Kingdoms in Chaos

by Michael James Ploof

  “Drop your weapons,” said McKinnon.

  Tyrron stood between Whill and the soldiers defensively.

  “Are you mad?” Whill asked, noting that there was no one between him and McKinnon.

  The lord turned from the window and regarded him with wry grin. “Drop your weapons.”

  A storm of heavy boots sounded outside the door. Crossbows twanged, and the cries of Whill’s soldiers rang out as they engaged McKinnon’s men.

  Whill’s anger flared and he charged across the room, pulling back his father’s sword with a cry.

  Tyrron called out in alarm and rushed the crossbowmen.

  One of them fired just before Whill reached the startled lord, and Whill felt a hot pain shoot through his back. He staggered—his legs suddenly useless—and fell to the floor at McKinnon’s feet. He could hear Tyrron battling the guards behind him.

  Whill clawed his way toward McKinnon and grabbed ahold of his leg. He lifted his sword from the floor only to have it kicked away by a rushing guard who pinned him down. His head was turned to the door, and he gave a strangled cry when he saw Tyrron lying on the floor in a pool of blood with six darts protruding from his body.

  “No!” he cried as the guards stabbed Tyrron repeatedly to ensure he was dead.

  “Idiots! I said that the king was not to be harmed!” McKinnon yelled, bending to inspect the arrow in Whill’s back.

  “You’re a dead man,” Whill growled from the floor.

  McKinnon ignored him. “Bring him to the roof!” he ordered his men.

  Whill’s hands were bound behind his back and he was taken up by many hands and carried up a flight of stairs to the right of the door. Fear welled in him. Where were they bringing him? Why the roof? He tried to kick, but his legs refused to answer. The guards held him firm while he thrashed and swore, spitting curses and promises of revenge.

  “You’ll never get away with this!” he promised McKinnon. “My army has orders to attack if I do not return.”

  “Your army is being flanked by five thousand of Merek Carac’s soldiers from the east. They will surrender or they will die.”

  The guards placed him on a stone slab on a dais at the center of the battlements. McKinnon stood near the short wall, looking north into the darkness.

  “Leave us,” he said to his guards.

  “But sire—”

  “NOW!”

  The guards did as they had been commanded, and McKinnon strode over to Whill. Behind the man, a dark form could be seen flying toward them against a backdrop of moonlit clouds.

  “Who bought your loyalty?” Whill asked.

  McKinnon regarded him with sympathy. His grim face told Whill that he found no joy in what he was doing. “The necromancer, Zander. If I give you over to him, he will spare Brinn and Breggard.”

  “You would sell out your own people to a dark elf? Are you mad?”

  McKinnon turned to regard the growing form descending on the tower. “I have done what was needed to protect my kingdom and my people. You should have done the same.”

  He moved out of Whill’s line of sight. From the north a great winged beast drew closer. Whill realized that it was a large draquon. A dark rider rode on its scaly back. As it came for him with claws spread wide, he tried to struggle free, but the arrow had paralyzed him from the waist down.

  The undead beast scooped him up in its wicked claws and ascended high into the sky to carry him north across the lake.

  The Draquon flew over Lake Eardon and set Whill down in the courtyard of Castle Belldon. As the death knight dismounted, Whill shifted on the ground and saw a tall dark elf walking toward him.

  “The king of Uthen-Arden, as you requested,” said the death knight.

  “Whillhelm Warcrown. I have waited a long time to meet you,” said Zander, who, upon seeing the arrow in Whill’s back, turned on his minion.

  “I said he was not to be harmed!”

  The tall knight in black armor removed his helm, revealing a face half eaten by decay, whose teeth showed through rotten cheeks. “He was injured by McKinnon’s men.”

  Zander turned from him in disgust. “Idiots.” He pointed at Whill and yelled to the waiting lichs. “Lift him up off the ground. He is a king, after all.”

  Whill was lifted easily by the two elves and held by the shoulders to face Zander. He found that he was afraid—not for himself, but for his unborn child. He feared that he would never see Avriel again, and would never see their child grow up. Why hadn’t he listened to Tyrron?

  “I am Zander.”

  “I know who you are,” said Whill through clenched teeth. The pain in his back was excruciating, and the realization that he was paralyzed only fueled his rage. “Do what you will with me. I was tortured by Eadon and his lap dogs for six months. You will get nothing from me.”

  Zander grinned. “A delicious challenge, indeed. But I have no interest in physical torture. So barbaric. No, I have other plans for you.” He turned from Whill and marched toward the archway. “Bring him!”

  Chapter 52

  Mountain o’ Fire

  “By the gods!”

  Roakore took in the sight of the dragons circling the fire mountain and gasped.

  “You ready for a good fight?” he asked Silverwind.

  She offered him a rumbling coo. If not for the clouds and Silverwind’s ability to change the color of her feathers at will, Roakore would have been spotted from miles off. He had slipped through the cloud cover when he felt the presence of the island. With so much water below them, the island of stone was easy to detect.

  Roakore approached the island from the south, and dropped below the clouds long enough to see the burning dwarven ship on the coast. Black smoke curled up from four other locations around the island. He had forgotten how big Drakkar was. It would take him days to scour the entire thing.

  Dread had filled him the entire flight, now panic began to churn deep inside him. He tried to think, but the thin air above the clouds did little to clear his head.

  He had ordered General Hammerfell to land on the shores under cover of night and then to infiltrate the underground caverns and network of caves. Judging by the burning ships upon the shore, he assumed that the dwarves had landed and unloaded without incident. If the dragons had seen them coming, they wouldn’t have waited for them to land. Roakore figured that the best place to look for his son would be the cave system beneath the volcano. But which ship had Helzendar ended up on?

  Silverwind abruptly banked. Roakore cursed her and fought for the saddle horn as she spiraled through the clouds and spread her wings to catch a current down to the jungle below.

  “What in the blazes you be doin’, ye damned bird?”

  Silverwind gave no answer as she glided over the lush jungle strewn with smooth lava flows long cooled and frozen in time. Roakore nervously searched for dragons as they shot over the treetops. Soon Silverwind pulled up and landed on a rock face jutting out from between the vine-laden boughs of trees he had never seen. Roakore’s feather covered cloak turned green to match the foliage, as did Silverwind. She cocked her head to the left and right, searching the jungle. A ruffling of her feathers that made her appear twice as large told Roakore that she was excited—she was much too smart to show it through song.

  “What you see, eh?” he whispered, climbing down from her back.

  She eyed him sideways and pecked at the stone at her feet.

  Roakore watched her curiously.

  She pecked again.

  “What you tryin’ to say? What’s down there?”

  She leveled one large eye on him and her back shook, causing her green camouflaged feathers to dance.

  “What? You be sayin’ Helzendar be down there?”

  She gave the faintest of coos.

  Roakore regarded the stone. “There must be a tunnel down there below the jungle.”

  He studied the rock face, judging it to be only a few dozen feet down. He would be able to scale it easily.

&
nbsp; “Ye’ve done well. But you can’t come with me down in them tunnels. I’m going to need you to get us the hells outta here, when I find him… Stay hidden, and either look for me here or listen for me elsewhere. I ain’t for knowin’ were I be endin’ up, or how long I be takin’.”

  Silverwind crooned, and Roakore pet her smooth head. He took his axe and stone bird from the saddle, along with his shield and a pack of supplies, and then secured the cloak over the saddle. With one last goodbye to his trusted mount, he descended the rock face and slipped below the canopy of the dark jungle.

  He found the mouth to a small cave hidden behind a great tangle of vines. The air whining through the cave mouth carried the faint stench of dragons. Pushing back the vegetation, he shouldered his way into the dark corridor and called out his son’s name. He wasn’t surprised when no answer came. Would that it could be so easy, he thought, and trudged inside with grim determination.

  The cave widened as he went, and soon opened up to fork where two other tunnels branched off from his. He considered his options for a time, and finally trusted his gut, which told him to take the passage to the right.

  He journeyed through the dark tunnel for a few hundred yards and came to a wide open chamber with a lake of molten lava bubbling at the center. He gasped at what he saw, and pride swelled in him; a half a dozen dead dragons littered the cavern, and three times as many dead dwarves.

  “May Ky’Dren greet ye with open arms in the Mountain o’ the Gods,” said Roakore. He slammed his fist to his chest and bowed his head, offering up another prayer to the fallen heroes.

  Reluctantly, he moved through the cavern, checking the dead. Some were burned beyond recognition, but he was convinced that none of them were Helzendar. He moved to the far wall where a curious sight waited. Three tunnels opened into the cavern on that side of the room, and it appeared as though two huge stalactites had been forced into the tunnels to block them. He couldn’t help a beaming smile. None of the five hundred had been of his direct line, so only Helzendar could have accomplished such a feat.

  He had been here.

  Hope swelled in Roakore and he hurried to the last tunnel. Dwarven boot tracks littered the area, both coming and going. It appeared as though they had doubled back, but Roakore was curious, and so he went searching through the tunnel to see what he might find.

  It wasn’t long before he came to another large cavern. He found more dead dwarves, and dragons as well. When he saw the broken dragon eggs, he gave a laugh that echoed through the chamber. Here, too, stalactites and stalagmites had been used against the dragons, and it appeared his clever son had used them to smash dozens of the eggs. Tears welled in Roakore’s eyes and he chuckled to himself. Helzendar had earned himself a place in the mountain of the gods, indeed, a seat at the table awaited him. It appeared as though he had killed a number of dragons both born and unborn—and all before the age of seventeen.

  Roakore had never been so proud in all his long life.

  He followed the tracks. There had been a great battle near the center of the room. He noticed that one set of tracks appeared to be slightly smaller than the others—possibly Helzendar’s. His excitement grew as he followed them back out through the tunnel. They were accompanied by bigger tracks, and by the looks of it, Helzendar had been helped along by someone else, for the prints often dragged across the ground. It made sense. If Helzendar had used his innate abilities to move such large pieces of stone, he would have been exhausted.

  Back through the cavern with the lake of fire he went, and followed the tracks to a tunnel adjacent the one he had first come through. It appeared that only four or five dwarves had made it out. Among the tracks were the smaller ones. Roakore found himself running through the tunnels with a pounding heart, full of apprehension and excitement.

  “Helzendar!” he called out, uncaring who heard him. He even hoped that he might be noticed by a dragon. It had been a long time since he had a proper fight, and the display of dwarven prowess had gotten him in a right aggressive mood.

  Chapter 53

  In the Eyes of the Father

  Helzendar awoke in the narrow tunnel and shot to his feet with a start. His helm banged off the low ceiling and General Hammerfell regarded him with a grin.

  “Mornin’, me prince.”

  “How long I been out?”

  “Few hours is all.”

  “Where be the others?”

  “Keepin’ a lookout.”

  Helzendar sat back against the curved tunnel wall and rummaged through his pack for some jerky. He found bread to go with it, and ate with ravenous hunger. Orrin offered him some crumbly cheese and he gladly took it.

  “What be the plan?” Helzendar asked between bites.

  Orrin smiled at his enthusiasm. “I be o’ the mind to find the others. There’s sure to be some more stragglers about.”

  “Then what?”

  “Then we find another one o’ them hatcheries, if any more be existin’.”

  Helzendar nodded, and popped the rest of the jerky into his mouth and got up. “Right, then, what we be waitin’ for?”

  The general got to his feet as well and offered him the dwarven sign of respect. “I had me doubts about ye’, Ky’Dren forgive me, but I did. They was unfounded. I ain’t seen a more fierce dwarf aside yer father in all me years.”

  Pride straightened Helzendar’s sore back. “Thanks, it means a lot to me, that does, and comin’ from you.”

  Orrin slapped him on the shoulder. “C’mon. Let’s find us some egg—”

  A booming voice shook the stone. Deep and guttural, the unmistakable growl of a dragon echoed through the tunnel. To their utter surprise and shock, the dragon spoke dwarven words. The beast was calling them out, cursing their descendants and promising to devour their clan.

  Helzendar’s anger and outrage was reflected in the general’s steely gaze of determination. The lookouts came running from both ends of the tunnel.

  “Which direction that demon comin’ from?” Orrin asked.

  The dwarf who had emerged from the northern end of the tunnel pointed back the way he had come. “It be coming from the wide tunnel that be hookin’ off this one ‘bout two-hundred yards that a way.”

  “Helzendar!”

  The dwarves froze, and a deep frown grew on Helzendar’s brow.

  “Was that…was that me king?”

  “Helzendar!” The voice was certainly Roakore’s, and coming from the opposite direction of the dragon.

  “That be the king, all right,” said Orrin with a grin. “It came from that way, I be sure o’ it. Come on!”

  They ran south down the tunnel and came out into a wider branch running east to west. The growling curses of the searching dragon echoed from the north.

  “Me king!” Orrin yelled. “He be here. Follow me voice.”

  “Orrin?”

  The dragon’s roar shook the stone once more, and an orange glow illuminated the dark tunnel. Dragon fire erupted from the northern tunnel and Orrin pushed Helzendar back. Behind them, flames flashed by and receded.

  The other two dwarves charged to meet the beast when the flames subsided, and Helzendar pushed Orrin off to join them. He gripped his shield tight and cocked back the dragonlance. With any luck his father would find him battling the dragon, and he would see his son for the warrior that he was.

  The stone vibrated beneath his feet as he sped after the two dwarves, determined not to miss out. When the largest dragon Helzendar had yet seen shouldered around a bend in the tunnel, the lead dwarves gave a fierce cry and began to sing to the glory of the gods. Adrenaline quickened Helzendar’s heart. His fatigue was soon forgotten, and bloodlust fueled his charge. He raised his shield before him, expecting the green beast to douse the tunnel in flame once more. To his surprise, the beast stopped, opened its jaws, and shot a long stream of green acid at the approaching dwarves.

  Helzendar skidded to a stop and watched, horrified, as the green venom melted the dwarves and their
armor like candle wax. He stared in shock at the bloody pool of gore on the tunnel floor before him. The dragon cocked back its head and shot a long stream of flame in his direction. He ducked behind his fire shield, enduring the intense heat with a grimace.

  When the flames subsided, he moved to charge, but Orrin’s strong arm held him fast. He was pulled back by the stronger dwarf.

  “Helzendar!”

  He turned to find Roakore charging down the wide tunnel after them.

  “Let me go!” Helzendar demanded, wanting to kill the dragon in front of his father.

  Orrin held him firm and pulled him back from the fast approaching green dragon. The beast filled the tunnel with fire once more, and Helzendar felt what little beard he had burn away beneath the terrible heat. He had barely gotten his shield up in time.

  With a cry, Helzendar broke free of the general and charged. He cocked back the lance and let it fly as his father’s voice called to him once more. The lance flew true, and would have hit the green in the chest, had the beast not bathed the projectile in acid that dissolved it quickly.

  The dragon shot a glob of acid at Helzendar and he barely lifted his shield in time. But it mattered not, the acid hit and burned through the shield as though it were paper, and continued on to his left arm. Helzendar was thrown to the side by Orrin, who stood facing the dragon bravely.

  Helzendar cried out in pain and terror as the acid ate through his armor and dissolved his entire left arm up to the elbow. Roakore cried out his name as he finally caught up to them.

  “I’ll hold the beast back, me king. Get the lad out o’ here!” Orrin lashed out with his lance, trying to keep the dragon from his prince. But the dragon slapped the lance to the side and struck like a snake, easily biting Orrin in half.