“But where?” Frank asked.
“Not sure,” Cyril said. “We need better information about the spread of the wyrm’s minions before we decide.”
Frank pursed his lips, clearly not satisfied with the answer but apparently willing to accept that Cyril didn’t have any more to offer.
“Are you going to tell me what happened back in Prospect?” he asked instead.
Cyril held him with a glare until Frank looked down.
“You’d know what happened if you hadn’t run off,” Cyril said. “We were attacked by some very bad people. They took Imogen, so we killed them.”
Frank started to say something but stopped when he saw Cyril’s expression.
“I couldn’t help it,” he finally muttered.
“We should get moving,” Cyril said.
By late afternoon, Ben was tired and his legs felt like rubber. The up and down from one ridgeline to the next was taking a toll on him. He wondered at his grandfather’s ability to maintain such a grueling pace given his age, but Cyril seemed to be the least exhausted of them all … except maybe Homer.
When they had reached yet another ridge, John stopped them with an urgent gesture, pointing down toward an old forest road. They could see a trap containing a very agitated coyote. Not far off was a man and a horse-drawn cart with an empty cage in the back.
Everyone took cover, watching and listening.
“Well now,” the man said to the coyote, “looks like my luck is your misfortune. The priest will pay well for you and you’ll be back out in the wilds in no time.” He worked at pulling two ramps out of the back of his wagon while he talked to the animal. “The bad news is, you won’t quite be yourself after he’s done with you.” He slid the empty cage down to the road and pushed it out of the way with some effort.
“Let’s see about getting you loaded,” he said, climbing onto the wagon and unwinding a rope from a hand winch mounted to the front of the wagon’s bed. The coyote snarled and snapped at him when he hooked the line to the cage.
“You’re a feisty one,” he said, chuckling but taking care to keep his hands out of reach. He climbed back into the wagon and slowly dragged the cage to the ramps and then up into the bed. Once it was loaded, he tied it down and nodded approval.
“You’re not a cat, but then they’re far less agreeable when caged.”
Sunlight fell on the man’s cheek—it was scarred with a rune, the mark of the Dragon Guard, but this man wasn’t dressed in any type of uniform. Instead, he wore clothes one might expect of a hunter or trapper. Only the scar gave him away.
He went to the empty cage and baited the trap, sprung it once and then set it again.
“Let’s get you back to Rogue City,” he said, climbing into the driver’s seat and urging his horse into motion.
John nocked an arrow, but Cyril slowly shook his head, motioning for quiet while the man with the coyote rode away. After several minutes, he stood up and surveyed the forest with a frown.
“Is that where the stalkers come from?” Imogen asked.
“Seems that way,” Cyril said.
“So why didn’t we kill him?” Frank asked. “And how do they turn a coyote into a stalker?”
“Better to leave as little trace of our passage as possible,” Cyril said. “As for the how, I have my suspicions, but I couldn’t say for sure.”
He headed down to the road, stopping to look at the trap for several moments before reaching inside and pulling the trigger, causing the door to fall on an empty cage.
“Shouldn’t we destroy it?” Frank asked.
“No, a sprung trap isn’t out of the ordinary—a destroyed one is,” Cyril said. “Our best defense right now is to pass unnoticed.”
When night began to fall a few hours later, they found a secluded meadow to make camp.
“How much farther?” Frank asked.
“A day, maybe two, depending on the terrain.”
“Wasn’t the Deschutes Territory hit in the initial attack?” Ben asked.
“It was, but the population in that area was far lower than in other places,” Cyril said. “They’ve been able to clear out the dead and rebuild, or so I’ve heard.”
“I still don’t understand how the dragons managed to wipe out most of the world overnight,” Frank said.
Cyril’s eyes lost focus for a few moments before he snapped back to the present and nodded to his grandson.
“I’ve never really talked about it, avoided it, in fact,” Cyril said. “I guess you’re old enough to hear the story.” He paused to collect his thoughts. “You boys remember your history lessons?”
They both nodded, though Ben had to wonder which lesson his grandfather was referring to.
“I’ve never been much of a student,” Hound said. “So I wouldn’t mind a refresher.”
Cyril nodded with a grin. “After the old governments ran out of other people’s money and went broke, the world devolved into chaos for a while. People were desperate for security, any kind of security. The corporations were only too happy to provide it. They began to take geographic areas under their direct control, forming their own militaries and police forces to establish order. And people were happy to have it … at first, anyway.
“The thing about corporations is they understand basic economics, unlike politicians and bureaucrats. The corporate masters know that an economy runs on productivity and nothing else, not consumption and certainly not debt. Unfortunately, they always tend to lose sight of the human component—people become numbers, units of production, all expected to add to the bottom line. While that kind of thinking does lead to a higher standard of living for most, it fails to take into account that some people simply can’t be as productive as others, whether due to age, illness, or disability.
“Some corporations solved that problem with pretty draconian measures. It was a dark period of history called the ‘purge.’ That led people to revolt against their corporate masters. Rather than lose their power, the corporations agreed to reforms, and the continental conglomerates were formed. Six super corporations were charged with managing the resources of each major land mass, and make no mistake, they considered people to be a resource, both to be protected and exploited.
“Over time, the world stabilized. The six conglomerates formalized trade relations and agreed to reduce their military capabilities. One of the consequences of this was a dramatic reduction in nuclear weapons worldwide. Each conglomerate kept a few dozen nukes, but they were all carefully controlled. Unfortunately, some genius came along and invented the neural-pulse bomb, and since it was a brand-new weapon of mass destruction, it wasn’t controlled by the trade agreements. Before you knew it, the world was in another arms race.
“And the timing couldn’t have been worse.”
“Wait,” Frank said. “How does a neural-pulse bomb work. I mean, I’ve heard of them before, but I never understood how they killed so many people.”
Cyril nodded. “When a nuclear weapon detonates, it creates an electromagnetic pulse capable of disrupting electrical systems. It didn’t take long to discover that the effect could be duplicated with conventional weapons. The neural-pulse bomb was the next evolution of that idea. It emits an electromagnetic pulse that disrupts the electrical activity in the nervous systems of mammals. The effect doesn’t last long, just a few minutes, but we can’t survive even that long without a heartbeat. By that time, everybody in the area of effect is dead.”
“I’m usually a big fan of weapons,” Hound said, “but that one makes my blood run cold.”
“Tragically,” Cyril continued, “when the dragons came, the corporate conglomerates were busy building up enormous stockpiles of these weapons, complete with stealth delivery systems. Worse, nobody saw Dragonfall for what it was. The eggs hatched and the dragons went into hiding until they could grow in size, magic, and influence. Over a few dozen years, they secretly gathered followers, promising them magic and power, systematically infiltrating higher and higher
levels in the corporate structures until they were ready to strike.
“That was the day the world ended—the day your grandmother died,” Cyril said, looking to Ben and Frank in turn. “Now, get some rest, tomorrow’s going to be another hard day.”
And it was. They walked up and down for most of the day, from one ridge to the next, until Cyril stopped atop a bald, rocky bluff and surveyed the forest stretching out before them.
“There,” he said, pointing toward a valley two ridgelines over. “We’ll reach my cache tomorrow.”
“Glad to hear it,” John said, pointing toward the sky. “Looks like the bird is back.”
All eyes turned upward and found a hawk circling high overhead, directly above them.
“We’ll keep an eye on it,” Cyril said, “see if it follows us.”
They made camp that night under the trees next to a burbling stream. When they set out the following morning, Ben searched the sky, feeling a twinge of fear when he saw the hawk overhead.
“What do you think they’ll send at us next?” Hound asked.
“A lot more than before,” Cyril said, anxiety ghosting across his face.
More than anything else, Ben was disconcerted by his grandfather’s worry. It took a lot to get to him, but something clearly had, more so than all they had already been through.
“What do they have besides the Dragon Guard and stalkers?” Frank asked.
“A dragon,” Cyril said, with a deadly serious look.
“But he’s nowhere near here,” Frank said.
“Dragons can fly,” Cyril said. “We need to move.”
He set a brisk pace, driving all of them harder than Ben would have thought possible. He started to wonder at his stamina, when a thought occurred to him that drove out all other considerations.
The dragon’s egg.
The story of the resistance told of a single unhatched egg—the source of the Wizard’s power. He’d seen Cyril use the bone amulet, seen the power he could command with a trinket made from a long-dead dragon. He could only imagine what his grandfather might be capable of with a living dragon egg.
While they trudged up a steep incline, understanding of the true nature of their plight flooded into Ben as if he’d been struck by lightning. He stopped dead in his tracks, his mind abuzz with fear and possibility.
Cyril was taking them to the egg—the centerpiece of his weapons cache, a source of power unequaled in all the world. And the potential doom of humanity.
If the egg hatched, there would be two dragons, almost certainly a breeding pair.
“What’s wrong?” Frank asked when he saw Ben’s dumbstruck expression.
Ben struggled to shake off the implications of his sudden understanding, shaking his head and willing himself to continue toward the ridgeline.
If the dragon knew that the egg was back in play, that the Wizard was at work in the world again, he would stop at nothing to recover his potential mate. That was what Cyril really feared. Ben looked up, marking the position of the bird with renewed concern. The Dragon Guard was coming, and there was no telling what they might bring with them.
“You look like you saw a ghost,” Frank said.
“Just contemplating our enemy,” Ben said, setting out again. He knew the look on Frank’s face. His brother was a lot of things, but he wasn’t stupid. Ben chided himself. He would have to become a better liar, in word and deed, if he was going to keep Frank from discovering their family secret.
Nearing the top of the ridge, he pondered what Frank might do with the knowledge, how he might leverage it. He knew one thing for certain … if Frank discovered that Cyril was the Wizard, that he possessed the dragon’s egg, he would want the egg for himself above all other things. Enough even to cut ties with his family and strike out on his own.
The end of that particular set of bad decisions would be Frank’s capture or death and the wyrm’s ultimate victory—an outcome that Ben vowed to himself to prevent, no matter the cost.
He stopped at the top of the ridge, leaning against a tree to catch his breath while the consequences of his silent vow penetrated to the core of his being.
He might have to kill his brother.
He’d thought about it before, but never more seriously than typical brothers in a fight. He’d even said it, but never with the full force of intention or with any real consideration for the implications of such a thing. He tried to imagine carrying through with it and was immediately assailed by his conscience, by an internal rebellion of such magnitude that he realized in an instant that he simply didn’t have it in him.
Frank was untrustworthy, infuriating, and totally self-centered, but he was also his brother, his family. How could he ever bring himself to turn on family? And yet …
How could he not? If the world truly did hang in the balance, if Frank’s monumental selfishness might lead to a future of darkness and slavery, tyranny and domination, how could Ben put his own feelings ahead of that?
He looked over at Frank and shoved the dilemma from his mind. Not because he’d arrived at anything resembling a decision, but because it was simply too painful to consider.
“There are some things all of you should know about the place I’m taking you,” Cyril said, his eyes never leaving the forested valley below. A few broken-out rooftops could be seen through the trees and the remnants of an old wooden fence marked a line along one side of the creek.
“Such as?” Hound said when Cyril didn’t continue.
“It’s haunted.”
“I don’t believe in ghosts,” Frank said.
“You should,” Cyril said, looking at him with a deadly serious expression. “All of the stories of magic, of haunting, of strange and unnatural creatures—all of them have a basis in reality. Some have been embellished, but the sources of all those stories are real. This is no different.
“This place has been called many things over the centuries. It’s a natural electromagnetic vortex that warps space and time. Before the dragons arrived, it was harmless enough, little more than a curiosity, but now it contains some unique dangers and properties. My theory is that the veil between worlds is naturally thin here, and the dragon’s presence makes it permeable.
“You’ll see things that don’t make sense. You may be faced with apparitions. It’s important that you don’t look at them. If they notice that you can see them, they will act. I believe that many of the entities called ghosts exist in our midst all the time, but we can’t see them. It’s only in places like this, places where the veil is thin, that they become visible. Our perception of their existence gives them power to manipulate us through that perception.”
“So what should we do?” Imogen asked.
“Honestly, it would be better if you all waited here,” Cyril said.
“Not a chance,” Frank said.
John pointed toward the bird still orbiting overhead.
“We probably should stay together,” Hound said. “Just tell us how to handle these ghosts and we’ll be fine.”
“Ignore them,” Cyril said. “Pretend they aren’t there. Don’t let your eyes linger on them, don’t react to their behavior, don’t heed their words or howls.”
“Howls?” Ben asked.
“They’ll make all manner of noise to frighten you—some of which are truly terrifying.”
“Why on earth would you hide your weapons here?” Frank asked.
“What better place than one with built-in supernatural guard dogs?” Cyril said.
Ben suspected he had other reasons.
“Everyone down,” John said, ducking behind a tree.
The sound of horses coming up the road reached them shortly before four men came around a bend. They were all armed with blades and one carried a bow.
“The bird is overhead,” one said.
“They should be around here somewhere,” another said.
“Bounty hunters,” John whispered. He motioned toward the one with the bow. “I know that one.”
/> “Quietly back up,” Cyril whispered.
They crept backward, putting the top of the ridge between them and their hunters.
“So what now?” Frank asked.
“We wait.”
“For what? The Dragon Guard?” Frank said. “If these guys got here this quickly, the wyrm’s people aren’t far behind.”
“He’s got a point,” Hound said.
Cyril looked up at the hawk and frowned.
“Frank, you and John and Hound go up to the ridge and watch them, but stay out of sight,” Cyril said. “If they head this way, come back without alerting them to our presence.”
Ben was grateful that Frank didn’t argue.
Once they’d reached the ridge, Cyril leaned in to whisper to Imogen and Ben. “Have you ever seen a small bird harass a hawk?”
They both nodded with confusion.
Cyril smiled, taking Imogen’s hand and motioning for Ben to take her other hand.
“Close your eyes for a moment, take a deep breath and clear your mind,” he said softly. “Let go of your thoughts and picture a hawk. Picture three or four small birds hitting it in the back of the head, tearing out its feathers, harassing it mercilessly. Hold that thought in your mind, picture it vividly.”
Ben did as instructed. He’d seen it many times before, a big bird soaring on the wind with two or three smaller birds taking turns diving at the back of its head, and usually driving it off. He pictured it in his mind, holding the image with as much clarity as he could muster.
“Good, now let go of the image and open your eyes.”
When they both complied, he smiled and pointed at some moss hanging from a tree.
“Do you remember what that is called?”
Both looked at him with more confusion, shaking their heads.
“No matter, I just needed you to truly let go of your thought. A spell is never actually cast until you release the thought form you’ve created into the world.”
“What are you saying?” Imogen asked.
“We just cast a spell,” Cyril said. “Now we wait for reality to obey.”
He looked up at the hawk and smiled when he saw a pack of crows headed toward it.
“How can we even be sure that we did that?” Ben asked.
The Dragon's Egg (Dragonfall Book 1) Page 23
