“This is the chamber of warriors,” Eithne said. “They were the Pyr who came to destroy Blazion.”
“Why?” Melissa asked.
“Because he failed to defend the treasures of the earth,” Rafferty guessed as he moved closer to the fallen.
Eithne nodded. “Yes. If he had lived longer, he might have turned Slayer.”
“You know a lot about our kind,” Rafferty said.
The woman smiled. “I’ve been watching a lot of television. That’s why I knew who to call when Embron, the other brother, awakened.”
“He came here,” Rafferty guessed again. It wasn’t a daring guess: they’d seen a dragon flying over the city.
“He came to this very chamber. He took one dagger.” She sighed and folded her arms across her chest. “And then he gathered the magick, just the way I taught him to.”
“You?” Melissa and Rafferty said together.
Eithne smiled. “Me. I was the most powerful witch on Regalia, which is saying something, given the competition there.” She raised her hands and sighed. “And now I have no magick left at all.”
“Why not?” Melissa asked.
“I gave most of it to my wards. It was trapped in the crystal orbs mounted on the hilts of their matching swords. Embron released his, thinking it would aid his kind. Blazion then loosed his, entertained by the notion of a battle. There was already earth power here, but the magick I brought was infinitely more powerful. People used to call it dragon power.” She eyed Rafferty. “Your grandfather distrusted it, especially once it began to mutate.”
“How did it change?” Melissa asked.
“It went wild, or maybe it turned rogue. It burned blue-green instead of red, and snapped like lightning instead of burning with a persistent glow filled with brighter sparks.”
“Darkfire,” Rafferty said.
“That is what he called it. Pwyll taught his sons all he knew about magick, and three of them formed a company to hunt the rest.”
“Three?” Rafferty demanded. “My father had only one brother, Myrddin.”
Eithne smiled. “That’s what Pwyll wanted you to think. It was around 500 AD that his sons set out on a quest from which they would not return.” She stepped between the prone warriors and indicated the one in the middle. “This is Emyas, your uncle, the most stalwart dragon warrior of his time.” Rafferty was too astonished to make a sound. She gestured to the fighter on her other side. “And this is his twin brother, Malduc.” She smiled a little. “He called himself Malduc the Magnificent, and he was a splendid sight in either form.”
“But how can this be?” Melissa asked. “That’s over fifteen hundred years ago.”
“Don’t you see the magick? It will glimmer red in your peripheral vision. There’s not much of it here, but there’s enough to keep them like this.” She shrugged. “At least there will be until Embron claims it all.”
“They’re already forgotten,” Melissa whispered, looking at the seven men.
“And then they will be lost,” Eithne said. She gave Rafferty a piercing look and he knew what he had to do. He understood why Pwyll had helped him and why his grandfather had given him that command.
He removed the darkfire crystal from his pocket. Eithne smiled and nodded. “I thought so,” she murmured. “Let the battle between darkfire and magick begin, here and now.”
Rafferty cracked the crystal on a lip of stone. The sound was loud enough to shatter their eardrums and the mountain shook with the power of the darkfire’s release. The darkfire flared brilliantly over the fallen warriors, a seething cloud of blue-green fire and smoke. Seven lightning bolts struck the warriors, each taking a blow to the heart. Then the ground shook beneath their feet, a dragon howled in the distance and all went black. Rafferty shifted shape and found he nearly filled the space: his back was pressed against the top of the chamber and his tail was coiled tightly around. It was easy to find Melissa and Eithne and pick them up in his claws. He heard a shuffle of movement, then light flared.
In the middle of the chamber Emyas, his uncle, stood, holding the two halves of the darkfire crystal back together. The blue-green light spun around him in a frenzy, diving into the stone and out of it again. The light revealed that the other six warriors had awakened, although they looked confused and disoriented.
Emyas studied Rafferty, his suspicion clear.
“Greetings, Uncle,” Rafferty said in Welsh, then bowed his head. “Pwyll sends his regards.”
Emyas laughed. He smashed the two pieces of stone together, shattering them into shards. There was a roar and a wind spun around the chamber, seemingly emanating from the broken stone. It was filled with flashes of blue-green light and it whipped around them like a cyclone. Rafferty couldn’t see the rock walls. He lost sight of the warriors. Then he felt the nausea that heralded the unmistakable sensation of being moved through space.
They were all going to spontaneously manifest elsewhere.
He held tightly to Melissa, and hoped that wherever they were sent, they would all arrive together.
But he knew there was nothing he could do to influence the result either way.
“There!” Kris shouted, pointing to a crackle of blue-green light far above them. Bree dug her heels into the stallion’s side but he was already racing for the spark of light. Once again the earth was rumbling beneath them and rock was falling.
Kris reached the opening first and flung himself through it. It was magickal, because it accommodated his dragon form easily, even though it didn’t look big enough. The horses surged through the doorway after him and snorted as they emerged from a crack of earth on a mountaintop.
The horses whinnied and reared, throwing their riders, as a dragon rose from the earth before them. He could have been part of the mountain come to life, except for the furious glow of his eyes. It was the old dragon Bree remembered, or his brother, and the sight of his primitive black form sent terror into her heart.
He blew fire into the night sky, the orange flames bright against the darkness, and laughed then snatched at her. The horses spun and fled, disappearing into the earth again. The portal to Fae glowed red, then closed like a steel door. They were all abandoned on the side of the mountain. Bree screamed when the dragon’s talons closed cruelly around her and she slashed at his claw with force. She drew his blood but it made no difference. He tore the sword from her grasp and cast it toward the earth.
Kris shouted and attacked, but Bree knew he was injured. The old dragon’s tail slashed through the air, sweeping Kara and the other two Pyr off the peak and sending them rolling into the valley far below. They cried out as they fell, but Bree couldn’t help them. She was too busy fighting the dragon herself. Kris grappled with the old dragon, battling for Bree, but she knew he didn’t have a chance. The old dragon was wily and powerful and he struck Kris with half a dozen blows in rapid succession. Then he hooked a talon into the arrow wound on Kris’s chest and ripped his flesh, flinging Kris to the earth again. He laughed again when Bree called out, then picked up Kris by the tail.
He turned in the air, beating his wings so powerfully that they were soon over a large body of water, and the mountaintop far behind. Bree saw a flash of blue-green light in the distance, then tried to guess the dragon’s destination.
“Why me?” she asked, knowing that she had been singled out and guessing why.
“I need to ask my brother a question,” he said, his voice deep and ancient. “You are the only one who can help, Sigrdrifa. I remember your skills.”
“Then you also remember that I’m a Valkyrie and can’t be injured by you.” She hoped this was actually true. Kara’s assault had left her with questions.
Her captor chuckled. “Why do you think I brought your companion?” He shook Kris’s inert body so that his blood sprinkled over the ocean. “You will do as I command, or I will kill him slowly while you watch.”
Bree shuddered. The last creature she wanted to wake from the dead was the dragon Siegfried had kill
ed, but this dragon’s threat meant she didn’t have a choice.
Rhys awakened on the side of a mountain with the wind blowing around him. His feet were killing him, but Hadrian wasn’t far away. He crawled to his fellow Pyr, relieved that he wasn’t dead or rotating between forms.
Had they really escaped that nightmare?
And where were they? He looked around the sparsely-vegetated peak, noting how rocky it was. The northern lights danced overhead, shimmering like a lime and blue curtain. There were no lights or villages in the vicinity and he couldn’t hear any traffic. He could see the ocean in the distance, and that had to be east, given the location of the northern lights. Far away, he thought he could see the silhouette of a dark dragon flying away.
Rhys watched it, wondering how much of his recollection had actually happened and how much had been a dream. He raised one hand to his lips, thinking of a maiden in the sea. He saw the blond woman get slowly to her feet and look around herself dazedly, as if she didn’t want to remember that wild dance either. The woman with Kristofer had called her Kara and sister. She looked fierce, even though she had to be exhausted.
Before Rhys could greet her, blue-green light suddenly danced around them, picking out a circle of sparks, then the earth roared and cast a company of warriors onto the mountaintop. To Rhys’s relief, Rafferty was one of them.
Kara leaped forward, waving a sword at the new arrivals.
“He’s a friend of mine,” Rhys said. “And of Kristofer’s.”
She lowered her weapon but remained wary. “Then he must be a friend of my sister, Bree, too.”
“Bree and Kristofer?” Rafferty asked. “Where have they gone?”
“There was a dragon, just like that old one,” Kara said with a shudder. “Kristofer had lost a scale and the arrows found their mark. Maeve had the scale and broke it.”
Rafferty caught his breath and Rhys heaved a sigh.
Kara looked between them. “What? What does that mean?”
“That he loves her,” Rafferty supplied.
“What difference does it make?” Kara asked with impatience. “The dark dragon captured them both and flew that way.” She pointed after the dragon Rhys had seen.
“Of course. She told us where the other dragon fell,” Rafferty mused as he looked east. “That must be where they’ve gone.”
“Where are we?” Rhys asked as Hadrian stirred beside him.
“Where the darkfire crystal originated,” Rafferty said with conviction. He held the shattered pieces in his hand. “It brought us home.” As he held them toward the ground, the parts flickered with blue-green fire.
“They find smoky quartz in the Cairngorms,” Melissa said. “I looked it up on the way to Edinburgh. We’re northwest of Edinburgh and west of Aberdeen. The Great Glen is that way.”
“Then that’s the North Sea,” Kara said, indicating the direction the dragon had taken, and her voice softened. “They’ve gone home.”
Rhys surveyed the seven men who stood behind Rafferty, watching. Their armor was old, made of boiled leather, and they wore furs. They smelled like Pyr, though, and they shimmered on the cusp of change, ready to fight.
“The witch is gone,” Rafferty said to Melissa, which made no sense to Rhys. She looked around and nodded agreement, then surveyed the ragged little company.
“I think we should go home,” she said.
Rafferty nodded slowly, his gaze clinging to the retreating dragon. Rhys couldn’t really see him anymore. “Take them all home,” he said to his mate. “Do what you can and give the news to Erik and Drake.”
“You’re going to help him,” Melissa said and Rafferty smiled.
He picked up a sword on the ground that Rhys hadn’t noticed before. “I’m the one who taught him the importance of the firestorm,” he said, raising his hand to Melissa’s cheek. “I can’t stand aside while he defends his mate alone, not when he’s so wounded.”
She turned and kissed his hand, her eyes glowing.
Then Rafferty shifted shape in a glorious shimmer of blue, becoming a dragon of opal and gold, his scales gleaming like moonlight. He took flight, making it look effortless, then dipped low and turned east, flying after Kristofer and Bree.
Fourteen
Of course, the old dragon took them to the Atlantic Road. Bree hadn’t really expected anything different, but she wasn’t glad to be there all the same. She tried to get a good look at Kris, but couldn’t see him clearly from her vantage point. He looked to be out cold and he’d certainly lost a lot of blood. The old dragon flew low at intervals, dragging Kris through the ocean so that he sputtered and struggled. Bree supposed it was good news that he wasn’t dead—although the bad news was that this dragon would torture Kris as long as he lived.
What could she do? As much as it infuriated her to do this old dragon’s will, Bree didn’t see that she had any choice.
She also feared it wouldn’t make any difference to the outcome whether she cooperated or not. This old dragon would kill Kris, and he’d do his best to kill her, too.
Bree had to find another solution.
As the old dragon flew, the wind became stronger, as if he was whipping it up with his great wings. She watched the dark water of the ocean below them begin to form into waves crested with white foam. The wind swirled around them and the rain began to fall in cold sheets. By the time they reached Norway, the storm was raging, the ocean pounding on the shore and the wind blowing at gale force.
It seemed the perfect setting to raise a dragon from the dead.
On Halloween, too.
The dragon prince had been to the site before, Bree guessed, because he flew over the length of his brother’s form, then landed on the piece of land nearest to the dead dragon’s head. Bree recognized the cliff from which she and Siegfried had rolled the corpse, and thought she could point out the mountain that had contained the hoard. The old dragon flung Kris to the ground and Kris didn’t move, although Bree couldn’t tell if he was just pretending to be unconscious.
The dragon prince lifted her before his face, holding her captive in his fist. He glared at her from massive eyes, which were lit with cold menace. “You will rouse my brother,” he commanded. “I will talk to him.” His voice was low and terrible, a rumble that shook the earth beneath his feet.
She tried to stall for time, to give Kris more time to recover, even though her captor didn’t appear to be a very patient individual.
“It might not work,” Bree said. “He’s been dead a long time.”
“You will make it work.” He gave her a little squeeze for emphasis and Bree wondered if dragon princes were as capable of injuring her as her sister Valkyries. She didn’t really want to find out.
“He might not answer my summons.”
He chuckled darkly. “A good point, since you helped Siegfried to kill him.”
Bree considered her captor, thinking it couldn’t be good that he knew the part she’d played in his brother’s demise.
“That feeble warrior would never have managed the feat without you,” the dragon said, then hissed her name. “Sigrdrifa.”
Bree had the definite sense that her chances of survival after she performed the spell were very small. She looked down at the roiling surf as her hair was whipped around her face. “What do you want to ask him?”
“Where is the gem of the hoard?”
“But the entire hoard was gems, wasn’t it?”
“The gem of the hoard,” he insisted. “He will know what I mean.”
“Tell me,” she said, trying to look daunting. “I need to understand for the spell to work.”
He wasn’t sure if she was lying or not. His eyes narrowed and a slow stream of smoke rose from his nostrils. “You do not need to know.”
“Then tell me which one you are,” she said. “You’re twins, aren’t you? I need to use the right name to awaken him.”
He snarled then, showing an impressive array of teeth. “I am Embron. He is Blazion. Do your sor
cery, Valkyrie. Your feeble earth magick has one power in its favor. Use it.”
Bree would have asked another question, but he plunged her into the ocean, shoving her into the depths of dark cold water. She struggled and twisted in his grip but she couldn’t escape. She needed a breath of air desperately and was shocked when he pulled his clenched fist out of the water and gave her a shake. The cold wind slid beneath her clothes and she was instantly chilled to the bone. “Did you see him?” he demanded in a low growl.
“I can’t see anything. It’s too dark.”
“Look again,” he said, his hot breath sweeping over her, then plunged her into the water again. Bree felt along the stone outcropping with her hands, feeling the sharp shells with her hands even as she tried to find a familiar shape. It was hopeless.
To her relief, she was pulled from the water again. Had Kris moved? She thought maybe his position was different but couldn’t be sure. She was shaken again, shaken so hard that her teeth rattled—or maybe that was because of the cold.
“Siegfried,” the dragon murmured, his tone taunting. “I liked his wife. She was passionate.”
“She killed him.”
The dragon laughed. “Of course, she did. I went to his hall when he rode to hunt. I was treated with great hospitality as a guest. I drank his ale. I ate his meat. I let his wife know I found her beautiful. Then I told her that her husband loved another woman. I told her she could never compete with the one who held his heart.” He smiled. “I told her how he could be killed. And then I left his hall. I passed him in the forest, full of the plenty of his board, and I waited for the inevitable.”
“You beguiled her!”
He laughed. “I did not have to. He loved you and I took him away, just as I will take this were-dragon away—unless you do my bidding. Rouse my brother this time, or he dies.”
Bree had no chance to argue or even agree. She was driven down into the dark water and held captive there. She had to try. She traced the shape of the rune in the water and reviewed the spell in her thoughts, hoping it would work even if she didn’t say it aloud. She waited, then did it again. She was almost out of air, but wanted to stay submerged until the spell worked.
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