Sorcha's Heart

by Mumford, Debbie

  She opened her maw and screamed at Caedyrn, “What am I?”

  Her words rumbled in an avalanche whose overtones assaulted her sensitive ears. Worst of all, the act of speaking agitated a strange little lump on the roof of her mouth and flame scorched the air as her scream hiccupped into silence. Cautiously, she explored the bump with her tongue, amazed that the flame hadn’t burned her mouth. A slightly acrid taste remained, but seemed to be the only after-effect. She sniffed delicately, and detected a faint sulfur odor. Her human intellect catalogued the smell, but her dragon senses found it comforting rather than frightening.

  A thought intruded on her inner confusion. “Speak to me here, little one. Human speech, as we produce it, pains our ears, and as you’ve seen, it can trigger fire if not carefully controlled.” Caedyrn’s words poured across her fear in soothing waves. “But to answer your question, you are a dragon. The Heart of Fire transformed you.”

  His words snapped her attention back to the larger issue. “That’s impossible,” she cried, forcing herself to use the link instead of her voice. “I can’t be a dragon!”

  “Rise, little one. Unfurl your wings. Feel the power at your command.”

  Sorcha stood. Four sturdy legs held her gargantuan body above the sun-warmed sand. She swiveled her head and felt the Heart of Fire thump against her breastbone. Pink ridges undulated down her back, ending an incredible distance away in an arrow-tip of tail. The length of beach she covered told her she had to be at least twenty-five feet long, snout to tail.

  The pale pink color disturbed her. She turned back to Caedyrn and asked, “Am I ill? This color looks sickly.”

  His laughter bubbled through her thoughts. “You are no ordinary dragon. Your color reflects your essence; the pink of human flesh combined with the opal’s milky fire.” Sound thrummed from his body, and Sorcha realized it indicated happiness. “I find your color exotic — and attractive.”

  Confusion besieged her. She didn’t have the experience necessary to decide if the innuendo implicit in his last comment was intentional. Dragons obviously didn’t blush, or her strange color would have deepened to scarlet across her entire bulk. Lord, she was bigger than many of the huts in the village where she’d grown up! So much for feminine vanity, at least of the human variety. Were female dragons vain?

  “I don’t understand your question,” came his immediate response. “If you mean, ‘are they prideful,’ then the answer is often yes. If you mean, ‘are they concerned with their appearance,’ then I’d have to say no. Dragon color cannot be changed, and dragon physique cannot run to fat. Our magical fires burn too brightly. If we do not control those fires, they consume our flesh.”

  His red-eyed gaze scrutinized Sorcha and the intensity of his study heightened her awareness of a growing ball of agony in her enormous mid-section. Pain flared and smoldered in an insistent pulse.

  “Come,” Caedyrn said. “Your transformation cost you dearly. You must eat.”

  He spread his vast wings, and with a single downward stroke, leapt to the sky. He didn’t turn to see if she followed, but his voice rang through her mind. “Don’t think about it, little one,” he sang, “just follow me.”

  Sorcha stared after him, terror constricting her airways at the thought of being abandoned. Alone. Trapped in an alien body. What should she do? What could she do? She couldn’t return to court, the king’s knights would kill her on sight. She wouldn’t be allowed to live long enough to explain, and if she somehow survived, she might roast someone when she tried to ask for her mother. Gods and goddesses! What if she flamed her mother? She had no other option. She had to stay with Caedyrn, at least until she learned to control this new body.

  She focused on his lazily circling form, imagined herself catching hold of his triangular tail- tip, and threw herself into the sky. Unaccustomed muscles screamed as her wings yanked at the air currents. She gasped, closed her eyes in terror, and then forced them open to check her position. She flew! The muscle strain eased as she ceased to worry about what her wings were doing and focused on following Caedyrn.

  Wind whipped past her face, and nictitating membranes rose, shielding the precious moisture of her eyes. She flew, high and fast. Soul-searing awe threatened to explode her heart. She flew! Elation swept through her system in a wave of exuberant delight.

  A childish giggle rose from her human side, and she remembered a long-ago day when Elspeth had taken her to the cliffs near the sea to study the raptors that made their nests there.

  “See how efficient they are?” Elspeth had said. “They use an economy of movement to reach the air currents and then they ride those streams, watching for prey.”

  As they’d observed the mighty birds, one had dived suddenly and disappeared from sight around the side of the hill.

  Elspeth had nodded. “His prey won’t have a chance. He’s been resting in the arms of the wind, conserving his energy. You must learn the same restraint in your use of magic. Don’t waste energy fighting your spells. Let the flow of power support you; rest in the assurance that it is in your blood, that it will be there when you need it.”

  With this memory to support her, Sorcha stretched her wingtips, caressed the heavens and raced to catch Caedyrn. “We had no idea, Mother,” she whispered. “Flight is so much more than we could have possibly imagined.” She laughed aloud, unconcerned about triggering a jet of flame here among the clouds. “But it is very much like magic!”

  At that thought, a shadow marred her joy. She’d lost her magic — something had blocked her from her reservoir. The innate ability had defined her existence for so long that its loss eclipsed her recent transformation and first flight. Melancholy stole over her heart and her wing strokes slowed. She lost the steady rhythm and began to fall.

  “No!” she screamed, and fought to pull herself back to an uplifting air current. Caedyrn turned to check on her, but she warned him off. “I can do this,” she cried. The unaccustomed muscles in her back ached, and each stroke felt as if it would tear her wings from her body. She concentrated on forcing them to keep beating despite growing pain.

  Caedyrn’s voice intruded on her intense effort. “Stop thinking like a wizard. You humans worry too much. You think you control the world, when it would function just as well without you. Let go, little sister. Your body knows what to do.” A silvery cascade of laughter highlighted his words.

  Indignation replaced determination, and Sorcha glared at the rapidly disappearing dragon. So humans worried too much and tried to control everything, did they? She’d teach that arrogant lizard a thing or two about humanity!

  A moment or two later, realization filtered through her irritation. Nothing hurt. She swooped across the sky, executed a tumbling aerial somersault, rose back to her previous level and hastened to catch up.

  Exhilaration sizzled through her system as she pulled level with her mentor.

  “I did it!”

  She screamed the words into the cloudless sky, where the wind carried them away before the strange harmonics could abuse delicate dragon ears. On a whim of delight, she switched to their private link and crowed, “I am Sorcha and I can fly!”

  She saw his smile and wondered how she could ever have found it threatening.

  “Thank you, Sorcha,” he said. “I am honored by your trust.”

  A wave of nausea swept her gut. She’d given her name to a dragon; she’d put her life in his keeping. A magic user could bind a being with their true name, and dragons were powerful magical beings. What if she’d made a mistake? Had she allowed the elation of flight to cloud her judgment?

  But Caedyrn had trusted her with his name, how could she do less? She flicked her tongue against the lump on her palate and spat a gout of flame. Too late to worry now. The words couldn’t be unsaid. She’d discover soon enough if Caedyrn was worthy of her trust.

  No sooner had she soothed her qualms than her belly erupted in an onslaught of pain so intense she almost fell from the sky. Caedyrn arrowed beneath her and
supported her until she found the rhythm of her strokes again.

  “We must get you fed,” he said. “Follow me and observe what I do.”

  Caedyrn streaked across the sky with Sorcha close behind. They swooped over thickly forested lands, where tree canopies made green waves of restless movement in the afternoon wind, and washed ashore on a far-reaching prairie. The golden undulation of the grassland fascinated Sorcha — until she saw their bovine prey.

  The power of the longing, the white-hot need of dragon instinct shook Sorcha to her core. She tried to maintain distance, to watch and learn in a rational manner. She wanted the brutal immediacy of slaughter to horrify her. She wanted the lack of proper gratitude and respect to offend. But those human niceties failed to materialize. Her focus narrowed and her dragon side took over; she lost the thread of any thought not directly connected to the hunt.

  Peripherally, she observed Caedyrn’s technique, but was too focused on her chosen prey to emulate his precision. She arrowed toward her kill even as Caedyrn plucked his victim from the herd. The sheer physical pleasure that burst through her system as her claws ripped into the bull’s hide strengthened her wing beats, and she shot back to the sky’s embrace, dinner dangling from her front feet.

  “Do we eat in the air?” she called as she rushed to Caedyrn’s side.

  His laughter roared aloud before he answered through their link. “No, little one, we will feast in a glen just past that outcropping rock.”

  The thrill of the hunt evaporated as they flew, so that when they landed Sorcha faced her kill with human sensibilities. She dropped the bull in the glade, and circled back to the sky. Caedyrn’s massive black bulk filled the northern portion of the clearing among the trees. Two broken bodies of cattle lay in the center, their mangled limbs flung in impossible angles. Shame flooded Sorcha’s soul, and she averted her eyes. Not only had she killed without proper ritual, without praise for the animal’s life, she had stolen from the village folk. She shot higher still, seeking solace in the clean serenity of sun and wind.

  But her wings grew heavy and she angled toward the glade with its alluring aroma of food. Twice more she circled the clearing, human mores fighting dragon hunger. At length she landed, stifled her ingrained scruples, and allowed new instincts to govern her actions. A cat-like pounce landed her on the broken body of the white-faced black bull. Powerful jaws ripped through tough hide and tore muscle mass from bone and sinew. Purposefully not thinking, she devoured the meat, slaked her thirst in blood, and felt the agony in her belly extinguish under the nourishing onslaught.

  Hunger assuaged, she raised her head and watched Caedyrn demolish his meal. Efficient, like those long-ago raptors — not a sliver of flesh remained on the skeleton when he sat back and crunched a single bone he’d selected with care. Compared to Caedyrn’s carefully piled stack of bones, the remains of her meal were a disaster. She looked away, preferring not to revisit the scene of carnage. The devastated carcass with its twisted mass of bone and sinew opened the way for too many disturbing thoughts.

  Caedyrn seemed to sense the burgeoning attack of scruples, for he chose a bone from his own stash and pushed it toward her with his snout. “Relax. Chew a bone,” he said. “It’s good for your teeth, and it makes a nice finish to a feast.”

  Sorcha’s heart skipped a beat as his flaming red gaze met her own. A new hunger sparked, one that had nothing to do with the needs of her stomach. Human dignity fought for control, but this new hunger spread like a wildfire, and with soul-scorching intensity. She stared at the virile black dragon and her over-full belly threatened to rebel. No, absolutely not. She refused to desire a dragon.

  Masculine scent tempted her nostrils; she turned away, concentrated on the bone he’d given her to chew. Her tongue wrapped its length, and her loins clenched, provoking a wave of fire to race through her extremities. She closed her eyes, but images of the massive red-eyed demon haunted her.

  She couldn’t mate with her enemy. She wouldn’t lust after a nonhuman male, no matter how attractive, how strong, how muscular, how...perfect he was.

  Gods and goddesses, she didn’t seem to care about his species, or her own! She burned to join with him, to absorb his thrusts in her own cushioning softness. Enemy — mentor — lover. Transformation, indeed! She needed divine assistance to resist this beautiful male.

  A sudden, urgent need to fly seized her, and Sorcha withdrew from their link and threw herself into the cool evening sky.

  As her strong strokes carried her higher, she felt an insistent barrage of thoughts hammering against the barrier she’d erected. A bellow ripped the evening calm as Caedyrn launched himself into the wind. The intimacy they’d established allowed her to hear the overtones of confused impatience in his roar. Human shame and draconic desire fought for dominance as he caught up with her frantic flight.

  “Land!”

  He didn’t wait for agreement, but shot above her and used his mass to force her to ground. She plummeted the last few feet and absorbed the impact with quivering joints. Caedyrn managed to land close beside rather than on top of her, but the distinction didn’t matter. Sorcha’s lust ripped open the mind-link and lashed Caedyrn with the full force of her desire.

  The black dragon turned his head and observed her through partially closed eyes. He stroked her back with the tip of his wing, a soothing hum issuing from his throat. After a quiet moment he crooned, “Breathe easy, little wizard. There will be time for that when you’ve adjusted to your new form. Dragon mating is strenuous and not for the faint of heart.”

  Shame won its battle and flooded her soul with disgust. She’d always detested spilling her emotions, and this had been a torrential flood. Elspeth would be appalled. Her mother had given up so much to bring her into the world. She’d refused to give her up, as wizards who had children were expected to do, had suffered ostracism and stigma to raise her in the craft. Elspeth had held her own desires in constant check to allow her daughter to reach for her destiny. She had never thrown herself at any male.

  And yet, I exist, said a small voice from a deeply recessed corner of Sorcha’s mind. I exist, though no one has ever admitted to having known my father. Not even Mother.

  This unexpected thought quenched her shame like the bull’s blood had slaked her fiery thirst. She couldn’t undo the embarrassing emotional lapse, but her wounded pride would heal. She concentrated on drawing deep, cleansing breaths until the red haze retreated.

  This new body’s reaction startled her. As quickly as the lust had consumed her, it fled, leaving a bone-deep weariness in its wake. Her eyes closed, lower lids rising hesitantly.

  Caedyrn’s voice resonated through her mind with quiet conviction. “Rest, my Sorcha. When you awake, we’ll journey to the ice aerie.”

  Chapter Three

  The Ice Aerie

  The ice aerie housed all the dragons that remained on earth. Sorcha cowered in Caedyrn’s shadow as they wandered the maze of caves and rough-cut passageways. Dragons of every shape and size gazed at her with curious, bold-eyed stares. From hatchlings to grizzled elders, the inhabitants of the aerie pushed against the barrier of her mind.

  “It is your choice, or course,” Caedyrn said as one daring hatchling brushed a wingtip against the pearly pink scales of Sorcha’s hide, “but their curiosity will abate faster if you open your mind and let them know your essence.”

  “They’ll overrun my mind,” she complained. “I won’t be able to protect myself.”

  He nudged her neck with his snout. “Dragons know their boundaries. There are rules of etiquette for such things, rules ancient before the eldest among us was hatched. You will not be harmed.”

  They continued their shuffling pace toward the center of the community, and Sorcha felt a great horde of bodies crowd the passageway behind them. No going back, no going forward without a guide in this maze. The Heart of Fire felt cool where its chain banded her neck, reminding her of what she had already dared. Raising her head, Sorcha gathered he
r courage and opened the floodgates to the flight of dragons...

  ...and was swept away on the swell of their excited greeting.

  “What an odd color,” exclaimed one.

  “Where did you find her?” asked another.

  “I’ve never seen her like,” growled an honored elder, “and I’ve watched every dragonet hatch.”

  Sorcha discovered that she could read the speaker’s age, color, sex and character in their communications. She gasped under the weight of knowledge that crashed into her consciousness with each new comment. Just as she thought she must drown in detail, the torrent eddied away as the dragons withdrew to give her time to assimilate.

  She listened from a quiet pool as the flight turned their questions on Caedyrn. He answered calmly, if nonspecifically, until a majestic voice stated what could not be denied.

  “Her essence is human, Caedyrn,” the awesome voice proclaimed. “Tell me what you have done.”

  “He didn’t do it, Sire,” Sorcha said. “I did.”

  Her dragon-sense informed her that the gigantic, red-brown male at the center of the aerie was the monarch, the rex of the flight. The oldest and wisest of dragon-kind.

  The Rex turned his attention on her, and she felt like a butterfly pinned to one of her mother’s displays; every nuance of her personality lay bared to his gaze. Then his focus broadened, softened, and he said, “Tell us of your adventures, little wizard.”

  She told the flight everything that had happened since she discovered the runes and followed them to the Heart of Fire. She faltered over her attraction to Caedyrn, but even that was confessed to the Rex and the community as a whole. The dragons listened with patience and consideration. Not a single hatchling interrupted with a stray thought.