24

  Past midnight in Longshore, over a frozen dark tarn:

  Valerian and Filimar darted and swooped like the court-ball players they were, hammering the dragon with roaring flame on the one side, and a storm of sharp, flying rocks on the other. They may have struck each other more than once. Just, you know… accidentally.

  Besides the developing feud, Val was trying to drive that icy white monster the drek out of Longshore, while Filimar honestly thought that he was the slayer of Jonex’s prophecy. The young Arvendahl dived at the dragon repeatedly, searching for weak spots. But…

  “Insects!” It bellowed, shaking the mountains and cracking the frozen tarn. Spreading its tattered wings, the dragon swatted both elves aside with thunder-clap force. “You are nothing! Neither of you is the slayer!”

  They were sent tumbling through the air to crash into opposite valley walls; one in a fiery CRUMP, the other creating a massive landslide on impact. Jonex rose from the rock-hard lake, the battered, wedge-shaped head on its neck darting this way and that. Blight pulsed from the dragon in rippling waves, sickening everything mortal. Not just on the mainland but very far outward.

  “Show yourself, Slayer!” roared Jonex, as a tornado of bats screeched out of the darkness to strike at the village below. “Come forth and end your life in my jaws! Add your blood to all of the prophets and heroes and king’s sons who’ve already fed my immortal reign!”

  Hallan Gelfrin ad Reddick wasn’t much of a flier, though the ship’s new mage had been giving him court-ball lessons. The red-haired midshipman could manage short and wobbly hops, is all, but he was fiercely determined to help.

  Now, landing hard on a splintered pier, Hal cried out,

  “Me! I’m the Slayer, Dragon-sir! See? I’ve got an enchanted sword!”

  “And a cook!” shouted Miri, who’d emerged from the wavering shadows cast by the golden light of Hal’s upraised blade.

  The young elf scowled at her, but then nodded, giving the top of her head a fond pat.

  “A very fine cook!” he boasted, striking a manly pose.

  The dragon melted to mist somehow, blocking that dark and Seam-riven sky. The mist rolled toward them like sea-fog, icy and dense and somehow intelligent. It muffled the sounds of a burning town and an army of corpses, killing the wind, as well.

  Hallan kept his sword high, sweeping Miri into a tight, side-arm embrace. The blade’s glow and her quickly-sketched runes held back the hungering fog. Barely. Creatures and villagers caught in the stuff crashed to the ground, drained like flagons.

  “Just children,” hissed that swirling white mist. “Foolish brats in search of adventure.”

  Hal shook his head.

  “N- Nossir,” he said, forcing some bass into his shaky voice. “Adventure keeps finding me… but I’ll fight you right now, if you promise not to hurt Cookie.”

  The fog shook with laughter, coalescing suddenly to form a one-armed, pale-haired boy. Hal’s age, in seeming.

  Startled, Hallan stepped backward, though that other boy was lightly clad and he held no weapon at all. Not that open hands made him look any safer. The boy’s eyes were deep, blazing red and his skin was terribly pale. A strange charm hung at his neck, flickering weakly. Waves of compulsion rolled off of the one-armed youngster, who looked like a frozen and smiling corpse.

  “Come,” he said to them. “Come and embrace me, little ones. A moment’s exquisite pain, and then you shall live forever. I will make you my favorite playthings, for calling me ‘Sir’.”

  ‘Vampyre,’ thought Hallan, fighting the monster’s pull with all that he had.

  Miri whispered a spell of protection; the first that her master had taught her. But… the fascination and stirring… the desire that Jonex ignited in both was deep and ferocious. They wanted the vampyre’s teeth, its bite and embrace, more than air. More than life. Only the glow of Hal’s sword and Miri’s bright sigil stopped them from staggering forward.

  “Come to me, little ones,” urged Jonex. “I will taste of your blood, and then you need fear nothing at all but me, forever. Douse those silly lights and come to me.”

  It was so very hard to resist. Hallan felt himself take the first step, beginning to unclench his hand. Then somebody else skidded up across icy wood, stumbling and flailing, waving a sword that sparked a bit at its edges.

  “Leave them alone!” raged the newcomer.

  Jonex turned his head to regard that shabby and reeling intruder.

  “A mortal,” he scoffed. “Helpless and weak, and riddled with blight into the bargain. Yet… the charm pulses hotter, as the shopkeeper claimed that it would.”

  The newcomer recovered his balance and straightened, as two glowing streaks shot away from opposite valley walls. The filthy, shivering human kept talking, holding that transformed dragon’s attention.

  “I am Nalderick ob Korvin, a Valinor p- prince of the Blood Imperial!” he insisted. “And Lord Oberyn’s g- gift to our family is controlling dragons, c- creature!”

  A case of content theft: this narrative is not rightfully on Amazon; if you spot it, report the violation.

  Jonex cocked a silvery eyebrow, then laughed at him.

  “I see nothing before me but mortal trash with a stolen and nameless pocket-knife,” taunted the vampiric boy. “You are no elf and no Slayer, at all. You, I shall drain to a husk, leaving your corpse behind for the mice to nest in. They’ve complained of you often enough.”

  Val and Filimar didn’t have to come rocketing in like a pair of comets. They could swoop down as silent as owls, instead, lashing out from two sides with the Blade of the Tarandahls and Handy, nearly beheading that one-armed, vampyre boy.

  Nearly.

  The swords bit deep from two sides, but they struck and deflected each other before they could sever the monster’s neck. A tremendous shower of sparks and dark blood gouted high in the air. Jonex changed forms once again.

  In moments, the boy’s head snapped itself back into place. Then the undead creature flowed up and out, back to its icy dragon-shape. The wooden pier creaked, groaned and then splintered under the monster’s weight, launching great jagged splinters in every direction.

  Nalderick lurched out of the way, dragging Hallan and Miri into the shelter of a snapped wooden piling.

  “Maybe if you’d listened to your oracles instead of eating them, you’d know, wyrm: Fate won’t be mocked and She can’t be avoided!” yelled Derrick, peeking around the piling. “I’m drekking cursed, and you’re about to be dead!”

  The air temperature plunged so low that stone cracked and nothing mortal could hope to survive. Derrick would have perished, except that Hallan and Miri stepped nearer, saving his life with their elvish warmth.

  Somewhere out in the village a transport gate flared, then another, but Nalderick kept his focus on Jonex. The dragon reared to full height and bellowed, spreading both ribbed wings like the tattered sails of a ghostly ship. Its left forelimb was only a withered stump, clamped tight to its scaly white chest.

  “By all means, little flea,” sneered the reptile. “Come stick me with your brave little knife! I shall not hinder your vicious attack!”

  Lies, of course, for dragons are rarely truthful and always devious. Nalderick knew that, but he took a deep breath and started forward anyhow, making his way through a tangle of shattered planks and snapped wooden pilings. Hallan and Miri kept pace with him across the buckled ice, Val and Filimar overhead. Otherwise, sheer cold would have turned him to crystal.

  In its dragon-form, the pulsing charm was only a bright spot at the base of its flexible neck, but that spot glowed like wildfire, now. Slowly, with a rumble like a hunting manticore’s, Jonex lowered its head to the mortal’s level. Nalderick wanted to run. Had never been more terrified in all his life. Kept moving, though, coming to stand less than an arm’s length away from the dragon, raising a shuddering blade.

  Out of its sight and Derrick’s, Val held up one finger… two… three… and then (just as the dragon’s jaws gaped wide and its head lashed forward) he and Filimar struck once again.

  Tchuk!

  Krack!

  Their enchanted blades bit deeply through iron-hard scales and into cold, undead flesh. Jonex howled and shot upright again, jerking both swords right out of their wielders’ hands (and the arms almost out of their sockets). Both young elves took to the air again, cursing luridly. Derrick was left on the frozen lake, in what felt like a forest of stamping legs and a slashing, lightning-bolt tail.

  “My problem! Get to safety!” he growled at the two kids, who were clutching the hem of his tunic.

  The red-haired boy shook his head stubbornly.

  “Can’t!” he objected.

  “You’ll freeze!” explained the young girl.

  Which was true. But then others appeared. Mum and Dad, Genna… the prince-consort and Derrick’s unwanted uncle, Alexion. They’d brought what looked like an army, but Nalderick paid no attention. Dawn was near, and he had a sudden idea.

  “Dragon!” yelled Derrick. “Jonex I name you, and as prince of the Valinor blood, I command you, begone! Fly to the poisoned waste and… and bury your head in a sand dune!”

  Which would have sounded better if his voice hadn’t squeaked in mid-sentence. Jonex rumbled with laughter… but also took flight, rising some ten feet over the lake’s hard-frozen surface. It was listening. It had to, by Oberyn’s will.

  “You do not command me, dust-speck!” raged the beast, unfolding to full, mighty height. “I am invincible! My forces are legion, and they are already marching this way! My blight will destroy all the mortals, leaving your kin to be plucked like soft, rotten fruit!”

  Uh-huh. Nalderick made a sign with one hand. It was a court-ball gesture, meaning ‘boost me, I’ve got the ball’. He knew that his power-forward and center were watching. Derrick was starting to sense flashes of thought from them and the red-head, too. Then…

  Crunch!

  He’d expected Filimar and Valerian, but Derrick was still surprised when the one seized his tunic and belt, while the other swept past to fly block. Moments later, they were high in the air, over a lunging and snapping white dragon, dodging a hailstorm of razor-sharp ice.

  Nalderick’s legs milled as though he were trying to run through the sky. He jammed a hand down into his own shredded tunic to haul Kia out. Next, thrust her at Val. There was too much cloth-and-hair-and-wind-snap… too many close calls with hurtling ice shards… to allow for much conversation, but he screamed,

  “Save her!”

  Then,

  “Drop me!” Just as if he held the ball and was over a wandering goal.

  All credit to Valerian, he was disciplined enough to do exactly as his team captain ordered him to. (Like it or not.)

  Nalderick plunged thirty feet to the dragon’s ridged back, just missed by its snapping jaws because Filimar fired a crossbow point-blank into a big, flaring nostril.

  A tiny green spy-eye buzzed around Nalderick’s head, scowling ferociously, blinking in furious code. Derrick ignored the thing. He landed hard, scrabbled a bit, then took hold of a spine-ridge so cold that it burnt his fingertips instantly black.

  Thrusting the blade through a crack between scales, Nalderick gasped,

  “A p- prince of the V- Valinor line, c- commands you! B- By Oberyn’s might… obey!”

  Filimar shot again, targeting the dragon’s red eyes. Valerian focused all of his fire on that withered, bare forelimb, where there weren’t any scales, at all. The dragon twisted wildly, snapping and blowing foul ice. Nalderick skidded, then felt his parents’ defense-magic rise to enfold him. Heard in his mind,

  “In three, it is going to roll, Son. Hold on!”

  Derrick nodded, though Korvin and Marika were too far to see him. Longshore spiraled and shrank to an ember, far below. A hint of pearl-grey brushed the eastern horizon. Wind shrieked and howled, drying his eyes and his wide-open mouth.

  1… 2… 3…

  And the monster writhed in midair, trying to cast him off, just as his father predicted. Two blazing sword-arms arced in from below, while the horizon first tilted, then flipped, leaving a shrieking Derrick hanging on by only the hilt of his sword, Exterminator.

  The spy-eye seized him with a flash of arrest-and-hold magic, keeping Nalderick’s numb, blackened hands on the sword hilt. He swung like a hypnotist’s pendulum, but the sword began to slide free with a sucking and crackling noise. Only, the dragon couldn’t fly very well upside down. Not with torn wings and dozens of oozing wounds. It flipped upright once again. Derrick vomited but held on, crashing sideways onto cold, bony scales.

  Firelord swooped near, in His follower, Galadin. The Lord of the Dawn turned up, too, nearly bursting right out of Alexion. They flew beside him, along with She-of-the-Flowers and Alyanara… but Nalderick was the Slayer. His curse was lifting. He could feel it. Sobbing, Derrick used that burgeoning manna and light to seize tighter control of Jonex.

  Didn’t try anything fancy. Didn’t have time. Just hammered his will into the dragon like an iron spike, calling on Oberyn’s gift and riding that murderous, screeching wyrm straight into the side of a mountain.