The tenderness of her touch, the love radiating through the blanket’s weave to Durren’s skin, penetrated to his heart. He looked from Mirianna to the boy and responded with his heart before his head could process the reasons, “I…trust you.”
“If you die…if you give up and let go and take the Dragon with you,” Mirianna said, “everything you’ve worked for, everything you’ve worked to preserve will go too. The Shadow Man will win, and Durren Drakkonwehr, the man you once were and were becoming again, the man I love, will disappear too.”
He knew in his bones she was right. He loved her, had committed his heart to her, but he realized he loved the boy too, as a man loves a younger brother or—even—a son. They and his sister were his family, and he had to take care of them as best he could. Even the old man and the fat fool were his charges now. He’d been shadow too long; he’d almost forgotten how to be a man. It had taken a motley bunch of humans and their bumbling hearts to make him care again. He would give his life, but not in the name of Drakkonwehr. He would give it to save them, the people he loved, and that was as it should be.
“What…do we do now?” he said.
Mirianna’s eyes shone. He saw unshed tears, but also pride, love and fear.
Ayliss swallowed and cleared her throat. “You complete the change that the broken spell set in motion. I’ll do my best to weave the spell, but I have to warn you, with this small piece of crystal, I’m only buying us time. Neither of you will be…entirely whole. The Dragon will take your body, Durren, but you’ll be within the Dragon. It will keep you alive until we can find enough crystal to complete the Chant and, hopefully, separate the two of you.”
“Hopefully?” Mirianna said on a whisper.
Ayliss leaned forward and covered her hand where it lay atop Durren’s heart. “‘True hearts and no fear,’ Mirianna. That’s older magic than crystals and spells. Remember that.” Gripping Gareth’s hand, she stood. “I’ll give you a moment,” she said, taking the boy with her out of the chamber.
Mirianna’s hand on his chest trembled.
“You’re not…going to lose me,” Durren said as she blew out the candle.
“I know. The dream—we’ll always have the dream.” She turned and took in the glow radiating everywhere from his body.
She was terrified. He understood. His heart would be as cold as the stones of Drakkonwehr right now if it weren’t burning so hot with dragon flame. “No more…time, love.”
“I said I would do anything, Durren, and I meant it. I love you.” She raised shaking hands to his face covering. “I want to kiss you, and then I’ll go.”
“Close…eyes…please.”
“For now. But you’ll be back, and the spell will be broken and you’ll be yourself again.”
Would he? Dear Koronolan, that would be as wonderful as the fresh air caressing his face before her lips, cool, touched his so sweetly, so tenderly, he sensed more than felt the kiss. Then she stood and rushed from the chamber, leaving him alone in the dark—but not alone as the pain in his side intensified and the glow grew and the beast inside him stretched and the world shifted, wrenched itself inside out, and went dark…
****
Mirianna tramped along the path back to the fire in the courtyard. Full darkness hid the tears she wiped from her eyes, and she had her voice mostly under control when she met Ayliss and Gareth at the edge of the firelight. “I’m going down to the pool. If Gareth found one piece of crystal, there should be more to be found.”
Gareth blocked her with his staff. “She wants you to wait.”
Ayliss stood with her arms outstretched, palms up, eyes closed. Firelight shifted across her face, sparkling the sweat beading her forehead as she mumbled in a language Mirianna didn’t know, but seemed somehow familiar.
Shadow Speech, she guessed, remembering Durren’s gesture days ago—was it only days?—when he’d rubbed the stone, a bloodstone, in his broken sword. It had power too, the sword or the stone—or both. The Sword of Drakkonwehr, Pumble had called it. Where was it? Still with Durren in that chamber or—no, she couldn’t think about that now, what might be happening in that darkened room. ‘True hearts,’ Ayliss had told her, and she sensed there was power in that or she wouldn’t have left Durren alone to face whatever was going to happen to him. By the Dragon! Mirianna jammed her fist to her chin to stop its tremble. She needed strength now, not tears.
Ayliss stopped speaking. She opened her eyes, but recognition came into them slowly, as if her thoughts returned from a great distance. She reached out for the boy, who took her arm over his shoulder.
Mirianna needed no further evidence of a connection between the two. Every touch, every unspoken communication since the shelion had made herself known to Gareth told her Ayliss had secrets yet to tell. She would push her, but not just yet. Durren came first. “Well?”
Breathing deeply, Ayliss spoke. “Going down to the pool is a good idea, and we may yet have to do that, but do you remember Syryk?”
“The mage? You said he died in the spell.”
“Disappeared,” Gareth corrected.
Ayliss smiled at the boy. When hoof beats sounded in the courtyard, she nodded toward the clatter. “Well, I think he’s found us. As the spell unravels, it seems to be drawing all who survived back to its wellspring. The circle should be complete now.”
****
Rees rode like the demons of Beggeth were after them while Syryk clung to the saddle pommel with both hands. His head throbbed and blood dripped into his eyes, but he dared not release his grip to wipe it away. The demons of Beggeth were indeed on their trail, and though the Krad had no horses, they could climb like goats in pursuit of a blood-smell far less fresh than his. Behind, he could still hear distant howls despite the twists of the narrow rock passage they followed ever upward. At last Rees rode through what seemed like a gate, and ahead Syryk glimpsed a fire.
“Don’t come any closer!” A squat, round shape in a floppy hat stood silhouetted in front of the fire, sword drawn.
“Pumble!” Rees leaped out of the saddle. “How in Beggeth did you get here?”
“He came with my father, you bastard!” said a woman’s voice.
Syryk slid off his horse and wiped blood from his eyes. Yes, it was most definitely a woman. And she held a long wooden stick in front of her like a pike or halberd. She was garbed like a warrior woman he’d once seen depicted on an ancient scroll, her skirt sheared off at mid-knee and split over one leg, exposing a length of alabaster thigh. If this was the old man’s daughter, his luck had definitely turned. But he had a more immediate problem. Rees had stepped forward with a look of befuddlement on his face.
“Mirianna! I…” Rees trailed off, lowering his sword.
She lunged. The stick caught him square in the chest, knocking him on his back. “That’s for leaving my father to die!” She loomed over Rees, pole jammed into his throat as if she dared him to resist, to give her an excuse to ram it home, but the otherwise competent warrior lay at her feet, apparently stunned.
The fat man rushed up to snatch Rees’s sword. “You should never have done that, Rees. That’s not like you.”
“Take his knife, too, Pumble. And any other weapons you know he carries.”
“I’m sorry, Rees.” The fat man relieved Rees of a knife in his belt and one in his boot. “But you really made her—and me—mad.”
The woman backed a step, raised the stick, and rotated it toward Syryk’s chest. He thought, being behind Rees in the darkness, he might have escaped her notice, but no—she’d merely prioritized her attack. “You! Drop your weapons and come out of the shadows.”
Syryk stared. He’d never seen anything fiercer, or more breathtaking, but he grasped his pouch and closed his fingers around the crystal within because someone had to take control of the situation. While she was making an admirable attempt, he much preferred playing his own game. Taking a deep breath, he drew on the power of the crystal.
“Who in Beggeth are you
?” The fat man’s question broke his concentration.
Syryk glared down his nose at the miscreant despite the fact they were of a height. “I’m your master, fool!”
The fat man shook his head. “That’s the Master of Nolar, and you’re not him.”
Syryk clenched his fingers on the crystal and projected its power, sending it to Rees, who still lay like a lump on the ground, to the fat fool staring at him as if he’d emerged from the cracked Stone Dam at Herrok-Eneth, to the woman warrior who set her feet and prepared to level him with her stick. Why were none of them responding? Why did the woman glow with a red aura? Why did another woman’s voice speak his name from somewhere in the darkness behind him? And why in the name of the Dragon did she sound like the one woman he’d never expected to hear again?
He turned. And she was there, coming into the reach of the firelight, her hair a fall of gold on either side of her face, her eyes as green-gold as he remembered, her face, if possible, even more beautiful. “Ayliss,” he said.
“Hello, Syryk.”
“You…you’re dead.”
“So are you.”
“But…we’re not.”
“So it would seem.”
Chapter Twenty-Five
When the clatter arose, Gareth moved as he’d been instructed. How Ayliss—he still thought of her as the she-lion—told him what to do, he had no idea since she didn’t speak it. He simply knew he had to follow Mirianna toward the intruders and hand her his staff. The man who spoke first he recognized as the loud one who’d frightened him when Mirianna and the others had first come upon the Shadow Man’s camp.
When she knocked the man down, Gareth’s blood ran hot. He wanted her to hit the man again, wished he’d struck the blow himself, but this was her fight and whatever she chose would have to do. The other man smelled of fresh blood, cold sweat, and the tangy spice of some herb-and-oil mix he’d once smelled on a guest who arrived at the inn with an armed escort. Coin had flowed freely, but so had the demands. Gareth frowned. This stranger spoke in that same sneering way. He wished Mirianna would level him too, but Ayliss intervened, drawing the newcomers’ attention.
Mirianna pressed the staff back into his hands. “I have his sword now,” she whispered.
“Do you know how to use it?”
She blew out a breath. “I used to try the blades in my father’s workshop. Maybe now I know why.” She squeezed his shoulder. “Go. Do whatever it is she told you to do. I’ll be fine.”
Waves of energy flowed from her. Gareth’s heart pounded in response, and his breath quickened with it, but this energy didn’t prompt chills. Instead, all his senses sharpened—if possible—and he wanted to act on what they reported. He gripped his staff, wishing once more he could strike a blow against the menace the strange man projected, but the she-lion—Ayliss—was depending on him. Backing away from the glow of the fire, he headed for the shadows.
****
“Ayliss…” Syryk stretched out a hand, took a tentative step in her direction. He hadn’t until this moment given a thought to regrets, to the consequences of any of his actions, his decisions. He’d always been forward focused, on finding his ancestors’ scrolls, on locating the Chant, on raising the Dragon. When all Beggeth broke loose in the chamber, he’d naturally acted in self-preservation, saving himself, never once thinking—in all those years he’d been trapped in the crystal, waiting for someone to find it and shed blood on it—about what he might have lost in that moment, what he’d risked in the pursuit of his dream, his destiny. Yet here she was, alive, against all odds, all expectations. If only he’d taken the time, at the time, to see what he saw at this moment. “I never meant…”
Her face, that beautiful, perfectly unchanged face, hardened. “Of course you did. And so did I. The time for lies is over. You used me to get the Chant. I used you to get the power of the crystal. The arrangement was mutually beneficial—until everything went wrong.”
She hadn’t touched him, not advanced even an inch, yet her words hit him like a body blow. Evidently she hadn’t been suspended as he had for all those intervening years. He swayed, stunned, while he wondered where she’d been and what she’d endured and why in the name of the Demon Master she looked at him as though he were a piece of Krad dung. A thought worked its way through the haze of his mind. By all the Demons in Beggeth, this was an illusion! Either that or a hallucination brought on by the Krad rock he’d taken to the head. Well, he would deal with it as he had everything else that interfered with his plans. He tightened his fingers around the pouch and focused on the crystal inside.
She did not disappear. Nor did she fade. Nor did anything else surrounding him alter. If he squeezed the crystal any harder, he would slice open the leather and his fingers. Panicked, Syryk tore the pouch from his neck, yanked open the thong, and tumbled the crystal into his hand, murmuring all the time.
The illusion had the effrontery to roll her eyes. When he stared at her, Ayliss extended a hand and opened it. Something shimmered on her palm, shifted colors, and glowed. “You can’t work your crystal because I have a piece of it. Now our pieces are together, they cancel each other’s power—unless we work together.”
Syryk flushed. He should’ve thought of that. After all, he was the only one who could work illusions. He was the mage, not she. She hadn’t studied through all her youth, pored over all those musty scrolls, spent all those years learning crystal craft. Besides, she’d foolishly shown him her power source. He smirked, covering his own between his palms. “My piece is bigger.”
“Yes, and you know the secrets of working it.”
His eyes narrowed. Why would she so readily acknowledge the truth? He would never yield the slightest advantage to an opponent. Yet she seemed not the least cowed. He surreptitiously stroked his crystal, and power tugged at his fingertips. Not as much as usual, to be sure, but power nonetheless. She would expect him to use it against her. He sent it to Rees instead, to the disk suspended around the man’s neck—just enough to regain control.
The shard on her palm pulsed. Her already stony expression hardened. “Did you not read the scrolls?”
Of course he had—once—when he’d sorted them. Most contained unimportant, irrelevant drivel. The ones that held what nuggets he needed, those he’d memorized—down to the random droplets of ink on the page. A bead of sweat—or maybe blood, he couldn’t be sure which—trickled into his eyebrow, tickling as it went. He’d read everything. Everything! What was she so sure he’d missed? She raised her gaze, and her eyes burned with a strange green fire. He sensed power, and not crystal power. Where in the name of the Demon Master had she found that power?
“You’re standing on Drakkonwehr ground, Syryk. Your spell has completely unraveled, and your power source is shattered. What you began is undone, but what you set in motion…”
That ground heaved, tilting the giant paving stones and opening crevices between them. The fortress groaned, and the walls shifted, swaying in the dark around them as if an earthquake shook the place. The movement went on and on, filling the night with the agony of stone on stone, the thud of falling rock, the screech of wooden beams straining to hold against massive pressure. Syryk stumbled, flailed for his horse. The beast shied and blundered into Rees’s mount. Both animals bolted into the shadows beyond the courtyard.
Rees scrambled to his feet, face pale. “What in Beggeth—?”
The fat man, mouth agape, pointed at the ramparts.
Above, lightning sparked. But not earth-shattering bolts of blue-white, Syryk realized with a growing sense of awe and horror, but strings—whiplashes, really—of snapping, snaking red-yellow fire. Silhouetted against a billowing cloud of smoke was an enormous shape he’d beheld only in scrolls. He swallowed. The scrolls had not done it justice.
The Beast roared, and the foundations rattled again. Lightning flashed. Even the stars shook in the night sky. Then the massive head, yellow smoke curling from nostrils large as cauldrons, lowered, and two iridescent
eyes with foot-tall slits for pupils focused on him. “Hello, little mage. Should I thank you, do you think? Or would you rather I did your bidding, little one?”
Syryk trembled, but he summoned voice and tried once more to pull power from the crystal. “Beast, behold your master! I raised you. I broke the enchantment. I—”
The Dragon laughed, a hoarse, hissing sound that filled all the corners of the fortress and licked chills up Syryk’s spine. “Your ancestors bound me and mine to do their bidding. They led us to slaughter! Now I am free, I will do naught for you, spawn of the black arts!” A jet of flame shot into the earth at Syryk’s feet.
His recoil landed him within inches of Ayliss. “What..? But the Chant—”
“Drakkonwehr ground,” she repeated, sparing him a glance. “Your boots are smoking.”
With a yelp, Syryk kicked dirt over the smoldering spots. As fast as the embers died, his rage flared, overriding fear and stampeding directly to certainty. She’d given him the Chant. The Dragon had arisen. But the Beast was not his to command. “You bitch! What did you leave out?”
“Nothing you couldn’t have figured out yourself—if you were as clever as you thought you were.” Her retort stung nearly as much as the fact she hadn’t even glanced at him. “Now pay attention and focus on something other than your miserable self for once. It’s going to take all of us to get through this.” She held out her hand to him, the one with the shard of crystal lying on the upturned palm. “Drakkonwehr ground,” she said for the third time, through gritted teeth, with one fierce glance full of green fire that drove from his mind all—nearly all—thought of snatching the shard from her grip.
Ayliss thought he was selfish, did she? She thought he was a fool? He would show her how much he retained of the scrolls, the history, the spells. He shifted his crystal to his left hand and slapped it into her palm, wrapping his fingers around hers, jamming the two shards together.
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