by Jada Fisher
“No, not at all,” Dille agreed quickly. “And we’re here because there’s about to be an earthquake that’s going to destroy a small clutch of brindled eggs that are in the back of the hatchery.”
“Brindled eggs?” the woman repeated in surprise. “No, we don’t have any of those in the cave. I would know. We don’t even have any brindle pairs. Or even mixed. The only brindle left is—” she cut herself off, going pale for a moment before laughing at herself. “Why am I worried about you knowing? You probably already do.”
“We probably already what?” Eist asked, feeling like she was still catching up to everything that had happened.
“Oh goodness,” she murmured, looking pleased with herself. “Why don’t you guys come with me?”
Eist looked at the little cottage in front of them. It was nondescript and almost hidden into the mountainside. It had taken them a good two hours to hike to it, Brunillde silent through most of the walk.
It reminded Eist of her grandfather’s place. Which meant it most likely was probably built into the mountain to make it more sizable on the inside.
“Mello, you can come out. It’s safe!”
There was a rumble that Eist could feel up her spine, and some vines in the mountain parted. Her breath caught in her throat as a broad, shovel-like head appeared, followed by a bronze, gold, and black-scaled dragon body.
“By the Three…” she whispered, staring openly as a beautiful brindled dragon stood before them.
And then Fior tackled it.
Eist let out a startled shout, hands going up to tell him to stop, but Dille gripped her arm.
“Look! They’re playing.”
Eist stopped in her tracks, watching as the two rolled around each other, mouthing play-bites into each other’s limbs and gently thwapping each other with their tails.
“There ya go, Mello. You missed all your friends, haven’t you?” She looked to Dille and Eist with a grin. “We haven’t seen another of her kind since we were brought here. I thought she was doomed to be the last one, but you’re telling me there are some secret brindle eggs in my own hatchery?”
Eist nodded. “Or at least, that’s the theory.”
“Uh, I’m a bit curious, though,” Dille added. “If you knew your dragon was the last one, why don’t you let her go gravid?”
“Mostly because she’s not supposed to exist. I popped into existence here and had to make a life until you showed up again. I couldn’t do that pretending to be a dragon rider, so I had to hide my girl away.
“Don’t get me wrong, I thought about sneaking just one little one in there, but she can’t lay until she goes to the hatching cave, and all of the other workers would definitely notice a brindled egg. You ever seen one?” Eist shook her head and the woman grinned even wider. “They’re like opals. I always bragged that they were the prettiest shells out there, just like their eyes.”
“The dragons must have adapted some sort of camouflage for their brindled eggs to try to hide them.”
“Yeah, hide them, right. You said some earthquake was gonna come and destroy the clutch? Those chances seem pretty slight.”
“That’s because it’s not just chance. It’s a deliberate attack by the Blight. After its encounter with you, it started trying to kill all brindles.”
“Huh,” she said, looking at their two dragons while they played. “And I guess it was successful considering that no one here seems to even remember what a brindle is.”
Eist nodded. “It’s the same in my time. For the longest while, the healers thought that he was a damaged copper dragon. That he’d been stunted at birth.”
Brunillde snorted. “Healers? They’re dumber now than they were when I was running around. I don’t know what made man turn against us witches, but they lost so much knowledge in their stupid extermination of our kind.”
Eist tucked that thought away for later. “Right. Well, about what we need from you…”
The woman’s face hardened a little before she let out a bitter sigh. “Let me guess, it doesn’t involve me going home.”
Eist felt her stomach turn with guilt, even though she hadn’t done anything to this woman…yet. “No. Not quite. We need to get the eggs away from the hatchery, and you’ll need to help them hatch and raise them to be ready for battle and follow your orders. Then, when it’s time, we’ll summon you into battle.”
“And what makes you think I’d agree to this?”
“Because we’re going to finally take down the Blight.”
Her eyes went wide and Eist could feel her breath hitch. “And what makes you think you can do what we didn’t?”
“That’s the first easy question you’ve asked,” Dille said with a laugh. “It’s because the Blight possessed a human form now. One that practiced old magic. We’re going to use that to tether it to our world’s laws and then finally kill it.”
The woman’s responding smile was entirely wolfish as she straightened. “My dear friends, why didn’t you start out with that?”
“So how did you know to find me here if you haven’t cast the spell that pulled me here yet?”
“Our grandfather said you were likely to help us. He had suspicions about you since you kept to yourself and he thought he might have seen some dragon scales when he followed you to your house once.”
“He followed me to my house?” the woman hissed as they slunk toward the hatchery.
It was the dead of the night and she was not one of the workers who lived within the house, but she said she was confident that she could get them in without anyone noticing.
“He said you were being weird and at the time, someone was trying to kill his daughter.”
“Oh. Well, I guess I can forgive him then. Although maybe I’ll give him a good punch or two when we meet anyway.”
“I’d rather you didn’t.”
“Hush, we’re close now.”
Instead of approaching the front, they reached a window toward the very back of the building where it was connected to the hatching caves. She waved her hand over the glass and it flew open, a breeze following into the room.
“What spell was that?” Eist asked.
“A simple one,” the woman answered, climbing inside. “Or at least, it was simple back in my time. Nowadays, every spell seems exhausting.”
“That’s because our world is dying. When the Three took over, it disrupted the system that the old spirits had in place. The Blight has been capitalizing on that and now there’s hardly any magic left,” Dille explained.
“But it’s much worse in our time,” Eist added. “As far as we know, we’re the only ones left who have any sort of gift.”
“Oh, I’m sure there’s more,” Brunillde said softly. “They’re just hiding. Probably not too different from me.”
The conversation fell silent as they crept through the remainder of the house and into the caves. From there, they slowly made their way through the clutches of eggs one by one, trying to find the hidden brindled eggs.
“How do we know when we find them? Not that I don’t believe in the skill of you two, but I’ve been doing this for two hundred years and I feel like I might have noticed eggs that didn’t exactly fit in.”
“That’s where these come in,” Eist said, tapping near her eyes.
“That doesn’t really answer the question, but I guess I’ll wait.”
Eist ignored her, closing her eyes and calling upon the vision she could feel right behind her eyes. Normally she needed darkness, or the thrill of battle, but with magic as thick as it was in the air around her, it was easy to just breathe out and summon it at will.
The hatching cave lit up around her, glowing like midday, but off in the corner, something shone even brighter. Once more, she felt that same pull that she had felt her very first time ever in the cave. Back when she and Fior had first met.
She strode over with a purpose, mesmerized as the rest of the world faded from her. Sound, scent, everything, until she was crouched in
front of the shimmering eggs.
They didn’t shine gold, as important things usually did in her vision. But they did shine. Beautiful and perfect and everything she needed.
“Here they are,” Eist said breathlessly, dropping to her knees in front of them.
“You sure?” the woman asked, coming up behind her.
“Definitely.” She made a wide circle with her two arms. “There’s four of them.”
“Four, huh? That’s not bad. Once they reach maturity, Mello might be inclined to lay her own clutch. Maybe we’ll have a whole army for ya.”
“Just be careful,” Eist warned, pulling one of the large eggs to her. It was heavy and warm in her hands. She was careful to keep it upright, knowing that rolling an egg was far too dangerous to risk. “The Blight went so far as to send his greatest sorcerer to steal my little one as soon as it found out about him. If word gets out of what you’re doing, it’ll come for you too.”
“Right. So just raise a whole fleet of brindled dragons in secret. Sure, that’s an easy request. Oh, and when I inevitably die, because I assume that I’m not alive in your time because I might have slapped you on sight, I leave you some sort of way to find them.”
“Yes. All of that.”
She rolled her eyes and picked up her own egg. “Just don’t tell me that the fate of your entire plan relies on me.”
“It doesn’t. We’re going to other times in the past to make sure all of the other eggs are saved.”
“And once they are? What… You’re gonna find a hatchery worker like me every time?”
“Well, no,” Dille said cautiously. “We know that’s pretty unlikely, so we thought that we could just…well, that we could—”
“You want to bring them here. With me. You want me to raise every egg you saved.”
“Well, yes. That was the idea.”
The woman looked both of them over, the hard lines of her face deepening before she shrugged. “Then one of the two of you is grabbing two eggs. If I’m stuck being some time-displaced nanny, then I should be doing the least of the heavy lifting.”
“I can work with that.”
With Dille’s help, she managed to get another egg solidly into her arms and they crept back the way they came. Fior was waiting outside, saddle-equipped with padded baskets to transport the unhatched little ones, but they had to get the eggs there first.
“There’s one more thing we have to ask,” Eist added sheepishly once all of the unborn were safely packed on Fior.
“Really? Just one more thing. Is that it? What, do you need my firstborn or something? Because, I assure you, that ship has long since sailed.”
“Actually, we were wondering if you had a big enough space for us to cast our next spell.”
She let out a dry huff. “Finally, something easy. Yeah, I have a place in mind. But you two will have to wait until the morning. Today… Well, today has been something else.”
Yes, it certainly had.
10
Round Trip
Traveling through time wasn’t any easier the second time, Eist’s body feeling like it was being pulled apart and knit back together and burned and frozen all at once. Her mind seemed to stretch over everything, telling her little details and events that she couldn’t make heads or tails of amid the pain.
So much pain.
She saw all, but she comprehended none of it, and by the time she was ejected out of another portal, her stomach was heaving.
“How in the name of the Three were you able to go right into a fight after this?”
“I think going forward is much easier than going back. Or maybe the less amount of magic, the less the shock of it is? I have no idea, really.”
They both rolled to the side as Fior crashed through after them. He managed to land on his feet, but quickly staggered while letting out a moan.
“I know, me too.”
Eist laid there for several moments, breathing deeply, until she felt well enough to stand. But the moment she did, her heart gave a thump and her skin seemed to prickle with little lightning bolts.
“By the Three,” she murmured. “Do you feel that?”
Dille nodded. “That’s magic. We’re… Goodness, we’re in the earliest days of the academy. The magic is…is…”
“Overpowering,” Eist said, her eyes glazing over. She felt like every bit of her body was being pumped full of life itself, making her stronger, faster. Filling her with something she hadn’t known since that fateful battle at Margaid.
“Hey, don’t get drunk on that now, Eist. Remember, the magic is a tool. It’s a part of the world that’s letting you borrow it to help it live. Don’t listen to that voice that says it could all be yours.”
Eist closed her eyes, trying to listen to her friend, but goodness, did she feel good. Better than she had ever felt. Better than the mead made her feel. Better than any stupid kiss. Better than—
A concerned warble sounded from Fior and his cool muzzle pressed against her cheek. Eist blinked and looked into her guy’s eyes. “Oh, hey there.” He rubbed his nose against her face and made another coo. “I’m fine. I’m fine now, I think. But thanks.” She was breathless as she spoke, but she felt herself rise from the headiness of the magic surrounding her.
No wonder witches used to be so respected and powerful. And why most riders had once had gifts. No wonder there were more dragons and they were bigger. There was just so much energy. So much power. It was like she had been forced to breathe through a reed her entire life and finally, she’d had her first real gulp of air.
Uncanny.
“Come on,” Dille said, her own voice a bit strained. “Let’s get those dragon eggs and get out of here before we get involved in another fight we don’t need.”
They found three eggs and placed them all lovingly in Fior’s saddle, then slunk away from the academy to find a place where they could set up their spell circles. Dille was getting faster considering it was going to be the third time she was making them, but they still took quite a bit of prep. It would have taken even more if they hadn’t packed all the supplies they needed in the bags they brought along.
“So, this is actually working, isn’t it?” Eist asked as the three of them stepped into the same circles to go again. Her stomach didn’t even feel settled from the last jump just hours earlier.
“Yeah. It is. Kind of incredible, isn’t it?”
Eist nodded. “It really is.”
And then Dille was starting up the spell again, and they were zooming off.
More pain, more careening, and then they were launched out of it just as violently. The feeling of sickness increased even more, making her feel like her insides were going to become outsides in just a few breaths.
She groaned, trying to roll over, but before her head even cleared, an explosion of pain burst from her back.
Had…had someone kicked her?
She felt movement through the haze in her mind and rolled out of the way, looking up to see that there was indeed someone attacking her. They were dressed in layers of clothes covered by very old, leather armor. There was no family crest on it, or even national markings, and Eist guessed that was because most of the families she knew didn’t exist yet.
Time travel was such a trip.
The foot came down again, ready to stomp on her ribs, but she caught it in her hands. The person had momentum and size on their side, but if the magic from the previous times had been heady, the amount in the air around her was downright intoxicating.
It took no effort at all to call upon it as a blast of energy, sending her attacker flying away. Eist rose to her feet, forming more of the energy into a weapon just like when she had fought Farmad.
It was strange to be able to summon such spells without her blood being spilled, or being near death in general, but also so incredibly easy. She took a step in the direction of her thrown assailant, only for a bright blast of light to toss her from her feet.
Things whipped by her until the
hard bark of a tree slammed into her back, driving the air from her lungs. Eist slid to the ground, panting, her fingers pressing into her sides to see if her ribs were still intact.
They certainly didn’t feel like it.
A dark hand reached for her and pulled her to her feet. Eist collided gently with Dille’s front, letting her head rest against her friend’s chest.
“That was not the welcome I wanted,” Eist groaned.
“I know, I know. Hold still for a moment. I think I can do a healing spell with how potent the magic is around here.”
“It really is something, isn’t it?” Eist asked with a weak laugh as she felt her friend’s cool magic flow into her.
It didn’t take away all of the ache, she could still feel it deep in her back, but she felt better. Like she could draw in a full breath. She didn’t have much time to celebrate, however, as she could feel something cutting through the air toward them.
She threw Dille to the side and ducked just as three arrows buried themselves into the same tree that had slammed into Eist’s back. She didn’t waste any time marveling at the deadly aim, but launched herself forward, throwing her magic out like a spear.
She felt the thud of it hitting flesh and launched forward, vaulting herself over a rock and up into the air. She may not have grown much in stature, but she had gotten even better at controlling her body. She landed in a crouch and rolled forward, landing on her feet and pushing herself forward again until one of her hands was gripping the length of her spear and the other was clutching the neck of their attacker.