Dragonbound: Blue Dragon (8 page)

The massive serpent lay dead, severed in half except for a thin flap of skin. Kanvar wiped the green blood off the blade against Devaj's shirt which was still bound over the wound on his leg. Then he sheathed the sword and retrieved his walking stick.

A warm feeling of gratitude filled him that Devaj had taken the time to fasten the sword to Kanvar's belt. He must have hoped it would somehow keep Kanvar alive.

An amazing sword. He'd loved looking at it as a child while his father polished and sharpened it. But it had only been a thing of beauty then. Now Kanvar realized it had to be something far greater. He rubbed the hilt and felt a tingle of magic spread through his hand and up his arm. Powerful magic. No wonder the Maranie soldiers had feared to touch it and opted instead to burn it along with Devaj.

Kanvar let his hand linger on the tingling hilt. He'd used the sword to blind Dharanidhar, but there hadn't been time then to notice the power. Now, Kanvar strained his fevered mind to remember early lessons about the fall of Stonefountain and the Great War. There had been a legend in all of that about the golden king who carried a magic sword, forged with all the skill of the ancients and powers birthed by the fountain. A weapon created at the height of civilization for the most powerful man alive, Khalid, the Naga bound to the Great Gold Dragon King. But Khalid had been murdered in his sleep at the start of the revolution. No one knew what happened to the sword.

Kanvar imagined what it must have been like to live in the city at Stonefountain before it fell. Legend said the streets and buildings were all made of gold. And the golden king lived in a palace as big as all of Daro at the top of the hill where the fountain bubbled. It sounded perfect. Too perfect, and it had crumbled.

Sweat trickled into Kanvar's eyes and violent shivers took him. His fevered mind imagined he heard Abhavasimha's voice once again.
And what do we have here?
The Great Blue dragon held Devaj's limp body.
Looks like the young Naga princeling.
Such a fine prize
.

"Devaj is a prince?" Kanvar muttered as he staggered his way along the river bank, pressing through the thick bushes and limping around wide trees that dangled roots and branches into the rushing black water. "Son of the Golden King? Heir to the throne of Stonefountain?" But that would mean Amar, Kanvar's own father, was Khalid's successor. But it couldn't be. Stonefountain had fallen a thousand years ago. Amar couldn't be that old.

Kanvar pictures Devaj's wild gold hair glimmering as it had when the soldiers marched him into the colony. Devaj had held his chin high and walked like a prince.

Kanvar staggered and nearly fell. He felt ashamed of his crippled body more acutely than ever before. He was a cripple, twisted, ugly. He dared not stand before Rajahansa, the Great Dragon King, even if Rajahansa was bound to Kanvar's father as he must be.

Kanvar stopped and leaned his stubby arm against a tree. It no longer hurt.
Must not have been broken after all
, he thought. He spread the two fingers and thumb that projected at the end of the odd-shaped limb. From there he looked down at his twisted leg and useless foot.

"Why?" he cried. "Why would Devaj risk his life to come in search of a little brother as repulsive and useless as I am?"

He had no answer.

A piercing scream startled him from his fevered haze.

Chapter Six

Kanvar rubbed the sweat
from his eyes and glanced out into the jungle for the source of the scream. Hundreds of species of trees spread their branches from the understory up through the great canopy. Moss hung on the trunks branches as well as flowering vines and a rainbow of fungi that filled Kanvar's nose with the smell of living green and decaying wood and leaf. Heavy mist hung in the air, blurring Kanvar's eyesight. The steady throb of insects, croak of frogs, and call of birds, silenced in the wake of the scream that came once and then again.

A human scream. That of a girl.

Deep in a thick stand of trees, Kanvar saw a movement of mottled green. He unfastened his crossbow and got it armed with a shaking hand. The girl screamed again from the direction, Kanvar had seen the movement.

Kanvar left his walking stick behind and staggered toward the sound. He couldn't hold it and the crossbow at the same time. The cut in his leg throbbed with fire as he put his whole weight on it, but his leg held him up for the moment.

He blinked, trying to clear the fevered sweat from his eyes, and saw a girl, perched on a thick branch far above his head. She wore mottled green clothes that blended with the leaves around her, and her skin was the same flaked gray as the tree's bark. Only the brown pouch that hung over her shoulder and the black braid, which reached down her back, gave her away. That and the sudden cry she made as she scrambled farther out along the branch.

The cause of her cry took a moment longer for Kanvar to focus on. What he'd taken at first to be another branch of the tree, growing out of the one the girl was on, moved. As it did, the ripple of muscles and scales became visible for a moment. Focusing hard, Kanvar made out a monstrous body: four powerful legs with sharp claws, an arched spine the color of leaves down its back, a thin head with powerful jaws and cunning eyes, and a green glow emanating from between its eye ridges.

A Great Green Dragon.

Adapted to the leafy confines of the dense jungle, it was smaller than the blue and the gold dragons but still gigantic compared to Kanvar. And as invisible in the trees as a Great Gold in direct sunlight.

But the girl saw it and knew she was trapped. The drop to the ground from the high branch she was on would kill her. She scooted back a few more feet.

Kanvar moved closer, then let his crossbow down to rest on the ground in order to save his strength. Though the Great Greens' scales weren't as hard as a Great Blue, its hide was thick and strong and secreted a paralyzing poison. Kanvar's bolt would be useless against a Great Green at that height. But at a close range, it might just penetrate the Great Green's hide.

The green darted forward and swung its long whip-like tail around to rub the poison on the girl's skin. The girl yelped and threw herself from the branch before the tail touched her.

Kanvar sucked in an anguished breath, expecting the girl to fall to the jungle floor. Instead she swung in an arc away from the branch, her hand wrapped around a vine she caught as she went over the side. She made it to the next tree, grabbed another vine, and slid down it. She hit the ground running, while on the branch above, the Great Green hunched in preparation to launch itself after her.

"This way," Kanvar yelled, waving the crossbow.

The girl saw the weapon, switched directions, and ran straight for Kanvar.

The green pivoted to face them and dove from the high branch. It spread its massive front and back legs. Thick flaps of skin billowed out between the forelimbs and the back, allowing the green to glide safely and swiftly to the ground. It landed right behind the girl and swung its tail at her again.

The girl jumped as she sped past Kanvar. The long green tail passed under her feet and slid along the side of Kanvar's leg as the green pulled it back around.

Kanvar smelled the caustic scent of the poison, but his dragonhide armor, even mismatched as it was, saved him. He froze anyway, with the crossbow leveled at the green as it charged toward him.

He waited until the green's chest was less than a foot away before releasing the bolt. It flew true, puncturing the dragon's hide and tearing through its heart.

The green's momentum propelled it forward, and Kanvar had to leap to the side to keep from being smashed as it fell in its death throes. The green light glimmered for a moment in the dragonstone on its forehead then went out.

Kanvar felt the sudden loss of life like a tearing in his own chest. He bit his lip in sorrow. He hadn't even tried to talk to the dragon. If he had, perhaps he would have been able to save both the Great Green and the girl. Kanvar wondered what Rajahansa's punishment might be for murdering a Great dragon. Better not to find out. Better to stay as far away from the Dragon King as possible.

The girl stopped her flight and turned to face him. "You killed it."

Her words cut into him in sharp accusation.

"You killed a Great dragon. I don't believe it." She took a step back toward him. "Weren't you terrified? I've never seen a dragon hunter stand his ground like that. You should have shot so much sooner."

Kanvar rubbed the sweat out of his eyes and shivered. She wasn't accusing him? She sounded impressed instead. Her smooth skin looked beautiful in the green jungle light and her lips parted in a smile as she breathed deeply to catch her breath.

"Not with this crossbow," he answered her. "It doesn't have enough force to kill a Great dragon at a distance."

Her eyes flashed from the crossbow to Kanvar's crippled arm and leg. She leaned her head to the side to get another view of him, and the smile faded from her face. "What kind of a dragon hunter are you?"

Kanvar gritted his teeth, turned away from the girl, and limped over to the fallen dragon. He was used to people seeing him as a useless cripple. He'd only forgotten for a moment in the rush of energy brought on by facing down the Great Green and casting his eyes on such a beautiful girl. Stupid. No girl would have anything to do with him no matter how many dragons he killed.

He strapped the crossbow onto his back and reached out a hand to the smooth green dragonstone. He'd killed a Great dragon, and here was the stone to prove it. He need only pry it from the dead dragon's corpse. It would be worth a lot of money as well as high praise in the dragon hunter jati.

A hand slapped Kanvar's fingers away from the stone with a stinging blow.

"You can't take the dragonstone," the girl said. She pushed him away from the fallen dragon. "It's a Great dragon. Would you dishonor the dead?"

Kanvar blinked at her. A moment ago she'd seemed pleased that he'd killed it. "I just saved your life," he protested.

The girl flushed and hugged the leather pouch to her side, which was full of purple fruit she'd been gathering in the tree. "Yes. Thank you. But you can't take the stone. Its power gives life to the jungle. Our village will be cursed if you don't let it lie where it has fallen."

"Cursed?" Kanvar stumbled back away from the dead dragon. Yes cursed. What would Indumauli think of him now? What would the Dragon King say? Kanvar imagined his own hide being peeled from his body and hung on the King's palace wall. He shuddered. "I'm sorry," he cried as he forced himself to limp away as fast as he could. "Sorry. It was a mistake."

His foot caught on a root, and he fell. The fern fronds closed over him as he hit the ground. The last of his will and strength gave way to fevered delirium.

He barely felt the hands of the girl as she knelt next to him and examined his wounded leg. He hardly noticed when other villagers joined her, lifted him onto a stretcher made of woven vines between two poles. He didn't come back to himself until hours later when he heard a couple of men whispering above him and realized he lay on a mat in a round house, woven of sticks and covered with thick fronds to keep the rain out.

"It's the dragon fever," one of the voices said.

Kanvar blinked, trying to get his eyes to focus on the faces of the men who stood over him. Their skin was gray like the girl's had been, and they too were dressed in green clothing. The man who spoke of the dragon fever was older, wrinkled, with wispy strands of gray hair.

"I don't think so. Dragon fever is too rare. We haven't had a Naga birthed in the village for generations if you don't count Aadi, and he's a long shot," a younger man said. He had thick black hair, which hung free to his shoulders, and he wore a feathered crown on his brow. "The cut in his leg is infected. That's what is causing the fever. It will take time to heal. Then we'll see."

"Yes, we'll see." The older man said. "And when you admit the truth, you know what must be done. We cannot keep a Naga here in the village. It would mean his death and the wrath of the Great King upon us."

Kanvar moaned and tried to sit up. The older man already suspected he was a Naga. He had to get away before the younger one, the village leader from the looks of him, ordered Kanvar killed.

"Easy there now." The village leader pressed a strong hand against Kanvar's chest, forcing him back down. "You need rest and food. Our healer has already cleaned and rebandaged your wound. Don't know how you cut yourself with your own sword. Mighty careless." He chuckled.

Kanvar reached to his side and his back and cried out in alarm as he realized his weapons were missing and his armor gone from his body. "My sword? My bow?"

"Don't fret," the old man said motioning to Kanvar's things in a pile beside his sleeping mat. "Everything is here." He patted the sword in its sheath, which lay at the top of the pile. "Dangerous sword, that. It shocked me when I touched the handle. Wouldn't let me draw it out." His eyes flashed, and his thoughts spun into Kanvar's mind.

The old man recognized the sword. Knew it belonged to the Dragon King's Naga. And so he had no doubt that Kanvar's fever was not caused by the wound in his leg. He knew exactly what and who Kanvar was.