“Well, sure,” I said. “But Redwing won’t want to help us. And Windfang seems to feel the same way. Unless we convince you the dragons have to help us, I’m afraid we’re not going to get any help from Wyrmspire. Which is a pity, since we traveled what seemed like half the world to get here.”
Longtooth lifted his head to stare above us, out the door into the clear sky. “I am very old,” he said, his voice such a deep rumble that the words almost melted together. “Yet it seems only yesterday I saw Eldest Longtooth, my grandfather, cast the Realm Keepers from our lands and bid them never to return. In time, all humans were shunned, welcome upon our slopes no longer. And as the sun rises and falls, as summer is born and dies, many things have changed. You have changed. You might not have been cast out. But if the winds of change make the mountain worn, its edges softened, might not they sharpen again? We may vote to help you, and usher in a new golden age. It is not that time, but the end of that time that I fear. I will not be here to see it, and yet it must wholly occupy my thoughts.”
The nest was silent for a long moment. Then Blackscale spoke up. “Tides ebb and flow. They may bring bountiful growth or terrible destruction. Only in change may we place absolute faith. Even the greatest among us cannot see every path—that curse belongs to Destiny alone.”
Longtooth’s gaze lowered to him. “And therein may be found the heart of the problem. How do we choose a path without seeing its end? If I tell our people that we must help these Realm Keepers, and the end of that journey is battle and death, in whom will our progeny see fault?”
I cleared my throat. “What if we don’t fight together, and Chaos wins? Wyrmspire might be invincible, but it might not. If it turns out not to be, there won’t be anyone left to see fault at all.”
His eyes slowly slid down to me. He gave a deep, heaving sigh. “Do you know the tale of the Schism?”
I shook my head. “I’m sorry, Elder Longtooth. We don’t remember it in our kingdom.”
He shifted his bulk again. I heard Blade sigh quietly behind me. I hoped he didn’t say anything stupid.
“Malus it was who first wrought the alliance,” Longtooth began. “He crafted it as well as any smith, an agreement bound in honor and sealed with iron. But iron may rust. There came a time when Chaos grew silent, and the humans forgot that it was we who had saved them in their hour of need.
“The Realm Keepers had been our allies. We fought beside them. We sat upon our chairs of scrying and passed word of the scheming designs of Chaos across the lands in an instant. We watched the land as they slept, the unwavering eye that guarded their bodies and their people. In return for the services we rendered, the Realm Keepers began to place themselves above us.
“When the change began, it came swiftly. They began to regard us as their servants. They did not seek our counsel; they gave commands. They did not bind their strength to ours; they ordered us to fight. They rode us into battle, and as a consequence they soon saw us as nothing more than steeds, little better than the warhorses that they bred in great numbers. Strife grew between our races, but ever we sought to restore the balance, to rebuild the friendship between us that eroded ever more swiftly.
“In the end, it was not slow decline, but a defining moment that sundered our alliance forever. The Giants, long hostile toward us, began their great war. From their homes beneath the earth they struck at us. They marched upon the Wyrmspire, and though they could not break it, many dragons of mighty wing and sharp fang were cast from the skies and broken.
“The dragons in the human kingdoms received word of this through the chairs of scrying. They told the Realm Keepers, with whom they wished to march south with to cast the Giants back into their pits.
“But the Realm Keepers would not come. In their eyes, our war was not their war. We, who had fought to protect their lands for centuries, could fend for ourselves when it was our own home under attack.
“Enraged, the dragons took their leave in defiance of the Realm Keepers orders. They traveled south, and when they fought beside their brothers on the mountain, their wrath was terrible. These were dragons honed by hundreds of years of combat. Where they struck, they felled the enemy like wheat beneath the scythe. We drove the Giants underground, but that did not satisfy our rage. We followed them into their homes. We broke open the stone and killed them in their homes. We purged them with fang and claw, with wing and wrath and flame, until they were eradicated.”
Tess gave a little gasp beside me. My throat was suddenly dry. “You…wiped them out?” I said.
Longtooth’s nod was slow and deliberate. “Yes. Those of us who still remember it feel the shame of it, but every year’s new hatchlings grow more and more forgetful. To defeat the foe who makes war upon you is honorable. But there was no honor in what we did; we unleashed decades of anger at the humans who tried to command us, and the flames of that anger would not be sated with simple bloodletting.”
I swallowed hard. What Longtooth was talking about wasn’t just war; it was genocide.
His eyes hadn’t left me since I spoke. “When it was done, we felt the great weight of our dishonor pressing down upon us. We retreated to the mountain. That is when the Realm Keepers arrived. Unaware of what had transpired, they had the audacity to accuse us of abandoning our posts. They demanded that we return at once, to continue watching over their bodies as they slumbered.
“We were sick of slaughter and weary of battle after war with the Giants. Only that kept the Council from ordering the Realm Keepers’ death. But our alliance was forever broken. My grandfather bade them to leave, to take the gifts they had brought to our alliance and return with them never again.”
Longtooth gave another deep, rumbling sigh. Once again he looked over my head into the sky. “So you see, Keeper of Earth, you do not ask only that the dragons risk our lives. If ever again our alliance should sour, you may be risking the lives of all your own kind. The hatchlings who live upon the mountain today have forgotten the lessons of our past. If the flames of their wrath are stoked, the Giants will not be there to burn within them. They will spread across your lands like a plague.”
A massive lump was forming in my stomach. It was a lump of sudden, shocking fear and doubt. What if he was right? What if I was inviting an ally who would destroy us if we ever went back on our word? The dragons penalized lying with death. I was placing a lot of faith in humanity to bring them a weapon that would turn on them if they weren’t true to it.
And then I thought of everything Greystone had told me about Terrence and his forces. I thought of the armies outside Morrowdust, and how they were just a drop in the ocean of darkness that threatened to sweep across all of Midrealm.
I steeled myself. “Humans may not live as long as you. They might not be as trustworthy. But we’ve got a spark of goodness in us. I’d rather trust us not to burn ourselves with that spark than let it get snuffed out, if that makes sense.”
Longtooth didn’t take his eyes away from the sky. He sighed. “I am very old, and I must rest. I have heard your pleas. Leave me to my thoughts.”
I turned and followed Blackscale to the platform, down the mountain and away from the dragon who would decide whether we all lived or died.
THE COUNCIL
TESS
AS SOON AS I GOT home from school, I knew something was up.
My dad was home. That was the first thing. My dad was never home in the afternoon. He was usually just starting work at some night-shift job, getting ready to spend all night trying not to fall asleep as he watched some security monitors. Or he was working an overnight construction job, if my uncle could get him onto a crew whose foreman didn’t look too closely at your paperwork.
Second, mom was here, too. Mom and dad were never home at the same time. They both had to work too many hours. That was why I had to take care of Kellyn and Nikki so often.
But they were both here, and they were both sitting on the brown, half-demolished old sofa we’d picked up off the street the day we
moved into the apartment and which had sat there ever since. Kellyn was on my dad’s lap, Nikki on my mom’s.
I ducked behind my hair for half a second, afraid of the worst. A thousand possibilities raced through my mind: something had happened to Uncle Joe, and we wouldn’t be able to stay in Cranston; someone had finally caught wind of Dad’s situation, and he or all of us were being deported; we couldn’t afford even this tiny little place any more, and we were about to be homeless on the street.
Then, finally, it sank into my mind that my mom and dad were both smiling.
All of this raced through my head in the split second it took my mom to look up and say, “Come in, Contessa. We have the most wonderful news.”
I blinked. I forced my hand to shut the door. I took two careful steps into the living room. The sofa was full, so I sat on the floor against the wall on the other side of the room.
“What’s up?” I said. “What is it? I thought both of you would be at work.”
My mom’s smile widened, and she looked at my dad. “You tell her. It’s your news.”
My dad’s always been a little less expressive than my mom, but what he lacks in volume, he makes up for with sincerity. When he’s sad, it seeps into every fibre of his being, the curve of his neck and the stoop of his shoulders. When he’s happy, it radiates from every part of his body like a soft glow.
Right now, he was beaming.
“Contessa, I got approved for my green card today,” he said quietly.
It took me several long seconds before I could move, say anything, or even fully understand what he’d said. When I finally did…
“What?” I said. “When did you…how?”
“The application’s been sitting on someone’s desk for years,” he said. “Since way before we moved here. Every once in a while they go through and pick some people at random, check them out, and approve or disapprove them. The odds make the lottery look like a sure investment. But today, I won. Our whole family did.”
I realized vaguely that if my eyes went any wider, they were going to explode from my skull. My lips were parted ever so slightly, and they were smiling. “What does that mean?”
“It means we don’t have to hide any more, Contessa,” he said eagerly. “It means I can get a job now, a real job. Anywhere I want! I won’t have to be away all the time. Your mother can be home more.” Tears welled up into his eyes, though his voice didn’t quiver. “I can finally take care of you all, my baby girl, like a father is supposed to.”
I jumped off the floor and threw myself in between them, not caring that there were exactly zero inches between my parents. Nikki and Kellyn just laughed. My dad wrapped his arm around my shoulder and kissed the top of my head over and over again. At some point I started crying.
Some tiny, nagging voice in the back of my mind told me to calm down. It wasn’t like we were rich or anything. But I refused to listen. The dark cloud that hovered over me, that had hovered over me as long as I could remember, had dissipated.
“We can do anything we want to now,” my mother said softly. “We can move back to Colorado if we want to.”
My breath caught in my throat. I shot up and stared at her in horror.
“We can’t move!” I said, my voice almost a shout.
My mother’s brow furrowed. “Contessa, I’m not saying we have to, but we lived there for—”
“No, we can’t!” I said. “I don’t want to leave. Promise me. Promise me we won’t move anywhere.”
What would I do if we moved away? What about school, where I had finally found a circle of friends? What about the others? My “sleep disorder?” How could Anna and Briggs look after me if we moved back to Colorado?
What about Blade?
As if my thought was a cue, I saw my mom’s eyes fix on me and her face soften, the ghost of a smile haunting the edges of her mouth. Oblivious, my father put a calming hand on my shoulder. “Relax, mija,” he said. “We won’t go anywhere without talking about it as a family first. We wouldn’t go anywhere until you finish high school, in any case.”
I felt myself relax, but just barely. That was good, I supposed. But the war in Midrealm might last much longer than the year and a half until I graduated from Roosevelt High.
But now wasn’t the time to think of that. For now, it was enough that they weren’t going to try to pull me away from the others. And that finally, at long last, we had no more reason to hide, and we could begin to build the sort of life we wanted.
My parents had broken out some money. Nothing really, just a rainy day fund they must have saved up in case of emergencies. They took us out to dinner at a restaurant that probably wasn’t any higher than three stars, but which seemed like the height of luxury to us. Nikki and Kellyn chatted nonstop the whole time. And my mom and my dad just sat at the table and held hands, looking at each other every few seconds and smiling.
I remembered the last time we’d all been like this, back in Colorado. I remembered how happy we’d been, and how prosperous our life had seemed to us then. It had seemed even grander in retrospect over the last few years. No wonder their first instinct had been to return.
Maybe we could. One day.
Much, much later, I put Nikki and Kellyn to bed before settling in to my own mattress. I closed my eyes and was just about to allow myself to drift off to sleep when I heard a buzzing. My eyes shot back open. The buzzing was coming from my pants, lying on the floor next to the mattress.
I reached into my pocket and pulled out the black safety phone Anna had given me weeks ago. I flipped it open to see her name on the screen.
I pressed the green button and put it to my ear. “Hello?”
“Hey, girl,” said Anna on the other end. “How’s your day been?”
In a flash, my mind put the pieces together. When we’d first toured the fake Medicorp facility, I’d asked Anna for help with my family’s money problems. She’d smiled at me. I might be able to do you one better, she’d said.
“This was you?” I whispered, glancing at Kellyn and Nikki. They were already snoring. “Did you do this?”
“Oh, you know,” said Anna. She tried to keep her tone casual, but I could hear the glee in her voice, the barely-suppressed smile. “Just nudged the right couple of forms onto the right couple of desks.”
Tears sprang into my eyes. “Thank you,” I whispered. “You don’t know what this means.”
“I might not, but I can guess,” she said. “You’re welcome. I’m glad I could help.”
“Thank you,” I said again. What else could I say? “I’ll see you tomorrow.”
I clicked off and tucked the phone back into my pants. A few minutes later I fell asleep smiling.
I woke to Nora standing above me, looking into my eyes as they opened.
“My Lady,” she said.
“What is it?” I said, sitting up. “What’s wrong?”
“Nothing,” she said, forcing a smile. “The Council has been summoned. They will meet soon. Our presence, of course, is required.”
I felt a hollow pit begin to form in my stomach. This was it.
I refused to eat breakfast—I had a feeling that if there was anything in my stomach, I’d lose it before the day was over. Instead, while the others grabbed some food, I stepped outside Nightclaw’s nest, Nora shadowing my footsteps. Bonebreaker was lying nearby, along with another dragon I didn’t recognize. As soon as I appeared, they both pushed themselves to their feet. Bonebreaker came over immediately.
“Keeper of the Mind,” he said, tilting his head slightly. He gave Nora a glance and her own, smaller nod. Bonebreaker was respectful to us, but he didn’t go so far as to dip his nose to the ground like Nightclaw did. From what I could tell, he was watching over us for Blackscale’s sake—and because wherever we went, we seemed to carry the high probability of a fight breaking out at any time.
“Good morning, Bonebreaker,” I said quietly, giving him a bow. “How are you?”
“I am well,” he said. �
��It gives me great pleasure to bring before you Thunderfoot, my hatchmate.”
The other dragon stepped forward and dipped its head. “Greetings, Keeper of Mind. I am honored by your presence.”
I heard a slight rhythm in the words, a different inflection to its speech. With a start I realized that it was in Nightclaw’s speech too, and Redwing’s. It must have been the way female dragons talked, the same way you could tell a girl’s voice from a boy’s even if they were the same pitch.
I’d been silent for a long time. I bowed again, feeling myself blush. “Thank you.” A painfully awkward second passed before I quickly said, “The honor is mine.”
Thunderfoot glanced at Bonebreaker. Bonebreaker looked at me. “Does something trouble you, Keeper?”
“No,” I said quickly, ducking further behind my hair. “It’s only…please, excuse me if this seems really rude or anything…but Thunderfoot, are you a girl?”
Thunderfoot’s lips pulled back from her teeth in a dragon’s smile. “Why, of course, Keeper.”
I ducked my head, studying the ground beneath my feet. “I’m sorry for being so rude. It’s just…we have trouble telling. You look so similar to us. But I heard…something in your voice. A difference. You talk like Nightclaw.”
Bonebreaker and Thunderfoot looked at each other in surprise for a moment. Then both of them threw their heads back and exploded with laughter. It roared like thunder against the mountainside. From somewhere close below us, over the edge of the nearby cliff, an eagle erupted from the rocky wall with a cry, wheeling away into the air.
Sarah, Blade and Miles ran out of Nightclaw’s nest, eyes wide and arms held up, ready to draw on their magic. The Runegard came right behind them, hands on their sword hilts.
“Tess, what’s wrong?” said Sarah.
“It’s okay!” I said, holding my arms up. Blade’s eyes were afire, and I gave him a reassuring look.
“Realm Keepers, forgive us,” said Bonebreaker, bowing a bit lower than normal. “That which passes closest before the eyes may be hardest to see. Scarce knowledge had we that you could not tell the fathers from the mothers, brothers from the sisters upon Wyrmspire.”
Wyrmspire (Realm Keepers Book 2) Page 61