The Long Journey Home (The Legend of Vanx Malic Book 8) (11 page)

He watched as a streak of jagged lightning shot up from one of the sinking ships and caught one of Moonsy’s great hawks. It wasn’t her, which was a relief, but both rider and bird fell limply toward the sea. Just before they splashed into the water, Moonsy’s hawk swept by. The Glaive of Gladiolus glimmered brightly in the sun, and Moonsy must have caught the tumbling bird with the healing blade. He didn’t see where the elf splashed in, but the great hawk righted itself just above the waves and started gliding in a circle around the area.

It would still be long moments before any of the ships were in bow or harpoon range, and he looked ahead to see that they were coming very near the island now.

It’s almost time
, Master Ruuk said to Zeezle, who understood he had to make sure that, as soon as the other group was back on the
Adventurer
and the tow was loose, the smaller ship was scooting out from between the land and the converging pirates.

When I hear your true voice from this tub’s deck, we will be skimming the waves out of here
, Zeezle replied, hoping Vanx would be along for the ride.

Not having seen his friend surface for air and knowing one of the elves might be dead didn’t have him feeling hopeful. He still manned the harpoon and readied himself to try and hit the captain of the first ship that came close enough. He knew he didn’t have to control the ship, and knowing that Vanx had connected with it helped ease the worry over his friend; for if Vanx had been hurt or killed, Zeezle had no doubt the boat would have ditched the plan and gone after him.

The closest ship suddenly stalled in the water, causing all the pirates hustling on the deck to pitch forward.

“Did they run aground?” Zeezle said aloud, even though he was the only one on the boat, save for Poops.

It sure looked like they had. He had to turn from the ordeal when he heard Ronzon’s voice yelling out in alarm. He saw Ronzon as he half-climbed, half-fell from the rigging of the bigger ship to get down to the deck.

He saw Chelda and the horses appear on the distant shore. They’d ended up ankle-deep in water, and from this distance the two full-sized animals looked like a pair of Spring Fair ponies next to her. She led them from the sandy beach, across a small stretch of open area, and into the trees.

Suddenly Castavonti, Master Ruuk, and Ronzon appeared like a net haul of fish on the
Adventurer’s
deck, and the ship went speeding off in the direction it was supposed to, all by itself.

“Where is Vanx?” Master Ruuk asked.

“He dove in.” Zeezle shrugged, but the sight of a bigger harpoon-laden vessel cutting across their intended path, coming from the other side of the island, made him gasp. The others turned and, amazingly, went into action.

Master Ruuk repelled the rope-trailing harpoons that were being launched at them with a shield similar to the one the pirates used earlier. Castavonti started sending his kinetic pulses at the planks, just at sea level, as if he were trying to pound through the hull.

But then a shadow swept past them, and the pirate ship’s sails burst into flames.

One of the harpoons made it through the Zythian wizard’s casting. Zeezle had to think where he’d stashed his machete, because he hadn’t thought about leaving it in reach, as he had all the bows and arrows.

Ronzon was trying to untangle the harpoon’s hook, but the rope attached to the thing pulled tight, pinning him violently against the rail.

Zeezle’s chopping swing severed the rope and saved the seaman from being cut in half.

Then the
Adventurer
was yanked from the transom, where another rope had started hauling them toward the larger ship. Zeezle ran and chopped it. The next harpoon that came through Master Ruuk’s casting was knocked aside by Castavonti’s well-timed kinetic pulse.

Ronzon found the ax they had used on the invisible island and made ready to chop lines if any more came.

The chaos of the flames on the larger ship and the two magi on their smaller vessel acted together to allow them the room they needed to slip out from between the closing pirate ships.

It was what happened next, though—to both the horse hauler and the seemingly stalled vessel—that left them all standing slack-jawed on the deck.

Even the pirates stopped and watched in shock and awe.

Chapter Twenty-Five

It is only a coin

and only a price
.

It’s not worth your honor

and not worth your life
.

V
anx had to scream at the female leviathan that attacked the horse hauler instead of the newly arrived pirate ship, which was trying to get hold of his
Adventurer
. He was just glad she hadn’t made the worse mistake of attacking the boat his friends were on.

He was on the shoulder of the male, which was rising before a ship full of confused pirates, who were wondering why their vessel wouldn’t move. Then, four shark-mawed tentacles were darting down and snatching men, one at a time, off the deck while Vanx prepared a spell that would fracture the hull.

A whoosh sounded as a ball of colorful force appeared, hissing and crackling in Vanx’s hand and slowly pulling energy from the air. He cast a
Tempus
Fist first, and then he cast an expanding ball of sticky wizard fire that coated the rigging and upper deck of the sinking ship.

A cloud of dark tar smoke blown from one of the other ships’ burning sails assaulted his nose, sending him and Poops both into a fit of sneezing.

The female leviathan finally left the
Ada Rosamond
and dove. The creature Vanx was riding swam toward the other two ships, its upper half out of the water. Vanx laughed when they both started changing sail and maneuvering to flee.

Too bad for the slower ship. Vanx winced. Moonsy and the elf that had been plucked from the water already had it burning like a floating pyre. The faster ship, they didn’t pursue, which Vanx decided was just as well. Those men would spread the tale of what happened to those who ventured too close to Dragon Isle.

Using the Hoar Witch’s controlling crystal, he directed the leviathan he was riding back to its mate and the larger vessel she was now tipping over by its charred main mast. She was casually feeding on the swimming sailors with her shark-mawed tentacles while the big eyes on her fishy head seemingly stared into the distance.

Vanx saw the
Adventurer
, and once the ship understood what he was doing, it started speeding his way. He left the male leviathan by leaping back into the sea. He had damaged its digestive system when he’d pounded it before, but it was healing. Luckily, it was afraid of him, as if he were Nepton himself. Vanx had allowed it the sea around Dragon Isle to keep its mate and raise its young, in exchange for it stopping any ship but his from taking anything from the island.

He wasn’t greedy, but in Pyra’s lair there was enough wealth to buy the world. He didn’t want it falling into the wrong hands, and now, at least by sea, the hoard had some protection.

The leviathan would be protecting more than just Pyra’s hoard, too. Vanx moved the
Adventurer
to a protected cove and ordered that the longboat be readied. He also informed them that there would be two separate camps made. The one Castavonti, Master Ruuk, and Ronzon would be going to was already being set up by Chelda and Moonsy.

Vanx stopped and imagined that Moonsy’s two elves were really doing the setting up while Moonsy and Chelda rolled around in the high grass somewhere. He chuckled. It was their business. He wasn’t keen on angering the Troika, but Moonsy said Elva Toyon agreed with her aiding Vanx in his new quest. If the elven council wanted him to try and send her back, they could reach him through the crystal now, and they hadn’t.

Vanx watched the seaman and the sea mage lead Master Ruuk along the shoreline toward the stream of smoke rising above the trees down the
beach. Vanx, Poops, and Zeezle started the harder uphill trek to crest the high ridge that protected Pyra’s valley from the blunt of Nepton’s sometimes stormy wrath.

The deceased queen dragon’s wealth was in another cavern at the far end of the island. It opened facing upward, and, from the edge of the opening, one could see the sunrise at an amazing angle without the smell of this foul valley reaching one’s nose.

This end was where Pyra left her shit, and every male dragon on the island did, too, just to try and impress her. Vanx had decided that he was going to crack the Heart Tree seed here; at least it would have fertilizer underneath it for a few hundred thousand years.

Once they were near the top of the ridge, Moonsy landed her great hawk, and in the moonlight, Vanx had a strange memory of Foxwise Posey-Thorn and their trek down the Rotted Root Way under the Hoar Witch’s dungeon.

Had everything in his life been leading him to this? The waist-tall beauty had a hard time with the hammer. It dragged the ground, even hanging from her belt. Vanx went to her and took it. The moment it was in his full grasp, it stopped being heavy. In fact, he put his hand through the looped, braided-leather cord at the end, and it never regained its weight when he let it dangle from his wrist.

“Have you—?” Vanx started to ask, but Moonsy saved him the question.

“Papri left before the sun went down.” She smiled a goofy grin, but he wasn’t sure if it was because Chelda had satisfied her or if she was happy he was in love with Gallarael.

“Where are you going to smash it?” Zeezle asked.

“Down there in the shit field,” Vanx replied.

“I was afraid of that.” Zeezle found a piece of cloth in his gear and tied it around his face so it covered his nose.

“I’d suggest not using Poops’s nose for this one, Vanxy,” Zeezle said, sounding nasal, his eyes bugging out with the emphasis he was trying to convey from underneath the cloth.

The dog sniffed the air, and both he and Vanx sneezed at the same time. “I suppose not.” Vanx pulled the collar of his undershirt up over his nose.

“Can you cover us from above?” Vanx asked Moonsy.

“I will stay perched here, where my mount can see both the campfire and your descent.”

“Good enough.” Vanx nodded, and then followed the eager dog down into a valley full of old dragon shit and who knew what else.

They traveled in silence until about halfway down the semi-steep grade. Zeezle started laughing and then asked Vanx a clearly rhetorical question.

“Why, again, are we heading into a field of dragon shit, in the dark?” He started spitting under the rag. “Gah! I can fargin’ taste it.”

“You think that’s bad?” Vanx spoke the words, trying not to open his mouth very much. “Poops wants to eat it.”

“Gahhhhh!” Zeezle made a gagging noise. “Yuuuck.”

Vanx was surprised to see Zeezle do a cartwheel-like move away from something. Vanx saw it was a huge dung beetle with forward pincers extending from its head. They snapped shut right where Zeezle had been, and Vanx cast a kinetic pulse that lit up the immediate area and flipped the huge bug.

Poops was barking at another of them, but Moonsy’s hawk came flapping down and grabbed the upended bug and flew away with it.

“Cast an illumination, fools!” Moonsy screamed as she passed. Vanx saw that her face was scrunched from the smell. “Light it up.” She said the last with her breath held.

Zeezle did just that, and Vanx saw that there were more insects than he could have imagined skittering around them. They were hurrying away now, afraid of the feeding great hawk and the sudden brightness.

They only had a short way to go after that, which was good, because Poops finally sampled the dragon shit or a chunk of something that was in the dragon shit.

Both Zeezle and Vanx saw it happen, and both of them had to fight the urge to vomit the rest of the way.

Chapter Twenty-Six

Sometimes taking risks

ends up with you rich
.

But sometimes all that thrill

is how you end up killed
.

The place Vanx chose was nearly dead center of the Valley. He wanted this Heart Tree to have the largest Shadowmane possible. Using magical illumination and mirrors, he could ensure anything inside the ridge line was touched by the tree’s shadow, thus giving the whole valley its protection.

It was well past midnight, and the now fully clear sky allowed the bright moon to make things easy. Only one more feeding beast came near Vanx and Zeezle, and it never even got that close. Moonsy swept by and scared the shit out of them all with a jag of magic. The creature fled back into the forested darkness that surrounded them and then maybe took flight.

Poops stopped and did something Vanx had never seen him do before. The dog howled out. A few moments later, he actually received a chaotic response from a handful of other dogs.

Home
, Poops voiced to Vanx through their familiar link.

Vanx nodded.
Yup. This is where we met
.

There wasn’t a flat surface to smash the gem on. Vanx and Zeezle flipped a larger rock over so that its flattest side was facing up. They sat it on an even larger rock that was about chest high to them. They supported the flat chunk with some smaller stones piled against its sides, and then Vanx pulled out the amber gem.

“That last thing Moonsy scared away may have been a dragon,” Zeezle said, his discomfort still showing. “Get on with it.”

Vanx sat the gem down on the flat of the stone and got the hammer handle in his hand.

Watch your eyes
, Vanx voiced to anyone, but especially Moonsy and her hawk, through the ethereal.
This will be intense
.

He then brought the hammer down with all his might, smashing the jewel into an expanding ring of incomparable force.

Vanx was thrown a dozen feet backward, but Zeezle was there, crawling under the awe-inspiring plane of dust and magic. Pure, wholesome power, newly released, radiated through the valley.