The Windrider, part VIII:
Determination’s Flame
Becky Minor



“To the abyss

with your sham-god, Queldurik!” I could feel hatred contorting my features. In a single, swift stroke, I cut the bonds on my ankles and lunged for the dragon-kin priest before me. His yelp told me he had not anticipated such boldness—or was it stupidity—on my part. I felt the drag on my blade as it swept across his chest, and he staggered back, clutching the wound and snarling. His head snapped to the creatures detaining Veranna. A flurry of gravely words spilled from his lips.

One of the dragon-kin warriors released Veranna’s arm and dove at me, Veranna’s short knife in his hand. Were I more callous to the horrors of war, I would have found his feeble opposition laughable. He fell under a grimly efficient stroke from my blade.

A throaty note cut through the air. The other dragon-kin warrior had placed a curving black horn to his lips, and the sound drove slivers of panic into my gut. In my peripheral vision, a flicker of unwholesome, greenish light gleamed: otherworldly energy pulsed across the priest’s wound as he enacted the dark magic that would knit his flesh back together. I vacillated for a moment. Kill Veranna’s captor, finish the priest, or prepare for the inevitable onslaught the horn would draw?

The scaly warriors that bounded around the corner of the tent made that decision for me. My longsword flashed in arcs of devastation and rid the world of four more abominations before the sheer press of numbers overwhelmed me. It took one dragon-kin soldier for each of my limbs, but they succeeded in dragging me to the ground. My face crashed against the hard clay, rattling my teeth.

What had Veranna been doing all this time? Was there no miracle of Creo she might have called upon to, at the very least, ensure her own escape? I suspected her power in Creo had confronted little practical testing in the face of crisis.

My captors dragged me across the camp while I thrashed and cursed them in Elvish. They slammed my back against a thick stake, and when they lashed me to it, they made sure not to skimp on the amount of rope they wound around me. Splinters from the rough-hewn post bit into my back.

I stood in full view of a grisly sacrifice altar, which rose upon a dais of stone blocks. At its pinnacle stood a hauntingly stark figure: a cast iron shape of a featureless man, his arms outstretched before him and his surface scorched with many passages in and out of flame. A dozen braziers that ringed the profane place smoked and crackled, and heaps of fuel beneath the idol awaited their charge. Why they stopped short of hauling me up the dais right away, I did not understand, but I accepted this small measure of mercy without hesitation.

The dragon-kin tightened the last rope until it cut into my arms, but an unmistakable shriek wrenched my focus from my own plight. The dragon-kin brought Veranna to the altar as well. Her convulsive struggling made no difference. They bore her up the dais stairs and thrust her into the arms of the idol, clamping shackles upon her ankles and arms that secured her in the iron embrace of death. Her scream of resistance transformed to an undeniable keen of agony.

Fury like none I had ever experienced roared through my flesh, raising beads of sweat on my back and brow. Stand and watch as they put the prophetess to flame? No matter my personal quibbles with her, I would not permit such an offense. Of course, what I could do about it remained elusive.

I strained against my bonds, but moved a scant few inches. Creo’s healing had given me some strength, but I felt half the elf I might have been that night. I could not quite clear the fog from my mind to generate some workable tactics, if indeed any existed.

The dragon-kin priest strode up to Veranna as she lay across the idol’s outstretched arms, writhing in her shackles, eyes closed, lips moving. From beneath his hood, his voice boomed in a ceremonious lilt. The creatures that ringed the dais lifted their hands, the orange light of torches and braziers dancing in their eyes, reflecting dully off their scales. They intoned as one. Again, I understood nothing but the constant repetition of the name Queldurik. Through the blurring air created by the heat of flames, the crowd weaved in a grotesque dance of dark appetite.

The priest lifted a torch to one of the braziers, lit it and carried it to the wood and tinder beneath Veranna with purposeful, reverent steps. I thrashed against my bonds, sure I would break my body if not the ropes.

He lowered the flame.

He waited.

The tinder did not so much as smoke, let alone catch.

He lashed his tail, perturbed, and croaked to the creatures around him. A few scuttled to the pyre, flinging oil upon the wood…even on Veranna herself.

Still, no flame caught upon fuel or half-elf.

“A blight upon you, elf-witch!” The priest threw his torch to the ground. “You will burn, if not alive, in pieces!” He pulled a knife with a long, curved blade from a sheath on his hip, its blade ablaze from the firelight around it.

I thrashed again, and the cords around my chest went slack.

Without warning, a roar shook both the air and the earth with its potency. From above came a massive column of white, steaming liquid, a column that pummeled the crowd of dragon-kin around the dais. Every creature it engulfed turned to ice, frozen in whatever pose of terror they took as the attack overwhelmed them.

“Majestrin!” I said with a gasp. Though I could not see the dragon himself, the products of his assault proclaimed his arrival.

All the while, Veranna remained in the idol’s arms, mouthing words I could not hear, but it mattered little, for the dragon-kin scattered before Majestrin’s attack like leaves before the wind. I strained once more against my bonds, and the last of the ropes fell away. Even the fetters on my hands and ankles fell limp to the ground. But why?

I would contemplate it later. For now, I leapt away from my post, bounding up the dais in three steps. The dragon-kin priest had fled the place and was now scrambling among his kinsmen, bellowing orders.

I pried apart Veranna’s shackles. To my horror, the insides of the iron cuffs bore rows of spikes like shark’s teeth, and the restraints were sticky with her blood. Even the platform where I stood wore the crimson stain of her wounds. Without a thought, I lifted Veranna from her prison.

“Can you stand?”

“I…I think so.” Veranna swayed on her feet, but stayed upright. “Praise the Maker! He freed you! He hears my prayers!”

I would have pondered the prophetess’ words more closely had some of the dragon-kin not gathered their wits and realized their sacrifices were escaping. Six of their warriors ascended the dais stairs, weapons drawn. I glanced about in desperation.

Veranna’s voice broke into a musical chant as I flung myself at one of the braziers, hoping to wrench the pole on which it stood from the platform and use it as a staff.

The prophetess thrust her hands toward the dragon-kin, and bolts of lavender lightning arced from her palms to our attackers. As the electricity snaked across bodies and armor, the villains’ screeches of pain ripped through the air. I finished the job Veranna began with a whirlwind of blows with my improvised polearm.

Never, ever, would I so much as leave my bed without a sword in hand again.

I pulled a longsword and a morningstar off the warriors we downed and brandished them with a bravado that dared another of their foul kind to try the stairs. Two more met their end under the swift assault I waged upon them, though most of the enemies stayed far from the dais, their eyes bulging as they scanned the skies. How long had it been since Majestrin last breathed his worst upon them? The dark, vengeful part of me anticipated his next volley of annihilation.

The activity amidst the chaos that worried me most was the priest’s, even though a legion of dragon-kin stood between him and me. He bellowed the same set of words, again and again, flinging his hand in an arc across the sky. After his fifth attempt, Majestrin winked into view, startlingly close.

The last, terrifying vision the priest beheld: Majestrin’s wide maw.

The dragon clamped bone-crushing fangs upon the priest. With a flick of his head, he flung the villain in a high arc, which to my relief, carried my adversary so far from the dais that I did not hear the sickening thud when his body landed.

Majestrin snatched both Veranna and me from the platform. We sped into the air. A cacophony of croaks and shouts erupted from the dragon-kin below, and the warriors among them scrambled to take up the stout bows of their kind. Arrows flew in a whistling storm, many of them glancing from Majestrin’s silver hide, but a few either pricking or sticking fast. One dart found my leg. Veranna, curled in a very tight ball against Majestrin’s body, avoided the volley. The dragon bolted skyward, quickly moving out of bowshot, but the ascent brought back all my stomach woes in an instant.

I gulped the lump in my throat. “Excellent timing, my friend!” I bellowed over the wind.

“It took the two of you long enough to get loose!” Majestrin replied. “That release, capture, release business made my part of the strategy nebulous, at best.”

I grunted. “You had a strategy at work? I venture that nothing short of a miracle got us out of there.”

“Finally, Captain, you give credit where it is due!” Veranna interjected, though her words came out slurred.

While her delivery lacked finesse, I could not argue with the truth she spoke. Creo indeed deserved the praise for a situation I could never have prevailed over in my own strength. I marveled at how the Creator could use even the bungling of his limited creatures. Miracles and curses clashed that night, and no one could deny which emerged the victor.

“Can you ride, Vinyanel?” Majestrin called back to me. “We shall make better time back to Delsinon if I have you astride rather than having to lug you like a sack of turnips.”

“I can manage it.” I swallowed my worries that my dizziness might prove a fetter if the dragon-kin embattled us in the air. Sack of turnips, indeed.

I glanced behind me at the ever-shrinking flicker of firelight at the center of the dragon-kin camp. No figures pursued us, from what I could determine.

Majestrin plucked me from beneath his foreleg and craned his neck around to place me astride his back. Just as deftly, he slipped Veranna into both of his front talons and clutched her against his underside. The fact that she did not shriek surprised me.

I peered over Majestrin’s shoulder to discover Veranna’s newfound source of confidence. However, a brave countenance I did not find, but rather the rolling eyes of one semi-conscious.

“We do need to hasten home, Majestrin. But we shan’t fly a course to Delsinon yet. Seek the cover of the mountains. I do not see any dragon-kin, but—”

“Oh, at least a few follow. I would know that stench from miles distant,” Majestrin said.

We wheeled to the northeast, aiming for the craggy southern arm of the Triastead Mountains. I needed time and relative safety, for I had many conundrums to sort.

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