“Shadowbeast . . .” The word floated up from deep within Keriya. Empress Aldelphia had said shadowbeasts were Necrovar’s demonic minions, and this monster fit that description.
The shadowbeast growled and launched at her, claws outstretched. Max wielded a current of air to intercept it, smacking it to the ground. It howled in confusion, hissing and spitting.
Keriya cast around for something she could use to fight—a branch, a rock, anything—when a ghastly, rotted black hand clamped around her wrist. Her gaze slowly traveled from the hand, up a skeletal, decaying arm, and landed on the face of a man whose skin, hair, and eyes were all the inky, hopeless color of death.
A shadowman.
She struggled and he tightened his grasp. With his free hand, he grabbed her other arm and squeezed so hard that it felt like her bones were about to snap.
“We’ve been looking for you,” he said, blowing rancid breath into her face.
Panicking, Keriya kicked at him. He dissolved into thin air before her foot hit, his body growing transparent and dissipating into spectral, smoky mist. He reappeared behind her, his arms solidifying and sliding around her neck in a stranglehold.
A punch of icy adrenaline surged through Keriya. This magic was beyond anything she’d ever encountered before, and she had no idea how to combat it.
“Don’t kill me,” she choked.
“We don’t want to kill you.” The shadowman lowered his head and whispered in her ear, “We need you.”
“Let me go! Max,” she cried, “Help!”
Max was defending himself against three more dark monsters who’d joined the first. Though they appeared reluctant to attack the prince, an ominous black fog was rising beneath them, flickering in the wind.
“Wield, Keriya!” he yelled.
“I can’t!” He was aware of her disability, and she’d told him time and time again that all the power she had been given was locked away.
Or was it?
Shivnath had promised she would be able to wield when the moment was right, and if this didn’t qualify as the right moment, nothing would.
Keriya closed her eyes and focused her intent, wanting—no, needing to call the dragon, needing it like she needed air and water and sunlight. She imagined her voice as Shivnath’s: all-powerful, commanding, a voice that was designed to be obeyed.
“Dragon, come to me! Help me!” An ancient, foreign language slipped from Keriya’s mouth, a language filled with the same essence of power that had lived within every syllable the god had uttered. The shadowman’s grip loosened as soon as she spoke. A spark of energy flared in her chest, and some long-submerged instinct told her that whatever she was doing, it was working.
For the first time in her life, magic was within her grasp.
She elbowed her enemy and he released her. Drawing air into her lungs she shouted again, this time for the world to hear:
“Dragon, come to me!”
She wanted to open her eyes—especially since the glow reflecting off her lids was blinding her—but she couldn’t. She was caught in the thrall of her spell. Whatever power she had harnessed, it had taken control of her.
A rumble shook the earth. The wind and rain beat against her skin. Thunder boomed, but her concentration never wavered. She was no longer Keriya Soulstar: she was a singular, burning desire to summon the dragon. She was the universe, and the universe was on her side. It felt like every magicthread around her wanted this to happen.
Through the blur of power-lust and panic, part of her thought that if this was what it felt like to wield, then she wanted to feel this way forever.
Something hit her square on the forehead and she doubled over, opening her eyes at last. Hailstones were falling thick and fast. The black fog had grown so dense that it was impossible to see the shadowbeasts.
“Max,” she cried, spinning on the spot. “Where are you?” There was no response.
A monstrous sound echoed from above. She squinted up to see a thunderhead seething and bubbling with lightning. Droplets of light spewed from the center of the cloud vortex, where a shape was silhouetted against the glow. Was it another shadowbeast?
The shape grew larger, drawing closer, landing in front of her. Time churned to a halt. Keriya stood frozen for a moment, an age. She couldn’t breathe. She felt as though the world were falling away from her.
Then, with another rumble, the world was falling away. The ground caved beneath her feet and she tumbled into a subterranean hollow with the creature.
It wasn’t a long drop, but she landed hard. Her legs buckled and she slammed on her side. Groaning and shaking her head, she blinked and stared around. Above, the black fog was sticking curious tendrils into the opening of the collapse as if searching for her.
Or maybe it was searching for the dragon she had summoned.
He was hard to miss. He perched atop the pile of caved-in rubble, scrutinizing her. It was too dark to discern much of his form, but his eyes were ablaze with red-violet fire, their glow cutting sharply through the gloom.
It was like looking into a mirror, but this mirror was more telling than any reflecting glass Keriya had ever seen. His eye color was unsettling enough, but there was an aura that pervaded the irises, a sense of otherworldly-ness and danger. She understood now why people were so frightened when they looked at her.
“Who are you?” His voice was a calm tenor, dark and quiet, yet radiant with power and audible over the howling wind.
Keriya couldn’t answer. She suddenly realized that this creature was not like Shivnath, and just as suddenly, claws of fear hooked into her heart.
The dragon glanced at the fog seeping toward them. “And who is wielding this darkmagic?”
Keriya scooted backward along the floor. The dragon descended from the heap of debris to follow her.
“If you do not explain, human,” he said calmly, “you may force me to kill you.”
“I don’t know!”
A jolt of panic speared her in the stomach, giving her the strength to rise. She turned her back on the fog and the dragon, fleeing blindly into the open cave. She heard him running after her and doubled her wild pace.
A wave of dizziness and nausea brought her crashing to her knees. She sprawled on the uneven ground. Stars winked across her scope of vision, then everything grew dark.
The dragon caught up to her. He lowered his head and opened his jaws. Keriya fought to stay awake, but her body was shutting down.
The last thing she saw was two spheres of purple, whose light remained engraved in her mind long after she surrendered to the oblivion of unconsciousness.
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
“Though you may think you wish to disappear, perhaps all you really want is to be found.”
~ Sagerius Fangheart, in the Age Before Ages
A throbbing pain in her side woke Keriya. She opened her eyes and saw a carved rock ceiling, crumbling with age. To her right, an archway led to the outside world. The morning sun illuminated stone ruins and toppled pillars that had been all but swallowed by vines.
Memories dribbled back to her: the storm, the attack, the shadowbeasts, the cave-in . . . and the dragon.
Instantly she was on guard. She jumped up and backed toward a wall, gazing into the corners of the cave. It took only a moment to spot him, for even in shadow his bronze scales gleamed like the sides of a faceted gemstone. Though his eyes were no longer glowing, they shone with ghostly reflections of sunlight.
“Where are we?” she asked the dragon in his native language. Now that she had spoken it once, it was like a dam had broken. She had access to a pocket of her mind that had previously been sealed away—a pocket that held every word she needed to communicate with him.
“Selaras, fourth planet from the yellow star Esentia,” he replied dispassionately. “I cannot be more specific, for my people have been
gone too long for me to identify this land with any degree of accuracy.”
Keriya blinked. That was hardly the sort of response she’d been expecting.
“If you are referring to where you are in relation to where you were last, I brought you here. I determined that you were not a threat and that it would behoove me to keep you alive to procure information from you. So I saved you.”
She wasn’t sure how to react to that—nor to the dragon in general. He was smaller than she’d originally believed. From the tip of the sleek, reptilian head to the tail that stuck out straight behind his lithe body, swaying gently, he was the size of a small sheep. Overlarge wings stirred at his sides and floppy ears twitched behind the budding horns lining the back of his skull. He was clearly young.
Here in the light of day, it was hard for Keriya to remember why she’d been so terrified of him. She stretched out a hand in greeting, but he tensed as if to run—or to attack. A set of translucent inner eyelids flickered up, briefly shrouding his purple gaze.
“My name is Keriya Soulstar.”
“Keriya,” he repeated.
“That’s me. Do you have a name?”
“I am Thorion Sveltorious.”
“It’s nice to meet you, Thorion.”
Thorion didn’t reply. Keriya fidgeted in the silence, feeling a mounting pressure in her chest. She should say something else, make a good impression. What did people usually talk about when getting to know one another?
“So . . . how’d you get here?”
“I dragged you through the tunnels until I found this place, which is safe and defensible.”
“Yeah, I sort of figured that out. I meant, you know, here-here,” she said ineloquently.
“I am here because you called me.”
“No . . . how did you first come to be here?”
“I understood the context of your question.”
“Okay,” she said, taking a steadying breath and shaking her head, trying to find the right words. “Here, as in Allentria. How did you escape the Etherworld?”
Thorion’s eyes unfocused, glassing over as if he were staring at something far away.
“I cannot remember my escape. It was abrupt. First I was elsewhere, and that place was a slow death for the dragons. We were all together, but we were each of us alone. We were cut off from our magicsources, always drained of our powers.”
Though he spoke in a bland, unaffected voice, something about his words sent shivers crawling down Keriya’s back.
“I felt a great pull. There was pain all over my body, and I was brought to a place where the weight of eternity pressed on me. Then I was in your world.
“The crossover from the parallel universe has left my sense of time and space distorted,” Thorion continued. “It may have taken milliseconds or millennia to re-enter Selaras—though it is improbable that it is the latter, seeing as I would have aged, either physically or relativistically.”
Keriya raised an eyebrow as the young dragon waxed poetic. She was fluent in his language, but it was difficult to understand him. He was so detached and cold. No, not cold exactly . . .
“Emotionless,” she muttered as he droned on. Empress Aldelphia had mentioned that dragons didn’t have emotions, but she hadn’t mentioned how off-putting the lack of emotions would be.
“Therefore, I believe I was brought to your universe in order to maintain the balance,” Thorion concluded.
“Mm,” she said. “You know, I’ve heard a lot about the balance, but no one’s explained why it’s so important.”
“The balance keeps the magics of our world in check,” he told her. “In an isolated system, all magicthreads tend toward entropy.”
“What’s entropy?”
“Entropy represents the unavailability of a thread’s potential energy. The more entropy there is, the harder it is for wielders to use magic. If the buildup of potential energy reaches a critical point, it can cause a reaction capable of destroying our universe.”
“I see,” Keriya lied. She was sorry she’d bothered to ask. Thorion’s indifferent voice and complicated words were intimidating.
In Aeria, she’d fancied herself an expert on magical theory, studying it obsessively in the hopes that one day, she would be able to wield. Here in Allentria—and especially now that she’d met Thorion—she was realizing she didn’t know the first thing about magic.
“But balance prevents entropy and keeps threads in a wieldable state,” Thorion continued. He tilted his head toward her. “Now it is my turn to ask questions. Can you free my family from the Etherworld?”
“I’m not sure,” she admitted.
“You called me. Surely you can call them, too.”
“I don’t think I have that kind of power.”
“Then it would appear that you are useless to me, and I saved your life for nothing.” He moved toward the archway and spread his wings, preparing to take flight.
Keriya might have been offended, if not for the fact she was used to being told she was useless. That, and the fact that he’d delivered his biting words in the calmest of monotones.
“But I will try to help you,” she added quickly. He paused and glanced back at her. “Our empress will help, too. All of Allentria will help, as long as you stay with me.”
The empress also wanted him to fight Necrovar, but Keriya suspected it was best to omit that information.
She offered her hand again, and Thorion drew near to inspect it. His nostrils flared as he breathed in her scent, tiny scales slipping seamlessly over one another to accommodate the subtle movements of his face.
“This offer of assistance sounds as though it could prove beneficial to me,” he said.
Keriya let out a breath and smiled shakily. That was as much of a pledge of cooperation as she was going to get. Now it was time to figure out her next step.
She wanted to find her friends. They had agreed to return to Noryk if anyone was separated from the group—but if she brought Thorion to the Imperial City, she might anger Shivnath. And if she didn’t, she would definitely anger Aldelphia.
“Why are you upset?” It was clear by the way Thorion said the word that he had no idea what ‘upset’ meant. He’d used it perfectly in the sentence, but the concept of feeling upset appeared unfathomable to him.
“I don’t know what to do,” she said. “I’d like to get to Noryk, but—”
“No need for uncertainty. We can go this way.” Thorion indicated a tunnel behind him with a nod.
Keriya gazed into the dark, gaping maw of the tunnel. “Why do you say that?”
“The last time we were above ground, we were attacked,” he reasoned. “The runes on the walls indicate that these are dwarf tunnels, which were extensive in the age of the dragons and led to every major mortal metropolis, the most famous of which was Noryk. We should be able to find our way with ease.” With that, he loped toward the tunnel.
“Who exactly is leading this quest?” Keriya asked herself wryly, though she made no argument as she hurried after him. Now that she’d found him, she wasn’t going to let him out of her sight.
They descended into the tunnel, leaving the light of the sun. Glowing lichens and mushrooms crowded the walls, providing enough illumination for them to find their way.
The only sounds were the soft scuff of her feet against the worn rock floor and the click of Thorion’s talons. At first she didn’t mind the eerie silence, but over time it grew oppressive. She should be talking. This was the first dragon to walk the face of Selaras in ten ages. There was so much she could learn from him.
“How old are you?” she asked, figuring she’d start with simple questions.
“I will be one hundred and twelve on the fifteenth sun of the second moon of the third season,” he informed her.
Her eyes widened. “Do all dragons live that long?”<
br />
“Fueled by the arcane magic in our souls, the strongest of our species can live for thousands of years.”
“What do you do with that time? Without emotions doesn’t it get boring?” Too late, she remembered boredom was an emotion.
“When the dragons were free, we devoted ourselves to the study of the universe,” said Thorion. “As the dominant and most intelligent life form on the planet, we once used our wisdom to make the world a better place.”
“That’s very altruistic of you,” she observed, eyeing him sidelong.
“It was wise to monitor and maintain the balance of magics and to ensure our ecosystem functioned properly. A safe and healthy world benefits all of its inhabitants.”
“If that’s true, why didn’t you fight Necrovar during the Great War?” The question was out of her mouth before she could stop it, before she considered the repercussions of asking something so insolent.
“You seek many answers,” said Thorion. He was unperturbed—he couldn’t be perturbed—but Keriya also noted he hadn’t given her the answer she sought.
“Sorry. I’m just curious,” she mumbled.
“Curious,” he repeated.
“It means—”
“I know what it means,” he interrupted. “I know the words for human emotions, though having never experienced them, I cannot comprehend them. But expanding one’s knowledge is the highest goal one can pursue. That is what the dragons did, out of wisdom and necessity. So I find . . . I understand your curiosity.”
Keriya couldn’t dwell on this revelation, for they were approaching the end of the tunnel. It opened into a circular room from which stemmed four paths. A star had been etched into the center of the stone floor, each of its points angled toward a corresponding corridor. Runes and pictures marked the star points and—though the letters were undoubtedly Dwarvish—one tip pointed at a carving of Noryk. The distinctive onion domes of the palace made it unmistakable.
Dragon Speaker Page 15
