Twice Drowned Dragon (The Gryphonpike Chronicles Book 2) (3 page)

“Come, sit,” Drake said, patting the bench beside him. “Tell us. We promise not to laugh.”

“There’s a big shallow pool by the keep. Old reflecting pool or some such. I saw it there. Big it was, and black as night. All bones and rotted flesh. Stared right at me with burning red eyes and I felt like all the joy and color was gone from the world. I couldn’t move or breathe or nothing. Then it looked away and I ran.” Nabbe shuddered and then glared around at us, his gaze half-challenging us to disbelieve him and half-desperate for us not to.

“We went down there the next day,” said one of the other monks. “Saw nothing at all.”

“I didn’t make it up,” Nabbe said.

Though Makha, with her uncanny ability to discern truth, was nodding, I hardly needed the confirmation. Whatever this monk had seen, it had terrified him down to his bones. He had the unhappy, haunted look of a man who had faced something terrible and found himself wanting for courage.

“Will you show us way in morning?” Azyrin asked gently.

Nabbe pressed his lips into a tight line and then nodded.

“Good. Is settled. We will make sure nothing bad there.”

“Can we leave our packs here, Abbot?” Makha asked.

“Of course,” the Abbot said. He gave himself a little shake and then shrugged. “We’d be happy enough for your assistance. Probably just a bear or some such that moved in and disturbed old Peggy.”

My companions asked a few more questions about the keep and the orchard, as well as coaxed what detail they could about what the sour monk had seen. I couldn’t decide if I wanted it to be a bear or truly a dragon. Dragon, I thought. A dragon would be more of a challenge, but it was also more of a threat. Surely slaying a dragon would count toward my atonement. I stood up and stretched, looking forward to the morning.

* * *

After a quick breakfast of thick bread slathered with honey, I took my arrow bag and my quiver out onto the shallow steps in front of the monastery. I’d lost arrows in the fight with the spider and if we were to fight a dragon or even just a nasty wild animal today, I wanted to make sure I was full up. The dawn air was still cool but with a thickness to it that promised another warm summer day ahead. The monastery walls were nearly overgrown with wishvines, the tiny white blooms opening to greet the sunlight that crept over the trees like a bashful child coming home from a night of mischief.

I slid arrows from my bag and checked them for damage to the fletching and straightness. The best ones I put into my quiver to take with me. I figured I’d leave the arrow bag with our packs. We had a short distance to travel with a likely fight at the end. Seemed little point in taking more than I’d need.

Drake came out a few moments after I did and started limbering up. He pulled his kukri and began a flashing dance across the open area between the monastery and the bee hives. I glanced up the steps and saw two of the monks watching him. Showing off, then.

Still, this seemed as good a moment as any to approach Drake about an idea that had been building in my mind for weeks now. I slid the arrow I was holding into my quiver and stood up. Crossing to where Drake had paused in his movements, I drew my dagger and imitated his stance. I had never had much use for a blade when I’d been able to speak. Having the ability to shape the world with magic via words of power made using a knife in self-defense or aggression a moot point. Easier to tear something limb from limb with a simple song. I had only learned to use a bow as a physical exercise, the same as I had learned to ride a horse or send and call a hunting raptor from my hand.

Here in the mortal realms, however, I’d found myself using my dagger in moments when fights grew too close for bow work. I had no skill at it. I knew it. I could see the difference between the way that Drake’s short blade flicked and slashed and my own
Good Tree get it off me now
wild stabbing. I had many deeds left to perform before I regained my voice and with it my power. Many fights ahead of me. It was time I shoved aside the tattered rags of my pride and learned how to fight better with something other than Thorn.

Drake stared at me and raised a dark brow. I waved the blade around a little, trying to tell him to start moving again without actually telling him. My curse was fooled, I think, since no headache overtook me.

“Killer?” Drake kept staring at me like I’d grown a horn.

Frustrated, I started trying to copy what I’d seen him doing. Step forward in a half-lunge, thrust with the dagger, slash sideways while moving other foot forward, slash. I stopped as I heard Drake’s laughter and turned to glare at him.

“Oi. I get it. You want me to show you some moves, eh?” My glare managed to quiet his laugh down to a chuckle. “First, you are holding that wrong.”

He walked over to me and reached for my hand. I flinched away and brought the blade up. I wasn’t sure if him touching me would count as communication, but I wouldn’t learn anything if I were knocked unconscious or made sick by my curse before we had even begun.

“Whoa, okay. No touching. I got it. Here.” He sheathed his kukri and drew a smaller dagger from one of his tall boots. “Like so.”

Drake led by example and showed me some basic ways to move and cut. When he approved of how I was moving, I switched hands and started again. He paused for a moment and then shook his head with a little smile.

“Definitely more to you than meets the eye, eh, Killer,” he said.

You have no idea. Besides, why be good with one hand when you might be injured and lose its use?

Of course, I guessed that none of our little group was all that met the eye, as Drake put it. All I knew about him was that he hailed from the southern kingdoms and shot down any talk of ever traveling that way. Makha had been a mercenary with a reputable company until she met Azyrin, but whenever asked about that story, all they did was smile at each other and change the subject. Even Rahiel had her secrets. She was from one of the noble families in Glassnesse and all I knew is that we were heading that way because, with the acquisition of the black pearl she wore around her neck, she could finally pay off a debt she owed.

“Hey, dripbats, if you two are done cavorting, we’re getting ready to leave in here,” Makha called out to us from the steps.

“Coming,” Drake answered. He sheathed his dagger and nodded to me. “We’ll do this again. You’ve got good speed and range with those long arms of yours. Might have to put a rapier in your hand one of these days.”

I shrugged as casually as I could and turned away.
Don’t push it, human.
Learning to use a dagger for emergency situations in a fight was one thing. I wasn’t ready to walk away from my beloved bow just yet.

“What was that?” Makha asked Drake as we walked by her.

“She wanted to learn to handle her dagger better, I think.” Drake shrugged.

“Don’t go putting one of your bull-stickers in her hand. We need her bow skills and she’s too good to become a ponce like you.”

“What? You gonna give her one of those lumps of slow iron you call a sword?”

“She’s too skinny to wield a proper blade,” Makha said as she eyed me.

I snorted and turned, holding out Thorn.
Go on, muscles, string my bow and pull it
. I waved the bow, urging her to take with my eyes.

“All right, elf.” Makha took the bow and tried to string it. She set the lower limb against her boot and pulled. Thorn didn’t even bend. Makha looked up at me as though trying to read my face and determine if some trick were being played here. She stepped through the string, attempting to do it that way. No luck as Thorn bent a little but not enough for her to slide the string into its notch.

I took my bow back and set the limb against my foot, stringing it easily. Then I handed it back and made a pulling motion.

“What tricks are you up to, elf?” Makha muttered as she pulled the string and couldn’t get past a half pull. Her fair skin flushed and she let out an angry breath as her efforts failed. “Got to be magic.”

“It’s not magic,” Rahiel said as she settled her skirts from her perch on Bill’s back. “I checked if she had any magical items when we first met, remember? That bow is probably some sort of elfcraft, but there is no magic on it.”

“It’s definitely unique wood,” Drake added. “I’ve seen it stop a sword strike the way you’d expect a staff would.”

Makha handed Thorn back to me, and I pulled it to full draw before unstringing it and turning away with a smile.
Watch who you call skinny, human
.

“Stronger than she looks, that’s for sure,” Makha muttered behind me.

Nabbe had reluctantly agreed to show us the way to the orchard, his desire to have his story confirmed warring visibly with his fear of encountering the dragon again. It wasn’t a long walk, and most of it was down hill through fairly dry terrain. We crossed a couple shallow creeks and then the bog cypress and willows thinned out, turning to apple and cherry trees that were likely older than the monastery on the hill.

“Through there, you can see where the old road lay.” Nabbe pointed and then looked around nervously. The orchard lay still in the morning light, no insect noise or birds flitting between the branches loaded with ripening fruit. Something menacing lurked here, to quiet the wood so.

“Go,” Azyrin said gently. “We will find way.”

Nabbe needed no other prodding. He turned and half-ran back up the hill toward the monastery, his robe flapping with his haste.

I took the lead, Thorn strung and ready, as Fade materialized beside me and we headed deeper into the huge trees.

The road was overgrown with hedge grasses and tangles of wildflowers. The orchard smelled of bruised fruit and sun-burnt grasses but there was a hint of something else underneath that, a more sour note that my nose couldn’t quite place. The track opened out into a courtyard and I stopped with a gasp.

Star pears. Two huge trees, their bowls thicker than Azyrin and Makha’s girths put together, formed a vast canopy over a mostly intact reflection pool. The trees were thick with moss and their wide blue-green leaves blighted with lichens, but a few of the bright white fruits showed here and there among the branches. Star pears were rare and difficult to grow even for my people. Their tart flesh had been her favorite. . . I shoved away the memory of thinly sliced star-shaped fruit, pale against golden-brown skin. These trees were ancient, perhaps even as old as the Barrows themselves.

“The elf is stuck,” Makha said behind me.

“Those are some impressive trees, you got to admit,” Drake said. “Wonder what they are?”

“Star pear,” Rahiel said with almost enough reverence in her voice. “If only they were ripe and I had the spells to transport them. Those fruits could make us all a fortune in Glassnesse.”

“Sure, dipwing. Cause people will pay for some blighted fruit. Right.” Makha clanked past me and drew her sword. “Let’s poke this pool and see if any dragons pop out. Unless ya’ll want to pick some fruit, maybe have a picnic, sing a song.”

I ignored her and walked up to one of the star pear trees and laid my hand on its gnarled blue-grey bark. I could almost feel the slow, thick flow of its life, the weight of the ages it had endured, the stretch of its massive roots deep into the soil of this place.
We endure
, the tree seemed to whisper.

“This pool isn’t deep enough to have a dragon in it,” Makha said, swishing the water with the tip of her sword. Disappointment tinged her voice.

“Mayhap that crumbling building there will?” Rahiel said.

“Not as crumbling as it should,” Azyrin said. He and Drake had walked up to the old half-wall that circled the inner courtyard beyond the reflecting pool. I pulled myself away from the beautiful trees and the black wave of my own terrible memories. The stone wall had seen some repair. Fresh wagon tracks marred the ground and the grasses were beaten down, some nibbled on. I pulled up a hank and looked at the ends. Horse, most likely.

The keep itself was little more than two thick towers mashed together. It was perhaps three stories in height with narrow windows missing their shutters and glass, if they had ever had glass in the first place. The stones were worn and moss covered, but the brush around the edges of the building had been recently cleared and there was more fresh stonework bolstering the foundations near the large door.

“There’s another track that leads off, there,” Rahiel called from where she and Bill had flown up into the air to check the lay of the land here.

Fresh stonework. Place where horses grazed. Or, perhaps, mules.

“What’re the odds that this has nothing to do with that cranky bastard attacked by those spiders?” Drake asked, his thoughts following mine.

“Sure, two totally separate groups of stonemasons came out this way with a cart. I can see it.” Makha snorted and turned away from the reflecting pool.

A thick, foul stench fogged the air and Fade started to growl, backing away from the pool. The algae-clogged water rippled. That was the only warning we had.

I barely had an arrow out of the quiver when the dragon broke the surface of the not-so-shallow pool and spewed forth a stinking cloud of noxious black gas. The dragon’s head was mostly intact, its black scales fixed on black bones and its eyes burned red just as Nabbe had said. The rest of its body was rotting away, great swaths of scales and flesh hanging from its bones or missing entirely.

I threw myself to the side, bringing my arm up to cover my nose and mouth as I held my breath. The poison was thick and wet, misting my face with an unnatural cold that stung my skin and made me want to gasp as my chest tightened from the sudden chill. Above me, Rahiel yelled. Wind rushed from the pixie-goblin’s outstretched wand, dissipating the poisoned gas. The dragon heaved itself out of the pool and lunged for Makha.

She smashed its reaching jaws with her shield. The dragon knocked her back, but his teeth scraped off the metal shield with a horrible screech. Makha stabbed at its eyes over her shield, and the dragon reared back, swiping with a front claw.