Memory of Dragons
Page 27
The dragon snarled through his mind. Boden seemed to gather his strength for something new, but somehow Austin sensed that strength had begun to falter. Austin clenched his eyes shut and tried to steel himself. He needed to hold on, just hold on . . .
Something forced itself between his hands, seeking to pry the crystal away. Austin yelled and renewed his grip against what felt like a losing battle.
“Austin!” Corinna shouted. “I’ve got it! Let it go!” She wriggled her fingers in further to seize the crystal from between Austin’s two battling hands.
He opened his eyes with an elated curse upon seeing her, appraised her grip, and then slid his left hand down to clutch his other wrist. She yanked the crystal free of the right and backed away, ready for Boden to hurl Austin after her. Austin only stood, wracked with pain.
“Are you in control, Austin? Is it you?”
“I don’t know!” He continued to squeeze his wrist as if he were clinging to a cliff’s edge. “He wanted me to smash it. There’s dragon bones in here — ”
A single convulsion wrung itself through him. He seemed to fight it off and tried to catch his breath.
Corinna tried to catch her own breath, mind racing. “Aye,” she answered finally. “Best we give him what he wants then.”
“What?”
“Can you walk?”
He made an attempt, looking for a few moments like a marionette with its feet nailed to the floor, before shaking his head with another curse.
“We’ll do like I said in the car, Austin. I doubt you can hold out much longer, and I can’t trust he won’t control you again. So, get ready. With luck, this won’t hurt any more than you’re already feeling.”
She knelt and pulled Tragen’s book from her pack, then opened it on the ground before her to a passage she desperately hoped would be appropriate. Dragon bones in the cave were a curse and a blessing: failure here meant a fully formed dragon, yet the bones would provide a focus for the magic and exert a pull on Boden’s spirit that would guide him along predictable lines.
From a pocket she drew out Maeron’s necklace. She first called magic to protect herself from becoming the dragon’s new anchor, then lay the foundations for the rebinding. Arcane power filled her mind. She wove it into the words that poured from her lips. She would recapture the dragon’s spirit. She would seal him anew within the crystal.
Maeron’s necklace hummed in her hand. Again she wondered if the magic worked entirely through it, or continued to draw from the crystal’s aura. If Boden got free before she was ready . . .
Concentrate!
She built the magic upon itself, readying the prison, building on the foundations of the crystal’s initial sealing and inscribing across it the links to Aurkauramesh’s ancient magic. Arcane currents whirled about her, heightened by the cavern’s residual harmonics. They threatened to outpace her control. She was crossing magical terrain beyond anything she had ever worked before. Yet she could see the path through. Just a little further! Then she would be ready to release the dragon and face the final struggle to recapture it, seal the lock, and put it all right again.
An avian scream broke her concentration before she got the chance. Talons scraped her palm as the shrike swooped in as a gray blur to snatch the necklace away. It whipped around the cavern edge to the entry tunnel and dropped the necklace into a battered Maeron’s hands.
Corinna flung an instinctive blast of magic Maeron’s way, an assault borne of desperation more than thought. Fire seared through the air and evaporated against a barrier thrown from his waiting hand.
The rift lit his grin with a preternatural malevolence. “That’s only going to work so many times, Rhianon!”
Austin remained immobilized across the cave. Corinna felt the energy of her spellcraft to rebind Boden remaining, unfinished. Yet Maeron was crafting a spell of his own. It was all she could do to recognize it — a psionic lash to stun her unconscious — and throw up her defenses. She drew from the dragon’s aura. There was no other choice.
Maeron’s spell leapt, unseen but felt. She threw a shell over her mind, then rushed to bolster it while he struck at the weak points like a rabid dog behind a fence. She could only hope he lacked the power to strike simultaneously at Austin.
Instead, Maeron tightened his focus on her. His hand clenched the necklace as he glared through the torrent. The shrike swooped in again. Its talons tore at fingers holding Boden’s crystal. Corinna clutched it tighter, shutting her eyes concentration to reflect Maeron’s assault off the shell and into the enslaved bird. She struck blindly. Her hope crumbled with every failed strike. To continue risked disaster; to stop guaranteed it. The magic raged like lightning around her, through her, denying her the chance to think or plan.
Austin shouted something. She chanced a glance to see him waving his arms once and shouting again above it all:
“Stop!”
Light burst from the crystal with a force that knocked her backward and cracked her skull on the cavern floor. Her head swam; her defenses were down. She braced for Maeron’s assault until she saw him lying across the cave in the same position as she.
Something new had entered the cavern. A translucent, convulsing form was gushing from the crystal, wreathed in triumphant laughter. She had overtaxed the aura. Boden had escaped!
The dragon’s spirit coalesced into a violent, twisting horror above her head. Fringes of the half-formed magic she had prepared to trap it anew crackled across its borders, but it was not enough. It must have been the dragon’s plan all along: to get them both here, to force a magical confrontation in his presence. She had known it, risked it because Maeron forced her to . . .
She struggled to tear herself free of the shock. The shrike lay dead on the ground beside her, killed by either her efforts or the dragon’s escape. Her head pounded.
“What have you done?” Maeron screamed it across the cavern, his frustration for once echoing hers.
They scrambled to their feet as one, but Corinna moved too fast. The cavern floor spun beneath her and she dropped again to her knees in the battle to stay conscious.
Austin remained kneeling, fighting for awareness. Their plan was in shambles. There had been a flash, the pain had subsided by half, and then laughter and yelling.
A massive, ghostly shape hovered above him with a single extended tendril of mist embedded in Austin’s chest. Ten yards behind and to his right, the rift crackled. Maeron rushed to stand near it. A near equal distance behind and to his left, Corinna knelt, reeling, hands at her temples.
Boden’s laughter echoed through the chamber, joined suddenly by the rumbling crack of shifting rock. Some distance ahead of him, a pile of stone and mud against the far cavern wall began to churn like soil tilling itself. Long white struts jutted up from beneath: a dragon skeleton boiling its way out.
The ghostly shape that Austin knew to be Boden drifted toward the bones. Austin could feel the dragon’s ambition pouring like hunger through their shared link; he would reach the bones, possess what remained, and rebuild the body anew as he had always intended. It would happen near instantly once Boden reached the corpse.
“Dragon!” It was Maeron, shouting behind him. “You belong in Rhyll! The others must be released!”
Silver light arced across Boden’s spirit: pieces of the binding Austin knew Corinna was beginning to rebuild. They tugged at Boden and slowed his path, but could not stop him. The dragon drifted toward the bones like some inexorable smoke.
“I’ll not return, wizard! Not to be one dragon among many! This world shall be mine alone, and none shall command me again!”
But Maeron was already weaving his own net. The air tightened as he threw one arm toward the rift and the other toward Boden. At once, the rift began to pull the dragon’s spirit with an invisible force that Austin could not explain how he sensed. Even as Boden writhed against it, it yanked Boden backward past Austin, toward the rift. Maeron glared in concentration. He strained as if the magic were a ph
ysical tether.
Austin took hold of the cavern wall beside him, pushed himself to his feet to do he knew not what, and struggled to think through his panic. If Maeron pulled Boden’s spirit through the rift, it released the dragons on the other side. The question of whether Maeron’s mentor was right no longer mattered to Austin; Maeron hauled the dragon closer with a crazed fury no sane man could create.
At once Boden’s anchor to Austin yanked taut. The pain of it tore a scream from Austin’s lungs. He clung reflexively to the wall as the dragon’s voice roared in his mind.
“He will draw us both into that world, human! He cannot take me without you! Hold fast or die!”
Austin’s grip tightened on the wall before he could think to stop it. Boden dragged himself away from the rift and then, upon passing Austin, pushed forward past him like a bargeman poling upstream. Austin nearly blacked out. He had to claw his way back to awareness as a massive weight compressed his rib cage.
He could feel the dragon’s spirit trying to force its way into him — an attempted possession Austin had instinctively blocked with both mind and body. That block created a physical force Boden could push against. Fighting to keep him out as if gripping the wrists of a knife-wielding maniac, it was all Austin could do to not scream anew from the strain.
Ahead, the dragon bones continued to free themselves from the rock. They stretched toward Boden’s spirit with a palpable yearning, almost literal fingers reaching up from a grave. Simultaneously clinging to and crushed against the wall, Austin could only watch Boden close the distance in a slow but winning battle against Maeron’s pull. Sweat coursed down Austin’s back. He tried to slip Boden’s grip. Nothing worked.
Wracked with pain and desperation, Austin could hardly think straight. He needed to get loose, to deny the Boden the traction that felt like it might tear him apart. Yet success would only get the dragon pulled back to Rhyll, releasing the others and causing untold devastation. Was Maeron right? Was it necessary?
Did it matter? Nothing Austin could do had any effect! When Boden reached the bones in another few moments, it would be over. There was no way a creature that size could fit through the rift, and Boden would try to kill them all once he controlled such a body.
And then, above the sound of creaking bones and the magic pounding in his ears, Austin heard Corinna chanting a litany he did not understand.
She now stood across the cavern where she had fallen, the third point of a triangle formed between the bones and the rift. Her green eyes glowed as she held forth Boden’s now-empty crystal in her left hand and continued the binding spell.
Silver motes of light floating in the air coalesced into a field of sparks. They shifted about Boden’s spirit like a school of fish in a wild but synchronized dance. Faster and faster they twisted, becoming a tornado that seemed to halt Boden’s advance scant yards from the dragon’s goal. The spirit snarled, losing ground.
It lasted only a moment. Boden’s spirit convulsed with a force that thundered through Austin. The dragon dug its heels in to hold position in mid-air before the bones. The rift, Corinna’s spell, Boden’s own will: Austin felt all three through his connection with the dragon. It was triple tug-of-war. No one could gain ground over the other two, and nothing could seem to make the pain stop!
As he grew certain the stalemate would rip him to pieces, Austin sensed something happening. The cavern wall began to grow distant between his bloodied fingers. Silver light flashed in his eyes and tingled along the anchor. The light swept through him.
Somehow it brought with it an awareness: The situation had left Corinna no time to sever the anchor. Through it, Corinna’s renewed binding tugged at Austin’s own spirit. He knew he was not the magic’s target — he sensed no danger of being torn from his own body if he tried to resist — and yet, something had loosened him.
His every nerve screamed from the dragon’s abuse. Would the pull grow stronger as the spell culminated? If Corinna couldn’t sever the link, could the magic tell his spirit from Boden’s? Would it trap them both? Combine them as one? Austin reeled with horrific possibilities, certain he would rather die.
But he was not dead yet!
Time stretched. Austin couldn’t be sure if it was a trick of his mind or the combined magics in the cavern, but Corinna’s chanting slowed. The hum of Maeron’s efforts drew out over countless seconds contained in a single heartbeat.
Austin tried to shout to Corinna, but couldn’t tell if she heard and didn’t know what he would say if she did. Behind him, Maeron strained to draw Boden toward him, toward the rift. If Austin could launch an attack of his own against Maeron, distract him, even for a moment . . . But he had no way to do it!
“Corinna!” Austin tried again. The words only rang in his mind.
And yet, if they were only in his mind . . .
“Boden!” he tried. “Can you hear me?”
The dragon’s affirmative snarl tore through his thoughts as clearly as Austin’s own voice.
“I need your strength!”
“My strength is spoken for!”
Austin could think of no way to persuade the dragon of his plan in what little time remained. Boden shoved against him anew, searching for better purchase against Corinna and Maeron. Austin pushed back, kept him out, until a wild, clear, desperate thought took him. With barely a moment to steel himself, Austin stopped resisting.
He let the dragon in.
Boden’s spirit flooded into him as far as it would go. Though he reeled, Austin was ready for it. Boden was not. He could feel the dragon’s surprise at the unexpected loss of traction, the scramble to seize the mental reins of the human into whom he suddenly found himself knee-deep. For Rhi, for himself, and with confidence born of knowing failure was no option, Austin stabbed his own will into the dragon’s and demanded Boden fling himself along the pull of Maeron’s tether.
Austin could feel Boden fighting to escape even as he steered the dragon from the bones to dive into the force-tether with which Maeron pulled. Either from Corinna’s half-formed binding or just the sheer difference in size, Austin could contain only so much of Boden’s spirit. Though reeling and smashed up against the side of his psyche, Austin held fast to his stolen control; if the dragon could make him act, then Austin could do the same!
It was an opportunity that could vanish in seconds. Surely only Boden’s surprise and Corinna’s spell together made it even possible. Yet seconds were all he needed. Leeching strength from the piece of the dragon’s spirit captured inside him, Austin launched himself from the wall and bolted toward Maeron, who was hauling with all his might on his tether to the dragon.
The sudden lack of resistance flung Maeron backward as the tether yanked Boden toward the rift. Half the dragon’s spirit still billowed outside Austin. It tugged him like a sail and he ran with it, now struck with a choice: aim for the rift, or Maeron himself?
It all came at once: Even if he could stop Maeron, Corinna’s binding might fail. Without Maeron, Austin doubted he could hold Boden in check longer than a few moments; the dragon would break free again, claim its new body, and kill both Corinna and Austin. Or Austin could dive into the rift himself and take Boden with him; it would save her, but at the cost of releasing the dragons upon Rhyll.
Yet — Yet that assumed the rift went to Rhyll at all, didn’t it? He had no way of knowing! Even if it did, Maeron might be right about the need to do so! Could he sacrifice Corinna to protect some unseen world when he couldn’t know if it would work? He remembered the way Corinna had smiled at him, kissed him, an echo of Rhi’s love, Rhi’s life, of all that was real about her. Either way he was doomed, but could he let her die again? Didn’t she deserve better? Why couldn’t he save her?
How much did people in whatever Rhyll was really count, anyway?
The thought, once fully formed, sickened him at once. Austin threw it down and changed course. He stampeded along the cavern floor, struggling to veer to one side of the rift amid the current.
The sorcerer regained his footing just as Austin collided with him. Austin locked his arms around Maeron’s chest. He would drag Maeron off balance! He would throw him through the rift before he could fight back!
Not fast enough. Maeron drove a knee into Austin’s thigh, breaking his effort. The two fell to the cavern floor in a tumbling grapple. Boden snarled in Austin’s mind, now throwing himself into the fray in earnest. Together, the two fought to overpower Maeron.
With his initial grip lost, and lightheaded from the dragon’s pressure inside his mind, Austin jabbed a punch into Maeron’s kidneys that he only half-controlled. Maeron grabbed Austin’s neck. Austin broke the grip, and Boden forced him to smash his forehead against Maeron’s face. Maeron reeled and tried to scramble away across the cavern floor.
Silver light danced between them: Corinna’s magic catching up. Half blinded, Austin and Boden leapt after their quarry and took a wild kick in Austin’s shoulder before shoving aside Maeron’s foot. They grabbed his knee, then scrambled forward to pin the man to the floor. Maeron thrashed beneath them, struggling to cast some magical defense as they battled his concentration, until, finally, they caught both his wrists.
Just then, Corinna’s chanting came to a head. A flare of new power roared through the room to tighten the binding. Its force pulled Boden free of Austin, and the dragon’s spirit spooled out of him so rapidly that Austin needed to fight to stay inside his own body.
It was as if Corinna’s magic had heightened Austin’s awareness of his own mind, his own psyche — his own spirit? They hummed tangibly inside him. Staggered, he reeled from the sensation and clung to himself within, as if clinging to an airplane door flung open in mid-flight.
Maeron pulled a knife from his jacket and stabbed it into Austin’s side.