Cursed Bones: Sovereign of the Seven Isles: Book Five (9 page)

“We’ve received reinforcements from the fortress islands,” Corina said. “My wing now stands at ninety-seven Sky Knights, including seventeen witches. Additionally, Bianca has cleared the northern fortress island and established a base of operations there. She is prepared to assist and is already running scouting operations. And Cassandra reports that the wyvern-breeding program is moving ahead and the new class of Sky Knights is ready and awaiting the next hatching.”

“General Kern should arrive within the week,” General Markos said. “Quarters have been set aside for the Rangers, and we’ve already made preparations for stabling their horses. The latest supply shipment arrived from Ithilian today so we should have enough food to last through the winter.”

“Any word from Ruatha?” Abigail asked.

“I’m afraid not,” General Markos said.

Abigail nodded, pursing her lips. Winter had set in, blanketing the majority of the Isle of Fellenden with over six inches of snow and effectively ending any significant military operations. She had turned her attention to the more mundane, yet vitally important tasks of rebuilding
Fellenden
City
and sheltering the soldiers and refugees under her care.

She was running through the checklist of matters to address when the alarm bell tolled. She looked to Captain Sava, who was standing guard along the wall of the big room. He nodded and sent one of his Strikers for a report. Before the man could reach the door, a roar shattered the early evening.

Only one thing could make such a fearsome noise.

A dragon.

The air in the room dropped precipitously as the ceiling crystallized, freezing solid, icicles forming in seconds.

Everyone stood. Magda, Corina,
Sark
, and Dax began casting spells. The Strikers drew swords and raised shields as a soldier burst into the room.

“A dragon attacks!” he shouted as the arched ceiling shattered, sending blocks of stone raining down.

Anatoly grabbed Abigail and covered her with his body as he shoved her under the table. A rock the size of a man’s head crashed into his back, knocking him unconscious and pinning Abigail underneath him.

Magda’s shield flickered into being, followed a moment later by a force-push spell that shoved a section of ceiling the size of a wagon back against the wall, saving Conner and Torin from being crushed.

Sark
turned to wind, barely escaping as several stones crashed into his chair, leaving nothing but splinters.

One Striker managed to deflect a stone with his shield, suffering a broken arm in the bargain. Another took a direct hit to the head. His helmet was undamaged but the force of the blow broke his neck, dropping him to the floor, dead in an instant.

Sava
raced to Abigail, shield raised overhead, and took a position over her and Anatoly to protect them both.

Corina staggered back as a large section crashed into her shield, exploding into smaller stones that clattered to the floor.

Dax cast a spell that caught a dozen or more stones that were falling toward him, stopping them in midair, blue sparkling light dancing over the surface of each, then with a wave of his hands, he tossed them harmlessly against the wall.

Abigail worked to free herself from Anatoly, rolling him over and frantically checking his breathing. She could hear gurgling as he struggled to draw breath.

“Help me get his armor off,” she said to
Sava
.

She gasped when she saw the extent of the damage. The right side of his upper back was crushed, shattered ribs sticking out and bright red blood flowing freely. She sobbed as she fumbled with her jar of healing salve, scooping out nearly all of the contents and spreading it liberally on his back, then gently rolling him onto his side so she could pour a healing draught down his throat.

When she looked up into the sudden silence, she saw that General Markos and two of the Strikers had been killed by the falling debris. The general was crushed under a section of stone that would have killed a horse. He’d died almost instantly. Several Strikers were down, a few were struggling to get back up, some would never rise again.

“Call for a healer,” Abigail commanded.

One of the Strikers nodded and raced off.

“We have to get you out of here, Lady Abigail,”
Sava
said.

“I’m not leaving him,” she said, kneeling next to Anatoly and cradling his head in her lap. She felt the knot in her stomach tighten when she saw the bright red blood on his lips. He was hurt … badly. Then she heard another roar, and though not as fearsome as a dragon’s, it had a similar quality. She looked up and saw a dozen or more creatures descending into the room.

They were a mixture of man and dragon, each standing eight feet tall with pale blue scales like those of a snake covering their entire bodies. They had bright golden eyes, horns that swept back from their dragon-like heads, and a ridge of spikes running down their backs. They were thin and sinewy, but looked inhumanly strong. Blue batlike wings, a long bone-bladed tail, sharply clawed hands and feet completed the nightmare.

One landed on the table in front of Abigail, its claws gouging into the wood. Captain Sava stabbed at it, but his blade was turned aside by the hardness of its scales. It backhanded
Sava
, sending him tumbling to the floor, then grabbed Abigail by the arm and started to launch into the air.

She grasped the hilt of the Thinblade just as the creature thrust with its wings, slipping the blade free of its scabbard and slashing up toward the monster. The Thinblade cut cleanly through the beast’s arm and wing, sending them crashing to the ground amidst an inhuman shriek of pain from the half-dragon, half-man.

Abigail rolled to her feet as
Sava
and two of his men converged on her, forming a cordon of protection with their dragon-plate shields raised high against the threat descending on them.

Another beast landed in the center of the shattered table. It reared back and breathed a cone of icy air at Magda, coating her shield with frost. She seemed to be chilled by the attack, but her shield protected her from the brunt of it. Her spell came quickly, sudden anger flashing in her eyes … a blue pinwheel of force materialized in front of her, then moved quickly toward the dragon-man, catching it in the midsection and cleaving it cleanly in half. Three of its brethren shrieked in fury at the loss of one of their own.

Another flew over Torin and Conner, breathing a gout of frost on them, chilling them to the bone and sending them to the ground, shivering. They were both still alive, but completely incapacitated by the numbing cold. Corina released a light-lance spell at the beast, burning a hole through its chest. It crashed to the ground and never moved again.

Sark
caught two of the creatures in a whirling vortex of wind and carried them up and out of the chamber into the dark of night.

Another of the beasts grabbed hold of one of the Strikers with its taloned feet and carried him several dozen feet into the air before dropping him to the ground. He crashed into the stone floor and fell still as death.

Mage Dax was feeding power into a ball of lightning that was forming between his outstretched hands. It was growing in size and intensity when a blue dragon landed on the edge of the hole in the ceiling. It was beautiful and terrible all at once. Abigail saw similarities between this one and Ixabrax. Its rider looked down into the room with calm, almost detached calculation.

Zuhl.

“Take the girl,” he commanded as Dax released the ball of lightning at him. Zuhl directed his staff toward the streaking, crackling ball of electrical power and instantly formed a half-shell protective shield in front of him. The lightning struck it with thunderous force, shattering the shield and hitting the dragon square in the chest. The dragon reared back and looked like he was preparing to breathe frost into the room, certain doom for them all, but Zuhl commanded him to stop and they launched into the darkness.

Three of the dragon-men landed around Abigail. All three breathed frost at her and her cordon of Strikers. They all fell in a shivering mass. Abigail had never been so cold. It penetrated into her bones, paralyzing her with numbness. The nearest dragon-man grabbed her and launched into the sky. She held on to consciousness even as the Thinblade slipped from her grasp, burying to the hilt in the stone floor.

At the same time, two more dragon-men breathed frost at Magda and Corina, forcing them to defend against the attack long enough for the beast carrying Abigail to escape. She watched the ground fall away as the beast gained altitude. It flew to Zuhl, perched atop the guard house on the last remaining tower of the fortress.

“Very good,” Zuhl said as he took Abigail and secured her over his saddle in front of him. He whispered a few words and she felt suddenly warmer, though she was still unable to move. Zuhl pulled a fur blanket over her and launched into the sky, followed by the remaining nine dragon-men.

The last thing Abigail saw before she lost consciousness was Mage Dax launching a bolt of lightning at the trailing dragon-man. It hit the creature, lighting it up with crackling power, then arced through the night to another and another and another and another after that, burning a hole through the chest of each as it leapt from one to the next, each falling from the sky in turn.

Chapter 9

She woke in a round room with a single barred window and a trapdoor in the floor. She was lying on a pallet with several furs covering her. The air was cold … she could see her breath in the dim light streaming through the window. Aside from the pallet and furs, the room was completely empty. She checked her boots and found her knives were gone.

She was defenseless.

Still wearing the clothes she’d been dressed in during the meeting with her advisors, she stood and wrapped a fur blanket around her to ward off the chill air. From the tiny window, she could see the ocean below, bleak and foreboding, low clouds blanketing the world to the horizon. Light snow was sporadically whipped into a frenzy by sudden gusts of frigid air.

She went to the trapdoor and tried to open it but it held fast, as she knew it would. She knocked on the door, but got no response, so she sat back down and tried to think of a way out of her predicament.

An hour later, she heard the sound of boots on stone from below, followed by the scraping of metal on metal, and then the trapdoor opened. One of Zuhl’s brutes eyed her with a menacing grin and grunted while motioning for her to follow him.

With a sigh of resignation, Abigail wrapped a fur around her and followed the big man down the corkscrew staircase to the level below. There were four guards in the chamber. Each stared at her in open challenge—she ignored them.

The brute led her through the halls of a keep until he came to a large set of double doors, which opened to a sparsely furnished and somewhat cold room, though warmer than the little tower room where she’d awoken. Zuhl sat at a table with an assortment of foods arrayed before him, all served on fine porcelain dishes.

“Good morning, Lady Abigail,” he said, dismissing the soldier with a gesture. “I trust you slept well.”

She scanned the room, looking for a weapon or an opportunity to escape, anything she could use against Zuhl, but found nothing. She decided to be bold. The temperature of the room didn’t warrant the fur blanket, so she shrugged it off, letting it fall to the floor without a second look. Then she walked to the table and sat down.

“Well enough, considering,” she said as she took an empty plate from a stack and started piling food on it.

He almost smiled, but not quite.

“I have a number of questions for you,” he said. “Most are simply matters of curiosity, a few are of strategic importance. You will answer them all, one way or another.”

Abigail shrugged as she took a big bite of biscuit dripping with blackberry jam. “Maybe,” she said around a mouthful.

He stopped and looked at her, not a simple glance, but really looked at her as if seeing into the essence of her being. Abigail was reminded of Alexander and the way he could look into a person and assess their true nature.

“What were you thinking when you jumped from your wyvern and attacked me in midflight?” Zuhl asked, his penetrating gaze searching her face intently as he awaited her answer.

“I was thinking it was the only way to kill you,” Abigail answered, preparing another biscuit.

“The odds of success were so slim as to be improbable,” Zuhl said. “Failure was almost certain death, yet you didn’t hesitate. Why?”

“I told you, it was the only way,” Abigail said.

“I don’t understand,” Zuhl said, shaking his head slightly, a deep frown creasing his pale brow.

“What choice did I have?” Abigail said. “No one else had any chance at all against that dragon. I was the only one who could do what needed to be done, so I did.”

“You could have retreated, you could have sued for peace and offered terms for a truce, you could have ignored the dragon and focused on the land battle, you could have sent your Sky Knights against me, you could have surrendered, or better yet, you could have stayed on Ruatha where you belong, yet you chose to engage me when you are clearly not my equal.”