maniacally, and it fell so good that he didn’t try to stop when he saw his daughter, Shaella crying hopelessly on the floor. He didn’t even stop laughing when the huge red dragon behind her reared back its head and sucked in a great breath of air.
Claret wasn’t really the dragon’s name, but it was the name she had given Shaella to command her by. Her true name was unspeakable in any of the languages of men, elves, or dwarves. It pained her deeply to be collared as she was, but she had to protect her eggs. Nature dictated it. It was instinctual. Now, she found she was glad to be where she was. As the green demon flames around Pael died away, Claret saw the egg the wizard’s tornado blast had left broken on the floor. In her growing rage, the dragon sent out magical feelers for her other eggs.
Shaella had tricked her, she learned, but in doing so, had saved one of her eggs from being destroyed. Through the magical link of the collars she and Shaella wore, the dragon could read the girl’s heart plainly. Shaella had not wanted to hurt the eggs, nor did she have any personal reason for trapping and collaring the dragon. All that Shaella had done, had been done to please her father, or to protect her lover.
Claret could tell that the only egg left unharmed was the one that Shaella had captured. She also knew that when the girl was done with her, that she would give her the egg back. Therefore, protecting the girl’s interests became important to her. The hysterical wizard, rubbing salt into the girl’s wounds, by laughing at her sorrow, was the one responsible for destroying two of her un-hatched babies. Thus, when Shaella looked up at her father and wished him dead, Claret gladly warned Shaella out of the way, and prepared to roast him in his tracks.
Shaella wiped the snot from her nose, and looked at the vile old man she had been trying so hard to impress all her life; her so-called father. The man had spent her entire life raising a kingdom prince instead of raising her, his own flesh and blood. She had asked him why he was always away when she was a little girl. “It is all for you,” he would tell her, and she would believe him.
She had desperately wanted her father to love her. He promised her a kingdom, but that’s not what she really wanted. She had wanted him to teach her as he had Cole and Flick, and spend time with her, but it had never happened. Her mother, who had been a Dakaneese Marsh Witch, had cursed him with every breath she had ever taken, even her last one. Now, Shaella understood why. He was so heartless, that she doubted him even human anymore.
She bent down, picked up the gnarled old staff he had left lying there, and then spat at his raving laughter. Then, she wasted no time getting clear so that Claret could avenge her un-hatched babies.
The blast of fire that spewed forth from the dragon’s maw was long, and white-hot at its core. Pael was completely consumed in its path, but even through the ear-splitting roar that accompanied the huge gout of flame, his laughter never ceased.
The rock at his feet began to glow red, like coals in a fire pit, yet the laughter carried on. When the blast finally subsided, Pael was still there unharmed. He glanced at his daughter’s giant eyes then, and the mirth and joy he was feeling, evaporated like a single raindrop in a hot skillet. His brows narrowed, and his lips pulled back in an angry snarl.
What Shaella saw before her wasn’t her father anymore, but something else altogether, something terrifyingly powerful, and out of control.
Pael raised his right arm, and choked the air exactly like he had done in King Glendar’s pavilion tent, but this time, when he thrust his grasp back, it was Claret’s huge horned head that felt his grip. The great plated head slammed into the back of the cavern, causing huge pieces of stone to come crashing down on the floor.
Smoke curled up from behind Pael, where all of Gerard’s blood was sizzling like grease on the surface of the red-hot Seal. Claret started to scrabble for purchase with her sharp fore-claws, but a squeezing shake of Pael’s grip, made her think better of it. It was all she could do to get air back into her emptied lungs.
Somewhere, close to the dragon, the deckhand made a sound that was a miserable, pleading howl. Pael flicked at the air with his free hand, and a huge chunk of the cavern ceiling broke free and fell. The sailor’s whine ended in a sickening crunch.
Shaella swallowed hard. Through the link of her collar, she could feel the dragon’s growing fear. After seeing Claret so easily destroy a hundred or more of her Zard soldiers, she could only imagine the power this thing in her father’s body now commanded. She hated him. He could have waited until the dragon had been collared, like he said he would. He could have used the deckhand for a sacrifice. His greedy lack of patience had caused Gerard’s death, nothing more, nothing less. None of this had been for her. She saw it plainly now. It had all been for him; for him to gain more power.
“Let her go!” Shaella yelled at him.
She wanted to draw her sword and charge, but she knew that it would be useless. He would easily find a way to stop her. Besides, she had left her blade lying on the cavern floor where she had collapsed earlier. It didn’t matter to her now. The sword had been a gift from Pael. and she found that she no longer wanted it.
As if he could read her mind, Pael spoke.
“Ungrateful bitch!”
His voice was as hard and cold as his expression. “I would crush your life away if you weren’t my daughter! Love is a fleeting thing, little girl. You’re too good for a mere egg thief. I saved you from being a slave to your own emotions. You have Valldian blood in your veins, the blood of the ancients, and you’d do well to never forget it. I spared you a lifetime of heartache!”
Spittle flew from his lips, and his veins bulged, like blue and green earth worms, under the slick, white skin of his forehead and neck.
“I’ve left a kingdom virtually unguarded for your taking, and I showed you how to take it and hold it. I gave you the dragon collar, and the means to trap the feeble beast, and all you can manage, is to try and use it to burn me to ashes!”
A long, ropey strand of saliva dangled from his chin, but he was oblivious to it. “How dare you scoff at all that I have done for you!”
Claret writhed bodily in his grasp, her huge body knocking loose pieces of the walls and shaking the whole cavern as she did so.
Pael knew that she was about to choke to death. He gave her a rough final squeeze, and with eyes that glared deadly lightning into her, he let her go. Wisely, she recoiled into a cowering position, and gulped precious air back into her lungs.
Shaella found that she felt more than a little ashamed. Pael was right, and she knew it. Still, she hated him no less. She glared back at him coldly, as she strode over, and took up her sword. As she stood there fuming, with the staff of malice in one hand, and softly glowing blade in the other, she thought she saw in his eyes the thing she had sought for her entire life. For the first time, she could remember, she saw his respect there.
“Use your rage and hatred, for what I have done is to help you take Westland for your own.”
The look in his eyes faded into something colder than ice and darker than pitch, and his voice grew distant. She wasn’t sure then if it was still her father who was speaking to her.
“I have my own agenda to tend to. You owe me. Do not forget it again!”
What Pael had become she couldn’t say, but whatever he was now, he vanished from before her with a static pop of emerald sparks.
Looking beyond where he had stood, she saw the dark stain of Gerard’s life blood smoldering on the floor. It was all she could do to bite back her grief, and keep from breaking into tears again. The knife scar that ran down her cheek tricked her into thinking a tear had escaped her new found force of will. As she went to brush it away, she couldn’t help but think that she had lost far more than just a lover this day. She had lost her father as well.
Chapter 31
Mikahl shivered inside the thick Shagmar fur coat he was wearing. It was still early summer, but in the Giant Mountains, it was snowing. Not actually new snowfall, Hyden had explained to the castle born Westlander, but windblown snow, left over from the previous winter. Mikahl didn’t care how it got there; to him it was snowing. The stuff was swirling about them, getting down his collar, and whipping into every little tiny opening of his warm
