The Hearts of Dragons

by Josh VanBrakle

  Iren knew Melwar was right. Last year, Rondel had used the same strategy against Amroth. The Lodian king had countered by using magic without moving, but in the end, Rondel had still won.

  Only one living person had defeated Rondel: Hana. Yet Melwar had insisted that Iren—not Hana—fight Rondel. At first Iren had thought Melwar made that decision to give him a chance for revenge, but now he realized that wasn’t the case. Hana must have seen both Rondel and Minawë on her scouting mission. If Hana fought Rondel, then Iren would have had to fight Minawë. Even if she was Rondel’s daughter, Iren couldn’t bring himself to attack her.

  Iren wondered whether Minawë or Hana would win their fight. He’d gone three-quarters of the way around the circle, so his back was to them. Their battle sounded more exciting than his and Rondel’s. The area shook every few seconds as plants and rocks clashed.

  A particularly nasty explosion sent dust and shrapnel flying past Iren. Rondel ducked and shielded her eyes from the storm.

  Iren saw his opportunity. He used magic to accelerate himself and raced toward Rondel, stabbing the Muryozaki at her chest.

  He thought he had connected, but then Rondel’s body blurred and disappeared. With a curse, Iren swiveled his head around to look for her. Now that he had moved, Rondel’s strategy would begin.

  A rush of air moving toward him caught his attention. Iren leapt aside as the Liryometa thrust through the space where his head had been not a second earlier. He swore again. The strike proved what he had hoped might not be true. Rondel wasn’t holding back. She intended to kill him, just as he intended to kill her.

  Before Iren could think of a counter, Rondel disappeared again. Unwilling to stand still and wait to be attacked, Iren took off at random.

  He ran flat out. As he did, his eyes swept the battlefield in search of Rondel. The effort was futile. Without Lightning Sight, he couldn’t track her rapid movements.

  Rondel appeared in front of him. Iren barely managed to slow down enough to avoid impaling himself on her blade. He swung the Muryozaki in a horizontal arc, but Rondel blocked it. The vibration of the clashing weapons rippled through Iren’s arms.

  Flicking her wrist, Rondel turned Iren’s katana and stabbed at his gut. He backpedaled, but he couldn’t get away. Rondel’s dagger pierced him. A jolt of lightning went with the blow and launched Iren backward.

  When he skidded to a stop, he couldn’t move. Iren knew what Rondel had done. She had used a similar technique last year to paralyze him, though she hadn’t stabbed him that time. The attack had ended that match. Had Rondel wanted to kill him back then, she would have had plenty of time to do so.

  Unfortunately for Rondel, Iren had improved since that training match. He had used Divinion’s magic to heal himself while he flew through the air. Before Rondel could reach him to deliver the killing blow, Iren was back on his feet and uninjured.

  Rather than rejoin the fight, though, Iren took advantage of the distance between him and Rondel to retreat. He didn’t intend to escape; he knew he couldn’t. He just needed a few seconds to think.

  Rondel wasn’t any faster than he was. They should be fighting evenly, but they weren’t. Rondel was dominating.

  Her advantage came down to Lightning Sight. With it, Rondel could track Iren no matter how quickly he moved. By contrast, Iren could barely see the old hag.

  But his eyes weren’t the problem. They were capable of keeping up with her. The problem was Iren himself. He couldn’t interpret what his eyes saw fast enough to judge which way to block, let alone to counter.

  Then like the igniting of a flame on a moonless night, the answer shone in Iren’s thoughts. He kept on running, but he forced himself to calm down. His breathing slowed. His muscles relaxed even as they worked at full power. His mind went blank, and he settled into the technique Melwar had forced him to master: No Mind.

  The blurring of Iren’s surroundings stopped. When his brain no longer had to worry about interpreting what it saw, his eyes were free to convey every detail. Only his instinctual mind could react to those details, but that was all he needed to win.

  No longer in control of his body, Iren watched as he spun around to face Rondel. She was mere feet behind him, but he was ready for her attack.

  She must not have realized his new state, because she tried to run around him and stab him in the back. Iren tracked her, and when she attacked, he blocked effortlessly.

  The unexpected maneuver caught Rondel unprepared. Iren saw his chance. He spun his blade off Rondel’s and flicked it up.

  The satisfying gush of red from Rondel’s side told Iren the blow had connected. It wasn’t enough to defeat her, but now Rondel would feel shaken. She had believed Iren couldn’t keep up with her, but he’d proven her wrong.

  Rondel’s grim expression deepened into a frustrated scowl. She launched a blistering assault, her dagger a flash of light as it danced. Iren blocked each strike as he waited for an opening. It wouldn’t take long. He and Rondel had equal speeds, but Iren had greater reserves of magic. Eventually Rondel would have to slow down or risk her dragon overwhelming her. When that happened, she would die.

  The hag’s face contorted with panic, and Iren knew he would win. Rondel made her mistake. Her foot caught on a stone. The momentary distraction halted her strikes and left her vulnerable on her left side. Iren disarmed her and sent the Liryometa flying.

  In his No Mind state, Iren reacted at once to Rondel’s exposed form. His katana swept toward her neck. The battle was over.

  Inches away from contact, the impossible happened. Rondel, still off-balance, ducked Iren’s blow. The Muryozaki cut empty air.

  The attack had left Iren wide open. Rondel looked up at him with a cold smile. Her hands glowed blue. She reached up and put both of them on Iren’s chest.

  The shock ripped through him as strongly as the pain from breaking his magical barrier. Iren screamed, and the agony ripped him out of No Mind. He went limp. The Muryozaki fell to the ground, and a moment later Iren collapsed as well. Smoke rose from his body.

  Rondel kicked away the Muryozaki. She crouched in front of Iren, and he had an odd feeling of nostalgia. The hag had done the same thing after defeating him last year in Ziorsecth.

  “You used No Mind,” she said. “Melwar must have taught you that.”

  Iren couldn’t answer, so Rondel continued, “Do you think I’m that inexperienced? I know all about No Mind, including its flaw. Doing away with conscious thought isn’t all Melwar claims it to be. True, it will improve your reaction time, but without higher thought, you can’t plan beyond the next move. You can’t analyze, so you misread signals. You saw my panicked expression, so you assumed I panicked. Your instinctual brain couldn’t fathom that I might fake such an expression. The same is true of my stance. I didn’t trip on that rock, and I was never off-balance. I made it look that way to trick you. I even let you disarm me. I planned it all in advance, knowing No Mind would fall for it.”

  Iren tried to move, to speak, to spit at her, to do anything at all, but he couldn’t. He could hardly breathe.

  “I have to admit I’m impressed,” Rondel prattled on. “You’ve improved a lot. I put all the magic I could manage into that strike, and it still didn’t kill you. I’d hoped that it would. It would have been cleaner.”

  Her patronizing incensed Iren. If Rondel wanted to kill him, she should shut up and get on with it.

  Rondel seemed to read Iren’s thoughts. “Well,” she said, “I guess I have to make a messy end of it.”

  She retrieved her fallen rondel and returned to Iren. Her diminutive frame towered over him. As the blade descended, Iren promised himself he wouldn’t give her the satisfaction of another scream.

  CHAPTER FORTY-SIX

  Shattered

  Using the air current surrounding him, Balear charged, moving faster than he ever had before. As he neared the Fubuki, he leapt into the air. The wind carried him to twice the Fubuki’s height. He crashed down and swung his sword a
t the monster’s head.

  The Fubuki looked startled for a second, but it recovered. It raised its hammer to block Balear’s strike. The weapons clashed. Balear felt the hammer give.

  His opponent must have felt it too, because the monster stepped sideways and out of the path of Balear’s sword. It then let its hammer drop, causing Balear to fall to the ground.

  The spear end of the Fubuki’s weapon whirled toward Balear, but the beast didn’t get a chance to attack. As the Auryozaki struck the earth, it threw up a cloud of snow, dirt, and rock that repelled the Ice Dragon Knight.

  Sensing an opening, Balear lunged. The Fubuki roared in frustration and retreated. As it did, it created a wall of ice between it and Balear. The Auryozaki pierced the barrier and splintered it into thousands of pieces. The resistance the wall provided, though, slowed Balear’s attack enough for the Fubuki to get out of range.

  Balear charged again, but then he realized his predicament. He aborted his attack and leapt back as a rain of ice shards from the destroyed wall pierced the spot where he’d been standing. Other shards careened in midair and launched themselves at him, controlled by the Fubuki’s magic. Balear was soon dodging for his life as hundreds of frozen blades aimed for him.

  Just as he was certain the shards would find him, magic welled in him again. Balear threw his hand out to one side and called up a small tornado around his body. The blades struck it and bounced off, flung in every direction by the vortex.

  The tornado took more energy than Balear had expected. When it cleared, he sank to one knee. His previous spells hadn’t felt draining on their own, but in total they had pushed his body to its limits. He could use magic, but not to the degree that someone of a magical race like the Maantecs could handle.

  “Stand up!” a voice roared. “Are you going to let him kill you? Keep fighting!”

  Balear glanced around. The Fubuki hadn’t spoken, and Balear couldn’t see anyone else.

  “I’m not out there,” the voice said. “I’m in you, and in your sword.”

  Realization dawned. “Ariok?”

  The dragon’s presence brushed against Balear’s mind. He recoiled, but Ariok said, “Wait! I want to help. When I saw you training in the forest, I knew you were preparing for an impossible task, yet you insisted on pursuing it. Your tenacity impressed me, so I sent you some memories of past Sky Dragon Knights.”

  “Then those weren’t dreams,” Balear said. “They were real events.”

  “That’s right,” Ariok replied. “I knew that if you had those experiences, your body would know how to release my magic even if your mind didn’t.”

  “But it’s not enough,” Balear said with a frown. “I can’t beat him, and if I can hear your voice, then that means I’ve used too much magic. You might take over my body, like Feng did to Amroth.”

  “No,” Ariok said, “I have no intention of raging like Feng. Some of us dragons have more honor than that. Let me take over the battle. Become a dragon, and we’ll defeat this monster together.”

  Balear considered a moment, but then he shook his head. “I can’t agree to that. I don’t know a lot about magic or dragons, but I know enough. I can’t let you take control. I’ll win this battle myself.”

  As Balear spoke, the Ice Dragon Knight attacked. Balear leapt back to avoid a hammer swing that would have pulverized him. He tried to step forward and counter, but he fell to his knees. Confused, he stood back up and attempted to take a step. His feet refused to leave the ground. When he looked down, he saw the reason. Ice encased his legs up to his knees.

  Balear struggled, but he couldn’t escape. The Fubuki waved its spear, and the ice spread to Balear’s waist. It then extended out and trapped his arm so that he couldn’t swing the Auryozaki. He swore. The monster had won.

  “You never could have killed me, human,” the Fubuki said as it approached. “When I fought you before, I had to use almost all my magic to maintain the cold. In the winter, with my magic free for combat, I could defeat even Hana.”

  Balear’s jaw dropped at the name. “How do you know Hana?”

  “That traitor gave me this Toryokiri,” the Fubuki snarled, holding up its hammer, “and then she tried to kill me!”

  “That can’t be true. Why would Hana give you that weapon?”

  The beast sprouted its cruel smile. “You think she’s your friend,” it said. Its voice dripped with mockery. “You think she helped you. But Hana serves Melwar, and he ordered her to give me this Ice Dragon Hammer last winter. They wanted my help to wipe out Lodia.”

  Balear swooned. It couldn’t be real. Hana . . . who and what was she? Balear had trusted her. No, it was more than that. He’d loved her. Yet all the while, she’d plotted Lodia’s destruction.

  He wouldn’t believe it. Hana wasn’t the one who had butchered everyone in Veliaf. The Fubuki was lying about her.

  It would suffer for that!

  “Ariok!” Balear called. “You want control? Take it. Take it and kill this bastard!”

  The Fubuki raised its spear to pierce Balear’s chest, but a gust of wind threw the monster to the ground. The wind pulled in tight around the ice that held Balear in place. Then, with a wrenching screech, the ice exploded.

  Balear screamed as Ariok clawed into his mind. His body stretched in every direction, and the pain made losing his arm seem like getting a splinter. His feet grew until they shredded their boots. His fingers and toes lengthened into sickle-shaped claws. Blue scales covered his skin as his body elongated into a serpentine shape. A pair of great, bat-like wings sprouted from his back.

  His face changed last of all. His nose and mouth morphed into a square muzzle, and two long whiskers grew out from his upper lip.

  Ariok roared in triumph. The dragon took flight, and as he did, he swept aside Balear’s consciousness. The Lodian had no control over his body’s movements, but he still had his senses. He could see the Fubuki far below him. He could feel the cold air rushing over his wings.

  And he could smell. Oh, he could smell. It was as if he had been blind and had regained his sight. He could smell the snow and the ice, and he could differentiate between the two. He could smell the carcasses of the slain Fubuki, and he could smell the fear in the one that remained.

  The Ice Dragon Knight fled. Balear could sense Ariok’s indignation. A human, a Maantec, or a Kodama would have had the honor to stand and fight. The Fubuki, by contrast, raced for Akaku Forest. It no doubt hoped for safety among the thick trees.

  Ariok shrieked. His voice shook the ground. The Fubuki stumbled, but it managed to keep going.

  Flying low, Ariok passed the Fubuki and landed in front of it. The Fubuki skidded to a halt. Its blood-red eyes searched frantically for a way to escape.

  The Sky Dragon didn’t give them time to find one. Ariok waved his front leg, which still clutched the Auryozaki. Balear heard a bizarre sucking noise, and then the Fubuki’s right arm snapped up. The beast strained to move it, but Ariok somehow held it in place.

  The sucking sound grew louder, and the Fubuki’s left arm snapped up too. Then its feet lifted off the ground. It floated in midair.

  Balear gasped in his mind as he realized what the dragon had done. Ariok had pushed all the air away from the spaces around the Fubuki’s wrists and ankles. The air wanted to return to those voids, and the resulting force gripped the Fubuki’s limbs as securely as the strongest chains.

  The voids wrenched on the Fubuki, and it howled in torment. Balear couldn’t forgive the monster for what it had done, but all the same, he pitied it. He knew what would happen next.

  With an easy motion of the Auryozaki, the Sky Dragon ordered the voids to separate. Balear wanted to close his eyes, to block his ears, but he no longer had control of his body. The Fubuki’s final scream as Ariok drew and quartered it would haunt Balear the rest of his life.

  “It’s done,” he managed to say inside his mind when the Fubuki’s shout faded. “Now return me to my body.”

  Ariok’s face
appeared in his consciousness. “Return you to your body? Why would I do that?”

  “Because you promised! You said you wanted to help me!”

  “And I did want to help you, so you, stupid human, would free me.”

  “You tricked me!” Balear yelled. “You didn’t want to protect Lodia. You wanted to escape. You lying, treacherous worm!”

  Ariok’s smile gleamed full of blade-like teeth. “So guess what happens now?” The dragon shifted his gaze from the Fubuki’s tattered remnants to the village of Veliaf.

  “No!” Balear cried, but Ariok thrust aside the man’s mind as effortlessly as a spring breeze tosses a leaf.

  With a single wingbeat the dragon was airborne. He surveyed the frozen village below him. Nothing moved within it. It was likely everyone was dead, but perhaps a few remained alive, clinging to life and hoping the ice would recede.

  The dragon hovered above Veliaf and pointed the Auryozaki down. Wind from behind him rushed into the village square. There it condensed into a sphere the height of a man.

  Terror gripped Balear. He’d seen a spell like this before. He recalled the flash as Iren’s Dragoon magic ignited and defeated Feng. It had been an amazing yet horrifying sight.

  The air continued to gather, and Balear could only watch. “Don’t,” he said. He repeated the word over and over until his mental self was crying.

  Ariok ignored him. The Sky Dragon swung his Ryokaiten to release the magic binding the wind sphere together. Freed of its constraints, the pressure released in a hideous blast.

  In less than a second, Veliaf disintegrated.

  Balear wailed as the frozen town’s shattered pieces settled over the countryside. “Why?” he moaned. “Why, Ariok?”

  “Because mortals imprisoned us. I’ll teach them to mock us and play at being gods.”

  The dragon faced south, and Balear’s fear increased. Ariok had Balear’s memories, as well as those of every knight who had ever bonded with him. He knew the locations of all the cities in Lodia, and likely many outside the country as well.