The Deer Prince's Murder: Book Two of 'Fantasy & Forensics' (Fantasy & Forensics 2) (23 page)

Chapter Thirty-One

Damp or not, the woods behind us leapt into flame as Sirrahon’s fiery breath ignited the underbrush. Adrenaline pumping, I managed to lever myself up onto Galen’s back just as the centaur swerved to one side. I gulped as I looked to the rear. The hellish red of Sirrahon’s jet of fire moved to track us. High above, the creature’s baleful eyes shone down at us like searchlights.

“Faster, Galen!” I cried, as the dragon flexed its neck, and the molten cone of its breath moved ever closer. “He’s almost got us!”

The wizard said nothing. He bent into his full gallop, face red with exertion. His breath came out as tight, wheezing gasps. I got ready to jump. At this speed, I’d be lucky not to land and break an ankle. But I was slowing Galen down, and I wasn’t about to let him get toasted on my account.

Just as I was about to leap, I heard the dull
crump
of rock on bone. The dragon’s cone of breath shut off like water from a tap. Galen skidded to a stop and I scrambled off his back. We turned to see what had happened.

Shaw circled the dragon’s head, wings beating furiously. He held a stone the size of a steamer trunk in his leonine forepaws.

“Dost thou like the sting of rock, monster?” Sirrahon rubbed the top of his snout where the griffin had either lobbed or dropped a rocky payload as Shaw taunted him. “I have another taste of it here for you!”

The dragon’s head bobbed at the end of his sinuous neck. He snapped at the griffin, jaws closing inches away as Shaw bobbed and weaved. The griffin shot skywards as Sirrahon made a mighty lunge. My heart caught in my throat as I heard a
crunch
.

Shaw dropped away, leaving the dragon clutching only the rock in his jaws.

“Galen!” I shouted, “Can you hit that stone with something?”

“A target that size is foal’s play,” he said grimly. He flung his arm forward, releasing the ball of magical energy he’d kept spinning in his palm.

The glowing sphere sailed up along the dragon’s neck, disappearing against the creature’s bulk until it touched the stone. A
fizt!
as it detonated.

The rock Shaw had jammed into Sirrahon’s mouth exploded. Sharp fragments rained down around us. At least some were stone. Many were jagged remnants of the dragon’s teeth.

Sirrahon blinked, as if he wasn’t sure what had just happened.

Then he let out a roar that shook the leaves off any nearby trees that weren’t already ablaze.

Oh, great,
I thought.
We just pissed him off.

Instinctively, I ducked as the
slithering
sound came again. Galen danced back as the dragon’s telephone-pole sized tail sliced the air between us. The wizard shouted his next incantation over the din of smashed trees. The lightning bolt that shot from his fingertip glanced off the side of the dragon’s head, rocking it backwards and leaving a black scorch mark.

Shaw darted in again, slashing at Sirrahon’s neck with his talons and beak. The sound of chalk on a marble-hard surface echoed as the griffin’s attack did little more than attract the dragon’s attention for a moment. But it gave me an opening as Sirrahon turned away to snap at the retreating griffin.

My gun looked pitifully small in my hands as I assumed a shooter’s stance and took careful aim at the dragon’s eye. I’d tried this once before with the dragons that had attacked me and Galen in these very same woods. It was worth a try. Sirrahon’s near eye was a lot further away, but the fact that it was the size of a Cadillac’s hubcap made things easier.

I squeezed off a trio of shots. Two sparked against the creature’s stone-tough hide and whined off harmlessly. The third hit home. I didn’t see so much as a scuff mark on the clear scale that protected the eye, but the yellow iris pulsed and Sirrahon bellowed anew. Maybe I hadn’t done more than give it a good poke, but again, it was enough to get its attention.

Too much attention. My guts turned to jelly as the diesel throb of Sirrahon’s fire breath got going again.

Destry phased into existence off to my right. He reared, neighing wildly, silhouetting his black form against a cluster of burning trees. Sirrahon cut loose, smothering the pooka in dragon fire. Destry may have been an ethereal, but I held my breath until Sirrahon let up. The mystical horse appeared, unharmed and phased into insubstantiality amidst the flames.

If this had been any other time, I might have laughed at Sirrahon’s puzzled expression. But the dragon ignored the pooka from then on, and decided to start crunching forward on all fours deeper into the Fayleene woods.

Liam stood in his way, looking like a child’s toy set before the fully grown monster. Before I could shout at him to get out of the way, the Fayleene’s antlers glowed with power again. The remaining thunderbird circled back into the fray and let out its keen whistle. With a
CRACKOOM
, a double-forked bolt of lightning stabbed from the clouds and hit Sirrahon in the chest. The dragon halted his forward charge and staggered for a moment.

Shaw, seeing his foe stagger, dove in to slice at the dragon’s head again.

But that was a feint. And our griffin fell for it.

With the quickness of a striking snake, Sirrahon whirled to one side, smacking the incoming griffin with his tail. Shaw tumbled in midair, stunned. The dragon caught him in one taloned fist. All I could see was the griffin’s dazed eagle head sticking out from the dragon’s cruel fist.

“Oh, dear God–” I choked out.

Sirrahon squeezed.

Shaw let out a heart-rending squawk. The crisp
pop!
of a two-by-four announced the snap of one of his ribs.

Liam’s eyes went blank as the thunderbird called down a second lightning strike. Galen called up a second energy sphere and hurled it at Sirrahon’s side. I emptied the remaining bullets in my gun. All of our blows made the creature flinch, but he refused to let go.

A second
pop
. Then a third.

“
Mon dieu
,” Destry’s voice whispered in my mind.

“Galen!” I cried, “Get Shaw out of there!”

The wizard hesitated. “If I do, then I won’t have the energy to get anyone else out of trouble.”

Shaw’s next squawk turned into a mewling cry of pain. A gout of bright red fountained from his beak.

“Do it, Galen!”

The wizard swung his hands forward, shouting his incantation. A white glow enveloped the griffin. Shaw vanished from the dragon’s vise-like grip.

Sirrahon’s beaklike snout grinned at us through a horrible skein of broken teeth. He crouched forward, his hungry eyes turned toward Liam a second time. The dragon’s pose looked familiar.

In fact, it looked exactly like his sigil from the book in Galen’s saddlebag.

“We have to change our tactics,” I stated, as the wizard trotted over. “All we’re doing is annoying him.”

Galen wiped a soot-stained brow clear with the sleeve of his now ruined jacket. “In that, I must agree.”

“Before we left, Master Zenos found Sirrahon’s sigil inside the Codex,” I explained, as the forest shook with another of the dragon’s mighty steps. “How can we use that in this fight?”

The wizard shook his head. “I don’t see how. A sigil is a magical seal. Used to bind creatures in caves and cells, or to magically repel someone from opening a secret scroll or document. None of which are applicable to our current predicament.”

I fought down a wave of panic as Sirrahon split the world with his roar again. Think, think!

“Wait, wait! Zenos said that a sigil was a kind of ‘seal’, or a ‘banner’ of power. What does that mean in this world?”

“A banner is a flag that conveys a symbol, or a message. In combat, it is the formal declaration that a lord has decided to give battle.”

I tucked away my gun, understanding. “Then that’s what we have to use it as.”

Destry wavered into tangibility to our side. “Whatever you do, I would move
très vite
. The beast bears down upon the Fayleene quite rapidly, no?”

A third crack of thunder was cut short as Sirrahon blasted Liam’s remaining thunderbird out of the sky with a gout of flame. The time for debate was up.

“Destry,” I said quickly, “You can get to Liam faster than we can. Tell him to do whatever he can to distract Sirrahon for the next half-minute. We have a plan.”

The pooka bowed to us and winked out. Galen helped me mount up and then took off at a gallop towards the Protector. I held on to Galen’s torso with one arm and turned around as best I could, opening up the top of the nearest saddlebag. I had to hunt more by feel than sight, but I managed to grab the Codex and hold it tight.

A chorus of squeaks, trills, and squawks filled the air overhead. Birds of every color and shape, from magnificently tressed songbirds to spare, stern looking hawks erupted from the trees, all making a beeline for Sirrahon.

It looked like a pathetic excuse for a delaying action, but it actually worked. The clouds of birds completely blocked Sirrahon’s vision. They pecked at the thinner scales of his eyes, his ears. The dragon raked his talons through the assembled flocks, smashing dozens of creatures at a time, but he had been stopped.

Galen stopped before where Liam stood atop a tiny rise at the edge of what remained of the Sacred Grove. Destry waited next to him, his form wavering between tangibility and phantasm. His eyes glowed as they continued to call and send birds against Sirrahon, but he sensed my approach as I dismounted.

“The birds are a clever stratagem,” Galen remarked.

“Birds may be too small to stop a dragon,” Liam said, with a smirk. “But I know how many there are in my forest. And I have a
lot
of them.”

“Then before you run out, I’ve got a plan to try.”

“That’s the best news I’ve heard all day.”

“The thing is…” I admitted, with a hard swallow, “That it puts you right in the line of fire. If it doesn’t work…”

“Then Sirrahon might as well slather me in barbeque sauce and have at it, as you might say.”

I blushed. I’d spoken those very words here in the grove. They didn’t sound very amusing now. But Liam shrugged it off and motioned me to go on.

I held up the Codex and then opened it to the page with Sirrahon’s blood-red sigil. “This book is infused with magic. And it’s got Sirrahon’s sign on it. A sign of power, or a ‘banner’. I’m betting that if you display it, challenge Sirrahon, that it will repel him.”

Liam thought about that for a moment. He sighed. “It’s that, or nothing. Give me the sigil to display.”

I considered how to secure the book to Liam’s frame. I decided to simply jam the open book between his newly grown antlers. To my amazement, the Codex fit snugly, and the nubs on the inside edges of his antlers worked to hold the pages open to the right place.

“Galen, if you have any magic left, help Liam project his voice, his image.” The wizard nodded curtly as I turned to Destry. “I don’t think we can change our responses on the fly this time. But if you can read the dragon’s thoughts, his reactions…maybe we’ll at least know if this is going to work.”

“That I can do, Dayna,” the pooka agreed.

Sirrahon let out a bellow of triumph as he swiped away the last of the birds. Galen backed off to one side, murmuring his incantations. I remained where I was, Destry next to me. Liam took a few steps forward, head raised, the book perched securely in his antlers. The white glow around his eyes and antlers had been replaced by a blue one as Galen completed his spellcraft.

“Sirrahon!” Liam cried, and his voice boomed like surf against ocean cliffs. “Stay your wrath and come no further!”

The mighty dragon glared down at Liam. Stubs of broken teeth gleamed from deep within his mouth. A long scuff showing the mark of griffin talons trailed down one side of his head, while Galen and Liam’s lightning bolts had left dark blotches on several of his large, flat scales. But aside from giving him a reason for a trip to the dentist, we really hadn’t done the dragon any substantial physical damage.

But at least Liam had his attention. Now, as the rest of Galen’s spellcraft took effect, the Fayleene seemed to grow to five or six times his size. It was illusory, and still far too small to cause Sirrahon any alarm. But the image of the sigil had grown too.