Dragon Thief Box Set

Chapter 2

CHAPTER TWO

Darkness swept past me, carrying my hair above my head as I fell through a completely black abyss. I clung to the only solid object I could get a hold of, and that was the stick.

Light from below made me look down, and I gaped at a hole in the blackness through which the brilliance emerged.

I dropped out of the darkness and into a starlit sky. There was a whole world around and beneath me. Far, far beneath me. In fact, it was about a mile beneath me.

I let out a long, high-pitched scream as I careened toward a very quick doom. My only comfort, such as it was, was the staff clutched tightly against me. I needed a miracle to get out of that.

And that’s when a miracle erupted in my hands.

The brilliant light that had surrounded it grew brighter, and the wood beneath my hands quivered. The glow raced down the handle, following the path of the strange grooves. I gaped at the staff as long straw bristles popped out of the bottom like exploding fireworks. The handle itself thinned and straightened, though the strange markings over its surface didn’t change.

The transformed staff gave a strange twitch before it shoved itself between my legs so the whole front of my body was pressed tightly against the stick. The moment I was hugged the stick shot forward with me holding on for dear life.

That’s when it struck me. It was a broom.

The metamorphosed stick shot across the sky at a speed that would have put a drag racer to shame. We zigged and zagged, moving ever closer to the ground. It wasn’t fast enough.

I practically smashed my face against the broom handle. “Lemme down!”

The broom obeyed, but too well. It pointed its nose straight down, and that was the way we went toward the strange city below us.

Now that I wasn’t falling to my doom, I could study some of the features of the unfamiliar metropolis. It was a huge city of gray stone and brown wood that covered many miles of a large valley, with roads that rarely ran parallel to one another. Most ran at angles, and some even wound their way between the assortment of buildings. There was everything from tiny cottages to majestic mansions, with churches and public buildings scattered among them, all mingling together in a mishmash of poor city planning.

The largest structure, however, was a castle atop a rocky hill situated in the center of the valley. The fort rose some five hundred feet above the valley floor and featured a half dozen towers of various heights and styles. Parapets connected them, the walls of which were some hundred feet high and made of huge stone blocks. Slitted windows were the norm, but a courtyard stood just behind the main gates, and the great hall featured some ornate stained-glass windows.

A large circular town square sat in the middle of the metropolis at the foot of the hill. The area was surrounded by a low stone wall which featured a few dozen ruined columns, and a wide entrance at each of the cardinal corners. The open space covered some hundred yards and was filled with stalls, small stock pens, and even a large stage at the northern end. Hundreds of people walked between the stalls with bags hanging from their arms filled with their chosen goods, and children played about the stage, enjoying the last few minutes of the setting sun at my back. A few large, tall posts stood around the clearing, and unlit oil lamps hung from rods that stuck out the sides high near the top of the poles.

I could take all this view in because that was exactly where the broom was taking me. The end was pointed toward the businesses closest to the stage, some of which were the pens. There were only two hundred feet left. One hundred. Some of the people caught sight of me and pointed up at the sky.

I grabbed the last top inches of the broom and gave it a hard shake. “Pull up, you over-sized feather duster, or you’ll kill us both!”

The broom got the hint and pulled up at the last second. My heart stopped as my magical vehicle turned at ninety degrees, a foot from the cobblestone ground and zipped through the crowds. We weaved in and out of them for fifty feet before we burst into the open square in front of the stage.

“I want to get off!” I shouted.

At my plea, the broom seemed to lose all hope, and its speed went from deadly to ‘nope’ at the drop of a hat. The change was so quick that my momentum kept me going, meaning I flew over the handle of the broom and landed on the wooden boards that made up the stage. Children scattered as I rolled past them and crashed into the sturdy wooden wall. The broom itself clattered to the ground in front of the stage.

My knees hurt. My head hurt. My funny bone hurt.

I sat up and groaned as all my body seemed to protest at any moment. Even breathing was discouraged.

Short shadows fell over me, and I looked up to find a spattering of kids standing over me. Most of them wore simple pants and short-sleeve shirts of bland cloth. The girls wore dresses with plain flowered patterns or no print at all. Their curious eyes stared in wonder at me.

“Is she a witch?” one of them asked his companions.

An older boy frowned at him. “Of course, she’s a witch, you i***t. How else could she ride a broom?”

A young girl c****d her head to one side as she examined me. “She doesn’t look like a witch. My aunt’s a witch and she has a wart.”

A girl who resembled her in looks nudged her with her elbow. “Not all witches have that, silly! Just Aunty after that accident with that frog spell.”

A commotion behind them made all of us look in the direction of the stalls. The throngs of adults were pushed aside as a troop of half a dozen guards pushed their way through. The guards wore tunics over chain mail, and a stitching of a reared dragon stood out on the front.

One look at the halberd-armed men made the children scatter. My heart restarted and pounded hard in my chest as I watched the men march across the open square and over to the stage. At a direction from the leader, a man with a long plume on his cloth hat, half of them remained at the stairs leading up, and he and two of his men continued up to me.

They stopped just a few feet away and the leader frowned down at me. “We witnessed your drop from the sky. Where did you come from?”

My jaw flopped a couple of times before I shook my head. “I-I came out of a hole.”

The man frowned. “What does that-”

“Sir!” One of the men had picked up the broom and held it up to his commander. “I think you need to take a look at this!”

The leader’s frown deepened, but he held his hand out. “Bring it here.”

The soldier scurried up the steps and soon set the broom in the leader’s hand. The man studied the broom, and as he did so his eyes widened. He whipped his gaze up to me and held out the staff clutched tightly in his hand. “Where did you get this?”

I blinked at him. “I-I found it lying on a path.”

His lip curled back in a sneer. “Don’t toy with me. How did this come into your possession? Did you steal it?”

My jaw hit the ground before I furiously shook my head. “I didn’t steal it! It was just lying on a path in the park!”

The man scoffed. “No one would be foolish enough to throw this away. You must have been the one to steal it.” He turned his head to one side and jerked his head toward me. “Take her to the castle. We’ll continue this interrogation there.”

My heart nearly exploded as two of the men marched forward. They reached out their gauntlet-covered hands and grabbed my arms. The pair yanked me to my feet as I thrashed in their hold. “Please just let me go! I didn’t do anything! I don’t even know where I am!”

My pleas went unheard as I was dragged across the stage and over to the steps. The men were just hefting me down the steps when a knife flew out from nowhere and embedded itself into the top of the last step. My captors froze and whipped their heads up in the direction where the weapon had flown, as did I.

A tall man stood perched the nearest lamp post. He wore a black vest over an equally black buttoned shirt, and his pants were of the same color. He had the hem of his pants tucked into heavy, high black boots. His vest had a high, stiff collar that hid the lower half of his face, and a simple black carnival face mask finished the job. The man’s long black hair was slicked back, though a few loose strands framed either side of his face. The skin on his bared forehead had a strange texture to it, almost like scales. The man held three more daggers between the fingers of his right gloved hand, and I caught sight of a long sword in a sheath that leaned against his right hip.

What astonished me the most, however, were the blood-red leathery wings on his back. They were slightly folded behind his back, but even with that shrinkage, I could still tell they had an impressive span. The ends curved downward into sharp, bone-like points, as did the highest peaks close to the back of his head.

This guy was more than just a man, and even with his face so hidden I could still tell he was insanely cute.