Josef stopped and took time to get his bearings. He was still in the Dwarven District, near the parapet that led to the castle. To his left, he could see the wall, which was saying something given how thick the sandstorm was growing. He channeled a bit of his water magic and wove it around him in an orb. It slowed the sand, making it heavier than the wind could blow, and creating a muddy mess around his feet. Through the distorted bubble, he could see winged shapes gliding through the storm.
Two dragon attacks in one day.
While he was distracted by the dragons, fire rained down on him from the direction of the wall. It sizzled on his orb, and he had a moment to jump into the safety of a closed doorway before another volley of fire scorched the wet earth where he’d previously been standing.
It wasn’t dragon fire, that much he knew. Dragon fire would have burned away the mud. Dragon fire would have burned straight through his defenses and charred him to a crisp. He stripped out of his tunic and trousers, folding them, and piling them neatly on the staircase. His sword he held in his hand. When he shifted to wyvern, he would still have a hand of sorts. It was a dragon foot attached to the elbow of his wings, but he could still hold his sword.
He called the wyvern soul, and felt his bones reform in a chorus of pops. The pain was blinding, but when it passed, he was no longer human. He was, instead, a blue wyvern the size of a pony. He grabbed his dragon saber in his talon, and took to the sky, dropping his water orb so he would be a smaller target.
The sword made flying only slightly harder, and he was thankful that he was so close to the parapet, that way he could use it as leverage to climb and hide his ascent from Matthew. Dragons winged through the storm, shadows the size of sailing ships drifting by. The fright that filled Josef was less to do with the intrinsic fear every wyvern had for dragons, and more the fear of such large shapes that could so easily take hold of him and rend him in two.
He had to ignore the dragons, as impossible as that seemed. He couldn’t see much above him, and at any moment Matthew could come blasting down the wall, taking him to the ground. With that thought in mind, Josef started zig-zagging his way up the wall to make a harder target.
He was nearly to the top when fire found him once more, blasting from his left. It struck his tail, and Josef cried out, but his water magic slipped over his body moments later, creating a wet layer to his scales to ward off any further attack.
The good thing about the fire volleying at him in a series of fireballs was that now he knew where Matthew was. With a final leap, Josef crested the parapet and slunk to the ground just inside the wall. The palace grounds ran like an arrowhead through the city, with the wall keeping it safe from commoners also providing an elevated land that those on top of the parapet could look down on those below. Josef could still see the dragons flying high, lightning and fire played through the sandstorm. He was aware of those great shadows colliding, and he knew the friendly dragons were at work.
Fire bloomed directly before him, but Josef didn’t bother shirking from it. The fire sizzled along his scales, and went out. He charged forward, ignoring the fact that he was smaller than most wyverns. He threw himself forward, his wings catching the air, and slowing him as the storm blew against him. He struck out with his dragon saber, and as it met with resistance, he heard a roar of pain from the red wyvern.
:Josef!: Matthew called into his mind. :Josef, help me!:
The fire and rage within his blood stopped him. Josef sank to the ground, circling around the wyvern in case this was just a ruse. :Matthew?:
:I didn’t do it,: he said. The fear in his mental voice wasn’t something Matthew could fake. He was genuinely afraid. :I can’t deny I hate dragons, but I would never…:
It would take a beast of a person to kill someone protecting them, even if they hated that someone.
:You need to lock me up,: Matthew pleaded. :There’s times something comes over me, and I can’t control myself.:
Josef could make out the shadow of Matthew before him. He’d shifted back to human. His body was hunched over against the sandstorm, but he held his hands up so Josef could see he no longer had his sword.
:Another power takes over.:
:Who’s possessing you?: Josef asked.
:I…I don’t know. I never hear a voice or a command. It’s just like someone else takes control of my body, and I can only watch.:
Josef shifted back to human, the pain unbearable, but through a force of will, he kept his sight trained on Matthew.
:Where are your clothes?: Josef asked. :I need to restrain you if I’m going to carry you to the keep and keep you safe.:
:Here,: Matthew attempted to throw his clothes to Josef, but they didn’t go far; the sandstorm pushed them to the ground. Josef inched forward, his sword held at the ready. He didn’t want to kill Matthew, but he couldn’t take the chance the red wyvern turning on him.
Grabbing his own shirt, Josef slipped behind Matthew, and bound his muscular arms behind his naked back.
:This is going to be difficult,: Josef said. :You’re going to have to grip my sides with your legs. I won’t be able to fly with you, but I can get us close to the keep by gliding. The wind should help me from crashing, but you need to sink close to my neck.:
:I know how to ride,: Matthew said. :Just hurry. There’s no rhyme or reason to when the power takes over.:
Josef hurried. Moments later, Matthew was on his back, and Josef launched himself over the edge of the parapet. His heart in his throat, Josef tried to fight the wind as he aimed them toward the keep. He had a sword in each winged talon, and aiming was difficult with such poor visibility. He didn’t want to imagine the beating Matthew’s human skin was taking from the sandstorm.
Several terrifying minutes later, Josef landed on the street outside the keep.
:No!: Matthew yelled in his mind. Josef could feel the other man’s body tense on his back, and Matthew toppled over, off his mount.
Startled, Josef jumped around toward the man who’d just lumbered from his back. Power surged through the air. The power was so strong Josef could see it like heat wavering in the air around Matthew. The air burned, and where sand flew, it turned to tiny shards of glass. Matthew gripped his head and tumbled to his knees.
“No!” he yelled out loud, and though the wind tearing through the streets was near deafening, Josef knew he’d hear that one word echo through his mind for the rest of his days. Fire exploded from Matthew. As bits of the fire wyvern shuttled through the air, Josef felt the heat of the fire singe away the protective water on his scales, and he was hurled through the air. When he connected with the building behind him, Josef knew only darkness.
“I would never do that,” Leaghan said, helping prop Josef’s head up in the infirmary.
“But you told Andraal that you’d kill us to rid the world of dragons,” Marcella accused. She fluffed Josef’s pillow a little harder than was necessary. “So, please, tell me how you’d never do that?”
“You know me!” Leaghan argued, straightening the blankets over Josef’s prone figure.
“Enough!” Millie stormed into the room, every inch of her black figure seemed to shiver with rage. “Have your little squabble somewhere else, I have a patient to tend to.”
Marcella squared her shoulders and crossed her arms over her chest.
“I said out,” Millie said to the yellow wyvern, her voice cold enough to freeze water.
Marcella huffed and stormed out of the room. Leaghan hot on her trail.
“What was I supposed to say?” Leaghan asked, her staff all but forgotten in her hand. “He had me on the ground. My protections were waning. What was I going to say?”
Marcella sighed and shook her head. Some of the tension seemed to leave her shoulders. She closed her eyes and rubbed the bridge of her nose. “I don’t know.”
“I’m not going to go on a murdering rampage just to see the dragons driven from the long desert.” Leaghan relaxed a bit as well, now that the only true frien
d she’d made since coming to Darubai didn’t seem like she was going to turn on her. “I think there’s a place for them here.”
“Oh?” Marcella asked, quirking an eyebrow at her.
“Yes. Not all of them are bad. There’s at least a few on Dragon Aerie that don’t want to see the humans destroyed. There has to be more of them. More that don’t need the dragon tamer to enslave them for them to be good.”
“All right,” Marcella huffed. “Then, what are you thinking of doing, if you’re not going to do what Andraal demands?”
“I have a plan, but first we need to get in touch with Marcone.”
The sandstorm still howled around the laboratory when Marcone came. When he’d finished showing Leaghan how to recharge her staff—which was a simple discharge of power from her magic into the staff—she broached the topic of why he was there.
“Andraal has come to see me,” she said.
“Again?” Marcone barked a phlegmy laugh. “I was wondering how long that would take.” That wasn’t the response Leaghan was expecting.
“You knew he might come, and you didn’t warn me?”
“Why warn you?” Marcone wondered. “If I warned you, wouldn’t that have made you more fearful of doing what you had to do to learn your craft?”
Leaghan sighed. She wasn’t sure if it would have scared her off. Him attacking her at random was doing a good job of scaring her off.
“I gave you the tools you needed to defend yourself,” Marcone said.
“Yeah, a light spell does an awesome job of fighting back,” she groused.
“Don’t be daft. You can’t fight him. I said I gave you the tools you needed to defend yourself. I assume your robe held up wonderfully?”
Leaghan nodded.
“Good, then you’re learning wasn’t a complete loss. What did he want?”
“What do you think? He wants me to finish what I started,” she said.
Marcone sighed heavily. “And what do you think of that?”
“Well, what I think has little to do with his request,” she said. “I think Andraal is behind all of this.”
“All of what?” Marcone wondered.
“The recent killings of dragons; how crazy the empress seems to be about dragons; my attacks by controlled people. It all sounds like things he wants.”
Marcone thought for a moment, his eyes distant. “It could be. But you say those people have been controlled, correct?”
“Yes,” she said.
“Tell me about it. What did they look like? Did they speak to you at all? If so, what did they say?”
Leaghan told him the things she’d noticed when she was attacked. The people didn’t speak, they showed no emotion, their eyes were slightly glazed, as if controlled by another presence. They all seemed eager to destroy her.
“How does this fit together?” Marcone wondered. “These are two different things happening. You’re being attacked, which you claim is Andraal using other people. Two dragons have been killed, which you claim is also Andraal. These two things don’t seem to be connected at all.”
“You don’t think it’s Andraal?” Leaghan asked.
“I didn’t say that. Controlling people was never one of Andraal’s powers. However, he’s been within the ether for a while, there’s no telling what he may have picked up during that time. I’m simply saying that the attacks on you and the attacks on the dragons don’t seem connected.”
“But that’s what he did before,” Leaghan said. “He killed wizards, and he put the dragons behind the wards.”
“But this isn’t before.”
“Look, if you know something, I’m all ears.”
“Fear. It’s a great weapon. If he turns the people against the dragons through fear, they will be willing to do nearly anything to be rid of them.”
Leaghan nodded.
“If the people see you as their only hope, they will be willing to go along with whatever you say. To see you as hope, they have to see how important you are. Tell me, what happened when you were first attacked?”
“Wyverns moved into the keep,” Leaghan said.
“And rumors spread that you were being protected because you were attacked. Forget where the attacks came from. They saw that dragons were attacking the city, and you were being attacked.”
Leaghan was starting to see where he was going with it. “So it is Andraal.”
“It makes sense,” Marcone spread his hands wide with a shrug. “The people fear the dragons, and they see you’re being attacked, so they think there’s a connection there. They think that you’re the one who can save them from dragons because at the same time the dragons are attacking the city, they might be attacking you as well to get rid of the one person who can send them back to where they came.”
“But I’m not being attacked by dragons,” Leaghan said.
“Fear wins out over reason,” Marcone said. “Now, what have you learned from his library?”
“Besides the blood journal, I found this.” Leaghan pulled out the schematics for the containment cube. “It’s a containment cube.”
“Ah, yes,” Marcone said. “A device for trapping magic within it.”
“What are they used for? Certainly not just for what he used it for.”
“They’re a very simple form of magic. Similar to your staff, but they don’t need the will of the wizard to unlock their magic. However, this specific cube has to be activated by a wizard. This rune here,” he pointed to the rune on the top of the box. “This rune is normally a different one that will generate the power on its own. But with this rune, it takes the will of a wizard to direct the power.”
“So that’s how he trapped all the magic and then was able to use it for a specific purpose?”
“Exactly. This is the normal rune.” Marcone dipped her quill in the bottle of ink and drew a simple, looping figure. “That will allow the device to generate its own power.”
Leaghan worried the edge of her lip, a plan coming to her mind.
“What are you thinking?” Marcone asked, his lips parting in a smile. “If it’s what I think it is, then you’re very clever.”
And so Leaghan told him the plan she’d formed. After much time discussing the best ways to do it, and the type of cube she’d need to pull it off, she finally had the finer details in place.
Once Marcone left, and Marcella braved the last remnants of the sandstorm to visit Josef, Leaghan sent a message to Drex for the dwarf to make her an iron cube as soon as possible.
The walk from the dining room to the library was uneventful. Still, Wylan could get used to seeing such lavish hallways, even if they weren’t lavish for the citizens of Lastilor. In Darubai, the hallways were normally filled with debris, no matter how often they were cleaned. The rooms were furnished with items that hadn’t been through the rough years of dragon attacks, and the air of the city didn’t have a lightness to it like Lastilor did.
The last part had taken Wylan some time to figure out. She came to realize the relaxed sense within the city had to do more with not worrying about dragons attacking. Likely the only excitement they’d seen for some time was when Wylan found their city with a broken and damaged elf upon her back.
The guard knocked on a weathered wooden door, setting the iron ring handle to jitter against the door. Moments later, a middle-aged man opened the door, and the smell of musty tomes and stale air greeted Wylan.
“Ahh, you must be Wylan,” the man said, stepping around the guard. He was a short, chubby man. His head was devoid of hair and his face lined with whispers of old smiles. His eyes were blue and the kind of large that looked as though they might pop out of his head if he sneezed too hard. “I’m Kelvin, it’s so great to meet you.” He pumped her hand enthusiastically, and Wylan could only smile at his exuberance.
“It’s nice to meet you too,” she said. “I heard you wanted to meet with me?”
“Of course I did. Such excitement surrounding your arrival.” He motioned the guard to le
ave, and hustled Wylan into the library. It was a dimly lit room, a little on the cool side, and the air was dry enough that Wylan sneezed immediately.
“When I heard a girl with dragon eyes, and a scaled arm showed up at our borders…” Kelvin sighed. Wylan peered at the chubby man, his back pressed against the door, a delighted smile on his face. “Well, I thought maybe you were the plague bearer.”
Whatever cheer Wylan had previously felt evaporated with those two words. She sunk into a chair. Honestly, she just sunk, she wasn’t even sure a chair was there. It was a stroke of luck that she hadn’t fallen to the floor. “What do you know of the plague bearer?” Her voice was distant, hollow.
“Many things,” he said, waving the question away. “Enough to know that you fit the description. However, I would have thought the plague bearer to be a man…and much larger.” His eyes trailed over her body, and then he grunted. “It’s no matter.”
“Why?” Wylan wondered. “Why would it be a man, or large?”
“Well, the stories often say ‘he,’ for one. They also talk about the size of the plague bearer, that he can move mountains, that the dragons kneel before him. There’s many random snippets about the plague bearer. I’m beginning to see that maybe what they spoke of wasn’t so much the size of the person, but their power.” He waved a hand in the air as if it didn’t matter, but it mattered to Wylan.
“How would he move these mountains? Why would dragons kneel before him?”
Kelvin shrugged. “Moving mountains has always seemed more a metaphor than actually moving mountains. Texts said that governments would crumble before him; that he’d rise to power fast, and that he would create a new world for dragons.”
Wylan shivered. She’d seen the new world of dragons, and she certainly didn’t want any part in making that world better for them. But in a way, hadn’t she already? If she was the plague bearer, then she’d already made the long desert a better home for the dragons. Her coming had been the last straw in breaking the wards. Her coming had sparked the dragon plague that wiped out so many humans, and allowed the populace to be taken over by dragons that much easier.
Dragon Forged: Chronicles of Dragon Aerie Young Adult Fantasy Fiction (Plague Born Book 3) Page 17
