Rise Of The Dragon King (Book 5) (6 page)

Clover decided he had been listening all along.

CHAPTER EIGHT

T
he second Silva dashed Rikky with a refreshing blast of her dragon magic, he came to. She stood guard over him, Prince Jericho, and Captain Willian, while the emerald-green dragon, Jade, picked the trolls apart.

“Where is Linux?” Rikky asked the prince, who was still clinging to him.

Jericho shook his head and sobbed. “Where is Pascal?”

“Brawn has Pascal over there.” Captain Will pointed with his sword. One of the trolls fighting Jade spun around toward them, and just before Silva blasted it with molten pewter spew, the captain stepped forward and jabbed his blade through its lower abdomen. After he pulled his steel free of it, the creature took a step back, but fell forward toward them. It’s huge, smelly gourd smacked the ground just a foot away from Rikky and Jericho. Its wild eyes were rolled up into its head, but straightened for a heartbeat, which was just long enough for them to focus on the prince and blink. Then the light of life faded from them.

Brawn yelled out in frustration from not so far away and below them.

Captain Willian charged over the corpse toward the next of the trolls that
came near. In a matter of moments, the creatures that hadn’t yet been dispatched were fleeing. Jade’s roar was loud and seemed to bring comfort to the prince. Rikky was only slightly perturbed that the king’s dragon had been following and watching over them.

Rikky saw Jericho’s eyes and that Pascal, with Brawn’s help, was half-limping, half-crawling back up the grade toward them. Linux was alive, his hissing orb of light all the proof Rikky needed, but he was nowhere in sight. Pascal was once again so rattled that his skin was as pale as a sheet. His huge eyes looked past Rikky, though, and Brawn raised an arm to point at something up on the mountain behind and above them all.

Rikky turned and felt, more than saw, the presence of something sinuous and stealthy. Whatever it was, when Silva brought her head around and started drawing air, it faded into the shadows.

“Come on!” The captain was urging them down to the cavern entrance.

Jade had just cleared the shelter and appeared to be chasing the last few of the trolls. Rikky and the prince were the only two mounted, though Brawn’s horse was still there. It most certainly would have bolted back the way they had come, had Silva not been blocking its course. The animals were terrified and edgy, to say the least, and all of them, including Rikky, were upset by the fresh coppery stench
of the gore through which they were forced to trot.

No sooner were they huddled inside the cave than a blue druid’s fire flared to life in the pit.

It had a pit because, over the last few years, foresters and new rangers had been training in the lake valley in the summer months. Rikky was starting to think that a manned outpost might be in order. Had they not had two dragons to protect them, this group would have been destroyed.

Knowing the truth of it made Rikky swallow hard. Already, Zahrellion would probably skin him for putting her son at risk. Aikira would certainly try to put knots on his head. For a moment, he entertained thoughts of taking the boys to Three Forks by dragonback, but something old Herald once said—actually, the first thing Herald ever said to him and Master Kember’s group when they met him—sprang to mind: “It’s just the possibility that we might not ever make it back home that makes it thrilling.”

These two boys needed, more than anything, to stay and deal with what had just happened. Running home to protect them was exactly what they didn’t need.

Or maybe Rikky needed to stay, for the thought of running home had been his, hadn’t it?

“It is Linux!” a form shouted as it eased from the trail below the cavern into
it. “Don’t shaft me, man.” He was speaking to Brawn, who was watching the opening with his bow in hand.

Seeing he was recognized, Linux visibly relaxed. “There’s no need for that.” He indicated the bow. “There are two dragons circling above.” He looked at Rikky then. “I went after the forester, but…” He shrugged and shook his head grimly. His eyes shot to Pascal then, and he let loose a sigh of what might have been relief.

“I’d hate to be you, Rikky Camille,” the druid said. “Aikira and Zahrellion are going to beat your arse.”

The kingdom of Vikaria was modest in size, but apparently wealthy. The port in which Richard and his liberators arrived was crowded, and Baru pointed out that it was shared with the neighboring kingdoms of Kartania and Dal’Kar. The climate was not unlike the island he’d just left, only it wasn’t misty or steamy here. The sun was bright, and the breeze was warm out of the south. Baru also pointed out a balcony, high up the side of a castle that overlooked the bay. On the balcony were five or six female figures, all of them dark-haired and bouncing excitedly around a man and woman who were dressed so gaudily that they had to be the king and queen.

Richard took three charging strides up to the foredeck of the boat; from
there he waved at the royal family and gave a flourishing bow. Baru said he didn’t think it was all that appropriate, but Richard was certain that those girls up there were eyeing him like hawks pacing a mouse in a field.

The people of Vikaria, especially the staff of the castle where he was taken, were very welcoming. His quarters were more than adequate, and a whole wardrobe of what Baru called ‘modern wear’ was in the room. Richard asked for a bath, first thing.

Baru said that Richard could come and go as he pleased, and that he would be protected from afar as he did so. That meant his every move would be reported, so he decided to ease into the situation and take his time feeling his way around. Already, twice he had had to fight away the voice of Gravelbone in his head telling him to attack and maim people. One of those he almost murdered was again Baru.

After a few days, Richard started getting the hang of the full Karian language and its many dialects. In fact, he almost fully grasped it now. He’d achieved this through sorcery, of course, for one of the first things he did upon arrival in Vikaria was to quietly seek out practitioners of the dark arts. He’d found a pair of would-be wizards, skilled apprentices, really. They studied with Master Taqu, King Chad’s castle mage, in the mornings, but they spent the rest of their time mixing potions
and learning any spells they could find. Dinaqu was the taller of them, Kovin the shorter and wider.

Everyone seemed happy with their acquaintance, too, for in the afternoons, the two scholars, very visually, taught King Richard about the political history of the land and showed him maps and notable places, giving Baru a chance to coordinate the nightly gatherings put on by the Vikarian princesses. Richard was almost content in this time, for he was given every reasonable thing he requested, and though the king saw him at these feast-like gatherings on occasion, and had nodded his head once slightly, Richard had yet to be summoned before His Highness.

Richard didn’t mind this, for if he was asked about the daughters, he would be forced to lie. He had their names so confused now that he had sworn not to even bother with identifying which one was which until they sorted it out among themselves. Baru had been correct about them: it didn’t matter which of them it ended up being, they were all the same, only a little younger or older than the next one, and they were just like their mother. That thought made Richard smile, for making a gaggle of children with any of them was going to be a most pleasurable undertaking.

Part III

A COLOSSAL DEBACLE

CHAPTER NINE

A
fter the group gathered themselves, Rikky talked to the two boys about the deaths they’d just witnessed. Both of the youngsters were visibly rattled, but neither of them was ready to go back home yet. Worse, there were no bodies to bury, so there would be no easy closure. Everyone was trying to stay distracted and busy, and so far it was working. Already, Linux was hauling in palm-sized sunfish, some of which Captain Willian and Brawn were cleaning and frying; others were going into a bucket for later use as bait for a bigger set of lines.

The valley was warm and green and alive. When they first came down from the camp, they spooked a herd of fleet gazeelin through the forest. The tiny, rabbit-sized deer looked like scrambling antlered mice as they fled.

Birds of all sorts called and whistled, and the big, long-necked storks near the lakeshore aggressively screamed out their protest at the human intrusion into their world.

Some of the creatures showed less fear. The squirrels and the little brown-and-white-striped dirt-runners went about their daily routine as if the horses and
men were not even there. A few of them even braved the camp to get at some bread crumbs Linux tossed out before he found the rowboat.

“The only thing we are guaranteed in life is to die,” Rikky commented to the boys in what he hoped was a nonchalant manner. “All any man can hope for is to die well.”

“Preferably old, fat, and cozy by a hearth fire with all your kidlets at your feet,” Brawn called over.

Both Jericho and Pascal chuckled through the grim mood that had overtaken them all.

“By the gods!” Linux yelled from the small wooden craft he was rowing back across the lake. His voice carried over the water and reached Rikky just before the sloshing sound of a large wave splashed around his ankles.

It wouldn’t have been so alarming, but the lake was ice cold, and he’d been standing a good three feet from the shore.

“Pull me in!” Linux’s voice sounded more like that of a frightened woman than that of the husky guardsman’s body he’d stolen.

Captain Willian was pulling on the rope tied to Linux’s boat, and Brawn was racing over to help. Out in the lake, a bubble the size of a farmhouse gurgled up and popped, sending another three-foot-tall wave rolling out away from the
epicenter.

Rikky started to go help the rangers, but Pascal was knocked off his feet by the water and swept a dozen yards away. Both Rikky and the prince ran after him. It was a good thing they did, too, for a roaring splash as loud as any he’d ever heard, and then the heavy smacking of something huge slapping the mud right where they’d been, came next.

Run to the woods straight ahead
, Silva’s voice sounded across the ethereal.
Run fast
.

As soon as Rikky scooped Pascal up out of the mud and herded the prince into the trees, he turned to see what it could be. He was shocked that it was something so large that he had to crane his neck to take it all in. It looked like some sort of long-legged rhinosaur, or something he’d seen drawn in the archives on King’s Isle. When Silva swept by it, Rikky had a feeling he hadn’t felt in some time: true fear. The lake creature could have snapped his dragon in half with just one bite. Luckily, its neck was thick and short, and its limbs were all four on the ground or in the water, not reaching. It seemed as if his dragon was but a falcon or a hawk irritating a gill-necked, bull-headed mountain cat the size of a ship. The thing lowered its head and side-smashed Linux right out of the boat, then it buck-kicked a huge splash and smacked Silva with its deceptively long tail.

The silver dragon went flailing into the trees, but then another roar resounded, and another.

“Crystal.” Prince Jericho grinned. “And Blaze.”

“It is Crimzon,” Pascal said, his awe pushing through his fear. “And your father is riding Jade this time.”

Another week passed for Marcherion and Blaze, then they spotted flocks of birds churning through the evening sky. This lifted the weary wyrm and its rider’s spirits, for the avian clusters meant that there was land in the distance.

It turned out to be a very short rest there, for the island was overgrown with thick, thorny vegetation and the birds all had nests on it. It wasn’t small, but the area available to them to laze on was limited at best.

The morning they left the island, the huge flying creature showed itself again. March watched it for a while and decided it wasn’t hunting them. What it was doing was beyond him, and he didn’t discount that his judgment was based on hope more than any sort of knowledge. When it flew alongside them one afternoon, he finally got a good look at it.