Isle of Wysteria: The Reluctant Queen (47 page)

“They dragged the ship into the sea?” Alder repeated.

Mina nodded. “Dragons are the only thing that can live in seawater.”

“I didn’t think anything could,” Athel shared.

“It would seem these dragons are invulnerable,” Alder mused.

“Um, you guys might want to see this,” Hanner called from the crest of the hill, pointing to the mists beyond as he held his son. They ran up alongside him and couldn’t believe what they saw. The dale beyond was littered with dragon carcasses, the very ground soaked and puddled with their deep purple blood. Split open and butchered like oversized cattle, their bones and remains lay where they had been sliced apart, some still steaming with body heat. No carrion or scavenger animals disturbed the carnage. No insect or fly landed upon them. It was as if the very land was paralyzed with mourning.

“Looks like someone found a way to kill them,” Hanner observed.

“How?” Athel wondered.

“Over there, to the north,” Mina whispered, motioning for everyone to duck down.

Far off, they saw a bound dragon thrashing about amid the corpses of his kin. Silently they worked their way closer. As they neared, they saw the dragon was bound in some kind of thick, glowing metal cable, wrapped around him tightly like a vine. The creature roared and released a flash of fire, but was unable to free itself.

As they came within a hundred yards, they saw other movement as well. Three squat Stonemasters were moving about, preparing to carve up the dragon. In their hands they held long blades, or rather, they held something in the shape of a blade that was made of black, crackling energy.

“How are we going to fight them?” Athel asked worriedly as they peered up over a rocky outcropping. “Our magic doesn’t work here.”

“But these do,” Mina whispered, loading a dart round into her flintlock rifle.

The three Stonemasters had lifted their crackling blades, preparing to cut into the dragon’s neck, when the first shot rang out. Mina’s aim was true, and one of them collapsed to the ground. Ryin’s shot rang out a heartbeat later, catching the second one in the flank and spinning him around before he fell unconscious.

The third one was quick; he lashed out in their general direction, the dark energy of his blade becoming a wave that sliced through the dale, carving out a riverbed straight as an arrow as it sped towards them.

Hanner kept his cool and took aim, even as the others had to jump aside to avoid the energy blade that swept past them and cleaving the rocks in twain. With a smile on his lips, Hanner took the shot and the third Stonemaster went down.

Cautiously, they approached the bound dragon, looking around to see if there were any other Stonemasters nearby.

“Is this the same one that attacked us earlier?” Hanner asked, slowly circling the beast. Strenner cooed happily.

“How should I know?” Ryin quipped. “I mean, how do you tell dragons apart, anyway?”

“I am the same one you fought before,” came the response from the dragon. His voice was fulminating, and seemed to come from everywhere at once. It made Mina drop her weapon and cover her ears.

“My name is Vah’mnemn. I am the youngest of my kind.”

“How old is that?” Alder wondered.

“Twelve thousand of your years.”

“Why did you attack us?” Athel asked.

“I do not apologize for attacking you before. I thought you were numbered among the Stonemasters that invaded my lands.”

“Do we look like Stonemasters to you?” Mina asked incredulously, holding out her long furry tail and waving it around.

Vah’mnemn struggled against his bonds. “I could not be sure. You mortals all look the same to me.”

“Are you kidding?” Ryin huffed. “He’s ten feet tall, she’s covered in white fur, and I am irredeemably handsome.”

“Give us a break, Colenat.”

Vah’mnemn stretched against the cables and looked them over closely. “When I look at you, I see death. Your bodies all stink of it, slowly decaying with the passage of time. I can feel you dying at this very moment, right in front of me. It is revolting.”

“Not very diplomatic, is he?” Alder whispered.

“Twelve thousand years, you'd think he would pick up a little tact along the way,” Mina observed as she nervously splashed herself with more perfume. “I don’t stink...I don’t.”

“Well, I like him,” Hanner smiled.

Athel drew out her silver dueling blade and lined up with the cable that held Vah’mnemn.

“Lady Athel, what are you doing?” Alder asked, backing away.

“You let that ruttin’ thing go, it could eat us all,” Hanner warned.

“No, this creature is obviously not our enemy,” Athel stated calmly. “So we must help him.”

“Don’t do it, Athel,” Ryin warned, but it was too late. Athel struck hard against the cable. Her saber groaned with a shrill crack, then broke in two. The broken section spun in the air and planted itself into the cold earth.

“What the spit?” Athel exclaimed, looking at her ruined blade.

“I tried to tell you,” Ryin explained. These cables have been alchemically hardened. “Your little Wysterian metal might as well be a carrot when you bang against it.”

“I'll have you know this was forged by the finest...”

“Yes, yes,” Ryin soothed, raising his hands. “I’m sure by your standards it was a very nice blade, but Wysterians make kiwi and pumpkins, not swords. Let a Ferran show you how it’s done.”

Ryin kicked one of the Stonesmasters over and removed some iron tongs from his belt. From another, he got a pair of good solid leather gloves, and a quarterstaff. After a bit of lashing, Ryin now had the bone fragment pinched in the tongs which were lashed to the end of the staff.

“Okay, Ryin said, donning the gloves, “can you give me a good long stream of fire out of just one nostril?”

Vah’mnemn struggled for a bit, but finally managed to position himself so that the right side of his face was pressed up against the ground. Breathing in as deeply as his bonds would allow, he released a tight jet of multi-colored flame from his raised nostril. Stepping forward, Ryin thrust the tip of the bone into the prismatic flame. Even though they were not directly in the jet, the tongs began heating up immediately, turning red hot, while the bone itself seemed unaffected. After a while, though, the bone began taking on a color. First, a dull red, then growing hotter into a bright orange, then finally white hot. The tongs were beginning to ooze apart in red-hot droplets, and the quarterstaff was blackening with scorch.

Baby Strenner giggled at the flames and clapped.

“Oh, look at him,” Hanner praised. “He’s a little pyromaniac, just like his daddy.”

“Isn’t that hot enough?” Mina asked from a distance, shielding her face.

“She can go hotter,” Ryin insisted, wiping the sweat from his brow.

Alder leaned in towards Mina. “I thought he flunked out of the smithing academy.”

“He did,” Mina assured.

“Look, just because I got bored studying old books doesn’t mean I haven’t seen this stuff done a thousand times before,” Ryin assured as he rotated the bone fragment in the fire.

“Really?” Mina pressed. “You've seen dragon bone heated up by dragon fire thousands of times before?”

“Well...no.”

The quarterstaff reached its kindling point and burst into flames, the bone slipped in the weakening grip of the melting tongs, but grew hotter still, glowing a bright blue, then a rich indigo, and then finally passing out out of their ability to see in a fading purple.

“Now!” Ryin took the bone bit and shoved it into the glowing cable. It burrowed through it, causing the metal to squeal and shriek, recoiling from the heat as if it were a living thing. Ryin wrenched it around. One of the threads broke, then another, then another. Finally, with a leveraged downward twist, the quarterstaff splintered and the final threads of the cable broke.

Vah’mnemn unfurled his wings, knocking them all to the ground, and let out a triumphant roar that shook the earth. His sapphire-like scales shimmering in the sunlight as he twisted in the air. When he came down again, he pinned them to the earth with his massive clawed hands. Ryin and Hanner between one, their heads poking out between claws, Mina Alder and Athel in the other.

“You're welcome,” Ryin said sarcastically, spitting out some dirt.

“Mortals have spilled the blood of dragons!” Vah’mnemn roared. “This is a blood moon! Where have they taken the others?”

“We don’t know,” Athel coughed. “We only came here to destroy the ruper spice.”

“Why have they come here!?” he roared, bearing rows of bright silvery teeth.

“We don’t know!” Mina insisted.

“Um, I can offer a theory,” came a timid voice.

Vah’mnemn turned his snout towards Alder, the fire of his eyes burning brightly. “Speak quickly before I bite your head off.”

Alder wriggled an arm free and pointed towards the nearest carcass. “There is a traditional method to slaughtering a large animal,” he explained. “A procedure to follow so that no parts are wasted...”

Vah’mnemn snarled in anger. “You compare my slain siblings to a fatted calf?”

“Aldi, what are you doing? Are you trying to get us killed?” Athel whispered.

“...but they haven’t followed any of those,” Alder continued. “All they have done is chopped the bodies into large sections and removed the skin, leaving everything else to waste.”

“The skin,” Vah’mnemn repeated, fume escaping from his lips. “Are you telling me my kind were killed for their pelts?”

“It would appear so,” Alder confirmed.

“How can you know such things?” Vah’mnemn accused. Are you an expert in dragon carving or something?”

Alder blinked in terror. “No, just a house-husband.”

Vah’mnemn pulled back and roared again, releasing them from his claws. “This is humiliating!” he howled as he paced around anxiously. “They attacked us while we slumbered. I see now that we had grown too complacent. We have been too merciful to the mortals infesting our world. It never even occurred to us that they might attack us with Eia'eino.”

“It would appear that they were transporting the pelts to another location from here,” Alder said, pointing over to a floating craft where some skins had been stacked. Looking like an oversized rickshaw, a quartet of sleepy oxen stood yoked to it. “If we follow the oxen’s hoof prints, we can trace it back to its point of origin.”

“Fine, we will begin tracking them immediately,” Vah’mnemn snarled.

“Wait,” Ryin interrupted, holding up his hands. “Why are we helping this guy again?”

Vah’mnemn snapped his razor sharp jaws shut right in front of Ryin, nearly taking his head off.

“Oh, right, I forgot,” Ryin squeaked.

Hanner leaned back and placed his cigar in his mouth, “Dragons are very persuasive.”

The oxen trail led off several miles towards the east, through a misty dry riverbed that cut sharply through a rocky ridge, slipping down a muddy slide up into the edge of a grimacing bluff.

Carefully, Athel and Alder crept up to the edge of the bluff and crested the hilltop, looking down into the fjord below. The long narrow inlet led out past glaring cliffs towards the ocean beyond. A section of the floor was covered by a large glowing dome of energy, from which a few rickshaws like the one they had seen before were lazily entering and leaving. An unmarked cargo ship broke away from the temporary docks that had been constructed, and sailed away, down the inlet towards the sea.

Although it was difficult to make out, they could see a few dozen dragons being held within the barrier.

As Athel tried to think of what to do, she found it hard to focus. Her mind drifted back to when she left her island so long ago. At the time, she really thought she had escaped her cage. Now, more than ever, she realized that she was just as imprisoned as ever. She caught Alder looking at her sympathetically, and forced herself to smile.

“So, what do you think, how should we handle this?” Athel asked, tickling the back of his neck. “
The Temple of the Lost Realm?
”

Alder thought for a moment as he looked at her. Her face was smiling, but her eyes were not. Slowly he shook his head. “We don’t know when the next solar eclipse will be. Perhaps
The Castle of Frozen Hearts?
”

Athel chewed her lip. “I don’t think there are enough of us for that. I mean, don’t get me wrong, but you're really not all that handy with a blade...outside of the kitchen, that is.”

“That is true, Lady Athel,” Alder bowed.

“The porter is to call me Lady Athel. You are my husband, you will call me Athi,”

` “Yes, my Lady.”

Athel rolled her eyes and tapped her fingers together. “You know, I've always wanted to try
The Gypsy Path.
”

“We don’t have a cat,” Alder pointed out.

Suddenly they both perked up and turned to one another. “
The Hourglass,
” they said in unison.

Disguising themselves as Stonemasters was easier than they expected. Just rolling around in the dirt and mud until you were covered in a layer of it and remembering to stoop over got you halfway there. Although persuading Mina to do so proved a fruitless endeavor. Vah’mnemn eventually tired of the arguing and simply plucked Mina off her feet like a toy and slammed her down into the mud himself. They all learned some new Mesdan swear words that day.

Add in a few accoutrements from the unconscious Stonemasters on the ground, heavy gloves, dirty goggles, a long, worn scarf, a leather half-coat, and from a distance they all looked downright passable as they manned the heavily laden rickshaw and drove the oxen towards the encampment in the fjord. Strenner was particularly happy to be covered in mud, and Hanner let him chew on his filthy fingers enthusiastically, despite Alder’s protests.

“This is humiliating,” Vah’mnemn growled from where he was hidden beneath the piles of bones and skins on the rickshaw.

“Hey, keep it quiet,” Ryin warned with a kick of his boot from the top of the pile. “Don’t make me slay you.”

“Slay me?” Vah’mnemn hissed.

“Aye, that is my Stonemaster cover name, Veribad Dragonslayer, esquire.”

Athel forced a grin through the heaviness in her heart. “And I am Lord Knight Mare,” she boasted as she drove the oxen at the front of the cart.