Dragon Sacrifice (The First Realm Book 3)

by Klay Testamark

  I said nothing.

  “Cut you a good deal on some Lamemhessian marching powder, if you know what I mean,” he said.

  “This is a family restaurant,” I said. “Really appreciate if you’d take it somewhere else.”

  “Oh yeah?” I could hear the sneer through the door. “And what will you do?” he asked.

  “I know the manager,” I said.

  “You’ll have to do better than that.”

  What the hell. “I also know Prince Veneanar.”

  He laughed. “That fop? What could he do?”

  Fop? “Listen here, boy, I’ll not have you disrespect our lord and soon-to-be king.”

  “Soon-to-be? I wouldn’t put money on it.”

  “Now look here—” There was a rumble. The kid snickered.

  “That wasn’t me,” I said. There was another rumble deep in the plumbing. The vibrations were growing stronger. I activated my Sight and the bathroom stalls turned transparent. So did the walls and ceiling. The punk’s aura was lit up like an elf’s. Probably a half-elf, considering his occupation. The toilets were set into the wall. The pipes behind it were glowing bright.

  “Uh-oh,” I said.

  Bloosh! The toilet on the far end became a fountain, spraying the ceiling with clear, high-pressure water. Boom. The toilet slammed into the stall door. Bloosh! The next toilet became a fountain.

  “Oh, fuck,” I said. I clapped to activate the cleaning spell but I couldn’t get my mind around the specifics.

  Boom. The second toilet smashed into its stall door, wrenched off the wall by the force of the jet.

  Bloosh! The next toilet became a fountain.

  “Come one, come on,” I said, clapping like a madman. Sparks flew from my silver hand but I couldn’t manage the spell. It was as complex as teleportation because it was teleportation, applied to skin surfaces. Was I going to have to run for it?

  Bloosh! Boom. Bloosh! Boom. Bloosh! Boom.

  “Shit, shit, shit!” I said.

  “Are you doing this?” the dealer asked, panic in his voice. “How are you doing this?”

  “Run, you idiot!” I said. The toilets kept jetting and exploding, jetting and exploding.

  “I’m sorry! I’ll never come here again!”

  I completed the spell. Maybe a little too thoroughly—the hair on my arms disappeared. I pulled up my pants and burst out of the stall.

  The punk was a half-elf. He couldn’t have been over fifty, which meant he was too young to drink, let alone snort anything. He stood, shocked, as the jets of water became searching tendrils.

  “Run!” I said. I grabbed him by the shirt and dragged him past the glass-brick wall. Boom. The last toilet exploded. We ran out the exit, an enchanted wave chasing after us.

  Diners gaped. A waiter froze, tray in hand, and I grabbed a wineglass as we rushed past. We reached my table and my friends leaped to their feet.

  “What is it?” Mina asked. “Who is that?”

  “An innocent bystander,” I said, letting him go. “Get out of here, kid.”

  “You’re Prince Veneanar,” he said.

  “I guess I am. Why else would this keep happening to me?”

  I emptied the wineglass in one gulp, then turned to face the Sending. The mass of water had taken the shape of a man. Someone I hadn’t seen since he was a boy.

  “Is that you, Conrad?” I said.

  “I’ve very sorry about this,” Conrad said.

  We stood in the ruined bathroom. Water dripped from the ceilings. The last toilet had been catapulted so hard it was embedded in the glass bricks. There was no smell, for which we can thank dwarven engineering and elven magic.

  The real Conrad was far away, of course. This was just an illusion of water and light. Wherever Conrad was, he was being attended by at least one elf with an affinity for this kind of magic.

  “You’re calling from all the way in the Northlands?” Meerwen asked. “That’s impressive.”

  “Let’s focus on how I almost got a surprise enema,” I said. “A surprise enema. Would a postcard not have been enough?”

  “There’s a monster in the Northlands. It’s killed a hundred innocent people and none of the humans have been able to kill it,” Conrad said. “Garvel, chieftain of chieftains, has issued a call to all men of rank.”

  “Didn’t we send Heronimo and Cruix to meet with him?” I asked.

  “He remembers you,” Conrad said. “I expect his own message will be arriving shortly. He sent it by fastest ship.”

  “So he wants our help. He has it.”

  “There’s something else, though. Garvel is offering a chieftainship as a prize. It comes with some land.”

  He named a figure and I whistled. “That’s a good bit of real estate,” I said. “Enough to start your own country.”

  “Exactly. I’ll be joining in myself, which is why I called.”

  “What do you need?” Mina asked.

  “Later. Garvel has already sent heavily-armed groups to slay the beast. None have returned. He’s opened the hunt to non-humans because he needs elven firepower, or similar.”

  I grinned. “So you need elven firepower.”

  “Or similar,” Mina said. “I think we can work something out.”

  Conrad flickered. “Assuming I win the chieftainship.”

  “What kind of monster is it?” Cruix asked.

  The Conrad-shaped water column turned to him. “Some kind of wyvern, judging from footprints.

  But bigger. Much bigger.”

  “Another throwback?” Heronimo asked.

  He meant a wyvern with a dragon in its ancestry. Such wyverns were extremely dangerous, their atavisms making them bigger, smarter, and more magical than regular wyverns.

  “Could be,” Conrad said.

  Damn. I’d encountered exactly two of them and they’d almost killed me.

  “We’ll be there,” I said. “But I’d like to say one last thing.”

  “What’s that?”

  “Surprise enema!”

  Humans were a tough crowd, but they had none of the explosive firepower that the other races could bring, one way or another. It was like the difference between a shower of arrows and the same weight in catapult stones. The arrows could darken the sky, sure, but against something as powerful as a wyvern you needed something with more punch.

  Old Garvel might have been able to hire foreign mercenaries and adventurers—if there weren’t laws forbidding elven wizards from setting foot in the Northlands. Under most circumstances bringing so much as a single grey mage into human territory would have been an act of war.

  That’s why the tournament-style invitation. He didn’t want me because I was a prince, but because I was a mage and a wyvern hunter. He sent for dwarves and caprans as well, but the whole thing was a cover for me to kill the monster.

  Packing was surprisingly headache-free. Like I said, my friends and I tour the country, trying to help people as part of our campaigning. We visit towns big and small, raising mone for public works. Sometimes I get to build a bridge and sometimes I have to hunt a wyvern.

  It’s great when we arrive in time for a local festival, because then I get to party and call it work. A little music, some local wine, and a woman or three… that’s my kind of politicking.

  I tend to pack light anyway. Meerwen, of course, had stashed one of her backpacks in my room, so she was good to go.

  “You’re not going to get in trouble with your dad?” I asked her. “More important, is he going to think I’m kidnapping you?”

  She laughed. “I wrote a note in his feybook. He’ll understand.”

  “That I’m kidnapping you? Come back here!”

  After a few hours sleep we assembled in the courtyard. Dagonet had a packed a bag as well.

  “You’re not coming with us,” I said. “This is a combat mission.”

  She raised an eyebrow. “I think we know that I can handle myself.”

  “I didn’t hire you to fight for me.
I wouldn’t feel good asking you to risk your neck.”

  “And yet, you’re bringing your girlfriend into it.”

  We looked at Meerwen, who was in full armour. Her helmet was moulded to her head, like something built up over a swim cap and domino mask. It was a lot more substantial though, with enchantments to keep her brains in the right place. In all that black steel and leather, she was more battle-ready than I was.

  “It’s not negotiable,” I said.

  Dagonet sighed. “I’ll hold the fort, then.”

  Everyone else piled into the carriages. Mina motioned me to join the first one and I pulled

  Heronimo in with me. I said goodbye to Uncle and Auntie and off we went.

  “Did you hire the fastest ship available?” I asked Mina.

  “I did. We got lucky. I’m told it’s the fastest ship, period.”

  “That sounds familiar,” Heronimo said.

  Mina looked at me. “Angrod. Why are we doing this? Why are we throwing ourselves into danger?”

  “A hundred innocent people dead,” I said. “And here we are, the most experienced wyvern hunters in Brandish.”

  We hadn’t always been. It surprises me too, but thirty years of doing it as a public service added up to a lot of hunting trophies.

  “Wonder what happened to Marcus Wyrmsbane,” I said. The professional hunter had disappeared after our first and only adventure together.

  “I heard he retired,” Mina said. “He couldn’t charge as much as he used to, and of course he was dead to the halfling community.”

  “Trying to backstab a party member will do that,” Heronimo said. “I still can’t believe it.”

  “That he tried to collect a reward on my head?” I asked.

  “No, that you survived. He was an artist with the knife.”

  We fell silent, remembering that first wyvern hunt. It was also the only time we encountered throwbacks. The mother and its offspring had ravaged the countryside before we could put them down. I’d needed to destroy a good part of the wilderness to do that.

  “It’s good that we’re doing this to save lives,” Mina said. “I can’t stop thinking about the political implications.”

  “It is a nice chunk of land,” I said. “And it comes with a title.”

  “Jarl of Folkvang,” Heronimo said. “Sounds familiar.”

  “This can only help your bid for the throne,” Mina said. “There’s the added prestige, of course. There’s also the extra revenue.”

  “An elven chieftain of the Northlands,” I said. “You know, of course, that this can only complicate the political situation there.”

  “A monster on the loose,” Mina said. “A hundred people dead.”

  “Don’t remind me. Hey, does this mean we’re finally meeting your father?” Mina’s father was chieftain of the Ironore Dwarves.

  “Don’t remind me,” she said.

  Chapter 6

  Corinthe Harbour isn’t as nice as Drystone Harbour, but then we don’t have the same seafaring traditions. Northlander raids were a constant danger for much of our history so we built with an eye to defensibility.

  We stopped in front of a dock. It was morning and the sun was lighting up the ocean.

  “There it is,” Mina said. She pointed to the ship at the end of the pier. It was a trimaran sloop, a single-masted main hull with an outrigger on either side.

  “I’ve seen this before,” Heronimo said.

  “Ninety feet at the waterline,” I said. “She’s a sleek little thing.”

  “That she is.”

  I turned and stared. We all did. We weren’t quite sure what we were seeing. The man was huge. I’ve fought Northlanders (hell, I live with one) so I am not intimidated by large men. This man, though, was easily as massive as two humans. His hands reached to his knees and looked like they habitually crushed skulls. He was a fortress of flesh, a bulwark of muscle and bone.

  “Would you be the passengers?” he rumbled, through his beard. “I’ve been expecting you.”

  “You’d be the captain, I’m guessing,” I said. Who could possible boss around this walking mountain?

  He tossed his head back and laughed. “Oh, no! I’m the quartermaster. Hogan Hardberger, at your service.”

  “Would you by any chance be a dwarf?” Mina asked.

  “Don’t be ridiculous,” I said. “He’s taller than I am—” But then I saw it. No elf or halfling had proportions like he did. Not even humans were halfway as stocky. But dwarves were.

  We were looking at a dwarf. A dwarf that was six feet tall.

  Hardberger laughed again. “My mama was a dwarf from Ironore. She wanted me to be a miner but I hated the low ceilings.”

  I could hear cheering coming from the ship. It sounded like the crew were in the middle of some kind of game. There was a whoop and Hogan looked up.

  “If you’ll follow me aboard, I’ll see if I can drag him away,” he said.

  We made our way up the gangplank, then over the wing that connected the outrigger to the main hull. Several of the crew hurled a ball across over a net, which stretched over the deck. Several more crewmen caught the ball and hurled it back.

  “Yeah!”

  “Back up, back up. Here it comes, here it comes.”

  “Ugh! Whoo!”

  From the way they threw it with both hands, the ball was a hefty one. It flew back and forth anyway, the players more than strong enough.

  “That’s good!”

  “C’mon, c’mon, slow down.”

  “Serve!”

  “Ungh, give me that!”

  There was a dark elf, a regular-sized dwarf, a pair of half-elves, and a couple of halflings.

  “Which one’s the captain?” I asked.

  Hardberger sighed. “The one with the pink hair. The dark elf. He loves his hooverball.”

  “That’s a medicine ball,” Meerwen said. “Looks to be six pounds.”

  “Why do they call it hooverball?” Heronimo asked.

  The captain had light pink hair and dark blue skin. An uncommon combination, but magic does that. He didn’t seem to exert himself as much as the others, but his team was winning.

  “You guys’re animals!”

  “Good serve, good serve. Woo-hoo! All right!”

  They batted the ball back and away, the leather ball a blur. Hands reached and caught it, arms swung and hurled it.

  “Trebuchet! Waauugh!”

  “That’s game! We won!”

  High-fives all around. They were still whooping when the dwarf spotted me and threw the medicine ball at my face.

  Whap.