Cold Hearted Son of a Witch (Dragoneers Saga) (10 page)

Chapter 11

The Temple of Dou was almost as impressive as the valley in which it was built. Jade had done a fine job of carrying them there. At the moment he was resting on a ridge while Lemmy and Jenka stretched their legs and took in the sight below. This deep in the mountains, last year’s snow still topped the peaks, but along the heavily treed slopes the deep greens of summer fought a losing battle with the rusty shades of autumn. Across the valley’s floor, crop fields, orchards, and a few interior pastures holding cattle sprawled away on either side of a winding stream.

Jade told Jenka he would finish the journey and then feed. Once he was sated he would be able to get the deep slumber his growing body truly needed.

The young green dragon sat them down just out of arrow range on the temple’s walled-in lawn. There were some people about, but they were farmers, not soldiers. They scattered to hide behind whatever was available. An ogre loped toward another of its kind at the edge of the tended area. It reminded Jenka of the old Crix Crux fireside tale his mother used to
tell,
only this one was fleeing a dragon, not stalking children.

Jenka was amazed that a place this far away from civilization would risk not having real defenses. The wall surrounding the main structure was only head-high to a tall man. An orc could leap right over it in stride. He knew the druids practiced powerful magic, but he couldn’t fathom them defending this place from the vermin.

They were greeted at a set of wooden doors that opened onto what was nothing less than a fully manicured garden. A small, robed and hooded form gave Lemmy a short bow then led them to the Temple.

To Jenka’s surprise, not everyone there had tattoos on their faces. Lemmy explained that only a small portion of the people at the temple were druids. Much of the labor was done by ogres and the folks that lived in the seemingly protected valley. Looking around, Jenka realized that there were a lot of things resuming. Three rows of black-robed druids, and behind them another row of brown-robed boys and girls, were praying on a tiled patio. Several pairs of brown- and black-robed men and women worked on ladders, trimming and plucking at trees that bore recognizable gourd nuts. Zahrellion had a tree like these in some special magic place she’d told him about once. The liquid in the nuts was sweet and revitalizing. The grounds were more like a village than the reclusive place of worship Jenka always imagined it to be. There was an odd dullness to a few of the laborers. Jenka couldn’t put his thumb on it, but to him they seemed dazed. Until Jenka got a closer look, the temple itself didn’t seem like much other than a well-decorated rectangle with towers at its corners. Once he saw how the puzzled pieces of stone fit together he felt insignificant, as if he were alone on the open sea. Something so amazingly intricate was baffling to him.

The hierarchy of the Order was portrayed by the color of the robes the druids wore. Brown was obviously low on the pole, and black not much higher. Jenka saw a white-robed boy whose tattooed face looked almost exactly like Zahrellion’s. He saw serious men wearing light blue robes too, but when he saw the druid in the blood-red robe trimmed in silver, he was confounded completely.

The man strolling out of the temple with his hands clasped behind his back looked exactly like Linux, so much so that Jenka decided they had to be twins. When the man was introduced as the High Druidon, Lanxe,
Jenka
decided he was correct. Lanxe’s facial tattoos were exactly the same as Linux’s. Lanxe spoke to Lemmy mentally and had no problem pushing Jenka out of the conversation. Soon the High Druidon was walking away and Jenka was following Lemmy in another direction.

We’ll refresh ourselves. After that Unisyus will show us around the grounds while the acolytes are cleared out of the librarium,
Lemmy explained.
Once that is done the libriars will be at our service
.

Jenka was shown to a room with a large tub of water in it. There was a tray of cheese and fruit on a table, and a set of clean gray robes trimmed in red. The ebon-skinned, blue-robed man who led him there reached down and spoke a few unpronounceable words while stirring his finger. Within the span of a few heartbeats the water in the tub was steaming. The druid rose, took a vial from a shelf and dropped a dollop of oily blue liquid into the bath. Soon a rich, earthy smell, like a hardwood forest in full spring, filled Jenka’s nostrils. Then the man made an offering gesture toward the tray of food and bowed his way out of the room.

After his bath, Jenka ate most of the fruit and all of the cheese. He found a different druid, this one a young man in brown robes, waiting at his door. He was led outside through a fragrant garden of pastel peach-colored blooms to a gazebo where Lemmy and a tall man in a blue robe trimmed in gold sat before a trickling water feature.

This is Unisyus,
Lemmy said in the ethereal.
Unis, Jenka De Swasso, one of the Royal Dragoneers.

I’m not that
royal
,
Jenka jested as he exchanged head bows with Unisyus.
But I am a Dragoneer.

The bald, long-bearded man was old. The triangle tattooed on his forehead was colored somewhere between blond-stained wood and brilliant gold, depending on the light. He seemed irritated about something, but did a good job of keeping his frustration in check. He started telling them about the construction of the main temple as if he were reciting a lecture. It was made of intricately-carved granite blocks that fitted together in ways that seemed impossible.
 
“...they Dou-crafted each and every stone,” he was saying. “We used ogres to fit them, of course. The ogres are the reason we can exist up here in this deep, isolated valley without being overrun by the trellkin. The ogres love smokeberry wine.” He gave a conspiratorial wink. “We make the best of it. Our only competition is the Outlanders. Even at the height of Gravelbone’s uprising we were relatively safe here. It was a group of our Order’s gatherers that were cut off from us by the hordes that came to you. We were glad to learn they made it to Kingsmen’s Keep and then Mainsted.”

“Ogres couldn’t have topped those spires,” Jenka said, trying to conceive a way for anyone to put the hammered copper sheets up on the top of the steep peaks.

“You’re right.” Unis gave Lemmy an impressed nod. “Men did it.”

“How?”
Jenka asked dubiously.

“I’d show you from the inside, but the towers were converted into apartments when the trolls went mad. Several Outlanders were caught in the mountains and ended up fleeing here too.” Unisyus answered. “As for the rooftops, they were done from the top floor of the tower, on the inside, with the last panel being hinged like a gate or a door.”

Jenka was still dubious. Craning his neck to look up at the five-story structure, he decided that it wasn’t impossible. Unis began telling some of the history of the temple, but a young man in white robes, with a silver triangle on his forehead, approached. He spoke to Unis for a moment then hurried away.

“It seems that the librarium has been cleared,” Unis told them. “Let us see if we can find that journal for which Linux sent you.”

Chapter 12

The eager libriar led them right to the text Linux was after. It was a journal written by a woman named Clover. She’d lived a century ago. She either had a vivid imagination or she was the first known rider of dragons. The latter was the case. The truth was confirmed in several accounts written in the early days of the druids’ settlement. Her wyrm, who she called Crimzon because he had scales the color of blood, was a fire drake. According to the passages Jenka read over Lemmy’s shoulder, they had an eventful time of it. Among the diary-like entries were several sketches of dragon saddles. Those were what Linux said he wanted. They were about to ask for an inkpot and quill, but then Lemmy found a page that was stuck to the next. It was the page that Linux’s message secretly told him to seek out.

Unis was standing about, talking softly with one of the libriars, and not paying much attention. Lemmy gave Jenka the hunters’ hand signal for silence. Then he carefully peeled the pages apart to find a map. To Jenka’s amazement, the tri-coiled Dragoneer emblem was sketched in the bottom corner of the page. He’d thought it a sketch of an upside down clover at first.

Linux, Jenka remembered, was the one who helped the tanners make the Dragoneers’ emblazoned vests. He must have remembered the design from Clover’s sketch.

Jenka was dying to know what the map led to.

Neither of them bothered to study the drawing. Lemmy shut the journal and began tactfully trying to get Unisyus to let them take it. The old druid balked at first, but after Lemmy promised that he would return the volume when they were done copying the saddle designs,
Unis
finally relented. Now Jenka and Lemmy were hurrying to Lemmy’s room so they could use the ink and vellum they’d obtained to copy the saddle drawings and the map.

Where does it lead?
Jenka asked as soon as they were away from Unisyus.

To a castle, I think
, Lem answered excitedly.

Jenka couldn’t help but notice how Lemmy acted more the age he looked, instead of the age he was. It was amazing to think that the half-elvish hunter was over ninety years old.

Is it close?
Jenka asked.

I’ll have to search for landmarks on the map. It was most likely made before we began earnestly settling the mainland.

We need to copy the whole journal, Lem, at least the significant passages
.
How long will that take?

Lemmy thought about it for a moment
. I can have it done by the time Jade is rested and ready to fly again,
he promised.

There was an unspoken agreement then. They were going to find the castle, if it wasn’t too far away.

Lemmy went right to work, and began copying first the saddle sketches, then the map. When he started copying text, Jenka read and studied the pages after Lem finished them. It was all general womanly stuff, about Clover’s garden and a recently deceased wizard who had schooled her in the arcane. After a while, Lemmy’s hand grew cramped. Jenka took the journal and skipped to the later entries. On the second random passage he looked at he went as pale as a sheet. There on the page was something about the Confliction.

To avoid the impending Saraxian Confliction, Crimzon and I exhausted the power of one of the teardrops his mother shed. The spell will hold the strange creatures for decades, maybe centuries, but it will not hold them forever. The call the creatures emit seeps through the coating. They crave human flesh, and are suited to hunt. Twice the size of a man, and two-legged, with thick, greasy skin, they fly fleetly on powerful wings. They swarmed Crimzon that first time, and would have brought us down. Only my uncanny luck saved us, when a storm broke, and filled the sky with lightning that seemed to be drawn to them, but did not harm them.

Vax will watch over what I have done and spend his days trying to fortify the spell, but I fear even his strong natural ability will not be enough. He is a good son, a good man. He has devoted his entire life to sustaining the encasement. Eventually it will fail, though, and the Confliction will begin again. The Sarax will not stop feeding until they have devoured all. They are not of this world. They have no respect for the life here. The steel star ship that carried them here buried itself in the earth. They cannot leave. Sooner or later we will have to kill each and every one of them, or they will surely eat us all.

We hope that the Great Seer of Corm told us true when she predicted the coming of the Dragoneers. Five dragons, with five riders, she said, will stand and face the savage Sarax to determine the fate of men. It is for these five that I will spend my last few years preparing things they may need.