Dragonoak
Page 37
“How did you find him?” I asked Kouris. At least I knew he'd understood me and made it to Kyrindval after all.
“By chance, more than anything. Reckon he recognised me,” she said, voice slowly coming back to its usual strength as she went on. “Came up and bumped his head against me. Kind of reminded me of you, if I'm to be telling the truth.”
I nodded, glancing down at Oak. He rolled a dark eye up to look at me, and I continued smoothing my hands along his snout as he settled down against the ground, torn wings folding against his back, tail swishing along the edge of the Bloodless Lands. He knew who Kouris was because I'd showed him; I'd changed him when I'd only meant to save him. How many of his thoughts echoed my own I couldn't say, but when Kidira stepped closer he let out a low, rumbled growl of warning.
I wrapped my arms around his muzzle, whispering, “No, no. It's okay, it's okay.”
“What did you do to that dragon?” Kidira asked, upon recalling that she had a voice after all.
“I brought him back. That's all I did,” I said, glancing off to the side at Kouris. “I gave him another chance and let him do as he pleased.”
“Yrval, come now,” Kouris pleaded, exasperated. Kidira turned her head sharply and looked at her, brow furrowed in scrutiny, able to fix her eyes on her once more. She folded her arms across her chest, as if waiting for either me or Kouris to explain what had really happened with the dragon, but he wriggled free of my grasp before I could even consider answering.
He shook his head, tilted it back to let out a piercing yawn, then plodded off towards the mountains. We watched him wander off, too tense to speak to each other, hoping he'd do something to keep us distracted. He fell down on his side at the foot of a mountain, close to what remained of a stubborn old tree. He wrapped his jaws around it, idly tearing chunks of bark away.
“We're going somewhere,” I told Kouris, eyes still on Oak. “Through the Bloodless Lands, to where they're keeping the dragons. We'll be able to get there a lot faster now.”
“I'll be coming with you, then,” Kouris said, and took the joint silence Kidira and I produced to mean that we had no objections. As if making a peace offering, Kouris quietly added, “He got a name, yrval?”
“Oak,” I said quietly. “You should've asked before.”
The four of us headed back into the mountains, as quietly as we could with a dragon clambering over the wall. We were a good ten miles from where we'd started and the wall there was more refined, though there were plenty of footholds to be found. Kouris walked up the wall without having to grasp to keep her balance, and though she didn't offer to take me on her back, she'd hold a hand out to me, when I needed it.
Whenever I wrapped my fingers around hers, hoisting myself up a steeper part of the wall, I couldn't help but notice way she wasn't looking at Kidira, wasn't giving herself the chance to endure Kidira scorning her outstretched hand.
I helped Kidira, when the rocks became too tall to clamber up alone, and Oak even used his snout to gruffly nudge her along, far from having warmed to her. Kidira had decided that we'd make camp before heading onto our destination, and so we made camp; she muttered something about the Felheimish losing control of their dragons, and we accepted her explanation. Neither of us wanted to engage with her, much less argue, and we weren't yet privy to her plan.
She marched with such strength between the mountains, never once faltering, in spite of the exhaustion that riddled her. Kouris and I let her choose the camp site, let her head off to hunt dinner, and quietly set about gathering wood to burn. It was late evening and staying still left me restless, as though Oak's arrival hadn't seared weeks off our journey already. I said nothing of it, shoulders hunched, and while we were alone, Kouris didn't try luring me into conversation. I'd glance over at her but she'd be miles away, head full of all the weighty things Kidira hadn't said to her.
There was goat for dinner. Kidira prepared it, silently putting a portion of the meat to the side that went uncooked, and placed it in front of Kouris once our own meals were prepared. Oak toyed with the carcass between his jaws as we ate, licking the bones clean more for the taste than out of hunger. I looked up at the sky, trying to will Isjin into existence so that she might take pity on me and bring the night crashing down upon us.
I curled up next to Oak, after a time, trying to convince myself as much as Kidira and Kouris that sleep would come to me. To my relief, I felt a lot more relaxed with a dragon forming a barricade between the three of us, and was able to let a little of my glow trickle away from me. It was far from gone, and I wondered when it had become such an integral part of me; Kouris hadn't asked what had happened, if I was alright. I took a deep breath, telling myself that I didn't want to slip a hand under my shirt to see if my skin really was as smooth as it'd once been, more than a decade ago. The tension pushed through my veins, urging me to clamp my hands together, to tug on my fingers, but when Kidira spoke, I didn't dare to move an inch.
“You no longer use your claws to pick meat from between your fangs,” she said.
I tried to picture her sitting there, arms wrapped loosely around her knees as she stared into the fire.
“I knew you always hated it,” came Kouris' quiet reply.
“I didn't hate it,” Kidira said bluntly. “It annoyed me. That's all.”
Kouris made no reply. All I heard was the sound of one of them shifting, rearranging themselves in front of the fire, until Kidira spoke again.
“Do you want to hear something funny?”
“Will it make me laugh?” Kouris asked dryly.
“No,” Kidira said, and I suppose Kouris must've nodded, because she went on speaking. “For years – for a decade, perhaps – I spent every day wishing that you'd come home. I'd entertain all manner of absurdities: the people deciding that execution wasn't a fit punishment, you finding a way to atone with the rest of the life they'd allowed you to keep. I even imagined that you might've slipped through their fingers, and told myself that it wouldn't matter to me how you'd dishonoured us both. As those days turned into months and then years, it was harder and harder to believe that you'd come home. I'd tell myself you'd escaped and had gone into hiding, over in Felheim or Agados, or that you'd returned to your people, but one day, I had to stop.
“My mind would still wander. I suppose I used it as a... reward, of sorts. Get through the day, return to my chambers and allow myself to imagine that you were something other than dead. Every time, Kouris. Every time somebody knocked at the door, every time a raven came, every time I saw horns in a crowd; every time, I thought it was you.
“And then you return to me. After twenty-seven years, one day you are suddenly there, knelt before me. Just as I'd always imagined, just as I'd always wanted. And the funny thing is, Kouris, the funny thing is that it does matter. All of it, every last bit, matters to me. I do not wish to see you, I do not wish to be near you, and so I do not know who I have been these past twenty-nine years, or before all that.”
I turned my head, face pressed into the dirt. I squeezed my eyes shut tighter, fingertips pressed to the ground, pretending I couldn't hear Kouris' heavy breathing, the growl rattling around the back of her throat.
“The pane aren't my people,” Kouris eventually managed, “You are. You were the only one who—”
“Yet still, you left,” Kidira said, cutting her off. “You left me.”
“I know,” Kouris murmured, voice muffled by her hands or arms or something else. “I know.”
In the morning, we returned to the other side of the wall. Once we were back within the Bloodless Lands, there was no more putting it off: the three of us had to find a way to settle down on Oak's back together. Weight wasn't the issue. He'd carried Akela and myself together and had been fine with Kouris on his back, and Kidira hardly took up much space, but I couldn't comprehend the least awkward way to arrange ourselves.
Eventually, Kouris decided to take the reins and I settled down behind her. Kidira sat behind me, and once
Oak took off, you would've thought she'd spent her life on dragonback; she placed her hands on my shoulders but didn't cling as if for dear life, nor did she press up against me.
We travelled close to the ground, hidden by the mountains, though there wasn't much call to hide; no one stood vigil over the Bloodless Lands and no human wandered closer to the mountains than they had to. Kouris had fashioned a blindfold for herself and like Kidira, covered both eyes as we flew, but I looked out on the Bloodless Lands, watching Myros unfurl like a scroll as we flew past. There were cities, dozens of them, villages and towns and open fields between, rivers and lakes turned still and white, as though ripples and waves had been carved from something quite unlike stone.
The journey was a little longer than the one to Orinhal had been, made longer still by the breaks we took to stretch our arms and legs. When nothing in the scenery had changed – the Bloodless Lands were still to the left while the mountains rose and fell on our right – Kidira said, “Here. We walk from here.” It was hard to argue on a dragon's back, and so Kouris gestured for Oak to land.
“What's so special about here?” Kouris asked, pulling up her blindfold and squinting at the mountains.
Kidira, blindfold already half pulled up, began to press on.
“Nothing,” she said without looking back, “But I rather wouldn't announce our arrival, should anyone be awaiting us.”
Kouris and I remained where we were for a moment, sharing sceptical looks. Oak, deciding that his help was no longer required, slumped down on the dusty ground, wings stretched out at his sides. I looked around, trying to find whatever landmark it was that Kidira had spotted and came up empty.
“All she's said is that we're going to the place where they keep the dragons,” I mumbled, “She says I need to go with her and be brave, for whatever reason, but she won't tell me anything else.”
“Of course she won't, yrval,” Kouris said, patting a hand against my back as she hurried to follow Kidira. “But this is Kidira: she doesn't do anything lightly. Whatever this is, it's important and she's sure to be having a plan.”
I could've refused to follow along, ruining whatever plans Kidira might've formed, but I couldn't bring myself to be quite that petty. Better to get it over with as quickly as was possible. Admittedly, I was more than a little curious. The last leg of our journey lasted well through midnight, though darkness didn't fall on the Bloodless Lands themselves. The sky had long since turned black, while the Bloodless Lands teemed with light, as I too did.
“Reckon we're not far from Thule,” Kouris murmured, eyes ever on the mountains.
“Kouris...” I said, but didn't know what else I wanted to say. I thought back to our first journey together, from Praxis through to Kastelir, all the way to Isin and reached out, and placed my hand in hers.
A building came into view, a dozen miles from where we'd left Oak. It didn't belong to the Bloodless Lands and its design wasn't Myrosi; it was old to be sure, but compared to the wall and what laid beyond, it'd barely seen a day in the sun. The round, domed building sat in the centre of a clearing, with no glass in the small, square windows carved into the stone. Instead, light poured out; light that cause me to curl my fingers towards my palm, light that made Kouris look between Kidira and myself, on the verge of demanding answers. Kidira put up a hand to preemptively silence her, observing for a few moments more before speaking.
“I stood watch here for days. The dragons are kept further down; it's the pane who bring them here in shackles, muzzles about their snouts, led by guards. For the longest time, I didn't understand what I was seeing. I only knew that I couldn't head into that building alone,” Kidira explained, eyes fixed on me as though the weight of her stare could rip the light from my bones. “Until I found you, and it became painfully clear.”
“You mean... ?” I tried, leaning towards the dome, trying to feel their presence.
“Necromancers,” Kidira said.
“But this was supposed to be a...” I squeezed Kouris' hand tightly, doing what I could to keep my voice level. “You said it was a rescue mission. But you just want me to... to stop them?”
Kidira let out a heavy breath, tilting her head towards the building.
“We are going to stop them, Rowan. But considering the state I found you in to entice such a glow, I doubt they will scorn our help.”
With that, Kidira marched towards the building, while Kouris and I stood frozen.
“Come now, Kidira. Shouldn't we be waiting for a few more of us... ?” Kouris said, trying to reason with her.
She didn't break her gait. She could see as well as we could that there were no soldiers around, for what good were guards when it came to necromancers? If they were there of their own freewill, then a fleet of soldiers could offer them no better protection of their own powers; if they were truly being kept there, the soldiers wouldn't have stood a chance.
I recalled what Claire had told me. That necromancers were involved, though she didn't understand how. I ran to catch up with Kidira, knowing beyond all reason that there were necromancers within the building.
That feeling of warmth, of understanding, made me braver than I rightly should've been. I pushed past Kidira, eyes fixed on the dome, breaking out into a sprint. I could feel something beneath all that unspoken familiarity. There was something ringing in the back of my head, too high-pitch for me to hear; something making my nerves pull taut. Kidira was right. Whoever was in there needed help.
They needed help and I understood that. Once a necromancer had been bound, they were trapped; they could kill their captor but they'd still be in chains.
“Wait,” Kidira said, grabbing hold of my shoulder.
I shook her hand off without looking back. “I'll go first,” I said, barely aware of my surroundings. All I knew was that I had to keep going, had to see what was behind those doors. I don't know if Kidira responded to me, if Kouris said anything. I wrapped my fingers around the handles, saying, “You wait,” as I pulled them towards me.
They might've brought pane to the building but the doors weren't designed for them. The doorway was so low that Akela would've had to duck to get in, but then the room opened up, up, bright light making the domed ceiling into a sky. In that first flash of light, I saw the building as it once must've been; saw all the depth the faded carvings once had, the colours the peeling paint had once shone in. But then my eyes adjusted and it was nothing more than a weather-worn collection of bricks, unfit to house anyone.
I didn't find a group of necromancers within the building. Chains hung from the ceiling, pulled taut around the wrists of one man; not quite long enough to allow him to kneel, though to look at him, I knew he'd forgotten how to stand years before. Light peeled off him in sheets and I saw what I might become, saw an echo of what those who laid their eyes on me must've seen.
Light bloomed from his eyes like white fire, coiling up into the air and never burning out, skin glowing as though he had been carved from the same stock as the rivers and lakes in the Bloodless Lands. If he knew I was there, he didn't register it, at first.
“A-ah... ahh,” he whined breathlessly in a plea for freedom that never ended. Hands trembling, I stepped closer, and he seemed to flinch; but he was used to people coming in and demanding things of him, and so hung his head and went back to whining.
It wasn't until I knelt before him that I really got his attention. “Can you hear me?” I asked, reaching back for my dragon-bone knife. “It's going to be alright, just...”
His eyes went wide, embers dying down for half a heartbeat. “You're a... you're a...” he tried. “Go, go! You must...”
His words lapsed into a mumble, and then more groaning.
“It's fine, Aejin. We'll get you out of here,” I said, trying the knife against the chains. It was like cutting through brittle wood.
“Aejin? No, no, my name...” he murmured, slumping as the first of the chains broke. “They'll take you, take you like they took me, they'll...”
“Shh,” I said, working on the second chain.
It finally snapped, and though I went to steady the necromancer, Kouris had already rushed in and caught him in her arms.
“Iseul!” she said, kneeling with his head rested against the crook of her elbow. He gasped shakily, as though we'd pulled him out of the chains and into a bed of ice, fingertips twitching as he remembered what parts of his body were his. A lifetime without food, without water, without sleep, and there he was, reaching up to Kouris' face.
“My Queen!” he said, fingertips trailing across Kouris' cheek when she bowed her head towards him. “I didn't—oh, they took me. I fought and I fought, but... but they said... if I brought the dragons back, if I... showed them where to fly—”
His words faded into raspy breaths and I felt as though I was bleeding light for him, for Iseul. The blood in my veins slowed to a crawl, thick and sticky, and I understood; Oak had found Kyrindval because I'd slipped the image beneath his skin, he'd recognised Kouris because I too knew her.
“Oh, Iseul,” Kouris murmured, “You must've known they wouldn't ever let you go.”
Iseul tilted his head back, eyes closing, light not fading. Kidira stood in the doorway, stony-faced, not telling us to hurry as I'd expected her to.
“I tried! I tried to help. The pane, did they find you?” Iseul asked. “I sent them to you, my Queen... sent them to Canth. That's why you're here, isn't it? But it must've been weeks, only weeks...”
“That's right, Iseul,” Kouris said softly, trying to keep him from shaking. “That's why I'm here. You brought me back. Don't be worrying about any of that anymore.”
Iseul seemed to smile and murmured, “Then it isn't too late.” Eyes blinking open, he pressed his fingertips to Kouris' closed eyes. “Your eyes grew back, Your Majesty. I was so worried they wouldn't...”
“Aye,” Kouris whispered. I met Kidira's gaze and wished I hadn't. “That they did.”
I looked at the ground, at anywhere but her. The change in her expression was so slight that it should've gone unnoticed, but there was a sudden sting in her eyes that she knew I'd seen. Slowly, Kouris rose to her feet, lifting Iseul up with her.