Dragon’s Call: Dystopian Fantasy

by Ann Gimpel

  Limping even worse than before, Runa joined me. Smudges streaked her face, and her clothing was torn where the monster’s talons had dug deep. “We need to clean those up.” I tapped her shoulder very gently.

  She nodded. “Not much more for us to do here. I’ll take us home.”

  She obviously had more juice left than I did because the field faded and the walls of the room I’d sat in a few hours ago formed around us. At least the air was clean. I took great, gasping gulps to clear the taint of poison from my lungs. And I took a good, hard look at Runa.

  She was pale. Pain had etched lines into her forehead and around her eyes.

  I touched her forehead. It was hot. Far warmer than it should be. “Sit,” I told her, concerned some of the monster’s poison had breached her skin.

  “But I need to get water,” she said weakly.

  “My turn to take care of you.”

  A young, blonde woman raced into the room. “Ro. What happened?” She angled green eyes my way. “You’re the man from the other night. The one who came with the dragon. I peeked out of the cave when there was all that ruckus and saw you.”

  “Tansy—” Runa began just before she crumpled to the floor.

  “What’s wrong with her?” Tansy wailed and knelt by Runa’s side. “By the goddess. She’s on fire.”

  “Get hot water,” I told Tansy. “A big kettle of it, and linen to clean her wounds.”

  “But what’s wrong with her?” Tansy persisted.

  “She’s been poisoned. Hurry.” I clapped my hands for emphasis, and Tansy bolted from the room. As gently as I could, I pulled Runa’s hair out of the way and levered off her tunic and vest. Red streaks were working their way down her chest and back. Her breasts were perfect, high and mounded, but I had a far different focus than the wonders of her body.

  I dredged still more magic from Hel only knew where and barked power words. I told the poison to stop. To neutralize itself. To leave. I’d welcome any one of the three, and I wasn’t taking any chances.

  I traded from Runa’s front to her back and repeated my words and my actions. Somewhere along the way, Tansy showed up and began cleaning the wounds. She sang in a high, clear voice, and her chant mixed with my power words. Finally, the red streaks began a slow retreat.

  When I breathed deep, the stench of poison was gone.

  “Will she be all right?” Tansy’s voice was small and scared.

  I dropped a hand onto her shoulder. “Yes. She will. Thanks to your help.”

  Tansy offered me a shy smile. “I have the healing gift, but I’ve never had to use so much of it before. Let me get the dirty water and stained linen out of here.”

  I rocked back on my heels, so weary remaining upright was a challenge. My eyes might have shut of their own accord. What dragged them open was a large black cat who’d curled up on my lap and was purring as if he didn’t have a care in the world.

  Chapter Sixteen, Rowan

  I ran full tilt into the misshapen creature’s wrongness when I was stabbing its clawed forelegs. That was when its blood first mixed with mine, creating an unpleasant jolt. Not something I expected. Griffons may be nasty pieces of work, but they don’t spew venom. I knew right away I’d been poisoned, and I set markers in my body to protect myself. I believed they were working until I brought us back to the coven’s lair.

  Yeah. I also believed the worst of my injuries was a sprained ankle from when the bastard dropped me after Bjorn put out one of its eyes. Guessing wrong about shit can come back to bite you in the ass.

  I’ve always been a champ at putting a good face on things. It’s something I learned very young. Usually, I have time to set things right, but today when I recognized my inner warding had failed catastrophically, I was down for the count.

  Except for an astral thread or two that detached from my body and watched Bjorn and Tansy fighting to bring me back. I’m immortal. The monster couldn’t kill me, but there are worse things than being dead. Like being trapped in my body and unable to move.

  I tried to help, but my magic was slow, sluggish. I’d burned through gobs of it, and it would take a while to recover. Maybe a long while at the rate things were going.

  Bjorn was exhausted. I sensed what it cost him to keep on drawing power from somewhere, but he was intent on stopping the monster’s poison—a gift that kept on giving even after its master was dead. Bjorn was a good man. He didn’t care he’d moved well past when he should have quit. He’d keep right on going until he either brought me back from the dark, twisted corridors where most of me wandered or fell on his face.

  I’d treated him abysmally when I bolted out of his cottage. Sunk in my own misery, I’d lost sight of what was going on with him. He’d been kind and flexible, given I’d dropped in unannounced when most of the world was sleeping. I had a million excuses, most of them circling back to my hideous childhood, but how long was I going to drag out those tired old vindications and parade them as an excuse for being an inconsiderate twit?

  I felt the wrong places within me first grow smaller and then leave altogether. I was still unconscious, but I’d recover soon enough. Tansy gave me a kiss before she trundled off with the dirty water and blood-stained rags. I’d known she had some talent for healing, but she was more than capable. Perhaps she could apprentice with Leif or Hilda, the two primary healers within the coven.

  I made a note to talk with them about taking her on. After they were done with harvesting our crops.

  Bjorn’s eyes had closed. He still knelt over me, but exhaustion had claimed him. Or, more likely, he’d given up fighting it as soon as he was certain I was out of danger. It was as good an opportunity as I was likely to have to really look at him. Not that I hadn’t grabbed the odd glance here and there, but I hadn’t studied his face with its regal bone structure. After examining him from different angles, I realized he looked a lot like Odin. The real one, not the travesty who led the hunt.

  Perhaps Bjorn was a bastard blowby? It would explain why power shimmered around him even in his depleted state. Blond bristles coated his cheeks and chin. He’d look wonderful with a beard, rough and steeped in masculinity. Not that he was lacking in that regard now, but his features were so striking he almost came across as too beautiful to be real.

  I longed for my body. My astral self sensed things, more than experiencing them. I wanted to inhale his scent and murmur how sorry I was about leaving the way I had. We were born to fight together, he and I. If I’d doubted it before, the battle with the griffon-esque thing had wiped away any lingering reservations.

  Mort stalked into the room. When he spied me crumpled on the floor, he abandoned all pretense of the feigned indifference common to all felines and raced to my side. He stuck his nose into my neck and licked me with his rough tongue. It took a while, but once he was satisfied I’d live, he jumped over me and curled up in Bjorn’s lap.

  Mort rarely let anyone else touch him, yet he’d sought out Bjorn. Surprise drove me back into my body. The collision of astral and physical selves was always brutal, which is interesting because the separation part is easy. Between my various hurts and the shock of being whole again, I groaned and dragged my eyes open.

  The cat stared at me, purring.

  Raw and needy from what Bjorn and I had lived through, I crawled close enough to curve my body around him and Mort. “You’re awake.” Bjorn’s voice was raspy. He stroked hair back from where it had fallen into my face.

  “You sound surprised.” I threaded an arm around him. It felt right to touch him, and for once I didn’t deny myself comfort.

  “I am. Figured you’d sleep for hours.” He coughed and turned his head to spit. “Let me get us water.”

  “Looks like I’m right on time,” Tansy’s voice rang from across the room. “I brewed tea for the both of you. And I brought Ro a fresh shirt.”

  Bjorn hugged me awkwardly given our positions with him kneeling and me plastered around his bent legs. And then he got up and walked toward
Tansy. Where he’d been pressed against me felt empty, and I wanted him back. Displaced from Bjorn’s lap, Mort rubbed his head against my upper arm as if to remind me I had responsibilities.

  I scratched his head and got to my feet very creakily. I had hurt places that had never hurt before. When I weighted my one ankle, pain shot up my leg, and I yelped.

  Bjorn and Tansy hustled to where I balanced on one leg, and Bjorn hooked an arm around me and helped me to the nearest table. “Sorry about your ankle,” he said. “I didn’t forget about it, but it wasn’t nearly as important as everything else.”

  “It will mend.” I focused a thin beam of magic at the place the ligament had torn. Not much because I didn’t have much left, but anything was better than doing nothing.

  Tansy helped me on with a fresh tunic, and then she spooned honey into the mugs, stirring it in. Fragrant with mint and rosemary, the tea slid down my abraded throat.

  “Thank you,” Bjorn told Tansy. “This is perfect.”

  “You’re welcome. I’d do anything for Ro. She saved my life.” When she looked at me, she added, “I ran your other clothes through the wash kettle. They’re drying.”

  Before I could protest, tell her the debt—if there’d ever been one—was well and truly discharged, she walked quickly toward the kitchen. Mort ran after her, probably in hopes of a handout. Something besides mice.

  “Tansy is a treasure.” Bjorn sipped more tea. “Whatever’s in this is perfect. My throat’s a mess from when the venom turned into a gas. I tried not to breathe deeply, but it was a losing proposition.”

  I patted the spot next to me at the table, and he settled on the bench. “She’s not the only treasure,” I said. “I have no idea where all the power came from, but you just kept pouring it into me.”

  He smiled, and I felt my heart crack wide open. “I couldn’t give up,” he said. “We’re partners.”

  I grinned back. “We are. I fought it, but how we click when we work together can’t be accidental. This will sound hokey as fuck, but the way our power meshes is special. I’ve never encountered its like.”

  He nodded. “Same conclusion I came to.” His smile wilted, traded for a thoughtful expression. “Tansy still calls you Ro. Are you planning to tell the witches your other name?”

  “No.”

  “Why not?”

  “I haven’t exactly thought things through, so this might sound disjointed, but names offer others power over you. The fewer who know my true name, the better. Earth is…different, for want of a pithier term. It’s like the Breaking started something in motion, something that will end with Earth dying.”

  Bjorn opened his mouth, but I held up a hand. “I want to know what you think, but let me get through this first. Earlier, when I crawled up the monster to deliver a death blow, it seemed I had a foot in two worlds. This one and another that’s far away but growing closer.

  “Touching the griffon linked me to that other place, but briefly. As soon as someone—a guardian?—recognized energy that didn’t belong there, they slammed the gate fast. By then, I’d killed the monster, so the link probably would have winked out anyway.”

  I drank more tea. My throat wasn’t the best, either, and I hadn’t been as close to the fumes as Bjorn. The air immediately around our adversary had been cleaner. “The third element,” I went on, “is you and me. There are no coincidences. We met for a reason. We tested our magic together for a reason. This isn’t a come on”—I exhaled nervously—“but it circles back to ground we covered earlier. We’re meant to merge our magic.”

  He nodded and reached for the pot of hot water Tansy had left with the tea makings. Hefting it, he poured more into both our mugs. “I may pay for this, but the two pieces of knowledge I have that you’re missing are these.”

  I set my cup down and laced my fingers together so tight the knuckles turned white. I’d criticized him roundly for holding out on me, but he’d had good reasons. “Hold up,” I said. “If revealing secrets will cause problems for you, then perhaps you should let me find out on my own.”

  The same soft smile, the one that tugged at my heart, returned. “I’d decided much the same. Until today. I didn’t sense the gateway to another world, but hearing you describe it worries me. A lot.”

  He spread his hands in front of him and looked at me in his direct way. “I’m not violating any confidences when I tell you I’ve been waiting for more fallout from the Breaking. It damaged Midgard’s—Earth’s—ability to protect itself. We’ve felt differences throughout the other Eight Worlds. For the first few decades, I assumed Midgard would heal its hurt places—or that Odin would conjure a fix. When neither happened, it concerned me, but I’m a tiny cog in a much larger wheel.

  “No one wanted to hear from the chief sorcerer.”

  “I’m certain someone did,” I broke in and unclasped my hands to grasp one of his. He didn’t shake me off. I longed to ask about his possible familial connection with Odin, but it truly wasn’t my affair.

  “Aye, the common folk, but not the gods or goddesses. And they’re who could have made a difference.” He rolled his shoulders straighter. “And now, I’m moving into forbidden territory.”

  I tightened my grip on his hand and waited for the other shoe to fall out of the sky and clonk me over the head.

  “Dragons, probably the same two who paid you a visit, have been after me too. Mostly the large golden one. His name is Nidhogg, and he’s the Norse Dragon. For years, he mostly nibbled on Yggdrasil’s roots, but he sought me out perhaps a fortnight ago and tasked me with watching over Midgard.”

  I blew out a tightly held breath. So far, this wasn’t too bad.

  Bjorn reached into a pocket and retrieved an egg-shaped piece of quartz that glowed with an inner light. His hands were just as filthy as mine, caked with blood and gore and grime. Once he’d laid the stone between us, it rocked gently.

  “This is how Nidhogg keeps tabs on me, so if the skies crack open and I vanish—”

  “I’ll be on your heels,” I said firmly. “No way am I letting anyone hurt you.”

  A soft laugh bubbled from him. “Thanks. I feel the same way about you.”

  His words wrapped me in warmth, tenderness. I leaned closer, letting our shoulders touch.

  “The things you don’t know,” he went on, “are twofold. After years of doing very little, the gods are worried about Midgard. If it fails—and you’re correct about it teetering on the edge of disaster—serious consequences affecting the other Eight Worlds will follow.”

  “As in?”

  “The rot will spread, and it will be the beginning of the end of Yggdrasil and the worlds supported by the One Tree.”

  Breath whooshed from me. I’d known things were serious, but I’d assumed only Earth was implicated. The stone glowed brighter, and its gentle rocking became more pronounced. “Oh-oh.” I reached for the stone, but Bjorn grabbed my hand.

  “Not a good idea.”

  He was probably right. I was so tired, I wasn’t thinking straight.

  Bjorn shut his eyes for a moment and then stumbled to his feet and offered me a hand. “Come on. Time to pay the piper.”

  I was unnerved by how much energy it took to stand. My ankle wasn’t much better, but I could weight it a little. “Pay what piper? Where are we going?” I asked.

  “Outside.”

  The stone leapt up of its own accord and nosedived into his pocket. While I blinked stupidly at the place it had sat, the scent of Bjorn’s power surrounded me. “We can’t teleport,” I protested. “Not enough magic.”

  “Normally, I’d agree with you, but we’re not going very far.”

  The common room shimmered to nothing, replaced by the familiar beaten-down dirt in front of the hidden entrance to the cavern carved beneath Ben Nevis’s bulk. As soon as Bjorn’s spell cleared, I saw Nidhogg.

  The golden dragon’s huge hind legs were planted firmly, and he’d crossed his forelegs over his scaled chest. He regarded both of us before
untangling his arms to shake a talon at Bjorn. “I told you to let her find her own way.”

  Bjorn stalked in front of the dragon and looked up at him. “I don’t answer to you. Nor will I lie to my friends.” He dug the stone out of his pocket and tried to drop it between him and Nidhogg. It made a U-turn midair and returned to Bjorn’s pocket.

  He rolled his eyes. “Cheap parlor tricks aside, why are you here?”

  The dragon lumbered closer to me. “That one”—he hooked a talon at Bjorn—“is determined to deliver certain news. Since he canna keep what should remain hidden secret, I am stepping in.”

  “It’s not as if ye told me aught.” Bjorn had retreated to Norse. “I figured out the other on my own. Same as I unearthed her name.”

  “Pfft. Details.” Nidhogg curved his neck. The motion moved his head closer to mine.

  “Whatever this is,” I growled, “would one of you spit it out so we can move on?”

  “What I am about to tell you,” Nidhogg said, “is no trivial thing. Combined with your true name, it will change everything.”

  I resisted the impulse to tap one foot and tell him I was waiting. I was tired and grumpy and annoyed my private moments with Bjorn had been upended.

  The dragon leaned closer still. Heat from him was oddly comforting in the chill of the night that had just fallen. “Long have ye wondered who sired you.”

  My eyes, which had been sitting at half-mast, snapped open wide. Shit. Was that what this was about? My long-missing father? “I suppose you’re going to tell me he was a dragon,” I muttered.

  Fire shot from Nidhogg’s jaws, missing me by millimeters. “Show respect, child.”

  “Sorry.” I focused my hot, gritty eyes on him. “Go on.” I’m no expert on reading dragon expressions, but he looked pissed.

  “Your father was a dragon,” he said in a firm voice that gave no quarter. Between the words and the tone, I knew what he said had to be true.

  “Was it you?” I squeaked out.