Chapter 15 #6
We headed west for several hours before taking a turn towards the north, the certainty in my destination as clear in my mind as if I were walking the path back to the house I grew up in.
It was beyond strange, and I didn’t like the knowledge that I’d been subjected to some twisted, stolen magic, but if I could make something good come out of this then I was more than willing to do it.
I just prayed to the Fallen that I wasn’t cursing myself by making use of this dark gift and spitting in the eye of the lost god it had been stolen from.
Soon, I spotted a huge rock on the horizon roughly shaped like a giant eagle with its wings stretched wide and beak pointing off to our left as though it were looking at something.
I smiled in relief, kicking the camel into a fast pace to reach it, bouncing up and down wildly on its back as it took up a rolling gallop which came close to unseating me.
The gang hollered as they took chase, evidently thinking we were close to our prize and Drake whooped loudly to encourage them, grinning at me from beneath the hood which he was using to shade himself from the unrelenting sun.
We passed under the shadow of the hulking rock form and my breathing stalled as my camel fell still and the thieves closed in at my back.
“We should leave an offering here,” one of the men muttered and I looked over to find him staring up at the hulking rock in reverence. “This is Karu, the lost god of the wind. We should thank him for offering us shade from the sun.”
My mother had always enjoyed telling us stories of the lost gods and their so-called powers to my sisters and I at bedtime when we were children, and I had some vague recollection of Karu gliding across all the land and guiding the best of the weather wherever he saw fit.
Or sending storms ahead of him when that suited his mood instead.
Several of the thieves produced trinkets and small coins to toss at the base of the rock while others snickered in amusement at their superstitious behaviour.
I glanced at Drake, wondering about his beliefs and finding a dark look on his normally smiling face.
“The gods abandoned us long ago,” he muttered, sneering up at the hulking stone which cast us in its shadow. “Why should we offer them anything when they turned their backs on us? I have no interest in pandering to some deity who has no interest in us or the fate they dealt us when they left.”
He spat on the stone and the man who had first spoken of Karu gasped in alarm while another looked inclined to punch him for it. But Drake just tugged a lethal looking blade from his belt and levelled them with a challenging look.
My gaze caught on the ink which coated the fingers of the hand which held that blade and I frowned, wondering why my attention had been drawn to it so forcefully.
Before the men could come to blows over their beliefs or lack of them, a wild wind picked up, sand belting us as it whipped around the stone eagle and caused a wailing sound to echo beneath the rock for several long seconds which made my pulse beat out of rhythm.
“You’ve angered the gods!” one of the men cried and Drake barked a laugh as the wind died down.
“The gods are fucking lost, Brantar. I guarantee they didn’t come back just because I spat on a lump of damn rock. Pull yourselves together or fuck off back to Egos and tell him that your superstitions spooked you, and you had to run home to suckle at his hairy teats for safety.”
The men all bristled angrily at that suggestion, but Drake ignored them, turning his gaze to me in a clear demand for directions.
I blew out a breath and forced my mind from the prickling feeling which was still running across my skin, focusing on the sense of direction that Magdor’s magic had left in me instead.
I led the way beyond the eagle, heading towards the red stone chasm ahead of us and passing between two vast walls of rock that created a pocket of darkness out of the blazing sun. The shadows were thick and cool, a welcome relief from the heat of the desert as we rode into the ravine.
I found myself staring up at the rock walls, the blood red colour of them making me feel at once awed and uneasy as I wondered what could have caused them to look that way.
There were old tales of a battle that had taken place here between the Fae of old.
The claim was that so much blood was spilled in that fight that when it was done, at the end of a long and gruelling passage of seven days and seven nights, there was only a single Fae left standing to claim the victory.
It was rumoured that the blood of all those who had fallen had stained the ground here until the rocks themselves bled and that was what I looked upon now.
I wasn’t sure I believed such a tale, but it was harder to deny in the face of it, especially when I reached out to brush my fingers along the red rock and they came away stained with the bright colour which glimmered wetly on my skin.
Something about the place commanded silence and whenever the men broke it, they spoke in whispers to one another without anyone needing to command it.
Even Drake was quiet as he rode beside me, the plod of the camels’ feet on the hard, rocky ground beneath us echoing around the cavernous gap and no doubt alerting any beasts in this place to our presence.
The stones above us were baked dry by the blinding sun, cracking towards the top of the sheer walls like the crust of a pie.
I kept my hand on the hilt of the scimitar at my hip and Drake’s eyes darted left and right as he clearly anticipated an attack too, though nothing in the silence suggested we weren’t alone.
“I don’t like this place,” one of the men muttered behind me and I glanced back to see it was the one with the tattooed brows who had the issue.
“If you’re afraid, then you can go back,” I clipped and his spine straightened, his eyes narrowing and the naked arses of the women inked on his face lowering.
“Maybe we feed this one to whatever monsters come looking for us,” he suggested to his friends who sniggered in return.
“Maybe you shut your mouth and remember who’s leading us to the treasure,” Drake tossed at him.
“When we have it, we won’t need him anymore,” Jadar said in a low voice I barely caught, though Drake didn’t seem to hear it.
Or maybe he did, but he didn’t give a fuck.
I was going to have to work out an escape plan as soon as that coin was in my grasp, because otherwise I was going to end up with a sword in my back.
And I wondered if it might even belong to the man riding beside me.
Drake didn’t look my way as I gave him an assessing look, certain he held no loyalty to me at all.
He’d said himself he didn’t have friends, and the only reason he’d kept me alive so far was to deliver him to the gold I’d promised.
Between him and the eight men at our backs, I would be hard pressed to get out of this alive, even with my Affinity for fighting.
I might take down a few of them, perhaps more than half if I got lucky, but eventually one of them would wound me badly enough to bring me to my knees.
And then I’d die out here in this desert never to be found.
A squawking shriek carried from somewhere in the sky and we all looked up, drawing our weapons as we hunted the azure canvas above for the fire drake.
The camels grunted uneasily, slowing their pace and I thought of my horse, Gallow, wishing he was with me now. That animal was faster than a bullet and as fearless as a warrior. He’d get me out of any danger so long as I was on his back.
We kept moving, alert as we crept deeper into the ravine, watching the sky for any sign of the fire drake returning. We turned a corner and entered a wider part of the valley, the ground sloping sharply down beneath us until we arrived in what appeared to be a wide, round crater in the rock.
My eyes fell on the most beautiful object laying on the ground at the heart of it, nestled in a pool of golden sand which had been heated so violently that it had been turned to glass.
It was an egg the size of a man, the shell looking as though it were made of pure rubies, gleaming in the sunlight filtering down from above.
“Holy shit,” Drake gasped just as Tattoo Brows dismounted and walked towards it.
“What is that?” Jador called.
“A dragon egg,” I rasped in disbelief, having seen drawings of these in the old scriptures. But it wasn’t possible. Dragons were extinct, this had to be something else, though it was hard to deny the sheer beauty of the thing. I could think of no other beast who laid eggs like that.
“Don’t touch it,” I warned, but the arsehole was already laying his greedy hands on it.
“It’s hot,” he gasped. “Jador, come feel this.”
I glanced at Drake, seeing the reflection of the ruby egg gleaming in his eyes, temptation written into his features. He moved to dismount and my hand shot out, my fingers locking around his arm.
“Don’t,” I hissed. “Haven’t you heard of Dragon Lore?”
“That’s kid’s stories,” he said dismissively, but he didn’t dismount, only throwing a jealous look at Tattoo Brows who was all but humping the egg as he tried to roll it back in the direction of his camel.
“Leave it,” I snapped. “We have to move on from this place.”
“Do you know the price one of these would fetch, arsehole?” Tattoo Brows grunted. “Fuck the treasure, we could head home now and live like kings for the rest of our days on the bounty we’d receive for this prize.”
“And incur the wrath of a dragon who will not stop hunting us until its dying breath?” I snarled and Drake considered my words, seeming to weigh up the risks.
“Dragons don’t exist no more,” he hissed.