Dragonfang Read online

  Paul Collins was born in England, raised in New Zealand and moved to Australia in 1972. In 1975 he launched Void, a science fiction magazine.

  In 1978, Paul moved from magazine to book publishing, with a series of original Australian science fiction and fantasy novels and anthologies. During this time he published Australia’s first heroic fantasy novels.

  He sold his first professional fantasy story in 1977 to the United States magazine Weirdbook. The best of his short stories have been collected in The Government in Exile (1994). A later collection, Stalking Midnight, was published by cosmos.com.

  His first fantasy novel for younger readers was The Wizard’s Torment. Paul then edited the young adult anthology Dream Weavers, Australia’s first heroic fantasy anthology. This was followed by Fantastic Worlds, and Tales from the Wasteland.

  Together with Michael Pryor, Paul is the co-editor of the highly successful fantasy series, The Quentaris Chronicles; he has also contributed to the series as an author. Paul’s recent works include The Jelindel Chronicles, The Earthborn War trilogy and The World of Grrym trilogy in collaboration with Danny Willis.

  Paul has been the recipient of several awards, notably the inaugural Peter McNamara, the Aurealis, and the William Atheling. He has been short-listed for many others, including the Aurealis and Ditmar awards.

  Paul served time in the commandos, has a black belt in both tae kwon do and ju jitsu, he was a kickboxer, and trained with the Los Angeles Hell Drivers.

  Visit him at www.paulcollins.com.au and www.quentaris.com

  Also by Paul Collins

  Dragonlinks

  Dragonsight

  Wardragon

  Swords of Quentaris

  Slaves of Quentaris

  Dragonlords of Quentaris

  Princess of Shadows

  The Forgotten Prince

  Vampires of Quentaris

  The Spell of Undoing

  The Slightly Skewed Life of Toby Chrysler

  Allira’s Gift (with Danny Willis)

  Lords of Quibbitt (with Danny Willis)

  Morgassa’s Folly (with Danny Willis)

  The Wizard’s Torment

  Cyberskin

  The Earthborn

  The Skyborn

  The Hiveborn

  Sneila

  Metaworlds (ed)

  Dream Weavers (ed)

  Fantastic Worlds (ed)

  The MUP Encyclopaedia of Australian Science Fiction and Fantasy (ed)

  BOOK TWO IN THE JELINDEL CHRONICLES

  Paul Collins

  Published by Ford Street Publishing, an imprint of Hybrid Publishers, PO Box 52, Ormond VIC 3204

  Melbourne Victoria Australia

  Text © Paul Collins 2004

  4 6 8 10 9 7 5 3

  This publication is copyright. Apart from any use as permitted under the Copyright Act 1968, no part may be reproduced by any process without prior written permission from the publisher. Requests and enquiries concerning reproduction should be addressed to Ford Street Publishing Pty Ltd

  2 Ford Street, Clifton Hill VIC 3068.

  Ford Street website: www.fordstreetpublishing.com

  First published 2004

  National Library of Australia

  Cataloguing-in-Publication entry

  Author: Collins, Paul 1954–

  Title: Dragonfang / Paul Collins

  ISBN: 9781921665080 (pbk.)

  Target Audience: Fantasy – Juvenile fiction

  Dewey Number: A823.3

  Cover design: Grant Gittus

  Map: Marc McBride

  Printed in Australia by

  McPherson’s Printing Group, Maryborough, Victoria

  Acknowledgement

  I am indebted to Sean McMullen for his constant generosity, and to others who have offered valued help: Meredith Costain, Randal Flynn, Liz Harper, Dmetri Kakmi, Louise Prout and Cathy Larsen

  To Celeste Pryor, who loves dragons

  From a concept by Sean McMullen

  Contents

  1 The Great Temple of Verity

  2 The Tower Inviolate

  3 Assassins

  4 The Dark Empress Sails

  5 To Save a World

  6 The Dragonfang

  7 The Witches of Zaria

  8 The Green Mountains

  9 The Warrior Gate

  10 Prince Ulad’s Lair

  11 The Library of Hazaria

  12 Chicken Run, Bat Flight

  13 The Book of Alchemorum

  14 Lady Forturian

  15 Piracy

  16 The Ringstone

  17 Rescue

  18 The Voyage Home

  19 Dragon Versus Dragon

  20 Homecoming

  21 The Lindraks

  22 Allies and Enemies

  23 Epilogue

  Chapter 1

  THE GREAT TEMPLE OF VERITY

  During the night, someone had scrawled a slogan on the outer wall of the Great Temple of Verity in Arcadia. The two-foot tall letters were clumsily executed, as if the writer had clutched the brush in a tight-fisted grip rather than with the finer grasp needed for delicate penmanship. What surprised the former Countess Jelindel dek Mediesar even more was that a common street agitator could actually write. It didn’t make sense. And things that didn’t make sense worried her.

  Writing was important to Jelindel. Years earlier, when the Preceptor murdered her family, she had escaped. Disguised as a boy, she had begun a new life as a market scribe. Writing had saved her that time. Writing was powerful; it could make lives or end them.

  Jelindel always treated people who could write with respect, care, and sometimes suspicion.

  The previous week she had discovered in the Temple’s library an obscure tome that spoke of five pentacle gems. It was written that, when brought together, they could bridge the gulf between paraworlds. Was the chronicler retelling a myth or had he first hand knowledge of the gems? Jelindel had a very real need to visit one particular paraworld. Eyes still fixed on the graffiti, she failed to hear someone’s approach.

  ‘That will take hours to scrub off,’ said a worried voice.

  Jelindel turned to find the Holy Priestess Kelricka, gazing at the slogan.

  ‘Hours?’ Jelindel shook her head. ‘Better make that days. I can smell binding magic from here. The ink has depth-bonded with the mortar.’

  Kelricka sighed. ‘Why Has Verity Forsaken Us?’ She read the slogan aloud. ‘Why indeed?’ she asked of herself.

  ‘Pardon?’

  ‘Do not mind me. Lindkeer slips deeper into sickness, and I fear that she will not last this night …’ After a moment, she continued. ‘She has always been as a mother to me. The new Dean of Human Powers is – aggravating, to say the least. She acts as if she is in charge. As if Lindkeer were already gone …’ A single tear ran down her cheek.

  ‘I am sorry, Kelricka.’

  ‘Never mind. All things pass, as they say.’ She changed the subject. ‘What do you make of it then?’

  ‘The slogan? It’s the work of the Preceptor, of course.’

  ‘Why of course? Why not some empty-headed navvy who has lost his job and blames us for it?’

  ‘This is not the work of the merely disenchanted,’ Jelindel said. ‘For a start, the author can write. That alone sets him apart. It means he is educated, reasonably intelligent. Even the wording is cleverly phrased: “Why Has Verity Forsaken Us?” Not: “Has Verity Forsaken Us?” but a question that presumes established guilt. And then …’

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘The clumsiness of the writing is too – calculated.’ Jelindel paused. ‘The Preceptor moves against us, Kelricka. He has sworn a vendetta against the Verital Priestesses, and he is not a man to be easily thwarted. If he cannot get what he wants one way, then
he will do it another.’

  ‘By stirring up the people against us?’ Kelricka asked, alarmed.

  ‘With professional agitators – why not? His forces are perilously stretched across the continent. I would guess that he is discovering just how costly it is to maintain his newfound empire. He can ill afford a major push right now, certainly not one that might prove unpopular with the people.’

  ‘So he will make it popular with the people first?’

  ‘That is my guess,’ Jelindel replied.

  She did not admit that she might be partly to blame. That part of the Preceptor’s bile was actually aimed at her. She and her former companions, Daretor and Zimak, had eluded the Preceptor’s grasp once too often. History had proven that emperors – especially tyrants – were unforgiving.

  Kelricka expelled another deep sigh. ‘These are dangerous times. I will send some neophytes to start scrubbing.’ She turned on her heel and departed.

  That night, the first of month four 2132, Jelindel walked the battlements of the Arcadian temple. It was already a full year since her dedication to the Sisters of Verity. Life had been rich in learning and meditation; she had healed many old wounds, those on the outside more quickly than those on the inside. Even in this beautiful retreat, shut off from the outside world, the nightmares continued unabated. Some nights she screamed in her sleep, or lunged up out of deep dreaming, frantically smothering imaginary fires. The same fires which had consumed her family when she was but a girl of fourteen.

  Yet Jelindel was not content. She felt stifled. She gazed out over the battlements at the busy town below, and heard laughter and singing. Somewhere close, a fight had broken out.

  The sounds of life. She shook her head in annoyance.

  ‘Tch! What is wrong with me?’ she asked herself, querulously. And that’s when she saw it. Something dark blotting out the stars.

  She stood very still, relaxed her breathing as she had been taught, and scrutinised the star- strewn firmament. To seek a thing in the dark, the central field of vision is useless, droned the voice of old Surreanten, her father’s spellcaster. The dark of the eye cannot penetrate the darkness; for that the peripheral vision must be employed.

  She stared into the sky but switched her attention to her side vision. And saw them. They came swooping out of the darkest quarter of the moonless night like so many bats, only larger, and vaguely man-shaped.

  Jelindel did not know what the creatures were, but she knew evil intent when she saw it. She raced along the battlement, leaped the eight-foot gap to the roof of the chancery, then swung herself over the railing of the belfry and onto the narrow platform that ringed the great bell and allowed the maintenance men to perform their duties. However, the bell could only be rung from the floor of the belfry several storeys below. By the time she reached the ground floor, it might be too late, despite the guard spells that protected the Temple. Such spells were usually designed to thwart would-be intruders who came afoot; aerial attackers were a rare consideration.

  Jelindel knew she must warn the sisterhood. But how? The great bell, fully nine feet across at the base, bulged above her in the darkness. A braided rope dangled from a giant brass clapper to the flagstoned floor sixty feet below.

  ‘White Quell protect me,’ Jelindel whispered.

  She spat on her hands and leaped into the darkness. And almost missed the rope. She plunged through the air, smothering a cry, twisted like a cat and clutched the thick rope. Her grip was poor and the rope snaked through her fists, burning her palms. She muttered a small binding spell. The electric blue lights danced briefly around her fists and her grip held. She dangled thirty feet in the air.

  Above her the great clapper crashed against the sides of the bell – but emitted no sound. That’s impossible – unless a dampening spell had been cast! But who would do such a thing?

  Far below she caught sight of a small figure, barely more than a blacker patch of darkness, huddled on the floor. As she watched, the figure raised a hand and inscribed a hexagram in the air. A low muttering reached Jelindel’s ears.

  A traitor, Jelindel thought. And she hasn’t spotted me yet, so preoccupied with her dampening spell must she be.

  Jelindel let go of the rope and dropped. She muttered a cushioning spell and landed on the huddled figure, smashing it to the ground with a loud ‘Oomph!’

  Instantly, the Temple bell boomed out its basso profundo warning as the dampening spell broke, its author either dead or unconscious. Gasping for breath, Jelindel picked herself up and limped over to the still figure. She tugged back the cowl and grunted in surprise.

  Lying on the floor was Kelricka.

  A raspy voice erupted from the darkness. ‘You have damaged my tool. It is only fitting that you should replace her.’

  Morgat, the new Dean of Human Powers, stepped from the shadows. Her hands were already weaving a spell of control. Jelindel took a step backwards, ransacking her mind for the appropriate counter-spell. Behind her, the Temple was rousing. Lesser bells were tolling, emphasising the danger. But there were also hideous cries, and screams of agony.

  ‘Concern yourself not with what is happening out there, Jelindel. A danger greater than any you have faced stands before you now!’

  Jelindel was too preoccupied to answer. Her mind was busy dredging up bits and pieces of mage lore. She was still barely an Adept 9, whereas Morgat was at least an Adept 11. But Jelindel was different to other Adepts: she had worn the dragonlink mailshirt, and absorbed some of the skills and knowledge it had stolen from its legion of wearers.

  Jelindel uttered a sharp cry as she felt the blackness invade her mind. Morgat cackled, enjoying herself. ‘You shall become my personal mind-slave, my dear. How does that please you?’

  ‘It pleases me little, Morgat,’ Jelindel managed to say between clenched jaws. The blackness, a sentient control spell, extended cold penetrating tendrils deep into her being. In a few more seconds, it would control her, and her doom would be sealed.

  Then she saw it. It stood out against the control spell like a small and lonely lighthouse. An ancient word, not of this world. And like Morgat’s black spell, it possessed an existence of its own, though unlike anything human.

  As the control spell squeezed tightly about Jelindel’s mind, she grunted, almost spitting out the word: ‘Eskusk-il-Querl!’

  Morgat screamed, her bony hands darting out and feverishly inscribing a counter-spell. But, before she could complete it, a blob of Stygian blackness flung itself from Jelindel’s forehead, crossing the gap between them in a blurring blink, and dived into the old mage’s open mouth. Morgat gulped, partly in surprise and partly from necessity. Her eyes opened wide with fear.

  A moment later her face caved in, as if the brain had been consumed and a voracious vacuum created. The rest of her skull imploded; her arms and legs telescoped backwards into her trunk even as the body itself crumpled inwards with a sound like crunching glass. A moment later, there was nothing left of Morgat except a pea-sized bead of luminescence. Then that too shrank to a pinpoint and disappeared with a pop.

  Four silvery globes floated where Morgat had been. They coalesced and hovered above Jelindel. Their single voice was whisper-fine. ‘We await your command to enter, Lord Adept.’

  Jelindel waved them away. ‘You are free, slave spirits. Return to your paraplane with my blessing.’

  The globes rained a shower of multi-hued energy and healing over her. ‘Be thee well, Lord Adept, and accept our undying gratitude,’ the slave spirits said, and vanished.

  If clothes maketh the man, Jelindel thought, then paraplane spirits maketh the Adept. But she wanted no part in enslaving spirits for her own gain. Taking a deep breath, she turned to the growing clamour outside. She hurried towards the door just as Metriele, a novice, cannoned into her.

  ‘Run!’ Metriele screamed at her. ‘Lindraks! They fly –!’ She collapsed in a blubbering heap. Jelindel pushed her between two latticed columns and stepped outside. A black shape swoop
ed at her from above and she dived to one side; she hit the ground rolling and came gracefully to her feet as would an acrobat.

  The attacker wheeled in the air and came back for her.

  ‘Not a lindrak,’ she muttered to herself. ‘A deadmoon warrior. A levitating deadmoon warrior.’

  The deadmoon warriors were a creation of an Adept 12 mage called Fa’red. Having engineered the lindraks’ downfall, themselves a formidable enemy employed by the former King of Skelt, Fa’red had turned the deadmoon warriors into an implacable fighting force in the service of the Preceptor. And now this new ability: levitation.

  Jelindel uttered a binding spell that arced out to wrap around the attacker’s legs, but it made no difference. He wasn’t using his legs.

  Jelindel muttered a quick curse and ducked aside as a throwing star sluiced the air where she had been standing a second before. All over the Temple compound similar confrontations were taking place. The deadmoon warriors, supernaturally superior fighters against whom few could stand and even fewer succeed, were butchering novices and priestesses virtually unopposed.

  As Jelindel watched, a young girl ran screaming across the central courtyard, her arms covering her head in a futile attempt to ward off attack. Like a dark and silent shark of the air, a levitating warrior sliced down out of the night sky and gutted her on his sword. Her screaming ended in a ragged wet gurgle deep in her throat and she collapsed on the mossy flagstones, her arms flung out before her as if beseeching some higher power.

  Meanwhile, Jelindel’s attacker banked sharply and came diving in again, a thin tight-lipped smile on his otherwise expressionless face. In this engagement, he had the ‘high ground’ and he knew it.

  Jelindel flung herself backwards and upwards in a somersaulting spinning kick that Zimak had taught her, and which she had rarely had cause to use. It caught the deadmoon warrior completely by surprise. Her left foot, punching out like a piston, slammed into his face, breaking his nose and stunning him for vital moments. By the time he blinked back to consciousness, it was too late. He rocketed headfirst into the Temple wall and dropped like a stone into one of Kelricka’s prized flowerbeds.