by Lou Hoffmann
When we took to the skies, the dark rainbows shimmering over her black wings under the sun drew me skyward, and I’d follow her gladly into the blue expanse. Once we were in flight, though, I rose higher. I could fly farther and faster, and that amazed Ciarrah.
“I wish,” she’d told me once, “I wish I could fly like you! You flew so high this time, I couldn’t see a dragon up there; you were a red flame sparking gold like the sun.”
I basked in her rare admiration, but I wasn’t comfortable with how she described me. Fire burns. I looked fiery, it’s true. Even in my human form, my red hair falling over my face would glow in sunlight, or reflect the flickering bonfire when the Drakha gathered outdoors on feast nights. As dragon, my scales did shine, tricking the eye into seeing licks of flame instead of heavy reptile flesh. And yes, I breathed fire, hot and orange-gold like Naht’kah and all her red descendants, and like the green dragons who are our closest cousins. But unlike most, I did not want to breathe fire. I did not want to set enemies aflame or cause anyone any pain at all.
After the great storm, when we lived with Naht’kah and she would urge us heavenward and fly with us, I would watch, entranced, as her red scales mirrored the sun’s gilded shine. On one such afternoon, she spoke into my mind.
“Do you like how I shine golden, dear boy?”
I’d long since outgrown boyhood, and for a moment I considered telling her that. But I thought better of it and answered her question honestly. “I do, Grandmother.”
“It doesn’t scare you? You don’t think it looks like I’m on the warpath?”
“No….” I was going to say more, but instead I started thinking.
“Exactly!” Naht’kah laughed; she’d read my thoughts. “Not all fire harms. I wouldn’t have given flame to the Drakha if it could bring only pain. People need to stay warm, and roasted corn tastes so much sweeter than the ears picked fresh from the field.”
When Ciarrah and I had lived out our very long lives as humans, Naht’kah resolved—with our agreement—to lock our magic in stone instead of allowing us to pass after death through the Wraith Queen’s unmaking. At the moment of our final breaths, she started a magic that would transform us into stones—smooth-egg crystals of potential that would, in the right hands, at the right time, be made into magical tools to help our people, the Drakha.
Ciarrah was a warrior born, her heart burning with a fierce darkness that absorbed the light, held it close, and proved its tenacity. Wisely, Naht’kah gave Ciarrah’s stone to Nahk’tesh, and from his depths she emerged as black and beautiful as her shimmering dragon hide had been, her cold-fire light glowing deep within.
But Naht’kah knew my soul had nothing to do with weapons or conflict, and she treated me gently. The last sound I heard with human ears was the old red dragon matriarch singing the nonsense song Drakha parents would sing so their babies would sleep while they made the talak, the dark flat bread we ate at nearly every meal.
Pata pat, pata poe, slappa dot dip doe
Rilly rilly ahly, oh! Pata pat poe!
Love and a smile rested in the syllables. Naht’kah’s heartbeat supplied the rhythm just as a parent’s hands would as they pounded and rolled and slapped the dough while a restful golden flame flickered nearby. My last human thoughts were those of comfort, hearth, and home. I smiled into and out of my last breath, and I retained the slimmest edge of awareness as Naht’kah nested me in meadow flowers and mother of pearl, sang over me, and eventually buried me in the coals of that same friendly flame.
She bathed me in fire, but not a warrior’s blaze, for I could always comfort better than I could fight. Ciarrah transformed to hard, sharp obsidian, and her blade augments a hunter’s prowess, a warrior’s valor. But I am of amber, a different kind of stone, a stone that preserves what was and shelters the delicate material of life. Deep in the heart of the amber blade I have become, a piece of my living self abides. Nothing of the human is left, but the dragon remains, a single, small scale burnished in hearth fire from red to purest gold.
Vahrenn
THE WIZARD Vahrenn made his home inside a hill—almost tall enough to be a mountain—that butted its flanks against the salty water of Eagle’s Inlet on the East March coast. He’d been born in East March, as had his forebears for several generations past, yet his family maintained its ties to the Sunlands, from whence they’d come. His name, Vahrenn, bore a Sunlandian history, and his family name, Karrighani, was but a Marchian version of Ol’Karrigh.
Vahrenn bore the Ol’Karrigh talent for wizardry, and like select Karrighani of every generation, he’d studied wizardry long and hard at the University of Nedhra. He didn’t bear the same fame as his elder cousin Thurlock, or even Bayahr, but his relative obscurity didn’t stem from lack of skill or power. Simply put, people tended not to remember him because he slid coolly over their awareness the way water—his magical affinity—slipped past the feet they dangled in a stream. He’d been essentially deaf since birth, unable to hear the natural range of the human voice and many other sounds, and no magic or medicine had sufficed to cure it. Perhaps that was why he’d learned to listen so well, and he liked being quiet.
It was his deafness that led him to his magical strength, because what he could hear were the low rumblings of wave against wave, wave moving stone, wave brushing sand. Those sounds had been the music and poetry of his childhood, and he loved the waters and the creatures within it as much as his mother’s caress. He’d been so fortunate as to have a Drakha aunt who could mindspeak, and he’d tried to tell her about the water sounds once, but she didn’t understand.
“Those things don’t make sounds, Vahry,” she’d told him. “Perhaps you’re feeling vibrations?”
Perhaps he was, but he’d spent hours in the water, or out on a boat, or sitting high above sea caves on their rocky roofs, listening, learning, becoming one with the water.
Those weren’t the only sounds he could hear, though. In addition to the ultra-low-pitched rumblings of the sea, he heard sounds pitched too high for most human ears, like the high harmonics that rode the wind when the sea eagles cried. Sometimes the wild things, especially the tiniest creatures and those considered silent, made faint, secret sounds like words and whispers in a high range only they could hear—they and Vahrenn.
But what the eagles cried now, what the little ones whispered, what the rumblings of the sea lamented, were things too horrid to contemplate. Yet, think of them he must, for that was a wizard’s purpose—to observe, to find out why, and to figure out what to do about it. He smiled remembering the great wizard Thurlock lecturing his class at graduation on that very subject. No matter what anyone else said, the ancient man had a great sense of humor and a very distractible mind. But he was also wise.
That was fortunate, because by Vahrenn’s observations, the Sunlands and all her neighbors on the Karrighan continent—perhaps all of Ethra and beyond—stood in peril such as never before seen. The waters were… wrong. That was the only word he could find to describe what he sensed—the awful clash of his senses when he opened himself to the songs of the rivers and seas. The waters were diminishing, draining away not only in quantity, but in life, in spirit. Unthinkable as it seemed, Vahrenn thought maybe they were dying.
He’d resolved to call on Thurlock for help. He’d tried to reach Han Shieth, the Wizard’s Left Hand, but without success, so with an eagle waiting to carry it, he wrote a letter.
To the Honorable and Venerable Thurlock of the Ol’Karrigh
Premier Wizard of the Ethran Sunlands
Greetings, dear and respected brother in wizardry:
I’m writing you on a matter of great concern. The waters are failing. I cannot find the source of trouble, and I cannot do more than slow the process. Even in that, I am becoming less capable. I don’t believe it is my magic or skill that is weakening, but rather that whatever troubles the water, it is growing larger or stronger to the point that it begins to overwhelm my remedies. In any case, not knowing the cause, I c
an only address effects here and there as I find them. It is not enough.
I beg your assistance, and pray you can come without delay to the East March. I plan to undertake a trek into the Ehls in an effort to locate the source of evil. For that is what we face, sir. I’m certain of it. Evil has been unleashed in our world.
Yours in gratitude and hope,
Vahrenn Karrighani
Wizard of the East March
Wizard of the Waters
P.S.—Seriously, hurry if you can. I hope it isn’t already too late.
Chapter One
ON THE one hand, Lucky had enjoyed the month just gone by. Sleep had been his biggest challenge, but after the first few rough nights of fears and horrid dreams, things started to get better. Thurlock was unbelievably drained and at first what little energy he had went toward the bigger problems everyone was worried and anxious about—things in Ethra had not been all fixed up after they’d won the victory at the Battle of the Giant’s Hand, as it was now called. Healers had tried to help Lucky, but the teas and potions and mists the healers pushed on him proved mostly useless. The wizard Lorelei had been the first to offer any real remedy.
She’d invited him into her lab while she worked a magical image into a small, ever-burning lamp he could hang on his bedpost. Lucky had sat across from her at a large basin, which was filled with what looked like clear water, though it had an odd smell somewhere between sulfur and raspberry and maybe the faintest silvery glow.
“Now it’s very important, child, that you do not think about any of the awful things you remember from the battle, especially not if you’ve seen them in your dreams.”
Basically, that guaranteed that Lucky would think about every single horrible memory his mind could conjure in the limited time she allowed. To his vast alarm, some specimen of each remembered horror fell out of his hair—his hair!—into the basin, where it added its colors briefly to the liquid, caused a few small waves, sent up a multicolored mist, and disappeared.
“No, dear,” she answered his first question, patting his hand. “Don’t worry. You don’t have to drink it. That would be most ill-advised. Not for human consumption as they say in Earth.”
“You’ve been to Earth?”
“Hmm?” she said absently, concentrating on submerging most of a longish glass pin in the liquid and rotating it evenly. It collected the liquid like layers of new glass, and after a time most of the liquid was gone, and the pin had become a sparkling, glowing object the shape of a pine cone. She laid it carefully aside and leaned under the basin to open a connection, and all remaining traces of the liquid vanished down a previously invisible drain. In a blink, it was again full of clear liquid.
“It’s too bad there is no one you love,” she said, “and you haven’t been to any lovely, quiet places.”
Images began to pour from his hair into the fluid—Han, Thurlock, Rio, Cook, Hank, K’ormahk, Maizie, and the list of people he loved went on. The grove in Black Creek ravine lent the scent of myrtles; the interior of Hank George’s cabin added a waft of cedar smoke. The open fields of the Behlvale lit not only the liquid in the basin but the entire room with sunlight. An echo of laughter went in with Thurlock’s mischievous smile, Rio’s kiss almost embarrassed Lucky, and Han’s hand on his shoulder settled him with calm.
“There now,” Lorelei said, smiling—or perhaps smirking—at him over her glasses as if she knew all his secrets. She rose and went to a bureau built into the side of the room, opened a very small drawer at the top and drew out a small square of printed cotton cloth, then brought it back and began wrapping it around the pine-cone-shaped glass she’d created earlier.
“You have Thurlock’s pajamas?”
“Most of us do,” she answered, still not giving him her full attention. “Now hold this by the handle, dear, and dip it slowly into the liquid—just as you saw me do earlier. Yes, that’s right… now begin to turn it. Slowly! Slow and steady. That’s right. Keep at it until the liquid is gone. I’m ready for tea.”
The job was mesmerizing work, what with all the escaping sparkles and good vibes, and it seemed over too soon, finished just as Lorelei brought tea.
Her tea was strong, her cookies stale, but her lamp surprisingly effective. While it didn’t keep the nightmares from starting, it detected his agitation in sleep and slowly beamed an alternative image into his mind, giving him a choice. As Lucky had a lot of practice with being proactive in a dream—or dreamlike—world he could decide to go to the happy place in that image instead of the death-haunted canyon around the Giant’s Hand.
Alas, it wasn’t foolproof. The trauma of battle was very real, and the effect it had on Lucky’s mind was strong. Although the lamp—which ordinarily only gave off a glow and cast faint shadows of the fleur-de-lis pattern of the wizard’s pajamas—could help him pull himself away from the fear and darkness that hung like a curtain between him and true rest, it couldn’t vanquish it altogether. Sometimes he could snatch the good dream it tossed his way. Sometimes it let him wake, but not sleep in peace. Other times, it simply didn’t work at all, and Lucky would wake screaming or shouting, sweating, often wielding something nearby as if it were a weapon, sometimes no longer in his bed or even his room in the wizard’s house.
Fortunately, Thurlock began to recover more quickly than Lucky would have foreseen, and in unexpected ways he helped Lucky overcome his more persistent post-trauma symptoms—the resistant nightmares, a tendency to jump at unexpected noises or lights, trouble concentrating. Worst of all, Lucky suffered constant hypersensitivity to any disturbance in the channels of energy that flowed everywhere in the world—the very energy he’d worked so hard to recognize, draw upon, and direct. Not much could provide shelter from fears’ shadows more effectively than an ultrapowerful wizard who was unfailingly on your side.
This time, Thurlock helped mostly by just being there, and Lucky first discovered he could do that when he went to the infirmary to keep him company. Thurlock’s wounds—burns mostly—healed fast by virtue of magic and maybe his long friendship with the god Behlishan. But he’d been tapped nearly dry at the battle, and apparently even ancient wizards reach a limit as to how much they can give without being replenished. When Thurlock got well enough to enjoy company rather than resent it, Lucky sat with him, played Skippers with him, brought him oranges from his tower, let him direct him in some magic lessons, and read to him as best he could from ancient histories written in runes. In so doing, he found out wizards cheated at games, learned to make an ordinary magic light, got better at reading runes, committed to memory some important Ethran myth and history, and most of the time stayed thoroughly distracted from thinking about horrible things.
But trouble still brewed and simmered in the Sunlands, boiling up here and there. Lucky had little to do with solving such problems—mostly they were Han’s territory—but they served as unavoidable reminders, bringing the battle and its aftereffects right to the surface. Before the Giant’s Hand, even before Hoenholm, he’d put himself forward, insisting he was ready to be part of meetings and decisions for the Sunlands, so now he was always included. He knew what happened where, and though problems were isolated, they generally involved bloodshed and some form of horror, some unnatural ugliness like wraiths and zombies—the very things he wanted to not think about.
So now, having endured an after-dinner impromptu meeting about the northern Greenwood being haunted by wraiths that should have been knitted back into the fabric of Ethra’s life by the Wraith Queen, he couldn’t sleep.
Once again he wandered the Sisterhold’s surrounds, passing this time out through the gardens and into the Behlvale with Maizie—a quieter dog than she once had been—trotting along beside him. He kicked down the tall grass and sat beside the stream, petting Maizie after she flopped close by. He hoped the balmy late summer night and Springborn Creek’s lazy music might lull him into drowsiness. After a few moments, he sighed and lay back to watch stars wink in and out, patches of blue-black sky cover
ed and revealed by unexpected clouds.
Closer movement caught Lucky’s eye, only a bird—an eagle, he thought—crossing in front of the moon, but he thought of K’ormahk, and it brought his boyfriend to the front of his mind. On Thurlock’s advice Rio had flown home on the winged horse’s back, stopping at the Sisterhold long enough to make sure Lucky was okay and to get his minor wounds tended. He and Lucky stayed close until it was time for Rio to leave, and then hugged and kissed their goodbye. It had been awkward and long and sweet, but Rio needed to get news to Morrow of what had happened in the Fallows, and reassure himself that his brothers had made it home safely.
“I’ll come back soon,” he’d said. “And then I’ll stay, if you and everyone here will let me—”
“Of course you can stay!”
“But I think Thurlock’s right. I need to go home.”
Lucky thought now that if Rio were with him, he could sleep. But thinking of that only made him more anxious. Rio had been at the battle too—had been wounded, even. What if he’s seeing zombies come out of the woodwork every time he closes his eyes too? Lucky tried to push that worry from his mind. He was desperately tired, and worrying about the boy he’d fallen in love with wasn’t a path leading to sleep. His effort to put thoughts of Rio in some corner of his mind didn’t work. It wasn’t enough. He wouldn’t sleep, he knew, and if he did, he’d wake to some horrible imagination of things he’d seen, things he prayed to every possible god he would never have to see again.
MAIZIE STOOD suddenly, tail wagging, and when Lucky looked where her nose was pointing, he saw Lemon Martinez sauntering up, casual cat style, like he had not a care and maybe not even a thought in the world. When he got to Lucky, though, he stopped, meowed grumpily, turned around and started walking, looked over his shoulder and meowed again. When Maizie started following the grouchy gray ball of fuzz, Lucky got the idea he was being asked to go somewhere, so he got in line.
