“What do we have here?” the Widow asked.
“Stragglers from the Orc army, your Highness,” the lead guard said. With a push, he launched the Orc across the stone floor. The Orc stumbled and lost his balance, hitting the floor with a crack of his knees. He cried out in anguish.
The lair seemed to shake as the Widow pivoted to face them. Long, black legs chittered. Claws scrabbled. It was ear-raking; the equivalent of two rusty blades scraping together.
“Does your king not want you?” the Widow asked. Her voice was playful. Cooing.
The Orcs didn’t talk. The other guard threw the second Orc across the stones. He landed not far from his companion, but held his head higher, prouder.
“The king rejected them. Exiled, your Grace,” the lead Arachnid guard explained. “If you ask me, they got off easy, botching a job as fine as that one.” He looked crookedly at the back of the Orc’s head. “If that was me, I would’ve slain the old wizard right where he stood and taken that music box, even if I had to pry it from his cold, dead fingers.” He slapped at his belly and leaned backward to laugh.
“Thank you, my son. That will be all,” the Widow said.
The calm in her voice frightened Jinxton beyond belief. They say there is a calm before the storm, don’t they?
“I’s just saying, my Queen, that if you send me from guard duty, I cans gets the jobs done. That music box will be in your hands before youse knows it.” The guard grinned, his fangs protruding from blackened lips.
Idiot, Jinxton silently cursed. Shut your mouth before she rips it from your face.
“I means no disrespect,” the guard continued, “but I—”
Suddenly the Widow lifted up her massive body and scrabbled down the wide steps. Bones and dirt flew from the deep cracks in the stone. The ground shook. Dust drifted from the ceiling like a fine fog rolling out over a lake. The guard flinched backward, almost stumbling over his feet. The other guard, however, stood his ground.
The Widow didn’t even so much as glance at Jinxton. She lived off of fear. The stronger you presented yourself, the better of a chance you had of survival.
Jinxton dared not move. He locked his body until his muscles burned, and looked forward at the Blood Tree. The trunk seemed to mock him, and he wanted nothing more than to rip it from its soil and chop it up into firewood—but that would be certain doom, when there was a chance he could get out of this alive. The Orcs or the guards would be the Widow’s new scapegoats, her new sacrifices.
“I said enough!” she shouted, her voice dropping many octaves, sounding like the underworld itself.
“I’m sorry—” the guard began again, but that was as far as he got before death cut his words short.
He would never talk again.
Jinxton turned his head to see what had happened, though he had already known what was going to, and he instantly regretted it.
The death of an enemy was one thing, but seeing his own kind devoured right before his eyes was worse. Though it wasn’t the first time Jinxton had seen the Widow’s great pincers seize one of her own, and it probably would not be the last, he did not relish the sight. Her pincers, as big as tree trunks and as sharp as any blade, stabbed into the guard’s side until the clink of them coming together could be heard from inside the guard’s middle, even over his gurgled screaming. A fountain of black poured from his mouth—blood—and his eyes began to dim.
Jinxton wanted to think that the guard was dead before he entered the great cave that was the Widow’s mouth, but whatever gods were out there were surely not that kind.
He could hear the guard’s strangled screaming as the Widow’s great fangs munched and crunched his bones into oblivion.
She was done with him in less than five quick bites, and she turned back to the Orcs and the remaining guard. “Leave us,” she said to the guard, and he gave her a quick bow and was on his way. She turned to him then. “Jinxton?”
“Yes, my Queen?”
“Join me, please.”
“Certainly, my Queen.” Jinxton got up, relieved that he could stretch and relax his muscles for the moment, and went over to the Widow.
“I want you to guard the door, in case our newfound friends decide to run away.”
“Certainly, my Queen.” Jinxton went to the door and stood with his legs wide and his arms out, touching each side of the stone. The door was only big enough for five Arachnids to walk through abreast, but no way could the Widow fit through. Whatever she ordered, you did…even if that order was to kneel and allow your own execution.
“Now, my new friends, you will tell me what happened in the town of Ashbourne,” the Widow prompted.
The Orcs remained silent for some time. Their ragged breathing could be heard, and Jinxton thought he could hear their thumping heartbeats.
“If you do not wish to talk,” the Widow cooed, inching herself closer to the Orc prisoners, “then you shall be the rest of my dinner on this joyous night.”
Her pincers sprang outward again then clashed together, making a heavy, metallic clink-clink-clink.
“I’ll talk,” the Orc with the missing eye yelled. He scrabbled backward until he hit Jinxton’s shins. Jinxton growled at him, but the Orc didn’t answer.
“Good, good, goooood,” the Widow said. “What are your names, my friends?”
“I-I’m Graxon, and this big fella here is Bomid. We was there in Ashbourne, just like the King and Urlik said we was supposed to be, but there was Dragon Tongue there, the blimey bastards, and the witch with the music box had more friends than we thought she was gonna.”
“More?” the Widow asked, leaning forward.
“Yeah, yeah, more,” Graxon said, as the other, more rotund Orc stumbled backward.
“What of the rest of your army?” asked the Widow. She raised one leg and wiped black spittle away from the corner of her mouth.
“They were destroyed,” Graxon answered.
“Destroyed by Dragon Tongue, who are essentially one-dimensional wizards?”
“No,” Bomid said.
“Then by what?”
“By the Rogue Dragon.”
The Widow lifted her massive head, not an easy task, and laughed. Flecks of black armor flew from her mouth and sprayed across the Orcs. They didn’t even groan or squirm away. They just let it hit them.
“A Rogue Dragon? Do you realize how utterly ridiculous that sounds?” the Widow asked, humor laced within her voice.
“Yes. Yes, we do. But we know what we saw…” Graxon said.
He spoke with ignorant force. Not many used such a tone with the Widow and lived to talk about it; probably none at all.
“It was not a regular dragon,” Bomid added. “A normal dragon is much smaller. This…this one was huge. It could have swallowed the whole town, if it hadn’t been for…” He trailed off.
“Odarth, the Bright!” Graxon shouted. “That’s who it was! I heard the name from the lead Dragon Hunter before we—” He cut himself off.
“Before what?” the Widow probed.
No answer. They were practically signing their own death warrant, which pleased Jinxton. He would be glad to see such Orc scum eradicated. They, of all the races in Oriceran, deserved it—especially those under the watchful eye of the fat Orc King. An Orc who drank, ate, and slept away his rule; a king content with watching the world fall once more to the wizards, witches, and Elves.
“Before you fled the battlefield like cowards?” the Widow supplied. “I should have expected no less from Orcs…tainted Orcs, at that!”
The Widow boomed laughter. It was a sound laced with malice and evil, one that could melt skin from bone, and cause heart attacks in the healthiest of men. Jinxton had listened to it for as long as he could remember, but he would never get used to that terrible sound. It haunted his dreams, turning images of his beloved into torn portraits reserved for nightmares. He knew that sound would follow him to his death and beyond.
“We fled for our lives,” Graxon said.
“I see nothing wrong with that, eh? Do you, Bomid?”
But Bomid was too scared to speak.
“No matter,” the Widow decided after a long moment of Graxon eyeing his Orc compatriot. “We will see whether you are lying or not.”
“ ‘See’?” Graxon said.
Jinxton noticed the informant’s hands were shaking, as was his voice. It was the first sign of fear the soldier had seen from the Orc. He guessed that the legend of the Widow did not stretch as far as she might hope. Maybe many moons ago it had, but no longer.
“Yes, we shall see,” the Widow repeated. She turned her gaze to Jinxton. “Please bring our new friends to my tree.”
“As you wish, my Queen,” Jinxton replied.
“Tree?” Graxon said as Jinxton seized the Orc around one skinny bicep. “I hate trees, eh. Surrounded by enough of them bastards when we were dragged through this cursed forest! We don’t wanna see no more trees!”
“I’m afraid you do not have much of a choice, Orc,” the Widow said.
As Jinxton dragged the two Orcs to the Blood Tree, Bomid going willingly and Graxon putting up quite a fight, the Widow began to move back to her platform. The ground shook so much that Jinxton had trouble keeping his balance.
“Now make them kneel, Jinxton.”
“Kneel,” he said to the Orcs.
Bomid knelt as soon as the word escaped the soldier’s lips. Graxon, however did not.
“I’m going to count to three before I do something you really don’t want me to do, my Orc friend.” Jinxton eyed the Orc warily and pulled his sword free from the sheath slung across his back. “One…two…”
He paused for a long moment, giving the Orc more time to rethink his decision.
When the Orc still didn’t kneel, Jinxton said, “Three.”
With a quick swipe of his blade, he sliced the Orc in the back of the leg. The Orc cried out, dropping as quickly as a bag of rocks.
“I gave you a fair warning,” Jinxton said.
The blood leaking from the Orc’s wound and escaping through his intertwined fingers was slick.
“You’re horrible!” Graxon yelled. “Horrible!”
“I am only doing my job,” Jinxton replied.
“Which is what you didn’t do,” the Widow added. “You will be of no great loss; a warrior should never defect.”
“It was a Rogue Dragon!” Bomid shouted so loud and in control that it caught all of them off-guard—and the Widow was not one easily caught off-guard.
“We will see about that,” the Widow said.
Her two forelegs pushed outward, as quick and deadly as two striking Vipers. The Orcs screamed as they went face-first into the soil surrounding the Blood Tree.
“Please,” Graxon said through a mouthful of dirt.
The roots drank up the blood leaking from the Orc’s leg greedily. The black liquid was there and then, in the blink of an eye, it was gone. Jinxton noticed the white trunk of the tree start to glow.
Is it a trick of the eyes? Or is the tree being restored to life by the death of others? He shivered, thinking about it.
“Your pleading is not welcome here, I’m afraid,” the Widow boomed. She lifted those forelegs up, as quickly as she had done earlier, and struck down viciously.
The Orcs’ heads popped off with a sickening snap. Blood sprayed the soil and the trunk, and, to Jinxton, the red leaves took on the blackish hue of the Orcish blood. The trunk glowed. The tree seemed to get taller, its shadow stretching across the vast lair until Jinxton almost stumbled backward out of fear.
A tree shouldn’t be able to do this. It shouldn’t grow right before my eyes. What kind of dark magic is this?
As the life-force leaked out of the headless Orcs, first quickly and then at a slow roll, the tree continued to rise.
Jinxton was so enthralled that he had not even noticed the Widow’s mad cackling until she shouted his name, causing him to stir from his reverie.
“Yes, my Queen?”
“I said to move the bodies. The show is about to begin.”
Jinxton did as he was told, dragging the headless bodies over to the large piles of discarded carcasses, some shriveled with age, others fresher but decomposing.
As soon as the bodies hit the soil, something unbelievable happened. Roots thicker than Jinxton’s legs crept up out of the ground. Like greedy hands, they reached for the Orcs’ bodies. With a sucking sound, shortly followed by the breaking and crunching of bones.
Jinxton shuddered and fell backward. Dark magic. Such dark magic. He wanted nothing more than to get up and run away, but if he did, the Widow would kill him as easily as she had killed the Orcs. He would become just another sacrifice to this magic that was darker than any he’d seen before. So he stood his ground, swallowed hard, and waited for the tree to do what the Widow expected it to. He had, of course, made his own assumptions about what he would witness.
As the flash of lightning knifed through the dark chamber, he realized he was wrong. He was very wrong.
The tree disappeared right before his eyes. The air shimmered like a heat wave just above the surface of a paved road in the dead of summer. From the shimmering, an image broke through. First Jinxton saw a town—one he did not recognize. It was medium-sized, seemingly similar to a million other towns in Oriceran, but it was the calm lake and the distant mountains that gave this town’s name away.
Ashbourne. The place where legend said a great Rogue Dragon had fallen to Anwyn’s sword a millennia ago. Did Jinxton believe that legend? Not a chance… but he did not exactly believe that a Blood Tree held the power to bring back visions of the past, either, and he had just been proven wrong, hadn’t he?
Cloaked figures moved to and fro across the town. Their eyes glowed bright like smoldering flames. The image before them blew up, and now Jinxton could see forked tongues swiping chapped lips. These were the worshippers of the old Rogue Dragon gods.
Perhaps the Orcs had told the truth. It was almost impossible to pry his eyes away from the floating, shimmering screen in front of them, but he did. He looked to the Widow. She was just as entranced as he was. All of her green eyes watched attentively, and slobber dribbled from her great maw. She had even settled down on her massive stomach, letting her legs rest to each side of her.
The screen turned red as far as the eye could see. The lake seemed to be on fire. But that can’t be…
The lake parted, and a huge beast roared from the rolling waves.
Jinxton took an unconscious step back.
The massive dragon flapped its great leathery wings and roared loud enough that more dust cascaded down from the columns above them. When the dragon landed on the beach and sprayed its dragonfire, Jinxton felt his bowels turn to water.
By all the gods, it is true. It is a Rogue Dragon, resurrected.
The screen flashed again. A great battle took place; Orc and Dragon Tongue were killed, disemboweled, squashed beneath the dragon’s massive claws.
“Show me more,” the Widow said. “Show me what I need to see.”
The tree obeyed. The focus of the fighting narrowed, closing in on a figure standing high on top of a water tower. She held a sword—a great, glittering sword straight from the old legends—and on her shoulder was a worn and tattered bag that was barely hanging on by a thread.
Jinxton had never seen the girl that many were claiming to be Ignatius Mangood’s heir, but like with the Rogue Dragons, he had heard the stories.
At first glance, she was nothing to be afraid of: a tall, skinny, female warrior. It was known all over the kingdoms that, aside from the Widow—who possessed a great magic that none of the other Arachnids could comprehend—women were weaker and more fragile. Not built for war and battle. Too compassionate to take the blood of other—
An Orc had followed the girl onto the water tower, a massive Orc, and the girl known as Maria Apple slayed him as easily and nonchalantly as if he were a common housefly. Jinxton’s jaw dropped as the scene played out.
/> She didn’t even bat an eye. No tears, no regrets. This one is not weak. She is thirsty for blood.
Even through the wall of rain pouring down upon the scene, he could see it.
Though he didn’t notice, his hand gripped his sword so tight, his fingers began to ache.
Then, without looking the least bit concerned, the witch sprinted across the stretch of water tower and jumped high into the air.
Where was she jumping to?
An answer came in the form of an ear-splitting roar. The screen panned out, and Jinxton saw the Rogue Dragon’s great, rigid back. Maria Apple landed on the dragon almost as nimbly as a tree cat.
The Widow raised a massive leg. “I’ve seen enough.”
The tree snapped the picture off and stood there as if nothing had happened.
Jinxton’s skin crawled, and he shivered. The Widow looked to him, each one of her eyes boring into his very soul.
“She is more powerful than I thought,” she said.
Jinxton replied with silence. If he agreed with her, it could mean forfeiting his life.
“And it seems our Orc friends were not lying.” She chuckled, but Jinxton sensed no humor in it. “Oh well, the world will not miss a couple of Orcs—or a whole battalion, for that matter.”
“Shall I ready an army?” Jinxton asked after a long moment. It seemed like the only sensible choice. “I could lead them to the city, and we could snuff out the witch and her allies.”
More silence, this time heavier than before. It seemed the weight of the world rested upon Jinxton’s shoulders. He again wanted nothing more than to flee the lair. He was more comfortable in the cover of the dark trees; beneath the canopy their leaves offered him. He missed the smell of the fresh air and the sounds of the malicious creatures all around him.
I should’ve run when I had the chance.
Cringing at the thought, he eyed the Widow warily. She could sometimes hear thoughts, and if she picked that one up, he was surely as good as dead.
Midwest Magic Chronicles Boxed Set Page 63
