Dragonforge (41 page)

Sparrow fought for her home, her family, and her honor. She didn’t know what drove the woman, and didn’t care. At last, the woman’s eyes clouded and her head slowly rolled to the side. Sparrow pushed her away. The woman slipped in the gore they stood in and fell roughly to the stone. Sparrow limped past her, steadying herself with her fore-talon against the wall. Dark specks danced all around her as she fell against the oak door, pushing it open with the full weight of her body. She staggered forward, the world narrowing into a dark tunnel. At the end of the tunnel was a large, steel bar, the master release for the fortress gates.

She reached out her fore-talon as she collapsed. Her bloody claw slipped on the steel. She fell to the floor, dying, uncertain if she’d pulled the lever or not. The world went perfectly dark. The only sound she could hear was her own heartbeat, which pounded in her ears like ceremonial drums.

And then, the drums stopped.

She was trapped inside herself, frozen, fading into the great unbroken silence.

Against that backdrop of oblivion came the
click, click, clang
of gears as the ancient machinery once more began to turn.

Jandra stared into
the rainbow where Jazz had just vanished. Presumably, Jazz was now back on earth, expecting Jandra to follow. Jandra looked around the unending gray desert. She could run. But to where? How long could she survive in this bleak and barren place, without hint of water or food?

“Ven,” she sighed. “You can’t know how badly I need to talk to you right now.”

“We both know that isn’t possible,” a familiar voice said over her shoulder. “But perhaps I’ll do?”

She turned around. Vendevorex once more stood before her, ghostly, translucent, the stars on the distant horizon shimmering in his golden eyes.

“You’re back!” she said.

“I never left,” Vendevorex said. “Or rather, this recording has never left. If you’re seeing me now, it’s no doubt because I reached my demise before we completed your training. I’ve attempted to anticipate your most likely questions about operation of the helmet and will answer them to the best of my ability.”

“Well, for one thing, the helmet isn’t a helmet any more,” said Jandra.

Vendevorex’s shade nodded. “It wouldn’t need to be. You may have noticed it adapted its shape to fit your skull as you donned it. You could shape it into many different forms and have it retain its function. The Atlanteans call such devices Global Encephalous Nanite Interaction Engines—a GENIE.”

Jandra glanced back at the rainbow. How long did she have before Jazz came back looking for her? And, what was Jazz doing to Hex and Bitterwood in her absence?

“Ven,” she said, “I have a lot of questions, but let me start with the most urgent. Do you know how to lock the, uh, genie?”

“Of course,” he said. “My skullcap and your tiara were always locked to avoid detection by others wielding Atlantean technology. I commanded the devices to unlock in the event of my demise, so that you could don my skull cap and, if you chose, pass on your tiara to an apprentice.”

Jandra grimaced at the thought of this. She’d left the palace in a hurry; her tiara had been left sitting on her dresser. Anyone could grab it. Could anyone use it?

“Fine,” she said. “So how to I relock them?”

“Simple,” he said. “Here is the twenty seven digit prime that will encrypt it to only respond to your thoughts.”

Jandra listened to the number carefully. She repeated it internally, and could almost hear something in the back of her mind click shut. She repeated it once more and returned the device the state it had been in when Jazz had last seen her. She didn’t know what lay on the other side of the portal. She wasn’t ready to spring this little surprise on the goddess until she knew where Hex and Bitterwood were.

“I wish we had more time to talk,” she said, turning toward the rainbow. “But if I don’t get back, she’s probably going to come looking for me.

“We have all the time in the world,” Vendevorex assured her, as she leapt toward the void.

Bitterwood strained against
his cocoon of thick kudzu. He was twenty feet above the ground, dangling upside down from the branches of a towering cottonwood; his struggles sent down a rain of leaves, but did nothing to loosen the grip of the vines.

Nearby, Hex was barely visible as a bulge beneath a thick carpet of green. His jaws were tightly wrapped by the clinging vines. The sun-dragon had made no noise for some time, but Bitterwood could tell from the rhythm of his breath that Hex was awake.

The artificial sky had, by now, fallen into a pattern of darkness. Mosquitoes crawled over Bitterwood’s leathery face and the surrounding forest vibrated with the chorus of frogs and crickets. Against this cacophony, Bitterwood almost didn’t hear the steps of the giant beast. Almost. In the end, his highly-tuned ears knew that Trisky was approaching long before she came into sight, with Adam astride her.

Adam looked sorrowful. He obviously had something on his mind as he guided his mount beneath Bitterwood. He looked up and said softly, “I’m ashamed of you, father.”

Bitterwood said nothing.

“You desecrated the temple. You attacked the goddess and her angel without provocation. I’m captain of the long-wyrm riders. I’ve dedicated my life to serving the goddess. Why would you dishonor me so?”

Bitterwood blew away a mosquito that walked on his lips. He said, “I’ve spent the last twenty years believing you were dead. Perhaps it would have been best if you were. It would cause me less pain than to know you’ve devoted your life to this evil.”

“Father,” Adam said, struggling to maintain his composure. “I would slay any other man for uttering such blasphemy. The goddess is not evil. She spared you and the dragon.”

“And what of the people of Big Lick? What of Zeeky and Jandra?”

“You cannot judge the actions of the goddess as good or evil,” Adam said. “A storm brings rain and life to a parched land, yet may drown villages; its lightning may set fields aflame. Is a storm good or evil? The actions of the goddess are beyond the power of humans to judge.”

Bitterwood closed his eyes.

“You’ve made your judgment,” he said.

“Father, I implore you; repent your blasphemy and you’ll be released unharmed. You may live out the remainder of your days here in paradise.”

Bitterwood chuckled. “You live in a hole beneath the earth. How can this be paradise when you know that the stars above you are nothing but a lie?”

“Why do you think the world outside is any different?” Adam asked. “How can you know that the stars you look upon at night are real?”

Bitterwood didn’t have an answer for this.

Adam continued: “You’re a legend, father. The dragons call you the Ghost Who Kills. Yet, you aren’t a ghost. Does this make your struggle any less just? The dragons think of you as a force of nature, a supernatural being that slays without cause. Does this make you evil, father? Or are you a good man because you’ve you fought to make the world a better place?”

Bitterwood kept his eyes closed. He hoped Adam would go away. But he could still hear Trisky below, calmly munching on the grass.

Bitterwood sighed. “A lifetime of murder has corrupted me beyond redemption.”

“If you believe this, why do it?”

Bitterwood opened his eyes. He looked down upon his son. Adam was a man now, yet still had a boyish softness to his eyes. There was an innocence within him, a hope and faith that the world was a good world guided by a watchful, benign power. There was a light inside him that had long since burned to ash within Bitterwood.

Bitterwood had never been called upon to justify his actions. If he owed anyone an explanation, it was his own son. “It is said that if a man’s only tool is a hammer, then he will treat all the problems of the world as a nail.”

“Why do you answer me in riddles, father?”

“Hate was the only tool that remained after the dragons took everything else,” Bitterwood said. “In a single day I lost my God, my family, my home, my hope. Hatred kept me warm in winter. Hatred slaked my dry throat in times of drought and fed me in times of famine. I would have died long ago if not for my dream of a world without dragons. Perhaps, in the end, all the evil I’ve done will lead to good when mankind rules this world once more.”

“The goddess will never allow mankind dominion over the earth,” said Adam. “She says the race of man is unworthy. Listening to your words, watching your actions, I can’t help but wonder if she’s right.”

Behind Adam, the air began to rip. Prisms of light opened to surround a black gate. A woman stepped through. She resembled the goddess statue on a human scale; tall but nothing unnatural save for the hue of her hair.

“Sorry to interrupt this heart-to-heart,” the woman said. Bitterwood instantly recognized her voice as belonging to the goddess.

Adam threw himself to the ground.

“Oh, stand up and stop groveling,” the goddess said, sounding mildly agitated. “It’s starting to get old. I miss the days when guys your age couldn’t take their eyes off my breasts. You don’t know what I look like above my toenails.”

“I’m not worthy to gaze upon you,” Adam said.

“Worthy or not, I need you on your feet. Or on your butt, to be precise. Mount up.”

Adam rose, still averting his eyes as he climbed back into his saddle.

“Here’s the deal. I worked with the first matriarch to design the gene maps that would help her race slip out of the genetic noose it was caught in. But as we speak, Blasphet is attacking the Nest, trying to bring extinction to the entire species. He won’t succeed, of course. He doesn’t know about the sky-dragon population over in Tennessee or the big colony down in Cuba. Still, I’m a little pissed off that Blasphet’s wrecking a thousand-year-old project that’s one of my bigger success stories. So, Adam, I’m sending you and the other riders to stop him. I’m sending your dad along. Also, the big guy.” She cocked her head toward Hex.

“You want me to fight for you?” Bitterwood asked.

“You’ve shown a lot of talent for breaking things. Go break Blasphet.”

Bitterwood frowned. Was this a trick? Blasphet had long been one of the most difficult of Albekizan’s relatives to target. Normally, he would gladly accept an opportunity to face him. But not under these conditions.

“No,” he said. “I didn’t come here to serve you. I came here to find Zeeky.”

“Sure,” said the goddess. “So let’s cut to the chase. Go kill Blasphet and I won’t hurt Zeeky.”

“How do I even know she’s alive? Why did you send a replica to greet us?”

“I have her busy elsewhere right now,” said the goddess. “She’s not been hurt. For what it’s worth, I like the kid. She’s spunky. Reminds me of me when I was little.”

Bitterwood ground his teeth as he thought the offer over. What did it matter if Blasphet was attacking the Nest now? Even if they were outside the mountain, the Nest would take several days to reach. This must be a trick.

The goddess waved her hands toward Hex. The vegetation around his jaws loosened.

“How about you?” she asked. “Think you can take out your uncle?”

“Where’s Jandra?” Hex asked. With his head free, he strained to stand. The ground beneath him bulged as the full force of his muscles was brought to bear. In the end, the effort was futile. For every vine he snapped, two grew to replace them.

Suddenly, the rainbows behind the goddess rippled and a young woman stepped out. It looked like Jandra, though Bitterwood knew he couldn’t trust his eyes. This one was even less authentic than the earlier one. She wore no helmet.

Jandra looked up into the tree, then glanced over to the vines that covered Hex.

“What have you done to them?” she demanded.

“They aren’t hurt,” the goddess said. “Merely detained. I’ve offered them a chance to go to the Nest to fight Blasphet. So far, they don’t seem all that hot on the idea.”

“I’ll go,” said Jandra.

“This is further evidence you aren’t real,” said Bitterwood. “Your eagerness to do her bidding shows that you’re another doppelganger.”

Jandra looked as if she had no idea what Bitterwood was talking about. “I have no idea what you’re talking about,” she said. “But, here’s one thing I understand: Blasphet. He escaped from the dungeons right before I left. He’s got a cult helping him, the Sisters of the Serpent, and one of them almost killed me. I’m finding there aren’t a lot of easy moral choices in life, but this one’s fairly simple. Anything that Blasphet wants to do, we should want to undo.”

“What happened to your helmet?” Hex asked.

“I’ll explain later. You coming?”

“Draw nearer,” Hex said.

Jandra walked closer. Hex’s nostrils flared as he sniffed her.

“She sweats,” he announced, looking up at Bitterwood. “It’s her.”

Bitterwood nodded. A dragon’s sense of smell rivaled that of a dog.

“I’ll go,” said Bitterwood. He didn’t care much about doing the bidding of the goddess, but getting free of these vines was an improvement over his current state.

“And I,” said Hex. “My uncle has tarnished my family’s reputation even more than my father. Unlike Shandrazel, I’m not encumbered by any romantic ideas of law. I’ll gladly gut the old monster.”

“Swell,” said the goddess. She snapped her fingers and the kudzu began to writhe. Bitterwood was spun downward and deposited on his feet. Hex rose as the vines lost their hold on him. He shook like a wet dog to free himself of the last of the clinging tendrils.

“If I’m going to face Blasphet, I’ll require a weapon,” said Bitterwood.

“Naturally,” the goddess said. She reached up and grabbed a low hanging limb of the cottonwood. The branch snapped off in her hand. Before Bitterwood’s eyes, the raw wood warped, the bark and leaves falling away as it straightened into a wooden bow six feet long. The goddess grimaced as she bent the bow into an arc and plucked a strand of her own hair. The hair wove and grew into a long silken cord that knotted itself around the ends. She tossed it to Bitterwood. He snatched it from the air and gave it a pull. It felt perfectly balanced, and was a good match for his strength. He looked up to find that the goddess had reconfigured the bark and remaining wood into a quiver of arrows, fletched with fresh green leaves.