The Dragon's Throne

by Emily L K

  “How long have you been weaving it?” She asked to avoid stewing too long on his words. It sounded like it wanted him to commit suicide so it could be freed. The steady thump of his heart against her face and its synchronisation with the song only reminded her that both would shortly cease to exist. The thought of Rowan’s death brought to her an incomprehensible anguish. The song took the feeling for its own.

  “Close to eight hundred years,” he said lightly. His fingers curled in her hair and Cori admired his resilience to the power of the song. Already she could feel its weight like an oppressive burden and she’d been listening to it for less than an hour. Rowan had not only been listening to it nearly a millennium, he‘d been actively feeding it, encouraging it to grow. It was as much a part of him as his golden eyes.

  “I can put the barriers up again if it’s making you uncomfortable.”

  “No,” she said finally, “I can bear it with you.”

  A slight squeeze of his arms was all the thanks she got. It was all she needed.

  ODDLY, SHE DREAMED of Quart that night.

  He smiled at her and his cheeks dimpled.

  “Marry me, Cori,” he said to her. His voice was sweet. Overly sweet. Sickly sweet. “Marry me, you’re one of us, marry me.”

  When she said nothing, his eyes changed; gold snaked through the hazel and they flashed dangerously.

  “Marry me, human. Come with me. Come, come.” He reached for her, his arms glistening scales of emerald green, and in his hand was Rowan’s sword. He lunged at her and she ducked, throwing her arms over her head.

  A roar came from behind and she twisted to see the red dragon rearing back on its hind legs. It crashed down on all fours with a rumble that shook Cori to her core and its head snaked forward. She cried out and threw herself aside, but the dragon instead took a firm hold of Quart around his middle and shook him. He screamed, high pitched and weird. Cori ran.

  She awoke with a jerk and Rowan woke with her, instantly alert.

  “Where? Where is it?” He said, his hands running down her arms looking for the damage.

  “Just a dream,” Cori gasped. Her heart was hammering but there was no pain besides the wound that was already there. With shaking fingers she touched it anyway. “A nightmare,” she added when he stared at her blankly.

  “A nightmare,” Rowan repeated slowly. Even in the darkness she could feel his eyes rove up and down her body as if he didn’t quite believe her, but after a few moments he lay back down, pulling her with him. She pressed herself against his chest again, grateful for the reassuring strength of his arms around her.

  “Your fever is out of control,” he murmured, but it wasn’t until he pushed her hair from her sweaty forehead that she realised how hot she was; it was the middle of the night and they didn’t even have blankets on though the frost was settling on the grass around them.

  “At least it keeps me warm,” she murmured back.

  “And me,” he agreed. Cori nestled further into his side and he obliged her, shifting his body so they fit snugly together.

  She thought she might fall back to sleep - the foggy feeling of her fever certainly invited her to - but her eyes stayed open and her mind was lost in the memory of her dream. Dragons aside, dreaming of Quart had dragged up old feelings she would have preferred to forget. She no longer loved him - if she ever truly had to begin with - but she couldn’t help wonder how different her life may have turned out if she‘d been the one he chose to marry instead of some islander girl.

  She tried to imagine herself moving to the Nomad Isles with Quart, keeping his house and raising his children, but she couldn’t. She couldn’t imagine any life without Rowan in it. Her heart clenched at the thought of his imminent death.

  “What are you thinking about?”

  His voice was deep like the ocean and just as soothing. She missed the ocean. She missed her home, her friends and family, and yet laying on the ground in the dark in this too-still forest made Lautan seem like a half-forgotten dream. Rowan was the only constant, the only link back. She wouldn’t tell him she’d been thinking about Quart, or him for that matter.

  “What is this place?” She diverted his attention. She was curious to know how a mere stump could keep the dragon souls away and create a safe haven. He arched his neck to look at the stump behind them. Its whiteness glowed a little through the darkness.

  “When the forest was smaller and dragons were aplenty, the Dijem could live in the forest alongside the dragon souls. Sometimes - but rarely - the souls and the Dijem would form bonds. The soul would give itself up to the Dijem to become some sort of protective item; a sword hilt, a helm, a spear - whatever the Dijem needed.

  “This practice had a second benefit. When the tree is severed from its roots, the place it leaves - this clearing for example - would become a safe spot for travellers. For some reason most dragon souls abhor the practice and don’t move to fill the space.” Rowan shrugged at his own explanation but it was Cori’s turn to crane her neck back to look at the stump.

  “You knew this one?” She queried, and he confirmed her suspicions.

  “His name is Arasy, and he’s the throne in my palace.”

  She had not expected that. She propped herself up a little, leaning on Rowan to inspect the stump properly.

  “So he did blink at me? I wasn’t going mad?”

  “No. And likely he was the source of the whispers in your head, though he never told me there was a Dijem child in the palace, the sneaky bastard.”

  “You talk like the two of you have conversations.”

  “What do you think I do at those insufferable parties? Stare at the wall?”

  A living throne. Now she’d heard everything. Rowan drew her from her thoughts when he lifted her lightly and settled her back at his side.

  “Try to sleep,” he suggested softly, “there’s a few more hours before we have to move on.”

  Cori nodded against him but for a long time her eyes still didn’t close. After a time she found herself thinking again of how her life might have panned out differently, not with Quart this time, but with the man sleeping beside her.

  HER FEVER BROKE DURING the early hours of the morning and she woke shivering and cold on the frozen ground. She was still beside Rowan and he woke with a groan when she sat up, frost crunching beneath her. Together they raised their eyes to the indigo and rose streaked sky.

  “S’pose we should go,” Rowan suggested through a yawn. As he rose to his feet, Cori felt his Hum fan out around them. She let hers follow it and instantly felt Daiyu. The dragon was close, and she was waiting for them.

  “Do you want something to eat?” Rowan asked as he collected the pack and sword from the ground. He stuck his arm inside and pulled out two apples. He offered one to her, which she took, then bit into his own. She looked down at the fruit in her hand and felt ill. How could he be so calm when their winged doom was so near?

  Fear now rose in her like bile. The Deathsong latched onto her dread and siphoned it into itself. If Rowan could sense her terror through his spell, he said nothing.

  To buy time to compose herself, she lifted her shirt to look at the bandage around her middle. It had dried hard and was stained bloody and yellow. When she placed a hand over it, heat radiated from the wound. Still, she couldn’t bring herself to wet the bandage again in the chill of the morning.

  “Come on, Little One,” Rowan said, tossing his apple core into the trees, “let’s finish this.”

  They moved to the edge of the clearing and Cori forgot the dangers of the dragon awaiting them in favour of the more imminent problem of getting back through the forest to the road. The Deathsong halted as Rowan put up barriers around his own mind. Cori did the same, feeling isolated. Before he could step into the forest, she reached out and took his hand.

  He smiled at her over his shoulder, “Want to run?”

  She nodded, and he tugged her forward. They darted through the trees, feeling the press of the souls again
st their barriers, but after a night’s rest the onslaught wasn’t as bad as when they’d arrived at the clearing. Within moments they were back on the road.

  “Why don’t we tell the dragons our names?” Cori asked after they had been walking for a few hours. They were still holding hands, as they had been the day before, but they strolled at a leisurely pace, like a couple through the palace gardens rather than two people going to their death. The dragon souls pressed at their barriers, but they weren‘t yet close to the exhaustion of the day before. “Does it give them some kind of power over us?”

  “No,” Rowan said slowly. His eyes roved the road ahead as he deliberated over his words. “Normally it wouldn’t matter if they knew but there was once a time when I knew Cadmus and Daiyu and if they haven’t linked me to the Karalis, then I’d like for it to remain that way. We might get the jump on them when it comes to the fight.”

  “If you knew them well enough that you don’t want them to know you now, how old does that make you?”

  He looked at her sideways, a warning, but a smile played on his lips and his eyes sparkled. He wasn‘t going to give in to her guessing game yet.

  “Let’s just say I was born when Daiyu was already a mature dragon.”

  That meant nothing; dragons had long lives.

  “We’re about to-“ she choked, “-die and you still won’t tell me how old you are?”

  He grinned and leaned close to whisper in her ear. “If we don’t die, then I’ll tell you how old I am.”

  She couldn’t help but roll her eyes. “Well, I won’t hold my breath. You may or may not kill Cadmus but one thing’s for certain, we are definitely becoming dragon food. How do you expect to keep Daiyu from killing us first?”

  “That’s where you come in,” he said, still grinning. Cori’s eyes widened.

  “What?”

  “You keep me alive and I’ll do the rest.”

  She opened her mouth and closed it. That was all he wanted? He had dragged her across the entire realm to keep him alive in his own war? And exactly how was she supposed to do that?

  “Somehow I feel like I’ve drawn the short stick here,” she finally muttered.

  The trees abruptly gave way to what was probably once a sprawling lawn but was now a tangle of vines and nettle. A ruined stone building was before them, its magnificence not diminished by its crumbling state or the trees that now grew from its heart.

  It was two stories high but may have been three in its prime. The stone above the entrance was caved in and the left wing of the building had been deliberately laid bare to its foundations. Cori stared up at the building with open-mouthed wonder and knew she was gazing upon the scene of the Last Fight.

  Chapter Twenty-Seven

  It was a graveyard within a dead forest. Much as they had in Arasy‘s clearing, once Cori and Rowan stepped out of the trees the souls withdrew their relentless attacked and remained at a whisper distance. Staring up at the crumbled building sent a cold flash of fear up her spine. She exhaled sharply, willing her meagre stomach contents to stay down. Saying goodbye to Rowan crossed her mind but the words couldn’t leave her tongue. She wanted to say a lot of things to him, but instead she could only squeeze his hand. He returned the gesture then let go to pick a path through the tangled scrub towards the entrance of the building. Cori had no choice but to follow.

  “This is the great Dijem library,” Rowan explained, “where all the knowledge and histories were stored for safekeeping and transcribing... for the Tauta region, anyway.” Stairs rose from the tangle and they gained the stone platform where the doorway should have been.

  “Was any of it saved?” Cori asked, craning her head back to look at the building again. It was difficult to see around the jutting stones of the cave in.

  “Some,” he dropped the pack by the stairs, pressed his hands against a fallen pillar and gave it an experimental push. “Some of the others took what they could but I have the largest salvageable amount in my study.”

  “The Advisor has probably laid waste to it by now,” she watched him test another hunk of stone.

  “No doubt.” He seemed unfazed by the thought of the Advisor in his study. He took a step back and crossed his arms over his chest. “We’ll have to try around the back.”

  “Let me try,” she offered, raising her hands. She gave Rowan a furtive look from the corner of her eye. It was the first time either of them had spoken openly about her other magic and what she’d done to Quart. And Rowan wouldn’t have even known what she‘d done to her mother’s murderer.

  “Hiram magic is not much more powerful than physical strength,” he said in a carefully neutral tone. “You’re welcome to try but I don’t think you’ll be strong enough.”

  “Says you,” she responded tartly. He merely shrugged, so she focussed her attention to the stone pillar in front of the entry. She had once combined her two magics to kill the Hiram man who’d murdered her mother, and though she‘d thought little of it since, she was sure she could do it again. She was sure she’d used a strengthening song combined with a little push.

  The pillar flew high, shattering in two against the wall then tumbling away across the overgrown lawn. Rowan shouted her name in warning and she glanced up to see another large stone falling towards them. She squeezed her eyes shut, flinging her arms up again, and it too shattered across the grounds behind them. She opened her eyes a crack to check that no other loose rocks would fall upon them but the structure seemed stable. She dusted her hands on her pants as if she’d physically handled the rock.

  “I probably need some practice,” she muttered and peeked at Rowan. He had one hand against the wall and his body was tensed for flight. He watched her at her with narrowed eyes and she got the feeling he was warring between yelling at her and asking her to show him again.

  “What?” She demanded, unable to keep the heat from rising to her face.

  “Your Hum,” he said at last, “it worked.”

  “It’s always worked,” she told him and averted her gaze, peering through the doorway to the library.

  “No, your two harmonies came together. You had a new melody.”

  “Really?” It was Cori’s turn to narrow her eyes at him, “That’s it? You’re not going to yell?”

  “About what? I don‘t even know how you did it. And tricks like that might just save us,” he added and she could see a mocking smile curling his lips. “As long as you don’t crush me instead of our enemies that is.”

  “Oh, shut up,” she snapped and led the way through the doorway.

  The first room they entered would have once been a grand entrance hall. Now it was dusty and crumbling. The sweeping staircase that had once risen to the second floor had been smashed at its midpoint and no longer fulfilled its task of reaching the upper level. Sunlight peeked through the hole above the stairs, lighting the dust motes that stirred beneath their feet. Their footsteps echoed on the stone.

  Now they were inside the building, Rowan didn’t seem inclined to talk. He brushed his hand over the vine-wrapped railing of the staircase, looked up through the hole in the ceiling above then moved towards and archway on their right. Cori wondered if he’d been here during this destruction. Most accounts had him appearing after the war, but the few details he‘d shared with her he knew intimately.

  “Do you think they’re here somewhere?” Cori whispered, trailing behind him into what seemed to be the beginnings of the library, or at least a reading hall. The roof was intact here, but the remnants of old furniture was upturned across the floor and old books lay like debris beneath the shelves that were carved into the walls.

  “If Daiyu were here, we’d know about it.” He stooped down, pulling a book from underneath some rubble. It was charred at the edges and when he flipped it open the pages crumbled to dust. He tossed it aside and moved on.

  They picked their way through the hall, the only noise to accompany them was their footsteps and the occasional shuffle as Rowan bent to inspect things
. At the end of the hall they peered through a doorway that led to the last room of that wing. The curved walls were charred black as if a fire had been lit against them. The ceiling was caved in at its upper corner, revealing the sky. At the far side of the room near the glassless windows was a cluster of trees, amazingly having found their roots through the stone. The silvery sheen of their bark gave them away as dragon souls.

  Rowan made no move towards the trees, or even to step through the doorway into the room, but for a long time he stared. Finally he retreated, his expression carefully schooled. Cori wanted to reach out to him, but couldn‘t tell if he‘d be amicable to comfort right then.

  “Come,” he said, “I can feel Daiyu approaching.”

  Cori wondered if he’d lowered his barriers to do so; she couldn’t feel anything through hers. Nonetheless, her heart resumed its frantic hammering. She almost wished the dragon would hurry; the suspense would kill her before it did.

  “Can you feel Cadmus too?” She asked. They must be close enough to hear the other Dijem by now.

  “No. He would have his barriers in place, like us.”

  They returned to the reading hall and Rowan continued to wander aimlessly, this time taking a path by the wall, running his fingers across the stone. Cori moved in the other direction. Partway along the hall she found a small doorway with a staircase that spiralled downwards. She glanced back at Rowan who was crouched, shifting rubble and broken bits of furniture, then she descended.

  The stairwell was dark, and she trailed her hand against the wall to balance herself. The stairs turned perhaps three or four times before it reached the bottom. She found herself in a small square room, dimly lit by a grimy window near the ceiling.

  There were empty shelves along one wall and a fireplace set into another. A few books littered the floor but when she picked them up, they disintegrated in her hands. A wine rack sat against the wall beside the fireplace and Cori felt glass crunch under her shoes as she approached it. There was only one bottle in the rack and she lifted it gingerly. She blew the dust from its surface then sneezed. Holding the bottle up to the light only showed that the label had faded beyond recognition.