The Paper Dragon (The Chain Breaker Book 5)

by D. K. Holmberg

  He heard the sound of footsteps, and he spun. A darkened shape loomed in the shadows behind him, and it took a moment to realize what it was: the enchanted stone tiger.

  The tiger had followed them out here, but the others had not. The creature padded away a few feet and waited. He tracked after it for a moment until Theren’s voice called out from behind him.

  “What do you want to do now?”

  The stone tiger disappeared into the bushes.

  Gavin blinked back his exhaustion. He had to check on Imogen. They still had to track the keystone. And then they had to figure out how to destroy it. If Anna had some technique for that, Gavin could ask her to do that, but if she didn’t, then he was going to have to keep looking. Having seen the hyadan, he agreed with Imogen’s assessment that they needed to be destroyed—or at least secured.

  But he didn’t know if something like that could truly be secured.

  There was still much that he needed to do, still much that he didn’t have answers to. Going back might at least give him the opportunity to piece together what was going on.

  They hurried back to the city, both of them staying in the shadows. It didn’t surprise Gavin that Theren knew how to move carefully and swiftly, but he was reminded almost of how Gaspar stalked through the streets. He had a quick, almost deadly grace.

  As they moved, Gavin kept looking around him. He had been on alert ever since the attack, and none of that had changed now. He couldn’t shake that sensation and still felt on edge. The hairs on his neck stood on end, and a tingle raced along his spine—a feeling that someone was following him.

  “Why do you keep looking around like that?” Theren asked.

  Gavin ignored him and kept searching for anything that would tell him where Ruhid had gone. He couldn’t see an opening to the temple, but perhaps there wasn’t anything here that he might find.

  Ruhid had the keystone. And he had shown a willingness to release the hyadan.

  Which meant they had to find him.

  Gavin could look through the city. He hadn’t explored or examined Loruv yet, so he didn’t know if there was anything he needed to be concerned about. He wanted to know if Ruhid had truly started using the hyadan, and looking through the city would give him that insight.

  As they wandered through the streets, he frowned to himself, realization coming to him. The Sorcerer’s Society had taken hold in the city, but he hadn’t seen any sign of the sorcerers. That was unusual. It had been Gavin’s experience that when the Society got involved, they made sure their presence was known.

  “What do you expect to find?” Theren asked.

  Gavin shrugged. “I have some experience with the Society. Not all of them are dangerous.” He glanced over and realized that Theren was watching him, a hint of darkness in his eyes. Was that just the shadows, or was there more to it? “Given what we have heard about the city, it seems to me that we should have seen more evidence of the Society.”

  “This city has become a stronghold for them,” Theren said.

  “How do you know?”

  Gavin hadn’t heard that. But then, he hadn’t been traveling much lately, so his access to rumors and gossip was limited compared to what it once had been. Wrenlow had been his eyes and ears for a long time, ensuring that Gavin kept current with the gossip that existed in the world. In this case, he didn’t have Wrenlow, and he also hadn’t been traveling enough to learn.

  “Even though we live in the trees, we stay connected,” Theren explained.

  Gavin waited for him to expand, but he didn’t say anything more.

  “If the Society is here, we should be careful,” Gavin said.

  “I don’t fear them.”

  “It’s not a matter of fearing them. It’s a matter of making sure we don’t create danger for those who remain here.”

  “You mean the way you did in Yoran?” Theren said.

  Gavin clenched his jaw. “That was unintentional.”

  “I’m not saying it was bad. There are times when you just have to cut down a few sorcerers.”

  Gavin tensed and started forward, and Theren followed him. “You can go back,” Gavin told him. “You don’t have to stay with me.”

  “Why wouldn’t I want to stay with the great Chain Breaker?”

  Gavin paused and looked over at Theren. This time, the darkness glimmered in his eyes, and Gavin knew he wasn’t imagining it. There was something about sorcerers that put Theren on edge.

  Given what Gavin had heard from Theren, the way his people had been forced out of their homeland, he thought he understood. The El’aras had suffered because of sorcery over the years, and perhaps Theren was old enough to remember that time.

  “You don’t have to keep calling me that,” Gavin said.

  “You don’t like your nickname? I heard you earned it working with the great Tristan Rolanth.” He said it with a bit of a sneer.

  “You know him?”

  “I know of him,” Theren said. “Is that not enough?”

  Gavin supposed that many people knew about Tristan, and considering how Anna had helped him defeat Tristan the last time, at least indirectly, he wouldn’t be terribly surprised if the El’aras that worked with her knew about him as well.

  “I’m sure there are rumors about him,” Gavin said.

  “There are many. For those who care to pay attention, there is much to learn about him.” He smiled a dark smile. “Much like there are rumors about you. I have found that rumors can be founded in truth, though. Are they true when they come to you, Chain Breaker?”

  “It’s a nice nickname,” Gavin said. “And it has its uses, but I don’t know that you would call it true.”

  “A deception.”

  “Isn’t it in people’s nature to deceive?” Gavin shrugged. “It has its uses.”

  Theren chuckled. “Sometimes it does, doesn’t it? Unfortunately, we have seen that far too often even among my people.”

  “I didn’t realize.”

  “Why should your kind—well, humankind—be unusual in that?”

  “I suppose they should not,” Gavin said.

  He laughed and shook his head. “Of course they should not. And they are not.”

  They took a slight turn, heading deeper into the city. The slums stretched quite a ways through here, and Gavin wondered if he would even be able to find his way back into the Muvarth section. The slums twisted and turned, making navigating through this area more difficult than Gavin expected, with little more than a walkway through the buildings that leaned forward as if trying to swallow the path. Some of them even stretched into the street, or what had been the street, forcing him to squeeze through narrow passageways. The air had a strange, almost foul odor to it, as if there was a hint of rot that hung over everything.

  After sweeping along the slums for a while, he started to have the feeling of being followed again. Could Ruhid have trailed them? Gavin had seen no sign of him—or the hyadan.

  “Do you feel that?” he asked, looking over to Theren. “I feel like…” Gavin shook his head and paused, sweeping his gaze along the slums. “I feel like we’re being followed.”

  In this part of the city, it seemed impossible to believe that anybody could track them through the area, but maybe they had some way of finding them.

  The city was quiet. They passed an occasional grouping of dirty locals, though they made a point of looking away and hurrying on. At one point, Gavin heard the mournful sound of some creature howling, and they all slowed long enough listen before moving on. There were no obvious taverns, though music drifted from one building suggesting that they neared one. What might a Loruv tavern be like?

  Dim streetlights glowed with a pale light, leaving strange shadows swirling along the streets. A beggar trailed after them until Theren spun, sword unsheathed.

  “It’s just a boy,” Gavin said, resting a hand on his arm.

  And it might even be a young girl, though her face was dirty and hair cut short.

&nbs
p; Theren slipped his sword back into his sheath. “I don’t like this place. I feel like I can feel the sorcery here.”

  “Because you can,” Imogen said softly.

  They continued on until they reached an opening.

  The city had gradually shifted. The crumbling buildings made of stone and wood and other scraps ended, and beautiful, gleaming gray stone buildings stretched ahead. They shadowed the streets, and a wall surrounded them, making it difficult for Gavin to see anything else. But he could feel the strangeness in the air, an energy that existed, and he started to wonder if it was some sort of magical property.

  It was almost as if they had reached a transition point where everything changed. Gavin was reminded of what Imogen had said about Loruv, about how the Society had come in and taken hold, and how the people had begun to retreat.

  To the slums, and into the temple beneath the ground.

  “What are you waiting for?” Theren asked. “If you’re looking for the Society, let’s just go through here. And if we see any sorcerers, we can just deal with them.”

  “Deal with them?”

  “Listen, Gavin. I know you have a different view of sorcerers.”

  He wasn’t entirely sure what Theren was getting at, but he certainly had a different view than Theren did, it seemed.

  “I didn’t lose my family to them the way you did,” Gavin said, taking a gamble.

  “Family… I had a brother. Kinden won’t fly his kite near the Tesan Ridge again.” He took a deep breath. “My father won’t hammer the blades for our people. My uncle won’t…” He stopped himself, shaking his head. “It’s not just my family. I lost all of my people. I lost my home.”

  “That was a long time ago.”

  “Not as long as you would think. Do you remember how you were treated when you were young?”

  Gavin thought about Tristan. He had many memories of him from his youth, most of them dealing with his training and the brutality Tristan had often exacted during those sessions, but not all of it was bad. There were times when Tristan had actually been kind. Those moments were few and far between, but some of the earliest memories he had of Tristan were when Gavin had lost his parents. Tristan had been welcoming, warm, almost fatherly then. It was the reason Gavin had been so willing to go along with him.

  He almost smiled at one such memory. A time when Tristan had walked with him, holding his hand as he led Gavin to his new room. That simple touch had been a kindness from the man, and it was why Gavin had trusted him for all those years, despite the ruthlessness Tristan had put him through. It was almost as if Tristan had trained him in that simple gesture.

  “I remember,” Gavin said. He breathed out a long, slow sigh, and he swept his gaze around the streets, debating. He wasn’t sure he wanted to see a sorcerer, not in this situation. He might react poorly, especially given how he felt in this moment. “How many of the other El’aras feel like you do about the sorcerers?”

  “Does it matter?” Theren said.

  Gavin didn’t have the feeling from Anna that she felt the same way as Theren, though maybe she wouldn’t have shared that with him. She had tried to bring Gavin into the El’aras again, which was what she’d wanted to do ever since she’d first met him. She had explained that he could be a part of them, that she and others could teach him more. After the attack in the forest, Gavin couldn’t help but wonder how many El’aras were like Anna, and how many were like Theren. Maybe it was more splintered than he guessed.

  “We should go back and check on Imogen,” Gavin said.

  He turned and walked along one of the nearest streets leading back into the slums, staying away from the others. Theren followed him, a reluctant expression on his face, and then passed him by.

  “Don’t get too far ahead,” Gavin said.

  “Are you afraid you will lose track of me?” Theren chuckled. “You don’t have to worry about that, Chain Breaker.”

  Gavin shot him a look. “Just—”

  He stopped at the sight of three children lying in the street and ran up to them.

  “What’s going on?” he asked.

  “Are you him?” one of the boys said in a tenuous voice. His face was dirty, and a large bruise covered one of his cheeks. He coughed, a bubble of blood coming to his lips.

  “Am I who?”

  “We asked for a healer to come. Are you him?”

  Gavin shook his head. “I’m afraid not. If you need a healer, I can help you find one.”

  “I—” The boy cut off as he looked over his shoulder, glancing behind him. Gavin turned to see a sorcerer dressed in the dark maroon robes of the Society making his way along the street. There was a circular sigil around his neck, the mark of the healing guild within the Society.

  Gavin nodded to Theren. “Come along.”

  “You’re just going to leave them to him?” Theren asked.

  “He’s from the healing guild. You don’t have to do anything with him.”

  “What makes you think I want to?”

  Gavin shoved him forward, and Theren growled. Gavin worried he wasn’t going to leave, but Theren followed. They neared the end of a small section of the road where the slums shifted, and another section opened up.

  He looked back with concern for the boys and watched from afar. The sorcerer crouched down. He said something to the children, then stood, wiping his hands on his pants.

  “You see that, don’t you?” Theren asked.

  “It’s nothing,” Gavin said.

  Theren grunted. “You see what he’s doing. Or should I say, what he’s not doing. He won’t even help those boys in need.”

  “Maybe there’s nothing he can offer.”

  “Do you really believe that? You’ve seen one side of the Society. You’ve not seen what we have.”

  “I’ve seen the darkness within it,” Gavin said. “Not all sorcerers are the way you see them.”

  “Are you there, boy?” Gaspar’s voice crackled, barely drifting through the enchantment, but Gavin still felt a wave of relief at hearing his voice.

  “I’m here,” he said. “I’m looking for any evidence of the hyadan or Ruhid, but I haven’t seen anything yet.”

  “We can deal with that later. I need you to get back here. Imogen is awake.”

  Relief swept through Gavin. “I’ll be right there.” He turned to Theren. “Come on.”

  He shrugged. “You know, I might stay.”

  “You shouldn’t stay here.”

  “Why? Do you think I’m going to do something foolish?” Theren flashed a grin. “Come on, Chain Breaker. I’m just going to explore the city a little bit more. Why shouldn’t I do that?”

  Gavin looked at him with suspicion burning in his eyes. Then he glanced back at the boys, watching them for a moment.

  “Let me know if you need any help getting around the city,” he said.

  Theren grinned again. “I think I know my way around cities. I have been to other places before. Besides, there are no trees here, so it should be easier for me to get around.” He laughed. “Go on, Chain Breaker. Get back to the underground.”

  Gavin wanted to argue with him, but he did need to get back. He wanted to talk to Imogen, and he needed to find those hyadan stones, to ensure that somebody else didn’t get ahold of them and use them.

  Theren slipped past him and walked away. Gavin watched for a little while before looping back, heading toward the main section of the slums where he’d come through.

  As he worked his way back, a strange sound caught his attention.

  A sense of pressure built, some sort of energy. Gavin hesitated for a moment, feeling that energy, but he ignored it and continued on. He reached an intersection and stopped.

  Theren’s back was to him, and he stood with sword unsheathed, a sorcerer lying on the ground in front of him. Theren stabbed his blade into the sorcerer’s chest, then swept it in a quick arc, cleaving the sorcerer’s head off. When he was done, he wiped the blade on the sorcerer’s robe and con
tinued off down the street, moving away from where Gavin stood frozen.

  He had traveled with Theren for days now, and the sudden shift was jarring. He’d gone from jovial and joking to this violence. Gavin understood that Theren had lost his family and his home to sorcerers, but this was something different. Something much worse.

  Was that what it was like for other El’aras?

  For the first time, a real doubt about Theren crept into Gavin’s mind, beyond the suspicion he had. What if he was working with the others? And if he was, they needed to know.

  “Gavin,” Gaspar said, voice drifting through the enchantment. It was muffled, as if it had a hard time reaching him.

  “I’m coming.”

  First, he needed to try to get ahold of Anna again. He had questions for her. He tapped on the enchantment and whispered her name, but there was only silence. Gavin waited, hoping she might answer. When she didn’t, he tried again.

  She had given him the enchantment to reach her, and he didn’t know whether proximity made a difference, but he would’ve expected that Anna would have enough power to ensure that he could reach her across the distance. He decided to try something different.

  He reached into his pocket, fumbling for the other enchantment she had given him—a marker that allowed him to summon her. He pushed a bit of his core reserves into it, letting that energy flow outward, but there was again no response after he waited. If she detected that summons, maybe she would come for him… but maybe she wouldn’t be able to reach them.

  Troubled thoughts stayed with Gavin as he made his way back through the slums. He found the opening they’d come through before and headed in. He moved through the tunnels, hurrying as quickly as he could to get back, but also not wanting to run. He wasn’t sure if there was anything to be concerned about, but he couldn’t help it. Having seen Theren kill that sorcerer put Gavin on edge.

  As he reached the main part of the tunnel, he saw Theren. He was lingering in the main cavern, and he grinned at Gavin as he approached.