The Emerald Rider (Book Four of the Dragoneer Saga)

  The Emerald Rider

  The Dragoneer Saga Book Four

  © 2013 Michael Robb Mathias, Jr

  All rights reserved

  Includes bonus content:

  Crimzon and Clover One—Orphaned Dragon, Lucky Girl

  This one is for Marlee, Hunter, Cade, KayLynne, Kalyn, and Brady, Dragoneers all.

  Thanks to Derek Prior for the edit, Anton Kokarev for the cover art, and Kristi and Misty, for the proofing.

  Contents

  Copyright

  Part I: A Dangerous Visit

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Part II: Xerrin Fyl

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Part III: Into the Storm

  Chapter Nineteen

  Chapter Twenty

  Chapter Twenty-One

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  Chapter Twenty-Six

  Chapter Twenty-Seven

  Part IV: Together Again

  Chapter Twenty-Eight

  Chapter Twenty-Nine

  Chapter Thirty

  Chapter Thirty-One

  Chapter Thirty-Two

  Chapter Thirty-Three

  Chapter Thirty-Four

  Chapter Thirty-Five

  Part IV: Return of the Emerald Rider

  Chapter Thirty-Six

  Chapter Thirty-Seven

  Chapter Thirty-Eight

  Chapter Thirty-Nine

  Seven years later

  Bonus Content:

  Part I

  A Dangerous Visit

  Chapter One

  Jenka kissed Zahrellion deeply. She was pressing herself against him, as if she could make them melt together in the moment. Jenka didn’t mind. He needed this so badly he ached for her. She looked up at him and he took in the way the surreal, cloud-formed room swirled in a perfect cube around them. The soft illumination from his eyes tinted her pale complexion a bright shade of green. Even in this moment of longing, it amazed him that he saw no hint of the tattoos that once marked her face. Her beauty made his heart swell, and in her lavender orbs, he saw the warmest, most comfortable sort of love.

  A trace of worry passed across her brow. She lowered her eyes and buried her head in his chest. “You don’t even know if it’s a boy or a girl.” She took a deep breath and hugged him even tighter. “You don’t even know.”

  “Then tell me,” he whispered, noticing the darker tint to the clouds churning around them. A flicker of lightning came from a great distance, but the thunder that followed was a long, low grumble which seemed to grow nearer as it lingered.

  She squeezed him and let out a long, regretful sigh. “I can’t, Jenka.” The warmth of her touch was fading. “This is just a dream.”

  Jenka woke as the first fat drops of rain splattered across his windblown face. He wasn’t cold, but it was cool around them. He wasn’t sure where he was, but he knew he was on Jade’s back. The growing green dragon was winging them across an expanse of untended flatland. The sun was low, and they were flying toward a coppery sunset that revealed the lacy edge of the continent they’d just crossed.

  A grumbling roar, from not so far away, caught Jenka’s attention, and he looked up to see the yellowed underbelly of a massive red dragon above him. As his heart slowed back down, it all came back to him.

  It was Crimzon, and they needed rest. One of the fire drake’s wings had been ruined in a battle with a swarm of the savage Sarax beasts. Nothing more than the Dour-fortified spell Rikky Camille had placed on the wing was keeping the old dragon aloft. As far as any of them knew, Rikky’s spell could give way at any moment, and he wasn’t anywhere near to recast it.

  The truth be told, Jenka wasn’t sure why it had lasted this long.

  The old red had led Jenka and his dragon, Jade, over the mountains of southern Kar, a place Crimzon said he’d reigned over for half a hundred years. By the size of the hoard piled in the cavern in which they’d last slept, Jenka couldn’t doubt it. That was several days ago. Now they needed to recoup before crossing another expanse, the last of their long journey.

  Out in the sea before them was their destination. In that not-so-distant land, a lifetime ago, Crimzon’s rider, Clover, was spelled to stone as bait for a trap. The wizard Xaffer believed that dragons could turn into humans and walk among them. He wanted to make a potion so he could reverse the casting and spell himself into a dragon. He believed he needed the essence of one of these transformed dragons to achieve his end.

  Claiming to have knowledge of how to defeat the terrible shark-mawed creatures that were popping up across the land in those days, he lured Crimzon and Clover to his measly temple, petrified Clover, and then put her solid form in a place into which no dragon could fit.

  Xaffer had hoped Crimzon would turn himself into a man and come get her. Crimzon, who was even then so wing-wounded he could barely fly, and bound by his rider’s wishes, made a bargain with the dwarves and over the course of a decade used their tunnels to traverse the world. Clover had committed Crimzon to battle the Confliction, and more so to prepare the Dragoneers to finish it.

  They’d won that war.

  Now, Crimzon believed that Jenka, in his Dour-saturated state, could pass the wizard’s wards and release Clover, especially since Jenka shared a familial bond with Jade. Jenka was determined to give it his all, even though he now knew Crimzon had tricked him. In exchange for summoning the elementals against the alien in the Great Confliction, the old wyrm had made him swear to do this. Jenka, though, knew Crimzon would have called the elementals even had he not sworn. The old dragon had pledged his whole might to that battle long before Jenka or any of the other Dragoneers were born, though, so the subterfuge was forgivable.

  Jade was hungry. Jenka could feel the wyrm’s gnawing desire to feed. Crimzon was probably ten times hungrier and tired of feeling the pain of exertion. As if reading his thoughts, Crimzon spoke into the ethereal.

  “Followsss,” he growled before moving into a position ahead of Jade.

  Jenka felt his dragon comply and decided that he should rest his eyes some more. He stayed awake for days on end now, and then slept long and hard with the wyrms. It was just one of the many changes that the Dour magic caused in him. Even so, he could not stay awake as long as a dragon could fly, and they’d been flying as long as he could remember.

  Soon the rain was a full downpour. They made a circling descent over a long, empty stretch of coastline. Clouds swiftly consumed the sunset and the world grew dark and eerie.

  A cavern was visible, but only because Jenka’s eyes had grown keener. It opened just above a place where waves crashed into the stony shore, causing huge up-spraying explosions of frothy spume.

  No men would bother them there.

  It was an angry-looking area, and Jenka decided that if the cavern was empty it would make a perfect place to rest. It would be days before the dragons recouped and were fully sated. He decided correctly that it was where Crimzon was leading them. The old red hated the rain as much as he did and seemed to know exactly where he intended to go. It would definitely be better than this ma
ddening downpour.

  The dark hole loomed larger, and as Crimzon swept into it, Jenka felt Jade shiver with both relief and anticipation.

  The massive cavity was anything but empty. Most of the jagged surfaces looked razor sharp, but some of them were covered in a softly glowing yellow mold that gave the place just enough illumination to see by, but not much more.

  It was all Jenka could do to get dismounted and untether his gear before both wyrms were engaged in a bloody feeding frenzy. The sea cows and rock lions seeking refuge from the storm didn’t have a chance. There were hundreds of them. Crimzon was batting with his tail the ones who tried to get away, and Jade was snatching them, crunching them, and then tossing his kills into a pile. He stopped and chugged a smaller morsel down his gullet. Crimzon didn’t have to stop. He was chomping a whole sea cow while battering several more of them to death.

  In a matter of moments the water sloshing and splashing around the place was pink with blood.

  Jenka was tired, but smart enough to let the dragons feed. He scooted away from the sea spray in an attempt to stay dry, but no matter how hard he tried he couldn’t shake the lingering dream of Zahrellion and their mysterious child from his mind. It had been plaguing him since they’d left the Frontier, even before the child could have been born. The idea that he was not there, that even had he been there, he could not be a typical father, troubled him deeply.

  The baby must have been most of a year old by now. He longed to hold it, to be the father he never had, but he wasn’t the same as the mother and child were. He had been saturated with Dour magic so completely that it left its residue all through the very fiber of his being. More than that, he’d assumed some of the alien’s existence. He couldn’t even venture into a town without causing a confrontation. His very presence put people on edge. No one was comfortable dealing with a man who had glowing coral eyes and could crush them on a whim.

  He wasn’t sure if he could be a Dragoneer anymore, either. He was so changed that he didn’t feel the strength of the connection he’d once had with them. But beyond fulfilling his obligation to Crimzon, his only concern was returning to Zah and their child.

  Jenka waited until his bond-mate’s bloodlust passed and then got his attention. “Jade!” he yelled, even though he didn’t need to. “Before you gorge yourself to slumber, please set me up there.” He pointed at a shelf of rock that was a few dozen feet above the damp cavern bottom. “If I am to further fortify Crimzon’s wings, I’ll need more rest.”

  “You must need rest, Jenkss,” Jade slurred through his gluttonous state. “You can place yourssself theres, if you wisssh.”

  Jade snaked his head over anyway. Jenka was grateful, because he was too saddle sore and distracted to attempt the simple levitation. Besides that, using the Dour for complex actions made him feel sick and uneasy. He just wanted to rest.

  After Jenka dismounted, Jade eyed him for a heartbeat or two. Apparently satisfied that his bond-mate was all right, he went back to his feast. Jenka started a magical blue blaze and stripped out of his wet clothes. No sooner were they laid out did he don some dry ones from his pack and fall soundly asleep to the sounds of crunching bones and ripping flesh.

  Chapter Two

  Aikira was in a mood.

  “Did you bring the weekly?” Zahrellion asked her as she entered the clean but modest sitting room. “They’re supposed to have the conclusion to the Piebald Egg story.”

  They were staying in a small, but opulently furnished, stronghold at Three Forks. It was the best location for a kingdom seat. There were a dozen construction projects going on, including a proper castle, but it was still several years from completion. Without the vermin to harry progress, the “Expansion,” or whatever it had now turned into, was unhindered. Towns were springing up down all three of the tributaries, and goods were needed.

  The Frontier was thriving.

  “They do have it.” Aikira forced a smile. “You’ll like the way it ends.”

  When she was around Zahrellion these days, Aikira felt like a servant to a queen, not a sister Dragoneer. It wasn’t Zah. It was everyone else out here beyond the kingdom’s wall. They treated Zah like royalty because she was royalty. They treated Aikira like an ebony-skinned Outlander, which was like being a three-headed dog to the mainland commoners who’d never traveled the islands.

  King Richard had proclaimed Jenka King of the Frontier, and since Zahrellion was Jenka’s lover and the mother of his child, history said she was now some sort of Queen Regent.

  The only person who disliked it more than Aikira was Zah, though, which sort of evened out the roles they were forced to play until Jenka returned… if he ever returned.

  The people treated Aikira like a noble, but every time she mounted Golden, everyone, even Marcherion and Rikky, thought she was doing Zahrellion’s bidding, which she mostly was, and that just made it worse. To break the monotony, she was determined to go hunting with the boys this afternoon. She and Golden would remind them what an Outlander girl could do.

  She waited while Zahrellion read, but only until the nurse brought in the baby. Golden-haired Lemmy was with them as always. Since he was a mute, he’d written a sworn statement to be Jericho’s protector until Jenka returned.

  Jericho was just a year old. He was as beautiful as a baby could be, with a good temperament and an easy grin. He had his father’s unmistakable deep green eyes, and could squeeze your finger until it hurt. Crawling now, he was a handful, so Aikira kissed his pink head and spoke into Lemmy’s ear.

  “She will be well irritated if she reads too long. I’ve told the nurse to tell her there is a widower and his young daughter from the peninsula hoping to have audience about something or another. They looked desperate but have patiently been waiting their turn. I think they are some of Richard’s forgotten nobility looking for help or some-such.”

  As soon as Lemmy grunted that he understood, Aikira eased off while Zah was immersed. She really didn’t want to be around if Zahrellion read past her serial.

  The story scribed beneath the one Zah was reading was about the lack of authority on the kingdom’s side of the wall. King Richard didn’t concern himself with the affairs on the continent anymore. Not as long as the resources he needed kept going to King’s Island. The story would have the readers believe guilds, gangs, and witches all vied like lunatics over games of chance, potions, and lust over there. Worse, the story spoke of the vile things King Richard was rumored to be doing to people deep in his dungeon. Things like Gravelbone had done to him. It made Aikira shiver just thinking about it.

  Aikira had to admit Midwal was becoming more and more like a sailor’s town every day, but not nearly as bad as the story depicted. Zahrellion definitely needed to talk to King Richard, but she wouldn’t travel to the islands willingly. Aikira would stand beside her when the time came for that confrontation, but she wasn’t in the mood for politics, or tales of the kingdom’s abandonment, this day. Today she was determined to hunt vermin with Rikky and March.

  ***

  The sound that woke Jenka was terrible. The roar reverberated around the great cavern, drowning out the waves and the grunting barks of the sea life still braving the rocks. It was Crimzon, and he was in tremendous pain.

  As quickly as he could shake the cobwebs of slumber from his head, Jenka met Jade and rode his dragon’s neck over to where Crimzon lay.

  “It’sss coming undone, Jenka,” the old wyrm hissed.

  Jenka knew he meant Rikky’s spell was unraveling. He didn’t panic. Instead, he climbed onto hot brimstone scales and positioned himself on Crimzon’s back near the wing joints. He almost fell when the great red shifted suddenly and let out another anguished roar. Jade helped him hold steady with his tail, and without further hesitation Jenka reached into his well of alien-infused Dour and let it start flowing through him.

  Hurrysss, he heard Jade whisper, but he was already sinking into the magic.

  Crimzon’s wings had been gnawed by a swarm
of Sarax more than once. Worse, the wyrm had stayed in a cavern down a dwarven flue for some fifty-odd years, waiting for the Dragoneers to find their time. The lengthy inaction hadn’t helped. Rikky had somehow spelled the wings and muscles in a way that allowed Crimzon to fly, if awkwardly. Rikky understood healing, though, and the loss of limbs. Jenka understood neither. He had only been fortifying Rikky’s spell, which was a simple task, if taxing. Now that wouldn’t be enough.

  Jenka grasped the complexity of Rikky’s casting just as the last tendrils of it faded away. He used the Dour to try to reproduce the spell, but wasn’t skilled enough. He cursed himself for having a hundred times the power but not the knowledge to accomplish what the old red needed.

  Jenka knew Crimzon had his own reasons for helping the Dragoneers in the past; it wasn’t just because Clover would have wished it. He had helped them selflessly. If the truth were told, Crimzon’s knowledge and his elemental allies had really won the day against that morphing alien thing. Jenka wouldn’t allow himself to give up so easily.

  With his teeth gnashed tightly and his brow furrowed, he struggled and toiled long into the night and the next day. He put forth every ounce of effort he could summon, and then let his will carry him further, but it wasn’t meant to be. He found a way to end Crimzon’s suffering, but couldn’t make the old red’s wings work again. He just didn’t have the ability.

  Making sure the wyrm wouldn’t be in pain became the priority. As he labored on, his dragon’s consciousness, and then Crimzon’s, crept into his mind.

  Enough, Jade said softly.

  I can survives heresss, Crimzon said into the ethereal. These fat sea cows will swim right into my maw. You mussst find her and free her without me.

  I… I… I’m sorry, Crimzon, Jenka’s mind stammered. We are so close.

  You haven’t failed me, Jenkass, Crimzon sighed. An eternity of frustration was revealed in the sound. You ssswore to free Clovers, not nursse me along. Xaffer’sss tower is on the northern end of the land we spoke of. It is a full day’s flight from here.