For exclusive news, notification of free books, and to stay up to date on Heather’s novels, click here to subscribe to her newsletter.
Other works by Heather:
The Channeler series:
Born of Fire (short story)
Fire With Fire (novella)
The Secret of Spruce Knoll
Channeler’s Choice
Rise of a Rector
Fantasy novels:
To Ride A Púca
Dragon Empire novels:
Dragon Seer (short story)
The Dragon Empire
For a free excerpt of The Dragon Empire, read on:
1
What he was seeing could be the death of him, he knew, yet Grendar couldn’t look away. The undergrowth that had been hampering his progress through the jungle no longer seemed thick enough to conceal him. His hearts pounded and his throat constricted. What if they saw him? The human guise he was wearing wouldn’t exactly protect him, not considering what they were doing.
Through the ferns and palm fronds he could see them: four dragons the color of a starless night sky. At over twenty feet from hindquarters to nose, they were twice Grendar’s size. They gleamed in the tropical sun, their obsidian-colored scales contrasting with the bright blood on their long snouts and claws. On the beach before them was the source of all that blood. The partially eaten bodies of several people lay scattered about the sand like tortured and discarded dolls. The biggest dragon—one Grendar knew well—held a body beneath one of his massive forelegs. He reached down and tore a chunk of flesh from it, scarcely chewing before he swallowed. Both the sight and sound made Grendar flinch, the motion feeling foreign in a human body.
A breeze blew off the ocean, its salty essence tainted with the reek of carrion and death. Bile stung the back of Grendar’s tongue and nausea rolled through his stomach. People were protected, and for good reason. To kill one, let alone eat one, went against the creed of the Dragon Empire. Such a thing would get a dragon banished.
This morning it had seemed like an excellent idea to fly to the distant Breekay Islands and practice his human transformation spell. What with finals coming up at the end of the year and all. Now it seemed like the worst idea he’d had in a long time. He shivered in his borrowed skin and prayed that they wouldn’t smell him.
Not far beyond the black dragons, a ship lay crumbled against the jagged rocks that littered the bay. So the dragons hadn’t killed the people, they had found them. That didn’t make it much better. Their barbaric behavior was still unforgivable.
He started to shake, his nerves making it even harder than normal to concentrate and hold himself in a human body. Losing the form now, here, would make too much noise. Panic seized him and he jumped, hitting his head on a palm tree. Leaves rustled overhead, drawing the attention of the black dragons. Grendar ducked as low to the ground as he could get. He could turn invisible, but if he spoke the words to the spell aloud, they would know exactly where he was. Not to mention, he couldn’t do two spells at once. The transformation spell was hard enough to maintain.
“Quiet! I heard something,” the biggest of the four said.
Grendar’s shaking grew worse at the sound of that voice. He heard it in his nightmares, it had tormented him his entire childhood. Even now, when he was entering into adulthood, it still elicited a bone-chilling fear in him.
One of the other dragons flipped his long neck up and gulped a chunk of flesh down his throat. He wiped blood from his long jaw with a scaled finger before shaking his head at the bigger dragon. “You worry too much, Sidean. It’s probably just a bird.”
That too was a voice that visited Grendar’s nightmares but not nearly as often as Sidean’s.
The four of them turned to look in his direction. Sidean’s golden eyes focused right in on Grendar as if he had used a locate spell. Their gazes met and a phantom chill raced down the spikes that lined Grendar’s spine. It couldn’t really travel down his spikes since they weren’t there at the moment, but it felt as if it did. A horrible hunger filled Sidean’s eyes.
“Fresh meat,” he said in a voice that was thick with the blood of his current meal.
Grendar dropped his control on his human guise and rose up onto his hind legs as a dragon. He shuffled backwards fast as he could, stopping only when his flailing green wings hit a tree. He turned, ducked around it, and took off running on all fours. Behind him, he heard the other dragons struggling to get through the underbrush.
Being smaller and more agile, Grendar wove easily through the jungle and left his pursuers behind. A myriad of greens speckled through with bright spots of flowers blurred before him. As an emerald dragon, it was easy for him to blend into the jungle. Still, Sidean persisted, crashing through bushes and small trees.
If he could just make it a few more yards he had a shot at getting away. His heart pounded so loudly in his ear canals he could no longer hear anything else. The jungle gave way and the ground disappeared. Such a powerful relief flooded through him that it nearly brought tears to his eyes. Unfurling his wings, he took to the air. The main island wasn’t far away. If he could make it there and into the company of other dragons, he’d live. He stretched out his neck and tail and flew for all he was worth. The wind carried threats and curses to him. Massive wings soon slapped thunderously at the air in his wake. He pushed himself harder.
The ocean glimmered a brilliant blue below him. Bright sunlight bounced off the low peaks of the waves, tempting him. He may be able to out-swim them better than he could out-fly them. Out here in the deep, though, it wasn’t a good option. There were predators within these waters that made his pursuers look harmless. Counting on his skill to out-maneuver the other dragons, he flew on.
In no time at all they left the tiny, uninhabited island behind. The turquoise and blue ocean passed beneath him at a dizzying speed. Fear slowed time despite the appearance of the world zipping by, making it feel like forever before the big island came into sight. Just when he thought he might die from anticipation, his shadow fell over land. The muscles of his wings ached from his frantic flight and his throat burned.
Golden fields of wheat swayed in the wind roused by his wings as he dove low. The bigger dragons wouldn’t be able to maneuver so easily in the unpredictable air currents this close to the ground. The huge shadow that covered him from above was not encouraging, though. Ahead of him the field stretched on for what seemed like miles. In the distance he could barely make out the plateau where the city Ait Culmhaut perched. He wasn’t going to make it.
With his adrenalin pumping and his mind racing, he couldn’t focus enough to recall the words of the spell he needed. That he even needed words frustrated him. Most dragons were adept at spellcraft and didn’t need to use words. But he was not most dragons. Thankfully, Sidean and his mob needed to know the words to spells as well, for like him, their skills lie in other areas. Areas like pummeling and chasing.
Focus, focus! He chided himself.
With nearly a thousand pounds of black scales and claws breathing down his neck, that was easier said than done. With mating season closing in, this group was more aggressive than they’d ever been. This time he was afraid they were going to hurt him badly. Shoving his doubts aside, Grendar dug deep, calmed himself, and found the words he needed. All he had to do was out-think the other dragons. Considering how out of breath he was, he had to do it fast.
Magic surged within him, sending a warm rush from his snout to the tip of his fin-like tail. As the sensation tingled all the way through the clawed tips of his wings, he knew the spell was complete. Still, he couldn’t resist the urge to look down at his forelegs to check. Sure enough, they were invisible just like the rest of him was. It was a simple spell, one his father had taught him while he was still in the egg many years ago. Sometimes simple was the most effective. His father had taught him that too.
Unfortunately, his father hadn’t taught him the one thing he really needed to know right now, how to fight. That
would come later his father always said, when he was closer to mating age. He seemed to be studiously ignoring the fact that Grendar was nearly of mating age. Not that it really mattered. Even if he knew how to fight, he didn’t stand a chance against Sidean, he was half the monster’s size.
The moment his invisibility kicked in, he veered off course and dove toward a cluster of boulders. Touching down as gently as he could so he didn’t disturb the grass and give himself away, he tucked his wings in tight and crawled under an outcropping. All around him the field had given way to a rocky landscape filled with similar cubbyholes. He hoped it would help make his hiding spot harder to find. He had to suppress a sigh of relief as Sidean and the other two black dragons soared right by.
Several moments passed. The sound of wings beating at the wind faded. Thinking the danger to be gone, he stepped out from beneath the rock and stretched to his full ten foot height. His nostrils flared as he checked for any scent of the others on the breeze.
“Disspell,” a deep voice hissed behind him.
Pressure settled over him then promptly popped like a bubble. The air shimmered and a moment later he could see his forelegs. He shot forward and spun around, standing up on his hind legs so he could use the claws of his fingers if he had to. A mass of black scales rose before him. Balancing on his long, whip-like tail, Sidean towered over him at nearly twenty feet tall. He opened and closed his talons like the fingers of a fist, the huge muscles in his forearms bulging with each squeeze. With a shake of his horned head, he curled his lips back from his dagger-like teeth and laughed.
Staring into that gaping maw, Grendar realized if Sidean really tried, he could clamp his jaws all the way around Grendar’s head. That thought made him swallow hard and take a step back. For at least the thousandth time in his life, he wished he were anything but an emerald dragon.
Gem dragons were the smallest of the three types. Chromatic dragons like Sidean were typically twice their size. He supposed he should be happy Sidean wasn’t a metallic dragon. They were three times the size of a gem dragon. At the moment that was scarcely much comfort.
“You didn’t really think you could hide from me did you, Grendar?” Sidean asked.
“I’d hoped,” Grendar said with a shrug.
“What did you see?” Sidean demanded.
Could the brute really be so foolish as to think he hadn’t seen enough to condemn him? If so, there might be a chance he’d fly out of this in one piece. It was a small chance, but he’d take what he could get.
“Not much. I was concentrating too hard on practicing my transformation spell to pay attention to anything else. I saw you and him on the beach eating something,” Grendar said. His voice didn’t even shake. A touch of pride swelled through him.
Sidean took a step closer, looming over him and clearly enjoying it. “Eating what?” he hissed.
That tiny bit of pride fled on the carrion-scented breeze of Sidean’s breath. Grendar tried to look clueless instead of terrified. “I don’t know, a teranodon? I didn’t see. Why does it matter?”
A long black tail reached up and slapped him across the face. Stinging pain lashed through the length of his jaw. Bad as it was, it hadn’t been hard enough to break anything, this time.
“It doesn’t. Why did you run then?” Sidean demanded.
“Because our meetings always end like this. I was trying to avoid it,” Grendar said.
“That was stupid,” someone behind him said. From the sound of his voice it was one of Sidean’s younger brothers.
They were closing in on all sides of him. As a dragon born into the architect class—not to mention being half their size—he was no match for one of them, let alone three. That had never made any difference to Sidean and his friends.
“It wouldn’t have been if it had worked,” Grendar ended the words with a sigh.
While he remained the picture of calm resignation, his eyes darted this way and that, trying to see where the first attack would come from. Every muscle in his body tensed in anticipation. He considered using his breath weapon—a freezing cloud that instantly iced up everything it touched—but he didn’t want them using theirs on him. Sidean had spit acid on him more than once and it was unpleasant to put it mildly. Usually, if he didn’t do it, neither did they. Sort of a bully/victim kind of code.
Sidean’s snowy white teeth gleamed as he grinned a humorless grin. “You couldn’t possibly understand what my brothers and I are doing. Such a thing is beyond you and your precious Empire. If you’d like to keep flying and breathing, you’ll stay away from the Breekay Islands and forget you ever saw us there,” he said.
The words sent ice shooting through Grendar’s veins. What on Yacrana could he mean by that? He spoke like one who wasn’t loyal to the Empire. Such a thing was unthinkable. “Whatever, Sidean, it’s forgotten,” Grendar said, trying to make light of it. The lie rolled easily off his forked tongue.
Behind him someone repeated his words in a mocking tone. Grendar rolled his eyes. He knew it was a mistake the moment he did it but he couldn’t help it. Hatchlings could come up with a better insult, let alone full-grown dragons of near-mating age.
Sidean’s yellow eyes lit up like the sun as an angry growl rumbled through his chest. His right shoulder tipped back and by seeing it Grendar was able to get a foreleg up to block the swing that was coming. The impact knocked him back and pain burned along his foreleg as Sidean’s claws cut deep. Grendar bumped into hard bodies and was thrown forward. Laughing, Sidean lunged at him. The impact rattled Grendar’s teeth and sent him flying back.
“What Sidean, you can’t fight good enough to pick on someone your own size?” said a feminine voice.
Grendar knew who it was before he even turned around. Spitting dust and blood, he stood slowly and stretched his wings, testing them. Nothing felt broken save for the skin of his upper lip. Putting weight on his right foreleg hurt. The scratches must have made it to the muscle.
Shoving her way through the male black dragons was a female nearly their size and easily as dark. She was long and sinewy with a graceful neck that was half the length of her fifteen-foot tail. The anger filling her big blue eyes looked far more dangerous than the pair of long, curving horns behind them. With complete disregard for her own well-being, she stepped right between Grendar and Sidean. Turning her back to Grendar, she unfurled her bat-like wings to their impressive fifty-foot span, affectively hiding him. Unfortunately, it also blocked his view, not to mention completely demeaned him since a female was coming to his rescue. But, beggars couldn’t be choosers. A rescue was a rescue.
“Must you always come to his rescue, Makani? It’s tiresome,” Sidean complained.
Makani’s back straightened and the spiky ridge running down her spine forced Grendar to take a step back. His tail brushed against the boulders.
“You’re right. It is. So why don’t you just leave him alone?” Makani snapped.
“Our kind preys on the weak. It’s called natural selection,” Sidean said.
Though his voice was low and quiet, it sounded louder, like he had moved closer. That wasn’t good. Grendar prayed that she wouldn’t push him any farther. The last thing he wanted was for his friend to get hurt trying to save him.
“That kind of attitude could bring the Emperors down on you,” a second female voice said.
This one sent a thrill of fear through Grendar. It wasn’t fear for himself, but for her. He didn’t want this female anywhere near Sidean and his friends. Standing up on his hind legs, he stretched his neck out as high as he could and tried to see over Makani’s dark shoulders.
Storming up beside Sidean, wings twitching with fury, was the vision of beauty that made Grendar thank Oliss he was an emerald dragon. Her body was slim and fit like a skydancer and she had a long curving neck and tail. The sunlight glinted off her scaled hide, making it look more like cut emeralds than scales. Being that her scales were inflated, she had to have flown all the way her
e from one of the colder isles.
Gem dragons scales only looked that way—all bulbous—when they’d been in the cold. Their scales expanded with the warm energy of the sun. It was nature’s way of making them more adaptable to the arctic isles they called home. She must have flown here when he failed to show up on time for their meeting. Dammit, how could he have forgotten about that?
Lips curling back from his sharp teeth, Sidean turned to the female emerald dragon. He dropped onto all fours, snapped his wings in against his sides, and glared her down. At twice her size he literally towered over her.
“Ashanti, how predictable to see you here,” he said.
His head whipped forward, stopping inches from her face, lips curled back from his long, sharp teeth. Ashanti flinched and fear flashed in her beautiful white eyes. Glaring at him, she lowered her head so the tips of the short horns that sloped up from behind her eyes pointed at him. Most males wouldn’t dare take such an aggressive stance against Sidean. But then, Ashanti was more courageous than most of the males Grendar knew.
“How predictable to see you here Sidean. When are you going to grow up and stop bullying others?” Ashanti asked.
Sidean’s forked tongue darted out and licked his lips, looking like a trail of bright blood against his black scales. The movement was slow and sensuous. He moved up alongside her and his tail whipped around her hind legs.
“Case you hadn’t noticed, I am all grown up,” he said in a husky voice.
Bristling, Grendar tried to shove past Makani’s wings. Her tail wrapped around his left hind leg and held him fast. For a heartbeat he thought about breathing ice on her to make her let go, but he didn’t. She was his friend. He couldn’t hurt her.
Dragons didn’t interbreed because the mix couldn’t produce eggs. However, that didn’t mean they couldn’t copulate. The idea of Sidean even thinking about forcing himself on Ashanti made Grendar want to dig the bastard’s entrails out.
Making a disgusted sound, Ashanti clicked her needle sharp teeth at Sidean as she shoved him away. “Don’t touch me unless you want to lose parts vital to mating,” she warned.
Sidean and his friends laughed and mocked her, but thankfully, they took several steps back.
“Your Emperors would do well to remember their natures,” Sidean said.
After looking her up and down he grunted, turned, and walked away with his brothers in tow. Glancing back, he winked at Makani.
“You would do good to remember they’re your Emperors as well,” Ashanti called after him.
Sidean didn’t turn back or even twitch a muscle but the agitated way he whipped his tail from side to side made it clear he’d heard. After a few steps, he, his brother, and their companion spread their massive wings and took to the sky.
A low, hissing sound came from Makani. “Thank goodness your great aunt Samahra is the emerald dragon Emperor. Just the mention has made that son of an ogre back off more than once,” she said.
The scales on Ashanti’s cheeks swelled more as blood rushed to them. “I’m just glad those cretins have never called my bluff. I’m not sure even I could gain an audience with her now days,” she said.
Once the group of black dragons was out of sight, Makani tucked her wings against her side and turned around. Her brow furrowed and she shook her long snout.
“What’d you do to show him up this time?” she asked.
Pain seared through Grendar’s bottom lip as he smiled. Reaching up with the fingers of his left foreleg, he touched it gingerly. Blood stained his ivory claw.
“It wasn’t my fault this time. He couldn’t get his levitating potion right. The instructor asked me to demonstrate the proper mixture,” Grendar said.
He couldn’t tell them the truth. It would only put them in danger as well. Maybe if he just forgot all about it, everything could go back to normal. No one besides Makani and Ashanti would believe him anyway. The thought made his hearts ache. This was bigger than some petty squabble or beating. Such a thing meant Sidean was walking an even darker path than Grendar had thought.
Makani snorted and waved her hand in an agitated gesture, claws extended. “It’s never your fault. That stupid ogre’s ass. It takes less and less to set him off lately,” she said.
Slowly stretching his wings out, Grendar tested them for injury. The left one was a bit sore from landing on it, but nothing serious. He’d walked away with a lot worse before.
“He’s only jealous that you choose my company over his,” he said.
Makani made a sound somewhere between a snort and a laugh.
“He’d be lucky to get a fighter female to look at him, let alone me,” she said.
Coming from anyone but Makani such a statement would have seemed arrogant. Beneath her words hid an undertone of fear, one that made Grendar clench his teeth.
“Exactly. He’d never be able to fly the mating dance with an instructor like you,” Ashanti said.
Dragons were born into certain classes and it was unusual for them to mate outside of them. Both Makani and Sidean were born into the caith class, so a pairing wasn’t impossible. The wicked look in Makani’s eyes said otherwise though.
Ashanti’s shadow fell across Grendar, offering a slight relief from the tropical midday heat. Her scent filled his nostrils and he breathed deep of it: lavender and new snow. His eyelids fluttered as he drew it in like a decadent treat. More than anything, he wanted to look up into her ivory eyes and beautiful face, but he couldn’t. Shame kept his gaze riveted upon the crushed wheat beneath his claws.
How could he ever hope to be a worthy mate to her when he couldn’t even protect himself? Sure, an emerald dragon was no match for a black dragon, but Grendar didn’t even know how to fight. He was brilliant at history, mathematics, potions, debate, and was fluent in a dozen different languages. However, none of that did him any good against Sidean. It wasn’t that he wanted to be a warrior, he didn’t. He just wanted to be able to defend himself and those he cared about. Having been born into the architect class, Grendar knew he didn’t stand a blizzard’s chance in the ninth level of hell with her anyway. She was an amazing skydancer born into the artist class. Classes didn’t mix. But a male could dream.
“Oh Grendar, you’re bleeding badly,” Ashanti sighed.
The dainty fingers of her scaled foreleg inspected the wound, sending a tingling sensation all the way to his center that wasn’t entirely unpleasant. Blood trailed steadily down to his elbow and dripped onto the ground but he hardly noticed anymore. Her talons were amazingly gentle as they brushed over the ravaged scales. When she touched the open wound, he couldn’t help but wince. Looking down, he realized it was a lot deeper than he had thought.
Makani’s long neck snaked around Ashanti for a closer look. “Do you have any of that healing potion left?” she asked. Her eyes widened as they fell upon his leg and she whistled through her fangs.
“No. I used it up last week,” Grendar said.
Shaking her head, Ashanti pulled a piece of cloth from a pouch strapped to her foreleg. Grendar had to bite back a cry as she tied it tightly around the wound.
“It’s ridiculous that you have to keep healing potions around. The closer he gets to mating age the more out of control Sidean gets. I think it’s time we told my aunt,” she said.
In another full turn of the seasons they would all be of official mating age. Grendar didn’t even want to think of how bad Sidean’s attitude would be once he was able to start competing for females. But then it wouldn’t matter, Sidean would leave for the island of Kahindee and Grendar would never see him again. He would be safe; the torment of the last twenty winters finally would come to an end.
“Much as I hate to go that route, I think she’s right,” Makani agreed.
Pulling his arm from Ashanti, Grendar stepped around her and started to walk off. The moment he put his foreleg down and the blood rushed to it, a severe pain shot through him and he had to stifle a cry. Holding it agai
nst his chest, he sat back on his haunches and wrapped his wings around himself. He didn’t want Ashanti to see him this way but it was nearly impossible to hide the agony.
“No we can’t do that. Sidean is my problem, not the Empire’s. They have enough of their own to worry about,” Grendar insisted. The words were bitter and harsh upon his forked tongue. That was exactly what he should do—tell them about the bullying and what he’d seen on the beach—and denying it was sending his gut into turmoil. He had no proof of the beach incident, which meant the Emperors would only deliberate on the matter, giving Sidean plenty of time to kill Grendar.
Flinching, Ashanti let go of his foreleg. Regret coursed through him, making him forget about the throbbing pain for a moment. He reached out and caught her fingers in his own. Frustration filled her eyes and creased her brows together despite the bony ridge that separated them.
“I’ll be okay. Next moon is the last summer before our first mating season starts. It’s the last chance I’ll have to learn caith before then, which means my father will have to approve my training. I only have to avoid Sidean for one more moon,” he said.
Mentioning mating season while touching her was almost too much for him but he managed to do so without letting his voice break. She sighed and her fingers gripped his. He tried not to read into it or make more of it than it was. She nodded.
“Alright, but only if he doesn’t attack you again before then. If he does, deal’s off,” she said, sounding much tougher than her sad eyes looked.
The concern on her face made Grendar’s wings want to droop. It took all his self-control not to touch her cheek or stroke her long, curved neck. But he couldn’t. They weren’t exactly to that stage yet and probably never would be. He didn’t feel like he had any right to try and move beyond friendship with her. That didn’t stop him from wanting to though.
“Come on, let’s get you to the cleric,” Makani said.
Reluctantly, he let go of Ashanti’s fingers as she moved away to give him room to spread his wings. The words of the levitation spell ran through his mind. As he thought the last of them, he ran a few steps and beat his wings rapidly. The power of the spell lifted him enough so he could catch the air currents and soar toward the blue sky. Ashanti and Makani took to the air with him, flying close as they headed inland toward the jungle.
The Dragon Empire can be purchased in its entirety at all major retail outlets in both eBook format and paperback!
Dragon Seer Page 6
