As if sensing his submission, the rain intensified, driven by the wind scraping across the valley floor. Merrick screamed in frustration as loud as he could. For a moment, it seemed to him that the rain paused but then fell even harder with large drops that needled at his wounds. More uncomfortable than ever, he resolved to reach the rocky shelter above. He started back up the valley wall, stepping where tufts of grass provided him with better footing, trying to ignore the pain in his limbs.
After another half-hour, he arrived again at the group of boulders. He dropped to his knees next to the largest boulder and clung to its side as best he could. Its skin was mottled with grays, blues, greens, and veins of red. He felt its cold and unmovable strength that was derived from being a living extension of the mountain beneath. The boulder was strong in the same way that he had been while one with Terrada.
With the rain still pelting him, he crawled farther uphill until he had rounded the boulder and could lean against it without falling into the valley again. After catching his breath, he turned around and examined the structure. A gap between two of the boulders looked big enough for him to squeeze through. He got up onto his haunches and eased sideways into the rocky womb, happy to have found refuge from the wind and rain.
Once inside, he was surrounded by a low hum like the sound of the ocean in a conch shell. Sitting on the relatively dry ground, he wiped the water from his face and stared out at the wall of rain. The patter of the downpour lulled his breathing to a more normal pace. His muscles tightened as he glimpsed movement in the distance. He blinked and looked again. This time, he could clearly discern the dark shape of a person walking toward him.
He placed his hand on the inside wall of one of the boulders and leaned forward. As he did so, his hand sunk into the rock up to his wrist.
He tried to pull his hand free, but when his knees and back touched the rock, they melded into the stone as well. He looked up at the approaching stranger and then back to his situation. With only his left arm free, he pulled hopelessly, trying to wrench his limbs from the mountain’s grip.
He heard a voice and jerked his head up to look again at the approaching stranger. The back of his head hit the stone hard and he was filled with intense white pain. His eyes rolled back in their sockets and he screamed frantically.
The agony was so overwhelming that he barely comprehended the wave of power once again building inside him and the words of fire booming from his open mouth. Lightning bolts suddenly rained down onto his stone prison. He screamed again and again, his own skin sizzling with each new scorch mark given to the boulders. As the rock felt pain, so did Merrick. He was suffering more from his own attacks than from being trapped inside the living rock of the mountain. Resisting his survival instinct to fight, he willed his magic to relent. As one, the lightning outside and the searing pain in his brain stopped.
Footsteps pounded the ground just beyond the boulder’s entrance, but Merrick was unable to bring his head down to see who was there. He closed his eyes, trying to remember everything Ohman had told him, desperate for a way to use his power to escape, preparing for the worst if it was Eudroch who had found him.
Through the din of the rain, he heard Cara’s voice, calling out his name.
Cara eased her way into his rock prison, groaning as she bent her body to fit through the thin opening.
“Cara, don’t. It’s a trap,” he said in a forced whisper, unable to move his head as he spoke.
She didn’t respond. He felt her slide down in front of him.
“Don’t touch the rock!” he cried.
He heard and felt her repositioning herself. Even without seeing her, he knew that her back must be flat against the rock wall in which his left foot was encased.
“Calm down,” she said, still breathing hard. “And please stop fighting the mountain.”
They were crammed together so close that their bodies were intertwined and her heartbeat echoed in his head. As her pulse slowed, his did as well.
“I need your help,” he said.
“I agree, but I need a minute to rest first…thanks to you. Maybe my father was right to bring you here after all.”
“What did I do?”
Even as he heard his own words, he knew. In his panic to escape, he had once again summoned his magic and without thought, he had reached out to siphon the nearest energy source. This time, the unprepared Cara had suffered for his actions instead of Mona.
“Cara, I’m sorry…”
“I came here to help you, and instead I just lost a couple year’s worth of life…so that you could attack some innocent rocks, which, by the way, still seem to have the upper hand. If you panic like that when you meet Eudroch, you’ll be dead in a second.”
“What if this is a trap he set for me? He could be on his way.”
Cara laughed wearily.
“This isn’t a trap. It’s a bunch of rocks. You merged with them, Merrick, not the other way around. Let me introduce you to your captors. Humans call this stone Nepheline Syenite, but its creation name is this…”
Her voice rose like a low rumble overlaid with the sounds of cracking stones. It reminded Merrick of the type of noise he had just made using his own magic, but her sounds made him recall dusty earthen smells instead of burning fire. As her sound permeated his bones, the stone around him stirred and then stopped as she was once again silent.
“I’ll tell you the name one more time. Close your eyes and your ears and pay attention with your body. Don’t try to repeat what you hear. Try to recreate what you feel from the vibrations of my voice. You have the same extra vocal folds that I do, and your ears can hear more subtleties in the dragon tongues than mine are capable of. You are a full-blooded Drayoom, and your education starts now.”
Cara’s voice resounded as the stone throbbed around him again. He closed his eyes and parted his lips as she held the chord of the stone’s name. At first, the sounds from Cara seemed like cacophony. Slowly, he began to distinguish subtleties that he had missed before. The noise revealed itself to be a set of patterns pressing into his body and mind, making an imprint on him that was as unique as a fingerprint but as familiar as his own hand.
He heard himself emitting a low rumble, matching the pitch from Cara’s throat exactly.
Cara stopped suddenly, leaving his voice resonating alone in the air.
“Keep making that tone,” she said. “You’re using two of your vocal cords now. The next part is going to hurt since the back of your head is still stuck in the rock, but you need to stick your jaw forward and let the sound come from your throat instead of your mouth.”
She said the name again, and a series of booming sounds erupted from Merrick’s throat and intertwined with each other. The resultant chord was so powerful that it made him shake. His sounds flowed and ebbed in perfect timing with the changes in Cara’s voice as the rock in which he was ensnared turned to the consistency of thick paste.
“Slowly pull yourself free,” she said, “but keep saying its name until you are completely separated from the stone.”
His leg came free and then his head and his arm. He was finally able to see Cara sitting across from him. She was covered in mud and soaked but still as stunning as ever. He stretched his limbs and rubbed his neck, careful not to touch the surrounding walls.
“Thank you,” he said, both to Cara and to the boulders. “Don’t be mad at me.”
“I’m not mad—just embarrassed that you were able to take my magic so easily. Either I should be better than that or you shouldn’t be so powerful. Either way, don’t do that again to anyone.”
“I won’t.”
“You already promised that to my father. I’m sure you meant it then as you do now, but you have to learn how to control your power, and you have to think before you use it. It’s too dangerous the other way, especially when you keep using Fire Magic.”
“Your father told me that my family was here—that they’d teach me how to control my power, but how’s th
e Earth Clan going to help me control my Fire Magic?”
“Fire’s power is rooted in spurts of potent and unthinking passion and emotion. The earth’s power is that of patience and slowly evolving life. To learn about one is to have control over the other. The Earth Clan can teach you to develop the Earth Magic in you, which will help you gain control over your entire self. But first, we have to find them. Until you’re inside the mountain, you’re still exposed.”
Merrick and Cara turned as one as they sensed the heavy thuds of footsteps outside. Looking up, Merrick saw three dark shapes emerge from the mist, each wearing a long, hooded robe the color of dark grass. Cara silenced Merrick with a soft touch to his chest before he could say anything.
“Come with me, and don’t say anything” she said as she squeezed her way out into the rain.
He followed and stood next to her in the deluge, waiting motionless as the three hooded strangers came closer. The shadowed face of one of the men became clearer, and Cara’s stance seemed to soften.
“Looks like we won’t have to find the Earth Clan after all,” she whispered. “They’ve just found us.”
#
Heinin placed his hands on his knees and bent at the waist, trying to catch his breath. From the top of the grassy hill, it appeared that his family’s two-bedroom cottage with its thatched roof was still standing, but he couldn’t see his parents anywhere. Itsy barked behind him, patiently herding the animals home.
The door to his home suddenly flew open and his mother walked out and waved to him. He smiled and ran down the hill.
“Mum, are you and Dad all right?”
“Of course,” she said. “We were starting to wonder the same about you and the animals. Almost time for lunch, you know. Better go collect your father out back.”
He hugged his mother and sprinted to the field behind their house. His father was plodding along behind their ox as it pulled a wooden cart filled with straw. Heinin walked up alongside his father, careful not to disturb the straw his father was laying with his pitchfork.
“Dad, did you feel it? Me and Itsy were over in the valley and everything started shaking and the grass was making waves like the sea and one of the yearlings got her leg stuck in a hole in the ground…”
His father pulled back on the ox’s reins and made a loud clicking noise to get the animal to stop pulling. Heinin knew enough to stop talking while his father put down the reins and wiped the sweat from his hands onto his overalls. He turned toward Heinin.
“Slow down and say what happened, and tell if the herd is alright, but we felt no earthquake here, son.”
Heinin forced himself to describe every detail, ending with his mercy killing of the yearling.
“She wouldn’t stop bleating,” he said, “and her leg was broken. I tried to do what you would have done. I had to kill her, didn’t I?”
“If her leg was broken and it was spooking the herd, it was the best thing to do. Where’s she now, then?”
“Over in the valley, on the other side of Glen Coe. I’ll get her as soon as I put the rest of them away. I ran here as fast as I could to see if you and mum were alright.”
His father looked up at the overcast but glaring sky and shielded his eyes with a thick, callused hand. He looked back at Heinin.
“The goats and Missy were acting a bit funny early on,” his father said, patting the thick neck of the ox. “Maybe it was only a warning quake you felt. Best get the herd in the pen just in case there’s another one coming. Leave the yearling where she is for now, until I say it’s safe for you to go back out there. The meat won’t spoil too quick with it being so cold tonight and the rain will keep the hide from drying out.”
Heinin nodded and went off to find Itsy and the herd already on their way home. He knew his father was trying to protect him, but without having to worry about the herd, he could handle another quake on his own with no problem. He owed it to the yearling to retrieve its body and not leave it sitting in the open overnight. Besides, he would be safer down in the valley than he would be sitting at the supper table.
After securing the herd in their pen, he grabbed a walking stick and ran off back to the valley. Itsy ran in circles around him, yelping and wagging her tail.
When he arrived, he didn’t have to search for long to find the dead yearling. He stood over top of it and looked into its glassy, lifeless eyes.
He pushed back his rising nausea and turned away from the carcass. He looked around, and listened for any unusual sounds that might signal another earthquake. He heard nothing except the wind and the rain but thought he saw a woman walking along the opposite end of the valley.
Sometimes a stray tourist or two would find his or her way this deep into the Highlands, either dead lost or searching for a mystical place that didn’t exist. This woman was looking for something or someone. He almost called out to make sure she wasn’t injured from the quake and needing any help, but she was moving pretty fast and he thought it best to leave her be.
He picked up the stiffening reindeer carcass and hoisted it over his shoulder. He turned to look at the woman again just as the sky erupted with thunder and lightning, but she was gone.
Maybe she got hit by the lightning. He was about to put down the yearling and go looking for the stranger, when a group of people seemed to appear from the mist, walking toward a group of boulders close to where he had last seen her.
CHAPTER 13
A GUST OF AIR swept across Eudroch’s cheek as he and his brother’s woman, Mona, stood in front of the Rune Corp building. Not since the beginning of time, when Abred had sprung forth from the Manred, had a Drayoom held power such as Eudroch soon would. Araki of the Wind was watching—as were all of the dragons, because tonight heralded the beginning of the age of fire. It was finally Eudroch’s time to begin playing the part that Sigela had planned for him, and it was time for Ohman to die.
The Rune Corp logo five floors above them cast a crimson glow over the sidewalk beneath their feet. The red neon reflected off of Mona’s skin, reminding Eudroch of the volcanic glow from his home and making him long to be with his tribe.
“I’ve heard of this place,” she said. “Privately owned, research and development think-tank for artificial intelligence and knowledge management software—supposedly pretty cutting edge stuff for the government.”
He ignored her comments. Humans always talked incessantly right before something meaningful was about to happen.
He placed his open hand inches from the building’s glass walls, trying to detect some clear sign of Ohman’s life pattern. His magic ached to be released, to tear down the magical camouflage that cloaked the building and to reveal it for what it was, but he forced himself to hold back until he could be face-to-face with the traitor. It would do him no good to show his hand too early. Ohman was no average prey, and the old man’s fortress was almost certainly protected with more insidious defenses than were first apparent.
He looked up at the two-story, mirrored windows that presented the outward face of Rune Corp’s lobby to the public. Each giant pane was rimmed with bands of copper that were etched with intricate Celtic runes. These were meant to impress the humans, but they posed no actual threat.
The magic of the dragons—their power—was contained in their spoken tongues. Their words, if one could even call them that, could not be contained in simple written symbols and read like print from a common newspaper, and they definitely could not be made into window frames.
Only the sounds of the dragons mattered.
Sound made the world in the beginning, and only through speaking the ancient words of the dragons could their power be invoked.
Eudroch pressed his palm against the glass, readying himself for one of Ohman’s magical defenses. He intoned a low hum that reverberated like thunder against the mirrored window in front of him. To his surprise, his hand passed easily through to the other side. He wiggled his fingers and pulled them back out of the thick glass, unharmed.
&nb
sp; It could not be this easy. There would be traps still, even though he was certain that he could handle them. He grabbed Mona and shoved her into the glass door. He grinned as she closed her eyes and grimaced, expecting slicing pains from glass shards that never came.
She landed inside the security vestibule unharmed, but she was still separated from the inside lobby by another set of glass doors. She turned, quivering, and stared out at him through the unbroken glass door through which she had just passed. He waited a few moments to make sure that her presence had not activated any defense wards, then he melted into the glass himself and emerged next to her in the sealed security chamber. He reached his hand out to the next layer of solid glass, ready to test for security wards again and then to push his guest through the second glass door and into the open lobby beyond.
As his hand entered the glass, a recorded voice boomed inside the chamber, warning in English and then in several other languages that they should not proceed or run away—that they were trespassing and that security personnel had been dispatched.
Eudroch pulled his hand back from the glass. The recording had not been activated by magic, but by technology. This precaution was meant for corporate thieves breaking into the building at night, not for a Drayoom who couldn’t care less about an entire brigade of human security guards. The recording itself was nothing more than annoying, as it repeated its warning on a continuous loop.
“We’d better get out of here,” Mona said, her hand already reaching for the handle to the outer door.
He grabbed her wrist, then looked around the chamber and cocked his head. There was something hidden behind the announcer’s voice—a series of overlapping sounds so far below the range of human hearing that even he could barely detect them. His heart turned cold as he finally recognized the hated voice of the traitor. It was Ohman, and he was speaking in the Earth Dragon’s tongue, invoking the creation name of Iery Duncan, a name that Eudroch had thankfully learned of during his studies.
The Conservation of Magic Page 10