Dragon's Rise

by Lou Hoffmann

  But then everything stopped as a wave of magic washed through the connected worlds, a wave so strong, powerful and terrible and beautiful and desperate. It burst through his awareness, through the very stuff of Naught that interwove the worlds, shaking Ephemera and rattling the cages it held its victims in, knocking Primes to the floor.

  That magic behind that energy storm wasn’t Thurlock’s, and it hadn’t come from anywhere in Ephemera. One word came into Thurlock’s mind, occupied it fully: Luccan. Nothing mattered to Thurlock at that moment except the need to be at Luccan’s side. Instead of using the magic he’d gathered to wreak destruction on Ephemera, he used it to power the virtual M.E.R.L.I.N. And instead of heading for Portal One B, he fixed on Luccan as the only possible destination.

  Chapter Eighteen: The Laboratory—Saving Sahsha

  LUCKY COULDN’T explain his sense of urgency, couldn’t imagine what that foggy oblivion might mean, and had no idea what he could do about it. Still, he called Zefrehl to him with a whistle and a Wish, labored into the saddle, and set Zef on a course to follow the ley line. At the edge of the area bathed in roiling fog, Zefrehl stopped.

  “I don’t blame you, girl,” Lucky said. “Just wait for me here, okay?” He pulled an apple out of his pack and gave her that and some nose rubs as a thank-you, then started walking into the fog.

  This fog wasn’t mist-shadow, but as soon as Lucky put a foot beyond the edge of the fog, he could tell mist-shadow claimed some space inside it. With one hand covering the Key and the other clutching Ciarrah’s hilt for dear life, he ducked and dodged the black swirls and blue flashes.

  “Scared,” he said out loud, thinking human sound might be a comfort, but it was too weak a word to describe the dread weighing down his feet like lead boots, and speaking it didn’t help. He thought about turning around, going back to Zefrehl, maybe even back to Followers Quarter, but he still felt like whatever was going on here, it was his problem, and he needed to try to fix it. Besides, he no longer knew which way “back” was, so he kept putting one foot in front of the other.

  “Breathe,” Ciarrah said.

  Lucky followed the advice, sucking in a delayed breath even though the strange smell inside the fog—bitter and acrid like vinegar struck by lightning—made him afraid to take it into his lungs. When nothing bad happened, he kept breathing through what felt like hours of slow forward movement.

  The end of his fog-shrouded journey came suddenly. The cloud didn’t thin out or change, it just stopped. Lucky blinked, standing in light discolored by darkness even though it was bright enough to make his eyes water. He slowly pivoted, trying to figure out how that could be, and got a shock. No fog stood between him and Zefrehl. None at all. And Zef stood not more than five yards away.

  “Blade-keeper, breathe.”

  “Right, right,” Lucky whispered, obeying and rolling his eyes. Pretty bad when a stone object has to keep telling you the most basic thing.

  The nearness of Zef and the sunny world out there confused Lucky but also reassured him, and he took stock of his surroundings. The smell here was bad, but different. Rot and animal waste, Lucky thought. Thoroughly gross but somehow not as scary. The discolored light made a circular dome, as if magical glass hid this place from view. Maybe, he thought, it was concealed like Isa’s tower in Black Creek Ravine. He told himself taking another step into the space was either brave or stupid, but that’s not how it felt. It was simply what was in front of him to do, so he did it. When he’d gone about ten strides, he realized the Sight was still engaged, and it had begun to make him sick to his stomach. He let it go, hoping he would be able to see whatever he needed to see anyway.

  A few steps farther in, he turned a corner on a worn path and then stepped through the gaping door of a temple. A massive idol stood at the far end of the long gallery-like room. The god-statue seemed to stare despite being faceless except for an open mouth. Red-stone flames ringed its head in an aura; blood-washed slabs and flame-blackened pits lay at its feet. A rack of sharp instruments stood within handy reach. Iron cages of varied sizes, all empty, lined the room’s red-marble walls. No priest or worshipper or living victim occupied the place, for which Lucky felt enormous gratitude. He spotted a narrow staircase descending from behind the statue, but wherever it led was hidden from view under the floor. Honestly, Lucky admitted he might not want to know what he’d find there.

  But I have to go.

  He had, somehow, done magic that rocked the world, but he was no wizard, and neither was he warrior. Whatever reserves he might have had to run or fight were spent, and so too—most probably—was Ciarrah’s light.

  But I have to go.

  He was afraid, and this fear was no abstract emotion about dark magic in the ground; it was personal.

  But I have to go.

  He set one foot on the stairs and followed with another, steadily descending until he reached a dark, hot, humid room occupied by things he couldn’t, at first, see at all. Living things, though. They mewled and groaned and hissed weakly from every corner.

  Steeling himself, he tried the Sight. It failed—either he didn’t have the energy to power it, or perhaps something blocked it. But after a moment, when his eyes adjusted to the dark, he was glad he couldn’t See what was inside that place. Using his eyes the ordinary way was plenty bad enough.

  The room, a chamber of horrors, was cluttered with equipment and containers and filth. Open metal boxes, all sharp corners and rust, lined the walls. Some of them held large greenish eggs. Weakly alive inside other boxes, newly hatched creatures Lucky couldn’t identify cried and rustled. Some kind of black liquid fed from a large bottle behind each creature through tubes inserted under the faded blue reptilian skin. Disgusted and shaken, Lucky lowered his gaze until it latched on to one small creature near his feet that had fallen from its box, the “feeder” tube dislodged. He stared for a long time, struck immobile by the sheer horror of human cruelty he saw in this place, filled as it was with monsters in the making, helpless things fed with hate, evil, and the darkest of magics.

  The rest of the room, the city, the world fell out of Lucky’s awareness while he stared at the pitiful, twisted creature at his feet. Moved with pity he dropped down to either cradle it or kill it—which would be kinder, he didn’t know.

  His utterly complete focus on the small, hurting soul blinded him to the entire chamber around him, and it wasn’t until Mahros spoke that he even knew anyone else was there.

  “I have a guest, I see,” Mahros said, his voice deeply resonant and calm, lacking the sharpness it had held days ago in the meeting at the Sisterhold.

  Lucky stood up straight again and gazed at him warily. He had no idea how he could defend himself against this wizard, whom Han had labeled “exceptional.” He was certain, though, that Mahros’s mild manner of the moment was but an act, and he meant Lucky no good at all. It wasn’t clear if Mahros expected a reply, but Lucky gave him none.

  Mahros chuckled before continuing. “I don’t know why I’m allowing myself to be intrigued by you… or is it charmed? I am, after all, quite certain it was you who blew my magic back on itself a short time ago. But we’re not naturally enemies, you know.”

  That crossed a line. Lucky knew that Mahros bore the Ol’Karrigh name, but had he missed the gene that prevented lying? Or had he simply become acclimated to it? Or maybe… maybe he truly believed what he said. That idea made Lucky sick, and he wasn’t the one telling lies.

  “You’re crazy,” he said, throwing caution to the wind. “You just tried to burn me to death, and you didn’t even care if the whole Quarter ended up ashes along with me.”

  “Did I? Do you truly know the fire at the Quarter was my doing?”

  For an instant, the question threw Lucky, but quickly he realized he did know. The magic he’d followed back to this place had Mahros’s signature all over it. When he’d started recognizing magical signatures, he couldn’t say, but he did this time. It was plain as day.

  “Never
mind, though. It was my power that rolled through Followers Quarter, I’ll admit it, though I won’t agree you were the target. But that happened, unfortunate as it may be, and there’s nothing you or I can do to change it. Truly, you think you’ve quelled the blood magic, but all you’ve really done is sent its errant power straight back to my hands.”

  Maybe that was true—Lucky couldn’t know for sure. But even if it was, he didn’t regret the healing he’d seen come over the land and its creatures as the twisted power retreated. He didn’t see any benefit in announcing that to Mahros, though. He stayed silent.

  “You don’t believe me? I can show you what this magic means when it’s in my hands. If I do, I assure you, you’ll know the taste of true power—if only for an instant before you die.” Bloodred flame erupted from his blackened staff as he said those words. “But I’ve told you, you were not my target, and even now your death is not my goal. We can change what comes out of this meeting. I won’t have to end you if we aren’t enemies.”

  I’m so tired of this, Lucky thought, and—never stopping to think about how much it ticked people off—he rolled his eyes. Then, snap. Just like that he lost all control of his tongue.

  “Why do you people keep trying to get me to join you? Does every evil wizard and witch in the world work from the same playbook? Oh,” he said, making his voice high and whiny, “little Luccan, why don’t you come play in my gross and nasty backyard? We can be friends, and everything will be so—”

  Mahros shouted, “Enough!” He raised his flaming staff and began a booming litany of magical words. A sort of visible force field started to build around him, and then he grasped the staff by the heel with both hands and started a downstroke that would crash the burning metal tip to the stone floor.

  “No!” came a thunderous shout from behind Lucky, somewhere on the stairs.

  That voice was more powerful even than Mahros’s, and Lucky knew it belonged to Thurlock. Part of him wondered how Thurlock had gotten there, literally just in the nick of time. He thought too, remotely, how unbelievable these two powers were. And he dreaded the imminent impact between them. Those thoughts flashed by in milliseconds, but then he heard the tiny, twisted creature at his feet cry one last time and his awareness of everything else stopped.

  He dropped to the ground and covered the monstrous infant beast with his own body, Wishing without reason but with all his heart that the innocent thing would be well and whole, shielded from the magic that would surely destroy not only Mahros but all the twisted life he’d created in this horrid laboratory. The Key flared bright, enveloped Lucky’s huddled form. Ciarrah wrenched herself from his grasp, but she didn’t go far. In his mind’s eye, he knew she’d laid herself crosswise at his head, creating a barrier that might shield him from at least some of the power about to be released.

  Then it happened.

  The flash momentarily blinded Lucky even though his eyes were closed, his face covered and pushed against the dirt floor; the explosion made a silence so loud it deafened him for some seconds. Then he felt Thurlock’s big hand on his shoulder and looked up to find the wizard staring at the creature he’d guarded. When Thurlock shifted his gaze to meet Lucky’s, his expression spoke of utter confusion, or perhaps astonishment.

  Lucky uncurled himself more completely from around the reptilian creature. Before, its scales had been cast in a dull blue. Now, they were shining, and their color had shifted to a bright, iridescent green. Its wings, which before were twisted stumps, had become whole and straight. Its yellow eyes sparked with the curiosity of youth and intelligence. It looked around and when it encountered Lucky’s face, stared into his eyes for a long minute. Then it flapped its wings, squawked in a healthy-sounding birdlike voice, and coughed a small, juvenile stream of green flame.

  “YOU’RE ALL right, Luccan?” Thurlock finally asked.

  Lucky did an internal check and, surprised, gave an honest “Yes!”

  Thurlock nodded and sighed and took sweets out of his pocket. After passing a Twinkie to Luccan and taking a Ho Ho for himself, he spoke through a mouthful. “We’ve got some talking to do later about that power of yours and what you recently did with it that was big enough for me to feel it in another world. But for now, I’m tired, and I think it’s more important to use what energy I have to check things out here. Starting with a possibly dead wizard.” He stopped speaking and looked away, his lips trembling. “Another one, if it’s so. And again, a relative.”

  With the small green dragon on his shoulder, Lucky followed Thurlock through the remains of the lab beneath the temple. Mahros’s body was there, though it looked emaciated in death. His staff had burned to cinders except for the ironlike metal ball at its tip, which held a still faintly glowing symbol Lucky recognized—the six-rayed sun.

  “That symbol, Thurlock.”

  “Yes,” the wizard answered distractedly.

  “Is it evil?”

  Thurlock made a sound that might have been a laugh, but it wasn’t in humor. “There are no evil symbols, Luccan, and no bad words. Only evil people and bad intentions.”

  That seemed like an incredible, most likely true statement, but it wasn’t what he was getting at. “So, what is it? I mean… I know it’s a six-rayed sun, but what is it about?”

  Thurlock looked at him then, brows knitted in something like confusion or disbelief or maybe even amazement. “How do you know it’s a six-rayed sun?”

  It was the standard “question to answer a question” routine, but Lucky thought better of making a fuss about it. “Ciarrah… she showed it to me.”

  Thurlock squeezed his eyes shut, rubbed his forehead. “I think my blood pressure might be up. Don’t tell Han.”

  “Luccan? What’s happening?”

  Why Han happened to check in at just that moment was the weirdest kind of mystery.

  Taken off guard, Lucky’s reply was more or less beside the point. “Thurlock’s blood pressure is up.”

  “Uh… aspirin and deep breaths, but that isn’t….”

  For some reason, Han’s voice faded, and Lucky couldn’t dial him back up. He’d been walking through the lab, letting the little green dragon hop around on his shoulders as he followed Thurlock, and he figured maybe they’d gone into a place where the reception was poor, like with cell phones, though of course he knew it wasn’t the same. He needed to stick close to Thurlock, though, even if he wasn’t going to get answers to his questions. He needed the security of the powerful man’s presence. And, he thought when he looked at how truly exhausted Thurlock looked, maybe he’ll need me too.

  Lucky did get answers to some of his questions over the next hour, though, and except for once when the old man stumbled over some broken pots and Lucky steadied him, Thurlock didn’t seem to need him. He muttered constantly as he walked through the ruined lab, and some of the mutters, Lucky could understand. Once or twice, Thurlock actually spoke clearly, apparently speaking to Lucky instead of himself.

  “Blue drakes,” he said once. “You remember hearing about them before? How Sahlamahn, the first one made, was the only one ever to be whole and healthy? Thing is, though, even a twisted and flawed drake can be very, very dangerous. This… this, Luccan, is a laboratory set up specifically to create numbers of them. Never before….”

  An enormous amount of twisted life force had been directed toward the creation of blue drakes—that was part of what the black goo being pumped into them consisted of, along with other magical materials. Empty green dragon eggs, the shells veined with black remnants of the sorcery used to corrupt them, lay broken and scattered around the underground chamber. They ran across a stash of unbroken eggs, but when Thurlock probed magically, he sensed no life within.

  “The failures,” Thurlock explained. “Lucky ones.”

  Finally, Thurlock said quietly and sadly, and with a more usual measure of kindness in his voice, “I’m tired, Luccan, but this needs cleaning up. If you think you can lend yourself to the effort, wonderful. If not, I under
stand and lay no blame. If that’s the case, just wait quietly.”

  He closed his eyes and, leaning on his staff, began a quiet chant that came through to Lucky like a song of sorrow and love. Lucky softly Wished, and in his mind he called Ciarrah’s name, but the Key only twitched and fell still, and the Blade told him their magic was wrong for this.

  “Only the power of love is needed here, Luccan, and that is not contained in metal or stone.”

  The drake had been fussing and hopping and looking everywhere with occasional squeaks and squawks and wing-flaps. Now, it quieted and lay its head against Lucky’s as he, acting on instinct alone, put his hand over Thurlock’s on the staff. Closing his eyes, he pictured wholeness, though the image he called up was not one he could have explained logically, consisting of a web of various threads and colors and life moving along all the pathways.

  Thurlock’s voice grew steadier, but still the chanted magic was slow, a trickle compared to Thurlock’s usual power. Lucky knew he helped, but his inability to do more drove home to him how very exhausted he was, himself. Eventually something clicked in Lucky’s mind, and whatever it was, it meant, “done.” Thurlock must have got the same message, for he ended the chant, opened his eyes, and took a deep breath.

  “Thank you, Luccan,” he said.

  “You’re welcome, sir. And I haven’t thanked you yet. Saved my life again.”

  “Probably so. No thanks are needed. Shall we go?”

  They turned together and Lucky preceded Thurlock up the stairs. He realized as he exited into the temple aboveground that the place had changed. Not that all the signs of evil past weren’t still there, but there was no more evil present. It was clean.

  Past the boundaries, standing next to Zefrehl, who still waited patiently, Thurlock turned back to the area that had been encompassed by Mahros’s magical dome and made a sign in the air with one hand. “Locked,” he said.