Dragon Child
Page 16
“That’ll make it hard to get an audience with Taeleia,” said Fletcher.
“No it won’t,” grumbled Roxanne. “Effrax was planning on blackmailing everyone to get what he wants.”
“So little faith you have in me,” said Effrax, though his mouth twitched in a lopsided smile. A moment later, the smile slid from his face.
“What’s—?”
Before Fletcher could finish his question, Effrax yanked on Emyr’s reins and angled the mule—and Roxanne and Fletcher—toward an alley. Emyr snorted and tossed his head.
“What are you doing?” Roxanne growled as Effrax herded them to the end of the dingy passage and tethered Emyr to a rain pipe. A host of mangy black rats scattered into cracks in the surrounding walls.
“Stay here and be quiet,” Effrax instructed them. Before Roxanne could argue, the Fironian whisked around and vanished onto the main street. Emyr stamped his hooves; Roxanne could sense the rough treatment had confused and upset him.
You and me both, she thought, glaring after Effrax.
He returned in short order, clutching a crumpled parchment. Mutely, he raised it. It was written in Allentrian, but Roxanne didn’t need a translator to understand what it meant. She felt the blood drain from her face as she took it with shaking hands.
It was an inked picture of Keriya. Beneath the large image were a few lines of red runes, and beneath that were other, smaller pictures—pictures of herself and Effrax, and a bland-faced, large-nosed boy who was probably meant to be Fletcher.
“What is this?” Fletcher whispered.
“A wanted poster,” Effrax said grimly. “I was a fool not to have expected it. We were lucky we got in.”
Roxanne stared at the crumpled parchment. Its edges fluttered limply in the wind. Why had they gotten in so easily?
As she raised her eyes and caught sight of her reflection in one of the windows of the nearest building, her question was answered. She looked nothing like the Roxanne in the poster. Her cheeks were sunken and sallow. Her hair hung in matted clumps around her grimy face. Her eyes looked more yellow than hazel, and they’d lost their sparkle somewhere on the road. She glanced at Fletcher and Effrax, whose transformations she had seen happening slowly as they traveled. They, too, were mere echoes of their former selves.
“What does it say we’re wanted for?” Roxanne asked, indicating herself and Fletcher.
Effrax took the parchment and scanned it. “You’re wanted for defying the Empress of Allentria, kidnapping the Princess of the Galantasa, extorting the Prince of the Erastate, and aiding and abetting the war criminals Effrax Nameless and Thorion Sveltorious.”
“War criminals?” Fletcher wrinkled his nose. “What does that mean?”
“It means Tanthflame’s found a scapegoat for what happened in Irongarde,” said Effrax. He began shredding the parchment into little pieces.
“How can he explain away what he did?” Roxanne demanded hotly, clenching her hands into fists. “He burned Irongarde to the ground! Thorion couldn’t have done that—he doesn’t wield fire.”
“He doesn’t,” said Effrax, “but I do.”
“You?” gasped Fletcher. “Tanthflame’s pinning all of that on you?”
“Not just me, I’ll wager, all fire wielders. You saw the writing on those storefronts—‘Fironians Not Welcome,’ ‘No Fire-Eaters Allowed,’ ‘This is a Smoke-Free Shop’ . . . did you think those were just decorative paint jobs?”
“But Tanthflame is Fironian,” said Roxanne.
“How could he sell out his countrymen?” Fletcher wanted to know.
Effrax shrugged. “Makes it all the more convincing. People will think he wouldn’t do that unless he was telling the truth. According to the poster, I am a co-conspirator with the Dragon Speaker in her plans to destroy the empire.”
“And did everyone in Allentria conveniently forget the Dragon Speaker is fighting Necrovar, their real enemy?” said Roxanne. A chill breeze whistled into the alleyway, wrapping around them. She longed for a warm place to sleep, to forget this increasingly complicated mess. “They can’t believe this garbage Tanthflame is spewing. Sounds to me like he got his stories crossed.”
“Or like he’s gotten his stories exactly right,” Fletcher said softly. “What better way to distract people from Necrovar’s return than to paint Thorion as the enemy instead?”
“You’re sharper than I gave you credit for, Lordling,” said Effrax, casting Fletcher an appraising look.
“It makes sense,” said Fletcher, his dirt-caked cheeks regaining some color. “I’m sure it was easy to turn people against Thorion after what happened in Irongarde and Sairal.”
“Great,” said Roxanne, crossing her arms. “So Tanthflame blamed Irongarde on Keriya and Effrax. Thorion gets painted as an evil monster who goes around attacking villages. We’re wanted felons. Now we’re stuck in Noryk, surrounded by Imperials, and we have no way of reaching Taeleia without being arrested.”
“Or killed,” muttered Fletcher.
“Don’t despair,” said Effrax. “I have a friend in midtown who runs an inn. He’ll keep us safe while we figure out how to get in touch with the elf.”
“When you do get in touch with her, how are you going to convince her we’re not war criminals?” asked Fletcher.
“Taeleia is smart. She’ll be willing to listen to us. Chances are she already knows Tanthflame is lying through his teeth about everything.”
“Then how come she doesn’t stop him?”
“Politics,” said Effrax, as if that was a proper answer.
Roxanne shook her head. “I don’t think this will be as simple as you claim. Especially since it sounds like Tanthflame is doing everything he can to start a war.”
“Oh, Tanthflame isn’t trying to start a war,” said Effrax, his voice growing cold. “The war’s already begun.”
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
“Only a fool trusts in tomorrow.”
~ Syranelle Pacene, Eleventh Age
Things quieted after the first night in the basin. Thorion didn’t see any more shadowbeasts, but he grew increasingly anxious as the Oldmoon thinned in the sky. Despite Keriya’s certainty that he wouldn’t hurt anyone, the sickness was progressing at an exponential rate. He knew it. He could feel it.
That full moon couldn’t come fast enough.
Uhs grew more human as the moon cycle progressed. His black, broad nose narrowed into a small fleshy protuberance and his whiskers receded into his cheeks. His tail and fur disappeared, though the wild mane on his head stayed much the same.
Seba was terrified of the werelion and Max downright hated him, leaving the camp whenever Uhs appeared. Though Thorion found the werelion fascinating, he couldn’t blame his friends for their reactions. It was clear Uhs hadn’t had contact with the outside world in quite some time, and he tended to make a nuisance of himself. He insisted on following the humans and ‘observing’ them. He also insisted on running around in his tattered breechcloth on all fours, despite the fact that he now looked like a full-grown man.
“You smell like blood,” Uhs announced on the morning of the new moon, leaping in front of Keriya as she headed for the stream.
“Uhs! Don’t do that,” she gasped, shying away from him.
Uhs sniffed at her. “And you smell angry. Are you hurt?”
“Are you hurt?” Thorion echoed, furrowing his brow ridges in concern.
“No!” Her face turned red and she stomped off. Thorion shot a questioning look at the werelion. Uhs, who was chewing on his fingernails, nodded knowingly.
“Bad time of the moon cycle for her,” he declared.
This wasn’t much of an explanation, but judging from Keriya’s reaction, Thorion decided it was best not to pursue the topic.
Over the next fortnight, Uhs regained his feline appearance. His fur grew in, his mane leng
thened, his nose elongated. But he wasn’t the only one who was changing. A week before the full moon, Thorion woke to a rosy sunrise and saw that the black threads on his claws had grown. Inky tendrils stretched to the base of his fingers.
He flew to the edge of the basin and dragged his ivory talons across a boulder until all traces of the Shadow were scraped away.
It was early and Keriya was still asleep, so Thorion flew to the stream next. He landed at the edge of the featherpines and hunched on a rock like a broken gargoyle, staring into a pool where the water eddied in a slow, stagnant circle.
At least I’m able to hide it, he thought ruefully, dipping his blunted nails in the lukewarm liquid. Then he rose with a start. His reflection glared up at him, bronze-scaled and purple-eyed . . . purple, except for thin, dark veins snaking across them like spiderwebs.
Thorion stamped his feet in the water with a thunderous growl, splashing away the image. His stomach clenched with impotent fury. How had the Shadow spread so quickly? How long before it consumed his body?
One more week, he reminded himself, his sides heaving as he drew deep, calming breaths through his nostrils. One more week until the full moon.
That evening, Uhs returned to examine everyone as they sat around the fire pit. When he finished his usual poking and prodding, he and Thorion struck up a conversation about life-threatening diseases and their cures.
“Swamp fever,” Thorion challenged the werelion. Uhs, who’d been a scrawny human, had filled out nicely. He looked like a lion now, save for the structure of his bones.
“Blood transfusion,” said Uhs. He crouched beneath the overhang of his cave, inspecting the black tuft of his tail for ticks.
“It’s not that simple.”
“Certainly it is,” Uhs scoffed. “Swamp fever is caused by a blood parasite. I would exchange my blood with the victim’s infected blood in balance. It is no trouble to me, since I am well-adjusted to burning out imperfections in bad blood. I win.”
“Fine. Leprous-plague.”
Uhs nodded. “Better. More difficult. I expect I would wait until the disease became terminal, yes, then I would trade one of my lives to my patient. Perhaps give him some extra skin, too.”
“You can do that?” Seba asked from where she huddled alone on the far side of the fire. She was always quiet when Uhs was around, but now she perked up. “Trading lives, I mean. How?”
“I have nine lives,” said Uhs, raising one of his hind legs to wash between his toes with his coarse tongue. “So I can exchange all of my life-threads with someone else’s without dying. This is how I save patients who are mere moments from death. I have an excellent grasp of lifemagic, so if the threads I receive in balance are badly damaged, I can heal them and package them for use later.”
Thorion frowned at the werelion. “Isn’t that an exorcism?”
“Silly dragon,” Uhs chided. “You should know better. Life-threads are replaceable, and they only constitute part of a magicsource—the weakest part, the destructible part.”
“What’s an exorcism?” said Keriya.
Uhs grew solemn. “The most dangerous and difficult spell one can perform: cutting out one’s own soul.”
Thorion didn’t like where this conversation was heading. He opened his mouth to steer his friends in a different direction, but it was too late. The light of comprehension was already dawning in Keriya’s eyes.
“That’s what Valerion did,” she murmured. “The gods took his soul and used it to create the Etherworld.” Uhs cackled at her and she shot him a glare. “What? It’s true. I’ve heard his story.”
“Half the story.” Uhs began chanting: “‘Flesh into sword, bone into blade, magic and blood and—’”
He got no further, for Thorion crossed to the werelion in two strides and shoved him backward. He pinned Uhs to the ground and bared his fangs.
“How do you know that?” he demanded.
“Thorion!” Keriya cried behind him. He ignored her.
“Valerion’s prophecy is well-known,” choked Uhs, squirming beneath the paw Thorion had pressed to his broad, fuzzy neck.
“I don’t mean his prophecy,” Thorion hissed. “I mean his full story. How do you know?”
With a reluctant growl, Thorion backed away from Uhs. The healer sat up, and there was a shrewdness in his gaze that hadn’t been there before.
The dragons guarded that story. An alien voice echoed in Thorion’s head, and he jerked away from the unexpected mental touch—it was Uhs. But my people know stories, too.
Thorion frowned anew. Mages could manipulate their threads in such a way that telepaths of different magical mediums could understand them, but he didn’t appreciate the uninvited intrusion. At least the unicorn had been polite enough to extend a telepathic olive branch before barging into his mind.
Sick creatures tend to spill their darkest secrets when they fear they are drawing their final breaths, Uhs added.
Someone knows, thought Uhs, flicking his ears. Valerion knew.
“Would one of you explain what’s going on?” Keriya demanded aloud.
“Pay it no mind, Keriya. He doesn’t know what he’s talking about,” said Thorion. There were some things humans shouldn’t know. There were also things he was forbidden to tell . . . but that was a different matter entirely.
“He was talking about an exorcism,” Keriya said in Allentrian. She turned to Uhs. “Is that what you intend to do for Thorion?”
“I can’t perform an exorcism, as it requires a magic I cannot wield. An ancient magic, a dangerous magic. Even if I could wield it, there is no guarantee it would help, for the Shadow’s poison has burrowed deep.” The werelion pointed at Thorion’s eyes. “If it is already showing on your body, it may be too late.”
Thorion took another step back from Uhs. He felt as though he were the one who had been pinned on the ground and choked. He’d heard the words he had been fearing most.
Too late.
Emotions flooded into him, filling him to the brim with fire. He wanted to roar. He wanted to rend things apart with his talons, including Uhs. His stomach was churning, his heart was cold. This . . . what was this? There wasn’t a word in his language or Keriya’s to describe it. It was fear, anguish, fury, all of these and none of them, greater and more awful than the sum of them combined.
He’d been angry more often than not lately, but everything he had felt for the past month was nothing, nothing compared to this. He dug his claws into the soil, wishing it were the werelion’s flesh. He hated Uhs. He wanted Uhs to bleed out on the ground—and if the werelion should use his extra lives to come back, Thorion wanted to kill him eight more times. Why had the healer let them waste a full moon cycle here?!
Thorion hadn’t registered that Keriya had come to stand beside him until he felt a touch on his shoulder. He turned to find her pallid face a mask of torment.
“Do you mean to tell me,” she grated at Uhs, “that we wasted a month doing nothing, just so you could tell us nothing can be done?” Rage coursed through her and pulsed into Thorion, feeding his own dark emotions. She’d been holding onto this hope, and now it had been stolen from her.
I must have been holding onto it, too, Thorion realized. I let myself hope when I knew I shouldn’t. Why did I do that? Why did I let myself believe?
“I didn’t sa
y nothing could be done.” The sharpness in Uhs’s feline expression had faded into something gentler. “I can heal you of the physical ravages the darksalm has left on your body, young dragon. It will buy you more time in this world. I cannot change a soul . . . but perhaps I can give you the chance to find someone who can.”
“No one can change a soul.” Thorion’s long throat was burning. He wanted to blast the werelion to smithereens. Acting on his anger without considering the consequences, he reached for his power. But, while he could see his magic with his mind’s eye, there was darkness shrouding it, a cloud crossing his inner sun. With that cloud there, he could not touch his source.
It was as Max had promised: here was an episode where he couldn’t wield.
Despair surged to the forefront of the emotions warring within him. Thorion sagged beneath its weight and lowered himself to a crouch. His innards constricted, knotted themselves in misery, making him feel as if he was going to vomit.
Keriya must have felt it, too. She doubled over, clutching first at her belly, then at her heart. With a pained gasp, she darted into the night, losing herself in the forest.
Silence stretched between those who remained. The werelion and Seba were watching Thorion, but Thorion couldn’t bring himself to meet their gazes.
“Are you alright?” Seba asked him in a low voice.
“Clearly not.” He gathered his strength and shoved himself upright once more. He walked away—not in the direction Keriya had gone, but toward a darker part of the forest to be alone. As he moved, something cold and wet trickled down the length of his snout. He crossed his eyes to see a single droplet of liquid rolling over his scales.
It was the first time he’d ever cried. Crying was something only humans did. It was the epitome of foolishness—a futile expression of silly emotions at best, a waste of vital fluids at worst.
“I suppose it makes sense. After all, I am a fool,” Thorion murmured, allowing himself a rueful smile.
He stopped fighting his feelings and let the tears come.