Rise of the Dragon King (Book two of the Royalty Trilogy): 2017 Modernized Format (Dragoneers Saga 5) Read online

  Rise of the Dragon King

  Book Five of the Dragoneers Saga

  Book Two of the Royalty Trilogy

  M.R. Mathias

  © 2016

  2016 Modernized Format Edition

  Created in the United States of America

  Worldwide Rights

  Formatting by Dominion Editorial

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, scanned, or distributed in any form, including digital, electronic, or mechanical, to include photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without the prior written consent of the author, except for brief quotes used in reviews.

  This book is a work of fiction. All characters, names, places, and incidents are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to any actual persons, living or dead, events or locales, is entirely coincidental.

  This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each person. If you are reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then please return to: [email protected] and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.

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  Other titles by M. R. Mathias

  The Dragoneer Saga

  The First Dragoneer – Free

  The Royal Dragoneers – Nominated, Locus Poll 2011

  Cold Hearted Son of a Witch

  The Confliction

  The Emerald Rider

  Rise of the Dragon King

  Blood and Royalty – Winner, 2015 Readers Favorite Award,

  and 2015 Kindle Book Award Semifinalist

  The Legend of Vanx Malic

  Book One – Through the Wildwood

  Book Two – Dragon Isle

  Foxwise (a short story) - Free

  Book Three – Saint Elm’s Deep

  Book Four – That Frigid Fargin’ Witch

  Book Five – Trigon Daze

  Book Six – Paragon Dracus

  Book Seven – The Far Side of Creation

  Book Eight – The Long Journey Home

  Collection -To Kill a Witch – Books I-IV w/bonus content

  Collection –The Legend Grows Stronger – Books V-VIII

  Books IX-XII coming soon!

  And don't miss the huge International Bestselling epic:

  The Wardstone Trilogy

  Book One - The Sword and the Dragon

  Book Two - Kings, Queens, Heroes, & Fools

  Book Three - The Wizard & the Warlord

  Short Stories:

  Crimzon & Clover I - Orphaned Dragon, Lucky Girl

  Crimzon & Clover II - The Tricky Wizard

  Crimzon & Clover III - The Grog

  Crimzon & Clover IV - The Wrath of Crimzon

  Crimzon & Clover V - Killer of Giants

  Crimzon & Clover Collection One (stories 1-5)

  Crimzon & Clover VI – One Bad Bitch

  Crimzon &Clover VII – The Fortune’s Fortune

  Master Zarvin’s Action and Adventure Series #1 Dingo the Dragon Slayer

  Master Zarvin’s Action and Adventure Series #2 Oonzil the oathbreaker

  Master Zarvin’s Action and Adventure Series #3 The Greatest Quest

  Crimzon and Clover I-X

  Table of Contents

  Part I – The Banished King

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Part II – Along Came Clover

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Part III – A Colossal Debacle

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chapter Nineteen

  Chapter Twenty

  Part IV - “Never Underestimate a Wizard. Any Wizard. Ever.”

  Chapter Twenty-One

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  Chapter Twenty-Six

  Chapter Twenty-Seven

  Chapter Twenty-Eight

  Chapter Twenty-Nine

  About the Author

  Rise of the Dragon King

  Book Five of the Dragoneers Saga

  Part I

  The Banished King

  Chapter One

  The banished king had been left on the small landmass known as Serpent’s Isle for nine years, so far. Richard, still King Richard in his mind’s eye, or Prince Richard, depending on what era his memory was caught up in, had gone somewhat mad in that time, but the sound he was hearing now was no hopeful delusion. A bell was ringing as plainly as the calls of the gulls and pelicans. It was irritating.

  Having spent a good deal of his time just laying there and listening, he knew the noise wasn’t coming from anywhere on the island. In fact, over the course of his first two years there, he had literally turned over every stone and investigated every crevice, crack, and cavern at least a dozen times. There was nothing here that could make such an unnatural ding over and over again. Nothing.

  The bell, and the steady repetition of its ringing, had a purpose and a meaning, but he had long since forgotten the few rules of seamanship he’d known. His Nightshade had spent the first few months here with him, but then one day it slid into the sea and he hadn’t seen it since. After that happened, he stopped thinking like a man and began surviving.

  The realization that it was a ship’s bell he was hearing, and then the more specific recollection, that it was the bell mounted at the front of a long boat, caused him to sit up. Each year, just before the cold set in, a sizeable bundle of stores and other necessities had been left on the beach. Maybe he was getting more? Maybe there was a message?

  Long before he’d arrived, Rikky and Zahrellion fought and killed a terrible serpent here. Some of its bones, and the upper part of its skull decorated his cave. The two Dragoneers had come to get an antidote to save his life. He was once a Dragoneer, too, and he helped save the whole realm. He and his dragon Royal had been the best of them.

  The sound of the bell brought him out of his jumbled thoughts.

  He was suddenly very excited. The previous bundles had been left by dragon, he was sure, for there were no marks on the beach around them at all. They had been dropped in the night. More though, winter wasn’t about to set in. In fact, spring was just getting started and he still had most of the storables from the previous package put away.

  It was possible that they were coming to get him, but even as the thought, and the flood of hope it brought with it, assailed him, his subconscious mind began revealing other, less prospective possibilities. After just a few seconds, he realized there was nothing worse that could happen to him. No w
ords could faze him unless it was the news that he was leaving this place.

  He was disappointed when he left the cavern he now called home. The fog was so thick he couldn’t see the hand at the end of his arm.

  The sailors were using the bell, and its echo, to gauge the shoreline.

  Knowing that when the air was saturated with moisture this way, he would have to get above the mist to see anything, he started climbing up to the island’s peak. There, he had long since rigged the thickest tree with ladder steps made from wood he’d salvaged from the broken ship in the bay. He also had a mirrored lantern and a hand carved whistle up there, for he had seen three ships in his time here and had gotten more prepared to hail one with each passing.

  He struggled up a rocky face that was slick with moisture from the mist, but once atop it, he stopped still, relaxed his posture, and started scratching his filthy head. This led to more scratching and, like a wild animal trying to rid itself of a flea, he ended up lying down and grinding his back and shoulders against the rocks until he ridded himself of the irritation.

  “Why don’t I just hail them now?” he asked out loud as he stood. “We’ve got nothing to lose by revealing ourselves, do we Royal?”

  As it often did, Richard’s broken mind took him away, back to a time in his youth when magic and wonder still had a place in his heart. A time before Gravelbone’s corruption had infected him. A time when he was crown prince of the only kingdom and a dragon named Royal loved him dearly.

  “He musn’t know, boy,” Mysterian the witch hissed with wide eyes. Even though she was deathly serious, Prince Richard’s excitement was so contagious it was clear she was feeling it, too. He was seventeen years old and had just taken his first flight with the magnificent blue dragon called Royal. They were standing in the garden bailey surrounded by lush greenery, punctuated with stark, lime-colored, four-petal flowers the size of a man’s palm. The predominant smell of brine was overcome here and Richard’s nostrils recalled the sweet citrus scent of the blooms well.

  He remembered it was a miracle they didn’t get spotted by his father’s Wallguard that night. Royal had glided right over them before dropping and landing like a sprawled cat in the garden. Richard also remembered how it felt after the huge wyrm had gone, when Mysterian twisted his ear until the giddiness was out of him.

  “If you get caught that dragon won’t get scolded, boy,” she forced the urgency of the message through her teeth. “They’ll chain him to the earth and take his head off with axes. Do you want that?”

  “No.”

  Richard remembered being angry that she hadn’t believed he already understood. He knew his father could never know. Hadn’t he and the dragon kept their previous meetings secret? For nothing more than caution, Mysterian had taken the glory of his first dragon flight from him. It was only one of the reasons he hated her.

  Thinking of Royal allowed him to easily dismiss Mysterian, and he was in the woods on the far side of Kings Isle again, meeting his wyrm for the very first time.

  The feeling was all fear. There was exhilaration later, but when he first saw the deep blue scaled dragon’s head laying there on the forest floor, he nearly filled his britches.

  An eye the size of a dinner plate blinked and the wyrm’s sword-like, slitted pupil shrank into a sliver as it focused on him.

  You’ve come thensss? it hissed into Richard’s young mind.

  “I have,” Richard managed. Standing in the presence of a beast that could swallow him whole, left him fully in awe.

  We have a grimss future youss and I. I am Royal, and youss are royalty. The dragon somehow filled his head with glorious thoughts. But until we meet our endsss, we shalls live.

  And they did. They were forced to take their flights over sea, for the most part, but after Richard became proficient on Royal’s back, the wizened wyrm took them all over the Mainland continent.

  These jaunts were only possible because of Mysterian, who used her witchy ways and made sure their absences didn’t seem suspicious. Richard wished his memories of her were fonder, for she thought she was looking out for her and the witches’ prophecy. Ultimately, she was only hiding the truth from them all.

  Those early years were tough on Richard. He was often forced to choose between the dragon’s beliefs and his father’s and, no matter what he did, he had to keep the dragon’s existence a secret. That was no easy task, and at that time Richard had no idea that Royal’s hatch mate had been the wyrm that maimed his Gran in the arena pit. He never got a sense of how much his father, and the people of the Kingdom, hated dragons until later. Looking back, he understood Mysterian’s caution, but he hated her no less for all her deceit.

  The memory of learning that a very young Kingsman named Herald was the one who took the axe to the chained dragon while the old King’s spellcaster held it still almost turned the reverie into something else. Luckily, the image of his father finally allowing him to go to the woods after a terribly long day at court filled his head.

  Getting free to go be with Royal had been everything.

  He stayed lost in that time, thinking of all the thrills and discoveries he and his magical friend made as he grew from a boy into a man and the two of them bonded. Then he remembered Jenka and Zahrellion arriving on Kings Island just before it all fell apart. In that moment, his guard slipped down and the visage of Gravelbone, and a legion of Sarax froze his blood in his veins.

  Chapter Two

  The sky over Kingsman’s Keep was speckled with small puffy clouds and colored a bright shade of blue that made it look much warmer than it felt. Silva pumped her wings sending her smaller, pewter scaled body past Marcherion and his dragon, Blaze, as if they were standing still.

  Rikky, who was clinging to the saddle on Silva’s undulating back, hollered as they swept by, “See ya, tubby!”

  He looked back to see March pumping a meaty fist at him, but the older Dragoneer’s smile showed he wasn’t really angry. Blaze’s roar of disapproval though, might have been tinged with more than a little frustration. The ever-growing red wyrm had eaten most of the elk cows they’d scared away from a large herd back in the peaks. The big drake was bloated and sluggish and probably sleepy.

  Marcherion had gained some girth, too. They said they were eating like they were because they were about to leave for Marcherion’s homeland. Thanks to a single conversation with Clover before she disappeared, King Jenka’s admiral, with Aikira’s help, had mapped their routes and a good portion of the globe. The Old World, as it was being called now, had reconnected with the survivors of the Dogma and ships were coming and going regularly.

  Rikky fully understood Marcherion’s desire to make the journey by air, though. Aikira could open a flash portal to almost anywhere in the world, but one out of every six or seven tries ended them up in a whole other existence. These places were nothing like this world. Some were gassy masses of unformed flotsam, others were frigid tundras that ended up being nothing more than gargantuan bergs floating on dark seas. Still, Rikky probably would have used a portal. Rikky knew March well enough to know that it was the solitude of the journey, and the time spent with his bond-mate and closest friend, that made the decision.

  Oddly, Rikky never pictured March having brothers and parents. He had always thought of him as the loner, the angry outsider from another part of the world, the Dragoneer who kept him sharp and ready.

  It wasn’t that way now. After two weeks of him blabbing about Brendly Tuck and all his sisters, and the size of the krill they caught in the river, and his brothers, and his girlfriends, Rikky felt as if he knew them, too. If he didn’t have duties to fulfill, he would have been preparing to go along with him. In fact, he was sort of sad he wasn’t.

  The story March told them about killing a wyvern and seeing the white stag seemed a little farfetched until Blaze confirmed the truth of it. Even after witnessing what transpired with the strange elves when they ended the alien beast in the Great Confliction, Rikky always felt as if March an
d his dragon were pulling his leg or poking fun at him in some way. It was clear they never told the whole tale, and equally plain they delighted in recanting the event.

  You’d eat up, too, if you were about to have to fly a hundred and twenty days straight, and then fly eighty-four more, Marcherion said to Rikky through the ethereal.

  I would if I had to fly that far. Rikky laughed aloud. But you don’t have to fly, tubby. You just have to sit there and hold your piss.

  Aye, March didn’t argue. Rikky figured it was probably because he knew he couldn’t win. Either way, Rikky still relished outdoing any of the other Dragoneers in anything, even wordplay.

  Having only one leg forced him to try harder.

  Not having March to hunt and compete with was going to test him. Jenka, Zah, and Aikira were always too busy with their children and the kingdom. The Rangers were well trained now, and most of the threats to the good folk had long been eliminated.

  How long will you be gone again? Rikky asked.

  At least two years.

  Rikky sighed. It’s going to be a long boring time.

  Jenka might hunt with you. Or Aikira even. The hopefulness in March’s voice was clearly forced. Jericho is ready to formally train as well.

  Aikira is busy with Pascal the rascal. Rikky tried to mask the loss of joy he was suddenly feeling, but it was hopeless. And King Jenka hasn’t the time for anyone, much less me.

  You’ll be all right, Rikky. Train Pascal, too. Just slow down a bit. We’re in no hurry today.

  After the bell sounded again, King Richard heard voices. They were clear and carried to his ears well, but he didn’t understand anything they said. They were speaking gibberish. Fast and clipped and somewhat hushed. As if the men in the long boat were afraid.