Her thoughts latched onto the bird’s mind. Let the mermaid go. She applied pressure to the bird’s neck. Let her go now and I will let you live.
Something more than basic instinct, awoke in the hawk’s mind. No, no, please no! The water creature is mine, my chicks haven’t eaten … don’t hurt me!
I have no desire to hurt you. She relaxed the pressure on the bird’s neck. But you must realize that I will not let you eat that mermaid. She is an intelligent being, deserving of life … not death.
Please, we must eat—
Hunger is not a justification for your actions. Drop her now and I will spare you.
What am I going to feed my chicks?
She reached out with her mind and sensed the presence of a rabbit nibbling on some grass by the riverside. It had no intellect, only instinct. Sighing inwardly, she threaded her thoughts down through the air, latching them onto the creature.
Drop the mermaid, she said to the hawk. You will find a freshly killed rabbit on the shore not far from here.
You are strong and wise, dragon daughter—for I sense the source of your strength: you are dragon blood—I will do as you say.
Dantress opened her eyes. The bird dropped its victim. The wee mermaid somersaulted in the air and dove into the water.
“Whew, what a relief!” Evela exhaled slowly.
Caritha studied Dantress with a frown on her face. “Did you do that?”
“I told him to let her go.”
“Him?” Her sister’s eyebrows lifted. “Who did you tell?”
“The hawk, of course.” When all five of them looked quizzically at her she realized and frowned. “You couldn’t communicate with it … could you?”
“With a bird? Dantress, since when have you been able to do that?”
“Well, actually … this was the first time I used my ability to do anything like this.”
Caritha shook her head in amazement. “Sometimes, your abilities trouble me, little sister.” She walked toward the forest and gestured that they should follow. “Come on, we should get moving.”
THE GREEN-BLOODED DRAGONS
Dantress stood near the base of a large dark tree, cloven from its highest branches almost to the ground. It reminded her of something out of a fable. Its two halves bent to the grass in the clearing, shaded now by the surrounding forest as the sun set. It had no leaves and its roots anchored it to the western edge of the clearing, guarding a broad trail leading into a thick growth of gnarled old trees.
To the right of the moss-covered tree gaped the hollow heart of a log of extraordinary size. It wouldn’t have fit a dragon, but it would easily accommodate Dantress and her five sisters. The log extended out of sight into the forest, extraordinarily long. Darkness descended.
One by one, Caritha leading the way, the sisters entered the log and lay down to sleep. Their feet squished into the wood like a sponge, rotting and thus moist. But they felt safer here than leaving themselves exposed in the clearing.
The hoot of an owl startled Dantress awake, but only for a moment. As the air chilled she and her sisters huddled together for warmth. She closed her eyes. Somewhere beyond the trees, beyond this quiet forest, lay the ancient temple, Al’un Dai. She wondered what it would look like. Would the old warrior who had once been a member of the Six be waiting for them? Surely he would be. But ….
She sat up. Something didn’t feel right. But what was it? Probing the vicinity of the clearing, she found no minds apart from those of her sisters. They were alone.
Wait! Levena’s thoughts were racing a mile a minute, frantic and feverish. Should she intrude on her sister’s mind? No! It wouldn’t be right. She willed a question into Levena’s mind. Levena, what’s wrong?
Help … C-can not… wake up! I must w-wake up!
“Caritha! Rose’el! Wake up!” Dantress crawled over Laura and Evela, ignoring their startled protests as her knees and feet landed on their stomachs.
“Dantress, what are you doing?” Rose’el sat up. Even in the dim light of the moon within the hollow log Dantress could see the scowl on her face.
She reached Levena and slapped her cheeks. Levena inhaled in short, painful swallows, her eyeballs moved rapidly to the left and right; she had entered a deep sleep.
“Stand back!” Caritha’s forceful words caused all of the sisters to do as she said. They stood away as she whipped out her now-glowing rusted blade and stabbed it toward Levena’s left leg.
Dantress screamed along with her other sisters. “Caritha! What’re you are doing?”
Caritha’s blade never touched her sister’s skin. Instead its point snagged a black object and pulled it away. “Foul creature,” Caritha spat as she displayed the spider on her sword’s point. Its hairy, inch-long legs clawed the air uselessly. Clear liquid dripped from twin fangs that showed above its shining black eyes as it wriggled on the metal.
“How did you …?” Dantress did not get to ask how her eldest sister had spotted the spider and how she had managed to react so quickly. Caritha raised her hand for silence and knelt to examine the bite. “It looks bad.” She shook her head. “Really bad.”
“Cut it open! Let the blood flow so that it can drain the poison.” Laura drew her sword and approached.
Levena groaned and choked for air.
“Cut it?” Rose’el growled at Laura and restrained her with a hand. “With what?” She glanced at her sister’s sword. “With a rusted blade? You would cause more problems than you’d fix using that.”
“She’s right,” Caritha scraped the spider off her blade with her shoe, sheathed her weapon, and slid her arms under Levena’s shoulders. She glanced around. “Well? Anyone want to give me a hand?”
They carried Levena outside and laid her in the grass. The damp air wetted Dantress’s skin as they drew back from the prone form.
“Any ideas as to what we should do?” Caritha asked, looking from face to face.
Dantress knelt. A shiver ran through Levena’s body. Her lips turned purple, her skin paled. She looked up to find Caritha stooping beside her.
Caritha slowly nodded, deep in thought. “You understand how to use our powers more fully than any one of us. If anyone can help her, you can.” She stood and stepped back, waving her hand at Laura, Evela, and Rose’el. “Everyone be quiet and stay back. Give her space so that she can concentrate.”
Perspiration broke out on Dantress forehead. They were counting on her to heal Levena, and she wasn’t even sure she could.
She had to get a hold of herself. She’d saved Mivere when it’d seemed impossible. Maybe she could save her sister, too. Beating her fist into the ground she gritted her teeth. No. She couldn’t just try; she must succeed.
She reached her hand to her sister’s livid face. With all her might she probed her mind into her sister’s consciousness, searching for the flame of life masked by death’s cloak of despair. The blood racing through Levena’s body, roared in her ears, begging her not to give up.
The spider’s venom had succeeded in paralyzing much of Levena’s energy and now fed off of her blood, using it to convey it to other parts of her body. If she could only stop the poison from reaching the heart, isolate it, perhaps, Levena might have a chance. The blood in Levena’s heart, untainted by the arachnid’s venom, responded to her mental probe and the dragon side in her sister reared up, promising to fight.
“I can feel it,” she murmured, ignoring her sisters’ intent gazes, “I can see with my mind’s eye. The venom … ah! Yes, it is spreading. But not for long.”
With her other hand she touched Levena’s leg. The spider’s fangs had penetrated the skin. Swollen tissue surrounded the minute wound.
Dantress closed her eyes, willing the energy within her to heal. It worked. Opening her eyes she saw her hand glow blue, sending a shock of energy into Levena that awakened her from sleep and revealed the foreign substance poisoning her. Instinct told Dantress to rise, so she stood, squinting in the bright light emanating from her palm,
streaming into the bite.
Venom works its damage from inside of the body, so she left the wound open. The spider’s poison needed to be drawn out. She concentrated on the energy making contact with the spider’s fang marks—it was an extension of her own self—binding the venom with a vengeance.
The sticky poison still could not resist her pull and she drained it out of her sister’s body bit by bit until she saw it swirling up to her hand. Attaching bit by bit like strands of pitch, the venom gathered above her palm, hovering inches from her skin until it formed a little black sphere.
Weariness suddenly overcame her. She stumbled to her knees. Her hand ceased to glow, and the energy stopped flowing. Her vision blurred. The voices of her sisters crying out with mingled relief and concern faded. Sleep, sleep … she must sleep.
“Dantress!” Caritha caught her as her head lolled to the side and her eyes closed.
“Is she going to be all right?” Evela asked. She drew near and helped lay their sister beside Levena.
“I don’t know,” Caritha said. “Maybe she wasn’t strong enough for this yet; she healed the fairy once, but this task was much larger.”
“Humph! If this was beyond her abilities then Levena would be dead.” Shaking her head, Rose’el crossed her arms as she stood looking down at the two unconscious members of their party. “Whatever she did, looks like it worked.”
Caritha listened to Levena’s labored, yet steady breathing. Rose’el was correct. Whatever Dantress had done, Levena appeared better off for it.
The darkness thickened. She looked up at the sky. Not a star shone, so she guessed that a layer of clouds blocked their light. As she gazed into the darkness lightning zipped across the heavens. That instant of illumination confirmed her cloud theory, and she looked to the north. Somewhere out there laid the sea that joined with the Eiderveis River, the beginning of this strange journey.
Thunder rumbled in the distance, and she imagined a torrent of water raining from the sky in response.
“It had better not rain.” Rose’el frowned. “We don’t have any shelter. Unless, of course, we felt foolish and desperate enough to lie down in that hollow log again … But I wouldn’t want to try it.”
Raindrops splattered on Caritha’s face. The downpour would follow. “We have no choice, Rose’el!” She ran to the hollow log’s gaping mouth and drew her rusted sword. “Evela, Laura, come on—and you too, Rose’el. Touch your blades to mine!”
Smiling, as they comprehended her plan, the remaining sisters stood with her and touched their blades to hers. The blades glowed dull red. Energy sizzled from their guards and down their blades. When the energy unified at the swords’ tips an explosion of orange and blue light almost made Caritha forget that they needed to control it.
Caritha felt her sisters join with her in purpose, one in mind and one in heart. The energy exploded away from them and burned out the log’s hollow interior. Hundreds of arachnids fled before the wave of light, but most of them did not escape.
The sisters pulled back their swords and the energy dispelled into the air.
Prodding one dead spider with her sword, Caritha smiled. “That should cleanse it of vermin for tonight. Come on! Let’s move Levena and Dantress inside before it rains.”
Thunder and lightning vied with each other for supremacy. Dantress awoke in the middle of the night to feel the ground quaking beneath her. Sheltered inside the log she felt safe. Car-itha, Rose’el, Laura, and Evela sat against the log’s opposite wall, a low fire burning between them and her. She rotated onto her side. Levena was lying beside her, eyes closed, but her chest rose and fell in healthy rhythm.
The smell of smoke hung in the air. It stung her eyes. She glanced at the small fire. Ribbons of smoke wove themselves out of the log’s open end, leaving little if any residue to taint the air.
“It smells strongly of smoke in here,” she whispered, not wishing to wake Levena.
Rose’el rolled her eyes. “It was Caritha’s bright idea to blast the log’s interior with energy.”
“Well, it did take care of the spiders and any other insects holed up in here,” Caritha said in defense.
Rolling her eyes again, Rose’el addressed Dantress. “It also burned the wood, leaving a bit of smoke.”
Thick sheets of rain fell from the sky into the clearing outside. The lightning and thunder gradually slackened off, but the rain continued unabated. By strange circumstance the clouds thinned overhead, allowing the full moon to shine through, dimly illuminating the clearing.
A roar trumpeted with sudden force in the night. It shook the ground and a primordial scream that sounded half human and half—something else—something on the hunt, like a bird seeking prey. The dark figure of a humanoid fell from the sky and knelt in the clearing. Long, curly dark hair hung across the creature’s face. Moonbeams played off the creature’s ragged gray-blue dress. Bare, human feet showed beneath the frayed skirt. The figure remained in a kneeling position only long enough to shake itself like a dog and then stood. Two large, dark, feathered wings fanned out from its back, shivering.
With a bird-like cry the creature turned its face upward. Its hair fell back from its face, and it raised human arms. Its face was undeniably that of a woman, though bonier than any that Dantress had ever seen. The creature’s cheekbones in particular stood out from the rest of her face, giving her a rather stoic appearance.
“Bring her down! Bring her down here now!” the woman screamed.
Roaring their assent, six serpentine creatures of large size landed in the clearing. They folded their membranous wings to their black-scaled sides and dug their broad black claws into the ground. Horns rose from their spines like protruding bones and flabby skin hung from their elongated maws. Their long white teeth stuck out over their lower jawbones as if they wore frozen, sinister grins.
Dragons!
Caritha stripped some moss off the log’s exterior and threw it on their ineffectual fire. It sizzled for an instant then died out.
Another dragon landed, his fellows growling their anticipation and shifting on their grotesque feet. This one dwarfed his comrades and when he walked toward them they cowered. In his clawed hand he held a large sack. “Drusa,” he rumbled to the winged creature, “I have the woman.”
“Show her to me,” Drusa hissed.
“With pleasure …” In one motion the dragon lifted the sack and flipped it inside out, sending its occupant into the mud at the feet of the winged creature called Drusa.
An old woman feebly stood. Her head didn’t even reach Drusa’s shoulders and her back hunched. She pulled her water-soaked sweater around her upper body and faced the winged woman. “What am I doing here—who are you? What do you want with me?” Her shoulders quaked as she coughed into her wrinkled hand.
Drusa took a step forward and kicked her prisoner in the chest. As she fell into the muddied grass, the old woman screamed. Her attacker sprang on top of her and perched on her chest.
“You are the nursemaid of Ostincair Castle,” it hissed “as such you must know whether the rumors are true. Is the lady of the castle with child?” It drove its fists into the old woman’s chest. “Answer me and perhaps I will end your suffering! Tell me now! Is the lady of Ostincair Castle with child?”
“Even if I were torn in half,” the old woman choked as the creature clamped its hands around her throat, “I would not tell you, It’ren!”
“You will tell me, or you will die!”
The dragons circled the pair. The largest among them chortled before he spoke to the prisoner. “Torn in half … hmm, what an idea. What do you think boys? One of you takes the arms, and I’ll take the legs?”
“Perfectly devious,” another growled. “Let me at her!”
The winged woman hissed in her struggling prisoner’s ear loud enough for the five daughters of the dragon to hear her words from inside their log. “What say you? Shall I feed you to Turser’s dragons? Or, are you ready to divulge the truth?”
“It will take more than your cries to get you out of this mess, old woman!” The creature struck her across the face. “Now, what will it be?”
“Creator of the universe,” the captive screamed, “save me!”
Drusa screamed into the air and smote the woman again. “The Creator will not save you, old woman. Only I can do that! Now, you will tell me the truth!” She waited several long moments, then looked up at the largest dragon. “Glandstine, tear her in two.”
The dragon and one of his companions picked up the old woman and began stretching her between them, Glandstine holding her arms and the other dragon holding her legs. Pitiful sobs sounded from the old woman, yet through them Dantress heard another prayer to the Creator.
Dantress could stand it no longer. “Enough!” she screamed, racing from the shelter of the log and brandishing her rusted blade. The anger within her fed the sword of Xavion until its blade glowed dull red. The knuckles of her right hand showed white as she clenched the sword’s leather-wrapped handle. She held out her other hand, palm out. “Release her.”
Glandstine laughed. “Drusa, look what we have here, a young woman … a very young woman. Should we wrap her up for the wizard to play with?” He pulled on the old woman, who cried out in pain.
“I said stop!” Quaking with rage Dantress unleashed a bolt of energy from the palm of her hand. It struck Glandstine full in his left leg, causing him to drop the captive’s arms and stumble into one of the other dragons.
Spitting on the ground, Drusa pointed a long finger at Dant-ress. The dragons, rumbling in their throats and snaking out their thin, forked tongues, whipped their tails at Dantress. She fell backward to the ground, the taste of blood in her mouth.
“Not so cocky now, are you?” Suddenly the It’ren launched through the air, its wings spread, and pounced on Dantress’s chest. With blinding rapidity the creature struck, dug its nails into her arms, and kicked Xavion’s sword from her hand.
Swords of the Six Page 11
