by Rin Chupeco
As before, the girl took their hearts, and I watched them disappear into the depths of her heartsglass.
They all flocked eagerly to her, like trained dogs.
“What do you intend to do with them?” I mustered enough courage to ask, though I feared the answer.
She cast her gaze toward the east. “Daanoris would be a good place to start,” she said thoughtfully, selecting a kingdom like it was a dress to wear on the morrow.
24
I didn’t remember much. I heard the sounds of people screaming, felt my world turn upside down as a mad dash commenced, upending my seat in the process. Fox was on me in an instant, rolling me out of the way from the stampede before anyone could trample over us. Lady Hami would have been critical of my reflexes; only then did my training take over, and I pushed away enough of my shock to scramble to my feet.
It was complete chaos. The bulk of the audience had fled, but the asha remained. I could see the sparks of magic knifing through the air at the creature that had clawed its way out from the floor, leaving a hole on the stage the size of an asha-ka. It was a hideous serpentlike thing with three heads, each with a long snout and teeth that were the stuff of nightmares: there were two on each mouth, curved cruelly upward along the sides of their jaws, like a boar’s. Their long necks ended in a scaled body the size of a large farm, with wings the span of two horses and a large tail that ended in a spike. Its unblinking, yellow eyes blazed at me from underneath hooded, scaled ridges of brow.
My heartsglass quickened. It was a black dragon.
It screamed again, and I saw fire leap into the air and fall in an arc toward the creature, bathing its stomach in flames. Smoke curled up from Althy’s clenched fist, arm still raised toward the beast. It had little effect; the beast reared its head up, and its tail whipped forward, destroying the stage in one blow. Many of the apprentices had fled; some remained rooted to the spot, staring up in horror.
“Tea!” I heard Polaire roar over the din. “Take as many of the novices as you can and get them out!”
I hesitated. I was a Dark asha—a Dark asha-in-training—and it was a daeva, but there must be some way I could help—
“Now, Tea!”
Fox made the decision for me, grabbing my hand and steering me away. With his other arm, he grabbed a frightened apprentice around her waist, lifted her up, and ran. I stumbled after him, following other asha guiding the rest to safety, away from the Willow district and toward the Ankyon market. “Make for the castle!” I heard someone scream behind me. “Their walls are the strongest in the city!”
I didn’t think those walls, strongest or otherwise, would stand up to a three-headed monster of that size, but we all turned obediently toward it, knowing nowhere else to go. Groups of people were already running past the palace gates, soldiers stationed in places to herd them inside like frightened sheep to make room for others still pouring in.
“I have to go back,” I told Fox, stopping just short of the gates.
“Don’t be stupid, Tea!”
“Fox, I have to go back! Lady Mykaela won’t be able to face that thing alone!” I was desperate, as frightened as I had ever been. But I also knew that I would never forgive myself if I ran while Lady Mykaela stayed behind.
“Keep behind me.” An advantage of our bond was his knowing any more attempts to convince me otherwise wouldn’t work. We deposited the rest of the novices with the asha who had taken charge of the refugees, then pushed against the tide of people fighting to enter, back toward the training hall.
The battle had not been without its casualties. I saw a few bodies huddled up in crumpled heaps at the corner of my eye but refused to look. I forged ahead, matching Fox’s pace.
“I told you to get to safety!” Polaire’s hua was torn in several places, and she had a small cut across her cheek. I was too wound up to speak and could only shake my head. I saw a row of asha with their hands extended out to the dragon, Shield runes glittering above their raised palms. Every time the beast lashed toward us with its tail or whenever one of the heads tried to snap at the nearest asha with its teeth, it encountered that wall of air, preventing it from drawing too close. Another group of asha formed behind the first, and here, different Runes gleamed—Burn, Storm, Lightning. There were two dozen Deathseekers, all clad in black, also slashing runes in the air.
But none of the magic seemed able to hurt it. The dragon only shook off the worst of their attacks, and the asha flinched when it rammed into their wall.
“It’s an azi,” Lady Seta, one of the asha reinforcing the Shield, muttered. “The books say it is the daeva most impervious to Rune forms. We can’t keep this up for much longer.”
I looked around frantically for Lady Mykaela, just in time to see her step through the line of asha and walk toward the beast. I leaped forward, but arms wrapped around my waist and held me back.
“Don’t even think about it!” Fox’s voice was loud against my ear. “Do you want to get yourself killed?”
“I can help!” I struggled, but he was too strong for me.
“Don’t think you can do what she does after raising only dead mice and old duchesses and brothers, Tea! She knows what she’s doing!”
Grimly, Lady Mykaela raised her hands up. The dragon’s three heads focused themselves on her. I watched her draw the Dark, looked on as I felt the magic lift up and around the azi, the Dark trails winding around it like rope.
The huge creature struggled, and I felt a wild glimmer of hope.
“Stop,” Lady Mykaela commanded.
It ignored her and continued to struggle.
“Stop,” the Dark asha repeated, her voice louder.
The dragon screeched, and the wall of Wind began to shake. One of its heads lunged toward Lady Mykaela, its mouth open, and my screams were lost over the sound of its roaring.
A small string of Wind wrapped around Lady Mykaela and yanked her back, and the azi’s teeth missed her by mere inches. Panting, Polaire lowered her arms, and the Wind around Lady Mykaela fizzled out. The dragon growled, shook all three heads, and stepped forward to try again.
“Let me go, Fox!”
“I’m not going to let you—”
“Let me go.”
He dropped his arms, and I was free, tearing past the wall and toward the asha. I heard Polaire yelling after me, but I paid her no attention, punching at the air to draw a Compulsion rune of my own. I aimed it at one of the heads snapping dangerously close and focused.
No amount of training can prepare you for stepping inside a monster’s head. There was nothing there to cobble any logical thought together, nothing close to reason. But there were emotions running rampantly through, anger and rage and fear and hunger, all unfiltered by any semblance of a mind—only a monstrous, terrible awareness.
I didn’t remember much. I remembered the feeling of being in two places at once, of staring up at the three-headed dragon and at the same time staring back down at myself from a much greater height. I felt a sudden need to destroy and maim, coupled with a towering rage of such proportions that it almost felt like a separate entity. Kill, that rage whispered, its intentions spiraling out toward Lady Mykaela, who remained still on the ground, unmoving.
NO. I put everything I had into that one word and turned it into a command. The being hesitated, and I repeated it again, pulling at the remainder of the magic around me from the runes the other asha wielded.
NO. I wrapped the magic around me like it was a cloak and then like it was the strongest armor ever forged.
NO. Lady Mykaela did not protest when I drew the rune away from her, added it to bolster my own. In that moment, despite the disorientation and the feeling of wrongness, I felt powerful and complete, and more importantly, I knew that the beast knew this.
NO!
The creature backed away from us and spread its wings to prepare for flight
.
“Kill it, Tea!” I could hear Polaire screaming at me. “Kill it!”
But I hesitated. As strong as I felt I was, I could not bring myself to say those fatal words. I was trapped between two minds, and at that moment, I was a part of the creature just as it was a part of me.
My hesitation was all it needed. I was assailed by a sudden image: a vast, serene lake, glittering. The creature’s thoughts reached for those waters, yearning.
With one final scream of fury, the dragon hurtled itself through the air, flying at such great speeds that soon it was nothing but a speck in the distance, heading toward the fullness of the moon. A few seconds later, it was gone, and the only thing left to remember it by was the carnage around me, the moans of the injured and the dying.
My legs gave out from underneath me, but Fox caught me before I could hit the floor. “You stupid, absolute, unbelievable idiot!” I heard him say. My eyes were trained on Lady Mykaela, who had not moved at all. Polaire and two other asha were already by her side, talking urgently among themselves. There was a faint whiff of something metallic; looking down, I was surprised to see that the front of my clothes was drenched in blood.
I must have fainted after that.
• • •
My brother was sitting by my side, scowling, inside my room at the Valerian. Fox never had a good bedside manner to begin with, and he was in a foul mood long before I’d opened my eyes.
“Whatever possessed you to do something so dangerous?” he all but exploded as soon as he saw I was awake. “Of all the foolish ideas—did you know how easily you could have been killed?”
“But I wasn’t killed.” The excuse sounded weak, even to me.
“Out of sheer luck! How many times have you faced down a dragon before, Tea? And don’t try arguing with me! I was in your head when it all happened! I felt that daeva in my head as thoroughly as you did! It could have killed you just as easily as it killed so many others!”
“Can I at least get some rest before you scold me?” My head was pounding. I felt like I’d just been pushed down a cliff and had hit every stone and branch on the way down. My mind was free and clear, but there was something curled somewhere in the recesses of my mind that Fox did not seem aware of—something not even I could reach.
There was a long silence before he sighed. Taking great care not to put pressure on the bandages wrapped around my leg, Fox leaned over and wrapped me in a fierce hug. “Did you know how scared you made me?” His voice was muffled against my hair. “Did you know how close I came to losing you?”
That would be ridiculous, was what I wanted to say in an effort to lighten the mood. If I’d died, you wouldn’t have had time to miss me, because you would have died too…
A choking sound rose up from the back of my throat, and I burst into tears without trying. He hugged me again. “Idiot,” I heard him say, but this time with none of the heat.
Someone cleared her throat. Mistress Parmina stood by the doorway, accompanied by Polaire and Althy. None of them looked happy.
“If I had my way,” the old woman said before either of us could speak, “you would be cleaning the outhouses in perpetuity. Banned from the rest of your lessons for at least two more years. Forbidden to so much as raise your hand as draw in the Dark. Massage my feet until you are older and grayer and hopefully wiser. I can think of many other such chastisements. In fact, I will punish you regardless of what the other elders say.”
She pointed at a small tray on a table beside me that contained several slices of runeberries. “Eat them quickly; you will need your strength. The elders require your presence later this afternoon. They will want their turns at yelling at you for your insolence.”
I knew better than to argue with Mistress Parmina at this point though and dutifully picked up a piece.
The mistress of the Valerian sighed, turning toward the other two asha and speaking like I was no longer in the room. “Did I not tell Mykaela that she was going to be trouble? And yet I have no right to be so surprised. Mykaela was just as unruly in her younger days.”
“Mykaela is one of our best asha, Mistress,” Althy murmured. “In time, Tea here might prove the same.”
“In time, but not today.” Mistress Parmina shot me one last look, sighed again, and left.
“If she could condescend to listen to us every now and then.” Polaire gave me a scowl. “Whatever possessed you to run out like that, Tea? Do you know how easily the azi could have killed you?”
“I was afraid it was going to hurt Lady Mykaela,” I mumbled. “Is she…?”
“Resting comfortably, thanks to you—although I am still very angry. You are never to do that again, do you hear me?”
“Yes, ma’am.”
She snorted. “Said so easily and ignored just as quickly too!” She sat down on the bed beside me. “Oh, Tea,” she sighed. “What are we to do with you? If you’d been my own child, I would have given you such a throttling! Unfortunately, the elders do not think so.”
“The elders?”
“The asha-ka association wants to speed up your novitiate,” Althy said. “You will be made an asha by the end of the year and sent off to tame your first daeva.”
Cold fear gripped me. Polaire nodded knowingly.
“Since you are this eager to confront daeva, they are doing their best to quicken the process. We will accompany you, of course. As will a Deathseeker—and Zoya too, unfortunately. She is skilled in the runes, and the disadvantage of having her for a sister has come back to bite us in our behinds. Fortunately, you will be kept too busy to get into too much mischief.”
“What about Likh?”
“Likh is fine. The elders have not yet called on him. Worrying about it now will not change anything.” Polaire snorted. “There is some trickery at work here, and I suspect these elusive Faceless have been busy. If they have found some way to control the azi, then we’re in trouble. Which of the three do you think did it? As far as I know, Usij is still shackled at his Daanorian fortress, but it would be easy enough to sneak out when no one is looking. There have been no sightings of Druj in the last few weeks, and no one’s quite sure if he’s still in Yadosha. Similarly, there has been no word of Aenah in Istera, though the bulk of her sect has been imprisoned.”
“Quite disturbing,” Althy agreed.
“Can I see Lady Mykaela?” I asked.
Polaire looked at my empty plate, at the rinds that were all that was left of the runeberries. She looked back at Althy, who nodded.
Lady Mykaela was sleeping in her bed, her face white against the pillows piled up around her. Her lips were bloodless, and the dark circles around her eyes were more pronounced. My heart broke for her.
“You are not as quiet as you think you are,” she said, opening her eyes. But she smiled, and a bit of color returned to her cheeks.
“I’m so sorry.” The tears began before I’d reached her bedside, and they wouldn’t stop. Every fear and small terror I had felt during the play, the growing dread of knowing they would farm me out the way they had farmed Lady Mykaela out to the daeva, like cattle led toward a high cliff, bubbled to the surface, and I wept. I looked at Lady Mykaela and I saw my future, and I knew then that I did not want to lie in her bed, wearing her stretched skin and her sunken eyes.
Thin hands enveloped me. “It would appear that I owe you my life,” Lady Mykaela whispered in my ear. “I hope they did not go hard on you, even so.”
I made her promise to never draw the raising Dark again, but it rung as hollow as the vow I had given Polaire so many minutes ago. And in my mind, the Darkness curled at that strange corner, waiting—but for what, I didn’t know.
The stranger came as a surprise. I woke at dawn to find him wandering the beach, staring up with dread at a massive skull. He started upon seeing me. “I didn’t think there would be anyone else here,” he explained, speaking
in Daanorian.
I took an immediate dislike to him. He wore too many rings on his fingers, his heartsglass nearly hidden by the copious glitter of jeweled embellishments that littered his neck. He stank of magic; even I, who have had no training, could smell it on his person. My Drychta upbringing rose to the surface as much as I tried to stem its ascent; like Istera, Drychta have no love for Daanorian folk.
“Are those things real?” he asked, staring up at the hideous bones that stuck out from the sand. His heartsglass glittered, more green than gold. I did not need to be an asha to read what was written there.
“As real as you or I,” I responded shortly.
“To find such a skeleton intact is a rare treat,” the man marveled. “Is it daeva? Imagine how many millions of li it could sell for at the black markets! It is just what she told me!”
“She?”
“The woman in my dream. I followed the blue moon over twenty hills in twenty days and found her standing underneath the bones of a great beast. She spoke of valuable cargo that I must deliver and promised the most precious of rewards if I obeyed.”
I began to tremble. “What is her name?”
“I do not know. But she has soft brown skin and dark hair, and a dragon lines her robes. Her eyes—” And he too shuddered.
“You are Lu Ren of Daanoris. A governor of the Santiang province.”
Neither of us heard her approach. The man recoiled at the sight of her, with her hideous pet taurvi trotting by her side.
“A daeva!” He stumbled and fell onto the sand but continued to scramble away.