Dragon Breeder 3

by Dante King

  Jazmyn, Ashrin, and I moved stealthily into a position not too far away. We were able to peer down into the ratfolk’s township, through a gap between two strange, blue fern-like shrubs flourishing in the bed of an old mineral creek.

  “Any sign of life?” I whispered to the other two.

  “Not a squeak,” Jazmyn muttered. Her eyes narrowed as she methodically scanned the motley assortment of buildings spread out below us on the floor of the cavern.

  The buildings of the underground town were just as Diggens had described them; quite well engineered and constructed, but crudely made out of salvaged materials. The walls of the huts and buildings were mostly constructed of stone, but the roofs of the bigger buildings were made from metal that looked like it had been salvaged from mine carts and the tracks on which they ran. I saw more than a couple of examples of old shields filling holes in roofs.

  There was not a soul around. Not a sign nor a single solitary sound of any of the ratfolk still in this town. The only sign that anything had once been living was in a largish square off to our right. There, hanging from a set of huge meat hooks, was a giant humanoid carcass, with pale gray skin and blunt features.

  “What the hell is that?” I asked.

  “Rock troll,” Ashrin hissed in my ear, “or a golem, I always struggle to tell the difference.” Her breath and her proximity sent a little tingle down my spine, making a little pocket of tantalizing heat spread out in the pit of my stomach.

  “Looks like our ratty pals managed to take down that big fucker just before they managed to breach the wall to our cavern,” Jazmyn said.

  The rock troll or golem certainly had been a big brute. All of ten feet tall and about as wide as a hatchback was long. The body of the thing was missing its two legs, which had been taken off with a butcher’s precision and hung on hooks next to it. Black blood pooled beneath the grim corpse.

  “Let’s get the others,” I said, “and start taking a look through this place. These rats might have been as mad as shit, but it doesn’t look like they were the sort of creatures to waste anything. If there are crystals down here, I bet they’re kept in a treasury or a place of prominence.”

  I paused for a moment, wondering whether Jazmyn or Ashrin would disagree with me, since they were the far more experienced dragonmancers. Except, they simply exchanged a look, nodded at each other, then nodded at me.

  We returned to the others. After going through a cursory weapon check, we headed into the town.

  We moved without haste, checking the buildings that sprouted with no real order around the place. The ratfolk clearly had no form of transport down here, so the structures were built haphazardly, with no central road running through the middle. The path between the randomly built dwellings and shops meandered this way and that through the settlement, sometimes widening to a full-on thoroughfare, at other times thinning so that we all had to move along in single file.

  Like a bunch of burrowing bugs worming their way into the middle of an apple, we wound our way further into the heart of the township. Gabby had his bow free, an arrow nocked to the string, as did a couple of the other members of Renji, Tamsin, Ashrin, and Jazmyn’s coteries. The eyes of our archers flitted from shadow to shadow, from empty doorway to gaping window, as we prowled quietly through the abandoned streets.

  Abruptly, we emerged from between two leaning shanties and out into an open square.

  “‘Ello, ‘ello, looks like they had themselves a bit of a knees-up in here, don’t it,” said Diggens sarcastically.

  There were ratfolk bodies strewn all over the place, cast hither and yon like fallen leaves. Many were crushed and smeared and broken beyond recognition; entrails and limbs scraped across the roughly laid stone flags of the square, as if some enormous being had used them as a condiment to cover the square.

  “There are some crispy ones over here,” Bjorn called in a low voice, nudging some charred and twisted corpses. They looked like giant french fries left too long in the fryer.

  “Dragon kills,” Noctis said, within my head, no trace of doubt in his voice.

  I echoed his words to the others.

  Jazmyn nodded her head in an agreement. She pointed out a few of the dead that had been mauled and bitten.

  “Looks to me like that wild dragon we dealt with earlier killed the few ratfolk that were left here and had a quick munch on some of them, amuse-bouche style,” I said.

  “Don’t think there was really too much amusing about it,” Diggens grunted. “But I get what you’re saying, fella, and I think you’re right. Our mate, the dragon, came through here, threw a bit of fire about, and had himself a picnic. Then, when he’d stoked his appetite, he followed the main army—the main course—up that tunnel.”

  “Seems to be the long and the short of it,” Renji said solemnly, looking down with something like pity in her eyes at the twist body of one of the ratfolk.

  “I wonder where the dragon came from and what brought it through here,” Tamsin said. She seemed a little disappointed that she wouldn’t get a fight in, after all.

  I pointed up at what was easily the largest building in the township; the ratfolk equivalent of a town hall.

  “Town hall… Or a temple?” Renji asked as she retied her silver braids at the back of her head.

  The front facade of this main building was built of large blocks of cut stone piled to make four huge pillars. It reminded me of the Acropolis in Athens, or one of those other Greek temples. Four large columns of stone holding up a triangle of rock that somehow looked more like a natural bit of rock than a piece of masonry.

  “Shall we take a look?” Ashrin asked Jazmyn.

  “He’s leading the expedition,” Jazmyn said as she gestured at me.

  Then, everyone looked to me. For better or worse, I was responsible for whatever the hell happened down here.

  “Let’s go,” I said.

  Up the great, worn steps we went; dragonmancers leading, squads following, and Diggens Azee and Will bringing up the rear.

  I stepped lightly up the steps leading to a huge main door. My Chaos Spear was in my hands, and adrenaline ran through my veins like liquid lightning. I was tense. Alert. I had to fight every instinct in my body not to run up the steps, kick the door down, and begin rummaging around whatever rooms lay beyond. Something spoke to my gut that here, if we were lucky, we would find some of the crystals that we so desperately sought.

  I pushed open the heavy door with the butt of my spear. It creaked with gratifying ominousness, scraping on crudely crafted hinges as I forced it open.

  Hot, dry air flowed out of the temple or hall or whatever the hell it was. The breeze smelled like sulfur and barbecue, a combination that was both delicious and nauseating.

  The interior was like a viking longhall combined with a temple where blood sacrifices were a recreational activity. The smell of herbs, scorched meat, and sulfur was heavy in the air. Columns, decorated with semi-demonic looking runes and carvings, held up the ceiling. Great oaken rafters crisscrossed the ceiling and cut the gloomy shadows above into segments. Runes were scratched haphazardly around the place, running up the columns.

  “It’s so… disordered,” Renji said, distaste in her tone.

  I grinned grimly to myself. I could imagine how the djinn, quartermaster and armorer of the Academy’s main weapon store, must be rankled by the confusion and mess.

  “More bodies,” called one of Jazmyn’s squad from the far right.

  “And here,” said one of the members of Ashrin’s from the left.

  The crude furniture had been smashed to matchsticks. Great streaks of soot marred much of the masonry. Patches of stone had been hit with such intense dragonfire that they’d bubbled and distorted and run like molten glass.

  Diggens took off his hat to mop his bald head with a filthy bit of rag. “I may not be a constable like what they have back in fancy towns like Drakereach or Rochaven,” he quipped, “but I’d say that that is where the dragon was being kept,
don’t you reckon?”

  The gnoll gestured down the far end of the hall with the hand holding the hat.

  There was a monumentally large cage at the far end of the temple, a cage large enough to house a dragon.

  “Shit, the ratfolk had some balls on them, didn’t they?” I shook my head at the ignorance or audacity that made them think they could keep a dragon penned in a metal cage.

  The bars of the cage had been constructed from scrap iron and recycled steel rails—the hipsters back in L.A. would have loved it—but they had been melted like they’d been made of butter. Shackles lay on the ground, but they were open—sheared through by tooth or claw, I could not tell.

  “Looks like the kobolds are not the only ones to worship dragons as gods,” Jazmyn said.

  “What I don’t understand,” said Ashrin, “is why, if this was the wild dragon, it allowed them to cage it in the first place. I mean, trying to restrain a dragon without magic, with only poorly crafted metal… “

  “Foolish,” Renji said.

  “Beyond foolish,” Ashrin said. “It’s like trying to bind a tiger with a daisy-chain.”

  “Excuse my b-b-boldness,” said Rupert, taking off his hat as he addressed Ashrin, “but may I offer a theory, Dragonmancer Ashrin?”

  Ashrin’s eyes shone with amusement. The fact that I allowed my squad to chat to me, and with other dragonmancers on occasion, like they were equals was still viewed as a novelty.

  “Go ahead,” Ashrin said.

  Rupert rammed his terrible Robin Hood hat back onto his flyaway black hair.

  “As Dragonmancer Jazmyn was astutely o-o-observed,” he said, “the ratfolk look to have adopted the kobold’s practice of worshipping dragons as gods incarnate. I b-b-believe that this wild dragon probably allowed itself to be led here and chained in exchange for regular meals and comfort. Dragons are, after all, highly intelligent and proud beings. It probably enjoyed the pampering.”

  Ashrin raised her eyebrows as she considered this. “A fine theory,” she said. “And then what happened?”

  Rupert chewed a thoughtful fingernail, then shrugged. “Perhaps they ran out of food. Perhaps the dragon simply got bored. Dragons can be capricious. No offense m-m-meant to any dragons listening in, of course.”

  A ripple of mirth, which I identified as coming from Garth, went through my mind.

  “I like the weird guy,” the Pearl Dragon said.

  “I wonder,” I said, “whether the wild dragon saw all the ratfolk leaving in a mass exodus and thought that it was being abandoned.”

  “Oftentimes,” Noctis said, speaking within my mind, “dragons are not logical creatures, but simple beings motivated by pride and vanity.”

  “That sounds pretty familiar,” I said drily, thinking of all those people in L.A. who ran up credit; spending money that hadn’t yet earned to buy shit that they didn’t need so that they could impress people they didn’t even like.

  “All right,” Jazmyn said, “as much as this place looks deserted, there are probably too many resources ripe for the plundering here for it to stay that way. It won’t be long before something comes creeping in here to start scavenging, so let’s search around and see if we can find these fuckin’ crystals. Then we can get the hell out of here, yeah?”

  We spread out to search the enormous temple then, although I noticed that Jazmyn and Ashrin never strayed too far from me. Of course, my squad kept me within view the entire time.

  Five dragonmancers and their coteries moved methodically through the temple building, overturning any furniture that had not been obliterated when the wild dragon had made its break for freedom. Cupboards were ripped open and rifled, chests found and upended.

  We found nothing. Not even any jewels that might have passed for crystals.

  We reconvened again in the center of the temple after thirty minutes of searching.

  “Anything?” I asked the group, though the collection of dire faces was answer enough.

  Everyone shook their heads.

  “Damn it,” I said, striking the butt of my flaming Chaos Spear on the ground so that white and black sparks erupted. “Back to square—”

  There was a fluttering sound from up in the rafters. In any other setting, I would have taken that sound with a pinch of salt—nine times out of ten it would have been a bird roosting up in the safe darkness. This though, was the tenth time out of ten—and the tenth time was in the Subterranean Realms where there were no birds. It might have been a bat, sure, but bats, despite narrative convention, were practically noiseless in their movements.

  As one, all twenty-one of us turned to face the sound. Bows were raised, bowstrings pulled tight to ears. I hefted my spear, preparing to unleash it at whatever was up there lurking in the rafters.

  A woman, wrapped in a dark gray shawl that covered her head as well as her body, sat on one of the thick rafters. She swung her legs backward and forward. As several arrow points turned in her direction, the mysterious woman raised her hands. She held them, palms out, toward us. From the little I could make out of her face, she looked to be human, although I had become extremely careful about judging books by their covers since coming to the Mystocean Empire.

  “You,” she said, her hands still raised, “I recognize you.”

  Her accent was thick, lilting. If she had been from Earth, I would have been tempted to say that there was an almost Scandinavian nuance to it.

  “It's a bit hard to figure out who you’re referring to with your hands in the air,” I replied. “Feel free to point at whoever you’re talking to. With one hand only.”

  Slowly, the woman lowered her hand so that she could point one accusatory digit at me.

  “You,” she said again. “I recognize you.”

  “I can’t say the same for you,” I said shortly, gazing upward. Even with my dragon-boosted eyesight, I could not penetrate the gloom under the hood of her shawl. “Where is it that you think you saw me?”

  “You were the one I saw in Drakereach, on the outskirts,” the woman said, in her musical accent. “The Bloodletters were hunting for me. One of them stole something that belonged to me.”

  Then I clicked.

  “You’re the one who had the crystal?” I said. My voice went up a pitch at thinking that this woman, the one from whom I’d taken the crystal, might know where others could be found.

  Chapter 15

  “You were the woman that I saw running along the track,” I said to the cloaked figure. “I thought you had been mugged.”

  “Mugged?” the woman asked, puzzled.

  “Robbed,” I amended.

  The woman considered this. “I had.”

  “And what,” I said, gesturing around the devastation of the temple, “brings you to such a fine spot on such a lovely—what even is it? Afternoon? Evening?”

  The woman flowed to her feet with such astonishing speed that if I’d have blinked I would have missed it. One hand was still raised in the air, but she had gained her feet in the manner of a person who had no bones attached to her muscles.

  Behind me, I heard the sudden increase in the tensions of the assembled bowstrings. A menacing creaking sound of arrows under pressure.

  “Not another move, woman,” Jazmyn said, her voice cutting through the air.

  I held a hand out to my side. “Easy, let’s not perforate anyone prematurely, eh?”

  “Easy,” Ashrin said from behind me.

  There was another chorus of creaks as the tension in the bowstrings were released a fraction.

  The mysterious woman pulled back her charcoal-colored cloak and showed two crystals hanging from her black belt.

  “I understand you are seeking crystals such as these, dragonmancer,” she said.

  “Maybe,” I said.

  The woman laughed lightly. “There is no maybe in it. Your eyes tell me as much. All your thought is bent on finding them.”

  I had only needed one crystal at the start of this little quest. This strange and rec
ondite woman had two of them hanging from her belt.

  The choice was clear. Wayne had to be saved.

  “Yeah, okay,” I said. “We’re after those crystals, if those are the kind that can store dragons.”

  “They are,” the cloaked figure said.

  I looked over my shoulder, at the men pointing their bow and arrows at the shadowy woman high above. I shook my head minutely. Slowly and carefully, the glinting tips of the arrows pointed down toward the floor.

  “You can put your other hand down,” I called up to the woman standing on the beam. “We’ll not harm you.”

  Slowly, cautiously, the woman allowed her hand to drop to her side.

  “I catch the scent of a bargain in the air,” Diggens muttered from where he was perched on a miraculously unbroken chair with his feet resting on an upturned bucket.

  “You have a bargain you want to strike?” I asked.

  “I can help you find more, more of the crystals,” the woman said.

  “But…?” I said.

  “But you must do something for me first,” came the reply.

  I nodded, trying my very best to mask my impatience. I could practically feel every wasted minute crawling past.

  “Allow me to discuss this with my companions a moment, will you?” I called up.

  The cloaked figure nodded her assent. I turned to Renji, Tamsin, Ashrin, and Jazmyn.

  “We need to take this woman in for questioning,” I said in a whisper. “We’re not making any bargains with her. I don’t want her to have us over a barrel in any way, shape, or form. She has the crystals we need now, so it’s all good if we take her here and now. Once we have her, we can decide whether or not she’s speaking truthfully. The knowledge that she potentially has, of where to find more of these crystals, could be invaluable.”

  “A reasonable plan,” Jazmyn said.

  “I couldn’t have thought of a better one myself,” Ashrin added.

  “Great,’ I said before I turned back to the woman.

  “We’re going to need a little faith before we trust you,” I said, while behind me, the other four dragonmancers fanned out into a position that would enable them to come at the woman from four different sides.