Warrior

by Bryan Davis

  Koren studied his face. With his blue eyes shining brightly, it seemed impossible to check for any hint of deception. Could he be telling the truth? If so, maybe it made sense to try it the easy way first. What could it hurt? If it failed, she could then opt to seal the hole. At least she could push the horrible decision back, if not eliminate it.

  As her fears subsided, her cloak blew to the side, exposing her booted legs. With Solarus shining, the dragon shadow again painted the ground next to her. She lifted an arm and looked at her wrist. An abrasion still reddened her skin, the symbol of Taushin’s cruelty.

  Her own voice entered her mind, passionate tones echoing after each punctuated word. Love … does … not … need … chains!

  How could she trust this beast, this mad dragon who would torture and maim? Yet hadn’t he told the truth about the Code? Hadn’t the Creator forced his will upon those who rebelled against him? Didn’t they require chains?

  And his explanation about the names of the planets and the purpose of Exodus all made sense. Maybe she had to be chained and dragged here in order to understand what she had to do.

  “So,” Taushin said, again casting his beams on her, “there are no chains here. What is your decision?”

  While facing a great throne and a seated white dragon, Cassabrie swayed, making her dress and cape visible. With a wide seat and a gap in the back for his tail, Alaph’s ivory chair was obviously designed for a dragon’s anatomy, and he seemed comfortable as he looked on, his ears erect and his eyes trained on a semitransparent image between him and Cassabrie—Koren standing in front of the door with Taushin.

  “That is enough,” he said. “It is time for you to go.”

  Cassabrie lowered her hands and waited for her cape to settle. “We didn’t hear her answer.”

  A gentle laugh rumbled in Alaph’s throat. “I think she will change her mind several times before she settles on a final decision, so hearing her first reply might satisfy your curiosity, but it would not be conclusive.”

  “Even so, she paused for so long. What was she waiting for?”

  Alaph looked at her, his blue eyes clear and sharp and casting no beams that might hide his intent. “For wisdom.”

  “Will you provide it?”

  “If she asks …” His expression suddenly turned morose. “Her knowledge of the Code is a valuable treasure, to be sure, and it will be a great light to her path, but …”

  “She needs to ask the Creator,” Cassabrie finished. “Will you tell me if Koren should resurrect Exodus? Should she seal the hole?”

  “So many questions!” Alaph breathed a stream of icy vapor. “You heard the dilemma. You experienced it yourself. Perhaps you should be asking your questions to a mirror.”

  Cassabrie grinned. “Not so, good king. I wouldn’t be able to see myself.”

  Alaph let out a roaring laugh. “Well done, Starlighter. You have bested me, so I will answer one of your questions. Choose well.”

  “That’s easy. When Jason was in the star chamber with me, he said that Exodus wanted to be destroyed. Is that true?”

  Alaph stared at her blankly. “How interesting. Jason’s wisdom might be greater than I gave him credit for.”

  “Then it’s true?”

  “It is true. Do you remember what I told you about a Starlighter’s fate if she were to be trapped between worlds?”

  “Yes,” Cassabrie said. “It is the most horrific existence imaginable.”

  “Then imagine this. A Starlighter lives within every such star. When Exodus moved freely, the Starlighter lived in ecstasy. It is not the lonely existence Taushin described. It is really an escape from the tortures of this life and a journey into the true Northlands. This Starlighter did not even realize she was confined. Listening to the Creator’s voice and repeating his words for all to hear was the greatest existence possible. She was in pure bliss and in his presence always. There is no greater joy.”

  Cassabrie trembled with delight. “And now?”

  “Now she is in torment. She cannot hear the Creator’s voice. For all these centuries she has suffered, still learning the events of the world and still sending them forth again as she weeps. As if wedged between the worlds, she is trapped, and the torture is unbearable. She wants to die and be with her Creator.”

  “Can she die?”

  Alaph nodded. “If Exodus is destroyed.”

  “Then Starlight will have no pheterone or guiding angel.”

  “True, but there is another option. She could be replaced by another Starlighter.”

  Cassabrie stared at him. Alaph’s simple declaration meant so much more, but she dared not ask another question.

  “Let us move on to other matters.” He shifted down to the floor and spread out his wings. “You cannot help Koren at this time, but there is someone who needs you.”

  “You told me I was going to Darksphere again,” Cassabrie said as she climbed up his tail to his back, “but you never said whom I would be helping.”

  “Someone who will face a threatening situation very soon. I will take you to the portal now.”

  “The Northlands portal?”

  “It is the only one I can reach. I still cannot pass beyond the wall.”

  Cassabrie sat straight on Alaph’s back. Without a spine to grasp, she had no way to hang on, but being a spirit had its advantages. Nothing could knock her from this perch. “I’m ready.”

  As Alaph flapped his wings and rose slowly into the spacious throne chamber, Cassabrie looked out the window they would soon fly through. A field of white lay before her, like a blank page waiting for an author’s pen. It was better this way, not knowing what was in store. The tale was yet to be told, and as the ink began filling the page, she would witness every stroke, memorizing each detail. Someday the people of Starlight and Darksphere would need to hear this tale, and she would be ready to tell it.

  Enjoy this sneak peek of Diviner, the third book in the Dragons of Starlight series.

  one

  Koren stood at the brink of a precipice and stared into the darkness below. Only inches in front of her black boots, a stairway descended sharply into the seemingly endless void. The rocky steps appeared to be hundreds of years old—narrow, crumbling, without rails or even walls—bare, sculpted stone jutting downward into the chasm before being swallowed by the eerie darkness.

  Floating a few feet above the stairs, globules of vaporous light streamed toward her, each one stretching out like a comet — a shining head of shimmering radiance followed by a glowing tail. Wiggling like tadpoles, they seemed to swim in the air, and as the first one passed by it orbited her face, brushing her skin with a tickly buzz.

  A soft voice emanated from the light, like a whisper from afar. “Has Exodus caused our pain? Will it ever return?” Then, after a final brush against her cheek, the stream flew toward the wall behind her, a sliding barrier that someone had left open, as if anticipating her arrival at the Northlands castle.

  The streams flowed through the opening, some pausing at Koren’s spot at the top of the stairway before joining the escaping herd. The rush sounded like a crowd of people hurrying by, with only snippets of their private conversations reaching her ears as they passed.

  “If the genetics are pure, we can force the recessive to survive.”

  “I will take the eggs to Darksphere. The children will have a dragon for a father.”

  “Find the escapees. No one will leave Starlight alive.”

  Clutching the stardrop she had taken from Cassabrie’s sanctum, Koren raised her hood, shielding her ears from the barrage of splintered sentences. She stepped down and shifted her weight forward. Although the stony material crackled under her boot, the stair held firm. Then, fanning out her cloak, she walked slowly down the stairwell. Ahead lay the darkness of the unknown, a dizzying descent into a river of visible voices.

  Koren pressed on. She had no choice. Somewhere in the castle lay the fallen star, Exodus, and Taushin, the new king of the dragons, ha
d compelled her to locate it—without detection. He waited outside, leaving her to pass through the empty foyer and explore the castle like a burglar.

  Her mind’s eye drifted beyond Taushin, across the Northlands’ snow-covered landscape, southward to the lush, fertile valley where she had left Jason Masters, her new friend from the world of humans, a young man her own age who had tried to rescue her. So much had happened since she had allowed herself to be captured to save him from the sorceress Zena’s pack of wolves. Where was he now? Dead? Captured? Had he returned to his own planet and forgotten all about her?

  Koren heaved a deep sigh. No, Jason would never desert his quest. She had to push away these dark thoughts. Jason was a warrior. Somehow he would have found a way to survive, to go on, even if he had to retreat to the south. One way or the other, he didn’t appear to be anywhere in the Northlands vicinity.

  As light from the world outside faded behind her, Koren slowed her pace. The never-ending streams of light illuminated the area just enough to allow a view of the dangers—a deep plunge into nothingness on each side and crumbling narrow steps ahead, seemingly more fragile in the dimness. The slightest misstep could send her tumbling into a bone-breaking crash or hurtling over the precipice.

  The stairs went on and on. Doubt stirred. How could a star have burrowed into a castle’s deep cellar? Yet some instinct drove her on. The whispering streams had to come from somewhere, making the chasm a likely place to search, even if it was not the safest.

  The whispers continued, quieter now but still audible in spite of her hood.

  “The Starlighter is alone and forsaken. She wants to die.”

  “Fear not the loss of life. Fear the loss of the eternal. For life can be restored. Once lost, the eternal can never be found again.”

  Koren kept her stare on the steps in front of her, marching to the beat of an inner rhythm. The fleeting statements seemed to beg to be put together, like puzzle pieces or perhaps threads in a mysterious mosaic. If she concentrated, maybe she could weave them into a coherent story, but so far the big picture eluded her.

  As her legs began to shake from exertion, a solid foundation came into view, an expanse that looked like the floor of a cave. A few paces in front of the final stair, a solid wall blocked forward progress. The chamber appeared to be wide open to the left, but it was too dark in that direction to see what might lie in wait. To the right, the whispering streams flowed from a cave opening in another wall.

  Taking a deep breath, Koren strode to the right, her gaze fixed on the cave. The pulsing lights funneled through the entrance, thick and frenzied, like radiant bats fleeing their daytime abode. She lowered her head and pushed through the barrage, trying to ignore the flurry of chaotic whispers.

  Light appeared ahead, growing brighter and brighter until she reached a massive chamber where, just out of reach, a glowing sphere hovered a foot or so above the floor. As she crossed the threshold into the room, the whispers stopped. All was quiet. Ahead, about twice the span of outstretched dragon wings, the nearly transparent ball of light trembled, as if shaking in fear.

  A flow of radiance erupted from a point on the surface and shaped into new whispering streams before swimming into the tunnel behind her. At the sphere’s lower extremity, liquid dripped to the floor, sizzling on contact. Vapor rose briefly before being sucked into narrow crevices zigzagging across the stone surface.

  Koren eyed the vapor-producing liquid seeping into the ground. Pheterone. The miners back home found it in veins that likely originated from this spot.

  She peered through the star’s curved wall. Inside, a smaller ball of light, about half the size of the entrance to Arxad’s cave, floated at eye level. Images flashed on the surface, changing every second—a red dragon, a cattle child, a stone worker with a cart. Each image acted as a layer on the sphere that peeled off in a pulse of light before shooting out as one of the vapors.

  Koren touched the edge of the streams’ exit point, a jagged hole nearly as big as her hand. As a new stream poured out, the flow warmed her skin. The light filtered through the gaps in her fingers and gathered behind her into yet another tadpole-like projectile.

  Mentally, she ran over what little she knew about this star that wasn’t a star. Taushin had called it “a celestial angel,” referring to the sphere as a guide given to this planet by the Creator. Unbidden, his words rose in her mind. The citizens of the planet labeled it a star, even though they knew that the twinkling dots in the heavens were very different. Although it was somewhat hot centuries ago, Exodus sustained a wound in its outer membrane, and it lost its heat.

  As another trickle of warmth leaked from the wound, Koren uncurled the fingers of her other hand, revealing the stardrop she had carried so far. The size of a large knuckle, the sphere glowed with white light.

  Her mission was to enter the sphere through the hole and tell Starlight’s stories from within. The light energy should cause Exodus to inflate and rise again. It would then release pheterone, infusing the atmosphere with the gas the dragons required to survive and eliminating the need for human slaves. Her people could finally shake off their chains and return to their home world, Jason’s world.

  She stared at the pulsing sphere in her hand. One problem spoiled this scenario. If the hole remained in the sphere, Exodus would eventually sink as it did before, and what they had gained would eventually be lost. Only one alternative seemed to be foolproof. She could enter the star and use the stardrop to seal the hole from the inside. She would become the guiding angel of Starlight—her destiny as a Starlighter, according to Taushin.

  Again his words returned to her mind: You may take your place as a star in the sky, a watchful angel who forever tells the Creator’s stories to every soul in the world, dragon and human alike … if they will listen.

  If. And if they did not, her sacrifice would be for nothing. For there would be no way out … ever.

  As if waging war in her mind, Taushin’s counterargument reverberated.

  Why sacrifice? Why risk harm to yourself when it is possible to gain what you long for without it? With your power, I am sure you can keep the star aloft long enough for me to get the slaves out. To be eternally trapped while your liberated friends celebrate their freedom without you would be the greatest of tortures. Yes, you would feel some joy … temporarily. But what about after a hundred years? A thousand years? Ten thousand? After every rejoicing slave is dead, you will be hovering over a thankless land, forever and ever. Your sorrow will never end.

  Koren shook her head, trying to sling the competing thoughts away. No matter what she decided to do later, she could do nothing from outside the star. Maybe when she entered the sphere a new secret would be revealed that would make her decision an easier one.

  She pushed the edge of the hole to one side. It stretched easily. As if in response, a low moan sounded from the inner sphere. She pulled again, stretching the gap and pushing her head and torso inside. Another wail of pain, longer and louder, echoed throughout the sphere’s inner cavity.

  She slid all the way inside and allowed the pliable skin to ease back into place, leaving a slightly larger hole than before. This time a gentle sigh drifted from wall to wall.

  Koren stood on the curved floor, angling her body to keep her balance. “Is someone in here?” she called.

  Her own words bounced back at her, repeating her question several times before fading.

  A voice emanated from the small inner sphere. “Who are you?”

  Koren let her boots slide down to the bottom of the floor. As she approached the source of the voice, she spoke in a soothing tone. “My name is Koren.”

  “Koren?” The images on the sphere’s surface stopped, freezing at a portrait of Koren pulling a cart filled with honeycombs. “Koren the Starlighter who works for Arxad?”

  “Yes.” She reached a hand toward the sphere, feeling the energy flowing from the speaking ball. “What is your name?”

  The flow diminished. Then, as if defl
ating, the sphere contracted, growing taller in proportion to its width. It formed into the shape of a girl, and the colors in the portrait spread across her body—red into her flowing hair, green into her eyes, and blue into a cloak that matched Koren’s. Only her dress remained white. Finally, every detail crystallized. She seemed as human as any young woman on Starlight. It was like looking at a mirror … with one exception.

  Koren looked down at her own clothes. Although she wore the Starlighter’s cloak, the black dress Zena had forced upon her covered her body from neck to knees, and the equally black boots adorned her feet, tied at the back to mid calf.

  The girl stared, her expression curious, yet sad. With her hood raised, she tilted her head to the side and spoke softly. “Why are you here, Koren?”

  “Uh …” Koren glanced back at the hole. The question felt like a challenge, a rebuke. It would be easy to retreat and slide out, run away from this responsibility … too easy. “I’m here to try to resurrect Exodus.”

  “It is impossible,” the girl said with an ache in her voice.

  Other books by Bryan Davis

  Dragons of Starlight series:

  Starlighter

  Echoes from the Edge series

  1 | Beyond the Reflection’s Edge

  2 | Eternity’s Edge

  3 | Nightmare’s Edge

  Dragons in Our Midst series

  1 | Raising Dragons

  2 | The Candlestone

  3 | Circles of Seven

  4 | Tears of a Dragon

  Oracles of Fire series