Enchanted Realms

Chapter 6

Josh followed the trail around the lake, looking for a likely place to set up camp. The stars reflected off the lake surface. The hillsides were dusted with snow.

“What a terrible existence,” Alyson said behind him.

“Just tragic,” he replied over his shoulder, shaking his head.

“Why do you suppose he ate it?”

“I suspect it"s his destiny.”

Thaddeus Corntassel, upon eating a spoonful of his own stew, had fallen instantly asleep.

“What do you suppose was in that stew, anyway?”

“I don"t know,” she replied, “but he must do something with the people who eat his stew.”

They exchanged a glance, Josh shaking his head in disbelief. Thaddeus had seemed so harmless!

Josh and Alyson had left the cave hurriedly, the cabinets, cupboards, and cubbies having all melted away the moment the old man had fallen asleep. Only the stew, the pot, the fire and the old man had been real.

We don"t even know if this lake is real, Josh thought, bemused and scanning the slope for a likely place to camp for the night.

“All I know is I"m really hungry,” Alyson said.

So was Josh, their last substantial food two days ago, when they"d left Alsace, which seemed as remote as his last meal.

“Hey, Josh, up here.”

Alyson stood under an overhang, just a ledge where the rock jutted from the hillside, hidden behind two trees. The fact that he"d not seen it meant others might also miss it.

He cleared the thin covering of snow and sat gingerly. If they were to lie down, he saw, they were invisible from the trail.

What about food? he heard Alyson think. Josh reached over and cradled the diamond at her breast. Her skin was warm on the back of his hand. He sent his awareness into the surrounding brush. A squirrel, an owl, some berries.

He tried the water. A salmon, over two feet long.

Josh smiled and reached for his amethyst.

“Look!” Alyson pointed through the trees.

Across the lake, a bright flame flared, in front of a mountain profile visible only as a silhouette against the stars.

They got up and made their way to the lakeside to see more clearly. They found a promontory on the shoreline, the rock several feet above the lake surface.

Against the mountainside, an oval was lit. Josh tried to estimate the scale, but his sense of the distance failed. Then, one, two, three shadows issued forth.

“What were those?”

Josh shook his head, the shapes too indistinct and the distance too great.

The light doused.

“Almost looked like birds,” Alyson said.

“You could see them?”

She smiled meekly.

“They were wyverns, weren"t they?” He felt the thought at the edge of her mind. “And they"re coming this way.” He didn"t need to tap her thoughts for that.

Josh never seen a real wyvern up close for any length of time. Except during the wyvern attacks on the wyrm herd.

And the one that had absconded with the raw diamond.

He"d not had the chance during any of those brief encounters to look at them closely.

“They"re coming for us.”

For me, Josh amended. “How long have we got?”

“They"re halfway across the lake.”

She can see in the dark. “Come here,” he said, and pulled her to him. “Hold onto me no matter what happens.”

And she did, putting her head on his shoulder. She was surprisingly warm and soft.

I can"t think about that right now.

They stood silent on the promontory.

The whistle of wings and grunts of the great beasts became audible.

“They"re circling,” Alyson said, clutching him tightly.

All Josh saw was blinking stars.

“One broke away.”

He was barely able to track it, a suggestion of shape against a background of stars. He saw it descend toward the lakeshore and land smoothly.

The head bobbed, as though to get a clearer view. “The humans huddle,” it said. “Are they cold or perhaps seeking comfort and protection?”

“What do you want?” Josh asked.

“You screech just like them,” Alyson muttered.

“I"ve come to take the boy across the lake.”

“Where? To take him where?” Alyson said.

Josh gasped and glanced at her.

“I can hear the translation in your thoughts.”

Josh asked the wyvern.

“To my master, Queen Aria.”

“She goes too,” Josh said.

The wyvern turned his head and spat a gout of flame. “I"ll roast her and have her for breakfast later, then.”

“To the wyrm with you and your master, I"m not going anywhere!”

The wyvern grunted, breathed a few times heavily, and then towered its head. “Forgive me, young human. I"ve offended you. I meant only jest. Of course she can go, and unlike Thaddeus Corntassel, none of us has an appetite for human flesh.”

Only then did Josh realize they had almost become Corntassel stew. He felt faint. Then he remembered they still hadn"t eaten.

“Catch that fish you were considering earlier,” the wyvern said. “I"ll fry it up and you can eat it on the way.”

Josh looked down at Alyson, a half-a-head shorter than he. “Will you be comfortable with that?”

“Ask him if he can carry us both. I want you near.”

A deep sense of belonging touched him, and he smiled.

“Certainly,” the wyvern replied. “After frightening the young woman, it"s the least I could do. By the way, I"m Threnody.”

“Josh and Alyson.”

“Ah yes, those obscurely defining human names, unexpected every time. And what"s her name?”

After straightening out the confusion over names, Josh located that salmon, and soon had hot roast fish to take with them.

Threnody knelt, and Josh mounted, the knotted trapezius muscles of the great beast rippling under him. Alyson climbed on in front of him. She slid backward into him, and he slipped his free arm around her waist.

The leathery skin and sinuous muscle beneath his legs distracted him from the pleasing feel of Alyson"s back against him, extending from her shoulders all the way down to her—

“Don"t get any ideas,” she said, putting her elbows into his ribs.

While he recovered his breath, she leaned back into his embrace, the steaming fish in front of her.

The ground dropped away and with it his stomach and diaphragm. Josh thought for a moment he"d never breathe again. I"m just glad I can"t see anything, he thought, the lake surface already hundreds of feet below. The crisp air bit at his ears and cheeks, and the wyvern under him heated up with exertion, causing the insides of his legs to sweat.

Alyson put bits of salmon in his hand, which he ate over her shoulder, its smell mixed with the scents of pine and snow and horrid wyvern breath, a mix of sulfur and brine.

Wyrms had the same awful halitosis, which Josh had long since learned to ignore.

The sensation of flying was glorious. The weight shifts as the wyvern banked for turns, the slight lifts and drops with each flap of the gargantuan wings, thrilled Josh, and he wondered what riding into battle on a wyvern was like.

The mountain grew larger against the stars, the small oval that they"d seen earlier growing into a humungous cavern, the toothy entrance with rocky incisors looking little like the smooth-lipped mouth that it had appeared to be from a distance.

Initially, Josh had wondered how the wyvern would navigate the mouth. And as they grew closer, its scale made evident that multiple wyverns could easily enter and leave simultaneously without concern for the jagged spires.

A fire in the center barely lit the cavern sides, but a gout of flame here and there indicated the presence of other wyvern. Threnody dove through the entrance seemingly without concern for safety, both Josh and Alyson ducking as though they might hit their hands on outcrops hanging down toward them, despite there being no chance of that at all.

Threnody landed near the central fire pit, which was far larger than it had appeared to be.

Josh squinted in the brightness, breaking into a sweat at the heat.

“This way,” Threnody said, and wobbled toward the cavern rear. Whatever grace they had in flight was amply contradicted by their comical walking wobble. But when they ran they were terrifying.

Toward the back, up a series of ledges, was a great nest, its edges sprouting whole trees which screened off its contents. The only nest of that girth, Josh noted. Away from the fire, Josh saw the cavern walls more clearly. Every ledge sported a nest, sometimes two or three, and the walls had clearly been dug into to make more cubbies.

The cavern a quarter-mile tall and at least a half-mile wide, extending like an egg into the mountain for nearly a mile, Josh estimated a few thousand wyvern nests, and to the best of his reckoning, nearly all were occupied with two or three beasts.

The large nest was cleft in one spot. Threnody stopped and gestured. “She sleeps, but asked that you wake her when you arrived. There, to the left.” He pointed.

Josh and Alyson entered.

To the left, lying on a moss-padded platform lay the orange-and-white mottled wyvern, on her side, her breathing rough and shallow.

From where he stood, Josh felt her fever. “She"s sick!” Then he saw the stub of spear in her flank, the flesh around it suppurated, discolored and swollen, fresh, red blood atop black, crusted blood.

He stepped to her side, into the crook of the great mottled neck, the bony spines of her head crest cradling a drowsy, glassy eye. He put his hand to her cheek, the rough bone under his hand hot to the touch.

The eye blinked at him. The chest heaved once. “You"re Josh, wyrm herder and wyvern talker.”

“Yes. You"re Aria, Queen Aria.”

“Presuming I live, yes.”

“You"re hurt, and it"s infected, but you"ll be all right. I"ll need some things, but you should be better soon.”

“You"re kind, and your words are a comfort, but your anxiety betrays your concern.”

Josh frowned, forgetting how well wyrmkind could read him. “Of course I"m concerned, but you need to think about healing, not how sick you are. Patient, be your own healer. That"s an order.”

“Yes, King Josh,” Aria said, her snort of smoke the equivalent of a chuckle.

“I"ll be back in a few minutes.” He retreated to the entrance where Threnody waited. “Three knives, the sharpest you can find, with two-inch, five-inch, and eight-inch blades. A cauldron of warm water. A needle or awl with thread or string, at least two feet of it.”

Alyson stepped up beside him. “How can I help?”

Josh smiled and described what he needed.