The Dragon Ring (Book 1) (28 page)

“Yes, Aleman, but I’ll get to it when I have time. You mustn’t clean up in here. You misplace things. It takes me forever to find them.”

“Uh huh.” The wizard wasted the admonition on the feisty housekeeper. Shuffling around the workroom, Aleman visually probed everything, which made Memlatec uncomfortable. Seeming to appear disinterested, Aleman glanced back to his employer. “Something’s got you worried.”

“How perceptive of you.”

“Now don’t go getting all riled up, I was just trying to help. I’m here if you need me, just ask. Course I’m no wizard. I can’t be changing people into bugs and stuff, but I’ll do what I can.”

“Thank you for your offer, but I don’t need assistance at the moment. Thank you for the lunch, Aleman.”

The old retainer sauntered over to the defensive wizard, crossed his arms, and stared at him. “Tell old Aleman what’s got you so wound up.”

“You don’t take a hint do you?”

“Never saw the need. You going to let me in on what’s bothering you, or must I camp out in this dust bin.”

Memlatec shook his head. The annoyance wasn’t going to leave until Memlatec shared what was troubling him. The old man wasn’t the best housekeeper, but he was a good enough cook. Still, the wizard could rely on him to keep a sharp eye on the tower and be invaluable company with locked lips to prying busybodies.

“The Dark Lord, king of Dreaddrac has grown an army in the Ice Mountains. His strength shows up strong on the power grid. I fear he’ll soon invade the kingdoms of the peninsula again and I’ve no indication the rulers are aware of the danger.”

“Does this have anything to do with the power stuff growing in Prince Saxthor?”

“The two are opposite halves of the whole.”

“Can’t be good.”

“No, Aleman, not good.”

“The prince, rest his soul, was too young to be fighting anyone, let alone an evil king. It grieves me we lost him.”

“Prince Saxthor isn’t dead, yet, but you mustn’t reveal that to a living soul. Should Earwig get an inkling he’s alive, she’d double her effort to find and kill him.”

“The prince alive!”

“Yes, but no more mention of it. Even the queen doesn’t know.”

“My lips is sealed.”

“Saxthor is safe for the time being. He must survive and grow up to achieve his potential to confront the Dark Lord successfully. I fear the king will unleash his army before the boy develops his power to full capacity. Dreaddrac’s forces could slip between the Edros Swamp and the Hador Mountains. They’d overrun Heggolstockin before word even reached the King Grekenbach at Graushdemheimer.”

The thought seemed to shock Aleman. He knocked over a water goblet and flooded the tabletop.

“Never did hear anything good about Dreaddrac. I bet the witch has something to do with all this. She’s a bad lot.”

Memlatec considered the water shimming on the table before Aleman cleaned up the mess. “Flood… witch…Yes, you’re a genius Aleman.”

Aleman looked up, his head askew with a suspicious eye cocked at the wizard. “Don’t you go making fun of me.”

Memlatec rushed to a wall cabinet and pulled out a map of the peninsula. He rolled out the parchment on the clean tabletop, putting implements on the corners. His long-nailed index finger pointed to a spot on the map between the Edros Swamps and the Hador mountains.

“What did I say?” Aleman asked.

Aleman scratched his head puzzled by the wizard, who cast him a grin as he darted to a bookcase. Memlatec returned with a dusty book and flipped through the pages.

“Witch, you said witch, and flood,” Memlatec said without looking up from his search.

“Witch? Flood?” Aleman’s face was as blank as the mind behind it.

“Witch,” Memlatec said. He looked up at Aleman, his finger pointing to a name on the page. “The Witch Zelda.”

“I never heard of her.”

“No, long ago she fought with an older and wiser wizard…Zelda lost. She ran off and sought protection under Dreaddrac’s king. She’s been living on the edge of the Edros Swamps since.”

“How’s a witch able to help you if I can’t?” Aleman wiped a spot of water off the table near the book. “Don’t you go getting mixed up with no witch.”

“She’s going to flood western Dreaddrac and close the only way open an army can pass out of Dreaddrac. The plan won’t stop the Dark Lord, but if all goes as anticipated, the resulting inland sea will delay him long enough for Saxthor to mature into his powers.”

“An old bumbling witch flood such a big place? Don’t sound like she could. Why would she do that for you?”

Memlatec took a book from a shelf behind the worktable and sat down to search through the pages for a suitable incantation. The wizard was engaged in his plot. Aleman nudged the tray closer to him on the table.

“Better you should eat your lunch and not get in another muddle.”

“Later, Aleman, I’ll eat something later. I must find a particular spell now. A dangerous incantation and a real risk for sure, but if my plan works, it’ll be just the thing.”

Aleman shook his head and wiped his hands on his apron. He stuffed his ever-present dust rag in the apron pocket and shuffled out the door, leaving Memlatec to his obsession. When the old man returned at dusk to retrieve the tray, Memlatec was finishing up. He’d scribbled down the spell on an old piece of parchment, singed the edges and aged it with charcoal smudges.

“Why you dirtying up a clean bit of paper?”

“A spell.”

“I turn my back and you’re making another mess.”

Memlatec didn’t respond. Aleman approached the worktable and began wiping all around Memlatec and the parchment until the wizard knocked his hand away.

“You’re being a pest, Aleman.”

“What’re you writing now? If I’m the genius who give you the idea, you ought to tell me what we’re doing.”

“
We’re
not doing anything.
I’m
fixing this spell scroll for the old Witch Zelda. I’ll have one of my watcher birds take this to her. She’s dense, and if I know her curiosity, she’ll have to try out the spell. The ground beneath the Edros Swamps isn’t stable. If this incantation works, extremely violent shaking underground will cause the land to settle. The Akkin River will flow backward and flood the surrounding area, closing off the passage between the swamp and the mountains. The king has neither vessels nor timber to make them, so he’ll be cut off.”

“You can’t do such a thing, can you? Make that big a disaster?” Aleman straightened up and stepped back. “Well, of course
you
could, you’re quite the best at making a mess.”

Memlatec ignored the comment and detected Aleman frowning when his ribbing didn’t get the desired response. The magician chuckled, having further frustrated Aleman.

“This spell can when cast on unstable ground.”

“Yes, looking around this room, I can believe you can make a big mess.”

Memlatec frowned and Aleman left the workroom with dishes clanking on the tray. The sorcerer soon sent the device off with a hawk he hoped would draw less attention in Dreaddrac than Fedra or his great horned owl.

* * *

The raptor found Zelda as she scratched out subsistence at the edge of the Edros Swamps. Nestling the scroll in a bush near her hut, he observed from a dead tree. The witch found the document and wiped her muddy fingers on her sleeve. She read the contents then frowned, fingering the torn upper edge that should have had displayed the spell’s name.

“Where’d this come from?” Zelda said mumbling to herself. She looked around but saw no one to the horizon. “A page of an old magician’s book, I wonder what this one does?”

The witch stuck the parchment in her tattered pocket and continued to cut scraggly weeds for seasoning the rat she’d killed for her meal. The spell stayed on her mind and after cooking the stringy rodent, she took the dingy spell out of her pocket.

“What harm can one little chant do?” Zelda wiped back the dusty, wiry hair from her face and reread the spell. “I’ll just recite this once and find out what happens.”

She cast the spell and at first, nothing happened. She stuffed the scroll back in her pocket. Then from deep in the earth, she felt the ground quiver. The shaking stopped and she stood up, but a massive jolt jarred her off her feet. Knocked backward, she sat up in the mud, legs apart, and scanned the dead-silent swamp.

“What have I done?”

The ground around her trembled, shuddered, and began to sink. Dead trees toppled over amid shaking scrub brush. Massive ripples formed in the swamp water and grew to waves. The earth sank more. The foul water’s leading edge appeared to stream toward Zelda. She grunted, struggling to stand up on the shaking soil. When she glanced again at the swamp, the water first withdrew then surged in waves toward her, lapping at the tattered hem of her skirt. She ran, but the waves overtook her. Fingered lightning bolts crackled the gloomy swirling sky. The whole swamp jostled across the horizon. The fetid water was soon knee deep and rippling with bobbing debris. Zelda choked on the swamp stench as she struggled to overcome her tugging skirt and boots stuck and sinking in the mud. A dead tree, whose rotted branch stubs spiked at the sky, was her lone refuge. The witch clutched the crumbling black-bark trunk. A surging wave plucked them up and hurled them along. She surfed east with the tsunami wave until it slammed into the Hador mountains.

Zelda went into hiding, but Dreaddrac’s king sent minions all across southwestern Dreaddrac to find the source of the power surge that triggered the devastation. Two bounty-hunter ogres eventually found wretched Zelda cringing in a damp cave.

“It’s that witch, Zelda. T’was her sure.”

Zelda backed up. “I didn’t do nothing.”

The grinning ogres looked at each other, snatched struggling Zelda, tying her hands and feet.

“Let me go!”

“Shut up. You’re taking a little trip with us.” The captors tied her down over a horned nark’s back and started back northeast to the Ice Mountains.

“Where’re you taking me?” Zelda asked between grunts from the rhythmic jolts.

“Where you won’ts be coming back from, Old Witch.”

Zelda glared at the grinning ogres, who stuffed a rag in her mouth and secured it to shut her up.

* *

In the Ice Mountains at the northern tip of the Powterosian peninsula, heat and steam rose from deep underground. Magma seeped up through fissures deep in the Munattahensenhov’s icy mantle. The Munattahensenhov was the mountain fortress where the Dark Lord grew his orc, ogre, and troll armies in a labyrinth of catacombs. In the bowels of the mountain, the Dark Lord of Dreaddrac sat fuming on his throne in the subterranean audience hall. His sinister courtiers stood before the king with the only ambassador, that of Prertsten his sole ally. Facing the Dark Lord was a penitent and cringing Witch Zelda. Old and haggard, she fidgeted on the cold granite floor before the dais and the enraged Dark Lord’s sparking glare.

“Stupid fool that you are, your bungling has flooded miles of land in southern Dreaddrac. For years, I’ve grown my armies, preparing to overrun the southern kingdoms. With little more than a year before completing my preparations, you collapse the whole of southwestern Dreaddrac, sinking solid ground under the Edros Swamps. For some time, the Akkin River has flowed backward, flooding miles of bog land. Your disaster has tripled the size of the swamp and closed the land bridge from Dreaddrac into the peninsula’s lower regions. What have you to say for yourself?”

Trembling, Zelda hesitated. “It was an unfortunate mistake. A teensy weensy little...” Her mumbling trailed off.

The Dark Lord rolled his head around. Struggling to restrain his rage, he sat with white spittle in the corners of his mouth. He felt the few hairs on his head frizz from the static charge escaping his elevated energy state.

The witch cowered, rocking on her boney knees too scared to speak further. The surrounding audience froze, apparently fearing even to move lest they draw the fuming king’s attention. Only the grinding of the Dark Lord’s chipped teeth reverberated off the cold stone walls to scratch at the nerves of courtiers across the hall.

“A mistake?”

A spark from the Dark Lord’s small finger claw zapped the witch, knocked her over and left a wisp of smoke rising from her shoulder. She winced, but clamped her lips. She struggled to get up, still bent and bowing to His Highness without looking up at him.

“Speak, witch!”

“Oops,” Zelda mumbled.

“OOPS!” the Dark Lord screamed, shooting up like an arrow from his iron throne. Sparks shot from his eyes and blackened claws. Instant panic surged through the hall as courtiers darted in all directions, scrambling for the exit.

Zelda collapsed and held her forehead to the floor. She couldn’t escape her fate. The all but deserted hall echoed the slightest sound. When exhausted from his rage, the king sat back on his throne. The unflappable chamberlain moved to his side. Zelda shuffled in the strangling silence.

“What do you wish to add, Witch?” the Dark Lord asked. “You’ve more to say.”

Zelda raised her head enough to speak, but not to face the king.

“Well, you see – there was this piece of an old scroll I found in a bush with a spell on it. I was curious to find out what the incantation did…”

“Piece of a scroll – in a bush – Fool, how would a piece of an ancient scroll still survive in the corrosive air of the Edros Swamps? Someone put the contrivance there for you to find. Only one individual would create a device with such powerful spell. Memlatec is behind this disaster.”

“How was I to know?” Zelda fidgeted on the floor. She spoke without permission and smacked her head back on the granite.

“I’d burn you to ash, Witch, but that would be over with too soon. You’ll live to suffer for many years yet. You’re banished to the desolate west coast of Tixos to live only in the company of rock-dwarves in the Highback Mountains. You’ll know no organic being again. The rock-dwarves will assure you suffer at the steaming forges deep under the mountain for the rest of your unnatural life.”

Zelda sobbed.

“Shall I send her with the orcs?” the chamberlain asked.

“No. Let her suffering begin sooner than that. She’s not to speak with orcs or any others. Dispatch her on the back of a dragon.”