The Confliction (Book Three of the Dragoneers Saga) (Dragoneer Saga)

  The Confliction

  The Dragoneers Saga Book III

  By M. R. Mathias

  Copyright © 2011 by M.R. Mathias

  License Notes

  This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each person you share it with. If you’re reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then you should return to mrmathias.com and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.

  A complete map of the Dragoneer’s realm, as well as info on the other Dragoneer’s novels and novellas, is posted at http://www.mrmathias.com/Dragoneers.html.

  I would like to thank Derek Prior and Kristi for the edit and proofread, and my fans for continuing to read about these misfit dragon riders and their wyrms.

  Thanks to Jennifer for the inspiration and Mom for the patience.

  A special thanks to Gary V. Tenuta of www.BookCoversAndVideos.webs.com for the Dragoneer emblem design and cover art.

  I would like to thank James Hunter-Shortland of fantasyinmotion.wordpress.com for making the map.

  eBook formatting & layout by MrLasers.com: ebooks@mrlasers.com

  Contents

  Part I

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Part II

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Part III

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Part IV

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Part VI

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Part VI

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  Epilogue

  Extra Stuff

  Part I

  The Warlock King

  Chapter 1

  In the early winter, King Richard was flying on the back of the Nightshade, over the long arcing wall that protected the Mainland Peninsula. He was visiting each and every stronghold along the length of the barrier, making his presence known, and establishing the authority that had been lost. Gravelbone’s madness, the confusion surrounding his father’s death, and the recent Sarax attacks in Midwal had everyone on edge. To the good people of the kingdom, it was as if all the old lore and legends from the wild Frontier were coming to life to drive man back to the islands where they’d washed up.

  Gravelbone’s madness was nothing compared with what was coming, Richard thought to himself. He could feel something malevolent, something horribly unnatural behind it all.

  The Nightshade hissed a response into its rider’s head. Your madness nowsss.

  They had no familiar link established, and they didn’t communicate through the ethereal like the Dragoneers. Theirs was a bond of a darker sort. It was a link that connected on a whole other plane. The Sarax hadn’t yet been able to disrupt it.

  Getting the people to rally behind him wasn’t an issue. The Sarax came and ravaged the settlements along the wall at will, sometimes attacking in groups of two or three. They were terrible creatures, with a head that was more maw than anything; cold, lifeless eyes set in thick hide, wide agile wings, and a short stumpy tail, all attached to a two-legged mannish form. They destroyed homes and violently consumed the people they caught. Then they disappeared back into the open frontier as if they’d never been.

  Once a Dragoneer, riding the magnificent blue drake, Royal, the people all along the wall knew Prince Richard by sight. He was the king now, and even in these grim times, they cheered his coming and going. They rumored that, since Royal was dead, their new king had made an unholy alliance with the foul demon beast he rode, just so he could protect them. His presence made those rumors truth. They were thankful for it. So far nothing but the young Warlock King and his hell-born wyrm could so much as irritate the vicious creatures that had them all so terrified.

  Back before the Sarax emerged, the Goblin King had taken Richard captive. He’d been forced to witness countless acts of violence, and was often made to do one thing or another that would determine the order in which innocents were tortured and killed. He’d been to the edge of madness and found that he could stomach the worst of it, while ignoring the rest.

  Even though Gravelbone had done a proper job of corrupting his mind, Richard had a strong will. He had little desire to cause mayhem. He was determined to get a firm grasp on the people of his kingdom and get them ready for what was to come. He had men training in the yards, and the armory forges burning all hours. He was no fool. He was once the best of the Dragoneers. He knew a greater confliction was upon them. There was more than the Sarax out there to worry about. He could feel it.

  What he didn’t know was that he was being stalked. The Sarax swooping down at him from above might as well have been invisible as it prepared to attack.

  The Nightshade sensed the Sarax at the last moment, and a collision with the toothy, dagger-clawed thing was narrowly avoided.

  Richard could see Outwal ahead. He urged the Nightshade south along the coast, trying to lead the Sarax away from the populace. As soon as Outwal was behind them, he banked out over the sea and headed straight at the setting sun. He hoped the intensity of the glare impeded the creature’s vision, but the brightness had no effect whatsoever.

  The Sarax dove at the Nightshade again and attempted another strike, but the hell-born wyrm was able to slither and slide through the air, leaving the pursuing Sarax frustrated and angry.

  Eventually, the sun sank into the water leaving a peachy gray light reflecting off of the clouds, and still the Sarax followed. Richard knew the Nightshade could carry him for days if it had to. The Sarax, on the other hand, seemed to be growing weary.

  Since he had the advantage, Richard decided to taunt it. He had the Nightshade power them higher into the sky, forcing the Sarax to climb after them if it wanted to follow. Then he dove past it and used one of the few spells he had been learning from his should-be-dead father’s feeble old wizard on King’s Island.

  A modest pulse of magical force swelled on his hand, and as if casting a stone, he slung it toward the Sarax. The pulse impacted and fizzled across the thing’s skin, only irritating the beast. Then it tried that much harder to catch its prey.

  Again the spellsss, the Nightshade hissed.

  Richard looked back as he spoke the words and felt the energy responding by building up like slime on his hand. The Sarax was falling behind. They curved sharply, coming hard around, and were suddenly speeding back at it.

  Now, hissed the Nightshade, and Richard threw his magic forth.

  For a moment nothing seemed unusual, but as the stuff left his hand, the Nightshade’s infernal magic combined with Richard’s and the blast was magnified tenfold in strength. It exploded away from them in a rippling wave of kinetic energy and impacted the Sarax with a bone-crunching thump. Richard marveled at how the alien beast was bashed out of the sky as if Thundar had swung his hammer. To his amazement, the Sarax went tumbling do
wn and splashed into the sea. It writhed like it had landed in hot oil, and tiny jagged veins of blue lightning flickered all over its skin. Then, in a violent flash of hot yellow static, it exploded.

  As Richard had the Nightshade bring them around again, all he could see was a dark stain slowly fading in the sea.

  Interesting, yesss? hissed the Nightshade.

  Very interesting, Richard agreed. On the return, he took special care to gauge how far out over the water they had come.

  Linux was so ashamed of what he’d done that he’d nearly killed himself twice. They weren’t attempts to get attention either. His essence wasn’t in his, or King Blanchard’s, body-core anymore. Attention wouldn’t do him any good. He was feeling so guilty and cowardly that he really did want to end it. He’d hanged himself from a rafter in the barn at the Mainsted palace, but was cut down by a stabler before the slack even pulled taut. The other time, he concocted poison using basilisk venom he purchased from the harbor traders. The mislabeled saliva was actually a psychedelic toad secretion, and instead of dying, Linux had taken his newest body on a binge of mind-bending insanity that still had him reeling.

  The essence of Rolph, the Royal Guardsman, had been forced into King Blanchard’s dying body. Linux took over the innocent man’s core, literally murdering his soul. He couldn’t forgive himself his selfishness. And now, after tripping through the cobbles throwing daisies with the local whores, Rolph the unemployed, and now wifeless, disgrace was trying a third time to end his life.

  The protected harbor at Mainsted is shaped like a dagger. The water is the blade that cuts up between two cliff-like sides, deep into the land. Mainsted sits on the dagger’s tip. The outer protective wall that rings the city ends in a narrow suspension walk that spans the three-hundred-foot gap a few hundred feet above the crowded harbor. Linux, in Rolph’s body, was out near the center of the icy, windblown crossing, about to let the sea take him.

  Looking away from the bay, and the few cheering sailors who were watching below, he took a deep breath and asked the essence of Dou to reclaim him so that his future might have another chance at goodness. Then he clenched his eyes closed and jumped.

  Curiously, after he fell a moment, he heard voices near to him. He opened his eyes to see the mast and rigging of a huge sailing vessel passing before him. Men were busy unfurling sails and gawking at him as he fell. Then his feet tangled and sent him spinning into a sail that was being raised. The canvas grew hot with friction and peeled off some of his skin. He tumbled head over heels again and slid, landing hard on the deck not two paces in front of an angry-looking captain with ebon skin and a fine collection of finger bones hanging around his neck. Then the pain of a broken leg took hold of Linux and he went swirling away into a welcome haze of darkness.

  When he opened his eyes he found that he was in a cramped wooden room that smelled of brine and tar. By the way his hammock was swaying he knew they were cresting the larger waves of the deep rolling sea. It was strange being in the gruff, mostly fit body of the hairy guardsman after being inside King Blanchard’s huge, uncooperative bulk for so long. He swung into a sitting position and thought for a moment.

  Since the vessel was sailing out of Mainsted, he figured Kingston was their destination, and wasn’t pleased. Not only had he murdered selfishly, and destroyed an entire family’s reputation, but he had been unable to absolve himself with death. As if fate meant to taunt him, he was now stuck on a ship that might be sailing to the last place he would ever want to go. The situation was infuriating enough that he completely forgot the condition of his leg when he jumped down to go find where they were headed.

  The pain of his landing sent him into unconsciousness again, and when he finally opened his eyes, it was clear that he wasn’t going anywhere. His leg was splinted, and he was restrained; chained to the hard plank bench he was lying on.

  “Am I a prisoner?” he asked the filthy, three-toothed man who was sitting by a porthole looking through the grime at the ever-swaying roll of the world outside.

  “Can’t say,” the man replied. “But we’ll be findin’ out when we get all these nit-picky witches to them Outlands.”

  “Witches?”

  “The Warlock King banished ‘em, and them marked-up druidoo’s, too.” The man spoke in a gossipy whisper. “We’re taking ‘em witches all the way to Avlron.”

  “Avlron?” Linux couldn’t help but feel a twinge of something akin to excitement flare inside him. He’d studied the Outlands at the temple. He’d even been to Indale on occasion to trade with the Outlanders and the ogres. The pain of his leg stole his thoughts away, though, and deep feverish slumber took hold.

  Chapter 2

  Jenka spotted movement in the snowy distance. He was on watch at the entrance to the star ship cavern, and was the only Dragoneer awake at this late hour. Whatever it was he was seeing, it was at ground level. Even in the thick flurries, the Sarax traveled in the air. He grew alarmed when he realized there was more than one thing moving down the valley slope toward Clover’s castle. Then the flakes thinned for a time and he saw that it was a pack of ogres. He grew excited when he saw that they were being led by Lemmy, the golden-haired mute. Jenka wanted more than anything to go greet his lifelong friend, but he was on duty. He let them go unmolested, knowing that if Lemmy was bringing ogres around, they were trustworthy.

  Soon his shift would be over and Aikira and her yellow-scaled wyrm would relieve him. He liked Aikira. She was girlish and fierce at the same time. And her voice was a thing of utter beauty. Her ebon skin and golden helmet lent her a majestic look that the form-fitted girdle and boots she favored only accentuated.

  To Jenka, Aikira was pretty, but Zahrellion’s otherworldly beauty owned his heart. While he waited and scanned the skies for Sarax, he thought about a farm and tow-headed children, about stew slurped around an oak plank by a hearth fire in a home. Jade kept intruding into the visions, though, reminding him that he was a Dragoneer, and as much as he and Zahrellion loved each other, those dreams were just dreams.

  They could never be.

  The Dragoneers welcomed the visitors well. For Rikky especially, it was an exciting break in the monotony of guarding the star ship from all the Sarax that had gotten loose. It was also good to see Lem. The reunion was cheerful, and a century-old cask of the finest Outland wine was carted up from the well-stocked cellar and tapped.

  There were six ogres, and Tkux was the alpha of the group. He moved about the high-ceilinged rotunda mingling with Aikira and Zahrellion, who both could speak gruffly in ogrish. The other green-skinned creatures stood and watched the humans from a tight-knit group near the huge hearth fire that was roaring. Rikky marveled at the fact that there was actually leather armor and packs made that fitted them.

  “Outlanders and ogres have traded for decades,” Zahrellion told him when he asked. “But apparently these ogres have learned to work the leather themselves.”

  Tkux has offered to craft the saddles we were working on, Lemmy said into the ethereal. The dragons can hunt the hides we’ll need. The ogres will also take on the terrible chore of removing all those carcasses from the star ship crater. It needs to be done while it’s mostly frozen. They’ll use the crater to pickle and cure our leather, and then work the materials. This will allow you time to hunt the Sarax. The ogres will be on guard while they work.

  “Why would they do that?” Marcherion asked with the raise of his brow. He was very protective over the castle. While Jenka was bedridden, he had taken it upon himself to formulate the watch system they were using.

  Rikky didn’t like March questioning Lemmy, but he was curious to hear the answer to the query, so he didn’t voice his complaint.

  There are two paired mates, and a younger female that Tkux will eventually take as a mate among this band, Lemmy explained.

  Rikky saw that his friend was happy to be able to use the ethereal. Out away from the castle it was crushed under the deep thrumming noise the Sarax generated. They couldn�
�t even communicate with their dragons beyond the castle’s field. Being a mute, this meant that Lemmy was reduced to hand signals, primitive grunts, and calls, unless he was here, inside the structure.

  The radiating protection of this structure covers a large mountainous area, Lemmy continued with the only voice he had. Tkux would settle here and work to protect the castle and the crater while crafting the saddles some of you seem to desperately need. He looked at Rikky when he said the last. Then he noticed that the other often unseated Dragoneer wasn’t about. Where’s Jenka?

  “It’s his watch,” Zahrellion said, as if it were her place to answer. She was wrapped in a thick furred robe, and huddled so deeply you almost couldn’t see her. “I bet he didn’t even see you arrive in that thick stuff.” Since Jenka had recovered from the Dou burnout he’d suffered after encasing the star ship, they had been intimate. It made the other Dragoneers uneasy, but so far both of them were happy and easy to get along with. “Any news from Kingsmen’s Keep or the temple?” she asked hopefully.

  Lanxe is mad. Lemmy shook his head. He had some of his collared ogres drive a score of orcs and trolls south toward the keep to attack. They ended up caught in that recent storm and all froze to death. It’s a shame he didn’t go with them. And Herald ... Herald will most likely burst his pumper if Mysterian doesn’t show herself soon. He’s planning a raid on the temple for spring because he thinks King Blanchard is a hostage there. I have a message about it for Jenka.

  “I’ll be relieving him soon,” said Aikira, her hairless head sleek and perfectly formed. She had her golden helmet under her arm. Her slightly gap-toothed smile was infectious. The dark thigh-high boots and the gauntlets she wore over her tight-fitting doeskins gave her an intimidating look. “Any news from Indale?”

  The Sarax have attacked cities in the kingdom and the Outlands several times over the winter, but they seem content to feed then flee, Lemmy answered. He and his travelling companions covered a lot of ground and gathered information from creatures all through the Lower Orichs. They say Prince Richard and the Nightshade are actually defending the kingdom. They call him the Warlock King.