Leaghan followed hot on her heels. She’d rather be locked in the laboratory than in the dorms.
She wasn’t comfortable until the laboratory door was closed and locked behind her. Even though the room was open—with the exception of shelves and cases—Leaghan still cast her eyes around the room to insure there was no one lurking about.
Marcella stripped the flimsy purple dress from her lithe frame, and stepped to the window. She caste the double windows open, swinging them in like doors, and stepped up onto the frame. Leaghan tried to ignore the sounds of snaps and pops that sounded from within the woman’s body as her bones reformed to that of a small yellow wyvern. And then she was off, gliding through the windy, pre-storm streets to Garrett’s offices in the council hall.
Leaghan paced, waiting for something to happen. Thoughts of Andraal were gone from her mind. When she suspected attacks were coming from the entity, she was more relaxed. She knew there was nothing she could do against him, and worry of Andraal, oddly, weren’t as scary as worrying about attacks from a physical person.
But then, worried that she was about to be attacked again, and her staff being out of magic, Leaghan worried that attack would come from any quarter. She forced herself to sit at the table, and thumb through the book of runes. It didn’t take her long before she was deep in study. It was strange how her mind worked now that she had gotten used to the magic. It seemed almost as if the words of the book of magic drew her in, called to a sleeping part of her mind that took over, and pushed all cares and worries to the side.
Leaghan remembered the runes of the cube, and she began searching for them, wondering if maybe this book of stories that had bits of magical history in it, would tell her something about the box.
She saw many runes that looked like parts of the runes inscribed on the sides of the box, but she didn’t find specific runes that matched exactly. Before she realized what she was doing, Leaghan was writing down runes that closely resembled those of the box. She was nearly done copying runes that resembled the six sides of the box when wings sounded outside.
She jumped to her feet, her hands instinctively grabbing her staff where it rested against the table. A small yellow wyvern landed on the window sill, and began shifting into Marcella. The streets had grown darker while she’d worked, and the wind howled around the eaves of the keep. She could see laundry flapping on lines stretched between broken apartments, and stray papers skittered along the hard-packed streets. Marcella had just managed to pull the straps of her gown over her shoulders when a knock sounded on the laboratory door, and Leaghan yelped in surprise.
“It’s Josef,” he called from the other side. “And Geffrey.”
Marcella crossed to the door, taking long, powerful strides, and pulled it open. The blond man and the dark-haired boy stepped inside, and Marcella bolted the door behind them. “I told Garrett. He’s summoning the wyverns back to the hall to mount a defense. He’s also sent word to the other districts, and to the dragons.”
“What does he want us to do?” Josef said.
“Protect Leaghan,” Marcella said.
Josef frowned but nodded.
“What about Nevik?” Marcella asked.
“Who’s Nevik?” Leaghan wondered.
“The red that attacked you,” Josef told her. He ran a hand through his blond hair, and slumped into a chair at the table. “He doesn’t remember a thing.”
“Are you sure?” Marcella asked.
“We’re sure,” Geffrey said.
Marcella frowned at the boy, but nodded, as if she trusted what he said. Leaghan thought she remembered that Geffrey was also a yellow wyvern, so he must have probed Nevik’s mind to find out if he was telling the truth.
“What does that mean?” Leaghan asked.
“It means he was being controlled,” Josef said.
“But how?” Marcella wondered.
“That’s what I was hoping you’d find out,” Josef said, leaning forward. “Things are a bit strange around the town.”
Marcella crossed her arms over her chest, and leaned against the door. “Strange how?”
“You’ve heard of the dragon attacks? The dragons that were killed in the city?”
She nodded.
“Well, no one can seem to find out any information when they investigate.” Josef sighed. “Yellows can’t sense anything about the scenes, and physical evidence is lacking. To be honest, the last attack on the forge didn’t leave much in the way of physical evidence, so that’s not a surprise.”
“What does it mean?” Marcella wondered.
Josef shrugged. “It all leads back to the fire fruit. Because it can block the power dragons hold on a person, apparently it also works against yellows reading energy.”
“What about the dragons?” Leaghan asked.
“Asked them,” Josef said. “They seemed unwilling to help, but when we convinced them it was as much in their interest as ours, they’d informed us that they had already checked the area. They found nothing. But they did say that the dragon who died in the forge was a genuine lover of humans. He wasn’t controlled by the tamer any longer because he didn’t need to be controlled into wanting to protect humans. He was just as curious of humans as some humans are of them.”
“How odd,” Marcella said.
“There’s more. I think we have a bigger issue with racism.” Josef rubbed at his eyes. As he did, the first of the sandstorm rolled into the city. Leaghan could hear the sand shower the outside of the windows. The storm roared through the streets, and thunder rumbled in a continuous, rolling thrum. It made hearing much of anything outside of the tumultuous storm difficult at best.
“Tell us,” Marcella said. She pushed away from the door, and came to sit at the table so they could hear one another over the raging storm outside.
Josef told them what he’d seen—and heard—of the empress’ speech to the city the last few weeks. As he talked, Marcella’s face darkened, and Leaghan felt a strange, unsettled stir in her belly. This wasn’t good. This wasn’t going to lead anywhere good. They were completely out of luck. If their leader felt this way, and had support, then they were likely doomed.
“This complicates things,” Marcella said.
Leaghan couldn’t help but feel that the empress speaking of sending the dragons back beyond the wards sounded an awful lot like what Andraal wanted. For a moment, she wondered if Andraal had even taken the form of the empress to rally support behind him. She already knew that he could change shape when he came out of the ether. Maybe he was controlling the empress somehow? She found it hard to believe that the empress could be so against dragons as she sounded. Andraal had said something about being able to control Leaghan, and he’d shown her that he could control the wild magics in her mind rather easily.
But I’m the only other wizard, and if he did the warding with the last death spells of the wizards before, how am I to do it now? She felt as if she were going crazy even thinking about renewing the wards. They had a dragon tamer now, and they had friendly dragons on their side. Sure, some of them were controlled by the dragon tamer, but if Josef was right, there were other dragons out there who loved humans.
“What can we do?” Marcella asked.
“There’s nothing yellows can do,” Josef said. “But maybe our new wizard could see if there’s magic behind this?”
“How?” Leaghan wondered. “I can’t really sense magic.”
“But you can sense powers, right?” Josef asked.
“I could meld with your mind,” Marcella said. “I could help determine what was magic, and what wasn’t.”
“Have you done any mental work before?” Geffrey wondered. “Have you done any seeing?”
Leaghan shrugged, slightly uncomfortable with the sudden premonition she’d had early, out of the blue. “Yeah, just a few moments ago.”
“Good, then you could help.” Geffrey nodded.
“All right. After this attack,” Marcella said.
They all look
ed to the closed window as purple lightning lit the sand raging around the keep. A great shadow glided by the window, and the first, startled scream sounded from the streets below.
There were dragons nearby. More specifically, there were dragons all around Wylan. She wasn’t sure if they could sense her, smell her wounds, or if they were just happening by her. Whatever the reason, she felt the need to get to safety before they found her. With a wounded tale, and a wounded neck, they would make quick work of her.
Honestly, they’d make quick work of her even if she were fully healed. One wyvern against even one dragon wasn’t odds to bet on, let alone one wyvern against a team of dragons. She could only hope they hadn’t found her yet.
She considered finding a place to rest until they passed, but Aariac had been uncharacteristically still on her back for some time. She didn’t relish the idea of resting because she wouldn’t be able to rest, not when she thought that Aariac had already died from his infection. If Aariac was still alive at all, he wouldn’t do well with the rest.
Adam had told her that the city was the closest place, and that they’d likely be able to heal Aariac. She hoped for the hundredth time that the city wasn’t just a myth, that she’d find it soon, and they’d have healers ready to save her friend.
She pressed on, her wings feeling the strain of the many miles spent in the air. She was tired, worn down, and ready to collapse, but fear for Aariac, and fear of the dragons urged her on. She wanted nothing more than to collapse, and she knew the only thing keeping her going at the time was the fear.
Lissandra was quiet, but after training and merging with her wyvern, Wylan was used to the silence. Still, she could use her calming presence then, the reassurance that everything would be fine. The silence seemed to speak more to Wylan’s fears than anything else.
Just then, directly before her, a glimmer appeared on the horizon. It was closer now than it had been moments before when she’d seen it first. As the shimmer danced on the horizon, Wylan felt her mind shy away from it, her eyes turn to the left until the shimmering beacon was no longer the focus of her attention, and instead she was looking at a dune that crested higher than all the others.
She heard the dragons overhead bay, and watched as their shadows in the clouds turned to the left, and the right, as if they were aiming to fly around the beacon. Wylan cast her eyes around, searching for the glimmer, and when she found it, she was surprised to see it was to her right. Wondering if she got turned around, away from the beacon, she corrected her flight, and aimed for the glimmer once more.
Despite the shift of her mind, and the urge to fly away from the glimmer, she pressed on, correcting her flight whenever she found herself flying away from the beacon. The dragons were thinning out the closer she drew to the beacon, and the fear of being attacked lessened as the shadows grew fewer.
But there was a new danger now—as the fear slaked, the weariness of her flight took a firmer hold of her body. If the beacon was moving her away from the destination, she hoped that’s why the dragons were growing fewer. She urged her wings to work, and when the last of the dragons vanished from overhead, she wanted nothing more than to give in to her tiredness and sink to the sand. There was one fear left, however, and that was Aariac.
She couldn’t shake the feeling that she’d already lost him. He wasn’t gifted with mental communication like some elves were, so she was unable to probe his mind to see if anything was working. There was no way for her to know if he was truly alive until she rested for the night, and she refused to rest until she was at that beacon.
Wylan hoped the city appeared before then.
But was there really such a place? Could there be a place that was untouched by dragons? A place that dragons didn’t go near? How could such a place exist?
The beacon was getting closer. It was near enough now that she could tell it wasn’t a beacon at all, but instead light shimmering from several different locations over a wide distance. As Wylan drew closer to the shimmering light, the dragons were little more than a distant memory. The light illuminated…something.
Beneath her, poking up through mountains of sand, were the broken tops of buildings. As her eyes surveyed the rubble, Wylan realized what she was looking at was the outlying homes and villages of…
A city.
Her gaze drifted through the rubble, and up to where the light shone from. As the sand gave way from the broken buildings, she saw streets teeming with people, and skies filled with wyverns. The buildings were clean, free of destruction, and even had pinions fluttering from the tops.
The wyverns were coming closer, but Wylan was weakening. She hoped they didn’t mean to fight her, because her energy was waning fast. So fast, in fact, that darkness was intruding on her vision, and she was sinking out of the sky and closer to the sand.
As the first wyvern reached her, Wylan touched down, hoping that landing would show she wasn’t a threat. Her legs gave out beneath her, and she collapsed to the sand, jostling Aariac from her back to land like a heap on the ground beside her, his arms still bound around her neck with her shirt.
The change came on her quickly, and as her bones snapped to reform into her human shape, the darkness of pain chased her into oblivion.
The ceiling was low overhead, and the bed was soft beneath her. Sheer curtains wavered in the open window, and on the slight breeze, she could hear children laughing as a ball bounced on the hard-packed streets.
It was a sound so foreign to Wylan’s ears, that she thought she was dreaming. Only the pain in her neck, mirrored by a slight throb on her lower back reminded her of her wounds, and that she was, most certainly, not asleep.
She leaned back in the bed, letting her head rest on the mountain of pillows, and watched the patterns of light dance over the ceiling. It was a small room, made of stone, and oddly cool given the time of day. The blanket that lay over her was the perfect temperature, and she wondered if she were dead, for everything to be this perfect.
Except for the pain in her body.
Her scaled arm was freshly washed, and the scales seemed to shine as if polished. She flexed her arm and felt no hint of sand beneath her scales. Chimes sounded outside the window, and over the murmurs of people walking by, and the sound of birds chirping, Wylan was soothed back to sleep.
When she woke again, she saw a thin black woman bending over her bed, checking her arm, and running a soothing hand under her neck, checking her wounds.
“Where am I?” Wylan asked her.
“In the infirmary of Lastilor,” the woman said, with a strange, heavy accent.
“Lastilor,” Wylan said, testing the name on her tongue. “What about the man I came with, the elf?”
“Is that what he is?” the woman asked with a smile. “We were taking bets on what he was. We knew that he wasn’t a human. Besides his ears, and his strange eyes, other…parts…are different as well.”
Wylan blushed, not wanting to know, but at the same time curious as to how else elves differed from humans. She certainly didn’t want to know that much about Aariac, so she cleared her throat and asked again. “Is he okay?”
“We are hopeful,” the woman said with a nod. Her hair was short, shorn close to her head, and she wore a rough brown dress that looked more like a tunic that was too long for her. “His leg was badly damaged. We had to open him up and clean out the infection before we broke his leg again, and set it right. Our greens are tending to him now, helping him heal.”
Wylan let out a deep breath she didn’t realize she’d been holding, and sank deeper into the cushions. Green wyverns. If she hadn’t been able to get him home to heal, at least she’d managed to get him somewhere with green wyverns.
“I’m happy to say that you’re healing well also,” the woman said. “What is your name, and where are you from?”
“I’m Wylan Atwater,” she said. “I’m from Darubai.”
“Ah, the imperial city,” she said, as if it was still the seat of government that ruled
the long desert. “The king and queen of Lastilor are very curious about you. We were unsure anyone still survived outside our borders.”
“You don’t venture into the long desert?” Wylan wondered.
The woman shook her head, and clasped her hands before her. “We have strict regulations on traveling from the city. We used to send patrols out, looking for people to bring back, but that was many years ago. After we lost more patrols to dragons than refugees we brought back, the king put a stop to that.”
“And no dragons ever attack?” Wylan wondered.
The woman nodded. “In the early days, we suffered attacks, but that’s long behind us now. We haven’t seen a dragon in our skies now in well over fifteen years.”
“How?” Wylan asked.
The woman smiled. “I’m sure you will have many questions for the king, and I’m sure he will have just as many, as well as answers. He is looking forward to meeting you tonight for dinner.”
“Tonight?” Wylan asked.
She nodded. “I have other patients to tend to right now, you’re more than welcome to sit on your balcony and observe the city until someone comes to help you dress for dinner.”
Someone was going to help her dress? “Am I that damaged that I can’t dress myself?”
The woman laughed, a deep, throaty laugh that sounded like music to Wylan’s ears. “No,” she assured. “But you’re a guest here, and a guest of some importance. You receive the full pampering.”
“Oh,” Wylan said.
“Do you need help getting to the balcony?”
Wylan pushed to a sitting position, and finding little protest from her body, she shook her head.
“I will be in this ward for several more hours. If you need me, ask any of the nurses in the halls for Jessup, okay?”
“Thank you, Jessup,” Wylan said with a nod and a smile.
Jessup left the room.
Wylan took a moment to situate herself to her new surroundings and her change of luck before she swept the blankets aside, and stood. She reached high and stretched her back, letting out a deep sigh as her muscles eased from her long travel. After a few more stretches, she padded to the patio doors, and stepped through the cream curtains and onto the small, half-circle balcony.
Dragon Forged: Chronicles of Dragon Aerie Young Adult Fantasy Fiction (Plague Born Book 3) Page 14