Chapter 87
WILD MAGIC, TANGELO MARGARITAS, AND SIR EUSTACE HAS HAD ENOUGH
The Leightonian army went wild at the sight of the baby luck dragon. Each soldier had been promised a bonus of ten gold sovereigns if it was their arrow who took down the dragon for their prince, and since starving men were desperate, the air became infested with arrows.
The luck dragon merely laughed and roused a tornado.
While the dervish caught the arrows and directly them harmlessly into another dune, Bradley used a levitas spell to hover near the black flames devouring the tower.
“Oblivatus,” he incanted, and the dark magefire vanished as if it had never been.
Bradley felt a drain on his magic that left him gasping and clutching the homespun over his heart. His levitas spell faltered and held, but he braced himself with a hand against the tower all the same.
Every spell exacted a price on the sorcerer, but with as much wild magic as he possessed, he rarely felt the spells’ effects. Apparently overcoming dark magic exacted a greater toll. He wouldn’t be able to do that again so soon without dire consequences.
“Reparo,” he barked at the tower, who obediently ejected the gigantic crossbolts from its wall and began repairing its damaged stones.
He spun away from the tower and glared at the dark mage. Gladstone.
The captain beside him screamed orders at the crew loading the Skybreaker for another attack. Its arrowhead was aimed straight at Dirk. The little dragon was distracted by his tornado, directing the dervish like a conductor of an orchestra with his claws slinging to a rhythm only he heard.
“Dirk,” Bradley shouted. “The Skybreaker!”
The blue dragon’s attention snapped to the crossbow, and a shimmer of white rippled down his scales. The Skybreaker fired, and the striated Damascus steel gave a deadly flash as it tore through the air.
Dirk spun, and a wind more powerful than his greatest tornado caught the bolt and whipped it away from his body. The baby dragon growled under the strain of changing the arrow’s trajectory. His magic prevailed and arced the arrow behind the tower to return it to the dune from whence it came.
“Take that, bucko!” With a swish of his tail, Dirk flipped the crossbolt a quarter turn so its point drilled straight down like the punishing hand of an angry god.
“For Caelus’s sake,” Sir Raleigh bellowed at the dark mage, “do something!”
Franklin Gladstone’s mean dark eyes were bulging out of their sockets, his skin the same pallor of curdled milk. “I-I—”
The soldiers screamed and flung themselves out of the way. The bolt skewered the Skybreaker with a thunderous crack.
Bradley flung out a hand and roared, “Fulminus!”
Lightning tore from the cloudless sky and zinged down the metal bolt. The Skybreaker crossbow exploded into splinters.
Orange sand and beige dust rose into a cloud as voluminous as a circus tent that billowed over the surrounding desert. Sir Eustace’s tent and desk vanished. The cloud swallowed the agave plants, the soldiers, the camels. The world became silent under the weight of the sand.
The desert softened Bradley’s landing to a whisper as he touched down just outside the haze, sleeve pressed over his nose and mouth to keep from choking. He nodded at Dirk, and the luck dragon sent a wind to clear the air.
Nothing remained of the Skybreaker except its metal workings and smoldering splinters.
The monstrous bolt endured, scorched black and its head buried in glass created by the lightning strike.
The army had scattered, the soldiers running in every direction into the desert so long as it was away from the tower.
Camels trundled after them, grunting their contempt.
Two horses bolted down the westward side of the dune in a frantic retreat for the Strip, but only one bore a rider. Sir Raleigh Flinthart.
Franklin Gladstone was the only one left behind, buried up to his waist in sand. He thrashed like a wild beast with its paw in a trap in an effort to free himself. Black veins threaded around his void-like eyes, harsh against his pale, freckled skin.
“I cursed you,” he screeched. “You should be a stuttering, dumb fool!”
Bradley’s voice was tight. “Glad I could disappoint you.”
The more Gladstone pawed at the sand, the more the veins around his eyes spread. It even corrupted his fingertips, for they appeared as if freshly dipped in ink. His dark magic was eating him from the inside out. Such was the fate of all sorcerers who grasped for magic beyond their understanding.
“But you’re nothing! You’re just a peasant from the Cut,” Gladstone raged. “That power was never meant for someone like you. It belongs to the nobleborn. It should’ve been mine!”
Perhaps that was the very reason the wild magic had chosen him, if such things were decided and not left to fate. Bradley hadn’t come into magic or to the College with the preconception that he deserved any of it. That he was owed anything. His magic was a gift, and he treated as such.
Without answering, Bradley extracted the first of the crystals from his robe pocket and placed it at the sand in his feet. He walked three steps, placed another crystal.
“What are you doing? Stop that at once. Listen to me, peasant!”
Bradley rooted a third crystal into the sand and kept circling.
“This isn’t over!” Gladstone raged. “This isn’t—”
What strength the dark mage had left, he directed at the baby dragon hovering overhead. He flung up his hand, teeth bared in a snarl, and the black gem around his neck flashed red like a stoked coal.
“Egad!” With a whip of his tail, the baby dragon zipped out of the way.
“Vacuo,” Bradley shouted.
The luck dragon’s wind and the sorcerer apprentice’s spell hit the dark mage at the same time. Gladstone’s body snapped back, and the life in his dark eyes winked out. He slumped forward against the sand and lay very still.
“Skin my scales,” Dirk whimpered. “Did I—? I didn’t mean to. I just wanted to defend myself!”
“He’s not dead, Dirk. We just knocked him unconscious at the same time. See? His breath is stirring the sand under his nose.”
Indeed, little beige swirls rose, spun, and drifted away like blown dandelion seeds.
Bradley quickly planted the remaining crystals and spoke the incantation that would confine the dark mage until a grand master from the College could deal with him.
Threads of crackling purple light rose from the crystals and fused together to create a dome-like net.
The containment field wouldn’t protect him from the elements, so at least Gladstone had had the good sense to fall on his face and protect his nose and cheeks from a vicious sunburn.
The two friends searched the dunes for anyone loitering and contemplating a sneak attack, but the soldiers had all fled. Together, they unearthed Sir Eustace’s camp and were met with an irate ministry official instead of a grateful one.
“Cinders and dragon turds! What is this?”
Dirk glanced at Bradley. “Is he pointing at me?”
“Of course I’m pointing at you, Dragon!” Sir Eustace gestured rapidly up and down. “Explain this immediately. Blue scales, white feathers, all of thirty pounds soaking wet? Since when were you a luck dragon? And a baby one at that. You don’t even have your barbels yet!”
The baby dragon clicked his white claws together. “So, um, I was only pretending to be a Great Red. I had, uh, some magical assistance.”
The incredulity in Sir Eustace’s gaze had Bradley squaring his shoulders. “I’m not his valet. I’m a sorcerer apprentice.”
“Since when is the Prestigious College of Sorcerers outfitting their apprentices in rags? Where’s the white wool?”
Bradley smoothed a hand down the brown homespun. “Uh, this has been the uniform for apprentices for the last half century, Sir Eustace.”
Rather than admit his sixty-year sabbatical in Lagunas had put him behind the times and saddled him with a vice for tangelo margaritas (not that he minded), the Komodo decided to blame the hominid species in general.
“Humans,” the ministry official spat. “Always changing customs and traditions as easily as a wind changes direction. It’s no wonder why your kingdoms and empires never endure. ”
The ministry official blew a raspberry. “Next you’re going to tell me that princess volunteered to be kidnapped!”
“Not volunteered,” Millie called down from the tower, “but I certainly didn’t resist. I went quite willingly.”
Sir Eustace’s golden eyes ignited with red flame.
Literally. “Do you two have any idea what you’ve done?
You, Dragon, are not Draco typhonus, but Draco caishen!
The Discount Damsel Protocol only concerns princesses properly kidnapped by Typhonus Class dragons, because up until this very moment no Caishen Class dragon would’ve ever dreamed of doing such a thing, which means no ‘going quite willing.’ This whole DDP is void! ”
“Aaand that means what, exactly?” Dirk inquired.
“It means that you, Dirk the Deceiver—”
“Just ‘Dirk,’ if you don’t mind.”
“—and you, Princess Psycho, have wasted my time, the Heroes’ time, everybody’s time! You’ve made a mockery of the Ministry of Folklore! It means you’ve lost all your points, Dragon, and you’ve got two black strikes against your name, Princess.”
“How perfectly scandalous,” the princess purred from the tower balcony. “I love it.”
“Gah! I have had it up to here with your shenanigans. I am leaving first thing tomorrow!” The ministry official turned right around and stomped off into his tent to turn every last tangelo on its tree into one giant margarita.
Duchess, who had witnessed the confrontation from the safety of the tent’s awning, padded out of the shade to give the dragon an affectionate bunt first and a swat of her paw second for jeopardizing her supply of caviar ahead of schedule.
Her fluffy tail bounced as she trotted quickly after the ministry official for her last taste of luxury before she had to return to the doldrums of the princess’s sardines and goose-liver paté.
Bradley gave the little dragon’s tail tuft a gentle tug. “How you doing? You okay?”
The little dragon was thoughtful a moment.
The DDP had been a huge feather in Dirk the Dangerous’s cap, a ticket to the Big Leagues.
The Big Leagues that were dominated by the Great Reds, who maintained their reputations through theft and ransom.
Theirs was a league of competition, not for one’s own betterment, but as a bragging right to use amongst one’s peers.
And Just Dirk realized that wasn’t the life he wanted.
He was a blue luck dragon, one who raised tornadoes and slung magic with the best of the sorcerers and befriended princesses and enjoyed tea and cuddling cats.
So what if he didn’t have any points? What were points compared to friends? To family? To his own self-worth?
Dirk grinned and corkscrewed through the air. “I am, Bradley. I really am!”
Then he whisked his best friend off the sand and flew them both back to the tower where the rest of their family was waiting.