Dragon Unleashed

by Grace Draven

  He dropped Batraza’s reins, closing the gap between him and Halani. She tensed but didn’t back away. Malachus slid a finger under the length of silver chain visible above her shift’s collar and tugged upward, revealing the medallion she kept concealed there. “When you die, will you ask your loved ones to bury you with this?” Tears filled her eyes. He dropped the chain and stepped back.

  They stared at each other for long moments. Halani’s throat muscles visibly contracted, and her jaw flexed. Her tears gradually dried, leaving behind only the gray he’d always associate with a dove’s wings or the morning mist. “If you’ll follow me back to my wagon, I’ll return the book and ink you gave me. The quill too.” Her voice was firm, without any noticeable emotion.

  “Keep it,” he said. “It’s yours. You’ve earned it.” He groaned softly and closed his eyes. That didn’t come out at all as he intended. He was certain he heard Halani’s back snap. He opened his eyes to see her staring at him, white as the chalk cliffs that hugged the shore of faraway Berenwren.

  “I’m not a whore, Malachus.”

  He scraped a hand down his face. “Gods, Halani, that isn’t what I meant when I said it.”

  Halani shrugged, no longer as pale but as distant from him as the moon. “It doesn’t matter if you did. There’s no shame in earning your keep, even if you do it on your back.” She glanced at Batraza, then back at him. “May the gods favor you both on the rest of your journey and throughout your lives. Goodbye.”

  Malachus watched her turn and walk back to the sheep. His hands literally cramped with the need to snatch her back, toss her on the back of Batraza, and gallop away from the people she loved, who loved her yet still risked her life—and theirs—to thieve.

  He climbed into the saddle and guided Batraza toward the front of the caravan. He resisted the urge to turn back for a last look at Halani, then gave in. She stood at the front of the flock, the dogs racing behind and beside her as they kept the sheep in a tight formation. Wearing a dress in varying shades of red, she resembled a bright poppy amid a washed-out field of gray grass. She raised a hand in farewell. Malachus did not. He couldn’t.

  He discovered a crowd gathered at the front of the caravan, staring down the road. A rider galloped hard toward them. As they drew closer and details became clearer, cries went up among the crowd. Several of the free traders jogged forward to meet them, calling out a name and waving in greeting.

  Malachus recognized Clamik, who’d left with the first half of the caravan led by Halani’s uncle.

  Clamik’s horse snorted a protest and pranced in place as the free traders surrounded them. Malachus noted Kursak, slower to approach and wearing an expression of unease.

  The newly arrived free trader half-heartedly returned the enthusiastic greetings, his attention solely on Kursak. “Thank the gods I guessed right and took this route. I was afraid you’d decided to go a different way once the rains flooded out the Serpent Road.”

  Kursak didn’t bother with the niceties. “You didn’t run that horse into the ground because you missed us. What’s going on?”

  Clamik searched the crowd. “Where’s Halani?”

  “With the sheep,” Malachus replied before Kursak could. “I’ll get her and bring her back.” One last glimpse of her, he told himself. Just one and not for long. Besides, whatever news Clamik brought with him, it wasn’t good, especially if he asked for Halani before he said anything else.

  Halani’s shocked expression at his return might have been comical were it not for her red, puffy eyes and splotched cheeks. Despite his still-simmering anger, he ached to take her in his arms and soothe away her anguish. Instead, he waited for her to reach him before offering her his hand. “Clamik has ridden here with a message. He’s asking for you.”

  Fear flared in her eyes. She grasped his hand and swung up behind him. Malachus turned Batraza and set her on a fast trot back to where the crowd had grown. He waited for her to dismount, then followed her.

  Kursak stared at him. “You’re staying?”

  “No, just staying long enough to hear this, unless you say otherwise.”

  The wagon master shrugged. “Suit yourself.” He turned his attention back to Clamik. “Halani’s here. What news from Hamod?”

  Clamik wiped a sleeve across his sweating brow. “We’d made it to Domora. Trade was brisk. Kraelag might be an ash heap and the Nunari running raids on the Empire territories west of the Veil, but the summer capital and the surrounding towns are busy and thriving. Resupplying the army and clearing off every merchant ship that sails into the sea harbor or river ports.”

  “That’s good news for us, then,” one of the free traders said.

  Clamik nodded. “We’ve made a decent profit from what we bought in the Goban and sold in Domora so far.”

  “Get on with it, man,” Kursak snapped. “That isn’t why you’re here.”

  The free trader tapped his hands down in a gesture for patience. “Hamod was keen to find a wealthy buyer for what he kept calling a prize of all prizes, a treasure of monarchs, but he had to sell it on the Maesor.”

  Malachus stiffened. It wasn’t unusual for trader bands to sell priceless objects as well as mundane ones, even in the far lands across the sea, but something about this unfolding story set his instincts on edge. Halani’s frozen expression and the despairing look in her eyes when she met his gaze only intensified them. “What is the Maesor?” he said.

  Kursak answered. “Rogue marketplace where sorcerous items are bought and sold. It exists outside of this world and time, supposedly safe from the imperial justiciars and their witch-hunters. It’s almost impossible to get into the Maesor. If Hamod managed to worm his way in, I don’t know how he did it.”

  “And did he find this buyer?” Halani bit out the words.

  Clamik shook his head. “We don’t know. He left with the promise of returning by evening. He never did, and we haven’t seen him since. We’ve searched all over Domora for him.” Gasps and distressed cries greeted his words. His features turned even more haggard as he looked directly at Halani. “The news is worse. Asil’s missing too.”

  “What?” For all its quiet tone, Halani’s single-word question dropped into the sudden silence like a thunderclap. “What do you mean Mama is missing?” Still quiet, she bit each word out between her teeth, advancing on Clamik like a she-wolf on a cornered ewe.

  He backed away from her, sending a pleading glance to Kursak for help. “We discovered her gone the day after Hamod disappeared. We think she followed him somewhere.”

  The Halani Malachus once thought he knew continued to surprise him. She abandoned the seething quiet in favor of full-blown panic and launched herself at Clamik. “You lost my mother in Domora?!” Both Malachus and Kursak caught her before she reached him.

  “Gods damn it, Halani, calm down!” the wagon master bellowed.

  Malachus wrapped his arms around her from behind to hold her. “Halani, stop. Stop.”

  Gradually his command penetrated the cloud of panic that seized her, and she slumped in his arms. He tipped her head back to rest on his shoulder, and the tears she cried now weren’t for him. They were for Asil.

  “My gods, Malachus, Mama is lost in Domora. It could only be worse if she was lost in Kraelag.”

  He loosened his embrace enough to turn her around to face him. Behind her, the free traders watched them with expressions of pity and worry. Somehow fate had woven another tether to keep him bound to these people, regardless of his intent to turn his back on them. “I can find Asil for you, but I need your help to do it.”

  She dug her fingers into his arms as if he threatened to drop her off a precipice. “Anything. What do you want me to do?”

  He recalled the look in her eyes when Clamik told the others of Hamod’s purpose in Domora. He knew what her answer would be to his question, and that knowledge opened a frozen hollo
w inside him. “Do you know what your uncle wanted to sell in the Maesor?”

  The despair in her gaze only confirmed what he suspected. She’d deceived him from the very start. “Part of a large claw with engravings on it that glow. Those two men you killed? Uncle bought—not stole—it from them, against my advice. The thing is practically pulsing with sorcery. It’s what you were hunting in the Goban market, wasn’t it?”

  “Yes, and you knew it.” He reeled at this latest revelation, numbed by it instead of furious. That would come later, when he was alone and could indulge in a blistering rant that only Batraza heard.

  Halani sighed. “I suspected, though I wasn’t sure until now.” She hugged herself. “Knowing what you do now, why would you help me?”

  “Because Asil, out of all of you, is worth the effort, and I have a better chance at finding her than you do running off to Domora in a blind panic and with no plan.” He stepped around her to reach Kursak. “Keep your folk back here, no matter what you see. You’ll also need to keep more than one person near your flock and herds.”

  Kursak’s perplexed scowl almost made him smile. “Why?”

  Malachus gazed at the sky, noting the patches of blue sharing space with clusters of white and gray clouds. Storms made it easier, but he didn’t always need one to call down lightning. “You’ll see soon enough,” he told the wagon master.

  He left Batraza with them. Of all the animals traveling with the caravan, she would be the one least likely to panic at what he was about to do. The last bit of the fen road unfurled ahead of him, and he stopped far enough away from the caravan that his actions wouldn’t affect them but close enough that they had a clear view.

  The last time he’d called down lightning, it had been less of a summons and more of just waiting in a strategic spot for the right moment. This time required tapping into the magic his draga heritage hoarded for the day he’d embrace it fully. Doing it created the inevitable result of stirring up the draga within him. Already made restless by his anger, it twisted inside him.

  The first lightning hadn’t misled him. Malachus had simply assigned it the wrong interpretation. It had shown him Halani because while she didn’t have the mother-bond in her possession, she knew who did. Saving his life had only been a fortunate coincidence for him. Falling in love with her, his greatest failure so far. Her betrayal of his trust cut his legs out from under him, and he staggered inside from the awful pain of it.

  He stood, facing in the direction of the dilapidated barrow, closed his eyes, and called up both draga magic and prayer, silently imploring the favor of Pernu and the blessing of lightning. For a long time the sky didn’t answer, and the sun beat down on his head with a merciless heat. Suddenly, his senses caught fire, and the fine hairs on his body rose at the warning sizzle in the air. A bright flash was his second and final warning before Pernu’s deadly blessing struck Malachus full force, a javelin of agony that punched through his back and out his midriff. He jittered in its grip, and his eyes rolled back in his skull. Far away, he heard a woman’s voice scream his name.

  Images, bright and clear, flashed past his mind’s eye. An older man with gray eyes and features like Halani, hiding like a rat in the shadows. Asil, sitting on a bench in a walled garden, her vacant stare broken only by the occasional blink of her eyelids. A child with no arms joined her and offered her a doll, while another woman kept watch nearby. The images flew even faster, became more confusing, showing his mother-bond in the garden with Asil and also in the hands of a beautiful woman with the abyssal gaze of the damned.

  The lightning bolt died with one more crackling flash, unshackling Malachus from its lethal hold. Darkness swept in where vivid pictures had filled his inner vision. He stumbled, his muscles jerking involuntarily from the lightning’s residual effects. Once again he smelled the char of burnt clothing and looked down at himself. A belsha-size burn hole marked a spot in his shirt just above his navel. Strands of his hair floated straight out in front of his face, crackling with the remnants of lightning’s power.

  Pernu’s blessing had lasted for less time than it took to exhale, and left him with enough information that he could use to find Asil, though far less than he wanted to make it an easier task. He embraced the shiver that started at his feet to envelop his entire body, then shook it off and strode back to where the free traders waited with Batraza.

  They all gaped at him, eyes glazed with shock, mouths hanging open. When he stepped closer, they retreated. Only Halani didn’t move, and in her face he saw wonder, awe, and a terrible sympathy.

  He bent to whisper in her ear, telling her in a small way that he was more than the man she saw, and also less. “Lightning,” he said, “has always loved the draga.”

  CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

  Gharek counted his breaths at the same time he counted the steps that led from the summer palace’s ground floor to the prison below it.

  Unlike the upper chambers, built to allow both sunlight and moonlight to stream in at the best angles and highlight the architecture’s soaring grace, the underground was a dark, dank, despairing place. Here, torchlight battled with shadow thick as lamp oil. The smell of human suffering and excrement mixed with the acrid stench of smoking pitch. Viscous pools whose contents were best avoided puddled on the treads, making the descent into the gloomy labyrinth slow and treacherous.

  His hand clenched around the artifact hidden in his robe’s pocket as if it were a talisman against evil or a charm of luck. In a way, it was the second, representing a chance to elevate his family name and change the fate of his daughter’s future.

  He followed the palace servant who led him down another flight of slippery stairs toward the sounds of something in the throes of agony. They turned a corner, coming abruptly to a dead end, where a cell lit by a trio of torches had been hollowed out of a stone wall. A lattice of rust-coated bars sealed off the cell from the rest of the corridor but provided observers a view of anything happening in the cell. Gharek stared for a moment at the horror before him and swiftly turned his gaze to the figure perched in an ornate chair in languid repose.

  Empress Dalvila’s deliberate scrutiny always made him think of a snake, and he the rabbit caught in its power. This time was no different. “Where is the draga you promised me, Gharek?” She sounded bored, as if her torturer’s work on what was left of his victim was no longer entertaining.

  “Soon to be reunited with its mother-bond, Your Greatness. And we have the mother-bond.” He removed the bone from his pocket, presenting it to the empress with a low bow.

  It wasn’t quite the same as when he first took possession of it, but she wouldn’t know that.

  She plucked it from his grasp, turning it one way and then another while she studied it from every angle. Her growing frown raised a cold sweat on Gharek’s brow. “Not at all what I expected. Rather disappointing.” One shapely eyebrow arched. “Was this a very small draga?”

  Disappointing Dalvila was just as deadly as offending her. “No, Your Greatness. If the drawings of dragas kept in the archives are correct, this is a small piece of a wing-tip bone. Likely the end of a claw.”

  Her own clawlike fingernail stroked the bone’s edge as if to test its sharpness. “And what did you do with the free trader who had it?”

  “Dispatched him, Your Greatness. He was of no use to us.” The lie fell off his lips as naturally as his exhalations.

  Dalvila’s empty blue gaze returned to the wreckage of the person slumped in a bloodied heap at its torturer’s feet. Gharek couldn’t tell if the poor creature was a man or a woman, only that death, in its final mercy, couldn’t come soon enough for them. “My dear cat’s-paw, you are, as always, an efficient man.”

  A gurgling rose from what remained of the prisoner in the cell. The torturer looked to Dalvila, who rolled her eyes. “Finish him. I’m tired of the noise.”

  The man nodded and, with one efficient swipe of
the bloodied knife he held, cut his victim’s throat.

  Released from his agony, the dead man pitched sideways to the cell floor. A part of Gharek, the part where cold-blooded reason had long ago supplanted sympathy, wondered how the unfortunate prisoner still had any blood left to bleed out.

  He looked to the empress, cruelly beautiful on her makeshift throne, and thought that here, in the prison’s subterranean gloom, she seemed far more at home than in the soaring, sunlit receiving chamber where she held court among her scheming nobles.

  She rose and tucked the draga bone into her bodice. The amputation of her arm had no effect on the feline grace of her movements. She motioned for him to follow her up the stairs to the palace’s first floor, a pair of guards closing ranks behind them.

  Once they emerged on the ground floor and stood in the middle of one of the palace’s many gilded corridors, Dalvila halted. “I’m about to send my armies into Nunari lands and take back what we lost during Kraelag’s siege. I plan to join our generals once we’re victorious and show those lice-ridden savages why they should have never cast their lot with the Savatar and turned on the Empire.” Her vocal register had lowered to a guttural seethe, and once more Gharek noted that any life glittering in her eyes came from the promise of violence. “I intend to do it with a body made whole again and a draga’s newly flensed skeleton in tow.” A flow of servants, slaves, and soldiers eddied around them at a safe distance. Dalvila’s beautiful face grew only more so as the summer sun spilled through the high windows and cast her in sublime luminescence. Gharek had never beheld such a cruel visage. “You have until the end of summer, Gharek, to bring me that draga.”

  Gharek heard the implied threat. If he wasn’t careful, he’d end up like the human wreckage they’d just left in the cell below them. “I believe it will be sooner than that, Your Greatness.”