“And Corentine, don’t forget to bring your brother. The whole family, all together again. One. Last. Time.”
The laughter swelled briefly before being sucked away into the void of the darkening skies above. The sun had slipped low on the horizon, and Coren stumbled to her knees as the magic dissipated from her body, draining everything she had with it.
She was too weak to walk, and she rolled to her back. Her remaining guard rushed toward her, as soon as he regained control over his feet.
“Did you hear any of that?” she whispered to the guard. The man nodded, eyes wide. “Get me to Sy and Resh,” she said, and he lifted her in his huge arms.
Her head lolled back as the guard carried her straight across the garden and down the many stairs and halls. He laid her gently on her bed and yelled for a servant. The girl gasped as she came running and then scampered to find a cool cloth for Coren’s forehead, water for her throat, and a blanket for her legs.
Coren waved her away, but the girl paid no attention. Now that she was safe and mostly in control of her body again, her thoughts swirled between her dead guard, her depleted magic and energy, and all the horrible new information Mara had given up.
Coren’s perception of the world had been colored a little darker today.
Not only did she share blood with the Restless King, but she shared it with Queen Mara, who was apparently her great-aunt. Her incredibly evil great-aunt, twin to her very two-faced grandmother.
And since Lorental hadn’t been able to read the Sulit journal, but Mara had, Coren suspected she was, in her blood, quite a bit more like the former Queen than she wanted to admit.
And would Jyesh be able to read the spells inside? Coren blanched at the thought.
Her eyes dropped closed in exhaustion and despair. Mara had outsmarted her again, beaten her again. She would find Penna and Kosh before Coren could ever reach them. She would destroy what was left of Coren’s family, all in the name of revenge and power.
The door banged open, and Sy and Resh hurried in.
She held up a hand to stop their questions. “I have a story to tell,” she said, repeating Mara’s words.
Chapter 26
NIK HAD QUICKLY GROWN used to being alone again, and many parts of his mind were enjoying the solitary days climbing the mountains.
There had been a few times in his life when he’d escaped his various tormentors. Those days of freedom had been among his happiest, and he relished the feeling now. He missed the women from the island, though, and his regret for leaving them stretched as far as the icy blue sky. He felt as though he’d lost yet another friend in Lorenya.
She would never agree to that, of course. She was far too forgiving. Nik had lost her instead because he could never forgive himself for what he’d done to that child. And losing her felt like taking one step farther from Sy and his other friends.
At least here, the only living beings were prospects for food instead of friends, and Nik felt little sadness in trapping what meat he could find.
The frozen mountains challenged his survival and his will to beat the darkness. He felt like each day he opened his eyes and walked deeper into their massive cliffs, he’d earned the right to do so. The bite of the wind was more immediately ferocious than the gnawing of his memories, and when darkness drew in for the night, he was too exhausted to dream.
All these advantages dissipated like smoke, though, the morning the echoing voice entered his mind.
It grew in whispers inside his head, a shiver creeping across his back even when the fire was warm. At first, Nik wasn’t even sure it was a voice. It could just be the odd sounds of the wind on the craggy rock or the cry of a distant bird.
But as he hiked higher and deeper into the heart of the mountain range, he began to notice words forming in his mind - words he was certain he hadn’t thought. Words in a language he didn’t even understand.
And then there was the heat itching beneath his skin with each pulse of that voice.
Nik raised his forearm to his head and wiped away impossible beads of sweat. He was as high as the clouds on an ice-sheathed mountain on autumn’s edge, and he was sweating.
Finally, he paused his climb. Setting down his heavy pack, he withdrew one of his precious flasks of lemondrine tonic. He’d been rationing the drink, and it was possible he was just depleted beyond reason.
But as he sipped, the energy swirling into his veins only amplified the voice. He could discern definite phrases now, and the fact that they were a foreign language pushed him closer to the belief that he wasn’t alone on this mountain. Fear prickled across his scalp.
Something was with him in the snow and ice.
Nik capped the tonic and replaced it in his bag, scanning carefully around him. There was nothing but white snow, glistening, pale blue ice, and rock.
And the voice, clearer and more insistent every minute.
“What are you?” he called, and the noise in his head settled, like the buzz of a guitar string fading to stillness. His spoken words scattered swiftly on the wind, leaving him feeling foolish. He’d spent time alone before without going crazy.
By the Magi, he didn’t intend to start now.
His skin flared again with heat, and the voice seared back into his brain as if a multitude of whispered voices competed to be heard. “Are you Shadow?” he called into the thickening white mist around him.
The heat pulsed like anger. Or laughter, he mused, as the voices somehow tugged a smile to his lips. The heat wasn’t comfortable, but neither did it cause pain.
Nik shrugged back into the straps of his pack and began to walk again, choosing his steps with care. He realized after several minutes that he wasn’t just avoiding the slippery pitfalls of hiking a frozen mountain. He was adjusting his path as the voice and heat showed approval or disapproval. It carried an odd compulsion with it, and Nik found himself wanting to follow the voice, even as he recognized the danger.
What magic was he following, and why? Nik yelled the question again and again in his mind, saving his breath for the steep climb. Finally, an answer came. A word he could understand formed itself fully in his brain, and he stumbled against the mountain, grateful for the ice at his back.
Draken.
Impossible. Still, the word repeated, a name for something too ancient for this world blurring Nik’s horizon of truth.
Draken!
The name was insistent in his mind, as unrelenting as the numbing wind swirling around him. If this were real...
“I want to see you,” Nik called to the air, before losing his nerve.
He really was going crazy. Who would want to see a Draken, even if such a thing might still exist?
The winds died as he scanned the sky above him, its white-gray opacity taunting him with blank, empty canvas. Nothing moved, not even a stray bird or a flake of snow. He leaned fully against the mountainside behind him, resting his skull on the icy rock. Even his mind was still and quiet again, and Nik began to wonder if he’d dreamed it all.
Draken were MagiCreatures that had been extinct for millennia. They were nothing more than a half-forgotten fairy tale.
Catching his breath and his nerve, Nik pushed away from the rock face and resumed his climb. He reached a natural plateau between two peaks, and though the ground still sloped upward, he could see he wouldn’t need his climbing hooks for a while.
Perhaps he would find a nice cave or flat spot to shift his bag into a tent for the night. He just needed to rest.
The path narrowed as he turned a corner, though, and soon ice began to enclose him on either side, pushing in on him until it should have been impossible to pass through. But just as Nik looked behind him, contemplating backtracking, the voice began its whispering again.
More words than Draken filled his mind and many more voices. There was something here if only Nik could get past these walls of ice.
“If you want me, show me the way,” he cried into the tranquil atmosphere. He wondered uneasily i
f he were being led into a trap. Perhaps no one knew of Drakens now because everyone who walked this path was dead. Eaten, or whatever such a creature might do with a human. At this point, he didn’t know if he could resist the urge to see.
He contemplated the tone of the voices. They didn’t raise his survival instincts any more so much as his curiosity. So, he pressed forward, rounding a curve and coming upon what seemed to be a solid dead end.
The ice before him flashed with a dark shadow then, and Nik realized that although it looked like an impasse, there must be something on the other side.
He stared up at the blank sheet of ice blocking his way, noticing how smooth it was, perfectly placed to hide what was left of the path. Its slick bluish white surface shone in the waning sunlight. Maybe it was more of a door than a wall. But how to open it with no handle or hinges?
Anyone but a shifter would have turned back, giving up or vowing to find another way.
But Nik felt a certainty in his actions as he threw his senses out to test the sources of the ice. Yes, it was thick, but something pulsed just beyond its solid barrier. Warmth flooded beneath his skin again, energizing his magic. Choosing a place in the center where the path should continue, Nik shifted away enough of the ice to create a narrow tunnel. He slipped inside, shifting the ice as he went.
The air grew inexplicably warmer as he moved farther inside the tunnel. The shifted ice piled behind him, enclosing him gradually, until Nik realized he could become trapped inside if he didn’t conserve his energy.
He leaned against a wall of pure ice and blinked around, resting for a moment, sipping more of his lemondrine. He’d come deep enough that everything should be black, but instead, the ice continued to glow blue and white and silver. The sun was above him somewhere, and the frozen walls were pure enough that even this deep, the afternoon light surrounded him.
Nik closed his eyes, visualizing a swirling tornado of thought in his mind. What was he doing? He should be hunting for Sy or helping the women on Weshen Isle, or at least completing his meditative journey of healing.
The tornado in his mind tilted, and Nik imagined he was staring into the blank, calm center of it. He took a deep breath, and the heat in his lungs cooled with the chilled air. As he watched the image in his mind, the center opened like an eyelid, and he found an enormous eye watching him, taking in his confusion and despair and compelling him to be still as it examined his very soul.
Instinctively, Nik knew it was the eye of an ancient being. A Draken watching him. And like the lure of a beautiful, enchanted jewel, Nik could not look away.
The eye stared unblinking into his very soul, and Nik felt his energy pulse with renewal, stronger than any lemondrine had ever been. No matter what fate awaited him beyond this ice, he was ready to meet it.
He began shifting the ice away faster than ever, bent on reaching the end of this path or wall or door. A force stronger than his own will pulled him forward until finally he burst through the last sheet of ice and stumbled out onto bright green grass, landing with his fingers pushed into loamy soil.
Grass? Fresh earth? These were impossible this high in the mountains, with pure rock and pristine ice shooting up all sides of the meadow he was in.
Nik blinked and shook his head in shock.
The mountains still towered above, scraping at the same white-gray of the atmosphere.
Yet, as he pushed himself up, his boots sunk into the springy grass, and he saw tiny flowers of red and orange and yellow dotting the field before him like multi-colored stars in a brilliant green sky.
It was like a child’s painting, where everything was beautiful, but nothing made sense.
The field around him was quiet and protected on all sides by towering cliffs. There was no wind or any creak of ice. But it was the quiet of someone holding their breath. There were things to discover here. Secrets to learn. Magic.
“Hello?” Nik called, and the air seemed to vibrate with warm laughter, though there was still no sound.
Draken, his mind whispered.
Nik relented, giving in to the last shred of his sanity with impatience. “Draken, please come forth,” he called, feeling like a fool.
The silence returned, more still than ever, and Nik had nearly decided to turn and leave this odd place that shouldn’t exist when the crack of bones sounded from a far corner.
The massive, clawed foot emerged first, stepping from a rift in the mountain. Nik gulped at the size. Just one claw could slice him in two. He stumbled backward as a wave of magic nuzzled him. Guessing it was a sort of test, he relaxed into the sensation, like allowing a strange animal to sniff his hand before petting it.
Soon, the air surged with energy, and Nik again felt as though silent laughter were shaking the sources around him.
The foot before him lengthened into a muscular, leathery leg, its color a red so dark it was nearly black. The creature’s head swung into vision, and Nik dropped to his knees, the muscles in his own body no longer able to support his wonder.
“You exist,” he breathed, taking in the scaled, horned head, and the great, dark, wise eyes, just like the one he’d seen in his mind, the calm at the center of his storm.
The Draken came fully into the field, and Nik marveled at its beauty, how its coloring changed from deep, blackened red at its claws and the bottom of its belly, growing hotter and brighter around his middle, and ending in vibrant, amber and lemondrine streaked wings
This was a fire Draken, he decided, recalling the colorful illustrations he’d once seen in a children’s fairy-tale book. The pictures had no hope of doing this creature justice. And the size... Nik could probably walk beneath its belly without ducking.
The head before him seemed to nod, and Nik realized the Draken was scanning his thoughts. When he concentrated on the interior of his mind the way he did with sources, he could still see that eye in his mind. As he stared into it, he felt the Draken’s presence more clearly than before.
Nik was simultaneously aware of both realms, the green field hidden between the mountains, and the calm eye watching in his mind.
“How long?” he asked, not even sure what he wanted to know.
The Draken before him nodded as if it understood. His narrow mouth never moved, but Nik heard the words plainly. We have always been here and always will be. Before man. During. After.
“But why choose now to reveal yourselves? And why to me?” These were the questions Nik truly wanted answered. If the Draken were friendly, why wouldn’t they have helped the Weshen before? They could have changed so much over the decades.
Our concern is not always with man. We lived here before the Father and Mother and their Twins placed your kind here, and our loyalty is to them alone. Not to you.
Nik struggled to make sense of the Draken’s words. Though his mind seemed to be insisting on an answer, it was not something he had ever heard, and so he doubted.
Your people’s beliefs do not set you free, as you believe. Instead, they harness you like slaves. The great gods, who were once one family of power, have been split among the people. By the people. Now, the gods and men alike are weakened and vulnerable to the darkness.
“You mean the Sulit Mother,” Nik realized. “And the Riatan god called FatherSun.”
Yes, the Draken confirmed. Only Weshen remembers the Twins. None of you remember the truth.
“That they are family? But how is that possible?”
You ask the wrong questions, Weshen, the Draken snorted, pawing impatiently at the grass. Possible means nothing. Look around you.
Nik did, and he quickly realized what the Draken meant. He was on a mountaintop oasis of summer. He’d shed his heavy cloak several minutes ago, and still, his skin was warm from the sun.
And watching him sagely was a creature everyone thought extinct, spilling secrets directly into Nik’s mind.
Possible had been redefined; its meaning was crushed beneath the weight of reality.
“So, the gods we worship a
re separate parts of a great family. Why are they not together?”
Family fights.
“But family also forgives,” Nik returned, thinking of Sy and his brother, of Coren’s recovered father.
The Draken nodded, and Nik felt the warm pulse of magic spread over him, deliciously soothing his tired muscles.
The love of family is the most powerful magic the world could ever know.
“Yet I have no family,” Nik said, bitterness spilling from his heart and countering the healing magic. “How is it my power is so strong?”
Oh, Weshen, the Draken sighed. The eye in Nik’s mind seemed to droop in sadness. Never despair. Your family is not whose blood flows in your veins, but rather whom you allow to hold your heart. You should know as much.
Nik knew the MagiCreature spoke the truth. Sy held his heart. Sy was his family, and Coren, and Lorenya.
No matter whose cruelty had raised him, he could still choose to heal himself, and he could still choose who was allowed to hold his heart.
“What do you need from me?” Nik asked. There must be more.
The family of gods is also separate because the people of the lands have made them so. The people need to come together, so that the gods may join as well.
“Riata? Join with Weshen and Sulit?” Nik couldn’t keep the bark of laughter down.
Already you forget your lesson on possible, the Draken chided. Even as you stand here and disbelieve, your friends work for the same.
“My friends? You know where they are?” Nik stepped too close in his eagerness, and the Draken narrowed his eyes and drew himself to full height. Nik shrank back, though he didn’t feel fear, only respect.
We know all that goes on in the lands. Your friends are now in StarsHelm, where the girl has taken the throne.
Nik reeled. Coren on the throne of Riata? Surely, he was dreaming this entire meeting. Maybe he was even half-dead, frozen somewhere in the NeverCross Mountains and hallucinating.
Weshen boy, calm yourself. All will be revealed in time. You will see your friends again, soon. But not until you see what we brought you here to see.
Dream of Darkness and Dominion Page 26