Legends of the Dragonrealm, Vol. III (24 page)

Gwen nodded, understanding. She understood quite well what it meant to grow up in wartime.

“Chaenylon, it was.” The monarch of Penacles unsheathed both sets of claws again. “Chaenylon, which will forever mean despair to us.”

They had only taken the Aramite port city some three months before, but in that short time it had quickly become a valuable part of their western campaign. Chaenylon gave them a new location to ship supplies to the forces ever inching closer to the heart of the empire, Canisargos. After all these years, the empire’s great citadel was within striking distance. The Aramites had always been more willing to give up their slave states rather than leave Canisargos anything but much overdefended. Now, not even that would save them. The confederation of free kingdoms, with the help of the Gryphon and Duke Morgis, had put together a combination of armies that would soon launch an attack in the direction of the Aramite city. It was possible that the wolf raider empire would cease to exist within the next three years.

That did not mean that the raiders would be defeated. There would be pockets of resistance for years and more than a few ships had slipped away into the open sea.

Gwen flinched when she heard the last. She had still not told her guests of the wolf raider rumors, in part because she feared that they would leave the moment they knew, but also because she herself
needed
to know what had happened overseas.

“Either they knew about the impending attack or it was pure bad fortune, but whatever the case, one morning Chaenylon itself came under assault.
Six
warships simply sailed in. The harbor was madness. They utilized special catapults to bombard the city. There were gryph—gryphon riders everywhere. Worse, from every ship there came an armed force. We turned back the first wave, but there was no way of keeping the second from landing.” The lionbird’s eyes lost their focus. He was once again in the midst of battle. “Western Chaenylon was in flames. The Aramites seized control of the docks, then spread through the city.”

Lady Bedlam recalled the siege of Penacles long ago. She and Cabe, fleeing the Dragon Kings who had sought the grandson of Nathan Bedlam, had been given refuge by the Gryphon. The drakes had not taken kindly to that. For days, they had tried to take Penacles. While the battle had never quite escalated to the sort of fighting that the defenders of Chaenylon must have gone through, it had been terrible enough. She could only imagine what her two guests had suffered through.

“We can never be certain of what happened.”

“We know
enough!
” hissed Troia. “We know that it was
D’Farany
again or at least one of his puppets!”

“Yesss, we know
that.
We know it was D’Farany’s curs, Troia, or else why would we be here in the first place?” Gwen would have spoken then, but the Gryphon, not noting her reaction to this latest revelation, continued with his horrific tale. “It happened during the fighting. We thought he would be safe where we had placed him. Understand, Lady Bedlam, that we valued Demion above
all
else. He was our pride. Despite his desires, we kept him away as much as we could, but no one could count on wolf raider tenacity.”

They had moved Demion and several others to what was considered the safest quarter of the city. Well behind the haphazard line of fighting. Not only was there a line of defense to protect him, but there was also little in that quarter that should have interested the raiders. Chaenylon had been one of the empire’s centers for cartographical study and thus great archives housing much of the sum of their seafaring knowledge had been built there. Maps dating back thousands of years were stored in the archives as were the most current. Whether drawn up by the Aramites themselves or stolen from some captured vessel, the maps were all carefully stored for future use. Much of the region where Demion had been placed was simply an outgrowth of those archives. There were only small stores of weapons and food there. Anything of true value to the invading force should have been near the fighting.

Yet, someone among the raiders had evidently found some need for those maps. Enough need to send a small but efficient force to hunt down the archives. They had somehow slipped past the lines, a trail of dead sentries marking their way. Their target they reached with minimal resistance, for everyone’s attention was on the main struggle. Once inside the buildings, they had proceeded to ransack the archives.

There it was that they had also evidently come across Demion, who had left the safety of the building he had originally been housed in by his parents.

Here again the Gryphon straightened. His mane bristled and his voice was both proud and bitter as he added, “We know that he and a few soldiers evidently with him gave of themselves the best they could. Nine raiders met their end there, three of them definite kills by our son.” He clenched his fists together. “But there were more than nine.”

“And the coward that
cut
him down did so from behind!” roared the furious and frustrated cat woman. She was on her feet in an instant, her own claws flashing in and out as she no doubt pictured the scene in her mind.

Despite barely being able to keep her own composure, Gwen responded in soothing tones. “But he did not let them take him without paying for it, Troia, Gryphon! He did not let himself be taken without payment. He fought honorably to the end. I grieve for your loss, but it is the good memories of him you must keep in mind from here on. The memories of what he was to you and how he will
always
be with you no matter where you are.” She was aware how different the thinking processes of the two were compared to that of either herself or Cabe. Both the Gryphon and his mate were civilized, but they were also predators, more than even humans were. She could only hope that her quick words carried some meaning to them. “Demion would want you to be looking forward, not dwelling in a maelstrom of hurt and anger.”

“We look forward, Lady of the Amber. We look forward to the final hunt, the snaring, and the running down of the curs responsible for his death.” The Gryphon’s part-avian, part-human eyes glared at the empty sky. Both he and his bride calmed a bit, if only on the outside. “Curs who have run to the Dragonrealm, if what we discovered is true.”

“The Dragonrealm?” It was a verification of everything she had feared, but Gwen did not reveal that fear to the duo.

Unwilling to sit down again, Troia began to pace gracefully back and forth. “In the end, we repulsed the damned dogs’ attack. They lost two ships there, but Chaenylon was in ruins. It took us the better part of the day to discover . . . his body. Whether the raider who killed him returned to the ships with the other survivors or died in the city before he could flee, we’ll probably never know, my lady. I wish we would . . . I’d follow him personally to the ends of the world . . . What we do know is that they seemed most interested in charts concerning the Dragonrealm.”

“And we discovered then that three of the ships never returned to the empire,” interjected the Gryphon. “Three ships, including the one carrying Lord D’Farany.”

“You mentioned him twice now . . . who is he?”

“He is a keeper, Lady Bedlam. An Aramite sorcerer.”

His words struck her with the force of a well-shot bolt. Having kept abreast of the distant war since its inception, the enchantress was aware of most of the major events. There was one in particular she recalled about the sinister keepers. “But they all died! Almost twenty years ago!”

“Died or gone
mad,
you mean? Lord Ivon D’Farany did not die; as to whether he went mad, that is another question.”

“Even still, he should be powerless!” Was Cabe heading toward a confrontation with a sorcerer of the darkest arts? “You said that they—”

“Had lost their link with their god, the unlamented Ravager, yes. You recall correctly. That loss, that withdrawal, was enough to kill most of them and leave the others mindless.” He squawked. “Somehow, a young keeper named D’Farany survived and although it cannot be vouchsafed that he had no power of his own, he has time and time again brought forth sorcerous talismans and artifacts that were thought lost and used them to the raiders’ advantage.” The lionbird held up his maimed hand. “This is the work of Lord D’Farany; even my skill is insufficient to heal it proper. Troia, too, bears the mark of one of the keeper’s discoveries.” She turned so that Gwen could better see the scars across her face. For the first time, the enchantress noticed that they
glowed
ever so slightly. Glowed bloodred. “He, more than anything else, has slowed the course of the war by at least three, perhaps four years.”

“And he does all this even though the dogs themselves mutter about his sanity!” Troia snorted, still pacing about.

Her quick, constant movements were disrupting Gwen’s attempts to remain calm. “You think he’s here.”

“He
has
to be,” the lionbird returned, almost pleading again. “There is no other place for him to hide so great a force. He cannot stay anywhere near the empire or the free lands. D’Farany, by abandoning the war, has in a sense made himself enemy of both. That is why he must be here.”

“What about the war? What will happen with you gone?”

He looked closely at her. “The war now moves well even without us and especially without D’Farany to aid them. We have given more than a decade of our own lives in addition to the life of our one child. There was no one who did not think we were entitled to depart. I did not abandon them. In fact, Sirvak Dragoth would only be too happy to see an end made of the curs. D’Farany and his men, as long as they live to fight again, will forever be a fear covering the freed lands and the surrounding waters.”

“We’ll find him, my lady,” hissed the cat woman. “He killed Demion as good as if he were the one who struck the blow. His death alone will pay for our son’s.”

The anxious sorceress could not help but blurt, “Do you truly think so?”

Neither of them could look at her then, but Troia slowly replied, “Nothing else will balance that scale, not even . . .” She held her tongue at the last moment, apparently unwilling to share some further revelation with her host. “Nothing.”

“The voyage across did nothing but stir the embers to new life,” the Gryphon added. It seemed whenever one faltered, the other was there to continue the tale. To Gwen, it revealed just how close the duo were to each other and in turn how close they had been to their son. “When we arrived on the shore of southeastern Irillian, I was barely able to control my desire to use sorcery to speed our journey to here along. Out of respect of the Blue Dragon, I held off until we reached the borders between his domain and that of the Storm Dragon. Then I found I could not wait any longer. Daring the lord of Wenslis’s ire, I teleported us from his lands to the ruins of Mito Pica, just beyond your forest. We would have even materialized at the very border of your domain, but the Green Dragon has ever been a good neighbor to Penacles and I would not wish to cause my former home any ill will.”

“We’ve told you our story, Lady Bedlam.” Troia stalked up to the enchantress, then nearly went down on one knee just before her. “Gryph said that if anyone could help us, if anyone had some word, it would be the Bedlams.”

The Gryphon stood beside his mate, the maimed hand on her shoulder. “Even if you have no word of the raiders, I ask that you might grant us the boon of letting us stay but one night so that we might be refreshed for the hunt ahead of us. You have my word that I will make amends for the trouble.”

She looked at them, at their eyes that both pleaded and hoped, and wanted to say that she had heard nothing. Like Darkhorse with Shade, they were obsessed. Gwen could not find it in herself to lie to them, though, possibly because she knew that under the circumstances she would have acted the same way.

“We think the wolf raiders are in Legar.”

They stood motionless before her, not at first comprehending her blunt statement.

“Cabe is there . . . and Darkhorse, too.”

The Gryphon did not question her reasons for not volunteering the information earlier. Perhaps he understood that she had wanted to hear his tale first. Instead, he asked, “How long ago? Where exactly?”

Troia stood up and clutched his arm. Her claws dug into it, but the Gryphon did not seem to notice.

“We do not know. Cabe—and Aurim—had a vision. Then, Cabe had another. They were peculiar, but both pointed to Legar. Both pointed to the Crystal Dragon . . . and wolf raiders.”

“The Crystal Dragon.”

Familiar with the Dragonrealm only through the stories told by her husband, Troia did not note the significance. “Can we speak with this Dragon King? Will he aid us?”

Again, the lionbird’s mane bristled. “The Crystal Dragon is not like Blue or Green, both of whom we might appeal to under certain circumstances. He is like none of his counterparts, Troia. He and his predecessors have ever been reclusive. He will tolerate those who, for one reason or another, find themselves traversing the peninsula, but woe betide anyone who seeks to disturb his peace. It was he who helped turn the tide against one of his own, the Ice Dragon. Without his aid, the Dragonrealm might now be a dead land under an eternal sheet of ice and snow.” The Gryphon grew contemplative. “Tell me about Cabe and his journey. Tell me everything.”

Gwen did, describing the visions, the Bedlams’ decisions, and the attack on the person of the Dragon King Green. The Gryphon tilted his head to one side during the telling of that incident and also the mention of the black ship in the vision. Cabe’s missive from Zuu particularly attracted his attention. New life had come into his eyes, but it was still a life dedicated to one cause, finding the ones responsible for his son’s death.

“Zuu. I remember Blane. His horsemen.”

“And Lanith?” asked the enchantress.

“He is unknown to me and hardly a factor in this.”

She did not think so herself, but telling the Gryphon that was not so easy. “You’re planning to go there.”

“Yes.”