through the thick air to his ears. To his right, for a fleeting instant, he thought he saw two tiny specks of yellow light, spaced a hand’s breadth apart, bobbing slowly along beside them at head height. By the time his mind registered that what he was seeing was two eyes reflecting the light from Shaella’s sword back at him, they were gone.
Off in the distance, the ear-piercing shriek of something huge caused a moment of total silence. The whole jungle, even the insects, stopped to listen. Then slowly, hesitantly, the cacophony of noise resumed, as if the creatures hadn’t been disturbed at all.
The ground seemed to grow less spongy as they continued, but it never stopped being slimy. The ever present moisture dripping from the leaves and vines above wouldn’t allow it. Gerard figured that they were slowly moving up onto higher ground. His new boots were probably a ruin. He wondered absently what Hyden would think of all the places he had seen so far on this journey.
He glanced down at his arm, and saw that it was swollen and bleeding. So much moisture was clinging to his skin, that he hadn’t noticed it. The wound began to pulse with pain then, and he wondered if he would be feeling the growing throb if he hadn’t looked at it. For a moment, he panicked. He had to climb soon. He couldn’t afford to have a swollen arm and be in this kind of pain. Go away! he screamed inside his head. Before the thought had completed itself, he felt the ring on his finger heating. The usual rush he felt in his blood was dampened by the pain in his arm, but only for a moment. The magic quickly scoured away all traces of the injury, and he soon felt its luscious tingle coursing through him. A thought came to him as he rode on the rush of unnatural power. Light! He commanded in his mind. To his great surprise, an apple sized ball of bright white light appeared in his palm.
He heard Shaella gasp, as she turned to see what had happened. It was a gasp of surprise, and maybe wonder. The sound of the Water-Mage’s gasp though, was clearly one of shock and terror. Gerard reluctantly peeled his eyes away from the glowing light in his hand, and saw what had frightened the man. In the trees, all around the group, were glittering pairs of reflection. Hundreds of black orbs, set in slithery, slick reptilian faces, were staring at the light. The lizard-like creatures were standing upright, and armed to the teeth with human weapons. A bright, pink tongue flickered from a split in a snouted turtle shaped head, then another. The parts of the creatures’ bodies that weren’t covered with ringed leather armor or scraps of chain mail, were scaled and as green as the jungle around them. Skeeks, Gerard decided correctly, right out of one of Berda’s stories.
Everyone seemed to be captivated, as well as irritated, by the light. More than one of the lizard men had moved to shield its eyes from the brightness. More flickering forked tongues appeared, accompanied by a severe hissing sound, as their heads began to dart around nervously.
Gerard was sure they were about to be attacked, but then one of them spoke to Cole in a strange, clicking sibilant language. Gerard recognized it as the language the two bald-headed wizards used when they spoke to Shaella and each other. Gerard noticed something else. It was the blackness of the eyes, maybe, or the elongated torso and head of the lizard men – he wasn’t sure. He tried to pinpoint the similarities, but couldn’t. They were subtle and many. He was sure though, beyond a shadow of a doubt, that both Cole and Flick were related to these unsettling creatures somehow. As if to confirm this thought, Cole responded to the beast in a casual, yet commanding tone.
Gerard waited for the lizard man’s response, but the next words were spoken to him.
“Extinguish the light!” Cole commanded harshly in the common tongue.
“Do it, Gerard,” Shaella added softly. “The light will draw things to us that we don’t want to run into out here.”
Gerard tried several silent commands to make the light go away, but none of them seemed to work. Off, Dim, Dark, Darkness. It grew very quiet. The air was crackling with tension, as everything alive inside the reach of the magical glow, held its breath. The silence became deafening. No matter what command Gerard gave, the light would not extinguish. Finally, under the intense gaze of all those strange pairs of eyes, he did the only other thing he could think to do. Reluctantly, he pulled the ring off of his finger. A dozen hisses and sighs of relief emitted from the suddenly darkened jungle around them. Gerard made a short prayer to the goddess that the light would stay gone when he slipped the ring back on. He let out his own sigh of relief when it did.
What seemed like days, but was really only a few hours later, they came to a clearing in the trees. Gerard gasped in shock when he saw a bowl-shaped depression, lit like a field full of burning stars by hundreds upon hundreds of campfires. Illuminated in the wavering orange glow around them, were thousands of Skeeks and other strange swamp creatures. A few big four-legged lizards could be seen carrying small groups of their two- legged kin around a perimeter of bigger bonfires. A dactyl bird, like they had seen soaring out over the marshes, was sharpening its long beak on a chunk of the black porous rock that was scattered about the clearing. It looked to Gerard as if all of the creatures there were, in one way or another, preparing for battle.
“An army of Skeeks?” he asked Shaella quietly.
One of the lizard men escorting them hissed out sharply.
“This is only one of several armies. And don’t call them Skeeks.”
She sheathed her sword and took his hand. “They prefer to be called Zardmen or ‘The Zard’. Come now, let’s feast, and then we can work out a plan to steal the dragon’s egg that pleases all of us.”
Gerard couldn’t help but wonder what they would be eating, and just who “all of us” really was.
Chapter 25
After being out in the cool, crisp mountain air for the past few days, the Elders’ council chambers seemed stiflingly hot. Every single pore on Hyden’s body was running freely with perspiration. His condition wasn’t caused solely by the temperature though. He was nervous, and more than a little bit afraid. He wanted to leave, but that wasn’t a possibility. The Elders would deny his exit, and probably lock him in a goat burrow if he so much as complained.
Talon was miserable too. He had fluttered over to the tip of one of the dragon skull horns that curved up out of the dancing blue flames, and perched there, but only for a heartbeat or two. Apparently, it was just as hot up there. The hawkling finally flapped his way down to the floor, and found a place between Hyden’s boots.
The stool Hyden was sitting on was directly in front of the dragon skull and facing it. The wicked blaze burning in the skull’s brain cavity made the dragon’s eye sockets seem alive, and made the semi-circle of Elders gathered around it look like a bunch of hungry ghouls.
Halden, the Eldest, sat directly across the sapphire blaze opposite Hyden. The dragon skull’s curved horns framed a disturbing picture, with Hyden’s grandfather at its center. The old man was chanting now, and raising his arms in a series of lunatic gestures. At precise intervals in the Eldest’s manic song, the rest of the Elders spoke the powerful words of invocation in unison. They shouted, in short bursts, phrases that seemed to make the walls of the cavernous burrow they were in hum with reverberation. Slowly, it became repetitive and hypnotic, and Hyden found himself slightly swaying to the flowing rhythm they had created. How long this went on, he couldn’t say. He had become lost in the moment.
Eventually, the walls of the chamber faded. All around and above them, was nothing but a deep empty blackness. Hyden looked up into it. A pinpoint of light appeared, then another, and then several more.
Suddenly, Hyden was looking at the open night sky. It looked exactly the same as it would have if they were outside around a campfire in the very same place. Or did it? Hyden questioned. Hadn’t the real sky been gray and cloudy?
Hyden became aware of the stark silence around him. Between the dragon’s horns, a thin wisp of smoke began to swirl up from the blue flames. The tendrils thickened and twisted like a miniature funnel, and spun crazily until a small featureless humanoid form appeared. It was about as tall as a man’s forearm is long. A pair of arms rose away from its sides. Hyden could see the back and buttocks of a shapely woman slowly define itself. Long flowing hair, curvaceous hips, and smooth tapering legs, formed in perfect miniature out of the swirling smoke. It was the White Goddess, but she was facing away from Hyden. He wanted badly to move to the other side of the dragon skull so that he could look upon her face, but he dared not do anything that might startle her away.
Halden spoke a greeting in a strange language and bowed his upper torso to the misty woman before him. The rest of the Elders remained silent, but all of them bowed their heads to her in a show of respect. Hyden
