The Sorceress of Aspenwood Trilogy Pack

by Sam Ferguson

  Leatherback smiled and nodded. “If we are to spend our nights hunting monsters, then why not try to fly north. If I get tired, I will turn back. Maybe we will make it. We can be free.”

  Kyra opened her mouth to argue, but then she let the words sink in. Freedom was what she wanted most. She was surprised that instead of thinking about revenge for her mother, the first reason to stay that came to her mind was Lepkin. She wasn’t entirely sure she could leave him, and certainly not without saying good-bye first.

  Even though she was still furious with Linny, she found herself thinking of her roommate as well. She had grown quite fond of Linny too, even despite being spied on by her.

  Then, for some reason Kyra couldn’t explain, she made up her mind and nodded. “Okay, let’s go north. We can take some of your gold here and we can fly until we find a spot that suits us. You can hunt for us, and I can use magic to cook for myself. Let’s do it.”

  Leatherback nodded and gathered a bunch of gold nuggets in the clutches of his rear feet.

  “I can go back and get a book, if you like,” Kyra offered. “Might be good to take some books for reading.

  Leatherback shook his head. “Enough stories,” he said.

  Kyra was surprised at that. He had always loved her stories. Not only that, but she had loved reading to him. That was how she had first bonded with him while he was still inside the egg. She had read to him every day. Now, without any reason, he was done with it. It felt strange. Too strange.

  “What about The Moon dragon?” she asked.

  Leatherback looked to her with his great big eyes and then he softened. “You can tell the story, as we fly and the stars come out.”

  “How about I tell it now? After all, we should wait for dark before flying over the northern part of the Middle Kingdom.”

  Leatherback nodded and laid back down on his gold.

  Kyra smiled. At least he wasn’t entirely done with stories just yet. She nestled into the crook just behind his foreleg and leaned back against his hard, warm scales. She recounted the story, complete with hand gestures and voices. Leatherback laughed at points, but even then Kyra knew this might be the last time she told him the story. Leatherback was growing up now, and his interests were compelling him forward, to new things.

  The treasure was evidence enough of that.

  When she finished the story, she looked down at the gold and picked a piece of it up. The hunk of yellow metal was rough, with bits of dirt clinging to it. The gems were likewise rough an unpolished.

  Kyra smiled and placed the hunk down. The two waited until the sun dropped below the horizon and the blanket of night began to spread over the sky. Then, they prepared to take flight. Kyra checked that the staff was secure in its holster on the saddle.

  The staff was an added guard against Nagar’s Blight. Njar had created the entire grove for the aspen’s ability to cleanse dark magic from an area. The staff was nowhere near as powerful as the grove, but every layer of protection was more than worth it. Leatherback was her friend, her family even. So, she did everything she could to protect him.

  The two of them then launched into the early night sky and began their long trek northward, leaving everything behind.

  Her mind raced as the wind rushed about her.

  Were they doing the right thing? Was it cowardly to leave while Severin was still roaming about the Middle Kingdom? What would her mother think? Would they even be able to find the northern continents, or would they get lost in the vast expanse between?

  Then, as a billowy cloud of silver swallowed them in its cool mist, she forgot all about her cares. She leaned forward and closed her eyes, enjoying the ride as they flew out across the sea for several hours.

  She had fallen asleep before they every came to the mountains that marked the northern most border of the continent. Leatherback snorted to wake her. Kyra rubbed her eyes and looked across the carpet of soft clouds to see massive spikes protruding upward for thousands of feet.

  “Are we flying low?” she asked.

  Leatherback grunted. “No, we are at the same height we were before, still above all the clouds. The mountains are taller.”

  Kyra held on as Leatherback climbed into the brightening sky. The silvery yellow glow in the east told Kyra that they had flown through the entire night, and now she was just beginning to understand how large the world actually was.

  Up and up they went, nearly stopping all forward progress so they could get up above the mountain range. The air grew thin and deathly cold. Though it was the middle of the summer, there were glaciers atop these peaks, and Kyra’s skin was turning a light shade of blue.

  As they climbed higher into the sky, she gasped for air and her limbs grew weak. She called out to her friend. “Leatherback,” she cried. “I can’t…”

  Darkness closed in around her and she slumped backward, letting go of the saddle entirely.

  She woke on the side of a mountain, nestled on a bed of pine boughs and encompassed about by fire.

  “I’m sorry,” Leatherback said. “When you lost consciousness, I brought us down below the clouds, thinking I could find a way through the mountains at a lower altitude.” The dragon looked up to the bright sky and frowned. “I carried you in my mouth for most of the day, but it is no use. We have reached as far as we can go without flying over the top.”

  Kyra sat up and looked out over the flames surrounding her. The gray stone of the cliff face seemed to mock her pathetic attempt to escape from the Middle Kingdom. It rose all the way up to the clouds, but she knew that the peak was likely thousands of feet beyond where she could see from here.

  “Is there no way around these mountains?” Kyra asked.

  Leatherback shook his head. “The barrier goes on as far as I can see in either direction. I might be able to fly high enough to go over, but you would not survive. Then, there is no way of knowing whether the sea starts immediately, or if there is by chance a beach of an area I could land upon and rest after passing the mountains. I would need a rest, I’m afraid.”

  So that was it then. Njar had been right. They were not ready to travel to the north. Worse still, they now had less time to find the village where the livestock were being killed if they wanted to keep the dragon slayers out of their hair.

  Kyra put a hand to her face and cried softly. “We have to go back.”

  “It will be faster going back,” Leatherback said. “I can fly lower and get us out of the mountains without needing to walk out. If we leave at dusk, we should arrive back at the grove before morning. We might even have enough time to find whatever is troubling the village you spoke of, if we happen to see it.”

  Kyra nodded. “We don’t have much other choice.” She looked around. “I’m hungry.”

  Leatherback shook his head. “I have only seen trees living up here. No animals at all.”

  “Fruit? Nuts?” Kyra asked. “Berries?”

  Leatherback shook his head and a large rumble sounded from within his stomach.

  “I’m sorry,” he offered. “I misjudged my abilities.”

  Kyra smiled. “It’s all right. I do that fairly often myself.”

  Chapter 8

  Kyra and Leatherback flew southward as soon as it was reasonably dark enough to do so. They were careful to stay among the shadows afforded them by the thick clouds hanging low in the night sky. The two were silent and alert, scanning all around themselves constantly for any sign of the reported beast.

  As they soared high above the ground, Kyra couldn’t help but wish that they were hunting more wylkins instead of a winged creature. Wylkins walked upon the ground with two legs, and were easily outmaneuvered by Leatherback. There was a part of her that feared they may be up against another dragon. Despite all of her studies, and even Lepkin telling her that there were no dragons north of Ten Forts, they could be wrong. After all, Leatherback had thus far managed to hide without being discovered. Couldn’t an older, wiser dragon do the same?

  In all he
r previous battles, whatever she lacked, Leatherback could usually make up the difference, except for their first encounter with the shade when Cyrus had needed to come to their rescue. If they were hunting another dragon, however, Kyra would have little to offer Leatherback should he be overpowered.

  As if he sensed her thoughts, Leatherback turned around and offered her a single wink of his right eye. “Fear not,” he said in a whisper.

  She smiled back at him and nodded, trying to force her doubts from her mind.

  A minute later, they rose up through a thick, moist cloud. Droplets of water collected on her skin only to be whisked away as Leatherback increased his speed and drove them higher into the night.

  The crescent moon gave little light as they burst out through the top of the cloud, but the view of the millions of twinkling stars was beyond description. It was as if the lack of moonlight allowed her to see them in clearer detail than ever before. Some were green or blue, while others were red, orange, or yellow. Then there were the thousands and thousands of white stars varying from dim pinpricks barely visible to great stars that hung heavily in the sky and shared their immense light.

  The two of them flew above the clouds, passing over the silvery blanket of rolling mist as quickly as a sparrow. Each beat of Leatherback’s wings churned the vapors, curling them upward in the dragon’s wake.

  Then, after several hours of flying and scanning the clouds, there was movement. Something broke through the surface and then smoothly dove through the clouds some four hundred yards ahead of them. Kyra tapped Leatherback’s neck, but he had already begun to turn. He had seen the movement as well, and his muscles tensed beneath Kyra as he started into a gliding pattern toward the creature.

  It rose again, just breaking the clouds with a horned head and ridged spine before diving down into the mist. An orange burst was seen through the clouds.

  “He’s attacking something,” Kyra said as she heard a roar accompany the strange glow. “Is it a dragon?”

  Leatherback snarled. “It is a fire drake, we can handle this easily enough.”

  Kyra looked at the animal and nodded her agreement. All of her reading about the dragons of Kendualdern had taught them both enough to recognize many different types of dragons and drakes. Killing the drake should be easy enough, given the size difference between it and Leatherback, and it might even give the dragon slayers enough of a dragon-like creature that they might see the body and then return to Ten Forts, satisfied that they had found the monster responsible for causing havoc in the north.

  Leatherback rose high into the air, abandoning the smooth glide in order to gain a greater advantage. Kyra leaned forward and gripped his neck, her eyes glued to the clouds below.

  The dragon leveled out several hundred feet above the clouds, and then began circling the way an eagle might before diving after its quarry.

  Another orange glow appeared along with a roar and the faint sound of bleating sheep.

  “We have to strike,” Kyra said.

  Leatherback didn’t respond.

  Then, when the drake broke through the clouds again, Leatherback pointed down into the steepest dive Kyra had ever witnessed. She almost screamed at first when she found herself entirely upside-down, but she managed to stifle her fear enough to avoid spoiling their element of surprise. Then, as Leatherback attained unimaginably fast speeds, Kyra found herself struggling to hold onto the saddle. She wound the straps over her wrists, essentially lashing herself to her friend.

  The clouds, which before had seemed thick and took several minutes to fly through, parted as Leatherback tore through them in a matter of two seconds. The dark figure of the fire drake loomed another fifty feet below them. It too was in a dive, but not nearly as steep as Leatherback.

  An orange glow erupted as the drake let out its fiery breath. One second later, Leatherback slammed into the drake with his chest, snapping the creature’s spine as Leatherback wrapped his forelegs around the drake’s chest and dug in with his claws.

  Kyra gasped at the ferocity with which Leatherback tore the drake apart. She heard the tearing and ripping of sinew and snapping of bones, and then a cloud of warm liquid burst around her as the drake was ripped in half.

  Leatherback let out a roar and then tossed the broken halves out to the sides before breaking his dive and soaring out over a flock of terrified sheep.

  Kyra was about to chide him for being so loud, for she didn’t want any shepherds to see or hear them, but before she could say anything another pair of drakes came in from the sides.

  “Watch out!” Kyra shouted.

  Leatherback flipped upside down and tucked his wings under his back as he engaged the two new drakes with his claws.

  The attackers came in spewing fire and diving for Leatherback’s sides. Fortunately, they were less than half of Leatherback’s total size, perhaps only twenty feet long or so from nose to tail, and the dragon was easily able to use his legs and claws to block their fangs and claws.

  Unfortunately, the drakes had come in so fast that they still impacted Leatherback with tremendous force. Kyra fell to the ground as a sharp tail lashed out and severed the straps holding the saddle in place. A few feet before she landed, she was able to conjure a cushion of air that softened the blow, but she still tumbled across the grassy vale for several yards, the saddle still lashed to her wrists, and received numerous abrasions and bruises before she came to a stop.

  A terrible crashing noise was heard over the sound of frantic bleating. Sheep ran in all directions as Leatherback and the two drakes ripped through the grassy dirt as they all came to an abrupt halt.

  Leatherback pushed the drakes off and rolled to his feet, fully ready to engage the attackers.

  Kyra hurriedly pulled at the straps around her wrists to free herself from the cumbersome saddle. She then reached for her staff, which had miraculously remained intact, and jumped up to go and help her friend.

  The hairs on the back of her neck stood on end as she felt something coming from behind. She wheeled around and saw a mess of teeth rushing toward her face. Kyra dove to the side and sent out a lightning bolt. The sudden flash of blue light illuminated the diving body of yet another drake. This one was black in color, its eyes a menacing green that glowed in the night.

  It ripped into the grass where she had been standing and then it turned its head toward her and its mouth opened. Kyra barely had time to throw up the ward before a crushing wave of flames issued out from the drake’s mouth.

  The magical shield crackled and sizzled, but it held strong against the creature’s attack, saving Kyra’s life. However, the drake seemed undeterred by the barrier. It lunged forward, raking its sharp claws across the magical ward and then biting down on it with tremendous force.

  The shield cracked, and then broke apart, dissipating into the air and leaving no barrier between her and the drake. The drake swung its head, knocking into Kyra and sending her back several feet as she lost her grip on her staff and it fell to the ground.

  She jumped up quickly, gathering her senses about her as the black drake stepped forward.

  Just then, a mangled, bloody form crashed into the drake in front of her. She jumped back at first, but then realized that Leatherback had thrown one of the other drakes. She glanced to him, and saw that he was nearly done with the second attacker as well.

  She turned back to the black drake and prepared two spells. In her right hand she gathered enough electrical energy to kill a horse, and in her left hand she formed ice crystals into a spear.

  The black drake shoved aside the mangled body and stood on its hind legs. It breathed a spurt of fire into the air and then dropped to all fours and stalked toward Kyra. The young sorceress stood firm and smiled.

  “You aren’t the only one with powers,” she jeered. Kyra let the lightning fly at the beast’s neck and face. It snarled ferociously, but seemed unharmed by the spell. It shook its head, curled its upper lip back to reveal its fangs, and then came forward.
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  She had expected this. That was why she was secretly preparing a spear of ice. She waited patiently, locking eyes with the drake as it charged. Then, it opened its mouth and just as she saw the red spark of fire deep within its throat, she let the spear fly.

  The ice soared straight and true, as fast as the lightning had before. The sharp, cold point sailed into the drake’s open mouth and then tore through the back of its throat and neck. The drake’s eyes shot open wide and it jerked its head to the side. Blood oozed down its neck as the body crashed to the ground two feet in front of Kyra. It twitched a few times, emitting a sound that seemed a mix of a snarl and a squeaking cry. Then it gave up the ghost and was still.

  Leatherback was there in an instant. Never one to take chances, he drove his claws through the black drake’s chest. Then he turned to Kyra and bent his neck low.

  “We must leave.”

  Kyra nodded, and only then did she realize there was shouting coming from the west. Someone had seen the battle. If they didn’t leave now, Leatherback would be discovered. She ran to him, stopping to pick up her staff and then leapt onto his neck and patted him on the side.

  Then, just as Leatherback was poised to launch into the air, she screamed and jumped off. Leatherback tensed and prepared for another fight, but then relaxed when Kyra ran toward the fallen saddle and picked it up.

  “We can’t leave this!” Kyra said.

  Leatherback reached around and took it in his mouth, and then they took to flight as quickly as they could, soaring for the clouds and shadows.

  Neither one of them knew that it was already too late.

  Several witnesses had seen them that night, and not all of them were human.

  Hidden in the shadows beneath a copse of twisted oak trees, Severin watched the pair climb higher into the night sky. A wicked smile curled his lips upward, accentuating his long fangs. His trap had worked even better than he had hoped.

  Now he needed only to wait for the dragon slayers.

  *****