Redheart (Leland Dragon Series)

by Jackie Gamber

  Murmurs erupted. Looks were exchanged. “She’s a dragon-lover and a witch!” someone shouted. The swarm re-gathered and shifted forward, fists and torches waving.

  “You lay another hand on that girl,” Jastin said, his sword drawing out from its sheath, “and I will remove it from its wrist.” He waved the tip of his weapon toward the crowd, which swept back with a hush.

  “Ye warned us,” said Jemiah Rode, and he stepped out from the crowd. “Ye said dragons was coming, and they did! Right as this girl showed up!”

  “She’s brought trouble on us!”

  “We got more trouble ‘n we need already!”

  Jastin waved his sword again. “All of you be quiet! Your dragon troubles are over. The Red is dead.”

  An invisible wind froze Riza’s bones. Kallon? Dead?

  “And just how do you know that?” Jemiah’s eyes narrowed.

  Jastin reached into a pouch at his side. In the darkness, Riza couldn’t make out what was in his hand until he pitched it to the ground. It rolled, withered and dusty, toward her knees. A toe. A red dragon toe with a curving claw. She screamed.

  Then she went numb. She reached for the shrunken thing, but couldn’t even feel it in her hand. She hugged the body part, Kallon’s body part, to her chest. She sobbed. It was all her fault. He’d never wanted a friend. She’d pushed him and followed him. And she’d killed him. She arched forward, pressed her forehead to the ground, and died inside.

  From somewhere far away, she heard Jastin again. “Your superstitions have harmed an innocent girl who was only trying to help you. She lured the beast to me, as I asked her to do.”

  “No!” Riza’s voice came out with more strength than she realized she had. She stood and tried to glare at Jastin, and at the mob, even though it welled the pain in her body. “I won’t lie! I don’t care what you do to me. I did not, and would not, help anyone harm that dragon. He was my friend!”

  The crowd surged toward her, and even Jastin couldn’t stop them. They knocked him to his feet and covered him like a swarm of ants over a dry leaf. Riza’s legs trembled from the effort of standing, but she held tightly to all she had left of Kallon and watched them come.

  Then, near her feet, the ground spat up a tongue of flame. The heat knocked her back to the ground, and the scaly toe bobbled away. Another flame erupted toward her left. Townsfolk dropped torches and ran, pointing and screaming toward the dark sky.

  She looked up. A great, black cloud drew in fast on flapping shadow wings. A dragon-shaped mouth opened, and a spout of fire belched out to strike the ground behind her. Then the cloud descended, and was lit up by a wall of its own flame. It wasn’t really black, and it wasn’t a cloud.

  “Kallon!” Riza called through crackling heat. She didn’t care if she was imagining it. She reached for him. Then she went limp.

  Chapter Twenty-Nine

  Kallon lunged and caught Riza before she hit the ground. She bore scratches and fist marks. Her clothing was torn. She looked just as she had the first time he’d laid eyes on her. He shook with a rage he’d forgotten he could possess. He cradled her, feeling her like a feather against his chest.

  “You did come,” said the voice of the dark human.

  Kallon lifted his eyes. The human limped toward him, his shape distorted through the haze of fading heat and smoke. Around him, villagers continued to scatter, except for those few that beat sticks at a thatched roof that had caught flame.

  “Tell me,” said Kallon. “How is it that a race of creatures so filled with hate and destruction can produce such a gentle spirit as in this girl?”

  “I suppose in the same way that a race of hearty, flying beasts can produce such a miserable weakling as you.”

  “It’s you who didn’t save her.”

  “She didn’t want to be saved. She’s being infected by your poison.”

  Kallon growled. “Poison?”

  The human stooped, wrapped his hand around his weapon, and pointed the blade toward Kallon. “You were a fledgling when you first stared up at me with eyes that wanted to die. You looked at me today with those same eyes.”

  The dark human. The sword. Kallon finally remembered, and his stomach churned. “You.”

  “And I’m only too happy to oblige.”

  Kallon’s voice roiled out with a billow of smoke. “You killed my father.”

  “Your father was already dead. I only made it official.”

  Kallon lunged. He snapped at the human’s head, but the man dodged and spun. Riza was snatched from his arms before he realized what had happened. The human held her, dragging her feet as he backed away.

  “You coward!” said Kallon. “You would use her as a shield against me?”

  “Oh, no. I’m removing her as your shield against me.”

  Riza jerked and moaned.

  “Be careful! You’re hurting her!”

  “She’s no concern of yours anymore.” The human laid Riza to the ground and touched his fingers to her pale cheek. “When I heard her call out your name in the cave, I thought she was there. I thought somehow she’d followed me.” He stood, pointing the tip of his sword at the linking stone around Kallon’s neck. “What is that crystal, that we heard her through it?”

  Kallon touched the stone at his throat. It was still glowing a vibrant purple. It had begun a short time ago, in his cave, when Riza’s voice had called out just as the man’s sword had lifted to strike Kallon’s tail. Both the human and Kallon had been startled.

  There hadn’t been time to think. The man dug the glowing crystal from his pocket, and he and Kallon had stared, listening, as Riza’s voice cried out again, and screamed in fear. Kallon snatched the stone and pushed the human out into the darkness. “Go!” he’d shouted. “They’re hurting her!”

  Kallon had been left alone to listen to her strangled pleas. He’d shrunk farther and farther into the cave’s darkness, living her fear through the stone. He’d clamped his claws around it, trying not to hear, trying not to know that the human would be her hero.

  Except the man wasn’t. Kallon had felt Riza resist. And when she’d thought he was dead, he’d shared her agony. She’d thought he was dead, and she’d shattered. In that moment, his own broken will suddenly set. He’d shot out into the night. He hadn’t even needed the stone to guide the way. He’d just followed his heart.

  Now he stood watching the human and calculating his distance. Kallon would be able to scoop up Riza in two wide steps. “I should have killed you. I shouldn’t have trusted her to you.”

  The human gripped the base of his sword with both hands. “I left you alive, not the other way around.”

  “And I was forced to come because you failed!”

  “Forced? Did you say forced?” The human crept closer. “She stood up to that pack of wolves and told them you were her friend.” He poked his sword again toward the crystal. “Did the stone show you that?”

  “I heard it.”

  “And you’re offended that you had to help?” The man glared. “I’ll be doing her a favor by destroying you before she has the chance to find out what you really are.”

  Kallon bellowed and charged the human. As the man parried, the sword slapped Kallon’s shoulder. Kallon swept his tail at the man’s feet and knocked him flat. Then he grabbed for Riza.

  “Leave her!” The human jumped to his feet and stabbed. Kallon felt a sting in his ribs, but ignored it.

  Kallon was about to lunge again, when a distant voice cried out, “It’s the dragon!” He froze. The villagers had stopped panicking in time to notice him again. Faces peered from around buildings. “Weapons!” someone shouted.

  Chaos broke out as villagers raced to action.

  The dark man cursed. “Get her out of here. Go.”

  Kallon turned, but spotted a red, withered dragon toe on the ground. His father’s body had been missing a claw on his left rear leg. He scooped up the toe, and, with a snarl, stuck it in the human’s face. “This isn’t over. I will kill y
ou.”

  The man’s blade chopped the toe in half. “Not today.”

  Arrows clanged into Kallon’s scales. The dark human shouted and waved his arms. “Be careful! You’ll hit the girl!”

  Hugging Riza, Kallon thrust airborne. The bedlam faded behind him, and the beating of his wings in the warm night drowned out the shouts. He’d come very close to crunching off the human’s head tonight, and he still trembled from the thought of it. He was filled with disgust at the violence of it all. At the humans. At himself.

  “Kallon?” Riza’s fuzzy voice came from near his throat. “Am I dreaming?”

  “No,” he said.

  Her soft arms gripped his neck. “I thought you were dead.”

  By the sound of her words, he could tell she was crying. He wished he knew what to say. For a while, the only sound between them was the whuffle of air as his wings pumped. Then he took a deep breath. “Riza?”

  “Hm?”

  “You told me once you thought your mother did a courageous thing by just closing her eyes and dying. Do you remember?”

  She shifted in his grasp. “I don’t really know if that’s what happened.”

  “But if it is. Do you really believe her choosing to die was brave?”

  She paused before she spoke. “I believe it can be brave to die when you want more than anything to live,” she said. Then her voice grew very soft. “But I think it’s just as brave to live, when you want more than anything to die.”

  After a few minutes, she went still, and he thought she’d fallen asleep. He looked down to find her bathed in the amethyst light of the linking stone. Her eyes were open. “I wish she’d lived,” she whispered.

  Chapter Thirty

  Riza awoke to the gentle music of trickling water. She became aware of the cool rush bathing her throbbing ankle, and a damp compress against her eyes. She rolled to her side, but was urged again to her back by a mild nudge. Her foot was guided and submerged again into cold wetness.

  She tugged the compress from her eyes. Bright sunlight flooded her face. Above, a canopy of green leaves swayed in a breeze. The ground beneath her back was lush and cool. Bird song twittered playfully, echoing among thick ferns. The pungent scent of honey soaked the air, and when she breathed in deep, she could taste sweetness at the back of her throat.

  She sat up slowly to find Kallon crouched beside her at the edge of a meandering stream, his eyes riveted to her leg. She shifted, and he carefully coaxed her ankle back into the water. She smiled, and tugged her ankle from the stream on purpose, only to have him repeat the motion.

  “Must keep still if you wish to heal,” he said.

  “Have you been there all night?”

  “Yes.”

  “Keeping my ankle in the water?”

  “Yes.” His muzzle swung toward her. His nostrils flared as large as her fist, and the breath he sucked in stirred her hair against her cheeks. “You still smell of blood.”

  Blood. She’d seen it redden the eyes of those angry faces in the night, and the memory rushed a chill through her heart.

  “You’re shivering,” Kallon said, his nose bumping her chin. “You cold?”

  “A little, I guess.” She looked around herself at the walls of shifting green. “Where are we? This place doesn’t feel real. It’s like a little pocket of forgotten magic.”

  “If there is any magic left in these mountains, it’s here. If there was any magic to begin with.”

  “So we’re still in Leland?”

  “We are.” He yawned, and a drop of his saliva splashed to her thigh. It stung through her skirt like hot bacon grease.

  “You’re exhausted.”

  “I’m fine. It’s you who needs rest. We have much more flying to do when you’re ready.” His eyes closed, and his muzzle hung so low it brushed her lap.

  “You’re not going to take me back to Durance, are you?”

  His eyes snapped open. “No. You can never go back there.”

  “Then where are we going?”

  “Not we. You. Home. Back to your father and your people.”

  She stiffened. “But I don’t want to go back there, either!” She grabbed his jaw to look him deep in the eyes. “I would rather go back to Durance than to face my father and admit to him that he was right.”

  He pulled his face from her hands.

  “Please, Kallon,” she begged. “Don’t take me back there. It will make everything I’ve been through all for nothing.”

  “All you’ve been through has been for nothing. Violence stalks you, Riza, and you are too innocent to recognize its traps. You walk straight into them, and it’s me who keeps pulling you out.”

  “Maybe my place is with you, then.”

  “You really did hit your head hard.”

  “What?” She leaned forward. “What’s wrong with that? Even my father speaks of a time when dragons and humans used to live together as equals. If I give him enough wine.”

  “Not equals. Servants and masters.”

  “Oh, come on. Dragons served by choice, not bondage.”

  “What do you know about it?” He sat back with a snort.

  “I know what I see of you,” she said. “I know you keep helping me, and not because you’re my servant.”

  Wispy curls of steam puffed from his snout.

  “Dragons could crush us out of existence any time they want, but they don’t. They choose a higher calling. They forfeit their own will for the sake of a greater good.”

  He poked his snout toward her face. “Human survival is the greater good?”

  “No.” Impulsively, she stroked his cheek, which she found cool and smoother than she’d guessed it would feel. “Our being together is the greater good.”

  He pulled from her touch. “Humankind and Dragonkind, you mean.”

  She withdrew her hand, fingers curling into a fist, which she pressed to her lap. “Of course,” she said.

  He regarded her for long time. “If more humans thought like you, Riza, you wouldn’t be in so much danger among them.”

  She smiled.

  “Lay back and rest now.”

  She didn’t feel like resting, she felt warm and tingly inside and ready to walk, or even fly. But she lay back anyway, and watched him watching over her until the melody of the spring faded from her ears, and the green leaves huddled together in a blanket of darkness against her eyes.

  Chapter Thirty-One

  Kallon squinted open an eye. He must have dozed. He didn’t mean to, but he felt as though he’d already been tired for days, and his vigil over Riza had drained what energy he had left. His peering eye found Riza staring directly at him. Her thin legs were lumpy beneath his chin. He’d fallen asleep with his head on her lap.

  “Why did you say that if Leland had any magic left it would be here?” she asked.

  He lifted his head. Then he groaned, his neck gone stiff. Riza wiggled her feet and legs. They must have gone stiff, too, with the weight of his slumbering head on them.

  “Why would it be here, if there was magic left? And why did you say ‘if there was any to begin with’?”

  “How long have you been awake?” He gazed up, but the bushy leaves of their green haven blocked the sun. The temperature was no gauge, either, for this place was warm with morning sun and cool with an evening breeze at the same time. It was a comfortable memory of the Leland Province that once was.

  “I’ve been awake for a while,” she said. “My ankle is better.” She held out her foot. Her ivory flesh was pickled from the water, but the black-blue discoloration was nearly faded. “I think there is magic here. How did you know about it?”

  The metallic tang of blood still overpowered her scent, which concerned him. Predators of any species knew the smell of the wounded, and he wanted her rid of it. “It would be good for you to bathe entirely,” he said.

  “But it’s so cold!”

  “It’s good and clean.” He poked the tip of his tongue into the bubbling stream. It was goo
d and clean, and he drank.

  “Well. All right.” She crawled forward and dipped her hands into the water, swishing them in lazy circles. “I’ll bathe if you tell me how you know about this place.”

  “I have known about it for years.” He waited for her to move further into the stream, but she only pressed her mouth into a tight line and stared back. “I don’t like talking about this,” he said.

  “You don’t like talking about anything.” She smiled, and her eyes were rich with the emerald of the velvety grass she sat on.

  “Very well. Follow me.” His weary legs pushed to stand.

  “This stream was once a river. Its mouth is near the top of Mount Gore. It circles the mountain, disappearing into the earth and reappearing again among the trees and boulders.” He glanced over his shoulder. She was following, but was favoring her ankle. “Can you walk?”

  “Yes. Please go on.”

  “Legend says the river is the heartbeat of the province. It pumps life into the veins of crystal ore that run deep through the land, in all territories, dragon and human.”

  “Look there,” he said, and paused at the edge of a wide pool that parted the lush growth. Here, his eyes traveled upward to the sheared-off top of Mount Krag. Beyond the mountain the sky arched as a tapestry of puffy clouds threaded through turquoise linen.

  “Oh. It’s breathtaking.” Riza came up beside him and rested her palm against his shoulder.

  “That trickle was once a waterfall. Follow the water with your eyes, do you see that ledge up along the mountain, just there?” She nodded. “You can’t see from here, but there’s a place that was once the home of Orman Thistleby. He’s the human who helped me when I first brought you to my cave.”

  “That day you saved my life.” Her face turned to him, and her chest rose with a deep breath. “The first time you saved me.”

  The warmth in her voice stole his words. He simply nodded.

  “Where is he now? You said he was in trouble that day the bird fell from the sky.”

  Shame clamped his chest. “I don’t know. I tried to help him but failed.”