Dragon's Fire

by Gwynn White

“Beyond measure.”

  That was an intriguing thought. He uncurled a little more. “She doesn’t do it to torture me?”

  “She knows nothing of your existence. Her world is a void, filled only with pain and neglect.”

  Talon sat up. It surprised him that focusing on Dmitri made the woman’s screaming less debilitating.

  “She does not have the privilege of the care you are afforded, Nicholas. Morass comes every day to feed you. None of the living visit her. They consider her mad. Her food, when they remember, is dropped though a hole in the roof.”

  Anger boiled in Talon at that neglect. “Morass?”

  “The physicians who should attend her.”

  Physicians? He rocked back. “Where am I?”

  “We were talking about your neighbor, Nicholas.”

  Talon wrapped his thin hands around his knobby knees. He noticed for the first time how ragged his clothing was. His skin, gray the last time he’d really looked at himself back in the forest, was black with grime. He must stink.

  Unlike his old cell, there was a faucet here, which gushed water into a narrow sluice. It was covered with a small, ill-fitting metal grate. But the noise had been so overwhelming, he hadn’t even considered using it to wash. He pulled back from Dmitri in embarrassment and then dismissed the vanity.

  He had grown up with Dmitri; thus the seer knew what he looked like at his best and worst. And anyway, Dmitri would not have stroked his back with such kindness if he were truly offensive.

  “Where is she?”

  “In an asylum for the insane.”

  He gasped. “She’s my neighbor.”

  “Aye.”

  “Am I insane?”

  “What do you think?”

  Talon considered. “I’ve been in jail a long time.” His face hardened. “Lukan tried to lie to me. It’s not been a year, but . . .” He grimaced down at his grimy nails, worn down to the nub from trying to escape his last cell. “No, I am not insane. But the noise could make me crazy. If it doesn’t kill me first.” He looked up to see Dmitri studying him. “Lukan wants me dead, so I don’t do that whole curse stuff of yours.”

  “Aye. That he does.” The seer’s head canted. “Will you let him win?”

  “I—I don’t want to, but the screaming.” He paused as guilt knifed him. “I know she’s sad, but why doesn’t she—”

  He clamped his mouth closed. How could he possibly say that he wished the unknown woman dead?

  Dmitri smiled, and Talon remembered the seer could read his thoughts. “She serves a vital purpose. That’s why she’s alive.”

  Talon frowned with confusion.

  “She serves you. And when you come to understand her sacrifice, go out and serve others in the same way.”

  Although he didn’t understand what Dmitri meant, more guilt stabbed Talon. But talking was getting easier and easier, so he brushed his guilt aside with humor. “By annoying them to death?”

  Dmitri didn’t look amused. “Nicholas, two defects mar your physical beauty.”

  Talon grunted his derision. “There is nothing beautiful about me at the moment.” His wasted muscles quaked, as if struggling to hold his bones upright. He was getting tired, but he fought the urge to slump.

  Dmitri brushed his objections aside. “Nothing a bath, a haircut, a change of clothes, and a few solid meals won’t solve. Now, perhaps you can restrain yourself from interrupting while I expl—”

  “You forget that it is many months since I spoke to anyone.”

  “Your fault, boy, not mine. Now, as I was saying . . . you were born with eyes that discern no color and ears that hear in a range beyond that of normal humans. Your bad vision has already proved its worth in preventing you from going crazy in the dark. Thanks to that poor wretch’s screaming, your ears are getting their workout. In time, you will thank her for her wailing, because the day will yet come when your hearing will be your salvation. Give thanks for the protection it is.”

  “But it’s killing me.” That came out like a whine, making Talon flinch. “I—I want to be brave, Dmitri. I really do.”

  His eyes flickered up to the black smudge Morass has suspended and the glass dome beyond. The brilliant white faded to mid-tone gray, and Talon began to discern the fiddle’s curvaceous shape. It was the most beautiful thing he had ever seen, more tantalizing than the images of the forest painted on the walls, more alluring than the sky, more tempting than the clouds, more compelling than the sun.

  He had to have it.

  And when he held it in his hands, whether he fulfilled the Dmitri Curse or not, he would escape.

  Dmitri’s voice tugged him away from his dreams.

  “Then devote some of your attention—the focus that makes you such a formidable opponent—on learning how to filter her shouts. It is within your power to do that. This is your work, not scheming to get an impossible-to-reach fiddle.”

  “But the thought of having it gives me hope.”

  “The season for trying for the fiddle will come. But consider, my friend, what good will a fiddle be to you if you can’t play it for the sake of the sound?”

  Dmitri had a point.

  “Aye.” Talon smiled a half-mocking smile.

  Dmitri smiled in turn. “Aye. Indeed.”

  All mirth vanished. Nicholas didn’t have much energy left, and he needed a specific answer from Dmitri. “You say the fiddle is impossible to reach, and maybe you’re right.” His voice dropped. “Will I ever escape?”

  “There is a prophecy to fulfill.”

  Talon’s stubbornness kicked up like a mule that Dmitri hadn’t given him a straight answer. “I don’t want to fulfill a prophecy! I want to be free!”

  Dmitri fixed him with a withering eye. “There is no freedom in Chenaya, Nicholas, only compulsion.”

  Talon wanted to scream and shout, but he contained himself. What little physical energy he had could not be squandered in worthless emotion. As it was, this conversation had tired him out even more than climbing the walls ever could. “Why is that my problem?”

  “Now that you know her story, how do you feel about the woman who screams?”

  Dmitri’s answer irritated Talon.

  “You know I’m angry for her.” He didn’t bother mentioning his guilt and shame; Dmitri knew his thoughts.

  “When you leave here, even your rotten eyes will see much that will make you angry. Then, perhaps, you will be ready to discuss the problems of Chenaya with me.”

  Talon didn’t want to lie down, but his wasted muscles couldn’t seem to hold him up anymore. He curled into a ball on the floor and looked up at Dmitri. “Is that why I’m colorblind? To force me to see the . . . the contrasts in life?”

  “Not forced, Nicholas. It’s what you chose.”

  A whole new conversation seemed to lurk in that answer, a conversation Talon didn’t have either the desire or the energy to hold. As it was, he struggled to stop his eyelids fluttering closed.

  Dmitri spoke through his smile. “Rest now. And then you have work to do.” He patted Talon’s matted hair.

  “Are you leaving?” Talon’s voice sounded distant as he drifted in and out of sleep.

  “Not if you want me to stay.”

  The last thing Talon muttered before slipping into sleep was, “You can come into my head.”

  Chapter 55

  “Ah, we progress! Dead people are now allowed!”

  Lynx heard Dmitri’s words above the desperate wails of that poor woman. She could barely grasp that Talon had called and Dmitri had come! What’s more, the seer rubbed gentle circles on Talon’s back as her son slept. He looked down at Talon with such love it almost leveled Lynx. She turned to share her joy with Axel, and her breath hitched.

  Instead of beaming relief and happiness the way she was, Axel looked concerned. Very concerned.

  Had he heard from Stefan? Were they all about to die?

  Her eyes followed the direction of his. Thirty-eight distraught faces confronted her
. A few of the kings clasped their chests. Others lolled in their seats like drunks. Liatl looked down at the floor. Even Hi Lai appeared discomposed.

  Winds! Did the siren blare? Did I not hear it? Then why are we not all rushing downstairs?

  She wanted to scream her questions, but Axel lumbered to his feet. He had to be planning to tell them evacuation plans. She sat forward in her seat.

  But when he spoke, his voice was surprisingly gentle, not the commanding tones she would have expected. “I understand how shocking that was for you. I assure you, having Dmitri there was not our plan.”

  Lynx turned to him in amazement and relief.

  Hi Lai spoke. “You once told me that Dmitri died hundreds of years ago. I could never believe that the dead still have enough interest in our affairs to drive curses through generations. Yet his skin glowed—” Her eyes had a distant quality, struggling to compute what she’d seen. “How else could that happen unless he was—”

  “A ghost,” Beric whispered. He clutched a talisman. “We’ve been shown a ghost on that vile technology.”

  Chad’s voice rang out. “Not a ghost, my friends, a resurrected human. And the dead most certainly do involve themselves with our affairs. We Trevenites know that better than anyone.”

  Although Lynx understood their concern—she had been shocked into unconsciousness when she’d seen her first dead person—it annoyed her that Talon and his message had been totally overlooked by Dmitri’s presence.

  She shot to her feet. Body shaking with emotion, she tossed her braids and feathers over her shoulders. “Why shouldn’t Dmitri come on a day when he—we—needed you all to believe in his curse? We can hide away in our palaces, our burrows, our mountains, but it doesn’t alter the fact that the day of change in Chenaya has dawned.”

  She pointed at the image of Talon. Dmitri had pulled her sleeping boy’s head onto his lap, just the way Talon had once done with Thunder. With gentle fingers, the seer smoothed Talon’s matted hair.

  “They are that change,” Lynx continued. “We can either join them on the battlefield or we can slink back into our holes. But don’t cry when the millions of people who have gone to their graves at Avanov hands rise up to curse you if you fail today to do what should have been done four hundred years ago. If the world had rallied after Thurban invaded Norin, none of us would be here today, dreaming of the demise of Lukan and his Dragon.”

  The Chenayan flag behind her chair caught her eye. She strode over, hoisted it, and, using her teeth and fingers, ripped it down the middle. The two halves, she threw into the air.

  As they fluttered to the glass floor, she shouted, “The day of dreaming is past! Now is the time for action!”

  Axel took her hand. His voice rang out like a clarion call. “Who will join us on the battlefield to overthrow Lukan?”

  Her father, Jerawin, and Chad stood.

  Her father walked over to the image of Talon and Dmitri. He drew the two machetes strapped to his back and went down on one knee with the weapons crossed at his feet. “I, Thorn, king of the Norin, pledge my weapons, and the weapons of every raider in my tribe to this cause. May the Winds hear my oath and consider it binding on my soul.”

  Dmitri lifted Talon’s head and placed it gently on the floor. As Talon slept on, he stood, facing Thorn.

  Her father thumped his fist to his chest, the homage Norin reserved for their kings, and then joined Lynx and Axel.

  Dmitri nodded at Thorn.

  After the flurry of gasps that the seer could see them, too, every eye turned to Chad and Jerawin.

  Chad snorted. “Seventeen years of Trevenite and Lapisian blood spilled by Chenayans shout our commitment. Jerawin’s people and my own will not rest until the invaders are driven not just from our borders, but from every capital of every stolen nation guarded in the Avanovs’ lair. Rulers of the Free Nations, it is to you that we now look to take up the fight. Join us. With Nicholas the Light-Bearer as our symbol, we will drive the Dragon from its lair and slaughter it. Only then will our world know the peace our forefathers promised us when they destroyed all weapons after the original Burning.”

  As frightened as Beric had been of the “ghost” and the “vile Avanov technology,” Lynx expected the king to respond with a positive shout, as he had whenever a member of the alliance leadership called for support.

  But instead, Beric—and the kings who followed his lead—cowered in their chairs.

  Lynx’s pulse raced. What if none of them agreed to fight?

  Jewels clinked and silk rustled in the silence. Queen Hi Lai stood. She bowed to Lynx and then turned her back so she faced the other monarchs. “Before you all think I am merely stepping into a gap left by Beric, let me assure you that is not so.”

  Beric squirmed, making Lynx wonder what the Zou queen was doing to him.

  Hi Lai shifted to include Lynx and the other alliance leaders in her field of vision. “I would have chosen to act regardless of what anyone else here does.” Her almond-shaped eyes roved across the kings. “I would hope you will also be guided by your consciences and not your alliances.” A brief hand wave at Talon and Dmitri. “Warlord Axel Avanov, free the Son of Prophecy, bring him and the seer to my court for me to meet, and I will pledge you my absolute support. Without the Light-Bearer, I cannot risk offending the Dragon by throwing my lot in with you.”

  She bobbed a bow at Lynx and then at Dmitri and Talon before returning to her seat. Queen Hi Lai’s trade partners shifted in their chairs, murmuring their support if the Light-Bearer was freed.

  The wonder on all their faces as they gazed at Talon moved Lynx.

  To these people, her son was not a forest boy who loved his dog, honey, and climbing trees. He was hope, a Son of Prophecy, a Light-Bearer, who would destroy the Dragon and bring about a new world. How could she have been so blind to what had been so clear to everyone else?

  It was time to burn the name Talon and revel in the rebirth of Nicholas. Perhaps with her undying support of his role—his name—her son would be willing to step up to the destiny that right now he shunned.

  That was her work.

  Axel looked squarely at Beric. “Are you with us or against us?”

  Beric’s already saturnine lips turned down even more. “I am never against you, Axel, you know that.”

  “Then show that support on the battlefield. Send me men to train for this war. It is only if your soldiers and those of your allies swell our numbers that we can take Cian. I have told you this for years. Otherwise, I would have destroyed Lukan and the capital when he first banished Lynx and her son.”

  Liatl’s quiet voice caught Lynx by surprise. “And if we don’t? Will your alliance and your ghosts have men enough to spare to wage war on us all? I would think overthrowing the empire handful enough—even using the Blades you have already stolen from me.”

  Axel didn’t bother hiding his irritation. “There is no room in this conflict for yapping dogs, Liatl. You either join us as a full alliance partner, or you face Lukan on your own.”

  A few of the kings in Beric’s block stirred.

  Lavar, King of Kartania, raised his hand. “Are you implying that Lukan intends to attack us? We pay you protection tax to avoid just that.”

  The siren blared.

  Chapter 56

  Axel froze at the strident call, so clearly a warning of something dire. So did every other person in the orb.

  “And now?” Liatl demanded. “More terrors to manipulate us into doing your will?”

  Axel considered quickly. Stefan had been prevented from alerting them that the drone was coming. No matter. They would have to make this work on their own, just as he made everything else in this endless, grinding war work.

  The height of the town walls and the range of the human eye, aided by a distance lens, should have meant the craft was at least five to eight miles out. But he couldn’t trust that. Not with a stealth craft designed to avoid detection.

  Quickly, he pulled up a fabricated sc
reen he had always intended to use for the meeting: an image of a blimp moving across mountainous terrain. Only, back when he had his programmers create the image, he had believed he would have an hour and a half to move these people.

  Now he had minutes. He placed the informa on the lectern and pointed at the image.

  “That flashing light is an unmanned Chenayan airship. In my world, where we accept that such technology exists, we call it a drone. That drone is loaded with poisonous gas—Lukan calls it Dragon’s Fire—and it’s heading to Oldfort.” His voice rose against the cries of horror. “We have a plan in place. Everyone please follow Heron and Magridal to the exit.” He gestured to those confounded narrow spiral stairs. Getting a mass of people safely and speedily down them was always going to be a challenge—now it seemed an impossibility.

  No one moved.

  Radiating panic, Lynx, Jerawin, and Chad leaped to their feet.

  “Calmly, like this is what we always planned,” Thorn whispered, so softly that Axel barely heard him. “Select a monarch and get things moving.”

  Each of the leaders picked a monarch to target.

  Axel could have hugged Thorn for his steadiness.

  Despite the fear-induced sweat streaming down his torso, this was not the time to show weakness. At the first sign of panic, these people would stampede and no one would be saved. Everything Axel had spent decades working for would be blasted to naught. Nicholas would never be rescued and the Dmitri Curse thwarted.

  Not on my watch.

  He gritted his teeth and smiled as he strode to Hi Lai. “Come, let me escort you.”

  The queen must have seen something in his expression. She started to rise. “You—you mean this?”

  “Every word. If Lukan has his way, we will all be dead. But the Pathfinder Alliance will never let that happen.” He took her arm, noticing that his friends were having similar success with the other monarchs. “But if we are to continue fighting him, we need more support. Yours particularly.”

  “You have always gone for the dramatic, Axel. But this is extreme, even for you.” Her fingers digging into his arm belied her calm.