They forded the river the next morning. Though there wasn’t much snow this far south, the water of the West Outlet was as glacial as ever. Max and Alphir didn’t seem bothered as they trekked into the gorge, but Keriya’s feet were swollen and sore from the cold. She limped after them, picking her way through the treacherous terrain.
They crested a ridge fanged with pointy rock spires and descended through veils of fog into a valley as still as death.
“We’ll be safe enough here—even if we build a fire, the light and smoke will be hidden by the peaks,” said Max. He removed Alphir’s bridle and let the arion go to graze. The wind horse’s movements were delicate, and he didn’t disturb the morbid, unearthly stillness.
“Now what?” asked Keriya.
“Now we wait for Thorion,” said Max. “Any idea when he’ll arrive?”
She shook her head. “He seemed far away when he last contacted me.”
“The empire is only so big,” Max told her bracingly. “I’m sure he’ll be here in a couple days.”
But a couple days came and went, and there was no sign of Thorion. Keriya reached out telepathically, casting her consciousness across the land every morning and evening, hoping to sense something.
“I mean, he can’t have died or anything,” she reasoned, pacing before Max as he prepared their dinner. The thing roasting over their fire looked like a rock, but was actually a species of armored land crab.
“Of course he hasn’t died,” Max said patiently. “You’d have felt it.”
“He’s hidden himself so I can’t sense him.” Keriya chewed on her fingernails and scanned the empty sky. “He’s doing something important without me. He’s keeping me out of it on purpose.” She kicked a pebble. It tumbled downhill and a deep, resounding crack echoed through the valley. Keriya froze as the ground shuddered.
“Sorry. I forgot how fragile it is,” she mumbled. “But what if he’s hurt, or starving, or—”
“Keriya, Thorion is a dragon. The intelligence you possess isn’t a thousandth-part of what he has,” Max told her. “You don’t have the power to help him. So please relax and try not to bring the gorge down in a rock slide.”
Max’s words were as true now as they had been in the Naetren Mountains, and the fact that they were true filled Keriya with a furious despair. She couldn’t help her drackling with any of the tasks ahead, from curing him to facing Necrovar. She had no magic.
But she did have a book. A book of prophecies, a book that might be filled with a vast wealth of knowledge. So Keriya fished the tome from her pack. Since the Allentrians and Aerians shared a language, with the major differences being dialects and certain words, she figured her only obstacle was the runes.
Another day passed, during which time she tried to translate the alphabet. Nothing she did made sense. While Aerian script often featured two of the same letters sequentially, in the book, double letters seemed to be denoted by a looping accent mark beneath the runes. There were also fewer total runes in the Allentrian alphabet.
She could have asked Max for help, but something within her—stubbornness, pride, or perhaps a desire to prove herself—insisted that she carry on alone.
She sat by the light of the fire on her second evening of work, scratching possible translations in a patch of loose soil. She’d arbitrarily assigned the word ‘and’ to the most common three-rune phrase in the book. She took a two-rune phrase next, and figured it might mean ‘on,’ or perhaps ‘in’; she found a four-letter word that could potentially mean ‘dark,’ and the five-letter word following it might logically be ‘night.’ For consistency, that would mean the two-rune word must be ‘on.’ She rubbed her finger through the dirt, erasing ‘in’ as a possibility.
Now she had a good assortment of letters, but she’d gotten this far before only to find something was wrong. She turned the page and found the white dragon. The illustration reminded her of the picture of Shivnath in her favorite childhood book.
Her gaze slid from the dragon to the paragraph beneath him. Keriya narrowed in on a six-rune word, and, using the runes she’d assigned, wrote it in Aerian script:
DRAGON
Just like that, everything fell into place. With three vowels she could easily guess other small words, and soon she’d scratched a full translation of the Allentrian alphabet. She scanned the book with growing excitement. Suddenly there was order and familiarity to the runes.
She lifted her head, beaming, to share her breakthrough with Max. He was already asleep, leaning against a mossy boulder.
No matter; she wouldn’t disturb him. She scooted closer to the embers of the fire and flipped back to page one to begin her translation.
CHAPTER FORTY
“Your thoughts shape your world.”
~ Elven Proverb
Fletcher wandered the grand halls of Indrath Eydres, the elven palace. The corridors seemed deserted, but he had the sense that someone was watching him. Glancing back, he thought he saw the hem of a dark cloak disappear around a corner, as if its owner had just hidden from his view. He quickened his pace, trying to find an appropriate place to wait for Taeleia.
A group of elves entered the hall, and Fletcher stooped into a sort of crouching bow. They cast him suspicious glances as they passed, their pale eyes sparkling in the rosy gloom of the dusk.
As it grew darker, the vines that stretched along the walls and twined around pillars stirred, and blossoms opened among their leaves. The flowers emitted a soft glow, and Fletcher used their light to find his way to an open courtyard complete with a pond and fountain.
He sat on a marble bench by the water and watched gold-scaled fish swim in lazy circles. He thought of his friends and wondered how they were faring. Shuddering, he recalled the certainty with which Illistriel had spoken of Thorion’s demise, and sent a silent prayer to Shivnath to watch over Keriya and the drackling.
To distract himself from his thoughts, he leaned forward and poked a finger into the warm water, waggling it at the fish.
“I wouldn’t do that if I were you. The koi are vicious.”
Fletcher snatched his hand back and jerked around to find Taeleia standing at the courtyard entrance. Her eyes glittered with amusement as she approached him.
As Fletcher scooted over on the bench to make room for her, a shadow flitted across the other side of the courtyard. The hulking figure of her bodyguard emerged from an alcove before vanishing once more.
“That is Danisan, my most loyal advisor. He won’t hurt you,” she told Fletcher, as he craned his neck to see where the huge elf had gone. He suspected Danisan was the one who’d been tailing him. “Nor will any of my people. They know you are under my protection.”
Fletcher’s hand slid into his coat pocket and closed around the letter Effrax had written. “Lady Taeleia, I assume you know what’s happening in Allentria.”
“Yes,” she said slowly. “Before I left Noryk, Commander-General Tanthflame spoke to me about the evil acts the dragon committed, and asked for the elves’ support in his endeavors to eliminate threats to our empire.”
Fletcher’s heart plummeted like a stone. “Tanthflame has painted Thorion and his allies as monsters—myself included, you may have seen wanted posters for me—but you can’t believe him.”
“I don’t,” she said lightly.
Fletcher blinked. “You . . . don’t? Just like that? It’s that simple?”
“Nothing is ever that simple,” she told him with a hint of a smile. “Tanthflame hoped to sway me to his side using fear. He thought I would remember the dragons’ crimes of ages past and that I would side against Lord Thorion.”
Fletcher wrinkled his nose in confusion. “Crimes?”
“Dragons wield a powerful arcane magic. During the Great War, we begged them to fight with us against the Shadow, but they ignored our pleas. The creatures who valued wisdom and balance above
all else stood aside and watched as Necrovar destroyed the world . . . and to this day, no one knows why. It is the greatest mystery of our past. Perhaps if we understood it, our present would be different.”
An eerie chill whispered down Fletcher’s spine at the elf’s portentous words.
“I can’t tell you why the dragons abandoned the mortal races of Selaras to suffer at the Shadow’s hand, but I do know it went against their deepest nature,” she continued. “And while Necrovar has always maintained that the dragons caused the imbalance, I know who is truly to blame. If Lord Thorion stands against the Shadow, I will stand by his side.”
Fletcher felt himself sag with relief. “Thank you for believing in him,” he whispered.
Taeleia nodded as if it were all in a day’s work. She struck Fletcher as being one of the noblest creatures he’d met in Allentria, yet her head was bowed, and in her face there was hidden a deep sadness he thought he recognized.
“Why was your mother so upset to see you?” The question was out of his mouth before he could stop himself.
“The tale is long, and may not make sense to a human.”
“Try me,” he said, softening the words with a smile.
“To explain it would paint me in poor light,” she admitted. “The truth about me is my greatest shame.”
Fletcher didn’t know how far he should press the elf; he might offend her, or she might think he was trying to pry for information. But her words had awoken something within him, and he thought he would be a coward if he didn’t speak.
“I don’t know much about elves,” he said, “but I know plenty about shame. And I’m a good listener if you want to talk about it.”
Taeleia’s scaly face softened. “You have a kind heart, Master Earengale. Very well.” She took a deep breath and began.
“In elven culture, names are of the utmost importance. By tradition, the eldest member of a family bestows names upon those of the younger generations, but this was not the case for me. I was named by an outsider, one who was not of Alenciae blood. This is one of the reasons my mother resents me.”
“Why?” said Fletcher. “That wasn’t your fault.”
“We receive our use-names on the eve of our tenth birthday, once we are old enough to know ourselves. I was also old enough to understand the importance of the tradition, yet I made the conscious choice to break the rules and not attend my own naming ceremony.”
“Ah.” Fletcher nodded. “Yikes.”
“You cannot imagine the wrath of an old elf,” said Taeleia.
“I might be able to,” he muttered, remembering the fury in Illistriel’s icy eyes when her daughter had spoken against her.
“The elven mage I was with at the time did not want me to be nameless, so she took it upon herself to give me a name before the night ended. Taeleianaravalkaeriess: it translates roughly to ‘The Flower That Blooms War.’”
Fletcher’s eyes widened. “No offense, but that’s kind of a terrible name. Why would she call you something like that?”
“Elves do not choose the name, it comes to us in visions. Our mages piece it together from images of the past, present, and—occasionally—future. My mother tried to revoke it, but it was too late. So, that is who I am,” she finished softly.
“But it’s just a name, right?”
“I’ve already told you, names are of the utmost importance to us,” Taeleia reminded him. “Which brings us to the other reason my mother resents me. She believes my name is a dark stain on our bloodline. The elves abhor war. After the Great War ended, we swore we would never fight again.”
“Seems an easy enough promise,” said Fletcher.
“Yet it was harder to keep than we imagined. In the Fourth and Fifth Ages we battled the Syrionese; in the Seventh Age we fought during the mass-murders of the wielding animals; we have long been at odds with the Allentrian Empire because the humans attacked Elvinthrane in the Eighth Age. Every time we fight, we lose more of who we are . . . and then I was named.” She let out a soft sigh and closed her eyes.
“I will bring war to my people, Fletcher. They know it, and they fear me. My mother fears me most of all, for she is Illistrielivaetrunaria: ‘She Who Rules Without A Throne.’ I am the true lumina of the elves, but she asked me to leave Elvinthrane because she did not want me to lead our people into conflict. So I abandoned my home, and I allow her to rule as steward.”
Fletcher didn’t buy the concept that an elf was doomed to a specific fate because of the name she was given—it seemed like a convenient sort of self-fulfilling prophecy to him—but there was no denying that Taeleia’s story was unsettling, given the political climate in Allentria.
“I’m sorry you had to go through all of that,” he murmured. He could see how much this was weighing on her.
“When I help Lord Thorion, it must be clear that I am acting alone. I have already resigned from the Council of Nine, and I will tell those who are loyal to me not to follow where I go. My actions must not be interpreted as a declaration of allegiance to any faction in the empire,” she said heavily. “The elves cannot fight again. We cannot—will not—survive another war.”
Fletcher frowned. “You’d turn your back on Allentria because of a name?”
“I didn’t say that,” said Taeleia, a sharp note in her lilting voice. “I will fight the Shadow to my last breath, but my people must remain safe. I will do everything in my power to stop Necrovar before he grows strong enough to bring the war to them. I believe that means I must help you and your dragon.”
Thorion belonged to no one—and if he could be classified as anyone’s dragon, he would most assuredly be Keriya’s—but the elf’s words made Fletcher feel more connected to the drackling. It made him feel like he was a real and important part of the quest to save Thorion’s life.
And I am, Fletcher thought, warmth thrumming through him. I pulled my weight. I did what I set out to do. For the first time since the attack on Irongarde, things were going right. The most powerful elven healer had joined their side.
“We should leave as soon as possible,” Taeleia added. “Necrovar is gaining strength and followers as we speak, and I have no desire to linger. I am unwelcome, and I cannot blame my people for not wanting me here. The sooner I go, the safer they will be.”
“I agreed to meet my friends at the Valaani Temple in the Fironem,” Fletcher told her. “I have a bloodbound carriage we can take, and I think it should get us there safely.”
“Has it been enchanted to know the location of the temple?”
“Uh,” said Fletcher, scrunching his nose in thought. He wasn’t sure about that.
“It matters not, because a bloodbound will cause trouble when crossing the border. Give me a few days to gather provisions for the trip. I’d like to prepare some potions for the dragon, and I need to put some serious thought into how we should travel.”
“I’m yours to command, Lumina Taeleia,” said Fletcher, thumping his fist over his heart in a gesture of solidarity. “Let me know what I can do to help, and I’ll gladly do it. The sooner we reach Thorion, the better.”
That coaxed a genuine smile from Taeleia. It transformed her features—so similar to those of a human, yet so alien—and melted the sadness that had settled into her scales.
“Thank you, Fletcher,” she said.
CHAPTER FORTY-ONE
“Take caution with your wishes, lest they come true.”
~ Moorfainian Proverb
By taking twigs and burning their ends in fire, Keriya fashioned styluses. She used the burnt points to scratch her translations in the margins of the book. If Erasmus could have seen her defacing the ancient tome, he’d have whipped her hands with a pine branch.
Keriya allowed herself a fond smile as she thought of the old Healer, but it faded as gloom settled on her. Another week had passed, and still there was no news from Thorion. K
eriya had made amazing headway with the book, but not even her work could distract her from the gnawing feeling that something horrible had happened.
She looked at the page before her, reviewing the lines she had translated, trying to distract herself from the relentless churn of anxiety in her stomach:
Flesh into sword, bone into blade,
Magic and blood and legend are made.
Eternity binds only those who are dead,
But thence from this spell shall I rise once again.
The Shadow will rule and I will have been lost,
But the metal remains where the mortal will rot.
My soul shall be sundered for no one to own,
My reward is the sin for which I must atone.
So passes the life and the power in me -
I surrender myself to my Destiny.
She’d thought knowing Valerion’s full prophecy would give her the answers she sought, but this was more cryptic rubbish. The first couplet alluded to war, she could tell that much. The third and fourth lines referred to Valerion’s return from the dead, but provided no additional clues as to the nature of his resurrection. The hint that the Shadow would rule was distressing, to say the least. And there was that last couplet, wherein Valerion acknowledged his inevitable demise. It gave her shivers to read it.
She heard the crunch of footsteps on gravel and closed the book with a snap that sent a plume of dust from its weathered pages. Max appeared, leading Alphir. He smiled as he passed Keriya, then he and the arion disappeared behind a boulder, heading for the river.
Well-behaved though he was, Alphir got antsy in the gorge. He didn’t have space to move freely, and that was unpleasant for a creature of his nature. Keriya wasn’t happy, either—and she was sick of eating land crabs—but she stayed, because Thorion had promised he’d come.
“Where are you?” she whispered to the empty sky. She wrapped her cloak around herself and shivered. The movement sent aches along her ribs.
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