Blood and Royalty (3 page)

Chapter Four

Rikky heard the parting conversation between Clover and Aikira and found it didn’t hurt him anymore to be around his ex-lover. Clover had never seen the world in the same way as Rikky, and since Rikky wouldn’t go to some crazed dwarf’s healing fountain in some faraway land and try to see if it would heal him, or more precisely, grow him a new leg, the two of them hadn’t been able to get along. Over the first year or so of their relationship, they had became so close that Rikky considered asking for her hand in marriage. It was a good thing he hadn’t, because just as his courage was at its highest, she told him she was leaving for a time. She said that when she returned they would no longer be together in such a personal way.

This stunned Rikky. He started training Jericho and Pascal at Kingsman’s Keep to keep his mind off of the heartache, but it had taken more time than they ever spent together to get where he was now. Rikky needed purpose in his life. He was a healer and a teacher at heart, and Clover just wanted to live forever, and bask in the power her dragon, and her dragon tear, afforded her. He understood that now, that Clover was wise for leaving him, not cruel. He was glad he could see her, talk to her even, and not feel that twist inside his gut.

The only thing that bothered him now was that he never asked her why she hadn’t just talked with him before that last time. He still didn’t know the answer. He had a feeling it had something to do with Milly as well, and he was certain that Milly wasn’t anything close to normal. After all, her father had assumed some of the alien they had destroyed in the Confliction, but only Jericho was conceived before then. Amelia, for all any of them knew, could be an alien half-breed who would cocoon like a horn-head into a Sarax or some such. None of it would surprise Rikky now. Not after broods of meddling witches and shape-shifting aliens, and skies full of violent Sarax. It wouldn’t surprise him if the girl just one day sprouted wings and flew away; nonetheless, he was her “Uncle Rikky” and he loved her dearly. He would kill or die for either of Jenka’s children, and neither Zahrellion nor Jenka had anything to do with his devotion. The children loved him, and he loved them; it was plain and simple.

Since he, Silva, Jenka and Jade had returned with Crystal, Zah and the children, Clover had been eyeing the princess. Quick looks, odd questions to the girl, and about her.

Rikky doubted anyone else saw it that way. Clover even spent a few long minutes with Milly, talking about her birthday and giving her an enchanted butterfly pendant as a gift.

Rikky was contemplating following Crimzon to see where they were going, but a familiar voice barked out beside him, and his shoulder muscle knotted with the force of Marcherion’s blow. It was a hard punch, too…hard enough that Rikky wasn’t certain if he should take it as a friendly gesture, or bust March in his nose.

“I didn’t forget that slap in the nards you left me with on the dais before the whole kingdom, Icky Rikky.” Marcherion’s grin was the best thing Rikky had seen in years, and his rush of indecisive anger evaporated. “Are there still elk up beyond the old Temple of Dou?”

“Some.” Rikky grinned and thought about how great it would be to go hunting with March right then. “If you really think Richard will try to take Gull’s Reach first, then maybe we should go and dig out all the old dragon guns and get the people ready to fight.”

“I’d rather go hunt a few of those elk, and so would Blaze.” March shook his head and shrugged. “But that is where he will come. Either that, or he will attack there, trying to distract us from something else. Either way, you’re right. We have to go prepare the island.”

“There is a herd of moose along the Cut Silva has been harvesting from. There is an older cow there of a size that should stay Blaze’s hunger for a time.” Rikky chuckled, but there was still a hint of warning in his tone. “Don’t let Blaze overfeed there. Let him take the old cow and then meet us at Gull’s Reach.”

“Thanks.” Marcherion relayed the news to his wyrm. Blaze could go feed and be back by morning.

“I’m- having- ships sent.” Jenka joined them, speaking almost normally. “I’m ordering the people of Gull’s Reach, the people who are not willing to die there fighting King Richard’s horde of mudged, to take passage to the Mainland.”

“I wonder if he will even bother with the Outlands,” Aikira said. “He’s never shown an interest there before.”

“Eventually he will.” March gave her a look that Rikky saw as a scowl, but might have just been disbelief, or maybe even awe of her beauty. “He wants to slowly torture us all like we were prisoners in his dungeons. He doesn’t want to win a war, Aikira, Jenka.” March looked at them each in turn. Then he shook his fist in front of his face. “Don’t you get it?” He nodded at Rikky as if he were the only one who understood the situation. “That crazy bastard just wants the war.”

Chapter Five

Clover used Aikira’s new, more efficient teleportation spells to take her back to the heart of the Karian peaks. She’d flown over here once since being revived in the Leif Repline Fountain, and she knew that men, even over the centuries she was imprisoned, hadn’t yet found a way to get that far into the mountain range. Only giants, orcs and dwarves could tolerate such inhospitable terrain, and even they did so by staying out of it more than in it.

The Karian mountains spread out across the horizon, sharp and either as black as pitch, or covered over with white ice and eons of accumulated snow. This part of the range was above the cloud layers, and Crimzon hated being there.

As a girl, Clover had hunted the edges of the foothills. She’d found Crimzon very near here, but even the deeper foothills ended most men who dared them. This was like a whole other world, free of humanity’s taint.

Tainted by elvesss,
Crimzon hissed and snorted at his own sarcastic levity. Dragons didn’t like elves by nature. Crimzon maintained himself only out of respect for Clover.

There was an entire population of elves hidden out here. The Elves of Everling had a valley called Everling Deep, which was magically domed over by the power of a Heart Tree. The forest underneath had been thriving the last time Clover was there. Men didn’t know it even existed, and they probably never would, but Crimzon and Clover did, and they were hurrying through the frigid air to get there, for the fire drake was in considerable pain now from being in the arctic climate.

It was shocking to transgress from such bitter air into the spring-like world underneath the glassine barrier that kept the true elements out, but the big red dragon let out an audible hiss of pleasure as his scales began to absorb the new warmth around them.

“Is it you?” a voice called from the back of a winged horse just out of the range of Crimzon’s breath. The elf riding it was a true elf, all stunted and ancient looking, with metallic hair, and glowing amber eyes. “Lady Clover is still alive? How is it possible?”

“Not only you twisted little buggers are immortal these days.” Clover gave a slight nod of respect. It surprised her that she remembered this exact elf as the one who had spent a good portion of a morning with a bow trained on her heart, right in this very place, trying to decide if he believed her tale. But that was a different time, an age ago or more.

“I need to speak with the Oracle, if she still lives.”

“She told us to expect you today,” the elf grinned, showing his crooked teeth.

It amazed Clover that when an elf bred with a human, the result was as beautiful a two-legged creature as one could behold, but half-elves were few and far between. True elves looked exceedingly graceful and beautiful even into their early three hundreds, but time gnarled their bones and hunched them over as if the weight of so much life was a physical load they were carrying. After about five hundred years, even the most beautiful of elves was pitiful to see.

The Pegasus on which this elf was sitting intrigued the deeply-guarded girlish side of Clover, though. “Can I ride your Pegasus later?”

“Follow.” The elf gave Crimzon a nervous glance and urged his winged horse away.

Canss I eatss a Pegasus?
Crimzon asked, his ever-hungry belly thinking for him.

You are a dragon, Crim. Who am I to deny you anything?
Clover replied honestly.
But, please, don’t eat that one. Ever.

Notss thatsss ones, sthen,
the dragon agreed as he followed the elf and the flying horse down into a lush forest.

Crimzon didn’t like learning that there was only one Pegasus. He had already agreed not to eat it, but he was directed to a herd of fleet mountain deer that roasted well on the run. He lay among the burning trees eating the ones he’d scorched, and when he was finished, he slipped off into some sort of half-lidded reverie.

Clover was led by other elves, a few of them still young enough to be enticing to her carnal side, but her reasons for being there were too important for her to allow herself to be transfixed by the frail beauty some of these creatures possessed. Some of them were eyeing her, too, but now she was directed into a hall carved, or maybe grown, into the base of a tree with a trunk so large that it might have encompassed the castle she’d built for the Dragoneers thrice.

A series of passages and a few upward-slanting ramps brought them to a platform rigged as a lift. As soon as she and the four elves escorting her were on the platform, it began to rise. It was all done with ropes and weights, and though there were other lifts here that worked using ancient elven magic, this one afforded them a view that was as beautiful as she remembered it being. Thinking of this spread of trees, with their colorful fruits and bloom, was one of the images that had held her together in that mad priest’s spell for so long.

She’d gone mad for a time in that empty blackness. Her body had been turned into a statue, but her essence left intact in a plane constructed to bind a demon. Jenka had saved her from it all and then she’d had to race time to a fountain her dragon knew of to avoid death. She wouldn’t forget the debt she owed him, which was why she was here.

The worst part of that imprisonment, besides missing her dragon, was knowing that her son was growing old without her. There was only the slimmest sliver of hope that she’d done enough to inspire and then guide the Dragoneers to the alien threat, anyway. She hadn’t known if the worst had happened or if she would ever be saved.

She’d dreamed of being here in this sanctuary again, and then spent a score of years thinking she would never be back, but here she was.

Soon the platform came to a halt. It swayed slightly as they stepped off of it, causing Clover’s heart to flutter. They were standing on the stoop of the Oracle’s knothole. Her skin felt tingly, and the dragon tear in her belt pouch warmed with power, as if just being there was as comforting to it as it was to her.

The door opened of its own accord, and at the direction of her escorts, she alone went in.

The Oracle was a shriveled knot of a being, almost crablike in her crumpled form, with short, bandy legs; yet clearly she was once a tall, standing humanoid.

Clover wondered just how old this woman, if that is what she could call it, really was.

“What answers do you seek, fortunate one?” the Oracle asked in a husky but thin voice.

The knothole was dim, and a fresh, citrusy smell filled the room. All of the furniture and amenities had been adjusted to fit the Oracle’s hunched, almost doubled-over form. Clover hoped that she didn’t end up that way. She wouldn’t relish life as much if she were unattractive, even to herself.

“How can I tell if one is a mystica, before they come of age?” Clover asked quickly. “She has not yet begun to bleed, and she is uncannily unique.”

“I will meditate on it and see if the gods grant me such wisdom, for only after we’ve sensed a certain change in the saffluxua are we able to know if there is one who needs to be brought here.”

“Have you sensed anything as of late?” Clover asked.

“No.” The Oracle’s tone was short, as if Clover were disturbing her now. “Be off. I will send for you soon enough.”

“I’ve not all the time in the world, and you’ll even your tone with me, or my dragon will take offense,” Clover returned. “Never forget what happened to the elves you sent to hunt me. I will leave you to do whatever it is you do, but do not dismiss me in such a rude way again.”

“Said she’d send for you?” one of the elves asked Clover as they retook the lift. He was devilishly handsome, probably near two hundred years old. Just a boy to a three hundred-year-old woman. She smiled at him. “She did. How long does this sort of thing usually take?”

“The last person she said she’d send for is still awaiting a response.”

“What?”

“He is in the garden yard, where he sits every day, hoping she will have an answer to whatever question he asked. He cannot speak, so I’m not sure she even got the question.”

“Is he a man?”

“No.” The elf gave her a glance that started at her feet and slowly crept up to her breasts. His eyes were indicating he was interested, but he kept the line of discussion going instead of ceasing the moment. “He is a half-breed from the land of the dragon riders who fought in your Confliction. He just appeared here one day, ravaged by trolls, or wolves, or something. I don’t remember. But to answer your question, he’s been waiting a few years.”

“Can you take me to him, please?” Clover asked, hoping it was the half-elf of whom Rikky used to speak. “After I’ve met him and have seen if he is who I think he is, I’m not opposed to a night at the river.”

“Lady Clover,”—the elf grinned and smirked at the other elves escorting her, when they chuckled—“it would be my honor to spend time with you, anywhere you please.”

Clover saw the half-elf from across the garden and knew he was the one called Lemmy. Lemmy had disappeared during the Confliction, before she’d been set free. She’d never met him, but she had heard many a tale, told by Rikky Camille, about the golden-haired mute who helped Jenka and Rikky all grow smart and strong on the hunts of their youth. His face and upper body were injured in some way as to cause him to move awkwardly, yet he was handsome, with hair that shimmered from across the garden like spun gold.

Maybe after she met with the Oracle, she would see if he wanted to ride back with her.