Red light flashed ahead of them as Rysha and Dreyak made it out from under the fortress. Any relief she might have felt at escaping the building before it collapsed was quashed by seeing the sorceress standing on the pebbly beach a hundred meters away, her sword pointed aloft and red branches of lightning streaking into the cloudy night sky. Toward two fliers twisting and looping overhead.
“Trip?” Rysha whispered, though she couldn’t see who the pilots were in the dark.
Green light flared from Dorfindral, and battle lust rushed into Rysha so forcefully, she almost lost her balance in the waves. Hunt, the sword seemed to whisper into her mind, pulling her focus toward the sorceress. Kill.
“Turn that thing down,” Dreyak ordered from her side.
Rysha had been holding the sword over her head to keep it from getting wet, and it now glowed like a beacon.
“It wants to get the sorceress,” Rysha said, striding toward the beach. It felt as if the blade was sending extra energy into her limbs, propelling her along. She felt strong. Powerful.
“So do I, but I’d rather she not see us coming.”
Rysha doubted they could have sneaked up on a sorceress and her soulblade under any circumstances, but she kept her mouth shut. The two fliers dove toward the beach, and Dreyak wouldn’t have heard her over the machine gun fire.
She didn’t think either of the pilots was Trip, as he would have had Jaxi in his cockpit as he descended, and her glow of power would have been visible. Rysha glanced toward the top of the fortress and up and down the beach, worried that the other two fliers might have crashed. And where was the pirate king with his chapaharii sword?
The two fliers strafed the beach, the pilots no doubt hoping to get lucky as they slammed bullets into the ground, flying straight for the sorceress. She lifted her sword again, and another lightning bolt streaked out.
It struck the propeller of one of the fliers, then branched and arched back over the rest of the craft.
The pilot—was that Leftie?—ducked out of sight. His propeller stuttered, and smoke billowed from it. Leftie banked hard, struggling to keep the flier aloft. But it lost altitude quickly. He turned out over the water—hoping he could land in it without a horrific crash?
Why were they attacking the sorceress when they had no means of harming her? And where were the others? Only Duck remained in the sky, and the sorceress had her sights on him now.
Rysha ran out of the water, her sodden clothes hanging heavily from her body and water spattering her spectacles, but she barely noticed. Her legs propelled her toward the sorceress, accelerating to a sprint as soon as they could. She should have been clumsy and prone to stumbling on the pebbles, but exhilarating power flowed through her veins, and she felt she could run across water if need be.
The sorceress stood with her soulblade raised, poised to strike Duck as soon as he flew close enough, but she must have sensed Rysha coming. She whirled to face her, her robe flapping around her legs in the stiff ocean breeze.
The soulblade shifted, pointing toward Rysha’s chest.
A big part of Rysha wanted to dive to the side, realizing she was an easy target on the beach and that this was suicidal. Who was she to challenge a powerful sorceress?
But the sword overrode her fear and drove her onward. She hefted the weapon over her shoulder with both hands.
The sorceress let her soulblade droop—she must have recognized that green glow. But she wasn’t ready to admit defeat yet. She flung a hand in Rysha’s direction.
Pebbles skidded down the beach, as if swept ahead of a hurricane, but they parted and flew around Rysha instead of hitting her. She was aware of a fierce wind gusting past, but it didn’t stir so much as a hair.
Rysha sprang at the sorceress, slashing Dorfindral toward her. A jolt of electricity coursed up her arms when the blade met her invisible barrier, but it continued through and would have cleaved into the woman’s neck if she hadn’t sprung back, whipping her own sword up.
Dorfindral, glowing green, crashed into the red-glowing soulblade. The woman’s eyes were tight, the blood dried on her chin evidence she’d already been hurt, but that didn’t keep her from returning the attack. She swept her blade into a series of swift, deft slashes at Rysha’s head and torso.
Without the chapaharii weapon, Rysha would have been gravely outmatched, since she’d never picked up a sword in her life, but again, Dorfindral took the lead. The blade cut and parried in her hands, moving so quickly it blurred. The clash of steel meeting steel rang out so rapidly that it was like one continuous ringing in Rysha’s ears.
The sorceress’s eyes narrowed to determined slits, and she pressed forward, not giving Rysha time to launch attacks of her own. The invincibility she’d felt only seconds before faded as she realized Dorfindral might not be a match for the soulblade. Or maybe it was she, lacking sword-fighting experience, who wasn’t a match for the sorceress. Would a more experienced handler have done better? She admitted she’d thought all she would have to do was slam Dorfindral down on the soulblade to destroy it.
After a complex series of attacks failed to get past Dorfindral’s defense, the sorceress snarled. Maybe she was growing frustrated at not being able to quickly defeat Rysha. That was something, anyway. Rysha had allies out here—she could see Duck’s flier landing behind the sorceress—and the same might not be true for her foe. All Rysha had to do was keep her busy long enough for one of the pilots to come down and shoot her. If nothing else, Dorfindral had destroyed her defensive barrier.
But, as silly as it was, especially in this frantic moment, Rysha wanted to defeat the woman of her own accord. She didn’t want to be rescued. Surely, something in her military or academic experience could come to her aid now. With Dorfindral handling the defense, that freed her mind up to consider her options. She was simply a conduit for the blade now. Albeit one that was starting to run out of breath.
The woman was too. Their swords might be guiding them, but they were both human in the end, limited by what their bodies could do. Maybe it wasn’t history or physics that could help Rysha here, but psychology.
“You can’t defeat me,” she told the woman, even as their blades clanged together in an X in front of their faces, and red and green sparks flew. “Not before… my friends come in to help. But we didn’t come here… to kill you.” Rysha gulped in air, realizing she needed to keep her speech short or she would be gasping on her knees. “Surrender, and you can… walk away. We got… what we came for.”
Dorfindral didn’t speak to her, not the way Rysha had heard the soulblades did, but she definitely sensed that the sword did not approve of the talk of surrender. New energy flowed into her limbs, and for the first time, she found herself taking the lead in the battle, attacking instead of defending.
“You kill my lover of twenty years, and you think I’ll let you walk away?” the woman snarled, the first words she’d spoken. Her face twisted with rage, and she struggled to take the lead back.
“I didn’t kill him,” Rysha said, though she appreciated the confirmation that he was dead. Who’d finally done it? Blazer? Trip?
“Your friend with the soulblade did. The Iskandian soulblade.” The sorceress sneered, as if it were the greatest of crimes to be from Iskandia.
“Yes, and he’s coming to kill you next… if I don’t do it first. You can’t win. You—” A massive explosion erupted behind her, yellow fiery light driving back the night for hundreds of meters in all directions.
The sorceress stumbled, her focus jerked in that direction for a split second. A split second was all it took for Dorfindral to take advantage.
The blade lunged toward the woman’s chest. The soulblade jerked over, trying to intercept, but it was too late. As shards of wood rained down for a half mile up and down the beach, Dorfindral plunged into the sorceress’s heart.
Her gaze jerked back to Rysha’s face, full of pain and horror. And accusation.
Rysha tried to release the blade, longing to back aw
ay from those eyes, but Dorfindral wouldn’t let her. The sword’s pride and satisfaction coursed through her as this dragon-blooded soul, this user of magic, died on its blade.
Rysha felt more horrified than triumphant. She knew the woman would have gladly killed her, and that she’d doubtless killed many in her role as a pirate, but Rysha couldn’t help but feel that she’d instigated all this, that her team had invaded the woman’s home and killed her. Brutally and… unfairly?
“Damn, Lieutenant,” came Leftie’s voice from the side. “Those were some fancy sword moves.”
He’d made his way out of the water and stood, pointing a pistol at the sorceress. It had to be as waterlogged as he, so Rysha didn’t know if it would have fired, but Duck’s certainly would have. He stood on the other side, pointing his own pistol at the crumpled form.
A second flier had joined the one he’d landed on the beach. Trip’s. Leftie’s flier was visible bobbing in the waves. Rysha had no idea how they would get it out. Blazer hadn’t joined them yet, but a glance toward the fortress revealed Kaika and Dreyak standing behind Rysha. They also had their firearms out.
Had Rysha simply flung herself away from the sorceress during the battle, giving her team a clear line of sight, someone else could have killed the woman. Dorfindral might have been disgruntled by that, but she wouldn’t have minded.
She grimaced, ashamed by her thoughts. She was an army officer, training for the elite troops. To want to hand off the dirty work to someone else was cowardly. Whatever her commanders and her king ordered, that was what she had to do, and they never could have gotten the pirate king’s blade if the sorceress had remained alive.
Or had they gotten that blade? They had one, perhaps two, if that other box held one inside, but what if Neaminor’s had fallen into the ocean? Kaika had suggested that might be the most powerful one.
She looked toward Trip, who’d climbed out of his flier and was walking toward them. Leftie and Blazer waved at him. Rysha took a step in his direction, wanting to hug him—for a while, she hadn’t known if he’d made it.
But Dorfindral, still gripped in her hand, flared to life, the green glow every bit as bright and intense as it had been for the sorceress.
Rysha’s first confused thought was that it was objecting to Jaxi or perhaps to the other soulblade—the weapon had fallen from the sorceress’s grip and lay dormant on the pebbles, but it would still contain magic. Then the urge to fling herself at Trip and drive Dorfindral through his chest flooded into her. Could all that be because of Jaxi? The compulsion was so intense, so strong, that she dropped to her knees to fight it, to keep her legs from taking off under the sword’s command.
Trip stopped, looking at her down on her knees and looking at the sword. He carried Jaxi with him, but she was sheathed and not glowing. Trip put his hands in his pockets, as if to appear completely harmless.
He gave Rysha a sad smile. “I guess you won’t be flying with me anymore.”
“No, I—” Rysha grimaced as more images flashed through her mind, more images of driving the blade into Trip’s chest. “Meyusha,” she snarled. “Meyusha!”
Behind her, Kaika uttered the same control word.
At first, the sword did not seem to heed them at all. But as they repeated the words, Dorfindral’s glow finally dulled. An intense feeling of petulance emanated from it.
Rysha plunged the blade into the pebbles, and it finally allowed her to release it. She backed away, her hands up, as if she were backing away from a viper.
“Where’s the box?” she asked.
She’d dropped both the ones she’d carried somewhere during her rush to face the sorceress.
“I’ll find it, but the sword will still be a problem,” Kaika said. “As I can say from past experience, it can influence people even if it’s boxed up, though having it in the box helps diminish its power over its wielder. If we have three swords now, things will be especially interesting.”
“I’m confused,” Leftie said.
“About how your flier ended up in the surf?” Trip asked, and Rysha had the feeling he was deliberately trying to turn Leftie’s focus to a different subject. It saddened her that he’d stopped well out of her reach. “I find that confusing too,” he said. “Did Major Blazer say you could land it out there?”
“Very funny. We’re going to have to find a way to get it back on land before it sinks, and then hope we can repair it.”
“Guess I’m on screwdriver duty again,” Trip said.
“Is it safe to start repairs?” Duck looked toward the flaming remains of the obliterated fortress.
Much of the dock system still stood, but the ships in the harbor had either been destroyed by the dragon or they’d taken off at top speed. The airship was a wreck, its deflated balloon floating in the middle of the harbor. A bronze dragon flew overhead, circling the area from high above, and even though Rysha had let go of Dorfindral, she felt stirrings of interest from the sword. It was eager to jump right into another battle, and dragons were its preferred foe, even more preferred than sorceresses and soulblades. And Trip.
“The dragon won’t attack us,” Trip said. “It got what it wanted.”
Human minions! a voice cried into Rysha’s mind. Everyone’s minds. Her entire team looked up toward the bronze dragon, the lingering flames from the explosion shedding their reflection on his scales. You shall serve your new master, Telmandaroo!
“That’s not us, right?” Duck asked.
“No,” Trip said. “I told him we would take the dragon-slaying sword away. Swords. And that he could have the islands for himself.”
“That was cordial of you to give him the islands,” Leftie said. “You having such a claim over them.”
“He intended to take them one way or another.”
“Would he have managed it without our help?” Kaika asked. “And should we find it alarming that you’re our liaison with a strange dragon?”
“I’m sure you could yell up and talk to him, too, if you wished,” Trip said.
Kaika gazed dubiously at their new “master.” He’d landed on the skeletal remains of the fortress, unperturbed by the flames warming his butt, and was doing the dragon equivalent of preening his feathers. His scales.
“Nah,” she said. “You go ahead. You’re doing a good job.”
Trip snorted softly and pulled out Jaxi. He considered Dorfindral, the blade still thrusting up from the beach, and then met Rysha’s eyes. “Will it be all right if I ask Jaxi to help us get the wreck in? With magic?”
“You’re asking me?” Rysha didn’t think her fifteen minutes of experience wielding a chapaharii blade made her an expert.
“That’s fifteen minutes more than I’ve had.”
Rysha started to reply, but realized with a jolt that she hadn’t made her comment about minutes aloud. She’d only thought it.
Not everyone was paying attention, some gazes being drawn toward the dragon still, but Leftie and Duck gave Trip confused looks. It hadn’t exactly been a non-sequitur to those who hadn’t known her thoughts, but it had been close.
Trip’s eyes grew concerned, as if he knew he’d made a mistake. “I’ll go down the beach a ways and give it a try,” he said and hurried in that direction.
Rysha watched him. She’d put the pieces together earlier and wasn’t surprised that he had dragon blood—she was fairly certain that Dorfindral’s desire to slay him had only partially been a result of Jaxi’s presence—but she hadn’t realized… Could he read minds? And if so, did he do it regularly? From what she’d read, the Referatu had considered that a faux pas, unless permission was given.
Even though she liked Trip, and had even had a few thoughts that involved more than liking, she didn’t like the idea of him reading her mind. It was disconcerting, for one thing. And it was an invasion of her privacy. She would be right to feel disgruntled.
A strange soothing agreement flowed into her, along with the idea that he should be punished.
Rysh
a glared at Dorfindral, knowing the exact source of that thought. She’d told the sword to stand down, that they wouldn’t battle Trip, but would it continue to try to influence her? To manipulate her? To pit her against him?
She shuddered, realizing these blades might be more sentient than the history books had led her to believe. They could be a tremendous help in battles against sorceresses and dragons, but at what cost? Would Dorfindral try to lead her to slay her own allies simply because they had dragon blood?
“There’s Blazer,” Duck said, waving to a flier landing farther down the beach. Blazer waved a long blade from the cockpit. “And it looks like she’s got the pirate king’s sword. So, we’ve got two?”
“Maybe three, eh?” Using her boot, Kaika nudged one of the boxes Rysha had retrieved, the one that was locked.
“We should definitely be able to destroy a dragon portal now, right?” Duck asked.
“Let’s hope so,” Kaika said. “I don’t think the rest of the dragons in the world are going to be satisfied with claiming little pirate islands for their domains.”
“No,” Rysha said. “The silvers and the golds, the more powerful dragons, will want much, much more.”
Epilogue
For the second night in a row, Trip found himself fixing a flier by lantern light. Also, removing seaweed from it. Up in the cockpit, Leftie grumbled as he heaved a colony of kelp over the side.
“This is ridiculous,” he said. “It wasn’t in the water for that long.”
Trip fought back a yawn as he worked on the wiring to the propeller. He hadn’t been there to witness it, but it appeared the sorceress’s red lightning had fried it. Or maybe that was the soulblade’s lightning? He eyed the weapon where it leaned against a log in their camp. They had moved the fliers to the field above the ocean—with the tide coming in, the beach had seemed a dubious place for repairs. Jaxi had floated Leftie’s craft out of the water and over the cliff to the grass. The activity had left Leftie sputtering and cursing and complaining about witch magic contaminating his flier.
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