Blood and Royalty (17 page)

Clover decided the wizard’s choice of locale spoke a lot about him, but the plump, kindly looking man who creaked open the door and greeted her wasn’t anything like she expected. Behind his thick, gray, beard, eyes as blue as the sky were ringed by red, irritated lids and cast in a way that betrayed a great deal of sadness. Clover suddenly felt ashamed.

“You’re a few evenings late, I’m afraid,” said Balin Zekker with a forced smile. “The girl child died from her fever and the boy is clinging to life by a pixie’s whisker.”

“Use the tear,” Crimzon’s voice sounded into Clover’s mind.

“Can I see the boy?” Clover asked as she slid off of her dragon’s back.

Crimzon caught the sparkle of malicious intent in the Wizard’s eye when the mage glanced back at him and spoke the word that released a spell. It was too late to do anything about it, because Zekker was already closing the door behind him and Clover. When it banged shut, a ripple of powerful spell magic radiated outward. It caused Crimzon to roar out in protest. A magical field had been cast into existence, an unseen aura around the tower that dug into his senses and repelled him. His instinctual reaction was to leap away into flight, to get away from it. Only after he was at a distance did he regain control of himself. He was panicked and confused. Nothing like this had ever happened before. The only thing he could think was that the wizard wasn’t after him. The flower dreamers told Clover wrong. The tricky wizard was after Clover... or more likely, his mother’s teardrop.

***

Zekker had been hearing of the lucky girl who’d befriended a dragon for months, but not until he cast a spell to detect magic did he learn of her teardrop’s massive power. He asked the herb witches who bought his potions to spy on her. Through them he learned that the farmers were thankful for Clover’s wyrm. Its presence kept the wolves and other would be predators from pilfering the herds. The young red didn’t bother them or their pastures. It hunted in the mountains away from the stock.

Clover was as notorious as her scale covered friend, but for very different reasons. She wasn’t allowed in the gambling houses because she never lost at dice or cards, but all of the other folk in the Vell treated her with respect. The spies said that Clover worked hard every day, with the leather-man, and that she had a soft spot for the orphans that ran the Vell.

Balin Zekker wanted the teardrop. He wanted its power badly. He considered all that he learned and then devised a plan. It hadn’t been easy to bribe a reputable mage to carry his message to her, but he’d managed the price. He was glad she had come. The teardrop was about to be his.

***

Clover knew the moment she stepped in and laid eyes on the thing in the crib that it wasn’t a boy. It wasn’t even human. Then the door boomed shut, cutting off her dragon’s roar of warning. She knew she was in trouble. Luckily, she was already reaching for the teardrop.

The thing in the crib leapt out at her, revealing its grotesque, gray-skinned form. Child sized with a maw full of needle-sharp fangs, it was some twisted version of the fae children that had visited her dreams. It hugged onto her upper body with unnatural strength. She barely had time to turn her face away from those teeth as they tried to tear her face away. It caught a mouthful of hair instead, and didn’t let go, even when the wizard began barking out orders for it to do so.

Clover’s right arm was pinned against her, but her hand was near her belt pouch. When she saw the wizard reaching toward her waist, she realized what he was after. She whirled around and ran the creature’s back into the corner of the hearth. It cost her a ferocious bite on the shoulder, but the wiry little beast let go and fell into a screaming heap of pain.

The wizard began calling out the makings of a spell. Clover’s hand wrapped around the teardrop just a heartbeat too late. She crumpled to her knees when the mage’s blast of debilitating energy hit her. The mutant fae hop-crawled on all fours across the floor like some malformed tree-monkey and sank its teeth into the bloody wound it had already caused.

“Don’t eat her,” the wizard yelled. “Get the teardrop out of her hand, you half-dense fumblegoon.”

Looking up from his prize meal of human flesh he let out a blood covered snarl. He growled out his displeasure, and began using his long fingers to pry the jewel out of Clover’s hand.

Clover wanted to fight back, but there was no strength left in her. Zekker’s spell left her feeling like her bones were made of water. She tried to resist the creature’s strong hands, but it was no use. Blood slicked, the teardrop was soon held up before the mutant’s curious eye as he inspected its sparkling nature.

The rush of the Dour magic filled the thing so suddenly that it shocked the beast into a wide eyed shriek of terror. Clover watched as the chubby wizard tried to take the prize from his familiar. The power struck little beasty had no intention of turning it over, and the two began to struggle around the room for it.

During all of this, Clover was regaining control of herself. She could smell burnt hair and she felt as if she had been roasted in the sun. Rising to her knees, she ignored the terrible pain in her shoulder and found the dagger she kept in her boot. It was a small one used mainly for skinning and carving, but it was a weapon. She reached out for Crimzon with her mind and was surprised to feel him there, fighting his revulsion to come to her aid. She didn’t doubt he would overcome the powerful sensation. It wasn’t in his nature to let her down. He would have to hurry, though; the wizard was choking the mutant now, and it had no idea how to focus the Dour that was flowing through it into a defense.

Clover stumbled to her feet and ran toward the wizard’s back with every intention of burying her blade there. But the mage won his tussle with the mutant and turned with the glow of the Dour showing angry in his eyes. He cast a spell that sent Clover flailing backwards into the block wall. She impacted with a lung clearing crunch. With wide eyes, swollen veins, and a clench jawed expression that showed he was now feeling the full rush of the Dour, he began calling out the makings of another spell.

Clover saw his eyes left no room for doubt. He was full of Dour, and about to kill her.

***

Crimzon tried flying back toward the tower several times, but every time he grew close, the feelings of revulsion overwhelmed his senses. The protective instincts his mother instilled in him took over, causing his wings to carry him away. Again and again he tried, but it was no use. Then he felt Clover reaching out to him. The relief he felt at knowing she was still alive was consumed by the amount of pain he could feel inside her. He had to do something, but what could he do?

Letting his rage lift him as much as the power of his wings, he began to climb into the sky. If the spell around the tower caused him to pull or turn away, he would just eliminate his body’s ability to comply to his instinct. It was all he could think to do.

***

Clover threw her dagger at the wizard as if she were practiced in the art. She wasn’t, but she was lucky. The butt of the knife thumped hard into Zekker’s forehead causing him to lose the spell he was about to unleash on her.

“You can eat her now!” the wizard yelled at his familiar. He rubbed the knot on his head and scrunched up his nose. “I’ve no need to bother with her now that I have it.”

“Mmm,” the ruined fae boy made a sound as if he’d just tasted something delicious. “Mmm, Mmm, Mmmmmm.” He wrung his hands as he started across the room toward Clover. She was backed against the curved wall, calling out to Crimzon with all the concentration she could muster. She felt her dragon. She felt him urgently trying to warn her, but his mind was distorted with the repelling magic of Zekker’s spell. She couldn’t understand what he was trying to tell her.

Balin Zekker seemed to have gained three feet of stature. He was drawing in the power of the teardrop. He was getting lost in its deliciousness. Had she not been in the middle of a battle for her and Crimzon’s life when she first held the teardrop, she would have been swept away by the Dour herself.

Just as Zekker exited the tower, Clover learned what Crimzon was trying to warn her about. The dragon came streaking shoulder first into the middle of the tower in such a way that it nearly stopped his momentum, but not quite. Crimzon had climbed high into the air and dove at the spire. He made sure he was moving too fast to open his wings as he came streaking in. The instinct to protect his delicate wings from damage overrode the urge to try and alter his course. Then he was there, crashing through the block and tumbling with the rubble and dust.

Clover felt, more than saw, the tower go tilting over her. She dove under the table board and was surprised to find the mutant there shivering in confusion, but snarling lustily at the blood flowing freely from her shoulder.

Without a second of consideration she jabbed her index finger into one of the beast’s eyes then pushed him out from under the table. Blocks and floor planks were falling all around them and soon the creature was lost in the dust and debris.

***

The spell Zekker cast around the tower was broken when Crimzon destroyed the structure, but the dragon was dazed and now floundering across the rocky terrain. Crimzon could do little as the wizard stalked toward him. The Dour was filling Balin Zekker, increasing his size as well as his ability. He was as big as a small giant when he finally made it down the steep slope to where Crimzon came to rest. He stopped just far enough away that Crimzon wouldn’t be able to whip him with his tail. With a look of evil intention raging across his giddy, power-lusting expression, the wizard began another casting, this one a spell that Crimzon knew would do him in.

Crimzon tried to move his wings and was overcome with white-hot flashes of searing pain. One wing was likely broken. His mother’s troubled voice filled his mind, as it often did, and urged him into reciting the words of a protective spell. He wasn’t fast enough.

A silvery-white swath of raw Dour shot forth from Zekkers hands and began freezing Crimson’s bulk as it swept across him. Within the span of a few heartbeats Crimzon lost consciousness and was frozen into a solid mass, his mind and soul held imprisoned in a frigid, magical stasis.

His last attempt to move his tail ended in more terrible pain as the solidity crept down to its tip causing it to nearly break away from the rest of him. Along with the pain came blackness as thick as lava. In the blackness there was nothing.

***

After the crumbling pieces of block and mortar stilled, Clover coughed the dust from her lungs and peeked out from under the table board. She was surprised more of the tower hadn’t collapsed on her. She heard a hissing, crackling sound and staggered out of the mess. What she saw chilled her blood almost as much as Zekker’s spell was freezing Crimzon’s. She didn’t have a weapon, but she grabbed up a stick of broken timber that was as big around as her arm and charged the wizard. He had his back turned to her and was caught up in freezing the dragon, so he didn’t see her as she raced down the valley slope.

It wasn’t until she grew closer that she saw he was growing larger by the moment. Already he was as big as an oak tree, with bulging muscles and throbbing veins. It didn’t stop her. She had to save her dragon.

By the time she swung the timber at him, Balin Zekker was over nine feet tall and crackling with the power of the dragon’s tear. He stumbled from the crack of wood against the side of his skull and lost control of the spell he was casting. He growled as he turned and backhanded Clover to the ground. She missed the rocks and rolled across one of the only turf-covered spaces in the area. When she came up, she had a fist-sized rock in her hand and she threw it as hard as she could right at Zekker’s crotch.

As usual, Clover’s luck held true and she hit her target with far more force than she could have hoped. The wizard roared out in pain as he doubled over.

Clover knew from firsthand experience that the rush of the Dour was an awesome thing to feel. It had almost consumed her a few times. At the moment though, her dragon was all she could think about. Crimzon had to be terribly wounded, if not dead.

Before Zekker could gather his wits, Clover took a quick step forward and kicked him hard in the face. His nose crunched under her boot, but he just put his fists on his knees, lifted his head, and stared at her. Fresh scarlet blood ran down his chin and stringed away, but he didn’t seem to notice.

“I’ve had about enough of you,” he spat. His eyes were beginning to clear, as if he was gaining control of the Dour that was raging through him.

Oddly, Clover could feel the Dour too. She used the teardrop at least a dozen times over the three years that she’d had it. And now, thinking about it, she realized she hadn’t held the teardrop in her hand every time she used its power.

Immediately she drew upon the Dour and called forth a sharp blast of kinetic energy. She threw her arm forth, pointing at Zekker. A fist of energy impacted him squarely. He took a cart-wheeling step backwards, but caught himself before he fell. The momentary look of shock passed from his eyes far too quickly. She saw his mouth moving to cast another spell.

Clover called forth a shield in front of her, but found she didn’t need it. The tricky wizard wasn’t about to blast her again. He was smarter than that, and she soon found the Dour she had been feeling slipping away from her like water flowing out a drain. Zekker drew up to his full height. Standing nearly ten feet tall, his body burst through his robes and his once plump form was now bulging with lean muscle. Sparkling tracers of energy flashed and sizzled across his skin. In his right fist he held up the dragon tear and began calling out the words to conjure something terribly destructive. His left hand pointed directly at Clover, who was now trembling so badly that it was a struggle to stay standing.

“Kneel before me, wench!” Zekker commanded. Against her will Clover fell to her knees. An angry red cloud was forming around the upraised teardrop. “Your run of luck ends here and now!”