Knights of the Wizard (of Knights and Wizards Book 2) (3 page)

Marcus and Ryxa flew around the castle several times enjoying the view from the air, the wind in his face felt nice. Ryxa hovered for a bit. Below them Stone was training several young soldiers as other knights looked on and although they had shields and he didn’t they were no match for him; he was repeatedly correcting their technique and becoming irritated because they were duplicating their errors over and over. Stone placed his foot on the bigger one’s buttocks and sent him flying, knowing that those mistakes would almost certainly cost them their lives in battle.

“Ryxa, you can bring me back to my chamber now, I’ll bet she’s gone.” Marcus was anxious to make a spell worked properly, any spell.

The dragon pumped her wings and was a little disappointed because she thought they would end up flying around for a few hours; she had liked Marcus right from the moment he had climbed up that cliff. But now that he was a wizard they were spending less time together. “You want to go back already?”

Marcus nodded. “I might be a wizard, but everyone is laughing at me. I want to at least make a spell that will keep everyone out of my chamber, and one that works correctly. Being a wizard is hard work. What’s the opposite of respect ‘cause that’s what I’m getting.”

The black dragon got as close to his chamber as she could and he ran and launched himself off her head catching onto the window but was unable to pull himself. Ryxa gave him a boost with her head pushing him back inside the castle and sure enough Alexa was gone. Marcus sighed and again started to go through several notebooks that Adorok had kept over the years, sitting and reading for over an hour until he came to an interesting spell. He checked his ingredients on the shelf on the wall and smiled because he had everything necessary for the enchantment. The hard part was, of course, to get it to work properly.

Marcus stood for a minute, smiling as he visualized the spell at work, then he disappeared down the hall and returned after a time with a bucket of dragon manure, which was great for keeping a single log in the fireplace burning for weeks. It could also used as a catalyst in some spells. The manure was hard black lumps that looked a lot like volcanic rock but had no odor, smashing it with a hammer it readily turned to dust, not as hard as it looked. He got a cloth and placed it in the dust, ran it all around the doorway including along the floor. Then he took three wooden bowls and in one he ground up the bark from a duwub tree that was planted by dragons, they so enjoyed eating its bark. In the other bowl he put in three hairs from a donkey’s tail with a large pinch of ground up tree root from a dead sycamore tree, and finally in the third bowl a small drop of his blood onto a breadcrumb that had been infused with some magical words.

Marcus nodded several times. “I have a good feeling about this one.”

He put all the ingredients in a bowl and mashed it together; it glowed and then morphed into a rock as the spell said it would. Was it actually going to work? Marcus felt excitement at the thought that it was going to be a success. He took another chunk of the manure and smashed it into a fine dust mixing a drop of his blood into it, and then sprinkled it over the rock. Marcus then took the stone and scratched all around the doorway with it and every scratch started to glow, hopefully indicating that the spell was working. There was a flash of bright light and then a puff of smoke.

“It worked!” Marcus could barely contain himself.

Alexa was chasing Abbey down the castle hall; she was a precocious toddler and a handful, as cute as they come. Abbey ran into the chamber and suddenly she was transformed into a baby donkey, looking around puzzled, attempting to figure out what had just happened.

“Abbey! Marcus! What have you done?” Alexa screamed from the castle hall. She was furious as she entered the chamber to put a beating on Marcus, but now she was a donkey as well.

The colt ran and jumped around in the chamber having a great time.

DEEP INSIDE THE BOWELS OF THE EARTH the smell of sulfur was pungent. A channel of lava made its way through the vast cavern and continued underground and out of sight. Bubbles in the lava expanded and popped as water dripped down from the concave ceiling high above creating a hiss of hot steam with each drop. It resembled, to a degree, what humans thought hell looked like. It was a deadly atmosphere for humans but a nice place to live for a particular dragon.

In another area, more water dripped noisily into a shallow pool of tepid mud and water, and out of it crawled a baby mud mole which then quickly waddled off. The uneven walls glowed red from the molten rock as shadows shifted around from bubbling lava, like dancing demons. A giant mole was digging through rock down a side tunnel, it broke a claw and it screeched but another grew back instantly and it resumed digging, faster and more determined than before. The giant moles were the product of a wizard that had lived over five hundred years ago, an inexperienced sorcerer that had liked to play with his magic, turning ordinary moles into giants for the fun of it. He hadn’t considered that they would be able to mate and reproduce and evolve. Sometimes there were consequences to a wizard’s lack of judgement.

It was a hot, humid dark and oppressive atmosphere but not for Charox. The dragon was comfortably asleep on an enormous circular pillar that jutted out of the bubbling lava, dreaming of pursuing and killing others dragons. Dragons didn’t come any bigger than a grey dragon, almost fifty ordinary size dragons could fit inside one, always an impressive sight. The monstrous dragon awoke from his four hundred year nap and was immediately aware that there was another dragon wizard in the world besides himself, another beast that could cast spells. And as he cocked his head and sensed Ash he didn’t like him one little bit, managing a menacing smile. He scratched the sleep out of his eyes.

“A mighty sorcerer eh?” Charox growled deeply as he considered. “That dragon cannot be allowed to exist. He could potentially destroy me. He seems young, but it’s best not to risk it.”

The dragon yawned and cracked his own neck, the sound of it echoing loudly off the walls. He stretched his massive wings to get the blood flowing, continuing to scratch the sleep out of his eyes with his enormous claws. Charox caught himself in the eye with his claw, but it didn’t hurt, sounded like metal plinking on glass. He ran his claws over his chest, feeling the ridges and bumps on his scales, discovered a parasite the size of a large rat and ate it. The grey dragon thought that the only way he could be killed was by another dragon wizard. Perhaps it was time for him to make his way up to the surface world and check out that little sorcerer, in any case he hadn’t terrorized humans for centuries. It would be a lot of fun. Humans tasted salty.

People knew very little about grey dragons except that they were the largest species of all and by far the meanest, they rarely showed their ugly rutted faces but when they did it was big trouble. Some thought that the end of humankind would come at the claws of a grey dragon because they appeared to be indestructible; it was thought that some were even immune to magic.

“Why am I still so tired?”

The number of grey dragons was unknown as were their weaknesses but a grey dragon sorcerer was a different animal and that much more terrifying. Centuries ago several kingdoms had been destroyed by one; in fact Charox had been the dragon that had destroyed them. He loved it when they screamed and cried because it was just the thing that made life worth living, took away the tedium of it all. He ate people like humans ate blueberries, by the handfuls, and once had crushed more than fifty of them with a single stomp, what satisfying little crunches they had made under his big feet. The history books showed the last appearance at just over four hundred years ago with more than a thousand human casualties; perhaps Charox would have destroyed all humans had he not needed that nap.

He repeatedly blinked his hot red eyes until he summoned a vision of Ash, swirling him around as a frozen entity in his mind, examining him from all angles, even upside down. He didn’t look like much until he used his remote sensor to detect his level of power, thereby realizing that he could indeed be a genuine threat, a blob of swirling energy. Could he really be more powerful than Charox? Ash’s aura looked fiery hot with sparkles of white light dancing inside it. Further examination revealed no other information so whatever those sparkles were he had no clue, but he definitely didn’t like the look of them. Ash appeared to be a child and his inexperience would not be good for the little guy, in fact, it would be fatal.

The sound of rocks tumbling out of a side tunnel caused the dragon to turn his head so fast that it made his neck crack; he got up and flew off in search of the disturbance, turning left down a tunnel and then right, his wings occasionally scratching both sides of the tunnel. He guessed that it was most likely a mole, but it was best to be sure, he certainly wouldn’t put up with any trespassers, and besides it would be fun to terrorize intruders. Charox’s mate Charissa had wandered off a long time ago and perhaps she was returning, but then again she might never come back, just because he tore a chunk out of the back of her neck during an attempt at mating.

Charox cocked his head as he listened, staring at the rocks where he assumed something was going to appear. Sure enough rocks dropped to the ground from the wall and then the mole fell through the rock wall and down more than twenty feet to the ground, momentarily stunned. The dragon bit it in two, roasted it with a blast of fire, and then swallowed the pieces. It wasn’t much of a bite but satisfying nonetheless, its blood squirting onto his tongue as he crunched its bones. Charox dug into the hole making it larger, grabbing the mole’s mate and biting her head off, roasting and then eating her as well.

High up in a mountain cliff inside a dragon’s lair the sun was peeking in from over the horizon as Ash woke himself with a blood-curdling scream, so loud that it frightened the entire family awake, the scream echoing through the series of caves and tunnels. Ash’s sister Cinder-Ella shook her head as she thought
oh no not again
; a good night sleep was getting harder to come by because of Ash and his nightmares. Her brother was having the same nightmare several times a week where a large grey figure would emerge from underground and immediately grab his father by the neck, shaking him so hard that his head came off. Zedock’s head always bounced before it came to a halt with his dead eyes staring up at Ash. The baby dragon refused to tell his mother the details of his dream, pretending that he was unable to remember but in actuality he would never forget those vivid dreams.

Ash was changing his colors, now was a combination of black and red but it looked good on him, obviously going to be quite handsome when he was full-grown. His mother Ella thought he was the cutest dragon in existence but wasn’t about to tell his two sisters Firestorm and Cinder-Ella that.

Zedock yawned and stretched his black wings. “Everyone go back to sleep it’s still dark out.” Sometimes when dragons had a large meal they liked to sleep in the next morning and Zedock had been looking forward to it but now suspected it wasn’t going to happen as he closed his eyes.

Ash shook his head. “It’s not dark out the sun’s coming up.”

Ella raised her head as Ash came running into his parent’s chamber. “Ash what’s wrong honey? Another bad dream?”

“I think another grey dragon is coming, and I think he’s coming after me!”

ALEXA WAS INSIDE MARCUS’S CHAMBER and she was furious, the donkey chased him around and bit him several times on the ass until he managed to push her out of the room. Luckily, as soon as she crossed the doorway’s threshold she returned to her human form. Abbey followed her out and also returned to her human form but immediately ran back in because it was great fun to be a donkey. The baby never had so much fun.

In the hall, Alexa grabbed Marcus by his robe and lifted him right off his feet. “Are you insane? What if we had remained donkeys?”

“Calm down,” said Marcus. “As soon as you leave my chamber you change back. Now put me down. If you don’t start showing me just a little more respect you’re going to be sorry. For goodness sake don’t you have enough sense to fear a wizard?”

Alexa put Marcus down and coaxed Abbey out of the chamber, picking her up when she returned to her human form. Although she wouldn’t admit it to him she was beginning to be wary of Marcus and his incompetence. How long before he concocted some terrible enchantment that wouldn’t just automatically reverse? “Marcus, you’re a menace. You need to be more careful.”

Although Marcus wouldn’t admit it to anyone his big sister was impressive, but he would never tell her that. Alexa was a beauty and could fight like a demon possessed by the devil himself. She certainly had more going for her than he had for himself. “Alexa, when you were a donkey did you have the mind of a jackass or a human?”

“I was still me but trapped inside of a donkey you jackass!” She so wanted to put a beating on him but now didn’t dare. The reality that her little brother was a wizard still made her shake her head.

“That’s not the way that spell is supposed to work! You were supposed to be all donkey, mind and body. If you have the mind of a human, you could just destroy my stuff anyway. I’m sure I followed the directions correctly. How will I ever be a powerful and respected wizard if nothing ever works right? Not even one of my enchantments has turned out the way they are supposed to, not even one.”

Infuriated Alexa stormed off with the baby struggling in her arms; Abbey was screaming and crying to get back in there.