Chapter 3: Consequences

Clive felt stale and unrested. Carole had woken him early before departing for the county education college for a day’s inset course. It was the last day of term and the kids’ schools had inset days, so Clive’s sister in law Laura was coming round to look after them for the day. Laura was a scatty divorcee who hadn’t any children and was running late as usual. Clive had to get the kids up and see to their breakfast and make sure they were washed and dressed before Laura arrived, fully armed with her usual lame excuses and half-hearted apologies. Clive was unhappy with her, but at the same time grateful that she had turned up at all.

Now Clive was half an hour late for work and realised when he looked in the rear view mirror that he had bad bed hair which he hadn’t combed this morning. At the traffic lights he adjusted the mirror while he unsatisfactorily combed his resisting locks with his fingers. That’s when he noticed he’d also forgotten to put on a tie this morning and discovered a greasy milk stain from the kids’ cereal breakfast which would have been partially covered by a tie if he had taken the trouble to wear one. Too late to do anything now, he thought.

At work, the staff car park was full, completely full, driving around it twice to make sure. He had to park up the street on a parking meter. He only had enough change for a couple of hours and needed to remember to come back and move the car by mid-morning or face a hefty penalty notice. By the time he walked back to his office, he was now more than forty minutes’ late. Then he found the Reception door locked and through the darkened glass could see the desk was empty. He rang and rang the bell, but there was no answer. Odd, he thought, especially as the car park was full of vehicles. Where was everybody?

The door clicked open, accompanied by a buzzing.

“Sorry, Clive,” the young Receptionist Donna gushed breathlessly as she let him in, “we’ve all been crushed into the main conference room for the past half hour. The Official Receivers are in and have taken over the company. They’ve been trying to sell the place as a going concern for a week but there’s been no takers, so looks like they’re going to sell off whatever they can unscrew piecemeal and close the place down. They are going to be talking to us all individually during the day. Your boss has already been given his cards.”

“Bugger!” Clive exclaimed, “there goes Carole’s Caribbean holiday.”

It was the wind noise first, followed by the feel of the wind that woke Korwyn. He discovered that he was lashed across his chest, waist and thighs flat on his back to some kind of woven bed, his exploring fingertips told him. The sunlight was bright, too bright to open his eyes at first. When he tried it, the sun was directly overhead and he was strapped in so tightly with something soft cushioning both sides of his head, that he couldn’t move his head. And it was cold, the noisy wind was so very cold. Then he felt a dropping sensation and it went dark and wet around him. He managed to open his eyes then. The sun was hidden by a cloud, one he had just flown through, and he almost jumped out of his skin!

Flying at his feet was a giant Eagle, its wings outspread and gliding, its talons holding onto the poles at the end of his ‘bed’, in fact some form of stretcher. He moved his eyes to see what was at his head, but he could only see the tips of spreading tail feathers, which twitched and fluttered on the air currents to keep his stretcher on the level.

“You’re awake, Wyn!” he heard Zyndyr call, although he couldn’t see her at first.

He heard wing flaps and soon another huge Eagle appeared just above and to the left, gently carrying the Elf in its claws. There was no sign of the Princess or The Boy.

“Hail, my Lady Elf,” Korwyn greeted his companion, trying his best to keep his voice calm and even. “I see you are all right, how did I fare?”

“Well, tell me, how do you feel?”

“Numb all over. What does that mean? Am I crippled?”

“No, my noble Lord Korwyn, Slayer of Dragons, the goosegog mead I gave you a sip of relaxes you while you recover from your ordeal. We are dropping down into the hills an hour or so ride from the Dwarf city, so the Eagles do not frighten them. We can rest for another hour before you will be able to walk again.”

“You are responsible for the Eagles taking us to the city?”

“I called in a favour, Lord Korwyn. Sometimes, being an Elf who’s been around a long time and once made Eagles’ eyries safe from predator dragons, can prove useful.”

Korwyn found he could laugh at the joy in her voice, but felt he had to ask, “What happened to the White Dragon?”

“Ahh! The Black Dragon, you mean? You killed it. Actually, you didn’t just kill it, not just now, no, but you sent it ten years into the past and, after it ravaged your Militia and my Elves in order to wreak revenge upon you and I, you recovered and eventually tracked it down to its island lair and now you wear its heatproof skin.”

“How is this even possible?”

“Magic. By sending the Sorcerer into the past, still in the form of a Dragon, this time a cold black one, he was stuck in that form for good. Without a Sorcerer’s tongue, or a trusted aide who could recount the original spell, he remained a Dragon.”

At this point, the Eagles stopped gliding and flapped their wings rapidly, to slow their flight and alight onto cool grassland. Zyndyr’s Eagle dropped her down beside him, as did other Eagles set down The Boy and the Princess next to him. The Boy was onto Korwyn in an instant, smiling and resting his head gratefully on the Man’s chest.

“You saved the life of his family, Wyn, from a tyrant who regularly beat him and his mother before sleeping in the lava flow. The Boy will be forever grateful to you, to us,” Zyndyr smiled, beautifully, Korwyn thought, as she knelt down and started to untie the bindings that strapped him to the stretcher. Fortunately, Korwyn’s head was still cushioned so he couldn’t see her lovely knees although the memory of them almost undid his good intentions as his only partial automatic response barely made a noticeable impact on his woollen trousers.

“An’ We vill al-soo,” the Princess declared in halting Man language before continuing more fluently in Dwarfish, “The Boy, my Baby and we will always have a place in our hearts and tell legends of Lord Korwyn and Lady Zyndyr around our night hearths for ever. I will demand that my father make you both Knights of the Grand Order of Pergammon, our greatest order of Dwarfish Knights.”

“That is a great honour, your highness,” replied Zyndyr, “and I speak on behalf of us both, as poor Lord Korwyn may still be under the influence of the goosegog mead I administered to ease his pain while his body recovers from his rigours.”

“Thank you Princess, the numbness is indeed wearing off,” Korwyn said, thinking maybe his modesty was preserved more by Elf honey wine than his own feeble willpower, “you do me and Zyndyr great honour.”

Korwyn sat up on the stretcher, now free of his bonds. A few yards away, at a respectable distance was a group of Dwarf Knights, spare ponies and a carriage, no doubt for conveying the Princess and her family for a home welcome at the Royal Court. A pair of larger horses, clearly brought for the pair of taller rescuers, were nibbling grass nearby.

“What actually happened to the Dragon, Zyn?”

The Princess spoke first, her Dwarfish now remembered, “My mother told tales of Witches in the past, who could cast spells. But she told me that spells will not work on Sorcerers, who cannot be killed by magic. So, to protect themselves, Witches made mechanical devices which only work on Sorcerers or can even be targeted to a particular Sorcerer—”

“Each living creature has a unique physical essence,” continued Zyndyr, “tied into even the smallest fragment of our bodies. That essence we pass onto our offspring, which is why our children share our likeness like hair and eye colour. The device built into the handle of your Dwarf sword was specifically attuned to the Wizard of Yandor, which is why, when The Boy wielded the weapon on you, it partially activated enough to give you a freezer burn, because The Boy is closely related to Yandor as his son.”