The Dragon's Back Trilogy Read online

  THE DRAGON’S

  BACK TRILOGY

  Books 1 & 2

  “The Poison of Thorns”

  &

  “My Brother’s Keeper”

  by Robert Dennis Wilson

  [Extensive helps included

  at the end of the book.]

  © December 2019

  by Robert Dennis Wilson

  Gryphon’s Bard Publishing

  The cover artwork: Hand-carved JADE DRAGON, Rhyolite Flame, mounted to a brecciated Jasper block. Part of a Jade Dragon & Knight set called "The Courage of the Cross" by Robert Dennis Wilson.

  THE DRAGON'S BACK

  BOOK 1

  THE POISON

  OF THORNS

  by Robert Dennis Wilson

  [Extensive helps included

  at the end of the book.]

  DEDICATION

  TO JUSTIN,

  You, whom God touched before birth,

  Are more special and more loved

  Than you will ever know.

  ALSO:

  To Yaffé, who in love,

  Endured this whole long thing;

  To Christi and to Rachel,

  Who learned, like bards, to sing;

  To Benjamin, who likes to listen,

  And doing work by hand;

  To Joan, who fought a warrior's fight,

  To rescue my Heartland;

  To Joshua, beloved son,

  For he's the one in fact,

  Who thought up the scheme,

  And dreamt the dream,

  That now is Dragonsback:

  THANK YOU!

  rdw

  "He that is born of the Gryphon,

  Beneath the waves won't sink:

  Forsaking the venomous flow,

  From the River will not drink.

  As sons of the Gryphon's Son,

  The truth you'll realize:

  Upon the Dragon's back,

  The whole of man's realm lies." *1

  (Yohann's Song, the Word of the Gryphon)

  © October 2010 by Robert Dennis Wilson

  2nd Edition December 2019

  Gryphon’s Bard Publishing

  Paperback: ISBN:2940011857164

  Paperback: ASIN: 146330799

  Ebook: ASIN: B004BA54TC

  OTHER SPIRITUAL WARFARE NOVELS BY

  ROBERT DENNIS WILSON:

  MY BROTHER’S KEEPER: The Dragon’s Back #2

  Fantasy. Currently out as e-book & paperback.

  THE PLAYERS: Earth - The Arena #1 [Science Fiction]

  Available as e-book & paperback.

  CONTACT INFO

  Amazon Author Page:

  www.amazon.com/Robert-Dennis-Wilson/e/B004FEK3XQ

  Facebook Writer Site:

  www.facebook.com/Novels.by.RobertDennisWilson

  Facebook Personal:

  www.facebook.com/RobertDennisWilson

  The Author’s Blog:

  robtdwilson.wordpress.com

  RDW’s Gemstone Carving:

  www.facebook.com/WE.ROCK.stone.jewelry

  RDW’s Acappella Scripture Songs:

  www.reverbnation.com/robertdenniswilson/songs

  Email:[email protected]

  The cover for this novel was designed by graphic artist Julie Grace.

  Prologue

  “God, it’s not my fault! Do You hate me? Is that why I was born this way? It’s just not fair! All the kids keep picking on me and it’s not my fault! I can’t help the way I look. Look at me! You made me this way!”

  ~ ~ ~

  In a hidden place of Stygian blackness, just outside of sight and sound, Evil took form and laughed a cackling, victorious laugh. Other of the hidden ones quickly joined him in the darkness. Together they howled with delight—like a pack of wicked boys skinning a screaming cat with a dull pair of hedging shears. Each of them brandished a long, thin, pointed barb that looked as if it had been freshly broken from some huge bush of blackened thorns. Vitreous poison dripped from those razor tips – and from the voices of the mob.

  “Can I stab him next?” one gleefully screamed, pressing closer.

  “No, me!”

  “No, I was here first!”

  The lesser ones squabbled noisily, violently, until Evil let loose a low, menacing growl.

  Silenced, cowering, learning, they watched as their eternal mentor went about his work.

  ~ ~ ~

  You are needed!

  I quickly closed the novel I had been reading, pushed down hard with my feet and pulled the lever on the recliner's side, then rose to a standing position. The warning had been more sensed than heard. Danger as a tangible presence quickened my pulse as I glanced around my daughter's living room.

  The Compulsion whispered again, You are needed!

  Where Lord? I responded, suddenly fearful that my faith would not bear the test that approached.

  Follow Me! rebuked that gentle quiet voice in my heart, retuning my focus.

  And then I knew my direction. Quickly, quietly I turned to my left and climbed a steep set of wooden stairs, toward the pair of dormered bedrooms waiting above.

  I gained the small second-floor landing and turned to my right where the light from my Grandson's room shown out from his partially opened door.

  You are needed, here!

  “Justin, I love you!”

  The boy turned quickly, as though startled by the voice from his doorway. For only an instant I saw behind the façade that hid his heart, then with a quick motion of his right arm, he absorbed with his sleeve all physical evidence that anything could be wrong.

  “Oh, hi, Pop-Pop!”

  I walked toward where he sat on his single bed and he opened his outstretched arms to greet me. Briefly, as I neared, he offered me a rare treat not many others had seen lately: a partial smile clearly revealing twin rows of sparkling metal braces.

  I returned the smile as I sat down beside him, then pulled him close to me in a crushing bear hug. He returned the pressure in a contest that was itself the prize. Lingering, we fed each other’s souls with the strength of that manly grip.

  “Justin, I love you,” I repeated softly in his ear.

  “I know, Pop-Pop,” his barely audible reply drifted up to me. "I love you, too!"

  How? I pondered to myself, How in the world can I help a ten-year-old learn to handle his scars? How can I show him that, I too, feel his pain?

  Deliberately, slowly, gently, I placed a hand on each of his young shoulders and pushed him back just far enough, so he could see my face and the unhidden tears in my eyes. Apparently, he accepted this visible sign of my love as a gift for he offered me another smile in return.

  Then, knowing his eyes were on mine, I deliberately looked over his shoulder as though something dangerous crawled up his back.

  “That’s quite a load of thorns you have there, stuck in your pack,” I told him and watched as an instant battle played across his young face: the seriousness of my tone fought against his reality.

  “Wha… What do you mean, Pop-Pop?” he stuttered as though caught off guard. Turning his head to try to see what I saw, he added, “I don’t see any thorns!”

  “Oh, you can’t see them, Justin, but they’re there all the same. Big black ugly thorns, as long as swords and twice as sharp. They’re sticking out of your pack. They’re poking you and hurting you all the time.”

  “Granddad, what do you mean?” he demanded an answer this time. “I’m not wearing my backpack! It’s still summer and we don’t have school for a couple of weeks yet!”

  “Well, Justin, you’re just gonna’ have to take my word on this one. You are wearing a pack and it’s full of giant thorns. Trouble is, only someone from Dragonsba
ck would be able to see ‘em and know how they got there!”

  Still, in unbelief, he shrugged his shoulders as if in proof of their emptiness then added as though an afterthought, “‘Dragonsback’? What’s Dragonsback?”

  “Not ‘what’ but ‘where’. Dragonsback is a land, very, very far from here. It’s so far away you can only get there in a story. Dragonsback is surrounded by water on every side — like a huge archipelago (or massive chain of mountainous islands). The strange thing about this land—if you could get up high enough to see it all—is that it actually looks like a sleeping dragon lying in the water!”

  “Wow! A Dragon! Wait… This is another one of your stories, isn’t it?” Justin’s eyes brightened with anticipation as he saw at last my direction.

  “Oh, it’s not just my story. There’s a lot of you in it. It’s a story about two brothers, Jason and Kaleb, not much older than you. And they really live on the back of that Dragon. It sure is a strange land, too: they talk differently than we do; they dress differently; they don’t have any of the fancy stuff and gadgets we have, like computers, TVs, and cell phones. One major difference is that they never ever have any rain. And one more thing, they see different things; things that you and I can only imagine here…

  “You mean, like packs and thorns?” Justin interrupted with youthful exuberance before settling down onto the bed next to me.

  “Exactly! But packs and thorns are only the beginning. It’s hard to explain, but even their dreams are more real on Dragonsback. It’s almost as if when they dream, they see things as they really are in their world, but when they’re awake everything’s clouded like a dream.”

  Justin turned that special face toward me and, with what passed as his best attempt at a wink, asked me in a voice that no grandfather could resist, “Can you tell me about Dragonsback, Pop-Pop? Can you, please?”

  OF DRAGONS

  AND DREAMS

  "Alone!" The boy-man stood high upon Dragon's Back, the massive land, now shrouded in darkness, stretched endlessly beneath him.

  He turned. Sudden vertigo, like an earthquake, shook his tentative world. Startled, his gaze fell over a naked precipice at his feet to plummet down into the boiling depths of the night-blackened sea hundreds of manheights below.

  Stumbling backward, away, he clutched at his only solace on the wind-swept heights, the still-massive stump of a Column, ancient and shattered before living memory. Its cold stone shelter leeched away his meager supply of warmth.

  "I have seen the Dragon move!" he screamed! But the hostile wind tore the desperate cry and flung its tattered shreds into the unhearing night.

  "No one knows! No one cares! No one will believe me!"

  His lonely voice rose to a wail. Yet his warning to the world barely rivaled, then blended, and finally succumbed to the conquering wind.

  The youth crumpled to his knees.

  He clung even more tightly to his broken sanctuary but could not turn away.

  Chains of fear made unwilling prisoners of his eyes, drawing them inexorably over the yawning edge.

  "I have been here before!" The shouted words brought no comfort, only a sense of impending doom. He spoke them because they were true: a spark of sanity in an insane realm.

  He waited.

  From below the edge of the escarpment, out of the hidden sea, they came, as he knew they would. At first, only disembodied shrieks chased by the wind up from the depths; then fear exploded into reality. They burst past the edge and erupted into the star-twinged sky.

  "Dragons!" Fear’s icy fingers strangled his words into whispers.

  Too late, he snapped shut his eyes. Too late, he froze against the Column.

  A silent prayer escaped, Maybe this time they won't see me. Maybe I'll go free!

  Too late! He could not shut them out! A dozen glowing streaks of green and red had etched themselves into his mind: burning eyes set in wind-whipped shrouds of midnight black. Like oversized bats, the creatures swarmed on leathery wings.

  Flashing shadows! Dark transparencies, magnified by glowing eyes and milk-white talons, razors in the night!

  Not again!

  The youth had seen them many times before. Shutting his eyes did not help. The red-hot stylus of fear had indelibly branded their image on the back of his eyes.

  That image tore words from his mind, painting pictures even the blind could see.

  Wind-borne wisps of burning black smoke turned monstrously real. Shadows with terrifying substance, not much larger than he. Four powerful legs! Sharp scaline claws! A thick serpentine tail making the creatures twice as long again. Nearly invisible midnight-black wings: three manheights across! Unrelenting Death in the air!

  They were on him, their dark breath as cold as the depths of the bottomless ocean below. Grabbing! Tearing! Seeking to dislodge his death-grip on the too-massive rock of the Column.

  "Jason! Jason!"

  The youth felt himself being shaken violently.

  The dragons fought to cast his struggling form over the precipice. On the horizon, out of the circling clouds, a flight of eagles burst into distant view -- starlight reflected on gold.

  "Jason, can you hear me?"

  The eagles were still too far away! Their delay had sealed his watery fate!

  The lizards' talons ripped into his shoulders and pulled him over the edge. They clung a moment longer, wrenching him out and away from any possible redemption. Beyond hope’s last point, they let him go!

  The young man screamed, voicing the terror of the damned.

  "Jason! Wake up! It's only me, your brother! You've got to wake up!"

  A forgotten voice coincided with an un-remembered name to catch at his attention. Warm hands clung firmly to his shoulders and drew him out of the cold dark depths of the sea of sleep.

  "My name is Jason," he whispered, and the sound of his own living words brought new life to his conscious mind. He opened his eyes and, in the semidarkness, knew the truth of where he was and whose shadowed face hung just above his own. "Kaleb, my brother -- you've rescued me again."

  Even the darkness could not hide the brightness of the rare smile relief painted on the older boy's face. Kaleb tousled his younger brother's hair as he said with mild rebuke in his voice, "Bet you were dreamin' of mythical dragons and make-believe eagles again, weren't you?"

  "Yeah, I know. You keep tellin’ me ‘The only Dragon around here’s the rock ‘neath our feet.’ But there’s more to this than just livin’ on a land that looks like the back of a Dragon… ”

  Kaleb interrupted, the sharp edge in his voice not meant for his brother but aimed at the coral walls that confined them. “We’re not on his back! We’re stuck out here on the Islands of the Tail. An’ I hate it! Locked away like this! No wonder you’re havin’ crazy dreams. I hate what it’s doin’ to you and I hate what it’s doin’ to me!”

  Jason sighed. Kaleb’s mood swings were familiar ground, yet unwelcome terrain.

  We only have each other, he thought, justifying his brother’s outburst of anger. I know it’s us against the world. Kaleb's said so often enough! Who knows if Grands will ever find us. But one thing I know, I’ve gotta’ help Kaleb deal with his pain or he’s gonna’ explode.

  But the volcano inside his brother had not finished its eruption. Sparks of verbal lava spilled into the night, “Ten years of our lives wasted! No news! No visits! Like animals in a cage, when we never did anything wrong! Why are we locked up in here? Why did they do this to us? I hate this orphanage! And most of all I hate Marvin for keepin’ us here!” Kaleb spoke the man’s name as though it were a curse laced with deadly poison.

  “I'm sorry I woke you, again." Jason's voice carried his embarrassed regret to his brother. He shared much of Kaleb’s hopelessness but would have given almost anything not to have invoked his brother’s response.

  “It’s just that,” continued the younger boy even more intensely, “the dreams seem so real. I can see and feel the dragons. I can smell them, even a
fter you shake me awake! I feel like I’m their prisoner more than I am Marvin’s!”

  "It's all right, Jase, wakin’ me an’ all that. I was havin’ a bad dream of my own..."

  "You mean the one... about Mom... and Dad, and... and the man with the sword on the boat?" Jason exposed his raw emotions. He cringed, feeling like someone had violently ripped a bandage from the still open wound he called his heart. Although tears did not fill his eyes, they drowned his words.

  "Yeah, that's the one. The night they were killed." Kaleb's voice sounded hollow and dry, as though echoing through an old fallen log, long ago crumbled and decayed on the inside.

  "I have that nightmare, too. Over and over. I can still see that Swimmer jumping up and down on the side of the boat till it flipped! Then he just swam to shore and allowed everybody else to drown!" Jason felt thorns tearing at his back like the dragons’ claws in his dream. Real tears salted the fresh wounds.

  "I remember him, too, Jase." And now Kaleb’s voice took on the cold hardness of polished scaline, the hardest metal on Dragonsback. "I remember him, too!"

  Jason didn’t want to share the room with his brother’s anger; their allotted space had never been large enough to offer hospitality to ghosts from the past. The youth lifted his mind beyond the imprisoning walls and returned to a bright sunlit field brushed by wind and painted with riotous wildflowers. He did not know if he had ever visited that place, before… But real or not, more and more lately he had sought refuge in its image.

  I wish Kaleb could find something beyond this orphanage to hope for, to dream about, he thought. Reaching up to grip his brother’s arm in the darkness, he asked a question, hoping to build a bridge that Kaleb could cross to join him in this light-filled place.