Ghostflame (The Dragon's Scion Book 2)

by Alex Raizman

  For now, however, this mouse had not forgotten, and skittered silently across the hardwood floor away from a smell it knew to fear.

  Silently. That was the problem. Tythel bumped against a chair to create a clatter, but it wasn’t enough.

  “Eupheme, you’re being too quiet,” Tythel hissed. The whisper was deliberately far too loud. Anyone in nearby rooms would be able to hear her, though not enough to make out the words. It was a careful sound, one she’d considered after the awkward conversation with Tellias.

  “Blood and shadow, Tythel, I’m an Umbrist.” Eupheme’s whisper was perfectly pitched to just reach Tythel’s ears, modulated so no one else would have the slightest idea she was even speaking. It wasn’t even really a whisper, barely a breath. “Besides, you two are loud enough for all of us.”

  Tythel opened his mouth to object, but the objection died on her lips before it could even pass between her teeth. She wasn’t incorrect about that, especially with Tellias in the arcplate. He hadn’t spoken since she’d laid out the plan and barely spoken even when she was laying it out for them. He still wasn’t speaking, but the heavy clomp of the arcplates greaves caused the floor to shutter loud enough to draw plenty of their attention on their own.

  He’ll be fine, Tythel assured herself. Their discussion had only happened an hour ago. Of course he was still upset. Tythel was still upset.

  Tythel reminded herself of the importance of staying focused. The goal was to attract attention, but not too much attention.

  Eupheme reached the door, then motioned towards Tythel. “I’d hate to open it too quietly.”

  Tythel rolled her eyes and closed the distance. She slid the door open a few digits to glance into the lot. A road lead to it, one covered with hoofprints and the triangle shaped claw prints left behind by Skitters. The woods behind the lot were dark and shivered in the early morning wind, a wind that carried the snorts of horses back to Tythel’s ears. Three Skitters sat out there among the horses. Giving Eupheme a smug smile, she closed the door with exaggerated care. “Ready?”

  Eupheme nodded.

  Tythel stood in front of the door and took a deep breath before kicking it as hard as she could. A thunderclap of sound filled the Inn and confused shouts began to erupt from above. She could hear shrieks of shock and fury. Eupheme rolled her eyes. “Think we have their attention?” she asked.

  “I hope so. Move,” Tythel said by way of response. Tellias nodded, the first sign he’d given that he was anything other than an automaton designed to look like arcplate. Tythel had no time to worry anymore about his feelings. That was something that could be mended later, when the world was safe – or at least when the current crises was dealt with.

  For now, what mattered was the feel of the barren dirt lot beneath her feet, the sound pounding in Tythel’s ears with every footstep.

  “Someone sing to the guards!” A woman shouted from an upstairs window. Tythel leapt the rest of the distance to land in the cabin of one of the Skitters.

  “Move yourselves! We have to get to my father’s lair!” Tythel shouted. Eupheme swung herself up to the cabin of the Skitter, followed by Tellias with a single heave.

  “A little bit too obvious, don’t you think?” Tellias muttered.

  Tythel was just relieved to have him speaking again. “Even if they think it’s a trap, they have to follow up on the lead,” she muttered, reaching down to pull open one of the panels on the Skitter.

  Tellias shoved the gauntlet of his arcplate into the spot Tythel had opened. The energy expelled was more than enough to kickstart the Skitters cells even without the benefit of a key to activate them. The Skitter began to hum to life.

  Tythel moved aside to give Eupheme access to the Skitter’s controls. She began to work the levers and start the legs moving.

  Not a moment too soon. Tythel could hear the pounding footsteps of guard drawing near, Alohym soldiers that would see their departure. “Go!” she shouted.

  Eupheme didn’t need additional encouragement. The Skitter began to veer away across the lot, pulling onto where the dirt road met the pavement.

  Tythel turned around for the final nail in the coffin. As they passed the guards that were moving to block the road, Tythel took a deep breath and let loose a torrent of dragonflame. Men shouted and scattered, diving to the ground to evade the impressive heat.

  There was no doubt they’d know where she was going now.

  ***

  “They’re coming,” Tythel said.

  The Skitter had been running for the last hour, an hour spent in tense silence, waiting for the very real risk that at any moment a patrol would intercept them. It was a chance worth taking, a risk they were aware of, but so far it hadn’t happened.

  None of them had been speaking for that hour. It had stretched on interminably. On more than one occasion Tythel had considered breaking the silence, but the fear of making sound that would cover the sound of pursuit or a waiting ambush had kept her mouth shut. She could only assume the same held for Tellias and Eupheme.

  Now, however, they were both looking at her with wide eyes. “What do you hear?” Eupheme asked.

  “The sky is screaming,” Tythel said. She’d just picked up on it, and it did what it always did – took her back to the first sound her improved hearing had been able to detect as the Alohym’s tentacled ship descended from the sky to slaughter her father and her. “Screams of iron and cracks of rivulets. It’s one of their ships.”

  “Flath. We weren’t expecting that,” Tellias said, spitting out the word. “This is a mistake.”

  Tythel shook her head. She wanted to agree with him but had no better plan. The trio that hunted them was too dangerous to fight any other way, and the fact that they were bringing an entire vessel didn’t change that. “I was able to hide in the illusion over the valley after my father died. They couldn’t penetrate it then, and that was…a year ago.”

  With a start, Tythel realized she’d turned seventeen a couple days ago. Or she would in a couple of days. Maybe a week in either direction. Dates had never been something she’d focused on too hard – Karjon had been the one to keep track of dates, but he’d used the draconic calendar. Between her sessions of unconsciousness, the long marches that seemed to stretch ahead endlessly, the dull months in hiding at Hallith, and the random days of panic that had each seemed like a week, she’d lost track of the human calendar in comparison.

  “Who knows what they might have discovered in the last year?” Tellias asked, his voice thick. “What if they’ve uncovered a way to see through it?”

  “Then we die,” Tythel said simply, looking out over the road ahead. She didn’t recognize this stretch of roadway. It was likely a couple more hours before they reached the point where Freda and…Tythel found she couldn’t recall her husband’s name. It didn’t matter. They’d soon reach the point where she’d been rescued.

  “That’s all you have to say? ‘Then we die?’” Tellias’ eyes hardened. She could see his hands clench into fists in the arcplate. Would you be this angry if I hadn’t rejected you? Or would you have regretted my acceptance now if I had?

  “Yes.” Tythel growled the word. “Tellias, we have a humanoid Alohym, an Umbrist who has been doing this longer than Eupheme, and a true Lumcaster after us. I’m a half-reborn half-dragon, you’ve got arcplate Armin threw together in a cave with a crate of scraps. Eupheme is the only one with a chance of escaping if this goes bad this time, and she’ll die before she escapes without me.”

  Eupheme nodded to confirm what Tythel was saying, though she focused on steering the Skitter down the road.

  “Light and shadow,” Tythel continued, “we’re massively overmatched. The presence of a ship just adds more Alohym soldiers, and we can cut through those easily enough. They’ll be a distraction, nothing more. If it has flathing Skimmers or weapons of its own, if it’s more than a transport vessel, then the illusion is the only thing keeping us safe. If they can suddenly see through it, we’re flathin
g dead, and we can’t do anything about that.”

  Tellias gave her a stricken look, and Tythel felt immediately guilty. It was hard to remember that he had no more idea what he was doing in this than she did. They both had to go off their best instincts and their training – his in politics, her in history, neither of which was particularly well suited to battle strategies. History is probably better at least, Tythel thought. “I just…feel like we should have a plan other than ‘we die.’”

  Tythel sighed heavily. “Well, we have the next few hours to come up with one. If we don’t, we can’t plan for every contingency. This was the best option.”

  Eupheme, who had been silent so far, nodded in agreement. “We lead those three back to the others…can you imagine what they’d do? Especially if they came back with an army, and maybe an actual Alohym on the field as well, and a few Skimmers? We’d be slaughtered by the dozens, and Leora would cut our leadership to ribbons. We Umbrists aren’t best as front-line fighters. We’re our best as assassins no walls can keep out. It’d be a massacre, and it would be the end of us.”

  “And if we die trying to stop them?” Tellias asked, his voice soft.

  “Then we take Leora down with us,” Tythel said, coming to a sudden decision. “The Resistance has fought against Lumcasters before, and Catheon isn’t that much more dangerous than a normal Alohym. She poses the greatest threat – something they won’t know is coming or how to fight.”

  Eupheme’s nod was grim, and Tellias could only shake his head – not in negation, but in disbelief. “Well, as long as we have a plan.” He grinned as he said it, but it was a sickly expression even to Tythel’s eyes, and he quickly put on his helmet before they could stare at his face too long.

  Behind them, the rending steel sound of the Alohym vessel grew closer. Its progress was faster than theirs, but not by much. In a couple of hours, Tythel would be able to hear the hum of its unlight engine and weaponry. It might give her an idea of this was a gunship or one of their transports. Either would be bad, but the transport would likely be worse.

  “I’ve never gone in with a chance the mission would be impossible,” Tellias said quietly. “I always assumed that there was some way out – that if I hadn’t thought of it, de’Monchy had, or my aunt, or Master Armin, or you, your highness. I’ve never known there was a chance it was hopeless.”

  “There’s always that chance,” Tythel said, trying to make her voice as gentle as possible. “Have faith, Tellias. We made it this far when you didn’t see the flaws. Light and shadow, most of the time I don’t realize how large the flaws are until afterwards.”

  “Well, I feel greatly comforted,” Tellias said, but he laughed after he did, so Tythel assumed it wasn’t meant in anger.

  “What I mean is…just because you’re aware of it doesn’t mean it’s any more dangerous. We survived impossible odds before. Somehow. We can do it again. We will do it again.”

  Tellias nodded, and his posture seemed to relax some. Tythel was grateful for that.

  She wished she had the confidence she was projecting.

  Chapter 39

  Haradeth was dreaming of the forest.

  It was night in his dream. Even though he remembered the forest best in the daytime, with the sun streaming through the leaves in narrow shafts that illuminated the shrubs and flowers below with beams of light, in his dreams it was always night. The domain of owls that watched from their trees, hooting softly to each other and waiting for some unlucky rodent to dare leave its burrow and venture out for food. The kingdom of the great cats that stalked the dusk, seeking the deer when they were growing drowsy from a day of feeding in relative safety. The realm ruled by the serpents that awaited hares hurrying back to their burrows.

  His dominion.

  The days had been full of light and life and energy. The constant chirping of the birds seeking mates or to warn away those that would impose on their territory. The rustling of the bears foraging for berries. The humming of the bees flying from blossom to blossom, spreading the pollen and ensuring another generation of flowers would be born to fill the world with color. That had been what his mother had ruled, the realm of sunlight and warmth and peace.

  His name, in the old tongue of the ancient Alohym, meant “Moon-Kissed.” He’d been born under a shaft of moonlight. His mother had told him it was like he had waited for that beam of light, refusing to enter this world until the sun had set and the night held dominion.

  There was no moon in the dream. There were lights in the sky, but they were too numerous to count – a ring of broken stones that encircled the sky, enclosing the world and creeping back beyond the horizon in both directions. The remnants of the moon shattered by some cataclysm of unimaginable proportions.

  In his hammock safely in the Sylvani lands, Haradeth stirred. Had anyone been watching him restlessly toss, they would have seen his forehead furrow and his hands clenched at his side in his sleep.

  In the dream those moon remnants were beginning to turn, spinning faster and faster with every passing second until they no longer resembled stones, but orbs of pure light – too bright to be stars.

  Haradeth knew what came next. He’d had this dream before. He’d had it over and over since his birth.

  The first orb’s glow began to dim until it went black, then began to draw in nearby light, warping it around its spin. Soon it was giving off a negative glow, pulling the surrounding light in on itself. Unlight. Haradeth knew that word, though he once had no phrase to describe it. He knew that word like he had once known these woods.

  The unlight stone streaked from the heavens. Its entry into the air caused it to burst into flames, flames that were subsumed by the unlight and turned into flickering fragments of darkness, a trail that annihilated all light it passed forming behind the stone as it plummeted towards the forest.

  “No,” Haradeth murmured, rolling over in his sleep. “No, no, no.” The word became a chant, a mystic incantation of denial, as if the word itself would ward away the dream.

  Or the reality.

  In the dream, the unlight stone struck at the heart of the forest. Haradeth wanted to flee what happened, but in the strange logic of dreams he found himself running towards the thing he feared, his feet crushing leaves and beetles as he passed.

  In the dream, time had slowed. To his right flickered a dragonfly, each beat of its wings visible to the naked eye. To the left was an owl, descending on an unlucky lizard with the vicious speed of flowing molasses. The lizard saw the owl coming, and it wasn’t trying to flee. It had turned to face its death with a mouth opened wide in some kind of hiss too high pitched to be heard in the slowed reality of the dream.

  Ahead of him, a light was forming. True light, not unlight. Like a sun was rising in the forest ahead, where no sun should be able to form.

  Shards of wood reached his dream skin at the same moment as the low rumble, a sound that shook him to his very core. In reality, the sound had been harsh and fast, even though the layers of earth that had separated him from the source of the burst. In the dream, it happened so slowly it sounded more like distant thunder than the explosion.

  Haradeth’s dream form was lifted from the ground by a shockwave as his real body began to sweat with fear. The dream-self didn’t feel the impact, except as a dull awareness.

  The owl burned. The lizard burned. The dragonfly did not but looked at Haradeth with eyes suddenly human and screamed with lips that should not be.

  Haradeth awoke with a scream of terror, sitting bolt upright. Lights began to glow in the room the Sylvani had provided him, casting reality into sharp relief.

  It was just a dream, Haradeth told himself, but the words sounded hollow even within the confines of his own head. It was just a dream, but it was one that he’d had before the Alohym had even come, before their weapons had lanced from the sky to destroy all that was beneath them. A godling’s dreams often had the touch of prophesy to them, and he’d been certain this was one of those.

&n
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