commanding sort of way.
The wizard’s horribly twisted form flickered on the tiled deck at her feet once, twice, and then the third time it held there. Targon was covered in blood, and his head hung at an odd angle, the neck stretched, and canted unnaturally. He was ripped open from groin to chest, and part of the cavity where his innards should be, was empty. He looked dead, and was most undoubtedly beyond saving, but his eyes fluttered open when Queen Willa spoke his name.
She knelt by his side, wanting to cradle his head in her arms, but was afraid to cause him pain.
Hyden stood there, slack-jawed. What were they going to do now? Targon was supposed to provide the means of getting the Night Shard all the way to the Seal. The plan was doomed. The High Wizard couldn’t even speak, to relay his idea to Queen Willa, so that she might play his part. Hyden was overcome with a dreadful sense of defeat, but only until he heard the dragon’s powerful roar fill the morning sky.
He looked up, and saw in the distance, a brilliant winged horse banking an arc through the sky. Its rider sent blazing, blue blasts back at the massive, red-scaled beast, which had just rumbled the morning with its rage. Hyden couldn’t say what amazed him most about the scene, Mikahl, riding on a winged horse made of flame, or the way the snaky dragon corkscrewed its bulk effortlessly through the air behind him, to avoid the attacks.
Forgetting the crystal for the moment, instinct took over. All Hyden knew, was that he had to do something to save his friend. He had talked to squirrels, hawklings, and wolves, now it was time to try something bigger. He remembered Vaegon’s tale of Pratchert, focused his concentration, and in his head, he called out to the dragon.
Mikahl was certain that he had hit the dragon, but it had twisted around his magical bolt of energy like a snake sliding around a tree limb. Its agility in the air was breathtaking. The humongous beast started to snap at him, but paused for a heartbeat. It shot past him, and the woman riding on its back shook a strange looking staff at Mikahl and snarled. She looked angry, and half of her head was bald, and scarred. She was screaming something at the dragon now, but Mikahl’s attention was suddenly yanked away, as his bright horse rose up swiftly on a stall of flurrying wing beats.
The earsplitting crack of the dragon’s whip-like tail, as it snapped on the point in space where he had just been, brought his mind back into full focus. When he turned, the dragon was darting off towards the castle, on long, powerful strokes of its leathery wings.
He guided the Bright Horse lower. Vaegon had been trapped on a lone section of wall that was still standing, and he hadn’t looked too well. Mikahl had seen all the blood on his arm, and had watched as Vaegon’s leg had been cut out from under him just before he had knocked the attacker off the wall.
To Mikahl’s surprise, the elf was no long longer up on that part of the wall. In a panic, and with a stomach full of icy dread, he circled lower, around the unnatural plateau, searching the dying battles, and the dead, for his friend. His stomach lurched, and the ice moved to his bowels when he saw the elf. He clinched his eyes shut, hoping that when he opened them, it wouldn’t be Vaegon he saw lying there, half buried in debris, but it was. The patched eye, and glittering hair, left no room for doubt. Without thinking, he made to land the Bright Horse, and try to help unearth his fallen friend, but then realized, as he came in closer, that it was only part of the elf that he was seeing. The lower half of Vaegon’s body wasn’t buried.
It had been sheared away, and was nowhere to be seen.
Sadness tried to envelop him. King Balton, Lord Gregory, and Loudin, not to mention Grrr, and now Vaegon, the only elf in the realm brave enough to stand and fight this evil, had all been killed. How many of the people he loved had to die. Were any of them alive anymore? What had happened to Hyden, Talon, and the other Great Wolves? He didn’t know, and that fact caused an explosion of determination to burst inside of him.
In response to his growing outrage, the radiance and power of Ironspike’s blade magnified, and shifted from blue to purple, and then to a heated shade of crimson. He spurred the bright horse up into the heights of the morning sky, until he saw the Choska demon. He was pleased to see it coming at him. In a blinding, white-hot rage, he urged his magical mount into a hard gallop towards the approaching bat-like beast, in a sort of midair jouster’s charge. He had had enough. It was time to put an end to this madness.
Chapter 56
“The dragon comes!” Queen Willa hissed at Hyden Hawk.
“Aye,” Hyden replied simply. He gave her a grim smile. “Cast no spells, lady. Tell the guard to stand down.”
“You’d let it roast us?” she asked incredulously.
His scowl silenced any further protests, and she did as he bade her.
“Show no fear. When it is upon us, signal me.”
He put an arrow to the string of the old elven longbow, and started toward the edge of the tower. Once he was at the parapet, he ducked behind a crenel, and set his eyes on the frightened Queen. In his head, he spoke to the dragon again.
Shaella screamed at Claret vehemently for flying her away from the one on the fiery Pegasus. Claret just hissed, and suffered the anguish of Shaella’s punishment through the collar. She was glad that Shaella was yelling and screaming at her, because it kept Shaella from hurting her with something far worse. Claret also knew that Shaella could only do so much punishing while they were in flight, so she went to investigate the strange and powerful voice that was calling her away. It hurt her terribly to go against the will of her rider, but the promises the voice was offering her, were too great to be ignored.
Once Shaella saw the Witch Queen of Highwander, alone on the tower rooftop, gawking up like a child, she forgot the dragon’s punishment altogether, and grew excited. She could complete her father’s conquest, and earn his respect and admiration right here. She urged Claret to take her around the tower. She wanted to keep the witch from reaching the stair house when she snapped out of her stupor, and made a run for it.
To Shaella’s growing frustration, Claret didn’t circle the tower as she had commanded, but the Witch Queen didn’t break and run either. Instead, Claret made as if to land there, at the tower’s parapet, but stopped at the last moment, to hold in a slow hover. Shaella shrieked out curses at the dragon, as the Witch Queen waved her arms crazily. Shaella cast a spell, and was about to lash out with a blast of static energy, when her heart was stopped dead in her chest. She saw Gerard rise up from behind one of the crenels and loose an arrow directly at her. Realizing that it was Hyden, Gerard’s brother, and not her lover, she tried desperately to get the dragon to dip, or sway her out of the arrow’s path. Nothing happened. She couldn’t find the will to draw breath, as the steel-tipped shaft came flying at her. She was shocked to feel it only graze her just under the ear, and she felt lucky for a fleeting moment.
In that fleeting moment, another realization struck her. He hadn’t meant to kill her. But why?
Between the thumping beats of Claret’s wings, she heard the proud and fierce cry of a hawkling, as it came shooting down out of the sky, right past her. It didn’t stop. It kept diving into the shadows below. Suddenly, she was afraid. She gathered all the persuasive power she could muster, and urged Claret to turn away, but the dragon didn’t budge. Then, she tried sending the dragon a clearer, and more painful command through the collar, but found that somehow, her link with the fire wyrm had been broken. In a panic, she reached to her neck.
Claret felt the connection sever, and roared out with delight. The menacingly triumphant sound was so loud, and powerful, that the Royal Tower itself trembled, as if it were afraid.
Shaella began to cast a spell. Hyden saw this, and loosed a second arrow at her. This one struck the staff she held, just a fingers breath above her hand. The thumping impact of it caused her to lose her concentration, and forget the spell she was casting.
“Spell the rider!” Hyden called out to Queen Willa. “Bind her, if you can.”
At once, Willa did as she was told. The presence of the dragon had her in such a state of terror, that if Hyden had told her to jump off the tower she might have done it.
Half a heartbeat later, invisible ropes lashed around Shaella, and drew tight. Her arms, and her staff, were pulled hard against her breasts. When she tried to voice a protest, she found that her mouth was gagged as well. She could do nothing, but glare at Hyden as he motioned for the dragon to land.
Willa backed away in utter fear. Claret’s great bulk, took up three quarters of the tower top, and that was
