Dragon Child
Page 23
Dread ricocheted between her and Thorion. He wasn’t able to wield. He pulled up sharply from his dive, banking left.
“Watch out,” Keriya screamed, as another rider fired his crossbow. Thorion banked again, but this time he wasn’t quick enough. The arrow caught him in the side. From such close range, the powerful bolt managed to penetrate his scales. Keriya gasped and clutched at her own stomach as a ghostly echo of Thorion’s pain clawed at her. How she wished she had her sword! She would fight those riders face-to-face, magic be damned.
A shrill cry from Seba jolted Keriya to her senses. She wheeled around and saw that Max had drawn his shortsword and was running at the approaching horsemen. The riders ignored him—their sights were set on Thorion, who was floundering in the air.
Keriya turned on the spot, searching for something, anything that would help. Her gaze fell on a stunted, dead tree ten heights to the north. Her paralysis lifted and she tore toward it.
When she reached the tree, she braced herself against the trunk and snapped off one of its heavy limbs. Brandishing it like a blade, she stooped and dug through the snow. Her gloved hand closed on a rock and she hefted it, turning to the mounted men. As they bore down on Max, the lead rider loaded another bolt into his crossbow.
“NO!” Keriya hurled the rock and missed. In desperation, she slung the heavy branch toward the man. It spun through the air and caught him in the chest, knocking the crossbow from his grasp. Two cruel eyes glinted from the opening in his face mask as he peeled away from his companions, spurring his steed to charge her.
Keriya had never appreciated how big horses were, how deadly their hooves could be. She stood like an idiot, gaping at the massive animal—then something knocked into her, sending her sprawling. Max had wielded a spell of condensed air to push her out of harm’s way. As the horse galloped past, its rider drew a steel blade and circled around for another attack.
Thorion descended upon him, digging his talons into the man’s shoulders and plucking him from his saddle. The man screamed as Thorion flung him aside, as easily if he were a scarecrow rather than a full-grown human. He thudded to the ground and did not rise again.
The remaining riders surrounded the dragon. They wielded air spells against him, battering him this way and that in the sky. Thorion executed a series of complex aerial twirls to evade the worst of the wielded currents and landed between Keriya and Max. Seba cowered behind them, clutching her blue-gold knives.
Shockingly, it was the princess who struck first against their enemies. She hurled a knife at the nearest rider, but he knocked it aside with an air spell. Before she could throw her second knife, her target crumpled in his saddle. A white-fletched arrow sprouted from his back.
For a moment, Keriya believed that her friends had returned and that Effrax was hiding in the foothills, valiantly shooting down their foes. Then Max gave a strangled cry and clapped his hand to his neck. He collapsed onto the ground.
“No!” Keriya screamed. She dropped to his side and rolled him over with trembling hands. She saw a small, thin metal shaft protruding from between his fingers. Something registered in her memory, but she couldn’t spare it much thought—the riders were circling closer.
Meanwhile, Thorion was struggling to wield. Waves of fury radiated from him. It felt like he was trying to flex a muscle he didn’t have or use a limb that had been amputated.
Thunk! Another white-fletched arrow burrowed in one rider’s chest. The man jerked and slid limply from his saddle. His horse, already spooked by Thorion’s proximity, bolted. One of their remaining assailants fired a shot toward the pine forest, but Keriya couldn’t see who—or what—he was aiming at.
There was a noise to her right, and she glanced over her shoulder to see Seba had sunk to her knees. Her knife slipped from her fingers as she fell face-first into the snow.
Thorion bent his head to sniff at Max.
Keriya stared at the dart in the prince’s neck. Of course—they were almost identical to the darts that Doru and his band of Imperials had used. Panic surged in her gut, making her nauseous.
“GO,” she screamed. “You can’t get caught. Not now.”
Another dart pinged off Thorion’s scales. He snarled and turned in the direction whence it had come.
“Don’t attack them. Leave,” she pleaded.
“What about you?”
“I’ll give you enough time to escape.”
“To what end?” he growled.
Thunk! Another arrow felled the last rider. His horse whinnied and cantered away.
“To find a cure,” she said fiercely. “Max was right, I can’t help you. I’m holding you back—only you have the power to save yourself. Go, for the sake of the world.” More softly she added, “For me.”
Sorrow flickered in Thorion’s crystalline eyes, but was replaced at once by anger as another dart missed his snout by a hair’s breadth. He leapt up, pumping his powerful wings to climb into the overcast sky.
Fighting the tears that were threatening to consume her, Keriya stood and faced the foothills. She stepped past Max’s prone form and grabbed Seba’s fallen knife—all she could do now was try to fight.
She never got the chance. Pain pierced her chest below her collarbone. At first she feared she’d been hit by an arrow, so blinding was the agony. Her vision dimmed as she looked down. A small dart had burrowed through her cloak and threadbare dress to puncture her flesh. Icy fire fanned across her body from the point of impact. Her heart took one last shuddering beat . . .
And then she collapsed.
CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN
“The heart has its reasons, which reason does not know.”
~ Calzani Proverb
Go!
Keriya might have thought her words no more than a desperate plea, but they fell on Thorion, heavy and insistent, and became a command: Go. Save yourself.
Against his will, he climbed the skies on leathery wings. Keriya’s fear tugged at him. More than anything he wanted to protect her . . . but her last order rang inside his skull.
Find a cure.
Do the impossible.
Pain fanned across his chest. A moment later, the brightness in his mind that was Keriya’s constant presence winked out. He wavered in the air, reeling from the sudden loss. She wasn’t dead, for there was no gaping chasm in his soul to indicate she had left him; she was merely unconscious. The lack of mental presence told him it was evasdrin.
He winged higher, losing himself in the clouds so his enemies couldn’t track his movement. For a time he circled aimlessly, like a blind vulture, fretful and indecisive. He wanted to return to Keriya, but Keriya had told him to leave. It might not have been as momentous as the time she had summoned him, but the power in her command was there. It burrowed into him, almost like darksalm, until it reached his soul. There it settled, burning him, insisting he obey.
But there’s nothing I can do, he thought, growling. On the heels of that thought there came another—a more subtle and sinister thought, a deeper layer to Keriya’s initial command:
Exorcism.
Thorion snorted. She clung to that foolish idea like a drowning man clinging to a raft. An exorcism would only destabilize his already-frayed soul.
And yet . . .
Keriya had been right. There was a missing piece of the puzzle. It had been staring him in the face, but Thorion had been too stupid—or perhaps too cowardly—to consider it. The unicorn had told him to remove the clean part of his sou
l to keep it safe. Keriya had suggested removing the shadowed part of his soul so the infection couldn’t spread.
What if he did both?
Ideas chased each other through Thorion’s head. He’d condemned Valerion’s actions, but suddenly he saw a beauty in them, a simple genius. A half-formed plan simmered within him. The anguish of being unable to wield evaporated. The pain from the arrow wound disappeared. Filled anew with energy and purpose, Thorion beat his wings and banked east.
He’d become far too human—that much was clear as he poured ingredients into his plan. The dragon part of him scorned his folly and arrogance. The part of him that had become like Keriya applauded his brilliance. And below it all, beneath the ideas and considerations and self-condemnations, there was a growing realization: he didn’t have the magical skill for this. He needed help.
Who was powerful enough to help him with such a task? He wondered whether he dared go to the Chardons, the major gods Valerion had bargained with in the Second Age. But that wouldn’t work; he needed to offer them something to balance the energy they’d expend on his behalf, and he had nothing to give.
He landed, inevitably, on the only answer. There was but one creature who could help him: the Dragon Empress.
And he was forbidden from interacting with her.
I have to try, he thought as he broke through the ceiling of clouds and emerged beneath a hemisphere of glittering blue. No matter what enchantments bind her, she is obligated to protect her kin.
The sun was warming his wings and the wind was with him. He would be able to enter her home—all dragons had the ability—but getting there was another matter. She lived in the Broken Vale, which could only be entered through one of the magnetic poles of the planet. Its closest natural entrance would be in Xintrallent, the northern ice continent.
Thorion shook his head with another growl. Xintrallent lay hundreds of leagues beyond the coast of the Galantasa, and there were no major landmasses between the two. He couldn’t make the journey overseas. Besides, he would never last in such a cold, dark climate.
That was almost enough to turn him away from the idea, but now that he’d thought of it, he couldn’t un-think it. He was too much like his bondmate in that respect: once she latched onto something, she was unable to let it go.
Still, the problem of getting to the Broken Vale seemed an insurmountable one.
There are other ways in, Thorion reasoned with a mental voice that sounded an awful lot like Keriya’s. There are Vale portals. Every god has one. That means there must be at least four portals in Allentria. In that case, maybe I should seek out Valaan.
The sensible, draconic part of Thorion rejected that idea. He had no idea where Valaan lived, nor did anyone else. Mortals went to shrines and temples to invoke or pray to their gods—man-made places where a Vale portal would surely not be.
The human part of Thorion agreed it was a bad idea, but that was because fear stirred in his gut when he thought of going to the Fironem.
What of the other Allentrian guardians? He was in the Erastate, he could search for Naero—but the same problem applied. He hadn’t the faintest clue where the gryphon-god might live. He suspected that Zumarra, the serpent-god of the Galantasa, had a residence in the depths of the Galantrian Lake . . . but it was only a suspicion, and there were too many logistical problems for him to think the attempt worthwhile.
That left him with Shivnath.
Going to Shivnath’s territory was as bad as going to the Broken Vale, but it had the benefit of being closer. So he banked and flew east toward the Smarlands.
While it would be faster to fly straight across Allentria, he decided to take a more roundabout route. He would angle over the rainforest, which was largely uninhabited, and curve around the lake.
He rose to a comfortable cruising altitude, his fingers and membranous skin bending around air pockets of the gradient winds. Though he no longer had access to the hive-mind, he retained a decent sense of geography from the memories he’d studied in his youth. Argos Moor was over two-thousand leagues away. He was clipping along at a good pace, but he wouldn’t be able to average more than forty or fifty leagues an hour—and in his current condition, it would be dangerous for him to over-exert himself.
But this was what he was made for. Hollow scales, porous bones, serpentine body, wide wingspan—his kin had evolved to handle prolonged flight. He drew energy from the sun and his second set of lids rose to shield his eyes from the wind. He tucked his legs against his body and used his tail as a rudder, steering north.
He bared his fangs in a smile. Never in his life had he soared like this! He’d only flown in short spurts while traveling with Keriya, and as for his time in the Etherworld . . . that place had been a prison. No one had wielded there, and no one had flown.
He made a mental note to take Keriya flying after they were reunited. He would probably be big enough to carry her by then. Despite the adverse effects of the darksalm, he was still growing.
The sun fell behind him as he flew onward. The clouds thinned and the world grew dark. Thorion didn’t need light to find his way—he was using the feel of the high-altitude wind to navigate—but the air currents were dying, and he had to impose limits on himself.
The countryside below looked deserted, so he returned to the heavier, humid air of lower altitudes. Soaring on the last of the rising currents, he spotted a pack of aeluros trotting in single file. Their winter coats shone silver in the light of the rising moons. Thorion’s mouth watered as he eyed the large alpha—but he wasn’t cruel, and he knew the animals needed their leader. He instead elected to pick off one of the older canids at the tail of the group.
It was an easy kill. He glided up silently and dropped onto his victim, snapping its spine. The other aeluros howled their fury, and the alpha rushed him. Thorion spread his wings and hissed, and the beasts scattered into the night.
He ate heartily. No part of the aeluro went to waste, though it was old and stringy. He licked clean the bones, then dug a hole in a snowdrift beside a rocky bluff. It would keep the night winds off him and hide him from any enemies.
Gingerly, he pulled the iron arrow from his side. Despite his promise to conserve his strength, he attempted a minor healing spell. To his relief, he could touch his source when he sought it. He bent time-threads around the small gash in his scales, weaving something simple to accelerate the wound’s natural healing process. Blood gushed from the wound as he worked, but he was able to close the injury quickly.
The next morning it took him a long time to move. With no humans to light breakfast fires, he had to find the strength to get going on his own. He’d never appreciated how useful it was to have mortals around.
Thorion walked as the sun rose. The world warmed fractionally. When he came to a road he took to the air, rising on thermals until he could once again soar on the highest currents. If a human spotted him, at this height he would appear as nothing but a speck in the sky.
He watched the snowy landscape unfurl beneath him, the edges of the horizon resolving from the haze of misty blue atmosphere, and reflected on how much the world had changed since his family had left it. Where were the other magnificent beasts of the skies? In past and better ages, dragons had shared the heavens with noble creatures like gryphons and rocs, and less desirable ones like harpies and wyverns.
“Human interference, no doubt,” he growled. He loved Keriya and her friends, but it was apparent that in the seven-thousand years since the dragons had been imprisoned, mortals hadn’t learned anything about balance or respect for nature.
He reached the rainforest by midday. Since he was ravenous again, he hunted an ibex and ate until his belly sagged. But, he reminded himself, better to be overfed on a journey such as this—especially when he’d have to cover a lot of ground tomorrow to pass the human-rich area of Irongarde and its outlying settlements.
The next
day he was glad for the additional sustenance, for the winds brought him straight toward the city. He saw the spires rising from the mists and hastily banked south. As he flew by, he felt a sense of longing and loss. He had been happy there. He had been safe.
How were the villagers? Had they recovered from Tanthflame’s attack? Thorion found himself desperately curious about their wellbeing, and it was all he could do to keep his distance.
He flew until Irongarde was but a memory. He was approaching the bogspectre’s territory, and he had no intentions of running into the psychotic monster again. Though by the last accounts they’d heard, it was roaming the Galantasa in search of its ancient blade. What if it found the weapon?
“Don’t worry about that until you have to,” he told himself firmly, and a touch too loudly. His voice echoed through the canyons and frightened a flock of blue-winged birds into flight.
It wasn’t wise counsel, and no self-respecting dragon elder would have given it. It was human advice, but it allowed Thorion to ignore the claws of anxiety that dug into his gut when he thought of the sword and the bogspectre. After he returned from the Broken Vale—If I return, he thought darkly, considering the myriad dangers of his visit—he would deal with the rest of his problems then.
He didn’t have the strength to hunt when he stopped that night, and he regretted it when he awoke to a howling blizzard the next morning. It was a battle to get airborne. He strained his wings as he fought the weather, trying to climb above the clouds. He managed it, but the effort exhausted him. Though he spent the next few hours soaring with the sun warming his bones, he could feel his strength waning.
He wanted to fly beyond the storm, but he couldn’t keep himself aloft. He dove into the blizzard to find shelter. The winds tore at him and he tumbled through the air like a stray leaf, smacking into treetops and narrowly avoiding a collision with a cliff.