The Confliction (Book Three of the Dragoneers Saga) (Dragoneer Saga) (18 page)

He looked up at Aikira and she saw a flash of confusion in his eyes. Then she heard the sudden thrumming of Sarax swarming in from behind her. It was all Golden could do to leap clear of the toothy alien creatures. Then the hot static blast of Rolph’s Druid magic nearly scorched them as they went.

The last thing Aikira saw before her dragon carried her clear of that part of the city was a glassine green dome snap into place over the very spot she had just left. Outside of the field, the Sarax began decimating anything they could get hold of. Soon the whole city was thick with goblins, orcs, and trolls. For every knot of vermin, there was an ivory-antlered alien imago commanding them.

There were Sarax, too. So many that Golden and her rider were soon caught in a swarm. One of the Sarax had a pike-like weapon and jabbed it at her. When it touched Golden, a familiar shock flashed through her body. The burst bit straight through flesh and scale, but Aikira cast forth a pulse of energy that sent the foul creature flailing away. It didn’t matter. There were a hundred more there to take its place.

When Marcherion and blaze came streaking down out of the sky over Delton, March saw the strange green dome flash into existence. A Sarax that had been half in, half out of the limits of the field was cut in two. The upper portion of torso and one of its wings slid down the edge of the dome, leaving a dark, shimmering streak. He remembered the other Dragoneers telling him how Mysterian cast forth such a thing to save ships full of soldiers landing to defend Mainsted when Gravelbone was attacking. He wondered why the dome was so much smaller than Rikky and Jenka had described. Then he saw a flash of gold deep inside a swarm of Sarax. Blaze didn’t need direction. The fire drake surged toward Golden with powerful thrusts of his wings. Marcherion’s rage fueled the magic contained in his white gold medallion. As his dragon spewed forth gouts of searing flame, twin rays of cherry shot from his eyes. They sliced through everything they contacted.

March could see that Golden was bitten in at least two places. One of the bites looked severe, but it was near the dragon’s rump, away from her wings. The amount of damage being done by Aikira’s wizard magic was fading. March didn’t cast spells, so he had never experienced spell weariness firsthand, but he’d heard Jenka complain of it. He’d seen how his fellow Dragoneer was drained to a husk when he’d sealed up the star ship what seemed like an age ago.

Marcherion’s rage caused him to nearly sear off one of Golden’s wings. At least a third of the swarm was littering the city below. Most of the remainder of the alien creatures were dispersing. Only a few were still trying to harry the dragon and its rider. One of these was drenched in dragon blood and seemed intent on finishing the meal it had started.

Blaze carried them right over Aikira, and as soon as they were clear, the fire drake roasted one of the creature’s wings to cinders. Marcherion felt an urge and shouted out a word from deep within. Up from his gut and out of his mouth a lightning-sharp streak of raw power pulsed forth and evaporated another Sarax into a misty wet cloud of black goo.

March looked up, coughing, to see another Sarax dropping at him from above. It never had a chance to get there, for Aikira and Golden went banking around so sharply that they were upside down. The gold dragon’s thinned spew did little to the creature, but its hind claws latched a hold and hurled it away fast enough that neither dragon nor Dragoneer were affected by the thing’s bright, flashing defensive pulse.

“I’m sure glad to see you,” Aikira yelled as her dragon came back around to glide just above Blaze.

“And you. Where is Zahrellion? Have you seen Rikky?” Marcherion asked, his anger slowly turning into concern.

“Zah is escorting hundreds of refugees west. I’ve not seen Rikky, or Jenka.” Aikira looked defeated as she spoke over the rush of the wind. “The king and queen, the Outland councils, and a handful of witches are huddled under that.” She was pointing at the strange emerald dome amid the chaos.

“I’d sure hate to be them,” said March. “We’re going after Zahrellion. We can’t leave her alone.”

“But those people—”

“There is something far worse coming this way, Aikira,” March said. “They’ll either survive or they won’t. We have to find the others. It will take all of the Dragoneers and more to stop what’s coming.”

It seemed as if the long strung-out group of mostly unarmed refugees Zahrellion was watching over was safe until the sun went down. Luckily, no one tried to stop and set up camp. With Crystal’s help, Zahrellion could make out the creatures, but the evacuees were being plucked one at a time. It was hard defending the people because by the time Zah saw one of the Sarax coming, she couldn’t attack it without harming those over which she was watching. One of the creatures latched a hold of a heavy man. As it struggled to carry him off, Crystal blasted the Sarax with her glacial breath. The weight of the frozen alien, when it landed on top of the man, killed him instantly. Zahrellion didn’t have time to feel guilty, though: already more Sarax were coming to feed.

As best as she could tell, there were only half a dozen of them, but in the darkness it was impossible to say for certain. Zah mistakenly assumed that the Sarax weren’t interested in attacking her. Then she was jabbed in the back by a long rod just before an explosion of power shot through her. Crystal roared out in agony as the flow of pain carried through the rider into the wyrm.

As if in slow motion, Zahrellion slipped from her saddle and fell. She impacted the muddy earth a good way from the road and bounced. In a rage, Crystal made an impossibly sharp turn and froze three of the attacking Sarax as she searched for her fallen rider.

Twice Sarax came streaking in formation and shocked Crystal with their pulsing weapons. She was large enough to absorb most of the power, but it was painful. For the rest of the night she led the Sarax away from the area and then returned after she’d lost them in the darkness.

When the big frost dragon finally found Zahrellion, the sun was starting to lighten the sky. Crystal could smell trellkin in the air and knew that the beasts following the bloody road from Delton would soon be on them. Zahrellion was unconscious and Crystal didn’t think she could get her into her saddle, so she gently clutched the white-haired girl in her claw and lifted into the sky. Immediately, fear shot through her when she saw two winged forms closing in from above. Relieved beyond measure to see that it was Golden and Blaze, and their riders, Crystal let out a roar that told the other wyrms she needed them.

A few moments later, Aikira was tending to Zahrellion’s unconscious form.

“If only Rikky were here,” Marcherion mumbled from his strapped-in seat atop Blaze’s saddle. “He knows all the healing spells.”

“I know some healing spells, too.” Aikira was resolved to keep her emotions contained. Over the winter she had grown close to Zah, but she was jealous as well. Zahrellion had Jenka, while she’d felt there was no other choice but to leave Weldon behind in Indale. She could have found him and asked him to help the ogres mind Clover’s Castle. If she had, he might still be alive.

Now he was dead.

She fought to keep control of her mind as she murmured the words of a spell that would help revitalize Zahrellion from the inside. She cast it, but her lack of strength kept the magic from being very effective. Zahrellion only barely came around.

Crystal moved her big white icicle-horned head over them and cast the exact same spell by repeating Aikira’s words. This time Zahrellion was filled with a powerful jolt of her dragon’s familiar Dou.

She sat up and looked around. Her eyes went wide and she found herself confused. She wasn’t sure what was happening. Her heart was racing, and the dark face before her was not the face she wanted to see. As she lay back down in the mud, a single word slipped from her mouth before she fell into a heavy slumber.

“Jenka.”

“We have to find Rikky,” Zahrellion said half a day later as she sat and tested her limbs for movement. Her voice was weak but firm, her body sore but functional. Crystal’s Dou was potent. “Jenka can take care of himself.”

“Rikky can, too,” Marcherion said. “If he isn’t...”

“Don’t you say it, Marcherion Weston,” Aikira said in a half-snarling, half-pleading tone. “Don’t you dare say that about Rikky!” She broke then, and it was another turn of the hourglass before they were all mounted and flying. They went west first, and as soon as they saw that the survivors of the previous night’s Sarax attacks were still underway and unharried, they turned due east toward Delton.

The central Outland city resembled the aftermath of the battle at the Temple of Dou, save for the melting slushy snow, and the fact that the carnage was easily a hundred times as bad.

There were fewer fires than Marcherion had seen in Indale. From above, the whole carrion-infested, trampled city looked like a scab on the unblemished snow-silvered terrain that surrounded it. The road, at least the first few miles extending out of Delton, was littered with bodies, too. March had told them about the creature he saw as they flew, but Zahrellion and Aikira got a firsthand look at it when they passed over the heart of Delton. The humongous, milk-colored creature had morphed from the loping feline state that Marcherion had last seen into something bulkier, bearish with a dozen long freakish limbs. Like a grizzly that had lost its fear of man, the creature rooted around the demolished buildings and lanes, picking the choice morsels of flesh from the rubble. It studied them with wagon wheel-sized eyes as wild as a flaming sunset.

It was four times as big as the biggest dragon she'd ever seen, and that wyrm had been half again Crystal’s size. “What is it?" Zah asked in awe. “Where did it come from?” But she knew the answer. This is what had gotten into her mind and compelled her to destroy the encasement. This was the hive master from the star ship.

“I don't know what it is, but it changes shape like the witches do,” Marcherion said.

Zah noticed a scorched, oozing mark as long as a tree trunk along the creature’s lower rear. She hoped Lemmy or Rikky had made the wound. It was a relief to know that the creature bled, even though the stuff that was leaking from the injury was more orange then red.