“I could physically overpower the two of you, and I could rip the sword from your lifeless fingers if that’s what you wanted,” he returned. “But it would be easier if we could conduct ourselves in a civil manner.”
“There is no being civil with you,” said Thorion.
Necrovar shrugged and began preparing a spell. Keriya felt fear rising through her, fighting to take over, but she shoved it aside.
Shivnath, she thought, gritting her teeth, if you’re listening, let me use your powers. Whatever you wanted me for, I know you wanted Thorion to stay safe—but I will need a miracle to save him.
As she prayed, spectral warmth flickered to life within her. She smiled. Not everything Necrovar had said was true, and not everything Shivnath had told her was a lie.
Necrovar lashed out and Keriya barely deflected his spell. Despite her promise to be unafraid, fear trickled in through her dam of resolve. Shivnath’s magic wasn’t ready. It was bubbling in the pit of her soul, ready to boil—she could sense it, she imagined she could see it, but she couldn’t wield it.
Thorion spat a beam of blinding light. It collided with Necrovar, spearing him in the heart. Shadowbeasts turned to dust and died when struck with a fatal blow, but Necrovar remained intact. He looked down with a faint sneer as a small part of his chest crumbled.
“Nothing you do will kill me,” said Necrovar. He shot toward Thorion with a shockwave of shadow, like an arrow fired from an invisible crossbow. He caught the dragon head-on and the two of them skidded backward, slamming into a thick tree trunk.
Spurred by panic, Keriya ran for them—but Thorion recovered and sprang into the air before Necrovar could get a firm grip on him. He flew over the valley, silhouetted against the Oldmoon, twirling like a leaf in the wind.
Necrovar launched into the night, hurtling after the drackling. They collided in midair. Thorion scratched and bit, but Necrovar’s presence seemed to provide Doru’s body with immunity to both magical and physical attacks.
Ignoring the talons slashing at his torso, Necrovar wrapped his hand around Thorion’s throat, below his jaw. Keriya’s gut clenched, but Thorion broke free with a powerful flap of his wings. The drackling dove for the jungle. Necrovar hovered in place, waiting.
Thorion caught a warm updraft and soared around for another attack. He wielded a second beam of light at Necrovar, who allowed it to hit him. It caught him in the left thigh and had no effect. In retaliation, he created a black mist that swirled around the dragon.
“No,” Keriya gasped, her throat tightening. The spell clung to Thorion’s scales and sank into his wings, turning them leaden and still. Slowly, he fell. Slowly, Necrovar glided after him.
“Leave him alone!” she screamed at the Shadow. He ignored her. He was fixated on Thorion, preparing another spell.
A sick and reckless fury roiled in Keriya’s chest as she watched. How was it that even now she was useless, unable to help her drackling?
No. She wasn’t useless. There were ways she could help. Acting partly on impulse and partly on intuition, she reached out mentally to Thorion.
She felt the familiar touch of his mind and pressed her consciousness against his, willing him to spread his wings and fly. She concentrated on pouring strength into him, lending him whatever power was at her disposal. She felt a flicker in Thorion’s shadow-dulled brain, then a surge of energy as he redoubled his efforts to shed the dark mist.
Through sheer force of will, Keriya and Thorion broke through Necrovar’s spell together. Triumph flared briefly through Keriya’s fear. Thorion beat his wings, catching the wind before he crashed into the trees and speeding away.
Connected to Thorion, Keriya felt his thoughts, movements, even his magic as if they were her own. Yet she also felt power brewing inside her, a power that was at once foreign and familiar. It tore at her, demanding she give it her full attention though she could not touch it.
She couldn’t pay it any mind, not when she had to give Thorion her strength. He pumped his wings, and she felt the lift in her own shoulders as he gained height.
Meanwhile, Necrovar completed and launched a dark spell. Keriya and Thorion flinched in unison. The dragon rolled in midair, avoiding the attack.
Despite their circumstances, Keriya had to admire him. He moved with such intention and grace, not a single wingbeat wasted, using knowledge from generations of his forebears. It wasn’t hive-mind memories that guided his flight, but raw instinct. Dragons had evolved over countless millennia to become the apex predators of the sky—and though their dominance had never been contested, they had developed incredible reflexes to see them through any challenge.
Thorion wheeled and spat a beam of light at Necrovar. It was a wide ray, less concentrated and therefore less powerful, but it hit its mark. More of Doru’s torso crumbled and Necrovar twisted his face into an expression of annoyance.
A chill swept through Keriya. Whether it was because of that horrible thought, or because Thorion had siphoned strength from her to wield another light beam at his foe, she couldn’t tell.
Suddenly, Shivnath’s words swam back to her: 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.
Keriya couldn’t allow Necrovar’s lies to spook her. She knew better than to listen to him. This wasn’t a block, it was a safeguard. She would be able to access the magic. She just needed more time.
Desperate to do something, Keriya grabbed a rock that had been wrenched loose during her sword fight with Doru. She hurled it at Necrovar’s hovering body, but it fell so far short of its mark that he didn’t notice. He was busy preparing a spell, and he shot a bolt of black lightning at the drackling.
Keriya pushed at Thorion with her mind, urging him to twist and evade. He heeded her mental warning and avoided the worst of the blow. The necromagic grazed his feet and underside, but that small contact was enough to incapacitate him.
He spiraled to the clifftop, folding his wings tight against his back before he crashed. Keriya screamed as his body scraped across the ground, his horns gouging furrows into the soft earth. She ran toward him, reaching him just as the Shadow alighted at the edge of the precipice.
“Stay back!” she cried, leaping over Thorion’s prone form to stand between him and Necrovar.
He chuckled. “Or what?”
“Or I’ll kill you.” She swung the decrepit sword in emphasis. Its weight caused her to overbalance and stumble sideways.
Necrovar laughed again. “Keriya, even if you had full and free command of your magic, you couldn’t kill me. I am the most powerful wielder who ever lived. And you . . .” He spread his hands in an apologetic shrug. “You are tiny, ignorant, weak, and crippled.”
The words pierced her, one by one. They were echoes of things she’d heard all her life—not only from others, but from herself.
Keriya rushed him, lowering the point of the blade. Necrovar shot a black spell at her, which the sword deflected, and nimbly sidestepped her attack.
She swiveled to hack at him, and he wielded a pillar of rock from the ground to shield himself. The stone turned to lightless obsidian at the touch of his magic. Keriya’s sword struck the shield with a grating clang. Pain bit into her arms from the impact, but she felt a surge of grim satisfaction as the blade broke through the necromagical spell. The solid stone shattered as easily if it were thin glass.
Necrovar bared Doru’s teeth in a grimace. He dispelled the broken shards of rock with a flick of his wrist and conjured a dozen jets of inky, shadow-touched water. They came at her from all directions.
Overwhelmed by the deluge, she wildly swung the bulky sword away from her body. She managed to repel one jet of water, but another slipped through her defenses.
The spell collided with her chest, shoving the air from her lungs. It threw her backward and she landed beside Thorion, wheezing wetly, feeling like some vital bones in her ribcage had broken.
Thorion’s eyes flashed when he saw her fall. He shook his head and pushed himself to his feet. He opened his jaws wide and shot a searing light spell at Necrovar.
It hit the Shadow full-force in the face, and Keriya felt it might be powerful enough to finish him. Black steam curled off Doru’s skin and sank to the ground, creating a cold, dark fog that shrouded the clearing.
Agony raked her chest as she used the sword to leverage herself upright. She backed away from the Shadow and Thorion joined her. They waited, leaning against each other for support and comfort. Keriya’s uneven breath grated against her ears, unnaturally loud in the sudden stillness.
The fog stirred, eddying around a disturbance, and Necrovar emerged. The side of his skull where Thorion’s spell had hit was a distorted, smoking wreckage. He was a nightmare incarnate.
He glared at Thorion and the dragon shrieked in agony. Through their bond, Keriya felt an echo of his pain in her chest. Her heart broke, releasing poisoned floods of guilt throughout her body. Thorion had been touched by the darksalm.
And it was her fault.
“Powerful though you are, Thorion,” Necrovar rasped, approaching with slow, deliberate steps, “you are no match for me.”
Why did Shivnath think we could do this? Keriya wondered, sagging beneath the weight of despair. Why did anyone think we could? My best efforts are useless, and Thorion is a baby.
“You think if he were a thousand cycles old it would make a difference?” Necrovar sneered, shaking his head. “I faced his grandsire in the Great War. Rhusarion Sveltorious, a bonded, callous fool.”
Necrovar raised a hand and Thorion wailed again. The dragon’s glowing eyes rolled madly in his skull, his pupils contracting to narrow slivers.
“Two thousand winters had passed him by, yet it took me but a heartbeat to kill him. He and his speaker thought they were a match for me, but I am the Shadow Lord. I am invincible. ‘Only the Blood can give me death, where once it gave me life’—there is no one left who can kill me!”
“Not true,” a familiar voice growled behind Keriya.
Necrovar’s gaze flickered to the speaker, and Keriya imagined she saw fear cloud his ruined face. She chanced a backward look and saw the bogspectre hovering in the trees. Its one black eye locked onto hers.
“He’s wrong,” it told her.
He’s wrong, Keriya repeated to herself, as if realizing a fundamental truth.
That seismic truth shattered the block on Shivnath’s magic. She had the power to kill Necrovar, and that power had finally come to a breaking point.
She swung the ancient sword at Necrovar, for that felt like the appropriate thing to do. A surge of unbridled energy erupted from her body. It focused to a point around her blade, then shot out and slammed into the Shadow, encasing him in a sphere of magic that glowed like a miniature sun.
Heat fires sprang from the moss at his feet. A whirlwind whipped to life, clawing at Keriya’s clothes. Necrovar’s shape was just visible within the blinding mass. Over the roar of her spell, she could hear him screaming.
She didn’t stop to consider whether it was a good idea. Hefting the sword with all the strength she had left, she ran forward and sliced his body in twain. His shorn figure spat and sizzled with energy. With a flash, he burst apart in an explosion forceful enough to fling her into the air.
Keriya flew across the clearing and slammed into a rock, her skull cracking against it. Fighting to hang on to consciousness, she squinted against the brightness.
Searing purple lightning stemmed from the place where Necrovar had stood. It forked into the heavens like the writhing, tangled branches of a massive tree. In the epicenter of the chaos was a black hole, a tear in the fabric of space and time that led to some unknown place.
The world distorted. Everything shrank in toward that single point. Keriya grabbed fistfuls of moss to anchor herself to the ground, to keep from being devoured by the spell, but she could feel it latching onto her, taking hold of her.
The fires flared, the ground heaved, the howling wind reached an ear-splitting pitch, and then . . .
Then everything was nothing.
CHAPTER FORTY-ONE
“If you let go of what you think you are, you become that which you might be.”
~ Beledine Arowey, Second Age
She was surrounded by darkness. The empty black pressed on her from all sides. She was surrounded, and she was alone.
Keriya had died. She had unleashed a power she couldn’t control, and she had paid for it with her life.
She had failed.
No, thought a tiny voice in her head. I didn’t fail. I killed Necrovar. I saved Thorion.
The thought staved off the suffocating despair that was threatening to creep in.
Keriya cringed. The mindvoice sent fire racing through her head.
She still had her memories and she could still feel pain, which meant she couldn’t be dead. As soon as that thought occurred to her the darkness fell away, coalescing into swirls of ebony fog. She became aware that she was standing on a solid surface, something tangible and real.
And there was Shivnath. Illuminated by a sourceless, omnipresent light, she glittered in the gloom like a gemstone trapped in a slab of midnight granite. Her eyes, as always, put the surrounding shadows to shame.
“Am I dead?” It was Keriya’s first question, though she knew she wasn’t.
“Not yet.”
“So . . . where are we?” They were no longer on Selaras, she was certain of that. Shivnath had appeared to her, somewhere, somehow, in order to talk.
And oh, did they have some talking to do.
“You,” said Shivnath, “are in the Etherworld.”
That statement spawned a hundred new questions, but for the first time, Keriya had no desire to ask them. There was only one answer she wanted.
“Shivnath, do you know what just happened?”
“I know everything.”
“Necrovar said something to me. He said you sent me as a sacrifice, that you wanted him to kill me instead of Thorion.”
“He said those exact words, did he?”
Keriya’s heart sank. Did Shivnath’s detachment indicate she thought the accusation was offensive, or just beneath her notice? Or did it mean she was upset that her plan hadn’t worked?
“I know you probably can’t tell me the truth because of the binding laws,” Keriya said to her feet, since she couldn’t bring herself to look at the god. “But whatever the truth is, I don’t want to hear it.”
There was a long
silence. When Keriya could no longer bear waiting, she peeked up through her bangs.
“Is that so?” was all Shivnath said.
“Yes. If he was lying to me, great. Everything’s fine. And if he wasn’t . . . I understand why you had to do that.”
“Do you?”
“Yes,” Keriya said again. “It was for Thorion’s sake. Don’t get me wrong, it was still an awful thing to do. I thought we were friends.”
“Friends?”
Keriya rolled her eyes. Even if the binding laws were keeping Shivnath from explaining herself, she ought to be treating this discussion more seriously.
“Well, I don’t know what you’d call it when your mentor is a big old dragon god, but whatever. That’s not my point. The point is, I know why you had to choose Thorion over me.”
“You’ve changed since you left Aeria,” said Shivnath. The edge in her voice had vanished. In its place was a softness that hinted at respect—or perhaps an unspoken apology.
“Maybe. But I still have one question for you.”
“And what would that be?”
“The same question as always,” said Keriya, folding her arms and matching Shivnath glare for glare. “Why me?”
It was this answer that would explain everything. After all she had learned and all she had seen, Keriya could no longer believe Shivnath had selected her randomly out of the millions of people that existed in the world.
“I give you the same answer as always: because I chose you.”
Keriya buried her face in her hands. That answer was as unfulfilling as it had been when she’d first heard it. Shivnath was hiding something from her, she was sure of it.
“Any other questions?” said Shivnath.
“Yeah, why’d you bother coming here if you refuse to have a proper conversation with me?”
“Ah, I’m glad you asked.”
Keriya frowned at her. The dragon’s eyes, which usually absorbed light rather than reflecting it, had an odd shine to them.
Dragon Speaker Page 35
