Dragon Breeder 4

by Dante King

  I gave my head a shake and managed to gain control of my own brain. I grinned. “I’m not sure about that. All I know is what I’ve learned in my limited life experience.”

  “And what’s that?” Cyan asked. Her voice, the voice in my head, was quick and clever. Bright as sunlight on water, and just as fast moving.

  “Males are like their plumbing, you know; pretty simple, with only the occasional surprise. Women on the other hand, well… they’re complicated.”

  “Gross, Dad,” Cyan said, while Wayne, Garth, and Pan all let loose idiotic internal snorts of delight at that mature analogy.

  “Sorry,” I said. “I was a little addled there. And what sort of dragon are you, Cyan.”

  “A Faerie Dragon,” Cyan replied promptly.

  “May I see you?” I asked.

  Instantly, Cyan, the first female dragon that I had fathered, came into being.

  As far as dragons went, Cyan was small and dainty and feminine. She gave that impression anyway. In reality, she was twenty feet of opalescent shimmering scales, tipped with bowie knife claws and teeth that looked like they could go through mail or plate without so much as chipping. Cyan was not just a single color, but a whole host. The glitter of her scales reminded me of the pearlescent sheen of the kind of car that you might see in the latest Fast & Furious movie. She had glittering, insect-like wings. They were very similar to the wings that Penelope had folded on her back in front of me. The eyes regarding me were a pale pink and had slitted pupils the color of abalone.

  “Isn’t she gorgeous?” Penelope said in a breathy voice stuffed to bursting with motherly pride.

  She wasn’t wrong. Cyan was a stunning example of a dragon. She was the sort of dragon that kids might draw if they were asked to picture one.

  “Mike!” a voice called from behind me.

  I pulled my eyes away from the latest addition to my family and saw that Hana was coming toward us slowly, sitting atop Bearne.

  “What’s up?” I asked.

  “We’re ready to go,” the Vetruscan woman told me. “The Queen just wants to say a few words before we set off.”

  “Will you be riding Cyan?” I asked Penelope.

  “No, I’ll be riding Glizbe,” she replied, referring to her Rooster Dragon.

  I nodded and went to hand Cyan’s crystal back to the Knowledge Sprite, but she shook her head.

  “She is your responsibility now, Mike,” she told me gravely, but with a sweet smile. “You’ve kept all the other dragonlings safe so far. I have no reason to doubt that you’ll keep Cyan safe too.”

  I leaned in and gave Pen a fierce kiss on the mouth. Then, I fastened the silver chain that held Cyan’s crystal to my sword belt and slipped the dangling stone into my pocket.

  “Okay,” I said, assuming the mantle of expedition leader once more, “it’s time for us to go.”

  Penelope and I walked back over to where the other dragonmancers were waiting, following Hana and her bear.

  “Is she coming with us?” Penelope asked gesturing at Hana.

  I nodded and smiled. “Yes, she is. Hana’s going to be our guide. We can rely on her. You can trust me on that.”

  Cyan followed along behind us for a little while before, at my insistence, she vanished back into her crystal.

  “Are you two coming with us?” I asked Jaz and Ashrin as they wandered back over from their private conference with Queen Frami.

  I was wanted the two formidable warriors to be a part of the company heading through the Fey Pass. The Queen had said that there were numerous dangers in the north, including giants, trolls, and no small number of monsters. Having Ash and Jazmyn along would only aid our chances in finding the relic.

  Jazmyn, however, crushed those hopes of mine with a single shake of her head.

  “Afraid not, Mike,” she said.

  “No,” Ashrin said, giving me a friendly punch on the arm. “No, we are going to head back to Hrímdale with the Queen here. The Overseer left it up to us to evaluate the threat on the Vetruscan Kingdom posed by these renegade bearmancers.”

  “And you’ve found the threat to be real?” I asked.

  “You can bet that fuckin’ sweet little rear end of yours the threat is real,” Jazmyn said. “The Overseer, not in so many words mind, is keen to present the heart of Queen Frami’s enemies to her. As taking down rogue mancers is somewhat of a specialty of ours, we’ll be staying behind and helping the Vetruscans take care of the insurrectionists. Not going to be much fun for you lot if you find that fuckin’ relic you’re going after only to come back to a Kingdom in flames.”

  “Fair point,” I said as I summoned Pan from his crystal.

  “A very fair point, in my opinion,” the Queen said drily.

  The dreadlocked woman mounted her bear and looked down at me where I stood with my feet on the ground, having yet to climb onto Pan’s back. From where I stood, she looked even more like the female version of Odin, the Allfather, than she ever had done.

  “Take care of my ward, Dragonmancer Noctis,” she said seriously. “Take care of Hana, as I know she will take care of you.”

  I bowed my head. “I think it wouldn’t be remiss of me to say that Hana is more than capable of taking care of herself, Your Majesty,” I replied, “but I’ll try and make sure that she doesn’t have to waste her time and energy pulling my ass out of a crevice or something.”

  The Queen laughed, a rumbling chuckle that sounded like thunder and the growl of a bear all at once.

  “Well, see that you do,” she said. She looked over at Hana.

  Hana sat atop Bearne, her furred hood thrown back to reveal her chiseled jaw, glittering piercings, and deep, dark eyes.

  “Do not worry about me, Your Majesty,” she said with an unsmiling sincerity. “Concentrate only on keeping our lands free of the rebels while we are away.”

  “I hope that the dragonmancer can hold up his end of the bargain,” the Queen said.

  Hana hit me with a quick, keen glance. Her eyes flicked from me to Saya to Elenari. A fleeting grin lit her features.

  “He will, Your Majesty,” she said. “He is a warrior who can hold his own.”

  “Very good,” said the Queen. “And just remember: once you are beyond the Fey Pass, take nothing for granted, and take nothing at face value.”

  Hana smiled again, but there was no humor in it. “That would be hard, Your Majesty. For little of what lies beyond the Fey Pass has been seen for millennia. There are rumors of things there, of course. Scouts have sometimes brought back reports over the years of things that have lain dormant since the beginning of time stirring there. Foul things that are better left to their own devices. Creatures that we might recognize from our most portentous and direful sagas.”

  “Sounds like your typical dragonmancer day at work,” Saya said ironically.

  “I only hope that we can find what we seek,” Hana continued, “and then get back south as quick as my bear and the dragons can go.”

  I mounted Pan and gazed around at the assembled company. At Elenari, Saya, Renji, Penelope, Tamsin, and Hana. Seven of us.

  “We should get moving,” I said. “It’s always hard to get to the end of something if you drag your feet starting it.”

  The Queen nodded and raised her hand.

  “Good luck,” she said, her eyes on Hana. “Good luck to all of you. May you find what you seek.”

  With that, she and her guard turned away and headed back through the gate. The gate swung slowly shut and thudded closed with a dull boom behind them.

  I cast an eye over my shoulder and saw that Will was still floating just behind me, bobbing at the small of my back like some sort of ghostly terrier.

  “You hear that, pal?” I whispered as Hana led the way north, out into the lonesome moorland. “May we find what we seek. No pressure.”

  Will said nothing. Showed how smart the little guy was.

  * * *

  The Fey Pass.

  To be precise, the northe
rn end, and the pinnacle, of the Fey Pass.

  It had taken us all day to reach it, traveling up from the moorland below and trudging through the boggy mires that lay like a repulsive skin disease at the feet of the mountains.

  Technically, this was all Queen Frami’s land, but just what you could do with such a place was beyond me. It was the cold that would hinder any permanent habitation. Snow had pelted us for the past two hours while we struggled up the steep incline of the pass.

  It was the very epitome of Vetrusca up here. The Vetruscan Kingdom distilled down into its savage, untamable, beautifully unforgiving essence.

  I had never thought dragons would do well in our current environment. The mountains were, traditionally and according to the myths and legends and fairy stories that I had consumed during my American childhood, the home of yetis and abominable snowmen and other hairy creatures of that ilk. Dragons lived under mountains.

  Just went to show, I supposed, how deeply steeped in bullshit those Earthling legends could be.

  Pan and the rest of his species had made their way as easily as anything might be expected to make its way through four feet of unbroken snow. The constant furnace-like heat that burned within them helped not just to keep them warm, but to melt their way through the icy drifts of snow.

  Hana was in the lead, sitting atop her bear and guiding us carefully through the snowbanks. Bearne had no trouble with the conditions. His thick gray fur was coated in frost and snow, but he would simply shake it off every now and again. His enormous paws he used as shovels to burrow his way through the snow, pushing a hundred pounds of snow aside with every swipe.

  “We’ll stop here for just a moment!” Hana yelled at the top of her voice so that we could hear over the howling wind and the swirling snow. “I just need to try and pick us a route down this side. There are two ways through the pass. There is one that is used by all who come through here. It is the safer route, though it is far from safe. The other way I don’t know much about. Few go down there and, of them, only a few return to tell of it.”

  “What’s so bad about that way?” Saya called, pulling her hood tighter around her face.

  Hana made a movement that might have been a shrug, although it was hard to tell under the multiple layers of clothing and the massive fur coat.

  “The last traveler to come back alive after venturing down the lesser-known path was back in my grandmother’s day,” she replied. “The tale goes that this woman emerged from the southern end of the Fey Pass and was found by hunters. She was raving with cold—her brain turned to ice. All she ever talked of until the end of her days was a castle of white in a world of white, guarded by a beast of burning white.”

  “Sounds… fucking vague!” Tamsin said through a mouthful of snow that had just hit her in the face.

  “The pale place became a myth in my time,” Hana continued. “One of those places that parents tell their children they’ll be carried off to if they misbehave or don’t do their chores.”

  “It’s immaterial,” Renji bellowed, her slow, calm voice seeming to penetrate the wind better than the rest of us. “We will not take the second way. Not if it can be helped.”

  Hana shook her head. “Do not wander,” she ordered, in a commanding tone that carried more than a little of Queen Frami in it. “This blizzard is building. I can feel it in my blood. It tingles. The last thing that we need is for one of us to be separated and lost out here.”

  She took a deep breath. “This weather is not natural,” I think she added, though I was only reading her lips due to the wind that whisked the words right out of her mouth and carried them far away.

  While Hana surveyed the long, snowy slope directly below us, I gazed out over the valley.

  A vast and icy vista spread out below us. The land was mostly white, of course, but there was plenty of dark green forest out there too. Icy rivers sparkled like discarded silver threads, and undulating white hills were illuminated by the hazy sun that sat in the sky, veiled by white clouds. How the rivers still ran in this cold baffled me, before I realized that they must be able to carry on running through force alone.

  A touch on my arm brought me back to the present.

  “Come on, Mike,” Elenari said to me over the screaming roar of the wind. “Hana said we have to move on before we get snowed in to some dead end somewhere. The key is to keep moving.”

  “She’s made up her mind about which direction we have to go in?” I asked.

  Elenari nodded and began forcing her way back through the snow, which was already closing over the tracks she had made walking to me.

  “I’m glad she knows the way,” I muttered as I followed to where Pan waited patiently for me. “Because I doubt we’re going to be able to see what way is down and what way is up pretty soon.”

  It wasn’t hyperbole either. The snow had redoubled its assault on us, and I could see why Hana was so intent to move down toward the plain—if that was her plan.

  We set off down the mountain slope in single file. I didn’t bother to look for landmarks. All my trust was in Hana, although I was skeptical that anyone could see anything in this sort of blizzard. The air was thick with white, to the point where I could only just make out Bearne pushing through the snow ahead of me.

  After what felt like ten hours, we rounded a great outthrust arm of rock. The storm suddenly abated a little, as if we had stepped through a curtain. The snow was still falling, but it wasn’t being pushed violently into our eyes and faces like it had been before. That, I perceived, was because the wind had died or was now being blocked by the great bastion of rock that we had just rounded.

  In the relative silence, Hana’s voice was clearly audible when she spoke.

  “I have been deceived by this malignant snowstorm. We have been misled.” Her voice was bitter, shaking with anger and not with cold. “A castle of white in a world of white, guarded by a beast of burning white.”

  All seven of us looked down at the natural shoot that ran down below us. About three hundred yards down the narrow gully was an ancient-looking castle constructed of white stone or snow, built into one of the outthrust arms of the mountain we were traversing. Crumbling turrets, splitting walls, and a shattered portcullis were all in evidence, but they were all secondary.

  Chained to one of the crumbling towers was a great wild dragon of glossy, pearlescent white.

  “A castle of white in a world of white, guarded by a beast of burning white,” Hana said, repeating her words.

  “That’s. . . that’s a Frost Dragon,” Penelope said as she stared at the wild dragon chained to the tower.

  We were all staring down at the sight when Will suddenly bobbed off the back of Pan and headed toward the castle and the dragon. He was glowing brightly. Excitedly.

  “Shit,” I said, “I think that we’re actually heading in the right direction.”

  “The relic?” Renji asked.

  I nodded.

  “You don’t think we should head back?” Hana asked me.

  As if in answer to her words, the snow and the rock beneath us began to quiver. Icicles the size of men began to rain down from the heights above. A distant roaring, like the sound of some monstrous incoming tide, filled the air.

  “I don’t think back is an option,” I said, adrenaline flooding my body.

  Hana’s head perked up, like a rabbit that senses a fox approaching. She took a breath.

  “Avalanche!” she screamed. “Run! Make for the castle!”

  Chapter 14

  “Take to the air!” I yelled.

  The others didn’t wait around to voice questions or make objections. A million tons of snow and ice coming toward you with the speed of a diving Peregrine Falcon really makes you focus on what’s important and worth taking the time to say.

  As Tamsin, Elenari, Saya, Penelope, and Renji all took to the air, I looked around to try and find Hana. She was the only one of us who couldn’t just fly above the oncoming wall of snow and ice.

&nbs
p; “Shit!” I said again to myself, seeing the fleeing bearmancer heading hell for leather toward the ruined castle. Bearne was making incredible speed through the heavy snow, his massive paws acting like snowshoes so that, even with his impressive bulk, he was already halfway there.

  The war-bear was making good speed all right, but he still wasn’t going to make it. He and Hana were going to get wiped out.

  I looked behind me and saw that the avalanche was almost upon us. The others were clear, but Hana…

  “Shit!” I said again. It was turning out to be a shitty kind of morning.

  Pan boosted into the air when the avalanche ripped by underneath us like some mammoth, furious ice-snake. It was carrying trees as long as semis as easily as if they were matchsticks. Boulders the size of family SUVs rolled along on its edges, looking like they weighed as little as marbles.

  I only spared the incredible sight a second’s glance, although I could have watched it for hours.

  “Go, Pan!” I yelled and pointed.

  Moving with a speed that had me gripping his flanks with my thighs, Pan took off like lightning—moving with the speed of a storm, like a Tempest Dragon should.

  Goddamn, but that avalanche was moving. Even with Pan flying at full tilt, it somehow felt that we were moving as slowly as cream rising on buttermilk. We managed to reach Bearne and Hana just behind the avalanche, and I thought that all we had accomplished was getting ourselves front row seats to watch their demise.

  Then, just as the word ‘shit’ was tickling the back of my throat once more, Bearne launched his giant furry ass into the air and somehow landed on the foremost slab of the avalanche.

  The war-bear, with Hana balanced on his back like some crazy gymnast or motocross rider, jumped unerringly from snow slab to boulder to ice sheet, even as the avalanche continued to plow down the mountain side toward the castle. How the hell the big bear was managing this incredible feat I had no idea, but the fact remained that he was doing the equivalent of keeping his and Hana’s heads above water, even as the avalanche began to slow its pace.