Blood and Royalty (12 page)

Chapter Twenty-Seven

Aikira came out of hyper-speed expecting the teeth-jarring change that happened to her the last time. After she shook off the disorientation of the change, she found she was covered with goosebumps. It was a glorious feeling, all of the dragon dour radiating from the colorful High Draci in real time, and she saw that there was more than just the barrier formed by their breath at work. There was also a shimmering glassine field spread wide around them for miles. She hoped it was blocking the pollen Jenka was so afraid of from getting to the Mainland. All of the dragons were immersed in something she soon picked up on: a hauntingly deep melody coming from Amelia.

Though neither she nor they could see Jenka, Amelia, or the creature, the dragons were doing just as little Amelia was directing them. She heard the girl’s low, humming song in her heart. Then Golden was caught up in it, too, moving to add her dour to the mix and strengthen the wall of dragon magic the others had created.

Amazing,
she heard a boy’s voice and Aikira suddenly panicked, thinking of Pascal. It wasn’t him, though. It was Prince Jericho, and he was with them in the ethereal, but how?

He has Marcherion’s dragon tear medallion,
Rikky said.

Aikira had to crane her neck around to see them in the sky, but there they were, Rikky and Pascal mounted on Silva’s back, as Silva, too, felt Princess Amelia’s call and joined the others.

Aikira marveled at how the pure-blooded dragons had situated themselves so that they looked like the rays of a rising sun formed of naught but dragon’s breath and only halfway out of the sea.

The center point, where all of their breaths were converging, was so intense that she doubted anything could survive it.

Look at that,
Prince Jericho said, the fear in his voice clear, even across the ethereal.

Aikira saw which way he was pointing. She turned to see what looked like a cloud of small blackbirds all flying in a shifting formation. They were mudged, not birds, but they were being directed by the Nightshade just as the dragons were by Amelia. And she suddenly realized what the dragons and Amelia were really doing.

Putting her faith in the will of a strange nine-year-old girl wasn’t an easy thing to do, but since her dragon had already done so, she didn’t really have a choice.

As she felt herself and her own ability being directed, she decided to let go. The High Draci were no fools. They wouldn’t allow themselves to be ordered about unless what they were doing made sense for the greater good.

They just wouldn’t.

*

Jenka only partially missed his mark when he appeared with one of his legs buried to the shin in the Sarsaraxus’s chest. Calculating a teleport while in hyper-motion, at a rate just slightly slower than the Sarsaraxus could achieve, was nearly impossible. Using his other leg, he immediately began trying to free himself. He saw the ultra-tiny feather-like puffs of pollen secreting from the thing’s pores, and the idea that he had failed assailed him. He couldn’t think about it, though, for he was stuck in the angry creature now, and it wanted rid of him.

He was definitely causing the Sarsaraxus pain, for it slapped at him as if he were a cat that had landed on its upper shoulder.

Jenka rolled around, allowing his head to dangle near the thing’s abdomen, barely avoiding the blow. Then his foot came out of it, without his boot, and he was falling. He saw that he was falling toward the Nightshade and managed to do the first thing that came to mind.

It was so simple it amazed him.

He drew the sword Mysterian had made for him, and as he fell past the hellborn creature, he opened its neck wide. Wide enough that it bucked the Sarsaraxus off of its back and went slamming back into real time.

This left the Sarsaraxus tumbling not so far behind and above Jenka, who knew he was about to be smashed against the hardness of the slower moving sea, and the bulk of the huge creature.

He saw the amazing display of dragon dour his daughter had orchestrated, and then felt his son in that mix with Silva, and Rikky, and Aikira. He knew his boy had Marcherion’s dragon tear, too, for he could read all of their thoughts as if they were on display. It was such an audible, vivid display of earthly power that he slipped off into reverie and let his senses absorb the awesome majesty of what he was seeing.

In his, Amelia’s, and the Sarsaraxus’s rate of time, the dragons had created a gateway.

Jenka reached out for Jade, knowing that his wyrm wouldn’t be able to respond, but he wanted his bondmate to know that he loved him and would have him carry his son if he didn’t survive this. Then he ground his teeth tight and prepared to hit the sea, for there was no time left to even try.

I was swallowed by the alienss, too, Jenksss,
Jade hissed, as he glided right underneath Jenka and kept him from impacting the hard water below.
Zahrellionsss and sCrystalss don’ts even know I have left thems yet.
The green dragon hissed a conspiratorial laugh. As far as dragons went, he was still an adolescent, and it showed.

You can move in hyper-speed without me?

Yessss,
came Jade’s response, then he turned them so that they could see the Sarsaraxus splash into the water right underneath them.

Like the Sarax, it started crackling over with bright blue static sparks, but it seemed to draw from it, as if all the power the sea had taken from the Sarax in the past was being delivered to the Sarsaraxus right then.

And as if to prove Jenka’s theory, the thing spread its arms wide and they started to extend, taking the thin skin that stretched to its hips with it.

It hovered up to the waist, upright in the water, and let a huge ball of terrible power loose at the wall of dragon breath, not the dragons. The ball of force went right through.

Back to his world,
Amelia finished Jenka’s questioning thought for him.

Because of the sword,
came the answer to his next question.

Chapter Twenty-Eight

The Nightshade appeared just as its swarm of mudged did, but it was squirting black blood from a gash in its neck and using all its strength of will to stay aloft.

Rikky started to pull himself, Prince Jericho, and Silva away from the radiant formation they’d been in, but Princess Amelia showed herself right in the heart of the cloud of mudged and blasted them outward into cherry husks, like a grand explosion at some holiday sparkler show.

She then pointed
Errion Spightre
at the Nightshade, and the hellborn wyrm was engulfed in powerful, pulverizing magic that left it falling from the sky like a thrice-shafted bird.

Amelia disappeared again, speeding up as her scraggly-looking blue dragon flew her back into the ultra-fast motion her father always used.

As he watched the smoldering remains of the mudged hit the sea and steam, Rikky saw the area of water displaced by the huge Sarsaraxus, too. And in the distance, he felt more than saw Zahrellion. She was calling for Jade as if the young dragon were a child lost in a snowstorm.

I can sense him out there with Jenka, Zah,
Rikky responded.
Come join the radiance and feel this.

What radiance?
There was a pause of silence, then a quiet,
Ooh.

Exactly.
Rikky tried to mask his sadness.
If only Marcherion could feel it, too.

Mother, I have Lord Commander Marcherion’s medallion, and I can think to you and the dragons now, too.
Jericho seemed excited, despite the sorrow in his voice.

This is amazing, Jericho,
Zahrellion replied.
All of it
.

Soon, they flew nearer, taking the place that opened when the dragons made room for her frost wyrm between Silva and a bright lemon-colored drake.

Amelia did it,
Jericho replied.
Her and Errion Spightre.

She and Errion Spightre, son,
Zah corrected.

Rikky found he was glad he didn’t have children. Then he saw the first of the pale, white, air-spouting whales that they had turned the shapeshifter into during the Confliction. There was another, and another. They were swimming around the displaced space where the Sarsaraxus was, and they were doing it with a purpose.

*

Jenka and Jade came around the creature. Jade let loose a blast of gaseous breath at it, then Jenka blasted it with yellow webbing that seared its pattern into the Sarsaraxus’s thin wing-skin, but nothing more.

Noooo,
Amelia screamed at him.
You will not kill it!

It has to die,
he replied simply.

Why?

Jenka didn’t have an answer for his daughter, but he felt the truth of what he’d said deep in his core.

Then let him do the deed.
She flew her little dragon low to the water’s surface and let the flat of
Errion Spightre’s
blade slide across the skin of one of the white things swimming impossibly slowly in the sea.

The sword isn’t a blade of peace. It is a blade of healing,
she explained.

Suddenly, the sky opened up, and a powerful swirl spun down into the sea, causing it to twist into a siphon. This was happening at their accelerated rate of speed, too, and it was overwhelming to behold, even to Jenka.

Just as the Sarsaraxus leapt into flight and started toward the portal Amelia opened for it, an extending tentacle, still forming as it went, snaked up out of the water and grabbed hold of the Sarsaraxus’s leg. The white, blobbish thing underneath the water was growing, as more of its parts were being drawn into the healing power of
Errion Spightre.

Jenka watched as the alien shapeshifter gained their rate of motion when it latched hold of the Sarsaraxus. It grew and then wrapped itself around the creature even more tightly. The Sarsaraxus, however, wasn’t giving up so easily. It pumped its wings even harder and started pulling the other up out of the sea, trying to keep its nemesis from gaining all of itself.

The shapeshifter let itself elongate as the Sarsaraxus stretched it closer and closer to the now shimmering portal. Jenka felt the alien essence in him and his dragon being drawn down toward the water. It was trying to reassume him, or at least the part of it he had absorbed. He didn’t know what to do. Even when he tried using the power of his dragon tear, he couldn’t resist the urge to rejoin the creature.

Suddenly, he felt
Errion Spightre’s
power as it engulfed him and Amelia and their wyrms. It was all the sword could do to keep the two of them from being drawn down into the alien. It was a part of them, too. Only Amelia’s quick thinking saved them, for they were whole as they were, and the sword would keep them that way.

It was a sword of healing, after all, and neither of them were sick. They were just different. Like Amelia and Clover were different.

That makes me double different,
his daughter said, startling Jenka out of his thoughts, and reminding him that she was just nine years old.
And why do you think of Clover so much?

Jenka didn’t answer that one. He did his best to shield his thoughts from her, too, but he had a feeling it was a rhetorical question, because the scene unfolding before them drew her attention, then his, and held it raptly.

Chapter Twenty-Nine

Amelia watched as the song she’d sung earlier kept resonating in the slower time happening around them. She saw her mother, brother, and Uncle Rikky in the arc of High Draci she’d willed to be. She saw Golden, too, and felt a twinge of pain for Marcherion; but it was more for Uncle Rikky’s loss, because Marcherion hadn’t been a part of her life growing up. To her, he was just a rumor that showed back up one day with stories about her mysterious uncle, King Richard.

The Sarsaraxus was almost into the shimmering portal she’d created to let it go home, but the alien destroyed by her parents and the other Dragoneers was healing, and not letting go.

Then the Sarsaraxus finally stretched the other creature thin enough to pull itself into the void the suspended dragon dour was creating.

Amelia’s father gasped beside her when the now monstrously large Sarsaraxus was squeezed into a minute point and stretched away to the world from which it had come.

Amelia knew that world as if it were a memory, but she knew she couldn’t go there, for the elements of life had no reign there. Water and air were naught but gases in the spherical area between that planet’s surface and its outer limits.

The white alien creature didn’t let go, and some satisfaction passed to Amelia and her father when it used its ability to pull itself into the void behind the thing it held, following it away from their world.

Then the sky exploded into a sparkling shower as all the magic dissipated, and everything was thrown back into real time.

There was some sorrow flowing through Amelia and her father, too, for there were still a handful of white swimming things spouting out their anger and disappointment over being left behind.

She wondered why they weren’t also being healed by
Errion Spightre’s
magic, but she didn’t dare touch another of them and draw all of that mess back to their world.

The void where the Sarsaraxus had been standing in the water was now closing up, and the siphon that spun down from the heavens had gone unseen by all but the four of them.

What mudged were left were fleeing the sky now, unsuspended, since she was no longer moving so quickly. The dragons were gathering themselves, some of them chasing the mudged, others starting back to the mainland mountains from which they’d come.

What is his name?
her father asked. She knew he was talking about her dragon.

He i
s a she,
Amelia said, matter-of-factly.
Her name is Vincaminor, but I call her Peri.

Peri
?
he asked, not getting the connection, which exasperated her.

Like
the color periwinkle blue.
She rolled her eyes, wondering if her mother wasn’t right about his intelligence
all
coming from the alien.

*

Cl
over and her mighty dragon were in the process of taking over Vikaria. She had heard the ballad of Orn Spike at least a hundred times. She knew every word, but a certain verse had been ringing in her ears since she’d held the weapon in her hands.

The wizard and the king marched the armies off to battle,

taking all the fighters, both on foot and those in saddle.

Then the wizard’s daughter and the dragon that she rode,

flew right into the kingdom and claimed that throne her own.

Clover was no wizard’s daughter, though Master Zarvin was more a father to her than any man had ever been. That aside, she and Crimzon were reclaiming his territory, for all of these divided lands needed to be one, and she still owed King Amothy a favor, even though he was long dead. His descendent would sit the Karian seat after she made it whole again. Then she would seek out the dwarves and see about the lair and the horde. It was all still there, she figured.

It betters beesss,
Crimzon hissed.

She hadn’t felt Marcherion die, but Crimzon felt Blaze’s death and almost shed a tear for the loss of one of his line. He was a territorial creature by nature, though, and he’d already set his heart on marking his old territory anew. All those years waiting in that dwarven flu, crippled and miserable, while Clover was imprisoned inside a temple he couldn’t even enter, had taken a toll on his sensitivity.

Clover didn’t mind. They were more or less immortal. The Dragoneers, at least some of them, were not. By uniting the kingdoms of Kar with dragon fear, they were helping the future of Jericho’s kingdom anyway. The Dragoneers didn’t need her anymore. Not with Milly there. At least that’s what Clover told herself, as she and Crimzon chased Lord somebody or another and his esteemed troop of dragon slayers across an open field as if they were deer.

*

On Prince Jericho’s twenty-first birthday, Zahrellion gave him
Errion Spightre,
and Jenka stepped down from the throne, proclaiming him King Jericho.

This was done in private first, so that the sword’s power didn’t overwhelm the boy in front of the people gathered for the celebration. After he’d held the ancient weapon that first time, for a few minutes, Amelia eagerly asked him how it felt. She couldn’t wait to hear his answer.

“This is even better than girls,” was his reply, and Jenka was only saved from changing his mind by Zahrellion, who took his arm and led him to his place in the ceremony.

In just a month, the hundred-foot-tall granite statue of Marcherion that had taken so long to construct was to be unveiled. Everyone agreed that it was the perfect first act of Jericho’s reign to remember those who had died to get them where they were.

Amelia, though, was getting a bit jealous, as adolescent girls sometimes do. Adolescent mystica, she corrected her thought, for she and Clover decided that the both of them had dodged an arrow.

Lemmy, who had long ago sworn with his life to protect Amelia and her brother, was keeping his word, for he kept Clover informed about everything the elves of Evermore did. Their quest to end anything perceived as able to give life to its will hadn’t ended when the Sarsaraxus escaped them. In fact, it only seemed to have made them worse.

Amelia and Clover talked often. Milly went into hyper-movement and teleported herself and Peri to the reuniting lands of Kar. She wasn’t bonded with Peri, like the Dragoneers to their dragons. Clover wasn’t magically bonded with Crimzon, either, but that only made their couplings stronger, for they were made by choice, not by anything else. The two things Amelia kept from all of them, save her father, was that Peri was of Royal’s direct line. Peri’s mam was alive in the deepest area of the peaks. Royal had left them to go bond with Richard, for it was his destiny. The other thing she kept from all of them was that she would always side with Clover.

They were both mystica, after all, and mystica had to stick together. Besides, Clover was teaching Amelia the lesser magics of men, useful stuff, when she wasn’t able to suspend their time and have her way with them as long as she pleased.

*

Aikira did her best to spend time hunting with Rikky, but her husband had been found crippled in a pile of debris, and they had a son to worry about.

Rikky more or less turned into grumbling old Herald, and even nicked the ears of a few of his tougher boys to set an example.

Jericho offered several times to touch Rikky with
Errion Spightre,
because its magic might regrow his leg, but Rikky refused him, just as he refused to go to the Leif Repline fountain with Clover. “It is the lack of the limb that defines who I am now,” Rikky explained. “To have a leg again would destroy everything I’ve ever done to overcome the loss.”

For a very long time, the kingdom was at peace. Everyone prospered, and not even Amelia, who seemed to know everything else, knew of Clover’s frequent visits to the forest outside
of Kingsman’s Keep, to see Rikky.

The End