Truth of Embers

by Caitlyn McFarland

  “Right.” So he couldn’t protect her himself because he was going to be right in the thick of things, expecting her to hold back. That wasn’t going to happen. They were saving her family. Wherever they were, she was going.

  The dragons transformed. Rhys slid into his harness, but Kai might have to jump off at a moment’s notice. Instead of clipping in, she climbed up between his wings and held on to the straps. Rhys leaped into the air, keeping low as he soared after Ashem through the wide lanes between buildings, the others gliding silently behind.

  The city flowed around them, clusters of broken towers stacked like massive Jenga blocks, their magnificent white stones scattered and buried in dust-pale sand. The Ancients seemed to have preferred open buildings. Most of them were like cakes—layers stacked on top of each other separated only by stone columns. They towered overhead, dwarfing the sixty—to eighty-foot dragons the way human skyscrapers dwarfed people. Scattered among the wreckage were huge shards that looked like they came from shattered gemstones, darkly glittering in every color Kai could name.

  It hit her, then, that she wasn’t just flying toward death, she was flying toward Owain’s dragons. Fear shot through her, turning her blood to ribbons of ice. What if they didn’t kill her? What if they took her back to that cold, opulent room with its drain on the floor and chains in the wall?

  She shook herself as Rhys set down behind a ruined wall. Shut out the fear. Don’t let it touch you. Don’t let anything touch you.

  Rhys set down outside a huge, clear space. At its center, the largest building they’d seen yet. “That’s it.”

  It looked like pretty much every other building in the place, but larger. Instead of shining white, it emanated a dull pewter glow.

  There was a thirty-yard circle of open sand around the base of the tower. Kai couldn’t see any dragons peering out of its many arching windows, but that didn’t mean the dragons couldn’t see them.

  “Going back and forth much more will leave us too exhausted to fight,” Tane said.

  “I don’t see that there’s much of a choice, Commander,” Rhys replied. “A diversion to pull the guards’ attention away could bring every dragon in this place down on us.”

  “What about something normal for the desert?” Isi asked.

  All of the dragons looked at her, and she crouched a little lower. She had to be good, Kai knew, to be in the Invisible. At the moment, though, she looked like a nervous teenager. Even if she was a dragon.

  “A sandstorm,” Ashem said.

  Isi nodded, readjusting her wings nervously on her back.

  Tane shook his head. “One Noodinoon alone couldn’t do it. She would need to link with at least one other.”

  “Me.” Kai stepped forward. “That’s what Wingless magic is, right? I’m like extra batteries or nitrous or something.”

  Rhys sputtered, “No,” at the same time Ashem said, “That might work.”

  “We were just sundered,” Rhys protested. “We don’t even know if you still have that magic.”

  Kai shrugged. “I’ve got all my other magic. We might as well try. Um. Have any of you used Wingless power before? Do you know how it works?”

  Nothing but shuffling feet and swishing tails.

  Kai raised her eyebrows. “All right. I guess we’ll experiment.”

  Rhys’s claws sank into the sand, but he didn’t argue further.

  Isi settled on the ground and Kai sat between her forelegs, figuring physical closeness couldn’t hurt.

  “Noodinoon link to do larger magic,” Isi said. “I’ll attempt a link with you, and we’ll see if that works.”

  “Sounds good.” Kai braced herself.

  But when a tendril of power wrapped around her, it was far gentler than she expected. Her first instinct was to push it off. Instead, she leaned into it until something inside her clicked, like it was snapping into place. Magic rose up in her. Not the familiar maelstrom of the fire, but something...purer.

  Something like possibility.

  It flowed out of her through the tendril, which Kai could tell, now, connected her to Isi. The Noodinoon opened her eyes wide and gasped, a tremor running over her with a visible, hissing shiver of scales.

  The incessant breeze that had been swirling at their feet picked up, blowing sand the way Kai had seen snow blow across roads during windy winter nights. It rose, snatching at Kai’s clothes and tugging the loose, inky hairs that had escaped her braid. It took a few minutes, but far in the distance—only visible because of the soft glow of the buildings—dust began to billow up off the ground like rising smoke. The smoke grew, forming a cloud that wasn’t near large enough to encompass the dragon city. It would, however, be plenty large enough to cover their entrance into the tower.

  Power was still draining out of her, leeching her strength. She pulled off the scarf she’d wound over her hair to protect it during the flight and looped it over her mouth and nose instead. The dust cloud had grown into a black wall that swallowed the glow of the city as it advanced, rolling toward them like a tsunami of darkness. Kai walked over to Rhys and positioned herself between his front legs just as it hit them.

  “This is not nearly as dramatic as they make it seem in the movies,” Kai said. The air smelled dry and dusty and the wind sighed in her ears, sounding remarkably like waves crashing against shore. “I thought it would be more dramatic. Like I’d have to fight not to be blown away or something.”

  “Does that disappoint you?” Rhys asked.

  Kai laughed without humor. “Considering some of the recent turns my life has taken, I think I can live with it.”

  A few minutes later, however, she found out that the movies had gotten something else wrong. She might not be half-buried in sand and unable to breathe, but everything was very, very dark. Yes, it was night, but the whole desert had been lit by the moon and the ambient radiance of the city. Now she couldn’t make out her hand an inch from her face. Though she was standing right beneath Rhys, she might have been alone in the world.

  A strand of terror twined around her like a strangling vine. She shot her arms out to either side. She banged her fingers against the hard muscles of Rhys’s legs, scraping the skin off a couple of her knuckles. Kai swore, but didn’t take her hands off Rhys to suck the injured digits.

  She just needed to know he was there.

  “All right?” His voice was gentle.

  “Yeah.” Her response was quiet, but he would hear.

  Isi had severed their connection, and the backlash smashed into Kai. A wave of exhaustion hit her so hard that she dropped to one knee.

  “Kai?” Concern edged Rhys’s voice.

  “I’m fine.” She wasn’t. She was reeling, drunk with exhaustion like she hadn’t slept in days.

  “How long will the storm last?” Ashem asked.

  Isi answered. “The wind will pull more wind behind it. I only had to get it started. Though I tried not to make to so big that it would feed on itself and make our escape impossible.”

  Kai had no idea where either of them were. Since they used dragon thought-speak instead of audible speech, she had no way of placing them. She kept one hand on Rhys’s scaled leg, stepping over his claws and hauling herself onto his elbow by feel. She forced weary muscles to keep going until she could fling herself across his broad spine. With a groan, she threw one leg over and smacked him on the scaled flank with a hand—the signal that she was ready to go.

  “Ready,” Rhys said. The others said the same.

  “How will we know we’re headed in the right direction?” Morwenna asked.

  “Thabo.” Kai wasn’t sure, but she thought Tane had said that.

  She readjusted the scarf over her face and closed her eyes, leaning down close to Rhys. The storm was worse up on his back, and dust kept getting in her eyes. “How?”
she asked as loud as she dared.

  “His magic has to do with the energy of motion kinetic force. If it’s moving, he can manipulate it,” Rhys said. “And he can sense it. He’ll be able to sense where the building stands.”

  Too tired to reply, she gave him a couple more firm pats the way she’d seen people give horses so he’d know she had heard. He twisted his massive head and gave her a look from the corner of one massive blue eye. It was so deadpan that Kai almost laughed.

  They started forward, and Kai was grateful beyond measure that she didn’t have to do anything but hang on. The space between the central building and the fallen tower in which they’d been crouching wasn’t huge, but the crossing, done in pitch-blackness with no way to orient herself, made Kai dizzy.

  Or maybe that was also the aftereffects of sharing her power with Isi.

  Rhys’s gait changed and his claws clicked on a surface more solid than shifting sand. At the same time, the sound of the wind disappeared. This was dragon magic she was familiar with. Instead of using glass or something solid to keep the elements out, they constructed semipermeable walls of air.

  In the silence, Kai became aware that someone was fighting.

  Rhys addressed the dragons, invisible in the darkness. “Stop. Stay where you are. Don’t try to warn anyone.”

  The sounds of scuffling stopped.

  The mantle. The power of it clung to Rhys like dew to morning grass.

  Kai shivered, thinking of the heartsworn pair Owain had commanded to kill each other. If he wanted, Rhys could use the mantle to force every dragon here to turn on each other—or on themselves. But he didn’t. He’d said, once, that using the mantle to kill another dragon would be the equivalent of shooting an unarmed man.

  Why could people not see that he would make the better king?

  “Light, cariad,” Rhys said.

  Kai reached for the fire swirling inside her and pinched off a thin strand, forming a tiny fireball in her palm. She closed her fingers loosely about it, dampening the light, which streamed in golden beams between her fingers. After so much darkness, even that small light was nearly blinding.

  Two dragons snarled at her across the room. Thabo and Morwenna were shaking themselves off, and Morwenna turned to lick a long, shallow-looking wound down her side.

  “All right?” Ashem asked.

  “Fine.” Morwenna’s voice had a snap to it, but that was nothing new.

  Rhys stepped close to the two dragons who were bound by his commands. Kai wondered if he was going to use the mantle to question them, then remembered that one of the magic’s limitations was that it couldn’t control a dragon’s mind, only its body. Meaning he could command them to answer, but not truthfully. Not even with real words.

  “Do you think you can handle the rest?” Ashem asked.

  Rhys paused, then said he could. Kai slid down from his back and staggered, tired legs betraying her.

  “Are you sure?” Kai whispered. The most powerful magic she’d seen him do with the mantle was to force a crowd of dragons into silence for about thirty seconds. Holding so many commands in place indefinitely—even on a smaller group—was probably going to be a challenge.

  “Can’t Ashem knock some of them out?” Kai asked.

  Now it was Rhys’s and Ashem’s turn to exchange a glance. “Our ability to use magic in dragon form is extremely limited.”

  “You’ve never noticed?” Ashem gave a caustic snort.

  Now that she thought of it, she’d seen Ashem in more than one battle and she’d never noticed him just knocking dragons out the way he did when he was in his human form. Kavar was pretty dang good at inflicting staggering amounts of pain, but she’d been human then, not Wingless. Maybe that made a difference. She was embarrassed that she’d never put it all together before. “Well...can you change and do it?”

  “Dragons in their natural bodies are considerably more impervious to magic than they are in human form,” Thabo said. “He’ll be safer as a dragon.”

  “Oh. Okay. Well, never mind then,” Kai said. She bundled embarrassment away with the rest of her emotions, but couldn’t quite shut away worry for Rhys.

  “Are we going to stand around flapping our jaws and waiting for Owain’s people to come upon us, or are we going to get what we came for?” Ashem asked.

  Kai stepped toward Rhys, but he shifted away. “You’re here, cariad, and I won’t stop you from joining a fight if one comes to you, but you’re exhausted and I’ll need to focus to control the mantle. Perhaps you could wait here while we take care of the guards, then I’ll find you when it’s time to destroy whatever artifact is allowing Owain to create his cordial. Or if we find your parents.”

  Kai opened her mouth to argue, but she was so stupidly wiped. She had done a lot to help get them here. So many of the ideas that were making this raid possible had been hers—that wasn’t to say that she felt like her job was over, but she didn’t feel bad about letting the dragons take out the guards. If she could just sit for ten or fifteen minutes, maybe the creeping exhaustion sucking at her limbs and pushing down her eyelids would go away.

  “Okay.”

  Rhys’s expression changed from cautious to concerned. He leaned in close, his warm breath washing over her. He smelled like smoke and reptile. “Are you all right?”

  A crooked smile found its way onto her face and she pushed his nose away. “Fine. I just need a rest.”

  Rhys nudged her with his nose, like a monster-sized horse sniffing for an apple, and Kai let out a surprised laugh that she stifled with a hand.

  “Knock it off,” Ashem barked. “Let’s move.”

  Kai let her fingers trail over Rhys’s long, scaled nose as he pulled away, a shocking burst of tenderness for him sweeping through her.

  “Be safe,” she whispered.

  “And you.”

  The cloud of dust outside was clearing. Weak starlight filtered in shafts through high, arched windows and holes in the walls. For the first time, Kai could tell that the floor was covered in sand—not surprising, considering its location. A sweeping, dragon-sized ramp on the far side of the room spiraled to the blackness above. Rhys, Ashem, Morwenna and Tane climbed it cautiously, then disappeared from sight.

  That left her with Thabo and Isi. Perhaps to be companionable, they both shifted to human, though neither of them tried to speak to her.

  Kai sat down on the sand to wait. Mistake. As soon as she relaxed even a little, the rest of her exhaustion tried to flatten her. She leaned forward and rubbed her grainy, dusty hands across her forehead. To keep herself awake, she started heaping the sand into little piles, thoughts creeping in that she’d kept firmly locked away.

  My parents are here. Brendan is here. They could be hurt. They could be dead.

  Relax, Kai. Hold it together until the guards are all taken care of. Then you can look around. Maybe Ashem is paranoid and Juli is mistaken. The dragons probably just missed them. Ashem put a barrier over their house. I bet Mom and Dad snuck in when Rhys’s dragons weren’t looking.

  Sand shifted beneath Kai’s hands. Too tired for surprise, she watched it funnel away into a sinuous, inch-wide crack. Curious, Kai swept a wide swathe of sand to one side with her arm, not quite baring what she assumed would be a stone floor. However, the movement did cause sand to run down into several more cracks. They made a pretty pattern, though the larger design was obscured by sand and time.

  She briefly wondered how a floor with a bunch of holes in it could support the weight of dragons, then poked her finger into the first crack. No ground beneath that she could feel. Nothing but smooth stone sides and air. She got down on her knees and pressed her ear to the ground.

  Below, someone sobbed.

  Adrenaline surged through her, momentarily obliterating her lethargy. The humans. They weren’t above, they w
ere below. “How do we get down there?”

  Isi, who was braiding her river of smooth black hair, shrugged. So did Thabo.

  Kai struggled to her feet. “We’re going to find out. Look for an opening. There has to be something.”

  She expected an argument, but—perhaps annoyed at being left behind to babysit—both dragons jumped at the chance to do something. They split up, combing the dark room. After a minute, Thabo called out. He’d located a dark recess in the far wall. No wide staircase led down into the forbidding blackness—it was nothing but a hole. A chute of some kind, maybe. Or a ventilation shaft.

  Kai peered into the hole. A single beam of moonlight shone in from some unseen opening, illuminating a patch of sand at the bottom. No ladder, no other doors, only this chute.

  But she had definitely heard someone crying.

  Kai motioned Isi and Thabo away from the shaft. The humans below could be unguarded, but knowing Owain as she now did, Kai doubted the paranoid dictator would leave something so precious unguarded, especially if he’d gotten his frosty claws in her parents and brother.

  If there were dragons in the dark, she refused to fear them. She was not who she had been.

  Gesturing Isi and Thabo close, Kai explained her plan. After some fine-tuning with their input, they walked back to the chute.

  Kai looked inside. Blackness. Owain had left her without light so many times that she had almost forgotten she could make her own. The memory sent anger surging through her, and with anger, heat. Power.

  She met Thabo’s eye. He nodded.

  She jumped.

  Her fall slowed, like she was sinking through water instead of air. Kai squeezed her eyes shut and pressed her arm against her face. She raised her hands, palms facing each other, and called the flames, pooling magic between her palms, shoving more and more into the tiny space until it raged and bucked. Fire snapped into being, bright as a flashbang. Kai was nearly dazzled, even with her face pressed against her arm.

  Somewhere below, a dragon snarled.

  So there was a guard down here.