Vane

by Teshelle Combs

  “Accolades and thanksgiving are both wastes of time unless they can directly correlate to an increase in one’s knowledge.”

  Myra put a finger up. “Or an increase in the world’s collective knowledge as a whole.”

  Declan smiled, straight white teeth breaking through his subdued demeanor. “Very good, young dragonling. You may ask me whatever question you like.”

  “Thank you for the permission. I listen when Cam reads out loud sometimes,” she said, grinning back. “I’m learning.”

  Declan chuckled again, rubbing his jaw as if he was remembering something. “Well, I should say that Cameron is wasting his time. Reading aloud slows one down.”

  “But Cameron believes that seeking only to improve one’s personal knowledge is selfish and wasteful. That a blue dragon’s greatest purpose is fulfilled when he improves the knowledge of others as well. To share what he knows. To know others. To teach them to do the same.”

  Declan laughed once more, smacking his hands together in delight. “Brilliant. I am pleased to see my former student instilling such ideals in the world. He is, quite figuratively, spitting in the face of the academy and everything it stands for.”

  Myra nodded. “That’s why he sought out the monastery.” She swallowed. “But we haven’t heard from him. And now we’ve gotten a letter from the monks that he’s deceased.”

  Declan frowned. “Dead. That would be regrettable.”

  Myra nodded at Cale. “His brother thinks he’s still alive, though. Despite the evidence. He says he would know, would be able to feel it if Cam was gone.”

  Declan pursed his lips. “And you believe that…?”

  “Myra O’Hara. And yes. I do believe it. I can’t prove it, but I believe it.”

  Declan nodded. “Perhaps, if there is no proof, you could explain it to me, so that I may be persuaded to understand how one could come to such a ridiculous speculation without evidence to support it.”

  Cale was about to say something about the insult to his theory, but Myra stopped him with a single hand.

  “A red dragon is equipped with instincts strong enough to draw her to her mate, to her rider. Some have biological factors that allow them to sense danger, hostility, fear, or love before other dragons. It is not unlike human beings and their capacity to act without knowing why they do it. It can’t be dissected, but it’s real. And Cale is particularly gifted in tapping into those instincts. Just as, after you mediate, I’m sure you find your mind more focused and alert, Cale becomes more in tune with the world when he has close relations with those he cares about, especially if those relations are in peril.”

  “I do?” Cale asked. He’d never heard it explained like that. All these years, he just thought he knew when bad things were going to happen because that’s just how he was.

  “Yes, you do,” Myra said. “Cameron has studied you extensively over the years.” And she looked back to Declan. “Because Cale is exceptional, and because Cameron is a very close relation of his, I do believe he would know if his brother was dead.”

  Declan swirled his spoon in his tea again, though he never seemed to take a sip of it. “Very well. The logic is sound, despite its flaws. But I’m afraid it will be difficult to give you directions to the blue monastery.”

  “What?” Cale said. “All this talking and you were never planning to help us?”

  “Patience, dragonling. I will help as much as I can. The monastery is for those seeking to preserve and share knowledge in its truest form. Unless that is you, you will not be able to locate it.”

  “So…it’s like a puzzle?” Cale asked.

  “No. It’s a paradox.” Myra crossed her arms. “You can’t find it unless you were meant to.”

  “That makes no sense.”

  “Yes, it does.” Declan frowned. “Sadly, if you don’t understand, I can’t help you. That’s how it works.”

  “So you’re telling me I can’t find this place unless it’s my destiny?” Cale shook his head. “Blue dragons are supposed to be rational. Destiny is a myth.” And he crossed his arm.

  Myra turned on him. “Don’t tell him what he can or can’t think just because he’s a certain race, Cale. He can make his own choices.”

  He held up his hands in surrender. “Alight, My, I’m sorry. I just can’t believe people actually think destiny is a real thing.”

  Declan watched the interaction with interest. “I believe that that God places things in an order that we do not understand. Chaos is nonexistent unless we create it. And destiny is simply the way things are ordered, the way things would happen, if we did not let our chaos interfere.”

  “So, we’re all evil.” Cale said it with a scowl.

  “No,” Declan said with a hint of a smile, “but we can be.”

  Ava interjected. “This just as confusing as talking to the dragon with the scars.”

  Declan sat up straighter. “Come again?”

  Ava frowned. “I wasn’t really talking to you, exactly. Just mumbling to myself.”

  But Cale was curious. “Declan, do you know who Ava’s talking about?”

  The professor grew pale. “I have little to go on. But perhaps.”

  Ava motioned with her hands, drawing invisible lines across her face. “He’s a blue dragon with scars all over. I mean all over. Every inch of him. And he talks in riddles. Right now, he is some ungodly king of the siren throng. He’s searching for something and terrorizing the dragon world in the process.”

  Declan put a hand to his chin, thinking, his eyes growing cloudy. “Slate.”

  Myra nodded her head. “I’ve heard of Slate.”

  Cale threw up his arms in exasperation. “You have? Why didn’t you tell us, Myra?”

  She shrugged. “You never brought him up, Cale. We’re not exactly best friends. I’m pretty sure we’ve never actually had a real conversation.”

  “This Slate character almost killed us,” Cale said. Now he was angry. “Tell us what you know.”

  Declan frowned. “Have you no manners?”

  “Since when do blue dragons care about manners?!”

  Myra groaned. “You don’t know everything about blue dragons, Cale, just because you live with two of them. Karma and Cam set aside a lot of their customs for you, and you don’t even know it. Manners matter. Not all of them, but some. Especially regarding the sharing of information. You have to ask.”

  Cale sighed again. This meeting is so much more frustrating than I anticipated. “Dear Declan and sweet, sweet Myra. Please share with me what you know about the dragon called Slate so that we can potentially stop him from ruining dragon society with his siren armies.”

  Declan stirred his tea again. “Slate. He was once an academy student. And then he was….”

  “He was an experiment,” Myra said. “He can take knowledge from dragons and hold it all inside his brain. He’s very talented and very….”

  “…Disturbed,” Declan finished. “I was not aware that he was released from the academy. They must be keeping that to themselves. Slate could be quite dangerous.”

  “Because they made him that way,” Myra said. There was an edge to her voice that spoke of sadness.

  “If I may ask you a question, Myra. How do you know all this? It is meant to be classified information,” Declan said.

  Her lips tightened into a hard frown. “You may not ask that, actually.”

  He nodded. “Very well. Your sources are yours to protect.” He stood. “If you will all excuse me, I have work to do and a mess to clean before I have to be on my way in the morning. May you grow in knowledge.”

  They all stood in awkward silence until Myra explained. “That means he wants us to leave, guys.”

  “Oh.” Cale fumbled as he headed for the door.

  He couldn’t help the sinking feeling in his chest. He couldn’t believe that maybe, probably, Myra was right. And he didn’t know his brother as well he always thought he did. Maybe, even though he’d never been able to tell a lie, he ha
d been living one.

  Thirteen

  Blue

  “That took a very long time,” Shiloh said, hurrying behind the others as they walked the streets of Dublin. The cars cast longs shadows as they went by, their tires filling the nights with whirring noises and their lights adding color to the slick roads.

  “Both you and Myra could learn some patience,” Ava said, her thumbs slung in the straps of her backpack.

  “Do not try to argue that,” Shiloh said. Rane wriggled in his satchel, unhappy with being cooped up. “If you were apart from the one you loved, you would move with haste as well.”

  “We’re going as fast as we can go,” Ava said. They were literally power walking along the sidewalk.

  “We could fly,” Shiloh offered.

  He was met with a collaborative “no,” so forceful that he and Rane both jumped. He frowned from behind them. “Why is everyone so opposed to our mode of transportation? Have we not been helpful?”

  Cale grimaced. “Shiloh, flying through the void is like being sliced open, stuffed with poisoned darkness and ice, and sewn back up again.”

  “It’s not that bad,” Ava said. “Shiloh probably enjoys it. Right, Shiloh?”

  “It is like dying, but never quite laying to rest,” he said. “Rane and I find it quite horrendous.”

  “What?” Cale turned to look at him and wished he hadn’t. He forgot how nervous he got looking at the death-bringer. “Why do you do it if you hate it, too?”

  “Because.” Shiloh patted his satchel affectionately, wishing his dragon was sitting on his shoulder. “Because it is what we were born to do.”

  “But you were born to protect the will of the greys and you’re not doing that.”

  Shiloh sighed. “I have not all the answers, red dragon. But I know they are within me somewhere. So I act on what I feel to be right. I haven’t always done this though. In fact, I was taught that this is a wrong and sinful thing, opposing the very nature of the grey book. But every time I have followed our core, I have seen the fruits of goodness born.”

  Ava turned to look at him, and she didn’t have to flinch. Shiloh didn’t scare her. “Maybe you’re not just a death-bringer after all, Shiloh. Maybe there’s more to you.”

  “That would be impossible, phoenix.”

  Cale growled. “We have names, you know, Shiloh.”

  He looked down at his feet as he walked. “I was under the impression that to use one’s name is to claim a sort of kinship to them. I did not want to assume I’d earned that.”

  “Friends,” Cale said. He was gruff, but he meant what he said next. “Friends, Shiloh.”

  “You’ve forgiven me, then?”

  “No.” He moved over as he walked and put his arm around Ava. Cale almost leaned in and kissed her cheek, but had to stop himself. It was so natural, so easy to be with her. “I won’t ever forgive you. Doesn’t mean we’re not friends.”

  A hint of a smile. “Very well, Cale. If it makes you feel justified, I do not forgive the two of you for what you did to Rane.”

  “Don’t expect you to,” Cale said.

  They turned into the marina, most of the boats docked for the night—white vessels bobbing in black sea. The moon cast shimmering light over the water, outshining the stars where it hung. The boy was there, his bare feet hovering above the soft waves, his torn up clothes still damp as though he had gone for a swim not that long ago.

  His uncombed head was hung, as though he was steeped in deep thought, and his eyes were closed until the group stopped near him. He turned a careful gaze to them, lingering over the sight of Shiloh.

  “I’ve not come to hurt you,” Shiloh said, easing the boy’s discomfort.

  Cale sat next to him, letting his legs dangle. “These are my friends. They’ll go for a bit of a walk, and maybe you and I can talk.” He paused. “Maybe I can ask you a question.” He didn’t think he said it right, but it was a try.

  He reached into his pocket and pulled out a sliver of pink salmon that Ava had willed up once they left Declan’s house. Cale handed it to the boy and looked away.

  With a bit of hesitation, the boy took the fish and slipped it down his throat, making sure that he angled his body so no one was watching. Cale knew it was shameful for a blue dragon to eat with an audience looking on. Social dining was nonexistent. Once the boy had swallowed, Cale faced the water again.

  “How did you know?” the boy asked.

  “Didn’t take long to put it all together. My brother is a blue dragon, so I know a bit about it.” Just a little, he thought. Apparently, not enough. “You saved us, didn’t you? Took care of those merfolk for us?”

  The boy kicked his feet a little. His back was slumped, as if he’d been sitting in the same position for some time. As if he was getting tired. “At first I thought you were monks. But no monk would be that useless underwater. So I figured you were going to die if I didn’t intervene.”

  “Why would you care whether we lived or died?”

  The boy looked at him with his wide blue eyes. “Knowledge is part of life. Without life, knowledge dies. It is our task to preserve knowledge. So I saved you and what little knowledge you have in that core of yours.”

  “You mean in my head.”

  “No, I mean what I say. Almost always. The academy believes that knowledge is from the brain. Monks believe it is from the core. It is who we are. And the water in our cores conducts that knowledge for us.”

  Cale nodded. “So, you’re a monk.”

  The boy stared into the sea. “I am not.”

  “But it seems like you know so much about them.”

  “I cannot find them. I’m not meant to go to the monastery. Only those who are meant to find it can go.”

  Cale thought for a moment. Thought about his mother and how hard she’d fought to educate them, how much she must have given up to be what she thought was a good mother for all of her children, for both races. About Cameron and how he’d tried in secret to make it easier for Rory and him.

  “You have a name?” Cale asked.

  “Neeraj.”

  “Well, Neeraj, maybe you couldn’t get to the monastery, because you weren’t meant to go…yet.”

  “Yet?”

  “Maybe you were waiting for someone. Someone you were supposed to save. Someone you were supposed to take along with you.”

  “Destiny does not exist.” He said it plainly and with quiet confidence. “I have been waiting here since I was a boy, trying every day to get there. Every single day, I sit here and try. And for nothing. I was not meant to go. They would never choose me.”

  Cale nodded. “Someone told me, not an hour ago, that destiny does exist. God has things in order, and the chaos we create messes it all up. I think that you were set up in order, Neeraj, so we could go together.”

  “Impossibilities, even when said aloud, cannot be made real.”

  “Yeah? Well whoever said that didn’t have an Ava.”

  Neeraj shook his unkempt head. “The monks will not tolerate intruders. They’ll kill us all. Even if we could find it, we’ve be dead if we forced our way in. And may I ask, what is an ‘Ava’?”

  “We won’t let them kill us, Neeraj. We have a black dragon and a phoenix on our side. They’ll answer your questions. Trust me.”

  “Why would you bring me along? I am of no further benefit to you.”

  “Because,” Cale stood up and offered the boy a hand. “We owe you one. Or, would you rather sit on the dock until you’re an old man and your brain is too rusty to work?”

  Neeraj followed him to the rest of the group. “May knowledge go before you,” he said. It was a customary blue dragon greeting, from places that had not yet abandoned the verbiage.

  “May I ask you a question?” Myra inquired.

  He nodded.

  “Are you from Nepal?”

  He looked surprised. “Yes. May I ask how you know?”

  “I can tell by the herd markings on your chest and the cre
st around your neck. It’s very well-made. Your craftsman must be skilled.”

  The boy touched his pendant, and Ava almost snatched from his neck. “Cale look! It’s just like the blue dragon pendants that the sirens wear. The ones who work for Slate.”

  “You work for him?” Cale asked. He had been tricked. How could I let this happen?

  The boy appeared to be confused, an emotion that blue dragons did not relish. “My grandfather made this for me. It has nothing to do with any sirens.”

  “Was your grandfather an academy man, Neeraj?” Cale asked.

  Neeraj nodded. “He was. And he was brilliant. But he has been missing for quite some time. The last I heard from him was eight years ago. He told me he was leaving the academy, siding with the monastery instead.”

  “Is that why you want to go so badly,” Ava asked, “to find your missing grandfather?”

  Neeraj shook his head. “I have given up on finding him. If he wanted me, he would have located me by now. I am going to the monastery to find myself.”

  Cale nodded. “Then we go in, and we make them give us what we want. All playing nice does is get you tea you don’t want to drink and long meaningless talks.” Cale pulled out his dragonblade. “Let’s go find my brother.”

  Neeraj, his narrow frame deliberate as he walked to the edge of the water, turned to address the group. “Stay close behind me or the merfolk will cluster and pick you off.”

  And he dived in, so streamlined that he might as well have been a blade through the air. Myra took a look at her heeled leather boots and sighed. They were already ruined from their first excursion beneath the ocean, but still she refused to take them off. She jumped in, followed closely by Shiloh and Rane.

  Ava grabbed Cale’s hand before he could go. She wanted to let it go, but he stopped her, wrapping his fingers around hers.

  “Cale, if I can, I’ll get you in.”

  “Ava….”

  “The other phoenix, Ixora, she said that the only thing I can’t do, the only truth I can’t change no matter how strong my will becomes, is that I’m a phoenix. That I have to die when my will can no longer be contained. And that means we could lose each other—”