The Dragon's Curse

by Bethany Wiggins

  He doesn’t wait for my answer. He twists the handle and the door swings open.

  The ceiling is glass in here, just like the rest of the building, letting the light flow into it. A long, oval table is in the center of the room, with nine empty chairs around it. Nine paintings of nine different people hang on the walls: four women and five men.

  I stride across the room to one of the paintings—a young, ordinary-looking man with pale brown hair and bright blue eyes. “That is Melchior the wizard. When he was young.” I walk around the room, examining the other pictures, and pause in front of a woman with a white flower tucked into her long red hair. Though my mind is blank right now, I recognize her face from an earlier memory. “This woman was the glass dragon.” Beside her is a middle-aged man with black hair and a crown. “And this is King Zhun.”

  Golmarr stands next to me, examining the painting of King Zhun. “Who are the rest of these people?”

  “That girl at the farthest end, the girl who is hardly older than a child, is me,” someone says.

  Golmarr and I whirl around. Chills dance down my spine when my eyes meet hers, so pale a shade of blue, they look as faded as her clothes and hair. “You can’t remember them because Melchior stole all Zhun’s human memories from him. He passed none of the most important parts of our history on to you, Sorrowlynn.”

  “Why not?”

  “Because Melchior didn’t want the fire dragon to know what he had planned, and the moment Zhun killed Melchior, all of his knowledge was passed on to the dragon,” she says. “He stored the memories in an object before he let Zhun kill him. Did he give you anything before he disappeared?”

  I think only for a moment. “A knife. He said to always keep it with me.” I do not tell her that Zhun ate it, along with my arm, before I killed him.

  The woman nods. “Yes. The knife.”

  “And you are?” Golmarr asks.

  The woman lifts her chin and firms her shoulders. “I am Moyana, niece of King Zhun, who was the former ruler of the six kingdoms and the captor of Relkinn. I am the daughter of Prince Mordecai, younger sister to Melchior the wizard, and wife of Grinndoar the warrior.” She smiles, and even though her hair is as white and fine as clouds, there are no wrinkles on her skin. She walks forward and takes my free hand in hers, gently squeezing it, and her eyes fill with tears. “I have been waiting for you for more than seven hundred years, Sorrowlynn of Faodara.”

  It is the question that has been plaguing Golmarr from the moment he learned that the glass dragon’s treasure was hatred. It flies from his mouth with the sharp precision of a thrown knife: “How do I remove the dragon’s treasure?”

  The smile wilts from Moyana’s face, but doesn’t fade completely. “Are you already transforming?” she asks. Her gaze sweeps every inch of Golmarr’s visible skin, searching.

  “Into a dragon?” Golmarr asks, and this time the smile completely leaves Moyana’s face. Lips pressed tightly together, Golmarr slips the neck of his tunic over his shoulder, revealing the dark scales.

  Moyana walks across the room and stops in front of Golmarr, examining his scales, tracing them with delicate fingers. “How far have they spread?”

  “They cover my shoulder and part of my back, and go down to my elbow. Do you know how to stop them from spreading?” he asks, and the thinly veiled desperation in his voice makes my heart wrench.

  “You have taken all of Corritha’s hatred—more than one thousand years of hatred—and that is why you are turning into a dragon.” She tenderly lifts Golmarr’s tunic back into place, tightens the laces, and then ties them into a perfectly symmetrical bow. Patting his chest, she says, “This building is the hall of records. It was built to house the Infinite Vessel. Every answer you are seeking has been archived in the vessel.”

  “The Infinite Vessel is here?” His hand comes to rest on the small of my back, pressing on the scales beneath my tunic. “Because Sorrowlynn is changing, too.”

  Now his desperation is not veiled at all. It has bled out into his words, into the iciness of his touch on my back, the stiffness of his stance. I study Golmarr’s profile, realizing for the first time that his fear of himself turning into a dragon has never been his main motivation. He has seen visions of me turning into a dragon. He has known all along, and that fear is what has fueled his desperate search for answers. My heart opens with this profound realization and expands until it feels as if it is too big to be contained in my chest.

  Moyana stares at Golmarr and blinks. She swallows and blinks again. Tears start streaming down her cheeks at the same moment a radiant smile illuminates her face. “You love Sorrowlynn,” she says. She places her small hand over Golmarr’s heart. “You already have the answer to your question within you, my son.”

  “What is the answer?” he asks, his voice an eager whisper.

  “Love. Focus on the love, and it will overpower the hatred. If the hatred is overpowered, you will stop transforming. But you will learn more about that in a moment.”

  “No! I keep seeing glimpses of Sorrowlynn turning into a dragon, and the world being destroyed by darkness, and me killing her, and her killing me, and I have to know how to stop it! How to change things!”

  Moyana puts her hands on Golmarr’s cheeks and looks right into his eyes. “What I am about to tell you is very important. Are you listening?”

  He nods.

  “What you are describing to me is not the future. It is part of the poison you inherited from Corritha. You are seeing visions of all your worst fears, Golmarr. If you choose to focus on them, you will make them a reality. You need to choose the best possible future for yourself and Sorrowlynn, and turn all your energy into making it a reality. Believe in the good. Be the good.” Slowly, she lowers her hands from his face. “I can see from the light that has returned to your eyes that you believe me. That is promising. At least that part of you hasn’t been tainted by Corritha.” She pulls a chair out and motions for me to sit. “We have a lot to discuss in a very short amount of time.”

  I take the seat, and Golmarr sits on my left. Moyana takes the chair on my right and squeezes my hand gently. “It is so good to finally meet you,” she says, a twinkle in her eyes. “Do you know that you are the one-thousand-time great-granddaughter of Melchior?”

  Memories of doing puzzles with Melchior while sipping hot chocolate fill my mind. When he looked at me, his blue eyes would twinkle and shine as if brimming with wondrous secrets. Now I know one of those secrets. “I am Melchior’s granddaughter?”

  Moyana nods and squeezes my hand again. “Yes, and you are my niece. I have been waiting ever so long to meet you. But we don’t have time for that right now. We need to focus on the problem at hand.” She drops my hands and rests her elbows on the table. “Once upon a time, there was a king named Relkinn,” Moyana says. “He was a strong, fierce king, with a gift for magic stronger than any, save my brother’s.

  “Relkinn’s greatest desire was to live forever. But he also wanted to remain in his prime for the rest of his life—eternal life with eternal youth. He was greedy. He made it his life’s purpose to discover how to harness eternal life.

  “One day, after a battle where he slaughtered hundreds of enemies, he realized something. When he came home from the fighting, he looked younger than his twenty-nine years. He attributed the youthful glow to the satisfaction of winning the battle. But the next battle he fought, it happened again. And then, by experimenting with killing, he discovered the more lives he took, the more life he stole. Every person he killed, the remainder of the victim’s years were transferred to him. At first, my father and uncle didn’t know what was happening. People were disappearing, children were found dead in the fields, bodies were simply dropped on the foggy streets at night.

  “You see, he went on a killing spree, until he had killed so many people, there was no way to count the years he’d stolen.
He sought out the gentlest people he could find so he didn’t have to exert himself to take their lives. He would prey on the young and weak. It wasn’t until I was fifteen that my father learned the source of all the murders.” She sighs and stares at the carved wooden table, her eyes far away.

  “What happened when you were fifteen?” I ask.

  “I was walking alone through the palace gardens at sunset when Relkinn grabbed me. He didn’t realize that my father had armed me with a knife and trained me to use it, should I ever encounter the murderer.”

  “Did you kill him?” I ask.

  “I should have. My knife pierced his heart, only all the lives he had stolen healed him up quickly—but not so quickly I couldn’t get away and tell my father what happened.” She leans back in her chair. “Were you taught of the Great War in your history lessons, or has it dwindled down to a mere myth by now?”

  “We know about the Great War,” Golmarr says.

  Moyana purses her lips. “That was my father’s attempt to dethrone Relkinn and make him pay for his crimes. Instead, it gave Relkinn the opportunity to kill hundreds more men, making him even stronger than before. But because of the war, my father was finally able to restrain him.”

  “Why didn’t you simply kill him?” Golmarr asks.

  She opens her eyes. “We could not. Scales covered every inch of his skin, and no weapon could penetrate them. Every attempt we made on his life—poison, starvation, bodily injury—healed before it could kill him. So we locked him under a mountain. Melchior sealed him far below the Wolf Cliffs in a prison of stone, while we tried to figure out how to kill him. One year later, when they went back to try and end his life again, Relkinn was gone. In his place was a beast. He was the beast—the very first dragon. So now we had a dragon that would live forever, that deserved death, but was impossible to kill. At least until his lives ran out.” Her eyes meet mine and hold. “His lives have nearly run out,” she whispers. Her blue gaze sweeps to Golmarr. “And you hold the reforged sword. You, Golmarr, are the one who shall wield it and finally put an end to his evil.”

  Golmarr looks at his hands in disbelief. “Why me?”

  “Because it is time, and every second of my brother’s life for the last seven hundred years has been spent molding and shaping people’s lives to bring the two of you here right now so I can tell you this and give you the Infinite Vessel.”

  Golmarr grits his teeth and looks at the sword belted to his waist.

  “Also,” Moyana adds, “it will break the dragon’s curse. But if you transform into a dragon before you complete your quest, you will remain a dragon for the rest of your life. Do you understand?”

  Golmarr looks at Moyana and slowly nods.

  “If Golmarr is the one destined to kill Relkinn, why do I need to be here?” I ask.

  “I am putting the Infinite Vessel into your care. Every piece of Melchior’s puzzle has fit into place and brought you here. Nayadi obtaining Zhun’s scale. Ornald, who is Melchior’s thousand-time grandson, leaving the Black Blades and becoming your father. You choosing death by dragon over an arranged marriage and being reforged in Zhun’s death fire, just like Golmarr’s sword.”

  “What? He knew I would choose that?” I ask.

  Moyana smiles. “It was his greatest hope that you would slay the beast. Melchior needed you to take Zhun’s gift of absorbing knowledge for his plan to work, and the only way your body could withstand the amount of information that will be placed in your head was for you to be physically altered. After you were burned by Zhun’s fire, were you changed?”

  I twist a strand of my smooth hair around my finger and think of my legs. “My father whipped my legs, and when I came out of the fire, the scars had disappeared.” I lift my hair, studying it. “And my hair is different.”

  Moyana smiles. “Yes. Those are only the visible changes. Because you are reforged, your mind has been given the means to hold vast quantities of knowledge. If it had not been altered, the strain of Zhun’s treasure would have killed you.”

  Golmarr’s hand finds my knee under the table. “If Relkinn was the only dragon, how and why did King Zhun turn into a dragon?” he asks.

  “Every living person is gifted with a bit of magic. Some have more, and some have less. You, Golmarr, have the inherent talent to become a great wizard. Like you, Relkinn was gifted with strong magic. Even before he transformed into a dragon, he was wearing away the seal my brother placed on his underground prison. So the newly appointed King Zhun gathered a group of the smartest, strongest, most stalwart, brave people he knew—we were called the council of nine—and transferred Relkinn’s power and stolen lives to them. All that magic was divided among nine people and a dragon, filtered to one-tenth of its normal potency.”

  I look at the portraits hanging around the room. “These nine people.”

  Moyana nods. “Yes. And of the nine, seven turned into dragons, but in the end, only six chose greed and evil as their treasures.” She rolls her long sleeve up, revealing a small, shimmering patch of very pale purple scales. “I started to turn. My vice was sorrow.”

  Golmarr leans forward. “What does that mean?”

  “First, I will give you an example of someone else’s vice, a vice you know all too well, Golmarr, through no fault of your own. One of our group was a brilliant herbalist named Corritha. She could cure or heal anything with plants. When she realized some of the council of nine were turning into dragons, she tried to heal them. When she could not, she blamed Zhun for their demise. She grew so furious with him that she started to hate him—a hate so strong and so passionate, it began to eat at her, gnawing away at her heart, at her humanity. That hatred is what made her change into a dragon. Her exterior changed until it matched her heart.”

  Golmarr nods. “Yes. I know her hatred intimately.”

  “As for me, I had taken one-tenth of Relkinn’s magic and eternal life, so, like all the others in my group, I began aging very slowly. I watched my children grow old and die. Then my husband, Grinndoar, King Zhun’s strongest and most loyal warrior, found something he loved more than me. His vice was physical strength, and the only way he could steal it was by killing. Every time he killed, he stole his victim’s strength, until he became inhumanly strong. Eventually, he did not care whom he killed to gain his treasure, and even sought to take my life. The consequence of his choices transformed him into a hideous dragon.”

  “The stone dragon of Satar,” I say.

  Golmarr clears his throat and stares at the table. “If I do become a dragon, will I hate Sorrowlynn forever?”

  “Even as a dragon, you will have the ability to choose a life of good, or a life of evil. We may not be able to change the things that happen to us, but we can choose how we respond. Grinndoar had many chances to change, but he did not. More than seven hundred years ago, I fled here with my father and we lived in peace with the natives of this island for almost a century. But when Grinndoar discovered where I was, he chose to send someone here to poison our spring. He killed every person on this island but me and my father. Because of the life we’d inherited from Relkinn, we were immune to poison. But sorrow crept into my heart. My own husband had tried to kill me, and he didn’t care about the hundreds of others that he’d killed because he’d gained their strength.”

  Tears spring to my eyes, and I look at Golmarr. “That is why I am transforming,” I whisper. “I have been living with so much sorrow since you tried to kill me. And then, what you told me about the world being more important than our love—the sorrow is overpowering everything else. I have never been so sad in my life.”

  “Yes!” Moyana says. “You are focusing on the dark part of something incredibly bright and beautiful, and it is turning you into a dragon. You must focus on the good, daughter! You have fallen in love with a man who realizes the importance of life and goodness. He is willing to put the safety and well-
being of a world above his own desires. And you.” She turns to Golmarr. “You already have so many things in your heart that can conquer the hatred eating you from the inside. In fact, you’ve already begun. Find the purpose in your life not centered on hate and make it your mission. Do not be afraid to love Sorrowlynn. It is our choices that form us into who we are. Choose darkness and you will become darkness. Choose light, and be a light for all to see. Be good. Be true. Be selfless. Let those be your focus and the darkness will not have the ability to touch you. And this”—she presses against his scales—“will stop growing.”

  Golmarr’s chin drops to his chest and his shoulders start shaking. I do not know if he is laughing or crying until I see a tear fall from his closed eye and shimmer as it passes through the sunlight shining in from the ceiling. It splatters against the wood of the table. I wrap my arm around his shoulder and pull him close, pressing my face against his neck, feeling the warmth of his skin on mine, breathing in the familiar smell of him. My touch seems to release more tears, as this man who has been taught how to fight is learning there might be another way.

  “This is good, Golmarr,” Moyana says. “This is the hatred and self-loathing coming out of you.”

  I look at Moyana, at the depth of understanding in her wise eyes, and ask, “What did you choose to focus on to overcome the sorrow?”

  “I focused my life on keeping the Infinite Vessel safe from all human eyes. Because if anyone learned the truth about the dragon’s power, men—even the very best of men—would try to harness it for themselves.” She smiles, but it is sad. “We have seen how that can turn out. I have kept the information for you, Sorrowlynn of Faodara—an entire library’s worth of scrolls and books. You are to bring it back with you, use it to destroy Relkinn once and for all, and safeguard it until you die.”

  Golmarr presses the heels of his hands to his eyes and sits tall, wiping the tears from his face. “Now I know why I couldn’t find the information in the Royal Library of Trevon,” he says. “You had it all moved here.” His eyes are bloodshot, and he looks more vulnerable than any warrior should ever look. It makes a fire simmer beneath my breast, makes me want to protect him, hold him, keep him eternally strong.