The Legend of Vanx Malic: Book 02 - Dragon Isle (13 page)

“We need to find a place to shelter,” Zeezle said. He chanced a look up. Above them the huge, pocked face of the moon shone golden, while at the edges of her circumference evenly spaced clusters of stars twinkled as if they were dancing.

“Let’s get closer to the valley floor so that we might have a better chance of pricking the bitch when she returns,” said Trevin.

“I was thinking more like the other side of this ridge,” Zeezle said with a look of frustration showing on his face. His eyes were blood red with burst veins, his hair a tangled, sweaty mess. He looked on the verge of collapse and appeared to have no interest in continuing with this quest.

“Vanx wouldn’t give up,” Trevin grunted, hoping to sway the Zythian from abandoning the task.

“’Tis true, brave Trevin,” Zeezle said flatly. “But that is why Vanx is dead and I am not.” He shook his damp hair again and pushed it back over his head. “If I walk away and live out my years, I’ll see four or five hundred more of them.” His tired gaze locked on the determined human’s. He sighed. “But I have to admit, I’d regret every single one of those years if I didn’t see this through.”

He stood shakily. “Come on, we’ve a treacherous descent to make and you’ve only one foot to make it with. On top of that, I’m as spell-weary as an old crone. Either way, this is our night. I doubt we can survive another.”

“Thank you,” Trevin said through clenched teeth as he gained his feet. He wondered if he could forgive himself if Zeezle died, now that he had talked him into continuing. Thoughts of Gallarael’s innocent smile, her long, golden hair and confident manner tried to balance the scales of his inner conflict. He was caught in some nightmarish tale where only the lives of his faithful companions could be traded to save the girl he loved. He decided it was some cruel jest of the gods. He was too far into it to turn back, though, even if he could find the will to walk away. He found he almost hoped he would die out here trying to save her; that way he wouldn’t have to live with the guilt of Vanx and Sir Earlin’s deaths.

He glanced over at the falling moon and caught a glimpse of flying shadow as it voided the stars beyond it. He started to warn Zeezle of what he’d seen, but stumped his roasted foot on a rock and fell into the Zythian. Both of them toppled forward into a heap. It was a lucky thing. Another dark-winged shape had been swooping at them from behind. At the same time Trevin yelled out in pain, the young green dragon who had been stalking them from above let out a roar of frustration. It barely missed grasping Trevin’s shoulders.

“If it lets loose its breath, hold yours,” Zeezle said hurriedly. His warning turned out to be unnecessary, though, for another dragon, a black one, shot out of the sky at the young green and blasted it with slime. The green glided straight into the rocks a few hundred paces ahead of them and crashed there in a tumble of corroding flesh and scales.

Zeezle, with Trevin’s help, got to his feet and started sharply down the slope.

The black dragon was coming back around to finish off its kill and feed.

“Sorry,” the Zythian said over his shoulder as the two of them went sliding down the steep grade.

Trevin found out immediately what the apology was for. His foot, his tender wound, seemed to find every root and hard surface there was on the frantic descent. Zeezle, however, even in his haggard state, used his keen vision to skirt and hop over the rough places. Trevin wasn’t so blessed, and by the time they tumbled to a stop on a wide shelf, he was teary-eyed and fighting to maintain consciousness.

The stench was stronger here, impossibly thick and foul. They were just above the treetops, a stone’s throw out from the twisted growth. A few trees grew out at odd angles around the area where the slope of the valley was too steep for them to take root normally.

Trevin seethed through clenched teeth, fighting with all he had to keep from crying out. He wasn’t trying to be quiet now. Their sliding avalanche had made a riotous amount of noise. It was the fact that, if he let go, the dam holding his tears, and the reservoir of guilty confusion he had been holding back, would burst and all of it would come flooding out.

Slowly, he got his breathing under control as he watched Zeezle crawl to the edge of the shelf on hands and knees to peer over.

The Zythian came back and helped Trevin hobble out to one side of the flat formation. There they eased down the grade a little more. Trevin saw where they were going. The bottom of the shelf formed a cantilevered extension over a shallow hole. The area under the slab offered protection from the eyes of all the beasts now battling overhead.

Zeezle laid Trevin back on the ground and elevated his wounded foot on a head-sized piece of stone.

“Do your best to keep a watch, Trev,” Zeezle rasped. “Once I’ve had some rest I can spell your foot to take away some of the pain. My rest, though, will be undisturbable.” He fell more than sat down next to the human. “Right now, all I have the strength for is this.”

Trevin was in so much pain that he doubted whether he could fall asleep even if he wanted to. Zeezle, however, was already snoring softly.

They hunt gray bears and ogres

and they kill them with bare hands.

You’d be better to poke a dragon’s eye

than cross a Highlake man.

A Highlake Mountain Man.

– Mountain Man

Q
uazar stood atop the Dyntalla wall at the western gate looking down at the mass of green-fleshed ogres still attempting to break down the barrier. He had been working his magic to repel them all day. As full night blanketed the dusky pink sunset that hovered over the mountains to the far west, he sighed with frustration. It didn’t make any sense. He was exhausted, and all his attempts to frighten the ogres away with thunder, lightning and even more violent exploding balls of wizard fire had failed.

Dozens of the beasts lay pulverized about the area, but the hundreds of living ones seemed not even to notice the bodies they were trampling beneath him.

A chorus of anguished howls came up from below. A kettle of burning oil had just been poured over the group that had gotten too close to the wall. An arrow sped down at them, flames streaming from its pitch-caked tip. The oil ignited with a great whoomp and, for a short span of time, the flaming and screaming bodies lit up that immediate area, revealing the arrows that were shooting down from the archers along the wall top.

Already another kettle was being readied to dump. Quazar couldn’t understand it. The ogres were enraged. They seemed ignorant of the fact that they were dying in droves at the base of the great stone barrier.

King Oakarm had arrived the previous night to oversee Duke Martin’s trial, but had been forced to stay aboard his ship for fear of getting caught up in this new attack by the green-skinned hulks.

Duke Elmont sent Quazar back to the wall to repel them, as he had before, in the hope that the king might land without worry. But the ogres were not going away.

There was no flourishing use of power when Quazar departed the wall this time. No fancy shining robes, no displays of flowing to the earth like some great, wingless bird. There was only a ragged-looking, spell-weary old man who clutched at his scepter of office as if it were a simple walking stick. As he hobbled down the torchlit switchback stairs to the carriage waiting for him, a young soldier had to help him stay upright.

Quazar had a lot on his mind, far more than the persistent beasts trying to get into the city. Matty was determined to kill Duke Martin in his dungeon cell, or at least geld the man. And worse, Gallarael was teetering on the verge of succumbing to the corruption inside her body. The spells Quazar cast were barely keeping the poison from running its course through her. The old wizard feared each morning that he would look in on a puddled corpse instead of a feeble young girl clinging to semi-conscious life.

The ogres seemed to be organizing somewhat now. Already they were coming at the gate in small groups and pounding at it before retreating quickly to avoid the kettles of oil. They hadn’t quite gotten the timing of the retreats down yet, but they would. Eventually they would figure out that the rafter log of one of the houses they had gutted would do more damage to the barrier than clubs and fists. It was just a matter of time. Quazar knew that something had to be done quickly, but other than a full cavalry assault, he had no idea what to do. Magic wasn’t working, at least not the fear of it, as it should have been.

Duke Elmont had a contingent of five hundred mounted men and as many foot soldiers that he could send into battle, but against the three hundred or more huge, savage beasts, it wouldn’t be a fair fight. And more ogres were arriving every day.

Quazar began working out how and what he would tell his liege lord. He didn’t look forward to the conversation, but he hoped to have some semblance of an idea of how to solve the problem by the time his carriage reached the inner gates. His intentions never manifested into action, though. Long before they rolled into Dyntalla proper he fell into a deep slumber. It was all the driver could do to wake him when the carriage bounced to a halt under the stronghold’s ornate entry.

In his dirty, foul-smelling, yet spacious dungeon cell, Duke Martin slept fitfully. His slumber was haunted by dreams of Coll, only it wasn’t the Coll he had come to know. It was something far more potent and unpleasant. A dark, shadowy form with a deep, resonant voice spoke to him from a great distance. All the while Coll’s black eyes bored into him. At the fringes of the emptiness, where the conversation was taking place, there was the flickering of open flames, or maybe just the suggestion of them. No matter which way he looked, he could see no fire, but the smell of brimstone was strong.

“You must get yourself free, my lord,” the heavy voice said. “Find my statue and topple it. It is the only way I can help you now.”

“Where are you?” The duke’s dream-born manifestation of himself asked the darkness around him. “Coll? Coll, is it you?”

“I am Coll to you. I am other names to other people, but to you I am Coll.” The deep voice was low and throaty, yet as clear as if it were whispering directly into the duke’s ear. “The old white-haired wizard tricked me,” Coll growled. “I was turned to stone. The statue must be toppled to break the spell.”

“I am locked in the dungeon,” Duke Martin insisted in a pleading fashion. “There’s naught I can do for you now.”

“Then there is naught I can do for you. You’ll soon be dangling from the hangman’s rope, or if you’re lucky, you’ll feel the headsman’s axe bite into your neck.” Coll gave a hoarse, growling chuckle. “Gallarael’s here and alive, you know. Once she and her companions tell their tale to the king you’ll be branded a murderer and a traitor to the Crown.” Coll laughed again. “Without me to protect you, your life is worthless. Find a way to topple my statue or face your fate alone. There are other possibilities for me, and I see now that my time would be better spent pursuing them.”

“No, wait,” Duke Martin pleaded. “How can I get out of here? How can…”

“Shhh!” Cole hissed. “Someone comes. I can only save you if you topple my statue and break the spell.”