Rogue Belador

  "Who peed in your crispy doodles this morning?"

  Evalle stepped over. "Tristan, would you just do your part without acting like a jerk?"

  He lifted his hands in surrender. "Fine. Wouldn't want to upset your witch buddy."

  Evalle shook her head and gave him a wry smile. "I'm trying to preserve your family jewels. I have no doubt she can remove them with a flick of her hand, but reattaching them ... now that might actually be some trick."

  Color washed out of his face. "Not funny."

  Tzader said, "We're not here for fun. Get moving if you want to stay alive. The sooner we're out of here, the better chance of that happening."

  Tristan said nothing after that unless someone asked him a direct question. Once Adrianna had them cloaked, Tristan teleported them away.

  Storm had been checking out the room. "How did you keep Lanna hidden once you figured out she'd traveled here with you?"

  Evalle said, "She could cloak herself, but she also kept practicing teleporting."

  "How far could she go?"

  "From the bathroom on the other side of that door." Evalle pointed. "To this room, and she kept hitting her head on the wall when she missed."

  "No wonder she gives Quinn fits," Tzader commented.

  Tristan appeared right in front of Storm. They both jumped back. Tristan said, "Stay out of my landing spots."

  Storm countered, "Put an X on the floor next time."

  The next time Tzader needed a black-ops team, he was leaving at least one of these two behind. Right now, he needed both. He asked Tristan, "Is Adrianna working on the dragon, or do we need to take out some guards?"

  "She's on it, and the hall outside the queen's quarters is empty. They must know when the queen is on-site or gone. Bunch up and I'll take you there."

  The jump to the throne room was quick enough that Tzader didn't feel his stomach do backflips. So this was the heart of TAmr Medb, huh? Adrianna stood in front of a throne that was, by the gods, shaped from a dragon. She said, "I can't break a curse unless you can tell me what it was."

  The dragon grumbled and the throne shuddered. Smoke curled from his nostrils.

  Evalle walked over to stand next to the dragon, who stopped making noises. His big silver eyes looked Evalle up and down, then shifted over to take in the men before returning to Adrianna. He tried to make noises but his mouth was not opening for him to talk, growl, or whatever he could do.

  Storm joined Adrianna and Evalle, saying, "Can you free his jaws or tongue to somehow release his voice?"

  Adrianna thought on it several seconds. She addressed the dragon. "I can try something, but it might require breaking your jaw. I won't do it unless you give me permission. Puff out one time for no and two for yes."

  Silver eyes thinned at that suggestion, but he puffed out twice.

  "I was afraid you'd say that," Adrianna muttered. "Everyone stand back. I'm using Witchlock, and I'm not sure what the radius of influence will be."

  Tzader and the other three backpedaled quickly. All he could see was her raising her right arm and holding her palm out where ... a damn ball of white energy appeared and spun, throwing off wisps of power.

  She was saying something, but he couldn't hear the specific words. That might be a good thing.

  A loud pop sounded and a deep groan followed. The dragon's jaw fell down, loose. He made gargling and choking sounds, but in the next twenty seconds his lower jaw moved upward. He cocked his head right and left then cleared his throat. "I hope your plan to break my curse does not require breaking all my bones."

  The dragon could talk?

  Tzader should have expected that after what Ceartas had said, but still it was strange hearing the head on top of that throne actually speak.

  Before anyone else had a chance to reply, the dragon called out, "Tzader!"

  "That's me." He took a step toward the throne. "Who are you?"

  "I am Daegan. If you're done socializing, we need to be out of here soon. I have no idea how long the queen will be gone, and you must destroy her scrying wall behind me before we leave."

  Tzader said, "A man I trust is keeping her and Cathbad busy in a Tribunal meeting." Did the dragon know what that was?

  "Not yet he isn't. Queen Maeve and Cathbad have gone to meet with someone who offered the queen a trade."

  Quinn didn't have those two tied up with a Tribunal?

  Tzader ordered, "Adrianna, you get busy on reversing his curse. Tristan, you keep watch on the hallway and conserve your energy. Storm and Evalle, come with me."

  When Evalle strode forward, she asked, "What's so important about the scrying wall? She'll just build another one."

  Daegan's voice had a rough, unused rasp to it. "That wall holds history of almost seven hundred years that Queen Maeve will use against anyone outside her coven, starting with Beladors."

  Tzader fell into stride with Storm. "Can you cover the noise?"

  Storm frowned. "I can shield some noise, but breaking that wall may cause a sonic boom if the power in it explodes. I can't keep that from rocking this place."

  The dragon called over, "You don't have to blow it up. Just pull out at least three stones and destroy those. That's enough to corrupt any images they try to pull out of the archives."

  The wall sparkled with a king's ransom in gems ten times over, and had water rushing down the surface. Tzader told Evalle, "While Storm covers our noise, I'll take the left side and you take the right. With our kinetics, we should be able to break some chunks out."

  Evalle stepped over and waited for a sign from Storm. He began chanting, and nodded at them to get busy.

  Tzader kept up with Adrianna's progress by how much snarling the damn dragon was doing.

  Daegan said, "Listen closely and I'll give you the entire spell so you can reverse it if you can recite the counter version exactly. Doesn't work if you mangle it."

  Evalle paused to glance at Tzader with a he's-an-idiot look she normally saved for Tristan.

  Adrianna said in a sweet voice, "Speak to me again as though I'm the idiot who got cursed into a throne, and you won't like how your head fits on your body when I reverse it."

  Tzader hoped Adrianna didn't blow up the damn throne. He ignored those two and planted his feet on each side of a spectacular deep-red stone the size of his head. Grabbing the rock, he growled and put his back into it, pulling for all he was worth.

  He strained, grunting and yanking. Nothing moved.

  Evalle had no better luck with the sapphire she was going after.

  Pausing in his chant, Storm walked over to look at the wall. The tower of oversized precious gems ran twenty feet up, then faded into nothing.

  Storm reached down to pull out one the size of a basketball and, after a moment of grinding effort, he stopped. "We don't have time for this. We need more power."

  Tzader turned to see how Adrianna was coming along. Not very well. They couldn't waste another second.

  Storm's comment about more power gave Tzader an idea. He told Evalle, "Link with me."

  Her power hit Tzader so hard he took a step back. "You've gotten stronger."

  She smiled. "Must be my gryphon evolution. What now?"

  "You and I both put our hands on one stone and see if we can channel our kinetics into crushing it."

  "Good thinking," Storm said, then his chanting kicked up again.

  Evalle asked, "Which stone?"

  "This big sucker in the middle." Tzader positioned himself on one side of a giant ruby, palming the stone with his hands a foot part.

  Evalle moved until she faced him, and placed her hands on her side in a mirror image.

  Tzader said, "Now!" He drew all the energy flowing through his body and forced the kinetic power to flow through his fingers. Sweat poured down his face and stung his eyes.

  Rainbow-colored sparks shot from his fingers, then from Evalle's. A squealing noise started thin and tinny then built until it sounded like a giant drill.

  Brina's sad face
came into Tzader's mind, and the rage he'd kept tucked out of the way swept through him.

  The stone made a popping sound as if chipped by Thor's hammer.

  Adrianna paused in her incantation, "I feel an energy moving this way."

  From over by the door, Tristan said, "We have to go. No one can get us out of the dungeon in this place."

  Straining, Tzader felt his muscles reaching the point of failure any moment now. Evalle would be right behind him.

  Adrianna argued, "Reversing the curse isn't working. If we try to move this dragon between realms in this form, it may affect the curse."

  Tzader was out of options, time, and patience. "Maybe it'll bust him free."

  "Or kill me," Daegan snarled.

  Tristan said, "Hey, no one said there wasn't a downside."

  The dragon growled something then ordered, "Break that cursed scrying wall now!"

  I may kill that bastard myself. Drawing so much energy at one time was squeezing Tzader's body from the inside out. One look at Evalle's pale face said she was putting all she had into it. If Storm looked over, he'd drag her away from this.

  All of a sudden, a loud cracking filled the air. Jagged lines wicked out from the center of the ruby. It broke into seven chunks.

  Evalle stood up, gasping for breath.

  Storm's head whipped around. "Are you okay?"

  "Yep," she answered. "But I don't think we'll crack another one."

  Tzader wiped pools of sweat from his eyes and forehead. "Let's get out of here." He strode over to the throne. "Time to teleport."

  Tristan was up and moving, but he still looked ragged around the edges. "What are we doing with the chair?"

  Smoke rushed from the dragon's nostrils, engulfing Tristan's face. Daegan growled, "I'm not a bloody chair."

  "Semantics." Tristan swatted away the thick cloud. "That smells like a box of burned matches."

  Adrianna said, "The energy coming our way is getting closer. What are we doing?"

  Storm asked Daegan, "Would you rather stay here alive, or risk dying during teleporting?"

  "That's not much of a choice," Evalle commented.

  Storm looked at her. "It's better than none."

  Tzader ordered, "Everyone shut up."

  That quieted the room, but another stream of smoke poofed out. The dragon said, "Just do it. I will not stay here another two thousand years."

  Tzader pointed at Tristan. "Link now. Evalle is still linked with me." He told Adrianna. "Sit on the throne."

  She looked appalled, but climbed up in the dragon's seat.

  "Evalle stands between me and Tristan," Tzader went on giving directions. "Tristan, you grab one arm of the throne. I'll grab the other, and Evalle holds both of our wrists."

  Storm moved behind Evalle, putting his arms around her waist, just as he had last time.

  A blast of energy rocked the room with the power of a hand grenade being set off.

  Five warlocks appeared in urban combat clothes. One had a tattoo of a snake circling his smooth skull, with the snake's head stopping just above the bridge of his nose.

  A Medb priest, but the last one he'd seen had worn a robe.

  Tzader had fought them before and respected that warlock's ability to take them all out.

  The priest-warlock pointed at Daegan. "Cathbad warned her to kill you, traitor. Now, I'll do it, and hand her five prisoners to boot."

  Tzader shouted at Tristan. "Now!"

  Nothing happened. Tristan's neck muscles stretched taut with the effort.

  Lifting his hands as high as his head, the warlock flung his hands at them.

  In an explosion of color and a deafening roar, the world spun out of control. Whips of power lashed across Tzader's face and arms.

  Everyone shouted.

  Blood rushed through his ears.

  The dragon roared and howled. The sound could only be described as a Kodiak bear being torn to shreds.

  The spinning Tzader had always associated with teleporting slowed as it whipped around him. Power drained away as they traveled, leaving his body tired but no longer in pain from the fast exit.

  He hated watching when he teleported, but had to see if all of his team had made it out.

  Faces and parts of bodies flashed by looking like a macabre version of the tornado scene from the Wizard of Oz.

  But he could still feel the chair arm or at least the part he'd been holding. Closing his eyes, he waited for the disorientation to end.

  When it did, wind blew him backwards, head over heels, slamming him onto his back.

  Rolling sideways over a bumpy surface, he opened his eyes in time to take in the thousand-foot-plus drop off the side of a mountain.

  What the hell? His body jiggled back and forth with movement. He was on top of a railway hopper car full of coal.

  "Get over here!" Daegan roared.

  Tzader was on his feet and balancing his weight against the movement and wind. The bottom fell out of his stomach when he found the dragon throne rocking back and forth, dangerously close to falling off the cliff he'd just stared down.

  Tzader lunged to grab the throne. His boots sank into the coal.

  Storm jumped to the other side and they pushed the throne to the center of the car. Tzader yelled, "Don't you have a tail for counterbalance?"

  Daegan growled an unearthly sound. "It's part of the throne."

  Tzader did a quick search for the rest of the group, although he had no doubt Storm had made sure Evalle was safe before turning his attention to anyone else.

  He said a silent thank you that they'd taken off after dark for Evalle's sake, but now there was a strange, dim glow hanging over their railcars. That had to be Adrianna's doing.

  The train moved at a fast clip, rocking back and forth, which was hard enough to deal with before adding the wind whipping around.

  Adrianna had landed on her hands and knees, perilously close to the edge where the two cars were connected. If she fell, she'd be crushed. Evalle had Adrianna's arm, lifting and turning her back toward the center. They stumbled sideways, swaying with the rocking car.

  Tzader looked around. "Where's Tristan?"

  "Little help!"

  Adrianna was on her feet, and latched onto Daegan's chair arm. She pointed her free hand. "There he is."

  Tristan dangled upside down from the side of the next car, close to the corner. He was digging his heels into the coal, but his bent legs didn't have enough room for a good grip to hold his weight. One good bump, and he'd be an Alterant splat. His body flopped around, banging the metal wall.

  Evalle started for him, but Storm pulled her back and showed his jungle cat agility when he leaped to Tristan's rail car, landing surefootedly.

  Tristan shouted.

  Storm lunged and clamped down on Tristan's calves just as the back of his ankles hit the edge.

  Tzader left Evalle and Adrianna to hold the throne, and hurried to the edge of his coal car. Looking over at Storm, who nodded as if he got what Tzader intended to do, Tzader shouted, "Do it."

  Storm slid his grip to Tristan's ankles.

  Tristan looked up at Storm as if he thought the Skinwalker was going to let him go. Then Storm stood up, lifting Tristan by the ankles, and swung him away then back toward Tzader, releasing Tristan at the last minute.

  Tzader used kinetics to catch Tristan and flip him overhead and in the direction of the throne.

  Tristan did a midair flip and landed with bent knees that hit the coal. He stood up and grinned, but it was an effort and his hands shook. Tristan said, "We made it back! Not too shabby a job of teleporting, eh? Sometimes I take myself for granted."

  Daegan yelled at him, "You could have killed all of us! We have to get off this infernal thing. Now."

  "Hey, I don't have endless energy, dragon boy."

  "Dragon boy? You should enjoy your next minute. It will likely be your last."

  "You gonna kick my ass from over there, chair?"

  Evalle, ever the mediator,
stepped between them. "Not now, guys. We do have to get out of here."

  Rumbling noise from the dragon grew. "I won't have to crush you, Alterant," he said to Tristan. "You've left a trail a blind enemy could follow. If you were at all adept at teleporting, you would have landed us somewhere we could defend ourselves."

  Storm had jumped back to their car, rejoining the group along with Tristan.

  Tzader asked, "The Medb can follow us?"

  In answer, two warlocks appeared on the flatcar ahead of theirs, which was loaded with steel plates, and three more warlocks showed up on top of the hopper car following behind where Tristan had just been hanging.

  Got my answer.

  That's when Tzader realized he was still linked with both Evalle and Tristan, but now was a bad time to stay that way. If one of them was killed, they'd all die. He ordered, "Unlink!"

  Sidestepping at the immediate loss of power, Tzader shook it off, took two steps and planted his feet, waiting on the two warlocks that had jumped down between the cars and were climbing up the front of Tzader's.

  The Medb-priest warlock had dark-purple nails an inch long and sharp as needles.

  When the first head popped up, Tzader pushed kinetic power into his legs and booted that warlock across the chin.

  His howl followed his body into the open space that dropped off forever.

  He clawed the air on his way down.

  Warlock number two stayed out of sight, and Tzader started to go look for him when a blast of something flew out of the trees they passed. Hawks emerged from the branches as if something magnetic pulled the solitary predators in to converge on Tzader's group. Screeching built as they flew into a swirling circle and came in like miniature fighter pilots.

  That was not normal.

  Those beaks and sharp claws could shred skin and blind them. Tzader swatted and lashed out with short kinetic bursts, shoving them back and off to the side. If these were real hawks, he didn't want to kill any normal creature unnecessarily, but neither could he let his people get ripped to pieces. Feathers clouded his view as beaks and talons dug into his skin.

  His sentient blades snapped and hissed, but he hesitated to use those when he had no way to keep them from slicing one of his team who might jump in to help. He slapped more kinetic blasts at the birds.

  Tzader smelled the sharp, metallic scent of his own blood.

  Adrianna's voice cut through all the noise. That little woman had some serious lungs. She kept shouting something, but he was too busy protecting his eyes to pay attention. He swung a wide kinetic sweep, knocking thirty birds away. Just as many filled in behind them. Damn it.