“This shouldn’t be here,” Bataar said, anger in his tone. “Look! They chipped it out of the rock! They affixed the slab right here in the floor. It’s blasphemy!”
“It’s certainly dangerous. Only a fool would want to touch one of those doors twice.”
Bataar lifted the lantern as if he was trying to get a good look at me to see if I was joking. All it did was show his own face, curiosity painting every feature.
“You know about the Doors of Heaven?”
“I know you have a silver swirl on your arm that came from these doors,” I countered. Ha! Beat that, Bataar.
His face paled suddenly, horror filling his eyes. He hurried back to me, grabbing the front of my coat through the bars and whispering.
“Who have you told?”
“Relax, man. I haven’t told anyone. I saw them last night before I snuck out to get Saboraak and come to pay the price for the little bracelet you’re wearing.”
He flushed, glancing at Saboraak who was snuffling quietly in her sleep, her drool scoring the stone floor like acid.
“If you tell anyone ... you won’t tell, will you?” His eyes were so wide I thought they might fall out of his head. He looked more desperate than I’d ever seen him.
“Of course, I won’t,” I agreed.
He ran a hand over his face.
“Look, Tor. You’re my Secret Bearer now.” He said ‘Secret Bearer’ in a way that made it almost possible to hear the capital letters. I’d never been anything so formal sounding in my life. He continued, “If I’d known ... I had no idea you would bring me to this city. I can’t be here. I don’t dare be here. I was trying to flee to the Dominion when I met you and I still need to go there. I can’t stay in Ko’Torenth.”
“Well, here’s a thought. Break me out of here and I’ll help you leave.”
He nodded briskly. “And the doorway?”
“We could go through it. The girls are fine here without us. Dramatic performances and dresses and all.”
Bataar’s brows squeezed together. “We must not enter this doorway under any circumstances. It is taboo to speak of it.”
“Well, then why are you asking about it?”
“It should not be here.”
“We can’t take it with us,” I said calmly. “It’s literally built into the floor.”
They’d laid the rock the door was attached to in the floor when they carved this huge room from the rock. Only one wall and a piece of floor that held the trap door were made from wood. No surprises there. It was why the building looked small from the outside when it was massive.
He nodded as if I’d said something profound. Maybe the illness had messed with his mind.
“Why don’t you try looking for a key to my lock?” I suggested. “Then we can leave doorways and psycho Magikas and all this craziness behind, what do you say?”
He nodded as if I’d given him sage advice and pulled a burlap sack out from his belt, handing it to me. “Gather your things.”
I didn’t really have things. But my captors did. I eyed the shelves, chewing my lower lip. They’d stolen me, so it stood to reason that stealing from them wouldn’t be wrong. It would only be fair. But what to take? I had no idea which items were magical. The ones I’d looked at hadn’t been in the book. I’d searched the lower shelves. So, my best bet at finding something magical would be to take it from the higher shelves. And the more the better, so small things. Jewelry. Tiny statues. This kind of thing.
I climbed the shelves to where I hadn’t searched yet and began to stuff handfuls of small items into the sack until it was so full that I could hardly tie the top.
“Tor?” Bataar whispered through the darkness. And then there was a loud squeak as the door to my prison was opened.
I leapt from the shelves to the ground. If there were guards posted, they would have heard that! I rushed out the door, but already I heard feet rushing toward us. I double checked that both books were secure in my pockets as I ran.
Saboraak! Wake up! Wake up!
Her snoring increased.
I rushed over to her, my burlap sack clinking as I ran.
“Saboraak, wake up!” I pushed at her, trying to wake her. “Come on! Come on!”
Bataar, always a pragmatist was already scrambling up her back. “How do you ride her with no saddle?”
“With difficulty!”
I said. I scanned the room looking for anything that might protect us against the guards when they came but the room was mostly empty. There were a few empty crates to one side of the room and looped ropes. I grabbed one of the ropes in case that would do any good and threw it to Bataar who caught it one-handed, his other hand still holding the flickering lantern.
Was that my axe hanging on the wall? I rushed to it at the same time that Saboraak woke with a jaw-breaking yawn. She shook herself, and Bataar yelped, the lantern flying out of his hand and smashing against the wall. Darkness flooded the room as my hand closed around the axe handle.
What now? I couldn’t see anything in this dark. There was a shout from the other side of the door and I settled into a defensive squat, my mouth dry and hands shaking. I was no hero. This wasn’t what I’d been made for at all.
Steady now. Who is this on my back?
Bataar. Get ready!
The door opened with a crash and light flooded back into the room. I spun, threw the sack to Bataar, and then gripped the axe in both hands ready to fight. My breath was already too fast, and my eyes blinked too rapidly, like they’d forgotten how to operate properly on their own.
Karema stepped through the door, jewelry on her arms and around her neck catching the light of her lantern and refracting it.
“What do you think you’re going to do, hack your way through us like a country lad through a forest?” Karema asked.
My breath caught in my throat as my mind raced to try to decide on my next move.
What was she doing awake at this time of night? I’d expected Shabren. He seemed more like a stay-up-all-night-and-torture-people kind of guy.
She lifted a hand and a powerful but invisible force hit my hand. The axe flew out of it, clanging as it hit the bars in my former prison.
Steady!
Behind me, heat flashed through the air, so hot that I felt the hairs on my neck singe. If she’d burned off all my hair, she’d have some explaining to do. What was she trying to scorch back there? Not the doorway?
A new hairstyle could only be an improvement.
Bataar yelled something I didn’t understand. I swung my head to see him leap off of Saboraak and rush toward the doorway. It was brightly lit along the edges as if someone was shining a bright blue light – brighter than any sun – from behind the door.
“They’re coming through!” he said, reaching toward the doorframe.
Karema twisted her hand toward him and I leapt in front of it. If we had enemies coming through that door at our backs, then Karema and her gang were my problem.
A second powerful force knocked me backward. Lantern light gleamed off Karema’s bracelet as I sailed through the air, hitting the ground and sliding across it.
The bracelet! All that jewelry they wore was full of magic!
Knowing didn’t help me. I was climbing to my feet and trying to recover my axe, when Bataar rolled up his sleeves and grabbed the doorframe with both palms. Light flashed up his arms – silver and sun-bright along the lines of his silver tattoos – the Ko. The light faded from the edges of the door and Karema screamed.
I leapt just in time to block a second blow from her magic rings – a blow that felt less like a punch and more like a gale-force wind – and then I was flying through the air and hitting the stone floor with a thud.
I saw quick glimpses of Bataar rushing back to Saboraak and flinging a rope around her neck, of Saboraak flaming the guards who burst out from behind Karema. Her flame narrowly missed scorching me.
I was still skidding across the stone from Karema’s last blast. The wind h
adn’t let up.
Grab something!
There was nothing to grab.
I slid past the doorway – dim now – too far away to grab it. That force must be pushing me across the ground! Why did the air behind me feel so cold?
I blew a hole through the wall while you and Bataar were distracting Karema so we could escape.
Now she tells me!
Frigid air bit at me as I clawed at the floor trying to stop my careening. The magic gale pushed only me, but it pushed with a force I couldn’t fight. In front of me, Karema’s eyes widened with horror and then there was no more floor underneath me.
I plunged through the empty air.
Chapter Seventeen
STEADY!
I was falling, falling, the air rushing around me. My heart was in my throat. My eyes streamed with water. Where was Saboraak? She was my only hope!
But above me, I saw flames and bits of wall flying outward and no dragon emerging from those flames. Seconds felt like hours as I fell. In the darkness, the bright flames burst like flowers in the night. At least I would die watching a spectacle.
Steady!
My heart was racing as if it was trying to get every beat possible in before I smashed on the ground below. My mind rushed, trying to see and think every thought before time ran out. My gaze scanned across the three faintly glowing peaks of the three parts of Ko’Koren.
What was that strange outcropping to the side of the last mountain? It looked just a little like a gnarled tree.
From the bright flames above, a sudden boom shook the air and a dragon burst out through the wall, debris and flame and ash scattering in the air around her. She dove toward me.
A very nice effort, Saboraak.
But she would be too late. The city was growing too distant. I was falling too fast.
At least no one could say I’d lived a boring life.
I looked one last time at the bright moon and then I closed my eyes. I didn’t want to see this last part. I wanted the last thing I saw to be the moon. It felt good to know it would still be there long after today.
Long after I was gone.
Unbidden, the riddle came to mind:
Three there stand but four there be,
One the shape of gnarled tree,
Wait for moon before you go,
Fail and you will never know.
Wait. Had I just solved it?
I felt something tighten around my ankle and then my spine shivered like the crack of a whip and I was buoyed upward, dangling by one foot.
I told you to stay steady. I had to make sure Bataar was fastened tight before I took the dive.
I dared a look through squinted eyes.
Saboraak gripped my ankle between her teeth, her wings flapping hard as she gained height. On her back, a shaken Bataar clutched the gunny sack and the rope slung around her neck and stared at me with wide eyes.
Yeah, welcome to my world, Bataar. It only gets weirder from here.
I’m afraid he cannot hear your thoughts.
Really? How surprising.
Oh. You have once again resorted to sarcasm. Can I assume that means you were afraid when you were falling?
Afraid? Was she kidding? Anyone would be afraid if they were falling to their death!
I did solve the puzzle. Which was handy since we couldn’t exactly go back to Eski now that we’d set one of the local businesses on fire.
Where to, Tor?
We’re going to that fourth peak – the small one that hardly seemed like a peak at all but instead looked like a gnarled tree when the moon was behind it. And quickly, if you don’t mind. I’m getting lightheaded dangling like this.
I love adventuring with you!
You love this? Falling through the night, bursting out of flaming warehouses, constant danger, never enough to eat or sleep?
Precisely!
I’d bonded a mad-dragon. Did dragons go insane?
I’m not insane. I’m just beginning to find the fun in life you always seem to find.
Well, if this is fun for you, Saboraak, then stick around. I have a lot more where that came from.
I’m counting on it.
The gnarled peak was growing slowly closer and I couldn’t help but feel excitement. Maybe there would be instructions there from Hubric – or even just a place to sleep for a full night. Hope blossomed within me.
I’m counting on you.
I didn’t dare let her down.
Dragon Chameleon: Mist of Power
Chapter One
MY FOOT HURT. I WASN’T saying that Saboraak had pierced the skin or broken it or anything, only that it hurt like crazy. And my head hurt, too. I wasn’t meant to be dragged through the air upside down. That was hero stuff and I was no hero.
You could have fooled me.
I was still holding the axe. I couldn’t have said why. It made more sense to just drop it, but my frozen fingers couldn’t relax if I tried.
Above me, Bataar was riding like a king on Saboraak’s back. Tor? Oh, don’t worry. We’ll just scoop him up like a fish and drag him to wherever we are going.
Don’t be so dramatic, Tor.
And we were in trouble. We were being hunted now. Powerful people wanted us dead or wanted to use us. Neither Bataar or I could show our faces at night – just in case someone demanded to see our arms. We had no safe house, no money, and nothing of value except the items I snatched from the basement of the magical pawnshop. My whole life dangled from a thread just like my body dangled from a foot.
Maybe you should be acting at the theatrical performance Zyla is watching. Histrionics would suit you.
Don’t remind me. She’s with that stuffy Apeq. He betrayed us. I know he did. And now he’s charmed Zyla and Zin into his pocket.
Forget him and focus. We’re nearly at the peak that looks like a gnarled tree. What should we be looking for?
I didn’t have an answer to that. I’d only figured out the first part of the riddle so far.
Three there stand but four there be,
One the shape of gnarled tree,
Wait for moon before you go,
Fail and you will never know.
We found the fourth peak. Which meant that the next clue must be about the moon – somehow.
The three mountain peaks ascending from a single base, Eski, Balde, and Ziu were lit up by smoking braziers and hanging lanterns, but their lights were small from here. The gnarled peak was just out from the edge of the middle peak, Balde – out on its own tiny peak like an island in the air, almost hidden by the perpetual mists that rose from the base of the mountain. The moon hid behind the jagged rock of that peak, but there were no lights, no ladders, no walkways, no signs of people at all.
Let’s fly closer.
Saboraak – my dragon partner and dare I say, friend? – drew so close to the peak that she almost scraped her wing tips on the rock as we flew
If I’m not your friend after saving your life three times, then I’m not sure what else I could do to earn that title. You’re a hard boy to please, Tor.
Wait. What did I see glimmering in the moonlight? Was that the symbol of the Lightbringers, a rising sun over a hill? It was scrawled as if written by hand in silver on the side of a rock. The marking was so small that you had to be nearly on top of it to see it.
Saboraak flew closer and I tried to twist to get a better view.
Stop squirming!
Why was it so faint?
I think it’s an ink that only can be seen in the moonlight.
Did everyone have that stuff? Don’t even get me started on doorways that tattoo it to your arm ...
There! Behind the symbol, a rock jutted out and behind the rock was a dark shadow.
You want me to try to squirm into that shadow with you in my mouth?
She was already landing like a bird of prey on the lip of it, ducking her great head and slipping inside the rock.
“I’ve been meaning to ask you,” Bataar said from abov
e. “Where are we going, exactly?”
“I’m following a hunch,” I said through gritted teeth. My head bumped against the rock below. “Oww!”
Sorry. It’s dark in here and I can’t flame for light with your foot in my mouth.
We all have our trials to bear. I wished I could roll my eyes mentally.
There was the sound of flint striking and then a flickering flame above us.
“I always keep a flint and candle stub on me,” Bataar said.
I bet that when he was a kid the grownups were always pointing to him saying, ‘You should be more like Bataar,’ to other kids. I was never friends with kids like that.
It was hard to be too bitter when his candle lit the cavern with weak light. It was big in here. Bataar lit a lantern on the wall and I gasped as the light grew stronger.
Saboraak dropped me.
“Ow!”
I crashed to the ground, barely shielding my head with my arms before I landed. My legs and back hurt from the drop.
You were only an inch above the ground. Don’t be a hatchling.
You should know, Saboraak, that humans are not built with permanent armor. You could have snapped my neck!
So easily? You are delicate things ...
But I didn’t have time to chastise her more. I checked my leg for gashes and was relieved to find that her teeth hadn’t broken the skin.
I leapt to my feet. Time to explore. I’d fuss about the bruises on my legs later.
Or you could thank me for saving your life ...
In one corner there was a fireplace – venting through a tunnel to the outside, I guessed – with wood set in the hearth and stacked in an alcove to the side. Bataar was already dismounting with his gaze set on the fireplace.
A pair of cots were near the fire and a wide rug with a small table and chairs of various types were set between them. Bookshelves lined one wall and a set of shelves with supplies lined the other wall. I set about exploring immediately with one of the lanterns while Bataar lit a fire.
This main room was the size of three dragons, mostly empty, and smelling of acid – a sure sign that Saboraak was not the first dragon to occupy this area. Tack hung on the wall beside the entrance – dragon saddles, bridles, and saddlebags. I almost pumped a fist in excitement.
Dragon Chameleon: Episodes 1-4 Page 21