The Hearts of Dragons

by Josh VanBrakle

  Tweeting a song in the Tengu’s honor, Minawë descended to reunite with Rondel.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX

  Defender of Lodia

  Dirio Cyneric, mayor of Veliaf, trudged through the narrow, windy streets of his village. He’d just left the office, head full and spirit leaden.

  He’d thought being a mine foreman was tough. At least back then, he’d supervised at most a dozen men, and he could always pass the blame up or down the chain as necessary. Now if he failed, he couldn’t fault anyone but himself.

  And he had failed. Veliaf didn’t have the manpower to defend itself. It was only a matter of time before one of the large cities arrived with an army. When they did, Dirio would have to surrender and join them. It wouldn’t matter whether he agreed with them or thought they stood a chance of winning the throne. He would have no other option, except to see his town destroyed.

  Again.

  As he passed through the austere village, Dirio caught sight of a white uniform heading for the town hospital. He smiled and called, “Doctor Raebeld!”

  The doctor stopped and looked at him. “Mayor Cyneric,” he said. The doctor was the only person in town formal enough to use Dirio’s last name. “To what do I owe the honor?”

  Dirio walked over to Raebeld. “I was hoping to run into you. How’s our boy?”

  Raebeld didn’t need to be told who “our boy” was. “Considering all that’s happened, Balear’s doing well,” he said, “but he’ll never heal if he doesn’t rest.”

  The mayor shook his head. He still had a difficult time processing what had happened. He was used to injuries; Veliaf’s mine was a dangerous place. Something about Balear’s wound, though, struck him especially hard.

  Maybe it was the sheer strangeness of it. Dirio unconsciously put his left hand on his right bicep. He couldn’t avoid thinking about it, what it must feel like to have your arm pierced and then frozen from the inside out. He shuddered.

  “Actually, I’m not concerned about his physical injury anymore,” Raebeld said. He opened the hospital door and gestured to invite Dirio inside. “Thanks to whatever devil magic that Fubuki used, the wound is clean where he lost the arm. There’s little danger of infection as long as he keeps it bandaged until the skin grows over it. Even so . . .” he trailed off, and his expression grew foul.

  “What’s the matter?” Dirio asked.

  The doctor sighed. “I’ve seen miners who have lost limbs. It’s different from most injuries. It affects the mind. Sometimes people think they still have their arm or leg, even though it’s gone. I haven’t seen that from Balear, but still, he worries me.”

  “What makes you say that?”

  “He’s a soldier. Has been his whole life. I don’t know how he’ll recover from losing his dominant arm. Maybe he never will. In any case, I don’t think he’ll fight again.”

  “That might be for the best,” Dirio said. “Personally, I think Lodia could do with a little less fighting right now.”

  “You don’t understand. Fighting is all that young man has. It’s what he knows. It’s what he does. If you take that away, what’s left?”

  Dirio didn’t have an answer for that. He and the doctor walked in silence through a hallway with doors on both sides. When the mine was in full operation, the sick rooms on the other sides of those doors saw a lot of use. Fortunately, Balear was the only patient at the moment.

  They reached Balear’s door. Raebeld was about to open it when Dirio heard muffled words from the other side.

  “. . .ven, twenty-eight, twenty-nine . . .”

  The mayor frowned. “What’s he doing in there?”

  Raebeld didn’t hesitate. He flung open the door, and Dirio blinked several times in surprise. Balear was out of bed and lying face-down on the floor.

  No, Dirio realized, not lying. Balear was doing one-armed push-ups. He was midway through one, his body at its lowest point. He shook, and his face resembled a ripe apple.

  “Thir. . .” he groaned. “Thir. . .”

  “What on Raa are you doing?” Raebeld cried.

  The distraction was enough. Balear collapsed on the floor. His chest heaved, and sweat poured off his body. He gasped for every breath.

  “I was . . . so close,” he said.

  Raebeld shot Dirio a commanding look. “Help me get him into bed. Grab his ankles; I’ll take his shoulders.”

  When the pair finished manhandling Balear into bed, Raebeld turned his harsh expression on the former general. “Rest!” the doctor screamed. “Rest! How thick are you? It’s only one word! It’s only one syllable!”

  Balear flushed a deeper red, something Dirio didn’t think possible. “I have to get stronger,” Balear wheezed. “Amroth trusted me.”

  “Amroth was a monster who put Lodia in the mess it’s in,” Raebeld shot back. “I couldn’t care less what he thought of you.”

  “Raebeld . . .” Dirio began, but the doctor’s gaze cowed him into silence.

  “I’m your doctor,” Raebeld pressed on. “Do you want to live? Then follow my orders. You’re a soldier. You should be able to do that much.”

  Balear looked at the ceiling. His expression was distant, like he was seeing something other than the room.

  “I am a soldier,” he said after a long time. “I’m a member of the Castle Guard, the only one left.”

  “And unless you want them to disappear forever, you’ll stop these ridiculous exercises,” Raebeld said. “If I catch you one more time, I’ll strap you to the bed.”

  Dirio expected Balear to back down, but the young man glared at the doctor in challenge. “Try it,” he snarled, “and I swear I’ll kill you.”

  Patient and doctor glowered for a moment before Dirio intervened. “Balear, Doctor Raebeld wants to help you,” he said. “He has a lot of experience treating wounds. I know it’s hard, but—”

  “You don’t know,” Balear interrupted. “You don’t understand at all. I have to get better. I have to get stronger.”

  “Why?”

  “Because Rondel opened my eyes to the truth. Amroth might have been a monster, but he still chose me as his second-in-command. When he and I came to Veliaf last year to defeat the Quodivar, everyone in our group was a Maantec except for me. I was the only human. Do you get it? There’s a reason for that.”

  Balear sat up and swung his legs over the side of the bed, prompting immediate protestations from Raebeld. The soldier looked at him with cold certainty, and the doctor fell into silence.

  Dirio was stunned. He’d never seen Raebeld intimidated by anyone.

  “That Fubuki will come back,” Balear said. It wasn’t a guess. When Dirio heard it, he knew it was true.

  “It could come back today,” Balear continued. “It could be out there now. I don’t have time to sit around.”

  Balear stood and walked to the corner of the room where his gigantic sword leaned against the wall. He picked it up. “Iren, Hana, and Rondel all left,” he said. “We can’t count on them to protect us. I’m Lodia’s only Dragon Knight. No one else can stop that monster.”

  He brushed past Dirio and Raebeld on his way to the door. They both had to jump to get out of the way of the Auryozaki.

  To Raebeld’s credit, the doctor tried one last time to dissuade Balear. “Stop this,” he said, though the strength and command had gone out of his voice. “You can’t defeat that thing with just your left arm.”

  Balear didn’t bother turning around. “I will,” he declared, “because Amroth believed in me. He knew what I was before I realized it myself. I’m a defender of Lodia.”

  He left the room. A few seconds later, the door to the street slammed.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN

  Suicide Forest

  At sunset four weeks after escaping the Tengu, Rondel and Minawë at last reached the end of the Eregos Mountains. Below them, the ground sloped down, and a mile away, fog shrouded the landscape.

  Rondel’s left shoulder twinged. Her wound was bothering it
again. She’d removed the Tengu’s arrow and applied a rudimentary bandage made from a piece of her cloak, but it was no substitute for what a real healer could do.

  She was lucky to have survived at all. That lightning bolt had almost knocked her out, and retrieving the Liryometa had resulted in burns on much of her body. Most had scabbed over by now, but a few of the heavier ones remained.

  A shriek overhead interrupted her thoughts. A moment later a hawk smashed to the ground in front of her. Rondel rolled her eyes. “I thought Kodamas were supposed to be graceful.”

  The hawk stood and shook its head in a most un-birdlike fashion. Then it grew. Its feathers shrank into its skin, and its beak changed into a nose. Last of all, its wings changed into arms, and Minawë stood before Rondel, looking indignant.

  “Flying is easy,” the Kodama said. “Turns out landing is trickier.”

  Rondel smirked. “Naturally.”

  Minawë folded her arms. “Doubtless you didn’t get Lightning Sight correct your first time around?”

  “It took me thirty years to perfect,” Rondel admitted, but then she added, “let’s hope it doesn’t take you that long.”

  Rondel didn’t want to tell Minawë, but the Kodama’s pace amazed her. Even Otunë had never used Dendryl’s magic to change his shape.

  “Are you daydreaming again?” Minawë asked. “Let’s get going.”

  “Not tonight,” Rondel said. “We’ll camp here and head down in the morning.”

  “Down?”

  “See where that mist starts? The Eregos Mountains don’t end in foothills on their southern border like they do in Lodia. Instead, they come to an escarpment that plunges more than a thousand feet. We’ll have to climb down it to proceed.”

  “You climb. I’ll fly.”

  Rondel laughed. “You think you can? You have no idea what’s in that fog. It’s a vast jungle, more expansive than Eregos: Aokigahara. Maantecs have another name for it, though.” Her tone darkened. “They call it Suicide Forest.”

  “You can drop the melodrama,” Minawë said. “I grew up in a forest, remember? I’m not scared of them.”

  “Aokigahara is nothing like Ziorsecth,” Rondel warned. “In Ziorsecth, the tree trunks are so wide and the canopy so dense that most places have little underbrush. Aokigahara is a green wall. It has plants at every layer from ground to canopy. If you flew down that cliff, you’d become tangled in the forest’s branches and break a wing. You might even die.”

  “So how do we get down? We don’t have any rope, and even if we did, it wouldn’t reach a thousand feet.”

  “There are spots along the wall where a person can climb,” Rondel said. “It won’t be pleasant, but it’s doable.”

  Rondel activated Lightning Sight and examined the cliff edge for any irregularities that might indicate a way down. Her shoulders slumped. “As best I can tell, there aren’t any such paths near us. We’ll sleep here tonight. Tomorrow, we can walk along the wall and search for a place to descend.”

  With that Rondel sat against a pine tree and settled in for an uncomfortable night. She wished they still had their supplies, but they’d lost everything with the horses in their flight from the Tengu. The food and camping gear would have eased the pain of Aokigahara a lot. They’d survived Eregos by having Minawë transform and hunt, but that might not work in the tangled rainforest.

  While Rondel rested, Minawë stared at the cliff before them. “I have an idea,” she said.

  The Kodama shrunk and changed into a white owl. Rondel smiled despite herself. “So that’s your plan.”

  Minawë cocked her head sideways, then went even further so that she was looking at Rondel upside down. Rondel laughed. “Would you get going? You’re creeping me out.”

  Ignoring the comment, Minawë took flight. Rondel used Lightning Sight to track her at first, but then Minawë entered the mist and was lost even to the enhanced vision. Rondel closed her eyes to wait for Minawë’s return.

  A hoot jolted her awake. Rondel looked up in time to see an owl flop down hard and roll twice on the ground before settling to a stop.

  Minawë changed back to her Kodaman form and rubbed her arms. “There’s a way down not far west of here,” she said. “If we hurry, I think there’s enough light for us to scale the cliff this evening.”

  Rondel frowned. She had no desire to enter Aokigahara at all, let alone at night. Minawë looked so excited, though, that it was hard to refuse her.

  Besides, every minute they delayed was another Hana and Melwar could spend with Iren. “Show me what you found,” Rondel said.

  Minawë led her to the cliff and turned right. The pair walked along the edge about fifteen minutes before Minawë stopped and indicated that they had arrived.

  Rondel looked over the cliff with Lightning Sight. Sure enough, a steep natural stair led down the escarpment, though there was no way to tell if it went to the bottom.

  “It’s more like a ladder than a staircase,” Rondel said. “You’re sure you want to do this tonight?”

  It had been easy for Minawë to be brave at the campsite, but faced with the actual descent, Rondel could tell the Kodama was nervous. The route was absurd, even in daylight.

  Rondel expected Minawë to give in and allow for another night in Eregos, but instead the Kodama’s face steeled. “Well,” she said, “let’s stop wasting time.”

  The old Maantec grated her teeth. It wasn’t hard to see which parent Minawë took after.

  Minawë slid a leg over the edge, but Rondel stopped her. “Let me go first,” the old Maantec said. “Lightning Sight will let me see the handholds better. Follow my lead.”

  Rondel started down the cliff. Using Lightning Sight, she found the peculiarities in the rock face and then relayed the information to Minawë. It was rough going, but before long they’d covered a considerable distance. When Rondel looked past Minawë, she could no longer see the cliff’s top.

  The farther they descended, the more treacherous the wall became. The fog hindered Lightning Sight and made the rocks slippery.

  The climb shouldn’t have been a challenge for Rondel, but thanks to her wounded left arm, she had to make the descent one-handed. With lightning magic enhancing her strength, though, she was managing.

  A scrabbling of rock was Rondel’s only warning. Minawë screamed and fell. Rondel instinctively reached out with her broken left hand. It snapped its splint and shot toward Minawë. For a moment they touched, but Rondel couldn’t get a grip.

  “Minawë!” Rondel cried. She scanned below her with Lightning Sight, but it couldn’t penetrate the mist. Cursing repeatedly, she scrabbled down the rock face as quickly as she dared.

  “Minawë!” she called again, though she knew it was hopeless. No one could survive a fall like that.

  After what felt like an eternity in her panicked state, Rondel felt solid ground beneath her. Her eyes swept the dark jungle, but she caught no sign of Minawë.

  Her chest tightened. Minawë must have transformed and become hung up in the forest canopy. Rondel forced away the mental image of a broken bird corpse lying in those upper branches.

  Rondel dropped to her knees. Suicide Forest had claimed yet another life, and it was her fault. She had gone along with Minawë’s suggestion to descend tonight even though she had known they should have waited until morning.

  There was a motion beside her. She drew her broken rondel. “Who’s there?” she asked, doing her best to sound fierce despite her grief.

  “Rondel?”

  “Minawë!”

  The Kodama forced her way through a tangle of shrubs. “I’m all right,” she said. “I transformed as I fell. I wasn’t thinking about it. I just knew I had to change if I wanted to survive.”

  “But what did you change into?” Rondel asked. “If you became a bird, there’s no way you could have broken your fall in time, let alone stopped before slamming into the canopy.”

  Minawë blushed. “Well, it will sound weird, but I didn’t know wh
at else to do. I just knew I needed to fly, so that’s what I became.”

  “A fly?”

  She nodded. “Once I changed into something that small, it was easy to get down safely. Although since I was so tiny, you beat me here. It also didn’t help that the fly’s eyes are hard to use. I could see in every direction at once!”

  Rondel fell back on her rump and whistled. Then, without intending to, she burst out laughing. Minawë looked at her oddly for a few seconds, and then she joined in. The pair cackled loud and long, and soon Rondel was crying and laughing at the same time.

  “Please don’t ever,” Rondel gasped between sobs, “ever do that to me again. You’re going to give this old woman a heart attack!”

  “I’ll do my best not to fall off any more cliffs,” Minawë replied.

  Rondel slowly regained control of herself. “All right, I’ve had more than enough excitement for today. Let’s camp here. Aokigahara is no place to stumble around in the dark.”

  “No arguments this time,” Minawë said. She leaned against a nearby tree and sat down. Rondel stood to join her, but then she stopped short.

  Minawë’s brow furrowed. “What’s the matter?”

  “Quiet,” Rondel hissed as Lightning Sight flashed. She searched the jungle. One . . . two . . . three . . . damn.

  Rondel raised her Liryometa, but then an arrow shot past her. It pinged off the escarpment and left a scratch on her right ear.

  Minawë reached for the Chloryoblaka, but another arrow landed inches in front of her. “Don’t move!” a voice called, and Rondel’s mouth dropped open as she realized the language wasn’t that of Lodia.

  “Hands up!” another voice shouted in the same language. Rondel snarled, but she obeyed. Lightning Sight had already picked up a dozen of them, and there might be more hiding in the trees where it couldn’t spot them.

  Minawë looked around. “What’s going on? Who’s there?”