Michael Mathias - The Sword and the Dragon

“Who are you talking to?” a wavy, liquid voice said from the doorway.

The sound of it, and its suddenness, startled Vaegon so badly that he almost fell to his knees. He looked for the source of it, and found a ghostly form standing there, a man in a long, flowing robe, sporting a crown upon his head. The figure had no substance, and very little color, but was still defined in smoky white, and vivid detail. The ghostly thing had been human once, with a sharp nose, high cheekbones, deeply set eyes, and long straight hair.

“What? Who are you?” Vaegon asked, as he eased his way back towards the cooling stone.

“I was once a King,” the ghost said sadly. “But now, I’m just a harmless ghost.”

There was a hint of sarcasm in the tone of his voice.

“There’s so many undead up and about, that I decided to go look for a conversation. It’s lonely down here, you know. I felt the sword there, and heard you singing.” The apparition pointed a bony finger at Ironspike on the cooling stone. “It’s not every day a power such as that comes around. It’s driving them away. As I suppose it should do. No undead soul wants to feel its edge biting into them. It’s such a final thought, don’t you think?”

“What?” was all Vaegon could manage to get out of his mouth. The dwarf’s powerful snore filled the silence that followed.

The ghost looked at Dugak curiously and then back to Vaegon.

“Well sir, there are no ghosts or undead in here, and I doubt you can relate to my situation well enough to sustain a decent parley, so I’ll be on my way.”

The ghost bowed regally.

“Good day,” it said, just before it disappeared entirely.

Instantly, Vaegon felt the air begin to warm around him. He had been too frightened to notice how cold the chamber had gotten. He spent long moments blinking his good eye, trying to figure out whether he’d really seeing the thing, or if he’d gone crazy down here in the underground. It didn’t matter, he decided. Crazy or not, the thing had felt Ironspike’s power, so it was time for them to go.

He put the sword back in its sheath and, as politely as he could manage, he woke Dugak.

They started back the way they had come. Vaegon had never been happier to see the light of day than he was when they came out of the mouth of the necropolis, into the afternoon sun. The moment they were drenched in the bright, welcoming warmth of it though, he knew something was wrong. He turned, and saw the source of the rancid stench that had assailed his nostrils. A troop of soldiers was there, looking just as surprised as he and Dugak were. Every one of them was dead, and rotting on the bone, but coming at them with murderous intent nonetheless.

Mikahl was back in his childhood bed, in his mother’s tiny apartment, in the servants’ wing of Lakeside Castle. His mother was in the old, creaky rocking chair in the corner, needling something or other out of a peach colored yarn. The fall of her golden hair shone with angelic radiance, and he was bathed in her feelings of love for him.

“Creeek…Krooth…Creeek…Krooth…Creeek…Krooth…” the chair sounded, as she slowly rocked it to and fro. In a nearly inaudible voice, she hummed an old lullaby in time with the rocking of the chair.

Quietly, so as not to disturb the tranquility of the scene that he found himself in, Mikahl crept out of bed, and tiptoed to the window.

Outside, he saw the ocean rolling and swelling in the distance. A deep, dark sea wasn’t supposed to be outside that window, but he accepted it as if it was. He felt a comforting presence ease up beside him, and peek its furry head out, to see what it was that he was looking at. It was Grrr, the Great Wolf, and sensing him there, caused a coldness to churn inside Mikahl’s belly. As he scratched the wolf behind the ears, he realized that he was no longer a boy, and that the sound he was hearing wasn’t his mother’s rocking chair, but was the creaking, and groaning of a ship. He looked from the wolf, back out the window, and it was there, passing very close to them.

“Creeek…Krooth…Creeek…Krooth…Creeek…Krooth…” the timbers slowly groaned, and the taut ropes protested.

The ship’s deck was littered with bodies. A small group of tired and haggard looking men worked to throw them overboard, one at a time by the limbs, like sacks of grain. Each of their faces was full of fear and defeat. At the front of the ship, leaning out like some half dead bowsprit, was King Glendar.

Glendar turned, and looked at Mikahl with eyes as cold and black as jet, and smiled a grin of needle sharp teeth. It wasn’t a smile of victory or menace. It was a smile full of contempt; contempt for the living, for the ship was floundering aimlessly at sea now. There was no crew in sight, only King Glendar, and a few Westland soldiers tossing corpses out into the vast, cobalt expanse, while drifting to their own certain deaths.

Mikahl turned from the window, and hurried to the door of the little room, but it wouldn’t open for him. He tried and tried to turn the knob, but it wouldn’t budge. Terror shot through him like wildfire.

“There has to be a way!” Loudin’s voice spoke from the chair where his mother had been sitting.

Mikahl’s fear ebbed away, and he smiled at his big, tattoo-covered friend.

“Aye Loudin, but what is it?”

“There is only one way!” King Balton’s hoarse voice croaked from the bed.

He was buried under a pile of blankets, and the skin of his face was greenish pale, and slick with sweat. The poison was still eating his life away, and he was gasping for breath.

“Think…Then act…Think…Then act…Think…Then act…” the raspy mantra echoed on and on.

Suddenly, Grrr rose with his hackles standing on end, and a deep rumbling growl in his throat. Mikahl turned to the window. Peeking in, with a gleeful smile on his sickly, white face was the wizard Pael. His cackling laugh echoed through the room, and it all collapsed into a sudden blackness that overtook Mikahl.

Alone again, back in his coma, the only sound Mikahl could hear in that dark empty place, was the sound of his own broken body trying desperately to draw breath. “Creeek…Krooth…Creeek…Krooth… Creeek… Krooth…”

After he stepped inside, Hyden Hawk closed the door to Pratchert’s Tower behind him. Talon flapped up from his shoulder with a start, and he jumped a little himself.

There was no room or hallway there. He found himself in a forest. Sort of a forest, anyway. Leading out ahead of him was a tunnel-like corridor formed of greenery. What little space overhead, that wasn’t closed in by branches and leaves, was filled with tangles of colorful, flowering vines, and clumps of hanging moss. The moss seemed to glow a radiant yellowish color, which lit the underside of the canopy like a lantern might. The thick trunks of the trees, that lined the archway in nearly perfect rows, were wrapped in spirals of ivy and creepers. Between, and behind the trunks, an unforgiving wall of thorn-bearing shrubs filled every conceivable space. Beyond that, there appeared to be nothing but blackness.

Talon flew up to the peak of the arch and tried and tried to get through where there should have been sky, but the effort was futile. There would be no bird’s eye view of the layout of this place, Hyden decided.

After further investigation, Hyden found that the walls of this passage were just as impenetrable as the roof was. Seeing that there was nothing else to do, but find where the forest tunnel led, Hyden set off down the leaf-strewn, grass covered floor with Talon winging along beside him.

Clumps of wildflowers sprouted up here and there, some with tiny white petals, some with big drooping orange and red blooms. Around the base of a rather large tree, a cluster of purple and gray mushrooms sprouted up, like a little city of toadstool buildings. A bright, yellow butterfly fluttered by on its way to an even brighter, cerulean colored flower, which bloomed from the thorny shrub beyond the trees. Hyden half expected a group of fairy folk to troop out, and dance a jig for him.