by Sam Ferguson
That much was true, but even then Erik understood the prelate’s motivations. “The Prelate was in a desperate situation, as were we all,” Erik replied. “I bear no ill will toward the man.”
“Intriguing,” Alkantar said. “Now, open that book and go to the end. The last three pages will describe the dark sahale.”
“I will not read the trickery of warlocks,” Erik fumed.
“But you have the gift and power of discernment!” Alkantar shouted. “Surely, this task is not beyond your powers, is it?”
“I am not chasing a sahale, I am looking for a shadowfiend who murdered a dozen sahale in Winter’s Beak.”
“But perhaps you are on the wrong side,” Alkantar said. “What if the shadowfiend is working to protect the Middle Kingdom from the dark sahale? What if by saving the sahale, you doom the rest of us to oblivion?”
“No, I can’t believe that.”
“The bond between humans and dragons never lasts,” Alkantar said. “It always breaks down. Even now the two species are unable to rediscover the harmony that used to exist between them. It won’t take much to ignite the fires of hatred, and once that happens, war will ravage this land.”
Erik shook his head. “No,” he said.
“You see nightmares,” Alkantar cut in. “You see the Four Horsemen. You know what they are capable of. You seek a way to stop their coming, but fail to see the obvious path set before you.” Alkantar spoke a spell and the cords binding his wrists and legs melted away. Erik pulled his sword, but then his body was frozen in place, as if held by invisible chains. “Don’t make this harder than it has to be,” Alkantar said. “You may be the Champion of Truth, but you have let yourself come into a spider’s den.”
Erik struggled against the invisible chains, but to no avail.
“Don’t you know that a shadowfiend is most powerful in his lair?” Alkantar asked. He stretched his arms out to the side and then his human form began to warp and shift. Thickly corded muscles flowed into his arms. Spikes jutted out from his shoulders as fangs grew from his jaws. The black eyes grew in size as the shape of Alkantar’s face became much more animal than human.
“I am Alkantar, the Trapper. I am surprised that Njar never warned you. You see, he once made the error of assuming that I was peaceful because I didn’t leave the comfort of my cave. What he didn’t realize, was that I have more than enough quarry willing to come into my home. Daring adventurers, eager apprentices, unlucky wanderers. If my wights don’t get them first, then I pull them into my home, much like a spider lying in wait.”
“What of the dark sahale?” Erik asked with great difficulty.
“Oh, that was all true, but since you are more concerned with the other shadowfiend, why should I let you escape? You would only get in his way, and his work mustn’t be stopped. Besides, for all I know, you could be the dark sahale. You have killed countless in your wars, and you have already defied the fates once. Who is to say you wouldn’t turn to a darker path if pressed against something you couldn’t ever understand?”
Alkantar raised his right hand and brought Silverfang over to the desk. He laid the animal down on its side. Silverfang tried to fight against the spell, but this time there was nothing it, nor Erik, could do.
“I think I shall devour the wolf first,” Alkantar said as he licked his blueish lips. “I can feel a great power coming from him. What plane does he come from, do you know?”
Erik remained silent, still trying to push against the invisible force that held him in place.
“No matter, I shall consume its essence, and then I shall take yours. It will be good to taste the power of a sahale.” Alkantar smiled and moved in slowly toward Silverfang’s neck. The wolf snarled, but went rigid as the spell pulled at it and held it down.
Alkantar moved in, jaws opening wide so his fangs could bite into Silverfang’s thick neck. He came in closer, obviously relishing each passing second. Then, right as he moved to bite, Silverfang snapped his head up and bit into Alkantar’s neck. There was a sick, wet tearing sound as the wolf pulled at the monster’s throat.
The spell holding Erik in place faded away at once and he jumped into action, leaping over the desk and drawing his sword. The white flames erupted around the blade just as the cold, Telarian steel bore down on Alkantar’s skull. The bone cracked in two and the black eyes went dull.
“Didn’t you know?” Erik began. “Silverfang is immune to paralysis spells, he is a master of them himself. He was only feigning capture.” Erik booted the shadowfiend to the ground. Silverfang continued his work until there was a loud cr-snap! Alkantar’s head rolled awkwardly until his nose came to rest behind his left shoulder, throat torn out and neck broken.
Erik knelt beside Silverfang and petted the animal on the back of the head. “Well done,” he said. “If Alkantar was the spider, then you were the assassin bug.”
Silverfang licked his snout and then turned to face the tunnel they had come in from. His hackles were up and he started to growl in a low, menacing rumble.
“Right, time to go!” Erik said. With Alkantar now dead, he was free to transform himself. In the blink of an eye, his body ripped through his clothes as scaly limbs replaced his human ones. The tunnel needed widening, but with his dragon strength he had no problems burrowing his way upward. Silverfang ran ahead of him. They could both hear Lady Arkyn battling something outside the cave.
As Erik had suspected, leaving Lady Arkyn outside was playing into another trap that Alkantar had arranged. He and Silverfang burst through the cave opening to find a team of wights running after her. She had managed to slay a few, but six more were chasing her through the valley. Fortunately, she was quick on her feet and deadly with her sword. A wight’s head fell to the ground just as Erik took to wing.
He opened his mouth and gathered his fire in his chest as Silverfang let out a long howl, the signal for Lady Arkyn to turn and run out of the way. No sooner had she put thirty feet between herself and the wights than Erik unleashed a cone of fire that engulfed the monsters entirely, reducing them to smoking ash.
When the battle was over, Erik dropped down near Lady Arkyn and transformed back into his human form. The she-elf turned and pulled a spare pair of under garments from a satchel she wore at her side and handed it to Erik.
“Next time, I get to play prisoner and you can deal with the wights,” Lady Arkyn said.
Erik smiled and dressed himself. “Alkantar would never have gone for that. We had to let him believe he had the upper hand.”
Lady Arkyn shrugged and eyed Erik from head to toe. “It appears we need to find you some new clothes.”
CHAPTER 8
Erik finished scouring Alkantar’s lair for clothes and then burned the corpse and collected the ashes into a vial as protocol demanded. The ashes of every slain shadowfiend were supposed to be sent in to King Matthias. The first time Erik had seen this done was at Spiekery, when Lady Dimwater defeated Balt’ezar the Brown, a wicked and vile shadowfiend masquerading as a priest requiring human sacrifice. After she had killed the monster, she had burned the body and collected the ashes.
Now, Erik was doing the same thing, and not for the first time either. Alkantar marked the tenth shadowfiend that had fallen at Erik’s hands. He had also fought three demons, including the one at the monastery, and several other things that most dared not face even within the confines of their own nightmares.
He closed the vial and tucked it into a satchel, provided courtesy of the dead Alkantar. He then left the tunnel, never to return to this forsaken cave again. He had thought about collapsing Pracheloor Cave, but decided that in the interest of time, his strength would be better put to use traveling.
With all of the necessary tasks completed, Erik looked around the lair for anything else that could prove useful. He started with the books, smiling to himself as he realized Tatev, the librarian from Valtuu Temple, would have done the same thing. The types of books before him were a veritable treasure trove of foreign cu
ltures and peoples. He saw books written in Common Tongue, Tarthun runes, Elvish, Dwarvish, and even Orcish. He had only seen the one book written by the Cult of Zammin, which was now being perused by Lady Arkyn, but he did find another book that proved of interest.
“Minnie,” Erik called out, using his nickname for her. “I found something that says it is written by Kyra Dimwater. Could this be accurate?”
Lady Arkyn moved over to him, tucking the large tome she was studying up under her left armpit. “What is the title?” she asked.
“A Treatise on Dragons, Their Strengths and Weaknesses, with Excerpt from The Chronicles of Kendualdern,” Erik replied. He flipped through the first few pages and found a short introductory note in the inside. “This book uses my own first-hand account of interactions with dragons, as well as factual accounts of dragons who lived upon Kendualdern, my favorite of course being Gorliad, the dragon prince.”
“Erik, you have stumbled upon Lady Dimwater’s lost manuscript!” Lady Arkyn said. “She spent years writing this.”
“How did it end up here?” Erik asked as he looked around. “Certainly she wouldn’t give such a book to Alkantar.”
Lady Arkyn shook her head. “No, it was lost at some point during her travels. It’s a long story, but she and I were beset upon by a band of Blacktongues once, and we lost many things that we had been traveling with. This book was one of the things we lost.”
Erik nodded and tucked the book into his satchel. “Then we shall return this to her the next time we see her.”
“Are you sure about the direction we should be heading?” Lady Arkyn asked as she rummaged through the book written by the Cult of Zammin.
Erik nodded. “I have done some research on them privately, before coming here. Everything I learned would seem to corroborate Alkantar’s notes.”
“But why would he leave notes?” Lady Arkyn asked. “I mean, why would he have a paper in the back of this book with directions to find the cult, let alone a hand-drawn map?”
Erik shrugged. “He said that he knew who was behind the murders. Perhaps he is more involved than that. Maybe he was responsible for training the murderer. After all, he had a spell that kept me from transforming into my dragon form. Perhaps they both had the same master.”
“And that master is somewhere in the cult?” Lady Arkyn asked as she closed the book.
“I think so. Either way, the Cult of Zammin seems to be our only clue at this point. It is the only thing linking Alkantar with the murderer. We’ll take the books and Alkantar’s map with us.”
“So then, should we fly?”
Erik shook his head. “No. I don’t want to draw undue attention to ourselves, and more importantly, I don’t want to be ambushed by someone else who can prevent me from changing. If they can stop the spell from being used, then who is to say they can’t also reverse it? If they should do such a thing while we were in mid-flight, all the armor in the world wouldn’t save us from crashing to our deaths.”
“So this is something we have to fight on two legs then,” Lady Arkyn commented with a nod. She smiled then and gave Erik a wink. “That’s all right, you’re cuter in your human form anyway.” Erik smiled at the compliment. He thought of telling her then how much he had missed her, but the moment passed before he could find the words. Lady Arkyn turned and gathered a few additional supplies and turned to leave the cave.
“We’ll go back to Far Point,” Erik called out after her. “It’s time to take Gerald up on his offer to give us a tour of the seas in the north.”
They retraced their path back to Far Point. Other than a light snow storm, they met no obstacles. However, when they reached Far Point, things seemed quite different from just a few days before. Well-armed guards stood before the gates. A trail of smoke rose up from behind the walls, stretching high into the sky.
“What happened here?” Lady Arkyn whispered.
Erik shrugged. Then, the wind shifted and carried with it the scent of sulfur. He knew in an instant what had caused the fire. “A dragon fight,” Erik said.
“What?” Lady Arkyn asked. “Impossible.”
Alkantar’s warnings of a dark sahale came back into Erik’s mind.
The guards took one look at Erik and then ran back to the gatehouse. He couldn’t hear what they were saying, but their shouting was anything but happy.
The gates creaked and groaned as they were opened from within the city.
Erik stopped in his tracks. He would have recognized the warriors for what they were by their spiked and ridged Telarian armor. Each of them carried spears, swords, and hand axes, ready for battle. Four dragon-slayers emerged from Far Point, accompanied by a taller man in dark robes.
“I don’t like the looks of this,” Lady Arkyn said. “What are they doing up here?”
The other guards disappeared through the open gate only to emerge a few seconds later, pushing a large cart, upon which stood a massive wind-lance, a weapon not unlike a scorpion launcher. What differed, was the target each weapon was designed for. While the ballistae, and scorpion launchers were created to slay human foes, the wind-lance was invented and perfected for one purpose; killing dragons.
“I am Erik Lokton, son of Trenton Lokton,” Erik called out as the four dragon-slayers continued to advance on him.
“We know who you are,” one of the men called out.
“Then surely you understand that I am no threat to Far Point, or to any other city in the Middle Kingdom, Erik replied sternly. “What is the meaning of this display?”
Three of the dragon-slayers stopped and readied their spears.
“Erik, I don’t recognize any of them,” Lady Arkyn said.
The fourth dragon-slayer removed his helmet and tucked it under his left arm. The strong Telarian steel was well oiled, and seemed to move effortlessly as the warrior approached them. He strode up to Erik within arm’s reach and then stopped.
“The day after you left Far Point, the city was attacked,” the man said.
Erik nodded. “I can see the smoke. If you are asking for my assistance in tracking the assailant, you are making a piss-poor impression.”
The warrior scoffed. “I am not here to impress you. I am here to do my job.”
“And what is that?” Lady Arkyn asked.
“To keep out dragons, and… other trouble makers.”
“Do you know who Erik Lokton is?” Lady Arkyn asked incredulously.
“I know what you are,” the man said. “You are part dragon, and therefore you are not coming in.” Lady Arkyn started to object, but the dragon-slayer spoke over her. “Challenge me and you will find three more as determined as I am to keep you out of Far Point. If you get past them, you will have to face the wind-lance, operated by a crack team that owes its loyalty to us.” He then turned to Erik. “And before you think to take your dragon form, I should warn you that Master Dilbin is fully capable of preventing you from transforming.”
Erik perked up at this. Was Master Dilbin a member of the Cult of Zammin? Or had he been at some point in the past? “Where is Dilbin from?” Erik asked. “I haven’t heard of him before.”
“He hails from the north,” the warrior said. Erik shot Lady Arkyn a curious glance. She returned the gesture with an understanding nod. “I must also warn you that we have been alerted to the savage murders of many people in Winter’s Beak. I find it most curious that both towns have seen destruction, and both have had you as guests in the recent past.”
Erik slowly drew his sword and set the point on the ground. “I think you forget your station,” he said. The white flames flowed out onto the blade. “I am an agent of the king. As such, I have authority to go where I please, when I please. I am on official business, and you are impeding my investigation.”
“We do not recognize your authority,” the dragon-slayer said.
Erik shook his head in disbelief. “Where are you from? I knew Tillamon, and I have trained with Master Lepkin, and I even met many dragon-slayers, but I have neve
r seen one act the way you are now.”
“Tillamon was an old fool!” the warrior spat. “Lepkin is a traitor. He is a dragon himself. And you are just like him. We are the true dragon-slayers, we are the Sons of the Blade, and we will not rest until the Middle Kingdom is safe again.”
Erik turned and looked at Lady Arkyn.
The elf stepped forward and leaned in. Her green eyes were like daggers, and her fingers tensed, hovering just over the handle of her scimitar. “Are you saying you would defy King Mathias’ agent?”
“I am saying all of Far Point will,” the rogue dragon-slayer replied evenly. “Mathias sent most of the men folk from Far Point to die. The governor’s own sons are dead now as a result of a war that benefitted none but the dragons.”
“That isn’t true!” Lady Arkyn said.
“Yes it is,” the warrior said. “Otherwise we would not be cowering in our own homes while dragons darken the skies above us. We would not be yielding our country to outsiders. We would fight them off, and repel this invasion.”
“But it isn’t an invasion,” Lady Arkyn argued. “This is the way the Middle Kingdom always used to be, with men and dragons working together for the good of mankind.”
“Does that look like something good?” the warrior shouted as he pointed to the wafting smoke.
Erik, sensing the tension rising to a tipping point, put his hand on Lady Arkyn’s shoulder. “Come, we should go.”
“Yes,” the warrior agreed angrily. “You should.”
“Know this,” Erik said quietly. “I am not responsible for the destruction here, nor the deaths in Winter’s Beak, but I will find the one responsible, and when I do, no mercy shall be given.”
“If you speak the truth, then perhaps there may be a place for you among the ranks of true patriots,” the warrior said. “But if you throw in with the dragons, we will offer you no quarter.”
Erik pulled on Lady Arkyn’s shoulder. The two turned to walk back toward the forest when the rogue dragon-slayer called out after them.
