The Dubious Gift of Dragon Blood

by J. Marshall Freeman

  The quadrana, Tiqokh, held the rock up over his head, mouth moving, eyes bulging. Veins stood out all over his body as if he was a weightlifter who had just clean-and-jerked the three planets into the sky. I was kind of hoping Krasik-dahé would announce this was all a big hologram trick they’d concocted to freak me out. In fact, she was smiling broadly, but with awe, not, you know, comedy.

  “These are the Elemental Realms, Crispin,” she shouted over the wind and thunder, “made visible through the summoning stone and Tiqokh’s virtuosity. Above us, the Realm of Water.”

  It was a blue sphere, close enough that I could see the shimmering glints of cresting waves. Were those whales breaking the surface, or were they dragons? Fluffy white mountains of cloud gathered at the horizon.

  “It’s beautiful,” I said. “Can we go there?” In my imagination, I could see myself travelling that boundless sea in a great sailing ship. Altman was with me, of course, and we were doing the Titanic pose at the front of the boat, though I’m not sure who was Jack and who was Rose.

  The Consul shook her head. “The strands that connect the Earth to the Realm of Water have been badly degraded. If Tiqokh had a stronger stone, and if he were powerful enough to control the link—”

  The quadrana spoke, gasping a little. “The Realm of Water is not our destination.”

  The sky itself was rotating, carrying its celestial bodies with it. The Realm of Water began to sink behind the horizon, and Krasik-dahé pointed to the next world passing overhead.

  “That is the Realm of Air,” she said into my ear. “The dragons of that realm are the most warlike and secretive. We have heard no news from behind its storm clouds for hundreds of cycles.”

  Clouds girdled this globe in wide bands of green, white, and mocha. A big spot like the eye of Jupiter swirled in one hemisphere, but deep blue and spitting out lightning bolts. Streamers of coloured gas leaked off the world into the void, giving the Realm of Air a fuzzy outline. Was there a core of rock below or just clouds on top of clouds?

  Before I could ask, Tiqokh said, “Nor is that our destination.”

  Then a more peculiar celestial object was rising—not a sphere, but a rough football shape. Like over the Realm of Air, fog banks danced across this world. But between them were patches of colour: the green of fields and forests, the white of snow-covered mountains, small vibrant patches of blue water, and at either end, geysering jets of lava that shot high into the air—red-orange at one end of the world, electric green at the other. My breath caught as the Realm of Fire rose into the sky like a phoenix. And yes, I knew this strange planet was the Realm of Fire. I’d never been there, but part of me felt homesick for it.

  “You see, Dragon Groom?” Tiqokh wheezed, his breath even more laboured than before. “The strands are strong.” He pointed at what looked like shimmering shoelaces of thick, shifting copper that hung between the Earth and this new planet. “When the Realm of Fire is in position, I will transport us there as if climbing a sturdy ladder.”

  I panicked. “Wait, I’m not ready!” I shouted. “This is too soon!”

  As if my words had broken a spell, the quadrana fell to his knees, the stone dropping heavily on the roof of the hotel. The realms vanished from the sky, and the city flickered back into existence around us. Thunder was replaced by the roar of traffic and the wailing of sirens. The sky was just normally dark, dotted with the few stars you could usually see through the light pollution.

  Tiqokh’s prominent ribs rose and fell as he struggled to get his breath back, and I dropped to the ground beside him, overwhelmed.

  “Sorry,” I said. “I didn’t mean to break it.” Tiqokh didn’t look at me, and I thought he was pissed off, but then Consul Krasik-dahé offered a hand and pulled me to my feet.

  “No, Crispin, Tiqokh could not hold the connection any longer. And in any case, we must wait until the Realm of Fire is directly overhead. I think that will not happen for more than an hour.” Without looking up, Tiqokh nodded at her estimate.

  “Okay. Great. I was worried that—” I froze. “Wait a second! Why is it dark? When we came up here, it wasn’t even noon.” With a sinking feeling, I started digging in my pocket for my phone.

  “Yes,” the Consul said calmly. “Time passes very differently when the connection to the realms is established.”

  “Oh no, oh no,” I moaned, staring at the screen in dumb horror. Six fifteen p.m.

  “What is troubling you?” Krasik-dahé asked.

  I gave her a look that my father called Generic Adolescent Wordless Disgust, or GAWD. “It’s after dinnertime, and I didn’t come home. That’s what’s troubling me. After everything that went down yesterday, what do you think they’re thinking now? Oh crap, look at that. I have fifteen messages.”

  The consul was frustratingly calm. “They will come to the hotel? Is that your guess?”

  “Yeah, with the cops and the army and dogs and a big net.”

  She laid a hand on my shoulder, and I wasn’t at all sure I liked this new touchy version of the octona. “Come, we will return to the room and await their arrival. Tiqokh, are you sufficiently recovered to join us?”

  Without a word, he stood up and put on his clothes. As we returned to the hotel room, my stomach made an audible rumble. I hadn’t eaten since breakfast at the Shendorfs’ house, either four or ten hours ago, depending how these things worked. Krasik-dahé let me phone down for a bacon cheeseburger on ciabatta with sweet potato fries and a peach smoothie. The Consul added a small Cobb salad to the order. I was relieved when the meal arrived before my parents, but even so, the suspense wasn’t good for digestion.

  “Shouldn’t I call them?” I asked.

  Krasik-dahé headed for the bedroom with her salad. “Just wait for events to unfold,” she said, closing the door behind her, apparently unperturbed by the coming apocalypse.

  I looked at Tiqokh. “Don’t you eat?”

  He turned his strange eyes to me. “Once a week. A very large meal.”

  I didn’t feel like imagining that, so I took the conversation in another direction. “The prophecy was, uh, forecast or whatever up in the Realm of Fire?”

  “Yes. Eight days ago.”

  “And what? They sent you a text or something?”

  Tiqokh reached out his long arm and took a fancy leather-bound book off a side table, handing it to me.

  “Correct,” he said. “A text.”

  I opened the book and began flipping through pages of weird, undecipherable calligraphy. “Is this the Tongue of Fire? If I can speak it, why can’t I read it?”

  “The written language is relatively new, but the blood you carry is ancient.” It took me a second, but I got what he meant. I kept turning pages, and every one was crammed full of the swirling black text. The writing ended about halfway through the book, and the rest of the pages were blank. The last and, I guess, most recent entry was not in black ink, but in deep blue. The letters seemed to pulse. I put my fingers on the page, and the text was warm to the touch.

  “Is that the prophecy?” I asked, lowering my voice, taking a slow sip of my smoothie.

  Tiqokh recited it from memory. “The balance has been disturbed. The Great One flies from Farad’hil, magnificent in blazing fury. And there, where the ground is wounded with light, the dragon dies, coloured tears falling on frozen ground.”

  I couldn’t breathe. The plastic straw sat unmoving on my lip. The words were beautiful. Beautiful and awful. Maybe this was what our English teacher always hoped we’d feel when he read us his favourite poems. The phone on the coffee table rang, so unexpected and loud, I accidentally inhaled some of my smoothie, sending me into a coughing fit. The Consul swept back into the room and picked up the receiver.

  “Yes,” she said. “He is here. I understand. We are in room 1412.” She hung up. “That was—”

  “Yeah, I got it.” No time to worry about prophecies, this was a real emergency. “What are we going to do?”

  Tiqokh stood, flexin
g his arms. “I will help you escape. Just say the word ‘ekdahi’ and we’re off. I will smite any that stand in our way.”

  My mouth dropped open, but Krasik-dahé said simply, “There will be no smiting, Tiqokh. Go into the bedroom so you don’t alarm Crispin’s parents.” As he closed the bedroom door, he gave me what I took to be a conspiratorial nod. A minute later, there was a sharp knock on the suite’s front door.

  The Consul opened it, and there was my father, a sweating monolith of injured pride. My mom stood behind his right shoulder, sighing with relief when she saw me.

  Consul Krasik-dahé said, “Please, come in.” Mom started forward, but Dad stood his ground and didn’t let her past.

  He ignored the octona. “Crispin, I’m very disappointed in you. How could you just vanish like that? Didn’t you realize how worried we’d be?”

  “It wasn’t my fault. We were viewing another dimension; the time got away from us.” This didn’t sound as good out loud as it did in my head. Dad just glared, and I asked Krasik-dahé, “Did I say that in English or Dragon?”

  The Consul gestured toward the living room. “Come sit down. Let’s discuss this calmly.”

  Dad shook his head. “I trusted you. I vouched for you to my wife, but you were planning to steal him away without our permission from the start. How could you?” He sounded genuinely hurt.

  The Consul’s expression did not change. “Crispin came here of his own free will. This is bigger than any of us, Elliot. He is the Dragon Groom.”

  Dad raised his hands in the air, apparently done with the discussion. “Crispin, get your things and come with us!” His temper was shorter than a garden gnome, and I would have obeyed if Krasik-dahé hadn’t spoken up.

  “The choice is Crispin’s,” she answered, as cool as ever.

  Dad would not be placated. “Anytime you want, you appear and turn our lives upside down! I didn’t ask for the blood. Neither did Crispin.” He pulled out his phone and waved it at her like some magical amulet, only to be used in times of peril. “If my son isn’t allowed to leave right now, I’m calling the police and having you charged with abduction.”

  Mom broke the standoff by pushing past him into the suite. “Elliot, just ignore her. We’re here to talk to Crispin.”

  Mom joined me on the couch but sat at the far end, giving me space. Dad, the wind blown out of his sails, entered quietly and dropped into Tiqokh’s chair. I hoped he hadn’t left any dragony residue behind. Krasik-dahé, to her credit, stood quietly in the corner and let the family drama happen.

  Mom folded her hands in her lap and gave me little encouraging smiles that made me even more wary. “Crispin, honey—” she began, but I cut her off.

  “Mom, honestly, I didn’t mean to worry you. Everything’s just been…” I let out a shaky breath. I was more emotional than I had admitted to myself. “It’s been a weird twenty-four hours, okay?”

  She nodded, a spooky marvel of serenity. “I know, Crispin. Adolescence can be a very tough time of life, and that’s why you don’t want to make any rash decisions about your future. Honey, I think there’s more going on here than just this”—she waved a hand vaguely in Krasik-dahé’s direction—“this dragon business. Lately, you’ve been so moody. You use sarcasm to cover it, but I can see you’re in pain.”

  Even though all her amateur psychology was super obvious, I felt tears stinging my eyes. “Honest, Mom, I’m fine.”

  She nodded, but not like I’d said anything particularly interesting. “I want to ask you something, Crispin, and whatever the answer, your father and I love and support you.”

  I looked from her to Dad, but he was very busy picking dirt from under a fingernail. “What?” I asked, dread cramping my stomach.

  “Are you and Altman in some kind of relationship? I mean, a romantic relationship?”

  I jumped to my feet. “What? No! Why would you say that?” My heart started pounding, and my vision telescoped until her big, accusing eyes were the only things in the room.

  Mom raised a hand like she was calming a startled horse. “It’s okay, it’s okay. If he is your boyfriend, that’s…well, that’s something we’ll sit down and discuss. With his family, with you…Because we’re all in this together and—”

  I was backing up, putting as much overwrought furniture and faux-royal carpeting between us as possible. “No! No, we’re not in this together. You have no idea what you’re even talking about.”

  “Say something, Elliot!” my mother snapped at my father, and everything was just a freaking disaster. This was my thing, my coming out. And it was being taken from me in a hotel room full of octonas and quadranas and freaking huge realms floating over our heads. My boyfriend! I was nothing to Altman, and nothing but a slut to the rest of the school.

  My head hurt. I couldn’t catch my breath. “No, you don’t get it,” I gasped out. “You don’t get any part of this.”

  Everyone was on their feet now, turned my way. Mom said, “Just come home and we’ll work it out. I promise.”

  “No!” I screamed. “I don’t want to go home with you. Why did you have to come here in the first place? Dragons only, Mom. Get out.”

  Dad tried the authority thing again. “Crispin, these people aren’t your friends. The sooner we all go home, the sooner you’ll be able to think straight.”

  Everyone looked blurry now, and I realized I was crying. “I don’t think straight, Dad. I don’t anything straight. Isn’t that the point?” And then, without planning it at all, without considering the consequences, I shouted, “Ekdahi!”

  The bedroom door burst open, and Tiqokh exploded out of it, an indistinct blur in a long trench coat. I was swept off my feet and thrown over his back like a sack of beans. I watched my parents’ shocked faces retreating as the quadrana ran us out onto the suite’s balcony. The world turned upside down, and it took a second to realize he was climbing the outside wall of the hotel. I screamed, and he tightened his grip around my waist.

  In no time, we reached the roof, and Tiqokh dropped me on the tar and pebbles. The night was windless and calm, the city around us pulsing with the play of light and sound. I felt dizzy, barely able to comprehend what was happening as Tiqokh raised the summoning stone over his head, this time chanting out loud in the dragon tongue.

  “Children of the Realms, lost ones from the belonging time, I reach for you. I declare our unity.” A rumbling shook the building, the universe, my terrified guts. With an ear-splitting crack, the Realm of Fire appeared overhead.

  The great, rough world of rock was so close now, I could see animals grazing in pastures dotted with fog and riders on horseback moving among them. Up on a range of hills was some kind of city, buildings rising on the rocky peaks, streets twisting around the landscape, everything hanging upside down. As if in celebration or warning, the polar volcanoes spewed geysers of green and red into the sky. And somewhere I could hear a song…a poetry that made a weird kind of sense to me. In fact, the more I listened, the more its meanings seemed to multiply, connection on connection, a history older than any I knew. There was sorrow and longing and loss in the song, but within that sorrow, a promise of reconciliation.

  The noise was incredible, and I only barely heard Tiqokh call me. “Dragon Groom!” He stretched out his hand, and I hurried toward the blinding light of the summoning stone. The quadrana wrapped his bony arm around my waist, and together we lifted off the roof of the Ambassador Hotel, swept along like we were whitewater rafting on the copper strands connecting my home on Earth with a home I had never seen before. Together, we flew headlong toward the Realm of Fire.

  PART II

  The Copper Guest

  Chapter 6: Deliberations

  “Please keep your attention focussed on me, D’gada-vixtet-thon, not on the gallery, beautiful as the inlaid panels may be. What does the DragonLaw say on the matter?”

  D’gada-vixtet-thon—D’gada of the house of the dragon Vixtet, apprentice of Thon, the Atmospherics discipline, known to hi
s friends as Davix—was seated in an ancient, uncomfortable chair. He lowered his eyes to Grav’nan-dahé’s thin, pinched face. “Teacher, when serious matters are discussed, the eye must search for unassailable clarity, not whimsical delight. So it is written in the Collected Wisdom of Tarn.”

  Davix could tell Grav’nan-dahé, Prime Magistrate, the most revered human in the Realm of Fire and most learned in the ways of the DragonLaw, was pleased with the answer. The Prime Magistrate intimidated most of the People, but after more than a cycle studying at his side, Davix knew his teacher valued him, even if words of praise rarely left his lips.

  “You can be forgiven your awe,” Grav’nan-dahé said. “I have never before invited you to the Council chambers. It is a mark of my trust in you, a trust you have earned through dedication and obedience.”

  Davix tried to appear calm and focussed, even though his thoughts were swirling. He had received the urgent summons while at lunch, and his thighs still burned from running up the steep, winding streets to Etnep House. He would finally hear the results of the inquest, fifteen days after Rinby’s death. While it could be explained as an accident, Davix had carefully noted to the investigators from Defence of Realm all his troubling observations.

  Davix kept his eyes on his teacher, though he wanted to look up again at the panels. He was wondering if one or more of the bidahénas was hiding behind their latticework. Stakrat had told him sometimes these most inscrutable of the mixed beings listened unseen when the Council of Masters met. Even the masters didn’t know when they were being observed.

  Grav’nan-dahé rose from his chair and crossed the room in his shimmering robes to stand at the window. Old as he was, his voice was strong and clear. “I have brought you here, D’gada-vixtet-thon, to give you news I hope will bring your heart a measure of peace. T’lexdar-inby-thon’s death, though unusual, was simply ill luck.”

  Davix should have felt relieved. The matter was closed, and their lives could now go on. Still, the niggling grains of doubt could not be dislodged so easily from his mind. He squirmed in his uncomfortable chair.