“’Tis true, brave Trevin,” Zeezle said flatly. “But that is why Vanx is dead and I am not.” He shook his damp hair again and pushed it back over his head. “If I walk away and live out my years, I’ll see four or five hundred more of them.” His tired gaze locked on the determined human’s. He sighed. “But I have to admit, I’d regret every single one of those years if I didn’t see this through.”
He stood shakily. “Come on, we’ve a treacherous descent to make and you’ve only one foot to make it with. On top of that, I’m as spell-weary as an old crone. Either way, this is our night. I doubt we can survive another.”
“Thank you,” Trevin said through clenched teeth as he gained his feet. He wondered if he could forgive himself if Zeezle died, now that he had talked him into continuing. Thoughts of Gallarael’s innocent smile, her long, golden hair and confident manner tried to balance the scales of his inner conflict. He was caught in some nightmarish tale where only the lives of his faithful companions could be traded to save the girl he loved. He decided it was some cruel jest of the gods. He was too far into it to turn back, though, even if he could find the will to walk away. He found he almost hoped he would die out here trying to save her; that way he wouldn’t have to live with the guilt of Vanx and Sir Earlin’s deaths.
He glanced over at the falling moon and caught a glimpse of flying shadow as it voided the stars beyond it. He started to warn Zeezle of what he’d seen, but stumped his roasted foot on a rock and fell into the Zythian. Both of them toppled forward into a heap. It was a lucky thing. Another dark-winged shape had been swooping at them from behind. At the same time Trevin yelled out in pain, the young green dragon who had been stalking them from above let out a roar of frustration. It barely missed grasping Trevin’s shoulders.
“If it lets loose its breath, hold yours,” Zeezle said hurriedly. His warning turned out to be unnecessary, though, for another dragon, a black one, shot out of the sky at the young green and blasted it with slime. The green glided straight into the rocks a few hundred paces ahead of them and crashed there in a tumble of corroding flesh and scales.
Zeezle, with Trevin’s help, got to his feet and started sharply down the slope.
The black dragon was coming back around to finish off its kill and feed.
“Sorry,” the Zythian said over his shoulder as the two of them went sliding down the steep grade.
Trevin found out immediately what the apology was for. His foot, his tender wound, seemed to find every root and hard surface there was on the frantic descent. Zeezle, however, even in his haggard state, used his keen vision to skirt and hop over the rough places. Trevin wasn’t so blessed, and by the time they tumbled to a stop on a wide shelf, he was teary-eyed and fighting to maintain consciousness.
The stench was stronger here, impossibly thick and foul. They were just above the treetops, a stone’s throw out from the twisted growth. A few trees grew out at odd angles around the area where the slope of the valley was too steep for them to take root normally.
Trevin seethed through clenched teeth, fighting with all he had to keep from crying out. He wasn’t trying to be quiet now. Their sliding avalanche had made a riotous amount of noise. It was the fact that, if he let go, the dam holding his tears, and the reservoir of guilty confusion he had been holding back, would burst and all of it would come flooding out.
Slowly, he got his breathing under control as he watched Zeezle crawl to the edge of the shelf on hands and knees to peer over.
The Zythian came back and helped Trevin hobble out to one side of the flat formation. There they eased down the grade a little more. Trevin saw where they were going. The bottom of the shelf formed a cantilevered extension over a shallow hole. The area under the slab offered protection from the eyes of all the beasts now battling overhead.
Zeezle laid Trevin back on the ground and elevated his wounded foot on a head-sized piece of stone.
“Do your best to keep a watch, Trev,” Zeezle rasped. “Once I’ve had some rest I can spell your foot to take away some of the pain. My rest, though, will be undisturbable.” He fell more than sat down next to the human. “Right now, all I have the strength for is this.”
Trevin was in so much pain that he doubted whether he could fall asleep even if he wanted to. Zeezle, however, was already snoring softly.
They hunt gray bears and ogres
and they kill them with bare hands.
You’d be better to poke a dragon’s eye
than cross a Highlake man.
A Highlake Mountain Man.
– Mountain Man
Quazar stood atop the Dyntalla wall at the western gate looking down at the mass of green-fleshed ogres still attempting to break down the barrier. He had been working his magic to repel them all day. As full night blanketed the dusky pink sunset that hovered over the mountains to the far west, he sighed with frustration. It didn’t make any sense. He was exhausted, and all his attempts to frighten the ogres away with thunder, lightning and even more violent exploding balls of wizard fire had failed.
Dozens of the beasts lay pulverized about the area, but the hundreds of living ones seemed not even to notice the bodies they were trampling beneath him.
A chorus of anguished howls came up from below. A kettle of burning oil had just been poured over the group that had gotten too close to the wall. An arrow sped down at them, flames streaming from its pitch-caked tip. The oil ignited with a great whoomp and, for a short span of time, the flaming and screaming bodies lit up that immediate area, revealing the arrows that were shooting down from the archers along the wall top.
Already another kettle was being readied to dump. Quazar couldn’t understand it. The ogres were enraged. They seemed ignorant of the fact that they were dying in droves at the base of the great stone barrier.
King Oakarm had arrived the previous night to oversee Duke Martin’s trial, but had been forced to stay aboard his ship for fear of getting caught up in this new attack by the green-skinned hulks.
Duke Elmont sent Quazar back to the wall to repel them, as he had before, in the hope that the king might land without worry. But the ogres were not going away.
There was no flourishing use of power when Quazar departed the wall this time. No fancy shining robes, no displays of flowing to the earth like some great, wingless bird. There was only a ragged-looking, spell-weary old man who clutched at his scepter of office as if it were a simple walking stick. As he hobbled down the torchlit switchback stairs to the carriage waiting for him, a young soldier had to help him stay upright.
Quazar had a lot on his mind, far more than the persistent beasts trying to get into the city. Matty was determined to kill Duke Martin in his dungeon cell, or at least geld the man. And worse, Gallarael was teetering on the verge of succumbing to the corruption inside her body. The spells Quazar cast were barely keeping the poison from running its course through her. The old wizard feared each morning that he would look in on a puddled corpse instead of a feeble young girl clinging to semi-conscious life.
The ogres seemed to be organizing somewhat now. Already they were coming at the gate in small groups and pounding at it before retreating quickly to avoid the kettles of oil. They hadn’t quite gotten the timing of the retreats down yet, but they would. Eventually they would figure out that the rafter log of one of the houses they had gutted would do more damage to the barrier than clubs and fists. It was just a matter of time. Quazar knew that something had to be done quickly, but other than a full cavalry assault, he had no idea what to do. Magic wasn’t working, at least not the fear of it, as it should have been.
Duke Elmont had a contingent of five hundred mounted men and as many foot soldiers that he could send into battle, but against the three hundred or more huge, savage beasts, it wouldn’t be a fair fight. And more ogres were arriving every day.
Quazar began working out how and what he would tell his liege lord. He didn’t look forward to the conversation, but he hoped to have some semblance of an idea of
how to solve the problem by the time his carriage reached the inner gates. His intentions never manifested into action, though. Long before they rolled into Dyntalla proper he fell into a deep slumber. It was all the driver could do to wake him when the carriage bounced to a halt under the stronghold’s ornate entry.
In his dirty, foul-smelling, yet spacious dungeon cell, Duke Martin slept fitfully. His slumber was haunted by dreams of Coll, only it wasn’t the Coll he had come to know. It was something far more potent and unpleasant. A dark, shadowy form with a deep, resonant voice spoke to him from a great distance. All the while Coll’s black eyes bored into him. At the fringes of the emptiness, where the conversation was taking place, there was the flickering of open flames, or maybe just the suggestion of them. No matter which way he looked, he could see no fire, but the smell of brimstone was strong.
“You must get yourself free, my lord,” the heavy voice said. “Find my statue and topple it. It is the only way I can help you now.”
“Where are you?” The duke’s dream-born manifestation of himself asked the darkness around him. “Coll? Coll, is it you?”
“I am Coll to you. I am other names to other people, but to you I am Coll.” The deep voice was low and throaty, yet as clear as if it were whispering directly into the duke’s ear. “The old white-haired wizard tricked me,” Coll growled. “I was turned to stone. The statue must be toppled to break the spell.”
“I am locked in the dungeon,” Duke Martin insisted in a pleading fashion. “There’s naught I can do for you now.”
“Then there is naught I can do for you. You’ll soon be dangling from the hangman’s rope, or if you’re lucky, you’ll feel the headsman’s axe bite into your neck.” Coll gave a hoarse, growling chuckle. “Gallarael’s here and alive, you know. Once she and her companions tell their tale to the king you’ll be branded a murderer and a traitor to the Crown.” Coll laughed again. “Without me to protect you, your life is worthless. Find a way to topple my statue or face your fate alone. There are other possibilities for me, and I see now that my time would be better spent pursuing them.”
“No, wait,” Duke Martin pleaded. “How can I get out of here? How can…”
“Shhh!” Cole hissed. “Someone comes. I can only save you if you topple my statue and break the spell.”
“But, but please tell me what to…”
“Tell you what?” Matty cackled at the iron door to the duke’s cell. “You were begging,” Matty smirked. She had to stretch up on tiptoes to press her eye to the peephole. She couldn’t see much, for her head eclipsed most of the torchlight coming from the corridor in which she was standing. She stepped back and pulled a pin free. A small plate fell outward and clanged against the door when it hit. The sound brought Duke Martin fully out of his slumber and to the feeding slot on hands and knees. One eye and his nose came into the opening expectantly. The man seemed disappointed that it was Matty standing there looking down at him.
“What do you want, slave?” he snapped.
“My lord, I want you to hang your little cock out here so that I can take it in my mouth,” Matty purred. “I do miss the taste of it so.”
The duke looked as though he was about to oblige her, but caught himself. He had raped and used Matty a dozen times before putting the slave chains on her and giving her to Amden Gore to sell. She knew there was no way he was stupid enough to think she really wanted him.
“What is it you want?” he asked harshly, but then, remembering Coll’s request from his dream, he asked in a more agreeable voice, “Do you want to make a bargain?” Before she could reply, he added tauntingly. “I can get you your weight in gold. You’ll never want for anything again.”
Matty felt herself being tempted, but not even a castle full of gold and jewels could sway her from the pain that she planned to exact from Humbrick Martin. The hope that she might get both, though, threatened to divert her from the path she was on.
“What do I have to do to get all this gold, my lord?” she purred seductively. She reached her hand into the slot and let it find the duke’s crotch. “I knew you liked my mouth, but I didn’t know you liked it that much.”
“No, I mean, yes,” he stammered. “I delight in the pleasures you so expertly provide.” He tried to stay focused as his member stiffened in her hand. “But the gold could only be paid if you open this door and help me get free of the dungeon.”
“That’s easy, my lord,” she whispered. “I’ve already worked my charms on the dungeon master to get in to see you. Getting the key will be nothing. Is that all you want me to do for you?” She pulled harder on his engorged member, forcing him to want to rise so that he could push it out the slot for her mouth.
“Yes… uh… no, no.” He let her guide his manhood fully out of the slot. “Satisfy me, and then go fetch the key and I will make you wealthy ‘til the end of your days.”
“Aye, my lord.” Matty breathed heavily on his cock, even kissed it, just before she yanked it to the edge of the slot and slammed the steel plate closed on it with all the strength she could muster.
Coll’s earthly form was trapped in the stone Quazar had spelled it into, but his true form was far from human, or even earthly in origin. In truth he was a lesser demon from the darker reaches of the Nethers. His true name was Raxxteriak. Raxxteriak’s true form couldn’t manifest itself on the earthly plane, but his essence could float about like some invisible cloud and reach into the minds of those whose nature was tainted with a streak dark enough to hold him. Coll had been one such human. The relationship with Coll, though, had taken years to cultivate. The control Raxxteriak had over his mind and body couldn’t be garnered over a day or two. It took years to possess a soul the way he had possessed Coll.
Raxxteriak was finding that there weren’t many evil people in Dyntalla. There were mean people, angry people, and calculating people, but he couldn’t find any soul that could be considered downright evil. There was that fool, Duke Martin, but he was locked away in the dungeon and of no use at the moment. Raxxteriak had been alive for thousands of years, though, and wasn’t about to let this little inconvenience stop him.
Just outside the city gate there were other sorts of minds, savage and primitive minds that were easily tempted in one direction or another. He couldn’t possess an ogre, but he could force an idea into its mind. All he needed was for Coll’s still form to be toppled and Quazar’s spell to be broken. What better thing to topple him than a horde of hungry ogres storming the stronghold? All they really needed was to learn how to break through a gate.
The next morning, after dreaming of battle lust and glory, and of a particular statue and a red stone, the ogres came at the western gate with a whole tree. They carried the trunk, roots, branches and all, and began bashing it into the humans’ barrier in earnest.
There is a place so cold and gloomy,
so dark that nothing sleeps.
A frozen sea of mourning,
eternal Saint Elm’s Deep.
– Saint Elm’s Deep
The underground city, which wasn’t quite as grand as Vanx had first perceived, was called Boondara. Vanx gathered from Olden Pak that it was only one of many such places scattered about the world. When the novelty of the idea of such a place wore off, Vanx found it was much like any other town, only this one was illuminated by the accumulated light from thousands of glowing mineral deposits. Hard-packed walkways lined rutted lanes where two-wheeled carts hauling Zwarvy and goods were being pulled by well-muscled dogs. The dwellings were mainly stone-walled cubes with round windows and flat, moss-covered roofs. On the way to Olden Pak’s home, Vanx heard a strange instrument being played and a singer coming from a crowded building that quite possibly might’ve been a tavern. The female voice was resonating a sad-sounding lyric, but the joy of the song was evident in her tone. The Zwarvy they passed all looked up at him with eerie, suspicious eyes. Some stopped and pointed while others gave a wide berth. He felt like a giant among them.
Olden Pak
’s wife, a milky-white block of a woman, eyed Vanx dubiously but fed them a fishy-tasting stew at a small table made from worked wood. After they ate, Olden Pak took Vanx out, telling his wife to care for the pup as he went. He said they were going to see the few extraordinary sights of Boondara.
The cavern was immense. Vanx felt as if he were caught in some great underground bubble, which in fact was exactly the case. Over by a shop was a huddle of the Zwarvy haggling over the value of some stone tool that looked newly made. All of them to a man stopped and stared with their strange green eyes as Vanx passed them. At the outer fringes of the space beyond Pak’s home, neat rows of vegetation grew and were tended by several female Zwarvy in wide-brimmed hats. Some of the rows were of a bright yellow plant that looked out of place in the strange, almost colorless world. Across the road there were rows of gray cabbage balls, and Vanx thought he saw a dark, purple-capped mushroom or two jutting up in the spaces between the crops. The cavern walls, at the edges of the worn floor, glowed and crawled with some dim blue energy. When one of the gardeners called out to another, Vanx suddenly understood the need for hats. The walls were glowing a steady and potent shade of blue, similar in hue to a clear spring sky. The dark crawling he was seeing over this radiance was a coating of living bats. The woman shouted and waved her hat and a whole section of the cavern wall erupted in a shrieking explosion. The area brightened considerably for a few moments until the bats settled back into place, sparsely covering the light again.
He was amazed by all of this, but as Olden Pak led him toward the most central portion of the cave, Vanx noticed two things.
One was Pak’s growing discomfort. The old Zwarvy seemed to have something to say that he wasn’t quite ready to. After they passed a group of men working outside a cart-building shop, and several of them demanded to know why a “mannish” was among them, Olden Pak grew even more uneasy.
Dragon Isle (The Legend of Vanx Malic Book 2) Page 9
