The Dragon Wrath: Book Two of the Arlon Prophecies Page 4

  CHAPTER 7

  It was old.

  At least, it looked old.

  Entire sections of the enormous stone walls had been reduced to moldy rubble, and creeping vines had worked their destructive tendrils between every crack in sight as far as the eyes could see.

  “It’s a city!” Mae’Lee yelled, shielding her eyes from the sudden blast of sunlight as she and Arlon broke free of the forest. “An ancient city.”

  “Come on!” Paymer screamed, waving his lanky arms at them frantically. “This way! There’s a big hole in the wall! Dead ahead!”

  “Take it!” Trilyra ordered. “I’m right behind you!”

  Arlon was sure his heart would explode while he escorted the Princess through the tall grass at breakneck speed. He was extremely worried. And with good reason; the seventy-five yard gap between the edge of the woods and the distressed city walls could provide just enough of a level stretch to allow war horses space to overtake them.

  Just past the halfway point, Arlon and Mae’Lee caught up to Hort. The struggling Dunamai from Thilasson was huffing and puffing and losing speed.

  “Come on, Hort from the port! Kick it up a notch!” Arlon yelled. “Almost there, my friend!”

  Three seconds later, Paymer reached the gap and ducked inside. Arlon swallowed hard. The hole was wide enough for a horse and tall enough for a rider to pass through. As they got closer to the wall, a nagging set of questions started bothering him.

  What if there’s more of them inside the ancient city? Who knows what’s in there?! It could be a Therion trap.

  They slowed somewhat as they encountered the rubble scattered all around the break in the wall. Paymer waved them in enthusiastically just as a group of riders burst out of the forest. “Good news,” he offered, out of breath. “The city looks deserted. Empty.”

  Trilyra spun around and dropped low about ten yards out from the gap, releasing a barrage of arrows. Two riders immediately lunged backward and tumbled violently to the soil. Arlon finally got a better look at the incoming savages. Each of them had a splash of white paint across the left half of their faces and a formidable javelin in their right hands. Dark, furry capes billowed out behind them, rippling in the wake of their furious charge.

  Trilyra hunched low and scrambled into the gap with the others. She took the briefest of moments to survey the impressive yet apparently-abandoned city. “Find a place to hide. I’ll take out as many of them as I can from here! Now go!”

  Arlon locked desperate eyes with her. “But Trilyra, we—“

  She shoved him away. “I—said—go—hide! I will be fine! Go!”

  The group reluctantly jogged towards a succession of low-rise stone buildings off to the right, but the sheer volume of debris cluttering the ground made progress more than difficult.

  A single Therion spear sailed into the gap and crashed into the dirt, then another. Trilyra ducked behind the wall before pivoting back around and firing. A third and final javelin with a metal tip clanked against the thick fortification and careened off to the side. With a quick motion, she strung another arrow, but then lowered her bow with a confused frown.

  “That’s strange.” Trilyra rotated towards the group. “Hey, guys! I, uh, I don’t know what’s going on, but…they stopped. They just…stopped.”

  Paymer grabbed a huge crumbling stone block and raised his head above it. “What?”

  She glanced back through the gap and stared outside. “I’m telling you…they just stopped pursuing us. About twenty-five yards out. Like there’s an invisible wall or something.”

  Mae’Lee plopped down on a pile of rocks to catch her breath and wipe the streams of sweat pouring down her cheeks. She raised her water pouch and drank for quite a while. “Why would they stop?”

  “Your guess is as good as mine, Princess.”

  “I’ll tell you what my guess is,” Arlon said, grabbing a drink for himself.

  Trilyra peered over at him.

  He picked his way carefully back towards her; Paymer and Hort followed. “What if there’s something in this old city worse than the Therion? Maybe there’s a reason it’s deserted. Maybe they have a good reason for staying out there.”

  “Don’t say that,” Mae’Lee whispered coarsely. “This place already feels creepy enough.”

  A trio of enormous falcons sailed beyond the wall high overhead. Trilyra raised her bow and released a warning shot in their general direction. The birds shrieked several times before abandoning the chase and vanishing.

  “Why are those things called Blood Feather Falcons?” Hort asked.

  “Bloodtips,” Paymer corrected. “Bloodtip Falcons. The tip of each one of their feathers is a deep red. It looks like it’s been dipped in blood. When I was little, someone gave me one of their wing feathers for my birthday. It was huge.”

  One by one everyone gathered at the jagged opening in the wall and gained the courage to peer out and study the curious sight. Nearly two dozen horses and their oddly-decorated riders milled about, keeping their unusual distance.

  “What’s that on their faces?” Mae’Lee inquired.

  Trilyra shrugged. “It’s hard to tell from here. Perhaps it’s some kind of white marking to indicate affiliation. We know that the Therion are not a unified kingdom. They are made up of various groups. Apparently they all don’t get along.”

  “Did the ones that attacked your convoy look like those guys out there?” Arlon asked.

  Trilyra shook her blonde head and leaned back against the rough wall. “No. They didn’t have any paint on their faces, or any paint anywhere for that matter. I think their horses had markings, though.”

  “Well, there is one good thing about having those guys near,” Arlon noted. “We probably don’t have to worry about the Order getting anywhere close to us anytime soon.”

  Mae’Lee folded her arms. “I don’t want to be around either of them. They’re both dreadful.”

  Paymer fished out a coin and rolled it nervously through his skinny fingers. “You know what I want?”

  “I’m sure you’re gonna tell us,” Trilyra smirked.

  “Well, what I want is to eat. That wild boar is sounding pretty good right about now.”

  “I agree,” she said, pushing off from the wall and slinging the bow across her back. “But not here. We need to do a bit of exploring first. See who or what is in these ruins. Especially if we want to sleep here tonight.”

  “I agree,” Arlon said. “Let me take the lead.”

  _____________________________________

  Arlon knew that two things were typically associated with large cities: people and noise. He was baffled. The immense ruins had neither. Except for the occasional blackbird call or the rustling of dry leaves piled up in every corner, the city was dead silent as they meandered its vacated streets. The outer layer of buildings—those closest to the walls—appeared to be abandoned houses. As they explored deeper in, the roads became wider and the structures grew larger. Much larger.

  The entire scene was a haunting mystery. There were no indications of a massive overthrow, such as scorched blocks or toppled buildings. No bleached bones or rusting weapons of any sort were to be found. It appeared that time itself was the only violent enemy to have visited this city. The invisibly slow ravages of wind, water, and decay met the eye at every glance and in every direction.

  Whatever happened, had happened hundreds, if not thousands, of years before. The group had yet to discover a single piece of hand-hewn timber or any other manmade wooden objects. If there had been any, they had rotted and deteriorated to dust over the long centuries. Faded clay pots (often masterfully decorated) and metal utensils were scattered here and there, especially in the outer residential areas. But not a scrap of wood or even a shred of fabric.

  “Do you think it was disease?” Mae’Lee asked.

  Everyone stopped and stared at her.

  She raised her eyebrows. “Maybe a plague or something like that wiped them out. Plagues do
happen you know. Maybe that’s why those dreadful people out there wouldn’t come in here.”

  “It is possible,” Paymer acknowledged. He rested his freckled hands on his hips. “Though you would think that we would find, you know, remains. A few bones here or there. Something.”

  “They could have been conquered,” Trilyra said. “Conquered and carried away as slaves. Maybe by the Therion.”

  “It just doesn’t look like a city that was besieged,” Arlon replied. “It just looks like everyone got up one day…and left. And when I say ‘one day,’ I mean one day a long, long, long time ago.”

  Hort rubbed his round chin. “But why?”

  Arlon lowered a hand onto the young man’s shoulder. “That, my friend, is an answer *I bet not a single Sevasti in all of Alaithia truly knows.”

  He could not have been more wrong.

  CHAPTER 8

  It wasn’t even close to dark, but after a warm meal and almost an hour of weapons practice, the fugitives bedded down in the safety of a gigantic building near the city center. Thick piles of dry leaves covered in cloaks and shirts served as their makeshift, crunchy mattresses.

  Most agreed that they felt relatively safe for the first time since leaving the Karaval nearly a week before.

  Arlon had volunteered to stand the first watch. He wasn’t really all that tired. The earlier thrill of actually escaping from a Therion raiding party combined with the present mystery of the uninhabited city overpowered his ordinary sense of exhaustion.

  Several dusty shafts of light poured into the spacious chamber and bounced off of the stone walls and alighted on the muddy marble floors. Two rows of impressive stone columns rose far overhead, and a wide series of steps at the distant end of the hall led to some type of stage or platform.

  Arlon employed his highly-active imagination and struggled to picture what might have transpired here in ages past. He saw clusters of smartly-dressed political officials engaged in vigorous debate, with a king or queen seated on an elaborate throne from just above those marble stairs. Huge hand-woven tapestries dangled along the walls and intricate, colorful rugs were everywhere underfoot. He closed his eyes. Outside, he could envision thousands of citizens, merchants, and visitors in a lively throng along the crowded avenues. People were busy. People were happy.

  But then something must have happened.

  But what? he wondered.

  Arlon opened his eyes once again and transitioned from the exciting past to the enigmatic present. He surveyed the immediate area.

  Everyone was sleeping.

  Good.

  Everything was quiet.

  All was well (at least, as well as could be given the fact that they were now being hunted by not one, but two, of the most dangerous groups in existence).

  He ventured towards the far end of the hall.

  Something compelled him. It was an odd sort of feeling, an urge that was difficult to pinpoint and a sensation impossible to understand. Hort’s (now-famous) snoring drowned out the hollow echoes of Arlon’s own nervous footfalls while he traversed the broad marble floor.

  He drifted past row after row of enormous columns, looming above like stationary stone guardians standing at full and silent attention. The hairs on the back of his neck seemed to pop up as he began ascending the dozen or so steps up to the next level. He glanced around the wide stairs, then back at his sleeping friends.

  Why do I feel this way?

  What’s going on here?

  The final step led him to a sizable marble plateau with a pair of round depressions inlaid into the floor about twenty feet apart. Both were filled with a muddy mash of leaves and dirt nearly up to their decorated brims. Arlon imagined that they must’ve served as either fire pits for cooking or shallow pools for bathing.

  He ventured further back on the stage and looked up. A broad swath of amber light from a massive window off to his left illuminated a stone, table-like structure along the rear wall. Small chunks of plaster and rocky debris littered most of the counter’s filthy surface. Arlon reached out timidly and wrote his name in the heavy blanket of pale dust with his index finger.

  And that’s when he noticed it.

  To the right.

  What do we have here?

  It was about the size and thickness of a large book, and far too regularly shaped to have been merely a random slab of broken rock.

  It looks like a box.

  He brushed his hand across the top of the object and scraped untold years of dusty buildup to the side. A few more careful wipes and a quick blast of breath revealed a much different texture below.

  It’s a metal box.

  Arlon grabbed the corners and gave it a quick shove. The container didn’t budge in the slightest. He studied it from a few different angles. Something roundish was protruding from the middle of the side facing him. He cleaned it off and bent low.

  Aha…an old lock. A very, very rusty old lock.

  I bet it wouldn’t take much to pop you loose.

  He located a fist-sized rock and took careful aim. After three quick strikes, the padlock pretty much crumbled. Arlon would’ve been impressed with himself had he not realized that hundreds of years of corrosion had obviously done most of the hard work for him.

  Now to pry you open.

  He knew the lid would prove difficult, with hinges seized by rust and edges cemented together by a thick glazing of dust hardened over the eons. Frustration was the only lasting result of a series of strained grips, pushes, and pulls all along the rim of the six-inch high box.

  Well...I may have to crack this thing open.

  Arlon snatched up the rock again and did his best to break the lid free with a repeated series of forceful hammerings all the way around the seam. The dull thuds reverberated off the walls of the huge chamber for several seconds before fading to silence.

  Careful there, Arlon. Don’t make too much noise and wake up your exhausted friends.

  He glanced back.

  Still sleeping. Good.

  Arlon adjusted strategies and knelt way down until his eyes were almost level with the stone tabletop.

  Maybe if I hit upwards, it will jar you loose.

  He did. And it did.

  Incredible!

  In anticipation his fingers trembled under the strain of a quickening pulse as he stretched towards the liberated cover. At first, the long hinge spanning the back squealed, then popped, before finally submitting with a dull snap.

  Arlon pulled in a deep breath, peeled the lid back, and hunched over. The weakening window light spilled into a box that he figured hadn’t seen the sun in over a thousand years. Maybe more.

  He squinted.

  What?

  Wait…I’ve seen this before. Or something like it.

  It was red…a brilliant red.

  And huge…nearly as big as a grown man’s hand.

  He dared to trace his finger lightly along its delicate, waxy surface. He admired all of its sharp points connected by crisp, unbroken edges.

  This red leaf looks fresh…like it was plucked five minutes ago. But how can that be?!

  With all the precaution of a skilled surgeon, Arlon lifted the leaf and turned it over. To his amazement, the underside bore the same vibrancy as the other.

  Absolutely incredible!

  But what’s this?

  He redirected his fascinated gaze from the underside of the leaf to the underside of the lid. The artwork’s colors were not half as rich as the plant, but the painting was quite detailed. Arlon leaned closer; he wished the light was a little better.

  It’s a waterfall.

  A waterfall?

  The painting seemed hauntingly real. He could hear something—or maybe feel something—way off in the distance. Water. Roaring water. A flood of water began rushing through his mind. And just then, something else came rushing back.

  Of course!

  He grabbed his necklace and rubbed it over and over. My vision! I remember. At the Rone. The red leaf. T
he tree with red leaves. The water.

  But what does it all mean?

  CHAPTER 9

  CLANG! CLANG! CLANG!

  A groggy Arlon went from deep sleep to deep confusion in less than two seconds.

  What’s happening?!

  CLANG! CLANG!

  An alarm?!

  He jumped up, along with a very disoriented Hort and a very ready-for-action Trilyra. Her sword was thrust out as she pivoted in multiple directions.

  “What’s wrong?!” she demanded. “Where’s the danger?!”

  Oddly enough, Mae’Lee and Paymer were standing side by side. And smiling. Mae’Lee was clutching two metal containers. She banged them together.

  CLANG! CLANG! CLANG!

  “Wake up, sleepyheads!” the Princess called out.

  “A little late for that,” Arlon murmured.

  Trilyra raised to her feet and lowered her blade gradually. “You two better have a very good reason for this.”

  “We do.” Mae’Lee raised her thin, black eyebrows and rocked back on her heels. “Breakfast.” She and Paymer pointed down. “In royal fashion. Almost.”

  Arlon glanced over. He wondered for a moment if perhaps he was still dreaming. Five incredibly beautiful dishes, laced with ornate swirls of blue and red, were spread out in a loose circle on the floor. Each elegant plate held a modest slab of steaming pork and a pair of golden utensils.

  The Princess knelt down. “I’m just sorry that I couldn’t find any cups. Or proper napkins. I guess you can use your sleeves.”

  “Wow, this looks great!” Hort exclaimed, scooting over to the nearest place setting.

  Arlon followed. “Where did all of this come from?”

  Everyone else sat down.

  Mae’Lee was obviously bursting with pride. “I did a little exploring.”

  Trilyra shot her a quick stare. “You? Really?”

  “Yes, really. I woke up early and talked to Paymer for a bit. He tried to show me how he does that coin-flip thing. I’m not a very fast learner. Then I took a stroll.” She gestured to her left. “Over that way. There is a narrow hallway and then several smaller storage rooms. I found a bunch of stone containers in one of them. One of them was filled with plates, like these. They were dusty, of course. But I cleaned them with water and a few of my scarves. They polished up nicely.”