The Hearts of Dragons

by Josh VanBrakle

  “When I reached the castle, though, I discovered Rondel was there too. If I tried to take you, she would attack me. I could not match her, so I had no choice but to leave you, my emperor’s only son, in the care of humans.”

  The Maantec lord looked into Iren’s eyes. “Ever since that day, I have waited for a chance to separate you from humans and teach you of your Maantec heritage. Because I needed to be here most of the time to govern Shikari, I asked Hana to observe you and, if Rondel left, convince you to come here.”

  Iren cradled his head in his hand as reality sunk in. Rondel had hidden the truth from him all along. She’d claimed to hate Iren because he was a Maantec, but it was more than that. He was a constant reminder of the murders she’d committed and of how she’d orphaned a child just like her parents’ killers had done to her.

  “There is something else you should know,” Melwar said. “A while back, we received a scout report from Aokigahara. Rondel is headed for Shikari. She was waylaid in the rainforest, but I have no doubt she will overcome any difficulties. She could arrive in a few weeks.”

  Iren clutched his knees and stared wide-eyed at Melwar. Rondel was on her way! His parents’ murderer was coming here!

  Melwar frowned at Iren’s reaction. “Wish all you want that your parents still lived, or that someone else had killed them. Know, however, that such wishes cannot come to pass. I do not believe in ‘should have’ or ‘could have.’ To me only one question matters: what are you going to do about it?”

  The question struck Iren like the flat of a blade. What was he going to do about it? About Rondel killing his parents? About her coming here?

  A strange calmness overtook him. His heart rate slowed. In his mind’s eye he pictured his friend’s wrinkled face—her emerald eyes, her silver hair. He whispered his father’s final words, “I love you.”

  He had his answer.

  “You have to break my barrier,” Iren said. “Now.”

  Melwar looked at him with shock. “You have not yet mastered No Mind outside of battle. You will never survive the attempt.”

  “I don’t care. I have to see Rondel, and I can’t meet her without magic.”

  “The pain will overwhelm you.”

  “Pain can’t reach me,” Iren murmured. “I am already numb.”

  Melwar looked him over, the lord’s eyes searching for something Iren couldn’t see. Finally, he released a long breath and said, “Draw the Muryozaki. If this works, you will need its healing power to restore any other parts of your body damaged by my spell.”

  Iren unsheathed his father’s katana. “I’m ready,” he said.

  “No, you are not,” Melwar replied. “You are just stubborn.”

  Melwar placed both hands on Iren’s chest. The Maantec lord’s arms darkened until they looked like they’d been charred. Then he spoke a single word in Maantec, and Iren drowned in pain.

  It was like his body was being ripped into pieces and set on fire. He screamed, but he hardly knew it. His eyes rolled back in his head, and he flirted with unconsciousness. The pain training had been nothing compared with this.

  He was going to die. He had no idea how long it would take for the barrier to give, but his body couldn’t last another second.

  Then an image floated before him. Rondel leered at him with cold, sparking eyes. For a moment he was back in his own memory. He was a baby looking up at her. His parents’ blood stained her dagger.

  Through the pain, Iren fixated on that image. The agony came worse than ever, but Iren endured. He couldn’t afford to die here, not before he saw Rondel again.

  A tremendous tearing sound filled Melwar’s room. White energy surged through Iren like a wave. It smashed apart his body’s defenses, drawn toward the shadow that opposed it. The two magics clashed inside him, and as they touched, they detonated.

  The pain of breaking the magic barrier had been the worst Iren had ever experienced, but the explosion afterward surpassed it tenfold. He never even had time to cry out before his heart stopped.

  CHAPTER FORTY-ONE

  Gifts of War

  Rondel groaned as she came to and struggled to sit up. She was in a large room, surrounded by wood. It made up the floor, walls, ceiling, and every piece of furniture. She sat on a bed with a soft mattress and silk sheets. Her clothes were also silk, and when she rubbed the fabric between her fingers, she recognized the weave as Kodaman.

  She’d spent enough time in this room to know where she was—the Kodamas’ hospital. She couldn’t believe it. The last thing she remembered was Azar cooking her alive. Now she didn’t have a mark on her.

  Narunë’s face popped around the doorway. “Sitting up already!” he shouted, which prompted hushing sounds from the main room of the hospital. “It’s only been three weeks. I expected you to be out for a month. Our healer had a time keeping you hydrated, but he’s the best for a reason.”

  Rondel rubbed her face to clear some of the confusion. It didn’t help.

  Narunë handed her a wooden cup. “Here, drink this.”

  She sniffed it. “Water? I could use something a little stronger.”

  “That’s like you,” Narunë said. He stepped inside the room and shut the door. “Stick to water for now. Maybe if you behave and don’t cause me too much grief, I’ll sneak in something for you. We don’t have any maple brandy, but several of the local fruits make excellent wine.”

  Rondel sipped the water. To her chagrin she had to admit that it did help clear her head. “What happened to me?” she asked between swallows. “What happened to that Oni?”

  Narunë smirked. “Minawë happened. She killed Azar. Our sentinels saw the line of smoke and went to investigate. They brought you back to the village.”

  Rondel barely heard what Narunë was saying. She was hung up on Minawë killing Azar. “Is Minawë hurt?” she asked. “Is she in the hospital too?”

  “No, no, calm down!” Narunë couldn’t seem to stop grinning today. “She’s watched over you all this time. She hadn’t eaten in two days, so I made her promise to find some lunch. She’s been worried about you, and so have I.” His smile became, if possible, even wider. “If you died, what on Raa was I going to do with this?”

  Narunë reached behind his back and pulled from his belt the sheathed Liryometa.

  Rondel accepted it from him and drew it. She gasped. It was repaired. “How?” she asked. “You said your smith couldn’t fix it.”

  “You have your daughter to thank for that, too,” Narunë said. “She brought the Karyozaki back with her. From examining it, my smith Palentos was able to repair your rondel. It was delicate work, since he couldn’t touch the Karyozaki. Still, I never lost faith in him.”

  Rondel’s restored dagger awed her, but she frowned all the same. “I appreciate your smith’s work, but bringing the Fire Dragon Sword here was a mistake. Some of your Kodamas might try to control it.”

  Narunë shrugged. “Not likely. After we finished with your rondel, I had Minawë hide the Karyozaki. Only she and Palentos know where it is now. Even I couldn’t tell you where they put it.”

  The door to the room opened a crack, and a familiar voice asked, “How’s she doing, Uncle?”

  Narunë laughed. “Come see for yourself!”

  Minawë stepped inside. She smiled when she saw Rondel sitting up.

  “I hear you’ve been taking care of me,” Rondel said. “Thank you.”

  The Kodama blushed. “It was nothing,” she said. “I’m glad to see you awake.” She paused a moment before adding, almost inaudibly, “Mother.”

  Narunë stood. “I’ll take my leave,” he said. “Minawë, Rondel is still recovering, so don’t keep her too long.” He left the room and shut the door behind him.

  For a long time Rondel and Minawë sat in silence, neither able to meet the other’s eye. Finally, Rondel said, “I hear you killed Azar.”

  “Only because you saved me.”

  Rondel looked at the ceiling and whistled. “That was a h
ell of a gamble.”

  “What do you mean ‘gamble?’” Minawë asked. “I thought you saved me because you knew I could kill him.”

  “Sure, let’s go with that.” In truth, Rondel had hoped Minawë would take advantage of her sacrifice and escape. She had never imagined that Minawë could defeat that monster.

  Rondel looked on her daughter with new respect. She had always admired her, but since Minawë had become the Forest Dragon Knight, the woman had far surpassed Rondel’s expectations.

  Minawë creased her eyebrows. “Why are you staring at me?”

  Rondel shook her head. “Oh, nothing. I just had a strange thought. The Maantecs nicknamed Aokigahara ‘Suicide Forest.’ Who could have suspected it would become a place of healing for me?”

  To Rondel’s surprise Minawë said, “I can understand why they call it that. I feel like I died here. The Minawë who left Ziorsecth and the Minawë sitting here now can’t be the same person.”

  The room felt stuffy. Rondel wanted to blame the tropical climate, but she knew there was more to it than that. “Minawë, I never wanted you to learn the truth, but now that you have, I’ll keep no more secrets from you. Ask me what you will.”

  Minawë thought for a moment. Then she said, “How did you seduce my father?”

  Rondel cringed. She suspected it wouldn’t be the last time in this conversation she reacted that way. Even so, she said, “During the Kodama-Maantec War, our races fought to a standstill. Iren Saito knew that to defeat the Kodamas, he would have to take Ziorsecth Forest. He invaded it twice, but both times your father, Otunë, repelled him.

  “Those defeats taught Saito that he couldn’t conquer Ziorsecth without some kind of an edge. He needed a spy, and I was the only one who could do it. I was faster than any other Maantec, and I was small and clever enough to avoid detection. I could also enhance my senses, so I could learn secrets from a distance.”

  Minawë waved her hand dismissively. “I’m familiar with the history of the war. You said you would answer my questions.”

  Rondel shivered despite the room’s heat. “I’m not telling you this to dodge your question,” she said, “I’m saying it because it matters. My role as a spy is how I first came to know your father. I spied on him and the other Kodamas for years. What do you think I saw?”

  When Minawë shrugged her shoulders, Rondel continued, “I saw people. I saw women and children. I saw families. I saw that our terrible enemies, the Kodamas, were no different from us. They weren’t evil. They weren’t inferior. They just wanted the war to end.

  “As I traveled from Ziorsecth to Serona and back again, the disparity between Otunë and Saito magnified. Saito sought conquest; Otunë sought peace. Saito wanted to rule; Otunë wanted to serve. In the end, it was Saito’s fault that I defected. Had he not sent me to spy on the Kodamas, I never would have learned enough about them to make me join their side. As it was, I finally approached Otunë and offered him my rondel.”

  “Why didn’t the Kodamas kill you?” Minawë asked. “They would have had no reason to trust anything you said.”

  “Did you already forget that I was a spy? When I confronted Otunë, he was alone in a Kodaman tree home. I slipped in without his guards noticing. When I woke him, I saw his fear. The Chloryoblaka was out of reach, and he knew he couldn’t best me when he’d been startled from sleep. The fact that I didn’t kill him then convinced him to accept me.

  “After I joined him, I wanted to march against Serona and wipe out the Maantecs. But Otunë argued that even with my help, it would cost many lives to invade Serona. To give the invasion the best chance of success, he needed information about the Maantecs. So instead of using me to support his military, he gave me a different job.”

  Minawë interjected, “Double-agent.”

  Rondel nodded. “Saito was my husband. He shared all his strategies with me, never suspecting that I relayed everything to his foe. That’s all it was for the first year.

  “Over time, though, something changed. I found myself not just caring about Otunë’s people, or Otunë’s cause, but Otunë himself. He was so strong, yet he was also vulnerable. When you saw him in public, rallying his soldiers, he defined resolve. But I saw a side of him he didn’t show anyone else, not even his wife. When I brought him information, it was always one-on-one. Narunë was the only other person who knew we were meeting. It had to be a secret, otherwise a captured Kodama might reveal the truth under torture. As a result, Otunë didn’t have any masks around me. I saw his face contort in agony whenever I informed him of some Maantec victory or of Saito’s latest plot. I saw him cower on beds with his head in his hands, wondering if the war would ever end. I wanted to lessen his pain, or at least to share in it.”

  Rondel wiped her eyes. “I never meant to pull your father away from Aletas, but in the end, that’s what happened. For all her qualities, Aletas never took part in the war. She could whisper words of comfort to Otunë, but she didn’t understand what he was going through. I did. In me he found a kindred spirit, someone who had seen the horrors of war and was as disgusted as he was.”

  “And that was when you started sleeping together.” Minawë’s voice was cold. It made Rondel cringe again.

  “No,” she said, “it was innocent enough at first. We would meet ostensibly for me to relay information, but in reality it was so we could comfort each other. Things gradually escalated, but we only shared a bed once—the night before we stormed Serona’s capital of Edasuko. That night, both of us were terrified, not for ourselves, but for the Kodamas we led and for each other. We both feared that it was the last night we would be alive.”

  Rondel sighed. “It isn’t an excuse, but take comfort in this. Otunë never stopped loving Aletas. Our night together was born of passion, fear, and desperation. It never would have lasted. Had Otunë survived the war, I have no doubt he would have gone back to Aletas. He was not the type to abandon those who cared about him.”

  Minawë sat so still Rondel wondered if her daughter had turned to stone. Finally, the Kodama said, “So I was conceived that night. You were pregnant with me during the final battle.”

  “That’s right,” Rondel said, “although I didn’t know it. At the time, I didn’t think it could happen. Otunë was Kodaman after all, and I was Maantec. Even if it was possible, the thought of becoming pregnant never entered my mind. You probably already know this, but because of our immortality, it’s difficult for Maantecs and Kodamas to conceive. A couple can sleep together hundreds of times without becoming pregnant. That’s why our populations never recovered from the war, even though it happened a thousand years ago. Conception takes extreme emotion from both partners, because the child is created from tiny amounts of biological magic from each parent. Those energies combine in the mother’s womb and create the child. In our case, Otunë and I were so anxious about the upcoming battle that we met the conditions for pregnancy without realizing it.”

  Minawë folded her arms. Her expression was still flat and cold, but she didn’t look angry. On the contrary, she looked like she was working out a puzzle. “If what you’ve said is true,” she said, “then I was conceived before Saito’s curse took effect. Shouldn’t I have died in your womb, an unborn victim of his spell?”

  “The mother’s body protects the child,” Rondel said. “As long as you were within me, the curse couldn’t harm you. It also affected you less than a typical Kodama, because you’re half Maantec. That’s why you were able to survive in Lodia during your mission last year. Your Maantec blood slowed the curse’s effects and prolonged your life.”

  “I always wondered about that,” Minawë said. “Mother died in seconds after Feng pulled her from Ziorsecth, but I lived outside the forest for weeks. Even so, I would have died eventually. That’s why you left me in Ziorsecth as a child.”

  Rondel didn’t answer right away. It would be so much easier to let Minawë go on thinking that the curse was why Rondel had abandoned her. She had promised her daughter no more secre
ts, though, so she said, “Leaving you in Ziorsecth did keep you safe, but that wasn’t why I left you there. The truth is that where I was going, I couldn’t have you with me. I went in search of Iren Saito, in order to kill him.”

  “Iren Saito?” Minawë looked shocked. “But he died during the final battle! All the histories say he did!”

  “All the histories are wrong, or at least they misrepresent the truth. In a way, Saito did die in that fight. The emperor was gone, his army defeated, but the Maantec who was Iren Saito survived. He renounced his title and became a wanderer. I think he wanted to forget what he’d done.

  “But I couldn’t forget. I hunted him across the continent. By the time I brought him the justice of Okthora’s Law, you were an adult who believed Aletas was your mother. I couldn’t face you, so I went into hiding. I thought I’d never see you again, but then Iren Saitosan and I rescued you in Akaku Forest.”

  Rondel leaned back against her bed’s headboard. For a thousand years she’d kept these secrets. A small part of her felt relieved not to have them locked inside anymore, but the greater part felt ashamed that she had them at all.

  Minawë, meanwhile, had become contemplative. She had a hand on her chin, and her gaze looked at something far away. “When I was a child,” she said, “Mother warned me once about seeking revenge. She said it couldn’t make me happy. I had no desire for revenge, so I didn’t understand why she spoke to me so passionately. Now I do. She knew you were my mother, and she knew the pain you must have felt abandoning your child to pursue Saito. That brings me to my final question. Even if it was for one night, I was still born of Father’s affair. Why would Mother take me in? Every moment with me would remind her of it.”

  “True,” Rondel said, “but you also reminded her of something far more important. You see, when I returned from the war, I brought Aletas two gifts. One was the Chloryoblaka. The other was you. Do you understand? Aletas’s husband went away to war, and only his weapon and child came back. Aletas protected you because you are Otunë’s legacy. As long as you live, part of him lives on as well.”