Paragon Dracus: The Legend of Vanx Malic Book Six Page 7

  There was an awkward pause of silence, then Pongo said something that caused them to turn their heads his way. He was near the shoreline, conferring with Buzz, holding the goat, which was almost as tall as he. He was bent down looking at something. He pointed, then reached, and Vanx remembered that there were a lot of namestones here, and probably other witchy wards besides the fish-man-thing.

  “Don’t--” Vanx started, but it was too late. Pongo flipped over a stone and Vanx saw him mouth the name written on the rock, just before a deep orange-yellow flash seemingly swelled out and engulfed the elf and the goat.

  Buzz had winged himself far enough back that he didn’t get caught in the conflagration. All the bright, possibly liquid, stuff suddenly went sucking back into the stone, taking the elf and his goat with it.

  Buzz darted over, his fairy wings strumming out a steady drone, and grabbed a waterlogged stick. With it, he carefully flipped the rock back over, then eased closer to the others, who were just as slack-jawed as Vanx was.

  “Where’d he go?” Chelda asked.

  “Good question,” Zeezle responded. “I’m not going after him. Most likely, he and the goat are dead.”

  “He was one of my guardsmen.” Moony’s anger was suddenly replaced by the sadness of responsibility. “I can’t just do nothing. I can’t--” She started over to the stone.

  “General Moonsy, Pongo and Chops are gone,” said Buzz, almost pleadingly. “I saw the stuff burning and crushing them as it drew them back in. It almost had me, too. There is nothing to save.”

  “Let’s go pack our gear.” Vanx wasn’t sure if he lacked the emotion to feel any pain over Pongo’s loss, or if he just hadn’t known the elf long enough to care. He was still confused about Thorn’s death, and the way the then elven general had left his sword hanging on the horn of his saddle and run right into certain death to save Moonsy.

  “Are we teleporting back?” asked Zeezle as he joined Vanx a safe distance away from the stone that had consumed their companion. Moonsy was rattled, and Chelda was now comforting her.

  For the first time since she’d tackled and kissed him, Vanx noticed Gallarael was no longer among them.

  “If you can hear me, Gallarael,” Vanx yelled, “we are teleporting back to the palace from last night’s camp. Unless you want to negotiate that icy ridge again, you should show yourself. We can’t afford to wait.”

  There wasn’t a response, and Vanx hadn’t really expected one, but one thing he knew was that he didn’t have time to wait for her. He now knew the name of the Paragon Dracus, or at least he was pretty sure he did. The name hidden in the spell book seemed more likely for such a terrible thing than Richard Blanchard did, but that was what was scribed on the namestone.

  The witch had said it had been a man once, a king even. Then, after being banished to isolation, he somehow managed to become a king again, in a different land. Those were amazing accomplishments. Vanx decided those were things someone named Richard Blanchard would do. And after feeling the power of the dragon tear flow through him when he was healing Chelda, he understood the man’s addiction to that rush of power. Once something like that was out of control, there was no stopping it. It was the very reason he kept thoughts of the dragon tear in his pouch as far from his mind as he could. At least he had until Chelda had suggested he use both the namestone and the teardrop together. Since then, he had been as eager to be in a book as he’d ever been. A full quarter of Aserica Rime’s spell book was dedicated to bindings, banishings and crystalic mind control.

  What he didn’t know, exactly, was what they would have to do to end the Paragon’s reign of terror. To figure that out, he needed to be back at the palace. He might even need Master Kruuga and his remaining Zythian spellcasters. However much damage you could do to something, using its real name, and magic, they would try.

  Not for the first time, he found he missed Xavian and Quazar both, but then Poops found his side. Poops missed them, too, but the dog was hungry.

  I’m hungry, too, Sir Poopsalot, Vanx answered. When we get rid of that Paragon bastard, we will venture down to Orendyn and see how Darbon and Selma are fairing. I bet Fanny will give you an elk bone to gnaw on. Yup, I bet she will.

  In response, Poops licked Vanx’s hand.

  Chapter Twenty-One

  Out among the swelling sea

  At mercy to the waves

  I wonder just how many men

  who are buried in this grave.

  - A sailors song

  Vanx waited until every last one of them was near enough and then called out, “Meet me down in the lookout, Gal. I know you can hear me. I-- I-- I-- We can figure it out together.”

  With that, Vanx teleported them back to the meeting grounds just outside the palace’s entry.

  “Did you almost say, ‘I love you’?” Moonsy asked, and then sniffled. She then looked around, and took a deep breath.

  Vanx frowned.

  “Ya, he did,” Chelda agreed.

  “He was about to say, ‘I can figure this out’.” Zeezle shook his head at them. “He didn’t want to exclude her from the process.”

  “Love.” Chelda punched Zeezle in the arm jokingly, nearly knocking him over.

  “Excuse me, Vanx, Zeezle.” Moonsy gave Chelda a quick hug. “Buzz and I have to give account before the Troika Sven, in the nexus. Then I have to tell Pongo’s wife and daughter he is dead.”

  That sucked the joy and relief of surviving such an encounter right out of Vanx, and maybe Zeezle, too.

  “Tell the Troika the truth, Moonsy,” Vanx said. “He was told, all of you, to leave the namestones alone. Pongo didn’t follow orders.”

  “Should I tell his wife that, too?” Moonsy growled and stalked away.

  Buzz, who hadn’t said a word, followed her at a shoulder-high hover.

  Chelda gave a huff of understanding to Vanx and Zeezle. “He meant to remove any guilt you may have been feeling.” Chelda said this loud enough for Moonsy to hear her. Then she said, in a normal tone, “Let me know as soon as you have a plan. I will speak with Gal when she returns.”

  “Thanks, Chel.” Vanx gave her a hug. “Send someone to tell us what King Russet is about. I see most of his men are no longer here.”

  “Ya,” Chelda looked around. “I just noticed.”

  Vanx saw that Chelda wasn’t wearing her Heart Tree wrist wraps.

  “Where are your Heart Tree cuttings?” Vanx was astonished. “How did you leave the Shadowmane without them?”

  Her eyes grew wide, very wide. “I don’t know. They must have been removed by the medika who attended me after we returned from Dragon Isle.”

  “It is probably because she died, and the curse was broken before you revived her,” Zeezle shrugged. “You should still wear a cutting, though. It will go far toward keeping the Paragon’s foul magic from getting at you.”

  “Ya.” Chelda looked confused. A little frightened, even. “I will.”

  After she left, Zeezle followed Vanx down to the lookout. They searched for anything they could find, Vanx in the witch’s main spellbook, Zeezle, in the volumes of notes and observations the old crone had jotted down over the years.

  “She bound a man with a stag once,” Zeezle said with disgust. “Can you imagine, a stag with a man’s head? He couldn’t scratch his nose. Ever.”

  “Look for stuff that will help us.” Vanx sighed, and saw his fragment of the Mirror of Portent sitting near his friend.

  “Touch a bit of that powder to your tongue and look into the mirror,” Vanx suggested. “Maybe you will see the answer we seek. When I look, all I see is Russet trying to kill me, while I either pretend to have no ability to use a blade at all, or I am bespelled. I can’t tell which, but by my blade alone, I can see I am avoiding the kill, for the opening I seek most in a sword fight is presented to me twice, and yet I still don’t take advantage.”

  “I know that opening.” Zeezle licked his finger and touched the powder in the bull scrotum, then picked up
the mirror. He nearly dropped it when the taste of the stuff he’d just ingested hit him.

  Vanx hated the taste of it, too, not only because it was mostly made of pixies that had been dried out and mashed to dust, but because it left an aftertaste that reminded him of Aserica Rime long after he used it. Luckily, the fae had agreed to donate the bodies of deceased pixies, should Vanx run out of the stuff. Vanx would do without the witchy magic if he had to kill innocent fae to use it. It was bad enough they were pixed.

  Whatever Zeezle was seeing had him transfixed. Then he looked up at Vanx with eyes full of disbelief. He looked again at the mirror, watching even more intently than before. Then he looked back up at Vanx again. “How could you know what it would show me?”

  “You’re jesting, right?” asked Vanx.

  “Yeah.” Zeezle sat the piece of silver-backed glass gently back down on the table. He was dead serious when he finished. “I saw the Paragon defeating you.”

  “Great,” Vanx shrugged. “How? Where did it happen? Could you tell when?”

  “At the destroyed castle atop Parydon Isle. King Russet and Master Kruuga were there, too. It jabbed you in the face with that dazer. I couldn’t tell when, but there was a dark storm raging over that checkerboard floor, and wicked-looking lightning causing the shadows from the broken columns to reach out, as if to grab at us. There was all sorts of evil-looking shit in the sky, too, not just those dazed wyrms.”

  “Fantastic.” Vanx grabbed the mirror from his friend and wondered if Thorn hadn’t seen a portent similar to Zeezle’s: one that showed Moonsy’s death, or even Thorn defying her death. If the latter were the case, then he really hadn’t seen the mirror’s predicted future altered at all. That made him feel even more unsure. Still, he forged on deep into the night, with his friend at his side, scouring the spells and notebooks for any more knowledge or advantage they could use.

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  They’ve eyes like cats and skin that sheds

  and golden hair upon their heads.

  They live forever, that’s a fact

  and they'll eat your flesh just like that.

  - A sailor’s song

  Master Kruuga gave him the nod he was waiting for, and King Russet threw back his hood and stabbed the nearest blue-eyed Trigon fighter. As he heaved the now undazed and confused combatant over the side of the ship into the moonlit sea, he yelled at the top of his lungs, “I am your king! Fight for your king!”

  “It is him,” a voice called.

  “It’s Russet Oakarm!” yelled another.

  Several men on the ship did just as Russet had ordered, and began dispatching the enemy by flipping them overboard.

  The men on the ship, as hungry and exhausted as they looked, managed to drag the captain and first mate out of the wheel house and throw them over the side while they were still under the daze.

  “Someone turn this ship around!” King Russet yelled, and the men he’d just saved, cheered.

  Russet and his crew had just thwarted the taking of three score more fighting-aged men, but he felt no sort of victory for the brave deed. They’d gotten close enough to see that Parydon Isle was teeming with both men and beasts under the Trigon Daze. So many that Russet believed the Paragon was bringing in reinforcements they hadn’t previously considered, through his evil world-ripping magic. Russet had been around wizards and magic his whole life, but he’d never seen anything like when the sky, from the clouds down to the sea, tore open and filled with flying, blue-eyed death. Ships and dragon-riding wizards had come through and attacked. He’d had to kill his own mind-washed father, who had been trying to kill him. Nothing had been the same since.

  He’d ordered the wizards of the Royal Order, his wizards, to use their might to save as many women and children and undazed men as they could, by getting them to Dyntalla, or Flotsam.

  Now he had ordered them to leave competent men in charge of their refugees and all gather outside of Andwyn. Vanx was coming, he’d heard through the Zythians, and he might be bringing with him the edge they needed.

  King Russet was happy to keep these men alive, to save them from becoming the enemy, but he wanted the Paragon Dracus and its underlings dead.

  Over the last three days, they had saved more than a thousand men, women and children, but they were all starving. He’d sent men into the mountains to hunt for food, and others to empty Highlake Stronghold.

  The normally dangerous mountain roads and passes were as safe as Parydon Isle’s cobble-walks had once been, for the giants and rock trolls had fled into the deepest parts of the mountains after the first attack. Apparently, they wanted no part of the deranged Paragon.

  Who could blame them?

  Russet was eager to get back to the cavern they were using to organize their efforts, for if anyone he knew might have a chance at defeating the thing, it was Vanx Malic and his motley crew of odd allies. From tiny, finger-sized winged men, to hundred-foot-tall trees that could carry on a conversation with you, to ghostly phantoms, Vanx had rallied them. He’d even battled the Paragon and its wizards from the back of a fire wyrm.

  Russet was about to concede that hearing about Vanx’s edge had given him a fraction of hope, but the feeling was already gone. In front of the ship, between them and the fire pits burning on the shore south of Andwyn, the last Trigon wizard appeared atop his terrifying wyrm.

  Russet was expecting an attack, but the spell that came didn’t do anything other than cause a few of the men, a few of Russet’s men, to collapse on the ship’s deck where they stood.

  The wizard laughed out loud.

  “We will be waiting for you, and your feeble heroes, when you arrive.”

  Russet yanked a bow off of one of his fallen men and launched a silver-tipped arrow at the Trigon wizard. It almost sank in the smug wizard’s eye, but ended up only grazing his temple.

  For a heartbeat, Russet was hopeful he’d undazed him, but apparently the wizards were not under the daze, like their fighters.

  “You’ll pay for that, King Oakarm,” the wizard spat. “An eternity at the bottom of the sea you will spend for this!” The Trigon wizard wiped the blood from the side of his face.

  “What did he just do?” Russet asked Master Kruuga quickly.

  The acid-spewing wyrm was drawing in a breath. It could sink the ship if even a small amount of the stuff ate a hole through the hull.

  “He read the minds of Bagger, Gaerns, and a few other of your personal guards. He knows everything they did about our encampment and our plans now.” Master Kruuga looked ashamed. “I am sorry King Russet, for failing you.”

  “You, you didn’t fail me. You and your kin, you gave us a chan--”

  Just then, the Trigon wizard’s dragon roared out, and sprayed its corrosive spew down at the ship.

  King Russet roared back at the dragon, ready again to take whatever death fate dealt him.

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  Gather in and gather close,

  don’t misunderstand.

  In the end we’ll wage a war

  to keep our sacred land.

  - Balladamned (a Zythian song)

  Russet was as surprised as the others when another large flying creature hit the wizard and his black dragon from the side and forced them down toward the sea. Then the ship’s sails filled with such a force that everyone was tumbled to the deck when it went sliding backward through the water, right out from under the dragon’s acid.

  Russet saw the scene as he fell. Vanx was on his fire wyrm, and it lit up the night with its searing breath. Its roar of dominance made the black’s roar seem puny. Vanx’s Zythian friend was riding another dragon, and its green scales were barely showing above the surface of the dark water, where it looked to be holding the black dragon under with its claws.

  There was a snapping sound from the sea that thumped through the whole ship. Then the green dragon lifted out of the water hauling a limp, black wyrm in its claws. The rider was nowhere to be seen.

&nb
sp; Vanx and the fire dragon got behind the ship. The half Zythian cast a spell that sent an amazing amount of wind at them, forcing the bow to cut into the waves and turn the craft back on course. It took a while to get south of the city, to the private landing they’d been using, but far less time than it would have using the wind alone.

  After they arrived, sorted out the refugees, and got them eating, Russet hurried to the cavern-turned-command-center. There, he was pleased to find five distraught-looking wizards of the Royal Order waiting for him. He also found Vanx, Zeezle, Chelda the gargan, and another gargan whom Vanx introduced as Fargok.

  “Just call me Fark,” the big guy said.

  Russet couldn’t help but notice that Fark was a head taller than Chelda, and the sword he had strapped to his back was as long as Russet was tall.

  “Where is my sister?” Russet asked. He was relieved that she wasn’t among them, but concerned for her well-being.

  “She is avoiding Vanx.” Chelda gave him a slap on the back that nearly winded him. “But she is safe.”

  Russet looked at Vanx, but then changed his mind about asking the question why. “I don’t want to know, do I?”

  “Nope,” Vanx answered simply.

  ***

  “I’m not even sure what her problem is,” Vanx lied.

  Gallarael was pregnant with a child that could possibly be a changeling, with Zythian blood, no less. It was doubtful she could even survive the birth. That was the truth, and what he wanted to say.

  Russet was his friend, and he didn’t like keeping it from him, but it wasn’t him who was with child. It wasn’t his place to tell Gallarael’s bloodkin. It was hers.

  “It is time to end this thing, ya?” Chelda asked.

  “‘Tis why I came,” said Fark, shaking the water from his shaggy, blond hair before easing closer to the central fire pit.

  Fark had been mounted behind Zeezle when they hit the water. Kelse had managed to drown the black-scaled wyrm, but Vanx and Zeezle both figured the wizard himself had teleported away.