The Roar of a Dragon (19 page)

‘How did you and Iskandor meet?’ I asked, fascinated.

Timor sighed. ‘During my time-traveling exploits, I decided to travel further in time to see what would become of the Ther-lor invasion. At one point, I found myself in the forest of Vidasel, I came across the dragon, and the cave where your body lay sleeping. He was quite startled to see me.’

Iskandor smiled, nodding. ‘It took a while to convince me that he had no ill intentions. From there, we became friends, and he traveled a bit further to see when you would wake up.’

‘Timor, you said that Iskandor and I would have to avoid our younger selves while in this time,’ I said thoughtfully. ‘What about you? Don’t we have to worry about running into your younger self as well?’

‘Not at all,’ Timor answered simply. ‘I will not be born for several more decades.’

My eyes nearly popped out of my head. ‘You’re not from this time?’ That explained his wistfulness when he was staring at the shattered time-traveling jewel.

Timor shook his head, and was about to answer, when Derrick suddenly held his hand up.

‘Did you hear that?’

We all fell silent and listened, but it was hard to hear anything over the thunder, the wind, and pouring rain.

Then we all heard it: a high-pitched growl, followed by several more, coming from the other end of the cave.

Suddenly, a few seconds later, it sounded like
a lot
more.

We all jumped to our feet, Derrick, Kirra, and I drawing our weapons.

‘Everyone stand behind me!’

We all obliged. I stood right behind Iskandor, so I could use my night-seeing ability to see what threat was hunting us. It was too dark for me to see the other end of the cave, but I could hear the creatures coming around the corner — their growls became much clearer at that point. And then…I could see them very clearly.

‘Goblins!’ I whispered harshly to everyone behind me. I heard Derrick curse. I silently cursed myself for a fool.

We should have explored further…

No time to worry about that now — I could kick myself later. The goblins were filing around the corner, and there seemed to be no end to them. Like all goblins, they were green-skinned, thin, bloodthirsty — not particularly intelligent, but smart enough to make their own crude weapons (or take them off of corpses) and know how to use them. They were creeping as silently as possible through the cave, thinking that we couldn’t see them, when, at least, I could.

‘Get ready,’ Iskandor whispered — for what, he didn’t say, but I obeyed anyway.

Several more seconds, and then —

Iskandor unleashed a fireball that exploded on the floor of the cave, sending goblins flying everywhere. The ground in front of the goblins was on fire, and the rage of the goblins was evident by their loud screeching.

‘The fire won’t last long!’ Iskandor shouted. ‘Out of the cave!’

The five of us scattered out of the cave, into the unforgiving storm. We then turned to face the threat, Kirra, Derrick, and I in front with our blades, Timor and Iskandor behind ready to wield their ranged magic.

Then, finally, the goblins poured out of the cave and crashed upon us like a tidal wave.

Derrick swung his massive broadsword in a wide arc, dismantling three to four goblins with every swing, while Kirra and I used our quickness and technique to kill as many as we could. Behind us, Timor and Iskandor cast as many spells as they could think of — balls of ice rained on the goblins, tree roots grabbed goblins by their feet.

But despite our efforts, there were just too many goblins. There weren’t as many coming out of the cave anymore, but a few of them were beginning to flank us.

A goblin came at me with two mismatched daggers — I didn’t waste time with extra moves. Using the length advantage of the shortswords, I swung a wide backwards arc with my right arm, slashing the goblin across the chest, then stabbed him through the abdomen with my left hand sword.

Then I heard Kirra’s voice behind me: ‘Get — off of — me!’

I spun around, Kirra crowded by two goblins, who were attempting to overwhelm her. She was holding them off for the moment, but there was a third coming up fast from her right side. I took two quick steps and kicked the approaching goblin solidly in the side, knocking him down, and stabbed him with both swords in the chest. I then turned and swung another backwards arc with my right arm, slashing the goblin on Kirra’s right side in the thigh, following up with a left sword stab into the goblin’s ribcage. The goblin fell, and Kirra took down the remaining goblin.

Without a look at Kirra, I turned my attention back to the battle.

I took a quick look around — Iskandor and Timor were holding up quite well, but Derrick was having problems.

I rushed over to give him a hand. A goblin had jumped on his back, yet Derrick was still attempting to fight off the other advancing goblins. Derrick was trying to buck the goblin off of his back like a horse, and while doing so, he saw me coming.

‘Get it off of me, Aidan!’ He shouted. ‘Smells like a rotting cow!’

Smiling, I slashed the goblin across the back with both swords. It fell to the ground, and I stabbed it in the chest.

Derrick was trying to wipe the smell of goblin off of him.

‘What’s the matter — didn’t want to keep your pet?’ I yelled over the rain and wind, grinning.

‘That’s not a pet — it’s a garbage heap with big ears,’ Derrick retorted.

Finally, the goblins began to scurry away. All told, we survived with minor injuries — I could hear Derrick groaning in pain. Turning toward him, I could see that he was holding his right leg…there was some blood visible on his upper thigh.

‘Let’s set him down inside the cave,’ I heard Kirra say. ‘We need some light.’

I could hear Timor chanting strange words, and then I could see, through my still-foggy vision, what appeared to be a brightly glowing rock, floating in the air.

Finally, I could see well enough to notice that Kirra was stripping the greaves off of Derrick’s legs.

I heard Derrick groan, ‘We’ve never even been on a date.’

‘Shut up,’ Kirra said. Then, under her breath, I heard her mutter, ‘I’m old enough to be your aunt, you ninny.’

Finally succeeding in her task, Kirra examined Derrick’s leg, Timor kneeling next to her. ‘It’s a small stab wound, he’ll be fine. I need some cloth though. Derrick, I’m going to cut off the bottom part of your trousers.’

‘Aww,’ Derrick moaned. ‘I was fond of these trousers.’

‘I’ll steal you new ones,’ Kirra said, then pulled out her dagger. While she was doing that, Timor poured a drop of water from his flask on the wound to clean it, then poured some ointment on it from a vial he had in his pouch. Derrick hissed in pain.

‘Oh, relax, you big baby,’ Kirra smirked. ‘It’s just a boo-boo.’

‘Easy for you to say,’ Derrick said through gritted teeth. ‘Timor, the next time Kirra gets a “boo-boo”, will you let me pour that stuff on it?’

I chuckled, then brought the conversation back to topic. ‘We can’t stay here. As soon as he’s ready, we leave.’

‘Hurry, Aidan! We have to reach Garridan before it’s too late!’

Garridan and his men were surrounded by enemy soldiers, and one by one, Garridan’s men were falling to the enemy’s overwhelming numbers. But Garridan, brave and valiant, fought on with grim determination
.

But then, just as Derrick and I were about to strike the first blows against the enemy, Garridan fell to a series of sword blows
.

‘NO!!’ I screamed
.

Derrick and I made short work of the enemy, fighting with great vigor for our fallen friend. When the remaining enemy soldiers fled, I found Garridan’s body and fell to my knees next to the bloody, lifeless form
.

‘I’m sorry,’ I whispered
.

‘Aidan!’ Derrick shouted
.

I jumped up, swords ready, to find another soldier suddenly right in front of me — he was wearing Delmar armor, his skin was obsidian, and his eyes were blood red
.

It was Garridan…the Ther-lor
.

‘What —’ I mumbled, looking down at the dead body on the ground, only to find that it wasn’t Garridan lying there — it was the body of another soldier, whom I didn’t recognize
.

‘What in the name of the gods —’ I said, looking for Derrick, but he was nowhere to be found
.

The Ther-lor Garridan raised his sword and swung —

I woke up with a gasp, my head darting back and forth. It took a moment to figure out where I was. Then it came to me; we were in an old, rundown fort that we had found the previous night. Kirra said it was an old watchtower in Longchester.

Then I noticed there was a dark silhouette standing right by me.

‘Ahh!’ I shouted, startled.

‘Very funny,’ Kirra said. Honestly, my alarmed reaction was not a joke, nor was it an insult about her looks (though she was ten-to-fifteen years older, Kirra had an elegant beauty about her), but rather the fact that she was staring at me when I opened my eyes.

‘How are you feeling?’ she asked.

I frowned slightly, not quite sure how to react to Kirra’s change in attitude toward me. ‘I feel fine,’ I said apprehensively.

‘I’ve heard a little bit about what you can do with your powers,’ Kirra said. She paused for a moment, seemingly not sure how to continue. ‘I’ve heard the stories from Timor, it seems to me that you don’t know what you are fully capable of just yet.’

By now, I had fully recovered from the shock of my sudden wakeup call and Kirra’s change in disposition. ‘Kirra, I don’t think this is the conversation you want to be having. Why don’t you ask me what you really want to ask?’

Kirra sighed. ‘You are smarter than you look. Alright then…during the battle with the goblins, you helped me. Why did you do that?’

I frowned, not understanding the question at all.

Kirra started over. ‘What I mean is, from the time we first met, I have treated you horribly — I have insulted you time and time again. If the situation were reversed, I can’t say I would have helped you — it’s likely that I would have let the goblins slaughter you to death.’

I nodded, taken aback slightly by her words, but appreciated her honesty at the same time.

‘Well, regardless of whether we see eye-to-eye, on the battlefield we are still comrades. If you are in trouble, I am going to do everything I can to help you. It is the code of the Knighthood and the military, but it is also who I am as a person. Yet, I understand your mindset — please don’t take this the wrong way, but thieves are, by their nature, selfish.’

I feared that Kirra would explode in anger and storm away, but to my surprise, she shrugged.

‘I can’t honestly deny that. I appreciate what you did for me.’ Her words came out hesitatingly, and I could tell Kirra wasn’t used to getting help from people or thanking people for said help.

‘There’s nothing to thank me for, Kirra. So I suppose that you have gone from hating me to being indifferent to me.’

Kirra half-smiled in response. ‘Yes…I will no longer notice you from now on.’ With that, she stood up and started to walk away.

‘Kirra,’ I said, stopping her.

‘What?’ she asked, turning around.

‘Why did you become a thief?’ I asked her.

Kirra looked down slightly, considering the question, and walked back toward me slowly. ‘Well, my mom was a thief… my dad was a thief…I really didn’t have much chance at being anything else.’

I nodded.

‘I don’t think my parents ever wanted me to become a thief like them,’ she continued, ‘but they really didn’t have any other skills to teach me. But after both of my parents had died, and it was time for me to go out on my own, I made the decision early on that I didn’t want to steal from just anybody. I had already developed a distain for the wealthy, arrogant aristocrat, the kind of person who has no appreciation for what they have, who treats everyone around them like filth, who truly believes that they own everything.’

‘Those are very risky targets,’ I observed. ‘The more wealthy the target, the more guards they have, and the more security they have.’

‘Indeed,’ she said. ‘I knew I had to very either very careful, or very quick — but usually, I had to be both. True, I got caught a few times, but I scored much more often than I was caught. Over time, my name became legend among thieves and feared among the rich.’

I thought for a moment, and then decided to ask a question that had been lingering in my mind. ‘You must have made a lot of gold by stealing from the wealthy…what did you do with all of it? Your clothes aren’t exactly upper-class, and your weapons are of fairly common design, though well-made.’

Kirra’s eyes seemed to drift far away, and for a moment, it didn’t seem like her mind was here having this conversation with me. But, just like that, her eyes snapped back to attention.

‘I’m afraid that is a personal matter, Aidan. I’m not going to discuss it now…but perhaps, someday, you’ll know the whole story.’ With that, she stood up and left.

I felt a small twinge of regret — like I had gone too far into Kirra’s past, though unintentionally. It was clear that something was haunting her, something that she really didn’t want to discuss, at least with me. But in the same instance, I was glad that Kirra and I had gotten to know each other a little better.

***

‘So does anyone know what type of situation we’re walking into in Longchester?’ I asked the group as we resumed our journey later that day.

Derrick shrugged. ‘Well, as everyone in the kingdom knows, King Holden died, and his young son took the throne —’

‘King Holden died?!’ I exclaimed, suddenly overcome with shock and a slight amount of grief. I didn’t know King Holden well, but had met him once before my death when he was a guest in Alexia. We didn’t speak more than a few words to each other, but those words were very kind and respectful, and it didn’t take much for me to consider him a good man. From everything that I had heard, his people adored him, and he loved them just as much.

‘Oh, yeah…I forgot,’ Derrick said sheepishly. ‘I’m sorry, Aidan. Anyhow, yes, the king passed away, and his son, Marion, whom the King’s Council thought too young and a bit on the immoral side, took the throne.’

‘If the Council thought he wasn’t a good fit, why did they allow him to take the throne?’ I asked.

‘I can answer that,’ Kirra said. ‘From what I heard, there’s more to the king’s death than meets the eye.’

‘What do you mean?’ Derrick questioned.

‘Well, I don’t know anything for certain,’ Kirra said, ‘but it is also fairly well known that he didn’t have much faith in his son as a king.’

I nodded. ‘Well, Marion was very vocal on his views on punishment for crimes…he wanted his country to use torture for even the slightest infraction. In my previous life, no king of Longchester had tortured anyone for many generations.’

‘Torture for pick pocketing,’ Kirra said absentmindedly. ‘I’d like to torture
him
for even letting that idea creep into his mind.’

‘I’m sure you would, Kirra,’ I said, with a half-smile. Kirra narrowed her eyes in response.

Derrick’s brow was frowned in thought. ‘Are you implying that Prince Marion — well, King Marion now — was involved in his father’s death?’

‘Not directly,’ Kirra answered. ‘I believe that Marion
had
King Holden assassinated. One thing is true: Marion showed little remorse at his father’s death. The Council put Marion on the throne out of fear. My sources told me that more than half of the eight members were opposed to making him king, but the rest convinced them that if they didn’t, all of them would meet the same demise as their king.’

Derrick shook his head with a bewildered look on his face. ‘How do you hear all of these things?’

Kirra gave him a sly smile. ‘I have eyes and ears
everywhere.’

Derrick chuckled. ‘Do your “sources” have any idea on how Lady Mirabelle might feel about this, if such is the case?’

Lady Mirabelle — the Lady Knight of Longchester and leader of their armies. As beautiful as she was deadly on the battlefield, she had no reputation for boasting about her battle skills or her exceptional beauty. I had never met her personally or seen her in battle, but I was told that she was extremely easy to spot on the battlefield, no matter how large the battle. Like me, she never wore a helmet, and her long, wavy red hair was like a beacon to her position. Mirabelle became a knight three years before my death, though she wasn’t much older than me, and there was one thing I did know for sure: she was more beloved and famous than her king. But for King Holden, that was never a problem; he cared for Mirabelle deeply — some say like she was his daughter — and between the two of them, they combined for a presence that bordered on hypnotic among their people.

‘Lady Mirabelle has her suspicions, and she hasn’t been very quiet about them.’ Kirra said. ‘She has told some people around her that she believes Marion to be responsible for King Holden’s death.’

‘Does King Marion know of this?’ Timor asked.

‘He does,’ Kirra said, a bit dramatically, but with certainty.

‘I would suggest that Lady Mirabelle’s days are numbered then,’ I said. ‘If Marion did, in fact, have his father killed, and did so with little or no remorse, you can bet that he’ll do the same to Mirabelle.’

‘I’m not so sure,’ Derrick said thoughtfully. ‘Not only does he need Mirabelle, but if she were to mysteriously die like his father, Marion and his army might well be trampled to death by their own people…which would be funny, come to think of it.’

‘Well, it seems to me that we simply need to be prepared for the worst when we arrive in Longchester,’ Iskandor said.

‘Not as easy as it sounds, my friend,’ Timor said. ‘Assuming we can even get into the castle, we request to King Marion that we need to speak with Azizi, his castle wizard. Hopefully, the king won’t have a problem with that.’

‘Somehow, I don’t think that it’ll be that easy,’ Kirra said in a low voice.

***

Four days later, the five of us stood on a hilltop, looking out across the vast Valley of Yaroth, and on the other side of that valley, stood the Royal City of Longchester. The city was enormous, gray, and square, and from our vantage point, still miles away, the city looked like a beacon of peace.

‘Maybe we’ll arrive and find the city at peace,’ Derrick said.

‘Yes, perhaps they’ll all be naked, holding hands, and dancing around a giant bonfire, singing songs of unicorns and fairy dust,’ Kirra quipped sarcastically.

Derrick shrugged. ‘I’ve seen stranger things.’

Kirra put her hands on her hips and sighed.

‘Things are going to get difficult if we’re walking into a possible war zone,’ I observed. ‘We should be prepared to fight.’

‘We should be prepared to reason,’ Timor corrected me. ‘We’re not going to fight our way through hundreds of people.’

I couldn’t disagree with that — but doubted we’d have better luck reasoning.

‘Let us just get to the gates, and figure out our next move from there,’ Iskandor said. ‘It is getting dark quickly.’

The sun was indeed dipping low in the sky, and so we started down the hill into the Yaroth Valley. A light wind blew through the valley, and the atmosphere was quite peaceful. A few small clouds drifted overhead, watching us cross the valley from above. The valley itself was green and grassy, with several patches of trees, and a few large rocks lying scattered in various places.

As the sun began to approach the horizon, the city gates of Longchester finally came into view, as well as the two guards posted outside of them.

‘What are we going to tell them?’ Kirra asked.

‘What’s wrong with the truth?’ Timor asked in return.

Kirra glared at the young wizard. ‘Because the truth is that we know about a ritual that no one else knows about, we have a soldier in our midst who is supposed to be
dead,
—’ Kirra jerked a thumb in my direction ‘— and we are bringing a dragon into an anti-dragon country. Now you tell me — what’s wrong with the truth?’

‘There is no need for us to explain the entire story,’ Timor said. ‘All we really need to do is request an audience with King Marion. All other facts can be omitted for the purposes of our entry.’

‘Oh,’ Kirra muttered thoughtfully. ‘Yes, I suppose that could work.’

I glanced at Kirra. ‘In mentioning all the reasons why we wouldn’t get into the city, Kirra, you left out one thing — yourself. I’m sure the guards will be
very
thrilled to hear that the “Queen of the Thieves” is going to try to simply stroll into the city.’

Kirra gave me a sharp, penetrating look.

‘He’s not wrong,’ Derrick added. ‘Let me do the talking.’

‘Aidan, perhaps you should put up your hood,’ Iskandor suggested. ‘We may have better luck if the guards cannot see our eyes.’

I agreed.

We stopped a short distance from the gates, and I could hear the guards coming out to greet us. The top half of my vision was obscured by my black hood; all I could see directly in front of me was the back of Derrick’s steel greaves and steel boots. I could see Kirra’s leather boots next to Derrick, feel Iskandor’s presence next to me, and hear Timor’s light shuffling next to Kirra.