Keriya shot a glare at Penelope Sanvire, daughter of the Head Elder. She stood a few heights away, surrounded by her friends, twirling a strand of curly black hair around her finger.
“Shut up,” Keriya growled through the corner of her mouth.
“Make me. Oh wait, you can’t.” A cruel smirk crinkled Penelope’s plump cheeks. “You have no magic.”
The fiery hand of shame tightened around Keriya’s throat, and she blinked to stave off the tears that sprang to her eyes. Those four words hurt more than anyone could know.
She wasn’t able to pay attention to the send-off, and she didn’t join in on the group prayer to Shivnath. She kept her mouth shut and her head down.
When the prayer was over Erasmus stepped aside, allowing the participants to enter the trees one by one. He presented each of them with a sheepskin waterbag, the only thing they were permitted to take on their rite of passage.
Keriya opened her mouth, but her voice stuck in her throat. Erasmus discouraged displays of affection, so she couldn’t find the words for a proper goodbye.
Erasmus had nothing to say to her, either. He handed her a waterbag and gestured for her to get going. She offered him a brave smile before hurrying into the forest.
A single footpath snaked through the Felwood—well-worn by the Salters when they traveled to the sea—but multiple game trails branched from it. While the trails were more dangerous, Keriya would rather risk running into wild animals than risk running into Penelope Sanvire.
At the first opportunity, she veered onto a narrow rut that meandered through the undergrowth, relaxing in the cover of the familiar trees.
She uncorked her waterbag and took a small drink. It was filled with water from Lake Sanara, which was said to have powerful healing properties. Though the lake had never actually healed anyone, clean water was essential for survival in the wilderness, and Keriya had to do everything she could to survive this ceremony. She would survive, if only to spite the Elders.
She walked until purple tendrils of twilight wended their way through the forest. Keriya had never believed the stories of the dark spirits that plagued the Felwood, but as a chilly wind stirred the leaves and shadows writhed on the ground, it was hard not to imagine evil things lurked behind every tree.
A branch snapped, deafening in the stillness. Keriya gasped and whirled around.
“Who’s there?” she whispered. There was a long, painful pause.
“I’m sure it was just the breeze,” she explained to a nearby shrub which seemed like it needed reassurance. She crawled beneath its branches to take shelter, piling handfuls of damp, smelly leaves over herself in the vain hope they might keep her warm. It took some time, but eventually she fell into a fitful, dreamless sleep.
Keriya woke to a misty drizzle at dawn and scrounged around for something to eat. Erasmus had taught her to identify edible mushrooms and berries, but there were none to be found. Hungry, wet, and still tired, she walked until it grew dark again. She found a rocky cave that kept her dry as she slept, but the uneven stone floor was the furthest thing from comfortable.
On her third sun of travel—another rare, bright morning—the trees thinned. A dull roar reached her ears, and finally, she was out of the forest. She had come to the edge of a cliff overlooking an impossibly vast body of water.
“The sea,” she murmured, her chest swelling with awe.
The roar came from waves crashing against craggy rocks below, scattering droplets that sparkled and drifted like jeweled dragonflies in the sun. A mist-wreathed, mountainous island loomed in the distance. It was the only interruption in the unbounded horizon, where the blue of the cloudless sky faded into the azure waves.
Keriya felt small, but it wasn’t a bad feeling. There was more out there. The world was a larger place than she’d believed.
So maybe, she thought, as her heart leapt at the thought of new people and faraway lands, there’s a chance I can find a place in it.
She spotted a path that led to the shore and descended to the soft sand. Though the sea was beautiful, she was far more interested in the island. Something about it seemed strange, perhaps even magical.
Keriya was seized by the idea that she’d been destined to come here, that this was where she would find her sign. She waded into the water, obeying the island’s siren call.
Then the sunlight vanished.
She snapped out of her reverie to discover that ominous clouds had rolled in. Keriya wheeled around and sloshed toward the shore. She was in past her knees—what had she been thinking? She didn’t know how to swim! Had she thought she could just stroll over to the island?
The water tugged against Keriya’s shins as an immense wave rose and crashed on her. She crumpled beneath it and hit the ground. Her face scraped against the sand, which no longer felt soft, but sharp and abrasive. She struggled to rise, but a ruthless undertow dragged her from the shallows.
Keriya kicked and flailed. She managed to surface for one more inadequate breath before another wave wrapped her in its arms.
No, no! This was all wrong—she was supposed to survive, to prove she deserved a place in Aeria. It couldn’t end like this. She had promised Fletcher she’d be safe. She couldn’t leave him alone in Aeria.
She clamped her mouth shut and fought to keep her head above the whitecaps, drawing short, searing breaths through her nostrils.
As if guided by Shivnath herself, a black wave swelled and forced Keriya underwater, pushing her into the midnight depths. Her heart, which was flinging itself against her ribs, doubled its frenzied pace as the light faded.
This isn’t happening! It can’t! I won’t let it!
Her white hair swirled around her like spectral seaweed, spiraling upwards weightlessly even as her legs grew heavy. She clawed at the water, trying with all her might to climb to the surface. She could do it. She had to.
Shivnath, Keriya prayed, help me! If you let me live, I’ll always behave. I’ll do whatever the Elders say. I’ll never put poison ivy in Penelope Sanvire’s bed again!
Her entreaties grew more desperate, but if Shivnath was listening, she wasn’t doing anything about it.
Keriya’s lungs were on fire. Her body spasmed of its own accord and she opened her mouth. Frigid liquid stung her nose and flooded her lungs. She tried to cough and found she couldn’t—her throat was constricting in an effort to keep the saltwater out.
The chilling shock of drowning brought one last surge of desperate hope. Keriya had done as her body required: she had breathed.
She kicked again with renewed vigor . . . but something was wrong. Her brain was no longer communicating with her legs. Or her arms, she realized, as she tried to lift them.
Keriya went still and her vision grew dark.
Shivnath . . .
She didn’t have time to finish her last thought before she died.
CHAPTER THREE
“Choice is not the same thing as freedom.”
~ Gorkras Shädar, Second Age
She was surrounded by darkness. She didn’t know who she was, where she was, or how she’d gotten there. Her mind was blank. She was an empty shell, bereft of feeling, desire, or purpose.
The darkness pressed on her weightlessly, infinite and absolute. Worry tickled the corners of her pleasantly vacant brain. She turned to get some sense of direction and found herself facing a phantom shape shrouded in shadow. The figure, which was four times her size, gazed at her with eyes so black they banished all memory of light. Purple slitted pupils slashed their sable depths.
“We meet at last, Keriya,” the phantom whispered.
That name—her name—sparked recognition. Tiny drops of her identity came trickling back, filling the nothingness within her.
“How do you know my name?” said Keriya.
“I know everything about you.”
A deep,
primal instinct filled Keriya with the desire to run, but a deeper curiosity overpowered it.
“Who are you?” she asked.
The phantom raised its head and a sourceless, fey light spread across its body. Wonder bloomed in Keriya’s chest. One stray recollection returned to her, flaring like a flame on a pile of dry tinder: she was sitting at a table in a hut, reading a book. She was looking at a page with a picture of a dragon.
That dragon stood before her now.
“You know who I am.” Shivnath’s voice resonated in Keriya’s chest, making her ribcage hum and her heart quiver with fearful excitement. It held the promise of greatness and the threat of destruction all at once.
No picture could do justice to the god’s grandeur. Her dark emerald scales were each edged with a lustrous sparkle. Pearly spikes marched along her spine from the tip of her tail to the base of her reptilian skull, where they met noble horns that curved out and down. Muscular wings protruded from her shoulders, ribbed with clawed fingers like those of a bat.
“I’ve been trying to decide how to deal with you for a long time,” Shivnath admitted. “There was always some reason I couldn’t do as I pleased.”
Keriya swayed as her unblinking gaze swept Shivnath’s lean frame. “Why’s that?”
“All gods are bound by magical laws, and as such, I am unable to meddle in mortal affairs. I may perform earthmagic that indirectly affects every creature in my domain, but I cannot tamper with individual mortals and their problems.”
“Aren’t you tampering with me right now?”
“I’m good at finding the loophole in every rule. But I am not here to talk about the binding laws. I am here because you are dead.”
Keriya furrowed her brows and stared at Shivnath for a long moment. Then she let out an incredulous snort. “That’s not possible.”
“Isn’t it?” said Shivnath, offering a smile that held all the warmth of a glacier. “Why would I lie to you?”
The laughter died on Keriya’s lips.
“You lost your memories when you left your body. I shall return them.”
A rush of visions surged through Keriya’s mind, vivid enough to blind her from her surroundings and so vibrant they made her head ache. She jerked backward to escape the deluge, but the visions burned into the backs of her eyes. She saw her lonely childhood. She saw herself entering the Felwood. She felt herself thrashing in the water. She tasted the burning salt. She was sinking, suffocating. And then . . .
“Oh . . . I’m dead?” It was the strangest feeling. Terror gripped her, yet at the same time she felt consumed by a numb, almost complacent hopelessness. In her struggle to make sense of it, her first instinct was to argue.
“If I’m dead, how can I be talking to you? Seeing you? How can I perceive myself?”
“While your body may expire and rot away, there will always be an essence, a tangle of magicthreads—your soul—which can never be unraveled,” Shivnath explained. “It is what makes you who you are.”
Keriya hugged her arms to her stomach. She couldn’t be dead, could she? Of course not. She was alive and breathing—at least, that was what it felt like.
But Shivnath would never lie to her.
“I have a question for you,” said Shivnath. “What possessed you to leave my domain and enter the Chardons’ territory? Why did you go into the sea?”
“I’m dead,” Keriya murmured in a hollow voice.
“We’ve already established that. Now answer me.”
Keriya drew a ragged breath and gave herself a shake. She examined her newly returned memories, struggling to rearrange them.
“I saw something,” she said slowly. “An island. I wanted to go there. I thought it was magic, though I’m not sure what magic feels like. It just felt . . . different.”
“You are an interesting creature,” Shivnath mused. “I’ve decided that having you dead is unacceptable. Thanks to certain powers of mine, I have the ability to restore life, and thanks to certain loopholes in the binding laws, I will give you back yours. However, before I do such a thing, I would ask that you do something for me.”
A surge of relief, so strong it nearly shattered her, swept through Keriya. “Yes,” she said, covering her mouth with shaking hands. “Anything!”
“What do you know of the far side of my mountains?”
“Only that it’s a wasteland.”
“Wrong,” Shivnath replied flatly. “Beyond the mountains is a land called Allentria, and Allentria is on the verge of war.”
“What’s war?”
“Ah, to live such a sheltered life as an Aerian. War is a state of violent conflict between two or more opposing factions.”
“Like an argument?”
“A big argument.” The corners of Shivnath’s scaly lips twitched as if she wanted to smile. “Ten ages ago, my brethren sought to destroy the most powerful dark force our world has ever known—and they failed. This was Necrovar, the physical manifestation of evil. His war has lasted since the dawn of mankind, for humans are inherently evil.”
Keriya frowned but, reflecting on how the Aerians treated her, decided she did not necessarily disagree.
“In the Second Age, Necrovar took human form and began his conquest. He attacked the mortal nations before setting his sights on the creatures who posed the biggest threat to him: the dragons. Then, at the height of Necrovar’s power, as he was poised for victory, he was defeated by the leader of the World Alliance.” Shivnath paused before she spoke the name: “Valerion.”
“Valerion,” Keriya echoed softly.
“Valerion begged the gods to help him end the war, and we agreed. Using his magic, we bypassed the binding laws that keep our power in check. We wove a spell that imprisoned Necrovar in a place where he could no longer hurt us, a parallel universe called the Etherworld. In order to preserve the magical balance, the spell also imprisoned the dragons.”
Keriya waited in breathless silence for Shivnath to continue. The god’s nostrils flared. A subtle change came over her sculpted features, like twilight creeping across a valley.
“But the spell was imperfect, for one dragon escaped it. And now Necrovar has grown powerful enough to tear the magicthreads that separate our world and his prison.”
“Ah,” said Keriya. There was the catch she’d been waiting for.
“He will return to finish the war he started. He intends to kill that dragon, while the Allentrians seek to use it as a weapon. I cannot allow either of those things to happen.”
Keriya nodded. “Of course.”
“So, to save the dragon, I need you to go to Necrovar in its place.”
Keriya paused mid-nod and stared at Shivnath. “I’m sorry, you want me to . . . ?”
“That’s right.”
This seemed like a dangerous sort of adventure—which was admittedly the best kind—but while the idea of it appealed to Keriya, she knew she was in no way fit for the job.
“I’ve read enough stories to know where this is going,” she said. “I’m guessing you need me to fight Necrovar for you?”
“More or less.”
“You do know I’m crippled, right? I don’t have any magic.”
“I know exactly what you are, which is why I will weave some of my magic into your soul.”
The words pierced Keriya’s haze of confusion. A lightness spread through her, suffusing her limbs with sparkling warmth. Magic. She was going to have magic! And not any old magic, but Shivnath’s magic.
“Be warned that I will not allow you to freely access the power within you. It will be veiled until the right moment. Then it will be gone forever.”
The elation drained from Keriya as quickly as it had come. What good was magic if she couldn’t use it whenever she wanted?
“Magic is not to be abused,” Shivnath growled, as if in response to her thoughts
. She bared a set of impressive, gleaming fangs. “It is not a tool for your foolish human whimsies.”
“I—I’m sorry,” Keriya stammered, cringing before the dragon’s wrath. Shivnath wasn’t anything like the benevolent, loving guardian the Aerians claimed her to be.
“You trust what the Aerians say, do you?” Shivnath sneered. Yes, she was definitely reading Keriya’s mind. “They know nothing. You cannot trust anyone, Keriya. The sooner you learn that, the better.”
“Then how do I know I can trust you?” she asked, trying to inject some levity into the increasingly unnerving conversation.
“You don’t.”
A chill trickled down Keriya’s spine. “Shivnath, that was kind of a joke.”
“I do not joke,” Shivnath told her stiffly.
“Right. I’ll keep that in mind.”
There was another stretch of silence. Keriya opened her mouth, and one question of the millions she pondered slipped out, unbidden.
“Why should I do this?”
The words hung in the air between them, ringing in the stillness, and at once she wished she could take them back.
“Why should you do this?” The god’s voice was no longer cold and angry; now it was slow and calculating. She drummed her talons on the invisible ground. “You mean aside from the fact that you will remain dead if you don’t?”
Keriya winced. Why couldn’t she have kept quiet? It wasn’t like she had a choice in the matter.
“There is always a choice, Keriya,” said Shivnath. For the first time, a glimmer of compassion softened her hard face. “The trick is not to choose the lesser of two evils, but to rise above the evil once chosen. The ninth binding law states that I cannot force you to do anything against your will. You alone must decide where to go from here.”
It wasn’t so much the advice, but the unexpected kindness with which it was given, that made Keriya relent.
“I’m sorry. I don’t know why I asked that. I didn’t mean it.”
“Oh, I think you did . . . but that’s all for the best. I expect you’d want to do this because if you save that dragon, you will be a hero. Heroes are important and powerful. They are brave and they do great deeds,” said Shivnath. “And the best thing about heroes is that everyone loves them. Isn’t that what you want?”
Dragon Speaker Page 3
