Rise Of The Dragon King (Book 5) (15 page)

Rikky’s heart swelled when he saw them gliding along the newly created shoreline. Zahrellion was in her ivory battle armor and looked as beautiful and fierce as she ever had.

Oh no
, Linux sighed beside him.
Look
.

The druid was pointing at a stream of water that had found a way through the lower part of Jenka’s self-made structure.

Rikky didn’t know what to do. He looked back to Zahrellion, and this time she was close enough for him to see that her expression was pained, and he wondered where the rascals and baby Amelia were.

Then Linux went to the leak and began casting a spell that would hopefully plug it.

CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

K
ing Chad lost six of his men —a dozen if you counted his litter-men— to the big black dragon. He had it collared, though, and was wrestling its defiant will with all the inner strength he could muster. He hadn’t expected to share the dragon’s thoughts through the collar, and he was most relieved to find that the intensity of that sensation subsided somewhat when he wasn’t trying to stay mounted on the angry wyrm.

And the wyrm was angry. Blacky, as the king had started calling his prize, didn’t like losing her free will. She didn’t know what free will was, but not having it was causing her to shudder and snarl, and lash out at people with her tail.

There came a point when King Chad had enough, and he summoned the willpower to force the dragon’s head down. He suffered the intense consciousness sharing, settled himself tight against its neck, and forced his wyrm to take flight. Once they were in the air, the dragon was too preoccupied to rebel against his thought commands, and soon the wyrm was finding the human king’s curiosity a curiosity in itself. When the king urged the dragon to swoop low over a
village and spit melon-sized fire balls at the thatch of a barn, the dragon began to respond with a bit more eagerness. Watching the yellow, barrel-keg-sized balls of flame churn and slowly spin as they flew toward their target made King Chad’s blood tingle with excitement. Seeing the terror in the eyes of the people scrambling below made the dragon’s heart beat faster, too. Before long, they began to understand each other.

King Chad was pleased beyond words. He had expected to be trying to control some super-intelligent thing that was more powerful than he, but this wyrm was starting to be compliant — eager, even. When they sped across the rowed field of one crop or another and she snatched a farmer right out of his plow wagon, the king let loose a roar. He salivated as she landed, ripped apart her treat, and chugged it down in two separate pieces. He could taste the sweet blood and smell its coppery stench. He could feel the stuff sliding down his long gullet. As his guts began digesting the farmer, he felt tingles reaching down his long spine and out through his wings. A deep need for slumber came on.

“No!” he yelled. “We’ve a bit more to do, Blacky, my love. Then we can sate your urge to feed and let you laze on the warm rocks near home.”

The dragon didn’t articulate a response. Chad wasn’t sure if he’d just nabbed a stupid wyrm, or if King Richard had been stretching the truth of it. He
decided the latter was the case, for he’d never heard of dragons doing more than killing cows and attacking caravaners and such.

What of King Richard, anyway?
he asked himself. He no longer needed the man. The kingdoms were forever tied by way of his daughter’s marriage. His daughter was, in fact, now the true queen of the New World. Having that thought while Blacky lowered him into the very rocky pit out of which he’d lured her, he decided that maybe he could create his own legion of Dragonites and put her on her throne properly.

Since he saw no sign of Richard, only a bloody stain a few dozen paces into the cave, he decided that it was his duty now to do so. Richard could be alive in there somewhere, but no one was going in after him to see.

With a confident smirk, King Chad urged his wyrm back up. The gods were smiling on him this day. Not only had he collared a dragon, in one great imagining of a future he had become the Dragon King. And he would buy enough dragon collars to outfit an army and then take his daughter to the land of Dragoneers, relieve them of their station, and sit her on her rightful throne, with or without her husband.

Rikky couldn’t believe how well Aikira was healing. She was no longer
swollen, and her limbs were straight and bending in all the right places. The Outlander was moving stiffly and using a walking stick for support, but the staff went with her high-collared wizard cloak perfectly. Under the cloak, Rikky saw golden plate mail and knew she was struggling to function with the added weight strapped to her.

The two of them, along with Zahrellion and Linux, were standing below the dam Jenka and Jade formed, all wondering nervously what they could do to strengthen the span or relieve their fellow Dragoneer and his wyrm. Golden, Silva, and Crystal were making a new boulder pile even farther upriver, but the flow wasn’t subsiding. It was slowing a bit, but there was already so much water pressing against Jenka’s obstruction that they feared it would tear away from its anchors and fill Demon’s Lake with poison.

Rikky wasn’t wearing armor; in fact, Rikky’s only suit of armor was ceremonial at best. He didn’t think it mattered much. Against trolls and goblins and antler-headed demons, protective clothing was necessary. Against dragons and wizards and beasts that could swallow you whole, it didn’t amount to much.

“Even if we somehow keep holding this back, we will have to buy some of the inoculation,” Zahrellion said. “The seepage alone”—she pointed at the trickle stream running between the base of the dam into the now muddy river bottom—
“might pollute the lake.”

“I think Blaze or Crimzon could evaporate most of that,” Rikky said. He almost said that he wished March were here, but Aikira said it for him in a voice so small it was barely audible.

Rikky was overcome with unease and even a little shame over the jealous feelings he got when Zahrellion went and pressed her face against Jenka’s form. She spoke softly and soothingly, and it was clear to Rikky she still loved her husband. In that moment, Rikky understood the wrongness of loving Zahrellion.

He dropped his head and looked at his scuffed-up boots. He’d told her his feelings earlier, he’d screamed them to her, and he was now suddenly wishing he had held his tongue

Just then, a loud cracking came from the edge of Jenka’s dam. Water erupted out of one fist-sized hole, then another, then a crack crawled upward around where Jenka met the rock face.

“I can only hold it back for so long!” Linux screamed. “Do something to fortify it!”

“What do we do?” Rikky had no idea what he should do, but he knew that if the dam broke, they would be washed away by poison. He put his arm around Aikira and helped her stay steady as they levitated up and out from behind the
lake Jenka had formed.

Then rocks on the far side started cracking and coming loose. It was all Zahrellion could do to drag Linux out of the danger as the upper levels of water came pouring over the places where the rock was giving way.

CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX

R
ichard crept up on the sleeping mudged as if he were the shadow of a shadow. He had done this sort of thing before, back on the island, hunting for food. There were times when he’d had to stand statue-still and move so slowly the fish couldn’t detect him. He didn’t rush, and he was rewarded for it.

The dragon rolled over and extended its long neck, as if it were stretching in its sleep, and Richard casually threw the collar from his shoulder to its shoulders. His movement went from a crawl to a rush in a flash, and he was fastening the buckle and giving commands before the wyrm was even fully awake.

He was thinking he would ride this wyrm deeper into the cavern and use it to find a purer-blooded dracus, but this one turned out to have enough sense to balk when he tried. It was a lot bigger than he first estimated, too, and not nearly as crazed as some of the other mudged wyrms he’d encountered. He decided the gods had favored him with this one, and climbed right onto its shoulders.

He wanted to get into the air and feel the rush of the wind against him. His blood was electric with excitement. He had little trouble gaining the wyrm’s
attention and subduing its will, for he was experienced in dealing with mudged wyrms. It came as a surprise, though, when a few other, smaller, mudged followed them and responded with almost full compliance when he had his new mount order them around.

Dawn was breaking, and no full rays of sun were shining down into the bottom of the cave pit yet, but as Richard’s new dragon lifted them up into the glorious morning, he marveled over how long he had lived thinking these feelings of freedom and power were forever lost to him. He was feeling them now, and the dragon’s frustration and excitement over having been collared as well.

He saw that his wyrm was less black than he’d first thought. It was a brownish-purple color splattered with darker spots. Richard’s skin prickled when he saw the bright blue speckles down its spine. The wyrm was ultimately the color of a flesh bruise; it even had areas of green and orange mixed with the brighter turquoise and the darker shades. Its wing membranes were so thin, Richard could see through them.

Bruiser is a good enough name for you, then
, Richard said.
What do you think, Royal? He looks like a Bruiser, right? The question is, is he royalty, like us?

They shot up into the crisp sky, and Richard found that the less he urged Bruiser, the more the wyrm responded. Soon the dragon was but an extension of
him. It knew his thoughts as he thought them, and Richard’s experienced mind translated those thoughts for his mudged so that it didn’t have to think much on its own.

Richard’s teeth were clenched and his mind raced with ideas of all the mayhem he could cause here in the Old World, and even better, the mayhem he could cause back home. He wasn’t sure that this wyrm could make such a flight, though, and he didn’t know the teleportation spells that Golden and Aikira had mastered for those aggravating Dragoneers.

The thought of home reminded him that King Chad’s sorcerers were planning something shifty there. He didn’t know exactly what it was, because King Chad was smart enough to keep most of his dealings secret, but he knew a trick or trap was being set, and that his brother and Zahrellion were predictable enough that they would probably fall for it.

Richard grinned at one of the lesser mudged, a yellow-speckled wyrm about the size of a horse, as it swept by. The other henchwyrms were dog-sized and pallid. They had a natural pale color that shimmered like dull gold in the sun.

The larger one looked as if someone had slung fresh scarlet blood down its spinal line. To confirm its tainted lineage, a puff of smoke shot forth and then swept back past its head as the wyrm curved and flew around them curiously.

Richard spent most of the morning just enjoying the sky and the world. He was scheming in the back of his mind, but the moment was too powerful to be set aside. He was free again. He was a dragon-rider again, and the mudged he had collared was strong and compliant enough to serve him well. He would decide what to do when the thrill of newfound freedom wore off. Until then, he was going to absorb the world and know that, even with all the delicious pain and agony, there was still room for something so base and primal as elation.

Crimzon and Clover were worn to the ends of their frayed sanity. They had gone deep down into the earth so that Crimzon could summon aid. It had been no easy trek, for the deep cavern was narrow in places, and the huge dragon was forced to shimmy through. This was a deed that only he could do, though, and Clover chose to go with him.

It is nice feeling young again
, Clover said at one point.
I wonder if the water from that fountain would maintain its power in a jug?

The story I wasss told, that caused me to take you theresss, was of a birdss that carried the waterss to a wizard
.

Hmmm
.

Once they found the place for which the fire drake was looking, Clover
stayed in her saddle and didn’t say a word.