The dragon ducked, barely, thrusting his own tail where Mettalise would need to shift to keep her balance. But Mettalise was quick, one of the most agile dragons in the Kyer. She clamped her jaws on his tail just above the barbs, and he roared. I heard the sound, dimly, but it meant my hearing was returning.
The enemy breathed fire at Mettalise. Dragonfire couldn’t hurt another dragon, but it did obscure vision. I held my breath as the flames died away, and my heart leaped into my throat when I saw the enemy with his jaws on Mettalise’s neck.
She twisted and failed to dislodge him. His grip wasn’t in her flesh—teeth were slipping on her hard spines—but his claws raked her back. She bashed him with her tail, ripping open his side, but he didn’t relent.
Do something, I ordered myself. The stunned pain was fading as fear for Mettalise shot energy through my body. I stood. Swayed. How could I help? No weapons. Rock? I needed to hit the red dragon only, not Mettalise, and the two entwined like fighting dogs.
*Mettalise, jump away!* I called. No answer.
The red dragon lost hold, and Mettalise tackled. He kicked her off. I acted as fast as I could, striking the ceiling between us with my Gift. The weak rock shuddered and a slab the size of my dining room table crashed to the floor.
The enemy dragon spun at the crash; Mettalise struck. Her jaws sank into the tender, thin spot at the hollow of his throat. Blood dyed her opal scales a slick crimson. She shook once, twice. His head flopped forward as she released the torn flesh. It didn’t move again.
*Hello, human of mine,* Mettalise said. She sounded beyond weary, strained with pain, but her smugness made me want to sob with relief. She crawled closer and flopped to the ground. *Anything new?*
I sank to the floor. “Not much. Catching up with my father.”
She gave the stone fountain an appraising look, grimaced, and spat out a chunk of dragon muscle. *Next time, don’t invite me to the reunion.* Her midnight-blue eyes grew serious. *You aren’t dying or anything? I dare not lower the block any more between us to find out.*
“Not dying.” I chose not to look at my mauled arm. “You?”
*Passing out soon. Lost a lot of blood.* She shifted, squeezing her eyes shut as she did so. *I hate to ask you to move, but I’m supposed to make sure Merram isn’t in the process of dying.*
“Merram!” I scrambled to my feet, swaying as dizziness blackened my vision. I gritted my teeth and tried again. This time, I pushed away the pain.
“He’s still breathing,” I said. I nudged him with my foot rather than stoop and invite a blackout. “I don’t see any wounds. There must be magical damage, and I’m sure his Gift is low.”
*Not dying though? Good. I’ll spread the word.*
“He’s not dying,” I repeated slowly.
*Is that a problem?*
I swallowed. “That vision. You know, of someone dying.”
*The sapphire happened weeks before the other visions.* Her words slurred together.
“Maybe I got here in time.” It occurred to me that, unless I wanted to bleed to death myself, I needed to do something about my injured arm. I cried in pain as I ripped my unstained sleeve from my numb arm and pathetically used my teeth to help wind it about the gash. Halfway through I remembered I had a Gift and clumsily used Telekinesis to finish the job.
Mettalise watched with half-lidded eyes. The drying blood on her maw and scales made her look like something monsters would have nightmares about.
“I should let Shamino know we’re safe. He can patch that wing.” He would have been a better choice for bandaging my arm, too. First One, I needed to pass out. Instead, I began walking to the door. “Did you get the dragon that shredded your wing?”
Mettalise scowled. *No. Last I saw, Maolmuire was carrying Jerroth away.*
I froze. “Jerroth?”
*Who else? Though it was a bit chaotic when the enemy lost contact with Thorkel.*
“But Shamino was—” I rushed through Merram’s quarters, my pain vanishing. Living room, collide against sofa, Merram’s study with its papers, an open door—
Shamino lay in a pool of blood.
“No!” The vision swept over my eyes—it was Shamino dying in my arms. I dove to his side. “Shamino, can you hear me? First One, there’s so much blood…”
A massive hole in his chest oozed. Tressa’s body had vanished, along with Jerroth.
“Shamino?” I repeated. I pulled his head into my lap and held a blood-slicked hand to his face. Breath tickled the blood on my hands. Barely. Irregularly. His skin was corpse-pale.
*Mettalise! I need a healer!* But there was no answer. She had passed out.
“First One, you can’t do this to me!” I bunched his shirt over the wound, but blood saturated it already. “Don’t die! Please, please don’t die…”
I dissolved into tears and bent over him. If I ripped the bandage off my arm, maybe I could manage to die with him? Shamino loved me, he wanted me with him despite everything, I couldn’t go on without him now that we finally—
The sapphire tumbled from under my shirt and tapped my nose. I grabbed it and snapped the chain. I put the jewel on the gaping hole in his chest and twisted the signet ring so that its gems touched the sapphire. “First One, please, let it be enough.”
I closed my eyes and grabbed my Gift.
I’d used over half my energy jumping from dragons and pulling lava through rock. With what little I had left, healing was impossible.
But I had desperation. I had gems.
I had Shamino’s love.
“Take me,” I prayed. The gems flared so brightly that I saw them through my eyelids. “The Kyer needs him, not me. I killed Thorkel. You’re done with me. Please, please let me save him.”
Power filled the jewels. I released it in a single beam and let my mind ride blue fire. I found the torn muscles, the severed vessels, the blood. Zoland had made me read books on healing, I’d seen Shamino heal dragons, I’d bandaged and even sewn dragons myself. I tried to fuse one bit of vessel to another, I tried to make flesh whole. It was clumsy, sloppy work, but I figured the less blood he lost, the greater the chance he’d live long enough for a real healer.
My head began to roar. I braced against darkness. Before I sealed what I hoped was the last vein, I shifted as much of the surrounding blood as I could back into his chest. My body began to tremble. The pulsing gems now rested on healed flesh, but something was wrong. Something was missing.
Shamino’s Gift. I probed him with my power and found it: a tiny spark of life, deep inside his chest. It flickered. He’d tried to fight Jerroth with magic; his healed body would die without a Gift. Could I give him mine? I didn’t think it had ever been done. But that spark of Gift was so much like fire, so beautiful and so very much Shamino.
I poured my Gift into the spark. I breathed into it, breathed it into a flame, and it grew. Bigger, stronger, strong enough to live. Strong enough to heal Mettalise and save the dragons.
That’s enough, child.
I cracked open my eyes and saw in double. Soot where a rug had lain, and growing from it… flowers shimmering and vibrant. Burned tapestries hung against a sunless blue sky.
Blue fire continued to trickle into Shamino.
I said, that’s enough.
I extinguished the flames. The ghostly flowers grew sharper; tapestries faded to blue. Shamino vanished into the emerald grass. I knelt in a meadow, both of my hands flexing without pain.
A man approached me. He wasn’t really a man, but it was the best I could describe him. A man who wasn’t a man, and his rainbow aura was made of laughter and sadness and longing.
I glanced at my uninjured body. “Pigshit. I just killed myself, didn’t I?”
The First One laughed.
Chapter Forty-Two
I didn’t know a deity could laugh. The First One’s laughter flowed like warm honey.
“That is why I love you, Adara,” he said. “You are always honest with me.”
I
bit my lip. “I am, though, dead.”
“Not quite. Come. There are things to show you.”
I followed him across the meadow, though I was unsure if there was anything else to see in the afterlife. The blue sky stretched forever, the meadow as well. In the corners of my vision, I thought I saw butterflies flitting about, but whenever I turned to look, they were always gone.
“You listened,” the First One said as we walked. “More importantly, you obeyed. Therefore, you are only dead for a moment. It is a small moment, but time flows differently here.”
“Ah.” I didn’t know what else to say.
The First One chuckled again. “Here we are.”
Out of nowhere, a small pool appeared. The water was as clear as air, showing the smooth brown pebbles on the bottom. The First One knelt and gestured for me to do the same. He touched the surface. The water darkened as ripples spread.
An image formed. Shamino screamed silently as he held me. A mage I didn’t recognize rushed in, and her hands began to glow white, the stronger of the two colors of a healing Gift. Another mage pulled Shamino away from my body.
“He’s alive,” I breathed. “I healed him.”
“And then some. He will heal Mettalise, along with the dragons that still live.”
I looked at the First One. “Thank you, for letting me save him.”
“You saved him on your own. I merely warned you when to stop.” He tapped the water again. “I’m not done with you.”
I frowned, but I leaned over the pool. In the new image, Maolmuire flew with a bundle in his claws. The background was too blurred for me to know which way he flew.
“Jerroth lives,” the First One said. “What you see will affect the events to come.”
Anger flared in my chest. “He tried to kill Shamino.”
“You killed his beloved.” There was no gentleness in the First One’s voice.
“What? I didn’t—they were going to kill me!”
The First One held up a hand. “Grief blinds him, Adara. Tressa is dead, and he knows it was your raw power that ultimately killed her. What you do not realize is that he altered his spell at the last moment. Jerroth never would have killed you, even under Tressa’s influence.”
A sick, hollow feeling replaced the anger.
“Remember this: every person sees his or her actions as justified. Empathy and forgiveness are more powerful than magic.” He touched the water a third time.
We looked on the world from high. I made out Drageria, but all around it, darkness.
“In the beginning, there was darkness,” I whispered, quoting the Record. “Evil roamed the land, devouring all that was good…”
“So the First One created mages and dragons, and together they brought light,” the First One finished. The map cleared until gray dotted all the lands. “Evil was never destroyed. Not completely. The past few months were a time of preparation. The real darkness is coming. Be ready.”
I didn’t like how he said that. “You speak as if I’m supposed to take care of it.”
“Many people leave me offerings. Fewer speak to me. Fewer still approach me as someone to speak with.” The First One stood and looked down on me. “I didn’t choose you, Adara. I chose all of mankind. You’re the one who chose me back.”
I attempted a smile. “It was the chocolate, wasn’t it?”
He laughed. “Keep that humor in the days to come. And remember. Your Gift is not your power. Your heart is.”
My hand slipped into his. The First One pulled me to standing, and the world around me dimmed, first the sky, then the grass. Only the flowers in rainbow hues remained, a soft glow in growing grayness. Stone gray. Kyer gray.
I opened my eyes to rainbows dancing on the stone ceiling, shimmering on the walls. They covered the moss-green quilt that I’d grown fond of. My bed. My room.
My home.
Merram sat in a chair beside the bed. Brown streaked his white hair now instead of the other way around. His face held more lines than before, but they softened as he smiled. “Welcome back. How do you feel?”
At his words, sleep lost its hold. Pain pulsed through my body: dull, almost as if it wasn’t sure it wanted to bother. Judging by the thick, tingling sensation on my tongue, someone had poured powerful potions down my throat.
Still. “Like a dragon slammed me into a wall.”
He chuckled. “For a moment we thought we lost you. I have a very upset Seneschal, by the way, who will be overjoyed to learn you’re awake.”
“He’s healed?” I asked. I knew I’d saved his life, but— “I didn’t damage him or miss anything?”
“He is fine, though the healers had… a bit to correct,” Merram said. He studied my face. “You will have to tell me how you managed a healing spell after defeating my greatest enemy.”
I opened my mouth to tell him about the gems, but he held up a hand.
“First, I owe you a thousand explanations, and a thousand apologies, and an inadequate thank-you. I hid so much from you, but you still saved my life.”
I blushed.
“Why?” he said in a whisper.
There were many reasons. Merram had been in the right, a defender and not an aggressor. His life had been put in danger because of the secrets I’d kept. He’d done his best to save the people who had cared for me for ten years. All were true, but none were quite why.
I looked at the face that wasn’t mine, and I said, “I found the letters. Mother loved you.”
Merram’s eyes filled with tears and he inhaled.
“Besides, killing Thorkel ended the war,” I said with a tired grin. “You happened to be in the right place.”
He burst out laughing and wiped his eyes. “True. Very true. Now. What do you want to know first?”
Since seeing my smile on Thorkel’s face, only one question sickened my heart. “Mother loved you.”
All humor died. “She did, and I her.”
“But—”
“But I am not your father.” He took a slow breath. If he had been Shamino, he would have run his hand through his hair. “I’ve told you the story over and over in my mind, yet now that you’re here before me… It’s still hard. Krysta and Thorkel attended court at the same time—he for the Kyer, she to visit a cousin. Krysta admired him for a while, I think for his intellect and passion, but soon he became possessive and paranoid. She wanted to end the relationship, but he wouldn’t leave her alone.
“Then the Kyer called him home as a reprimand for some of his political outbursts. The Dragonmaster sent me to Dragonsridge in Thorkel’s place.”
“And you fell in love with her.”
“I did.” His smile, the way it filled his eyes, it took decades from his appearance. “The moment we met, I knew I’d found the only woman I’d ever love. Krysta felt the same. When Thorkel learned of our love, he…”
He blinked and fixed his gaze on a rainbow on the wall. Then he blinked again.
The silence stretched. My dread became almost unbearable. Deep down, I’d already guessed what had happened, but I never wanted to think of my mother in that situation.
“Krysta vanished,” Merram finally managed. “By the time Orrik and I found her, she was with child. I married her anyway. We eloped at the first Devotarium we came to, and I asked Orrik to hide her where no one could find her, not even I. I flew back to the Kyer to confront Thorkel, but it was too late.”
“Is that when he assassinated the Dragonmaster?” I asked.
Merram nodded. “The Dragonmaster’s health was poor, and the Council was considering both me and Thorkel as successor. That’s why they sent us each to court, to see how we handled ourselves. From what the Elders pieced together, Thorkel planned to kill the Dragonmaster in secret and take control in my absence. Instead, he was discovered.”
Thus Merram, Thorkel’s once-friend, had taken not only the woman he wanted but also the power he craved. “Thorkel escaped to Carthesia, but you feared him returning. So Mother stayed hidden.”<
br />
“Yes.”
I stared at a rainbow on the ceiling. Mother had died without rainbows. “You didn’t know where she was. She died before she could tell you we had found a home in Stoneyfield.”
“We didn’t even know your name,” Merram said. “Orrik searched for you, but there were hundreds of orphaned girls. So we waited…”
“For my manifestation.” Orrik had arrived so quickly—he’d been in the area, he said. How many years had he been in the area?
“Thorkel looked for you, too,” Merram said. “The Gift can manifest as young as fourteen. Carthesia began to kidnap mages two years before we found you.”
A knock sounded on the door. A woman in healer’s white entered. She exclaimed with happiness when she found me awake and shooed Merram to the side. With swift movements she changed bandages, including the one around my gored arm. It ached, but from far away. The healer nodded with satisfaction when I said so. Then she probed me with her Gift, asking me to move this and that.
We came to my left shoulder.
Sensation had returned to my hand, and I could open and close the fingers. The shoulder itself, however, was still numb. Lifting my arm took tremendous effort, and then I couldn’t raise it more than halfway.
She clucked her tongue. “We feared that. The same area appeared to have been struck multiple times. The damage couldn’t be reversed.”
“It won’t get better?” I asked. I couldn’t imagine not using my arm. Even with my magic, I still did most tasks in the Quarters with my muscles, out of both pride and habit.
“I’m sorry,” the healer said. “We can strengthen what’s there, but…”
I looked at Merram. Which was dumb—he had no healing Gift.
He spread his hands. “At least you have Telekinesis.”
Telekinesis. The word reminded me of Jerroth clinging to Maolmuire, flying… somewhere. Carrying the corpse of Tressa.
The healer gave me potions and instructions to stay in bed. She handed Merram a potion as well. Then she left.
“I should fetch Shamino,” Merram said after he drank his potion.
Blue Fire Page 27