The Emerald Rider (Book Four of the Dragoneer Saga) Read online

  Worse, Jade would come to rescue him and be trapped. The poor wyrm would be chained in the arena to fight the summoned beasts Xerrin Fyl and his cronies favored.

  It amazed Jenka how unafraid he was for himself. After a while, his sense of failure grew so strong it drowned out all else.

  He tried to think about Zahrellion, but her image wouldn’t form in his mind’s eye. This saddened him to the point of breaking yet again, and had he been able, he would have bawled like an abandoned babe.

  Part III

  Into the Storm

  Chapter Nineteen

  “Are you there, boy?” a soft voice asked. “Hello?”

  Suddenly, Jenka felt a presence beside him. Crimzon had said there would be a demon or demigod bound to the wizard’s more powerful castings, and Jenka suspected that this was it. He tried to turn and look but couldn’t move. Nor could he use his eyes in any normal sense.

  “Yes, that’s it,” the decidedly feminine voice said. “A young man, nonetheless. Lucky me.”

  A form, one that was more of a projection into his mind than a reality, appeared, stepping in front of Jenka. He knew at once it was Clover. She was every bit as beautiful as Crimzon had described. She was long and lithe, and so perfectly rounded at the breast and hip that Jenka found himself unable to think. Her lips were full and wet, and her hair was like blood flowing over her shoulders.

  “You have to tear away from the spell, man,” Clover said, running the back of her hand down his abdomen until it found his crotch. There she kneeled in front of him and cupped him. A grin slowly crept across her face. Then she rolled her shoulders, and closed her eyes dreamily. “Once you do, I’ll make you forget the pain.”

  “How do—?” he tried to ask, but no sound came.

  “Shhhhh,” she hissed, touching his nose with the same finger she shushed him with. “I can’t hear you until you tear away from the spell. Your physical body will still be where it is, but your consciousness will be free to roam this empty plane with me and keep me company. And I do need some company, boy. I don’t even know how many decades I’ve been here.”

  Jenka tried to lean his head forward and pull from the stillness but couldn’t move. He tried clenching his body and limbs. He tried swinging an arm and pulling in his knees, but nothing happened. While he was struggling to grasp the situation, Clover was caressing his hardened skin and subtly pleasuring herself. It was very distracting, to say the least, and had he not been spelled, he doubted he could resist her.

  She was breathtaking to behold, with leather armaments that fit her form perfectly, and hips that ground against his thigh. Thoughts of Zahrellion stole much of the enjoyment Jenka might have experienced watching her, but then Clover turned angry. Her look grew lustful and savage. When her hand clasped around Jenka’s throat, her visage was one of sheer determination.

  In the sitting lean Jenka had been frozen in, he had the most intimate of images flashing into his mind’s eye. She wasn’t choking him, for he needed no air. She was using his neck to steady herself while slowly grinding back and forth along his leg. She threw her head back, her scarlet locks shining in some sort of heavenly light, then she fell forward and put her head against his chest for a time.

  After a while, Clover sat up quickly. “Sorry for this, but the pain will pass.” She said the words as she pounded her fist into Jenka’s chest so hard that it passed through his flesh and shattered his rib bones. Her grasp latched onto his very soul, and the yank that followed was so painful it stole Jenka’s being. A flood of searing, blood-red agony engulfed him, and he screamed out for a very long time. He hoped for some sort of blackened unconsciousness to come save him, but none did.

  He felt nothing but pain, hot and scarlet, and all consuming.

  ***

  After entering the wyrm hole Golden had cast into existence, Aikira, March, and their wyrms came soaring out of the strange, swirling mist into a surreal scene that terrified them all, even the dragons.

  The moon was high and the color of new cheese, but the sea was amber tinted, and the one land formation they could see was an upthrust of jagged black rock, which turned out to be a mound of some soft, gooey substance barely able to hold their weight.

  Not a place of our worldsss, Blaze hissed into their heads. Clover is farther away now.

  Your mental projection of our destination is what brought us here. Aikira defended her dragon’s spell, if weakly. We will cast another. This time concentrate on where you feel the old red.

  If this place wasn’t so creeped out, I’d rather fly there, but right now I want to be anywhere but here. March pointed. Look.

  In the distance the strange yellow sea was parted by a growing fin. Golden was going through the words of the spell and Blaze was trying to listen. March was thankful when the rippling circle appeared before them. They didn’t hesitate to follow the Outlander through.

  They went gliding down a long, perfectly cylindrical tunnel, watching land masses, oceans and starry skies twist and spin around them. It wasn’t as bad as the first time, but the sensation was very disorienting. Plus, there was the unshakable feeling of dread for what could be waiting on the other side.

  The tube closed tightly down on them, and March clenched his teeth and readied himself to battle whatever beast or army lay on the other side. But when they burst through the misty haze into reality, there was no threat.

  Where are we now? Marcherion asked into the ethereal. They’d just come careening out of Golden’s wyrm hole into a sky that was clean and fresh. A storm had just passed, and in the distance the dark wall of its rain could be seen creeping away. The rest of the immediate area was bathed in warm, rich afternoon sunlight. There was no land in sight, but there were birds, and Marcherion knew there was land somewhere nearby.

  I don’t know, Aikira said, with more than a little exasperation sounding in her tone. Do you sense Crimzon?

  Blaze is trying.

  March could feel what his dragon was sensing and was relieved. This time they were close. He and Blaze had both been practicing the words Golden spoke to open the wyrm hole. Had they known such a spell when they’d bonded, they could have avoided a year-long journey across vast oceans and formidable continents.

  A moment later, March only shrugged when the young fire wyrm started banking them toward the darkness of the storm. I guess he is this way. March couldn’t help but chuckle. There is no other reason he would fly toward rain.

  Yesss, Blaze hissed to them. His displeasure rang clearly across the ethereal. Into the ssstorm.

  Before long, all they could sense around them was whipping rain, gusting winds, and the hair-raising flashes of natural power that were streaking all about.

  Chapter Twenty

  The pain lasted far longer than Jenka could have imagined. When it did end, Clover was there asking question after question about the Dragoneers. They were in some sort of plane constructed just for Xaffer’s spell, or maybe by the demon bound to it. Time had little meaning, save for those agonizing moments. Jenka felt nauseous at best, and residual flashes of pain assailed him in brief, racking torrents. He felt as if every bit of skin had been ripped from his body, carefully and slowly. He managed to get the story of the Confliction out, but not much more. He also had the presence of mind to avoid telling Clover of Vax Noffa’s part. The legendary wizard recluse had been her son, and the way he told the tale, Vax might have been long passed before the Dragoneers joined the fight.

  Then it was Clover’s turn to answer a question.

  “How did you and Crimzon meet, or bond, or whatever?” asked Jenka.

  “Well, that is a tale.” Her form had less substance now that he was with her there. They were like shadows in an ill-lit room, but Jenka could make out the sheer adoration she had for her dragon in the excited way she gestured as she spoke about him.

  “His mamra was wounded by hoard raiders. They stormed her lair, and Crimzon’s hatch-mate was killed, his mother given a mortal injury. Crimzon heard
her songs, though, as she lay dying.”

  “Jade heard his mam’s songs, too,” Jenka interrupted. “They come to him sometimes as we are going along. Uh… they did.” He missed his wyrm, not to mention Zahrellion and the child, but he held his sorrow in check and listened as Clover resumed her tale.

  “Crimzon was forced to eat the flesh of the men his mam killed in the battle, all while watching her corpse rot.” Her shadowy head fell into her hands and she sobbed. “I taught him to hunt for himself… I’ll… I’ll speak of something else.” Her sniffle vanished as quickly as it appeared.

  She reached over and placed her insubstantial hand on Jenka’s forearm; he felt it there, but barely. “There is a being who rules this space. He, it, will come to see the new arrival.”

  “Fyloch?” Jenka asked.

  “No. This one calls itself Orthon, and it has been waiting for a dragon-blooded man to come so it can be released from this binding. It will be very displeased that you are not a dragon in human form.”

  “When will it come?”

  “There is no way to convey time here, and no way to measure it. Your story might have taken decades to tell. When is irrelevant, but that he will come is certain.”

  Jenka wasn’t looking forward to meeting this thing, but the vast knowledge he had gathered through the alien and the Dour hadn’t vanished along with the magic. What he knew was his forever. His knowledge could never be taken. The alien had known much demon lore. Jenka couldn’t help but ponder it.

  He suddenly remembered that the druids of Dou had mind-washed men and ogres, and he decided that his mind could be lost. It was a disturbing thought.

  He reached for the alien’s knowledge and found it. The only problem was that thoughts of Zahrellion and their child kept creeping in. They reminded Jenka that he had failed in the most important parts of his life, and now he would never be there for them.

  What if their child was twenty years grown now? What if it’d passed on and its children were grown? And what of Jade? The poor wyrm would die of sorrow, missing Jenka, if he hadn’t already died in one of Xerrin Fyl’s vile arenas. It was too sickening to bear, and Jenka began to crumble from the inside.

  He and Clover absently continued speaking of things dragon riders would speak of. Her lust must have been quenched for she showed no more signs of desire, none at all. They found they were very similar, though. Both had left a lover and a child behind in order to keep their word. This led to Jenka crying out about his love for Zahrellion and the fear and worry he felt for a child he’d never known… would never know.

  Both had also possessed large dragon tears cried by the mamra of their bond-mate. Jenka had retained both tears for a time and this amazed Clover, for just the one nearly stole her soul when she’d first grabbed it up.

  Clover then told him how she had lost herself in the Dour at first. She and Crimzon had acted quite primal and dominated a continent for most of an age. That was before the alien crashed and the Sarax started cocooning. Once she realized that only if dragons and men fought together could they prevail against such a foe, she and the elves started preparing a future for the Dragoneers.

  Jenka had no idea how much she had done, but when she started talking about Denner Noffa, he felt again how his child would miss him, and he his child.

  Soon her voice carried away, and images of Zahrellion curled into a ball and sobbing filled his mind. A child screamed in terror, and then a cloudy roil of blood-colored steam rolled into their presence and Jenka felt a substantial amount of fear flow over him.

  “Orthon,” Clover said simply, and then their world was drenched in pain and blood.

  ***

  Jade gasped a last bit of air before being taken back under. He saw Crimzon thrashing like a clutched fish in the octerror’s grasp and felt hope. That hope was crushed just as Crimzon was bashed against the wall, then a glossy liquid film stole the scene from his eyes and he was dragged underwater.

  He held his breath as long as he could, which for a dragon is a very long time; then just as the craving for fresh air was overpowering his will, he saw the creature’s sharp, toothy beak coming closer. It opened and made to chomp down on him, but he let out his air and filled the thing’s throat with noxious fuming spew. Even underwater, the stuff did potent damage, but Jade was left sucking in water instead of air, and the octerror, no matter how wounded by the green dragon’s breath, hadn’t loosened its grip on either of them. In fact, it began shaking Jade and slamming him against the submerged rocks, just as Jade imagined it was killing Crimzon above.

  Jade tried one last time to wriggle free, but couldn’t. The lack of air began pulling him out of consciousness, and water filled his cavernous lungs completely.

  It was the end and Jade knew it.

  There was nothing left that he could do.

  Chapter Twenty-One

  Blaze and Golden fought the storm for a long while. They saw nothing, save for lightning, clouds and raindrops. It was as if there were no up or down, for the rain was flying sideways across their path. It was enough to make Marcherion angry. But then Blaze sensed Crimzon again and March grew excited. They were very close.

  They lowered themselves into an even heavier part of the storm, and though it was harder to manage the sky, Blaze sighted the darkened hole where he sensed the old red.

  Blaze dove toward the sea cavern as if he were flying on a string line. Golden and Aikira were right behind them. The storm was violent, and luckily the Outland girl was strapped into her saddle. Marcherion had ridden Blaze so much that they were a part of each other in flight, and even still he was having a time staying seated. Aikira’s legs weren’t nearly as strong, and the dragons had to twist and turn through the wet, turbulent air.

  A brilliant flash of white-hot lightning crackled up uncomfortably close to them. For an instant, their hair stood on end and the air itself sizzled with static. The concussion of thunder that immediately followed sent both dragons careening off course and fumbling for purchase, but then they were below the clouds, skimming across a rocky shoreline toward a cave.

  In a series of strobe flashes, they saw the huge bulk of an undulating green creature easing out into the sea. It was dragging not one, but two familiar forms through the shallows behind it.

  Rock lions and lazy seals were floating everywhere, some dead, some half crushed or otherwise injured, some frolicking mindlessly. Hungry fish were swimming over each other in the shallows, gorging themselves on the carcasses. Whenever lightning flashed, the blackness of the waves was turned the bright color of blood. It was impossible to tell if the two dragons were alive, but Blaze and Golden were already corkscrewing around each other into a diving attack.

  Sever the appendages holding them, Golden said into the ethereal. Aikira and I will do the rest.

  Yes, we will, Aikira affirmed, and the two peeled off toward the bulbous creature’s bulky end.

  March lost them in the storm, while Blaze decided a direct approach was best and came down using claws and teeth to tear right through one of the thing’s tentacles. The creature instinctually made to flee the surprise attack and started away. Crimzon’s limp form didn’t follow, but Jade’s did. Aikira and Golden must have attacked just then, for the thing stopped moving into the sea and brought out three of its massive tentacles to defend itself.

  Blaze had to dodge them with his wings while trying to get back into the dark sky, but he eventually managed to get clear of them. He went right for the tentacle that was wrapped around Jade and was slapped into the surf as a reward. He landed near where he had intended to attack, though. As Blaze rolled swiftly up out of the waves, March shook the steaming water from his hair and held his place steady with his thighs. At his breast his medallion began to burn with energy. The cherry conflagration filled his head and forced its way out. His eyes shone scarlet. Searing beams shot forth in a triangular pattern. Each of his eye rays charred whatever they touched, but the larger flow, from his wide-open mouth, burned deeply int
o the sea monster’s flesh.

  At the same moment, Aikira threw a pumpkin-sized ball of prismatic energy at the creature’s body. The arcane mass wobbled through the air clumsily, but the impact was terribly volatile. Rubbery flesh and bright scarlet and white chunks of meat went flying everywhere. But even more effective at ridding them of this foe was the stark flash of bright illumination that scared the sea beast into forgetting its prey in order to flee.

  At once, the great sea monster turned Jade loose and scurried into the sea. The battle was over, but the young green wyrm lay still.

  Several hours and several dozen spells later, the four dragons and two riders lay in an exhausted heap inside the cavern. Blaze and Marcherion were standing guard because they’d done very little of the healing and were the most alert of the group.

  It had been a close call with Jade. After only a few moments, Crimzon’s brimstone core evaporated the water from his lungs and he began coughing and heaving and howling from the pain of his battered and broken bones. The water had to be spelled out of Jade, which hadn’t been the problem. Getting the young wyrm to draw a breath after he was empty was the hard part.

  The dragons tried several different spells, but nothing worked. Things grew tense as time passed. Though no one spoke it, they all knew there was a point where they would have to give up and leave the drowned dragon to his peace.

  It was Aikira who finally talked Blaze through a method she’d seen work on a drowned sailor once. The larger fire wyrm nearly swallowed Jade’s snout, but puffed him full of hot air as if he were a bellows. They did this only twice before Jade was hacking and thrashing around in a fevered state of confusion.

  For Marcherion, it was an overwhelming relief. There he was thinking the green dragon was done one moment and having to duck to dodge Jade’s tail the next. It was amazing, and March found a new, deeper sort of respect for Aikira. The girl’s wyrm had gotten them here in just days, too. That fact wasn’t lost on him. Crimzon and Jade both owed their lives to the Outlander and her wise wyrm.