David Wells - Cursed Bones

One landed on the table in front of Abigail, its claws gouging into the wood. Captain Sava stabbed at it, but his blade was turned aside by the hardness of its scales. It backhanded Sava, sending him tumbling to the floor, then grabbed Abigail by the arm and started to launch into the air.

She grasped the hilt of the Thinblade just as the creature thrust with its wings, slipping the blade free of its scabbard and slashing up toward the monster. The Thinblade cut cleanly through the beast’s arm and wing, sending them crashing to the ground amidst an inhuman shriek of pain from the half-dragon, half-man.

Abigail rolled to her feet as Sava and two of his men converged on her, forming a cordon of protection with their dragon-plate shields raised high against the threat descending on them.

Another beast landed in the center of the shattered table. It reared back and breathed a cone of icy air at Magda, coating her shield with frost. She seemed to be chilled by the attack, but her shield protected her from the brunt of it. Her spell came quickly, sudden anger flashing in her eyes … a blue pinwheel of force materialized in front of her, then moved quickly toward the dragon-man, catching it in the midsection and cleaving it cleanly in half. Three of its brethren shrieked in fury at the loss of one of their own.

Another flew over Torin and Conner, breathing a gout of frost on them, chilling them to the bone and sending them to the ground, shivering. They were both still alive, but completely incapacitated by the numbing cold. Corina released a light-lance spell at the beast, burning a hole through its chest. It crashed to the ground and never moved again.

Sark caught two of the creatures in a whirling vortex of wind and carried them up and out of the chamber into the dark of night.

Another of the beasts grabbed hold of one of the Strikers with its taloned feet and carried him several dozen feet into the air before dropping him to the ground. He crashed into the stone floor and fell still as death.

Mage Dax was feeding power into a ball of lightning that was forming between his outstretched hands. It was growing in size and intensity when a blue dragon landed on the edge of the hole in the ceiling. It was beautiful and terrible all at once. Abigail saw similarities between this one and Ixabrax. Its rider looked down into the room with calm, almost detached calculation.

Zuhl.

“Take the girl,” he commanded as Dax released the ball of lightning at him. Zuhl directed his staff toward the streaking, crackling ball of electrical power and instantly formed a half-shell protective shield in front of him. The lightning struck it with thunderous force, shattering the shield and hitting the dragon square in the chest. The dragon reared back and looked like he was preparing to breathe frost into the room, certain doom for them all, but Zuhl commanded him to stop and they launched into the darkness.

Three of the dragon-men landed around Abigail. All three breathed frost at her and her cordon of Strikers. They all fell in a shivering mass. Abigail had never been so cold. It penetrated into her bones, paralyzing her with numbness. The nearest dragon-man grabbed her and launched into the sky. She held on to consciousness even as the Thinblade slipped from her grasp, burying to the hilt in the stone floor.

At the same time, two more dragon-men breathed frost at Magda and Corina, forcing them to defend against the attack long enough for the beast carrying Abigail to escape. She watched the ground fall away as the beast gained altitude. It flew to Zuhl, perched atop the guard house on the last remaining tower of the fortress.

“Very good,” Zuhl said as he took Abigail and secured her over his saddle in front of him. He whispered a few words and she felt suddenly warmer, though she was still unable to move. Zuhl pulled a fur blanket over her and launched into the sky, followed by the remaining nine dragon-men.

The last thing Abigail saw before she lost consciousness was Mage Dax launching a bolt of lightning at the trailing dragon-man. It hit the creature, lighting it up with crackling power, then arced through the night to another and another and another and another after that, burning a hole through the chest of each as it leapt from one to the next, each falling from the sky in turn.

She woke in a round room with a single barred window and a trapdoor in the floor. She was lying on a pallet with several furs covering her. The air was cold … she could see her breath in the dim light streaming through the window. Aside from the pallet and furs, the room was completely empty. She checked her boots and found her knives were gone.

She was defenseless.

Still wearing the clothes she’d been dressed in during the meeting with her advisors, she stood and wrapped a fur blanket around her to ward off the chill air. From the tiny window, she could see the ocean below, bleak and foreboding, low clouds blanketing the world to the horizon. Light snow was sporadically whipped into a frenzy by sudden gusts of frigid air.

She went to the trapdoor and tried to open it but it held fast, as she knew it would. She knocked on the door, but got no response, so she sat back down and tried to think of a way out of her predicament.

An hour later, she heard the sound of boots on stone from below, followed by the scraping of metal on metal, and then the trapdoor opened. One of Zuhl’s brutes eyed her with a menacing grin and grunted while motioning for her to follow him.

With a sigh of resignation, Abigail wrapped a fur around her and followed the big man down the corkscrew staircase to the level below. There were four guards in the chamber. Each stared at her in open challenge-she ignored them.

The brute led her through the halls of a keep until he came to a large set of double doors, which opened to a sparsely furnished and somewhat cold room, though warmer than the little tower room where she’d awoken. Zuhl sat at a table with an assortment of foods arrayed before him, all served on fine porcelain dishes.

“Good morning, Lady Abigail,” he said, dismissing the soldier with a gesture. “I trust you slept well.”

She scanned the room, looking for a weapon or an opportunity to escape, anything she could use against Zuhl, but found nothing. She decided to be bold. The temperature of the room didn’t warrant the fur blanket, so she shrugged it off, letting it fall to the floor without a second look. Then she walked to the table and sat down.

“Well enough, considering,” she said as she took an empty plate from a stack and started piling food on it.

He almost smiled, but not quite.

“I have a number of questions for you,” he said. “Most are simply matters of curiosity, a few are of strategic importance. You will answer them all, one way or another.”

Abigail shrugged as she took a big bite of biscuit dripping with blackberry jam. “Maybe,” she said around a mouthful.

He stopped and looked at her, not a simple glance, but really looked at her as if seeing into the essence of her being. Abigail was reminded of Alexander and the way he could look into a person and assess their true nature.

“What were you thinking when you jumped from your wyvern and attacked me in midflight?” Zuhl asked, his penetrating gaze searching her face intently as he awaited her answer.

“I was thinking it was the only way to kill you,” Abigail answered, preparing another biscuit.

“The odds of success were so slim as to be improbable,” Zuhl said. “Failure was almost certain death, yet you didn’t hesitate. Why?”

“I told you, it was the only way,” Abigail said.

“I don’t understand,” Zuhl said, shaking his head slightly, a deep frown creasing his pale brow.