Fate of Dragons

by Alisha Klapheke

  “Thank the Source.” Vahly bent over, putting her hand on her knees to support herself. She let the worst of her fear wash over her. He was alive. This kind elf who had agreed to help her. This good elf who had been wronged and sought to do what he could to aid Vahly and her dragons despite his own problems.

  “Do you not know me, Vega?” The pain on Arc’s face as he looked at the old female elf cut Vahly more sharply than she would have guessed it could. “You knew my mother…” Shoulders dropping slightly, he turned to the red-haired elf. “Leporis? I taught you how to use that bow one hundred years ago. And Pegasi? When did King Mattin assign you to this post? I congratulate you on completing your training. It is Arcturus, my kynd. Please, try to remember.”

  Vega’s forehead wrinkled and she lowered her knives. “Arcturus, you say?”

  Arc moved his hair away from his ears to show his points. “Yes.” The smooth column of his throat dropped as he swallowed.

  “Some magic has been done here.” Pegasi’s young voice was almost a whisper, distrust breaking the syllables at odd points. His black eyes, a match to Arc’s, were wide as platters as he studied the light and dark curling around Arc, a sight that Vahly could barely see.

  “Yes, Pegasi.” Arc’s tone curled around the name like a protective hand. The young elf was obviously important to him. “I was there when your dear parents birthed you. Your father, Rigel, swiftest elf in all of Illumahrah, traversed the entire forest in four days to tell everyone of your arrival.”

  A sad smiled painted Arc’s mouth, and Vahly had to go to him. She took his arm and looked him over, eyeing him for wounds. She wouldn’t have been surprised if he had a pine tree sticking out of his back.

  “Are you well?” she asked Arc, trying to remain calm as she turned her back to the other elves. Please don’t shoot me in the back, she thought silently, glancing at them. Or begin a raging battle with Dramour or Arc or both. “The fall didn’t injure you? That seems impossible.”

  But he didn’t appear hurt. Well, he did have a cut on the side of his head that was leaking blood, but it was a minor injury.

  Arc spoke and his words stirred Vahly’s hair. His eyes held sincerity and amusement. “I am well and thank you for your concern, Earth Queen.”

  She raised her head. His mouth was close and his presence hummed in her blood. What would his lips taste like?

  “Of course.” She stepped back and released his arm.

  “I caught the wind on my way down and was able to find a tree.”

  “Wait. You can fly?”

  “Elves do not fly.” Vega had her knives out still, but she didn’t have them up or aimed at anyone. “We use the wind to lessen a drop.”

  Arc touched his minor head wound and light spooled from his fingers. He was healing himself.

  “No, we do not fly. And we do not use foul magic to deceive one another. That would never happen in Illumahrah. Never. I do not believe this elf’s tale.” Vega flicked her fingers.

  Everything happened at once.

  A blinding pain crashed through Vahly’s shoulder. She dropped.

  Dramour blasted dragonfire somewhere behind her.

  Shouts and grunts rose into the air as Vahly rolled to her uninjured side. She worked her sword out, glad the arrow had stuck her in her left shoulder instead of her right.

  Leporis, poppy-red hair loosed from its tie, stood over Arc, who had gone to his knees. Leporis spoke in elvish.

  “Because we cannot fight the entire elven army and have no wish to,” Arc said in dragon with a meaningful glance at Vahly. “We simply need to speak with the King.”

  Vega had Dramour on the ground, a knife pricking the side of his remaining eye. “If you want to lose the second, try that on me again,” Vega said. A bright red burn showed on her forearm.

  Dramour glared at Vahly. “Still think this is a good idea?”

  Kemen roared in frustration, his talons flashing in the sunlight as he flexed and paced in front of Pegasi and the young elf’s shining blades.

  Vahly shivered in the grip of pain. “It was a long shot. You know how I enjoy winning against terrible odds.”

  Pegasi lifted Vahly like she was nothing more than a sack of feathers, and the odd burning cold of a bad injury smashed through Vahly’s shoulder. She gritted her teeth and threw her focus elsewhere.

  Why didn’t these other elves have the strange lights around them like Arc did?

  Vega and her cronies walked Vahly, Arc, Kemen, and Dramour back to where Nix and Ibai waited. The two stood as they approached, smoke billowing from their nostrils.

  Leporis gripped Arc by the hair and forced his chin high. Arc’s white teeth showed in a wince, but he didn’t fight the hold the other elf had on him.

  “If you want them to remain alive,” Leporis said, “you will come peacefully and allow us to bind you. Only then will you get a word with our King. If not, we will cut these deeply, here and now, then take our chances fighting you to the death as well.”

  Nix put a hand on Ibai’s chest, holding him back. “We agree.” Her gaze found Vahly and her lips tucked up in concern. “Although I’m certain King Mattin will simply kill us in a way that is far more creative and painful, we agree.”

  Pegasi tucked his knives away and snapped the arrow shaft protruding from Vahly’s shoulder.

  Sweat poured from her face. Pain—burning, consuming—dropped her to the ground.

  “We will leave the injured dragon here. She is no threat and we can return if we so choose after speaking to our King,” Leporis said.

  With quick hands, Pegasi turned Vahly over, cut a slash into her shirt, and then reached inside with chilled fingers to pluck the arrowhead and remaining wood from Vahly’s body.

  The pain drew curtains over Vahly’s consciousness.

  Chapter Twelve

  Ryton led Grystark and a host of sea folk around the northeastern tip of Tidehame. They swam hard, fins slicing through the rough, cold waves, the water pulling at their hair, seaweed clothing, and sharpened coral spears. The ocean was a cacophony of booming spellwork shouted by one of many companies Venu oversaw. The smell of magic pricked at Ryton’s gills, masking the other scents of oily breaker fish and the earthblood vents that released bubbles beyond the field of battle.

  Their goal today was to extend the flood to the Jades’ hunting grounds.

  The Watcher had suggested the attack, and Ryton was pleased. This plan didn’t call for Ryton’s closest friend, Grystark, to lure Jades toward the Blackwater well. The Watcher’s strategy was still dangerous, but not as insane.

  All cherished the Watcher, an ancient, gnarled female. She could See events in the past, present, and future, making her an invaluable resource in the war. The Watcher had told Queen Astraea that the Jades were the second worst threat to sea folk’s power. Ryton and his army had to curtail the Jades’ reproduction through direct culling during attacks and by diminishing their ability to find meat. If allowed to thrive, the Jades would destroy all of his kynd’s Blackwater sources and drive Astraea and her kin into oblivion.

  As to the foremost threat to the sea folk, the Watcher claimed that Fate still shrouded that danger.

  Now, a host of Jades flew above the surface, their shadows dark and sinuous among the waves, their flaming maws rippling with fire magic that burned Ryton’s gills even as he swam ten feet underwater. Ryton had no more time for thinking of the mysterious threat the Watcher could not yet name.

  The Jades were here and he had to fight them now.

  “To the right!” he called to Blue Unit. “Spell with speed and accuracy!”

  Grystark took off with Blue, as planned, and threw Ryton a nod as he did. He truly hoped that wouldn’t be the last he’d see of his old friend.

  Ryton kicked and rose, the Silver, Green, and Gold units behind him. A moment before breaking through the waves, they spoke their spells into their weapons, for once they surfaced they’d have no oxygen to shout into air. With their spears, they could t
hrow twenty square feet of spelled water at the dragons. Aside from an expert spear throw to the few sensitive spots on a dragon, water magic was the only way to take the beasts down.

  “Touch the sea and turn the tide,” Ryton said to his spear. It hummed at his side as he swam up and up and up. “Water spelled for breaking. Teeth of salt for tearing.”

  The rushing, boiling sound of water magic grew louder.

  Those beside and behind him spoke the same spells, pushing their will into the spears, using the magic that flowed through their veins. Gills flaring along the sides of their necks, nostrils expelling water, they focused on their approach.

  Ryton broke the surface.

  Two hundred, maybe more, green dragons flew through the storm-black sky. They shouted in their usual manner, a brutal, guttural sound like a rhythmic growl. The salty air lashed Ryton’s cheeks and lightning ripped the sky in two. He raised his jagged spear and threw a column of spelled salt water at the nearest Jade, a large battle dragon with a deep green belly that rumbled with the warning of dragonfire, his fire magic snapping and crackling.

  The Jade blasted flames at Ryton just as the spelled water hit the dragon’s throat and left wing. Ryton leaped and dove underwater to avoid the fire, his muscles quaking with the effort.

  The dragonfire boiled through the leaping waves, its raging orange flames like claws tearing into the sea. The magical fire spread across the surface like a slice of the sun had fallen.

  Immediately rising and breaking the surface again, Ryton watched as his magic worked on the vicious beast. The dragon roared, crashed into one of his allies as the lighting cracked again, then in a circular blaze of flame, transformed into his weaker state before smashing into the sea.

  To be sure the dragon was dead, Ryton dove after the beast. It thrashed, bleeding into the water, hair tangling where spikes used to be.

  The dragon shouted, face tight with pain, bubbles rising from his mouth. “The Earth Queen rises—”

  A spear through the gut cut off his water-muted words. The sea clouded, red and thick, around him.

  Grystark swam around the body, yanked the spear free, and nodded to Ryton before shouting commands to his companions.

  Ryton shook off his confusion at the dragon’s dying words. There was no time for that now. He shouted orders for Silver and Gold to form a line. “Draw up the water!” he called through the tumultuous sea.

  The units did as ordered and soon the sea was heaving.

  “More!” Ryton added his own will and magic to the force, glad he’d stopped by the Source well before the fight to wash in the salt water-Blackwater mixture that gave all sea folk their power. The magic tugged at his forehead and palms, drawing the energy he’d pulled from the well and throwing it into the rising tide.

  The sea folk’s power rose to a manic thrum, sounding like the crash of countless waves on endless rocks.

  Ryton thrust his spear, and the ocean twisted above his head—a force that uprooted the seaweed from its bedding, shoved the lesser coral and rock into a spinning frenzy, and pulled at Ryton’s own beard as it heaved and rushed at the Jades’ coastline. Ryton and Grystark raced to the surface to witness the devastation.

  Frothing waves sped under the wheeling, fire-breathing dragons and their lightning storm, and then smashed into the rocky shore. The highest of the waves grabbed a score of Jades and thrust them into the depths.

  The water crashed over the trees and flooding into the hunting grounds.

  Dragons keened and listed away from the successive waves to avoid being caught. One closest bore the blackened marks of spelled water up and down her side. She would die before the sun set on this day and Ryton thrilled to see it.

  The trees disappeared under the foam, as did the hills and the sweeping vista of rocky, grassy ground.

  Ryton’s gills burned. He needed to get back underwater. Grystark pounded a fist into the air, leaping high, his legs thrashing in the sea to lift him.

  Then both dove deep along with their companies. The waters of Tidehame enveloped them in salty arms, already healing tired bodies and mending wounds delivered by dragonfire. Those burns were not easily soothed. The fire from a dragon’s mouth had a persistent, deadly heat to it, but the sea could ease that pain when one was not too badly burned.

  Ryton’s mind turned over the fallen Jade’s final words. The Earth Queen rises! He had called out in sea folk language. The dragon had meant for Ryton and the others to hear it and understand the threat.

  But there were no more humans. Ryton’s own uncle had helped flood what the land creatures now called the Lost Valley, known to his own as the Tristura Sea. They had killed every last human.

  Ryton shook his head as he joined with his warriors to swim back and report to Astraea. That Jade dragon had only been trying to unsettle the sea folk with his falsehood. It was nothing. The Jades were obviously growing desperate. They were losing and they knew it.

  Ryton smiled wickedly. And they didn’t even know the worst of it yet.

  Three moon cycles past, Ryton had discovered an underwater tunnel that ran the length of the island, from the North, winding under the land and opening outside the Lapis territory. It had taken weeks to navigate and they’d lost two good folk in the effort, but it was well worth the challenge.

  With today’s major victory for the sea folk, the dragons would unite. They would be foolish not to. Ryton would command the armies of the sea to attack the Jades once more. The fight would draw the Lapis, and then, when most battle dragons were up north, Ryton would lead the Sea Queen’s full forces through the tunnel. Without much resistance, they would focus all their power on raising the water and smothering the southern side of the isle with the multiplied salt water.

  It would be the end of land and the war.

  He couldn’t wait for it all to be over.

  With the dragons defeated and the world swaddled in salt water, surely Astraea would be satisfied. She would no longer demand the whale’s share of Ryton’s waking hours. There would be peace, calm waters, time to travel and to dine with Grystark and his wife Lilia. Perhaps even time enough for Ryton’s heart to heal so he could consider searching for a mate and creating a family of his own.

  That was all he wanted. Quiet days in the sun-touched shallows of the far South, a net of fermented sea apples at his side, and the chance to laugh with a friendly female. His skin prickled as he imagined the warmth of the waters on his face and the caress of a gentle, female hand. Could he find someone with a lovely voice that didn’t twist him up with words that sounded like praise wrapped in barbs?

  He would be free. If they could just end this Blackwater-forsaken war, he would be free of the Sea Queen, free of the fight, free to find a life worth living.

  Queen Astraea’s guards, dressed in finer sea cloth than Ryton would ever want to wear, moved away from the entrance to her private chambers as Ryton and Grystark approached.

  The Queen lounged on a couch of woven salt tulip leaves beneath a bank of glowing nautili, gathered upon their death near Scar Chasm where most of the sea folks’s illuminating decor originated. Pearls sparkled in Astraea’s braided hair as she tipped her head in greeting.

  “I heard we were successful,” she purred.

  “Yes, my Queen,” Grystark said. “And the water doesn’t seem to be receding from the area either. We now control the northwestern swathe of Jade hunting grounds.”

  “Ryton, how do you propose we flood the upper reaches, to the East?”

  “I don’t know if we can, but we’ll get the entire area surrounded and won’t leave enough land to hunt or survive. We will conquer. And soon.”

  A smile slid over the Queen’s lips. “That’s what I like to hear. Why don’t you stay and keep me company, Ryton? We can let old Grystark here return to his beautiful wife. Give her my love, won’t you?”

  Grystark looked to Ryton, silently asking if he wanted an excuse to leave.

  “What are you looking at him for, Grystark?�
�� The Queen rose, her webbed toes a few inches from the sea floor. Eddies pulled sand up and around her tiny ankles. “Get out.”

  But Grystark stood his ground. She could have him put to death for this kind of disobedience. Ryton had to defuse the situation.

  He slapped Grystark on the back. “His head is jumbled, my Queen. Took a hard hit today. Please excuse our good general.”

  Grystark pursed his lips, but went along with the ruse. “Apologies, my Queen. High General.” He bowed to each in turn, then swam away, giving Ryton one last look before leaving.

  He was a great friend, to risk his own life to make certain Ryton was all right. Of course, Ryton wasn’t wholly all right with the situation. Far from it. But he could deal with Astraea’s advances a little longer.

  She only wanted him for his military abilities.

  He was not the best-looking male in the sea.

  Soon, the war would end and Ryton would be free. There was no need to anger her and risk Grystark’s neck as well as his own and whoever else happened to get in the way.

  Though he truly longed for bed and sleep, Ryton crossed the room to make the Queen a net of fermented tideberries. He uncorked the conch she kept on her coral shelves and then shook six perfect berries into a small net of purple threaded seaweed. Holding them out to her, he smiled politely.

  “Don’t give me that look,” she cooed before nibbling a berry from its trap.

  Ryton rubbed her shoulders. “What look?”

  “The one that says you are only here because I bid you to be.”

  He kept his gaze on his feet and rubbed his neck. “I am your servant, my Queen.”

  “You are so much more. You are the key to unlocking the treasure of ultimate power. Don’t belittle yourself with the term servant. It doesn’t suit you.”

  “What does suit me?” His stomach twisted.

  “Champion. Conqueror. Blood-spiller.”

  Ryton was glad she had her back turned because he had difficulty hiding the wince. When had he started wincing at the violence of his life? It seemed like yesterday he’d been more than willing to slay the day away, as Grystark and he always put it.