~ Sindir Bladeleaf, Tenth Age
The bird found Keriya the day after the exorcism. She and Thorion had slept late into the afternoon, and she might have slept straight through til nightfall if not for the creature’s insistent squawking. She rubbed her tired eyes and squinted into the overcast sky. A hawk-like animal was circling overhead and making a terrible racket. It was so loud that it brought Max running.
“What’s going on?” he asked.
Thorion lifted his head and growled a warning at the animal. Far from being deterred, its chirping grew more insistent, and it flew down to settle on a nearby boulder.
Keriya frowned and pointed at its left leg. “What’s that?”
“Looks like a message canister,” said Max. He took a few tentative steps toward the bird. It let out a furious squawk and hopped closer to Keriya.
“Hello,” she said, staring at the bird. With another chirp it lifted its leg, offering the canister. She raised a bemused eyebrow and glanced at Thorion. “Should I take it?”
“I think so,” he replied. “He clearly wants you to have it.”
Her first instinct was to be suspicious—but she reasoned that if an enemy was trying to reach her, they wouldn’t do it with a messenger bird. They’d most likely do it with an army of shadowbeasts.
Keriya approached the bird cautiously and undid the clasp on the canister. There was a single parchment paper within. As soon as she had it in her grasp, the bird took off.
“I don’t believe it—it’s from Roxanne!” she exclaimed as she unrolled the paper and saw familiar runes. It was like a leaden weight had lifted from her heart. Even the dismal nature of the message—that Valaan couldn’t help—didn’t dampen her spirits. Knowing Roxanne was safe more than made up for the disappointing news.
Besides, they didn’t need Valaan anymore.
She shared the letter with Thorion and Max, whose frown deepened when she read it aloud.
“They can’t be serious,” he murmured. “They want us to go to Indrath Nazrith?”
Keriya turned to Thorion. “Do you mind one more stop before we go to Necrovar?”
“I certainly don’t mind,” he said in a dry voice. “It will be good to see our friends again before our adventure comes to an end.”
Now that the end was in sight, Keriya found herself reluctant to face it. Another two days passed in the Temariyan Gorge, during which time Thorion rested and regained what little strength he had. Nervous though she was about what was to come, Keriya knew it was worse to sit around. She left the dragon basking on a rock in the afternoon and went to talk to Max about leaving. She found him hunting for land crabs.
“Hi,” she said awkwardly. “I was wondering if tomorrow would be okay for you to . . . to keep going.”
Max stood and brushed the dirt from his hands. She fidgeted under his gaze as the silence stretched between them.
“I don’t think you should go to the Fironem.”
Keriya blinked. She was sure she must have misheard—Max was the one who’d kept insisting they go to the southern kingdom. After a long pause, she asked the only question she could articulate: “Why?”
“Because it’s dangerous.”
She bit back a laugh. Had there been a time in the last year when she hadn’t been in danger? “I’m not afraid.”
“I know, and that’s what bothers me most. You have no idea what you’re up against.”
“Oh, I have an idea,” she growled, thinking of her last few conversations with Necrovar. She hadn’t shared those with anyone, not even Thorion.
“He’ll kill you without a second thought. You’re walking into a trap and I . . .” Max closed his eyes and shook his head. “I just want you to be safe.”
“I always knew where my story would end. Shivnath told me what I had to do. Now it’s time for me to do it.”
Max didn’t argue, but she saw on his face a softer version of the disparagement the Aerians had regarded her with. There was sadness in his gaze, but also pity. He didn’t believe in her.
That was not a comforting thought, nor was it the way Keriya wanted to start the final leg of their journey, but they could delay no longer. So that night they packed their scant belongings and prepared themselves for what lay ahead.
The next day dawned bright and blustery. Keriya was too antsy to eat—and she’d had enough crab meat to last a lifetime—so Max skipped breakfast. He scoured the area to make sure they left no traces behind. Keriya hefted her pack and buckled the hand-cannon holster around her waist, securing it over the sword’s belt.
They marched in single file to the southern lip of the gorge and picked their way through unstable rocks toward the river. The plan was to follow the West Outlet and continue southeast to the Fironian border, which—according to Max—was marked by a great canyon.
Now that they were on the move, Keriya’s spirits rose. Thorion took to the skies, soaring on high air currents, and she and Max rode Alphir along the river’s edge. The knot in her stomach loosened and she managed to find enjoyment in the blossoming countryside rolling by.
They made camp in a secluded hollow of the land and Thorion joined them once dark had fully fallen. As Max coaxed a fire to life and prepared their supper, Keriya shared her translations with the dragon. Neither he nor the prince were as fascinated by the prophecies as she was.
“Look.” Frustrated by their lack of enthusiasm, Keriya shoved the book under Thorion’s snout, pointing at a page she’d blackened with scribbles. “It’s a prophecy Helkryvt himself made!”
“Helkryvt made many prophecies,” said Max. “He was a mage, an expert wielder, and he had an excellent grasp of timemagic.”
“This one seems important.”
“They were all important,” said Thorion. “But not all prophecies are true.”
Keriya frowned. “Then what’s the point of them?”
“The River of Time has many tributaries,” he explained, smiling at her tone. Even his smile was less than it had been—once vibrant and merry, it now lacked sparkle. “What is untrue in our world may come to pass in another. There are many worlds parallel to ours.”
“Like the Etherworld?”
“The Etherworld exists within our universe. But there are hundreds, thousands, perhaps infinite reflections of our world that are different because people made different choices within them. When a choice is made, the River of Time splits and a different reality is born. Prophecies are an expression of timemagic—glimpses of the future—and some of them draw from tributaries that have split from our own.”
Keriya couldn’t wrap her head around this concept, so she returned her attention to the book. Helkryvt’s prophecy glared up at her, cryptic and chilling:
So it passes - the Betrayer has become now the betrayed;
For a single mortal sin has my debt been paid.
But from the sin my power grows, and from there shall I rise.
When I return shall tyrants fall, old orders face demise.
They fight me at their doorstep, but they love me in their hearts.
Though resistance shall be met with, they can’t tear me apart.
No mortal’s hand shall harm me, not by magic, sword, or knife -
Only the Blood can give me death, where once it gave me life.
“Only the blood can give me death . . .” she murmured, tapping the page. This reference to dragon blood explained why no one had believed she could kill Necrovar. Necrovar had taunted her with that fact.
“Thorion, do you remember what Necrovar said before we killed him—or thought we had?” she asked. Thorion tilted his head; it was clear he hadn’t committed the Shadow’s words to memory, as she had done. “He said, ‘Only the blood can give me death, where once it gave me life.’ I thought this last line of his prophecy was referring to dragons—”
“It is,”
said Thorion. “He will die by a dragon’s hand.”
“But after that, he told us there was no one left who could kill him. The way he was acting, it was like he knew you couldn’t do it. Like he didn’t think you were a threat.”
A crease appeared between Thorion’s brow ridges.
“I gather the dragons have some pretty big secrets about their blood,” she said. She didn’t want to upset him by prying—but she wasn’t prying. She didn’t much care about the mysterious draconic powers she would never understand, she was only interested in how and why dragon blood was deadly to Necrovar.
“If the prophecy is referencing a particular secret, it’s a secret I don’t know,” Thorion admitted. He leaned closer to inspect the page. Keriya watched as his lips silently formed the last words of the poem.
“Perhaps we’re reading too far into it,” he said at last. “Perhaps when Necrovar was taunting us, he wasn’t referencing some strange secret. Perhaps he was stating facts.”
“What do you mean?”
“He knew I was infected. He knew it was only a matter of time before I . . . well, before I wasn’t a threat to him, one way or another.”
Keriya refused to accept that explanation. If she did, it would mean she had acknowledged that there was no hope for Thorion, that she and her drackling were facing a foe neither of them could defeat.
“What if there was another bloodline that could destroy him?” she pressed. “His own bloodline, maybe, since he references the blood that gave him life. His human host, Helkryvt—did he have a family?”
“He did,” said Thorion. “Helkryvt’s mother was bonded, but she and her dragon died when he was young. He murdered his father shortly after he rose to power. He had a lover—a fire mage named Beledine Arowey—but he killed her, too. And there is no evidence that she bore him any children.”
Keriya nodded absently, chewing on her lip. “What about Valerion?”
“What about him?”
“He and Necrovar are always mentioned together. They were enemies. Plus, he was a dragon, which means he could have killed the Shadow.”
From the slightest narrowing of Thorion’s eyes, Keriya suspected she was onto something. The only question was, would Thorion give her answers? Or had she stumbled on another secret not meant for human ears?
“Valerion’s father was Ghokarian Equilumos,” said Thorion. “He was the Archon of a powerful dragonflight before he bonded. But he, too, was murdered by Helkryvt.”
Keriya’s brows shot up. Helkryvt had quarreled with Valerion’s father. That seemed suspicious.
“Could he have been trying to kill his only competition?” she asked.
“Helkryvt killed countless bonded dragons in his time,” said Thorion. “Even if there was something special about the Equilumos bloodline, it wouldn’t help us. Valerion had no children. He turned himself into a human at a young age.”
“What?” That rerouted Keriya’s line of thought. “So he was a human?”
“Only in the most generic sense of the word. He was a dragon in all the ways that counted, for he had a dragon’s blood, mind, and soul. The dragons forbid their kin from fighting the Shadow. To evade this edict, Valerion changed himself. He became a human so he could join the war effort.” Thorion tilted his head. “I thought Uhs told you.”
“Uhs only told me Valerion was a dragon,” she murmured. Thoughts tumbled through her mind faster than she could make sense of them. Eventually she asked, “Why?”
“Why what?”
“Why did Valerion have to go through that trouble? Why didn’t the dragons fight?”
Empress Aldelphia had asserted that the dragons refused to aid the mortal races during the Great War—that was one of the reasons the Allentrians had needed Keriya. They’d wanted her to summon a dragon, but they’d also wanted to use her rheenar abilities to force the dragon to fight.
Keriya hadn’t known enough to ask questions about that when she’d started her quest. Now she had experienced Necrovar’s cruelty firsthand, and she’d become something of an expert on dragons.
“Thorion?” she prompted after a stretch of silence.
“They were forbidden from fighting,” he repeated.
“Right, but surely they could see how awful Necrovar was. Even if they didn’t have emotions, they must have known. You once told me the dragons used their wisdom and power to make the world a better place. If that’s true, why did they refuse to fight?”
“Their reasons don’t matter. The fact remains that they did not, so the task has fallen to us, instead.”
That recalled Keriya to her present problems. She’d thought she was onto something with the idea about bloodlines, but it was another dead-end in her hopeless battle against the Shadow.
The prophecy haunted her throughout the night. Necrovar strolled in and out of her dreams, taunting her with her oldest fears: You can’t do it. You’re not good enough. You have no magic.
The next day they followed the river into a silverwood forest. While there was plenty of space between the thin, towering trees, the ground was carpeted with spongy moss that slowed Alphir to a walk. Keriya and Max dismounted to give the arion a rest. The only good thing about the forest, which was damp and filled with nasty biting bugs, was that it was safe enough for Thorion to travel with them.
She observed him as he padded over rocks and under low-hanging branches. He sounded like Thorion and acted like Thorion. Yet something was missing from him—an indefinable something—and it made her heart ache to look at him.
When they stopped to make camp that night, Keriya took it upon herself to trail Thorion as he hunted in the misty woods. He froze, and Keriya stopped as well, thinking he’d spotted some animal to be their supper. His body went rigid and he began choking.
“Thorion,” she cried, running toward him. He snapped his wing out to keep her at bay, his sides heaving. Keriya skidded to a halt, watching as he hacked up a gob of black blood.
She was reminded of the bogspectre, of its dark, glistening, undulating body. Her stomach twisted and her hand clenched convulsively on the hilt of the monster’s decrepit weapon.
“I’m alright,” Thorion gasped when he could speak again.
“No, you’re not!”
“It’s unavoidable, Keriya,” he said, staring at her with dull, sunken eyes. “I have no soul, and my body is weak.”
Seized with inspiration, she dug in her cloak. Though the weather had grown warmer, she still wore the blue covering for protection from the damp. She produced the laesabrel packet Uhs had given her and loosened the drawstrings with fumbling fingers.
“Here,” she said, pulling a small bulb from the bag. “This will help.”
She wasn’t sure that was true, and judging by Thorion’s expression he also had doubts. His once proud head was bowed with regret, but when she offered him the bud he ate it without argument.
Thorion had more episodes over the next few days as they made their way through the forest. The first attack was so bad that Keriya insisted on giving him no less than four laesabrel buds. The second attack wasn’t as severe, but she still gave him two. That was more than half her precious stash gone.
They left the cover of the trees after a week of travel and emerged onto grassy plains. The open ground meant they could pick up their pace. Thorion resumed his flying and Alphir was free to gallop at full tilt across the rambling meadowlands.
The grass thinned and gave way to coarse, stony ground. Then they saw it: a great split in the land, hugging the curve of the horizon. It looked like an old wound in the flesh of the earth. Its crusty rock cliffs had a ruddy tint, like dried blood crumbling from the edges of a rotting cut.
“The Chasm,” said Max, reining Alphir to a walk.
“The border,” said Keriya, squinting through the haze to the kingdom on the far side of the abyss.
&nbs
p; Thorion dropped and landed beside them. “I don’t think I’m strong enough to carry you. Is there a place where you can cross on foot?”
“Yes, but the bridgeways will be heavily guarded,” said Max. “It will be safer for us here, in the wilderness. I can wield us over the narrow point.” He gestured to an outcrop of rock a league to the east. The divide was smaller there, but Keriya estimated it was thirty heights to the far side.
As they approached the so-called narrow point, a feeling of foreboding grew within her. Alphir seemed to share her discomfort. As they drew closer he tossed his head and stamped his hooves. Max pulled him to a halt and dismounted.
“What are you doing?” asked Keriya.
“I’ll scout the area. Stay here, and if you see any sign of danger, run.”
Before she could argue, he loped toward the fissure. He crept onto the rocky outcrop, staring around like a rabbit watching the skies for hawks, before waving them over.
“Do you think it’s safe?” Keriya muttered to Thorion as she urged the arion forward.
“Nowhere is safe,” he replied. “Least of all where we’re going.”
“I’ll send you first,” Max told her once they’d reached him. “Take only what you need. Humans are at the upper limits of what I can support over a distance like this.”
“How will Alphir get across?” asked Keriya, sliding inelegantly from the wind horse’s back.
“Alphir can leap long distances,” said Max, patting the arion fondly. “But this distance is too great for him. I’ll turn him loose, and he’ll find his way to the royal stables.”
Keriya felt an unexpected pang in her heart. “Bye Alphir,” she whispered.
Max stepped aside and she shuffled onto the outcrop, keenly aware of the sharp drops on either side of her. After a furious inner battle, she unslung her travel pack and laid the book of prophecies on the ground. It was a wrench leaving it behind, but it could no longer help her. She’d committed both Valerion’s and Helkryvt’s prophecies to memory . . . not that they’d been any help in the end.
“Right.” Max rolled his shoulders and shook his hands. “I think the best bet is for me to levitate you. Keep still and stay calm.”
Dragon Child Page 38