Redheart (Leland Dragon Series)

by Jackie Gamber

  “Helping you?” She bucked her shoulders to dislodge his hands. If only she could see! The blackness was harsher than even Kallon’s cave, and made everything seem immense and threatening.

  His hands did leave her shoulders, but she felt them again on her arms, then grasping her hands. “You’re frozen! Are you naked?” Soft rustling sounded. “Take my tunic. Mind the pockets.” Cloth pressed to her face. The smell told her how filthy it was. Still, it was warm. She slipped it over her head.

  “Kallon said a white dragon brought you.” She tugged the fabric into place around her knees, and her hands moved curiously along the seams in search of pockets.

  “Yes.”

  “How long have you been here?”

  “Lost track.” She felt his hands again, stopping her searching fingers. “The pockets are there. You’ll have to trust me on that.”

  She pressed her hands to her lap. “Why did they bring you?”

  He sighed, and she could hear the creak of his old bones as he shifted to settle. “Fordon Blackclaw doesn’t need reasons to do what he does. But if I were to give one, it would be that he’s greedy.”

  “Fordon Blackclaw?”

  “Did you meet a monstrous black dragon?”

  “Yes.” Her nostrils still sizzled from his breath.

  “That’s him.”

  “He wants to know where Kallon is.”

  “Did you tell him?”

  She shook her head. “I don’t know where he is.” She drew her knees up to her chest and hugged them tightly. Tears sprang anew, and her chest tightened with trying to hold them back. “I don’t understand any of this.”

  “No. I’m sure you don’t.” He patted her kneecap. She suddenly wondered how much more frightening it would be if she were alone. The sound of his voice somehow kept the panic at bay.

  “Why does Mr. Blackclaw want Kallon?”

  His patting hand paused.

  “Orman?”

  When he spoke, the lilt in his voice led her to think he was smiling. “Where are you from, child?”

  “Cresvell, originally. Most recently, Durance. Why?”

  “Cresvell,” he repeated. “Far removed from any dragon territories. Almost not even in Leland Province. Can you see the mountains from there?”

  “On a clear day we can almost see shadows of them. We know they’re there.”

  “Is that what you came searching for when you left home? The mountains?”

  Riza frowned in thought. “I don’t think so. I don’t know that I left in search of anything, I only know I couldn’t bear to stay.”

  “You’re an adventurer.”

  She rested her chin on her bent kneecaps. “If I am, I’m not a very good one.”

  “No one gets it just right on the first try.” Craggy knuckles stroked her face.

  She closed her eyes. “I’m sorry for you that you’re here, but I’m glad for me that you are. I don’t like the dark.”

  “Don’t sleep well in it.”

  “No. Not anymore.” She lifted her head and squinted at him. She could almost make out a faint, fuzzy outline. “How do you know I don’t sleep well?”

  “I’m a wizard, after all. I’m not without my tricks.”

  “What kind of tricks? Do you have a way of getting something to drink?” Her throat felt coated in sand each time she swallowed. She pressed her fingertips to it.

  “No. Wrong crystals. But we have this.” She felt a ripple of air at her left side, and a yellow light exploded from the seam of the tunic. The glow grew to the size of a fist, then a loaf of bread, and then it burst open to scatter glittering fragments like floating glass around their heads and shoulders. Each splinter cast its own tiny prism flame. “I save that for when I really want to impress someone.”

  She could see! Orman sat in front of her, his knobby legs folded. Dancing light arced over his scrawny chest, turning sparse hairs to buttery yellow. His beard whiskers took on the same warm tone where they drooped over one knee and puddled onto the floor between his legs. Wild eyebrows perched over sharp eyes. He smiled. Wrinkles collided around his cheeks.

  “How are you doing that?” Riza patted the seam at her ribs. “I don’t feel a pocket or anything.”

  Orman lifted a finger. “Doesn’t mean one isn’t there. Our eyes are as easily fooled as our minds.” He leaned closer. “All the times you fed and tended Wager, you never did see the tiny shard around his neck, did you?”

  “Wager?”

  “My pigeon.”

  “The bird I kept in my room? How could you know about that?”

  “Child.” Orman tilted his head, and his eyes narrowed, inspecting her so closely she could feel his eyes like probing fingers. “I thought by the strength of the link that you might have the gift. But you’re not understanding easily.”

  Riza lifted her chin. “Well, maybe if you would stop talking in riddles!”

  Orman tsked and shook his head, his beard wobbling on his knee. “Is all of Cresvell so ignorant of the old ways?”

  “I’m not one to ask. I thought the only ways we have are old ways.”

  He smiled again, and tapped a finger beneath her chin. “You feel trapped by them. Bound up in the old ways like leather straps around your dreams.”

  Riza didn’t ask him this time how he could know such a thing. She simply nodded.

  “Oh, you have it, all right. Something’s inside you waiting to blossom like a hopeful bud on a Dandria branch. You’re still young enough to sense it.” He patted her knee again. “You got out just in time, Riza Diantus.”

  She didn’t remember telling him her name. Somehow, maybe, he just knew.

  Orman gave a long wink. “Now you’re learning.”

  Chapter Thirty-Four

  A scrape of claws against stone alerted Riza. Orman doused the light with a wave. The rattle of the door chain sent a bolt of fear down Riza’s spine, and she scooted toward Orman, hands reaching for him. His leathery fingers closed around her palms, and her panic quieted.

  A shaft of flickering light snapped against the floor. Slivers of something oozed like flat snakes through a slot in the door and dropped. Then the light disappeared with a groan of metal, and the retreating clickclick of toenails left them alone once more.

  “Dinner,” said Orman. “You like dried meat?” He shuffled past her shoulder, bumping her off-balance.

  Her stomach burned from emptiness. “I’d like dried leather just about now.”

  “Isn’t much, but you can have mine. I’ve lost my appetite these days.”

  “But you should eat, you need to stay strong.” As she spoke, the glow from her pocket blinked to life again and exploded around her face.

  Orman knelt, offering his meager strip of meat. “Take it. And remind me what I was saying.”

  She took it. She tore it in half and tried to offer some, but Orman shook his head, so she nibbled it. “You were saying that Kallon’s father was your vassal.”

  “Ah, yes. That’s right. A fine and honorable soldier he was, too. It was my pleasure to know him.” Orman tugged thoughtfully at his whiskers. “Had such plans for his son. But Kallon is stubborn and still angry.”

  It did describe him. “He’s never told me exactly what happened.”

  Orman stared for a long time at nothing. Then he spoke. “There’s no magic stronger than dragon magic. Humans try to duplicate it, attempt to harness a sort of power of our own. But what we do is really all about the crystals in our feeble hands.”

  “I know nothing about how magic works.”

  Orman smiled. “So you say. But you rise with the sun each morning. You watch clouds dangle from the sky like bits of cotton thread. You’ve watched the birth of squealing piglets and bathed in a warm summer breeze.”

  Pleasant memories, all of them. She smiled. “Of course. But what’s that got to do with magic?”

  Orman grasped her hand, regarding her patiently. “That’s the real magic. Those are the things that defy explanation.”
He fanned out his fingers. “Miracles.” He lowered his hands again. “That’s what we try to duplicate with our chants and crystals. That’s the power we try to harness for ourselves.”

  Riza studied him. “I don’t think I understand.”

  “No, maybe you won’t just yet. It took someone very special and wiser than me to help me understand. You’re not eating.” He shoved a strip of meat toward her face.

  She smiled, and pushed at his knuckles. “I’ll eat if you eat.”

  “But you’re starving.”

  “So are you.”

  His eyes went so dark she thought he was suddenly angry. But he bit the meat, tore off a bite, and waved the sticky end at her. “Your turn.”

  She gnawed at her own food. “How long can they keep us here?”

  “As long as they want.” He chewed and leaned in, eyeing her. “Whatever you did to get Blackclaw mad at you must have been impressive.”

  “I don’t know what I did at all. I only just saw him for the first time when I got here. I was with Kallon by a river near your house.”

  “Aris River? In Wren Meadow?”

  “Kallon never named it.” She hugged herself. The prison’s frozen air was leeching into her very bones. “I took a bath, and Kallon went to investigate something that flew overhead, and while he was gone, a brown dragon swooped down and scared me half to death.”

  “A brown dragon? A male?”

  “I think it was a girl.”

  Orman tugged his beard. “Vaya perhaps. Interesting.” He bobbed his chin. “Go on.”

  “Well, she roared something about being in dragon territory, and what right did I have? I tried to tell her I was with Kallon, but she grabbed me and flew off so fast I couldn’t even get my clothes.”

  “She didn’t say why?”

  Riza shook her head. “It’s as though she was already mad at me before she even met me.” She pulled her arms in from the sleeves of her tunic, and huddled beneath the thin cloth as though it were a blanket. “We landed here, and everyone spoke a language I don’t know, except at the end, when Mr. Blackclaw asked me about Kallon.”

  Orman tore off another bite. “Goes round and round, just like the circlet that started it all.”

  “What circlet? Started all what?”

  Orman rocked forward to his hands and knees. Then slowly, creaking and groaning, he pushed to his feet. His arms stretched up, out of the crystal’s light, and eerie shadows crawled across his face. “It was while I was dragon liaison to Venur Romas of Shornmar. You probably don’t remember dragon liaisons. Few people do.”

  “No,” said Riza. “What is it?”

  “It’s how most wizards got the best training. We served a land owner, managing the dragon soldiers in his service, and in turn, we were allowed to study his vast library, and were given crystals mined from his land.” He crouched, his face near. “We got the discards. No venur would sacrifice the best crystals for a liaison wizard. But sometimes, Venur Shornmar would take me to the mining site, and I saw them pulled from the ground in their purest state.” His eyes drifted aside, and Riza could almost see his memories in his cloudy gaze. “Bluest quartz, pink crystals like peppermint, and bronze-speckled chunks of clear ice.”

  “You never kept any of those?”

  “Oh, no. I hadn’t anywhere near the skill needed to wield pure crystals such as those.” He shook his head. “I was a new wizard, and a mediocre one at that. I came into the trade late in life, you see.”

  “Was it your first post?”

  “It was!” Orman pointed a finger. “It’s why I didn’t recognize the power of the circlet when first I saw it. I sensed something. I could tell by the way Venur Shornmar whispered its name. He never touched it directly, only gestured with the box containing it.” He drooped like a grieving buzzard. “Don’t know how I could have known, but I somehow should have.”

  “Known what? What circlet, Orman?”

  His voice hushed. “The Circlet of Aspira. Only one of its kind. Crafted by dragons, with bloodstone dredged from the very vein that courses through Mount Gore.” He let out a low whistle, and patted the stone floor. “Perhaps right beneath us, even now.”

  “I don’t know how it came to be in Shornmar’s possession,” he answered to Riza’s next question before she had a chance to voice it. “Didn’t ask. Didn’t want to know.”

  He formed his fingertips and thumbs into an oval, and then pressed them to the top of his head. He closed his eyes. “To grant the wearer the desires of their heart.”

  “What happened to it? Where is it now?”

  He lowered his hands. “As a friend to Bren, I finally told him about it. He said the circlet was supposed to have been destroyed years ago, but had been smuggled out from dragon possession, and lost.”

  “Did it really grant wishes?”

  “Yes. It did. But bloodstone is a very precarious crystal, and if your focus is even a little off balance, there are far-reaching consequences. Not to mention the fact that most people don’t really know their deepest desires. You can imagine why it was considered so dangerous.”

  Riza’s feet were falling asleep from sitting so long. She stretched out her legs. “What happened to it?” she asked, after she’d gotten comfortable again.

  “I decided to relieve Shornmar of it. I thought it would be for the good of everyone to get it back to the dragons, where it belonged.” Orman sighed, and the lines of his face deepened. “Didn’t know I’d been tracked. When I found Bren in the woods of Mount Gore, we were attacked. I scrambled to hide the circlet in the knothole of a fat tree, and Bren fought my battle for me.”

  He sighed again. “I came around a hill to find Bren wounded and bleeding, and dying at the feet of a man in black. So had Kallon. He’d thrown himself across his father, and I was too late to stop him.” He paused, pressing his fingertips to his eyes.

  “So Kallon watched his father die,” Riza whispered.

  Orman nodded slowly. “Kallon would have died, too. The man had his sword raised high, and Kallon was too frightened or too desperate…”

  “What happened?”

  “Bren cried, ‘May vita en dae!’ I was blinded by a kind of light I’d never seen before. When I could finally see again, everyone was gone. Except Bren.”

  Silence settled like a heavy cloak. Riza watched the memories in Orman’s eyes, and touched his hand. “Poor Kallon.” She wished he were here now, so she could touch him, too, and tell him that she knew, and that she understood. But she was buried deep in a chamber of the heart of Mount Gore, and he’d sworn that he would never return to this place. She wondered if she’d ever see him again.

  “No magic’s stronger than dragon magic,” Orman said, breaking the silence. “They are born of the same power we try to grasp, but so pathetically mimic.” He turned and rested his wrinkled face against the wall.

  Riza crawled toward him just as the pocket crystal blipped out. If she hadn’t been beside him, she might have panicked. But she could hear his breathing, and could feel his bony kneecap against her thigh.

  “Orman? ‘May vita en dae,’ what does that mean?” she asked.

  He shifted. His voice came nearer to her ear, though it was very soft. “It means, ‘My life for his’, child. Bren said, ‘My life for his’.”

  Chapter Thirty-Five

  Kallon sat on the plateau of Mount Krag. He felt as though he’d been there for hours. Not a muscle twitched for fear he’d disturb the gentle current of air that might bring a clue, or a familiar scent, to lead him toward the place where Riza had disappeared. His ears were primed, and his nostrils wide.

  His neck ached. His shoulders cramped. Frustrated, he opened his eyes and nearly called her name again, but something pressed to the inside of his gut and warned him to stay. Be still.

  “Kallon Redheart!”

  Kallon snapped his gaze toward a pebble-eyed pigeon that blinked impatiently up at him. “Orman?” he asked.

  “Of course,” snapped the little bi
rd. “What are you doing loafing about when you are needed?”

  “Was not loafing! Where are you? Are you all right?”

  “No thanks to you. But we’re tired of the place. Wing your carcass over here and get us out.”

  “We?”

  “Your lovely friend, Riza, is here with me.”

  Kallon shot up to all fours, his wings wide and ready to fly. “Tell me where you are.”

  “You know where we are,” said the little bird.

  His wings sank as his heart dropped low in his chest. “Mount Gore. Why is Riza there? Who took her?”

  “Doesn’t matter. She’s here, and she’s cold and hungry.”

  “And frightened,” Kallon added quietly as he turned his eyes to the towering peak in the distance. “But I have no power to release her. I’m no one to them now.”

  “You are, and always will be, the son of Bren Redheart. You have authority over all dragons in this province, whether they acknowledge it or not. Claim your place and you will see them know you.”

  He didn’t believe Orman, and he wasn’t sure he wanted to claim his place, even if the dragons were willing to listen. What would he say to Blackclaw? How could he convince the leader to release his friends? He would be flying straight into the most humiliating experience he’d ever know.

  But Riza was there, and in trouble again. He groaned. “Orman,” he finally said. “Tell her I’m coming.”

  * * *

  “What did he say?” Riza asked, as Orman turned. She’d been watching the wizard speak to the air.

  “He’s coming. I told you he would.”

  She clapped her hands together. “I don’t believe it! Can he make Blackclaw let us out?”

  “He can try.”

  “How did you use the bird to speak to him?”

  “A link through a small crystal around the bird’s neck. It’s a similar version of Kallon’s stone. The one that was his mother’s.”

  “Yes. I’ve seen it. But I never saw the one around Wager’s neck.”

  Orman pressed his cold hand to her cheek. “A crystal that can be seen can be removed. I can’t have that, can I?” He patted her face, and Riza smiled at the warmth in his voice.