The Dragon Ring (Book 1) (29 page)

Zelda raised her head. “Have mercy.”

The chamberlain ignored her plea. “No dragons have been seen south of Dreaddrac since the Third Wizard War, Your Highness. Do you want to risk the enemy seeing one and alerting the southern kingdoms to your new forces?”

“None will observe the beast. Have him fly over Dreaddrac and cross the Tixosian Sea at the northern tip of Tixos where no southern ships dare sail. Attend to this matter personally. The icy winds aloft on a dragon this time of year should be bone chilling for the old hag.”

The chamberlain motioned for the two ogre guards to drag the whimpering witch out of the hall to the mountain top and the dragon stables.”

“Have Mercy!”

“What’s to be done about the Edros Swamp, Majesty?” the chamberlain asked ignoring the witch half dragged, half stumbling to her feet.

“What can be done?” the fuming king said. “I’m immensely powerful, but I can’t drain that inland sea. I’ll set great monsters loose in the waters, sealing it off to invaders at least. Then I’ll have to devise a new plan of invasion. That witch has set me back half a dozen years. Stupid witch, playing with forces she didn’t understand.”

*

Zelda staggered up dusty tunnels, prodded by the snickering ogres’ spears. She stumbled. One grabbed her by the arm to pull her up, but she jerked away and gave him a defiant glare.

“Keep your filthy hands off me, you monster.”

“Look who’s calling
me
a monster.”

The other ogre laughed, infuriating Zelda. The guards nodded to each other. The first poked her again. She crawled to the entrance of the dragon stable, where the rancid stench of decay, urine, and feces mingled with smoke. Zelda jerked free of the ogres’ clutches.

“I’m not going in there.”

The senior ogre shoved Zelda down in the putrid mud at the stable opening and put his foot on her back, preventing her from getting up.

“You better learn you gonna do what you’re told,” The ogre grinned, “Dragon Keeper!”

The pudgy attendant in charge of the stable, still covered in waste, plodded through the muck to the three at the entrance and stood propped on his wooden pitchfork.

“What you wants?”

“The king ordered this witch sent to the Highback Mountains on the northwest coast of Tixos to spend the rest of her days enslaved to the rock-dwarves. You’re to set her on a dragon to take her there and be sure she’s held by them dwarves.”

The dragon keeper frowned at Zelda flailing in the mud. “The dragons is proud, they won’ts like being used for carrying baggage.”

Zelda’s head popped up, “Baggage!”

The ogre lifted his foot from her back. With care and precision, he mashed her skull down into the muck again.

His head shaking, the dragon keeper plopped back through the muck and returned with a juvenile dragon that jerked his head, tugging at his halter.

“This here beast will do. He’s young and rebellious, but Crackle will do what he’s told. Troublemakers, these two have that in common.” A puff of dragon flame singed the hair on his filthy arm cutting short his chuckle. “Stop that, you quarrelsome beast.”

The ogres picked Zelda up, dripping from the mud, and thrust her over the dragon’s neck tying her down. The dragon keeper held the defiant reptile, who stamped his feet and pulled back to no avail.

Zelda spit out the rag. “You’ll all regret this insult.”

The lead ogre guard ignored the squirming witch and smacked her protruding posterior with his sword. Zelda jerked, groaned, and shut up.

“Does this contrary beast knows what he’s supposed to do?”

“He knows,” the dragon keeper said, turning to the creature. “Be off with you and don’t stop until you reaches them Highback Mountains and the rock-dwarves.” He whacked the young dragon’s flank. The reptile snorted and jumped into the air, his wings whipping, blowing over the three ogres into the mire.

“He done that deliberate,” the second ogre guard said.

“Young’uns, they likes to show off,” The dragon keeper said. He wiped slop from his posterior and turned back into the dark, smoky stables leaving the ogre guards to watch the dragon’s flight to the setting sun.

*

Enjoying his freedom, Crackle flew west with wings whipping the cold air. His neck joggled Zelda with each wing thrust. The powerful wings smashed the air and sliced through the wind, causing his neck scales to poke into Zelda’s soft gut like meat hammers tenderizing tough beef. She gasped and groaned with each breath. She vomited until she only had dry heaves, but the dragon flew on unconcerned. Ice formed on Zelda’s extremities at the high altitude in the far north, numbing her throbbing pain for a while. She fainted some time later and spent the rest of the voyage unconscious, though her body was tossed and turned into one huge bruise.

She regained consciousness soon after the pounding stopped a long time later. The dragon stood on the side of the mountain, talking to a skittish orc at the entrance to the subterranean mine.

“Where are we?” Zelda croaked.

Crackle ignored her. “Take this witch and stuff her down under the mountain. She’s not to speak with anyone again. Keep her deep down in the forges, a slave to the workers. She’s not to see the light of day or talk with anyone other than rock-dwarves until she dies or the king orders otherwise.”

Zelda’s head throbbed. The world was still spinning when the orcs threw icy water on her and the dragon, washing off her vomit. They cut her, shivering and half-frozen, from the dragon’s back and dumped her on the ground. The pulsing pain returned. The last thing Zelda saw before fainting again was the winged reptile taking off and heading back east into the clouds.

“Where am I?” Zelda asked.

Someone had left her on the rock floor of a sweltering forge room amid half a dozen rock-dwarves. Thawing in the intense heat, her throbbing pain intensified. No one answered her. A rock-dwarf plunked a moldy piece of bread and a burned rat in her lap, but said nothing.

“I’m not eating this.”

Zelda flicked her tattered apron, flipping the victuals off her. An indifferent rock-dwarf put a shovel in her hands and pushed her to a pile of rubble beside a wheelbarrow. Zelda looked from one rock-dwarf to another, but all ignored her. One poked her and pointed to the heap.

“I’m not shoveling this crap.”

The witch stood there until one kicked her, knocking her to the floor. Resigned to her fate and rubbing her bruised rump, Zelda picked up the shovel and stood up. Her last speck of independence extinguished, she surrendered, and shoveled shards for an hour before collapsing, landing on the moldy bread. She brushed it off and ate a bite. A dwarf shoved a stone cup of warm muddy water at her. Thus began years of servitude under the Highback Mountains.

* * *

Several years passed on the Isle of Helshia as Saxthor and Bodrin grew into men under Tournak’s tutelage. They ate well, trained in the military arts and studied using the library Memlatec put there. Tournak expanded their knowledge of social skills they retained from their early days at court.

When the time came for the men to return to Powteros, they would be well equipped to fill their places at Neuyokkasin’s court. The boys grew into refined young men with few distractions from the corruption of court life or Earwig’s plots. Memlatec was confident Saxthor would survive and be prepared for the challenges ahead when the Dark Lord of Dreaddrac rose to overturn the Powterosian peninsula’s kingdoms and their whole civilization.

* * *

Earwig fumed in her palace, raging at the terrified servants she encountered.

“Fools! Tournak’s managed to evade all my watchers and assassins and hidden the boys somewhere on Tixos. That is, if one of the Dark Lord’s beasts on that mysterious island hasn’t already killed them by now. I won’t be able to prevent him taking his revenge. By then, Eleatsubetsvyertsin will have established her line as the legitimate claimants to the throne. The boy won’t have political uncertainty to restrain him. Unlike his mother, who hesitates fearing dynastic instability, he won’t be reluctant to kill or imprison me when he reaches maturity. No, Saxthor must die if I’m to survive and regain the throne.”

Earwig’s agents searched the southern inhabited regions of Tixos and stood sentinels at the port and byways for years, but none of the exiles ever appeared again on Tixos.

*

Then amid the titanic posturing of Wizard Memlatec and the Dark Lord of Dreaddrac, a distant, obscure incident occurred that should have gone unnoticed. The occurrence set into motion events that would return the exiles to Neuyokkasin and upend the power balance of Powteros.

15:  Trouble through the Years

Through the years Saxthor was growing up on Helshia, the whole Powterosian peninsula deteriorated back home. Neuyokkasin’s economy and society dwindled as the queen withdrew from court life due to the strain of losing her sons. Earwig took advantage of the situation, fell further under the spell of witchcraft and raised her dragon Magnosious to an increasingly cold, calculating sociopath.

In Dreaddrac, the Dark Lord expanded his armies while he plotted to undermine the southern kingdoms from within and build alternate paths of invasion through Prertsten and the Hador pass. Memlatec watched all this with growing alarm. Flooding southwestern Dreaddrac delayed the Dark Lord’s war plans for six years, but Memlatec was running out of time.

In Konnotan, rumors purporting Magnosious had devoured an investigative group of Neuyokkasinians at The Crypt caused extreme consternation at court. The nobles demanded the queen summon Duchess Irkin to judgment. Humiliated, the witch stood before Queen Eleatsubetsvyertsin in the audience hall of the Neuyokkasin’s royal palace. The queen was most disturbed at having to question a member of the extended royal family, if one only by marriage, in a public forum.

“Duchess Irkin, several testimonies claim your dragon ate members of an expedition to the dreaded place, The Crypt. We must demand an explanation from you,” the queen said.

The witch offered the faintest possible curtsy to the queen. She scanned the courtiers with narrowed eyes before looking back to Her Majesty with her syrupy smile.

“Your Majesty, I’m just a poor, banished woman, cast from the pinnacle of power into the lowly dust of obscurity. Exiled, I’ve nothing left but for my little pet, Magnosious, who is like a child to me. Surely, in your magnanimous generosity and with mercy in your heart, you wouldn’t deprive a lonely outcast her only little pet, would you?

“Your little pet,” Eleatsubetsvyertsin repeated.

“My little Magnosious does in fact play with the buzzards at The Crypt. Yet who is so cruel as to accuse my innocent baby because he’s well… simply so large?”

“Duchess, your little baby is a nearly full grown dragon. While you insist he eats only herds of cattle from your estates, we receive more and more reports of citizens and travelers disappearing in the vicinity of the Earwighof. We’ve even gotten rumors you import condemned prisoners from foreign lands to feed your precious baby. What have you to say?”

Flushed, Earwig’s eyes narrowed, the smile collapsed with grinding teeth. “Lies… Hearsay! Who dares accuse my boy Magnosious and me of such dreadful things? These are all circumstantial accusations because my little pet has outgrown his playpen. I’ll not give credence to such defamation tactics. If someone wishes to slander my name and good reputation, let him come forward with his evidence.”

The sorceress scanned the room like a vulture. Malice seething in her face burst forth in her glaring dissection of the terrified court. No one so much as cleared his throat. The duchess turned back to the throne.

“Well, you see this rubbish was all a flutter of malicious gossip, Your Majesty. If you will permit me to return to my place of exile, we’ll hope to hear no more of these spiteful accusations.”

The witch didn’t wait for dismissal but turned her back on the queen to leave the inquisition. She hesitated and turned to the throne. “In future, I hope, indeed, expect your majesty to incarcerate those attempting to damage my household with such malicious and unfounded accusations.”

“You may withdraw, Duchess.”

Red with rage, Earwig stormed out of the audience hall, her boot heels scraping on the marble. She snatched a massive door from a guard and slammed it with a bang as she left. For several moments, the court stood frozen, staring at the door as if expecting the witch to reappear and vaporize them all.

“Keep an eye on her,” the queen said, leaning to Chatra Rakmar.

The minister nodded and bowed, but what could he do? He feared the duchess as much as any in the room did.

*

Back at the Earwighof, Earwig stormed about unrestrained. She removed the spell that restrained Magnosious in his cave behind the palace.

“Magnosious!”

The bloated dragon was lying on his back, tossing the stiff corpse of the last expedition member and spinning the carcass in circles above his head on a claw tip. When the witch summoned him, he let the morsel drop into his gaping mouth and swallowed. He flew to the workroom tower, landing with dexterity even if a shower of slate shingles did rain down on the lethal garden below.

“What’cha want, Mommy? Did you bring me more tidbits to eat?”

“Magnosious – Magnosious… This lurking and gobbling up the locals must stop. The court is on to you. They know you ate a dozen of those expedition members at The Crypt. They can’t prove anything of course, none got away as eyewitnesses, but you must be more discrete. Eat the poor loners on the back roads if you must, not the rich and powerful. You’re going to bring that imposter queen’s wrath down on us.”

“But Mommy-- ”

Earwig wheeled around glaring at the dragon.

“Don’t ‘but mommy’ me, do as I say. I provide you with the estate’s cattle, though you eat faster than they can reproduce. We must be careful with the prisoners. That source of nutrition has come into question, too. Do be more careful. Mommy doesn’t want to have to banish you to the far, frozen north where the only things to eat are those nasty, bitter orcs.”