Breath of Dragons (A Pandoran Novel)

by Barbara Kloss

  I looked up to find him watching me. The smile was still on his face, and then he placed a hand over his heart. "I am Arioch Prime," he said. "And it is truly an honor."

  "I am—"

  "Daria Regius," he finished for me. "I know. You are the last of the Draconi."

  I exchanged a glance with Thad, and Thad shrugged as if to say, What did I tell you?

  "Yes…" I started, turning my attention back to Arioch Prime, "but I'm not related to any Draconi. My father is…was a Regius and my mother was a Pandor." It was still hard placing my father in the appropriate tense. But Arioch Prime wasn't looking at me any more. He had turned his attention to Thad.

  Thad stood ogling what would have been a chemistry teacher's dream. There were Bunsen burners and beakers and flasks and huge Erlenmeyer bulbs filled with bubbling blues and bright greens. I'd never seen such a magnificent or complicated arrangement. The only thing missing was a fume hood.

  "Ah, does the young master have a penchant for alchemy?" Arioch asked, slowly approaching Thad.

  Thad squinted as he watched a bright blue vapor thread through a glass tube and into one of the Erlenmeyer bulbs, where it condensed and coated the base of the bulb in solid blue. "Is that oil of calamus?"

  Arioch nodded and made a face like there were still other ingredients he wanted Thad to guess.

  "And are you mixing it with Dulcis Seed?" Thad asked.

  Arioch clasped his hands, pleased.

  "But how are you getting the two compounds to fuse together without exploding?" Thad asked, trailing his finger over one of the glass tubes.

  "Centuries of study, young man. Centuries. And a bit of callaberry root." Arioch winked as he ambled to Thad's side, while I tried wrapping my mind around the idea of being centuries old. "I'm making essence of Dragon's Breath. Here, let me show you…" Arioch turned the dial of one of the Bunsen burners to reduce the flame beneath one of the large beakers filled with blue. He squeezed a metal clamp, removing it from the bulb, and with a twist, he pulled the bulb free. A thick fragrance immediately filled the air, sweet and aromatic like tuberose, but so strong it tickled my nose and I sneezed.

  "Whoa…" Thad's jaw fell open.

  Arioch smiled at me and reattached the bulb. "The scent is very strong when concentrated like this."

  I wiped my nose. "I'll say. I've smelled the flowers before, but they weren't nearly so—" Sneeze. And I had smelled the flowers before because Danton had given me Dragon's Breath flowers during the festival.

  "When it's concentrated like this," Arioch continued, "it makes an unparalleled age-reducing emollient."

  "I didn't think it was possible!" Thad exclaimed, completely awed.

  "All things are possible," Arioch said, "given the right ingredients and conditions. Perhaps I could take you on as a pupil. You seem to know your part and parcel."

  "Really?!" Thad gasped, looking like he'd just won the lottery. "You mean you could teach me to—"

  "Thad." I gave him a look. We had not come here to find him a potions master. He could find that on his own time.

  "Er…yeah. Maybe later," Thad said, and I gave Thad a tight smile of gratitude.

  "And do you think maybe…" I held up my cuffs and rattled them.

  "Oh, right." He hurried to my side and removed them while Arioch watched in interest. Thad shoved the cuffs in the folds of his cloak.

  I turned my attention back to Arioch. "I don't mean to be rude, but…"

  "You know, I have never understood why people begin a phrase in that manner," Arioch said, waving his hand at the air. "Because what inevitably follows is, in fact, very rude, and by admitting as such, it is as though you wish to somehow forfeit responsibility for your next words."

  I saw Thad smirking at me in my periphery.

  "What I mean to say is that I am in a hurry," I continued carefully.

  "You are the one who came to me, my dear," Arioch said, walking around to the back of his desk.

  "Yes, because Tran said—"

  "I know exactly what Tran has said," Arioch said, taking a seat in his high-backed chair and folding his hands on the desk. His blue eyes burned through me like lasers. He was no longer Grandfather Storyteller. Now, he was more like Grandpa Scrooge. Maybe he wasn't crazy. Maybe he just suffered from multiple personality disorder.

  "How?" I asked, feeling small and insignificant beneath that intense gaze.

  Arioch observed me a moment. "Because Tran Chiton is my brother." He sighed and looked up at the ceiling as if he were accusing some omnipotent creator for cursing him with such a relation.

  "Your brother," I repeated.

  Arioch drummed knobby fingers on his desk and looked back at me with narrowed eyes. "Younger. Yes. And he's earned every bit of the designation."

  Thad had moved to stand beside me, watching our conversation with great interest. He seemed to be enjoying the fact that he was clearly the favorite. A saying about birds flocking together came to my mind.

  "So you know why I'm here, then," I said to Arioch.

  "I do. But I must admit that I'm surprised to see the young Master Mendax accompanying you." His blue eyes moved to Thad, and the look in them wiped the smirk right off Thad's face. It seemed like Thad had fallen out of favor with the Grandpa Scrooge side.

  "I am too," I admitted, "but he's with me. It's okay."

  Arioch raised a bushy gray brow as he studied Thad, and Thad looked offended. "Hey, I'm the one who—"

  Arioch raised a hand, cutting Thad off, and then he looked back at me. "You're here about the box."

  "Yes," I said. "I believe it'll help me find a way to keep Eris from using the shield of power."

  Arioch observed me a moment in silence. "Oh, finding the box will do much more than that. Tell me"—he threaded his fingers together and leaned forward over his desk—"do you really know what it is you seek?"

  I hesitated. "If you mean what is inside the box…no."

  He studied me a long moment, then opened a drawer in his desk and rifled through it until he pulled out a slip of paper. He waved for me to come over, so I did, with Thad following closely behind.

  "Let me show you something." Arioch grabbed the huge, silvery quill that was standing on its tip, completely unsupported, right on the edge of his desk. He hadn't bothered grabbing a vial of ink, but when he started writing on the page, the quill wrote on as if it hadn't known the difference.

  Arioch wrote out a word in black:

  draconi

  Before I could say anything, he said, "Watch." He waved his hand over the sheet of paper, and the letters began rearranging themselves. The "d" flipped upside-down to assume the identity of a "p," the "c" joined with the "i" forming a new, accented "d" and the remaining letters moved so that combined, they all formed a brand new word: Pandor.

  For a minute, I just stared at the paper, feeling Thad's surprise course through my body. And then I looked up at Arioch. "You're trying to tell me that Pandor and Draconi are the same?"

  "I'm not trying; I am telling you," Arioch said, his tone all gravity. "Do you know of Galahad Estroian's betrayal by Septimus Draconi the fifth? Or do you believe that it was Galahad himself who attempted to destroy this world?"

  I remembered the living mosaic on the floor of the Temple of Draconi back in Gesh. "Well…up until recently, all I'd known of Galahad was that the shield of power corrupted him and that it destroyed him when he was trying to rule over the world."

  Arioch's eyes shone as he waited for me to continue.

  "But I've been more recently informed that, ah, Galahad had actually been betrayed by a Draconi—whom I've also only recently learned of—and that they both died when Galahad was trying to overcome the Draconi and his dragons. But I never heard the name of the particular Draconi, and no one has ever mentioned Galahad's last name."

  Arioch looked pleased, and Thad looked utterly shocked.

  "Where the spirits did you hear all that?" Thad gasped.

  Arioch continued as if Thad ha
dn't spoken. "The Draconi who betrayed Galahad was Septimus the fifth, and Galahad's full name was Galahad Estroian."

  "But why hasn't this been taught?" I asked. "Why does everyone believe that Galahad was the one who tried to destroy the world?"

  "Because, dear child, it is the victors who write our histories. Both men were the most powerful in all the territories, and with both of their deaths, the seat of the throne was empty. There were many prominent men at the time who saw this as an opportunity to rise, and therefore gave the people a different story. A story that would destroy Galahad's reputation and disinherit his heirs. Since many of those leaders had been on the battlefield, it was an easy story to believe."

  "But how could the people forget about the dragons?" I asked.

  "Not everyone has forgotten." He held up a finger, and I remembered Mercedes' words. "There are still some who hold to the truth, but centuries have turned most of it into myth and folklore. Time has the unprecedented ability of altering the past."

  "Maybe because your version of the past never happened to begin with," Thad remarked, his arms folded over his chest in a way that made him look very much like a pouting toddler.

  Arioch didn't even glance at him.

  "Arioch, did Septimus Draconi leave any heirs behind?" I asked.

  Arioch's smile was slow and secretive. "One—a baby girl, named Berava. Right before the Great War, her mother grew fearful of what she knew was to come and hid her daughter away with a young family. She told this family who this child was and to keep her identity a secret, as well as her abilities."

  "You mean her connection to the dragons?" I asked.

  Arioch's features pulled together. "It goes beyond that, princess. The Draconi had a tie to Gaia's spirit that gave them their unique bond with dragons. That tie gave them a unique ability to perceive others—sense their spirits, if you will. Feel their emotions and draw on power most mortals could only dream of."

  My skin erupted in goose bumps; this was all beginning to sound eerily familiar.

  "But there was still the bond with dragons that had to be dealt with. For as long as a Draconi heir lived, there would be dragons flocking near, and Berava's identity wouldn't stay hidden long. A very intricate spell was cast, for the linkage could not be destroyed without killing Berava, so the bond was removed instead. The spirit portion of this linkage remained intact and was pulled away in a breath and then locked safely away in a magical box. And it has remained there ever since so that if great need ever arose, the breath of dragons could be restored to a true Draconi heir."

  I stood, dumbfounded, trying to process everything he had said. Was it true? He seemed to believe it was, though it all sounded too incredible to be real. But something deep inside of me had stirred at his words. Something deep inside of me had already known. "The name Pandor was made up, then," I said.

  "From the name Draconi, yes," Arioch said.

  My head was starting to ache something fierce. "But what about Stefan?" I asked. "My brother. Wouldn't he have inherited it, too?"

  Arioch shook his head. "It only passes to one. Strangely, it seems to have passed only to the women since Berava."

  Thad held up a hand as if he were trying to physically pause the conversation. "So you're saying the princess here is actually a Draconi—the last heir of the dragons."

  Arioch Prime nodded very slowly. "The very same. A great of many greats, but a descendent of Berava Draconi, the last of those with the gift."

  Thad threw his hands down like he was fed up. "And you get dragons? I swear…genetics just isn't fair."

  I was too stunned to comment.

  "So you see," Arioch continued, "the great secret of the Pandors is actually that the Pandors are not Pandors, but descendents of the Draconi—those with the blood to tame dragons."

  I inhaled deeply. "How do you know all of this?"

  Arioch Prime leveled his clear eyes on mine. "Because I am the one who raised Berava Pandor—the last of the Draconi and first of the Pandors—and I am the one who gave her the name by which you are called."

  My vision started tunneling, and I found a stool and sat down.

  "Tran is the only other person in this world who knows Berava's true history," Arioch said.

  "You are the one who removed the gift, aren't you?" I asked.

  "Yes…" Arioch Prime shut his eyes as if the memory were painful. "I was a young and ambitious wizard at the time, and I had no idea what the cost would be for a revocation of that magnitude. I lost my wife."

  I opened my mouth to say something, but then closed it instead. Sorry did not cover death.

  Arioch had opened his eyes and noticed. "Do not pity me, my dear. It was many, many years ago, and I have learned to live on. Keeping watch over the Draconi line has kept me more than preoccupied. I've lived here all these years, making sure the Pandors were kept safe. I told my secret to Tran when I believed he was mature enough to handle it. I saw the signs and I knew that it wouldn't be long before the longevity of the Draconi line would be challenged. It wasn't long after I recruited Tran's help that Cassian Regius, your great grandfather, sent his son Darius and his armies across the Black Sea to see this rumored power of the Pandors. When they…took your mother, Tran followed her back to Valdon and watched over her from there. I had to stay here to keep watch over Pendel and the box I'd hidden.

  "But Eris never forgot," he continued, "which, I believe, was his impetus for starting the Dark Reign. He had been after the shield of power—yes—but he also wanted the box of the Pandors. Of course, he did not know what it held, but he suspected its greatness, which was why he'd secured such a strong foothold in this land."

  And I'd read about that, too. When Eris had attacked the mainland with his shadowguard the first time, about twenty years ago, he had begun his work in Pendel. The histories said the reason was because Pendel would be an easy victory, since they had no lord and were cut off from the other territories. It would have been easy for Eris to take it over and instill fear in the other territories. But it would make more sense if he'd started with Pendel because he'd been in search of the box.

  I set my feet on the stool's supports, set my elbows on my knees and leaned forward, staring at nothing. So what Eris had said had been true. That my grandfather had come over to Pendel—not to help Pendel with their civil war—but to help his father take the power of the Pandors and use it for their own purposes.

  And then I realized something else. If what Arioch had said was true—which I felt deep down that it was—then there was nothing in the box that would aid me with the shield of power. The only thing in the box was a breath that would reestablish a linkage between dragon and man…or, more accurately, me. I sighed, closing my eyes. "The only thing in the box is the linkage."

  "It's not the only thing," Arioch said. "There is also a record of the past—lineages, if you will, of great families that I am sure many in this world would like to get their hands on and destroy."

  I opened my eyes; my chest felt unusually heavy. "Why?"

  "Because, child, though the nobility may choose to ignore, blood does not lie, and there are many figures of prominence who would be displaced if the true heir was discovered."

  I understood what he was saying. "You mean the true heir of Pendel, as in Galahad's line."

  "Yes."

  "But I thought that line was dead," I said. My mind was spinning in circles.

  Arioch Prime sighed. "No, Galahad Estroian's line is not dead. It is very much living."

  "Then who is it? And why didn't you say anything earlier? You could end all of this fighting!"

  Arioch shook his head. "I'm not altogether certain, and besides, it would be much too dangerous for anyone to make such a claim at this point. I'm sure even your Thaddeus here would agree with me on that point."

  I looked over at Thad, who didn't look like he was too eager to help Arioch out after being so abruptly smote. Still, Thad nodded.

  "How so?" I asked Arioch.

&n
bsp; "With so much discord between the territories, the current lords would most likely kill anyone who made such a claim. There are too many others—your grandfather included—who are vying for the position of power, which that episode at the festival snatched right out of their hands. Anyone who comes forward now would need the written history in order to prove their blood, and even then such an act would be extremely risky without a multitude of support."

  "So retrieve the box!' I exclaimed. "You say that history is inside of it, and you've had it in your possession all these years…" My voice trailed because Arioch was shaking his head.

  "I set the spell so that only a Draconi can retrieve it. If anyone else tried, they would never get to it alive, assuming they even managed to get through my wards."

  I did not like where this was going at all. "You're saying that I am the only one on this entire planet who can retrieve it, and that I'll have to do it alone?"

  Arioch nodded very slowly.

  I was almost afraid to ask because I had the sneaking suspicion that I already knew the answer. "And where is the box?"

  "In the heart of the Hall of the Dead."

  I stood perfectly still, suddenly terrified. I was pretty sure Thad wasn't so jealous of genetics right then. He even let out a slow whistle, shoved his thumbs in his pants, and leaned back on his heels.

  "The catacombs?" I gasped. "But there are…monsters inside of it!" I was distantly aware that I sounded like a small child afraid of the dark.

  "Monsters?" Arioch looked surprised. "What in Gaia's name are you talking about?"

  I described to him our encounters with the Zombie Hulks, and Arioch looked suddenly worried.

  "Well, that isn't right," he said. "I cast the spells myself. They should only come to life if someone not of blood enters the tombs, and I took great care in fabricating wards so that they could not leave."

  "Wait—you made those things?" I asked.

  "No, I did not make them, child," Arioch said, looking startled. "Only dark magic could create such vitriol. Dark mages of old created the curse that transformed dead into kytharii centuries ago. When the dark mages created the kytharii, they were a great terror upon this land, though over the years, many of the people have forgotten them. They've been reduced to frightening tales of myth, and the people have my tampering to thank for that. However, I couldn't destroy the curse, so I trapped the kytharii in the great hall."