Highland Dragon Master

by Isabel Cooper

  “In the name of Azazel, I send you back. Power of judgment have I over you. In the name of Kokabiel, I banish you. Power of the stars have I over you.”

  Indeed, power answered to Erik and Toinette’s call. It pierced through the dark, slimy air of the room, flowed through their words, and struck at the creature in the box.

  Connection was an inescapable part of combat. Steel met steel, or even bone, and the blow numbed the arm of he who dealt it at first. This time, in this combat, Erik caught a glimpse of the thing in the box, and of the shrieking knot of hunger and malice that served it for a mind.

  It needed no food. It ate for the joy of it, or such joy as It knew—reveling in torment and consumption, in the painful return of existence to the nothingness It loved and hated at the same time. Given twenty years, It had made the island Its own. Given another century, It would grow, until It ate through the world and out the other side, returning in triumph to the place of tumorous angles It called home.

  Erik’s soul screamed within him at the knowledge. His mind shuddered and wished to turn away, to seek comfort in madness or death.

  The dagger was in his hand. Power held him up. Toinette’s voice yet sounded in his ears.

  It is not what the un-ark would have you believe, Adnet had said, and if that was so, then there was a force beyond the one that pressed on his lungs and his mind. Erik could cling to that.

  “In the name of Shamsiel, I bar this world to your presence. Power of the sun have I over you,” he continued, breathless at first and then no longer so. Force was speaking through him, and it had no need to breathe. “In the name of Sariel, I bar this world to your mind. Power of the moon have I over you.”

  The chest shuddered now with every word, blows that came from inside, as the spirit hurled Itself against Its vessel in pain. Erik went onward, invoking Tamiel and Uriel, Arakiel with the power of the land and Penemue with the power of wisdom. He knew they were hurting the un-ark, and he knew it wasn’t enough. He and Toinette were landing blows that bruised, but none that pierced the armor.

  The first pass, he thought. Both strike, but stay in the saddle.

  He drew breath and power, then let it out in the final verse of the exorcism. “And above all I compel you to leave this world by the God of those virtues and potencies, who dwelt in the Heavens, who rideth upon the Kerubim, who moveth upon the wings of the wind, he whose power is in Heaven and in Earth, who spake and it was done, who commanded and the whole Universe was created; and by the holy names and in the holy names, Iah, Iah, Iah, Adonai Tzabaoth.”

  As the last syllable rang in the chamber, dispelling the slurping sounds and the voice alike, Erik ran forward to the un-ark. It aided him, though he suspected unwillingly; close at hand, It had a pull like the tide. He saw twisted letters on the black metal bands, forming an incantation he never wished to read, and noticed that the white wood was the same color as a drowned corpse’s face.

  The dagger was hot enough against his palm to have crippled a normal man. Erik raised it over his head and then stabbed downward with all his might, sinking the blade hilt deep into the center of the box.

  * * *

  Winter-dawn quiet filled the room. It lasted just long enough for Toinette, staring at Erik and the dagger, to notice the stillness.

  Then the screaming began. It came from no human lungs, and so had no pauses or hitches, no moments of respite. The voice that had insinuated earlier abandoned words and howled in the rushing shriek of a waterspout.

  Don’t like that, do we? Toinette thought, and her lips stretched in a killer’s grin. She remembered her men, and the Templars with their brave pathetic crosses of rubble, and she laughed out loud. Keep wailing, you wretched beast—you’ve lots more pain due, and I’ll pay you all the interest I can.

  The words to the Conjuration of Fire were Latin. She’d learned them long before and had had no occasion to use them since her girlhood—but when she started speaking, they came back to her vividly, with the feeling that she wasn’t exactly the one remembering them. For some spells, anger was a great asset.

  Now the shapes on the walls were them. Images of Toinette and Erik rotted, or sickened with plague, or underwent all the tortures of the damned. Her guts spilled and vanished. Erik’s mouth became a bloody hole.

  Toinette didn’t look away, but watched and was glad. She knew what the un-ark was saying, and I’ll kill you, you son of a bitch was always the first threat of any man who’d gotten a fist to the nose or a knee to the bollocks. The angrier they sounded, the more they were hurting.

  She raised her voice, pitching it to cut through the screaming just as she’d done to make herself heard over gales and pounding waves. The names of angels twisted on her tongue.

  They called on fire beyond fire. Beyond the world, Mars governed the true essence of flame, the fire that danced on the wings of the seraphim. So Artair had explained it when he’d taught Toinette the ritual, with a quick smile for the notion of flaming serpents as angels. Toinette hadn’t given it much thought at the time, but as she and Erik chanted, she felt that fire within her veins.

  Even the lair of the un-ark wasn’t beyond the reach of all aid.

  Still, when the shapes faded from the walls and the screaming quieted, Toinette didn’t believe they’d won. All but the stupidest of creatures knew how to gather strength.

  She braced herself as she kept chanting. When light began to fountain out of the box, she was glad she’d done so—and knew it might not be enough.

  The light pressed on her mind. Senses and sense buckled under its formless weight, caving in slowly to a force they were never built to withstand. Toinette clung to the words of the conjuration. Every syllable took conscious effort, deliberate motion of her lips and tongue, and deliberate awareness of the word’s meaning. All other meaning was slipping away: Jehan’s face, oranges in Iberia, the words to prayers, the feeling of flight at dawn, Erik’s lips against hers. She would have wept. She might have been weeping. She could barely feel her own face.

  Purity and wisdom, light and inspiration, protection and destruction both.

  The chant rose in pitch. Power rose with it. Toinette knew that she was almost done. One more line, then one more task, and—then?

  The thing before her had to perish.

  All else was fog and phantoms.

  Spirit of flame, hear us and aid!

  She screamed the last phrase. Clarity, a light unlike the green-purple radiance around them, burst into her brain, driving the other force back for a few precious breaths. Toinette felt her body again: wet cheeks and cracked lips, blistered feet and bruised arms.

  The un-ark’s power was entering there. She could feel the flesh falling away, and the icy void that replaced it.

  You want change? she thought at it. Fine.

  As Erik had plummeted from the Hawk’s deck in the storm, Toinette turned and dove off the platform, arrowing her body into the void. As she fell, she opened herself, embracing the power of the flame and the power of her blood together, and letting them fill her from the inside out.

  She fell.

  Then she flew, and her wings had no need of wind.

  Forty

  Rising, Toinette shone in the darkness. The golden sparks in her eyes glimmered throughout her body, shining among her ebony scales. Her wings beat slowly, but she hovered midair with no visible struggle, her neck curving long and graceful to let her look down at the un-ark.

  Erik would have held still just to watch her if he could have.

  He himself had started changing while on the platform. Luckily, he’d been halfway through when Toinette had hurled herself into the abyss; he’d had no chance to panic, only to gaze awestruck as she ascended.

  The light yet flashed around them, trying to compel, but it found no purchase. If it had ever been used on other than mortal flesh and blood, that time was aeons past.
It was already fading as Erik left the platform, flying through a void at once more stable and less resistant than air. He caught a glimpse of his body as he bent his neck forward and saw that he was glowing too, but far more faintly than Toinette.

  Between one blink of an eye and the next, giant hands made of shadow and lined with purple-green light lashed up from the depths.

  The too-long fingers clutched at Erik. He recoiled, just out of reach of nails like sharpened tree trunks; from across the room, he heard Toinette’s roar and whipped his head around to see her. She’d escaped the worst of the attack, but the second hand had caught her across a hind leg. It dissipated back into the wall, but the damage was done. Blood dripped, hissing and smoking on the platform and glowing molten red.

  The spirit of fire was with them. If it was to do any good, there wasn’t much time left.

  Erik turned his gaze away from the hands and breathed deeply, summoning forth the flame. He saw Toinette stretch out wings and neck, her chest swelling, the glow steady in her eyes even as the hands began to re-form behind her.

  Fire poured out from each of their mouths, striking the un-ark dead center on two of its sides.

  A hand of shadow wrapped itself around Erik. Its fingers bound his wings to his sides, and wherever it touched him, he felt not just cold but blighted, as though the mere contact took away a bit of his vitality. He tried to escape, tried to rake at the hand with his claws, but to no avail. It clung. It began to squeeze.

  Bands of shadow clasped Toinette too. Her body thrashed frantically, vainly trying to escape—but her flaming breath was steady and strong.

  Good it is, Erik remembered his mother’s father saying, to end a stout life with a stout death.

  Wing-bound, he would fall. But he would fall in fire. Erik ceased his struggle and thought only of the foe before him, the blot that must be purged so that men could live more safely in the world. He bent all of his strength toward that destruction.

  Lungs aching, vision blurring, he saw the bleached wood kindle and flare.

  The hand’s grip slackened.

  Erik took the reprieve and hauled more air into his lungs, keeping the fire blazing forth from his open jaws.

  The flames around the un-ark took on a greenish hue. No, Erik thought, with no energy left to shout it even in his mind. There was only flat denial left, and pointing the power he channeled at the discolored flame. The force riding his body doubled, racking his bones and muscles with pain. Flesh, dragon or mortal, was an imperfect vessel.

  Yet the fire flared a deep red-gold, banishing the taint of green, and that sight was worth every heartbeat of pain.

  Wood, though transformed by the fell spirit within it, was still wood, and fire was fire. Once the fuel had caught, the flame spread rapidly. From each side of the un-ark, it roared up and around, meeting in the middle and forming a half-sphere that wavered less than most wood fires and glowed more. Within it, wood crumbled away, and even the metal bands began to melt.

  The hands broke up as well, fading back into unformed darkness. The spirit that had animated them was withdrawing Its power, discarding all forms and shapes in favor of one last bitter fight for endurance.

  Erik could almost see It as the box crumbled. The flames clouded his vision, and he was grateful for that, but within the broken shell of the wood he could faintly make out a presence like darkness given matter: a void that squirmed and huddled against the walls that had given It a home for so long. He had the sense that It was bigger than his eyes allowed him to see, and less solid as well; he knew, though he couldn’t say how he knew, that It was wounded.

  Although he could tell that the thing was gathering strength, he couldn’t have said what for, and the sudden cessation of flame from Toinette’s side filled him with a jolt of alarm. He looked up, found her gone, and knew fear all through his body until he spotted her again, smaller and human, thrusting her hands into the flame to grab the un-ark.

  “You go down with your ship,” she snarled, her voice nearly equaling her roar in dragon’s form. “No slipping away.” Shoulders straining with the effort, she wrenched the un-ark up from the table and held it in midair. Adnet’s dagger yet remained in the lid, and Franz’s rosary hung now from the hilt, silver cross glowing in the midst of dragonfire. It and the blade had both begun to melt, but from within, like no metal Erik had ever seen. As he and Toinette were, they were vessels for power; as they were, cross and dagger were likewise imperfect.

  Toinette turned with a speed that belied her burden, spinning so that the largest hole in the box faced Erik, and he saw clearly the spirit within. “Now,” she roared.

  And faced with the void’s eyeless, consuming regard, hoping but uncertain for Toinette’s life, Erik spent the last of the power he could channel in one piercing gout of flame, narrow and blue-white with heat.

  The flame spread out as it touched the spirit: not as fire might catch and spread, but as a thrown net unfurled around its prey. It covered the writhing blackness in a mesh of fine light that knit itself together, pushing the creature behind it back at the same time: back, but Erik could not say to where, and wouldn’t have wanted to try. He knew only that the thing faded from his vision, that the sense of cold hungry malice went with It, and that the world where it had been seemed mended: a scar, but no longer an open wound.

  When he sunk to the platform, out of breath, he noticed that the smell was gone, and the sucking noise as well. The only sounds were the crackling of flames as they devoured the rest of the box, and the harsh, gasping breaths he and Toinette took: one set louder than the other, but both labored, both in harmony—and both signs of people very much alive.

  * * *

  Thunk went the un-ark back onto the platform, only a flaming shell now and without a passenger to worry about escaping into the stone.

  Thwap, more softly, went Toinette’s arse onto the floor, and thunk again, less controlled and more bruising than she’d have liked, went her back onto the side of the altar. Her arms shrieked at her about muscles and blisters. Dragonfire wasn’t as fatal to other dragons as it generally was to humans, but it hurt like hell nevertheless.

  A part of her, the girl from London, wondered whether the flames had burnt especially, and her especially, because they were holy. She doubted that small voice would ever truly die, any more than had the spirit in the un-ark, but she could tell it to sod off with far greater ease than she’d have managed a month before.

  She’d called on the angels. They hadn’t turned away. For a little while, she’d been part of something much greater—and she’d been in it with Erik.

  As though her thoughts had summoned him, he knelt at her side, as human in shape as her, and stroked the side of her face. “Thank God.”

  “I’m looking no worse than usual, then,” she joked, but she turned her head and laid a kiss in his palm. “You?”

  “Well. Better than I’d thought either of us would end this. The dagger’s vanished, though, and the rosary with it.”

  “Huh.” Toinette got to her feet, groaning, and stared down at the box. Indeed, it was only a pile of charred wood now, and that rapidly becoming ash. No trace of metal was left. Before long, there would be no sign of the un-ark at all.

  For the first time, she noticed that the platform no longer stood in a void either. Toinette couldn’t see a floor below, but rough stone walls, the sort that might appear in any cave in the world, surrounded them. The air was chilled, but no more so than she’d have expected from being underground.

  “It went to good use,” she said, watching as the wood burned. “I’m sure Franz will agree. If we can go home now, I’ll go to the shrine myself and get another blessed for him—oh?”

  Distracted as she was, she didn’t notice Erik stepping up behind her until his hands settled on her shoulders and he turned her around. He did so gently, careful of her injuries, but there was nothing diffid
ent about his face. Feeling filled his shining eyes and splashed a smile across his face, astonished and joyous at once.

  “You,” he said. “If my journeys took me ten times as far as yours, I’d never find another with your spirit. Not man or woman, dragon or mortal.”

  Sentiment hadn’t figured largely in Toinette’s life—Jehan had been a swift interlude in the march of years—and to hear so much, from Erik of all people, struck her dumb and dizzy. She hoped her answering smile spoke for her, as for a breath or two she stood staring into his eyes.

  “You—you were damned impressive yourself,” she finally managed, and wished, for the first time since her girlhood, for more poetic gifts, or a heart that spoke more easily. In the absence of either, she could only lift a reddened hand and stroke his hair back from his forehead. “I feared that you’d not know what I meant, at the end, but I should’ve known better.”

  “I knew well, my love,” he said, and Toinette’s breath caught, “but I’ll be glad if I never have to do such a thing again.” Erik took her hand carefully in both of his, looked down at it, and shook his head. “I’d not have harmed you for anything less than the world.”

  “I know,” she said, “and I—”

  But a crack cut through her words, one too inhuman, too loud, and too instantly recognizable for either of them to ignore.

  Erik, facing the back of the cave, was the one to see what had happened. One arm still around Toinette, he pointed, and Toinette turned again.

  A stalactite had fallen. The one that Erik had noticed had been small, but in the instant when they stood staring, a chunk of the ceiling shivered and fell. It landed in a heap on the opposite side of the altar, just where Erik had been standing during the ritual.

  “God’s blood,” said Erik quietly.

  Above them, the ceiling rumbled again, and the platform shook below them. The path to the door was still there, but the pit below it, even if only material and mortal, was very deep.

  “Let’s run now,” said Toinette.