Alchemy's Child (The Mindbender's Rise Book 5) Read online

  Alchemy’s Child

  The Mindbender’s Rise: Book 5

  D. J. Salisbury

  Published by

  Magic Seeker Books

  Alchemy’s Child

  Copyright © 2017 by D. J. Salisbury

  All rights reserved.

  [email protected]

  www.DJSalisburyBooks.com

  Published by Magic Seeker Books

  www.MagicSeeker.com

  100 PR 232

  Abbott, TX 76621

  This is a work of fiction. Any resemblance to actual persons, events, or locations is entirely coincidental.

  Cover art and design by Deb Salisbury.

  Zharyl’s misadventure in Veriz was published in a slightly different form in Michael Pennington’s Aurora Wolf as “Amber Profits” in 2012

  Fantasy Novels by D. J. Salisbury

  Illusion’s Child

  Sorcery’s Child

  Serpent’s Child

  Dragon’s Child

  Alchemy’s Child

  Wizard’s Child (coming soon)

  and

  Necromancer’s Anchor

  I dedicate this novel to Dona Salisbury,

  Michael Pennington,

  B. E. Sanderson (who got me started again),

  and to Forward Motion, a forum for writers.

  Thanks to all of you for your help.

  I couldn’t have written this novel without you.

  Table of Contents

  Prologue.

  Chapter 1.

  Chapter 2.

  Chapter 3.

  Chapter 4.

  Chapter 5.

  Chapter 6.

  Chapter 7.

  Chapter 8.

  Chapter 9.

  Chapter 10.

  Chapter 11.

  Chapter 12.

  Chapter 13.

  Chapter 14.

  Chapter 15.

  Chapter 16.

  Chapter 17.

  Chapter 18.

  Chapter 19.

  Chapter 20.

  Chapter 21.

  Chapter 22.

  Chapter 23.

  Chapter 24.

  Chapter 25.

  Chapter 26.

  Chapter 27.

  Chapter 28.

  About the Author

  Prologue.

  The warrior snatched up a handful of rocks. “I name you Outcast.”

  Jagged stones jolted the dreamer’s body.

  The nightmare changed.

  Trevor’s cooling body sprawled on the cold stone floor of the Lab. A bloody fragment of the Scrying Glass protruded from one eye, screaming of danger, of death. And it was his fault, all of it.

  And changed.

  Two enchanted swords rose out of the sand, and two musical weapons grew beside them. Fiery lava erupted from a volcano. Earth thundered with the power of a galloping stallion. Air manifested as a dragon whirling through clouds. Water’s green scales undulated behind a mouth filled with shark teeth. All strands of the fragile thread of the quest.

  The Quest must prevail, murmured a sad, calm voice. If this assemblage founders, humanity will be enslaved for seven hundred years. The speaker transformed into a comforting chair, and the dreamer rested in warm coils.

  Coils whirled into a delicate castle that soared high into the forbidden clouds. A rift appeared upon a frail inner tower, followed by a web of cracks that slowly spread over the entire castle. But the dreamer was trapped inside the crumbling turret, helpless to interfere.

  “Mindbender,” Trevor wailed from the depths of a fissure, and the web of cracks spread across the countryside. The beautiful castle collapsed. Its tower fell upon the dreamer’s heart.

  He fell into darkness. Incredible, impenetrable darkness. He fled the dragon’s snatching hands, fled the pain, the fear, the hunger. In the distance, dark stone glittered.

  A glittering disk, covered with a map so small it was barely legible. But the diagram showed a route through the desert.

  Desert surrounded him. Bones littered glowing sand. Heat crushed his body, thirst seared his soul. “Few survive the Wizard’s Route,” the dead wizard said. “You must go alone.”

  Alone.

  Not alone, soothed the voice in his head. The hatchling need not be alone. There is life in death. Observe. Listen. Learn.

  The hatchling’s molt is imminent.

  Chapter 1.

  He shouldn’t have taken the dragon’s diamonds.

  In a flurry of green wings, Rizhanara plunged toward the meadow again, shrieking in Old Tongue, “Dung-eating human!”

  Lorel waved her long sword and shouted back in Zedisti, “Come down here where I can fight you, coward!”

  His turybird stood in front of the wagon in a fighter’s stance, as if daring the dragon to invade. Her seven-foot-tall frame, mahogany skin, and long black ringlets made her look like an avenging goddess. A fifteen-year-old demented goddess, but dangerous all the same.

  He’d never admit to how much he’d missed her.

  The Kyridon shifted its coils and hugged him tighter, as if it wanted to protect him. The serpent was pushing him off the Deathsinger’s cliff with its nursemaiding. He wasn’t hurt, merely tired and hungry. And disgustingly dirty.

  Tsai’dona stood guard beside him, her long dark hair blowing free in the chilly spring breeze instead of in its usual braid. Probably because her sword arm was splinted and messily wrapped with what appeared to be his whole supply of cleaning rags.

  The charcoal-and-red enchanted scimitar was in her off hand, carefully pointed at the ground. She glanced back at him, but her attention was on the fight. “Why won’t you let us kill the boggy monster?”

  As if they could kill a dragon. Though with that particular weapon, maybe she could.

  But why was Tsai’dona carrying the scimitar? She wasn’t its wielder. Was she? For her sake, Viper hoped not. The ghost inside that weapon called itself “Volcano Conqueror who is Bigger than Everything” and had the attitude to match, even though in life it had been a chunky lizard barely two feet long.

  Viper rather agreed with the creature: its ability to spit twenty-foot gouts of fire justified its arrogance.

  If Tsai’dona was stuck as its host, she’d need more fortitude than he thought she had. He wished her luck.

  Rizhanara spun on one wing and gained altitude, soaring over the artic forest. Thanks to Lorel and Tsai’dona’s quick defense, blood was splattered across the dragon’s emerald ribs and flanks. Magic swords were the rare weapons that could pierce dragon hide, and, understandably, Rizhanara seemed unwilling to confront them again.

  Why didn’t she give up and go away? It couldn’t be because of the diamonds.

  It really hadn’t been theft, since Leysamura had ordered him to take them. But why else was this dragon attacking him? As far as he knew, they weren’t her diamonds. Why would she care? Or did she simply hate all humans that much?

  Why had Lorel pulled Tsai’dona out of the fight? Besides the girl’s broken arm; she fought equally well with both hands. No, Lorel had shouted something about fire.

  Horses screamed from the safety of the forest behind him. He hoped they stayed under the trees. Rizhanara knew perfectly well that eating his team or the girls’ mounts would cripple their escape.

  The dragon dove closer to the wagon.

  All this fuss, and he hadn’t even had a bath yet. His tongue still hurt from biting it during his escape. Or more honestly, from the moment the dragon had freed him. His magic felt drained from trying to fly. And from driving off the silly green dragon.

  He’d promised Leysamura he wouldn’t harm a dragon if he could avoid
it. But he really needed to do something before someone got hurt.

  Viper squirmed out of the Kyridon’s coils, balanced on his foot, pointed upward, and concentrated. Mage fire shot from his extended hand.

  The tip of the dragon’s tail sizzled. Rizhanara squawked. Her aura flared orange and silver, doubling in size for a few seconds.

  Both Lorel and Tsai’dona – and the Kyridon – turned and gawked at him.

  Lorel shook her head. “Couldn’t’ve been the kid.”

  It was his second direct hit on that portion of the dragon’s anatomy. It ought to hurt worse than a lightning strike. Why didn’t Rizhanara go away?

  She did flap harder than an overweight turkey until she was a thousand feet above the meadow.

  Could he hide the camp from her?

  He willed an illusion of grass over the blue starfish-coated wagon.

  The spell flickered drunkenly. Blast. He was too tired. Normally he could invoke convincing illusions in his sleep.

  But he doubted this illusion would fool any dragon, since sand­blasted Lorel had covered his wagon with stinky serdil pelts again. Rizhanara would smell the rotting hides for miles.

  He wished Frederick’s ghost still resided inside the wagon. The spirit seemed to know something about dragons, and about adult females in general. His advice would be useful right now.

  But he’d destroyed Frederick to further the Kyridon’s quest.

  He didn’t dare ask the Kyridon. The serpent would talk for an hour before it admitted it didn’t know the answer to his question.

  Rizhanara flew higher and circled their camp.

  Lorel sneered and stomped back to face him. “How far is the winged weasel gonna follow us?”

  “Until she gets bored. Listen, when we get back to civilization, don’t mention dragons. We don’t need that kind of attention.”

  Both girls rolled their eyes.

  Did they think he was joking? “I mean it.”

  Lorel snickered. “They’ll think we fell off the Loom if we say we seen dragons, much less fought them.”

  Tsai’dona nodded. “They’ll think we jumped into the bog with that story.” She awkwardly sheathed the scimitar in a serdil-fur scabbard – one much better made than her arm splint – and patted him on the shoulder. “Even Sentakai would be falling-down drunk before she’d mention it.”

  Lorel snorted. “I ain’t never been that drunk.”

  Well, not often. And no one would believe anybody that drunk, anyway.

  The nickname ‘Sentakai’, meaning ‘Too Tall’ in Duremen-Lor, reminded him of the chores he needed to do to complete the Kyridon’s quest. Such as finding the wielders of the magical weapons, and talking some crazy wizard into binding them together.

  Praise the Thunderer, he wasn’t required to become a wizard himself. They didn’t have the decades it would take for him to learn that much magic.

  They were running out of time. He had to get his crew moving.

  But first he had to get cleaned up. He smelled so revolting he couldn’t stomach himself. Both girls were standing upwind.

  “I’m not going to have the peace to bathe properly until she gives up.” He looked up at the dragon, who was still circling overhead. “Could you pour warm water over me? I’d rather not bathe in snowmelt.”

  Lorel sheathed her swords, grabbed a bucket, and dashed off to the creek.

  Tsai’dona nudged the kettle over the hottest part of the campfire. “I’ll hop inside and grab another pot to heat water in.”

  He knew there was a reason he liked these girls.

  Lorel arrived with a bucketful of ice water just as Tsai’dona was climbing out of the wagon with a large pot and a beige wool blanket.

  But something bounced out of the wagon with her.

  “Bog swallow it.” Tsai’dona tossed the blanket onto the grass. “I told you to stay put.”

  “Izzy, get back inside,” Lorel shouted. “You gotta stay with Baby.”

  What on Menajr was that thing? It seemed to be made of severely-abused leather and thick yellow thread, all stitched together into a parody of a prairie dog. It appeared to be a stuffed animal with a ragged pink ribbon tied around its neck, but it moved under its own power.

  He shut his dangling jaw and turned to Lorel.

  She shrugged. “Izzy used to be your boot before them serdil chewed him up and Tsai sewed him back together.”

  He turned and gawked at Tsai’dona.

  Her face turned bright red. “I couldn’t stand watching a tangle of leather straps moving around on their own.”

  On their own? He turned to the Kyridon.

  It stared back. “This one did not influence the manufacture of the enchanted construct. It is the hatchling’s innovation.”

  His? He had tried to turn his old padded boot into a talisman, but the spell hadn’t worked properly. The sandblasted boot often wandered off on its own. It did help him when serdil attacked his camp, and gotten chewed up for its bravery. How had his spell survived the destruction of poor old Boot?

  Lorel poured ice water into Tsai’dona’s oddly-dented pot, and Tsai’dona drizzled boiling water into Lorel’s bucket. Together they lifted what he hoped was a container of warm water.

  The Kyridon scurried out of range.

  “Wait a second.” Viper hastily unfastened the belt made of dragon’s-egg lining and tossed it, with its overstuffed, matching pouch, closer to his wagon. Neither girl would bother the diamonds inside it. If they did, they were welcome to them. “Now I’m ready.”

  The girls tipped lukewarm water over his head. Water he didn’t need to break the ice on. Pure bliss.

  He scrubbed at his matted hair. Gray mud slithered over his shoulders.

  Tsai’dona’s eyes widened. She backed away.

  “I’ll get more water.” Lorel dashed off to the creek.

  His turybird really was a good friend.

  He scrubbed his face, his hands, his arms. His coat disintegrated into tatters. His jacket and shirt peeled off as if they were made of wet clay. He kept on scrubbing.

  The girls mixed more water and poured it over him.

  This batch was even warmer. Euphoria was too mild a term. Ecstasy was closer.

  “I never seen that much dirt on one body in all my life.” Lorel stepped out of drippy-mud range and shook her head. “You gonna need more water, kid?”

  “I’m surprised you aren’t shaking.” Tsai’dona frowned and examined him critically. “I’ve never seen that much blue skin.”

  His trousers chose that moment to dissolve. “Yikes!”

  “Too much skin.” Lorel grabbed the blanket off the grass, whipped it around him, head to toes, and scooped him up. “Into the wagon with you.”

  “Hold on.” Tsai’dona grabbed his boots and tugged them off. “These are what stink.” She didn’t recoil from his ankle stump this time.

  “You try living in the same clothes for – how long was I gone, anyway?”

  “Lost track ages ago, kid.” Lorel bounded up to the driver’s bench and carried him inside.

  Hot air rolled over him the instant she opened the door.

  Sweat broke out on his face, the only part of him not covered by the itchy wool blanket. “Why is it hot in here?”

  “We lit a fire inside the stove yesterday ’cuz the toad froze down to a nubbin.” She plunked him down on the wagon’s single chair, reached up to the top bunk and into his clothing chest, and pulled out a handful of rags.

  Well, not rags, exactly. Much mended wool trousers, a frayed, grayed linen shirt, and a long serdil-pelt vest. The last, at least, was supposed to be gray. He’d need new clothing once they reached Noran.

  So would the girls, for that matter. They both looked like ragamuffins.

  She dumped the clothes in his lap. “Get dressed, Loom lint. It ain’t exactly warm in here.”

  Something on Lorel’s bunk wiggled. Something black with white spots had burrowed inside a nest of gray serdil pelts.

 
; “What’s on your bed?” It was too big to be a rat. Or a coney, for that matter. “It’s not a skunk, is it?”

  “I ain’t that stupid.” She reached into the pile of pelts, lifted the creature, and cuddled it against her chest. It was longer than her forearm. Much bigger than a full-grown house cat. “This is Baby Bear. Tsai calls him Baybid’ba’ir. It means Stealthy Warrior in Duremen-Lor.”

  Huge blue eyes peered at him from a long-muzzled kitten’s face. Doglike legs ending in catlike paws paddled the air. Thick, luxurious fur grew from its head to the tip of a panther’s tail.

  Viper hugged his clothing against his chest and tried to scoot backward. “Is that a serdil cub?”

  Lorel scowled at him. “Don’t get all squeaky on me. Baby’s just a puppy. She’ll have good manners when she grows up.”

  “Thunderer, you have an interesting attitude about manners.” And about monsters. “I hadn’t pegged you as philosophical.”

  She snorted. “Fillies off cold. I love it. Don’t make sense, but sounds good.”

  The cub stared at him, licked its lips, and yodeled. “Mau?”

  “No, you can’t chew on me.” Trust his turybird to make a pet out of the scariest animal on the continent.

  “She likely is hungry.” Lorel nuzzled the beast.

  The cub’s pink tongue slurped at her face. “Mau?”

  Why was she keeping the creature in his wagon?

  “I’ll go check if there’s a bunny in my snares.” Lorel eased the cub back into its nest of pelts. “Get dressed, kid. I’ll be right back.” She scooted under the door and hurried outside.

  He eyed the serdil cub. It looked too young to attack him. In fact, it didn’t show any sign of being able to walk. It seemed far too immature to be eating meat. It ought to be nursing.

  It did appear hungry. “If you’re relying on the turybird to catch your dinner, you may be hungry a long time.” If they were going to keep it, it wasn’t fair to let the cub starve. He’d go set up his snares as soon as he could.

  But first he had to get dressed. And get dry enough to get dressed.