The Legend of Vanx Malic: Book 02 - Dragon Isle (14 page)

“But, but please tell me what to…”

“Tell you what?” Matty cackled at the iron door to the duke’s cell. “You were begging,” Matty smirked. She had to stretch up on tiptoes to press her eye to the peephole. She couldn’t see much, for her head eclipsed most of the torchlight coming from the corridor in which she was standing. She stepped back and pulled a pin free. A small plate fell outward and clanged against the door when it hit. The sound brought Duke Martin fully out of his slumber and to the feeding slot on hands and knees. One eye and his nose came into the opening expectantly. The man seemed disappointed that it was Matty standing there looking down at him.

“What do you want, slave?” he snapped.

“My lord, I want you to hang your little cock out here so that I can take it in my mouth,” Matty purred. “I do miss the taste of it so.”

The duke looked as though he was about to oblige her, but caught himself. He had raped and used Matty a dozen times before putting the slave chains on her and giving her to Amden Gore to sell. She knew there was no way he was stupid enough to think she really wanted him.

“What is it you want?” he asked harshly, but then, remembering Coll’s request from his dream, he asked in a more agreeable voice, “Do you want to make a bargain?” Before she could reply, he added tauntingly. “I can get you your weight in gold. You’ll never want for anything again.”

Matty felt herself being tempted, but not even a castle full of gold and jewels could sway her from the pain that she planned to exact from Humbrick Martin. The hope that she might get both, though, threatened to divert her from the path she was on.

“What do I have to do to get all this gold, my lord?” she purred seductively. She reached her hand into the slot and let it find the duke’s crotch. “I knew you liked my mouth, but I didn’t know you liked it that much.”

“No, I mean, yes,” he stammered. “I delight in the pleasures you so expertly provide.” He tried to stay focused as his member stiffened in her hand. “But the gold could only be paid if you open this door and help me get free of the dungeon.”

“That’s easy, my lord,” she whispered. “I’ve already worked my charms on the dungeon master to get in to see you. Getting the key will be nothing. Is that all you want me to do for you?” She pulled harder on his engorged member, forcing him to want to rise so that he could push it out the slot for her mouth.

“Yes… uh… no, no.” He let her guide his manhood fully out of the slot. “Satisfy me, and then go fetch the key and I will make you wealthy ‘til the end of your days.”

“Aye, my lord.” Matty breathed heavily on his cock, even kissed it, just before she yanked it to the edge of the slot and slammed the steel plate closed on it with all the strength she could muster.

Coll’s earthly form was trapped in the stone Quazar had spelled it into, but his true form was far from human, or even earthly in origin. In truth he was a lesser demon from the darker reaches of the Nethers. His true name was Raxxteriak. Raxxteriak’s true form couldn’t manifest itself on the earthly plane, but his essence could float about like some invisible cloud and reach into the minds of those whose nature was tainted with a streak dark enough to hold him. Coll had been one such human. The relationship with Coll, though, had taken years to cultivate. The control Raxxteriak had over his mind and body couldn’t be garnered over a day or two. It took years to possess a soul the way he had possessed Coll.

Raxxteriak was finding that there weren’t many evil people in Dyntalla. There were mean people, angry people, and calculating people, but he couldn’t find any soul that could be considered downright evil. There was that fool, Duke Martin, but he was locked away in the dungeon and of no use at the moment. Raxxteriak had been alive for thousands of years, though, and wasn’t about to let this little inconvenience stop him.

Just outside the city gate there were other sorts of minds, savage and primitive minds that were easily tempted in one direction or another. He couldn’t possess an ogre, but he could force an idea into its mind. All he needed was for Coll’s still form to be toppled and Quazar’s spell to be broken. What better thing to topple him than a horde of hungry ogres storming the stronghold? All they really needed was to learn how to break through a gate.

The next morning, after dreaming of battle lust and glory, and of a particular statue and a red stone, the ogres came at the western gate with a whole tree. They carried the trunk, roots, branches and all, and began bashing it into the humans’ barrier in earnest.

There is a place so cold and gloomy,

so dark that nothing sleeps.

A frozen sea of mourning,

eternal Saint Elm’s Deep.

– Saint Elm’s Deep

T
he underground city, which wasn’t quite as grand as Vanx had first perceived, was called Boondara. Vanx gathered from Olden Pak that it was only one of many such places scattered about the world. When the novelty of the idea of such a place wore off, Vanx found it was much like any other town, only this one was illuminated by the accumulated light from thousands of glowing mineral deposits. Hard-packed walkways lined rutted lanes where two-wheeled carts hauling Zwarvy and goods were being pulled by well-muscled dogs. The dwellings were mainly stone-walled cubes with round windows and flat, moss-covered roofs. On the way to Olden Pak’s home, Vanx heard a strange instrument being played and a singer coming from a crowded building that quite possibly might’ve been a tavern. The female voice was resonating a sad-sounding lyric, but the joy of the song was evident in her tone. The Zwarvy they passed all looked up at him with eerie, suspicious eyes. Some stopped and pointed while others gave a wide berth. He felt like a giant among them.

Olden Pak’s wife, a milky-white block of a woman, eyed Vanx dubiously but fed them a fishy-tasting stew at a small table made from worked wood. After they ate, Olden Pak took Vanx out, telling his wife to care for the pup as he went. He said they were going to see the few extraordinary sights of Boondara.

The cavern was immense. Vanx felt as if he were caught in some great underground bubble, which in fact was exactly the case. Over by a shop was a huddle of the Zwarvy haggling over the value of some stone tool that looked newly made. All of them to a man stopped and stared with their strange green eyes as Vanx passed them. At the outer fringes of the space beyond Pak’s home, neat rows of vegetation grew and were tended by several female Zwarvy in wide-brimmed hats. Some of the rows were of a bright yellow plant that looked out of place in the strange, almost colorless world. Across the road there were rows of gray cabbage balls, and Vanx thought he saw a dark, purple-capped mushroom or two jutting up in the spaces between the crops. The cavern walls, at the edges of the worn floor, glowed and crawled with some dim blue energy. When one of the gardeners called out to another, Vanx suddenly understood the need for hats. The walls were glowing a steady and potent shade of blue, similar in hue to a clear spring sky. The dark crawling he was seeing over this radiance was a coating of living bats. The woman shouted and waved her hat and a whole section of the cavern wall erupted in a shrieking explosion. The area brightened considerably for a few moments until the bats settled back into place, sparsely covering the light again.

He was amazed by all of this, but as Olden Pak led him toward the most central portion of the cave, Vanx noticed two things.

One was Pak’s growing discomfort. The old Zwarvy seemed to have something to say that he wasn’t quite ready to. After they passed a group of men working outside a cart-building shop, and several of them demanded to know why a “mannish” was among them, Olden Pak grew even more uneasy.

The other thing Vanx noticed was that the stalactites in that center area of the domed cavern extended farther down and the stalagmites reached higher up than anywhere else he could see. At the edge of the area where he’d seen the Zwarvy tending their gardens, there hadn’t been any drooping fangs or up-reaching spikes at all. Now, as they came round a row of dwellings made from tightly fitted blocks, Vanx couldn’t help but gasp.

As in the cavern, where he’d fallen under the Zwarvy’s sleep spell, several of the stalagmites had met in the middle and formed columns. Only here it looked to be no random occurrence. It was a divine place, created by some godly hand; of that Vanx had no doubt.

A pool had formed, more a pond in size, around the bases of the substantial columns. The random stalactites above that hadn’t reached down to their mates were dripping. The falling drops plopped silvery water that exploded into a misty spray when they hit the tops of the spikes reaching up from below. The effect was spectacular, for the glowing blue mineral formations made the mist seem like a magical cloud hovering just above a man’s reach.

“Skelatra,” Pak said with reverence, indicating the sight above the cottony blue layer.

Rising up out of the cloud like some massive barred cell was a small island. At its center stood a large, drooping tree that looked to be made of ivory, or maybe slightly yellowed bone. From its twisty limbs, tiny silver leaves glittered like scales, and translucent, golden apple-sized orbs, which held a curious flickering light source of their own, dangled from the branches. Surrounding the tree, at least twenty paces from its massive trunk, were the stalagma-formed columns. The space between them was uniform and about wide enough for two men to wade between side by side. The effect they created around the ancient Earth Bone Tree, for Vanx recognized it as such from his lore lessons, was that of a gargantuan cage.

“Is it true that fairies are born from its fruit?” Vanx asked, remembering the tales and wishing he had listened more.

“Fairies?” Olden Pak frowned as he considered the word. He shook his head from side to side. “Wispwights,” he said. Vanx had heard the term before, but wasn’t quite sure what a wispwight was. He assumed it was another form of the fairy folk: pixies, sylphs, flutters and glimmers, why not a wispwight too?

“Un mest go unton Skelatra consoderin unself. Ruetun un granten Zwarvy ful ena.” Though the old Zwarvy’s words were spoken in his strange dialect, Vanx understood them clearly. If he went into Skelatra and then returned, the Zwarvy would help him complete his quest. Pak had an apologetic look on his face as he spoke, as if he were certain that Vanx would find this disagreeable. He couldn’t have been more wrong.

“What if I choose not to enter?” Vanx asked, trying not to provoke or offend, but wanting to understand the gist of his situation.

Olden Pak told him that if he didn’t enter then he could never leave the Unzurra. The Unzurra, Vanx surmised, was the whole of the Zwarvy underground. It made sense to him. If he were a foolish person, a gossip, or a braggart, he could cause these people much harm. These were things he would never dream of doing, but how would Olden Pak or his people know? As a bard, he’d learned all the ancient tales and figured that the tree’s magic would assess his worthiness or something of that sort. Many of the songs Vanx sang had verses about the hero’s resolve being tested by similar means.

He shrugged and started off into the pool at a brisk pace. Had he been given the choice he would have chosen to take a closer look anyway. He didn’t turn to look back at the old Zwarvy as he went, but he said, “Look after that doogle if I don’t return.”