The Dragon Ring (Book 1) by C. Craig Coleman Read Free Book Online Page B

again. My gold is little consolation for the endless bloodletting she demands.”
     

4: Flight
     
    Bodrin smacked down the thorny blackberry canes ahead of him with his walking stick. “These briars are worst in fall.”
    The boys worked their way to the Sentinel Pine with care. Bushes, vines, and threatening spikes infested the low grounds between fields and swamps bordering the Southern Nhy River. Autumn had tamed the tender undergrowth for the winter, but briars and tangled vines held vigil, keeping intruders at bay. Saxthor trudged along deep in thought, oblivious to the barbs snagging his clothes.
    “I’ve put up with Aunt Irkin’s meanness since I can’t remember when. She’s said ugly things about my brother, sister, and me in front of us every chance she’s had. Still, I never thought she’d try to harm us. I got a bad hunch about Memlatec’s scrunched face when he spoke of Aunt Irkin.”
    “Maybe she had something to do with the man’s death in the stairwell yesterday. She wants to do more than make you miserable. What does the wizard want you to do?” Bodrin asked.
    Saxthor’s expression was dismal. “I don’t know.”
    “Stop worrying so. You’re making too much out of the accidents. We’ll find out what the old man wants soon enough.”
    “Memlatec just said to come to the Sentinel Pine.” Saxthor tripped over a stick. “It was his expression that scares me. He frowned and his eyes-- his eyes got big, almost jittery. I never saw him so upset before, sorta in a rush. What he didn’t say worries me most.”
    “Probably nothing.”
    “I keep seeing the old wizard’s expression when he caught Aunt Irkin staring at me in the hallway yesterday. Her pinched face and beady eyes gave me chills, like a big snarling dog with hair bristling about to attack.”
    Bodrin pointed. “We’ve got company.”
    Fedra, Memlatec’s eagle plunged in full dive, wings back, focused on something behind them. Fedra smashed into a black vulture carrying a writhing water moccasin in its talons. A shower of inky feathers spiraled to the ground trailing the wounded, tumbling scavenger. Knocked from the claws, the serpent wriggled in the air and plopped in the bog. Though stunned a moment, the snake slithered away.
    *
    In his tower, Memlatec followed the strike through Fedra’s eyes in his crystal ball.
    If I destroy the vulture, Earwig will sense my intervention at once, he thought. Better to hold the scavenger unharmed until the boys are well away. This is her doing. She’s managed to follow and pursues them still.
    Memlatec closed the crystal’s vision, chanted a spell and turned aside.
    *
    A smoky translucence enveloped the bird stumbling on the ground. Close by, two water moccasins sunned on a log jutting from the dark cypress waters. They witnessed the drama playing out also. A third agitated and bruised cottonmouth emerged among the brown fern fronds at the tannic water’s edge. The new arrival slipped back into the water and slithered through the duckweed to a narrow isthmus only a few feet ahead of the boys. Its mottled gray-brown scales blended into the leaf litter where the serpent coiled.
    *
    “Careful of logs and stumps,” Saxthor said to Bodrin in the lead. “Lots are rotten; your foot will mash right into them. Walk on the mossy mounds around small trees. They hold up pretty well crossing the muck between spots of dry ground.”
    “Like I don’t know that.” Bodrin picked his way along the squishy quagmire. “Soon we’ll come to the deep swamp.”
    “The Sentinel Pine is up ahead.” Saxthor pointed at the magnificent sight. The tree rose from a dry raised finger of earth hooking out into the boggy low grounds. “The old timer stands out over everything, even makes its own branches seem tiny. We’re so little next to the giant.
    “I’m wound up and alert whenever we get near this place,” Bodrin said.
    Saxthor nodded. “Almost erases the briars and crud torment.”
    Bodrin laughed.