Rise Of The Dragon King (Book 5) (17 page)

Marcherion, Blaze and the huge sea bird all reached the Tankil Islands on the same day. It was strange how the feathered creature stayed close but not too much so, for the remainder of that leg of their journey.

Marcherion wasn’t worried about the bird now, though. It wasn’t a red meat eater. It was a fish eater, and a few days previous he had the glorious opportunity to watch it dive on a school of fish. The thing went completely under the surface
of the waves when it came streaking down out of the sky. Then it came up out of the sea with a man-sized wriggling gray prize it had caught. Blaze gave a chuckle of respect for the catch, and March wondered what else was down in the water that it might eat.

March started craving fresh water as soon as they saw the big, isolated island. He nearly broke his leg jumping down from Blaze’s back before the dragon came to a complete halt. He landed in the hot sand and relished the way it felt on his feet.

There was a sizable collection of rain water on some of the flatter rocks and he wasted no time sipping and filling his many canteens. He decided he liked the taste of the rain water better than the stuff that had been sitting in the sun, and a shower blew over them in the evening while they were lazing on the warm beach and provided them with enough to drink their fill and still fill most of the bags and bottles.

The joy was short-lived, for there were still eighty-four more days, give or take, of flying to reach Kar. The longer flight was completed though, and March strung his bow and went on a hunt to see if he could find a meal of meat before they started off again. Blaze just lazed on the sand, absorbing the sun. He would feed on fish when he could snatch them out of the water with his claws. It
happened often enough that feeding the big red wyrm wasn’t a problem, or at least it hadn’t been yet.

Richard had designs to fly Bruiser over King Chad’s castle and land on one of the bailey walls, but he found a wyrm was there, and it didn’t look like the one the king had collared. It also looked as if a new expedition was being outfitted near the front gates.

He saw a stack of dragon collars on the back of a wagon, maybe five of them, and was suddenly a little uneasy. There was a group of fit-looking men, and a crowd of others behind them, too. King Chad was speaking to them from the back of his wyrm. The others were just observing.

Two mudged, so far. What was King Chad trying to do?

He thought about what he was seeing and decided that the man was going to try to collar a bunch of wyrms. There were already two he’d seen, and maybe more.

Richard had another feeling: a feeling of a familiar power getting closer to him. His skin started tingling, his hair stood on end, and his mind told him that he
needed to end King Chad’s rise before he gained too much control.

As Richard started diving his wyrm toward the other dragon below the bailey, warning blasts sounded from the wall top. Richard wasn’t worried, because he was far too high up to be hit with an arrow, and he doubted the king would harm him anyway, at least not in the open. He was the man’s son now.

Richard took a deep breath, for he knew there was about to be a battle. The feeling he was getting was lifting his ire and pushing him to the point of rage. He could hear Gravelbone whispering encouragements in the back of his mind, and he wanted to do worse things than were being suggested. He still didn’t know why he was feeling such hatred for a man who had liberated him and given him his daughter, but he was.

Before the king and the group to which he was speaking had a chance to react, Richard brought Bruiser down right on top of the crowd, leaving the men being spoken to between him and the king’s wyrm. He marveled at how much more powerful Bruiser looked than the king’s dragon. He wasn’t that much bigger, but he was clearly less mudged and nowhere near as stunted.

“…and here is my daughter’s love now, adding himself to our growing force,” the king said, welcoming Richard with open arms. “If you ride with me, you will feel the glory of victory over and over again!” King Chad’s voice rose as he
spoke, and the uncertain men to which he was speaking responded with nods and even a few cheers of agreement.

“Together, we will catch and collar as many dragons as we can.” The king paused for the voices that followed. “I will make my riders lords once and for all! Then together we will conquer the world! The Old World and the New!” The king met Richard’s eyes then, and he grinned maniacally, and caused his dragon to roar. The gatherers stepped back again, but only until Bruiser let out a warning growl.

Richard was feeling that feeling again. It was like a storm was coming, and it was going to be deliciously bloody. Then Bruiser sensed something in the sky and managed to pull Richard’s attention to it just long enough to stop his thought.

You’ve founds yourself agains
. A voice as recognizable as any he’d ever heard spoke into his mind, and he saw what Bruiser was seeing.

It was the Nightshade, and it was as thirsty for revenge as he was.

“There is a problem with your plan, King Chad.” Richard turned his attention back to the king.

The king’s eyes narrowed, and he scowled. “What is it, then?”

The men between them grew nervous, for the tone in both of the kings’ voices was laced with venom.

“Your collars are no longer necessary, and you don’t have a dragon anymore.”

“What? He is right here, you—”

Bruiser shot his long neck forward, right over the men between them, and snapped at the king’s mount behind its head. The king’s wyrm tried to leap away and only managed to throw his rider to the ground, where he landed with a hard thump. King Chad’s wyrm fell limp beside him, and then the shadow of something big enough to chomp Bruiser in half, and more evil than any of them, save for Richard, came sliding over them all.

With the Nightshade, King Richard didn’t need collars to control the mudged he’d discovered in the mountains. He didn’t even need riders. Richard laughed out triumphantly, for the sky behind his old hellborn mount was already filling with feral wyrms.

The dragon king had risen, and the Dragoneers were soon to pay for leaving him all alone for so very long.

CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE

T
he wizard looked to be gloating as he stood atop three barrels full of his cure on the deck of his ship. He was watching the Dragoneers and their dragons carry in chest after chest of gold and dump them into one of the three ships he had been granted by the frigid queen.

There were gold coins, jeweled necklaces, and brooches, as well as platters, statues, and trinkets galore. But even all of that wasn’t the prize he most treasured. The male colossal was in the hold of the third ship, and the remaining spellborn female was in the hold of the ship he was on. It wouldn’t be long before he could breed an army of them. And with the artifacts he could purchase in Kar now, he would be able to speed up the process and modify the offspring to suit his need.

“Or maybe to suit my greed,” he chuckled to himself.

They had delivered eighty-seven chests of valuables. Then the frost wyrm, with its even frostier rider, argued with his man while hovering over the treasure ship. Word came to the wizard that a statue worth easily thirteen chests full of
gold was having to be carried on sling ropes by all three of the dragons doing the work.

This intrigued the wizard, for something so heavy made from solid gold had to be amazing to behold. Since the other two ships were already heavily loaded, and he was a firm believer in not putting all the treasure on one ship, he had the dock men roll the three barrels full of cure ashore to make room for it.

It was a long while before the dragons were spotted flying in an awkwardly close formation, carrying his glittering prize.

He began to salivate. It was a wondrous statue of a dragon, done in miniature. Only, miniature to a dragon was still massive in size. When they tried to set it on the treasure ship, they were waved away. That was when the wizard saw that the dragon statue had a child-sized rider on its back. She was fierce-looking, and he decided he would set this before his podium in the great hall of his order as a symbol of their victory here.

Soon, the hatches were open and the hold cleared so that the precious piece of art could be lowered in. Once the ropes were cut and the statue lashed firmly in place, the wizard waved up at the dragon riders and then pointed to the barrels full of cure.

“Until we meet again,” he offered with a bow.

No one knew how long the sickness would take to manifest, but after Jenka drank most of a barrel of the cure, he seemed fine. That is, beyond the normal aches and pains of having shapeshifted and been broken so badly. He took some time to spend with his wife and children and marveled at how different the two of them were. Amelia was super-intelligent but skittish, while Jericho was almost exactly how he had imagined his father when growing up without him.

The luxury of being with them didn’t last long, for the Dragoneers were not done with the wizard just yet.

“Watch them well, Linux,” Zahrellion said as she buckled her ivory breastplate over her shoulders and took up her staff. “Jenka, you should stay. Clover and I will handle this, and Rikky will give us cover.”

“How about Rikky handles this, and the rest of you stay here and eat cheese and drink wine.” Rikky’s voice was full of bravado.

“How many times do I have to tell you to never underestimate a wizard, Rikky?” This came from Clover, who was always dressed for battle.

“Do you think they are far enough away?” Jenka asked. He had no intention of staying behind for this one. He was as eager as the others, but he didn’t want them to be hasty.

“Far enough,” Rikky said.

“I agree,” Zahrellion added.

“Well let’s be done with him, then.”

The wizard heard the men in the rigging calling out their warnings, but wasn’t alarmed. He had expected such a feeble trick as for them to pour the cure into the lake and then attack his group at sea.

“Foolish is as foolish does.” He laughed aloud when he saw them coming.

In an attempt to avoid losing any of his treasure, he cast his enlarging illusion so that the approaching dragons and their riders could see and hear him well.

“Until I speak the word,” the wizard’s huge visage boomed, “the word that completes the spell I cast on the curative waters, it will not activate.” He stroked his tangled beard and chuckled. “Even now, your people will start to feel the sickness. Soon it will show with pocks and festers on their skin.”

He put his arms across his chest smugly. “If you stop my ships, your people will never be cured.”

“Our people never drank the poison, dimbuss,” Rikky shot back.

And for the first time, the wizard wondered if he was still the one in control
of the situation.

CHAPTER THIRTY

R
ichard left King Chad enough pride to rule his people in spirit, but he made it clear that he was the new power. In the months to come, he rode the Nightshade and made maps and battle plans while the helborn wyrm gathered his army. He wasn’t sure when he would attempt to take back his rightful throne, or how he would get all the mudged across the sea, but he knew it wouldn’t be long.