A SEA, ENCASED in ice, glittered before them in frosted splendor. Massive shards of ice thrust upward at the sea’s edge, like waves that had frozen into giant crystals at the moment they’d crashed against the rocky shore. Drifts of snow lay in swirls and streaks, strange and undulating shapes drawn by the unrelenting wind that tugged at the landscape. Everything was blindingly bright, mournfully empty, and unrelentingly cold. It was a barren, terrible beauty.
Briand stood at the shore, the wind snatching at the cape around her shoulders and making it dance. The sky overhead was a wild, brilliant blue so lonely and cold that it made her bones ache to look at it. The ice kissed the horizon in a silver line as sharp as a blade’s edge.
Auberon pointed at the line. “Beyond there lies Ikarad.” He looked at Briand. “Call your beast, dragon girl.”
She stared back at him a moment. She was afraid. She looked at Kael, who stood a few paces away with his hands clasped behind his back and his brows drawn together as he watched her. He was calm, assured, his stance planted against the wind and his eyes like brands that seared all the way to her soul.
She loved him.
That love gave her strength.
She closed her eyes and reached deep with her mind.
It was cold below the ice, and the water was murky and blue-green, lit with what filmy sunlight shone through the frozen crust. The dragons slept deep, deep below in hibernation, their minds drifting in the dark corridors of dreams.
One mind caught with hers, hers like a fishhook snagging on something much bigger and stronger than a carp. She felt numbness first, as if she were falling from a great height—as if she had struck the ground and everything in her body had broken—
The dragon’s eyes opened with a snap.
Pain shot through Briand, pain so pure and hot that she couldn’t hold back the scream that wrenched from her mouth. Kael was at her side in a single stride, and Auberon and Nath too, and she was on her knees beside the ice, one hand pressed to the cold barrier between her and the dragon below as she screamed. The dracules rushed to her shoulder, making querulous noises in their throats.
She felt hands lifting her. Kael. He pressed her against his chest, one arm holding her up, the other cradling her face. “Briand!”
The dragon was like pure, cold fire. She was caught in the fire. It was burning her. It was consuming her. She was like a coal at the bottom of a heap of logs, only the logs were ice. She was ice. She was burning, but she was cold, and she was
Splintering
Apart
In
A G O N Y.
Dimly, she heard Kael and Auberon arguing above her.
“Do something,” Kael demanded.
Auberon was hissing something back, holding up his gloved hands, and Nath ground out, “So help me, Seeker, if you can save her and you do nothing, I’ll carve out your insides and feed them to you!”
The dragon writhed beneath the ice. It was far, far below her, a canyon’s depth below. It rose, swimming in a tight circle, shaking itself to be free of her.
Briand’s talisman was a circle of heat against her skin, diverting some of the pain, but not enough.
Auberon was beside her. “Dragon girl,” he said urgently, and then, “Briand!”
She forced herself to look up at him, and he pressed his forehead against hers. His power flickered against her mind weakly, fragments of memories flashing like ghosts before her eyes, and she struggled to see what he was trying to say to her. Circles, an endless loop of circles to pass the magic through, to keep it from burning her from the inside out, but she couldn’t seem to find her way out of the prison of the pain.
“I need my hands,” Auberon spat at the others.
She felt the press of Sieya and Vox’s snouts against her dangling feet, and something from their touch sent a stabilizing current through her, enough to allow her to escape from the dragon and rise back to her own mind.
She gasped as if coming up for air, and Kael murmured frantically into her hair, “Lords help me,” and cradled her tighter against him in relief.
She gasped again. She was drowning in the dragon’s head. Struggling upward to her body, falling back…
“Briand,” Kael said. “Briand.”
She focused on his face as she snapped back into her own mind. She gave him a shaky, pain-filled smile.
“I’m here,” she managed, the words a whisper.
Tibus gave a shout. “Look,” he called, pointing.
The dragon swam in circles beneath the ice. Briand turned her head weakly; she could make out the ripple of its dark shape through the clouded surface, large as a ship. The creature dipped low, nearly disappearing, and then rose to the surface again in a rush of scales and claws that wheeled away from them and then back again.
Kael exhaled angrily. He looked over her head at Auberon with a scorching expression. His jaw was flexed tight as a bowstring. “Are you trying to kill her?” he ground out.
Briand tried to struggle into a sitting position, and Kael helped her up. Nath lingered close, hovering anxiously, and Tibus and Crispin stood nearby with their arms dangling helplessly.
Auberon stood apart from the others, his eyes haggard, his chest rising and falling with rapid breaths. “No,” he said simply. “I am not. Quite the opposite.”
The dragon’s scales made a scraping sound against the ice as it bumped against the frozen ceiling holding in the sea. The tail dragged behind it, the tip rasping against the underside of the ice as the dragon dove deep again, another summersault in the blue water as it tested the tether of Briand’s mind. Crispin jumped back in terror, and Nath and Tibus put their hands on the swords at their belts.
Briand felt as if she were holding onto the dragon with her fingernails. She struggled to get a better grip as pain shot through her, making her toes curl and her fingers clench. She ground her teeth together as tears streamed from her eyes.
Kael’s hands were gentle as he cradled her. She buried her face in his chest and reached again, straining to hold the dragon’s mind.
Pain. Shooting bands of it, crackling like lightning.
“Dragonsayer,” Nath cried.
She didn’t answer.
To Kael, he shouted, “It’s killing her! Hang the Seeker’s sister, hang it all—abort the mission!”
But Briand held up a hand. She had the dragon. Her grip on its mind solidified, and she clung to it.
It wasn’t getting away.
“I have it,” she gasped. “I’ve got its mind in a vise. Let’s go.” She gestured wildly at the ice.
“Are you insane?” Nath demanded. “We can’t cross now. Look at you!” He gestured at her.
A look at Kael confirmed that he felt the same way. He put his hand against her cheek, his fingers brushing the back of her neck and burying themselves in her hair as he lifted his eyebrows. His gaze was dark, filled with a terror that struck Briand to her core.
“Let’s go,” she said again. “I can do this.”
“Are you sure, Catfoot?” Kael asked. His gaze bored into her, fraught with concern.
“Yes,” she began. But then she was half in the mind of the dragon, half in her own. The ground dipped, and her eyes rolled back in her head as—
She plunged into the murky blue water. The ice scraped her scales. She could hear the muffled sound of voices, and she was intrigued more than angry.
When she came back, she was shaking, her teeth chattering, her hands clenched into fists so tight that her skin had turned white at the knuckles. She gasped for air, but the feeling of icy water all around her, even in her lungs, did not abate. The pain of holding the dragon at the surface crackled through her whole body, radiating from her mind down her spine and into her limbs, and she felt as if someone had stabbed her through the back of the skull with a spear.
She tried to speak and groaned instead.
The muscles in Kael’s neck and shoulders were so taut that he looked like he was about to snap. “We don’t
have to do this,” he said in a low voice as he gripped both her arms.
“The mission,” she began.
“Hang the mission!” Nath declared.
“Catfoot, I won’t do this if it will kill you. We’ll find another way.”
“They’ll torture you if you go to Isglorn like you originally planned,” she gritted.
“You’re being tortured now,” he said. His hand was behind her head, his fingers threaded in her hair. His expression flickered, and she saw a flash of tenderness and anxiety and fierce determination.
The others were watching, but she didn’t care. Kael didn’t appear to either.
“I’m a dragonsayer,” she said. “And a guttersnipe, and a thief-queen. I’m strong, Kael.”
“You are,” he agreed. But his jaw was clenched as hard as steel, and his fingers trembled against the skin on the back of her neck.
It was tearing him apart to see her like this.
She brushed her fingers against his cheek. His eyes fluttered closed for a second.
“Trust me,” she breathed. “Trust my strength. Trust me to do this.”
He opened his eyes again. He locked gazes with her, and he nodded.
She pushed herself up with effort. The others were watching with concern and fear knit across their brows.
“I can do this,” she said, louder this time.
“Of course you can,” Nath said fiercely, clenching his hands into fists as though he’d fight anyone who thought otherwise. Tears shimmered in his eyes—or was that just them watering in the chill of the wind? “You’re the scrappiest, hardiest guttersnipe I’ve ever known. You’ve commanded dragons, called a horde of ragloks, blasted Seekers into unconsciousness with their own powers, and dragged sea monsters to attack pirates. You’re the Scarlet Blade. You’re the blasted thief-queen of Gillspin. You are far too stubborn to die out here. I should know—you’ve been tormenting me with your hardheaded ways for years now.”
Tibus grunted in agreement. “I’ve watched you scale a twenty-meter tower barefoot with a knife between your teeth when you were only a child, dragonsayer. You have always had bravery in your veins.”
“You would have called it foolishness once,” Briand said, her voice catching as the pain rippled anew through her head.
“And I would have been wrong,” Tibus said firmly. Grimly. “We were the fools, for not seeing your merits when they were before us.”
“You’re the most terrifying person I’ve ever met, other than the Seekers,” Crispin added, not to be left out. “If anyone can wrestle a dragon across that lake of ice, it’s probably you.”
Nath smacked him on the head. “Probably?”
“Most definitely,” Crispin amended.
“My dull-witted captors are right, for once,” Auberon said quietly to her left. “You can do this, dragon girl. Make a ring. Thread it with your power. Weave a rope. And then, wrap the rope around the dragon’s mind.”
Briand turned a surprised gaze upon him, and he offered her the barest hint of a strained smile. Something laced that smile. Something painful and angry. She didn’t understand it, and she didn’t have the strength at the moment to try to tease out the meaning. She was exhausted and in a haze of pain.
Was he angry that she was still so weak? That she was still failing in her duty as dragonsayer?
Well if he was, he could jump through the ice and wrangle that dragon himself. She was finished with worrying about what others thought of her dragonsaying talents.
Briand breathed in and out like a woman in labor as the pain crawled into her veins like tentacles of thorny fire. She gazed at the sea of ice, contemplating the journey before her, and then she turned back to Kael.
“I’m going,” she said. “Help me stand.”
His eyes were stormy with emotion, both worry and pride warring within their depths.
Kael didn’t release her completely as he helped her to her feet. He kept his hand under her elbow, holding her steady. She was grateful for it.
“This is the strongest dragon I’ve ever touched minds with,” she said, panting, and then she cried out again. Her back arched as the dragon tried to swim below again. Her mind felt as though it were stretching to the bursting. Like her skull was about to explode.
“Briand!” Kael said sharply.
Her laugh was short and breathless. “It’s getting bored. It wants to leave.”
Auberon approached her from the other side, his chains clinking as he reached for her other arm. He met Kael’s eyes over the top of her head, and the two men studied each other a moment.
“I can help her,” Auberon said fiercely. “Let me help her, traitor.”
The old insult fell from his lips, and for a moment, Briand’s memory leaped back in time to when Kael had been a spy working undercover among the Seekers, and Auberon merely a spoiled Seeker lord who hated him.
How long ago that seemed now.
“You just tried that and failed, Seeker,” Nath said severely.
Auberon ignored him. He kept his face turned toward Kael. “But I need you to take off my gloves. I need my hands if I’m going to use my power effectively.”
The others stiffened. Nath’s hand dropped to his knife. Crispin’s mouth opened in horror. Tibus growled.
Kael only looked at Briand with a wordless question.
Briand reached for his hand. She gripped it hard as she slid her gaze to Auberon’s.
The wind whipped his pale hair across Auberon’s face, and he blinked.
“Do you trust him?” Kael asked her.
A trace of a scowl flickered across Auberon’s expression at Kael’s words, but he focused on Briand again, and when he did, he wore no scorn on his face, no twisting smirk, no traces of mockery.
“I think he wants his sister freed,” she said finally. “And I think that he won’t do anything to destroy your chances of saving her.”
“Then do it.” Kael’s voice was clipped. He looked at Nath and Tibus pointedly while he remained at her side, holding her arm.
“Sir,” Nath began in protest. “You can’t possibly—”
“I can,” Kael said.
Nath fell silent.
Tibus came forward, pulling the key from its place on his belt. He turned it over in his hand, reluctant, but he did as Kael had commanded.
Nath yanked his sword from its sheath. “Turn on us, Seeker, and I’ll cut that hand off,” he threatened.
Auberon stood still as the soldier unlocked the chains that kept the leather gloves in place.
The company held their breath. Nath shifted, his grip on his sword tightening.
Auberon sighed in relief as he peeled the right one off. He stood still, head back and chin lifted, as Tibus locked him back in the chains again.
The Seeker flexed his freed hand, which seemed luminously pale in the sunlight. His black fingernails glinted like onyx as he turned and reached for Briand.
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
BRIAND WAS IN too much pain to even flinch as the Seeker placed his naked palm against her temple. She closed her eyes, expecting more pain to join the symphony of agony swirling in her head.
Instead, a cool rush of power swept over her. He was trying to read her mind…? No, he was giving her his power. He was pushing it toward her, offering it up. She pulled it in and felt the familiar rush of memories pour into her, but with them, she realized she was gaining a boost of magic. She saw circles—he was prompting her to thread the magic through a loop in her mind, as he’d taught her before. She tried—she made the circle, but it kept collapsing in on itself. She was too tired. The dragon’s mind was too strong.
Still, the agonizing pain in her head lessened enough to allow her to breathe normally as her muscles unclenched.
Kael tensed at the change in her. “What is he doing?” he asked her quietly.
“Giving me a measure of his power,” she said into Kael’s shirt. “It’s not that different from when I turn a Seeker’s power back on them to knock
them unconscious.”
“That is the idea, anyway,” Auberon agreed. He was pale, as if the exchange were a strain to him. But he didn’t withdraw his hand. The flow of power didn’t stop.
Briand felt woozy, and perhaps it was just the sudden cessation of pain, but sandwiched between Kael and Auberon, she felt deeply, profoundly safe. They hated each other, yes, and they were sworn enemies, but in this moment, they were both utterly focused on taking away the agony in her head, and each of them was touching her with gentleness.
But she didn’t have time to ponder it. She arched her back as the dragon turned another loop beneath the ice, yanking on the connection between her and it. Her whole body became cold and numb, and she turned her head as the pain flashed bright. Auberon’s power flowed stronger, coating the cracks in her beleaguered mind, building a cushion against the brutal effect of the dragon. Kael’s arms tightened around her.
“Briand,” he said urgently. To Auberon, he snarled, “What are you doing to her, Seeker?”
“It’s the dragon,” Briand managed.
She opened her eyes again and craned her neck to find Kael’s gaze, trying to infuse hers with strength and reassurance. He was worried and frightened—she could feel it in the way he was holding her. But he trusted her as much as he didn’t trust Auberon. She knew that much.
“I can do this,” she said.
He gave her the stern look she knew so well—the one she’d been on the receiving end of since the days at her uncle’s estate, when she’d been climbing ramparts and stealing horses for rides in the moonlight. The look he gave when he was exasperated with her, but, she suspected, a little compelled by her tenacity. “And the Seeker’s magic?” he asked.
“It helps,” she whispered.
Kael exhaled and looked toward the horizon. His brow wrinkled, and a muscle in his jaw twitched. “Then let’s go. But quickly as we can. Let’s not make this torture of you last any longer than necessary.”
Beneath the ice, the dragon made another turn. It was a dark rush of shadow, a watery flight of wings and scales that made the horses snort and stamp their feet.
Kael gave the order, and the others mounted while the dracules tread nervous circles around the horses. Briand gave them instructions to follow, and they sent her thoughts of nervousness. She tried to soothe them with thoughts of warm fires, but more pain flashed through her body, and she ground her teeth together to keep from crying out.
A Court of Lies Page 17