The Long Journey Home (The Legend of Vanx Malic Book 8) (14 page)

Chapter Thirty-One

More tomorrows keep coming
,

and yesterdays, they go
.

How many tomorrows are there?

Only the goddess knows
.

Poops came to Gallarael the same day Papri returned to the island with her things. Gallarael knew another elf was coming to get her, but since Poops had shown his agitation and nudged at her repeatedly, she commandeered Papri’s tired great hawk. Through Papri, the bird agreed to fly her to Three Tower Island, but only if it could rest and feed in the woods nearby for a few days before going anywhere else.

Papri let the bird make up its own mind, and Gallarael was mounted and flying toward Three Tower Island a day faster than she would have been had she waited for Anitha.

The great hawk circled on the warm air reflecting up from the island. Once they were as high as some of the clouds, they started gliding. It was hard to say how fast they were flying, but at times Gallarael had to let her claws extend to keep her grip and stay on the streaking bird.

Gallarael also had to control her instinct to change, to kill this meaty fowl and eat it. She had heard the story of the turtle and the scorpion and wasn’t foolish enough to let her nature contribute to her demise.

Master Ruuk had conveyed everything Moonsy said and told Moonsy everything he was asked to tell her.

She was extremely concerned about Vanx. It had been six days now since he’d gone into some wizard’s spell thing. No one was brave enough to go in after him. No one who could get there fast anyway. Chelda would have and Zeezle, too. Moonsy was probably willing, but the Troika Sven, no doubt, wouldn’t allow her to go.

Gallarael wasn’t sure what she was going to do when she got there. The elves said there was a good chance that if someone else touched the stone, it would do nothing. Master Ruuk said that most wards of this sort exhausted themselves the first time through—that Vanx would either make his way out or he wouldn’t. But there was a real possibility that someone touching the stone might follow Vanx into the ward.

It was that hope that Gallarael was living on.

Anitha and her great hawk saw Gallarael and the great hawk and turned to fly lead for the inexperienced rider and exhausted bird.

They landed once on a tiny atoll and took turns urinating and stretching. Anitha’s bird caught a fish and shared it with the other. Then they
finished the journey. They flew, skirting a small squall that night, and Gallarael managed to get a little sleep, for she woke in the predawn light when her mount came flapping down, nearly exhausted to depletion, on an island she’d passed a half dozen times going back and forth between Orendyn and Saint Elm’s Deep.

She slid to the ground and ran, stumbling on weakened legs, to the leaning tower as she’d been told. When she got there, Moonsy greeted her with a teary-eyed hug.

“Seven and a half days now, and nothing.” Moonsy could barely get the words out.

“Bah.” Gallarael returned her hug then stepped past. “Which one is it? The big ruby or the little yellow rock?”

“He touched the ruby,” Moonsy said through chattering teeth. “Oh, Gallarael, please. I, we, none of us want to lose you, too.”

“Vanx might not be lost,” Gallarael said sharply. She picked up the little yellow rock and gave Moonsy a look. “Do you know what this is?”

“No.” The elven general looked as if she might burst into tears. Gallarael knew the look, for they’d cried together many times while Chelda and Vanx were on the far side of creation, fighting the Paragon Dracus.

“Neither do I.” She shrugged and then palmed the big gem.

Instantly, Gallarael was pulled into a flash of brightness. When she opened her eyes, she was in a great hall that had been iced over. Part of a long-necked beast formed of frozen water was reaching down at something.

She didn’t hesitate. She knew it was Vanx, and he was pinned under the heavy head of the creature, which had broken from the neck and fallen on him. It had clearly been attacking him. He’d probably frozen it with a spell. He was bloody and mangled, and as she slid down beside him, she put her head against his chest and prayed to his goddess for him.

To her surprise, she heard his heart, and he jerked, startling her.

“Food, warm water,” he said as he slid out from under the frozen dragon head.

“You’re not pinned?” she asked, astonished.

“Nah, the hollow there holds heat while I sleep.” He grinned. “I’ve been waiting for you.”

“Waiting for me?”

“My goddess has tasked me.” He grinned again. “As long as I am in here, though, no one can rush me off to crack this or find another.” He held up the real ruby, the one he’d taken from the stone hand. It glimmered, casting a pink light across the ice. “I was just waiting. After I froze this bastard, I was out of it for a day or so. I still had to defy that crazy arm to get the stone, but I did it. After that is when Poops found you and told me you were there.”

“So, you have been deceiving everyone, including your goddess, just for me?”

“Yup.” He slid over next to her. “But I was about to give up on you.”

She kissed him then. “That would have been a mistake.”

Chapter Thirty-Two

If I had a dime

for every once upon a time
,

I’d be doing well
,

for I’ve some tales to tell
.

I
t turned out that the goddess didn’t care what spells Vanx used. She expressed her love for Vanx. The love he felt for Gallarael, she said, only made him stronger.

Follow your heart, not your anger
, the goddess told him, revealing to Vanx his great mistake. He had three other seed gems to find and crack, and without a dragon to help him, it wouldn’t be easy. He had a magic ship and the best crew around to go do it with, though.

After the birds rested, two carried carried Vanx and Gallarael each back to Dragon Isle, while the third bird carried the two elven women. Vanx took the Glaive of Gladiolus into his possession, just so Moonsy would have to come and protect it. But Elva Toyon agreed that having General Moonseed along gave King Longroot a claim to all of these new Heart Trees as part of his fairy kingdom.

Vanx laughed, for the poor kid was only three years old and had no idea what was happening outside his opulent nursery.

The ruby Vanx already had needed to be cracked, and the goddess had told him where to do it. So that was his next task.

Master Ruuk was going back to Zyth to help rebuild, but Zeezle decided to stay on Dragon Isle and keep an eye on the new Heart Tree and Chelda’s horses, which had been mating all week and needed protection from the young dragon the Zythian had been spying on over the ridge.

Vanx was doing his goddess’s bidding, not the elves’. The business of the seed gems just happened to be of both their concern, which worked out well for Chelda and Moonsy, who kept them all guessing how their late night groanings and moanings were played out.

The
Adventurer
was a small ship after all.

Vanx had a hard time imagining Chelda in a bunk, much less making love to Moonsy in one of the cramped cabins; but they made love, and so did Vanx and Gallarael.

Vanx wasn’t allowed out of his cabin, save to fish, until they were in the proximity of the invisible island. The goddess had told him he would learn about the other three gems there, but only after he cracked the ruby.

They had the great hawks this time, and the birds could see the island just fine even though the humans couldn’t.

As he climbed into the longboat with his friends and familiar, Vanx sighed. Another adventure was about to begin, and he hadn’t even fully recovered from the last one.

Maybe it was Gallarael’s sexual appetite he needed to recover from, he told himself. The truth was he didn’t need to recover, for he was whole because he had Sir Poopsalot and Gallarael with him now. And even though the loss of Pyra and Thorn weighed heavily on him, he knew they had died fighting, which was all anyone could hope to do.

“Woof!” Poops barked his agreement and put his head in Vanx’s lap.

“He missed you,” Chelda said, pointing out the
Adventurer’s
newly carved bow spirit, as she rowed them around the anchored ship toward what looked like open water.

“That is amazing, Chel.” Vanx said. He put a hand behind each of Poops’s ears and started scratching him vigorously. “It really is amazing.”

It was. The wild, red hair had been defined and the face chiseled into that of a fair maiden with only slightly pointed ears. The breasts were perfectly formed, and the arms no longer blocky.

Chelda had done well.

“Maybe we can get some paint the next time we are at a port,” Vanx told her.

“Yah.” Chelda grinned and rowed that much harder.

Vanx felt the ship radiating pride over its beautification. He, too, felt pride. It was with that powerful emotion he set his mind and Sir Poopsalot’s to the task ahead. As he sank into the dog’s perception and let smell become his primary sense, the island appeared for him in a scent scape.

Don’t fuck with the birds
, Poops said into his mind, causing him to remember Harthgar and laugh. But then the boat ran aground, and they all pitched forward.

Another adventure was about to begin.

The End

M. R. Mathias has several other titles available, including:

The Legend of Vanx Malic

The Legend of Vanx Malic Book One - Through the Wildwood

The Legend of Vanx Malic Book Two - Dragon Isle

The Legend of Vanx Malic Book Three - Saint Elm’s Deep

The Legend of Vanx Malic Book Four - That Frigid Fargin’ Witch

The Legend of Vanx Malic Book Five - Trigon Daze

The Legend of Vanx Malic Book Six – Paragon Dracus

The Legend of Vanx Malic Book Seven – The Far Side of Creation

The Legend of Vanx Malic Book Eight – The Long Journey Home

The Legend of Vanx Malic – Foxwise (a short story)

Don’t miss the huge International Bestselling epic:

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Book One - The Sword and the Dragon

Book Two - Kings, Queens, Heroes, & Fools

Book Three - The Wizard & the Warlord

Or the Locus Poll-nominated, bestselling, Dragon Rider Series:

The Dragoneer Saga

The First Dragoneer - Free Dragoneer intro novella

The Royal Dragoneers - Dragoneer Saga, Book One

Cold Hearted Son of a Witch - Dragoneer Saga, Book Two

The Confliction - Dragoneer Saga, Book Three

Confliction Compendium (Books 1-3 plus The First Dragoneer novella)

The Emerald Rider - Dragoneer Saga, Book Four

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Dragoneer Saga, Royalty Trilogy, Boxed Set (Books, 4, 5, and 6)

The Crimzon & Clover Short Story Series

Crimzon & Clover I – Orphaned Dragon, Lucky Girl

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The Sword and the Dragon

Copyright 2009 by M. R. Mathias

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Chapter One

G
erard Skyler used his free arm to wipe the sweat from his brow before it had a chance to drip into his eyes. Scaling the towering, nesting cliff for the second time was far harder than he expected it to be. No one had attempted the climb two days in a row before. His body was still sore and raw from yesterday’s climb, but he could not afford to stop and rest. He was more than three hundred feet above a rocky canyon floor. A fall would undoubtedly be fatal. The last thing he needed at the moment was burning eyes and blurred vision.

A few dozen feet above him was the wide, flat shelf they called the “Lip.” Once he was there he could lie down, stretch out his aching body, and relax his muscles before continuing up into the nesting shelves to gather the precious hawkling eggs he sought.

Why the blasted birds nested so high on the cliff and so late in the spring, he could never determine. All of the other avian species he knew had hatched their young and headed north already. Why he was foolishly climbing the cliff a second time was another question he kept asking himself. He already knew the answer though: he was doing it for his older brother, Hyden.