The Dragonskin Chronicles Bk. 01

"My Elf Queen has abandoned me here, Korwyn," Zyndyr said calmly, "so why should I serve these ingrates for an Elf Queen who cares naught if I live or die? Orc blood or Dwarf blood, it is all the same when spilled, as is mine, so bring it all on."

Princess Myr pulled her dead father off the throne and sat down in his place, clutching her baby, she was, after all, Klandrak's eldest child.

One of the courtiers yelled out, "The high king is dead, so long live the High Queen of the Dwarves, Queen Myr the First!"

Soon all the courtiers were swearing their allegiance to their new High Queen and were on their knees bowing to Her Majesty.

There was a movement at the back of the hall and one of the guards attempted to stop someone from making entry.

"I used to be the Queen here, Orc-arse, let me through to see my granddaughter and great grandchildren!" came a strident old crone's voice.

An old courtier remembered her, hissed to the guard, "Let Queen Urmah through, you fool, before she turns you into a rabbit with two tails!" Then, sotto voce whispered to his young companion, "She was the King's step-mother, banished after calling the King a bandy-legged cocklebutt. She was popular whenever she was remembered, even in exile."

The crone was escorted to stand in front of the throne. She nodded to Korwyn with a gap-toothed smile. "Ye did well, Man-Lord, as I knew ye would. Ye have my eternal thanks for returning my granddaughter to me. With your reward, ye'll not only be able to feed your people, but raise an army and a fleet to defend them, with an actively powerful ally forever here among the Seven Kingdoms."

"Your Majesty," bowed Korwyn, "I believe your gift has found its true owner." The Boy still had the Dwarf sword in his hand.

"And I hope you will find your own true destiny, too, my dear Lord Korwyn. One day I might call you 'Majesty', and your Elf too," she said.

"Gran'ma?" Queen Myr asked tentatively, standing up from the throne and taking a step forward.

"Aye, my dear, I have waited five long years to see you again, and you have an heir apparent already, who I know will do much to restore the pride of the Seven Kingdoms."

The two embraced, Queen Urmah, whispering to her young grandchild, "The Boy will need a name my dear, why not call him Bydonkriankryar, 'Kingmaker-Kingkiller'?"

"Aye, Prince Bydon for short, a fit name for any future king, half Dwarf-half Sorcerer," smiled the new High Queen.

Chapter 4

Content

A cool breeze off the Caribbean sea late in the night woke Clive with a start and he pulled the thin sheet over them both. It had been so hot earlier, the heat of the day still radiating from the rocks, the walls, the very air. Although the thin line between sky and sea was lighter, they still had an hour or two before breakfast would be served, so he filled his lungs with the fresh ozone-rich air.

Quitting his job and taking the redundancy package was the best decision he ever made. He'd always been a dreamer, dreaming of writing about his vivid dreams. The redundancy money would kept his head above water until he received the six-figure publisher's advance, partly for his near finished book, a fantasy about a Man and Elf in an earth filled with many adventures to be told, the rest of the advance for the electronic game spin-off. He smiled and relaxed back to his pleasant dream of another early dawn.

***

Korwyn's feet poked out of the end of the bed, the largest one the Dwarf Palace could muster at short notice, and his toes were cold in the early morning chill. High Queen Myr promised that her finest carpenters would build a gigantic new one by the morrow. He smiled and relaxed, closing his eyes to return to his pleasant dream of a Caribbean shore and a sated wife, a whole world away from this.

"Where do you go, my dear Wyn, in those quiet moments, when you seem so content?"

Korwyn opened one eye. Zyndyr had lifted her beautiful head from his chest where it had lain the last half of the long, long night filled with memories that could sustain a man's virility for life.

"Just somewhere I go to get a little perspective on life, my dear, I see another world, quiet and uneventful, unlike here in our world most of the time. It is filled with the everyday pleasures and the minor diversions of family life, if you really want to know. A pleasant place where my mind goes, where I can lose myself when I can. It is but a wonderful fantasy of strange hollow metal birds able to move a whole tribe halfway round the world in half a day and magic power coming from tiny holes in the walls, all conjured up from my imagination. I go there to hide from the dangers we face and the loneliness I have been forced to endure for too long, but now I have found peace in your love, Zyn. Here my reality with you in it has become more wonderful than anything I could possibly have dreamed up alone. I don't think I will ever need to go back into that strange dream world again."

"If it relaxes you so, please don't abandon your imaginary world, we all need to dream, it is good for us. Now, you dream of a family, how do you feel about having a family of your own in this world, our world, Wyn?"

"Family is everything to me, Zyn, sweetheart, but even if it was impossible for us to ... well, I would give all that up for you ... if you want to spend my lifetime with me, that is."

She smiled and kissed his bare chest, manly in its expanse, powerful in its depth, full of courageous heart and sense of honour, "if you are asking me that to do, then yes, I want to spend a whole lifetime with you, my dearest Wyn, to grow old with you."

"But what about your people and your ... immortality?"

"Oh, my Man, in fact all men, are so wonderfully blind to the nature of things around you," she shook her head. "You farm the land without being in tune with the land, you sail by putting your trust in the elements without the first clue what those elements are, what forces driven them and how they can be controlled. You take on in battle a fearsome Dragon-Sorcerer to protect people who are not even of your people, with no thought of the impossible odds, and then you bed an immortal Elf with no inkling whatsoever of the far-reaching implications that our act of mating has for us both. Your innocence of how the world works makes you even more adorable than your undoubted strengths, my sweetheart."

"What do you mean, innocence?"

"When an immortal 'marries' a mortal, my love, whether it be casual or committed, is no light matter for an immortal, it involves sacrifice, a mortal sacrifice. I have now mated with a mortal and therefore I am no longer immortal, Wyn, and my Elf senses inform me that we have already created the first addition to our family, due before the end of next winter."

"You are already with child?"

"Aye, my Lord, Elves menstruate but the once, at puberty, then my tiny eggs are stored in my ovaries, forever dormant until a choice is made by me to mate," Zyndyr nodded.

"But your sacrifice of immortality, Zyn, it is far too high a price to pay."

"Love has no price, it is freely given and accepted, my Lord. I love you and to age with you and alongside you means we can love each other to the ends of both our lives. If I was still immortal, would you saddle me with an eternity of loss, pining for the loss of Man I love?"

"Perhaps I would have liked to have been asked before you sacrificed such a thing as 'forever'. What if I had another lover?"

"But I know you do not."

He nodded, not knowing how she knew and realising that how didn't really matter to him. "True, my love, I have not."

"And my Elf-sense told me that during our time together, that you no longer blame me for what my kind did to you, are my senses right?"

"Aye, I hold you guiltless of any harm to me or my kind."

"And, even before we made love last night, you had changed your opinion of me and seem to hold me in quite high regard, is that also correct, my Lord?"

"Aye," he kissed the top of her lovely head, "I think it is time I owned up that I love you unreservedly, Lady-Elf Zyndyr, and I love only you with all the love a Man's heart can hold, but I would still have liked to have been asked after being explained full well the consequences of our love for each other."

She reached up and kissed him gently on his lips, "But I know what your noble answer would have been, my love, you would have been the one to sacrifice a lifetime of pleasure and fulfilment, you and I know you would, so putting the question to you was pointless. My life is my own, my dear Korwyn, and I gift it in its entirety to you as an expression of my eternal love. Now what do you think about our first-born being a daughter?"

"Us? A daughter? My joy would overwhelm me. Will she be as beautiful as you?"

"She will be beautiful, undoubtedly," laughed Zyndyr, "But she will be different to me. She will not be a half-Elf with wings, such creatures cannot exist, but she will be all human woman. I see her in my mind, not with green hair, that is my own, but she will be fair like your mother but with a hint of red in her hair. She will have my green eyes and my delicate facial features, but will have your squarer jaw, but smaller, to fit her face more naturally. She is tall, a little fuller in the bust than I, but with pale freckles upon her arms, shoulders and upper chest. And she will a future queen, I see a vision of her standing straight and tall in her magistorial robes with a crown upon her head."

"Queen Urmah's strange prediction of 'majesty' for you and I, do you put much store by that?"

"I do, she is a Witch."

"While you are an angel," Korwyn smiled, then grimaced as he wrapped his left arm around his lover.

"Are your wounds still sore, my love?" Her beautiful face was full of concern.

"Not my new wounds, you have healed those completely. Only my old shoulder wound aches. It is always rather stiff upon waking in the morning."

She smiled, planted both hands on his chest, pushing herself up and away, flying across the room to her pack. In the pale light of dawn, her naked Elfness, her small but pear shaped breasts, her slim athleticism, her rounded bum and shapely legs filled Korwyn with wonder at her wanton surrender to his every ministration this past glorious night. As she collected whatever she went for, she turned, her furry sex still caked in their dried juices, having filled her cup to overflowing thrice where nature intended and once where her tongue had worshipped, stroked and caressed his fleshly bodkin until he'd filled her throat with his spent seed even unto the excess spilled around her lips, which he had licked clean without hesitation, swearing he would never tire of her sweet lips, wherever she favoured placing them, no part of his body out of bounds to her sucking lips and insinuating Elf-tongue.

She returned with the green pouch she used on her two poor Dwarves, slain under her command at the mountainside, at the time Korwyn first set eyes on her. She delved in with her hand and pulled out a pinch of grey powder.

"What are you doing?" Korwyn asked, "was that what you used for the Dwarves' funeral?"

"Aye. Do you trust me Wyn?" she asked, "do you trust me with your well-being, and your life?"

"Yes. I do." He settled back comfortably in the bed, accepting his fate at the hands, or rather the pinched finger and thumb of his lover.

"The magic dust knows the difference between the living and the dead and it will remove only the dead tissue, which may ease your shoulder pain. It will not harm you, or your living flesh. I could never find justification for that, Wyn."

He nodded and smiled.

Zyndyr's tongue poked out as she concentrated on sprinkling the dust evenly on an ugly dried up scar a decade old, sustained when Korwyn was but a fresh-faced youth.

His shoulder felt warm, then hot, as hot as the Elf arrow tip which had punctured his light chain mail so long ago. There was pain, but back then he faced it alone, with his father and all the friends he knew around him dying, their screaming in the Black Dragon's flames still haunting his dreams from time to time. Now he was holding one hand with his lover, the mother of his child to be, and their other children he hoped still to come, a beautiful creature who had given up her immortality to share her life with him; the pain was no price to pay at all. He didn't screw up his eyes to endure the discomfort, but focused on her green eyes, that looked softly down on him, just as full of love looking down as his were looking up.

As fast as his muscles, skin and bones had heated up, they cooled. A hazy cloud formed above him, no bigger than a fist. Particles, as fine as dust, rose up from his shoulder to swell the tiny grey cloud, filled with swirling currents until the streams feeding the cloud ceased. Then the cloud rose up and slowly squeezed up to fit tightly together and flew out of the window.

"Where?" he asked.

"To the land of your fathers, where it will scatter to the four winds and settle on the land and water within the selvedge of your domains, the Elf magic will help manage your farmland, using the information from your essence stored in your dust, knowing what sustenance is needed for you to thrive, so the essence of your crops will change naturally under the influence of the magic, weeds that you normally pull but are preferred by insects will be encouraged to grow in the margins to feed on their preferences while your crops will discourage predators, yet be even more tasty and bountiful than ever before. Your beasts and the fish in ponds and sea will be fatter and easier to catch,"

"How?"

"Silly Mankind, you work against nature not with it. You plant your crops in clumps to the exclusion of other plants more favoured by the insects who have no choice but to attack yours. By understanding and working with instead of against nature, everything benefits. More insects means better pollination, better fed birds for hunting, more larvae in the water means fatter fish, equals better harvests. Your small dust cloud won't change much, but you will notice a difference at harvest time. Anyway, my dearest love, how's your shoulder now?"

Korwyn flexed his arm and shoulder, "Zyn, this feels as good as new, as if I had never received that wound."

"It will be better than it has been, my love, but you and your spirit have been scarred by it, see, you still carry its cause about your neck."

"My mother kept the arrowhead while I recovered and I carried it as a reminder. I think I can discard it and start afresh. You have given me a new life and purpose, my love. I think I would like to return to my land and be a farmer once more."

He lifted his head and pulled the leather thong over his head and was about to toss it on the floor.

"Wait! May I look more closely at it?"

He handed it to the lovely Elf, who still laid across him, sharing the heat from their bodies.

"It is clearly an arrow of Elf creation, Wyn, and must have burned you fiercely, but no Elf fired it, I can assure you. Look."

She returned to where her belongings lay and removed all the arrows from her quiver, bar one and picked up her bow.

"Come to the window, my love and see." It was a command he couldn't ignore.

Korwyn joined her. He shivered in his nakedness, the dawn breeze was chilly, though the fair skies above promised sun and warmth later. Zyndyr's nakedness was unaffected, as if this state of undress was completely natural to her.

Zyndyr drew that lone arrow from her quiver, making her movements more theatrically exaggerated than usual, with a smile playing upon her luscious lips and one raised eyebrow, making her look unutterably adorable to Korwyn's worshipping gaze. She nocked the arrow onto her slim bow, drew the drawstring taut until the arrow tip almost touched her grip upon the bow, and fired it across the courtyard into an isolated tree, which instantly burst into flames. Korwyn imagined he felt a twinge in his old wound at the reaction, but realised it was all in his head, his shoulder was fine. Still smiling he returned his gaze to his lover.

"Very impressive, Zyn, my dear, I am glad that I am firmly of the belief that we will never have a falling out, though our marriage endures for us forever."

"I believe that too, my dear Wyn, but that doesn't mean that we won't get angry together in the future, we just need to know exactly where to channel that anger and at whom."

'What did she mean?' he wondered.

She showed him the empty quiver. Empty then, but within moments the arrow she had just shot at the tree rematerialised undamaged in the quiver.

"An Elf archer, my dearest Man though still to be taught all our way, never, ever, runs out of ammunition."

"Ahh, so all the arrows you shot at the White Dragon, you never ran short, did you? But I still don't ... ahh!"

"Now you see Wyn? The arrows that wounded your shoulder and the one which killed your father were never fired by an Elf, but someone who had already killed an Elf in order to take his weapons, then using the opportunity of the tense atmosphere and the attack of the Black Dragon to eliminate the King and three possible rivals, the Crown Prince, the next eldest in line for the throne, your father, and you."

"My uncle, the present King!"

"Aye, my Lord, I believe your father and grandfather were murdered by your uncle. It appears your farming days will have to wait."

END OF BOOK THE FIRST