“Or, you know, and this is really just me thinking out loud,” I said, as I tried to move my toes. I couldn’t feel any of them anymore and I was worried about Bataar passed out along the wall. “You could try not killing thousands of innocents to protect your way of life.”
“They would die anyway. I’m just finding the best path.”
“The best path for you, you mean, right? Because it isn’t the best path for the mother and her four kids that I saved from death by golem in Estabis,” I said my fury filling me so that I hardly noticed how my teeth chattered and my lips had trouble forming words as I spoke. “It isn’t the best path for Woelran where the people were captured and their souls drained into the bodies of golems. It isn’t the best path for Ko’Torenth. Do they know that you’ve stolen their wealth for this campaign, leaving them defenseless? It isn’t the best path for the dragons – who were meant to soar free as no one’s slaves. And actually, now that I think about it, it really isn’t the best path for you, Ambrosia. Because with every decision you make that’s for you instead of someone else, where you worry about what is owed to you and what your future will be – for every decision like that you are curling inward, loop by loop, turn by turn, getting smaller and smaller until soon there will be nothing left of you. And all this power and all your intellect will have turned out to be nothing but a trap that you ran into at full speed.”
She hit me in the mouth so hard that blood spattered across the stones.
“Enough.” Her tone was quiet – menacing. I hadn’t expected her to get her hands dirty.
I coughed. But I wasn’t done.
“The harder you fight, the more trapped you’ll be. The stupidest, least magical, mud grubbing farmer is a bigger person than you are now. Imagine how much further you’ll decrease before this is done.”
She was quivering with anger, as she pulled in a ragged breath.
“I have your dragon. And her friends. And we’ll be taking her soul and putting it into a thing of metal. In the next few hours, you’ll be thinking your last thoughts before you die, too.”
I should have been panicked or afraid. But I wasn’t. I was furious.
“But at least they’ll be hours that I lived clean and free. Hours I haven’t robbed from someone else,” I said. “Every minute you still have left, you stole from someone who deserved it more.”
She leaned in close. “Now, you’ve gone too far, Tor. And I’m done playing with you.”
She stormed away, her movements so big and bold that her fur cloak swirled behind her as she stalked through the doorway and back to where she’d come.
And I knew that I really had gone too far, because Bataar was here with me, and Saboraak was her captive. And I couldn’t save either of them now that I’d infuriated the very person who I should have charmed into letting them go. I bit the inside of my lip until the blood mixed with the blood already flowing from my injured cheek and I thought about all the regrets I’d be bringing with me to the other side.
Chapter Eleven
“Principles are great until you hang yourself with them,” my mimic said, playing with the black scarf around his neck. “Has anyone ever told you that you tend to sabotage your own future?”
“Has anyone ever told you that you look terrible in black?” I asked.
“I look great in black.”
“Go make yourself useful,” I commanded.
“And how would I do that? You know I’m bound to you. I can’t go where you don’t go or do what you don’t do.”
“You can in there,” I said, nodding to the doorway. “Why don’t you slip into there and see if you can find us some help.”
He shrugged. “I’m surprised that you trust me with this. You know that when you die, I might be the soul that lives on. How does that make you feel?”
“About the same. I was already regretting my life.”
“Ha! Well, don’t say I didn’t warn you. After all, I might be the real Tor.”
He sauntered through the doorway as I leaned against the pole I was lashed to, letting my blood drip, drip, drip onto the ground while my mind swirled ineffectively in a circle. I needed to get free to save my friends. But I’d blown my only shot. And now I was destined to stay here and freeze until I was killed.
I was too cold to think about that. I was so cold that I needed to get free. So I could save my friends. But I’d lost that chance. I was so cold.
I looped round and round as the sun crept across the sky like a beetle across a frozen pond.
I must have lost consciousness or fallen asleep at some point because I woke to Bataar’s voice.
“Tor?”
“Bataar,” I breathed.
“I’m sorry.”
“For what?” my voice croaked like a dying toad. I shook myself, pulling my forehead from where it rested against the pole. I was so tired. I was so tired that I just wanted to go back to sleep. I couldn’t feel my feet or my fingers anymore.
“I should have left for help like you asked.”
“I shouldn’t have let you stay with me,” I replied.
“You didn’t. I kept disobeying you.”
“Ah, but I liked it. I’m not really a solo kind of guy. I like having people around,” I said. I hadn’t realized until right now how true that was. I even missed the mimic. If I was going to die, then I wanted everyone to be around when it happened. Even the worst parts of who I was. “Do you think he’s real or me?”
“Who is real?” Bataar asked, his words slurred by frozen lips.
“The shadow-self.”
“If you were ruled by your shadow-self we wouldn’t be in this mess. You’d be ruling Ko’Torenth or something. At least you’d be ruling Kav’ai. The deserts are so lovely and warm at this time of year ...”
His words faded off.
“You make it sound like he’d be way better at life than I am,” I muttered, irritated.
“Evil often thrives. Selfishness is gain for a time. Heartlessness can be profitable.”
He was still sitting, slumped against the wall, his head leaning against it, his words tired.
“You should probably stand,” I said. “The less of you to touch the ground, the less the rock can suck the warmth from you.”
“Too late,” he said with a ghost of a smile. He tapped a leg. “They don’t work anymore.”
Despair washed through me. Usually, that felt cold, but right now, everything was cold. The life was slowly being frozen out of me, as if I was being solidified in time as the Tor of this moment. And I had so many more lessons to learn. I felt like I’d barely begun to grow and learn, like there was so much more for me to do and to be. I’d hardly even started.
“I’m glad to have had the chance to fight beside you,” Bataar said, his face a picture of nobility. “Tell Zin that I love her.”
This was the part where I was supposed to say something inspiring like ‘Tell her yourself’ and then I’d shake off the chains that held me and free him, too.
Instead, I coughed.
“How do you expect me to do that? You know I’m dying right here with you, right?”
He grunted.
I would have found some way to comfort him eventually ... probably. But at that moment, the mimic burst back through the doorway, another man with him. The mimic had a grip on the bewildered man’s coat and was shoving him forward.
“I swear, I leave for a few minutes and everyone wants to give up and die,” the mimic said, rolling his eyes. He shoved the man toward me. He was about my height but thirty years older than me and his iron-gray hair was thinning.
“You’re ... you’re him,” he stammered.
“The Ko’Torenth Beauty Contest Winner? Yeah, that’s me,” I said wryly.
“The man who stopped me from killing that fellow with the spear.”
I tried to raise my eyebrows, but my face was too stiff.
“When I was a golem,” he said, as if that explained things. “Or at least, when I was in one. Y
ou froze it. And then I remember singing.”
“There may have been singing,” I agreed reluctantly. “Who are you and can you untie us?”
“He can’t untie you any more than I can,” my mimic said, rolling his eyes. “Are you losing your mind as well as your life, or are you always this idiotic? He’s a spirit. I grabbed him from that World of Legends that you built. This is Ty’nea. He used to live here in Ko’Loska – that’s the city under us right now. You really have been out of things. I could have sworn that guard who checked on you two a few hours ago mentioned it.”
“Guard?”
The mimic sighed. “Look, just stay alive for a bit longer and Ty’nea will do us a little favor and go find his friends. After that, he can go back to the World of Legends, right Ty’nea?”
“T – they won’t believe it’s me. They’ll think I’m a ghost!”
“Which you are,” the mimic said dryly. “So, hurry it up. Who knows what will happen if you try to stick around too long?” The ghostly Ty’nea ran across the parapet, disappearing from sight around the edge of the parapet. “The dead! I’m telling you, they are harder to train than cats. Don’t die on me, Tor. I can’t handle two of you right now.”
“I’ll do my best,” I replied, not knowing why I bothered. None of this could be real. I’d heard about people seeing visions of things before they died. I’d heard about them seeing the dead and talking to them. That was all this was. I was just dying and having weird visions while it happened. By the time Ambrosia returned, there would be no soul left to suck out of me.
There was a thunk as Bataar fell to the ground, unconscious again. I felt a ghost of sadness. Bataar was a good man. And he’d saved me more than once. Thank goodness I wouldn’t have to tell Zin. That was one upside to the fact that I was dying.
I yawned.
I was so sleepy.
If I just shut my eyes for a moment.
Just for a moment.
Chapter Twelve
I woke to hands shaking me.
“I thought I told you not to die,” my mimic said.
If he was shaking me, he could just go ahead and stop. I wanted to sleep.
“If you keep sleeping you will freeze to death.”
I wasn’t going to freeze to death. Ambrosia was going to come and suck my soul out.
“Something must have delayed her. You’re both going to die before she gets back.”
Then couldn’t I just die in peace? Was that too much to ask?
“I was wrong. The dead aren’t the irritating ones. It’s the living, hands down. I’m trying to keep you alive, you fool. Now, OPEN THOSE EYES!”
My eyes opened and I thought I grunted but it might have just been in my mind. Hands were pulling the leather thongs from my wrists and lifting me up.
“Shhh! We only have a few minutes before the guards come back. Grab his feet!”
There were so many half-whispered voices that I couldn’t tell one from the next.
“He’s not helping at all!”
“I think he’s frozen solid.”
“Can we even save them if they’re frozen solid? You said that we needed them – that they were our chance. But there isn’t a chance if they’re dead!”
“Would you be quiet already? Shush!”
One of my arms was dragging on the ground. I tried to pull it up, but it didn’t move. Skies and Stars! I was in trouble now! I tried to catch a glimpse of Bataar, but I couldn’t see him from where I was. I hoped he’d survived. He was in worse shape than me before.
“You should be soooo glad that you were given me,” my mimic said. “Otherwise, we’d be in the World of Legends right now and I can tell you this – I would be running things there. It suits me perfectly.”
I ignored him. Yes, he’d been helpful, but that didn’t mean that he’d be running anything – except maybe his mouth.
Someone was tying something around me – a rope? Why had they bothered to untie me if they were just going to tie me up again? But then I was being lifted, and to my horror, I was balanced on the top of the wall.
“Ungh,” I managed to say, not at all expressing my terror at balancing over a precarious drop. I could barely make out the details of the city below.
“Three, two, one, and heave!”
Something pushed me from behind. My breath stuck in my throat, my heart thudding irregularly. And then the ropes around me jerked and I bounced against them before hitting the end of the rope again. I swung toward the rockface like a pendulum, gritting my teeth for the impact.
To my surprise, it didn’t come. Instead, hands reached out from the wall – really? – and grabbed me.
No. It wasn’t the wall. It was a door in the wall and a group of young people in fur cowls and warm coats – did they have any extras? – grabbed me and pulled me into the doorway. Hands pulled the ropes from me and then someone was tossing them back outside the door.
My head was whirling as I tried to make sense of what I could see.
“Get him below so that Gran Ti’wilren can warm him up,” someone said and then I was carried roughly to a cart that looked like it might be used for mining. It was on rails. But the sides of the cart were too steep and once I was inside, I could see nothing but the rock above and the occasional light as I was shuttled down the tracks.
Voices echoed around me, none distinct enough to catch the words and before I knew it, I was being unloaded again and carried into a wide circular stone room with windows cut into the rock. A roaring fire in the center of the room vented up into a stone chimney. There were furs spread by the fire and I was dumped onto one of them to lie next to the fire.
I wasn’t complaining. Being dragged and dropped and thrown around like a sack of potatoes had been ... well, it wasn’t an experience I wanted to repeat ... but lying next to a warm fire? Now that was the thing! I could just lie here all day.
And then the pain began.
Chapter Thirteen
“Don’t fight it. You can’t stop it and you might bite your tongue,” the words were slow but clear.
Pain rippled through me as every muscle in my body cramped up.
“We should really put you in a tub of water and thaw you out that way, but I don’t have the tub or the water here.”
An old woman crouched down beside him, her hair woven into a long, gnarled rope and her coat a bright red wool. The furs around her collar and hood were striped black and white so that she looked more like a wildcat about to pounce on me than a woman.
“I’ll have these young ones rub goose grease bitters on you. It will help the muscles as they thaw.”
And then she was gone again and there were younger hands stripping clothing off of me and rubbing something stinky on my skin.
“Stop fighting it,” a girl’s voice said.
“He’s cold,” another person replied. “We can lay warm cloths on him soon, but not until he’s thawed enough that it won’t damage the flesh.”
Damage the flesh?
“Cloths,” I murmured. “Warm cloths.”
Maybe saying the words would prompt them to hurry.
“Isn’t he a pretty one?” I heard someone saying. “I could take him for a husband.”
I smiled. See? I still had the power to charm the ladies even when I was half-frozen.
“I think he looks Kav’ai” one of the other voices said. Oh. They were talking about Bataar. My smile faded.
“Married,” I muttered.
“It’s okay,” the girl tending me said. “Your wife won’t mind us saving your lives. Even if you are married. Besides, it’s the other one that Katsa is swooning over. He’s awfully good-looking.”
I would have ground my teeth if the old woman hadn’t warned me about that.
Eventually, there were hot cloths and hot tea and fresh – warm! – clothing and then I was being carefully helped to totter over to a chair set in a ring with about twenty other chairs. My feet were still frozen and stiff. I needed help to even move.
“Bataar?” I asked weakly. “Will he live?”
“He’ll live,” the old woman said from her chair. “He might not stay unmarried, though.”
“He’s already married,” I said and felt exhausted just by those words. Even speaking took out everything I had.
“Good,” one of the young men in the circle said. “Then my sister can stop fawning over him and get back to work.”
The old woman laughed. “Enjoy your youth, To’chris and stop fussing about your sister enjoying hers. It passes too quickly. Trust me.”
“Who are you?” I asked. Someone offered me a mug of broth. I took it, frowning when I had to be helped to bring it to my lips. This weakness was going to be a problem. Saboraak was in trouble, the golem army was about to lay siege to Questan, and I was stuck with limbs that wouldn’t move.
“We’re the Ko’Loska chapter of the Ancient Order of Balance,” one of the young men said. There were probably about thirty young men and women in the circle of chairs and a few more tending to Bataar. None of them looked older than I was. Except for the old woman, of course. “Gran Ti’wilren leads us.”
I looked to Gran Ti’wilren. “Why is everyone else so young?”
She clicked her tongue, scolding me. “You’re hardly showing wrinkles yourself, old man.”
I shook my head. I knew I was too young. That didn’t mean that they weren’t too young, too. It worried me that everyone here was as young as I was. I knew how much I needed more experience and tempering.
Dragon Chameleon: Episodes 9-12 Page 17