Into the Madness

by Richard H. Stephens

  Still trying to breathe, Silurian glanced at Karvus. The emperor raised his thick eyebrows and strolled casually across the room to retrieve his weapon.

  Silurian checked the stairwell to ensure nothing else prowled close by, then went to check on his sister. He was even too late for that.

  Karvus patted her on the back before fetching his battle-axe.

  Silurian studied the black soot on her face. “You’re hurt.”

  “Huh? No. I’m fine. The tower defenses threw me into the pile of scrolls I set on fire when I first saw that…that thing.” Her disgusted gaze took in the thawing pieces of the wraith.

  “It looks like the one we killed on the mountainside.”

  “Yes. One of Helleden’s elite minions. Tough little bugger, too. I hit it a couple times with a fireball, but it kept coming at me. It finally dawned on me its cloak is impervious to fire. Much like my own.”

  “It was waiting for us,” Silurian said, his ice-blue eyes examining her, searching for any sign she wasn’t being truthful about her health.

  “Appears that way.” She cast her gaze around the chamber. “Help me.” She ran around the chamber extinguishing everything on fire as quickly as possible.

  Silurian and Karvus patted out several hot spots, not quite as carefully as she did.

  When all the fires were out, the three of them stared at each other, composing themselves as best they could.

  Melody approached a small, upturned table near the central pedestal and righted it. She lifted a massive tome off the floor and lovingly placed it on the tabletop—the concern on her face notable.

  Silurian joined her. “Find something?”

  She appeared paler than usual. He didn’t think much of it until she nodded ever so slightly. There was fear in her eyes. One he hadn’t seen since that first day she set eyes on Thonk.

  “What is it?” He searched the room, expecting another wraith to appear, but she directed his attention to the rune filled pages of the tome with her finger.

  He frowned. “Something in the book?”

  She nodded quickly.

  “Helleden’s firestorm spell?”

  She shook her head.

  Karvus joined them.

  “Then what? Something worse.”

  She nodded again, her haunted look unnerving him.

  “For the gods’ sake, what is it? What could be worse than Helleden’s spell?”

  She croaked out a two-syllable word. It sounded like she said wagon.

  Both men looked at each other. Silurian gaped as the word sank in. “Dragon?”

  She nodded twice, real slow.

  “But they’re extinct.”

  She shook her head.

  He thought hard. They had faced two water serpents recently. Many people considered them water dragons, but as ferocious and big as they were, they wouldn’t threaten an army. There was also the Gimcrack, but from what Melody had told them of its ultimate goal, Helleden would be mad to set that thing free.

  “Do you remember that day on Grimward Island when I told you I was having second thoughts?”

  Silurian shrugged. “Sure, I guess.”

  “Well, you talked me into continuing on our quest to seek out the earth blood fount. I said we may as well travel to Lurker’s Lake and search out the dragon.”

  “Surely that thing died years ago. There haven’t been any dragons since, well, forever now. Even if it still lives, it would take months to get there, wouldn’t it?” He looked to Karvus for confirmation.

  “Lurker’s Lake? Aye, even on horseback it’d be a month with good weather.”

  “I wouldn’t be too sure about that. According to this,” she pointed at the tome, “if one were to cast a certain spell, from a certain location, they could summon a dragon to that spot.”

  “Summon a dragon? How old is that book? I can tell by the runes it was written centuries ago. It has nothing to do with us today. Does it mention what this summoning stone looks like? The stone could be anywhere. It might even be on a shelf in here.” He searched the busy shelves with his eyes.

  She carefully turned the brittle page. “From what I can gather on this map, that symbol indicates its location.”

  Silurian peered closely at a map of Zephyr, concentrating on the symbol of a sea serpent off the western coast, just north of Thunderhead. He’d seen maps like this one before. “That’s a Kraken, not a dragon.”

  “Ya, well, according to the pages leading up to the map, the tip of the Kraken’s mouth points to the summoning stone.”

  “You mean it’s a place?”

  “That’s what I’m thinking, but there’s nothing up there past Thunderhead. The shoreline is too treacherous, all the way past Cliff Face.”

  Silurian thought hard about his journeys while fighting in the Group of Five. He’d been up that way several times, mostly aboard a boat. “There’s a small fishing village north of Thunderhead. Fishmonger Bay. It’s difficult to reach by land, though I have done it with the Group of Five. A small trail meanders along the mountains from Thunderhead, but it’s best reached by sea.”

  “I know the place well,” Karvus said. “My father sacked it more than once.”

  Silurian and Melody shot him a dirty look.

  “What? I’m just trying to help.”

  Silurian glared at the emperor before returning his attention to Melody and the tome.

  Karvus muttered behind them, “Come to think on it, there did seem to be a lot of references to dragons there.”

  The siblings looked over their shoulders at him.

  “Yes. Now that I think on it, the people of Fishmonger Bay had far more pictures and statues of dragons than anywhere else I’ve been. It was almost as if they worshipped the beast.”

  Silurian nodded. “That’s true. They do.”

  Melody put a hand on Silurian’s forearm. “If that’s where Helleden has gone, we have to stop him. If he gets his hands on a dragon, Zephyr is finished. The world will be finished. We have to prevent him from possessing the ultimate weapon.”

  Witch-Wizard

  Helleden incinerated the insolent demon genuflected at his feet. How dare the creature insinuate he should fear the Wizard of the North. The minion scout had just run into one of the only half standing buildings left in The Forke to inform him of Surgat’s death atop the Wizard’s Spike.

  That was infuriating. He was counting on Surgat to lead the team responsible for snaring the dragon.

  According to the pile of ash on the hardwood floor, the female wizard—he shook his head at the presumption—along with Silurian Mintaka and Emperor Karvus had set out along West Castle Road two days ago, following in his wake.

  That news by itself would’ve been enough to raise his dander, but the pile of ash next to it had just finished relaying its account of the battle at Treacher’s Gorge. Four score of his crack troops had perished during their ambush attempt on Phazarus. The true Wizard of the North had gotten away. His last known direction had him heading this way as well.

  Helleden wasn’t prone to panic. Five hundred years of plotting and scheming invoked a measure of controlled patience in a person. Losing touch with the remaining Zephyr forces and failing time and again against not one, but two formidable magic users had begun to chip away at his resolve.

  Like it or not, he was learning to respect the witch-wizard from the north. She’d proven several times now to be a worthy adversary. If she met up with Phazarus and came at him before he summoned the dragon, he feared he might be outmatched. He wasn’t used to not having the upper hand. Enacting a firestorm to destroy the witch-wizard and Phazarus as they closed in on him wasn’t a great idea. Once called, the rain of death was an indiscriminate force. Strong as his defenses were, they were no match for a falling meteor.

  With both wizards converging on him, Helleden had to act fast. Unless Phazarus figured out a way to move like his favourite pet, the Sentinel, the wizard shouldn’t reach Madrigail Bay for days yet. He still had time.
>
  What are you up to, Phazarus?

  No matter. If the witch-wizard thought to join forces with Phazarus in the coastal city, she was in for a nasty surprise.

  A commotion sounded outside, the conflict compounding his irritation. Everything had gone so well until the unforeseen intervention of those putrid wizards. Zephyr’s army demolished, King Malcolm dead and the Kraidic army at his disposal; nothing should’ve been able to stop him.

  Now, every one of his elite demons had been killed or were unaccounted for. Each one worth more than a thousand Kraidic troops—gone in a matter of weeks.

  He glanced at the chart set on a shabby side table—a detailed coastal map. On it, north of Fishmonger Bay, a red circle marked his destination. The Summoner’s Stone.

  He took solace in the fact that by the time Phazarus and the upstart witch-wizard found him, he would be in possession of a new ally. A magical, mystical beast, bigger than a cabin and reportedly able to incinerate a city block with one breath. He couldn’t wait to see the look in Silurian’s eyes when the dragon confronted him—if the irksome man made it that far.

  His lips lifted in a rare smile. What if he rode the beast? He recalled an old myth he’d heard countless times in his youth of a crazy woman riding the winds on the backs of the flying monsters. Her mission had been to save the dragons from her peers. What a fool. Dragons were hellish beasts. They killed anything that fell within their shadow.

  Helleden meant to give the dragon a wide berth, at least until his troops subdued it. Afterward, he planned to egg the beast on—rile it up by reinforcing how cruel people were just before it faced Phazarus, and perhaps Silurian and the witch-wizard.

  His angst heightened. How he longed for Silurian’s death. If he could only discover how to communicate with the dragon and fool it into thinking that Silurian was descended from those responsible for initiating the dragon-kind’s demise. What a pleasure it would be to sit back and watch what would happen as a result.

  He picked up a small, leather-bound book beside the map and ran his spindly fingers across the cover. The well-beaten leather protected yellowed pages within, the paper surprisingly unaffected by the book’s apparent age. Magically preserved, he mused. The runic letters were written about a young dragon and the conversations someone had had with it. The inscription on the leather cover had faded over time. A large ‘R’ flecked in gold still remained, and then several smaller letters, effaced from legibility were written above a second word beginning with what appeared to be a capital ‘D’. The gold flecks had long since worn away but the fancy letter was clearly etched into the leather.

  The smaller letters following the ‘D’ had also faded away except for the tail of the last letter. Surprisingly, the tail remained in decent shape. If he had to guess, he would say it represented the flourished tail of the letter ‘y’.

  It didn’t take a huge leap of faith to realise he held the dragon lady’s diary in his hands. If that were true, the book was close to seven centuries old. He hoped that somewhere within its pages he might learn how to speak to a dragon.

  He pondered the significance of the walnut-sized indentation in the middle of the diary’s back cover. It seemed as if it had once held something but what that might have been, was a mystery.

  Whether the diary proved useful or was just fodder for the next cook fire, he vowed to return to the Wizard’s Spike after killing Phazarus and the scum he travelled with, to discover more of the treasures hidden there.

  He growled at that thought. It had vexed him when he learned of the insolent Kraidic torching the Vaults of Lore. They had paid for their mistake with their heads on a pike.

  The commotion outside heightened. The sound of angry men arguing with one of his minion commanders. He sighed and slid the book into his robes.

  He almost stepped in the pile of ashes of the minion from Carillon, his black boot hovering over it. Sidestepping, he made his way to where a sheet hung over the open doorway.

  He was in no mood to deal with whatever was happening outside. Whoever it was, they were about to wish they hadn’t chosen to argue outside of his temporary command post.

  He paused to glance back at the remains of the last two minions who’d irked him. He couldn’t afford to lose too many more troops. Who knew how many it would take to collar a dragon?

  Collapse

  Melody’s rump pained her to no end. Being bony and not used to riding she would never get used to riding bareback. She had hoped her posterior would get used to the daily routine, especially after enduring the journey from Gimcrack. The fourth day out from Castle Svelte along West Castle Road didn’t feel any better than the first.

  “I need to get down and walk,” she said into Silurian’s ear.

  “You wanna ride up here again?”

  “Thanks, but no. It won’t do any good. I need to stretch my back.”

  “Getting old, huh?”

  She belted the back of his shoulder. “I’ll show you old.”

  When Silurian reined in their horse, she slipped from its back and patted its haunch. “Good boy.”

  Silurian insisted she could ride in the saddle as much as she wanted but riding bareback was even more excruciating on his back, so she had elected not to. He needed to be able to swing a sword at a moment’s notice.

  Karvus stopped his horse farther along the trail, still preferring to assume the lead position. As emperor of the Kraidic Empire, she was certain he considered his station superior to any living creature, regardless of where they called home and thus his need to be out front.

  She considered arrogance in men like him insufferable, but she wasn’t naïve. In order to be an effective leader, one had to be ruthless—to a point. Being emperor meant he lived with more pressure, and indeed, fear, than most people—fear that he might expose a weakness that devious people would manipulate to their advantage.

  Karvus had surprised her. He wasn’t as brash or overbearing as she had originally thought. Certainly strong willed, and not one to delay reacting to situations without thinking them through, but travelling with him for the last few weeks had shown her a different side of the brutish, barbarian Kraken emperor. He had demonstrated unelicited compassion toward her on more than one occasion—placing his life on the line for both her and Silurian. Where Silurian was concerned, she would never be able to thank Karvus enough. Silurian was her world.

  She swallowed. There was always her husband and soulmate, Rook Bowman, but she resisted the urge to get her hopes up. The chance Rook had survived the Under Realm wasn’t good. Silurian saw the Gerrymander in her vision that night below Wizard’s Gibbet, but looking at things through the flames wasn’t the best way to identify anything with certainty. The war galley could have been any number of ships sailing Zephyr’s coast.

  “Well, are you going to walk or do you want me to pour water on you so you can grow roots?”

  Her brother’s words made her smile. Always the smart-ass. She didn’t honour him with a reply. Instead, she brushed the folds of her robes, regripped her staff and started forward.

  Karvus waited until she reached his side. “Would you care to ride my horse for while? I could use a good run.”

  She smiled up at the heavily bearded man, shading her eyes from the high sun. “No thank you. Save your strength. We’ll arrive at The Forke before nightfall. Who knows what awaits us there.”

  “You mean that scorch mark up ahead?” He jutted his chin down the road.

  She squinted. There did appear to be a blur on the horizon where the road vanished in the distance. “You see a town?”

  “What’s left of one. Looks to be a river coming up from the south and another from the north.”

  “That’ll be it.” She went to inform Silurian but he’d already noticed.

  She squinted again. Her eyes must be getting bad.

  They approached the town at a slow pace; West Castle Road descended gradually into the river basin. It wasn’t long before she saw the Frothe River tumbl
ing down craggy hills to the north and the mighty Madrigail cutting a swath of grey through the charred farmland south of the Forke.

  It didn’t matter how long she travelled through the ruined kingdom, the prospect of Zephyr’s future continued to instill a sense of futility within her. Even if they stopped Helleden, what was the point? Everything was gone. Animals, crops, homes, people—everything. They’d be better served leaving the barren kingdom and heading south.

  She admonished herself. What kind of gratitude was that toward their benefactors, the Royal Family? To King Malcolm, their adopted brother. If Malcolm had survived the maelstrom, he needed their aid now more than ever.

  Lost in thought, she stepped off the road and tripped. Letting out a squeal of surprise she barely kept from landing amongst the blackened stubble.

  “What’s the matter?” Silurian’s sword was in his hand before he finished the question.

  Her cheeks flamed red. “Nothing. I tripped.”

  Karvus sat with his battle-axe in hand, scanning the area behind them. He urged his horse forward, not saying a word.

  The wooden palisade surrounding the northern part of town lay in splinters—the spiked tree trunks that had formed the wall were broken like a pile of arrows trod upon by a giant.

  The old gatehouse welcoming West Castle Road into the city lay obliterated. Had she not travelled through here before, she would never have known one had stood here. Helleden’s awe-inspiring power humbled her. What business did they have thinking they might stop him?

  The acrid air wafting from the city turned up her nose. She lost track of how long it had been since the firestorm. A few months? It happened last fall. They were over halfway through the cold winter months so that sounded about right. Thankfully, snow wasn’t common this far south of the Altirius Mountains.

  Silurian and Karvus dismounted, leading their mounts around the scattered wreckage. It was obvious, even to Melody, that many clawed creatures and booted feet had been through here recently, but Karvus’ words were chilling nonetheless. He knelt by what remained of one of the gatehouses. “We’re about two days behind.”