The Dubious Gift of Dragon Blood

by J. Marshall Freeman

  I ran forward, screaming, “No! Don’t kill him, Korda, he saved my life. Translator, do what they say!”

  He dropped the spear and looked at me. “Kras-pa-han. I am most tired.”

  If Korda was surprised to hear how well he spoke, she didn’t show it. “On your knees, cat, or we will kill you.”

  “Please, Translator.”

  He put his paws on his head and slowly sank to his knees in the blood of his fellow soldier of Air. The guards ran forward and bound his arms and legs. He didn’t struggle.

  “Korda,” came a familiar voice. “Please, can I come down there now?” My heart, which had been heavy as lead, floated up like a silver balloon in the shape of a unicorn. It was Davix, standing above us on a ridge, half hidden in puffy white sheep fog, surrounded by three sky steeds, their muscular wings spread wide. It was like those pictures of heaven they used to paint, and Davix was my angel on high.

  Chapter 44: The Tables Turn and Turn

  The sun was already setting, and we lit a fire and cooked up a stew out of salted meat and root veggies the good folks from Cliffside had brought along. I don’t know if I can begin to describe the relief of having been rescued, not to mention having a hot meal in my belly. While four guards watched the perimeter for any stray cats or the return of the Air dragon, I told Davix, Stakrat, Korda, and Tiqokh everything I knew, including the fact that the dragon had not been seen for seven or eight days. Davix sat behind me with his arms wrapped around my chest. There was nothing you could have said, including “Hey, doughnuts!” that would have made me move. Above us, the strands to the Realm of Air were brighter than I’d ever seen them. I could just make out the sphere of the cloudy world hanging distant in the realm sky.

  “What’s the plan?” I asked. “Are the dragons coming from Farad’hil to kick the invaders’ asses?”

  Korda shook her head. “No, they trust us with this fight.”

  “But there’s a war on,” I said, surprise turning to outrage. “And they’re just sitting safe and sound in their mountain? They trust you to fight for them?”

  Tiqokh cut me off. “And we are honoured by their trust. Do not fear, Crispin, we have a plan.” Tiqokh led us back to where the sky steeds were tethered. From a big leather bag, he removed two coiled metal tubes. When he untied the cord wrapped around one, the coil sprang out open to form a broken circle. At one end was a shiny metal clasp with a red jewel in it, and when he closed the circle to create an outsized hula hoop, the jewel started glowing.

  Tiqokh said, “This is an explosive device. It will be detonated in the realm fissure.” We all looked over at the big, glowing firepit, which chose that moment to sneeze out a lava booger. “The explosion should seal off the energy stabilizing the strands to Air. We must stop more dragons from arriving in our realm.”

  “Will that kill any dragons already on their way over?” I asked.

  “Oh, no, X’risp’hin,” Davix said. “Don’t worry. If they are already crossing, they will fall unharmed back to the Realm of Air.”

  He gave me a reassuring squeeze, and I made a fake sigh of relief. Actually, I had been hoping the answer was yes.

  “Why do you have two of the, uh, explosion hoops?”

  Tiqokh said, “The other is backup, but I do not think we’ll need it.” He took two translucent stones, about the size of chicken eggs, from separate pockets in the leather bag and handed them to me. One was a beautiful twilight blue, the other a vivid crimson.

  “Crispin, I will give you a role to play. Please tap the trigger stones together so we can test the connection.” I took them and was about to bang them together when the quadrana touched my arm. “Very gently. Or else the detonation will occur now and kill us all.”

  “Uh…right. Okay.” Holding the rocks at arm’s length and cringing, I gave them the tiniest of taps. The assembled ring glowed for a second. After remembering to breathe again, I tried to hand the stones back to Tiqokh. He ignored me—deliberately, I thought. My “role” wasn’t over yet. I put one stone in each of my front pants pockets so they wouldn’t accidentally hit each other.

  Tiqokh said, “There is no time to waste. I will enter the fissure and decide on the placement of the explosive. If we shut down the strands tonight, we can fly to Cliffside at dawn.”

  “Do you need help?” Stakrat asked him.

  “The heat inside the fissure is too intense for a human body. I must work alone.”

  He took the assembled hula hoop and crossed the compound until he was standing above the pit, his face lit red by the fires below. Spreading his wings wide, he flew down out of sight.

  Davix and I didn’t have anything to do, so we took one of the bedrolls and lay down. Despite the heat of the night, I burrowed deep into his arms. Now that I’d been rescued, all the fear I had been pushing down in the last days was rising to the surface. I kept bursting into tears, and Davix would stroke my hair and my chest, kiss my neck, and whisper, “You’re safe. I’m with you.” I was embarrassed by my out-of-control emotions, but he didn’t make me feel ashamed. “You were so brave to be here on your own, X’risp’hin,” he said.

  But I hadn’t been alone. I looked over at Translator, squatting forlornly in the same cage where I’d been held, and knew I had to do something. We found Korda at a desk in what had been Farkol-dahé’s tent, reading through his notes by torchstone. Half of the tent was given over to Farkol’s outfits. It was like being backstage at a Vegas show.

  “Can me and Davix bring Translator some food?” I asked.

  “Yes, but you may not unlock the cage.”

  “Thank you, Kras-pa-han,” Translator said as he ate. “Please tell your commander I will do whatever is asked of me.”

  “I will, I promise,” I told him. “Hey, this is Davix. He’s my boyfriend.” My heart had started pounding before I said this, because it was supposed to be a big announcement—said as much for Davix’s sake as the cat’s—but the word had no oomph in the Tongue of Fire. It just meant he was my friend and he was a boy. I concentrated on saying the word in English, “Boyfriend…” but, of course, this meant even less to him. It even felt weird to me, like English had become some foreign language I was studying for extra credit. For the first time, I wondered how different things would be when I got back Earth. Now that my copper blood was used to life in the Realm of Fire, would it make me feel like a stranger in my own home?

  Davix surprised me by bowing to Translator. “X’risp’hin told me you saved his life. I am grateful to you.”

  “You may not believe this, human of Fire, but there is honour in our world.” He looked up at the strands and at his realm, which lay beyond them, out of sight. Suddenly, the hair on his neck and back rose, and he exhaled a long hiss.

  “What is it?” I asked, alarmed.

  “Kras-pa-han, go to the tool chest. In the top drawer on the left side, you will find a far-glass.”

  “What’s a far-glass?”

  Davix said, “It’s a metal tube with glass lenses so you can see at a distance.”

  “Oh, a telescope. Is something wrong?”

  Translator’s voice was tight. “Hurry, human. And tell your commander to join us.”

  After finding the far-glass, I spotted Stakrat counting arrows and asked her to bring Korda to the cage.

  “We are all very busy, X’risp’hin,” she said. “What is it?”

  “I don’t know yet. Just…come.” She followed me back to the cage, and I handed Translator the far-glass. He focussed on the strands and began mewing low, ominous tones.

  “What do you see?” I asked, looking up into the sky, dread creeping into my chest.

  Translator put his paws around me from inside the cage and pushed the far-glass in front of my face. The light through the eyepiece was bright enough to blind me for a few seconds, but then, just above the strands, I thought I saw something. I twisted the interlocking tubes, and the image came into focus. I swore in English. Four more Air dragons were flying our way on smoky win
gs. And floating around them, like nasty little attending angels, was another bunch of cat soldiers.

  “Oh shit, look, look!” I handed Stakrat the telescope, and she gasped at the coming horror. Calling to Korda, she ran into the night.

  “Let me out!” Translator said. “The penalty for capture is death!” But I didn’t have the key, much less the authority.

  Korda was out of her tent, scrambling up on a rock in the middle of the compound.

  “Tiqokh!” she screamed, and despite the loud roar of the pit, he must have heard, because he flew up into the air and landed a little ways off. His skin was so hot from being down near the lava, steam was rising off him.

  Korda pointed to the strands. “Four Dragons are on their way, and another ten cats. Are you almost ready with the explosive?”

  The quadrana looked up, apparently able to see the coming creatures without the far-glass. “Not yet. I must be sure I’ve set the device correctly. We no longer have time to set the second explosive if the first fails.”

  Stakrat said, “How long until they get here?”

  “Less than an hour, I believe. Dimensional parallax does not allow for a more precise estimate. Crispin, when next I emerge from the fissure, you must immediately bring the trigger stones together with force. That will set off the explosion.”

  Before I could object, Tiqokh flew into the air and back down into the fissure.

  “I have to go check in with the guards on the perimeter,” Korda said. “Dragon Groom and Davix, I want you back up on the ridge. Stakrat, you’re guarding them. Signal if you see the Air dragon or another cat. Go!”

  We climbed up a winding path to the ridge and crouched behind some rocks, watching the fissure. I held a trigger stone in each fist, fussing with them nervously. “Tiqokh should have given these to someone experienced. What if I accidentally hit the stones together and blow him up, and then everyone dies because of me?”

  “Don’t be foolish,” Davix said, reaching over to stroke my head, but I pulled away. It bugged me how he underestimated my talent for fucking up.

  But Stakrat understood. “You won’t, X’risp’hin,” she said. “Many times in these past days, Korda has given me duties I worried were too much, given my own lack of experience. But war is new to all of us, and no one is truly prepared. Korda believes in me, so I have no choice but to believe in myself. Perhaps that is the lesson Tiqokh wishes to teach you.”

  “Okay,” I said. “I’ll try.” A small pebble hit my head. Streams of falling dust began falling from above, making us cough. “What’s going on?” I said and looked upwards.

  Something was happening to the cliff face. It seemed to be shaking, as though an earthquake was passing through. But the ground under our butts wasn’t shaking, so it wasn’t an earthquake. The shaking turned to writhing, like squirming snakes embedded in the rock were waking up. Wind rose around us, whirling into shrill dust devils that grew into twisting, grey columns as they scooped up the earth. We stared, stunned, as the twisters merged with the form detaching itself from the cliff face. The muscle and dust resolved into a familiar shape, camouflaged in plain sight for more than a week. It was the dragon of Air.

  Chapter 45: Beasts of Heaven When They Fall

  The dragon spread its massive wings, jumping down on the ridge, almost crushing us under its talons.

  “FFFFFFFFSSSAAAAAAAHHHAAA-KLOOOOHHHHMMMM-AAAAAHHHHHHFF-FAAASSSSSAF!” it shrieked, staring up at the strands, and maybe Translator was right about the common mother tongue of the realms, because I thought I could almost understand. I think it was saying, “My family comes!”

  “This way!” Stakrat screamed over the whine of the wind. The earth shook beneath us every time the dragon moved. We followed her across the ridge, which narrowed and narrowed until we had to cross in single file, our backs against the cliff face, a steep hill at our feet. We were finally putting some distance between us and the Air dragon when the ledge crumbled away under my feet, and down I went.

  I heard Davix screaming my name as I tried to control my descent down the almost vertical hill. Blinded and choked by dust, I fell faster and faster, finally snagging my foot on a root and tumbling head over heels into the main area of the camp. My left arm hit the ground first, and the rest of my body came down on top of it. A spectacular light show of pain shot through all my senses.

  “Kras-pa-han! Are you hurt?” shouted Translator from the cage, just off to my left.

  But before I could say anything about my busted arm and the blood pouring from my nose, the dragon of Air leaped down from the ridge like it was no more than a step-stool. The repulsive leviathan danced around my head, although I don’t think it even knew I was there, and began to spit single syllables in the Tongue of Air:

  “KHAFF! SKEH! ARRSSFFF!” And again, buried in these sounds were words I could just understand through my pain. “Unity! Blood! Conquest!”

  The collision happened so close to me, I felt the WHOOM of displaced air deep in my guts. I pushed myself into the ground as a mass of flesh and scales, steam and dust rolled past, surging across the compound, crashing into another of the enclosing cliffs. Only then, as they got back up on their giant feet, did I see who the headliners were in this Wrestling Extravaganza of the Realms. In this corner, the butt-ugly, nameless dragon of Air! And in the far corner, for the first time in this tournament, that lizard living large, that pyrotechnic poet, Sur of Farad’hil!

  “THE SKY SPLITS/INFECTION ENTERS THROUGH THE WOUND/BARBAROUS STENCH OF BATTLE/THE PRIMITIVE PAST UNAPPEASED!”

  Sur’s juicy poetry shook the rocks. But any hope this would just be a rap battle was quickly dispelled. The dragon of Air leaped up from where it had fallen and crashed back into Sur, knocking her on her back. Despite having paid plenty for ringside seats, I decided it might be wise to get the hell out of there. I tried to push myself up, but I had forgotten about my arm. My scream mixed with the roar of the dragons and the howl of the fissure as my vision went black and starry for a few seconds. I got to my feet more carefully and limped over to the cage. Translator was pressed up against the bars to watch the fight.

  “K’FFFSSSSAAAAAA-RAHHHHASSSSAAL!” the Air dragon spat back at Sur, poised above her with its wings raised. Long, curved spikes emerged from the tip of each wing.

  “Weak child with no sense of history,” Translator interpreted in the cage behind me, screaming against the whine of the wind.

  “FRR’AHHHHHATLA-KHOOOOOLII-KRAI!”

  “It is war alone that writes the truth, writes it in blood.”

  Sur’s tail snapped out like a snake and grabbed the Air dragon by one of its five ankles, pulling it off balance so it crashed on the rocks with an ear-splitting wail. That’s when I realized I was in a Japanese kaiju movie, but without the buttery comfort of popcorn.

  Sur jumped to her feet. “A WAR FOR PEACE?/CHAOS IN THE NAME OF BALANCE?/NO CONTRADICTION LEADS TO DICTUM/NOR ERUPTION TO REASON!”

  The Air dragon growled long and low, birthing multiple mini-cyclones all around the compound. I tried to game out the odds on the fight. Both were physically strong, although the Air dragon was bigger and had those spikes on its wings. Plus that whole crazy wind power. Sur, on the other hand, had muscle and…rhymes? Yeah, I didn’t like the odds. I squinted through the growing dust haze toward the fissure. Was Tiqokh almost ready? I briefly panicked I’d maybe lost the trigger rocks when I fell, but they were still in my pockets.

  The dragons circled each other, the earth trembling with each step. Arrows rained down from the ridge, fired by Stakrat and the other guards, but they passed through the Air dragon’s skin of wind, bouncing off its bones or flying straight through the gaps.

  Translator and I clung fearfully to the bars of the cage in the growing hurricane. One guard had climbed down from the ridge, spear poised, trying to find a meaningful place on the Air dragon to aim for. With a shout I could see but not hear, he hurled the spear at the Air dragon’s head. But before it reached its destination, a gust of
wind slapped it aside. The dragon screeched, and two mini-cyclones at the edge of the compound changed directions and descended on the hapless guard. Before our eyes, his limbs were ripped loose, his body torn open like a pillow.

  Sur shrieked. “YOU HAVE SLAUGHTERED MY CHILD/YOUR SAVAGERY ENDS HERE!” The fringes on her neck were glowing red with her anger.

  But the Air dragon looked unstoppable. It curled the ends of its wings so the spikes were poised over Sur’s head and hissed its reply.

  Translator, his voice high and tense, interpreted. “And now, the first of the mewling dragon kits will fall!”

  Sur’s glowing fringes were brighter than ever, shifting from red to orange to white, dancing like an exotic octopus stripper. The Air dragon’s right wing shot forward, but in that moment, Sur reared back and opened her mouth wide. It wasn’t poetry that shot out, but a spray of fire so hot and terrible that even halfway across the compound, I had to cover my face. Squinting through my fingers, I watched the flame engulf the Air dragon’s shoulder. Skin and sinew burned, bone charred. The dragon screamed and tried to pull away, but it was too late. The wing broke off and fell to the ground with a crash.

  Still spitting sparks, Sur stomped the ground, making little earthquakes, chanting, “NO MERCY/I CURSE THEE, DRAGON OF AIR/REALM OF NO BALANCE/YOUR PALACE WILL FALL/FORGIVING IS NOT IN MY VOCABULARY/BETTER BE WARY, MY FLAMING DOES THE BLAMING!”

  The Air dragon writhed on the ground, one wing gone, three legs charred and misshapen. I almost felt bad for it as the wind died and all life seemed to leave its skeletal body. A thick, scary silence descended on everything. Was that it? Were we safe? I looked back at Translator. I looked up at Davix and Stakrat on the ridge.

  I was just about to officially exhale for the first time since the attack began when, in a shower of embers, Tiqokh burst from the fissure, rising high in the air.