“To General Moonsy!” he told the tree. Through the connection he was feeling with the Heart Tree, he actually felt some hope surging there.

  They’d done something to the other Trigon wizard, or to his dragon, that had lifted their spirits. They didn’t yet know that thrice the number of enemy they’d expected were arriving and cutting into the fae like scythes swung in ripe wheat.

  Vanx couldn’t see a way they could win. There were three Trigon fighters on foot alone to each of them, and that included the fae, but didn’t include the smaller wyrms or the two Trigon wizards.

  Whatever victory had lifted the hope of Moonsy and her fighters, Vanx hated to think what would happen if this Paragon Dracus were to arrive and set into them. It was soon to be futile to resist, but he knew they would until the end.

  None of them wanted to be dazed and turned into Trigon mind slaves.

  The vision Vanx had seen in the mirror seemed sickening now. How could he have thought they’d win against such a foe? He should have never let Sissy have Aserica Rime. If he’d have let this place be, it might have had its own evil, but it would have remained. If what he’d seen was true, it was about to be frozen over.

  Something clicked in his head then, but he missed it, for whatever hope it had given him fled. His heart fell to the floor. He had to visor his eyes, like a soldier saluting, but he saw it. There, in the distant sky, was the giant, slightly glowing blue dragon of which Quazar had spoken. It was gliding down from a higher elevation toward them, as if it knew the war would be over before it even got there.

  Chapter

  Thirty

  Old master Wiggins,

  wasn’t dead for long.

  He tumbled from the mulching bin,

  when they played his favorite song.

  – A Parydon street ditty

  The tree Vanx was in took seven or eight long strides and sat him down right where Gallarael was guarding over Poops. It then went to battle the Trigon fighters on the ground. Moonsy seemed to think Gal was guarding over her. She had no idea Vanx saw her surviving this, and Gal, too. The idea that there could be more to the vision than what he was allowed to see had occurred to him as well. He knew he wasn’t leaving Poops’s side anymore, not until this was done, not unless he had to. Poops let Moonsy dismount and joined him. Already, the dog’s senses were telling him something.

  “Chelda and a gargan horde are coming across the gorge,” Vanx said, smelling just how far Chelda was away from them.

  A sprite came zigzagging up to them and spoke to Moonsy, but loud enough for all to hear. “The gargans have received our gift and are tight-lining across the gorge. They need cover.” The little sprite took a deep breath, holding up his tiny hand as if to say there was more. “The dryad comes, too. Ptelea has a host of her own, unlike any you could imagine.”

  Poops barked, and Vanx smelled something else familiar, but couldn’t place it. There was enough hope to lift him, though. Chelda’s people could fight like no other, and would even the odds a bit, at least on the ground. And with Ptelea and whatever was coming with her, they had a chance to distract the flying warriors, who were learning how to defy the overhead shieldings the Zythians had been casting.

  Moonsy stayed to guard the Heart Tree, but Vanx and Poops went with a troop of her archers to help the gargans get across.

  They weren’t in time to stop two of the lines from being cut. Those sliding on leather straps across those recently taut ropes went screaming down, only to crunch into the ice at the bottom of the thousand-foot canyon. More heavy hook-headed spears came launching across and were pulled until they caught on the tree trunks or in the rocky earth itself. Gargans who’d already made it over called orders, while the elven archers and fairy fighters held off the Trigon as best as they could.

  Vanx grabbed a bow and quiver from a fallen elf. The equipment was small in his hands, but he could get a deeper pull and send silver-tipped arrows up into the sky that much harder and faster because of it. Anda, or maybe it was Inda, was there, but Vanx didn’t see his twin. By the look of hatred and determination on the skmoe’s face, Vanx figured the other one had been killed.

  Poops was nearby, savaging an undazed Trigon fighter who was still trying to get his dropped sword back in his hand.

  Vanx felt tiny surges of hope with each arrow he loosed, and he knew he undazed at least four of the smaller dragons, and at least one rider, before he ran out of arrows.

  Volan’s two Zythian friends were there, too, and a nod of respect over Volan’s death passed between them and Vanx, as if this were about the be the end for them all.

  Then suddenly there were no more dazed fighters left around them. The undazed were being quickly dispatched, for they had lost their own minds long ago. Vanx wasn’t sure if some of them could be healed or revived, but at this point, he didn’t care. Their swift deaths only helped the rest of them get on with defeating the enemy.

  Then Vanx wondered why the Paragon Dracus hadn’t joined the battle yet. Maybe Quazar was right—maybe in its wisdom, or out of simple self-preservation instincts, it wouldn’t take the risk.

  Chelda wiped some of the ineffective blue goo off her shoulder, then stalked over and gave Vanx a powerful hug. “Moonsy?”

  Vanx’s pause caused concern to spread across Chelda’s face.

  “General Moonsy.” Vanx felt a tear fall down his cheek.

  “Thorn?” Her visage didn’t soften as many females’ might have. Instead, her brows narrowed, and she became that much more determined.

  “There are thousands of Trigon foot soldiers coming from the palace side of the sward. King Russet, Captain Willie, and the fae have been holding them off, but they will break through without your blades.”

  “What of Moonsy?” Chelda asked, clearly unsatisfied with just knowing she was alive. “Where is she?”

  “She is guarding the Tree. They just now wounded one of the two remaining big, wyrms. She killed the third in Orendyn.”

  Chelda hadn’t even paid any attention to him after she had heard that Moonsy was at the Tree. She was already stalking off that way with a half-dozen of the two-score gargans who had now made it across.

  Vanx saw that not that many more were coming, so he hurried after Chelda. He was glad to see that the fae and Zythians who had shielded the crossing were directing the gargans toward the Trigon approaching the palace. This would keep them from getting to the Heart Tree so easily.

  There were gasps and strange looks among the forest fighters when the gargans joined the battle, but they’d already lost some of their number. The blood lust was on them, and they were more eager to kill those who had killed them than they were shocked by the terrible creatures of their lore fighting right there alongside them.

  Suddenly, the trees were full of ghostly forms. They were mostly horrific and malign to look upon, but there to fight with them nonetheless. Small, twinkling wisps streaked around them all, as if they were all standing still, and Vanx was reminded of the Zwarvy’s strange tree. Some of the dryads were so beautiful as to transfix a gargan here and there. Ptelea was one of those, and she broke away from the others and hovered nearer to Vanx, Poops, and Gallarael, who’d taken on her human form so as not to scare the shapeshifter-hating gargans.

  Then Vanx noticed that the forest floor had become a carpet of rats.

  Pwca, too?

  Poops barked a question at Vanx, and Vanx responded. Yes, I do my friend. I do think we have a chance now.

  Chapter

  Thirty-One

  Underneath the apple tree,

  I swore my love to Molly.

  She gave me a kiss, that was pure bliss,

  but told me love was folly.

  – Parydon Cobbles

  The scene was insane. Vanx couldn’t have imagined anything more wild. He was cutting down Trigon soldiers who had Pwca’s rats clinging to them, while ghosts and ghouls sped around them. The fairy archers and glassine-winged sprites darted through it all like busy insects. The enemy only got close to him every now and again, so he watched between skirmishes, trying to divine some fantastic idea that might save them all.

  He saw a pair of savage half-wolves rip a blue-eyed swordsman apart, and a yellow-green frog as big as any he’d ever seen had a lesser wyrm stuck to the end of its long tongue, trying to draw it down through the lower branches.

  The dryads and other spirit beings swooping through the forest were impervious to physical contact, so they shot up into the sky and harried the stunted wyrms and black dragons when they could. Their spells were strange and illusionary, but they served the purpose of distraction, which gave the fae and Zythians time to aim their silver-tipped arrows well.

  The gargan warriors were killing the Trigon ground fighters in droves, but were not shielded from above. They were forced to fight and run, and then fight and run again.

  The smaller fae nearer to the Heart Tree were dropping cherry bombs. Monkles were swinging on limbs, throwing acidy fruits at the Trigon from the trees, but it was pointless. The Trigon fell, but more kept coming. There were so many of them. So many more than Vanx had expected.

  There were dead fae, dead Zythians, and scores of dead men everywhere, but the areas where the black wyrms spewed the landscape into flat, open pools of stuff so disgusting even the carrion wouldn’t touch it, were the worst. Only a few sparkling silver arrowheads and rings remained in the muck, for not even the acid could dissolve those; but getting them back would be next to impossible, and they were running out of fighters to use them.

  Vanx saw a living tree dismember four of the blue-eyed fighters at the same time, while elven archers loosed silver-tipped arrows from its upper branches. He watched a riderless wyrm whirl down, like a spinner leaf falling from a tree, and then he saw one of the black dragon’s acidy spew melt them, Trigon fighters and all, into another putrid pool of repulsive matter.

  He, Poops, and Gal were very nearly splashed as well, and Vanx decided that the Heart Tree itself was in danger of being melted in such a way.

  Then he saw the Paragon Dracus, all blue and alight in the dusky sky. It sent a blast across the crystal palace that evaporated a whole wing of the building.

  The giant tree Vanx had ridden earlier wasn’t the only one of its kind in the mountains, and he hoped the one that had just grabbed the Paragon by its tail wasn’t the one he’d ridden, for the great blue wyrm shifted into a more elongated, snake-like form, and turned back on the tree with its head sideways to the ground. It snapped the tree above its trunk-legs and broke it into two separate pieces with a single chomp of its jaws. Then it was all dragon again, and all the more angry.

  Prince Russet, the Zythians, and humans who remained were retreating through the woods to the Heart Tree’s sward, and Vanx somehow knew that was a bad idea. Quazar had been wrong about that thing hiding and waiting out the battle.

  Vanx tried to focus on the vision the Goddess had granted him, but something about the vision he’d seen in the Mirror of Portent kept pulling his attention. Gallarael was watching over Poops behind him, and their immediate area was clear, so he fumbled it out of his pocket and watched the scene again in his palm, right there at the edge of the battlefield.

  He saw what he wanted to see, which was the shadow thrown by Moonsy. She was riding Poops in the vision; he just hadn’t seen the dog. This came as such a relief that he didn’t even see King Russet run up and tackle him.

  “It almost had him, Gallarael!” Russet Oakarm yelled at his sister angrily.

  Russet stood and picked up the piece of the mirror he’d knocked from Vanx’s hand. He was instantly transfixed by what he saw in it.

  Vanx looked where the eyes of the others coming up behind Russet were looking and saw one of the smaller wyrms climbing back up from where it had almost shredded him.

  “Is this my future?” Russet asked.

  “What did you see?” asked Vanx.

  “It wasn’t clear, but I was fighting to take back my father’s throne, in the throne room on Parydon Isle.” Russet looked as if he were studying Vanx now. “The top of the palace was gone, and it looked like a storm was raging.” The blood splattered on the young man’s tired face gave him an intense look, a look Vanx didn’t like very much. “Is it always the future?”

  Vanx shrugged Russet’s harsh visage from his mind, wondering why seeing such a thing didn’t please the boy. “It hasn’t always held true, for I saw Moonsy get eradicated at Orendyn in the mirror, not General Posey-Thorn. Why? What else did you see?”

  “It was you I was battling for the throne, Vanx.” Russet gave him back the mirror. “I hope it never comes to that.”

  “Aye,” was all Vanx could think to say, but then something struck him. “Were you fighting me, Russet, or were you watching yourself fight me?”

  “I was watching.” Russet looked at Vanx and cocked his head. “As if from a few dozen paces away. Why?”

  “Did you have a bow?”

  “What?”

  “Just curious,” Vanx replied as he was ushered out of the way of a new series of streaking yellow blasts coming at them from above. “The last thing I want is your throne.”

  It was like the whole battle was about to end right here, for a blast from the Paragon Dracus engulfed half of their number as they charged back into the trees.

  Visions or not, Vanx knew the Heart Tree wasn’t safe anymore, and he couldn’t think of any way to protect it. To Vanx, it not only looked, but also felt, as if they’d just been defeated.

  Chapter

  Thirty-Two

  Across his sea we sail,

  to Nepton we hold true.

  For if you cross old Nepton,

  his sea will swallow you.

  – a sailors song

  Poops started barking and sending chills up Vanx’s spine. Vanx saw what had the dog so excited. There was something else in the sky now, and it was the most uplifting thing he’d seen in ages. It was two dragons with glimmering scales reflecting the sunset in deeper shades of green and red.

  Pyra’s roar was so loud that Vanx thought he saw fear show in the Paragon’s dragonly posture. It froze when it saw the fire wyrm. This fear only lasted an instant, as if seeing that it wasn’t a certain red dragon relieved the Paragon. This made Vanx wonder what other giant red dragons were out there in the vastness of his world.

  Zeezle was on the back of a deep green drake, and it fumed the Paragon, right in the face with a spray of noxious, gaseous dragon breath as it swept by. Pyra came to a hover and blasted the gore-filled field before Vanx with her fiery spew. Ptelea, the rats, the fae, and even the trees had fled the area out of dragon fear. King Russet and all of that crew were gone as well. Only Poops and Gal remained, and the dog was behind her looking at Vanx with fearful eyes.

  “Gal, you take Poops somewhere and keep him safe.” Vanx met her eyes and made sure she understood. “Take him into the Underland and keep him there until I return.”

  She nodded.

  “Swear it!”

  “I will.” She put her fist on her heart and turned, shifting into feline form.

  A few of the gargans peeking out of the trees gasped.

  Go, friend. Vanx smiled at the dog. Keep her safe.

  Poops barked and turned, chasing after Gal.

  Pyra landed then, taking a moment to blast the dozen Trigon fighters coming out of the trees. To make men charge a dragon, the entrancing magic had to have total control over them. Pyra’s head was coming down, Vanx supposed for him to mount her. He’d ridden her once, from Dragon Isle to Dyntalla. By the looks of her, the Blood Stone he’d given her had brought her many an ogre to eat.

  Vanx tried not to show fear as he climbed between her spinal plates and situated himself.

  “What iss thisss Paragon jackassss?” Pyra laughed as she took to the sky. Clouds of sulfurous smoke roiled from her nostrils, nearly gagging Vanx, but he discerned she’d just violated his mind.

  He couldn’t stop her, since it was already done.

  Pyra knew his every memory and imagining. He was almost angry, but the purpose with which she was now moving toward the black wyrm nearing the Heart Tree meant she was now of the same mind as him.

  Only after sending forth impossibly long jets of dragon fire and setting the wizard on that dragon ablaze, did she show Vanx, in his mind, what the Goddess’s vision truly meant, and then Vanx understood.

  “There is the statue of Nepton,” he answered the dragon’s question out loud, even though he knew he didn’t need to.

  “Yessss,” she hissed, and started them back toward the ground. “How fitting.”

  She landed right next to the Heart Tree, and the big wyrm was forced to edge away against the thorn wall to keep her natural heat from singeing the freshly trimmed tree’s leaves. Vanx leapt from her back and ran through the portal that took him down into the Nexus.

  He was pleased to see Poops and Gal already there, but when he began ordering elves and gnomes to fetch the statue of Nepton for Pyra, they all looked at him as if he’d gone mad.

  “One blast of that black dragon’s spew will melt the Heart Tree,” Vanx explained. “The Tree is impervious to the Doulixir, but not a natural black dragon’s acid. Just trust me.”

  That sent everyone into motion, for tales of the hundreds of fae who had been eradicated from existence by the black wyrm’s breath had already spread down here.

  In moments, the statue was gliding across the crowd, being passed overhead by the fae wizards and arcanists sending their strength into the tree up through its core.

 

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