Rise Of The Dragon King (Book 5) (8 page)

“Bring both of those seamen here and have food and fresh water brought as well.” Jenka’s curiosity had been piqued. “Have a couple of girls clean them up in the royal bathhouse. Make sure they are fully serviced.”

Linux’s look showed his utter confusion.

“For what I intend to do to them, I need them wholly relaxed.” Jenka used the dour to imprint his command in Linux’s mind, and the druid nodded and went about it.

Jenka wasn’t surprised about the attack. In fact, he’d expected something to happen much sooner. The bits of alien intelligence he had assumed when he was swallowed by the shape-shifting alien during the Confliction told him it was inevitable. He had pondered the idea of war for a long time and decided that, even though it was a messy business, it was one of the most effective ways to bring about change. But he understood that conflict wasn’t always the answer.

A short while later, two scrubbed and seemingly content men were brought before Jenka. They both stood tall, and the larger of the two managed to avoid
Jenka’s eyes, but the other one met them and was instantly lost in their coral-green depths.

Jenka saw a harbor as if being approached from the sea. A woman, round-faced and brown-haired, waved as her dress flapped in the breeze. A strange flag, one of the many Karian flags, was flapping over a trio of lesser pennants. He felt the sensations of missing his mother, excitement, and fear all mingled in confusion.

The man’s mind skipped forward as Jenka dragged it away from his home. He found the present and began peeling away backward until he saw the beasts. They were there, each with a robed figure riding it, and they looked very little like the colossal they had battled in the mountains, save for in form.

These creatures were smaller, but still as large as a dragon. They had gills and webbed, clawed paws. Their bodies were muscled and sleek. They were a mottled mixture of gray and brown, being darker everywhere there was webbing. The skin looked like that of a whiskerfish or a shark, smooth and thick. They had arm-length teeth, and their bottom fangs, when their mouths were closed, stuck up around their noses, giving the creatures the look of having three horns, when in fact they had only one. The tails were long, and the tips looked to be covered in thick, plated hide, which allowed them to batter and bash without hurting
themselves.

Jenka saw the webbing that stretched from the heel of their hind legs out and back and down the length of their tails. The same skin created a wing, or fin-like plane from the forelegs to the abdomen. He imagined these things could swim reasonably fast and maneuver well in the water. Then he saw one of them trying to throw its rider because it didn’t want to ease into the hold of the ship.

Jenka felt the sailor’s fear as the memory played through his head, as if it were happening again. He searched the man’s memories for the wizards themselves but found that they were not on the vessel this man was on.

Jenka turned his attention to the other man. Linux pressed him down, and he knelt while looking at his companion to see if harm had just been done to him. His eyes met Jenka’s then, and suddenly he was slipping backward through his memories to the same point in time as the other man had first seen the colossal creatures.

Jenka was pleased that this one was easily twice as smart as the other. This man had paid better attention to detail, and when Jenka started querying the man’s brain about the wizards, he found out enough to alarm him. He also found that the agitated colossal threw its ropes and carried the wizard riding it out into the bay.

Jenka wasn’t that surprised when it swam, sort of like a dog, with its head out of the water, as if it were trying to keep its rider dry. Jenka wondered if the wizard saddled on its shoulders was the only reason it wasn’t swimming underwater, because with those bright red gills, it surely could.

The somewhat nervous-looking wizard kept the creature under his control and slowly got it swimming back toward the dock. Jenka was reminded of a story Clover once told him of a harbormaster who used a spelled octerror in his bay to manage the pirates. This wasn’t a Harthgarian harbor, he reckoned, and Clover had been telling him of a time long forgotten to these people. Either way, the wizard looked to have heard the tale, too, for he was looking this way and that, into the water around his beast, as he eased it to shore. It broke off a sizable portion of the wooden dock’s structure when it finally climbed back up and moved toward the cargo hold.

Jenka started probing the sailor for information about the wizards and finally found something of interest.

A cabin in one of the ships with the door cracked open was before the man. He put his eye to the sliver and peeked in. Inside there were at least a dozen robed men, all of them speaking to what appeared to be their leader. When Jenka’s eyes found him through the captive’s memory, the man actually saw him
looking. Jenka saw his black eyes, even through the memory, and was suddenly aware that at least one of these wizards was very, very powerful.

They were speaking words of arcana that Jenka could make out, but that his subject didn’t understand, so he didn’t remember them correctly. After the few words he heard, Jenka pushed the man’s brain a little too far trying to make them out.

There was a commotion and an explosion of wood and broken rigging. Then one of the wizards was mounted on his colossal, and it was swimming like a dog again, keeping the four robed men riding farther down its back above the water.

Suddenly, the man Jenka was violating began to tremble and convulse. Jenka had to peel himself away from his mind, and did so just before a flash of sparks and a cloud of churning smoke filled the chamber in which he, Linux and the two men were.

Before he could shake the sailor’s memory completely free of him, Jenka saw the wizard he had just seen in the man’s head, only he was standing there, or actually hovering there, with one of his hands on the back of each of the survivors’ necks. The next thing he knew, both men were crumpling to the tiled floor, and the wizard began to laugh, but only until Jenka’s radiant eyes met his and flared.

In that moment, Jenka saw the surprise the mage felt, but he couldn’t tell if the fear he was sensing was the wizard’s or his own.

CHAPTER TWELVE

“W
e do not wish to harm the people of this land,” the tall, black-eyed mage said, in a powerful voice. “Do not fight us. Lay down your blades and allow us to assume command, and we will not destroy a single home or person.” The wizard narrowed his brow. “Resist us, and we will trample your good folk into pulp.”

Jenka knew the thing before him was not the wizard. The wizard could be anywhere. Still, he had heard of apparitions like this being able to throw spells if the original caster was powerful enough. After all, the two men he had just been questioning had been affected somehow. The longer he sat there looking, the less intimidating the wizard’s apparition seemed, though. Still, Jenka could see why men might follow him.

He was tall and had dark hair that was corn-rowed back over his head, where it dangled in thick, rope-like clumps past his shoulders. His beard was thin and hung like a black stalactite from his narrow face. His cheeks were sunken and his thick brows owlish, and maybe too big for his head.

He was intimidating, Jenka was sure, to most. A glance at Linux told him that
the druid wasn’t so afraid. The men on the floor were too dead to show fear, and Jenka wondered what they knew that might make the wizard just end them.

The fact that he had ended them from his illusionary spell made Jenka a little more aware, but he was saturated with dour magic and the essence of the alien, and he decided it was time to let these fools know that they were barking up the wrong tree.

Jenka sat forward slowly but then went into his hyper-movement. He walked to, and then around, the apparition and ended up standing directly before it. Jenka walked casually for the entire series of steps, but the act took less than a heartbeat of actual time.

Just as the wizard’s form was registering what it had or hadn’t seen, Jenka reached into his misty chest and sent out a visionary casting of his own.

For a few moments, the wizard took in the images of Gravelbone and the Sarax that Jenka was sending him. Jenka was filling him with visions of the battles they had already won, but then Jenka let Jade project through their bond-link, and the wizard let out a scream when he felt himself being swallowed by the pale, fleshy alien.

I knows where he is nowsss
, Jade hissed into Jenka’s mind through the ethereal.

The wizard, in a show of defiance maybe, or perhaps out of fear, sent back images of his own ilk battling a dragon, of all things. It was huge, but by the darkness of its scales, Jenka could tell it was a mudged. Jenka doubted they understood the difference. Either way, the wizard disappeared with a static pop, and Jenka went racing to Jade. As he climbed onto his dragon’s back and buckled himself into his saddle, Linux reached to him through the ethereal.

Tell me where you are going, so I can direct the others when they return
.

They are about to be ambushed
, Jenka answered simply, and then he and Jade were flying like an emerald comet speeding across the sky.

“KIng Richard, please elaborate a bit more about these dragon riders we have been hearing so much about,” King Chad asked.

They were seated across from each other on a cushioned divan in an opulent parlor room of King Chad’s castle. The tall, robust man was pale and had an aversion to the sun, but he was not sickly. He wasn’t so much a “good king” either, which Richard found he liked.

Richard had seen firsthand how cold the man could be. More often, he was being invited to court, and he was learning how the Vikarian system of rule was handled. The daughters had narrowed down to three who were still interested in
him, but Richard had learned that there were dragons in the mountains farther inland, and he was determined to find another one to ride. Now he spent his time trying to get closer to the curious, intelligent king, for he had the men and equipment to make such a journey, and Richard was growing more anxious with each passing moment.

One day he was sitting behind and to the right of the throne. There were side mirrors staged for the King’s Guard to use, and in the reflection of one, Richard could see the king’s face clearly.

King Chad’s icy blue eyes sparkled brightly as he made the decision to have a man beheaded. And when the man’s wife wailed out in protest, he offered to throw her and the children in the dungeon. They grew quiet, of course, but that is when the king gained Richard’s true favor, for he didn’t let it end there. The family was made to come stand before their father, and Richard couldn’t help himself, for like he had been a hundred times before, he was giddy with anticipation.

“Make him confess to them what he did, first,” Richard whispered loud enough for the king to hear. He received a look of total dissatisfaction from over the king’s shoulder, and then a second look that showed a slight upward turn of King Chad’s mouth.

“Tell your children what you did, man,” the king barked.

“Please, just kill me.” The convicted man’s face was twisted in a knot of anguish, as it had been since the crier read the heinous charges.

King Chad slammed his staff on the floor hard. “Tell them what you did, or I will snip their digits half a finger at a time until you do.”

Richard knew the groveling man hadn’t dismembered the young chambermaid, for he had done the deed himself, but nevertheless, it was gripping listening to him confess the crimes to save his family’s fingers.

“Highness?” Richard shook his head and cleared it, bringing him back to the present. “What do you want to know about the Dragoneers?”

“The Dragoneers.” The king said the word as if he were tasting their flavor. He even let out a slow “Mmmm” before responding. “Why, everything, of course.” He leaned forward and put his elbows on his knees. He was clearly very interested and eager to learn more.

Richard looked around the room and then nodded for the king to dismiss his attendant.

“Bring us a full carafe, and then you can retire, Jameth,” King Chad called to the man by the door. He took a deep breath and sat back. “What I wouldn’t do to have a dragon to ride at my leisure.”

King Richard smiled to himself. This was going to be far easier than he had thought.

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

C
rimzon and Golden were flying an ever-widening circle around the lake. Their riders were talking through the ethereal about Clover’s son, while the dragons searched for signs of the colossals on the ground. Rikky and Zah were in closer, flying more or less directly over the shoreline.

Rikky hadn’t seen or heard from the other riders in some time, and he was suddenly aware that he was alone with Zahrellion. He found his heart was racing because of it. This wasn’t the first time he had felt something for her. The truth was, he always had. When Jenka married her, he’d been jealous, but being the true friend he was to both of them, he buried those inclinations and moved on with his heart. It was strange, for he loved Zah as a sister, too, but there was part of him that would always want more.