by K Kazul Wolf
My feathers rustle. “You’re calling the king of dragons an idiot, while you sit here too afraid to show yourself to what you yourself consider a lowly serpent? You have nothing down here. You are nothing compared to them as a whole.”
The quiet stretches and I can feel the tension thickening the air.
Good. I got under his skin, too.
“I may not have anything to my name,” his voice is soft, though more menacing than I’ve heard it before. “But I am more knowledgeable than your king by leagues.”
A small grin spreads across my lips. Good, you lose your temper, too, idiot dragon. “How would you know?”
“I’m his brother. I was related to him, for a time.”
I sit straighter, my grip tightening around my hilt as my wings twitch to be spread. “You’re claiming to be related to the king? You expect me to believe that?” No. This random dragon living in the dirt at the edge of our kingdom? It’s not possible.
“Believe me or don’t believe me; it’s your choice.” His voice fades a little as the water seems to ripple, but it’s hard to tell with the waves. “If you did as I tried to teach you, you’d be able to tell if I was lying. Locate me without cheating by pain or your silly little crystal, and we’ll continue talking.”
After he’s gone and the tense air long since dissipated, I realize the yellow of his eyes is exactly the same as the king’s.
16
The Illusion
I spend the rest of that day sitting at the edge of the beach, closing my eyes and trying to find the idiot dragon under the sand.
That’s how I spend the next day.
And the next day, too.
I lose track of how long I sit on the sand, staring at the sea. My skin itches for me to move, to do something more. This is a fool’s errand.
But…it’s not like I’ve got anything to lose by sitting here. I can still go back and help build the wings after this, but no one’s waiting for me. Carita might replace me for all I know. It doesn’t even hurt that much, not anymore. Losing everything I’ve ever loved seems to make everything else matter much less.
Either way, I can’t come back empty-handed. If I do, if they’ve already replaced me and I’m nothing to them, I lose the only thing I have left to fight for. So here I sit. Alone. At the edge of the beach. Being an idiot trying to master illusions in ways I’m sure only dragons can understand.
I’ve made progress, if small. I’ve gone beyond sensing the wafting of the spray and evaporating water from the ocean. I can feel the tide, the ebb and flow and cycle of the water moving in and out of the beach. It takes a little over half a day for it to go from its greatest height to its lowest low. So much progress while I sit here, doing nothing but feeling the water move around me.
I learned how to take the water from the ocean and leave the salt behind, making it much easier to make my rations last in the unforgiving heat. I carved out a few shaded spots in the dunes, but the darkness does little to chase away the sun’s burning until the chill of nightfall comes back. The only thing that lets me stay cool enough to be conscious is the water I illusion around myself. Keep moving, keep all the focus on the illusions; they save me from my thoughts. I’m more and less like myself than I’ve been in a while.
Maur hasn’t come back to see me. If he has, I haven’t felt him, in his weird not-illusions. How can I feel the tide of the ocean but not the pull of him drawing the water closer? I stretch myself as far as I can, feeling the larger sway of the water, the slight currents of the ocean as the small and large creatures go about their lives. There’s nothing from beneath me and only the salty spray around me.
“You’re still trying?”
I jump, my eyes opening to the blinding white of the sun reflecting off the waves. What an absolutely rude dragon. “I thought you said we would ‘continue talking’ once I was able to tell if you were lying.”
“I meant on that particular subject. Would you like to continue painfully failing for another couple of days? It seems as if your supplies are running awfully low, and I would hate to have to deal with a dead body.”
I turn and he’s actually standing behind me. Still in what I’m pretty sure are the exact same trousers, his arms folded as his eyebrow arches over a royal yellow eye.
“Why would you be dealing with it while you’re hiding in your snake pit?” I narrow my eyes at him.
“Because of the smell. I’m afraid death permeates through everything.” He walks over and sits next to me in my shade, crossing his legs. “You should be able to feel me, now.”
Not taking my eyes off him, I reach out—and sit a little straighter when I can feel the moisture warping around his figure. “Why?” What’s he up to?
“I’ve decided to take pity on you.” He grins, eyes meeting mine. “As I said, I don’t really want to dispose of a body.”
I glare at him.
He laughs. “You really do remind me of that person. I wonder…” He shakes his head. “Inconsequential. Now, do you want to learn if I’m telling the truth or not?”
“I suppose.” Though I’m really starting to question whether or not anything he says is the truth. Claiming to know the king and how to tell a lie through illusions is a little far-fetched. Perhaps both he and Dantea are a little delusional and they bonded over that.
“Don’t sound too enthusiastic, now.” He’s enjoying himself far too much. Well, who knows the last time he had contact with another intelligent being. “Do you remember the first hint I told you when I originally gave you this challenge?”
I eye him. “You gave me a hint?”
“You need to learn to read between the lines, illusionist. As I said, this is easy as your lungs move, easy as your heart beats.” And with a ripple in the air like a pebble in a tide pool, he’s invisible.
I glare at where he was. “We’ve already tried this.”
No response.
Fine. I shut my eyes, focusing on my surroundings. The same tide, the same waves, the same spray coming off them. Except…something’s off. Lungs. Breathing. There’s a disturbance in the air behind me, but it’s too large to focus in on a person in it. Was that what he was doing underground? Something more specific than the disturbance of breathing in the air. Heartbeats. A quiet thing, soft but rhythmic, that beats to the flow of the tide. Something that you can feel in the quiet moments, when your thoughts wander and you can feel the world around you, feel the tiny fluttering that echoes through our bodies.
I clench my teeth and focus, trying to drag myself past the heat pooling sweat on my forehead, down my neck and scalp, past the waves or water tossing and turning my thoughts. It’s as if the current becomes a part of me, rushing and swirling around in my head in a way that makes me feel as if I might drown.
And then I find it. The small, consistent beating of life, not pulsing into the air around it. Contained. Delicate.
I lift a hand, pointing a finger toward where he must be standing. A little bit behind me, to my right.
“Hmph.” Maur’s voice sounds from where I pointed, where his pulse is coming from. “Impressive. For a serpent that needed many days and hints to figure it out. Now, you feel my pulse?”
I nod, not trusting myself to talk and possibly lose that little flutter consuming my concentration.
“Good. Now, watch.” He clears his throat, not without dramatic flair. “My name is Robert. I’m a black-eyed traveler from the far north with bright red hair and have no idea what an illusion is.”
His heartbeat picks up, just barely.
“You’re lying!” I’m almost…happy. I can feel the same things a full-fledged dragon can.
“Well, no kidding. Now, open your eyes. You look like a fool.”
I open my eyes at his command, hating myself for obeying so readily. I blink in the bright light, my eyes re-adjusting to find him sitting near me again.
“Wh-why are you teaching me this?” What sort of test is this supposed to be?
“As I said, y
ou remind me of someone I once knew.”
I squint at him, his heartbeat still echoing in the back of my mind. It’s like I can’t stop it now that I’ve started thinking about it. “The one that ruined your life?”
“Precisely.” He gives a smile but it doesn’t reach those yellow eyes. “Now I have questions for you.”
His price. “Okay. What?”
“My brother truly got you to believe dragons are immortal?”
I press my lips together. “They really aren’t?”
“No.”
He’s not lying. “The king said…” A waft of a briny breeze rolls through the air, feeding the knot of sickness in my stomach. “If you feed on illusionists, you’ll have power. And the illusionists eaten will live forever through that dragon’s immortality.”
His eyebrows slide up his forehead so fast I’m surprised they didn’t fly right off. “You…you actually believe that?”
Heat rises, burning my cheeks. I don’t want to believe it.
“My…my dragon couldn’t change back into a human because he wouldn’t eat me. He couldn’t muster the power to change back. He’s the only dragon to be stuck in one form.”
He shakes his head. “I’m afraid you’ve eaten one of their lies, serpent.”
“A lie? You tell me I’m wrong without a thought?” My knuckles turn white before I realize I’m clenching my fists. “I saw my friend suffer for years, not having a voice to speak, not able to participate in the most mundane tasks. He may have only looked like a beast, but he believed he was. How dare you toss off his struggles so lightly.”
His eyes meet mine, a slight crease in his brow. “I think you understand the situation better than you know, more than you’d like to hear: it’s belief. He was fed a lie all his life. He believed in it. Believing in things gives them power. I’ve seen belief, whole and true, bring things into existence.”
“How can you prove it isn’t real?” That all our struggles never existed. That it’s all a lie.
He opens his arms, motioning around him. “I have not eaten an illusionist in my entire life—I’m not a cannibal. And yet I appear to you as human. And yet I’m able to create my caves, to disappear from your ability to sense me. If anything, not resorting to more crude methods of living has left me better off than your king and his dragons.” He lets his arms fall, leaning closer. “You said ‘your’ dragon. Considering you think yourself lesser than us, I imagine you did not own him.”
Ice crowds out the heat in my cheeks. “I have wings. Of course I’m a—was—a caretaker.” I brush my palms for gloves that aren’t there. I was a caretaker.
“Ah,” he says again, nodding in an annoying, knowing sort of way as he looks out toward the water. The sun’s starting to get low in the sky, pink blossoming at the horizon. “Inacio hated that some of you had wings, something about freedom that doesn’t belong to your sorts. No wonder he has them eat you. Though it’s not exactly humane, or sane for that matter. He thinks the sky should only belong to dragons. I say if you’re born with them, use them. Don’t clip what little other people have.”
“You talk about him so…normally.” He’s a king. He rules everything I’ve ever seen, he owns everything I’ve ever known.
“He’s like you or me. Or, rather,” he cocks his head, “a bit more insane than us, but still.”
I can’t even imagine what that’s like. “You’re actually related then? Not just raised by the same nest-mother?”
He nods. “Since we were related to the late queen, may she rot in a fiery pit somewhere, we were actually raised by the dragons who gave birth to us. This was before it was taboo for the dragons to be raised the same way as illusionists, knowing their mother and father and not raised in groups by one nest-mother, all shepherded to thinking and acting and behaving the same way. Not that there was much to know of my own parents. The only time they ever cared about our well-being was when we were falling short of their expectations.” He squints at the sunset, pupils small as his irises reflect the sun. “He was smaller. Second-born of us, but barely, since we were twins. He hated being smaller. He couldn’t stand that I was more powerful. Honestly, I think our parents couldn’t stand it, either. For a while, I wondered if it was some twisted way of looking up to me, but considering he tried to kill me on a few occasions, that delusion slipped away quite quickly.”
He takes a breath. “Still. I’m sorry his insanity has only gotten worse as he’s aged. At this rate, I wouldn’t be surprised if he attempts to do away with all the illusionists—if the Circles allow. I don’t suppose you would know the structure of the Circles, would you?”
I shake my head. The Circles were the governing dragons, and different Circles managed different aspects of the city and the country. For example, I know that the breeding Circle exists to maintain genetic integrity, but not much about it since I was never chosen for breeding—something I'm grateful for, considering "breeding" isn't something that interests me. And there are also circles to manage the hunters, food distribution, financial movement, and trading That’s all I ever knew of, though. Hunters occasionally needed to know which dragon did what, but caretakers had no business in politics, and Vito couldn’t tell me.
“Well, you don’t need to hear about my sorely damaged brother, do you?” He glances at me. “So, what about this dragon of yours? He obviously cared enough about you not to eat you, though I really hope that’s not saying much. Where is he now?”
My stomach twists. Hard. The little bit of meat I ate earlier threatens to come right back up.
“He isn’t…around anymore.”
“What was his name?”
Was.
“Vito.” I take a breath. “His name was Vito.”
“A fascinating name. I’m sorry he’s not with us today.”
So am I. Anything I want to say gets caught in my throat, tangled in the thoughts jumping around my head like fish out of the ocean. He can’t ask about this, he can’t push. This isn’t his business. “That isn’t why I’m here, though. Aren’t you curious about why I came?”
“Well, I don’t suppose anything I say will stop you from bringing it up, hmm?” He raps his fingers on the ground, and it takes me a second to realize the ground sways with the taps, turning into that odd, reflective surface of the caves he maintains. “Why did Dantea send you, then?”
“Well, there were two reasons.” I shift a little and I can practically feel his curiosity growing. “You already know she’s a part of the rebellion against Caelum. We have wings, we have people. But we have no way to defeat them and destroy dragons.”
“So you want me to turn against my people?”
I blink at him. “You don’t seem loyal to them.”
“You don’t seem to understand.” He sighs, scratching his head. “These dragons that you want to eliminate, there are some like me. Some like your Vito, I’d imagine. Maybe the majority are evil, but are you going to slaughter all of them to change things? If that’s your perspective, you’re as terrible as my brother.”
A chill wracks my body, despite the heat. I may not have anything left there anymore, but other people do, don’t they? I never thought of that, never considered it. I may not have been right on their side, but am I right on Carita’s side, a part of the Story Collectors? Is there any mercy in their future plans?
“You said there was a second topic she sent you to discuss.” His eyes pin me, an eagle’s stare on a mouse below him.
“Oh, um, yes.” The words tangle inside me, but slowly I pull them apart, put them out of my mouth. “Before I left, she wanted me to tell you she hasn’t forgotten about you. And that she forgives you, that there was nothing to forgive.”
His expression freezes, uncomfortable and awkward on his face “That’s what she told you?”
“I don’t have it in writing, but those are the words she used.”
He stands and takes a step away so I can’t see his face. Did his voice crack? He has to know I’m not lying. “Very
well. I must think on your words. We’ll discuss it further tomorrow.”
And he walks off into the ocean, the waves parting around him until it swallows his figure, the lips of the ocean closing around him.
I take in a deep breath, reach for my bag, and take out some dried meat I hope doesn’t taste as strange as the last. If this experience has made me sure of any one thing, it’s that this dragon is not good at ending conversations.
17
The Illusionist
I take in a deep breath, feeling the ground beneath me to make sure it’s not wet and I don’t start my day off soaked. With a lot of cracking, I stretch out my sore muscles. Sleeping on a bed of sand is something I’ll be quite happy never doing again in my lifetime.
I pause mid-stretch. Something’s off. It’s the same salty, fishy smell I’ve woken to every morning, the same hard sand, but in the air…the water is different. There’s a pulse.
My hand’s unsheathed my sabre in a second, spinning around to find a tall man with a bald head shining in the sunset as he stares at me with amused, golden eyes.
I re-sheathe my sword. “What do you want?”
“I believe we haven’t finished our conversations quite yet.” Maur’s grin grows.
“You came to a decision?” I perk up, sand sprinkling off my wrinkled clothes. “Are you going to help us?”
“You expect me to give an answer on an empty stomach?” He leans onto the balls of his feet, a small grin on his face. “Hardly. My father always said that you can’t think on an empty stomach, and though he’s more than slightly an idiot, I stand by that.”
Before I can argue, he struts away, the water parting for him like it did before. It’s a moment before I realize that it’s taking longer than it did before to close behind him, that I’m supposed to follow. I scramble after him as the water falls in around us, consumes us. I’m walking along the ocean floor, wet sand sliding underneath my feet, my lungs and mouth filled with the scent of fish and sand and seaweed.