Bitterwood (9 page)

“The wizard won’t have long to cherish his freedom,” Albekizan snarled. “Bander, see to it that the human girl is killed. We’ll not need that traitor’s help. Once you’ve seen to her death, go at once to the dungeon. Bring me Blasphet.”

“B-B-Blasphet!” Bander said, his turtle-like beak hanging agape.

Blasphet?
thought Zanzeroth, realizing for the first time that the depth of Albekizan’s hatred of Bitterwood might be greater than his own.

“Blasphet?” said Metron. “Sire, surely—”

“Silence,” growled Albekizan. “I’ve given my order. Despite his deeds I’ve kept Blasphet alive for a day such as this. No dragon that ever lived has more of a genius for killing. Bring him to me. Bring me the Murder God.”

ON THE WESTERN
side of Albekizan’s palace, a winding maze of chambers led to a star-shaped room that was home to Vendevorex, Master of the Invisible. The room itself was a nearly impenetrable labyrinth of piled books. Lining the walls were dusty shelves filled with handblown bottles of all sizes and shapes, their murky contents gleaming in the light of the small window slits that lined the chamber. Jandra sat at a desk in the middle of the labyrinth, a massive tome cracked open before her, the pages bearing colorful detailed drawings of clams and snails. For a Master of Invisibility, sometimes her mentor could be incredibly transparent. This assignment was obviously meant to keep her out of his way while he investigated Bodiel’s murder.

The knock on the chamber door came as a relief to Jandra. While normally a devoted student, she welcomed the excuse to take a break from reading about snails. She brushed her long brown hair back from her eyes and went to the door. Vendevorex never had visitors but sometimes while he was away servants would sneak up to talk to Jandra in hopes of acquiring some minor potion or charm. She knew enough of Vendevorex’s art to help most supplicants. The salve she mixed really could heal burns, and while the love potions she provided were only colored water, they gave people confidence and courage, which often brought them the love they sought.

Unfortunately, when she opened the door she didn’t find a serving girl or a stable hand. Four earth-dragon guards awaited her, one carrying iron manacles.

“Come,” said the dragon with the manacles.

“Where?” she asked. “Why?”

“Don’t question me,” the guard snapped, reaching out to grab her arm, his claws digging into her skin.

“Ow! All right! I’m coming!” she said. She contemplated turning invisible but couldn’t see how it would help while he held her. Once he released her she would have more options.

The guard locked the manacles around her wrists. The cold steel clamped her as tightly as the earth-dragon’s scaly grip. They dragged her by her chains into the hall. In the distance she heard a woman scream.

“What’s going on?” she asked.

“Silence!” The guard slapped Jandra’s face.

Jandra’s head spun. The earth-dragon guards were no taller than her, but they possessed incredible strength. Earth-dragons were slow and a bit dimwitted, but still dangerous. It was safest to cooperate. She bit her lip and walked on, now pushed by the pointy end of a spear. Another cry echoed through the hall, a man this time. The guards weren’t merely after her, apparently, but after all the humans in the castle. Was this tied to Bodiel’s disappearance? If so, she could expect only the worst from Albekizan.

Where was Vendevorex? Why was he allowing this to happen?

To her surprise the guards led her not to the dungeons, but to another tower. They unlocked the manacles and shoved her into a large, comfortably furnished room, though once the heavy door shut behind her it was as secure as any dungeon cell. She moved toward the room’s single window when she heard the shouts outside. Through iron bars she looked onto a courtyard where perhaps twenty humans stood, lined before an earth-dragon wielding an axe. To her horror, a woman was being pushed down to her knees. An earth-dragon guard roughly slammed the victim’s head against the chopping block. It was Ruth!

“Stop!” Jandra cried out. Mary, next in line, looked up to the tower.

“Don’t look!” Mary shouted through tears.

“No!” Jandra screamed as the axe rose.

She turned away in helpless anger as the executioner performed his task. The wet
thunk
sent a chill up her spine. Mary was screaming.

Jandra slammed her fist into the stone wall and sank to the floor, sobbing. How could even Albekizan order such a thing? What did Ruth and Mary have to do with Bodiel’s death?

Mary kept screaming for what seemed like an eternity. And then she stopped.

Jandra buried her face in her knees and bit her lips. This couldn’t be happening.

There was a gust of wind from the open window, followed by a scraping sound as claws clenched stone.

“Jandra,” grunted a disembodied voice. “Stand away from the window.”

Jandra raised her head. “Ven! Where are you?”

“Uhn. I’m clinging to the wall outside. Not much to hold onto.” The iron bars shifted, rust flaking, as unseen talons grasped them. “It seems I may have made a strategic error in sending you back to our quarters.”

“What’s going on, Ven?” Jandra said, jumping back up to the window, wiping away her tears. “Those people in the courtyard, they—”

“Are being executed,” said Vendevorex. “Don’t think about it. You’re in terrible danger; my first priority is your rescue. Stand back.”

“Why is this happening?” Jandra said, grabbing the iron bars, so cold and immobile. She sought Vendevorex’s claw but couldn’t find it. Apparently, he was no longer holding the bars.

“There’s no time to answer your questions,” said Vendevorex. “I must steady myself to disintegrate the mortar holding in the stones around the window. The stones will collapse inward. Stand back. Hurry!”

Jandra let go of the window. She wiped her cheeks again as she stepped toward the middle of the room. “Do it.”

Dust trickled from beneath the window. With a
crack
, several large stones broke free and crashed to the floor. The iron bars landed on top with a loud
clang
.

“What’s going on in there?” a guard shouted through the door.

“I-I tripped,” Jandra shouted back. She grabbed a pitcher of water that had been left in the chamber and thrust her hand into it. Concentrating, she worked the water into steam, filling the room with fog.

“Hurry,” Vendevorex said, climbing through the hole in the wall and turning visible. “I’ll fly you out of here.”

Jandra dashed to his side. She paused when she spotted the long, open wound on his cheek.

“You’re bleeding,” she said.

“It’s not important. I’ll heal it when there’s time. For now, we must fly.”

“But you haven’t been able to carry me for years,” Jandra said as she heard the guard’s keys rattling at the lock. “Oh, we should have thought this through!”

“I have,” he said. “Flying with your weight isn’t so much a problem as taking off. I’ll have a forty-foot drop to build sufficient speed to carry you. Hurry!”

Jandra went to her teacher’s breast and hugged him by the neck as she had done when he carried her in the harness years ago. She clasped her heels around his waist just below his wing-folds. The fog swirled as the door opened.

Vendevorex leapt. Jandra closed her eyes as they plummeted, the wind whistling past her ears. Then her stomach twisted as their downward momentum changed abruptly to forward motion. Vendevorex grunted with each beat of his wings. She opened her eyes and saw the stone wall of the courtyard mere yards away. In the half instant it took for her eyes to snap shut once more Vendevorex veered upward, clearing the wall by inches. Needle-sharp pains pricked along the back of her scalp as the rough stone snatched away strands of her flowing hair.

She opened her eyes again. They were flying above the forest. In the distance she could see the gleaming silver ribbon of the river. They soared far higher than the tallest spires of the palace now, and it seemed as if she could see forever. It was odd to be overcome with nostalgia while fleeing for her life, especially given the horrors she only just witnessed, but the sight of the world from on high brought back her earliest childhood memories, soaring high above the world, the wind rushing past, clinging to Vendevorex for warmth and safety.

“We’ve got a problem,” Vendevorex said, his voice barely audible above the wind. “We’re being pursued.”

Jandra looked back. A score of sky-dragons were rising from the roof of the castle. It was the elite aerial guard—the swiftest, most agile fliers in Albekizan’s army. Her heart sank.

“Oh no,” she said. “You’ll never escape carrying me! You… you should save yourself.”

“Don’t even think of letting go,” Vendevorex said. “Our only chance is invisibility. You’ll need to create the illusion. I’m too taxed at the moment to concentrate.”

“I-I’ll do it,” Jandra said. “I’ve been practicing.”

“Take care. You’ll find that the wind makes the illusion difficult.”

Impossible is more like it
, Jandra thought. Vendevorex was good enough to turn invisible in the wind and even in rain. He could walk and fly invisibly while Jandra could only maintain the effect if she stood still. She could not reveal her doubts to Ven, however.

Jandra clasped her mentor’s neck more tightly with her left arm while her right arm reached into the pouch of silvery dust she kept on her belt. The wind snatched most of the dust from her grasp the second she pulled her hand free, carrying it beyond the range of her control. She knitted her brow in concentration, envisioning each individual particle of dust in her palm, feeling it come to life. She released it, and with effort kept enough of the dust close to her to make the light deflection possible. The tiara on her brow grew warm as she extended the control field, bending the flight of the dust to her will, swirling the motes into a sphere large enough to encompass Vendevorex’s wingspan. Suddenly the sunlight dimmed as the particles began to follow the reflective pattern Vendevorex had taught her.

“Well done,” Vendevorex said, his voice weak. “Maintain control. And please, ever so slightly, relax your arm.”

“Sorry,” Jandra said, realizing she was choking him. As she thought of this the sunlight brightened once more. She gritted her teeth and snapped the dust back into the pattern.

“I can’t believe I’m getting this to work,” she said. “I’ve screwed it up every time I’ve ever tried it.”

“You’ve put in the practice,” Vendevorex said. “All you’ve lacked, perhaps, was the motivation.”

The pursuing dragons drew closer now, but their heads swayed from side to side, searching. Ven actually slowed his pace, dropping low, skimming over the tree branches. The guards pressed forward, passing above them, traveling in the direction Vendevorex had held the whole time they’d been visible. A lone straggler remained behind them.

“We’re losing them,” she whispered as Vendevorex banked toward the river.

“I can’t go much further,” Vendevorex said, the strain evident in his voice. “Once we clear the river I’ll need to land. From there we’ll continue on foot.”

“Where are we going?” Jandra asked.

“I don’t know,” Vendevorex answered, sounding hesitant, even lost.

The wind around Jandra grew suddenly colder. She’d never heard these words from her mentor before, or even this tone. Vendevorex always knew what to do, always had everything plotted and planned and under control.

Her mind drifted for a moment as she considered the implications. Then, suddenly, she snapped back to attention. The lone member of the aerial guard who’d still been behind them was diving straight toward them, a blue streak, still a hundred yards away, but closing fast. When she’d allowed her mind to wander the invisibility had been disturbed by the rushing wind.

The guard held an eight-foot long spear in his hind talons. It zoomed toward them quicker than she could think, closing the distance by a dozen yards a second. She tried to will the invisibility back until, with a sudden jerk, the dragon whipped his rear claws forward and released the spear.

“Ven!” she shouted.

Vendevorex jerked his neck around just in time. The spear passed through the air where his head would have been if he hadn’t looked back.

Alas, they were too close to the treetops. Jandra felt leaves and twigs snatching along her clothes until her shoulder collided on the tip of a pine. The tree was limber; it bent against her momentum, bruising her shoulder rather than breaking it. But it was enough to wreck her grip. Suddenly, she was falling. She closed her eyes as she flew toward the thick limbs of a second pine. The branches ripped at her as she skidded along the thick needles, then suddenly she was back out in open air, her limbs flailing. She opened her eyes in time to see the surface of the river rushing up to meet her. She tried to draw a breath of air but was too late. She smashed into the river, sucking water into her lungs.

Disoriented, she kicked and clawed, trying to make sense of what was up and what was down. To her relief, she broke back through the surface. She coughed out water then drew in great gasps of sweet air. The river wasn’t deep here near the water’s edge. Her feet found traction on the rocky bottom. When she stood the water was barely above her waist.

She staggered toward the shore, rubbing her eyes, half-blind from the water streaming from her hair. She stumbled when she reached the bank as her waterlogged gown tangled around her feet and she slipped on the slick rocks.

She crawled further onto the rocky bank, still coughing and spitting out water. Suddenly, the top of her head collided with something hard. She looked ahead and found herself staring at scaly blue legs with knees that bent backward and sinewy talons sporting two-inch, pitch-black claws. A long blue tail twitched behind the legs, catlike.

“Ven?” she asked, then looked up. It wasn’t Ven. The aerial guard who’d thrown the spear loomed over her, a long knife clutched in his fore-talon.

Jandra flinched as the guard reached for her.

Then, from the tree line, a voice: “Stop!”

It was Vendevorex. He stepped from the trees, looking more frightened than she’d ever seen him. He seemed smaller somehow, diminished in his fear.