Test of the Dragon

by Jessica Drake

  "Not quite nothing." I spun around to see Caor standing behind me. The messenger god regarded me from those lapis lazuli eyes with a mildly amused expression, dressed in nothing but his usual kilt, torque, and winged sandals. I must have dropped the piece of heart when I'd reached for my blade, as it hovered above his outstretched hand, suspended by a pulse of golden light. "I believe this belongs to you," he prompted, holding it out to me.

  I gave him a wry smile as I stepped forward. "I think the dragon god would disagree."

  Caor frowned, his wings fluttering with agitation. "Regardless of who it belongs to, you must get rid of it, Zara. Why have you not already left for the Forge of Derynnis? You could have been halfway there by now."

  "Because I have a responsibility to my people," I said, snatching the piece of heart from him. The black diamond was frigid to the touch despite the fire burning within, and I quickly wrapped it up in the cloth I'd dropped to the ground before I got frostbite or something. "If I'm going to abandon them on a weeks-long quest that I might die trying to complete, I want them to be prepared first. I didn't go through all the trouble of rescuing them only to let them die the moment I turn my back."

  "Fair point." Caor let out a theatrical sigh. "You humans really are far too fragile, but then again we made you that way, so I suppose there's no one to blame but ourselves." He gave an equally theatrical shrug that made me want to strangle him. "I have half a mind to snap my fingers and send you straight to the forge, except that Derynnis would toss you out on your arse before you could open your mouth. He does not believe in shortcuts. If you wish to speak with him, you must reach the island without divine intervention."

  "Wonderful," I grumbled. I'd been hoping Caor might be able to give me a little help. When I'd retrieved the piece of heart from Baron Fersel in Barkheim, Caor had used his godly influence to help me get past the guards and escape with my life. But if I was to do this without any "divine intervention," as he pointed out, that meant I could count on no such luck from him.

  "Did you come to tell me anything useful?" I asked. "Or just to save me from my nightmare?"

  "Mostly just to nudge you," he admitted. "Though I do sympathize with your plight. A good night of sleep is essential if one is to go adventuring, or so I'm told. Gods don't need sleep. Oh!" He snapped his fingers, as if remembering something. "You might like to know that Salcombe was taken into custody after you murdered Baron Fersel. As your alleged husband, the Zallabarians naturally think he was in league with you."

  It was my turn to shrug. "Well, if I hadn't gotten to the baron first, Salcombe definitely would have killed him to get the piece of heart." With the dragon god's power to aid him, he likely would have ripped through the entire staff like they were a house of paper dolls. I'd left most of them alive, and I wouldn't have killed any of them at all if Fersel hadn't decided I needed to be permanently silenced to protect his secret.

  "Yes, that was a nasty business," Caor said. "I would have thought Fersel would side with you, but he tried to kill you, proof that no matter how many millennia pass, humans remain as unpredictable as ever." He smiled, as if that pleased him. "The dragon god will not return to you tonight, Zara, so you may rest well. But keep your guard up during your journey. He will do whatever he can to make sure you do not reach your destination."

  "Wait—" I started as he disappeared, but the light faded away until I was blanketed in warm, heavy darkness. The exhaustion lurking at the edges of my mind hit me like a tidal wave, and after four days of terrible sleep, I gratefully allowed it to drag me under.

  6

  "You look like you had a good night of sleep," Tavarian said as we dressed for breakfast the next morning. He reached out and caught me by the chin, his strong fingers tilting my head as he studied my face. "The shadows under your eyes are all gone, and you look almost chipper."

  "Caor visited me in my dreams last night," I admitted. When Tavarian quirked a brow, I hastily added, "Not like that. He was urging me to go to the forge." I filled him in on everything that had happened in the dream, and what Caor had told me about Salcombe.

  "While it would have been nice if he had spread the dream love around, I am glad that you at least got a restful night's sleep." Tavarian caressed my cheek with the back of his hand as he smiled down at me. "You've been in low spirits the last couple of days, and the others have noticed. I think it will do them good to see you back to your usual self."

  I smiled back, but a pang of guilt hit my chest as I traced the shadows beneath his eyes with my thumb. "Are you sure you don't want to rest for another hour or so?" I asked. "We should be able to manage without you for a bit."

  "I'd never be able to lie abed knowing that everyone else is running around and being productive," he said ruefully. "However..." He slipped his hands down to my waist and slowly backed me up against the stone wall. "There is something else you could do that would give me a boost."

  "Oh yeah?" My breath caught as he nuzzled my neck, and I slid my hands up the back of his untucked shirt to feel his muscles flex and ripple beneath my hands. "And what is that?"

  Tavarian lifted his head, and the wicked gleam in his eyes made my skin tingle with the need to let him touch me all over. But before he could answer, someone pounded on the door.

  "Commandant! There's been an attack!"

  "Dammit!" I ducked under Tavarian's arm and yanked the door open. One of the sentries was standing in the hall, his face flushed as he panted. "What happened?"

  "A group of soldiers went out into the hills for an early morning hunt. They'd made slingshots the night before and were going to try and bring down some birds and rabbits. But a band of fifty locals ambushed them. Several are badly wounded, and if there hadn't been a dragon nearby, we would have lost most of them."

  "Shit." I raked a hand through my hair. "Where are the wounded?"

  "In the infirmary, being treated."

  "I'll be right down," I said, and slammed the door in his face.

  Tavarian and I hurriedly finished dressing, then made a beeline for the infirmary, which had once been a large study back in the manor's glory days, or so Daria had surmised when they'd first arrived. She'd told me there were remnants of bookshelves and pieces of a broken desk left behind, and she'd even found a few pages from a history text lying on the ground. I was certain the owner of the manor had never imagined that one day in the future, all the furniture in his study would have been cleared out and replaced with bleeding soldiers lying on the ground, treated haphazardly by other soldiers with basic field medic training.

  "Let me," Tavarian said, laying his hand on one of the medic’s shoulders. He gently nudged the man aside, then knelt on the ground beside a woman whose abdomen was bleeding profusely. The other six men and women in the room all suffered similarly bad wounds.

  "How many were in the party?" I asked the medic.

  "Ten," he murmured. "Four of them only suffered minor scratches, but these..." He glanced helplessly at the other patients as he lowered his voice. "Well, if not for Lord Tavarian helping out, I'm not sure they would make it."

  We watched as Tavarian slowly healed the wound, his face contorted in concentration. I wished I could comfort him or do something to help him shoulder the burden—he always felt pain when he healed a wound like this.

  "It is his burden to bear," Lessie said sympathetically. "Just as the dragon god's heart is ours."

  "I take it you know about the dream?" I asked her.

  "Yes. I overheard you telling Tavarian about it this morning." In a pained voice, she added, "I wish I could do something to help, but I battle the dragon god in my own dreams, too."

  "It's all right," I said, though I had to wonder. How powerful did someone have to be to be able to torment multiple people's minds at once? I honestly couldn't fathom it.

  "The real question is how twisted do you have to be," Lessie said darkly. "The sooner we can destroy that thing, the better I'll be able to sleep at night."

  "Literally," I
added, and she chuckled.

  The woman Tavarian healed fell asleep instantly, her body working hard to replenish the blood it had lost. I couldn’t question any of these guys for a while, so I asked the medic to take me to the ones who had escaped relatively unscathed and questioned them about the encounter. Most of them said they had no idea which family the attackers had come from, but one woman said she thought they were from the settlement on the western end of the island.

  "They wore these dyed blue strips of leather as arm bands," she said. "I've seen those a few times on that side of the island, back before we realized it wasn't safe to wander around."

  I thanked the woman for her information, then called another meeting.

  "It's probably the Porcillas family," I told the others as we sat cross-legged on the floor. "The natives we spoke to said that they've declared blood vengeance upon us because we killed two of their members during the airship attack."

  "I've had enough of this," Halldor growled, banging his fist against his inner thigh. "We can't just sit around and let them continue to attack us like this—they'll just think we're weak. We need to show them our strength and intimidate them into backing down."

  "That may make things worse," Tavarian warned. "The natives said that once blood vengeance is invoked, it can't be called back until the blood debt has been satisfied. Attacking them may just result in them adding to the blood debt they perceive is owed."

  "Then we'll just have to do it without killing anyone," I said firmly. "We're not barbarians. Surely we can figure out how to intimidate them without actually shedding any blood."

  We spent the next thirty minutes formulating a plan, then gathered a team of five and set out to where we thought the Porcillas family was located. As the settlement on the western end of the island came into view, I slipped my goggles over my head and counted the number of houses dotting the hilly area.

  "Around three hundred or so," Lessie said. "Those men were right. It is a very large clan."

  "Maybe, but they've clearly never prepared to deal with dragons." I pointed to the largest house, which was perched on the top of the tallest hill in the region. Normally that wouldn't matter, as the entire village was surrounded by a canyonlike moat on three sides, making it nearly impossible to access by normal means except by a single rickety bridge that was well-defended. "Like most leaders, they've chosen to stick their most important building out like a sore thumb. And it's going to cost them."

  I lifted my hand in a signal, and as one, the five of us dove for the clan chieftain's home. As we approached, arrows zipped through the air, but Tavarian raised his left arm and conjured a magical shield. The arrows bounced off the large, glowing blue orb as it flickered to life around us before falling back to the ground and their befuddled owners. I grinned as the locals stared at us, slack-jawed, as we soared past them, and my smile only widened when my treasure sense finally pinged loudly.

  "The weapon!" Lessie crowed excitedly. "It has to be."

  All four of us landed at the top of the hill, forming a perimeter around the house. It was three times larger than the ones around it, but still a rather basic wattle and daub construction. The dragons moved closer to the house to form a tighter circle, and Tavarian took a minute to strengthen the magical shield before we approached the front door.

  "Chieftain," I called as I banged on the door. "Open up. We need a word with you."

  When no one answered, Halldor kicked the door open and stormed inside, sword out. Three men were waiting in the large entryway, swords drawn, but Tavarian waved his other hand and conjured a strong gust of wind. The miniature gale knocked them back into the wall hard enough to rattle their skulls, and the men slumped to the ground, unconscious.

  Halldor glanced over his shoulder, an astonished look on his face. "I didn't think you could do two spells at once."

  "It takes some effort," Tavarian said, a bead of sweat sliding down the side of his face. "But you looked like you were about to run your sword through that man, and we agreed on no killing."

  Halldor's face flushed, but I pressed on through the entrance and into the next room, and they followed in silence. I kept my dragon blade extended as far as the space would allow, using it as a sort of deterrent. We encountered two more men who would have jumped us if not for the risk of impaling themselves on my blade, and Tavarian used his magic again to knock them out.

  “These weapons are of considerably better quality than the ones the Ariban men carry,” Halldor murmured as he paused to examine one of the swords.

  I nodded. “If they managed to get to the estate before the other clans, they would have taken the better weapons.”

  We turned a corner, then stepped over a threshold and into a kind of receiving hall in the back of the house. It was an open space with packed dirt floors covered with rushes. Light filtered in from thin rectangular windows lining the tops of the high walls. Since they had no glass, they couldn't afford to have large windows. A huge fireplace dominated one side of the room, and on the other was a raised platform. The chieftain stood in front of a rough-hewn wooden chair, a huge bow and arrow trained on my face, while four women sat around him on pillows, glaring hatefully at us. The bow, like the other weapons, was of much better quality than anything I’d seen on the island so far.

  "Chief?" I asked the man standing in front of the throne. He was a hard-edged man, dressed in a rough-spun kilt shot through with dark blue thread, and boots that looked like they'd been repaired several times. Swirling blue symbols peeked out from the neckline of his long-sleeved shirt, and a puffy scar slashed over his left cheekbone.

  The chieftain bared his teeth in an angry snarl. "Give me one reason why I shouldn't put this arrow through your throat."

  "My name is Zara Kenrook," I said calmly, even though my heart was beating an anxious tattoo in my chest. All it took was for him to release his hand on that string, and both Lessie and I were dead. "I am the leader of the dragon riders who have taken over the estate you attacked last week. We have come to negotiate a truce and settle any grievances between both parties."

  “I am Chief Cramus,” the chieftain spat back, “and we do not do truces. "You have invaded our land, killed two of our people, and—"

  "The land we are currently occupying is not yours," I said, cutting him off sharply. "It is not part of your territory, and is closest to the Ariban Clan's territory, so if anyone has the right to be angry at us, it is them."

  "It was our goats that your dragons killed, not the Ariban Clan’s! And you have not provided reparations for the stolen goats." The chieftain curled his upper lip. "Now if you have nothing else to say—"

  "If you release that bow string," Tavarian said in a voice like ice, "I will order our dragons to lay waste upon your entire village. You may have more men, but I assure you that your spears and arrows are powerless against dragon fire. They will burn down your entire settlement before you can fight your way through us and escape this house. And you will be trapped at the top of this hill with your wives and children."

  A flicker of movement caught my eye, and I glanced sideways to see a blond little boy peeking through a curtained door. My heart squeezed at the sight of his chubby little face, and I sincerely hoped we wouldn't have to resort to anything drastic. The thought of killing innocent women and children... of actually massacring… we couldn't go through with it. If the chieftain refused to back down, we would just have to leave and hope the next island we landed on was more welcoming and not under enemy control.

  The chieftain, whose face had been ruddy with anger, paled as the magnitude of Tavarian’s threat sank in.

  "You wouldn't," one of the women on the floor cried. "You wouldn't tell your dragons to kill us all. We are Elantian-born, just like you!"

  "Exactly," I said gently as I met the woman's tearful eyes. By the shape of her mouth, I could tell the boy staring at us was her son. "And I know your ancestors were treated horribly by the dragon riders who left you all here, but we are st
ill the same nation. I promise we'll do whatever we can to help your people, as soon as we can get what we need."

  "It's always about what you need," the chieftain growled. "What about what we need?"

  "Our needs are the same," I said firmly. "We are searching for a weapon that we believe is in your house, a weapon we need to defeat an enemy that has taken over the country. These people are trying to kill and enslave our dragons, and it is only a matter of time before they come for this island. When they do, your people will not be spared."

  "What enemy is this?" The chieftain's voice echoed with shock as he finally lowered his bow. "No one has ever defeated dragons in combat before, never mind taken the country."

  Tavarian and I explained about the war between Elantia and Zallabar, and the superior weapons the enemy was using. "The only reason we came to this place is because we heard the last dragon riders who were living here hid a powerful weapon somewhere on the island," Tavarian said. "We have reason to believe that it is here in your house. When you looted the larger estate, did you find anything that looked like a weapon?"

  The chieftain's brow furrowed. "We confiscated many swords and axes, yes," he said, “but nothing like what you mention."

  "Chief Cramus," I said, trying to put this as tactfully as I could. "I have a special ability that allows me to sense items of great value, and ever since we approached your village, I have sensed a very valuable piece here." Closing my eyes, I drew on my treasure sense and conjured up a smoky image of a large ivory horn carved with ancient runes. I described it to him. "Do you have anything in your home like this?"

  "We do," the chieftain said, sounding puzzled. "But that is a battle horn, not a weapon. It makes a fearsome sound when you blow on it, but nothing beyond that."