Blood and Royalty

by M. R. Mathias

  Rikky loosed an arrow at the other mudged and was pleased to see his shaft sink deeply into the thing’s wing joint. He then turned and shook his head as the mudged Silva had just blasted went spinning down out of the sky, its head now cased in hardening metal goo too heavy to keep aloft.

  The wyrm Rikky had shafted, which had been fluttering and struggling to stay in the air with the pain, now burst into emerald flames and disappeared in an instant. Right into the green mist that remained came Jenka and Jade, slowing from a blur into themselves.

  “Waass- thaat- all- of them?” Jenka asked slowly, his voice growing from a deep warble into its normal tone as he spoke.

  “There was one more, Jenk.” Rikky was already urging Silva to catch up with Zahrellion.

  Jenka and Jade flew right alongside them, and Rikky decided that once this last mudged was killed, he would spend more time with his wyrm. They needed practice. None of the others had ever been able to keep up with them in normal flight, yet here were Jenka and Jade keeping pace as if it were easy.

  They had to hurry, though, for with three riders, Crystal couldn’t just turn and battle a mudged.

  Rikky glanced at Jenka again, and their eyes met. Nothing was said, but Jenka nodded and went streaking away in a lime-colored blur, leaving Rikky and Silva to catch up on their own.

  Chapter Three

  Using the Nightshade’s ability to manipulate the mudged, King Richard was able to single out the least inbred of the many draci his hellborn mount was summoning for him. These less tainted dragons were more rebellious than the others. They were able to defy the Nightshade, which made them a risk, but it also made them more valuable.

  Richard, with his black, sleek-skinned Nightshade’s influence, a few brutal torture devices, and his evil spell-casting, found cruel ways to force the defiant half-bred wyrms to sometimes shed a teardrop. The tears hardened on their way to the ground and held within them powerful magic.

  These crystallized drops were not nearly as powerful as the one Royal had once cried for Richard, but he had seven of the lesser ones now, and all combined their power was easily threefold the power of Jenka’s or Rikky’s dragon tears. He wasn’t sure about Clover’s teardrop, because the lines between legend and reality had been stretched in tales of her over the centuries, but he was certain he would have to face her, and he had a few other tricks, too.

  The people of all the Karian kingdoms thought of Clover as some sort of semi-evil goddess who sometimes sided with the people, and sometimes against them. They all feared her, and tales of the deeds she’d performed for King Amothy and his sons, and even in the following wars that split that once massive kingdom into a score of smaller ones, were recorded by monasteries, druidic cults, and all sorts of bards, poets, and story masters.

  Richard sought out the official chronicles of Old Kar, as the people called the previously whole kingdom, and with the help of his wife, Queen Xawyn Azar, purchased them from the distant relative of King Amothy, who was presently sitting on that completely inconsequential seat.

  After reading of the deeds of Clover and her violent dragon from firsthand accounts, Richard found he was a bit intimidated by her ability. He also learned of her association with the dwarves, and that she might have abandoned them in their greatest time of need. There was a chance he could ally with them in the slow, bloody war he was so looking forward to, but at the moment he was waiting on the newest extracted teardrop.

  He had not only given his three men, Baru, Dinaqu, and Kovin, each a collared mudged, but a single teardrop as well, so that they might maintain control of other mudged wyrms, in other places, in his stead. They were loyal, perhaps out of fear, but mostly because they were revered by all of Vikaria as King Richard’s wizard warriors, for they were going to reclaim the New World for its rightful king and queen.

  King Chad, Xawyn Azar’s father, who was only Richard’s puppet now, gave his blessing to it all in formal settings. The rest of the time he cursed and drank over his ill fortune. The poisons the castle wizards were giving him were slow acting. They would soon rot him from the inside, leaving his childless daughter and Richard the queen and king of Vikaria, as well as the actual rulers of several other smaller kingdoms they’d acquired. And soon the New World as well.

  “Here it is.” Baru grinned as he knocked, but entered Richard’s map room without waiting.

  Baru had the teardrop wrapped in thick leather, for the acolytes extracting them were killed instantly, if not from the intensity of the power the drops contained, than by one of Richard’s two cronies, who knew exactly what other men would do to gain such power.

  Richard took the offered bundle and began peeling away the folds covering his prize. When he saw it, he gasped aloud, and then it was clenched in his fist, where it barely fit. His other hand reached into his belt pouch and grabbed a handful of his other, smaller teardrops causing a rush to slide over him like no other he’d ever experienced.

  He laughed maniacally, because now he was beginning to understand why his spies all told him Jenka spent his days in a daze. Did his brother have a teardrop as big as Clover’s, too?

  He didn’t know, and in that moment of raw bliss, he didn’t care.

  Now, even Clover’s power seemed insignificant to him. The time to start taking the islands had come, and he was as ready as he had ever been to bathe the soil of the Mainland with the blood of those who had once called him king.

  *

  Clover hated the situation. Not the unavoidable war that was coming between Jenka and his brother, but the situation with the mystica. If Princess Amelia proved to be able to impose her will so absolutely that she could create willborn, then she would have to be killed. It was an age-old thing that certain elves were bound to do, and they would pursue her relentlessly, if she was one. Clover needed to know if Jenka’s daughter was just tainted with the same affliction her father was, or if she had inherited the unallowable ability to create some terrible thing from nothing more than her desire.

  She’d left the castle as soon as the children and their mother had arrived. The girl’s ninth birthday had been ruined by her uncle’s wyrms attacking the Three Forks Palace, and Clover had to agree with Marcherion that it had been an intentional slight. Richard probably had spies enough to have known what day it was, and that there was a festival. Prince Jericho told her that Amelia’s conversation with her father and Marcherion was the only reason she hadn’t been outside on the dais, before the people, when the mudged attacked.

  Worse, Clover heard that the mudged were singling out all of the pale-complected young girls with their hair dyed bright red, as if killing Milly was their sole purpose.

  I’m insane, Clover thought to herself. Here she was debating on whether she would have to kill the girl herself, to save her from the wrath of the elven hunters who would eventually come, while siding with the child in her heart for having such an ass of a king for an uncle.

  “Are you leaving?” Aikira asked her.

  Clover was standing on a balcony that overlooked the lush valley below the castle. She and Crimzon had long ago constructed the place with the help of ogres and dwarves, which reminded her that she needed to go see King Granitine, or whoever sat the throne now, before the coming war got too far out of hand.

  “I am.” She smiled at the beautiful ebon-skinned girl her son had raised and then trained. For a second, she wondered if Aikira had learned enough to know of willborn duty, and the last laws of wizardry. She was suddenly sad, because she couldn’t remember if she’d passed them to her son, Vax Noffa. “I will only be gone a few days at the most. Marcherion is right. They will try to take Gull’s Reach first. Stave them off there as long as you can, and maybe I can find us a way to poke back at Jenka’s brother in a way he’ll not be expecting.”

  Clover didn’t mention the issue with Princess Amelia being a mystica. She’d slipped the term accidentally before Zahrellion once, when the two were speaking privately of the girl’s strangeness. Zah seemed to
understand something might be wrong then, but Clover wasn’t sure if Milly was, or wasn’t, one. The one thing she did know was that she had to find out before the girl matured.

  After a hug, she and Aikira parted ways. Clover then climbed the long, circular stair that led to the dragons’ landing pads. She could levitate like the others seemed to prefer doing, but she wanted to keep her legs strong, and keep her arse firm. After all, she was more than three hundred years old.

  She said a few quick words of respect to the other wyrms relaxing on the enchanted platforms that replenished them so, and then mounted Crimzon in the dusky light.

  “Take me to see the Oracle of Everling,” she told her dragon aloud. The Oracle, if she was still alive, had the box. Clover remembered having to stick her hand in it, but she’d been an adult, and had been riding Crimzon only a few years, at the time. Someone had claimed she was a mystica, probably one of the gambling guilds she’d taken advantage of, and then the elves of Everling had hunted her. They fought her and Crimzon, and lost terribly against them, but eventually persuaded her that she needed to know the last laws of magic, the few things Master Zarvin never got the chance to teach her.

  Once she learned those, she realized that she had to stick her hand in the box, for the legendary strawberry-haired, pale-complected mystica, who were able to give life to things born from just their will, had created horrible evils in the past. They had to be killed.

  Clover wasn’t certain how the thing in the box could tell, but the elves swore it could. She had the characteristics, just like Milly. The red hair and white skin; the power to sway the will of men, and always be favored.

  She remembered the thing touched her, and she’d felt that it was angry for being where it was. Then her arm was out and she was wiggling her tingling fingers before her face.

  She chuckled, for the elves had been even more relieved than she at that moment. Had she been blooded by the thing, and then killed by the elves, they would have then had to deal with Crimzon.

  There was the issue of the girl being a girl, though, and not yet a woman. Clover wasn’t going to steal away with Princess Amelia, at least not until she was sure the Oracle and the box would even work. She had to go see for herself.

  Chapter Four

  Rikky heard the parting conversation between Clover and Aikira and found it didn’t hurt him anymore to be around his ex-lover. Clover had never seen the world in the same way as Rikky, and since Rikky wouldn’t go to some crazed dwarf’s healing fountain in some faraway land and try to see if it would heal him, or more precisely, grow him a new leg, the two of them hadn’t been able to get along. Over the first year or so of their relationship, they had became so close that Rikky considered asking for her hand in marriage. It was a good thing he hadn’t, because just as his courage was at its highest, she told him she was leaving for a time. She said that when she returned they would no longer be together in such a personal way.

  This stunned Rikky. He started training Jericho and Pascal at Kingsman’s Keep to keep his mind off of the heartache, but it had taken more time than they ever spent together to get where he was now. Rikky needed purpose in his life. He was a healer and a teacher at heart, and Clover just wanted to live forever, and bask in the power her dragon, and her dragon tear, afforded her. He understood that now, that Clover was wise for leaving him, not cruel. He was glad he could see her, talk to her even, and not feel that twist inside his gut.

  The only thing that bothered him now was that he never asked her why she hadn’t just talked with him before that last time. He still didn’t know the answer. He had a feeling it had something to do with Milly as well, and he was certain that Milly wasn’t anything close to normal. After all, her father had assumed some of the alien they had destroyed in the Confliction, but only Jericho was conceived before then. Amelia, for all any of them knew, could be an alien half-breed who would cocoon like a horn-head into a Sarax or some such. None of it would surprise Rikky now. Not after broods of meddling witches and shape-shifting aliens, and skies full of violent Sarax. It wouldn’t surprise him if the girl just one day sprouted wings and flew away; nonetheless, he was her “Uncle Rikky” and he loved her dearly. He would kill or die for either of Jenka’s children, and neither Zahrellion nor Jenka had anything to do with his devotion. The children loved him, and he loved them; it was plain and simple.

  Since he, Silva, Jenka and Jade had returned with Crystal, Zah and the children, Clover had been eyeing the princess. Quick looks, odd questions to the girl, and about her.

  Rikky doubted anyone else saw it that way. Clover even spent a few long minutes with Milly, talking about her birthday and giving her an enchanted butterfly pendant as a gift.

  Rikky was contemplating following Crimzon to see where they were going, but a familiar voice barked out beside him, and his shoulder muscle knotted with the force of Marcherion’s blow. It was a hard punch, too…hard enough that Rikky wasn’t certain if he should take it as a friendly gesture, or bust March in his nose.

  “I didn’t forget that slap in the nards you left me with on the dais before the whole kingdom, Icky Rikky.” Marcherion’s grin was the best thing Rikky had seen in years, and his rush of indecisive anger evaporated. “Are there still elk up beyond the old Temple of Dou?”

  “Some.” Rikky grinned and thought about how great it would be to go hunting with March right then. “If you really think Richard will try to take Gull’s Reach first, then maybe we should go and dig out all the old dragon guns and get the people ready to fight.”

  “I’d rather go hunt a few of those elk, and so would Blaze.” March shook his head and shrugged. “But that is where he will come. Either that, or he will attack there, trying to distract us from something else. Either way, you’re right. We have to go prepare the island.”

  “There is a herd of moose along the Cut Silva has been harvesting from. There is an older cow there of a size that should stay Blaze’s hunger for a time.” Rikky chuckled, but there was still a hint of warning in his tone. “Don’t let Blaze overfeed there. Let him take the old cow and then meet us at Gull’s Reach.”

  “Thanks.” Marcherion relayed the news to his wyrm. Blaze could go feed and be back by morning.

  “I’m- having- ships sent.” Jenka joined them, speaking almost normally. “I’m ordering the people of Gull’s Reach, the people who are not willing to die there fighting King Richard’s horde of mudged, to take passage to the Mainland.”

  “I wonder if he will even bother with the Outlands,” Aikira said. “He’s never shown an interest there before.”

  “Eventually he will.” March gave her a look that Rikky saw as a scowl, but might have just been disbelief, or maybe even awe of her beauty. “He wants to slowly torture us all like we were prisoners in his dungeons. He doesn’t want to win a war, Aikira, Jenka.” March looked at them each in turn. Then he shook his fist in front of his face. “Don’t you get it?” He nodded at Rikky as if he were the only one who understood the situation. “That crazy bastard just wants the war.”

  Chapter Five

  Clover used Aikira’s new, more efficient teleportation spells to take her back to the heart of the Karian peaks. She’d flown over here once since being revived in the Leif Repline Fountain, and she knew that men, even over the centuries she was imprisoned, hadn’t yet found a way to get that far into the mountain range. Only giants, orcs and dwarves could tolerate such inhospitable terrain, and even they did so by staying out of it more than in it.

  The Karian mountains spread out across the horizon, sharp and either as black as pitch, or covered over with white ice and eons of accumulated snow. This part of the range was above the cloud layers, and Crimzon hated being there.

  As a girl, Clover had hunted the edges of the foothills. She’d found Crimzon very near here, but even the deeper foothills ended most men who dared them. This was like a whole other world, free of humanity’s taint.

  Tainted by elvesss, Crimzon hissed and snorted at his own s
arcastic levity. Dragons didn’t like elves by nature. Crimzon maintained himself only out of respect for Clover.

  There was an entire population of elves hidden out here. The Elves of Everling had a valley called Everling Deep, which was magically domed over by the power of a Heart Tree. The forest underneath had been thriving the last time Clover was there. Men didn’t know it even existed, and they probably never would, but Crimzon and Clover did, and they were hurrying through the frigid air to get there, for the fire drake was in considerable pain now from being in the arctic climate.

  It was shocking to transgress from such bitter air into the spring-like world underneath the glassine barrier that kept the true elements out, but the big red dragon let out an audible hiss of pleasure as his scales began to absorb the new warmth around them.

  “Is it you?” a voice called from the back of a winged horse just out of the range of Crimzon’s breath. The elf riding it was a true elf, all stunted and ancient looking, with metallic hair, and glowing amber eyes. “Lady Clover is still alive? How is it possible?”

  “Not only you twisted little buggers are immortal these days.” Clover gave a slight nod of respect. It surprised her that she remembered this exact elf as the one who had spent a good portion of a morning with a bow trained on her heart, right in this very place, trying to decide if he believed her tale. But that was a different time, an age ago or more.

  “I need to speak with the Oracle, if she still lives.”

  “She told us to expect you today,” the elf grinned, showing his crooked teeth.

  It amazed Clover that when an elf bred with a human, the result was as beautiful a two-legged creature as one could behold, but half-elves were few and far between. True elves looked exceedingly graceful and beautiful even into their early three hundreds, but time gnarled their bones and hunched them over as if the weight of so much life was a physical load they were carrying. After about five hundred years, even the most beautiful of elves was pitiful to see.