6.0 - Raptor (29 page)

The other dragon is up there, and I think he’s figured out that Phelistoth is alive and down here.

• • • • •

When the door to Tolemek’s lab opened, he grabbed a pistol and spun toward the intruder. Having that assassin sneak in had left him twitchy. He did not aim it at the person in the doorway, which turned out to be a good choice since it was General Ort.

Ort raised his eyebrows, and Tolemek laid the weapon aside.

“We’re done with this.” Ort walked in and held out the capped vial of the truth serum. “Thank you.”

Tolemek accepted the vial, the contents significantly lowered, and returned it to the rack. “Did you find out anything else?”

He did not know if Ort would tell him if he had, or if the general considered the confessions of prisoners to be military secrets. Still, Tolemek had a reason to be interested in the assassin and whether they had extracted more information from him. He was curious about the questioning of the Cofah soldiers too. He had worked through most of the night on his experiments, and wouldn’t have wanted to leave them in order to attend interrogations even if he had been invited, but he couldn’t help but wonder what had come out.

“Not from your new friend, but we focused on questioning the Cofah soldiers we captured.” Ort stepped back, as if that was all he meant to reveal, but he paused to consider Tolemek. “Maybe this will make more sense to you. As a whole, they’re confused as to how they came to be in the middle of Iskandian territory. They were happy enough to engage us once our airship showed up, but unless your serum is faulty, none of them remember why or how they came to be here, and none of them had any recollection of bombing the mountain. They also didn’t know what I was talking about when I questioned them in regard to how their craft came to be invisible. Only one of the men remembers the sorceress being with them on the ship.”

“My serum isn’t faulty,” Tolemek said. “We used it on the assassin just a few hours ago.”

Ort nodded. “I believe you. We questioned a lot of them, and their stories were too similar for me to suspect they were a part of some coordinated mass lie.” His gaze flicked toward the rack of vials. “As someone who apparently has some experience with magic, what do you think? Could the sorceress have been controlling their minds? All of them? Between the two ships, there were fifty people. We captured twenty-five and questioned fifteen. It’s extraordinary to imagine one person not only controlling that many people but then making it so they remembered nothing of the experience. The last any of these men knew, they were aboard routine patrol ships that keep an eye on Iskandia from out over the sea.”

“I’m afraid my experience is only with creating formulas,” Tolemek said. “I don’t think Sardelle could fiddle with the minds of fifty men, at least not all at once, but I don’t have a strong grasp of her capabilities.”

“Not all at
once
?” Ort grimaced.

Yes, the idea of someone being able to manipulate another’s mind, even one-on-one was alarming. Perhaps Tolemek shouldn’t have implied that Sardelle could do that at all, especially since he wasn’t positive she could.

“I always dismissed the sensationalist articles that claimed a witch was controlling Zirkander,” Ort said. “I’m sure Sardelle isn’t, but it’s alarming to think that it could even be a possibility.”

“I imagine that if she controlled Zirkander, he would be more polite, like she is.”

Ort grunted. “Yes, I guess we’ll know his mind isn’t his own when he stops strolling into my office, flopping down on my leather chairs, and slinging his dirty boots over the armrests.”

“You would need to ask Sardelle about what this sorceress might be able to do. She’s a healer, and I know that required very specialized training. I wouldn’t be surprised if there were other paths the sorcerers of old could take that would lead to different careers. Perhaps there were those who specialized in mind manipulation. Although…” Tolemek rubbed his jaw.

“What?”

“From what I’ve seen of this one, she seems more like the magical version of Captain Kaika. It’s hard to imagine her sitting down to patiently learn how to do a more subtle form of magic.”

“I don’t know that Captain Kaika would find your comparison flattering.”

“Perhaps not, but they both like to make things burst into flame. Wouldn’t you think that would appeal to one particular personality? The personality of someone who would be bored pursuing a more sedate field?”

“I don’t know. I’m completely ignorant on this subject.” Ort shook his head and started for the door. He paused before leaving and looked back. “Would you be able to tell if that sorceress was nearby?”

“I did have a strange feeling of something—perhaps a presence—nearby before we were attacked. I may have been sensing the magic used to form that invisibility field on the closer airship.” Except that Tolemek distinctly remembered feeling the same way he did when Phelistoth came close to him. On the other hand, he
didn’t
usually feel anything when Sardelle stood next to him performing magic. It might be that the sorceress’s magic was simply stronger, strong enough for someone with ill-honed senses to discern. “I don’t know. It might have been nothing. I’m sure I couldn’t track her, if that’s what you’re hoping.”

“I would just like to know if she’s stowing away on our ship somewhere.”

“I wouldn’t think so. We never actually landed to let the infantrymen down. She would have had to fly to make it up here.”

“Are we sure witches can’t do that?” Ort asked.

Tolemek opened his mouth to say yes, but he paused. Did he truly know? “She had to be flown off the fortress when it started to fall apart. In a flier. That should mean she can’t turn into a bird or sprout wings at will.”

“I’ll try to take some solace in that. While I walk around with flour in my pocket.”

“It was talc, and there might be some left in that cupboard there. General?” he asked before Ort could leave. “You didn’t mention what the man who remembered her had to say.” Maybe Ort hadn’t intended to. “If I had more information, I might be able to come up with some idea as to what motivates the sorceress.” In truth, he mostly wanted the information for his own curiosity. And so he could be better prepared in case she showed up again, especially if she showed up to hurl fireballs at Cas.

“This man was the captain of the first airship, and he seemed fiercely loyal to her. He was certain he was supposed to be there, but he couldn’t remember when he’d received orders assigning him and his airship to her command. He did know that she only returned to the empire briefly after the defeat of the sky fortress and was sent—or chose to come of her own accord—back here. The emperor supposedly told her Iskandia is hers if she can secure it, and that she’ll rule as his governor, reporting to him, but able to do whatever she wants with our country.”

Tolemek nodded. Some of that had come out when he and Sardelle—mostly Sardelle—had battled the woman.

“Despite the emperor’s generosity in offering her our country—” Ort paused to make an expression of distaste, “—he wouldn’t give her any troops, aircraft, or naval vessels to assist her in her quest to conquer us.”

“Which explains why she was here with two airships fully staffed by soldiers,” Tolemek said dryly. He raised his eyebrows, expecting more of an explanation.

“For the second time,” Ort said. “She had several soldiers and a couple of fliers when we encountered her out here a few weeks ago. One wonders if she’s borrowing people from the emperor unbeknownst to him. I’m still flabbergasted at the idea that someone might be able to wave a hand and take possession—body and mind—of an entire military unit.”

“We’ll definitely have something to discuss with Sardelle. I do know she said the woman is extremely powerful, so she can do things that nobody else left alive in the world can do.”

Ort grimaced. “Comforting.”

“She must have some limitations, or she could simply walk into the king’s castle with her sword, kill Angulus, and take over the government.”

“Eh, taking over or destroying an entire government wouldn’t be easy. Or at least I would hope it wouldn’t be. King Angulus is important to us, but the system carries on, whether he’s there or not, so a simple assassination wouldn’t work. The rest of the ruling council is spread out in the capitals of the regions across the nation.”

Tolemek thought the “system” had lost some of its effectiveness when Angulus had been kidnapped, but he agreed that an assassination wouldn’t be enough to let some foreign woman step in and take over. As powerful as she was, the Iskandians could probably turn their entire military might upon her and wear down her defenses sooner or later.

“So, why was she out here and trying to level your mountain?” Tolemek waved in the direction of the Ice Blades.

“That’s what I’m wondering. She obviously knows about the dragon statues since she was the one to discover them, but we thought she’d finished with them when she tortured Morishtomaric and apparently didn’t convince him to join her. It’s possible she thinks she didn’t blow things up sufficiently last time and came to ensure we’d never get back into that chamber. I’m sure she doesn’t want Iskandians to have dragon allies.”

Tolemek agreed that was likely, but couldn’t help but wonder if more was going on. It wasn’t as if Angulus had announced that he wanted those dragons freed for negotiations.

“Any chance she died when the airship crashed?” Tolemek asked. That would certainly solve some problems.

“I suppose there’s a chance, but I wouldn’t count on it.” Ort thumped his fist against his thigh. “I would have liked to search the area more thoroughly, but when Duck’s communication arrived—well, we can’t let the dragon attack our people up there again.”

“I won’t disagree with that.” Especially if Tylie and the others were in danger. Tolemek had thought she would be safe going off with Sardelle, safer than she would have been here with him, but that might not have been the case.

A knock sounded at the door.

“General Ort?” A corporal stuck his head inside. “Lieutenant Duck is back, sir. The dragon is attacking the outpost again.”

Tolemek clenched his fist. Again? With Tylie there? He couldn’t believe the airship had flown through the night and still wasn’t there.

“Can’t this slug boat move any faster?” he growled, following Ort into the passageway.

He didn’t expect an answer, but Ort glanced back as he headed for the ship’s ladder. “We’re about three hours out, but I can send you ahead in the fliers with Ahn and Captain Kaika, especially if you have a formula capable of hurting the dragon.”

“I’ve been working all night. I have something I can try if I can come up with a delivery method.” Tolemek wished he could say he had something guaranteed to work, but until he actually tried it on a dragon, he couldn’t. “I don’t suppose you have a dragon scale around that I can test it on first?”

“We didn’t stock any when we supplied the ship.”

“Shortsighted.”

“Yes. Get what you need and meet at the fliers.”

“Yes, sir,” Tolemek said before he caught himself. Sir? Even if he had been a soldier once and yes-sirred many people, he wasn’t in Ort’s army. Oh, well. If Ort was letting Tolemek go to help his sister, he would sir the man up and down.

Chapter 12

R
idge clenched his fist in frustration as another cannonball sailed into the air, missing the dragon by twenty feet. These weapons had been installed to stave off attacks from slow-moving dirigibles, not agile, fire-breathing dragons. Even when the cannonballs and shells would have struck the creature, Morishtomaric either lazily flapped his wings in time to avoid them or simply raised a magical shield, and they bounced off. Ridge didn’t know if a cannonball would do damage to that scaled hide, even if the dragon didn’t shield himself. His bullets certainly hadn’t done anything during their last fight.

The only good thing thus far was that Morishtomaric hadn’t breathed any more fire. The bad thing was that he seemed to be focused on Galmok Mountain. Aside from occasionally dodging a cannonball, he was ignoring the soldiers firing upon him. He kept sailing low along the rugged terrain near the outpost walls, and in his wake came more earthquakes. The tremors did not last long, but they shook the ground vigorously, causing the mountainside to buck and heave, almost as if someone were hurling explosives.

After the third pass, Ridge realized with a sickening feeling that the dragon was doing exactly that, hurling
mental
explosives. That could only mean that he wanted to do more damage, to further collapse the mines. Did he know Sardelle was down there? No, this probably wasn’t about her, or Tylie, either.

“He knows Phelistoth is down there,” Ridge said as the dragon soared low for another pass. Morishtomaric had attacked Phelistoth twice now. For whatever reason, he seemed to want the silver dragon dead.

“Sir?” the private manning the cannon beside him asked.

“Keep trying to hit the dragon,” Ridge said, though he knew it was useless. Nobody had touched him yet. The other guns and cannons along the fortress walls kept firing, coloring the air gray with smoke, but nothing came of it.

Dragon
, Ridge yelled in his mind, staring at the golden figure swooping down for another attack.
What do you want?

Was killing Phelistoth his sole reason for being here, or had something else attracted him to the outpost? His first attack had come
before
Ridge and the others, Phelistoth included, had arrived.

If Morishtomaric was monitoring the thoughts of the humans under him and heard the question, he did not bother responding. He didn’t look toward Ridge, or toward the outpost at all. He kept throwing his mental attacks at the mountain. Ridge dug his fingers into his hair, barely noticing when his cap fell off. If Sardelle was alive down there, the last thing she needed was
more
rock falling on top of her. But how could he stop a dragon that wasn’t even aware of his existence?

His gaze shifted toward the single flier parked atop the headquarters building. He’d sent Duck off again to warn the others about this new development, but his own craft remained.