Dragon Jade Chronicle: The Warlock And The Warrior

by Jamie MacFrey

  There was a high pitched scream from the field, and both Pol and Rouran startled, staring out at where the children were.

  Moving out of the trees were warriors of the Dragon Clan, their green jewelry visible from Rouran’s yard. One had the girl who’d been sitting on the wall, holding her off her feet with one arm, the other children rushing away in terror. Pol dropped his net. Before he realized what he was doing, he was dashing toward them.

  Rouran was running behind him.

  “What are we doing, Pol?” she shouted.

  “Go back inside!”

  “No!”

  The Clansmen had seen them now, pointing, archers nocking arrows to their bows. Pol drew up just shy of the warriors, watching as they scrambled over the wall. He looked at the warrior holding the little girl, a massive brute with jade bars running through his nipples.

  “Put her down,” said Pol. The Dragon Clan warrior laughed at him.

  “This little one is the property of the Clans now. She’ll become a thrall. Maybe a warrior, in time. She is ours to do with as we wish. All this village is. So are you.”

  “I’m not,” said Pol. “I’m not and no one in this village is. And that little girl is not yours either.”

  “You have a lot of guts for a soft, little village man, don't you, little village man?” said one of the other warriors.

  Pol grinned at him. Rouran grabbed his arm.

  “Careful, Pol.”

  “Listen to your wife, little village man. If you’re lucky, we’ll let you visit her on Creation Day.”

  “I’m going to ask you one more time,” said Pol. At his side, he’d extended the first two fingers on his right hand, twirling them in a circle. The grass at his feet was dancing in the breeze.

  “Put the girl down.”

  “Kill him,” said the Clan warrior with the pierced nipples.

  A bow twanged as an arrow flew off its string and headed for Pol’s chest. He swung his arm like swatting a fly and the arrow changed its course as if it’d bounced off a brick wall, landing harmlessly in the grass between Pol and the warriors.

  “A Sorcerer!” spat the bowman.

  “So what?” asked their leader. “There’s well and away more of us than him.”

  “I heard one of them held off most of the Sky Clan.”

  “The Sky Clan have grown weak and complacent, unworthy to the name of Vash’s clan. Their jade is old and used. He won’t be able to fight against true Clan warriors.”

  “Listen, are you all going to brag me to death, or what? Put the girl down and I won’t light you all on fire.”

  This last had its intended effect. The clansmen snarled and shouted a number of insults at Pol, suggesting various dishes his genitals would be made into, and the various temperatures they would be served to him at. Their leader’s voice came thundering over their taunts and threats.

  “Warriors! Kill the Sorcerer!”

  The stone wall that marked the border of the field behind the Clan warriors exploded. The Sorcerer with Red Eyes had had a few good tricks, Pol reasoned, but nothing that couldn’t be improved on. Shards of stone flew through the air. The jade wouldn’t stop them. Magic had only started them on their journey, not seen them to the end point. Pol threw up a barrier around the Clan leader and his hostage and himself and Rouran.

  The field was littered with screaming and groaning Dragon Clan. The stone wall was a wreck, like it had been smashed with a giant hammer, turned into sharp flat shards and gravel.

  “Vash bless us and guide our souls,” prayed Rouran behind him.

  Rouran wasn’t the only one terrified. The little girl was screaming her lungs out, louder even than she first had. The few Dragon Clan that had suffered only minor injury looked shaken as well.

  Their leader, however, seemed only angered. He flung the screaming girl away from him, then drew his sword, a long scimitar of jade, with the pommel worked into the open mouth of a dragon, discarding the scabbard in the grass.

  Pol had more pressing concerns though, as a few warriors had recovered enough to attack him. He ripped up a wall of dirt as high as his head, blocking a woman with a spear from running him through with it, then knocked over the wall on top of her.

  A wooden club swung at his head, the surface studded with bits of jade. An angry bearded warrior, bits of gravel still flecking his skin from where the explosion had embedded them into the surface, roared in frustration as it missed Pol.

  The warrior was quick, Pol had to grant him that. The bearded man avoided falling prey to the dirt wall spell like his companion, leaping away from it, forcing Pol back. The club came whistling through the air again, and Pol ducked under him.

  What Pol didn’t have to credit him for, though, was not getting in fights in back alleys in Lowvale when he was younger. If the warrior had, he might have decided that not all armor is bad armor. Especially armor for the groin.

  Pol wasn’t thrilled about grabbing a man by the balls, but once you had, he was pretty much at your mercy. Especially if pressure was increased in just such a way…

  It wasn’t a pretty way to dispatch an enemy, but it got the job done, Pol thought, rising from the writhing clansman.

  Something hard and heavy struck him in the back of the head, and he landed roughly on his face. A fairly large rock plopped into the grass next to him. He rolled over onto his back, staring into the face of the Dragon Clan leader.

  “Ha! A mighty Sorcerer of the Guild brought low with a single stone!” the big man laughed. His scimitar went slicing through the air, and Pol rolled away, barely missing being split apart by it.

  The sword flashed into the air again and Pol threw up the strongest shielding spell he could muster, causing it to catch in the air and slowly push down through his spell. The Dragon Clan warrior wrapped a second hand around the hilt, pushing harder, the blade slipping through the spell faster.

  Rouran landed on his back, screaming. The scaling knife in her hand flashed under the clansman’s chin, cutting a wicked gaping wound in his neck. The big man made a sickening gurgle, grabbing at his neck, blood pouring over his fingers. Rouran stabbed him again, leaping off as he collapsed into the grass.

  Rouran took a step towards Pol, then looked down at the bloody wreckage of the man she’d killed. She dropped her knife, doubling over so she could be sick in the grass.

  The scimitar was still suspended over Pol’s head. He rolled away, dropping the shielding spell so it fell harmlessly in the grass, then crawled to where Rouran was sitting, staring at the corpse of the Dragon Clan warrior.

  “Thanks,” he said.

  Rouran tore a hunk of grass out of the ground and threw it as far as she could from herself. The ripped up blades of grass burst into a cloud, fluttering in the breeze.

  “Hells and dragon’s bells, Pol, is it always like this, after? I can’t stop shaking.”

  “I don’t know,” said Pol. “I was unconscious underwater the first time.”

  “You’ve only been in two fights?”

  “Oh, no, I’ve been in lots of fights. I got beat up all the time as a kid.”

  It wasn’t a particularly funny joke, but Rouran laughed like it was any how.

  “I’m so cold, Pol.”

  “It’s just nerves. Mistress Heldi said that sometimes after a fight, you’ll get chills. It’ll pass.”

  “Do you get them too?”

  “Not that I feel.”

  “What happened to you?”

  “I... it’s kind of embarrassing.”

  “Worse than throwing up?”

  “I’m kind of... aroused.”

  “From killing someone?!”

  “No. From surviving. I feel very alive right now. Like I’m full of energy and I need to release it.”

  “Oh,” said Rouran. She was rubbing her chest to get warm, then realized the attention that was calling to her chest and stopped.

  “I’m not fucking you,” she said.

  “Good. It’s kind of inappropriat
e right now.”

  The little girl was huddled in a ball a short distance from them. Pol pointed Rouran to her.

  “She needs your help,” he said.

  “I’m covered in blood, Pol.”

  “I’m a Sorcerer, Rouran. You’re a familiar face. I think she’s going to respond better to you than me.”

  He was right. The girl tried to crawl away when Rouran and Pol approached her, but a groaning wounded Dragon Clan warrior in front of her and Rouran holding a hand out to her convinced her to agree to being carried back to the village.

  A delegation of villagers met them, the girl leaping from Rouran’s arms and running to her parents, where upon she immediately burst back into tears.

  “You saw what happened?” Pol asked.

  “The wall,” said one startled villager, an older man Pol took to be an elder.

  “That was me,” said Pol.

  “Rouran, who is this man?”

  “Pol Burr. He’s a Sorcerer from the Guild.”

  There was a moment of silence, and for a moment Pol basked in their awe.

  “That man’s not a Sorcerer,” said the elder.

  “Yes, I am!” said Pol.

  “Doesn’t look like any Sorcerer I’ve ever seen.”

  “See a lot of Sorcerers do you?” snapped Pol. “They all come from miles around for the fish, do they?”

  “Rude for a Sorcerer, too. I would think they’d be more…”

  “Magnanimous,” suggested a heavy set fellow with glasses.

  “Magnanimous,” said the elder.

  “What’s that mean?” asked Pol.

  “Lofty and kinglike.”

  “Lofty and—” Pol sighed. He pointed back behind him. “Okay, let me show you something: you see where I’m pointing?”

  “It’s a wall.”

  “Yep. Follow along with me... wall, wall, destroyed wall, chunks of stone thrown twenty paces from when I blew up the wall, dead Dragon Clan, wall, wall... is that lofty and kinglike enough for you?”

  There was some tittering as the crowd digested this sight. The elder swallowed.

  “Thank you, Master Sorcerer. Thank you for protecting our village.”

  “That’s Sorcerer Burr, to you. And don’t thank me yet. I think the Clan was here for me.”

  The crowd all clamored at once, most people suggesting that Pol leave, and fast.

  “Hold on,” shouted Rouran. “That’s not true. Their leader said the whole village was theirs. They’re here to conquer us.”

  “So what?” asked a villager. “We’ve always been at the mercy of Princess Fione and the Joians. Half the catch goes to the city, and then they take the other half in taxes. I heard the Dragon Clans believe in merit. Might be better under them.”

  “Any of you fight?” asked Pol.

  “I was in a war once,” said the elder. “Lord Nivan tried to rebel against the old prince, and all us men went off to fight them.”

  “Yeah? How many people did you kill?”

  “None, and proud of it,” said the elder.

  “Anyone here ever kill a person in combat? Or just win a combat?”

  There was a shaking of heads.

  “Listen,” said Pol. “I’m from the Guild of Sorcerers from Tia Vashil, and in the Guild Rock is a great library, and in that library is tome after tome written about the Dragon Clans and their customs.”

  Pol had not read these books, as such, but first Heldi and Garen and then Kiera had given him the broad strokes.

  “Unless you’re a warrior, you’re a thrall. You’ll be property of the Clans. They might let you stay here and fish, but likely as not, they’ll set you to whatever task they think necessary. It could be fishing, but it could be setting the warriors’ tables, or running the warriors’ baths, or sharing the warriors’ beds. It could be all three, or more. Does that sound better or worse than what you have now?”

  “Well, Master Sorcerer, what do you propose we do instead?”

  Pol frowned.

  “Why don’t you come with me to Tia Vashil?” he asked.

  * * * * *

  “Lady Kiera!” Princess Fione embraced her as Kiera entered the chambers of the High Council. “I was quite worried when I heard you’d been attacked.”

  “My father was attacked, I was just wounded,” said Kiera. She waved her bandaged hand.

  “Nonetheless, I was quite concerned,” said Fione, settling into her chair. She was naked, as was Kiera. She seemed unfazed by the necessity, perhaps even proud, comparing herself to the other women in the room. The entire High Council was to meet, and their rules demanded it. Master Bollu had joked that, while it would have been exceptionally clever of the Clan to plant an agent in their midst by wounding that agent in a surprise attack, he somehow doubted the agent would be the Exarch’s daughter, though he’d still taken her clothes.

  “And you?” asked Kiera, sitting next to the Princess. “I’d heard you were attacked as well.”

  “I was. But that night I was being entertained by Master Garen and Mistress Heldi, and my assassin badly miscalculated that her jade would protect her against two Sorcerers. She killed herself rather than be taken alive, you know.”

  The door opened again, and Master Waldrin came in, supported by Mistress Margase and the little scribe, Praela.

  “Good morning,” he wheezed, limping his way to the head of the table. All the other Sorcerers had beaten him here, and they nodded their deference to him.

  His leg was still mostly a mess, a thick plaster cast holding it steady, and his arm hung in a sling around his neck. A large portion of his mustache was missing. Kiera had heard it’d been just him and Margase in their quarters when the raider had attacked them. Waldrin had been warding his sleep since he was a new initiate into the Guild, back in the days of Kiera’s great-grandfather, when the Anti-Guild Riot had torn through the city and there’d been the possibility that the Guild’s servants would throttle them in their beds.

  The ward had been enough to wake him and Margase, but not enough to save him from serious harm, though having Margase there had been crucial to seeing him through the worst of it.

  “We have called this meeting to discuss the events of two nights ago,” Waldrin rasped. “I have asked Princess Fione vai Joi, as one of the targets for assassination, to join us, as well as invited Lady Kiera vai Ullan, who has been designated by the Exarch as his voice while he recuperates. Your highness, Lady Kiera, welcome.”

  “It is my blessing to meet this august body, even under these awful circumstances” said the Princess gravely.

  “My father regrets being unable to attend,” said Kiera.

  “It is unavoidable, given his condition. Ked is a loyal friend of the Guild and we wish him the best,” said Waldrin. “However, I am told you know something of our attackers?”

  “As I told the Masters of War and Spies, the Dragon Clan chieftain in Tia Joi who helped myself and Sir Tau vai Keller in our mission to rescue the Princess said that Dragon Clan warriors with the bird marking on their collarbones are members of a group called ‘Iandra’s Raiders.’ They are apparently Chief Olene’s private guard.”

  “Fascinating,” said Tudon, dismissively. “So the Chief has shock troops. They’d have to be good to infiltrate the city, pose as Easterners, and then pull of a simultaneous attack on three of our political leaders, wouldn’t they?”

  Kiera nodded in submission. Who was she to question a Master of the Guild? Her father had warned her that the Guild’s roving politics often meant suffering indignities in the present to avoid suffering vengeance in the future.

  “We should discuss what we are to do about it,” said Heldi. She spoke as if to the center of the table.

  “That is obvious,” said Waldrin. “We will deploy wards around the city, so that we can detect if dragon jade crosses their threshold. This will prevent further Clan assassins. We must also increase the Guard presence in the city and encourage citizens to report any suspicious activity to the Guard a
nd the Guild.”

  “That will be costly,” said Kiera.

  “It is worth it, if it means good men do not die,” said Waldrin. “We will release funds from the Guild’s coffers to supplement the city’s treasury.”

  “Master Waldrin, why have you not yet taken the Guild into the field and begun capturing the land south of the River Joi?” asked Princess Fione.

  “That is obvious as well, Princess. As the attack has shown, we are not yet strong enough to fight the Clan.”

  “On the contrary, Master Waldrin, and I mean this in no offense, but it seems to me the attack showed you are not strong enough to fight the clan. Mistress Heldi and Master Garen struck me as quite capable in dispatching my would-be killer.”

  “Mistress Heldi and Master Garen were both awake when you were attacked,” said Carista.

  “Master Waldrin was protected by the same wards he now proposes placing around Tia Vashil, was he not?” asked Princess Fione.

  “Princess, there are many things you do not understand about magic,” said Margase.

  “That is true,” said Heldi. “But she is not wrong. Waldrin’s wards did not spare him harm. And while he has suffered greatly, his suffering would pale in comparison to that of Tia Vashil’s if the city itself was wounded as grievously.”

  “Ah, so, you’d suggest something different, I suppose,” said Margase. Her tone was harsh and Waldrin reached forward with his good hand to rest it on her shoulder, but she brushed him away.

  “I would,” said Heldi.

  “Let’s hear it.”

  “The Guild should give the Five Noble Families as much funding as they need to raise, train, and outfit a substantial army from among the Vashili, supplemented by the Guard. The Guild should recall all its members not currently serving a vital capacity abroad or employed by Master Garen, and this entire Guild should train with the Vashili for war. When the Army of Coulain reaches us, we should march on Tia Joi immediately and lay siege to the city.”

  Tudron threw up his hands in frustration.

  “Master Garen asked us to do this months ago. If we had, we might have stopped the Clans in their tracks. Now they hold Tia Joi and you’re asking us to undo the damage you have caused!”