“Which means, since you’re the warrior, before we go we have to make you better.”
“Is that wise, Elora?” Thorn interjected. “I mean, to do that here?”
“It has to be here, Thorn. Nowhere else is safe.”
“Of all the words to choose from, child, to describe our situation, safe is the last on my list.”
“We have time,” she repeated.
“Can I help?” he asked. “The two of us, working together, will speed the healing.” Especially, he thought, since I’m the one who can wield magic.
“Hold fast to your strength, Drumheller,” she said, in a manner far older than her years, that carried with it the instinctive stamp of royalty. It was a voice that was learning to command, and growing accustomed to being obeyed. “We’ll have need of it later.”
He pursed his lips and huffed, very much a father confronted by an unruly offspring, frustrated by the realization that the child might be right. There was no sign now of the escarpment, as though a curtain of blackest velvet had been dropped before it. He remembered tales told by the sea-roving Cascani traders, of sandy islands surrounded by the trackless wastes of the Mother Ocean and it seemed to him that this was much the same. He wondered if he walked to the boundary of that darkness, then took one more step, whether his feet would find solid purchase beyond. Did it represent the limit of what could merely be seen, or what actually was?
On impulse, he dropped to one knee and swept a hand through the sand beneath him. Memory told him what it felt like while the dragons lived, yet every sense now gave the lie to that recollection. The soil flowed around his hand and between his fingers more like water than earth, and he found he could not grasp it. There was no texture to its touch, and even less substance; he might as well have been trying to catch air. With swift, sure strokes of his staff, he began to draw a sigil to serve as the focal point for a minor spell, but left the task unfinished as the marks in the sand disappeared as quickly as he made them.
“What is happening?” he asked, and supplied his own answer in a voice that mingled awe and stark terror. “What happens to the Realm of Dreams, when the Dreamers are no more?”
“Thankfully,” Elora said from her position by Khory’s side, “the Fates willing, we’ll never have to learn.”
“It does no good to deny what you’ve done, child!” he began, only to have words fail him utterly as Elora reached into one of her pouches with both hands and drew forth a single, gleaming egg, which she cradled in her lap as if it was the most precious thing she’d ever held.
“All living things have their allotted span, Thorn,” she said, and as she drew a set of fingertips across the surface of the egg, gently stroking it as she would a kitten, flickering coruscations of fire followed from deep within. It was of a fair size, roughly the equivalent of a Daikini’s head, and of a weight to match. Its coloration best resembled an opal, with that gem’s ability to refract light into a rainbow spectrum of subordinate hues. In this instance, the lines of flame Elora’s touch brought into being started out as a blend of scarlet and gold, but as the flames moved farther afield from their source they cast off ripples of lapis and rich purple that reminded Thorn of the colors of a summer sunset.
“Some,” she continued, allowing herself a slight smile, her caress of the egg returning as much pleasure as she gave it, “like the mayfly, last but a day. Others walk the waking world for years. For some, that term is counted in centuries. For the world entire, a stretch of time beyond measure or human comprehension. But death when it comes doesn’t necessarily mean the end. From each generation comes the seed of its successor. As you were the father to your children, as I am the child of my murdered parents. Even Khory here”—and her smile broadened—“the body of a warrior slain in ages long past serving as the repository for the soul of a demon, had a mama and a papa.”
She looked up from the egg and her smile turned ineffably sad, and Thorn knew she was seeing what he’d just tried so hard to recall, the form and texture of the dragons.
“Even dreams get old, Thorn,” she said. “They need to be renewed, they need to speak to each race and generation in turn. And be shaped by those races and that generation.”
“That’s why the Deceiver came, hey?” Khory nodded. “To gain the power to dictate the shape of those dreams.”
“And why he was able to breach their citadel,” Elora said. “Because, real as they may have looked to us, they were no more than shadows.”
A truth, Thorn realized with sudden insight, but not the whole truth. Elora was holding something back, the same perception revealing a thread of purest fear laced through the body of her thoughts and words. It didn’t glow very brightly, which made him wonder if she was even consciously aware of it, nor was it very thick, but it reached through the whole of her being. It was something he’d never seen in her before, and gave off resonances of both the dragons and the Deceiver. Something happened here, he thought, that struck her so deeply she dare not even acknowledge it.
He considered voicing his thoughts; instead, he chose to keep his own counsel and said, “Speaking of shadows,” emphasizing the comment with a wave toward the encroaching darkness.
Spurred to action, Elora set aside her reverie and returned the egg to her pouch, scooching forward until her knees barely touched Khory’s side right at the waist.
“Watch our backs, Drumheller,” she told him, and he responded with an assent.
“Thought you had no gift for magic,” Khory muttered to Elora.
“Depends on how you define the term,” Thorn replied in Elora’s stead.
“Figured there’d be a loophole. Someways, mage, you lot put lawyers to shame.”
Thorn ignored the gibe. “To most,” he said, “this is magic.”
He snapped his fingers and, presto, in the palm of his hand a ball of light appeared, so pure and radiant that Khory had to narrow her eyes.
“A little showy, don’t you think, Thorn?” Elora commented. The contrast between light and shadow was absolute, each so intense that they made it almost impossible to see, the glare washing out the shapes and colors of things as effectively as the darkness. In fact, the only way to tell the form of an object was by extrapolation from the shadows it cast.
“For now, perhaps. For later, perhaps not. The point is,” he told Khory, “magic is generally accepted to be the conscious manipulation of natural and unnatural forces. Summon a wind or a demon, it’s much the same procedure. Cast the proper spell, you’ll get the proper result. Elora can’t do that. By the same token, thankfully, she’s also immune to the effects of those enchantments.”
“Except when they’re cast by the Deceiver.”
“Bannefin,” Elora said with a dash of asperity, “I am so grateful for the reminder.” During their first encounter, on the night of Elora’s Ascension when the girl was thirteen, the Deceiver attempted to destroy her soul and assume dominion over her body. That attack failed, and with Thorn’s help Elora managed to escape. But as with the battle here in the caldera, that victory came at an equivalent price. The city of Angwyn, together with all its people and the reigning monarchs of all the Twelve Great Realms who’d gathered there to honor Elora, was ensorcelled, encased in ice. As for Elora herself, her skin had turned purest silver, as though she were a statue cast from that argent metal and miraculously given life.
“You’re the patient,” Elora said, and her tone brooked no further discussion. “I’m the healer here. Lie flat, shut your mouth, let me do my work.”
“This magic that really isn’t?”
“My kind of magic,” Thorn continued, “is the imposition of my active will on the natural order. The Deceiver represents what I do carried to the furthest and most damnable point. His power is the total dominion of his will over nature. Same powers between the two of us, same skills even, only he has allowed them to totally corrupt his soul.”
“I saw you two go at each other, Drumheller. There seemed no difference at all.”
He shuddered at the memory. “A taste only, Khory. I’ve seen now what I can do, and what I might become. I’ll have none of it, ever again.”
“And Elora?”
“She imposes nothing. She asks for the active help of what powers she needs, with no guarantee they’ll be in the mood.”
“Well,” Elora interrupted, “I’d certainly like to give that a try, if you two would quit jabbering long enough for me to concentrate on the task at hand. Hush, please, I’m serious.”
Khory nodded to Drumheller, which he returned, moving around the still form of his fallen companion until he stood opposite the kneeling girl. Sitting on her heels as she was, with her back gracefully curved toward Khory, he was finally able to look down on her. That recognition prompted a shy and rueful twist to his lips as he considered one of the main drawbacks to Nelwyns associating with Daikini, or any of what his people called the Tall Folk, namely the cricked neck that often came from trying to look them in the eye.
Elora laid one hand on Khory’s hips, the other on the center of her body, just below her breasts. The woman’s heart was sound but the beat of her pulse was slow and sluggish, as though the muscle was growing too tired to continue its work. The physical injuries done her were serious, that had been evident at a glance, and much of Elora’s preparatory work involved damping the pain Khory felt, then straightening the broken limbs as best she could. Healing the warrior wouldn’t be of much use if the result left her lame. The real damage, though, was within, and Elora suspected the Deceiver had struck with poison spells as well as blows, to sap the strength of body and will, to infect and overwhelm Khory’s soul.
A Daikini would have been dead and damned before his body hit the ground. Even Khory’s hybrid constitution only postponed the inevitable. If nothing more was done, she was doomed.
The problem was, trying to save her might lead to Elora’s infection by the same foul sorcery.
Khory sensed the danger and gripped Elora by the wrist.
“Danan,” she said, “enough.”
“Elora,” Thorn said, kneeling opposite her, “let me.”
She was tempted. Thorn had skill and experience, he was a mage and though he’d be the last to acknowledge it, one of the foremost in the Great Realms.
She shook her head and spoke softly, a single word.
“No.”
She leaned forward and laid her palms against Khory’s bare skin.
The contact was a shock. After all, she was the one who looked like a silver casting, it didn’t seem right for Khory to feel as cold as one. Elora stepped aside from her physical self, using InSight to view the scene from a perspective far broader than human eyes would allow. For her, there were no longer any such things as flesh and bone, muscle and sinew. The body was not a solid object but was composed instead of currents and networks of energy, crackling streams of fire, much like what she’d called forth beneath the shell of the dragon’s egg, that blazed with a multitude of colors and intensities. In Khory’s case, those blazes were muted, hardly more in some instances than faint embers, desperately close to outright extinction. Those were the points closest to the actual wounds themselves. From there spread the spiritual contagion that threatened the warrior’s young soul. It was hard to remember that while Khory’s body was that of a woman in the prime of her middle years, the soul that animated it wasn’t much more than a child, given its life by Thorn the same night that the Deceiver had tried so hard to claim Elora’s.
She bent herself to her task, concentrating first on the gross and major wounds, starting with Khory’s broken leg. She’d already set the bones, now she had to sing the Song of Making to them, to remind them of what it had been like to be in one piece, united and whole. There was resistance, a strand of foulness that was alien to Khory, glorying in the pain and chaos of the moment, savaging the careful latticework Elora was constructing even as she set it into place.
It would be like this throughout, she realized then. All the good she attempted would be undermined, if not undone outright. She’d hoped to save this worst challenge for last but she knew now there was no hope of that.
She drew back a little into herself, to take stock before making her next move, and that hesitation almost proved her undoing as the strand of infection that was ruining her repair on Khory’s leg suddenly reared up to strike at her with the aspect and deadly speed of a killer cobra. In that flash, it wound its own pattern tightly around her own and sent its poison racing up her arm. In a twinkling, it would be over.
In a twinkling, it was.
The breath rushed out of her, as though she’d been punched, with a deep whoulf that erupted from the pit of her diaphragm. She felt her blood begin to boil, and thought of the elemental firedrakes she’d befriended, creatures who were close but lesser kin to demons and dragons together, whose substance was as molten as the heart of the world. Where human hearts pump scarlet, hers suddenly cast forth molten, liquid gold, so incendiary hot it gave her skin a roseate glow that mimicked the living flesh of her own race. It wasn’t just her blood that burned; every nerve ending, the smallest particle of her being was suddenly turning to fire. She wanted to cry a warning to Thorn, to hurry himself and Khory to safety, or at least cast some kind of warding spell to protect them both, but she couldn’t draw even that single breath. She wondered in that moment, as glorious as it was terrible, if this was how dragons felt when they spat their fire.
As the Deceiver’s poison raced to claim her heart and soul, it ran full-tilt into that awful storm of flame and was instantly and completely consumed.
Elora wasn’t finished, though, not hardly. As the infection had leaped from Khory’s body to her own, so did she now cast her inner fire back across that gulf into the warrior. Khory’s back arched like a drawn longbow, her eyes wide and staring, their irises of jade subsumed beneath glimmering firegold. She cried out, more loudly than Elora had, not so much an expression of pain but of defiance. It was the sound a warrior makes in mortal combat, summoning the last of her strength from the core of her being as she throws herself a final time into the fray. It was her way of saying, “I will die, or I will triumph, I accept no other outcome.”
Elora sensed she herself was glowing, which happened when her own abilities were pushed to their limit. She could see that Khory was as well, though nowhere near so brightly.
Only when the battle was fully joined did she realize that the outcome was nowhere near as certain as she’d assumed. Her fury and her strength made her a formidable foe, but the infection the Deceiver had cast forth into Khory was her match, so tenacious and determined she feared it had a mind of its own. In a way, it did: Khory herself. In the same way that gangrene corrupted the flesh, this spell did the spirit, attaching itself to the darkest potential of its host and using it to gradually seduce the rest. The same resolve and courage, tenacity and battle savvy that Khory was attempting to bring to Elora’s aid was also being marshaled against her. The victory the warrior craved was as much over Elora as over the poison that threatened to destroy her. Whatever the outcome, the death would be—at least in part—her own.
A spear of darkest shadow erupted from Khory’s midsection to stab Elora through the heart. It pierced her body entirely, but as it emerged from her back the shadow exploded into flame, which instantly consumed the entire length of foulness as if it were no more than a construction of rice paper. Fast as a bolt of lightning, the silver fire rushed back along the course established by the shadow spear, carrying Elora along with it. The ride was wilder than anything she remembered, like plunging down a succession of cataracts, through a gauntlet of jagged boulders that churned the water white with spray and accelerated it to breakneck speed. She didn’t try to fight the current or grab for a handhold; both attempts would have been a futile waste of effort. She knew she’d have t
o stay this course for its duration.
She found herself in darkness, but the texture was different from the shadow that had attacked her. This wasn’t brought about by an absence of light, this was an active, dynamic force that defied the laws and structures that were the foundation of Elora’s life. With a shock of recognition, she recognized it as the part of Khory’s spirit that came from her sire, the part of her that was demon.
The fire plunged into that darkness like a high mountain flash flood, walls rising on either side to form a gorge, creating a narrow channel that forced the torrent to rush ever faster and more out of control. The flames Elora ignited could find no purchase, any more than she could herself; instead, they abraded the shore like a monstrous rasp, tearing at the walls with an inhuman fury, as though Elora’s spirit was taking revenge on Khory’s for daring to challenge her.
Scars appeared on the surface of the darkness, faint scorings at first, reminiscent of the scratches on polished metal that come from casual, careless use. But quickly, suddenly, those marks became the vicious gouges of a cold chisel, each gash great and small allowing a flash of light and color to burst free. The contrast was dazzling, even though there was a sense of great age to the images, the feeling in Elora that these were not true memories but their final fading echoes. They reminded her of the dragons upon the rim of their stronghold, so noble and majestic and passionate, so essentially wondrous to behold you didn’t realize they were little better than ghosts.
The same held true here, save that the memories themselves were the ghosts, the last vestiges of a soul that had long since departed to its just reward.
Even as Elora had that thought, the foundation her fire had undermined at last gave way and the entire edifice of darkness collapsed in upon her. It seemed to Elora that the world was suddenly composed of crystal and that some terrible mallet had struck the perfect tone to shatter it to bits. The young woman had barely a moment to realize what was happening, and none to contemplate the consequences, as palisades crumbled on every side. Pieces great and small tumbled into the cataract, filling it to overflowing, bursting its banks and barriers of a stream that had lasted for ages, transforming a flood into a maelstrom.
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