Twice Drowned Dragon (The Gryphonpike Chronicles Book 2) (2 page)

“Aye, we’re, uh,” the man started to say, but then his eyes widened and he put one hand to his throat with a groan.

“We no longer require you here. If you want to get to the honey monks by sunset, you should move along.” Master Ziarnys came back around the cart and the air turned a few degrees colder.

My fingers twitched toward my quiver and I tightened my grip on my bow. Something strange was going on here. Humans were usually a little suspicious of our ragtag band, but the Adventuring Guild medallions hanging at our belts or around our necks generally assuaged the fears of all but the most inhospitable of folk. This thin-faced human with his glittering jewels, hard eyes, and velvet clothing appeared to be in the latter group.

“Come,” Azyrin said, putting a hand on Drake’s shoulder when it looked as though the rogue would object. “We see we are not needed.”

We headed back down the path to the road and found our packs where we’d dropped them. According to Azyrin’s map, the honey monks had a monastery not far from Coldragon, somewhere in the swamp along a dirt track. We found it just down the road from where we’d turned off to fight the spiders.

“That man gave me the creeps,” Drake muttered behind me, voicing my own thoughts.

“What were they doing out here? That track isn’t on our map,” Makha said.

“Masonry gear. Maybe the ‘master’ has a keep nearby. He was certainly wearing fine enough garb to pretend at nobility,” Drake added.

“I am filing it under not my problem,” Rahiel said. “Tonight we will get to eat the finest honey in the known world. Who cares about some ponce with more gems than sense?”

“This honey’d better be as good as you say, flitwing.”

“Oh, it is, my muscled mountain friend.” I could hear the grin that must have been splitting the pixie-goblin’s face as she answered Makha. She had done nothing but go on about the monks and their special bees since she had realized that the monastery was here in the Barrows and not far off our path.

“Those spiders should not have attacked men in daylight,” Azyrin said. “It makes no sense.”

“Why? Maybe they were hungry,” Drake said.

Fade materialized from his mist form and padded along beside me. His ears were flat against his head, their thick fur tufts blending with the black and silver of his coat. He was probably as tired of the moist heat and muddy stench of the swamp as I was. I wished I could tell him that by the time we got to the other side of Coldragon; we’d be into the lowland plains and free of the sucking wet of this place. The lowland plains had streams and rivers aplenty, good flowing water wholly unlike this stagnant, weed-choked, mosquito-breeding brackish swamp.

“Those were giant trap-door spiders. They ambush prey, not hunt it. You see lair? You see woven grass and moss?”

“No,” Drake said and Rahiel echoed him.

“Is bad thing. Not right when creatures behave strange. Something wrong with swamp here.” Azyrin’s leather hauberk creaked as he took a deep breath and then sighed.

“Osh, well, we’ll maybe learn more from the monks,” Drake said.

“Let us hope,” the shaman replied.

I looked down at Fade and his defensive, unhappy posture, and let out my own deep breath.
Let us hope, indeed
.

* * *

The sun had sunk low enough that it was little more than a bloody wound on the horizon by the time we sighted a gap in the moss-choked trees and the stone bell tower of the monastery. It stood at the top of a hill and we were not quite halfway up when we heard men shouting in panic.

“Oi. Really? Again?” Drake didn’t bother dropping his pack this time, setting out at a clumsy jog as he drew his rapier.

I shifted my pack on my shoulders and followed him as Rahiel and Bill once again took off over our heads.

The gentle click and buzz of the swamp’s insect life gave way to shouting and the angry whirring of thousands of bees. The bright green bees, each as large as my thumb, swarmed out of tall, conical hives that looked almost like ocean coral. As I crested the rise and leapt the low stone wall defining the monastery grounds, the source of their irritation came into view.

The creature was half again the height of an elf, with a blue-grey hide, one giant red eye surrounded by bristly fur, and a single clawed foot. It gripped a huge spiked chain in its single claw, which protruded from the center of its stocky body. The beast looked like something from a child’s nightmare. Its chain was real enough though as it swung and crushed into the side of a small stone building, sending chunks of masonry flying. It made a terrible keening sound, but I could see no mouth.

Six monks in homespun robes were trying to drive it away from the hives with yelling and smoking torches. The creature lurched back from them and howled again. The bees were swarming, but not attacking, instead forming a loud, dark cloud over the battle field.

I sent an arrow past the monks but it only scraped the thick hide of the strange beast. I nocked another, aiming this time for its eye.

“No, no!” screamed one of the monks, turning toward us. “Hold the arrows! Don’t attack Peggy. Make noise.”

Peggy?
It almost sounded like the monks had named this thing.

Rahiel, riding Bill, swerved around the bee cloud and slapped her wings together as she waved her glowing wand. A sound like thunder in the peak of a storm pealed out from her delicate wings, and the creature moaned, backing away down the hill. Makha banged her sword against the edge of her shield, though just running in plate armor had made a pretty good clamor. Azyrin and Drake started shouting and waving their arms.

I halted and stood helpless, my bow hanging from my hand. Making noise was beyond me, thanks to my curse.

The creature backed up further. The chain swung in a wide arc and then it pulled it back, curling it around its body. With a final cry, the odd beast spun and hopped away, disappearing into the cypress trees.

“Apinir be blessed, we lost no hives,” said the oldest looking monk as he lowered his torch and turned toward us.

“It’ll take them bees hours to quiet now,” muttered a monk with reddish, thinning hair and a sour cast to his features.

“What in blazes was that thing?” Rahiel asked, flying down.

“What’re you? An’ what’s that?” the sour-faced monk asked, holding his torch out in front of him like a shield.

“Easy now, Nabbe, these fine folk helped drive old Peggy off.” The old man extended his hand to Drake, who stood nearest him. “I’m Abbot Konbri. Welcome to the monastery of Apinir.” His smile was genuine and though his face was lined like old parchment and his jowls soft, a keen intelligence gleamed in his cornflower-blue eyes.

“I’m Drake Bannor,” Drake said, taking the Abbot’s hand. “That there’s Rahiel Glowbix, a pixie-goblin,” he added with a faint smirk directed at the one the old man had called Nabbe.

“I’m Makha Stormbane,” Makha said, clanking forward and extending her gauntleted hand. “We’re Adventuring Guild, just passin’ through.”

“Azyrin Stormbane,” the shaman said, moving forward as well.

“A winter orc!” The Abbot chuckled. “I studied in Icerift for a while in my youth. And you, elf?”

“That’s Killer. She’s mute, so forgive her lack of manners,” Drake said.

The other monks came forward, looking at us curiously. The Abbot introduced them and then invited us in.

The layout of the little monastery reminded me of a bee hive in some ways. There was a large hall, dominated by the cooking hearth, from which many little rooms branched off like cells in a honeycomb. Nabbe chose to stay outside and burn sweet-smelling wood that smoked a lot in an effort to calm the bees. The other monks showed us in and soon warmed to Rahiel’s enthusiasm for their honey.

“The Sweetbee is like no other bee,” the Abbot agreed, smiling at the pixie-goblin as she flitted up to sit on the long black walnut table stretching much of the length of the common area. “They have no sting but produce the clearest honey you’ll find. Their hives are different, also. The middle of the hive cone is like a funnel that stores the honey they create. All we have to do is tap in and take what we need.”

Once our packs had been stored within a couple of unused cells and we had thick bread coated in the thick golden honey, mugs of mulled wine, and heaping plates of roasted summer vegetables piled in front of us, the Abbot brought the strange creature up again.

“It’s a Fachen. We named it Peggy, on account of it only having the one leg.” He chuckled at that and we obliged him by smiling around our food.

Rahiel hadn’t, for once, been exaggerating. The honey was divine. It was thick and sweet but light, melting into the dark bread and then again on my tongue. I wanted to grab the honey pot sitting on the table and guzzle it. I caught Drake’s eye as I stared longingly at the pot and he smiled like he knew exactly what I was thinking.

“Why not just kill it?” Makha asked.

“Kill Peggy?” The Abbot shook his head. “We try not to harm living things. Apinir teaches that the divine spark inhabits even the mosquitoes that bite our skin and the ants that steal our honey. A creature as unique as a Fachen probably has a great spark inside it. Besides, she’s lived down in the old orchard as long as I’ve been Abbot, and until recently never bothered a one of us.”

“It’s that dragon,” said one of the other monks, a thin fellow with hunched shoulders who walked with a slight limp.

“Dragon?” Azyrin set down his mug.

“There is no dragon.” The Abbot glared down the table. “It’s a story. Back in the centuries after the Ancient Imperium crumbled.”

I hid another smile.
Ancient Imperium? Saliidruin is their proper name
. A name now mostly forgotten. Even among the Elemental Elves, the world-breakers, as the name translated to, were almost more myth than history.

“The Barrows got their name from that, you know,” said the thin monk. “Whole place was a burial site for the Imperials.”

The Abbot shot him another glare. “They don’t care about old stories, Marto.”

“We do care,” Azyrin assured him. “Old stories are meat to adventurers.” He smiled at the thin monk, who smiled wanly back, eyeing the half-orc’s sharp white teeth.

“There’s a story about a dragon. How Coldragon got its name. Involves Wood Elves like your friend, actually.” The Abbot sighed and took a drink from his mug, settling in to tell the story. His blue eyes had a smile in them, as though his protests had been only for our sake. I imagined he didn’t get to tell the old stories much.

Of course, he was dead wrong about one thing already. Whatever this story was, it involved no Wood Elves like me. I was no Wood Elf.
You might be an old man
, I thought,
but you would’ve needed to live ten thousand lifetimes to know what sort of Elf I am
. Everyone guessed Wood Elf on account of my brown hair and green eyes. I wondered what would happen if we ever encountered an actual Wood Elf. Fortunately, my far distant descendents were very reclusive and stayed within the Woodland Reach far to the north and east of here.

“So they had to drown it twice?” Rahiel asked.

I blinked. I’d been lost in thought about my people and the other elves and missed much of the story. The heavy food, warm fire, and long day were catching up to me.

“Aye. They drowned the dragon a second time and this time the great black brute stayed dead. He’s supposed to be buried in a mound somewhere in these parts, but if so, it has long since sunk into the swamps.”

“Or maybe not,” the thin monk insisted. “Nabbe saw it down near the orchard. Says it was big and black with rotted scales hanging off its bones.”

The Abbot banged his empty mug on the table. “Enough. Nabbe craves more excitement than our quiet life gives, I’m afraid. Ever the curse of the young, eh?”

“Well, something drove old Peggy out of its tower,” muttered the thin monk.

“Tower?” Drake swiped his finger around his empty plate to get at the last drips of honey.

“There’s an old keep out in the orchard. Whole land used to belong to some wizard-knight. Family fell on hard times, sold the fief to the Duke of Barrows, and eventually he deeded it to the monastery. The orchard has gone wild, but the bees like the flowers, so we let it stay as is. Plus Peggy lairs in the keep and until now was content to leave us alone so we left it alone, too.”

I hid my smile behind my mug. The Abbot was trying to dismiss the whole thing, but he didn’t know my companions. I glanced around the table and recognized the excitement burning in their eyes. Makha had always itched to fight a dragon, joking that it was the only way to make a name for yourself as a fighter these days. The word “wizard-knight” had set Rahiel’s wings fluttering which made the flames in the great hearth flicker. Drake was probably calculating the odds of some lost treasure being hidden away in that keep or in the fabled dragon’s barrow, his fingers spinning his empty plate around and around.

Even Azyrin had a speculative look. Dragons came in all kinds, some good, some evil, most just little more than dangerous, dumb animals with only the cunning of a wolf pack. His god, Saar, Lord of Storms, demanded his disciples never turn from a dangerous fight and always lend a hand to protect those weaker than themselves. If a dragon were threatening these peaceful monks, Azyrin had to act.

For me, well, dragons die to arrows the same as most things and helping these monks might count toward my one thousand good deeds. It couldn’t hurt to investigate this old keep and make sure the rumored dragon hadn’t been resurrected.

“Wizard-knights, hmm…” Rahiel drizzled more honey onto her last crust of bread with a sharp-toothed smile. “It would only be proper of us to make sure nothing sinister lurks in that orchard, you know.”

“Very wrong of us to leave kind men in danger,” Azyrin agreed.

Makha clapped her husband on the shoulder and grinned. “Very wrong to leave a possible dragon rampaging.”

“He told you about that dragon?” Nabbe came into the hall, brushing ashes from his smock. “They laughed at me,” he added sourly. “But I knows what I saw.”

“Nabbe, no one laughed.” The Abbot sighed. He looked down at his empty mug with a bemused expression, as though wondering if there was something in the wine making us all insane.