Dragon Lords, page 15
part #1 of Swords and Skulls Series
On the death of Cthan’s rear guard, Zren had managed to worm his way through the battle and up the ledge. Panting, with new cuts and bruises, he was like a dripping beast, and Vetra almost cut him down, crouched as he was, lips asnarl and streaming sweat and blood.
“Fight with Jhara and protect each other’s backs,” Vetra ordered him.
The Thrule listened, for once.
To his credit, Zren had knocked Rafa’s man aside and had just saved the mercenary from a direct hit. He was willing to waste himself for the girl whom he eyed with most possessive fanaticism. Young, impulsive fool! thought Vetra. He would get them all killed with his headstrong impulses.
Bellowing a savage war cry, Vetra wheeled and smote in reckless abandon, giving Jhara space and time to crouch and round-house kick, “Die, you ass-licking dogs!” she cried, and she thrust a boot out into a bearded face. Vetra heard the crunch of bone. Rafa rounded in, grinning, lunging in to trip her.
Jhara fell with a thud, crying out in surprise, the wind knocked out of her. Her cat o’ nine tails licked out, but Rafa caught the twirling thong as it curled about his sword and he yanked it out of her grasp. She squealed in frustration as Rafa pounced like a tiger, flicking her hateful weapon over the edge.
The girl crawled away but Rafa pulled her up shrieking by the hair.
Zren came stabbing in like a wildman and Rafa snarled with fury at the fierce passion of the man’s attack. Rafa gave ground, stabbing wide-eyed, but his men shouldered in and booted the Thrule back.
“Away from me, you stinking cur! Back to the reeking pools where you belong.”
Gashed and seething, Zren leered. He swung two-handed frenzied sweeps of blade while Rafa dragged Jhara back into the protection of his knot of rogues.
She writhed in his cruel grip, her face pushed over the ledge overlooking the pool, but he clasped her tighter and encircled her with his ape-like arms, crooning a foul proposition in her ear.
Vetra lunged forth, but too late, blades kept him in check too. Lehundr crowded behind Vetra, his hilt quivering in his bloody fist.
Cthan paused below, a saturnine croak of laughter on his lips like the hyena who has cornered the rat. The smug insolence of the man showed on his face. He stared up at the vice his men had sprung on the rebels while others of his forces contended with the dragon beasts.
Toward the centre of the island he sauntered leisurely, a pleased expression on his face. Three of the guardians were down, one guarded the exit and only two remained to harry the walkways, these far away and under the control of his men.
“That’s right, Rafa,” Cthan called up savagely. “Hold the bitch. She’s a she-cat.” The sheriff’s one eye lingered on the guardian that menaced Dunon and his men at the other end of the ledge. “I’ll see what this precious dragon eye is all about.”
Rubbing his hands in satisfaction, Cthan paused to appraise the glimmering globe and its treasure. “A fair march to this god-forsaken place”, he said in hoarse enthusiasm, “and losses to go with it, but well worth it.”
“Aye,” gloated Rafa, yelling down from his ragged patch on the ledge. “These Thrules will pay for our losses. And this filthy outlander—” He shook Jhara vindictively as a dog does a rat and flashed her a lascivious smile. “In quarts of their own blood, and in bed favours. Starting with these mangy rebels before us, trapped in this treasure den.”
Rafa relaxed his grip, overconfident in his advantage. It was an open invitation for Jhara to strike and with a snake-like jerk, too quick for the eye to see, she twisted out of Rafa’s grip, ramming elbow into his teeth. The man howled and Vetra lunged forth, knocking one of Rafa’s henchman off the ledge. Vetra cut through another man and ground a heel into Rafa’s foot, catching the flailing arm and bending it backwards.
One of Rafa’s remaining henchmen grabbed Jhara from behind and put a knife to her throat.
With a savage wrench, Vetra pulled Rafa down to the stone so he was on one knee, gasping in pain, putting blade to his throat. Lehundr vaulted over the two of them, and his curved falchion quivered inches from Jhara’s captor’s face.
“Drop the swords!” barked Cthan, seething at the sudden assault on the ledge. “Let my man Rafa go free, or my other man will slay the girl. That I promise!”
Jhara protested, struggling with feverish desperation. “No! I got you into this mess, following you here. Don’t give into this monster! Let him die, Vetra. Let me die. Kill all these vermin.”
Cthan laughed cynically. “He’s not that much of a hero, doll face. Besides, that wouldn’t be very heroic of him, would it, ‘Vetra’?” he sneered. “Our knight in shining armour cannot live with himself, responsible for the slaying of a girl, could he?”
Vetra growled. It wouldn’t be easy for him to sacrifice the girl, that was true. Was there another way?
Rafa’s henchman now had the screaming rebel over a precipice. Vetra reluctantly released his hold on Rafa. The thug unruffled himself from Vetra’s grip and shook out the hurts.
“Now hold her this time, you idiot. I give you a few simple tasks and what do you do, get your eye gouged out.”
Rafa snarled and turned in malicious distaste on the girl. “You’re a tasty piece of meat. I think I’ll take out my pound of flesh on you later.” He ogled her sleek body, her luscious curves pleasing to him. He fondled her breasts like a drunken soldier in a brothel. “Do you remember how you gave me this, you wretched spitfire?” He jerked a hand to his eye, lifted the blood-torn patch, displaying an ugly red socket.
Jhara turned her head away. Though she struggled, there was no overpowering that brute who now held her and thrust her arm cruelly behind her back.
A voice from the haunted past, echoing dim and terrible, suddenly smote the chamber. Or was it only in their minds? Vetra did not know.
“So, this is what mankind has evolved to after a thousand years?”
The startled Behundrians peered around in abject wonder. Strangled murmurs hissed through their teeth.
Vetra looked around in no less surprise. But he could discover no source for the mysterious voice that rolled in doomful waves in his mind. A stir began to form in the waters abreast the pedestal.
Scowling into his beard, Cthan reached out with impatient urgency toward the mystical, glowing dragon eye.
Through the ethereal film, his hands thrust with bold intent to seize the eye for his own. A keen thrill of ecstasy rippled through his body and lit up his face.
“A life’s fortune,” he hissed in marvel.
The iris of the eye was cut like an exquisite diamond. A ruby pupil fitted dead centre glared forth. Like a cosmic egg it glowed, solid gold, silver, or both—one could not distinguish. The treasure harboured a shimmering aliveness that tantalized the beholder. Just as Cthan was about to withdraw the prize from the globe, a fierce wave of agony and horror passed over his face. A searing blast of radiance burst from the eye and lit up his face. From a distance Vetra squinted, the flare was so bright.
“I see your bloody past!” Cthan raved. “Dragon wars over aeons!” It was as if he came to understand all of the dragons’ secrets in that one flash and greedy grasp. A secret not meant for man. The eye lit with the brutal sum of knowledge of the aeons that the dragons had lived, and died and warred. All blasted into Cthan’s brain—embodied into one blinding pulse, like a hundred possessed lightning strikes.
With a choking cry the sheriff stumbled backwards, his lips mouthing shrieks of pain. The skin of his palms stuck to the white-lit egg, so supercharged it was with heat and mystical energy.
The rogue’s eye sockets hung in red and dripping flaps. Smoke billowed from his hands, his eyes scalded by liquid light.
The sheriff of Dragonskull jerked about like a mad puppet, stumbling back in blind terror, as he learned how the dragon lords became rulers of the earth, how all the battles they had won and fought were in vain, and how they had been lords of the sky and the earth ever since the beginning when the oceans boiled and the first islands rose out of the sea to become the fabulous continents on which the first humans stood.
The eye fell from his grasp and hung suspended in the sulphurous air to return in magic force like a faithful sentinel to perch inside the globe.
At the same moment a liquid column of strangeness rose from the pool at the stone’s edge. A water spirit? One of the feral jellyfish-like horrors? Vetra was at a loss. The thing was a giant cyclone of raging water at first, then an amorphous mass that bulged and formed the dim outline of one of the dragon lords, tall and imposing, with eyes unblinking, arms folded across chest and staff in hand.
The dragonish head tipped in grave judgement, staring down at the fly-sized humans. A shimmering yellow halo surrounded its watery form, this solemn giant of all creatures.
IX: The Dragon Lord
Cthan groped back blindly, as if aware of the foaming rush of some horror in close proximity. With pathetic whimpers, he pawed for his sword, his senses still intact, but his eyes beyond repair. He found his blade where it had fallen and gripping it in a clenched fist, swung wildly at an apparition he could not see. His blade passed right through the will-o-the-wisp without drawing a drop of water.
The thing ignored him as if he were no more than a gnat.
Vetra elbowed Rafa in the ribs, taking advantage of the moment. He seized the man’s sword. While he was doubled over, he sent him reeling into the hot springs. Lehundr ducked a whistling blade just as Zren surged through the pack and rammed his head into Jhara’s captor. Jhara gave a wild screech and in a burst of hysterical strength, pulled herself into a ball and brought her assailant rolling over her back. Vetra plunged steel into his throat and kicked the dying man down the slope.
Jhara scrambled past Zren and Vetra felt her shudder pass over his body as she brushed close. She shook with fierce outrage, her fingers digging into his back.
At the same time, words came into Vetra’s mind—thoughts forged from the hidden wells of the subconscious, a deep rumbling sibilance like low waves breaking on an ocean:
“None can lift the dragon eye so waste no efforts. ’Tis the jewel of our heritage, the heart blood of our race, the greatest treasure we have known—excluding the water that gives life, for the eye links soul with body, body with earth and air. We are centuries dead, our memory is preserved, and still you have brought a blight upon us...”
Rafa floundered in the water, quivering and thrashing as his flesh burned. He clawed his way up the shore, his flesh raw, red and seared. Swarming green and white tentacles crawled over the gang leader’s shins and began their evil work. He clawed at them with his quivering fingers, tearing clumps of flesh. The things wound tighter about his legs. He pounded his fists with strengthening intensity, tearing with fingers now bloody. His gruesome shrieks were awful to hear as he struggled in vain to get the ghastly things off.
Up the path Vetra, Jhara, Lehundr and Zren clambered, blocking out the sounds of Rafa’s and Cthan’s wails. They skidded up higher while the Behundrians stared in speechless horror like stunned deer. Vetra bowled through their startled ranks, leaving two writhing on the jewel-crumbled stone. He, Zren and the girl vaulted over them.
Dunon and Aus scrambled up a stair running parallel to Vetra’s and now cut down the last resistance from the back even as Vetra barrelled through.
More invaders, rousing from their shock, rushed them, grunting and hacking up from behind. Vetra herded the others up a set of steep, crumbled steps and turned, chopping the pursuers down from the narrow stairway. He was getting slowly pushed up, his back to his peers.
“We need to climb higher!” he bawled.
Dunon motioned. “To where?”
“Doesn’t matter! They can’t surround us on the narrower ledges.”
The voice from the ages boomed again:
“People from this far age—feast thy eyes on Naklion, our Dragon Heart. I am Macemas, last lord of Aslante. But only in memory do I impart this message. Take your wars and skirmishes elsewhere and wrest no bauble from our tomb, lest my curse befall you!”
All gaped in wonder as the voice reverberated through their bones.
“We, the lords of the dragons, have languished; our reign passed a millennium ago. Yet all must live together in this world. Leave in peace! Whether in life or death that you understand these words, take this memory with you—that whether dragons or their lords live or live not, you are the masters of your own destiny. Nothing comes to pass that is not a form of your own doing...”
Dunon gasped and clambered up higher behind Vetra. “What manner of creature is this water devil?”
Vetra grunted. “Something to mash our brains.”
“The dragon lords have left a remnant of their past, you fools!” snarled Lehundr, “—a living, conscious memory! None heeded the call for peace ages ago.”
“Get higher!” Vetra yelled.
In the midst of clanking blades he gave ground inch by inch. A long, ghastly line of guardians advanced like hungry predators from the exit tunnel. The mercenary grimaced and gripped his blood-stained blade tighter. Doom crawled at every corner of this forsaken pit.
The water god seemed to watch them with detached interest. Vetra expected it to kill them all in an instant, and drown them in lakes of quicksilver. But it just rose higher, a shimmering tower of judgement.
He craned his neck upward. The crust of jewels glinting like fireflies to the senses was tantalizingly close. While he slashed down at the Behundrians still fighting for a cause without a leader, the dragon pool seemed to cool, and billows of steam flattened in peculiar fashion. An ominous scrape echoed from overhead, like a heavy stone slab lifting off an impregnable tomb.
Vetra’s eyes narrowed. He saw a patch of open sky above them, pale sunlight momentarily blinding him. The water lord shimmered and compressed its liquid form into a long, rippling spiral, up around Cthan, who flailed blindly with sword raised like a madman as the dragon guards advanced on him. Up it rose, like a living cobra, swirling like a whirlwind to disappear in the opening and was gone.
Vetra’s senses reeled. He shook off his dizziness, a fear of heights returning in full. Sweat streamed off his face; his stomach heaved with nausea.
The rush of booted feet came from below. He edged back and struck all the harder at a leather-helmed skull that bobbed up. He pointed to the opening, then at the sky, and his parched throat gave voice to a hoarse shout. “There! Our only chance out of this burrow. Quick! before the portal closes.”
Like harried rabbits they crawled up the stairs, quivering fingers reaching for the opening. The Behundrians came roaring after them, scrabbling at their heels like bloodhounds.
“Cthan’s dead!” blurted one. “Our reward is gone.”
“Let’s kill these rogues and be out of here!”
Water hissed in the pool below and the Behundrian’s wild curses were lost in the wrathful echo of the dragon lord’s exodus.
Through gritted teeth, Vetra held the throng back, his blade whistling wild arcs of death. Dunon helped Jhara up the hole, while he and Aus and the others pushed Zren and Lehundr through. All were up and out and Vetra leapt, fingers clutching the opening’s rim. Feet dangling, he kicked at enemy blades that licked out at him like vipers. His friends snatched at his arms while hands from below sought to use him as a ladder. Vetra smashed these with his boot heels and a tumultuous wail rent the air as a man plummeted to his doom.
He was out, blinking in dazzling light. The open sky yawned above them and the searing heat of the desert beat down on his skin.
The stone slab was too heavy to pull over to stop the snarling Behundrians who seethed up in a mad, feverish wave. Vetra and Dunon hunched over the opening like vultures, slashing at fingers that tried to hoist themselves up. Dying shrieks echoed below; more fell to crash down the stairs and to the cavern below.
Vetra stared about, his eyes wandering to the place where the dragon lord had drifted. He shook his head, saw only a film before his vision. His eyes stung as he looked into the overwhelming, golden light.
The dragon lord glided like a solemn wraith across the skullish, scar-topped rock of the mesa.
Halting at the summit’s edge, he, or whatever it was, traced circles in the air with its slightly clawed hands. It had shed its watery body, yet its skin glistened as brightly as before. For all intents and purposes, he was now a real flesh and blood dragon lord, stern-faced and regal, and majestically rendered out of thin air. He lifted a hand in the direction of the two megalith fangs perched high on the adjacent hills. An unearthly aura surrounded him like a wizard from another age.
The Dragon Lord stared out over the edge of the cliff rising high above the plain. On the battlefield below, the straw-like figures of Behundrians, drenched in blood and sorrow, gasped and stumbled away in terror at the sight of the apparition. Searing light came lancing from the megaliths, arching out and striking the dragon bones that littered the ruins below at the warriors’ feet.
Like ants before the raging storm, the fighting men scurried on all fours, gusting curses. But no such easy escape was given them.
The sombre words from faraway spoke, splitting the fabric of the air, the fabric of their minds and the monstrous intonations rose and fell like deep musical waves:
“Fools! Ignorant fools! Do you flee like vermin without a moment’s understanding? Die now, and start afresh in your incarnations. Tragic repercussions are in order. Suffer for your actions in face of these Thrules who have struggled to uphold the heritage of the dragon lords. Now they lie broken like dolls on a god’s playground. But they die not in vain...”
These words came as not human born, but from an incomprehensible place beyond the stars.
In his days of life, as centuries ago he had moved in magical ways from hill to hill and tomb to tomb, the dragon lord moved now, the same which had discovered secrets and forbidden pathways far under the earth—the same which had forged the labyrinthic ways under the Dragon fortress of Aslante whose vastness and mystery mortal minds could not fathom.
