The Confliction (Book Three of the Dragoneers Saga) (Dragoneer Saga) (9 page)

Rikky blasted this way and slung magic that. He and his wyrm twisted, turned, and dodged a hundred razor-sharp claws. He could see that the rangers and witches on the ground were overrun with Sarax, trolls, and whip-lashing ogres. To Rikky, it looked like they were getting routed. Then he saw Jenka slump over limply, a long string of goopy blood dangling from his boot like a kite tail.

Marcherion was in a fix. Blaze was big, and the bitter climate sapped something from him. The five Sarax that were swarming him were able to literally fly circles around him. The fire wyrm’s scorching breath had them wary to attack near his head. This allowed March to loose his arrows unhurried. He was down to three, though, and now two as he just missed the eye of one of the bastards with his shaft. Blaze was trying to outfly them with sheer power, but it wasn’t working. Whenever he pushed his wings down, one of the foul aliens would disturb the flow of his thrust while another darted in underneath, causing Blaze to reflexively tuck to protect his soft underbelly.

Jade was landing, and Jenka looked to have bled out in his seat. Aikira was buried in a snow drift a half mile away in the woods, probably dead from the violent shock the dying Sarax emitted, if not frozen to death. Rikky looked about to be caught in a swarm of the things, too. March didn’t know what to do. He decided that if Rikky and Jenka could throw magic with the power of their teardrops, then he could, too.

He reached into his thick fur-collared riding cloak and pulled out the dragon tear medallion he wore. As the first Sarax sank its teeth into Blaze and took a bite, a power that seared Marcherion’s spine erupted up through his chest and out of his eye sockets. Twin rays of cherry energy cut across two of the Sarax. The white gold medallion was glowing, not the dragon tear mounted in it. March let it dangle, somehow knowing he didn’t need it in his hands. Only a small portion of the force flowing through him was from the tear. The white gold, and the symbols etched in the medallion formed of the stuff, held a different sort of power: a power that was raw and unrefined by generations of inherent understanding. He turned his head to seek out another Sarax to attack, but he was suddenly ripped from his seat. Skin-puncturing claws gripped him tight, and he was taken down to rocky ground so hard that he felt his legs snap when he impacted.

Jade landed easily. Jenka was limp and slipping from his seat, and he knew it, but it was all right because he was only inches from the deep, drifting snow the green dragon was wallowing in. When he slid off, Jenka was shocked back into full consciousness by ice falling into his collar. His lower gut was open, but his gizzards had only ballooned out a bit because the slice was vertical, from just above his button to the bottom of his cage. He unshouldered his sword belt while lying mostly submerged in powdery fluff. He held the hilt and used the power of his blade to try and knit the wound closed, but he couldn’t do it.

Rikky was the healer.

Not for the first time, Jenka’s ears were ruined. They throbbed with the thundering beat of his pulse. He hated that he couldn’t hear anything other than that infernal, buzzing drone. He wanted to reassure Jade. He wanted to hear Jade’s reassurance, too.

He pulled the sheath from its belt and held it in his teeth as he cinched the buckle tight around his middle. Once he’d recovered from the pain, he stood with his sword drawn and found a small band of trolls, some with antlers, some not, trudging toward Jade through the snow.

Jenka took out an ivory-antlered creature with a blast of emerald Dou from his sword, but then he was in close combat, swinging. He diverted a surely lethal claw, and then he hacked deeply into a troll. All the while he feared spilling his insides. Jade’s roar sounded like it was coming from a hundred leagues away, but Jenka still heard it. He ran another troll through, but was knocked aside when Jade thrust his head at one of the vermin. Jenka didn’t see it coming at him from the side, but his dragon saved him.

A filthy clawed foot raked across Jenka’s middle, causing him to cry out. He whirled with his sword and sliced one of the already wounded trolls open, but another of them rained a trio of powerful hammer-fist blows into his face. Jade latched onto the troll with his teeth and slung it away.

Jenka looked up with just enough time to see a knot of hungry Sarax converge on Rikky and Silva in the sky. That view was eclipsed by an open maw full of bloody razor teeth. As those jaws snapped shut in a steamy whirl of alchemical breath, something yanked hard on Jenka’s leg and dragged him down into the snow. The loose powdery fluff caved in over him as he went. Jenka couldn’t believe the Sarax missed him. With his arms outstretched and dragging behind him, all he could see when he opened his eyes was pure white snow.

Rikky felt Silva lurch from the pain of the first bite and he cried out in anguish over it. He’d had his leg eaten by trolls, and he was trapped in a cloud of worse things now. He didn’t want to die, nor did he want his dragon maimed, but there was nothing either of them could do. There were dozens of Sarax. One of them got a hold of Silva’s neck. Rikky threw a blast of Dour magic at it. It let go, but there was a semicircle of dashed gashes left. They instantly started spilling blood.

A claw raked Ricky’s back. As he leaned forward and hugged his dragon tightly, he felt Silva shudder again. Then they were falling, not flying. The next think Ricky knew, something spewed freezing cold liquid all over him. His dragon was suddenly writhing in the sky like a hurled snake. Rikky found himself plummeting from a great height toward the mass of massacred rangers below.

He didn’t fall far. Claws gripped him hard and he felt the air being squeezed from his lungs. He wasn’t about to crash anymore, but his situation was no less bleak. Then he saw something that sank his heart so far into his guts that he didn’t care what happened next.

There was Herald, near where the low protective wall had been breached along the orchard rows. The old ranger was full of splintered shards, lying amid a litter of bodies in the middle of a great red-black stain in the snow.

Tears were streaming from Rikky’s eyes so hard he couldn’t see. He was suddenly on the ground, though. When he cleared his vision enough to make out what was happening, he was shocked. He saw that it was Prince Richard and the Nightshade that had just set him down.

Without another thought, Rikky spotted his dragon in the sky. She was bleeding badly in several different places, but she was out of the Sarax swarm. Blaze wasn’t so lucky. The fire wyrm was still entangled with a score of them. March wasn’t seated, and Rikky couldn’t see him, but what he saw was as unbelievable as it was amazing.

Prince Richard, no King Richard, Rikky corrected his thought, was slinging from a pony-keg what appeared to be water over the cloud of Sarax attacking Blaze. Where the liquid touched the monsters, bright blue and yellow sparks traced like veins over their skin. The one of them that was splashed the most was suddenly consumed in flickering tendrils of yellow flame before combusting in midflight.

After seeing the Sarax explode, Rikky hop-stepped on his peg-leg through the soft, gore-strewn terrain until he found Herald’s body. Another of the things exploded overhead, and the terrible droning buzz shifted to a desperate howling pitch. He was almost overcome with anguish, but then Herald’s body sighed and twitched. With his dragon tear clenched tightly in his hand, Rikky made to use all the healing knowledge he possessed. He forgot about the world around him and started into his old friend’s body with his mind’s eye.

He would save Herald this day, or exhaust his teardrop’s power trying.

Deep in the temple, Zahrellion was as angry as she had ever been. Lemmy had just appeared and was explaining what was going on outside when Lanxe and a pair of red-robed druids appeared at her cell door. If the foolish rangers and witches had waited just one more day, Zah could have found out what they were feeding the Sarax. Her sweet voice went far toward tempting the dense night cell guard, but all of that was wasted effort now. One of the druids held her still with a spell while the other one made to put a damping hood over her head. Zahrellion’s ancestor, Grock Visium, had designed the hood to still captured Outland pirate-ship magi. It galled her to be going under it yet again. Before it was done, she saw that they’d put King Blanchard in a hood, too, then all she saw was darkness.

Zah was urged, not so gently, down a corridor that led to the roofless interior worship area of the inner sanctum. She knew that was where they were going because she could feel the bitter air blowing through the open doors. She’d been there before when she’d ascended to the White Robe. This time, her arms were bare, as were her legs from the knees down. The wind inside the pentagonal garden was swirling hard. The rest of her was covered in a burlap smock that did little to cut the frigid air. Soon she was stepping through shin-high snow so cold that it numbed her soles before they had a chance to hurt. It wasn’t as bad for her as it might have been for someone else. Zahrellion’s bond-mate was a frost dragon, and she was used to sitting on icy cold scales with wild wind whipping. It wasn’t pleasant, though. Her toes were surely getting the bite, even now.

King Blanchard was livid. Already his angry tongue had earned him an unmistakable wallop on the head with a staff.

“What of the king?” one of the druids asked.

“Blank his mind,” Lanxe said. “Linux’s body may come in useful someday. Throw Zahrahnah’s daughter on the block and extract her manna. Let’s get this over with.”

“Blank my mind? Why you fargin’ dung lovin’ son of a--” King Blanchard started.

“Crack!” a staff sounded as it impacted the hooded head of Linux’s body again.

“I said render him docile!” Lanxe snapped at the druid holding the king.

A loud roar sounded, and what must have been big clumps of snow came falling down on all of them. Men screamed and Crystal screeched out her anger. Zah felt the air grow even colder as her dragon exhaled her freezing spew.

Lanxe spoke the word of a spell she recognized, and Zah heard her big wyrm whoosh out a grunt from the heavy impact of his powerful casting. Then someone hit her so hard that half her teeth went loose. Zah’s head rang from the blow, and over the din she could hear the angry buzz of the Sarax growing louder and louder.