Hyden was starting to worry about Mikahl. His friend wasn’t sleeping, and on those rare occasions that he did manage to find slumber, the High King tossed and turned. He was sweating profusely, as if he were feverish, but only when he was dreaming. Every now and then he would mumble something about, Princess Rosa, or King Balton. Sometimes he would wake suddenly and look around as if he were a lost child.
Hyden knew that Mikahl had plenty to worry about, but as they drew nearer to Westland, and the dangerous task they were set on taking, he found he was concerned. Mikahl was possibly too ill to attempt sneaking into the Dragon Queen’s castle. If anything, the High King’s exhausted condition would be a hindrance. Hyden hoped to help his friend sort out whatever was the matter as he didn’t want either of them to get caught. He approached Mikahl with these concerns one evening, after Mikahl woke from a troublesome dream.
The ship they were on was called Shepherds’ Goddess. As the name implied, it was mainly used to haul stock. Prince Raspaar purchased it from a yard in Salazar where it had been sitting in dry dock for most of a decade. At least it held water and seemed sturdy enough in the one storm they sailed through. In its hold, forty head of prime Valleyan breeding stock whinnied and stomped about in the narrow stalls. Even on the deck with the breeze, the rich earthy aroma of digested oats was potent. Below decks the smell could only be described as ripe.
Hyden and Mikahl shared a tiny cabin. There was barely enough room for both of them to stand up at the same time. Hyden noticed Mik was awake and leapt from his upper bunk. He took a seat on the footlocker near his friend’s feet. Mikahl looked terrible.
“What is it, Mik?” Hyden asked. “You have to tell me. We can’t go into Westland with you half awake.”
“I have to go,” Mikahl said harshly. “I don’t expect you to follow me. If you don’t think you can trust me, or the state I’m in, then beg off.”
“Trust you?” Hyden’s voice was tinged with anger now. “We’ve been through too much for this. Tell me what the problem is or I’ll call the whole thing off, at least your part of it. I have to find Phen, and I’ll somehow get Rosa free if I can, but you’re sick, Mik. How are you going to keep from being discovered when you call out in your sleep?”
“How could you stop me from going?” Mikahl asked. He propped himself up on an elbow and it was obvious that he was more curious now than aggravated. The effects of his dream were fading, save for the sheen of the sweat that slicked his face.
“I’m a legendary wizard, Mik,” Hyden joked. He was relieved to see Mikahl grinning. “I can send you to another plane of existence. While you’re there you can go on a quest to find Oarly’s other boot.”
“Aye,” Mikahl chuckled. “The stumpy bastard told me about his boot, and the cinder pepper.” Mikahl cringed at the idea of it. “Brutal.”
“Aye,” Hyden nodded. “Talk to me, Mik. We have to succeed here. It’s not just me and you who will perish if we fail. If something happens to you, the kingdom will lose Ironspike’s might.”
“Bah,” Mikahl huffed as he reached for his boots. He pulled a shirt from the pack by his bunk and tried to shake the lingering effects of the dream as he dressed.
Mikahl hated the dream. It sickened him to see his father’s haunting, worm-ridden visage. And Rosa was bleeding and pleading for him to save her. Even now he could hear her in the recesses of his mind.
“Come on, let’s get some air and I’ll try to explain.” Mikahl stepped out the door to make room for Hyden but called over his shoulder before he got too far, “Bring the flask Oarly slipped you. I think I’ll need a sip or two.”
They made their way up onto the deck. After long weeks of traveling on the Seawander, Hyden was spoiled to its luxuries. The Shepherds’ Goddess was a ship of purpose, not built for comfortable travel. The peak of the bow offered the only bit of open space large enough for the two of them to speak privately.
Hyden decided it was like being on a balcony that overlooked the sea. Seeing his friend’s troubled expression, he handed Mikahl Oarly’s flask. Mikahl took a long pull from it and winced.
“By the gods,” he hacked into a hoarse cough. “Did that fargin dwarf piss in this?” He wiped his mouth and spat. “It’s got the aftertaste of a refuse pit.”
“Hyden laughed despite his growing concern. “It’s Wyndall’s home-brew,” Hyden explained. “Persimmons and some pink fruit fermented in a goat’s bladder.”
Mikahl blinked a few times. “It’s strong enough. I nearly swallowed my tongue.”
“Aye,” Hyden agreed as he took a sip and made a sour face. After he managed to swallow, he spoke in a hiss, “I should’ve filled it with squat weed juice to pay you back for your departing gift.”
“That was masterful, wasn’t it?” Mikahl was serious. “I had no part in the thing with the cinder pepper though. That was all Oarly. Dugak warned me he was a great trickster.”
“He is,” Hyden agreed. “He made us all think he was dead on Cobalt’s island. You should’ve seen Phen crying like a babe.” He stopped himself. The thought reminded him of the matter in hand. “I have to go fetch him. I’m not sure what it is, but there is something special about him. He kind of reminds me of you.”
Mikahl shook his head. “They are torturing the Princess, trying to draw me into a trap.”
“How do you know?” Hyden asked.
“I’m not sure, but I keep having this dream that’s not just a dream.” Mikahl faced Hyden and his eyes were grave. “It’s like seeing things that happened through someone else’s eyes. They’ve violated my father’s grave and mutilated the Princess. Something tells me it’s a trap, but there’s no way I can keep from trying to save her. It’s as if I’ve been spelled from afar.”
“Phen would know of such spells,” Hyden said, chiding himself for not learning more about magecraft now that he could read. Phen had taught him a dozen cantrips. Not illusionary tricks and the like, but real magic. Nothing formidable enough to take on a sorceress like Shaella, or her bald-headed wizards, though. Hyden couldn’t even find the boot he’d made vanish. He did have some of Phen’s spell books in his pack. He decided he would study them. Maybe he could find something that could help?
Talon swooped down and landed on the rail between them. He kept his wings partially open to keep his balance as the ship rolled and swayed on the sea.
“He’s gotten huge,” Mikahl observed calmly. He remembered when Talon was barely a foot off the ground. Now the fierce looking hawkling was twice that or more. The bird’s wingspan from tip to tip was as long as Ironspike.
Hyden beamed like a parent. “He’s strong too. He carried a fish twice his size up out of the sea to the deck of the Seawander once.”
Mikahl nodded and reached for the flask again. Hyden let him take it.
“I guess we need to figure out how the bitch is planning to trap you,” said Hyden. “Or at least make a plan better than what we’ve got.” Hyden was glad that Mikahl wasn’t taking the matter of his sickness lightly. He could tell that it would be impossible to try and stop Mikahl from taking part in what was to come. He didn’t like the situation, but then again who would? His faith in Mikahl was returning.
“Gods… Ughh!” Mikahl coughed as Wyndall’s brew stole the breath from his lungs. “You don’t like our plan?” he asked after he’d regained his breath. “We take to Lion Lake, swim into the underwater tunnel that Lord Gregory told us about, and follow his map through the dungeons. Then we go up into the castle and start killing skeeks and bald-headed wizards until there’s no one left to kill.”
“Is that really your plan?” Hyden snatched the flask back and took a longer sip this time.
“Do you have a better one?” Mikahl grinned stupidly.
Hyden forced the liquor down his throat and made as if he were a dragon breathing fire across the sea. “Not yet, Mik,” he managed to answer. “But by the White Goddess, and all the gods of men, we’d better come up with one.”
Invisible, Phen followed the skull to the hall the red priests had turned into a temple of Kraw. The priests didn’t like the idea of the Queen’s wizard standing over them while they worked, but apparently there wasn’t much they could do about it. After much debate, the three priests finally convinced Cole to relocate them and the Silver Skull. Phen overheard most of the conversation and it scared him. The priest needed a larger room, preferably with a high ceiling, so that any larger demons or devils, and especially the great Kraw, would have room to move about once a gateway to the Nethers could be opened. Cole asked them how a large demon would be able to leave such a chamber without destroying the walls to get out. That caused another argument, about the shape changing capabilities of demon kind.
Finally the decision was made to move the whole mess outside where there was plenty of room. There was a large enclosed garden off of the royal chamber. The gazebo, the priests decided, would make a perfect dais. The skull was placed on a table while the priests transferred their candles, tomes, and other accessories. Cole made zard servants hang curtains from the eaves of the structure so that the curious eyes of the tower guards wouldn’t intrude. A lectern, stolen from the castle’s chapel, was draped in black silk and the skull was eventually placed atop it in the center of the octagonal floor of the gazebo. A long table was covered with candles, bowls and other items, such as likenesses of Kraw in wood, gold, and stone.
Phen was in the garden, watching from a distance. He shuddered when his eyes met the milky green chips of jade that stared out of the Silver Skull. It almost seemed alive, as if it were anticipating the red priests’ spells. Phen overheard Cole grumbling about Shaella’s extended flight with her new dragon.
The eager priests soon grew fidgety, but Cole seemed like he couldn’t care less about any of it. Long after dark, Cole took the skull back into the castle. He laughed at the priests, then he threatened them when they protested. Phen followed him down stairways and through twisting halls. He was led through several rooms, and a passage that no one but the wizard seemed to know about. He had to stop his pursuit when he looked up and realized he was lost. But at least he knew where the skull would be when the priests got around to using it. Luckily Spike found him and led him back to a familiar place in the castle before disappearing again around a corner.
Phen found that he was hungry, but ignored the sensation for now. He figured he could sleep in the corner of the room the priests had been using. It didn’t look like they would be leaving the gazebo. He decided that, if they came back to the hall, it was big enough for him to stay out of their way.
Feeling secure in his immediate plans, Phen decided that he needed to eat. He reached out to Spike through his familiar link and went to find the lyna. He ended up at a pantry that was built under a set of little used stairs.
To Phen’s great surprise, several lyna were gathered there. None of them, save for Spike, seemed very friendly though, and they gave the boy plenty of space.
“Hello, Spike,” Phen said as he dropped into a squat to rub his familiar behind the ears. Spike loved it, and as long as Phen only rubbed toward Spike’s tail, he didn’t get pricked. “Who are your friends?”
Spike didn’t answer him with words, but conveyed that the other lyna were pets of the zard, or had been delivered there in the shipping crate they’d been born in. Phen was privy to the odd thoughts that Spike picked up from the others of his kind. When he asked Spike to help him find some food, a female lyna urged them both to follow her.
Spike conveyed that the female lyna belonged to the Queen’s servant zardess. Phen remembered seeing Queen Shaella take her staff from a zard girl before she’d taken flight on the dragon. He noticed Spike’s smug strut and could tell by the peculiar glances he was getting that his familiar knew how to cultivate the acquaintance.
“I’ll bet she can’t hear the Queen at night,” Phen said to Spike.
“Sticka, I am,” the female lyna’s unexpected response found Phen’s mind. “She talks to her demon lover with her magics. She’ll use a silver skull soon to call him back from the dark place he is in.”
Learning that another lyna could sense his thoughts disturbed him, but his nose was suddenly filled with the warm wholesome smell of cooking bread. His mouth began to water and his belly growled. He hadn’t eaten since dawn, and by his best guess it was near the middle of the night.
The two lyna distracted a cook while Phen pilfered himself a healthy meal. A short while after he ate he fell asleep in the pantry under the stairs where the castle’s lyna congregated.
Cole found that many perks came with the duty of running Westland in Shaella’s name. One of the boons was getting to oversee the dungeon. Like his mentor, Pael, he had a great interest in crossbreeding species. They had different goals in their experimentation, though. Pael wanted to create a race of creatures he could control and use as an army. Cole, however, just wanted to create one terrible and powerful beast. Something he could control, that was capable of battling a pack of breed giants, or an entire troop of men. In the winter, Flick had captured for Cole a real giant. After the invasion of Westland, Flick lorded over the northern lands until Shaella loosed the breed giants. The giant herdsman had ranged down into Westland, chasing after a stray devil goat. Flick captured him and kept him in the cells below the keep at Northwatch. Cole had secreted the giant here to Lakeside Castle’s dungeon. Shaella either didn’t know about it, or she didn’t care. She stayed wrapped up in her chamber most of the time, using the Spectral Staff to communicate with Gerard. She had her twisted world, and Cole had his.
She wasn’t concerned with his experimenting. At least Cole didn’t think she was. After all, he was following in her father’s footsteps. His prisoner was forgotten for now, though. He was curious about the Skull of Zorellin. According to history, Shokin had used it to open a gateway into the Nethers. The priests were going to try and bring their god back through just such a gateway. Cole knew that the skull had capabilities other than opening portals into hell. Like his mentor, Cole had studied the spell books religiously. He learned that with the power of the skull he could summon a thing or two that he could use in his experiments, and more importantly, he could bind certain creatures to his will.
That is exactly what he hoped to do with a thing he accidentally loosed into the lower levels. It was a malformed creation-part cave bear, part breed giant. A sentient creature, it had escaped its confinement and was loose. Until he killed or contained it, the lower levels of the dungeon were useless to him. Not even he dared to go down there. He knew that it would eventually starve if he left it alone, but he wanted to try and bring it under his control before that happened. He knew he didn’t have much time to use the skull. When Shaella returned, he was certain that her full attention would be invested in using it to free her lover.
Cole had already ordered his zard servants to prepare a test subject for him. The lizard-men relished the chance to nab an unsuspecting breed.
The exauhsted beast growled out and pulled at the chains that held its arms splayed wide. Blood dripped from the wounds that shackles had dug into its writsts. Its legs were in chains too, and stretched so that that the creature couldn’t bend its knees.
“It’ll be over soon,” Cole comforted ironically, earning a hissing laugh from the zard was watching over the captive. He then sat the Silver Skull on the breed beast’s chest and spoke a series of ancient words three times over. There was a slight humming sensation, but nothing else happened.
Cole, fearing that the controlling spell hadn’t worked, moved the skull to a table and gave the creature an order.
“Get your hands out of those irons. Do it now.”
For a moment he was disappointed, but then the zard attendant started hissing and pointing at the breed. The huge beast began yanking and jerking at the shackles, tearing the skin from its wrists until a bone finally snapped. It screamed out terribly, but didn’t stop trying to get free. Cole wasn’t paying anymore attention. The skull could do what he needed it to do. He had to prepare so that he could finish before Shaella returned.