Chronicles Of Aronshae (3 Book Omnibus)

by J. K. Barber

  The dragon that he had tried to contact stood up on his hind legs, rising to a towering height above them. Its enormous jaws were open wide, roaring at the humans helpless before it. Fangs the size of swords lined its enormous mouth and the dragons outstretched wings nearly blotted out the light from the sun. The creature’s giant shadow covered Jared and Sasha in darkness. From his vantage point on the ground, the hunter was now able to see two more dragons that had been circling overhead. The creatures folded their wings to begin a rapid descent towards the courtyard, their mouths open in answering roars to the one that now stood above Sasha and him.

  Jared expected to hear a similar roar from the other dragon in the courtyard, the one that stood between Katya, Johnson and the door. Instead the woodsman heard a sound that made him snap his head around, even though his body continued to protest painfully.

  “Stop!” a thundering voice cried, as loud as the bellows from the dragons around them. The other two dragons landed in the courtyard, their large bodies dislodging several of the flagstones with the impact. Three of the dragons turned their heads to look at the one who spoke, but said nothing, only stared at him in silence. The rearing dragon dropped back to all fours, folding its wings as it did so, but still looking wearily at the remaining Illyanders.

  Sasha reached down and helped Jared to his feet, as Johnson and Katya slowly made their way over to the red-haired warrior and the hunter. Jared realized that the dragons had said or done nothing for some time, only continuing to stare at one another. No sooner had it entered Jared’s head to wonder what the enormous creatures were up to than Katya gave voice to his question.

  “What are they doing?” the sorceress whispered, clearly afraid to attract the dragons’ notice.

  “I don’t know,” Sasha answered in the same hushed tones. “Jared?” The swordswoman turned to the hunter expectantly.

  “What?” he asked, in the same quiet voice as the others.

  “What are they doing?” Sasha asked, impatient.

  “Why in the world do you think I would know?” Jared replied, keeping his eyes on the dragons that encircled them.

  “Didn’t you just talk to them?” the red-headed twin asked.

  “I just tried,” Jared corrected. “They didn’t want to talk to me apparently. You saw what happened.” Johnson looked quizzically at the woodsman, but clearly felt there were more pressing matters at hand.

  “Actually,” Sasha commented, “I just saw you collapse. I have no idea whether or not you were able to talk to them.”

  Jared spared a quick glance at Sasha and then looked at the dragons again, puzzled. His voice was hesitant with confusion when next he spoke. “It was strange,” he began. “I contacted… something. Something huge and overwhelming, but then it was like the dragon… well,” Jared’s voice hesitated again. “It was like the dragon kicked me out. I don’t know how else to explain it.” The hunter shrugged his shoulders.

  Before Sasha could ask another question, a loud voice echoed across the enclosed courtyard.

  “My sister Isa would like to apologize,” the largest of the dragons said. The creature’s voice was loud and resonant, but there was an odd quality to it that reminded Jared of a person speaking as if they had just woken up, or perhaps someone speaking a language they knew, but had not used in some time. There was a hesitation before some of the dragon’s words, but the delay lessened as the creature spoke more.

  “Yes,” one of the smaller dragons said, the one that Jared had tried to contact. This dragon’s voice was clearer than the one used by the largest, better enunciated, and it held what Jared could only call a feminine tone. “I did not know what you were doing when you touched my mind. I thought you were attacking me and we….” The female’s voice, Isa, Jared reminded himself, trailed off as though she had been interrupted, but no sound had come from the other dragons. After a moment Isa continued. “I apologize if I scared you. I did not realize you were a friend of Sirus.”

  “What?” Jared coughed in surprise. “Who…,” he sputtered, before taking a moment to collect his thoughts. “You didn’t know I was a friend of who?”

  “Of mine,” the larger dragon said, in what the hunter now recognized was a deeper more masculine voice, at least as far as dragons went.

  Jared looked around at his companions, but they all wore matching looks of confusion, similar, he suspected, to the one on his own face. He returned his attention to the largest of the four dragons and cleared his throat several times before he could speak again. “I’m sorry,” he said hesitantly. “I don’t think we’ve met and I would remember something like….”

  Jared was interrupted by a low, intermittent rumbling noise that started coming from the dragon to whom he spoke. Quiet at first, the sound grew louder until the dragon’s jaws opened and the noise began to echo back and forth across the courtyard. The cacophony shook the dragon, causing him to convulse slightly. Sasha grabbed Jared’s arm in concern. Katya had grabbed her sister’s arm as well and Johnson’s hand inched slightly towards his mace where it still hung in the sheath at his belt.

  “What did you say?” Sasha asked, her voice laced with concern and fear.

  “I have no idea,” Jared replied quietly. “I just said that I didn’t know him.” The hunter realized he had referred to the dragon as a “him” but somehow it seemed correct. Before he could think on the matter more, the male dragon abruptly stopped making the strange noise and spoke again.

  “I apologize,” the dragon said, his voice sounding slightly breathless as though he had been…

  “Laughing,” Jared blurted out.

  “Huh,” Johnson said, keeping his eyes on the dragons.

  “What?” Katya said.

  “You were laughing?” Jared said, a question at first, but then more convincingly. “You were laughing at us,” the hunter stated, “well at me, anyway.”

  “Jared, shush,” Sasha warned the woodsman. “Are you trying to make them mad?” The swordswoman grabbed the hunter’s arm tighter.

  “No,” the male dragon said, his words becoming better enunciated the more he spoke. “The boy is right. I was laughing. But I couldn’t help myself,” he said, his deep voice tinged with humor. The dragon turned his huge head to regard Jared. “Boy, if you had let your jaw drop any lower, a bird could have made a nest in your mouth. Now quit your gaping and listen up.”

  “Sirus?” Jared asked, his mouth still wide open in shock, despite the dragon’s admonition.

  “I know it’s a surprise, boy, but we don’t have a lot of time for chitchat.” As Sirus continued, the terms of familiarity and his manner of speaking flooded Jared’s mind with memories of growing up under the older woodsman’s tutelage. “I don’t know how much time we have before the Empress calls us back, so I won’t go into too much detail. Just suffice it to say that it is me in here,” Sirus indicated his draconian body with a tilt of his chin. “You’re going to have to take my word on it. If time permits, I’ll tell you how it all happened, but for right now, just tell me something. What are you doing here?”

  Jared just stared at his old mentor for a moment before Sasha tugged at his arm, reminding him of her presence. The gesture brought the hunter’s mind back to the matters at hand. “Right,” he said, with a quick glance at Sasha, Katya and Johnson. “We came here to save the crystal.” The hunter kept his answer as vague and as neutral as possible. Having seen the Empress riding a dragon when last they met, the woodsman did not know where these dragons’ loyalty lay. These four had not attacked the Illyanders, and he was hoping that not all of the dragons served the Ice Queen.

  When Sirus did not reply, Jared attempted to explain further. “There’s a big crystal that grows up out of the earth, well there are several actually, but that’s not important right now. What I mean is we need to purify the crystal here that the Ice Queen corrupted.”

  Sirus interrupted Jared, his booming voice drowning out the hunter’s words. “I know about the crystal. You’re saying that
you can remove the corruption from it?”

  “Yes,” Jared replied. The hunter looked at Katya who returned his gaze with a pleading look of her own. “What I mean,” the woodsman corrected, “is that we might be able to, if we can study it.”

  Sirus looked to the other dragons and after a moment turned back to Jared. “Fascinating,” he said, his resonant voice holding a tone of hesitation that the hunter could not read. “My sisters and I…”

  Jared could not help himself as he interrupted his former mentor. “Your what?” he asked.

  “My sisters, Isa,” the dragon that Jared had tried to contact nodded her head, “Misae and Niambe,” the other two dragons nodded in turn, “would be very interested in seeing if you can, indeed, cleanse the corruption from the Ice Queen’s crystal. When do you think you will know if you can do it?”

  Jared introduced his companions to his former mentor, noticing that Sirus’ manner of speaking had changed. It had moved away from the familiar way that the older man usually conversed with Jared to a more formal manner. The hunter wondered what other changes had happened to his old teacher, besides the obvious, but as Sirus kept reminding him, time may be short. “First though, we have to solve a small problem before we can figure that out,” Jared replied sheepishly.

  “And what’s that,” Sirus replied, apparently elected to speak for the dragons.

  “Well, Sir,” the hunter said, falling back into his old habit of addressing Sirus. “We can’t find it.”

  A low chorus of what the Illyanders now recognized to be draconic laughter echoed through the courtyard. After it had passed, Sirus spoke. “We can help you with that,” he said. “Though we are too large to lead you through the palace, we can tell you how to get there.” Sirus began to detail the passages and turns the Illyanders would need to take to travel to the chamber which housed the crystal.

  Chapter 18

  As soon as Jared entered the room he could tell, on some level, that something wasn’t right. There was a wrongness in the air that he couldn’t quite place his finger on. His skin crawled and he shuddered as a chill, which had nothing to do with the cold weather, began running up and down his spine. The tip of the black crystal thrust up from the bottom of the room to nearly the top of the ceiling twenty spans overhead. As soon as Jared saw the corrupted spire, he stopped, some base instinct in him warning him not to step any closer.

  The effect that the sight had on Katya was immediate and dramatic. The sorceress held her hand to her stomach and hunched over, spasming slightly. The raven-haired twin was fighting her body’s impulse to vomit. Sasha leaned over her sister, pulling a stray lock of hair out of her eyes that had come free from the sorceress’ normally tight braid. Jared could hear Sasha whisper in Katya’s ear while stroking her head, but could not make out the words. After a moment, the sorceress stood, her skin ashen, and proceeded hesitantly across the room to the base of the crystal.

  Jared saw movement in Katya’s backpack and surmised that the Nhyme were suffering the same ill effects that the young sorceress had. “Johnson,” the hunter said, drawing the attention of the veteran solider. “Keep an eye out in the next room.” The four surviving Illyanders had passed through a huge set of wooden, iron-bound, double doors, and traversed an equally expansive room before reaching the smaller room which housed the corrupted crystal. The room just inside the double doors had been strewn with hay and the bones of several large animals. Jared had recognized the skeletons of at least a couple of bears and a large predatory cat of some type. Though the twins had not said anything out loud, the hunter suspected that they were wondering the same thing as he had. They all hoped that none of the therianthropes from the nearby village had ended up in the stomachs of the hatchling dragons to feed their growing appetites.

  Johnson looked at Jared, questioningly. “We don’t know if the Ice Queen has any more of her Shadow Walkers around,” the hunter replied to the unasked question. In the courtyard outside, Sirus had told the Illyanders that the dragons had thrown the Shadow Walkers from their backs during their brief minutes of freedom. However, before the dragons could escape entirely, the Empress had re-exerted her control and summoned the dragons to her palace, only to find her gone and their minds their own, once again. Sasha had expressed worry that the Empress could re-assert her control over the dragons at any time, but Isa had said that the Ice Queen was somewhere far away and most likely could not control them over so great a distance. Misae mentioned the image they had received from Walron, a vast sea of sand and heat, but admitted she did not know what to make of it. “The courtyard is covered by Sirus and the other dragons,” Jared’s tongue tripped over the word slightly. “We’ll be in this room. If they appear in the hatchery, I’d like as much warning as possible.”

  “Right,” Johnson nodded, though the expression on his face indicated he wasn’t thrilled about being in the next room alone.

  “If you see anything, yell out and we’ll be there in seconds. Don’t worry.” Jared clapped the man on the shoulder, projecting as much confidence as the hunter could summon. Jared wanted the man out of the room so that Katya and the Nhyme could confer in privacy, but he couldn’t tell the soldier that without betraying the existence of the diminutive creatures.

  After Johnson had reluctantly shuffled out of the room around the corner and out of sight, Jared turned to see Sasha looking hard at him. “What?” the hunter asked.

  “He’s obviously frightened…,” she began.

  “As are we all,” Jared interrupted.

  “You could go out there with him,” Sasha indicated the dragon’s hatchery with a jut of her chin.

  “I’m not letting you out of my sight,” he said. Though Jared smiled as he said it, there was an iron to his voice that was unmistakable. Just as noticeable were the woodsman’s eyes as he looked to Sasha’s belly and then back to the swordswoman’s face. The red-haired warrior opened her mouth as if to argue, but then closed it again, apparently not inclined to argue a point on which Jared was so obviously intractable.

  “I don’t like it here.” The tiny warbling voice of Chyla caught Jared and Sasha’s attention, directing it back towards where Katya knelt next to the blackened crystal. The fact that the small woman’s voice could be heard was a testament to how deathly quiet it was in the room.

  Jared’s eyes wandered the chamber again, familiarizing himself with their surroundings. Should one of the Shadow Walker’s reappear to defend their mistress’ castle, or the Empress of Ice herself, the hunter wanted to know the lay of the land. Jared didn’t have to look for long. The chamber itself was not wide, barely a couple of paces wider than the crystal column that rose from the floor, but the room was tall. Also, the space was completely empty save for a narrow staircase that ran its way along three quarters of the wall before leading up to a room above. The hunter had scouted it briefly before declaring it to be empty and quickly closing the trapdoor behind him. When Sasha had pressed him for more details, Jared had been uncharacteristically tight lipped. The red-haired woman had tried to push her way past Jared so that she could see for herself, but the woodsman had grabbed her by the arm before she could move beyond him and pulled her in close.

  “There’s no one up there,” he had whispered tersely.

  “Then what is up there?” she had asked, pulling her arm out of Jared’s grasp.

  “Nothing you want to see. Trust me,” he had said, his face paling slightly. When Sasha had tried to look him in the eye, he had turned away. After he had taken a deep breath he finally said quietly. “It’s the Ice Queen’s laboratory. Don’t go look… please.”

  Reluctantly, Sasha had let the matter go, not sure herself if she wanted to see what had caused Jared to quail in such a manner.

  Jared shook his head, trying to clear it of the images of the Empress of Ice’s workshop. Instead he looked past where Katya sat, conversing with Chyla and Niko, to the corrupted crystal. Large elliptical sections of the crystal had been removed, reminding Jared of a
large wheel of swiss cheese. Though none of the missing pieces were big enough to cause the column of black crystal to be in any danger of collapsing, the effect was somewhat disconcerting. Jared couldn’t help but be struck with the image of the massive pillar of crystal buckling and falling over to crush them all beneath its considerable weight. Katya, and the Nhyme did not seem concerned by the possibility so Jared forced his worry to the back of his mind. Chyla, Niko and the raven-haired sorceress were engaged in a debate however.

  “I don’t think that will work,” Katya said, looking up at the ceiling, considering the huge mass of crystal that towered above her.

  “I don’t think it will either,” Chyla said, standing in her natural form on Katya’s shoulder while Niko, also in his Nhyme shape, walked closer to the column’s base.

  “Why don’t we have the big dragons just knock it over?” the tiny man said. Niko looked as though he was going to walk up to the black pillar and kick it but stopped before crossing over the circle of melted wax and runes that encompassed the base of the crystal. Jared had recognized the substance that encircled the column by smell alone once he had entered the chamber. The same ritual that the fallen sorcerer Pieter had tried to perform beneath Aeirsga, his mind and body commandeered by the Ice Queen, had been completed here. The same sigils had been carved into the floor and the same type of candles, cast from the tallow of human fat, had burned here until the corrupting spell’s completion. Jared had seen Sasha say a quiet prayer to the Great Mother, presumably thanking Her that the Illyanders had been in time to stop Pieter from fulfilling his mission in the catacombs beneath King Morgan’s Royal Palace. Jared repeated the gesture again as he looked at the remnants of the foul ritual and what it had wrought.

  “I don’t think destroying the crystal is even a possibility,” Katya said, the frustration obvious in her voice. “Who knows how far down into the ground it extends? Besides, even if we could do it, I’m not sure shattering the crystal would help matters much.”