All of them looked eager to get their share of fresh human meat.
Linux stopped and started casting a spell, but one of the citizens behind bumped into him and ruined his concentration. He stepped away from the group this time, placing himself between them and the charging vermin. Again he began his casting. As the huge orc came clawing into him, a turquoise pulse of power blasted the thing into a bloody mess of gore that splattered the trolls. One of the Hazeltine witches, maybe the queen, sent a spiraling explosion that sparkled into a sort of magical barrier that the feral ogre ran right into. The wall didn’t waver, and the ogre hit it hard. He stumbled and dropped backwards. The length of crackling whip trailing from the device’s handgrip exaggerated the motion of his fall with a whooshing overhead “crack!”
One of the trolls dove on the witch, while the other went for Linux. Rolph’s body was fit, and Linux ducked and rolled out of the way easily. It was a shame there were people huddling behind him.
Just before the troll grabbed hold of the witch who had knocked its master unconscious, Golden came sweeping by and snatched it in her claws. The dragon banked and sent it flailing across the city. Two Sarax converged at the exact same moment, from either side, and both Aikira and her dragon were taken down.
Linux looked back at the king, who had a desperate, pleading look beneath his tattooed forehead. To Linux, it was almost like looking back at his twin brother when they were younger. But it was his own body he was seeing. He wanted to be back in his own skin, to make sure that the king was safe and protected throughout this ordeal, but he felt a deep urge to go see if he could help the fallen Dragoneer.
He had only known Aikira a short while, and it was more for Zahrellion, Jenka, and Rikky, all of whom he loved dearly, that he decided to leave his true body behind so that he could try to save the fallen dragon rider.
Zahrellion was trying desperately to blast Marcherion out of the sky. The Sarax were swarming all around him, and Crystal was fighting twice as hard to keep her rider from hitting him with a spell. Crystal understood that Zahrellion was under the master alien’s control. The frost wyrm wasn’t, and she was intentionally flying erratically so that Zahrellion couldn’t find her targets.
When Crystal saw Golden, two Sarax were tearing into her. The yellow-scaled wyrm went crashing into a structure, and rolled into another. The Sarax quickly converged on her and a wild thrashing battle ensued. It was clear to Crystal that Golden was wing-wounded, otherwise the dragon would have lifted back into the air.
Crystal felt Zahrellion about to cast another spell and prepared to veer sharply when it was released. For the dozenth time, she tried to cast the spell to break the hold the master alien had on her Dragoneer, but it wasn’t meant to be. This time, when Zahrellion let loose her magic, Crystal made a sharp wing-shift and caused her rider’s blast to hit a Sarax that was attacking Blaze. It fell away, but Marcherion’s dragon was bleeding profusely and now going down.
Before the fire wyrm hit the ground, one of the globules of white alien flesh came stalking over in a somewhat mannish form. As soon as Blaze was low enough, the alien wrapped itself around the red dragon’s neck, making it impossible for the wyrm to direct its fire.
Crystal roared out in frustration. She couldn’t reach her rider’s mind, and now Zahrellion was moving to blast at Aikira where she was struggling to pull herself out of the street and into some cover. Crystal decided the best place for Zahrellion was away from the others where she couldn’t do them harm. She banked east and began flying in the general direction of Clover’s castle.
Zahrellion grew livid. She yelled and screamed and cursed, and then finally she reached down and cast a painful shocking spell into Crystal’s back. The frost wyrm roared out in pain. She fought the vile alien’s will that was trying to command her through Zah. A tear formed in Crystal’s eye. It was a tear of sorrow; for her rider, the person she loved and trusted the most, had just assailed her with magic. Crystal knew that Zahrellion didn’t do it on purpose, but it was done, and it hurt. Instead of complying with her rider’s will, Crystal let them crash into an unplanted field. It was a slippery slide through mud and slush. The teardrop then fell from her eye and landed not too far away. Zahrellion didn’t fare so well. Crystal nearly shed another tear because the angle of her rider’s neck and the way she was lying in a jumble with one of her feet touching her sizzling blue-lined face suggested that she was dead, or at best broken beyond repair.
King Blanchard didn’t want Linux to go, but he was glad the man had the stones to try and save the ebon-skinned Dragoneer. Even with half the toes missing, Linux’s body was far better than the huge one he had been born into. He was continually surprised by the witchy capabilities of his wife and queen. She wasn’t leading them, nor was the other Hazeltine witch, but they were doing a good job of keeping the lesser vermin from hindering their passage through the wreckage.
The tattoos on the forehead of the druid’s body he was trapped in were icy and hot at the same time. King Blanchard was suddenly compelled to throttle his wife where she was standing, defending the way before him. He hit her so hard that her jaw snapped and she fell into a heap. He turned to attack the other witch, but before he could reach her a Sarax snatched her right out of the group.
The swarm converged over them then. When King Blanchard looked in the sky he saw nothing but black-skinned alien creatures. There were no dragons in sight.
For most of his life he’d hated the foul wyrms. His ancestors had fought dragon against dragon in the pits on King’s Island for generations. One of the wyrms had attacked the king’s grandmother, and that act had fueled the fires of hatred. Now he was here, his mind was being flooded with complex thoughts, and even more were being extracted. He was wishing that the sky was filled with mighty wyrms. They were all that could save the kingdom.
The alien knew everything about the realm that the old king did, everything that Lanxe, and Zahrellion did, too. It was particularly curious about the populace to the west, and the islands of people it could feed from as it needed. If it had to suffer an eternity trapped on this planet, they would be its new self-generating food supply. After all, they were surrounded by the salty liquid ocean and couldn’t get away. The alien had been in the ocean before the humans came and pushed the vermin into its mountains. There were things in the sea that tasted as good as men.
Then like a whip crack, King Blanchard’s mind was his own again.
Chapter 26
Aikira watched as her dragon was forced to fight the two Sarax that had downed them. She hit her head hard when she tumbled to a stop. She was huddled under the raised porch of an empty shop. She wanted to help Golden, but was having a hard time clearing her mind to cast a spell. Blinking, she scanned the sky and saw nothing but alien wings.
She was overcome with dread. She had never seen so much death and destruction. Now her dragon was getting bested.
She closed her eyes and tried to cast a spell again, but when she opened them Golden was taking a bite that was terrible to see. She looked up screaming in frustration, but the sound died in her throat. Her heart swelled with hope. She thought it was Jenka at first, but it was Rikky and Silva who were spraying the sky with salt water from a larger version of the bladder line. Behind Rikky, now engaging the Sarax, was the Nightshade with black-armored King Richard sitting proud. He and the hell-born wyrm were commanding a sky full of dark mudged dracus.
A concussive blast pulled her attention back to her dragon. She turned to see Rolph the guardsman standing there over the flickering Sarax he had just killed. The other alien was back-flapping away, and now it was lifting off to go find an easier meal.
In a quick tattoo, three Sarax exploded in the sky. A moment later, another met the same fate. The Sarax that weren’t getting doused with sea water were fighting the mudged dragons. Claws and teeth and ferocious aggression tore into each other while struggling to stay in the sky. More than one pair took their fight to the ground and ended up destroyin
g entire blocks of structures as they battled.
A large blue-black mudged had a Sarax in its jaws when the alien creature emitted its shocking pulse. An explosive gout of fire erupted as the combustion forced the thing out of the wyrm’s maw. A few of the huge dragon’s teeth were blasted apart, but the black was more angry now than injured. In a savage spree of lashing foreclaws and sword-like teeth, the wyrm eliminated half a dozen of the Sarax before it was swarmed over and devoured.
For a long time it seemed as if it were raining blood and flesh. The air was filled with disturbing sounds: growls, screams, and that constant thundering drone all combined with the stink of brimstone, charred flesh, and coppery blood. Golden slithered over to be near her rider. With Linux’s help, Aikira gathered enough sense to cast a healing spell on her wyrm, and though it worked, Golden was far too damaged to take flight again.
Above them she saw that the feral dragons were doing well against the Sarax. Then she remembered that neither King Richard nor Rikky knew that there were more than one of the milky-white-fleshed aliens..
No sooner did the thought cross her mind than one of the pieces elongated upward into the sky and tried to snatch Silva with its tongue.
From beside her, Linux let loose a hot sizzling blast of turquoise druid magic. The stuff streaked out and exploded where it hit the segment of alien. Part of the thing fell to the earth, while the other piece went skulking back toward the creature’s main bulk. The remaining segment of alien went stalking across the city in its huge mannish form. It caught one mudged wyrm and slammed it against the ground by its neck. Then it grabbed another and crushed its wings before throwing it aside.
Aikira watched speechless as King Richard and the Nightshade seemed to attack at the exact same moment. They sent some intertwining streak of translucent gray magic into the remaining segment. It went flailing, and then rolling away. When it came to a stop, it resumed its mannish form and went charging toward the master alien.
It dove right into the thing from which it had separated. Once the segment rejoined its master, the whole freakish alien blob rose up like some humongous stump and began lashing out with dozens of long, claw-tipped tentacles.
Linux blasted up again, but his spell didn’t seem nearly as potent this time.
“Oh no,” Aikira yelped as she leaned into her dragon and hugged it close. When she let go, she had a different look about her.
“What is it?” Linux asked as he staggered to kneel down beside her. It was clear that he had exhausted himself.
“It got Silva,” she growled. “And the Warlock King is running away.”
Linux was drained. He had nothing left in him, even if he had a spell that might change things. He was relieved when Aikira stood fiercely and began a casting of her own.
When Rikky told him about the massive alien, King Richard believed the youngest Dragoneer wholeheartedly. He didn’t conceive, though, how huge the thing was. Nor did he understand how it could shift shapes so swiftly. Like some giant tentacle-waving tree trunk, it had gotten hold of Rikky and Silva, and several mudged dragons. It almost got the Nightshade, and the hell-born creature was so repulsed by the alien that it sped away from it.
King Richard didn’t feel like running, and he got the Nightshade back under his control and turned around. He saw a yellow flow of wizard magic that grew bigger as it shot up from the rubble and hit the huge alien. The blast blistered its skin raw over a large portion of its pale form. A knot hole like a mouth opened up and roared out, and the deep thrumming vibration was terrible. Tentacles flew, and mudged fell from the sky, and soon all Richard could see were Sarax. Some of them were about to converge on the ebon girl who’d just scorched the alien.
Richard was angry. Gravelbone’s madness, the madness of death, thrilled him to no end. With Rikky down and all of his mudged scattered, Richard really felt he had no business risking himself. He still had three islands full of people to protect. Then he saw Linux carrying his mother through the wreckage. It was his father in Linux’s body, he knew. And as much as he didn’t want to have a confrontation with the man who sired him, he still wanted to protect his mother. When he came near them, the druid’s body looked up, the lines on his face blackened like cattle-branding scars. The man who stood there didn’t resemble Richard’s father at all. He really didn’t resemble Linux that much either, but the eyes flared with recognition. The druid dropped the queen as the Nightshade landed smoothly on the cobbles before them.
“It knows all, son,” the pitiful-looking body before him said. “It read my mind, Richard. It knows. It knows about the islands. It can swim.”
It enraged Richard, and filled him with some fear. The huge alien hadn’t been affected by the saltwater he and Ricky had been slinging around. It hadn’t been affected at all. It had to be stopped. Just a few days south of here lay Three Forks and Port, and beyond that there were thousands and thousands of people still in Mainsted. Not to mention three islands full of helpless folk.
The Nightshade stepped forth and plucked Queen Alvazina’s unconscious form from the cobbles with a claw. King Blanchard moved back with more than a little fear showing on his burned face. “Save the kingdom, son. Save it,” he said. He began backing away then, but before he turned and ran he added, “And don’t forget you’ve a brother.”
Chapter 27
Rikky was strapped to his saddle, so when the huge alien’s tentacles latched hold of Silva he was right there. He was slung and whipped around as his dragon fought with tooth and claw to break the grip around its lower midsection. He saw the mighty frost wyrm trying to carry Zah away from the area. He wanted to help Zah. He owed her his life for what she’d done out on that distant island. She’d heedlessly dived on the unicorn-serpent to save him. There was also the sense of loyalty he felt toward Jenka. He had to try and save his best friend’s love. Zahrellion was their sister by a bond stronger than blood.
He blasted at the alien using the dragon’s tear clenched in his fist, but couldn’t seem to hit the thing. He grew frustrated and was worried for his dragon. Some gooey juice was secreting where the tentacle was touching Silva’s skin. The pewter-colored dragon was in terrible pain.
Rikky finally popped the teardrop into his mouth and pulled the bow Mysterian had given him over his shoulder. He used the foot stirrup to hold one end and pulled down on the other to allow him to string it. This was no easy task because the alien was now pulling them in toward its mouth.
Rikky got the string in place, and then pulled the bow up to a firing position, just as the alien’s weird blue-fire eyes came into view. He couldn’t believe his luck. He had the shot and there was plenty of time to make it before he and Silva were carried into that harsh alchemical maw.
He reached for an arrow and his heart fell. The quiver of fine crafted long shafts wasn’t there anymore. Now the maw was opening into an undulating tunnel of dark stains and bloody mucus. Silva’s last struggles had lessened into twitches and sudden jerks.
From somewhere below, a humming blast of powerful magic struck the alien. This stalled the thing from tossing Rikky and his wyrm into its massive mouth just long enough for King Richard’s Nightshade to streak past and use its hot sizzling eye-rays. The powerful hell-born magic amputated the tentacle holding Silva.
The tentacle was still wrapped around the dragon, though, and they went tumbling down the side of the alien like food falling from a slobbish man’s chin. Only at the very last moment did Silva shrug off the burning rope of alien limb and get her wings open. They skimmed the ground and went sweeping past the golden-helmeted ebon goddess that was Aikira.
A man was with her, and Golden was stretched down the lane warning away vermin with her growl. Aikira had been the one who blasted the alien to save them. He owed her one now, too, he decided.
“Are you all right?” he called down.
“Golden’s wing-wounded!” Aikira called back up. “There’s nothing you can do here. Get away from the Sarax, Rikky. Get away from that t
hing.” He was relieved when she threw her pointing finger east. “Zahrellion!” He heard her sing the name so that it was clear in his ears, and with that he and Silva were off.
King Richard came around and blasted at the ever-swelling alien again. It had grown monstrous in size. The Sarax were thinning in the sky. The alien’s tentacles were getting longer, and as the thing bloated and shifted it was feeding on more and more of them.
The Sarax had dropped the fire drake called Blaze, with his rider strapped in, to the cobbles. The black thresher-mawed things were satiated and probably wanting to cocoon, so they were becoming less and less of an immediate threat. Richard wanted to keep the master alien where it was, so that it didn’t set its unsettling eyes on the kingdom, but the ebon girl and the druid were downed in the wreckage. He decided to lure the thing north out of Delton by flying just out of its range and taunting it. Unlike the dragons, the Nightshade could do this. Something about the hell-born wyrm dulled the alien’s senses. But in turn, something about the alien filled the Nightshade with fear. Soon he had the angered thing far enough away from the golden-scaled dragon that he flew back and had the Nightshade set his mother down with them.
“Protect her with your life, Linux!” Richard shot the command. “You owe me a life, for you took my father’s from him.”
“I do,” Linux dropped his head. “I will.”
The Nightshade hissed something at Golden and the dragon’s eyes lit up.
“Gather close to the wyrm,” Richard said. “My mount gave her a spell. She will shield you from the scavengers.”
As Richard lifted back into the sky and peeled away, Linux, in Rolph’s body, carried Queen Alvazina and laid her gently next to Aikira. When Richard looked back again they had vanished.
The Confliction (Book Three of the Dragoneers Saga) (Dragoneer Saga) Page 12
