Fate of Dragons

by Alisha Klapheke

  Vahly wondered if she appeared that way to them when she shot. If they thought so much of her, so much more than most dragons did, perhaps they thought of her as capable instead of a waste of breath.

  Arc fired the arrows he’d lodged between his finger and they zipped into the target—one, two, three, four—right into the center.

  “Nicely done, elf.” Vahly patted him on the back, appreciating the feel of his strong back under her hand more than she should have.

  After Cassiopeia and Haldus had their turn, Arc walked with Vahly to a spot closer to a river that bubbled along the forest floor.

  Vahly leaned on an oak and let out a long, slow breath she’d been holding her entire life.

  All around, the elves joked and ate, laughed and competed in archery and knife throwing. Looking at their facial expressions and the way they moved, every one of them could have been human.

  Here, there were no blazing vents of earthblood to suffer, no sharp remarks about Vahly’s inability to hunt down entire herds of deer or goat. No rituals far away in the sky where she could never join in. These elves stayed on land, lived like humans most likely had, and looked remarkably like Vahly.

  Finally, she belonged.

  Here, she could fit in. No, she didn’t have their magic, but she ate like them, moved like them, lived like them.

  Vahly realized Arc was looking at her. “I could live here forever,” she said quietly, oddly bashful about the admission.

  “And we would welcome you. I would welcome you.”

  Heat rose along Vahly’s neck and she remembered how he looked in that bath of his.

  She didn’t have time for this, but her chest fluttered rebelliously. The fact was, she could think about romance and mating. For the first time, here was a male with whom she was compatible.

  He’s much more than compatible, her mind whispered. He pleases you.

  She shook her head to clear it and eyed the nearest basket of food. The elves had sliced a loaf of flatbread into thin wedges. It didn’t look like much, but it tasted amazing. Chewy, warm, and perfectly salty.

  “Tell me about yourself, Arc.”

  He crossed his legs and put his hands on his knees. “What would you like to know?”

  “I don’t know. Whatever you’re willing to share. How about you tell me what the story is with you and horses and being able to speak telepathically with them?”

  “All elves can speak telepathically.”

  “I noticed. But can they all talk to simplebeasts in that manner?”

  “No. That is a unique skill of mine. Born of my royal blood.”

  “King Mattin can’t do it?”

  “No.”

  “He is the Horse Lord,” Cassiopeia said as she walked by with a cloak. She continued past them and placed the thick, black garment on an elf who appeared to be quite old.

  “The what?” Vahly thought maybe she’d heard her wrong.

  Arc answered. “Horse Lord. It is an old title. The last to hold it lived over one thousand years ago. It is like an affinity for the equine, not unlike the way humans used to be with many types of animals.”

  Vahly leaned forward. She hadn’t heard of this or read about it. “What do you mean?”

  “Your kynd always had animals around them.”

  Vahly remembered the scroll and how badgers, rabbits, bears and various other simplebeasts had gathered around the humans in the drawings. “Were they able to connect with them like you do with horses?”

  “Perhaps. I don’t know. We can ask King Mattin if you like. He should know. Out of all the elves still living, he spent the most time among your kynd.”

  “Do you have stables here in Illumahrah or do you focus your talent on wild horses?”

  Arc’s eyes narrowed. “I … we have stables.”

  “Are you all right?”

  “Yes … I thought I remembered a horse of mine. Etor.”

  “Good name. It means steadfast, right?”

  “Cassiopeia?” Arc called out. The female elf had joined in the dancing near King Mattin’s tree.

  She left the dance, smiling and waving to a friend, then came over. “What is it, Arcturus?”

  “Didn’t I have a horse named Etor? Forgive me. My mind remains addled from the injuries I sustained during my time away.”

  “You aren’t able to heal yourself?”

  “My memory, my power, refuses to be rejuvenated.”

  “You have never had a horse with that name. Perhaps you saw into the future days and will find such a steed later?”

  “Perhaps.” Arc thanked Cassiopeia and she returned to her dancing.

  Arc offered Vahly a dubious-looking vegetable. “Want to try one?”

  “What is it?”

  He tore a bite-sized piece from the plant’s long leaf, then chewed it. “It’s a bean, but we like the leaves best.”

  Vahly accepted a second piece. “Ooh. It has a punchy tartness to it, doesn’t it? And a sweet finish.”

  Arc’s dark gaze brushed her cheeks and neck. His dark pink lips tilted into a mischievous grin. “I believe I used the same words to describe you earlier today.”

  Vahly rolled her eyes, but couldn’t quite fight off a smile. “To whom?”

  “Rigel. He came to my rooms to speak with me. I fear something is wrong with him.”

  “This place. It’s so lovely that I can’t imagine anything being wrong here.” Except for that Canopus fellow.

  Though the air was pleasantly crisp and didn’t require extra heat, Cassiopeia set up split wood for a fire. She turned to Arc, a question in her eyes.

  Vahly thought maybe he was going to use more magic she hadn’t known elves possessed, but instead he walked to the fire, and took a flint and striker from a small pouch on his belt. Vahly joined him.

  “I understand.” He kneeled beside the woodpile. “We are so close to the Source. There is a peace that soothes this forest. But even here, foul magic can take root. It is more easily masked in this beauty.” He plucked the thin tips from a bunch of tall grass and tucked it under a split log.

  Vahly squatted beside him, keeping her voice low and speaking in dragon. “What do you think is wrong with your friend Rigel?”

  Keeping an eye on the surrounding elves, Arc struck the flint. A spark leaped into the tinder. “He has a heaviness to his presence. Like he has suffered a great loss. But he can’t recall any event that would mar his energy.”

  This all sounded much like what she was experiencing. “I didn’t want to complain, but I have a similar feeling. Mine is not so much a deep grief, but a worry. A fear.”

  “And you don’t think it’s due to your upcoming power ritual and the fear that it may or may not work a change in you?”

  The fire bloomed, and its flickering light painted Arc’s smooth brow and straight hair with an orange and yellow glow. His long fingers worked quickly as he stowed his flint and striker.

  “No. It’s difficult to explain. Do you feel as though you are well now? From whatever we suffered?” Only now did Vahly realize they never even attempted to figure out what had happened. “What happened to us? Did you find out anything from your kynd’s scouts? Perhaps we should try to trace our steps backwards to learn the truth. After my ritual, of course.”

  “I don’t feel completely healed. But for some reason, I can’t worry about it.”

  “That doesn’t seem right either.”

  Arc’s face twisted in frustration. “No, it doesn’t.” He stood, his surcoat falling in draping folds around his strong legs and tall black boots. “Why don’t we do exactly what you suggest and trace the way we arrived? I’m quite good at tracking. The king won’t conclude the festivities until after the music.”

  A group of five elves walked out of King Mattin’s oaken castle. One carried a stringed instrument with a long neck like a swan’s. The other four elves carted pipes of various sizes and shapes. Some were made of crockery and glazed with blue and green paints, the rest were made of carved w
ood and resembled large oak leaves.

  As much as Vahly hated the thought of missing elven music, she wanted to know what had happened to her and Arc. Whether it had to do with this place or the elves or something she couldn’t guess, the answer to their question might prove key in the future.

  They left the feasting, music swirling through the night behind them, and headed back the way they’d come. Past King Mattin’s throne, along the garden path, and into the wild woods of the Forest of Illumahrah.

  Starlight filtered through the treetops and clustered around Arc’s head and hands. He looked otherworldly, nearly divine.

  Once they reached the spot where they’d awakened, Arc crouched and picked up a broken plant. He studied the area, touching the ground. “This way.”

  Arc led Vahly down a slope and through a wide but shallow creek that smelled of fresh water and jasmine. She could barely see. Arc’s light-colored sleeves helped her follow him in the scant starlight as he hurried up another rise, then through a stand of young birches like pale candles in the darkness. If she asked him, he could call up a light for her, but she was fine, following him like this. Besides, she didn’t want him using up his energy with air magic unless it was truly necessary. They had no idea what they might find at the end of this trail.

  Panting, Vahly kept up with Arc as best she could. Arc stopped and put a hand on a beech tree. He stood still, head cocked. “Hmm.” Crouching, he pressed a hand against a footprint. Then, he took off a quick clip through an oak grove.

  She followed, scattering chipmunks and lizards as she tried to step around ferns and through thickets.

  Arc halted under a stand of pines that whispered in the breeze.

  Leaning on the nearest tree, Vahly sucked deep breaths. “Are you stopping because I’m about to fall on my face or because you actually need to track?”

  His mouth twitched. “A little of both.” He touched a depression in the damp earth between two boulders. “Do you remember any of this?”

  A lump formed in Vahly’s throat. She tried to swallow, her stomach twisting. “I don’t and I’m thinking that is a very bad thing.”

  “Agreed.” He stood, hair falling from its tie. His face was thunderous, and Vahly was glad his anger wasn’t directed at her. He was no dragon but with that look, he would be at least a runner-up in a competition for Scariest Highbeast on the Isle.

  He lifted his chin and sniffed the air. “Vahly. There are dead nearby.”

  Vahly’s heart froze. Ice sluiced through her veins. “What do you mean … dead?”

  Murmuring, he crashed through the underbrush beyond her, frightening birds into the air. Vahly didn’t want to follow him. But she had to and she knew it.

  Arc drew up quickly at several mounds of freshly turned earth. The ground smelled like rain, sun-warmed dirt, and the over-sweet beginnings of decay.

  “Do you normally bury your dead here?” Vahly whispered. “Please say Yes.” She clasped her own shaking hands to hide the fear from him.

  “No.” He moved like he was shaking a filthy cloak from his shoulders. “Can you feel the foul magic here? Now, I know for certain someone spelled us.”

  “I can’t sense the magic used, but I feel a distinctly wrong kind of energy. How do we discover who is dead under these mounds of dirt?”

  Arc put a hand on her shoulder, but didn’t look at her. “We dig.”

  Wind blew through the trees. Overhead, branches scratched together, emitting a creaking sound that send more chills down Vahly’s back. “I was afraid you’d say that.”

  Shutting his eyes, Arc whispered, “We have maybe one hour before the others will begin searching for us. Then someone will grow curious.”

  Vahly couldn’t seem to talk. She followed him to the closest mound and began shifting earth away from the heap, her hands hardly working as they trembled. Something in the back of her mind knew she was not going to like what they found.

  As she dug, dirt pressed under her nails until she was bleeding, though it was too dark to tell for sure and her hands were too numb to feel the injury.

  And then, her hands found the tip of a dragon wing.

  Chapter Sixteen

  Vahly’s memory came racing back.

  Her hands couldn’t dig fast enough.

  “No.”

  Vaguely, she was aware of Arc speaking to her in a calming tone, but he didn’t stop her from clearing the dirt away from a Lapis blue wing, mottled with splashes of Jade green. Arc joined her in the grim duty, and together, they exposed the side of a scaled body, a neck, and finally, the wide, dead eyes of Kemen.

  She remembered him. Fully. Wholly. She knew about the cider house and her many friends there. Her memory knitted itself back together only to rip her apart.

  Vahly’s stomach seized and she turned to vomit.

  Kemen was gone. Her fantastic brute of a friend.

  Breathing through her nose, she stared at her fingers in the dirt.

  Arc’s hands were on her back, and he was whispering, sending warmth and a glow of healing light into her skin.

  She touched Kemen’s cold face gently.

  Kemen, her friend, her cohort in thieving and in dice. The dragon who kept quiet and remained stoic, but had always been there when she needed him.

  A buzzing sound filled Vahly’s ears. The noise transformed into her own heartbeat and sweat trickled down her neck as she began digging again. Somehow, she knew there was more to find. More horror. More tragedy.

  “There is another,” she whispered, voice raw. She couldn’t look at Arc. She didn’t want to see the sadness he might feel for her.

  The scent of decay and damp earth hit Vahly’s nose again, like it had been saving up for a knockout.

  She paused, swallowing bile, then cleared a clump of dirt away to see a leg covered in scales like coins made of emerald and sapphire. Arc swiped an arm over the makeshift grave to reveal the dead creature’s face.

  Ibai.

  Vahly shut her eyes against the flood of tears suddenly overtaking her vision. “My Ibai.” She trembled under shock’s icy hands. “Do you remember these dragons now?” she asked Arc. “Because I do. I do.”

  How had they forgotten their entire journey here and what occurred in the Fire Marshes and in the forest that sat between the marshes and Illumahrah?

  “I remember.” Arc, stiff and slow-moving in the starlight, walked around to the rear of another mound.

  He shoveled dirt with his large hands for several minutes while Vahly sat and wept silently, her own body unwilling to follow her commands to help him and to find out who else had been taken from her.

  A light wind could have carried her off into the black sky.

  Arc stopped, then sat back on his heels. “There is another.” His words landed like an axe on Vahly’s neck. “Dramour. I remember him.”

  Dramour’s eyepatch and green scales, the black dirt of the mound, the trees—everything turned around in Vahly’s head, faster and faster. Dizziness overtook her. She fell onto Ibai’s still form and let the tears wash her away. Her fingers gripped the mound. A coolness touched her finger. She raised her head to see the edge of a worn, human coin. The one Dramour and Ibai traded after every bet. Gathering it to her, she rubbed the smooth gold until it was warm, then held it against her heart.

  Arc sat in silence, his hand on the ground beside her as if he wanted her to know she could grasp his fingers if she wanted.

  Vahly forced herself to sit upright.

  Nix had to be here too.

  It only made sense.

  The elves wouldn’t have let her live. It wouldn’t have taken much effort to finish Nix off, what with the injuries she’d sustained from the arrow and the fall.

  Vahly pulled at her hair, hating herself. How had she forgotten them? Could she have saved them if she’d remembered?

  Arc drew her hand away from her tangled braid. “It’s not your fault.”

  Trembling, she forced herself to stand. More mounds. More deat
h. Arc’s gentle gaze was like a touch. As soon as she began to dig again, he joined her.

  She kept glancing at Ibai, Kemen, and Dramour, expecting them to get up, shake the filthy from themselves, and make a joke. They lay so still. Her head pounded. It wasn’t as if she had never seen death. But these had been her friends. So full of life. How could that be them, still and silent in makeshift graves? In her mind, she imagined Dramour saying her name. He would never utter it again. He would never say anything ever again.

  Pushing her storm of emotion away, she shoved more dirt away, more, more, more.

  But there was nothing.

  Hope sparked inside her chest. She wiped her face with the back of her dirt and blood crusted sleeve. “Nix isn’t here. We should check that one.” Her gaze flitted to the next mound and her stomach tightened, threatening rebellion.

  This mound was not as large, but inside, under the earth, among broken bows and arrows, set out neatly—unlike the dragons—the bodies of three elves lay side by side.

  Arc sucked a breath and stood in a motion too fast for Vahly to see clearly.

  “Rigel’s son, Pegasi,” he said. “That’s what was wrong with Rigel. He found out that his son was dead. He must have. That was the grief hanging on him. But why did he forget? Why did we all forget? Even the others…”

  “You told me, in the marshes, that someone had spelled foul magic on you. That you felt it, like a sticky darkness.” Vahly choked on a sob and squeezed her fingers into the earth to keep from falling off the side of the world.

  “And this is Vega. And Leporis. I can’t believe it.” Arc shook his head and his throat moved in a slow swallow. “All dead.”

  “Except Nix. Where is she?” Vahly paced the length of the mounds. “Can you track her? Surely there will be evidence of her escape or her death here.”

  Arc, his face pale as moonlight, scoured the ground, bending and tilting his head, whispering and frowning. “She was here. Recently.”

  Vahly was at his side in a blink. The dark of the forest stared at her, its unknown depths pressing against her eyes.

  “Nix arrived here after the dead were buried. She may live still. There are footprints over this mound’s turned earth. And they aren’t ours. She is barefoot.”