The Wings of Dragons: Book One of the Dragoon Saga (24 page)

He had just enough time to curse before he
hit the water. Pain shot through his broken left wrist as the
impact ripped away its sling. The smell of saltwater filled his
nostrils, a scent he’d always found pleasing. Now it terrified him.
Desperately, he tried to swim, but he had no clue how. He’d never
been in water deeper than the bath in Haldessa. With each second,
his head dipped lower. Soon he started gulping mouthfuls of liquid.
The harsh water burned his throat and lungs. His vision faded, and
he realized he would drown. He didn’t care. No one could betray him
after he died.

Just before he blacked out, a strong, lithe
arm wrapped itself around his middle. Vaguely, as though in a
dream, he felt the sensation of movement, of someone or something
tugging on him.

When he awoke sputtering, he lay face up on
a sandy beach, staring at a bright, sunny sky. The smell of the
ocean overwhelmed him, and he heard the familiar calls of the gulls
and gentle crashing of the surf. It was impossible, yet it seemed
he had returned to Haldessa, back to the coast of his childhood.
Shielding his eyes from the harsh glare, he struggled to sit up,
fighting nausea. He was soaked, and sand caked his clothes and
skin.

“
You all right?” a
concerned voice said from behind him. He craned his neck around and
saw Minawë, herself thoroughly drenched.

“
I guess so,” he lied. His
broken left wrist ached horribly. “Did you pull me from the
water?”

She nodded.

Iren eyed her suspiciously. He didn’t know
if he could trust her. Amroth and Balear had both betrayed him;
Minawë could do the same at any time.

Unable to face her any longer, he turned his
gaze to the ocean. The surf roiled. It was high tide, and even from
here, Iren could tell the water had a strong current. It could have
easily washed them both out to sea. Nevertheless, she’d braved it,
risking her own life to save his. He doubted Amroth or Balear would
have done that for him.

“
By the way, moron,” Minawë
said, “if you ever do something that stupid again, don’t worry
about drowning. I’ll kill you myself.”

Something about the way she said that made
it hard for him to know if she was joking or not. He decided it
best not to push the issue. Instead, he asked, “What is this place?
Surely I didn’t run all the way to Lodia, yet this beach looks just
like it.”

Minawë laughed, clear and mirthful. Iren
couldn’t imagine a sweeter sound, and it made him happier just to
have it cross his ears. “No,” she replied, “you’re still in
Ziorsecth, or at least on its edge. The forest surrounds this
inland ocean on three sides, and the Eregos Mountains form its
southern edge. This is the Yuushin Sea, and we named our capital
after it. You only ran a few miles. Actually, you have pretty poor
aim.” She pointed to the right. The coast rose rapidly from the
gentle sandy beach where they rested to a tall bluff, not half a
mile distant.

She knelt down and smiled in his face. “You
jumped off near the top. A thousand feet closer in this direction,
and you’d just have run into the surf instead of off a cliff.”

Iren nearly fainted again. From here, the
bluff looked quite imposing. The fall alone should have killed him.
If Minawë hadn’t come for him, he would not have survived.

Not that he was much better off. He winced
as a fresh wave of pain jolted his broken arm. Minawë’s playful
grin vanished. “Let’s get you back to the village. A dunking in the
Yuushin Sea is bad enough on its own. I won’t have you getting an
infected arm on my watch.”

She helped him to his feet, and they had
just about left the beach when Rondel burst through the tree line.
The Maantec woman took one look at Iren and shook her head. “I
swear I can’t leave you alone for five minutes without you getting
into some kind of trouble. You really are an idiotic student.”

Iren frowned at the old hag. “I think I
preferred it when it was just Minawë on the beach. And since when
am I a ‘student’ anyway?”

Rondel smiled. “How else will you become
skilled enough to stop Amroth?”

He blanched. “Stop Amroth? He wiped out a
city!”

“
Which is precisely why he
must be stopped. You think Haldessa will satisfy Feng? No, his
fires will spread, and they’ll do so all the faster now that Amroth
has become king of Lodia.”

The words took a few moments to register.
Iren recalled how Azuluu had made the captain his chief advisor,
and therefore heir to the throne, during the feast before their
mission. With Azuluu dead, Amroth had full command of the
country.

“
So let’s go,” Rondel
barked. “We don’t have time to waste on you resting. Hurry up,
slacker!”

Iren took a step backward, protesting,
“Forget it! In case you didn’t notice, I have a broken wrist.
Besides, what about you? If you went to Haldessa and saw Amroth
torch the city, why didn’t you stop him? What happened to ‘evil
must be annihilated?’”

Sparks flashed in Rondel’s eyes as Lightning
Sight activated. “You think I didn’t want to? Between his kingship
and his possession of the Karyozaki, Amroth has become the greatest
threat to Raa since the Kodama-Maantec War ended. If I could have
killed him, I would have.” She sighed. “At the moment, though, I
can’t. When Hezna beat me, he took the Liryometa. Amroth grabbed it
along with Feng’s sword. Without Okthora’s magic bolstering my own,
I don’t stand a chance against him. Remember that bolt of lightning
I used against Zuberi to save you? That took nearly all the magic I
had. I can’t compete with Amroth as I am now.”

Iren shuffled his feet in the sand. If he
could have defeated Zuberi on his own, if Rondel hadn’t needed to
rescue him, maybe none of this would have happened. Haldessa might
still stand. All those people might still be alive.

Rondel ignored his self-pity. “Now you
understand why I came to find you. You’re going to stop Amroth and
get the Liryometa back for me.”

“
Be serious!” Iren felt
himself sweating. “If you can’t fight him, how can I? If you’re
counting on Divinion’s help, give up. I lost the Muryozaki in
Akaku.”

Rondel deactivated Lightning Sight. “Are you
that dense?” She pointed back in the forest. Aletas stood just
inside the tree line, watching them. In her arms she held a long
bundle wrapped in silk. Rondel retrieved it. “Amroth took my
weapon, but in his excitement over obtaining the Karyozaki, he
forgot all about yours.” She unwrapped the cloth and revealed
Iren’s katana, shimmering white in its sheath. “You and this sword
may be our only hopes for stopping Amroth.”

Iren reached out with his right hand and
grasped the blade’s hilt. He felt an odd tingling in his left arm,
and seconds later, it healed. He then took the Muryozaki from
Rondel and drew it with his restored arm. It was like reuniting
with an old friend.

The crone turned and left the beach. At the
forest’s edge, she said over her shoulder, “Follow me.”

“
Where?” Iren
asked.

“
It’s time you understood
the full secrets of that sword. It’s time you became a real Dragon
Knight.”

In a posh mansion by the Bay of Ceere, King
Amroth Angustion sat in an ornately carved high-backed chair,
watching the sun rise over the water and grinning to himself.
Behind him, he could hear the servants running pell-mell trying to
please him, rearranging the furniture to his exact tastes.

A week had passed since his coronation. With
Haldessa in ruins, Amroth had designated nearby Ceere as his
temporary capital, commandeering the largest house for his
residence.

Looking out the window, he could just barely
make out Haldessa’s remains atop the bluff that formed the northern
end of the bay. He’d conscripted half of Ceere’s populace to
restore the castle. He couldn’t wait to return there. It was his
destiny, after all. The Azuluu line had been one of worthless
kings, grown fat on peace and oblivious to the dangers of this
world. Peace only came through power. Nadav understood that. Amroth
understood it too.

Very soon, the rest of Lodia would as well.
Right now, the country was but a speck on the continent of Raa.
Amroth would change that. Under his leadership, Lodia would cover
the world.

He’d taken a desperate gamble from the
beginning, but it had worked out in the end. He’d achieved it all:
his revenge, the throne, and the best prize of all, the Karyozaki.
Hezna never deserved it. From the moment the Oni became the Fire
Dragon Knight, Amroth had plotted, trying to figure out a way to
kill the monster. All those years living as a simple farmer in
Caardit, he’d wrestled with the problem. No matter how he tried, he
couldn’t come up with a way. He couldn’t do it, not without being a
Dragon Knight himself.

It was thanks to Iren that he had succeeded.
Rather, it was thanks to Amroth’s own foresight in perceiving
Iren’s usefulness seventeen years ago. When Amroth and Captain
Ortromp had gone to investigate the presence of a Left farmer,
Amroth had seized on that mission as a way to become Captain of the
Guard. He’d told Iren that he regretted Ortromp’s death, but he’d
always intended to kill the useless captain and take his place. The
Left provided the perfect cover. Amroth could blame Ortromp’s death
on the Left, and no one would question it. He’d thought a promotion
was all that mission would yield him, until he’d seen the
Muryozaki.

Nadav had told him about the Ryokaiten, so
he’d recognized Divinion’s blade immediately. At first he’d
considered killing the infant boy resting against it and becoming
the Holy Dragon Knight himself. Had he done that, however, he would
never have passed Divinion’s test of purity of heart. Besides, he
didn’t want Divinion. He wanted Feng.

Then the helpless baby Iren Saitosan had
given him an idea. He couldn’t defeat Hezna, but if he had his own
Dragon Knight, someone he could mold and shape into the perfect
weapon, then perhaps he could. Iren would become his pawn, left
alone to grow up despised by everyone. Amroth had known what would
come of doing that. Iren would learn to hate. All Amroth needed to
do was channel that hatred by presenting the boy an opportunity for
revenge and pointing him in the right direction.

Once Iren had slain Hezna and obtained the
Karyozaki for Amroth, he would have outlived his usefulness. To
prevent him from ever becoming a threat, Amroth would arrest him
for treason and have him executed. Here the destruction of Haldessa
came into play. Once the Lodian people saw the fake letter from
Rondel, they would blame her and Iren for the city’s demise. They
wouldn’t bother searching for other evidence. Lefts were children
of the devil, after all.

Of course, Haldessa’s annihilation had been
about so much more than framing Rondel and Iren. It had provided a
vital diversion too. Even with a Dragon Knight supporting him,
Amroth had known that he couldn’t reach Hezna if all the Yokai
remained in Akaku Forest. Opening Haldessa to attack would empty
the forest and expose the Oni. The city had needed to die so that
Amroth, and ultimately Lodia, could triumph.

Besides, Haldessa’s destruction wasn’t in
vain. Its vulnerability had baited the Yokai and Quodivar into
concentrating in one location. In wiping out Haldessa, Amroth had
eliminated Lodia’s two greatest threats in a single glorious
onslaught.

Only Rondel could have disrupted his scheme.
She always got in the way. Without her, Nadav would still be alive.
The night she’d helped him in Haldessa with the infant Iren, he’d
needed to stomach his hate and put on a front of decency. All the
while, he’d wanted to kill her, but she could have carved him into
pieces before he’d finished drawing his blade. She could have
wrecked his plan at any time, had the senile Maantec ever guessed
his intentions.

Even the most dangerous of foes, however,
had their uses. Holy Dragon Knight or not, Iren lacked experience
and might lose against Hezna. Rondel, though, could almost
certainly slay the Oni. Amroth merely had to convince her to do
it.

In that regard, Iren had proven doubly
useful. The night Amroth first showed Rondel the baby boy, the old
woman had acted stunned, even terrified. Over the next several
years, though, Amroth had noticed something odd about Rondel.
Occasionally, he would catch glimpses of her spying on Iren. For
whatever reason, she was drawn to the boy. Amroth had therefore
crafted his speech the night of the feast to publicly announce his
intent to bring Iren on his impossibly dangerous mission. Rondel
would never allow Amroth to take Iren out of her sight, not into
such certain death. She cared too much for that little wretch.

The old fool might think herself clever, but
she’d fallen for Amroth’s wiles as easily as Iren had. Not only
would her presence on the mission guarantee that Hezna would die,
but in so doing, she would also allow Amroth to gain the Karyozaki.
Once he had it, he could use its power to finally get revenge on
her. By implicating her in the same treason as Iren, he could slay
them both with the full blessing of the Lodian people.

At least, so he’d intended. One element in
the sequence had gone awry. Iren had escaped. Amroth hoped Balear
could remedy that situation, but even if he failed, it made little
difference. Iren didn’t understand magic or the dragons. With
Rondel dead and the Liryometa in Amroth’s possession, the boy posed
no real threat.

The new king of Lodia laughed as he held up
the dagger, causing the servants to eye him curiously. The weapon
was undeniable proof that he had avenged Nadav. Those final hours
in the cave, when all his deceptions had come to a head, he would
forever consider his proudest moments.