by Terah Edun
Thanar snorted. “Oh lucky day. Can we skip over this mental portion?”
“No,” said Sebastian. “It all comes as a package deal. Mental and magical.”
“Says who?” countered the daemoni prince.
“Says a centuries-old scroll and a dragon ambassador who knows more than I care to about mental bondage,” Sebastian said.
“I thought you said she was clueless?” Ciardis asked.
“I said she doesn't know about us,” Sebastian replied. “I asked her if she could use her natural magic to seek out her brothers' wyvern while we were delayed with this farce of a trial. She, in a not so nice tone, says it doesn't work that way, the wyvern wasn't her blood, just an 'ignominious offshoot,' in her own words, and a lot more about creating bondage between individual parties and groups based on blood and magic.”
Thanar laughed. “I could have told you before you made an idiot of yourself just how well that would have gone over.”
“It's done now,” Sebastian replied with a shrug, “and my ears aren't singed…merely blistered, so I consider it a win. In any case, her monologue coalesced the idea in my mind, and from there I found one dusty scroll that had the link mentioned in it.”
“Of all the scrolls for Seven to pull for us,” Ciardis said, “that was among them?”
Thanar said, “Well, that at least I do not consider an impossibility. The man linked us to a closet with a nexus in their version of a grand library. Anything we want is ours to take.”
Ciardis turned with surprised eyes to look at the table, and sure enough, behind Raisa's chair in a corner were two easily ignorable slat doors.
“All right, what's the ceremony called?” Ciardis said as she fought back a yawn.
“And when will we do it?” Thanar demanded.
Sebastian smiled in satisfaction. He had won.
“Here and now,” Sebastian said. “We don't have time to waste, and the effects of the link will put us in a deep sleep for some hours.”
Ciardis raised her eyebrows. “That's cutting it close. The trial's tomorrow.”
“I know,” said Sebastian darkly. “And I plan to be ready. Not by studying legal precedent or local customs or thousands of texts. I am their prince heir. Their ruler in absence of the true emperor. They will bow before me or feel the wrath of the Algardis Empire.”
“What happened to apologies about the state of the empire and the emperor's proclamation on the Aerdivus?” Ciardis asked, shocked.
Sebastian pinned her with a steely gaze. “That was before they imprisoned us like common criminals. Before they threatened us for even entering their city. Before they decided to put a blood heir of the Algardis realm on trial.”
Ciardis leaned back in utter surprise.
This was a side of Sebastian she hadn't seen since the confrontations in the north.
Thanar chuckled darkly.
Sebastian looked at him, and Thanar waved his hand to forestall any argument.
“Oh no, little prince,” said Thanar. “I approve. You've grown. You want to assume your mantle of power. Perhaps if you'd said that at the beginning I might have been more…interested.”
Ciardis couldn't resist rolling her eyes.
Sebastian nodded in pride. “Now, if we're all in accord, I'll call her over.”
“Well, what's it called?” Ciardis demanded.
Sebastian blinked and shrugged. “It's an old word.”
“It wouldn't be seeleverbindung, by any chance?” Thanar asked.
“No,” said Sebastian. “Sorry to disappoint, but this one is flamme gebunden.”
“I liked seeleverbindung better,” said Ciardis in a deadpan voice.
She felt a chill go down her spine as she remembered a conversation from long ago. When she was a child. A visitor who had no face and stood in the shadows had said something to her that sounded awfully like that.
“Forged in fire, bound in flame,” Ciardis muttered.
“What?” Sebastian asked.
Ciardis blinked. “I…I don't know. It's just something I remember someone saying to me.”
“Who?” demanded Thanar.
Ciardis looked at him as she racked her brain. “I wish I knew.”
23
Ciardis's eyes unglazed. She'd been trying to recall more about the strange gentleman—she was sure it had been a man—that she had met on that dark evening so long ago.
“It must have been at least ten years ago,” Ciardis said with her brow furrowed.
“Do you remember anything else?” Sebastian asked in a low voice.
“It was cold,” she said. “Cold enough to frost your breath in the air.”
“But no snow on the ground?” Sebastian asked.
“No,” Ciardis said as she fought to draw the memory out further.
“Do you remember what the person looked like?” Sebastian queried.
“Think, Ciardis,” said Thanar. “Think hard.”
His voice changed and roughened at the end.
Ciardis glanced up at him, startled.
Sebastian hit Thanar lightly on the shoulder. “No need to scare her.”
Thanar gave him a side-glance that spoke volumes and then pinned his gaze back on her. “What was he wearing? What was his name?”
A stormy frown crossed Ciardis's face. “I don't know. Why is this so important to you?”
“The question should be why it isn't as important to you,” Thanar said. “This person could hold the key.”
“Key?” scoffed Sebastian. “Key to what?”
Thanar looked away and back to them. “I don't know. But that phrase…”
Ciardis sensed something in Thanar's voice, even though she couldn't point it out on his face.
Hesitantly, she reached for his hand. Grabbing him and squeezing slightly, she said softly, “What is it? You recognize it?”
Thanar looked down at her with pained confusion. “I don't know. I don't know.”
It was clear to all of them that this wasn't something Thanar was comfortable with.
Sebastian asked after a delicate pause, “Do you feel like you should know?”
Thanar's head bowed. Ciardis felt him drawing into himself. Even his wings began to curl in toward his body slightly.
He looked like a lost boy looking for refuge.
No, Ciardis thought. Like a person searching their soul.
Finally Thanar uncurled his body from its slight defensive posture and spoke in a clinical tone. “It's something I should know. Something I should remember.”
“But?” asked Sebastian.
Thanar looked away from the wall he was staring at and back to the prince heir. “But my memory's been wiped. Of everything but a familiarity with the phrase.”
Ciardis let go of Thanar's hand in shock.
“How do you know?” she asked in a hushed voice. Memory wipes were a serious and seriously illegal business.
Thanar let a mean smile cross his face. “Because I've done the very same thing. Though I'm always careful to not leave so careless a trace behind.”
“You can tell that a mage was there?” Sebastian asked. “In your mind, I mean.”
“Oh yes,” Thanar said with a dark laugh. “And when I get my claws into them, they'll wish they hadn't.”
Ciardis sat back on her legs and wondered aloud, “But what does it mean? This phrase that I know. This phrase that Thanar can barely recall.”
“It means that we'd better back out now,” Thanar said firmly.
“No!” shouted Ciardis and Sebastian at the same time.
Thanar looked back and forth between them with an irritated gaze and ruffled his wings in warning.
It was an instinctive gesture Ciardis had noticed in him. Like a bird of prey before it struck, or, in Thanar's case, bashed someone's head in and asked questions later. It was just his style.
Sebastian nodded at Ciardis. “You first?”
“Oh, no,” Ciardis said. “Please tell us why you'd prefer to procee
d.”
She wanted to hear his reasons why. Besides which, she'd spoken instinctively, a gut reaction to being unilaterally opposed to bowing to anyone else, specifically some mystical woo-woo that was more memory than prophecy.
“Very well,” Sebastian said after a significant pause.
He placed both of his hands flat on his upper legs and spoke. “I think this isn't a sign to turn away from this. It's a sign to forge ahead.”
“And why is that?” drawled Thanar. “And spare me the dramatics on more accumulated power. I am plenty powerful enough on my own, and it is not I that need to unify an empire so much as not die in its destruction.”
Ciardis glared and thought at Thanar, How callous of you.
Did I ask your opinion?
Enough, said Sebastian in exasperation. Though I suppose if you want to hold this conversation mind to mind, it'll certainly be easier on poor Christian's ears.
“No,” said Ciardis. “Although private, it's too much of a strain with all of three of us trying to talk mind to mind without physical contact or rest or both.”
“It wouldn't be if we were linked,” muttered Sebastian.
Thanar gave him a warning look. “Is that your only reason?”
“No,” snapped Sebastian. “But nothing I say may ever convince you fully.”
Thanar shrugged. “That is true.”
Ciardis rubbed her face with a tired hand.
“Thanar, you said your memory was wiped,” Ciardis said. “Maybe we can help you recover it.”
“And maybe you can snort fairy dust,” Thanar replied. “That seems just as likely.”
Ciardis glared at him. “I was just—”
“Thinking out of your bum?” Thanar asked.
“—trying to help!” Ciardis said as she seethed.
“Well, try to be more practical about it,” Thanar said. “If neither of you have a concrete idea to share, try to keep your mouths shut. I'd rather silence than empty words.”
Ciardis and Sebastian exchanged uncomfortable glances.
Then Ciardis smiled and Sebastian smirked.
They turned to the last member of their triad.
Thanar sighed in irritation. “What now?”
Sebastian said, “Maybe we need you more than you know.”
Thanar raised an eyebrow. “So?”
“So,” Ciardis said, “you could…bring us down a notch. Help ground us. Be our perspective.”
“Our own personal cynic!” Sebastian said hopefully.
Thanar looked between the both of them incredulously. “Is that your convincing argument?”
Ciardis grinned. “You know you'd enjoy every minute of it.”
“Torturing us with your barbed intellectual comments when our minds couldn't shut it off.”
“Finding no joy in helping others or solving a conundrum.”
“Waking up to find that everything—”
“All right, all right,” Thanar said with hands raised in surrender. “I truly don't know how I'll survive this…link…if this is what I have to look forward to.”
Ciardis clasped her hands together in excitement. “So you'll do it?”
“Yes,” said Thanar. “But not for any of the reasons you two espouse.”
“Then why?” asked Sebastian.
“Because your prattling on forever gave me time to formulate my own reasons,” Thanar answered.
“And you're not going to share?”
“Nope,” Thanar answered smugly.
Ciardis sighed. “I might have known.”
“I'm going to get Raisa before either of you change your mind again,” Sebastian said.
“Sure,” said Ciardis sarcastically. “Nothing like jumping into something feet first without really thinking about it.”
But Sebastian didn't hear her. He was already off.
When Raisa came to join them, she didn't speak for five minutes.
When she finally opened her eyes, she turned her head slightly to the right, and with eyes for slits said, “Where's my apology, Weathervane?”
Ciardis's mouth dropped open.
Before she could even speak, Sebastian reached over. “Whatever you said, whatever you did, just say you're sorry.”
His eyes were earnest and his grip was so tight that she felt she might be losing circulation soon.
Wrenching her hand out of his, she frowned and then rubbed.
But she wiped the pout off her face, squared her shoulders, and said to the ambassador, “You have my formal apologies.”
If her voice was a touch too stiff, no one else noted it out loud.
Raisa, for her part, smiled and said, “I am pleased. Perhaps you are ready for this new venture. You've learned so much in courtesy and decorum already.”
Sebastian coughed awkwardly into his fist. “Can we get on with this, Madame Ambassador? I'm sure we all need sleep before the next day dawns, and we've already been in this room for five hours.”
Raisa sniffed and said, “Let's begin. Join hands.”
With a brittle smile, Ciardis did as they were told.
She didn't feel coerced into this, but that didn't mean she was necessarily going into the flamme gebunden willingly. It was out of necessity.
As so many recent adjustments in her life were.
“Close your eyes,” Raisa instructed from where she stood between Sebastian and Ciardis—looking down at all of them with a distant gaze. “And bow your heads,” the dragon ambassador continued.
“Is this really necessary?” Ciardis heard herself ask before she could stop herself.
It was Thanar who answered, with a tight squeeze of her hand, “Never interrupt a mage at work.”
Ciardis was feeling petty enough to point out that Raisa hadn't started anything yet, but she decided that she didn't want to be the one explaining why there was a ring of fire through the floor if something did happen.
So Ciardis closed her eyes for a moment as she settled in and tried to objectively listen to Raisa's voice.
“Take calming breaths,” the dragon instructed. “Still your mind. Still your body.”
Reluctant to relax but seeing no alternative, Ciardis let the tension drain from her shoulders and settled in to listen to the rhythm of her heart. Counting the beats and the pulse of her heart was both the easiest calming exercise she knew and the hardest.
She had to block all extraneous noise from her mind.
Focus only on her inner beat.
Slowly, she found it. She was in it.
Then Raisa said, “Now join your magic. Let it flow freely. Do not restrain it. One person to another.”
Ciardis felt Raisa begin to move around their little circle counterclockwise. She touched Ciardis's shoulders and said, “Let my magic flow around you. Let me bind you.”
Ciardis didn't open her eyes—she opened her senses. She felt Raisa's aura flowing from her with wave after wave of magic emitting from her gaze.
It was strong and unbroken in its intensity.
She tried to accept it as it was. Welcoming the magic instead of rejecting it.
Apparently that was enough, because the ambassador moved on, taking her foreign gift with her. Ciardis felt rather than saw her stop at Thanar and Sebastian before proceeding back to her original position.
“Now watch,” said the dragon, “as I forge you into one.”
Ciardis felt trepidation as the power surrounding Ambassador Raisa increased until it felt like she sat before a blazing inferno.
Then she watched in awe as Raisa called up a dragon the length of her arm.
It reminded Ciardis of the astral projections that Serena had once made for her. But Raisa's small dragon was almost translucent, and clearly made of wavering smoke that coalesced into a semisolid form.
It ventured out from Raisa's embrace and drifted over to Sebastian's lap.
He jumped in surprise as the dragon's body wrapped around his own like a snake seeking warmth.
Ciardis could feel th
e coil tighten as if the dragon was wrapped around her body too.
But she didn't object.
None of them did. They were beginning to feel as one.
It was leaving Ciardis breathless.
The dragon released its tight grip and swirled up and over Sebastian's shoulder before drifting over to Thanar to complete the same ritual.
By the time it came to Ciardis, she felt hazy and weak as well as overwhelmed. It was becoming impossible to differentiate herself from the bodies and presence of the others.
“That will pass,” Raisa said.
“What will?” Ciardis asked while shaking off the haze. She blinked and looked at the ambassador.
Raisa looked her in the eyes and said, “The merge is powerful. It will feel as if you are losing yourself in their identities and their bodies. They will feel the same. As you gain control of the bond and figure out how to find your own paths once more, the feeling of conformity will change to one of unity.”
She turned to raise her hand and place her two middle fingers on Sebastian's forehead.
Raisa said something that Ciardis didn't hear, and he passed out.
Then Raisa did the same to Thanar and he crumpled to the floor.
Standing, the dragon ambassador signaled to two soldiers. They hurried over.
“What's going on?” asked Ciardis as she sat staring ahead.
She no longer felt so drowsy, but she was undeniably weak. She wasn't sure if that was because of the land's acid rain or their entrance into the city or what came later, but she would have given anything to pass delightfully into slumber, as Thanar and Sebastian had.
But she couldn't. She was the only triad member still awake, and as she extended her taxed mage senses around the room, she found she was the only person from their group who wasn't either asleep or tending to the two males.
“Take them to their sleeping pallets,” the dragon commanded.
“What did you do?” Ciardis repeated.
“I did as commanded, Ciardis Weathervane,” Raisa said as she reached for her forehead.
Ciardis leaned back, stubbornly out of reach.
With an amused smile, the dragon halted.
“You cannot stop this process now,” the dragon chided. “You only delay the inevitable.”
“Did you hurt them?”