Dragon Tear (Agents of the Crown Book 5)

by Lindsay Buroker

  He patted it. “We’re almost there, the captain said. You’ll feel much better once you’re on solid land.”

  The ship bucked, almost pitching him atop her.

  “You might want to wait to make your moves until she’s feeling better, Zyndar Hero,” Rhi said, though the violent motion had thrown her onto her side too.

  “Ha ha,” Jev said. “I’m sure Zenia has been pleased to have you and your wit to keep her company on this voyage.”

  “I have no doubt. Zenia, do you want me to keep going? It looks like this entry on the toad concludes the land animals that we might run into. The next chapter is on fish, marine mammals, and mysterious magical mutants that are found in lakes and the seas around Izstara.”

  “Keep going,” Zenia said. “And thank you for reading. I planned to finish all of those books myself and take copious notes on the way here. I wasn’t anticipating—” She swallowed and brought her fist to her mouth. For a moment, she didn’t move, simply trying to recover her composure. Then she opened her eyes and gave Jev an apologetic look. “Sorry,” she mouthed.

  He frowned and squeezed her hand. “For what? I’m sorry you haven’t felt well.”

  “I thought this would be a chance for us to—”

  A thunderous bang came from the side of the ship, and the craft jerked, hurling Jev to the deck. Rhi thumped down next to him, cursing as she struck her head.

  “What was that?” Jev asked.

  That had been more than a rough ride on a wave.

  Rhi only rubbed her head and cursed again. Zenia sat up, looking around with bleary and scared eyes. Jev had the urge to jump up and wrap his arms around her for comfort, but the bang came again, along with a jolt as intense as the first one. It threw Zenia against the bulkhead.

  He scrambled for the door to find out what was happening.

  As he opened it, someone bellowed, “Gunmen to the cannons. Now!”

  Damn, was that it? Some enemy ship was attacking them? If so, with what? A battering ram?

  “All warriors to the deck,” came a second call. “If you have a weapon, get up here now!”

  “Zenia, is this the warning your dragon tear showed you?” Jev asked, the deck rocking and swaying underneath him. Whoever was attacking them, they hadn’t waited for the storm to abate to do it.

  “I don’t think so.” Zenia swung her legs off the bed, gripping the furniture bolted to the deck for support. “I’m trying to figure out what hit us. I sense…”

  “Warriors, up here, now!”

  “Help however you can,” Jev told Zenia—he wanted to tell her to stay safe and that he would handle it, but with her dragon tear, she was far more powerful and better able to change the course of a battle than he was, “but stay here and use your magic from a safe spot. Don’t go up there and risk yourself, please.”

  Rhi snatched her bo up from beside her bunk and raced into the passage. “I assume that command wasn’t meant for me,” she yelled over her shoulder.

  Jev hated to leave Zenia, who looked more like she was about to throw up than to focus on calling upon her gem’s magic, but he ran in and hugged her, then ran out of the cabin.

  “Jev,” Cutter blurted, running up the passageway as Jev stepped into it. “You won’t believe what’s up there. Here.” He must have been in, or returned to, their cabin for weapons. He thrust the elven sword in its scabbard into Jev’s hand and hefted his hammer and a pistol. “You’ll need that.”

  Not waiting for a response, Cutter charged to the stairs. Jev ran up after him and onto the drenched upper deck. Shouts assaulted his ears as harsh rain hammered his cheeks.

  The first cannon boomed, and others followed in rapid succession. Jev looked to either side for an enemy ship.

  Shots fired from the starboard side of the steamer. The entire crew was by the railing over there, and Cutter ran in that direction too.

  As Jev drew his sword, their enemy came into sight.

  He stumbled and gaped. It wasn’t a ship but some hulking sea creature with multiple huge fanged heads waving about on long serpentine necks.

  “Hydra!” someone yelled between the cracks of rifles and booms of cannons.

  A hydra? By the founders, Jev had thought such creatures had died off centuries ago. Some people claimed they were the stuff of myths and nothing more. A skeleton in the Korvann museum suggested otherwise, but Jev had never expected to run into one.

  Lightning flashed overhead, highlighting their enemy’s sleek scales. Six heads were visible, similar in size to a dragon’s head, with slitted yellow reptilian eyes that flashed in the rain. Those heads rose up higher than the ship, and Jev realized the bangs from before must have been one of the heads or maybe the creature’s entire body striking the hull. The monster had to be larger than the steamer itself.

  “The bullets don’t hurt it,” someone yelled.

  “You have to cut off the heads,” Captain Yug hollered.

  He must have heard the same legends that Jev had. Would it prove true, or was there an easier way to destroy the creature?

  “How in all the ocean’s cursed depths are we supposed to do that with cannons?”

  Yug didn’t answer. No one did.

  Jev looked down at his elven sword and whispered, “Syshax.” It flared to life, its silvery glow brilliant in the dark stormy dimness. “I hope you can hurt that thing,” he murmured to it.

  One of the heads came toward the deck like a smith’s hammer. The crew members underneath it fired as they scattered, but their bullets did nothing to stop the creature.

  Jev took a bracing breath and ran toward the head.

  It slammed into the metal deck, leaving a crater-sized dent. The creature reared back, stared down at the deck, then rammed its snout against it again.

  Jev had no idea what was going through the hydra’s brain, but it seemed to have expected its blow to destroy the deck. Maybe it wasn’t familiar with metal ships.

  Jev sprang for its neck just below the head, a head as large as he was. The creature saw him coming, and its snout jerked toward him, water dripping from long yellow fangs as it opened its maw. Jev wanted to slash for the neck, but that maw lunged toward him, forcing him to defend himself.

  He whipped his blade up as a shield, and elven steel screeched against hydra fang. He expected to slice through the tooth with his glowing sword, but it was as if he’d struck a wall. A jolt ran up his arm, and he staggered back.

  The head reared up, and the creature screeched. Had the blow hurt it as much as it had hurt Jev? He hoped so.

  The foul stench of rotting fish washed over him—the thing’s fetid breath. He hoped the stories of hydras having poisonous breath were myth and nothing more, but he held his own breath as he ran in, getting his chance at the neck.

  He plunged the blade between its scales and almost shouted in triumph as it sank deeply into hydra flesh. He tried to turn the thrust into a sawing motion, hoping he could cut through the thick neck to sever the head. But something hammered him in the back. Another one of the heads.

  The force sent him flying across the deck, and he couldn’t stop his momentum until he crashed into the far railing. His fist clacked hard against a metal support, and he almost dropped the sword, but two heads darted after him like vipers. He dared not release the weapon. Crewmen lay scattered all over the deck, and Jev feared he would get no help.

  He rolled to the side. One head slammed into the railing, and a tremor reverberated through the ship. The second head stopped short of a similar fate, and it twisted toward Jev as he scrambled to his feet. The maw yawned open, fangs gleaming.

  A roar came from Jev’s side as a stout, bearded form raced past him. Cutter slammed his hammer into the side of the hydra’s head, distracting it from Jev.

  The head drew back, but Cutter sank his hook between two scales, and he rose with it, his boots dangling high above the deck.

  Though startled, Jev slashed upward with his sword. Too late. The hydra had risen out of reach.
He spun, seeking another target.

  The head that had crashed into the railing hadn’t pulled back into the air—maybe it had stunned itself. The neck lay limp on the deck.

  As Jev sprinted at it, it stirred, starting to lift. He sprang and landed astride it like a horse. It kept rising, but he shifted his blade so he could bring it down to use as a saw instead of a sword, cutting back and forth across the neck.

  A squeal of pain came from the head as his blade sank in and blood flowed from the wound. The neck jerked and writhed. Jev tightened his grip with his legs as the creature attempted to fling him away. The rain made its scales slippery and hard to grip, but he clenched every muscle he had, gritting his teeth and sawing harder.

  As he cut deeper, the head rose higher, still bucking and flailing and trying to throw him. Fear surged through him as the deck of the ship grew farther and farther away. If he fell from up here, he could break every bone when he landed.

  From his high perch, Jev glimpsed lights through the rain. Less than half a mile away, land and buildings and a harbor spread along the coast. He thought he spotted people—orcs and trolls?—on the docks watching, a breakwater protecting them from the storm, but he doubted any of them would send people out to help a kingdom ship.

  A great wrenching of metal assailed his ears as one of the heads tore free a piece of the hull. It pulled back, the metal siding dangling from its teeth, then snapped its neck about and flung the wreckage out to sea.

  Jev’s blade cut the last sinews of the neck underneath him, and the head tumbled into the waves far below. He thought he could slide down the neck back to the ship, but the appendage went limper than a dead snake. He should have anticipated that. He tumbled down along with the neck, and the elven blade could do nothing to stop his fall.

  He fell past the deck and into the water, managing to twist to enter feet first. Though the sea was a softer landing spot than the deck of the ship would have been, it slapped his soles and arms as he plunged in deep, and the water was icy cold despite the continent’s southern latitude.

  He clawed his way back to the surface, fearing he wouldn’t be able to find a way back onto the ship—and also fearing he would be an easy target for the hydra. He bumped something as he rose, something wet and scaly.

  Yelling, he whipped the sword up to defend himself. But the scaly neck lying on the surface next to him wasn’t moving. It was the one he’d sawn through.

  “Thank you, founders,” he muttered and dashed water from his eyes.

  The gray hull of the ship rose up less than twenty feet away. At first, he was pleased, because he could swim to it, but when he saw numerous massive holes in the hull with water rushing in, he questioned whether he should. Already, the vessel sat much lower than it should have, and he feared it had passed the state of ever being seaworthy again. Even if Jev and the others could defeat the hydra, they might be marooned here for a long time.

  Fear drove most of the queasiness from Zenia’s belly, thank the founders. Through her dragon tear, she sensed the great creature outside—and the innate magic that had arrived with it. Very abruptly with it.

  Her dragon tear hadn’t warned her that something powerful was coming at them, or she’d been too sick to notice an attempt at warning her. Either way, she’d been as surprised as everyone else by the thump against the side of the ship.

  Cries of pain and frenzied shouts came from the upper deck, punctuated by cannon and rifle fire.

  “What can we do?” she asked, gripping her dragon tear.

  An image of a battle raging flashed into her mind, of a giant sea serpent with eight necks and eight heads wheeling about the steamer. A body the size of a whale swam under them as the vessel turned toward a coastline not far away, but the heads were responsible for all the damage, slamming down to the deck or snatching up crewmen in great fanged maws.

  “Can you destroy it?” Zenia asked. “Or scare it away?” She envisioned the creature being alarmed by something and swimming out to sea.

  A sense of uncertainty came from her dragon tear, and she grimaced, recognizing the feeling. She hadn’t encountered it often with her powerful gem, but she realized this creature might be a dragon’s match. At least when its soul was trapped in a dragon tear. Her gem didn’t know how to scare or defeat the creature.

  Jev had warned her to stay in the cabin, but she might be able to help or come up with some ideas, if she could see this with her own eyes. She spotted the book Rhi had been reading on the deck and snorted, wishing they had started with sea creatures instead of land animals. She snatched it up and ran into the passageway.

  One of the heads slammed into the side of the ship. The force smashed her against a wall, and she fell to her knees, banging them on the hard deck. Half running and half crawling on the unstable ship, she scrambled up the stairs.

  A massive groan came from below, not from the creature but from the ship itself. An ominous crack sounded. As sturdy as the ironclad was, even it couldn’t stand up to this much abuse.

  Zenia paused halfway up the stairs as a thought came to mind. “Is this a deep-water creature?” she wondered aloud.

  Nobody was nearby to hear her. The sounds of the battle raging flowed down to her from above. Remembering that landmass, she gripped her dragon tear again and envisioned it channeling the power of the sea to send their ship toward the coast. Maybe the creature wouldn’t be able to follow them into shallow water. It seemed even larger than their steamship.

  A surge of excitement and approval emanated from the dragon tear. Yes, this it could do.

  The gem flared with intense blue light that filled the dim passageway, and Zenia sensed power flow from it and past the rear of the craft to the sea behind them. It manipulated the water, creating a huge wave.

  Zenia swallowed as the steamer rose up on the crest of that wave. Her stomach pitched into her boots, the queasiness returning along with fear as she realized that her dragon tear might be doing far more than she had imagined.

  She clambered up the steps and out onto the upper deck. It might have been safer inside the stairwell, but she had to warn the crew what was coming.

  “Tidal wave,” she yelled before she had a chance to look around.

  Crewmen were down everywhere, bleeding and broken. The sea monster’s numerous heads writhed in the air on python-like necks. She searched around for Jev, terrified he lay among those collapsed on the deck.

  The roar of the approaching wave filled Zenia’s ears, and she doubted anyone had heard her warning cry. The deck tilted downward.

  “Where’s Jev?” she asked as she dropped to her knees and gripped the hatchway.

  The dragon tear shared a vision of him in the choppy ocean water, hanging onto one of the creature’s necks, the head sawn off it. As the sea monster chased after the steamer, it dragged that limp neck behind its body and Jev along with it.

  Afraid he would drown in the rough water or draw the ire of the beast, Zenia implored the dragon tear to float him into the air and to the deck of the ship. Only after she made the request did she realize he might have been safer where he was. The steamer picked up speed as the wave carried it faster and faster toward shore.

  But the dragon tear surged with magic and carried out her wish. Jev appeared in the air beside the ship, his eyes bulging as he flew as fast as the wave, and then was floated down to land on the deck at Zenia’s feet.

  Then they hit land.

  It was what Zenia had wanted, but she hadn’t imagined the sheer terror of the moment. It felt like a giant steam hammer slamming into the ship, and she was ripped from her spot in the hatchway. She flew head over heels and glimpsed Jev in a similar state scant feet away. Blood smeared his face, and they were tumbling through the air at breakneck speed, but incredibly, he gave her a giant smile.

  Stop us, please, Zenia silently urged the dragon tear, realizing they’d flown over the railing and were going to smash into thick trees lining a beach.

  As she flew closer and close
r to a giant green tree, she curled into a ball and lifted her arms to protect her head. The dragon tear erected an invisible barrier around her in time, and it struck first. She bounced away like a ball. Or a bubble. It hit the ground, and she bounced twice before rolling down a rocky beach that made the ride a rough one. Finally, she came to a stop, and the barrier faded so that she lay among seaweed-draped rocks. Rain spattered against her chilled skin, and wind raked through the fronds of the nearby trees.

  Shouts and groans emanated from one side, and she gaped at the beached steamship. It lay tipped on its side with water running out of giant holes in the hull. Had those holes been caused by the creature? Or by her attempt to save everyone? If she’d caused the very destruction she’d hoped to save everyone from…

  People lay all around the wreck, some moving and some not, and she spotted Jev sprawled among the rocks halfway between her and the ship. She pushed herself to her feet, marveling that she wasn’t injured, and started toward him. But an earsplitting keening came from the water, and she paused.

  The sea monster swam a few dozen feet out from the beach, its many necks and heads in the air waving as all those sets of eyes focused on the wreck. On the prize it had lost. At least, Zenia hoped it had lost them. The creature seemed to be swimming with fins to stay afloat rather than kicking with legs, though she was only guessing what that body looked like, since she could only see the top of it. From what she could see, there wasn’t any damage to it, despite the copious amounts of rifle fire and cannon fire that she’d heard.

  She looked for the headless neck the dragon tear had shown her earlier, but she didn’t see it. The creature had eight heads and eight necks, and all of them appeared to be in good shape. Magic emanated from the beast; maybe it had the ability to heal itself.

  Only now that she looked upon it with her own eyes did she realize this was a hydra. Such creatures never appeared in Korvann’s harbor, and she’d only heard legends of their existence in the deep seas. What had brought this one so close to land? And why had it deliberately attacked their ship?