She felt a fluttering warmth against her neck, and Marla opened her eyes to find Zizi nuzzling at her cheek, her amethyst eyes filled with concern.
“I’ll be all right,” Marla laughed, reaching up to stroke the little creature’s feathery fur.
Another tremor rumbled through the valley but passed quickly with a rattle of falling stones.
“We’d better go,” Alyss said.
Marla nodded, stepping away from Claude as she turned to face the steaming rift in the earth again.
They worked their way down the slope to where the jagged rim of the cleft formed a natural staircase into the pit below. Their boots slipped and skidded on the red algae that grew along the rim, but they managed a cautious descent into the rift without injury.
“That’s it?” Alyss demanded in exasperation as they reached the bottom of the vent, only to find their way blocked by a fizzing pool of creamy water that stretched from one end of the cavern to the other.
Zizi chittered insistently as she hovered above the surface of the milky pool. She swooped low, dipping her tail into the water before flying back up, trailing a curtain of glittering droplets in the air behind her.
“I guess we swim,” Marla said, taking a cautious step into the pool. Warm waters rose around her ankles as she felt her way along the unseen bed of gravel beneath the surface. Soon she stood knee-deep in the effervescent bath. She turned to look back at the others.
Claude put one foot into the pond and then leapt clear of it, yelling in pain. “It’s boiling!” he cried, kicking his damp foot wildly as he hopped on one leg.
“It’s just a little warm,” Marla protested.
“No!” Claude hissed, “It’s boiling!”
“Huh,” Alyss mused, “Maybe only girls can touch it.” She dipped one leather-clad toe into the bubbling water. “It seems fine to... Ow!” she shouted, falling on her backside in the dry gravel beside the pool.
“Alyss!” Marla called out, wading back toward her friends.
“I’m fine,” Alyss groaned as she shook her foot dry, “but I think this is a Marla-only pool.”
Claude looked on helplessly as Marla lifted her hands in frustration.
“It’s up to you, Daughter of Really Hot Waters,” Alyss said as she got to her feet again, “Go find your dragon mother and ask her to get us off this ridiculous island... Maybe she can fly us all someplace nice... like home.”
Marla turned and looked down into the steaming water of the pool.
“I can’t see anything!” Marla cried.
“Then follow your heart!” Alyss said.
“What?” Marla asked giving the Arkadi girl a confused tilt of her goggles.
“I don’t know,” Alyss said, waving her hands, “It just sounded like something you should say at a time like this!”
Marla shook her head and took a deep breath. She waded deeper into the pool, feeling the warm, milky waters rise around her waist as she toed her way along the submerged floor below. The pond seemed deeper toward the far wall of the cavernous rift, and she made her way in that direction.
“Marla!” Claude called out.
Marla turned to look back at him.
“I love you,” he said.
“I love you too,” she said.
She looked away then, choking back a sob as she struggled to focus on her task. She held her breath and leaned forward, letting the waters take her in their warm embrace. She reached out with her gloved hands, blindly reaching through the depths as she swam down.
Somehow, she knew the way. She heard the muffled impact as she kicked away from a submerged ledge, and the distant tinkle of crystalline shards, raining down into the depths below. She saw only the blank white glow of the milky water through her goggles, and felt only the tiny bubbles of effervescence that swirled around her leather suit as she swam.
A distant part of her mind began to panic as she swam on, guided only by the irrational assurance that she somehow knew the way. To what end, she did not know. Soon her lungs began to ache for breath, but still her limbs moved with the strange conviction that deliverance lay just ahead.
At last, she could hold her breath no longer, and she released the stale air from her lungs in a frothing burst of bubbles that churned the water in front of her goggles. Her lungs burned with the need to inhale again, but she clamped her mouth tightly shut, clawing ever more frantically toward the surface.
She burst from the water with a desperate gasp, flinging milky droplets in all directions as she filled her lungs again. The acrid tang of dragon breath stung her nostrils as he found herself treading water in the center of a great, crescent-shaped pool, hundreds of feet across. A titanic dome of moonrock, dimmed to a bloody glow by a thick colony of algae, formed a vast, natural cavern above her head with no visible exits. A great mound of red stones lay piled against the opposite wall of the dome, forming an island that rose from the far side of the pool.
Of the golden dragon, only the stale scent of her breath remained.
The swim to the island took several minutes, and Marla’s limbs ached by the time she reached it. She dragged herself onto the rocky beach of large stones that she realized now to be enormous rubies. The gemstones clinked and shifted beneath her weight as she clawed her way up out of the steaming white water. She lay there on her back, catching her breath and wondering if she would ever have the strength to swim back out again.
At last she rolled over to have a better look at the strange island. The rubies ranged in size from the diameter of a hen’s egg to some as large as Marla’s head. She reached out and took up one of the smaller stones in the palm of her glove, marveling at the complex striations and patterns on its surface. The markings seemed almost rune-like, yet still somehow natural in appearance. Then she compared it to a much larger stone, lying nearby.
“They’re all the same,” she whispered, “... or almost.”
There appeared to be small variations in the patterns from stone to stone, but every single one of them bore the same ovoid shape with the same bulges and contours, just in differing scale.
She sat up, holding a ruby in each hand and admiring the remarkable craftsmanship that must surely have formed them, for she could not believe that two such stones could appear so similar by chance.
Then something caught her eye. A faint flicker of red light shone from deep beneath the mound of ruby stones beside her.
Marla began to dig, pushing aside the top layer of the ruby mound and then excavating with her hands, trying to reach the radiant source of the ruddy glow. Soon, she began to gasp with effort as she fought against the slippery gems that simply poured back into the hole almost as fast as she could shovel them out. She did not know why it was so important that she uncover the source of the light, only that she must dig faster if she ever hoped to reach it.
Sobbing and on the verge of exhaustion now, Marla’s hands blurred with speed as she flung rubies from the shallow pit she had dug. Then she saw it, a single ruby, about the size of a plum, which shone with a radiant heat from within. It was no moonstone, but something else, something that filled her heart with a strange melancholy as she wrapped her aching fingers around it and dragged it up from the surrounding mass of lifeless red stones.
As it pulled free, Marla fell backwards upon the stony beach, clutching the fiery stone to her chest. Clattering rubies filled the hole again as she looked more closely at her prize.
It was a stone, like the rest, covered in shallow grooves, like runes carved into the ruby’s smooth surface. These delicate lines now pulsed and glittered with an intense crimson light that flared brightest where Marla’s gloved fingers touched the stone. A low, keening reverberation seemed to emanate from the burning stone now, causing the nearby gems that lay piled around Marla’s legs to rattle against each other.
Without thinking, Marla pressed the fingers of her right hand between her ribs and elbow of her left arm and pulled her glove off. She felt the distant pain of the dim moonlight from ab
ove on her naked skin, but she took the living stone in the bare palm of her right hand and lifted it to her face.
A sweet warmth spread through her body from where the stone touched her hand. The stone’s light flared, intensely red for a moment, and then faded, and Marla found herself laughing with joy and relief, though she did not know why.
She looked down at the stone with tears in her eyes, laughing again. The ruby lay, cold and dead as the other stones now, and she let it fall to join the rest of them below.
“I knew you’d come,” a woman’s voice spoke from nearby, startling Marla.
She scrambled to her feet to find a coppery-scaled dragon, its body about the size of a large ox, watching her from atop a pile of rubies nearby. The dragon lay with her foreclaws crossed and her wings folded. Her long, silvery tail lay curled around her body, and she lifted her slender neck, her golden eyes blinking as though she had just woken from a long sleep.
“Who are you?” Marla demanded.
“I am the last steward of Uroe,” the dragon answered, “The last one to hold out hope that you would return to us.”
“Who do you think I am?” Marla asked.
The dragon blinked thoughtfully. “I think your name is... Marla Veranu,” she said, “That’s a pretty sort of name, though I am having a difficult time understanding exactly what a... vampire could be.”
“You can read my thoughts?” Marla asked, taking a step back, nearly tripping over a large ruby that turned and clattered beneath her boot heel.
“No,” the dragon said, stretching her wings with a bemused smile on her reptilian face, “I’m inside your thoughts.”
“You mean you aren’t real?” Marla said.
“I’m quite real,” the dragon laughed, “I’m just not... alive.”
Marla stared at her in confusion.
“That was my heart you found,” the dragon said, nodding toward the formerly glowing stone at Marla’s feet.
“Your... heart?” Marla whispered, “You mean...” she looked around in growing horror at the countless ovoid stones piled, island-deep all around her.
“Yes,” the dragon answered sadly, “These were the people of Uroe... the ones that chose to stay.”
Marla fought to control her revulsion at finding herself atop a giant mound of dragon hearts. “Why was yours the only one still... alive?” she asked.
“Because I was waiting for you,” the coppery dragon said with a gentle smile, “The rest have all gone to be with Mother.”
“Your Mother,” Marla said, “Is she here?”
The dragon looked at Marla with adoration in her golden eyes. “Yes,” she sighed, “She is finally here.”
Marla shook her head slowly. “I’m not who you think I am,” she said.
“I know exactly who you are, Marla,” the dragon laughed. No rubies moved beneath her as she lifted herself to her feet and spread her wings wide. She grinned broadly. “It is you who seem to have forgotten yourself.”
The dragon looked up as a massive tremor shook the cave, sloshing milky water upon the ruby shore and sending little showers of moondust down from the ceiling above.
Marla fought to remain standing as the tremor passed. “I’m sorry,” she said as the rumbling subsided, “but I led your enemy here... the Volgrem. It did something that’s going to destroy the island if we don’t find a way to stop it.”
The dragon shook her head sadly. “There is no way to stop it now,” she said.
“Then we have to find a way to escape!” Marla cried, “Can you help me and my friends get off this island before it’s too late?”
“You already know the way out,” the dragon said.
Marla looked back at the rippling pool of creamy water behind her.
“No,” the dragon laughed, “You’re thinking with your body... what a strange body it is. You don’t even have any wings, do you?”
“But it’s our bodies that need to get off the island!” Marla cried.
“The body follows the heart, child,” the dragon said, “and the heart follows the Song!”
“So I’m supposed to sing us off the island?” Marla scoffed.
The dragon lowered her snout and raised her coppery brows, waiting for Marla to arrive at the proper conclusion.
“Wait!” Marla said, “Draconic is sung, and the song is written in runes... You’re saying that... Is there a portal room on the island somewhere?”
The coppery dragon threw back her head and filled the cavern with merry laughter. “Why would the Queen of Dragons need a portal room?” she laughed, “Whom do you think made the portals?”
Marla stared at the dragon, dumfounded.
“So it isn’t the sand that lets me open the portals?” Marla asked.
“Mother never needed any sand,” the dragon answered.
“Then why would the Volgrem want to destroy the moonstone?” Marla demanded.
Another loud rumble shook the cavern. Then a terrible roar, filled with unspeakable rage, dislodged entire boulders of sun-bright rock from the cavern roof.
Marla fell to her knees, fumbling to put her glove back on as the blazing stones rained down around her, crashing into the beach and sending ruby hearts flying in all directions or slamming into the water and sending up great milky plumes to soak everything around.
The terrible roar shook the earth again, and Marla looked up to see a great crack now arcing across the algae-covered stones of the dome-like roof. Another boulder thudded into the ruby pile that the coppery dragon sat upon, but she seemed to pay it no heed as it passed through her insubstantial body.
“We’d better go now,” the dragon said, “Mother is very angry.”
“Take me to her!” Marla cried, shielding her face against a hail of dragon hearts as another stone crashed onto the beach beside her.
“She is not herself, Marla!” the dragon cried, beating her wings as she sailed down to land at Marla’s side.
“Please!” Marla shouted to be heard over the din, “I have to see her!”
Marla could see the fear in the dragon’s eyes as she looked toward the crumbling ceiling above.
“Very well,” the dragon said, “Follow me... and try not to die.”
Marla followed close behind as the dragon flapped her wings and soared across the cavern to land atop the tallest pile of ruby hearts.
“Here!” the dragon cried, “You must dig, and quickly!”
Another boulder slammed down behind Marla as she scrambled up the slippery pile of rubies to where the dragon perched. She clawed frantically at the mound of stones, hurling them away by the handful as she dug.
Then she began to make out the outline of a narrow tunnel of moonstone, its mouth buried beneath the pile of dragon hearts.
“Quickly!” the dragon ghost shouted.
Marla’s shoulders and forearms burned, her fingers throbbing with pain, but still she dug, flinging stones clear of the tunnel mouth as fast as she could.
A tremendous crack sounded from above as the roof gave way.
“Go, now!” the dragon screamed.
Marla shoved her body into the narrow fissure of moonrock, squinting against the brightness as she squirmed her way inside. Suddenly a choking cloud of dust blasted past her in the tunnel as the cavern behind collapsed. The impact of the concussion tore the goggles from her face, and a blinding radiance filled Marla’s eyes. She screamed as the stones around her shifted, pressing in like jaws of a white-hot vice. She tried to bury her burning face in the crook of her elbow, but something was pinning her arms.
She couldn’t move. She couldn’t breathe. She couldn’t see, or scream, or...
Darkness closed in around her, the unbearable light of the crystal moon draining away into a black well of nothingness...
Chapter Thirteen
“Marla!” Garrett cried, gasping for breath as he woke from a dream. He rolled onto his side, coughing weakly and panting as he tried to recall the nightmare. Where was he now?
“F
raithe,” Garrett rasped, and the witchfire torch sputtered to life, filling the bedroom of the Mayor’s house with flickering green light.
Garrett sat up in the soft feather bed, abandoned, like the house, by its previous owner... spoils of war. Garrett rubbed his eyes and took a sip of water from the cup on the bedside table. He squinted at the richly curtained window. Only the colorful light of wisps floating by outside shone through the frosted glass panes. He heard the distant whistle of a piper, playing a slightly sad tune and the muffled voices of fae folk passing by in the lane below his window. What time was it?
Garrett got out of bed, scratching at his belly through his silk nightgown before turning his attention to his bandaged wrist. He dug his fingernails beneath the tightly wrapped splint, grimacing as the itch there dodged every assault. He flexed the fingers of his right hand, deciding that he had had enough of the splint. He picked up a penknife from the nearby desk and began to awkwardly saw at the bindings upon his wrist.
The creak of his door opening made him turn.
“Haven?” he called out.
The slender dark-haired girl that stepped quietly into the room was not Haven.
Garrett almost failed to recognize her, as she wore dark, mud stained clothing, and a tattered cloak with a hood that covered most of her face, a face set into a look of grim determination as she silently stalked him with sword and dagger in hand... No, it wasn’t a dagger in her left hand. It was the silver spear tip that Sir Jons had nearly put through Garrett’s heart.
Garrett’s breath caught in his throat at the look of utter loathing in the girl’s eyes as she silently crossed the room with the tip of Sir Jons’s sword leveled at Garrett’s face.
Garrett took a step back and stopped sawing at his splint with the little knife.
“Hi,” he offered lamely, completely at a loss as to how to greet one’s assassin.
“He deserved a better end than you,” she whispered.
“I know,” Garrett said, taking another step back, only to feel the edge of the writing desk pressed against his backside.
Trials of the Twiceborn (The Songreaver's Tale Book 6) Page 17