“Nice cave,” she said. “Did you decorate it yourself?”
Boric moved in front of his drawing.
“Still holding onto that sword, eh?” she asked.
Boric made a noise halfway between a growl and a hiss.
The Eytrith folded her arms across her bosom. “Hey, don’t blame me, pal,” she said. “I’m not the one who traded his soul to become King of Ytrisk. I looked into you a little after our last meeting. Turns out you are seriously cursed.”
“Yeah,” said Boric. “I know.”
“My name’s Viriana, by the way,” she said.
“Charmed,” said Boric flatly. “So am I stuck here forever?”
“Beats me,” said Viriana. “All I know is that I can’t take you to Avandoor as long as you hold that sword.”
“But is this my last chance?”
“Huh?”
“You said you were going to return in seven days. It’s been seven days, right? I mean, the way you said it, it sounded like I was only going to get one more chance. So is this it? Is this my last chance to get to Avandoor?”
“Oh,” said Viriana, absentmindedly stroking the wyndbahr’s neck fur. “I can probably get you another week. Nobody’s asked about you yet; you’re not really that big of a deal.”
“Not that big of a deal!” Boric exclaimed. “I slew the Ogre of Chathain! I minced the Trolls of Trynsvaan!”
Viriana snorted. “That thing with the ogre was an assist at best. And trolls? Really? Nobody hangs their reputation on troll-mincing anymore. I mean, don’t get me wrong, you’ve got a decent ranking. Eighty-seventh overall, I think. But you’re no Greymaul Wolfsbane.” She snapped her fingers and her eyes went wide. “You know what you should do?” she said excitedly.
“What?” asked Boric.
“You should try to break the curse!”
Boric wondered what the penalty was for strangling an Eytrith. How much worse could they possibly make things for him?
“I’ve been trying,” growled Boric. “It’s not exactly easy, you know. First, I don’t know how to break the curse. Even the Witch of Twyllic didn’t know. And I’ve got these damned wraiths chasing me, and I can’t be out in the daylight, and this bloody mountain pass is impossible to find…”
“Mountain pass?” asked the Eytrith. “Why are you trying to find a mountain pass?”
“I need to get to the Library of Avaressa to figure out how to break the curse, and I can’t take the road, so I’ve got to go through the Kalvan Mountains and east into Blinsk. And then I have to go north through the Valmac Pass and into Avaressa. It’s going to take me days. Maybe weeks. And that’s if I can find the damned pass!”
“Wow,” said Viriana, frowning. “That sounds boring.”
“I know!” howled Boric. “I’ve been walking for days. I’m sick to death of it. Even if I find this pass, it’s going to take me more days of walking to get to Avaress. Just hundreds of miles of pointless walking. I never would have guessed it, but I think that the worst part of this whole walking corpse deal may actually be the walking part.”
“Well, all right then,” said the Eytrith. “Hop on.”
“Wait, what?”
“Get on the wyndbahr. I can get you to Avaressa in twenty minutes. I’m heading that direction anyway.”
“Seriously? Can you do that?”
“Sure, why not? I mean, Eytriths aren’t supposed to interfere with what’s going on down here, but between you and me, we aren’t supervised very closely.”
“Okay, but I can’t really leave the cave. The sunlight…”
“Oh, because you’re a wraith, right. All right, well, let me go pick up this knucklehead who’s about to get himself eaten by fire wolves in the Wastes of Preel. I’ll be back at sundown.” She climbed onto the wyndbahr, which launched itself into the air. Boric lay down on the cold stone floor for another eight hours.
At sundown, Viriana returned as promised. “Okay, hop on,” she said. “I’ve got a stop to make on the way, but you should be in Avaressa within the hour.” She climbed onto the back of the wyndbahr and helped Boric get behind her. The great winged beast leaped into the air, soaring above the Kalvan Mountains. Boric held tightly to Viriana’s waist.
“Hey, look!” she shouted.
“What?”
“There’s your pass! It was just on the other side of that hill. Wow, I can’t believe you missed it. It’s so obvious.”
“From up here, yeah,” growled Boric. “Try walking it sometime.”
“No thanks,” said Viriana.
They climbed higher, and Boric was suddenly blinded as the wyndbahr soared into the blanket of clouds resting atop the Kalvan Mountains. “Can you see?” he asked Viriana nervously.
“Not a thing,” replied Viriana. “But then I have my eyes closed.”
“Well, open them, for Grovlik’s sake!”
“Why? We’re in a cloud bank. Don’t worry, Bubbles can see. He’s never run me into a mountain before. Besides, you’re already dead. You should lighten up.”
She’s right, thought Boric. I’m a dead man riding a winged bear named Bubbles. What could possibly go wrong?
But then they dived back down below the clouds. “Now what?” asked Boric.
“That stop I was telling you about. I need to pick up this other dead guy.”
“What other dead guy?”
“Clovis the Dragon-Slayer. He’s number twenty-seven. Be nice to him, and maybe he’ll let you sit next to him in the Hall.”
“Clovis the Dragon-Slayer? You mean Clovis, the Prince of Blinsk? The one with the eye patch? He’s never slain a dragon!”
“Not yet, no,” said Viriana. “But give him a few minutes.” The wyndbahr was now plummeting toward a rocky ridge below. Boric became aware of a tiny figure moving along the ridge. Behind him was a cliff wall into that was carved the opening of a cavern. As Boric watched, a massive reddish-gold reptile emerged from the opening, spread two great, leathery, bat-like wings, and leapt into the air toward Bubbles and his riders.
“Move!” yelled Boric. “It’s heading right for us!”
“Calm down,” snapped Viriana. “We can’t be seen by the living. That is, I can’t, and Bubbles can’t, and you can’t as long as you’re on his back. So just hold on and shut up.”
Boric was immediately embarrassed by his panic — the dragon hadn’t been aiming for them, it had only been getting some altitude to pursue the man running along the ridge. Bubbles soared some thirty feet over the man’s head and Boric got a good look at him. He carried a sword and wore an eye patch: Clovis, Prince of Blinsk. Boric noted that Clovis carried a broadsword of a type that had recently become all the rage among the nobles in Ytrisk: it had a simple, even ugly design, but he had heard that noblemen paid handsomely for them because of their superior workmanship. Boric had tested one once but found it inferior to Brakslaagt. Of course, at that point he didn’t know about Brakslaagt’s considerable drawbacks.
Boric had never met Clovis but he had heard the stories. Clovis had slain ogres, trolls, and at least one giant. He had not, to Boric’s knowledge, ever slain a dragon, however, and the way his situation was progressing he was not likely to in the near future. The presence of Viriana the Eytrith did not bode well for his prospects. Eytriths showed up only when someone was about to die.
The dragon bore down on Clovis, opening its giant maw to release a burst of flame. Clovis’s cape caught fire and he unhooked the clasp, letting it fall; it twirled like a burning leaf into the chasm below. He was running as fast as he could across the rocky ridge, but there was no place for him to go, and the foul beast was gaining on him. The dragon’s next blast would incinerate him.
“Come around!” Boric shouted. “We’ve got to help him!”
Viriana shook her head furiously. “Can’t get involved,” she said.
“You can’t get involved. I can do whatever I want. I just need you to give me a ride.”
Viriana thought for a moment and
then shrugged, pulling hard on the wyndbahr’s reins. Bubbles veered sharply to the left, nearly throwing Boric. They made an about-face and soon were headed straight for the dragon.
“Get me above it!” Boric cried.
Viriana pulled up on the reins and the wyndbahr soared upward, arcing over the dragon’s head. Boric couldn’t help but shudder as they passed over the dragon’s snake-like, watermelon-sized eyes, but the creature gave no sign of having seen them. Once above the dragon’s neck, Boric drew his sword and leapt from the wyndbahr’s back.
Gripping Brakslaagt’s hilt with both hands, he drove the point of the sword through the dragon’s scaly armor as he landed. The dragon jerked and screeched, throwing Boric to the left and right, but he held tightly to the hilt of his sword, which was sunk halfway into the dragon. Unable to shake him, the dragon twisted its massive neck around to the right, regarding him with its giant, unblinking eye. There was no question that the creature saw him now. It opened its mouth and let loose a torrent of fire.
Boric threw himself over to the left side of the dragon’s neck, holding onto Brakslaagt with only his right hand. A wave of searing heat washed over him, and he smelled burning leather and flesh. Something very close to pain shot through his arm. He didn’t dare look at what was left of it, but it still held on. Fortunately the dragon didn’t seem to be able to turn its head completely around, or he’d be a pile of charred bones.
The dragon, still soaring through the air above the ridge, had completely forgotten about Clovis and was now focused on dislodging Boric from its back. It turned its head around to the left and blasted him again. Boric threw himself to the right, flopping crazily against the creature’s hide as he still held on with his right hand. This time he smelled less leather and more flesh. His arm probably looked like a sapling after a forest fire.
When he still held on, the dragon changed tacks, whirling upside down to make Boric fall off. But Boric held tight to Brakslaagt — or it held tight to him, and while the blade slipped a few inches, the dragon couldn’t glide upside down for more than a few seconds. Still, it kept trying, veering back and forth between the peaks of the Kalvans and periodically flipping upside down. Each time, Boric’s blade slipped another inch or two, and the dragon wouldn’t stop jerking and wriggling long enough for him to get any leverage. Soon barely enough of Brakslaagt was embedded in the dragon to keep him from falling off. One more flip would do him in: he’d fall a thousand feet to the rocky ground below, smashing what was left of his body into pieces. And Clovis would be on his own.
Fortunately the dragon was so preoccupied with getting Boric off its back that it wasn’t paying much attention to where it was going, and just as it began another flip it crashed head-on into the same cliff wall it had emerged from minutes earlier. Brakslaagt was finally wrenched free and the stunned dragon plummeted toward the ground with Boric following close after. As the creature twisted and writhed beneath him, Boric caught a glimpse of Clovis directly below them. He had evidently taken advantage of the dragon’s distraction to creep back to the cave opening, probably to pilfer some of the dragon’s treasure. As Boric and the dragon accelerated toward him, he stopped and looked up, his one good eye going wide with shock and fright. With no time to get out of the way, he drew his sword and held it, pointing straight up, above his head. The dragon fell on him with all its weight, crushing him. Boric landed on the dragon’s back and bounced off, hitting the ground with a thud. The dragon struggled for a moment, gave a plaintive moan and a puff of smoke, and fell dead.
After a moment, an apparition of Clovis crawled out from under the dragon’s carcass.
“Wow, thanks!” said Clovis. “I thought I was a goner. Holy shit, look at your arm!”
“You are a goner,” said Boric, examining the smoking, charred mass of bone and gristle hanging from his right shoulder.
“Doesn’t that hurt?” asked Clovis, amazed.
“Not really,” said Boric, inspecting his blackened, bony hand. “I’m already dead, like you.”
“I’m not dead,” said Clovis.
“Really?” asked Boric. “Then whose feet are those?”
Clovis turned to see two black boots sticking out from under the dragon’s carcass.
“Maybe…somebody else…” Clovis started uncertainly.
“And how do you explain that?” As he spoke, Bubbles the wyndbahr landed with a gust of wind next to them. Viriana slipped off his back. “Ready?” she asked.
Clovis looked to Boric and then Viriana and back again. Then he examined his ghostly hands. “So I’m really…”
“As a doornail,” said Viriana. “The good news is, you’re number twenty-seven. Congrats, Clovis the Dragon-Slayer. You could sit next to Hollick the Goblin-Slayer if you wanted to, although I don’t recommend it if you ever want to get your hands on any mead.”
“Whoa, how is he Clovis the Dragon-Slayer?” asked Boric. “The dragon fell on him.”
“He killed it with his sword.”
“Are you kidding me?” Boric exclaimed. “That was sheer luck!”
“I don’t feel very lucky,” said Clovis, regarding his ghostly form dismally.
“I killed the dragon,” Boric insisted. “Did you see what I did? I jumped onto a dragon’s back and rode it all over the canyon. That has to be in the top five bravest things anyone has ever done!”
Viriana shook her head. “First of all, that wouldn’t even make it in the top fifty. Second, that’s technically an assist, not a slaying. Third…”
“An assist! You’re going to pull that again? First with the Ogre of Chathain and now the Dragon of Kalvan? What do I have to do to get credit for killing something?”
“Actually killing it would be a good start,” sniffed Viriana, patting Bubbles on his head.
“I don’t mean to interrupt,” said Clovis, “but what do I…”
“These rules are ridiculous,” growled Boric. “I’m getting shafted out of two legitimate monster kills on a stupid technicality. An assist, my ass.”
Viriana shrugged. “I don’t make the rules. And by the way, calling it the Ogre of Chathain isn’t helping your case any. It just sounds pretentious.”
Clovis was looking around uncertainly. “Seriously, guys, do I just get on the…”
“Pretentious?” Boric growled. “You know what’s pretentious? Calling someone a Dragon-Slayer when the dragon fell on him.”
“Oh, and third,” said Viriana, “you don’t get credit for the assist because you’re already dead.”
“What? I risked my life to — ”
“You didn’t risk anything, you big whiner. You’re already dead. Get that through your maggot-infested skull, Boric. You’re dead. Dead, dead, dead.”
Clovis shuffled toward Bubbles. “I’m going to just climb on up the, uh, bear-thing…”
“And how is it, while we’re on the subject,” Boric continued, “that Hollick the Goblin-Slayer gets such high acclaim? They’re goblins, for Grovlik’s sake.”
“He single-handedly killed every goblin in Avaress,” said Viriana.
“There aren’t any goblins in Avaress!”
“Exactly. What in Varnoth’s name do you think you’re doing?” This last was directed at Clovis, who was awkwardly trying to climb onto the wyndbahr’s back. Bubbles seemed to think he was playing and began to nuzzle the Clovis apparition affectionately. “Back, fell beast!” cried Clovis, falling to the ground and raising his hands in fear.
“Take it easy, Dragon-Slayer,” Boric said dryly. He glared at Viriana, who stuck out her tongue at him. She hopped onto Bubbles’s back. “Crouch, boy,” she said, and Bubbles flattened himself against the ground. Boric climbed onto his back and Clovis followed. “Up!” cried Viriana, and Bubbles launched himself into the sky.
Less than twenty minutes later, Bubbles the wyndbahr landed on the roof of the Library of Avaress. Boric climbed down and waved good-bye to Viriana and Clovis the Dragon-Slayer.
“Good-bye, Boric of Ytrisk
!” said Viriana. “I shall return in one week! Pray that you have broken the curse by then!”
“Yeah, yeah,” said Boric. “Enough with the theatrics.”
“Good-bye, Boric!” called Clovis as the wyndbahr took off. “Thanks for the assist!”
“Poser,” muttered Boric, waving absently at Clovis.
EIGHTEEN
Boric did everything he could to locate Milah after the wedding, but she had disappeared without a trace. The widow hadn’t seen her since the morning of the wedding, and Milo the messenger hadn’t checked in at any of the Messenger Corps outposts within two hundred miles. The servants Boric had sent into the local taverns and brothels turned up many a pretty young redhead, but none of them were Milah. He issued standing orders to notify him if Milo checked in at any messenger haunts or if anyone caught wind of someone peddling magic mirrors in Ytrisk, but these orders resulted in not a single lead. She was simply gone.
Boric eventually settled into married life at Brobdingdon. He was relieved to find that Urgulana had as much interest in him as he had in her. Initially this was a bit of a blow to his ego; he had expected to have to continually rebuff her advances and explain to her that he had no intention of consummating their sham union. But it didn’t take him long to realize that he fell well outside of Urgulana’s preferences through no fault of his own. Urgulana’s orientation was as definite as her appearance was ambiguous.
Somewhat unexpectedly, though, this fact gave rise to a wholly different sort of tension in the castle. His servants continued to turn up remarkable specimens of femininity whose tresses ranged from auburn to near-crimson, and Boric couldn’t bear to let some of them go back to the inns and houses of ill repute in which they had been found. Being the crown prince, he had a fair amount of control over the hiring and firing of servants, and after several months the staff of Kra’al Brobdingdon began to take on a decidedly ginger hue.
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