Dragon Fire

by Randal Sloan

  Looking into the thing’s eyes, Jailyn saw just for a moment a hint of sanity. Mistress, it said into her mind. Kill me and release me. The moment passed, the blaze of madness returned once more in its eyes as it began absorbing the magic encasing the sword.

  Without second thought, Jailyn grasped the sword from Jesse’s hand, pulling it out and swinging it to strike the head from the beast. She was unprepared for what happened next. Huge bursts of magic exploded out of the monster, most of it striking her and filling her to capacity and beyond, not just one times her limit but tenfold.

  Unable to contain it all, she collapsed to the floor. The others came rushing forward toward her, Kynin in front and he slapped a healing ring on her finger. Giving him a smile of thanks, she passed out into oblivion.

  Lord Vipero came to an abrupt awakening when he was hit with a vicious slap in the face. Looking up in a daze, he recognized Melthevis standing there. Apparently the man had gone crazy. Obviously, Melthevis had taken the portals to the one located in the Capital and he’d somehow slipped past his wards. Vipero had chosen that location to build his palace to enable him easy access to the portals. Now he was wondering if it was such a good idea to be so close after all.

  “…You're such a fool,” Melthevis was raving. “Your refusal to believe in the prophecies may have doomed us all. You’ve got to find the boy and the others now, or it will be too late.”

  Shrugging his shoulders, Vipero sat up. “I’ve looked repeatedly for the boy’s magical signature, and it’s just not there,” he told him.

  He opened his second sight, looking with the searcher spell he kept active at all times. Suddenly, he sat up straighter.

  “Wait, I can see him now. Very weak but he’s there.” He stared at his mentor. “He’s in the mountains at the far north of the kingdom.”

  He couldn’t resist, “Why would he be there?” That almost earned him another slap.

  “If you’d bothered to learn your Dark Prophecies or even paid attention to your recent history, you would know. They’ve gone after the Talismans of Power.”

  Vipero resisted saying his thoughts on that subject. He’d never believed that bunk either.

  “So what do you want me to do? It’ll probably take me over a week to mount an expedition and reach there.”

  Something about that seemed to please his mentor. “That’s exactly what you need to do. I have another resource I can send now, but get your expedition together. You need to be there in ten days or it won’t matter. I’ll even send you a map, a crudely drawn one, but it should do. Don’t come back without something to show for it.”

  Lord Melthevis walked away smiling. This was working out nicely. He’d send the assassin team, closing the portal behind them. That would get his biggest problem out of his hair. His worthless student, he would send just in case they failed. One or the other should succeed. None of them would likely return from those mountains.

  His Dark team would go in a few years to retrieve the Talismans of Power. He would make sure they were completely loyal to him. With their help, he would control all of the two kingdoms. Yes, his plans were going to work out just perfect.

  As he stepped into the portal to return to Agansti, he missed the explosion of power in the Northern Mountains.

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN

  An Unexpected Setback

  ONCE MORE, JAILYN awakened from a magically produced episode. This time she wasn’t in an infirmary but lying on a bedroll in those horrible caves. At least she could feel all her friends nearby. She could also sense the sun was rising outside and she was going to be glad to get out of there.

  Feeling a weight on her finger, she looked down to see the healing ring Kynin had placed there. How odd; the ring still had a full charge of magic in it. If anything, it felt overcharged. She would have thought her condition would have drained it. As her senses worried at the ring, she suddenly understood exactly how it worked. I could build one of those, she thought.

  Speaking of magical items, she realized with a start the amulet was missing. Her movements must have drawn Kynin’s attention, for he came to check on her.

  “Where’s the amulet?” she asked before he could say anything.

  “Over there with the rest of your stuff, but that creature drained it.”

  “Nonsense,” Jailyn told him. “Bring it here. We need its protection. Vipero has probably already spotted us, but it can still buy us time if he can’t come directly to us.”

  Shaking his head, Kynin went to get it. He still didn’t know what she’d do with it; it was as dead as a door knob.

  Bringing it back over, he handed it to her. “Like I said, completely emptied.”

  Jailyn held it in her hands, looking it over. “I don’t know why I didn’t notice before. That spell’s not all that complicated, not really.” She concentrated, filling it back up with power. Without really thinking about it, she grasped the two ends of the broken chain, concentrated a second, and the chains grew back together.

  “There, as good as new,” she said as she put it back around her neck.

  Totally flabbergasted, Kynin just stared at her. “How did you do that?” he finally asked.

  Herself a little perplexed, Jailyn just shook her head. “I dunno. It just seemed the logical thing to do, so I did it.”

  She held her hand up. “Maybe it’s this ring, although it really seems to just be a healing ring.” She slipped it off, looking around a moment before slipping it back on. “No, I don’t think so. Everything looks the same with and without it.”

  That brought another question to mind. “Why is it so bright in here anyway? Carisa must be really working overtime with her fire. She should save her energy.”

  Kynin shook his head. “It’s not. It’s still pretty dark. We were afraid to use much magic after that thing attacked us. It seemed to be attracted to the magic.”

  “Yeah, it fed off the magic. That’s why I had to kill it with the sword.” She concentrated a moment. “It’s alright, there’s nothing anywhere close to us right now. It probably claimed the cave as its territory and killed anything that came near.”

  Kynin was beginning to get worried now. “I wish we had healers we could get to look at you. Are you sure you’re alright?”

  Jailyn gave him a questioning look. “Why do you say that? I’m fine now, really even better than fine.” She looked away a moment as if seeing something. “My hounds are waiting outside. Why don’t you get the others and let’s break our fast outside? Much nicer out there than in here. The wind’s barely blowing now and the sun’s quite bright already.”

  She gathered her pack and her staff, heading outside. She needed to reassure the hounds. She could tell they were still upset about the night before. Silly hounds, it wasn’t their fault. I wonder why I didn’t think to just use a soundproofing spell on them.

  Kynin stared after her. That wasn’t the same Jailyn he’d known before. He couldn’t help but be worried. His worries grew worse when Big Boy growled at her and the whole pack disappeared.

  Jailyn had been happy to see the day outside their cave, but she grew quite angry at Big Boy when he growled at her. Then the whole pack disappeared. She screamed his name, but they didn’t come back.

  Jailyn shook her head. “I don’t know why they did that. Maybe it’s something to do with this cave.” That didn’t make a lot of sense, but what else could it be? “We’ll just have to depend on our own scrying, I guess.”

  Standing beside her, Kynin was quite taken aback at the whole incident and he didn’t miss the flash of darkness that appeared in her aura momentarily. Before he could say anything, it went away and he wondered if he’d imagined it. Still, something wasn’t right — he needed to keep an eye on her.

  He turned to Jesse, speaking to him quietly. “Why don’t you lead the group for a while? I want to hang back here with Jailyn to make sure she’s okay.”

  Luckily, Jesse didn’t catch his real worries, just nodding. “No problem. Thanks to all
that I learned from you yesterday, I should be able to handle it. I’d just as soon get out of here anyway; this place gives me a bad feeling.”

  “You and me both,” Kynin told him.

  So the little group continued onward through the pass, following Jesse’s lead. He set a strong pace, but no one argued with him. None of them wanted to extend their stay up there, especially without the hellhounds to watch out for them.

  This continued until they reached the part of the trail that went down again. There they stopped, even though they all felt rather uneasy. They could all tell that the way down was not going to be easy and it didn’t behoove them to start down without rest.

  Strangely tired and oddly hungry, even though she’d just eaten only a short time before, Jailyn closed her eyes for a moment, resting at the rear of their small group.

  Beside her Corrie was very confused. His sense of danger was going off wide open, but he couldn’t determine the source of the danger. It was everywhere, from the sides of the pass, which gave off a red-hot feeling of danger, to something inside their own little group. It didn’t make any sense, but the only thing he could do was to warn Kynin.

  Kynin didn’t feel very good about the situation either. “Everyone,” he said, “Keep your weapons close at hand. Corrie says we are in danger!”

  Everyone did as they were told, except for Jailyn, who just shrugged her shoulders and walked off, ignoring the warning. To Kynin, it was like she was in another world. His worries only grew worse.

  Suddenly, Corrie saw movement behind them on both sides of the trail. “We’re under attack!” he yelled. He didn’t get anything else out, because before he could even attempt to shield, several rocks came flying at him at once. One of those missiles struck him in the head and just like that, he was out like a light.

  Beside him, Jailyn snapped awake, throwing up a shield that surrounded their small band. Terrified that Corrie might be dead, she screamed and launched a handful of fire javelins at what she believed to be the source of those rocks.

  A second flurry of missiles came flying at them. There were even more of them, including more rocks, an assortment of spears, and crude knives, but this time all of them merely bounced off Jailyn’s shields.

  What had appeared to their group as mere shadows on the sides of the mountain pass suddenly separated from those walls and rushed toward them. The stuff of nightmares, the creatures could best be described as the mythical goblins, the monsters imagined by the children in the villages but never believed to be real.

  Oh, they were real, very real. Hideous, distorted beings, they were the essence of evil. They also fought like a nightmare and there was a tremendous horde of them. The first flurry of missiles had only been the beginning. The vicious horde rushed toward them and there wasn’t any way Jailyn’s shields could protect them against the direct physical assault.

  Only Corrie saved them from being overrun. Because of his prior warning of danger, their weapons were at the ready; his declaration at the beginning of the attack gave them just enough warning to meet that first onslaught. Kelsey wasted no time filling the air full of arrows and taking out as many of the monsters as she could before they could even reach their group. Jesse quickly took the lead, rushing out to face the oncoming monsters with his sword.

  Kynin, and Carisa met the ones that slipped through. Jesse’s sword slashed red almost instantly as he met the crude weapons of the goblins with the hard steel of his sword, the lack of magic in his sword making his job harder but not impossible. After all, he had trained with a non-magical sword the whole time. The two with their staffs were nearly as effective, smashing heads right and left, but still the attackers just kept coming.

  There were just so many of them, the small group of defenders quickly became hard pressed and began to take injuries: a near miss with a spear leaving a cut on an arm or leg, a jarring blow against the sword and staff leaving the defender shaken, even the small knives the monsters carried caused minor injuries.

  The narrow area where they had gathered helped, so that not all the attacking mob could make it through to press their attack at once. No one could attack from the rear of the party, since it dropped off in steep cliffs. Those same steep cliffs came close to doing them in.

  “Don’t let them push you off,” Kynin warned as a particularly vicious monster came close to doing that very thing to him before he was able to dispatch it. Spotting a goblin trying to get behind Kelsey, he managed to hit it in the back of the head before it could reach her.

  There was nowhere to go and they were sorely pressed, so that as Kynin had warned, everyone was gradually being pushed back to where the others stood at the edge of the drop-off. To make things worse, the goblins didn’t seem to care about their losses; they just kept coming even as the bodies began to pile up.

  Kynin feared this time they weren’t going to make it.

  Jailyn fought like she’d never done before. Fighting tears because of her worries for Corrie, deep down she knew the attack was her fault because of the hounds leaving. Despite being unprepared with her staff, instead she drew upon a depth of magic that she didn’t know she had, conjuring a seemingly endless supply of fire javelins that struck the monsters right and left, each javelin striking a target and killing it instantly. Even in her desperation, she wondered how she was able to do such, but she dared not stop.

  Despite her effort, it just didn’t look like it was going to be enough. The enemy just kept coming and their group was close to being overwhelmed, but suddenly she spotted a goblin that was considerably larger than the others surrounded by a small group of what were obviously guards. He has to be their leader! Luckily, he’d allowed himself to get too close. This was their chance!

  “Jesse!” she shouted, pointing him out. “You have to take out their leader. I’ll cover you.”

  Without a thought for his own safety, Jesse pulled his sword free and rushed forward, using his trick of drawing upon earth magic to move fast, faster than should be humanly possible. Jailyn filled the air on all sides of him with her fire javelins. Taken by surprise, the goblin guards fell to the side, opening a path straight to their leader. With a scream and a mighty swing of his sword, Jesse struck and killed the leader.

  The death of the leader took the fight out of the monsters and they disappeared as quickly as they had come, leaving the little group to lick their wounds. Kynin knew just how close they’d come — another moment and they’d have been overcome.

  Even so, his worries about Jailyn didn’t allow him to breathe easy.

  The fight over, Kynin rushed to check on Corrie. Finding a pulse, he breathed a sigh of relief, immediately slipping a healing ring onto Corrie’s finger. Corrie’s pallor quickly improved, his pale appearance gradually turning back to a more normal hue and his aura flaring back into its normal brightness.

  At first unable to stop crying, Jailyn still blamed herself for the failure of Big Boy and his pack. If he and the pack had patrolled the pass, they would have certainly sniffed out the monsters and prevented the attack. Suddenly ravenous, she dug in her pack and pulled out several large portions, devouring them in a frenzy.

  Watching, Kynin’s fears were becoming more and more certain. Totally unaware of his scrutiny, Jailyn called Jesse over, explaining rather belatedly that she knew how to repair the magic to the sword that had been damaged in the attack with the Beast, as they all called him. Although it now had a few nicks, the blade was still sharp and otherwise undamaged.

  While repairing the sword’s magic, Jailyn talked a little about the man that became the beast. “He used to be human, you know. I think he came through with the Ancestors when they came into this land. He must have gotten separated from the group. Somehow he was stricken with the disease that gradually turned him into the Beast he became, living here for centuries, only awakening to consume any source of magic and then kill. He became quite good at the kill.”

  An insect had been buzzing around her head. She slapped her hands to
gether, killing it. Only Kynin noticed the significance of the timing of that act. He was beginning to get an idea of what was going on, but he hoped he was wrong. Surely he was wrong.

  Jailyn handed the sword back to Jesse. “There, nearly as good as new,” she told him. As Jesse walked away, Kynin didn’t miss the fact that she pulled yet another portion out of her pack and quickly swallowed it down.

  While all this was taking place, Corrie called for Kynin, so he didn’t have time to speculate any longer. He rushed over to check on the young man, offering him water.

  “How do you feel?” he quietly asked him.

  “Bad headache,” Corrie answered just as quietly, “but this healing ring is amazing. Give me a few minutes and I think I’ll be able to walk enough for us to get out of here. I know we can’t stay here.”

  He looked around and lowered his voice to be sure the others couldn’t hear. “The second danger I sensed, it’s still here,” he told Kynin.

  Kynin nodded. “I know. But as you say, we can’t stay here.” He shook his head sadly. He was now almost certain he knew what was happening. “We’ll address it as soon as we reach the bottom of the pass. Do you think you can stand? They could attack again at any time, so we dare not risk staying any longer than we can avoid.”

  With Kynin’s help, Corrie was able to stand, but he was struck by a wave of dizziness, staggering so that Kynin had to catch him to keep him from falling. He just stood there a few moments before the dizziness passed. Finally, he decided to try again.

  “I’m still not great,” he told the group who had all come to stand nervously around, “but I think I can make it as long as you go slow.”

  Kynin nodded and they began their descent silently. They were forced to move carefully, picking their way along the path; even so, Corrie struggled with the pace. But he knew they had no choice; they all feared the monsters would return and this time they wouldn’t be able to stop them. Corrie was placed in the middle of the group, with everyone other than Jailyn taking turns assisting him.