Dragon Isle (The Legend of Vanx Malic Book 2)

by M. R. Mathias

  The king had to order silence in the great hall because Prince Russet and a pair of armed soldiers were now escorting Vanx into the ballroom. The applause, whistling, and voracious cheers were so loud that the king had to scream over them to be heard. Once the crowd quieted, and the room was calm enough to begin, the king didn’t dally.

  “What is Humbrick Martin, my appointed Duke of Highlake,” the king paused a beat here and glared at Duke Martin as he finished the title. “…the Guardian of the High Mountain Road, and a keeper of Parydon’s trust, charged with?” The king’s tone was rather harsh. The disruptive crowd and the words Duchess Gallarain had whispered in his ear at the royal breakfast table this morning had his blood past the point of boiling.

  She’d told the king that she knew beyond the shadow of a doubt that her husband had been reaping a profit from the bandits attacking the caravans along High Mountain Road, but she had no proof. “It’s been going on for years, Majesty,” she’d said. “He has not a bit of respect for the kingdom or the king that gave him all that he has. If he had, he wouldn’t be always conspiring to take more.”

  Back in the courtroom, Duke Elmont read from a parchment, dutifully doing his best to show no emotion. “Sixteen cases of incidental murder, conspiring to kill workable slaves, conspiring with bandits for profit, conspiring to kill Commander Aldine with a suspected Darkean, who later proved to be a full-fledged servant of hell, attempting to sexually molest a prisoner in the Dyntalla dungeon…” This was followed by a round of disgusted, grunting laughter so that that Duke Elmont had to raise his voice to speak over. Then he added, “Not only once as a visitor, but again while being detained in a cell.”

  Duke Martin visibly paled at the mention of Matty slamming the steel slot door closed on his manhood. He would never forget the intensity of that pain. His cock was still raw and tender, not to mention the fact that it burned terribly when he took a piss. He decided he’d heard enough, though, and spoke firmly over the duke. “Your Majesty, is this redundant reciting of manufactured lies and secondhand information really necessary?”

  The room fell into silence as everyone strained to hear what Duke Martin had to say for himself. “Correct me if I’m wrong, Highness,” Duke Martin continued with a proper bow of respect, “are not both of my accusers kingdom criminals themselves? Your own father’s hand wrote the amendment, and I quote: No nobleman may be accused of a crime by a convicted kingdom criminal. Let an accuser of nobility be only of a reliable and honest nature, and free of guilt themselves.”

  Humbrick Martin beamed at his wife’s sneering scowl. He then looked back up at the king, feigning humility. “I’m not even sure why we’re all here, Your Majesty.”

  “Who could question the honesty and reliability of the accusers?” Duke Elmont snapped, but Quazar let out a sigh and looked dejectedly down at his curl-toed slippers.

  “Why, I can,” Duke Martin answered jovially. With his hands clasped behind his back he left his podium and began pacing as he spoke. He’d gained most of his weight back over the last few days, and strode the floor brimming with pride and confidence. His boots made soft peeling sounds as they lifted from the floor. There were no visible blood stains left, but a sticky residue still remained from where Gallarael had ravaged the ogres who toppled the statue of Coll.

  “Trevin Carrimore was placed in his position as a guard inside my house. His only duty was to protect my wife and daughter.” He dropped a hand and glanced a quick, accusing peek at King Oakarm. “Gallarael’s virginity was not his to take, nor was her heart. The accusations of a duty-shirker, a young man who used his position to seduce and violate a noble-born princess of the realm, cannot be considered in this matter. It is law.”

  “But it was a consensual coupling,” Duchess Gallarain blurted from where she was sitting. “I approved the relationship. I am her mother.”

  Duke Martin paused in his pacing and grinned at her displeasure.

  “Not now,” King Oakarm boomed. “We will hear this… this man out. He was just about to tell us what crime his own daughter is guilty of.”

  The slow peeling of Duke Martin’s boot soles as he resumed his pacing filled the silence. “As we’ve all been told by the rumormongers, our precious little Gallarael hasn’t been herself of late. Wasn’t she recently transformed into some vicious beast, just as they say my advisor Coll was? Are not all of you now guilty of consorting with a demon?” The crowd gasped at the revelation. “You are all as guilty as you say I am,” Duke Martin went on. “Trevin, the duty-shirker, is he not still on the brink of death from one of Gallarael’s hellacious attacks? What of the poor apprentice smithy whose face she ruined?”

  “This is preposterous!” Duke Elmont blurted out. “She was infected by the fang flower and then the dragon’s blood, poisons, not the lord of darkness. She…”

  “That is a matter to be investigated in her criminal hearings, Lord Elmont, not at mine.” Duke Martin turned to face King Oakarm then. “Beyond that, she was in the caravan in the first place to help free one of my slaves against my will. That alone is crime enough to render her accusations impotent. So you see, Highness, this hearing is a farce at best.”

  “A farce indeed!” the king boomed. He threw an accusing finger out, pointing at Duke Martin, who looked to have been expecting this reaction. “Technicalities of the kingdom’s law be damned, man. There are a dozen more accusers waiting in the hallway, Humbrick. Do you have enough wit to thwart them all?”

  “I’ve no doubt those who seek to destroy my honor will eventually find one I cannot.” He shook his head disdainfully. “That is why I’m requesting your consent to invoke my right to divine judgment. It will save us a lot of time.” The crowd’s whispering began to grow into a murmur. “Let the gods decide my innocence or guilt.”

  The king sat back in disbelief. He let the crowd mumble while he considered the request. If Humbrick was fool enough to face the same swordsman who defied the odds against a half-dozen ogres to help Russet and his men break free of the Wildwood, then so be it. The Duke of Highlake was a well-trained and well-disciplined swordsman, but if only half of what Russet had told him was true, then Duke Martin didn’t stand a chance against Vanx Malic.

  Prince Russet was already standing to protest when his father granted the request. As soon as he got his words out his son’s voice filled the hall. “A slave cannot fight a noble,” the prince called out, but Vanx pulled him down by the sleeve and the crowd noise drowned out his next words. Vanx drew the prince closer and whispered something into his ear and then repeated his words to Orphas. The now cloth-capped wizard chuckled under his breath and then hurried over to Duchess Gallarain and whispered something to her. A moment later she stood and urged the crowd to silence. With an expression full of contempt, she worked between the other attendees and over to her husband. “You are a fool, Humbrick,” she said. “He will gut you like a pig. He is half your age, twice as strong, and three times the lover you will ever be.”

  Duke Martin chuckled again. “Don’t worry your nasty old cunt about it, love,” he spat. “As a Parydon noble I invoke my right to choose a champion to fight in my stead.”

  With that, the crowd burst once again into murmuring chaos.

  “Who do you choose, then?” King Oakarm demanded over the noise.

  “My champion should know that once he kills his opponent, thus proving my innocence by the unarguable will of the gods, he will be granted his substantial weight in silver and a generous stead from my own holdings along the protected shore of Highlake.”

  “Yes, yes, yes, Humbrick,” Duchess Gallarain said with an urgent, worrisome tone in her voice. “But who will this champion be?”

  “Why, the most notorious of all the mountain men; a man who has slain a dozen rock trolls and twice as many ogres as he has grizzly bears; a man whose name strikes fear and respect in all who hear it.” Duke Martin strode over to the witness area and, with a flourishing of his hands, indicated his sizeable man by flipping back hi
s hood. “May I present my champion, Kavin ‘Bearfang’ Karcher.”

  A deflated “ooooh” swept through the room. The duchess dropped her head, crestfallen, for “Bearfang” was twice Vanx’s size and as dangerous as any man had ever been. Even if Vanx managed to kill him, he would probably be maimed or crippled in the process.

  She looked across the room at her lover, tears of apology pooling in her eyes. They spilled over and ran down her cheeks, but to her great dismay, Vanx seemed pleased with this turn of events. Amazingly, his emerald eyes were sparkling, and across his face spread a pearly grin of delight.

  “It is a shame that justice is seldom served true. Many a man wrongly takes the blame of another. Some wrongs are never remembered long, muchless righted. We as noble born must try our very best to follow the laws written, for by their obtuse rigidity comes order.”

  – King Maliver Oakarm

  Darbon helped Zeezle work through the crowd to where Vanx stood grinning like a guilty cat. All around them people cringed and shook their heads with doubt. The prince and Orphas were conferring quickly, both clearly thinking that Vanx’s little scheme had backfired. None of them thought that Vanx could best Bearfang, at least not without taking some crippling wound himself. The mountain man fought and killed ogres by himself in the Highlake Range for a living.

  The duchess found Gallarael and was stroking her daughter’s hair while fighting tears of worry. Even the king was in the ear of his royal advisors, questioning the legality of all that was about to transpire.

  “Let me be your champion.” Zeezle squeezed between the prince’s guards, his golden eyes wide with concern. “He is no match for my abilities.”

  “I beat you like a daisymaid when we were but children, Zee,” Vanx laughed. “Just after I thrummed your big brother, no less. I appreciate the gesture, my friend, but I have another trick up my sleeve here.”

  Zeezle smiled at the memory of his brother being granted his choice of weapons from the table for a single combat with Vanx at the Fairy Festival so long ago. Dorlan made his choice and then Vanx asked the Elders if he could choose any weapon he wanted. The Elders replied “yes” and Vanx chose the sword right out of Dorlan’s hands. He then discarded the weapon and proceeded to beat Dorlan senseless with his hands and feet.

  When it was Zeezle’s turn to face him at the Fairy Festival, Zeezle declined the offer to choose weapons first. Vanx only shrugged, took a dull but stout wooden practice sword from the table, and made ready.

  Seeing that it wouldn’t be wise to use Vanx’s trick, Zeezle took up a real sword, but it did him little good. He spent months recovering from the battle. Sometimes when he woke in the morning he still felt ghosts of all those lumps about his head and shoulders. If Vanx said he had something up his sleeve, then Zeezle didn’t doubt him. In fact it only made the Zythian more curious to see how this was all about to play out. If it went bad, he wasn’t about to let these people harm his friend. They were Zythian, and kingdom law meant little.

  “We will find a way to put a stop to this,” Prince Russet said. “Bearfang’s axe is too brutal a weapon for you to face. I have a mind to…”

  “No, Russet.” Vanx patted him on the shoulder. “You don’t understand. This is how I want it. Escort me down to the floor so that I can speak with your father and that fool of a duke.”

  The crowd parted anxiously as the princely procession wormed its way to the ballroom floor. Duke Martin had already sent two pages to retrieve Bearfang’s gear. Before them a circle of space was opening up before the king. A battle, it seemed, was going to take place right here and now.

  As Vanx positioned himself before the king, Prince Russet ordered his men to step away. He would not present his friend to the king as a slave under guard.

  “Father,” Prince Russet said angrily, “may I present Vanx Malic, the savior of Dyntalla and a hero of the realm?”

  Vanx bowed, but only his head. He owed no real fealty to King Oakarm, but he did respect the man. He kept his head down until the king spoke to him.

  “Rise.” The king gave the customary command, even though Vanx hadn’t knelt. “I am almost asham…”

  His voice was drowned out by the clanking, clashing sound of two young pageboys half-carrying, half-dragging Bearfang Karcher’s shining ring mail armor and his huge, two-handed great axe. The sight only served to reinforce the idea that Vanx wouldn’t escape this ordeal unscathed.

  “This is a mockery of justice, sir,” the angry king started up again, after several grown men of the King’s Guard took up the burden and ended the noise. “You’ve done nothing wrong, other than fall prey to the charms of a seductress.”

  Across the room, Duchess Gallarael batted her eyes and blushed furiously.

  “You’re a hero, and no matter the outcome of Humbrick Martin’s nitpicking of the kingdom’s law here, you will be remembered as such. But I’d like to say that I personally hope the gods show you favor this day.”

  “Thank you, King Oakarm,” Vanx said sincerely. “But my people, at least most of them, worship a single goddess, not your many gods. And the fact that I am alive leaves no doubt that she holds me in regard.”

  He glanced at Duke Martin, who was watching on curiously with a smug look of triumph on his hawkish face. “’Tis you, Duke, who needs the favor of your gods this day, for it is also written in your laws that a slave cannot fight a noble, or his owner.”

  “That is why I chose a champion, fool,” Duke Martin interjected. “I read the laws and prepared for these trifling details, I assure you.”

  “Let him finish, Humbrick,” the king snapped at him. “I don’t think he is quite through explaining what he has to say.”

  “Thank you,” Vanx said. “There is another law. It is written in the sections pertaining to hearings, divine judgment, and this sort of fiasco.” Vanx gave a broad sweep of his arm, but stopped with his hand extended toward Duke Martin.

  “I’m curious,” Vanx asked with a barely containable grin of his own threatening to spread across his face, “what weapon are you going to use against yon mountain man and his great cleaver? And this is the stumper: if you must yourself die to prove your own innocence, how will this turn out?”

  “What?” Duke Martin blurted out over yet another explosion of crowd murmuring and hissing exchanges. “I’m not going to fight that giant, you are.”

  “I beg to differ, master,” Vanx said with a mocking bow. “You have demanded that I am still a slave and, according to the laws of slave ownership, you must fight in my stead. For ultimately you’re responsible for the defense of those you presume to own. Ah… I see you are confused. I will recite the law, word for word from memory to remind you:

  “No slave may stand against an accuser, be that accuser of noble birth or otherwise. Let a slave’s owner, master, or lord stand in his stead. The confinement, training, and actions of anyone subject to slave chains is ultimately his master’s responsibility to bear.”

  “That is absurd!” Duke Martin yelled over the king’s bellowing laugh.

  “Master,” Vanx said disdainfully. “That is you.”

  “This can’t be right!” Duke Martin raged. “How can I prove my innocence if I have to fight for you?”

  “It seems a true divine verdict is being granted this day.” The king was laughing as he spoke. “The gods are already deciding your fate. I would find a weapon, if I were you. Karcher has a pretty big axe.” Then to Bearfang, who’d taken a curious interest in these new revelations after donning his gear: “Don’t worry, Mr. Karcher, the Crown guarantees that the duke’s promises to you will be carried out. Should you survive this contest and prove him innocent you will get the land and coin he promised.”

  The king stood and opened his arms wide. The man beside him banged the bottom of an iron-shod staff three times on the floor. “Clear out! All of you clear out! These men are about to battle for the judgment of the gods.”

  “Wait!” Duke Martin protested. “Wait, Your Majesty. This
can’t be right.”

  It turned out that Duke Martin was a coward among other things. He pleaded as he ran from his foe, even begged for the king to intervene. Had Vanx’s future not been at stake here, he might have. In the end, though, Duke Martin fought for his life, even if futilely. Bearfang let him swat his sword around and lunge in, but buried his axe in the man’s ribcage with his first blow. It was a tree cutter’s chop that went clear through the duke’s spine and ended his disgraceful existence. The once haughty and proud ruler of Highlake twitched thrice and then died in a pool of his own blood.

  Only one person in the whole room cried out. It was Gallarael Martin, her still transforming skin hidden by a robe, but her wild eyes showing the tears that streamed from them plainly. She had only known one father, and though he’d fallen under the influence of the dark, and succumbed to his need for revenge, he had once truly loved her. She ended up burying her head in her mother’s bosom while the men quickly rolled the body onto a canvas tarp and hauled it away. An old, dusty rug was carried in and unrolled over the blood stain. Then, as if nothing had ever happened, King Oakarm began the second hearing.

  “What is Vanx Malic of Zyth accused of?” the king called over the murmuring gossip. The room fell silent and no one uttered a sound.

  “There are many ways to skin a cat,

  the fun is choosing which.

  But it’s no cat I want to skin.

  I want to kill a witch.”

  – The Weary Wizard

  Much to Duchess Gallarain’s dismay, Vanx Malic chose to leave Dyntalla. Darbon decided he would go with him when he left. With Matty dead and buried and a fat pouch full of gold at his belt, a reward for his service to the kingdom, the young man decided that being a metal smith could wait a few years. Vanx wanted to see the great Sea Spire and explore Orendyn, Coldport, and the other settlements of the Bitterlands where his father once caroused. Darbon could think of no better way to get over the loss of his first love, and Vanx said that he didn’t mind the company.