by L. L. McNeil
The largest of them stepped forward, its muzzle a dark grey. It watched them both for a while, and then a low growl rumbled from its chest.
Kohl responded with a short blast of freezing air, but the wolves closed their eyes, lowered their snouts to the ground, and weathered it.
Amarah threw the last piece of her goat at its enormous paws, but the wolf ignored it, and took another step forward. ‘Looks like they really don’t want us here.’
Three smaller wolves broke off from the others, racing around them and into the trees.
‘They’re trying to surround us,’ Kohl said. ‘Grab your fire. Let’s go. We don’t want this to escalate.’
Amarah grimaced. She didn’t want to leave the shelter of the trees, but she didn’t want to attack the pack, either. Kohl’s peaceful approach made the most sense.
With no choice, she pulled her vial from her back and scooped up the fire.
The wolves who had entered the trees stepped out behind them, growling, and driving them away from their camp.
Amarah looked back to the big wolf, who stepped aside, as if allowing them to leave.
‘Maybe they’ve got cubs nearby?’ Kohl said, looking from the wolves behind them to the others on the edge of the field.
‘Maybe,’ Amarah said, shouldering her bag and sighing. She didn’t like the idea of being forced away, but she didn’t want to take them on.
Nor did Kohl, from the looks of it.
Her companion raised both arms suddenly, and two rows of icicles shot up from the snow, blocking the wolves from their path.
Amarah jumped at their sudden appearance but didn’t waste time. She ran between the two rows of icicles, the wolves’ distorted faces eyeing her through them.
When she cleared the last of the icicles, the wolves had to be at least thirty feet from her, and yet they were so enormous it looked like they were sat right beside her.
Amarah shivered, but they made no move to follow.
‘Definitely guarding something in the forest,’ Kohl said.
‘What I would give for a ship right now…’ she muttered, and Kohl slumped. ‘Won’t be too long,’ she said.
‘I can carry you to Tum Metsa,’ Kohl offered, glancing back every now and then to make sure the wolves weren’t following.
Amarah shook her head, stumbling a little in the low light. ‘I’m fine.’ She didn’t want to become dependent on the Arillian carrying her around. As an afterthought, she added, ‘thanks.’
‘What’s in Tum Metsa, then?’ Kohl asked. ‘I wondered why there, not somewhere else? Somewhere in Corhaven, perhaps.’
Amarah scratched her nose. ‘For one, it’s the nearest settlement to Oren. On foot, we don’t have much choice where we can go. For seconds, it’s the haunt of one of my pirating buddies. He and I go way back.’
Kohl nodded. ‘Another one you use but don’t trust?’
Amarah cackled. ‘Don’t be naïve. Some of my best friends have used me just as much as I’ve used them. “Mutually beneficial”, they call it. Just how we survive.’ She shrugged.
It sounded cold.
Maybe it was cold.
But it was freedom, and freedom always came at a cost.
‘I trust him enough to know I’ll get what I need. Doubt he cares much about Arillians, so you don’t have to worry.’
‘Look at me, getting mixed up with thieves and pirates.’ Kohl shook his head, a little humour in his tone.
‘Treasure hunters,’ Amarah corrected. ‘Or dragon hunters, now, I s’pose. You had any thoughts on that? I wanna get going as soon as I’ve got a deck and a wheel.’
‘Well, an ereven sphere would help,’ he said. ‘Otherwise it’s a case of tracking phoenixes. They’ll always lead us to a dragon. The more phoenixes, the bigger the dragon.’
Amarah nodded, wondering whether she should detour to Ranski to see if she could get an actual ereven sphere.
‘But Sevastos are known to you all as gods for a reason. They don’t usually come when called. I still don’t know how Moroda did it.’
‘The best treasure never does. You just need the right talent to spot the signs,’ Amarah said, catching herself before she stumbled again, her sense of balance still out of sync.
‘Here, let me—’
She slapped his hand away. ‘Kohl. Stop it. I told you, I’m fine.’ Amarah wiggled her foot in her boot, giving herself more grip. ‘You just concentrate on hunting dragons. I’ll make sure I’ve got a ship to come with.’
Kohl looked at her a long while, his expression caught somewhere between admiration and offence.
‘And stop with the damned puppy-dog eyes. You’re making me feel bad.’
He laughed out loud at that, and Amarah rolled her eyes.
She was definitely going soft.
As darkness fell, the two of them trudged through the snow towards Tum Metsa.
Chapter Twenty-Two
Palom’s days and nights merged into one, snow-filled blur.
He traipsed north through the Rio Neva forest, following the line of the Feor Mountains as they cut the continent in two. Much of the path he followed disappeared through overgrown trees, fallen rocks, or lack of maintenance. With so few settlements on this extreme landscape, Palom hardly encountered another soul.
His Valta Forinja kept him out of any danger, flashing whenever anything threatening approached him—Ittallan or wild animal—and he tried to keep from killing when he could, but the sword was hard to resist.
A quick slash and almost guaranteed to perish.
Emonos.
He sighed.
The dragon hatchling, however, followed him throughout it all, quite happy to perch on his shoulder or trot along after him when Palom slowed down.
He shared meat with it and wondered what on earth he was going to do now he had a baby dragon following him all day and night.
He was not going to be the best guardian for it.
He didn’t know the first thing about their needs.
Palom decided the best thing to do would be to try and find a wild dragon, and hope that somehow it would take on the hatchling, so he didn’t have to worry about it—or messing up—anymore.
It was foolish thinking, really.
Dragons were a rarity after Aciel.
Even if he were lucky enough to find one, he was more likely to be incinerated by it than be able to give it the hatchling.
But for all his recent mistakes, he hoped that saving the young dragon and finding it a permanent home would mean he wasn’t a complete failure.
His thoughts drifted to what he might do after bidding farewell to the hatchling, as they so often did.
How his life had changed in the past few months.
The Arillians had been the trigger for everything.
If not for Arillians, he’d never have met Kohl and been betrayed, lost Anahrik, Eryn, and Moroda.
If not for Arillians, things may have worked out differently with Lathri.
But…if not for the Arillians, he’d never have been able to forge the Valta Forinja. Would never have travelled to Berel to learn the secrets of the ancient weapons, would never have had the pressure or incentive to create them.
If the sword really was emonos, though…Perhaps he’d have been better off living out the rest of his days as a mediocre blacksmith.
He missed Anahrik.
Badly.
The other Ittallan always had an energy and enthusiasm about him that was infectious and kept them going even when things seemed grim.
Palom had needed to reign him back from time to time, but otherwise their business partnership had been fun from beginning to end.
Despite a seven-year age gap, despite the fact that their two types of meraki didn’t often gel, they were friends.
True friends.
Friends who would do anything for one another, even—as it happened—die for one another.
Brothers in all but blood.
Anahrik hadn’t wanted to ge
t messed up in Aciel’s war, in the fighting. He’d agreed to help Palom forge the Valta Forinja, to see if it could be done, and then he’d wanted to go north and stay with his cousins until things calmed down.
But Jato’s Arillians had killed him before he’d had the chance to return.
Palom hated himself for that more than anything else. Anahrik’s dream of peace snatched from him while he tried to help and protect their friends.
Of course, had Kohl stayed to fight, the outcome of that battle could well have been very different.
Anahrik and Eryn might have survived.
Moroda may not have been pushed to use a Sevastos’s power to seal herself and Aciel away.
Palom shook his head.
So much had happened, and it all came back to the damned Arillians.
It always came back to the Arillians.
There was a reason their brutal race had been exiled, why they were only known for their storms and devastation.
His sword sparked, sending another ripple of blue light into the clearing.
He’d hunt them to the ends of Linaria, if he could.
Maybe he needed a ship to chase them out of the skies. A warship, one with plenty nets to trap them.
At least his anger and hatred could be fuelled into something productive.
The dragon nosed at his bag and chirped. Palom frowned. It always seemed to be hungry.
‘You have eaten all food. Do not be greedy, Leillu.’
Little one, in the old tongue.
The dragon licked its lips and shoved its head into the bag, front claws scrabbling for purchase.
‘No. No get out. No!’ Palom clapped his hands.
With a surprised squeak, the dragon jumped away.
‘You are not allowed in there,’ Palom said with a scowl. He pointed to his bag in the hopes the dragon would understand what he meant. ‘You will have to wait until tomorrow if you are hungry.’
The hatchling sat down and turned its attention to grooming itself, nibbling at the scales on its tail and tiny horns.
Palom sighed. ‘At least you listen to me. A bit. Everyone else tells me how I am failure.’ He held out his hand, palm up, and the dragon immediately darted over to him. It clambered onto his fingers and rubbed its head against Palom’s skin.
He sighed again.
The dragon was dependent on him, but only took its share from what he hunted for himself. It would be years and years before it had grown enough to look after itself alone—and that was even assuming Palom could keep it alive until then.
‘Leillu, I like your company. But I do wish you were bigger.’
The dragon yawned in response, showing off a range of razor sharp teeth, before curling up in Palom’s palm, and looping its tail around itself.
His Valta Forinja had found the dragon. He couldn’t just leave it in the wilderness to be eaten by the next biggest thing that found it.
No, he had to find it a home. Had to find other dragons for it to live with.
Without a map, Palom had no way of working out how far north he was. The forest had begun to thin, and the mountains grew even steeper, but he could be anywhere between Gal Etra and the northern shore of Val Sharis.
He’d seen a few airships fly overhead—trading vessels from the looks of them—but in such a remote part of the country, the days and locations blurred into one.
Palom hoped to see more dragons flying around, particularly now he was on the outskirts of Ittallan civilisation, where few people could disturb them.
He worried he’d underestimated the impact Aciel had had on Val Sharis’s ecosystem.
The fires he built were small, barely enough to cook his food, much less keep him warm. There was simply too much snow, and he daren’t risk travelling deeper into the forest where there was less snow for fear of stumbling into other Ittallan and his Valta Forinja taking control.
Palom pressed on. For all the days he’d been travelling, all the soul-searching he’d tried to do, he was still no closer to peace. He didn’t feel any better about his past mistakes and hadn’t yet stopped grieving over lost friendships and relationships.
He’d only just come back into Manilo and Solvi’s lives and had abandoned them.
Again.
He was sure they were better off without him, as they’d always been. Manilo would have wanted him to return to Feoras Sol on a permanent basis, and the other Archigos wanted money from his status as a hero of Val Sharis.
Even if he’d believed it was all true, Palom didn’t think he could return to mining or a quiet village life. He could set up a new forge, he supposed, but with such few Ittallan coming to Feoras Sol to trade, it would be a waste of time and resources.
Taban Yul had been the best place for that, and he’d already squandered his chance there by destroying his old workshop.
So, where did that leave him?
A nomadic traveller looking for his purpose in the world?
Trying to find a family of dragons for the young one he’d somehow managed to hatch?
He’d refused to get involved with the politics of war, had refused to stand with Lathri and her allies against Sapora.
He’d managed to shake off one very real demon from his past—Mateli—but his nightmares still haunted him as if the crocodile were still alive.
Lathri’s words rang in his mind as they always did when his thoughts circled back to this.
What was he good for?
It certainly wasn’t protecting people.
He sighed, picking his way along the narrow mountain trail as it wound its way above the treeline. Snow threatened to fall the higher he travelled, but he shrugged off the cold and kept moving.
The trail broadened, and the treeline fell away to reveal open sky beyond. Somewhere high above, so high Palom almost couldn’t see, a pair of dragons soared.
On his shoulder, the hatchling looked up as well, chirping and flapping its wings. Whether it could see the dragons, too, or it was just having a stretch, Palom wasn’t sure.
He watched them a long while, weaving and darting around one another, as though youngsters in play.
Not a care in the world.
One swooped lower, hovered for a moment, and then unleashed a torrent of flame into the distance.
Palom blinked.
Even with his keen eyesight, he could not see what the dragon had breathed fire at.
Its companion joined in, diving down and adding its fire to the first dragon’s. For a long time, they hovered, sending fire into the air, before they suddenly whirled around and flew towards the mountains at top speed.
Palom crouched down, covering much of himself behind the rocks on the lip of the trail, and watched. His sword pulsed, ever-ready, and he unsheathed it from his back. ‘Get down, Leillu,’ he murmured to the hatchling, shifting his position to block it from view with one leg.
Both dragons flew past him, heading up towards the tops of the Feor Mountains. He looked back into the distance and squinted.
Nothing.
And yet…
His Valta Forinja buzzed with an energy Palom hadn’t felt since Aciel’s attack. Unsure whether to hide or flee down the mountainside and into the forest, Palom lurched where he was, gripped by a sudden sense of apprehension.
Then he heard thunder rolling through the clouds, and his gut told him what he feared.
Arillians.
From the sheer volume of noise, there had to be at least a dozen of them. Sheet lightning lit up the dark clouds, and another bout of thunder pealed across the sky.
The force of it shook the mountain and sent loose stones careening over the cliff edges. The young dragon trilled and clambered up Palom’s leg onto his back, where it hunkered down.
‘Do not worry Leillu,’ he said. ‘They might just fly past.’
Flashbacks of Aciel’s battle flooded his mind along with memories of his nightmares.
He exhaled slowly, trying to calm his nerves.
Palom held his br
eath and steeled himself for another battle when the sky exploded with Arillians careening through the air. Their wings beat powerfully, and they shot lightning in all directions.
‘Dragons above…’ Palom whispered.
His earlier estimation that there’d been a dozen Arillians had been way off.
This looked closer to fifty.
Several Arillians clustered around something—or someone—in the centre of the group, but they were too far away, and he couldn’t make out the details.
They plunged out of the air—feathered wings of different colours shimmering in the reflected light of their electricity—and charged towards the mountains.
Palom’s eyes widened.
Were they after the two dragons?
He thought Aciel had been the only one after them—had they forgotten the terrors he’d brought to Linaria?
The loss he’d caused their kind?
He snarled and stood up straight as the whole flock of them flew overhead, either paying him no mind or too focussed on the dragons to notice him below.
If they so much as laid a finger on those dragons, he’d never forgive himself.
‘Hold on, Leillu. I think we are going climbing now.’
Palom faced the sheer mountain as it rose above him. Wherever the dragons and Arillians were, it was much, much higher.
Scaling it would be nearly impossible, and he couldn’t—wouldn’t—leave the dragons to their wrath.
He looped his bag across his chest and under both arms and rested the Valta Forinja hilt-up against the rocks he’d been hidden behind.
In one, fluid movement, he transformed, the dragon clinging on all the while. Palom grasped the sword between his teeth, and then leapt up onto the rocks above.
He climbed upwards, jumping when the rock face became too steep even for a tiger’s claws. With every step, he felt the sword hum, and his desire to avenge his fallen comrades and slay the Arillians grew.
Before long, Palom heard the crackle of electricity as the Arillians threw it about, heard the dragon’s roar and whoosh of fire as they breathed it, and he quickened his pace.