The Wings of Dragons: Book One of the Dragoon Saga (12 page)

“
What about me?” Rondel
asked with mock hurt.

Amroth ignored her, saying to Dirio,
“Perhaps in gratitude, you could tell us what happened to
Veliaf.”

The black-haired man walked to the smashed
window, a grieving look on his face as his gaze swept over the
remnants of his once proud village. “All this damage has happened
in the past week. As you probably know, Veliaf prospers thanks to
its mine. The durable stone we extract gives us wealth beyond our
size. You’ve seen its quality in the wall that surrounds the town,
as well as our buildings and streets. I myself work in the mines as
a foreman, or rather, I did until last week. You see, we were
working in the mine when one of my employees reported that the
walls in the northwest section sounded different when struck. I
told the men to stop, fearing a possible cave-in, but the idiotic
manager above me overrode my decision and ordered them to continue.
Later that day, we discovered why the wall sounded different. The
miners broke through it, revealing a natural cavern on the other
side.

“
We sent teams to
investigate whether the cave had any exits. You can understand our
fear. We have always been careful to limit the ways outsiders can
reach us, what with Akaku on our doorstep. Breaching the cavern
jeopardized our safety. If it had an exit outside the village wall,
enemies could reach us through the mines.”

Dirio paused a moment, his hands clutching
the wooden window frame so tightly that even in the dark Iren saw
drops of blood slide down the wall. At length the foreman
continued, “The teams sent to explore the cavern never returned.
Barely an hour after we sent them, we heard screams within the
mine. I had returned to the surface at that point, so I ran to the
mine entrance to see what was happening. Then I beheld the worst
sight of my life: Yokai pouring from the mine, the blood of my
workers slick on their blades.”

Balear opened his mouth wide, and Rondel’s
eyes narrowed dangerously. Her grin became a furious scowl, her
bottle utterly forgotten. Amroth, however, simply leaned against
the wall nearest the door, arms crossed, and nodded as though he
had expected this.

Iren had finished his meager meal by now,
and he set his plate on the floor beside him. He gave everyone a
quizzical look. “Yokai?”

Balear smacked himself on the head. “Surely
you at least know about Yokai!”

When Iren’s blank stare conveyed that he, in
fact, knew nothing about Yokai, Rondel interjected, “It doesn’t
shock me that you don’t know. In Haldessa, only Castle Guard
members are told of their existence. Azuluu’s predecessors ordered
all books on Yokai burned centuries ago.”

“
What are Yokai then,” Iren
asked, “and why keep their existence secret?”

“
They’re a sentient race,”
Rondel answered, “though they do the word a disservice. Thousands
of years ago, they dwelt in the Eregos Mountains on Lodia’s
southern border. The Tengu pushed them out in a great war, and the
Yokai tribes, quarreling over who to blame for their defeat,
separated. Most went south and disappeared into lands beyond the
knowledge of humans. But one tribe settled in Akaku, hoping to take
advantage of Lodia’s northern settlements. Over the centuries,
places like Veliaf have had no choice but to defend themselves,
hence Veliaf’s wall. Caardit, in northwest Lodia, has a similar
construction.”

“
Besides Veliaf and
Caardit, no Lodian settlements lie within sight of Akaku,” Balear
added. “Once those towns built walls, the Yokai lost their easy
prey and went into hiding in the forest. King Azuluu’s ancestors
didn’t want the public panicking over the fact that Yokai dwelt on
Lodia’s borders, so they decreed the subject forbidden. They hoped
that, as generations passed, the Yokai would fade from memory, and
so they have.”

Amroth spoke for the first time in quite a
while. “So Yokai killed all those men in the square? Yokai looted
your homes?”

Dirio shook his head. “No, the Yokai swarmed
our village, killing many, but our militia rallied and pushed the
beasts back into the mines. We then dragged a heavy stone over the
mine’s entrance and sealed it shut. Doing so cut off our source of
livelihood, but what option did we have? With the mine compromised,
we had to seal it for the good of the village. We took the dead
outside the walls and buried them the next day, as is our
custom.”

“
But your troubles had only
just begun, correct?” Amroth fixed his gaze on Dirio. With each
question, the captain looked more and more like a cat stalking a
mouse.

The foreman nodded. “Two nights later, the
gatekeeper on duty was slain and the gate opened. Quodivar poured
into Veliaf. Our militia engaged them, but the Quodivar butchered
them all and stacked their remains in the square. The village has
since decayed into what you saw today. Those devils took nearly all
the remaining residents as slaves. As one of the few people left
uncaptured, I tried to sneak out and flee to Haldessa to alert the
Castle Guard. Unfortunately, the Quodivar noticed me. I thought
they would beat me to death.” The poor man shuddered.

Amroth ignored Dirio’s pained gesture.
“Where did the Quodivar take the villagers they captured?”

The question set the foreman in a panic. He
covered his head in his hands and slid down the wall, howling in
despair, “Into the mines! Those fools opened up the sealed mine and
went in, taking the villagers with them!”

Again Amroth didn’t react to Dirio’s
outburst. Instead, he replied evenly, “I’m sure the Yokai came back
into the village at that point, killing Quodivar and residents
alike.”

Dirio looked up from the floor, wiping his
face on his sleeve. “No, that’s the strange part,” he admitted.
“The Yokai have left us alone ever since the Quodivar reopened the
mine. I don’t know if the Quodivar killed them or merely pushed
them from the cavern, but I haven’t seen a single Yokai since the
bandits arrived.”

Amroth nodded, clearly unsurprised that
Dirio disagreed with him. “I expected as much. The Quodivar have
always had better weapons and armor than mere thieves should own. I
knew they couldn’t be acting alone; they needed some other force
arming them. The Yokai provide the only logical possibility.”

Dirio gave him a shocked look. “So the
Quodivar didn’t drive the Yokai from the cave?”

“
Quite the contrary. The
Yokai must permit the Quodivar to use the cave as their base. I
would venture that on the day the Yokai came swarming through the
mine, one or two Quodivar snuck in with them. They hid in the
village until they could open the gate from the inside. Because you
were so preoccupied with the Yokai, you failed to notice the human
enemy in your midst.”

Iren cocked an eyebrow. “But why would the
Yokai help the Quodivar?”

“
Because the Quodivar and
Yokai have the same desire: the complete overthrow of Lodia,”
Amroth replied. “But neither group can manage it alone. The Yokai
don’t have the numbers to conquer even a small town like Veliaf,
and without the Yokai supplying them with armor and weapons, the
Quodivar are little more than thugs. Joined together, however, they
could conquer even Haldessa.”

“
Surely they couldn’t
become that powerful!” Balear cried. “We must go back immediately
and warn the king!”

Amroth shook his head. “No, we have neither
the time nor the manpower to do that. Rondel gave us a narrow
opening today, and we’ll need everyone here to take advantage of
it.”

Balear nervously asked, “What do we do?”

To everyone’s surprise, Amroth smirked.
“Simple. I suspected the Quodivar had their base in Akaku, but I
couldn’t figure out how to reach it. Aimlessly wandering that
forest would kill us for sure. Now, thanks to Rondel, we have a
clear line of attack. Both the Yokai and Quodivar believe the men
Rondel killed today guard Veliaf’s mine. If we strike before they
realize those men have died, we can catch them by surprise. We’ll
sneak into their base from the one direction they consider
themselves invulnerable: below.” The captain turned to Dirio.
“You’ll have to come too. You know the mines better than any of
us.”

The foreman initially looked ill at Amroth’s
request, but then his expression hardened. “If it frees my fellow
citizens, I’ll do as you say.”

Amroth nodded. “All right, we’ll leave at
dawn. Let’s get what sleep we can. We’ll need it.”

Everyone except Iren rose and headed to the
door. As they did, Iren said, “Wait, Rondel. Can I talk to you
alone for a minute?”

The others exited the room, Amroth last of
all. He gave Rondel an interrogative look, but the old hag simply
smiled innocently, shut the door in his face, and took a seat in
the chair beside Iren’s bed. Apparently remembering her bottle for
the first time since they’d started speaking about the Yokai, she
raised it to her lips and took a long draught.

Iren didn’t wait for her to finish. “Why did
I pass out today?” he asked.

Rondel kept drinking until she drained the
bottle. Wiping her mouth, she replied, “First of all, while I
commend you for healing Dirio, you need to understand the severity
of your actions. Remember how I told you that you drew on
Divinion’s power to heal yourself? You did that today too. However,
you can’t draw on his magic without also drawing some of his
spirit, his will, out of the gemstone prison and into your body.
Using magic is essentially a contest of wills between dragon and
knight. If you draw small amounts of magic, little of the dragon’s
will comes with it, and you easily triumph. But the more spells you
cast, the more the dragon’s will seeps into you. If you draw more
power from Divinion than you yourself possess, his spirit will
break yours.”

“
What does that mean? What
would happen to me?”

Rondel shivered. “In Maantec history, a few
arrogant Dragon Knights attempted to use too much of their dragon’s
power with disastrous results. They foolishly believed their minds
strong enough to win the contest of wills, no matter how much magic
they used. None succeeded. In every case, the knight’s body
transformed into that of a dragon, losing control and going on a
rampage.”

Iren became ashen at the thought of turning
into a dragon. “Maybe I shouldn’t use magic at all,” he
mumbled.

“
Not if you can help it,”
Rondel agreed. “Fortunately, a dragon’s will can only exist outside
its gem for a limited time. Even though you pushed your magic to
the brink today, you can use it during the battle
tomorrow.”

Iren gulped. He didn’t want to think about
tomorrow. If Amroth had guessed correctly about the cavern being
the Quodivar’s base, they could very well end up meeting the
bandits’ leader, his parents’ murderer, down there.

Trying to distract himself from that
possibility, he changed the subject and asked, “Rondel, you used
magic to kill those thieves today, didn’t you? You also know a lot
about the dragons. Are you a Dragon Knight?”

She smiled and drew her dagger, holding it
up for Iren’s inspection. The hilt, hand guard, and pommel were all
perfectly round and made of dark wood. Staring closely at the hilt,
Iren looked for what he knew should be there: three concentric
rings of kanji symbols identical to those on his own blade.

After a moment, he snorted. The hilt looked
perfectly smooth. “Guess not.”

Rondel rolled her eyes. “You really are
hopeless, aren’t you? That close and you still couldn’t
notice?”

“
Notice what, you dried up
crone?”

“
Ignorant child! I’m trying
to teach you here.”

“
Oh, is that what you call
this?”

The two turned away from each other a moment
before Rondel, shaking her head and sighing, said, “I learned long
ago that advertising yourself as a Dragon Knight is a good way to
die. Fools challenge you constantly, wanting the dragon for
themselves. Sooner or later, one of them will succeed. Better to
hide your power and never let anyone know your true abilities.
After today, though, I can’t hide anymore.” She pointed directly at
the center of the hilt, and at last Iren saw it, barely visible.
The wood had been stained a beautiful red, but on top of that
someone had applied a second stain with a thin brush, just a hair
darker. With it, they had penned the ring sequence, all but
invisibly.

“
This is the Liryometa, the
Storm Dragon Dagger, and in its hilt rests Okthora. Like you, I can
use magic, although I must admit, mine looks a little flashier.
Thanks to Okthora, I can manipulate lightning.”

“
Whoa,” Iren couldn’t help
saying. He imagined Rondel summoning bolts of lightning from the
sky, obliterating all in her path.

Rondel must have detected Iren’s worry,
because she laughed and said, “Don’t expect me to call up a
thunderstorm any time soon. Remember how you passed out healing
Dirio? You used too much magic. The same can happen to me. Instead,
I prefer a simpler tactic. Rather than use the lightning outside, I
rely on the lightning within myself.”

Iren scoffed. Rondel had told him a lot of
crazy things in the past few days, but he was pretty sure people
didn’t have lightning inside them. At least, he hoped not.

Unflustered by Iren’s disbelieving retort,
Rondel explained, “When you want to flex your arm, do you know how
your brain tells your muscles to move? It uses an electrical
signal. The muscles also generate signals when they contract. Each
signal has only the most miniscule charge, so controlling them
requires little magic. But even small changes to them can have
fascinating results. For example, by increasing the amount of
voltage flowing to my muscles, I can move extremely rapidly.”