Cold Hearted Son of a Witch (Dragoneers Saga) (18 page)

Jenka said
, “
The King’s Rangers are defenseless.”

Find the SSSarax,
Crimzon hissed with more than a little urgency in his ethereal tone.
Waste no more time, Dragoneersss. We may have wasted too much already. My part will sssoon be done.
After that it isss all up to you.
With that, the mighty red-scaled wyrm backed slowly and sinuously into the shadows and disappeared altogether.

Chapter 22

Herald was arguing with Mysterian and King Blanchard in a labyrinth-like hedge garden that boasted a sacrificial altar at its center. The area was sizable, and by the indentions in the soil out away from the center, Herald reasoned that hundreds of people had gathered round the slab on many occasion. It was clear that the huge block of stone wasn’t just ornamental. Flies buzzed greedily over its rough, red-stained surface. The skulls of several different types of animals were littered around its base, including troll heads and several smaller goblin gourds. Herald saw one bit of old yellowed dome that he knew for certain was human and another that might have been ogre or orc.

Herald didn’t like it at the temple. The Druids were shifty and there was far more than met the eye going on there. Mysterian’s constant concern over the loss of the ethereal and Prince Richard’s betrayal had her anxious and edgy. She had dearly loved the Crown Prince. His severe actions after being revived hurt her, and more importantly, scared her. She was afraid and confused just enough to keep her from being her normally collected, ever-scheming self. Herald decided that an anxious witch didn’t make for good company. He was at the end of his tether with frustration. He couldn’t pin down what it was about the creepy temple that was bothering him because of her worries. It was maddening.

Some of the servants he’d seen roaming the grounds had the look of ravers about them. They moved along about their labors, slumped over in a slow methodical daze. With dead eyes and emotionless posture, they seemed aware of no other purpose than to serve the druids.

“We need to find them Dragoneers,” Mysterian said again, adding an elbow to jab Herald out of his thoughts. “Listen to the king.”

“I’m not against it,” Herald said. He’d been lobbying to take a party to Kingsmen’s Keep to see about his fellow King’s Rangers. He saw no point in sending men deeper into the mountains.

King Blanchard agreed. “They said they’d be returnin’ here, though, and they will,” he told Mysterian again.

Appearing seemingly from nowhere, Lanxe joined them, and speaking more to the king than the others, the High Druidon changed the subject. “Things are happening that require your attention, Majesty.”

With a glare and a raised hand, Herald stopped Mysterian from engaging the High Druidon so that he could ask a question. He marveled at the perfect resemblance of the two. Linux looked exactly like his twin brother. “Do those men with the dead eyes serve the Order of Dou willingly, or have you scrambled their thinkers?”

Lanxe gave a disdainful smile, as if he were being polite to a belligerent child. “Ask them. They’re not mute.” Then to the king, “Come Highness, there are others waiting to start work on the spells that will make people see you as you were. We have much work to do, Ranger.
If you will excuse us.”
He dismissed Herald by shouldering past him as he led the king away. Over his shoulder, Lanxe made a nasty snarl, but spoke in a kindly enough voice. He said, “It’s no easy task to make one look like someone we have never seen.”

Herald felt a flash of panic then.
One what?
Again, whatever it was that was bothering him eluded realization. He knew his instinct was right, though. It was always right. There was something sinister happening around him. Already Mysterian was pulling on his sleeve trying to get his attention. He was about to snap at her when several cries of panic rang out from another part of the temple grounds. Herald got a glimpse of what had them screaming when a savage-looking twelve-foot-tall winged beast hurled the body of a druida across the yard like a stone. It didn’t have much of a head, just a snouted protrusion from its shoulders with cold black eyes and a huge toothy maw underneath. Herald shuddered as he watched it devour a man in three chomping gulps. After that, his years of experience ranging the Orich Mountains took over and he literally dragged Mysterian away from the temple.

***

Lanxe was giddy. He was in a position that he’d never expected to be in. Even more satisfying was the fact that an idea of how he could use the situation to gain the power of the entire kingdom of men had presented itself as if a gift from Dou. Lanxe wasn’t all that angry about the death of his brother Linux, but revenge was still one of his motives as he led King Blanchard to his demise.

The Sarax attacked just as the doors to an underground section of the temple boomed shut behind the High Druidon and the king of men. Heavy beams were worked through iron bands by a uniformed troop of soldiers with bulging muscles. The king hadn’t noticed the beast, but it was no surprise to Lanxe. Many years ago, the druids had taken one of the things. Its dissected body was deep in the dungeons under the temple. They had been working on an incantation that would bind the alien beasts to the will of the caster for decades. In secret, Lanxe and his cronies had been studying other aspects of the Sarax, too. Linux, with the backing of the elder druids, Vax Noffa, and the witches of the Hazeltine, had forbidden such experimentation. But with Linux dead, and the eldest of the Hazeltine about to be Sarax scat, Lanxe knew that he’d done well to proceed. Once the link of control was established it was only a matter of sneaking someone into the crater to destroy the crystal that was encasing the creatures. The fact that Vax Noffa and the half-elvish mute had to die in the process was more of a boon than a loss.

“You and you, go out there and fetch the witch,” Lanxe ordered a pair of the blue-robed druids who were waiting in the opulent chamber they’d just entered. A few of the other blue-robes moved plush chairs around a small golden altar and then seated Lanxe and his twin directly facing each other in the middle.

“Why am I facing you? I thought I was the one being illusionated.” King Blanchard was starting to sense something, Lanxe feared, but the king’s eagerness to look like himself again turned out to be stronger than the alarm.

“None of us have ever seen how you look, Majesty,” Lanxe said, with just enough reverence in his tone to be convincing. “I must search your mind and see how you saw yourself. You’ve looked into a glass before?”

The king nodded.

“All I need is to see a memory of that moment, but moreover I can get a feel for your demeanor and the subtleties that made you feel like you.”

“Very well then,” King Blanchard agreed. All around him candles were being lit and a strange coppery smell filled the air.

His head was then gently pulled back into the headrest by a man standing behind him. Lanxe began chanting, as did several of the other druids, who were now sitting in a circle around them. After only a few verses of the repetitive mantra, the king’s head lolled to the side.

King Blanchard felt Lanxe enter his consciousness; he also felt his wrists and ankles being strapped to the chair he was in. He tried to struggle but his body wouldn’t respond.

Lanxe began examining King Blanchard in the most intimate of ways, from the inside of his mind. Soon, he would know all there was to know about the man.

It didn’t take long for the king to understand what was happening.
Why?
He asked with the voice inside his head.

Because I can,
replied Lanxe
.
Because I can.

Chapter 23

Herald had to wrestle Mysterian into the deep ocher forest south of the Temple of Dou. It was clear that the beast attacking the druids was some sort of winged and upright trollish thing that did terrible damage to the mostly defenseless men it chose to kill. A grinding, buzzing sound that was barely audible, yet surprisingly irritating, filled his head. Herald saw that two blue-robed druids were stalking fearlessly through the carnage, ignoring the pleas of their dying brethren around them. They weren’t clutching at their ears like many of the others so close to the beast were, either. They were searching for someone, Herald decided, and he was fairly certain it was him and the Eldest of the Hazeltine.

“Come, Mysty,” he whispered. He pulled her into a thicket, rolled them under some trees, and hugged her close to his chest while cupping a hand over her mouth. He let her breathe, but her every attempt to speak was averted with a sharp press of his palm, her every wiggle smothered in an urgent hug.

They huddled like that for several hours, as the sky slowly darkened, and autumn’s chill gathered bite. For the first few hours they heard the screams of the dying. The huge beast was eating people alive. It galled Herald to leave them
be
, but he did it. He knew that King Blanchard was in a fix. His instinct was to get to the keep and rally the rangers. What to rally them around was a question he would have to soon answer.

Once he was certain that the creature had moved on, Herald led Mysterian slowly up a sloped wooded area and didn’t stop when they topped the ridge. It was freezing and the sweat of their laborious climb had their breath escaping in huge, bilious clouds.

When they stopped once, Mysterian actually cackled out a laugh because steam was rising from Herald’s grizzled head. Her wits were returning to her. The idea that Prince Richard was fully corrupted by Gravelbone’s taint had set in, and she no longer grieved for his soul. Linux, she missed, but only marginally. The beast affecting the ethereal was only one of the concerns that
was
suddenly churning through her old witchy brain.

“How far are we going in this cold?” Mysterian asked just before the sun started to lighten the sky.

Herald was so cold he’d forgotten he was cold. “Two days if we rest little,” he mumbled.

“Are we going to Kingsmen’s Keep?” she asked.

Through his shivering he nodded. She spoke a word he didn’t know, then stepped up and hugged him close. After a bright, stark white flash filled his mind like a thunderclap, he found he was still standing against Mysterian, but in the open yard outside the keep. Two men with bows fully drawn were looking at them wide-eyed from their post outside the heavy wooden door.

“’Tis Master Herald and the witch,” the voice of an unseen ranger called down from a lookout in the trees. The rangers guarding the entry relaxed.

“Some evil beast has attacked the temple, but I think they are aligned with the druids somehow.
Them
druids have King Blanchard, too.” Herald chattered to the men. He was still hugging Mysterian and she was thankful for what little warmth his body provided her. Fortunately they were ushered into the keep and fortified with warm stew in front of a roaring fire in the kitchens.

“I must return to King’s Isle, Herald,
then
Mainsted. I have to warn my sisters of this madness.” Mysterian didn’t want to part from the man she had come to care for so much, but she knew she had to go. “If what you say is true, if the druids are in league with that creature and are working to harm the kingdom, then—
”

“I
be
not making it up, lass,” Herald spoke harshly, but his anger was over her needing to leave. It wasn’t directed at her. “
Them
blue-robed bastards walked right around the thing while it scooped up one of their fellows and took a bite. They showed no fear of it, them two. They weren’t hearing that infernal whine, neither. They knew it wouldn’t harm them aforehand or they’d have filled their britches and run. And that demon Lanxe gave me the look of the Destroyer himself when he said he was going to illusionate King Blanchard to look right again.” He paused to shake his head.

Hearing this, Mysterian pinched the bridge of her nose and sighed. “I’ll be off then, love.” She rose from her seat and kissed his hairy face. “Tell that boy Rikky, you see him, to keep that peg on.” She started to cast her spell then, but stopped herself. “Tell that De Swasso boy, and them other Dragoneers to end that terrible thing, Herald. It’s not of this world. It will destroy us.” With that she kissed him again and swirled away into a cloud of silvery sparkles.