Blood and Royalty (11 page)

Chapter Twenty-Four

The Nightshade shot out of the water again, but this time it landed on the beach and began burning harsh slices through Jade’s scales and flesh as the wounded green dragon paddled this way and that, trying to avoid the painful rays.

Zahrellion couldn’t see the Sarsaraxus, for it was moving far too swiftly. According to Jenka, if it gained the Nightshade’s back, then both of them would be able to move that fast, and they would get away, or maybe even decimate them right here.

The Druids of Dou had always believed that your life’s wrongs come back around. Zahrelllion decided that maybe they all deserved to die out here, where they’d banished a man who’d saved them all three times over.

Zahrellion couldn’t hate Herald enough, even though he was dead. How had he killed a chained wyrm just like that? It was why she’d told Amelia to spare Richard. She’d been leery at first, allowing a child of Amelia’s age to handle Jenka’s abused and forgotten brother, but there were four dragons with her, and the girl was probably as powerful as any of them.

She knew Richard had been a good man before Gravelbone captured him. It was like a sickness. He probably couldn’t be cured, but he wasn’t the person he was now because he’d
chosen
that path. His path had been chosen for him, or maybe the journey had just taken its toll. He was the way he was because he lost his dragon, because he was tortured and then banished by the very people he’d saved by sacrificing his sanity. This hadn’t been how she thought of Richard in the past, but Jenka recently reminded her that they owed Richard life, at the very least, and then hearing that it had been Herald, a man she had loved and trusted, who had murdered Royal’s twin gave her a sort of understanding. Richard wasn’t evil, and he had every right to be bitter. Richard was a valiant hero who was destroyed by the battles he’d won. After that, all the atrocious things he did were nothing more than the effects of a sickness.

Seeing Jade stuck in the open incited her to take a chance. She had Crystal spray as much of her frosty spew over the beach as she could. If the Sarsaraxus was there, it would have to avoid the stuff; even in hyper-speed, her dragon’s breath would be frigid. In fact, Zahrellion thought it might make the beach that much colder for the creature, as it had to spend a hundred times longer surrounded by all the frigid liquid moving at a snail’s pace around it.

She decided that was how it would be for the thing. If everything slowed around them when they were moving like that, as Jenka and Amelia had separately described to her, then her dragon’s breath would stay cold, and the creature would be moving through it as the stuff practically hovered around it. It would be like an ice storm happening so slowly that everything got frozen to the core, because of the longer, slower buildup of the chill.

The island wasn’t that big. With the sword, Zah sent similar explosions of icy stuff over every space, intentionally leaving one area open.

She was relieved to learn from Amelia that Richard was leaving without resisting, and even more pleased that two of the High Draci appeared in the sky over the beach. One of them, the dark green dragon, spat a powerful blast that sent the Nightshade flailing and left a huge crater on the beach, which immediately started filling with water.

Then she saw the swarm of mudged coming toward them from the direction of the Mainland.

They were like a flock of giant birds, all flying in shifting formations of a score or more. There were a few groups, too, probably three hundred of them that she could see, maybe more.

Something hit her and Crystal with a force then, but they were well warded, and the strange magic of the sword protected them from anything more than being pushed across the sky.

Apparently, the Sarsaraxus was angry with her, but she couldn’t see it, so she had Crystal start toward the swarming mudged. The Nightshade was controlling them, and now engaged in an aerial battle with the two High Draci.

Zahrellion called for Amelia across the ethereal. If they hurried, they could end this. Marcherion had been right. With Jenka wounded so badly, her daughter was the only one who could so much as see the creature.

With the sword, and all her alien intelligence and ability, Amelia would have to end this thing. Until Milly got here, though, Zahrellion was going to fill the sea around Serpent’s Isle with dead wyrms.

*

Aikira cast a wizardly healing spell on Jenka. Then she gently levitated him up out of the water to sit in the saddle behind her. He screamed when his legs were spread by the golden-scaled dragon’s girth, but he used his dragon tear, his alien essence, and all the will he could muster to strap himself in the saddle behind her.

It will be dizzying at first, and we will have to avoid Zahrellion’s clever trick,
Jenka said as quickly as he’d ever spoken to her since his encounter with the alien.

She wasn’t sure where the drifting, lime-eyed person she’d grown used to was, but she was sure he’d thought to her that fast so he could get all the words out before the world around them went spinning and then returned to her, only frozen. No, it was still moving, but so slowly that her mind, and even her ancient dragon’s, had to take a few moments to get used to it.

They saw the Sarsaraxus then, and Golden started for it with a purpose. It had to avoid all the slowly falling ice Zahrellion had left. When they saw what had been done to Jade, Aikira felt Jenka’s rage building behind her. Her own anger was peaking, for not only was the young green dragon striped with bloody lines, but Marcherion was dead, and so was his dragon, and there was no fixing it.

Quick, all three of us at once, before it realizes we are moving with it,
Jenka’s thought assailed her.

Aikira felt a vibration behind her that sent a shiver up her spine. How one man could have so much power and knowledge flowing through him all the time was beyond her. The energy left him unseen, and just as soon as it started crackling yellow and spider-webbing all around the startled Sarsaraxus, Aikira and Golden let loose, too.

Aikira sent a pulse of violent energy, and her dragon swooped past it and bathed it with a molten, golden spew.

Two things happened then.

The big black creature roared from the pain of Aikira’s blast more than anything, for Jenka’s evaporating web, and Golden’s hardening spew had mostly been diverted by whatever forces shielded it.

The second thing was that it sent a blast back at them, then ran across the island and traversed the rocky hills like a grown man climbing over a play yard hill. It leapt a hundred paces, at the very least, and landed on the Nightshade’s back, bringing it into hyper-mode, too.

The huge, older, red dragon in the sky was an almost perfectly still target for the Sarsaraxus’s first blast, and a hole tore clean through the wyrm. It was the same way Blaze had met his end, and Aikira was suddenly stricken with sadness and worry that she’d never see her son again, for even as Jenka blasted, the other High Dracus was cored before their eyes.

Worse than that, after the creature gained the Nightshade’s back, it loosed a blast at Zahrellion and Crystal that was surely about to end them, too.

Chapter Twenty-Five

Rikky.
Marcherion’s ethereal voice was weak, but Rikky heard him.

I’m coming,
Rikky said, using both his and Silva’s senses to try to locate exactly where he was on the island.

Yess.
Marcherion was clearly struggling.
Give my medallion to Jenka’s son. Swear it.

I will.
Rikky knew he had to hurry.

Theressss,
Silva hissed, indicating she saw Marcherion. She spiraled down into a rocky area that looked as if a terrible hail storm had just passed over.

Quit talking and wasting energy. We are almost there,
Rikky said, but all hope drained from him when he saw his friend. Marcherion’s left heel was touching the back of his head, the whole leg underneath him, and his right arm lay in a swollen arc, as if his limb had been broken, the elbow bones shattered completely.

Don’t heal me,
Marcherion said.
Take the medallion to Prince Jericho. Tell Aikira, it is the metal surrounding my dragon tear that keeps me from the lust for its power.

For a moment, Rikky didn’t feel March there at all.

Tell Jenka and Zahrell…

By the time Rikky teleported from Silva’s back to his friend’s side, March was dead. Rikky did his best to straighten March’s body out, but he knew better than to try to revive his friend. Just the idea of living on without Silva tore his heart. March wouldn’t want to live on without Blaze. He knew his brother was at peace now, but he wasn’t.

He took the medallion by the chain and pulled it over his head. “It will not come off of me until I give it to the prince.” Rikky closed Marcherion’s eyes then, and wiped a tear from his own cheek. When he tried to get up, his peg leg slipped on the ice.

AAAAAGGGGGGHHH,
he yelled across all the planes of existence, for such was the power Marcherion’s teardrop medallion added to his own, that he didn’t fall, but was supported by their combined forces.

He wanted to stay and fight. With this multiplied power not making his head swim, he could do great damage to the swarming mudged, but he’d sworn to give the teardrop to Jericho. He was just as angry over that as he was at the fargin’ bastard who killed March, but he understood now. The sword and the medallion were meant to be together, or so it seemed, for they’d been found that way. Jericho would have the sword, and he knew the story of the white stag and the body March and his friend had found in the cavern. The prince wasn’t bonded with a wyrm. As a king, he would need the power of a teardrop that didn’t overcome him like the huge magical jewels often did.

With more regret than he could measure, Rikky teleported to Clover’s castle, where the ogres and several High Draci were guarding over the crown prince.

He wanted to give the boy the thing and then get back to the battle, and he would. Even through his sorrow, or maybe because she’d been a lover, he thought about Clover. He hadn’t seen her in the sky over the island. In fact, he hadn’t seen her since he left the castle last time, but then again, the sky had filled with mudged just as he was leaving. Maybe she’d been in it, or off laying a trap?

*

Jenka saw Zah throw the sword across the sky at his daughter, who was riding, even commanding, a small, blue wyrm. He smiled because he shared Amelia’s thoughts, and even thought with her at times. This made him wonder if the alien that had swallowed him had been of a hive mind. Amelia’s sharp thought directed him to urge Golden toward Zahrellion. All the shielding Errion Spightre was providing her was gone, and the Sarsaraxus’s devastating magic was upon her. He sent an emerald blast at her that raced across the stilled sky and more or less redirected the brunt of the Sarsaraxus’s blast away from his wife.

He saw his daughter slip time, reach out and grab the hovering blade, and then disappear from the sky. Aikira and Golden both blasted at the Nightshade as it started fleeing the island, carrying the big black thing with it. Jenka could sense the pollen it was exuding. It was as if the act of battle was shaking more of the invisible stuff into the air. At least the wind was blowing south, away from the Mainland.

We- don’t- want- it- to- even- get- close-!
Jenka yelled into the ether, trying to slow his words so that they could be heard in real time, hoping that the others, and his daughter, understood him.
Take--- care--- of--- Jade,
he said as slowly as he could to Zahrellion alone. Then he urged Golden to catch the thing before it reached the Mainland, knowing that only if they killed the Nightshade would the mudged stay.

They flew as swiftly as the larger golden-scaled wyrm could fly, and Jenka used his teardrop and his alien ability to make them move as fast as he possibly could. Soon, they saw the pair of dark-skinned things racing north.

It didn’t take long to get right on the Nightshade’s tail, and from the advantage of having Aikira there to keep Golden on track, Jenka let loose one of his crackling yellow webbings at the pair.

It missed, but part of the spell tangled around the Nightshade’s hind leg and caused them to slow a bit and turn. Before Golden could change directions, they flew right into the Sarsaraxus’s bone-jarring spell. Jenka was thrown from the saddle and into terrible pain as the saddle straps yanked at his shredded legs and inertia broke them.

Aikira stayed mounted, but both she and her dragon were tumbling through the air so slowly now, that Jenka couldn’t help but wonder if the yank from hyper-speed when they were separated killed them. It might not matter, he saw, as the Sarsaraxus was about to core Golden, just like it had Blaze and the two dragons over Serpent’s Isle.

Falling, there was little Jenka could do, but he tried anyway. Just as he’d diverted the blast that might have cored Crystal, he sent an emerald pulse at the Sarsaraxus’s blast and hoped he had a better aim than he’d just had with his webbing. Then he hit the water and found that at his rate of speed, it felt more like impacting stone.

Chapter Twenty-Six

Zahrellion threw the sword to her daughter, knowing that with Amelia’s ability to slow the world around her, there was no way she wouldn’t catch it. Amelia was there one moment, then she and the sword were both gone. She heard Jenka’s voice like a whisper, and realized the mudged were leaving.

In less than a few heartbeats it was only her, Crystal and Jade there. Marcherion’s body, and three dragons, including Blaze, were sprawled on the island, or partly so.

Jade was wounded badly, and only just now making the beach, so Zahrellion and Crystal flew to him. She used all of her druidic knowledge and Crystal’s dragon dour to heal the younger wyrm, and several long hours later, it was clear that after they both had a good rest, they could wing it back to Clover’s castle.

Crystal agreed to watch over them while Zah slept off her weariness. Jade’s rapidly healing body would be stealing his energy for a while, so they couldn’t hurry anyway.

Zahrellion found that she wasn’t worried about her children like she’d been in the past. Jericho was a grown man, or almost, and Amelia was able to take care of herself. As she drifted off into slumber, she wondered how different it would have been if Anka Vira had kidnapped Milly instead of Jericho.

The witch would have brought her back.

*

It was awkward getting his legs back over Golden’s saddle, but at least this time when Aikira lowered him she gave him time to adjust them. Even as they leapt back into hyper-speed and started north, Jenka didn’t bother to strap himself in. He could read Amelia’s thoughts as if they were his own. He even interjected reason and suggestion into her mind as she did what she was doing.

He was glad she understood that they had to kill the Sarsaraxus before they gave Jericho the sword. Jericho wasn’t raised to be a king of war, but of peace. Jenka decided that he would leave his son a kingdom at peace, if it was the last thing he did. He knew that letting Richard live was a risk, but Richard was a fly compared with the things they were battling now. Jenka thought that even Gravelbone had been a tool of the Nightshade. Apparently, his mother and sister would soon give Jericho the tool he needed to keep the flies away. For the nicknames he knew for Errion Spightre were many: Peace Bringer, Life Giver, The Great Uniter, Demon Slayer. It was a sword for a king. It always had been.

The song about the weapon had made it across the sea on the
Dogma
, but had been told, according to Clover, a few hundred years before even that. He was suddenly wondering where Clover was, when they’d seen her last. He didn’t have time to ponder her long.

We will be coming up on something amazing soon enough,
Jenka explained.
Be ready to send your most devastating spells at it when you get your chance, because there may only be one opportunity to end this.

Aikira gasped when she saw it, for it was an amazing sight to behold.

A dozen or more High Draci all in a downward-arcing row were hovered there, almost perfectly still, for they were in real time. The dragons at the sides of the half-circle were parallel to the ocean, facing each other, but a good distance apart. The rest were evenly spaced between them around some imaginary center point. Their fiery, lightning, gaseous, and metallic spews were all blasting forth in real time, too, creating a multicolored wonder, an impassable wall of barely moving dragon’s breath before the Sarsaraxus and its hellborn mount.

Milly was using the sword to send jagged bolts of energy at the two black-skinned creatures, but she wasn’t able to get through their shielding; she could only knock them off course and agitate the Sarsaraxus every time it tried to blast at one of the dragons.

She was doing a good job of keeping the Sarsaraxus from getting around the amazing barrier she’d had the dragons create. Jenka couldn’t have been more proud.

Get us close, Golden,
Aikira voiced.
I’ve a message from Marcherion and Blaze to deliver.

Yesss, closerss.
Jenka knew his voice sounded like Jade’s, for his alien ability allowed him into his dragon’s most private thoughts, and he and Jade had become more than just bondmates; they were nearly one. Knowing his dragon was safe with his wife and Crystal gave him the freedom to take risks he would not take with his other half.

As soon as you let your magics loose, I will leave you back in real time.
Jenka was speaking to both Aikira and Golden.
If I do not survive thisss, take care of my wife, for my children will be able to take care of themselvesss.

Jenka imprinted his next command on their minds so that they didn’t waste time questioning him, for here they were, and the situation was perfect.

Aikira let loose a warbling mass of sticky-looking goo, and her dragon a gout of molten gold.

Then, just as he had before, Jenka teleported from Golden’s back to a place mostly inside the Sarsaraxus.