When he climbed back into the saddle, he guided the horse out of the village, continuing his southward track. He rode quickly, perhaps with even more speed than before, the emptiness of the village unsettling him.
He camped for the night near the edge of a forest. A hardpacked road wound westerly from here. He would follow that in the morning. He didn’t think he could make good time cutting through the forest, and it would be unlikely for Elizabeth to have brought Indra anywhere within its borders.
As he made a small camp, he began to wonder how he would ever find Elizabeth. So far, there had been no sense of heat, and nothing that would tell him that a fire mage was nearby. He wasn’t entirely certain that he would have expected to detect that. He was generally aware that Indra’s home could be found, his late night conversations with Theole telling him enough about their homeland, but would Elizabeth have brought her there?
While resting, he had another night of dreams. Once again, glimpses of dragons swirling through the sky came to him. This time, one of the dragons—one with indigo scales and bright golden eyes—seemed to watch him as it soared high above. Every so often, the dragon would howl and heat and flame would erupt.
Fes lost track of how long he slept but he knew that it was fitful. It was almost as if each time he drifted off, he began to have dreams of dragons. Did that mean that he was beginning to go mad?
It was nothing more than his imagination—he was certain of that—and tied to the fact that he had been so caught up in dragon lore that he was thinking about it even while sleeping. What else could it have been?
The night passed slowly. Fes tried to rest, but he continued to struggle.
In the morning, he was weary. Almost as if he hadn’t slept at all.
He rubbed the sleep from his eyes and dragged himself into the saddle, trying to focus on anything other than dragons.
The horse seemed to sense his mood and as they traveled along the path, the stallion required little prompting. He was thankful for that and occasionally drifted off as they rode, slumping forward in the saddle.
Late in the day, Fes jerked awake to the sound of thunder.
He looked to the sky, but it was clear. There was no sign of clouds, and certainly, nothing that should have triggered thunder.
Riders.
Fes craned his neck, looking behind him, but saw no evidence of movement. There wasn’t anything in the distance, either.
The road ran along the edge of the forest, and he debated going through the forest itself, not wanting to veer off a path that he thought would take him where he needed to go. But, if he didn’t, he feared that whoever was approaching would bear down on him before he could react. What would he do if it was the Dragon Guard? What would he do if it was Toulen soldiers?
Fes tried to think about what he knew of Toulen, but it wasn’t much. They were organized differently, many different clans who came together, making up the nation. Obviously they lived in villages, but he didn’t know whether they had larger cities as well.
The entirety of this mission was a mistake. It was foolish for him to be risking so much for Indra, and for what? Because he had made a promise? Because she reminded him of what he had failed to do with Benjan? Was that worth his life?
But if he didn’t do this, if he didn’t follow through on what he had promised, what did that make him?
The thundering continued to rumble, only now it had more of a direction to it. It was coming from behind him so Fes kicked the horse forward, trying to get more speed. As they rode, the rumble increased.
He jerked on the reins and headed into the forest.
It was better to remain hidden and let whoever was coming along the road get around him rather than confronting them directly.
Fes didn’t have to wait long.
Soldiers, fifty or more in total, raced along the road atop massive horses. The soldiers were dressed in strange colors, scraps of animal skin with fragments of bone arranged as jewelry. Most of them had their heads shaved and either tattoos or paint marked along their scalps.
Toulen warriors.
He didn’t know much about the Toulen warriors, only that they were skilled fighters and imposing enough that they made the emperor pause. Fes remained hidden, tucked into the shadows of the forest, thinking that he had managed to stay unnoticed, when a pair of riders veered off and headed into the trees.
He reached for his daggers before halting himself.
Wasn’t this what he wanted?
If he could gain the help of Toulen warriors, wouldn’t he be able to figure out what they knew of Indra? Maybe he could use them for help.
The riders headed directly toward him. Fes held his hands up, waiting, and the men approached with spears pointing directly at him.
He wouldn’t have been able to do anything against spears like that anyway. His daggers would’ve been of little use, and he had no interest in attacking the warriors.
The nearest man jabbed his spear toward Fes. “Who are you?” he asked. A strip of red paint ran down his forehead, ending between his narrowed eyes.
“I’m here searching for a friend of mine who was captured by an empire fire mage.”
Even as he said it, he realized how ridiculous that sounded. What would the Toulen warriors say to him? What would they do?
The warriors glanced at each other. “What friend?” the man asked.
“Her name is Indra—”
The other Toulen warrior swung the end of his staff around, catching Fes in the side of the head. He crumpled.
Chapter Twenty
Fes came around to the smell of smoke.
For a moment, he thought that he was having another vision of dragons, the same dreams that had been plaguing him and continued to harass him, even while knocked unconscious. Instead, he found that his arms and legs were bound, and as much as he tried to wiggle them, there was no escaping.
He turned his head, looking to see if his dragonglass daggers were still sheathed at his side, but they were not.
Panic set his heart racing.
“He’s awake,” he heard someone nearby say.
Someone approached slowly and stuck their face close to Fes’s. This was an older man, and he had an unpainted face and closely cropped gray hair. Deep wrinkles lined the corners of his eyes. “He is awake,” the old man said in a warbling voice.
“He is,” Fes said. “You don’t have to keep me tied up. I have no interest in harming you.”
“And tied up, you have no capacity to harm us, either.”
The old man nodded and someone jerked Fes so that he could sit upright. He looked around and saw a bright fire crackling nearby. He couldn’t see anything beyond the outline of the flames. There were several other Toulen warriors nearby, but he couldn’t make them out in the shadows.
“Where am I?” Fes asked.
“We question,” the old man replied.
“Fine. Question.”
Fes looked up, holding the old man’s gaze. The man looked back at Fes, and then he started to laugh softly. “Feisty for one of the empire in Toulen lands.”
“There’s nothing feisty about it. And I’m not one of the empire.”
“No? You ride a horse branded with the emperor’s mark.”
“That might be, but it’s a stolen horse.”
He stared at the warrior for a moment, and the old man looked back at him, almost as if waiting to see if Fes was joking, before barking out a laugh. “Stolen? What fool steals from the empire?”
“The same fool who thinks to attack the Dragon Guard,” Fes said.
The old man’s laughter died off. “What is this?”
“Like I said, I’m not of the empire. And as I told your two men,” Fes said, trying to look around to see if he could find any sign of the man who had smacked him in the head with the staff, “I came to Toulen to try and help a friend of mine who was captured by a fire mage.”
“He mentioned Indra,” a voice from the darkness said.
Fes nodded. “That’s who I’m looking for,” he said.
The Toulen warrior took a step forward, and Fes recognized him as the same one who had smacked him with the end of his staff. The man brought his staff up, almost as if to smack Fes in the head with it again, but he made a point of not looking away.
“How do you know Indra?” the old man asked, keeping himself between Fes and the warrior who approached with his spear.
“I met Indra and Theole on the road out of the capital. I traveled with them for a time, and I helped rescue Theole when he was captured by mercenaries.” There was no use in denying what he knew of them as he had to hope that his connection to Indra would grant them some leniency. He wasn’t certain whether it would matter, and given the way they had greeted him, perhaps it wouldn’t.
“What do you know of her?” the old man asked.
“I know that she was brought back to the capital after something happened to her father,” Fes said.
“She shouldn’t have been there,” the younger warrior said. “They shouldn’t have been—”
The old man raised his hand, silencing the other man. He turned up attention back to Fes. “You said that you traveled with them for a time. How is that?”
Fes shook his head. “I met them at the Great Market. They were there selling totems, and then again when traveling, I came across them on the road north.”
“Why would you have been traveling north?”
“Because I took a job.”
“You mentioned mercenaries. Are you a mercenary?”
Fes had never considered himself a mercenary, but maybe that was what he was now. He’d always thought himself a collector, but if he were a collector, shouldn’t there be something that he was after to collect? Instead, he was chasing after a person, more like a mercenary than any scavenger, the sort that he had tried to avoid becoming all these years.
“I’m a collector.”
“A collector?” The old man arched a brow at Fes and leaned close, taking a deep breath. “What sort of things do you collect?”
“Lately, it’s been mostly items for a fire mage.”
“He does serve the empire,” the young warrior said.
“I do not serve the empire,” Fes said, glaring at the man. “I serve whoever is willing to pay. It so happens that there is someone in the empire who has been willing to pay and happens to have deep pockets.”
“And what of your sword?” the old man asked.
Fes had forgotten about it. He shouldn’t have. He had sacrificed quite a bit to steal that sword from Jaken, but he suspected the sword marked him as one of the emperor’s men almost as much as the horse.
“It was stolen.”
“Stolen? You bear the blade of a Dragon Guard, one of rank, and you claim it stolen?” the old man asked.
“It wasn’t one of my best ideas,” Fes said.
“Why would you steal from one of the Dragon Guard?”
“Because I wanted to see whether there was anything magical about the blade.”
The old man frowned at Fes for a long moment. “Why would you question whether there’s anything magical about the blade?”
“Because I saw the Dragon Guard cut through a fire mage’s spell. I thought that I—” One of the Toulen warriors started laughing and Fes looked over at him, shooting him the darkest glare that he could manage. “As I was saying. I wanted to see whether I could use the sword to cut through a spell that a powerful fire mage might use on me.”
“And why might a powerful fire mage use a spell on you?” the old man asked.
“Because she’s the one who has Indra. I barely managed to escape the last spell that she placed on me, and I wanted to be prepared for the possibility of the next.”
The old man leaned back on his heels and breathed out heavily. He nodded to one of the men near Fes. The man approached, a wickedly curved blade slicing toward him.
Fes kept his eyes open. If he was going to die, he would do it meeting the gaze of the man who took his life. Surprisingly, the man didn’t cut through him. He cut through the ropes holding his legs, and then he grabbed for Fes’s arms and sliced through the ropes holding him.
As he rubbed his arms together, Fes glared at the warrior who had knocked him out. “Where are my daggers?”
The old man shook his head. “Those will remain with us.”
“No.”
When the old man smiled, he studied Fes for a long moment. “No?”
“Those are my daggers. And I will have them returned to me.” He looked around at the warriors arranged around him. There had to be a dozen, and it was difficult to appear as if he were unafraid with his heart pounding heavily in his chest. He was afraid, though he tried to conceal it. “What exactly do you think that I can do against you armed with only those daggers?” He kept his gaze fixed on the old man, the one who apparently led them, and crossed his arms over his chest. “There are far too many of you for me to be able to do anything. At least allow me my family blades back.”
The old man studied Fes for a long moment before finally nodding once.
The warrior who had attacked Fes and taken his daggers shook his head. “Father, this is a terrible—”
The old man raised his hand, silencing him.
Father. At least Fes had an idea of what the relationships were now. One of the other warriors approached, carrying Fes’s daggers. He handed them to Fes, hilt first. Fes took them and slipped them back into their sheaths, crossing his arms over his chest again.
“Where is she?” Fes asked. The old man studied Fes for a moment. “I can tell from your reaction that you know Indra, which tells me that this party is either looking for her or her father. I don’t know what happened to Theole other than what I heard. For all I know, he really is dead, but I had made a promise to him that I would keep Indra safe—at least, as safe as I can.”
“That’s what this is about for you?” the old man asked. “A promise?”
“Promises matter to me.”
The old man continued to stare at Fes, almost as if he were a puzzle that he was trying to solve. Fes refused to look away but couldn’t shake the uneasy feeling.
He had been wondering how he was going to find Indra, and now he wondered if he even needed to try. If these men were looking for her—and given how aggressively they had come at him, he suspected that they were—then maybe she didn’t need him to search throughout Toulen for her.
“Theole was never to have taken Indra from Toulen.”
“Why not? He’s her father, isn’t he?”
“He is.”
“Then why wouldn’t he be allowed to bring her out of Toulen?”
“Because of what she is. Because of what she can do.”
“And what is that?”
“You mentioned the totems that you saw at the market. Did Theole ever talk about them any more than that?”
Fes reached into his pocket and pulled out the figurine Indra had given him on their travels. It was not nearly as complicated as the ones she had given him before, but it resembled him, and he appreciated the fact that she had thought enough of him to provide him with such a gift.
Gripping it between his fingers, he held it out, showing it to the old man. “When we were camped, she showed me that there were figurines that she made. Theole alluded to the fact that she was able to do more with them, but I never really understood how much more.”
The old man stared at the figurine, his jaw clenched. “Where did you get this?”
“From Indra. She gave it to me.”
“She gave it to you?”
Fes shrugged and nodded. “Was she not supposed to?”
One of the warriors near him leaned close and gasped. “Look at it, Father.”
“I can see, Galend.”
“What is this about?”
“This is about Indra. If she was claimed by a fire mage, then much is in danger. She has the dragon blessing, and with it…”
Fes would have smil
ed, were it not for all of the dreams that he’d been having of late. Once again, it all came back to the dragons. “What do you mean by the dragon blessing?”
“That is not for me to share with someone outside of Toulen.”
Fes grunted. “Fine. Can you tell me why you were heading inland?”
“We heard reports of movement deep in Toulen.”
“What kind of movement?”
“The kind that would indicate danger from the empire.”
“Such as a fire mage?” Fes asked.
The old man met his gaze and didn’t look away. He didn’t nod or acknowledge Fes in any way.
“Fine. You don’t have to tell me. I will continue to go after them, and I will—”
“You will return to the empire,” the old man said.
“I haven’t completed my promise.”
“Your promise does not matter. In the morning, you will return to the empire and you will leave this fire mage to the people of Toulen.”
Fes licked his lips. He didn’t want to argue with the old man, and didn’t want to cause any difficulty for Indra, but even with as many men as he had seen, he wasn’t entirely certain that they would be enough to rescue Indra from Elizabeth. Not when Elizabeth had a golem.
“This is more than about a fire mage,” Fes said. “She has another source of power with her, and that might be too much for even your warriors to withstand.”
“Do you fear that Toulen doesn’t have the strength to stand up to the empire?” one of the warriors asked.
Fes looked over at him. He had strips of paint over each eye, and his brow was knitted in a frown. The man was muscular and he held onto his spear as if he intended to throw it—or jab it into Fes.
“I don’t know anything about Toulen and your abilities, but I do know that the woman who has Indra has a powerful creature with her, and this creature is more than most soldiers can withstand.”
The old man studied Fes for a moment. “What kind of creature?”
Dragon Blessed Page 21