“Yes,” Nath said, donning a leather tunic Selene had given him. It was plain, with no insignia of Barnabus, which was odd, seeing how everyone else was marked. It did have a special crest on it, a crown resting on wings. “I’m curious as to what that something is.”
He was speaking of Gorn Grattack.
Gorlee came closer, careful no one else was within earshot, and said, “It’s not too late to move on.”
“Nervous?”
“I feel something I cannot describe.”
“Does it make you feel any better that I feel the same way?”
Gorlee managed the grimmest of smiles on his warrior’s face. “It does.”
“Good then. Now listen, Gorlee. I’d just as soon you left to go find our friends Brenwar and Bayzog. You of all people have the best chance of coming out of this, and the fury no longer hunts you. I’d just as soon you slipped out, first chance you got. Someone else will have to fight this war if I fail.”
“I wish you wouldn’t say such things,” Gorlee said, buckling on his helmet.
“Things need to be clear.”
Without another word, Nath mounted his horse, and Gorlee followed suit. The army finished breaking down the camp, loaded up, and was on the move again. Through the misty rain they went, mile after mile, league after league.
Nath felt incomplete. He forged on through his doubts. Could he trust Selene at all? Could he trust himself? He’d made plenty of bad decisions. The Truce he had agreed to might have been the worst of them all.
But I couldn’t let my friends die, even though they were willing to. What kind of friend would I be if I had let them die?
He must not have done the right thing, though, because the farther they went, the smaller he felt inside.
Near evening, when they were cresting a hill made up of fallen trees and dried-up and broken branches, Selene appeared. She rode on the back of a dark grey horse. Her robes were deep violet woven in red, and her black dragon tail hung over both sides of the saddle. Draykis were on either side of her.
“We are near, Nath,” she said, coming along his side and leading him away. “Come.” She glanced at Gorlee and then spoke to the draykis commanders. “Stay here with the rest of the army. We shall return. Wait.”
Without a glance back, Nath followed Selene through the barren mountain range. It was a territory he was unfamiliar with. They would be hard pressed to push an army along this pathway, which cut through a thick comb of briars, thickets, and dying trees. And even though the forces of Barnabus were anything but his kind of people, he felt abandoned without them. A little more so without Gorlee in tow.
No one watching my back now.
Ahead, Selene rode tall in the saddle as always. She had a gentle sway in her body as she rode, plodding along, patient, eyes forward. The tip of her tail lay flat over the saddle. Sometimes he noticed that it would whip back and forth, caress her hair, or coil along her waist. Not now.
She’s nervous? Perhaps she is on my side.
After miles of riding through the dank day, she stopped her horse and looked back at him. “Are you ready?”
“There’s never been a moment that I wasn’t,” he said, smiling weakly.
“Huh,” she said, dismounting. “We’ll leave the horses here. Are you all right with that, or are you more comfortable around pets?”
Nath slid off his horse and hitched the reins over a branch. “Walking is fine by me, company or not.” He stretched out his long arms, rolled his shoulders, and cracked his neck. He puffed a ring of smoke. “I’m ready to greet him.”
Selene came closer and locked her arm around his. There was a warm-soft texture to her scales. Standing almost as tall as he, she looked up into his eyes. “Don’t do anything rash.”
“Me?”
“Just keep your tongue in place and let me do the talking. Follow my lead.”
“Silence and inaction aren’t my better qualities.”
“No, no they aren’t. But it’s your life, Nath. Your actions will determine how much longer you keep it.”
He squeezed her hands and held them to his chest. He wasn’t sure why. He just did it.
She didn’t resist.
That’s when he said to her, “Isn’t your life worth something, too?”
“I can live with my choices, Nath. I’ve lived for them. I’ll die for them. Not even you can change that.”
The morbid statement created a void inside him.
Her fingers slipped out of his, and she walked away, tail dragging over the path.
An ominous dragon-woman puzzle, that’s what she is. If I live, I might just write a poem about this.
CHAPTER 9
Gorlee fidgeted inside his armor. He was of no use to Nath now. Selene had him. His effort to stay close had been blocked. They’d been gone for hours, and darkness had come.
“Get back with the rest of the troops,” one of the draykis commanders hissed. He had great black wings on his back, and he was very tall and ominous inside his patchwork of metal armor. “We’ll watch the pass.”
“I don’t recall the High Priestess removing my authority. I’m to watch after the Dragon Prince, so far as I can.”
“There is nothing to watch now,” the draykis said, looking down the path Nath and Selene had taken. “But soon, I’m certain, there will be a funeral.”
“Until I see a body, I’m just fine right where I am.”
The draykis grabbed Gorlee’s horse by the harness and jerked its neck. The horse nickered.
“Ride your beast away,” it said. “This army is under the watch of the draykis now, not men.”
Gorlee looked into its face of scales and beady eyes and said through his teeth, “Let … go.”
“Move along, human,” the draykis said, releasing the harness and walking away. “Huh-huh, move along. There are four of us and just one of you, and any one of us can tear you in two.”
Gorlee didn’t doubt he meant it. Very few mortals could handle draykis. But he wasn’t mortal. He clenched the reins of his horse and nudged it away.
“Enjoy your sleep, human, while we who need no sleep watch over things. Huh-huh,” it said, following with a hiss.
Gorlee moved deeper into the ranks, where the army made camp. There was little reason to begin a scuffle with the draykis. After all, they were Selene’s most trusted. Them, and a handful of acolytes. He’d been clever enough to fool her. He had fooled them all, taking on the identity of Jason Haan. Selene and the draykis didn’t pay much attention to the men in the ranks. She’d grouped the different races of followers among themselves. In the ranks were goblins, orcs, gnolls, and men as hard as you’d ever meet. Fat, big, ugly, or rangy, they fought for greed. Gold. A twisted form of glory. Now he sat among them, listening to their coarse talk. Their usual tone, one of ruthless mirth, was now replaced by a dull sort of melancholy. It seemed that the draykis weren’t the only ones pushing them around. So were the other races, not to forget the lizard men.
“They’re showing their colors,” one man said. His scarred face was shadowed in the fire. “Pushing us around.”
“The orcs have been hoarding our rations.”
“The goblins slide away with our steel,” said another man, whose beard hung to his knees. “I caught one with a quiver of my arrows and throttled him.” He looked up at Gorlee. “Commander Haan, may I ask what in Narnum is going on?”
Gorlee didn’t have the answer to that. The truth was he’d been more concerned about Nath. But he was aware that some of the captains, the human ones, had been kept out of some of the meetings. It happened from time to time, but of late it had been more frequent. “Don’t fret. I’ll speak with the acolyte chiefs at first light.”
The bearded man spit a wad of tobacco on the ground and looked into the sky, shaking his head. “Something is not right about this,” he muttered.
All the others continued to mumble and grumble and complain among themselves.
Gorlee didn’t entirely underst
and it all, but he’d been around the races long enough to know that humans weren’t born with as much wickedness as the other kinds. They just had an unpredictable flair about things.
He started away toward the edge of the human camp and took a walk. The entire time, he was listening to the other races. After all, he understood all their languages. Languages were second nature to him. He didn’t hear much, however. The boisterous orcs were quiet. The gnolls gnawed on bones. The goblins stitched up their crude armor and painted themselves with bright, ghastly images. And the lizard men, who talked little at the best of times, now hardly breathed a hiss.
Gorlee kept walking, keeping his distance, but he could feel their eyes on him. The night air with its dripping rain contributed to an already very heavy tension.
Something is wrong, he thought. Very, very wrong.
He wondered if he’d been discovered. Perhaps Selene had known his identity all along. Maybe the feline fury had tipped her off after all. The dragon cat was as cunning and quick as any dragon. He tried to shake the feeling. Rubbed his hands together. He felt chilled.
Perhaps it’s time to change. Surely I can make off through the woods as something undetectable. Nath Dragon needs my help.
A commotion caught his ear. A small group of goblins barreled their way into the human camp, carrying torches and making a fuss. In an instant, a crowd of angry men gathered around the goblins, shouting.
Gorlee pressed his way into the throng. “What’s going on?” he yelled. “Get out of my way, men!”
The surge of bodies didn’t part. Instead, the knot of men tightened, and their voices became angrier. Standing taller than all of them, Gorlee could see the goblins standing in the middle of the fray, screaming and waving their torches back and forth. They yelled in Goblin. Gorlee’s blood froze as he recognized the words they said.
“Kill them, dragons! Kill them all!”
Suddenly, a large ring of dark shadows dropped from the sky, surrounding the human camp. The dragons, bigger than horses, spread their wings, corralling the dumbfounded men. Gorlee heard a sharp draw of air fill all the dragons’ lungs. The dragons’ eyes glowed with light, and he screamed, “Get down! Get down!”
Bright red-orange flashes roared from their mouths, setting fire to everything. To everyone. Including himself.
“No! Stop! What are you doing?”
The sound of agony. The intense heat. The horrid scramble of bodies overwhelmed him.
CHAPTER 10
The path bottomed out. Selene stopped. The valley ahead was a barren half moon, surrounded by more mountains. Nath’s stomach became a little queasy as the stench of decay riled the air.
“What is this place?” he said to Selene.
Ahead, towering stones that only giants could have lain jutted out of the ground. They stood upright in a pattern, though some of them had fallen long ago. Many were coated in vines, and some of the blocks were covered in moss and weeds. Nath figured if he could fly and look down on them, the stones would spell out something.
“More temple ruins,” Selene said, taking a few slow steps forward. “I think you are familiar with them.”
Nath was, but these were bigger. Some of the stones stood as high as forty feet. He noticed that on some pairs of them, other great stones rested on top, forming massive gateways. It would take a hundred horses, maybe more, to move any one of them. He followed Selene, noting the ancient rune markings on the stones. He was familiar with the ancient use of portals. The scales on his neck tingled.
“This isn’t your typical ruin,” he said, looking up at the top of one. A live dragon with a slithering tongue sat perched up there. A grey scaler. Its glowing green eyes narrowed on him.
Nath’s eyes narrowed back. “He is here, isn’t he?”
“You can feel him,” Selene said. “Can’t you?”
Dark power. Deep. Penetrating. Suffocating. Evil. It would have taken a man’s breath away, dropped the stoutest warrior to his knees. A mist drifted over his ankles, hugging his scales and giving him a chill. Above, he noted more dragons perched on the stones: grey scalers, sky raiders, iron tusks, copper hides. The moonlight twinkled off their scales and claws.
“I hate to admit it, but I almost can’t feel at all.”
But the feeling wasn’t unfamiliar to him, either. There had been days when he’d had to face his father, Balzurth, knowing he had done wrong. The power that radiated from Balzurth was unimaginable sometimes. At times, it seemed his father’s mere thoughts could shake the room.
Nath swallowed. Summoned up his courage. Now he was facing a power just as great but unfamiliar. A power that wasn’t warm and fiery, but instead an icy breath of death.
He then heard his father’s voice inside his head. “You can have faith in me or in your friends, but don’t forget to have faith in yourself, Nath.”
“Are you scared, Nath?” Selene said, glancing back at him. “I think I see fear in your eyes. It worries me.”
“And I note a tremble in your voice,” he said, pulling back his shoulders and stepping to her side. “But I’d be lying if I said didn’t feel fearful.”
“Fear is good. It can give us an edge.”
“Us?”
She didn’t say anything, but it felt like a slip. A good one, the kind that gave his spirits a lift. Maybe Selene wasn’t going to double-cross him? He took a deep, silent breath through his nose and into his chest, stoking the dim fires within. Onward he went with Selene, through the network of colossal stones where dragons loomed like large gargoyles on top. Selene’s hand even gently brushed against his a couple of times.
“Remember,” she said, slowing her pace as they approached another rectangular archway, “don’t do anything unless I do something first.”
“I won’t,” he nodded. Gawking up at the archway, forty feet tall and twenty feet wide, he noticed a great chair of stone in the distance. On either side, great urns burned with the glow of a purplish-red fire. He’d seen such thrones before, and the sight sent another sliver of ice through his scales.
A dragon, bronze and long necked, squawked above them. Other dragons squawked in return. It seemed their arrival had been announced.
“Let’s go, then,” Nath said. And through the archway they went.
CHAPTER 11
“What in Guzan’s beard is that?” Brenwar said, staring up into the sky.
Bayzog had returned with Samaz, but he’d kept Samaz’s dream to himself. After all, dreams were open to interpretation.
“It looks like a rock,” Ben said, craning his neck and shielding his eyes.
The sun was rising again, and Bayzog hadn’t bothered to say anything until now. Everyone needed all the rest they could get, especially Sasha. Her pale eyes were bleary, and she stood by everyone else, gaping and yawning.
“How can this be, Bayzog?” she said. “It glows. Is it a dragon? A monster?”
Shum and Hoven crept along either side of her, staring as intently as everyone. Neither of the pair was ever rattled, so calm and poised in their expressionless demeanors. Now there was a puzzled, almost amazed look in their eyes. They glanced at each other and then at Bayzog.
Shum said, “Can you see it now, Bayzog?”
“It should seem familiar,” Hoven added.
“Well, if you can see what it is, then why don’t you spit it out?” Brenwar said, holding Pilpin by his ankles and up on his shoulders. “Does it kill the elves to be forthcoming about anything?”
“Why would that kill us?” Shum said.
Bayzog glided in between as Pilpin hopped off Brenwar’s shoulders and bared his axes.
“A moment, everyone,” Bayzog said, irritated, “if you please. We can wait, or I can shed some light upon this for all to see.”
“Do it then, wizard,” Brenwar said with a growl. “And make it quick. I’m about to pull the answers I want from a pair of elven skulls.” He glared at Shum and Hoven. “That’s no jest.”
Bayzog spread his arms out wide,
revealing his slender hands from the wide necks of his sleeves. His fingers drummed the morning air, and he started an incantation. Before his eyes, the air shimmered with new life. The distant view of the land and sky twisted and warbled. He summoned more power within and muttered the final word of the spell in Elven.
“Ishpahlan!”
Ben gasped the loudest of the group. Some of the others stepped back.
“By my beard, what have you done?” Pilpin said in wonderment.
“It’s a wall of enhanced imagery,” Bayzog said, “making everything appear much closer than it is.”
“You can do that?”
“Fantastic, Father!” Rerry said, stepping closer to the wall. “Why haven’t you shown me this before?” Everything was closer, ten times at least. The trees, the rocks, the birds that flew in the sky. Rerry stretched his hand out.
“Don’t touch it!” Bayzog warned. “And don’t stare so long, either. It’ll make you dizzy.”
Brenwar stood close by, clawing his beard and grumbling to himself. “Where’d that rock go?”
Bayzog narrowed his eyes. It took time to adjust to looking through the magic wall, but just when he saw it, Brenwar cried out.
“It’s the Floating City!”
“That city?” Ben said, stepping closer. “Great Guzan! I see it now!”
The Floating City was there, floating straight toward them through the sky. Where it had seemed miles away, now it seemed as if it was right on top of them.
“Dragons are pulling that thing, Father,” Rerry said. “Hundreds of them!”
There they were, shackled by enormous chains to collars around their necks: dragons. All sorts. Black winged. Black tailed. All their eyes had a soft, green, radiant glow. Their leather wings labored over their backs as they pulled the city forward.
Bayzog felt Sasha’s hand on his arm.
“Dearest,” she said, “you have goose bumps. Never in my life have I ever seen you so stricken before.”
The Chronicles of Dragon Collection (Series 1 Omnibus, Books 1-10) Page 120
