by Bianca D’Arc
“You took this task upon yourself?” Gryffid asked with a shrewd look in his eye.
“There was no one else to do it and nobody who knew how much of a devil Fisk truly is. He skates very close to the law and has a decent, if not good, reputation. But I know the evil in his heart.” O’Dare looked down at his plate, knowing he needed to tell them all of it, but dreading having to say the words. “At one time, he was a business partner. I trusted him, and he learned many of my secrets, and my greatest weakness… My wife, Olivia. Fisk murdered her, and I have been hunting him ever since.”
Silence greeted his words, and he didn’t dare look at Livia. She hadn’t known how her mother had died. He’d deliberately kept it from her, not wanting to hurt her any more than she already had been by the loss of her mother. She’d been guarded all her life, though she probably didn’t realize the full extent of it. And he’d stayed away to protect her, as well as to collect his fleet. He’d done nothing for the past decade or more but work toward the goal of killing Fisk and ending the threat he posed not just to O’Dare’s family, but to the world in general.
“Is it true?” Livia’s whisper worked its way into his heart. He felt her pain, but he couldn’t expose his ongoing grief to the world. Not yet. Probably not ever.
“Yes, daughter,” he acknowledged her question, trying to remain as unemotional as possible. “It’s all true. This is why I haven’t been home in so long. I’ve been working to build the fleet to protect you—and everyone else—from Fisk.” That sounded a bit grander than the real reason—that he wanted to hunt Fisk down, cut him into tiny little pieces and feed him, bit by bit, to the sharks.
“Well, I, for one, am glad you took the initiative, Captain O’Dare,” Gryffid said, breaking the tension in the room. “You will all stay the night in the keep. Rooms have been prepared.” Gryffid stood briskly from the table and looked around at everyone. “I will see you all at breakfast, here in the hall, an hour past sunrise, if that is convenient. I wish to speak with each of you again, once you’ve had a chance to rest and recover from the events of the day.”
Murmurs of assent followed the wizard out the doors as he left them.
O’Dare turned to lace into the two men who had caught his daughter’s eye when the door opened again and the dragon and knight that had accompanied O’Dare’s ship walked in. Their pace was urgent, their expressions troubled.
“Seth, Sir Hrardorr has been trying to reach you, but believed something about the wizard’s keep was preventing him getting through,” the young man said. “Lady Genlitha and Xander tried to reach you, too, but their voices were blocked.”
“Not anymore,” Seth said, rising to his feet, his face grim. “Hrardorr just told me. I’ll be with you in a few minutes. I have to get some supplies from my baggage.” Seth raced out of the room without further explanation.
“What’s going on?” O’Dare asked Sir Leo as he approached.
“One of the sea dragons was cut badly by the diamond blades they are gathering from the sea floor. Sir Hrardorr wants Seth to look at her injury, since he is the only healer on this island truly familiar with dragons of any kind. Sir Hrardorr asked Xander and me to come get Seth and bring him to the little cove on the other side of the island where they say the sea dragons like to sunbathe.” Leo’s report was helpful in shedding light for Captain O’Dare on just how involved Seth was with the dragons. Very.
“Genlitha reports the same thing. She couldn’t get through to me for some reason while Gryffid was here,” Gowan said, scowling.
“Could he have blocked them somehow?” Livia asked, clearly concerned.
“I have no idea if that’s even possible, but it seems likely given the evidence we have. The minute he left, we were back in communication. But why would he block them? It seems odd. He didn’t do it earlier, when we first arrived.”
“Maybe it wasn’t him,” O’Dare put in, thinking of the possibilities.
“Who then?” Livia asked, her gaze reminding him so much of her mother, yet her independent spirit was more like his own. His late wife, Olivia, would never have challenged him in public. She was far too refined to do such a thing. But her daughter, Livia, was more irreverent. More independent. He liked that about her, but it was also trying at times.
“Fisk has been known to dabble in magic. It is said he made a deal with a demon to remain hidden from my vengeance for so long, and I’m half inclined to believe it, though I don’t generally hold with talk of magic,” O’Dare told them. They all seemed to ponder his words as Seth skidded back into the hall, a bulging pack slung across his back and another in his hands.
Xanderanth lowered his neck for Seth to slide the strap of the bigger pack around his long neck, settling it against his broad chest. Then, Seth and the dragon left the great hall, followed closely by Leo, who shrugged and waved to them all on his way out.
CHAPTER ELEVEN
Seth talked with Hrardorr about the sea dragon’s injury on the short ride to the other side of the island with Leo and Xanderanth. With Xander’s powerful wings, they arrived in no time at all, and Seth slid down off of Xander’s back, approaching Hrardorr, who sat quietly next to a slightly smaller dragon that shared Hrardorr’s dark coloration, but was just slightly different. She leaned more toward the dark blues than the deep greens that were the base of Hrardorr’s multi-hued hide.
“Hrardorr?” Seth asked, uncertain how to approach the unknown dragon who was eyeing him with a shy sort of suspicion.
“Seth, this is Lady Shara. She has been injured by a diamond blade and is in need of your expertise,” Hrardorr said formally, introducing the sea dragon.
Seth bowed as well as he could with the pack on his back. “Lady Shara, I am Seth, apprentice healer of the Southern Lair. Will you let me have a look at your injury? I promise to do all I can to help you.”
Her jewel-like gaze went from Seth to Hrardorr and back again.
“You may approach,” came her tentative voice in his mind. It was like a shushing whisper of waves against the shore, unlike any other dragon’s voice he’d ever heard. He found it pleasant.
Seth went to work, inspecting the long, thankfully shallow, gash that still wept blood on her foreleg. Seth sensed Hrardorr’s frustration in being unable to see what was going on, so he began to talk about what he was seeing and doing.
“It is a shallow but long cut, Lady Shara. I will apply a special salve that will stop the last of the bleeding and begin helping your scales knit together. You may have a slight scar after this, but it will disappear in time when the affected scales shed in the natural course of things. Sea dragons do shed your scales like land dragons, right?”
“Yes, Seth. Not often, but we do it from time to time,” Shara answered, her voice a little stronger as Seth applied the salve that he knew would also deaden any pain she might be feeling.
“As do we,” Hrardorr put in. “I always know a patch is going to shed when it becomes unbearably itchy.”
Shara seemed to giggle. “The itch is the worst,” she agreed with Hrardorr as Seth continued his work.
“Lady Shara, is it possible for you to remain out of the water for a few days? I only ask because the salve may dissipate in water, and I fear infection could set in. It might be best if you kept the wound from getting wet while it is still healing.”
“We sea dragons can spend time on land,” she admitted. “It is not our preferred place to be, but the wizard allows us the use of his beaches and caves. We like the ones in this area best, and the gryphons mostly leave us alone. I can stay in the cave over there for a few days if that will help in the healing. I have done so before.”
Seth looked over to the darker area in the cliff she’d gestured toward. Sure enough, he could just make out the opening of a cave that he hadn’t really noticed before. Night had fallen, and Xanderanth and Leo had set up a bonfire so Seth could see. Seth noticed the way Xanderanth was watching the sea dragon, as if mesmerized.
“Have you met Sir
Xanderanth, Lady Shara?” Seth asked while he worked, hoping to distract her a bit from her injuries.
“I have not,” she replied rather shyly.
“Xander, come closer and meet Lady Shara,” Seth said familiarly. He liked Xander and Leo—especially since they’d proven their worth by insisting they come along on this mission.
The dark blue dragon shuffled slowly forward, as if he, too, was shy. Seth was surprised. Xander was usually one of the more self-assured young dragons.
“Hello,” Xander said, approaching slowly. “I’m Xanderanth, but my friends call me Xander.”
“I’m Shanaraneth, Shara for short. Pleased to meet you.”
Was it Seth’s imagination or were the two dragons exhibiting the initial signs of being smitten with each other? Could a land dragon and a sea dragon even be mates? There had been only one case that Seth knew of—Hrardorr’s famous ancestor—but nobody in Draconia had even seen a sea dragon since then, and that had been centuries ago.
Seth finished up with the cut on Shara’s scales while she and Xander exchanged pleasantries. Yeah, they were definitely intrigued by each other, though only time would tell if anything would—or could—come of it. They were both quite young. Seth judged them to be somewhere around the same age, which put them both at just coming out of their adolescence into adulthood. That was very young for a dragon to find a mate.
And there was the complication that Xander was a fighting dragon. He’d bonded fully with Leo and could not take a dragon mate until Leo found a wife, lest the spillover from Xander’s amorous activities drive Leo mad. At such times, only a true mate would do for the human side of the family because the bonds ran too deep for a casual bed partner to be able to satisfy.
Seth sat back, having finished with the cut when the gleam of blood in the firelight caught his eye. He stood, walking around to the back of the dragon and had to stifle a gasp. She had another injury—a much more serious injury—to her wing that she was either unaware of, or trying to hide. He had no idea why she would do such a thing, but he had to try to help her.
“Lady Shara, may I look at your wing?” Seth asked gently.
Shara shied away from him. Not good.
“I only want to help you, milady,” Seth tried to reassure her.
“I prefer to wait,” Shara said softly.
Wait? Seth had no idea what the dragoness was waiting for. It didn’t make sense. Why wouldn’t she let him help her?
And then, the answer came clear when a tall blonde woman came down the treacherous path from the cliffs and walked into the firelight. Seth frowned. He couldn’t see her that well across the dancing flames, but as she drew closer, he saw that she held a satchel much like his own.
“My dear Shara, what have you got into now?” asked the woman, clearly familiar with the sea dragon.
At this, Shara extended her bleeding wing, trembling badly. Seth moved to support her, knowing she could use his help.
“I will hold your wing, if you allow it,” he offered to the dragon, not wanting to touch her without her permission.
Shara looked at him in surprise and nodded her great head just once.
“Thank you, Sir…?” the newcomer asked, moving closer.
Seth could see her a lot better now, and she was definitely one of the fair folk. If he hadn’t been convinced by her melodic voice, her lithe blonde beauty made a believer out of him. She was stunning.
“I’m not a knight,” he told her. “I am the apprentice healer from the Southern Lair, milady. My name is Seth.”
“My mistake. I’m Lizbet, a fellow healer. I mostly work with gryphons, but some of the sea dragons allow me to help them when needed.” She approached Shara on quiet feet, her hands moving gently over the dragon’s scales in what Seth recognized as a thorough examination. “Oh, Shara, sweetheart, what happened to you?”
“It was the diamond blades,” Shara admitted in a small voice. “Sir Hrardorr warned us all, but I got too close to Mattie when she was tugging one of the big blades free of the wreckage, and it sliced me up.”
“Is she badly hurt?” Hrardorr asked Seth privately.
“The web of her wing is sliced open between the third and fourth joint,” Seth told Hrardorr honestly as he got his first good look at the injury.
Hrardorr winced. “A flight-ending injury if not healed correctly.”
“Don’t worry, my friend, I’ll see to her,” Seth promised. He would make sure this young dragon didn’t suffer permanent effects from this injury if at all possible.
“I have not dealt with many wing injuries on dragons,” Lizbet admitted, coming up behind Shara’s wing, near Seth.
“I have,” Seth replied confidently. “This is bad, but not impossible. It can be healed, but we’ll have to stitch her up, and she cannot go in the water until the cut is knit together properly.”
“You have a needle that will go through dragon hide?” Lizbet looked at him with wide eyes.
Seth nodded. “I brought along my kit. I have all the tools we’ll need, and Sir Leo and Sir Xander can help us.” He remembered to address his patient. “Milady, will you allow Sir Xander to support your wing while we work on it? I have more of the ointment that will numb your wing so you will not be hurt further by our work, and I promise you that, in time, you will be healed, though this will leave a permanent scar, I’m afraid.”
The young dragoness looked scared, her head swiveling from Lizbet to Hrardorr, and then to Xander, surprisingly, before she turned back to look at Seth.
“Have you done this before, truly?” she asked, clearly frightened. He had to remember that these sea dragons did not interact with people much.
“Yes, milady. I grew up in the Lair with three human parents and two dragon parents. I apprenticed to the healer at ten years old and have worked on almost every dragon in the Lair at one time or another, including my dragon parents. The Southern Lair is different from most Lairs in that we have a lot of older dragons and knights and many young ones, like Leo and Xander, who are gifted fliers that need the training of the more experienced dragons like Sir Hrardorr and Lady Genlitha. The changeable winds along our coast are exceptionally good for learning, from what I understand, but training means pushing oneself to one’s limits and often results in injuries until skills are mastered. As a result, I have seen and treated many different kinds of injuries.”
“Seth sewed up my wing when we first got to the Lair,” Xanderanth put in helpfully, spreading his right wing out to show Shara the jagged line that had healed well. “I tore it doing something stupid and was very afraid I would not fly again, but Seth fixed me up, and as you can see, the rip was a lot crazier than your straight cut. Seth does good work. You can trust him.”
“We are taught to fear humans and stay far away from them,” Shara admitted. “But maybe that is wrong. You seem like a nice human, Seth. And your touch does not hurt.” She looked over at Xander and Hrardorr. “And land dragons like you and vouch for you.” Shara lowered her head to the sand. “Please proceed. I want to fly, even though I spend most of my time underwater. I like sunshine on my scales more than they say is good for a sea dragon.”
Seth had to smile at her declaration. “So then, you’re a bit of a rebel, eh, milady? That’s good. So am I.” He lowered her wing into Lizbet’s care with gentle hands and went to fetch what he’d need from his pack. With a nod, he motioned Xanderanth over to help support Shara’s wing. Lair dragons were used to helping each other in such situations, and he knew what to do.
“How are you a rebel, Seth?” Shara asked as she watched him take things from his pack, a few feet away from her on the sand.
“My fathers are knights. Everyone expected I would be, too, but I gave up the training and apprenticed myself to Bronwyn, our healer. She is very old, and her joints ache almost constantly. She needed help, and nobody else was offering. I could not let her suffer alone, so I started to help her instead of going to fighting practice. My family was not happy, but I insiste
d. Bronwyn meant more to me than doing sword drills.”
Seth kept talking as he bathed the wound in a liquid that would both clean it and numb the area. The pungent scent of the herbs it was made from almost made him sneeze, but he kept on working. Lizbet was at his side, helping once she saw the way of it.
Seth opened the small metal case in which he kept his most precious tools. Diamond needles in various shapes and sizes. Diamond was the only thing that would easily get through dragon hide, and each Lair had one set of the precious instruments.
This new set gleamed and was Seth’s newest and most prized possession next to the sword Gowan had given him. Livia had ordered these tools crafted by her artisans—probably without her father’s knowledge—from the diamond blades Hrardorr had recovered from the bottom of the harbor after the battle of Dragonscove.
Most of those diamond blades had been slated to be cut up into ornaments and jewelry, then sold on to pay for the damages to the town and to re-equip the harbor defense cannons with newer models and supplies. But Livia had set aside a few of the longer blades, earmarking them to be made into tools that could help heal dragons instead of kill them. Several sets had been made and sent to the capital for dispersal to various Lairs around the country, but one had come by special messenger with a handwritten note from Livia, delivered into Seth’s hands with the grateful appreciation, or so the note said, of the entire town.
He hadn’t had a chance to use them yet, but now was as good a time as any, and he knew the diamond cutters who worked for Livia’s father were among the best in the business. Seth had checked and rechecked these wondrous tools, and they were sound. He was sure of it.
And now, they would be put to very good use indeed.
