by Brian Beam
His mouth quivered shakily into a one-sided smile, his skin cracking as it did. “Jonasir. War in east…,” he trailed off, his chest no longer moving.
I could remember Undula talking about war brewing in Gualain when we had first met the McAlwains. I needed to know why Menar would mention it. It may have been a clue to finding Raijom. I quickly shot a small trickle of healing into Menar using my own body to create the spell at the risk of my ability to remain conscious and possibly even remain alive.
Menar’s body jerked slightly as he took in a haggard breath. His filmy eyes shot back and forth in confusion before returning to staring off unseeing into the distance. I had to lock my legs into place to keep from collapsing from even such a small expenditure of energy. When added to everything else I had done, it felt like the one drop of water that collapsed the roof.
“Let me die,” Menar whispered. “Please.”
“Menar, just tell me what you meant about the war,” I commanded. My spell would be lucky to add even a minute to his life.
“Raijom has his hand in it. He...he contacted me after I found Ingran. Said Ingran must...not live to find out. Must—” Another coughing fit interrupted his explanation. At least he had been able to stay focused. “Tell Ingran...tell him he has his mother’s eyes.” His body jerked and then settled with his last breath rattling from his lips. He spoke no more.
I was not sure at the time if as a squirrel I could cry, but I felt tears forming in my eyes. I made an oath to myself that I would let his family know that he had died an honorable death. Somehow.
Now I had to make a choice on our next step. On one hand, with Salmaea’s influence, we could find answers from the Wizard Academy on how we could track down Raijom. On the other, according to Menar, Raijom had something to do with the war that was apparently impending in Gualain. I figured that I would have time to think about it on the way to Byweather.
Looking over at Bhaliel behind me, I saw that she was turning to approach the two of you. With Menar dead, she no longer had any oath to adhere to. “Bhaliel,” I called, using a tiny bit of magic from one of my convenient lice to project my voice to her ears. Bhaliel turned her horned head down at me with unsettling red eyes. “Please, give me just a moment to talk to them before you do anything.”
I had never made a request to a dragon before. For all I knew, she would gobble me up for an appetizer right then and there for doing so. It was worth a try, though. She had been compliant with Menar’s wishes for her to wait for our explanation before taking action against us. Therefore, I had to assume that she was not eager to jump to any conclusions or hurt anyone. Also, it could buy us a few moments to think our way free of the situation.
Bhaliel stared down at me with no expression for a moment before slightly nodding her giant head in assent. Bhaliel now knew where the egg was and that we would not be able to stop her from retrieving it anyway.
I had recently come to terms with the fact that the prophecy concerning you had to be fulfilled; that the fulfillment of the prophecy was a sign of something much bigger and important than the single event it depicted. I also knew that for the prophecy to be fulfilled, you had to live. For that to happen it was looking like you would have to give up the egg. I could think of no other way at the time. I have to admit that I failed to acknowledge just how quick on your feet—or in this case, on your back—you could be. Your father would have been proud.
So, these words are meant to fill you in on what transpired between Menar and myself so that if I die, you can try to carry on my oath to pass on to his family that he loved them and tell them the circumstances of his death. I also want to carry out his last request and let you know that yes, you really do have your mother’s eyes.
Chapter 18
Dragon’s Tale
The very thought of conversing with a dragon terrified me. What I planned on telling it made the prospect even more chilling. How would you feel if you were about to tell a dragon that you in no way intended on handing over its unborn child? Let me tell you, you would not feel very confident about living through the next few minutes of your life.
From where Bhaliel had been standing, she only needed to take two steps with her giant legs to reach us. Green and gold scales shone metallically in the afternoon light, giving her a majestic appearance. The golden scales of her underbelly stretched up her neck and under her jaw. Her spike-tipped tail swiped jerkily back and forth behind her. She sat back on her haunches, causing a tactile shaking of the ground and gazed at me as if waiting for me to speak. Anger shone in her blood-red eyes, but she didn’t make a move. If she decided to kill me on the spot, my plan wouldn’t mean much anymore.
I could feel Sal’s leg muscles tense underneath my head and the fingers of her free hand dug painfully into my chest. Her other hand still rested in her wicker case as she stared challengingly at Bhaliel.
“Help me sit up,” I requested of Sal’, wanting to at least be facing the dragon. I knew if Bhaliel wanted to kill me, I wouldn’t be able to do much to stop her. Still, I didn’t like the feeling of vulnerability lying on my back with my head tilted back towards her. Plus, for my plan to work, I needed to appear confident. That’s not easy to do lying on the ground across someone’s lap.
Sal’, without taking her eyes from Bhaliel or the hand from her mice, stuck her other arm behind my neck and pulled me upwards. I put a hand to the ground, realizing for the first time that my broken forearm was healed in addition to my hand.
Using what strength I could muster, I felt the strain through my arm and my stomach muscles as I attempted to assist in pushing myself up. With Sal’s help, I awkwardly spun my body to face the dragon, having to keep one hand to the ground to help keep myself propped up. My legs were spread out before me. I’m sure it was an interesting sight with the too-tight, too-short robe. Sal stayed at my side with an arm across my back to help keep me from falling back.
I reached into my coin pouch with my other hand and pulled out the spherical red dragon egg and held it up for Bhaliel to see. Max jumped onto my arm and scampered up to my shoulder.
“Korin, do you know what you are doing?” Max asked quietly.
“Trust me, I do know what I’m doing...I think.” I was starting to question if I truly did. My plan was risky and could put all of our lives at stake, but I had to take that risk. I had to retain my freedom so that I bring justice to Raijom.
I focused my eyes directly on Bhaliel’s. I could see the rippling muscles beneath her scales tense as her serpentine neck tilted forward. “I’m the one who has your egg,” I announced, trying to sound confident. I’m pretty sure I wasn’t very successful at it. I was having trouble enough making my voice loud enough to be heard. However, it was time to go all in on my plan before I had too much time to think it through. “If you try to take it, Max here will destroy it with his magic.” I gestured to the wide-eyed, open-mouthed squirrel on my shoulder and shoved the dragon egg at him. He grasped it with his tiny, clawed forepaws.
Thankfully, Max had the sense to go along with me. At least, he did after a slightly stunned pause. “Try anything and I will shatter it,” he rasped, his eyes darting back to me questioningly. If Bhaliel could detect the weariness in his voice, she would probably know he was in no shape to do any such thing. I held on to the hope that her concern for the egg would keep her from noticing.
Bhaliel’s eyes literally lit up like lamps, burning like the rising sun as she snorted small bursts of flame from her nose. “You dare threaten me?” she bellowed, her voice like a rockslide. Her voice was so deep that it shook the ground and was hard to understand. It was difficult to think of her as a female dragon with that voice. “I have no interest in hurting any of you, but I will do what I must to take back my child.” She rose back up onto her massive legs and took a step forward.
Sal’ jumped to her feet and held out a hand in warning. “You have an interesting way of showing that you don’t have an interest in hurting us. Remember when you tried to k
ill us in Nansunic’s temple?” Her voice trembled slightly, but her stance was unwavering. Sal’ definitely had guts.
With a toss of her head, Bhaliel let out a deafening roar and then brought her eyes to Sal’. “Do not provoke me, wizard,” her voice thundered. “You used your magic on me in that temple. You did not expect me to retaliate? You wizards are the reason my race is all but extinct in the first place, and still you come after us. I did nothing to you and you tried to kill me with your magic. I should burn you to your bones.”
“What do you mean ‘all but extinct’?” I interjected without really considering the fact that I was interrupting a fire-breathing dragon—a massive, deadly, incredibly angry, fire-breathing dragon. I knew that dragons had been banished to the Snowy Waste according to the stories I had heard as a child, but I didn’t know that they were dying out up there.
Bhaliel shifted her unsettling gaze back to me. “When the Power Wars were being fought, the wizards were afraid we would try to take advantage of the weakened state of Amirand and take control over it. We were not only banished, trapped in the Snowy Waste by magic, but also cursed to only bear one child per female to bring down our numbers over time so that we could never be a threat.”
“That’s a lie,” Sal’ cut in angrily. “You were banished for your crimes against humans.”
Bhaliel snorted. “Crimes against humans? You mean our snatching of children in the night?” She snorted again. “All fabrications set up by your Wizard Council a thousand years ago to create fear and hate towards us so that their actions would appear justified.”
I weakly held up my arm to silence Sal’s impending retort. None of this really mattered for my plan. Still, my curiosity had been tapped and I found myself wanting to know more. Plus, I was really starting to second guess my plan and this gave me a chance to stall. “You seem pretty knowledgeable about this.”
“I was the Dragon Queen and my mate, Xalis, was the Dragon King during that time.” My breath caught. I heard gasps of surprise from both Sal’ and Max. Bhaliel was over a thousand years old. “I had been hibernating for a thousand years, waiting to hatch my only child into a world where we were once again accepted—a world where they could experience the freedom of uninhibited flight over the land. Instead, five years ago I wake to find Xalis dead—killed during his hibernation—and my egg gone. He had been killed hundreds of years prior during raids conducted by wizards to further decrease our numbers, only a collection of bones when I awoke.”
“Wizards would do no such thing,” Sal’ argued before I could stop her.
“Apparently they did,” I said aloud, but mainly to myself. “Til’ said the egg was a present to the Kolari from wizards long ago.” Sal’ glared at me angrily, her eyes as cold as the ice their color mimicked. I ignored her gaze. I had a million questions I wanted to ask, but there were more important things to worry about such as fulfilling the Contract and keeping the dragon from killing us.
Bhaliel lowered her head until it was level with mine. Her head was bigger than my entire body. When she spoke again, her rumbling voice was filled with sadness. “For years I could not feel the bond with my egg. I had thought it destroyed by the wizards. Then, two years ago, I could again feel the bond during the day, though it disappeared at night. I tried to break through the magic barrier holding us in the Waste, but could not. Not knowing what was happening to my unborn child was killing me inside with each passing day. Then, again, the bond disappeared completely and I gave up hope.
“Three weeks ago, I could feel it again. There were no more disruptions in the bond this time. I struggled to break through the barrier again, finally weakening it enough to make it through and came to find the egg.” Sal’ gasped at that last sentence, but held her tongue. This news was massive. The dragons would be free to leave their thousand year exile once they knew of the hole that Bhaliel had broken in the barrier.
While the fact that very shortly, dragons could possibly become a regular part of Amirand sunk in, I also considered the disruption Bhaliel had felt in her bond with the egg. I thought I understood why the bond between her and the egg had been interrupted the way it had. Above both of those issues, though, I could only think about Bhaliel’s pain.
I literally hurt to think about the torment Bhaliel had gone through. First her kind was banished to a land too harsh for anything but creatures of magic to live in, then she wakes to find her husband slaughtered in his sleep and her unborn child stolen.
And here I was making everything worse.
I wanted to hand the egg to her right then and there. Yet, I had to stay strong and stick to my plan. I had to remain free to go after Raijom. It wasn’t just about justice or revenge. He had been responsible for eldrhims being summoned. On top of that, he had a sadistic, psychopathic apprentice hurting people for sheer pleasure. The both of them had to be stopped.
“Now,” Bhaliel’s voice boomed, “give me the egg and I will leave you unharmed.” Her breath smelled of charcoal and sulfur. I was already lightheaded, but that warm, sooty breath made me even dizzier. I fought to keep myself upright, having to place my other arm to the ground for support.
“What did I miss?” Til’s high-pitched voice questioned from behind me. I didn’t want to use what little energy I had mustered to look back at him. “Hey, dragon, do you remember me?” If I could have slapped a hand to my forehead and shake it in disbelief I would have.
I felt Sal’s arm leave my back for a brief second followed by a smacking sound and Til’ offendedly exclaiming, “What?” I almost fell backwards from the loss of Sal’s support, but somehow remained upright.
“Shut your mouth before you get Korin killed,” Sal’ hissed quietly, bringing her arm back to support me.
Ignoring the Kolarin, I managed to bring a hand back from the ground to gesture at Max holding the egg on my shoulder. “If you want to keep the egg from being destroyed, you’re going to do as I say.” I swallowed, hoping I didn’t exude the fear I felt in issuing an ultimatum to a dragon. Bhaliel must have believed that Max, even as just a squirrel, could destroy the egg or I’m pretty sure that I’d have become a human fireplace log given the fiery look in her eyes.
“What are you doing?” Max whispered worriedly. If Max was concerned, I probably should have been more worried than I was. I felt a small spark of confidence in my plan, though. I held up a hand in a silencing gesture.
Bhaliel brought her face close enough to my own that that I could have reached out and touched her. “Speak,” Bhaliel thundered through clenched teeth. Sharp, arm-length, possibly soon to be dripping with my blood teeth.
My heart beat in double time, partially to compensate for my blood loss, but mostly out of fear. I took a deep, calming breath. Okay, it wasn’t calming at all. I was just about scared enough to soil myself. I had lived a life free of creatures of legend until mere days before this. The eldrhims I could handle; I had witnessed their mortality. This house-sized, thousand-year-old dragon, however, was a different story.
“Bhaliel,” I began, trying to sound confident, “you are going to leave us now. You are going to fly back to Nansunic’s temple and remain there for four nights. There is a crossroads a few hours by horse due north from Byweather. I will meet you a league to the west of the crossroads two hours after sunset on the fifth night.”
With Telis, and hopefully a second horse if the McAlwains had one to spare, we could make it to Byweather in three nights if we maintained a good pace. The extra nights, though, would give us time to stop in Geeron for the night, take an extra night on the way to Byweather, and be able to stay a night in Byweather before having to meet with Galius or Bhaliel. I figured that I’d need at least that long to really recover and I needed to be as recovered as possible to give me the best chance of pulling off my plan. I would need more rest than would be possible pushing ourselves through every possible minute of daylight.
Also, my life had been full of interesting distractions—so to speak—recently. Distractions suc
h as eldrhims, dragons, and evil wizards. It couldn’t hurt to have a couple extra days to accommodate the possibility of additional attempts on my life on the way to Byweather.
Bhaliel’s eyes narrowed even further. “And you will have the egg?” she questioned in her titanic voice.
“The egg will come to no harm. If I don’t have it, I will be there for you to take your vengeance out on me and then you can go retrieve it on your own using your bond.” I swallowed the bile rising in my throat. I may have just given Bhaliel permission to be my executioner.
“No, Korin. You can’t be serious,” Sal’ exclaimed from behind me.
“I am,” I assured her solemnly. I looked down to Max who was looking at me as if I had truly lost my mind. Turning my eyes back up to Bhaliel, I said, “So, there you go, Bhaliel. If you don’t want us to destroy the egg, you will leave now and meet me in five nights.”
“My bond with the egg has been broken before. How can I trust that your wizards do not possess the ability to break the bond and how do I know you will be there?” Bhaliel rumbled.
Those were good questions. If my suspicion on how the bond could be broken was correct, anyone could do so. I couldn’t guarantee that the bond wouldn’t be broken once it was in Galius’ hands. I only knew it wouldn’t be broken by me. Also, how could I get her to trust that I would meet her?
A spark ignited in my mind and I took out my Contract. “Do you know what this is?”
“Yes,” she replied. “My kind is familiar with Contracts. They were in use before our banishment. If wizards did not have to worry about one of their own taking over the world using Contracts during the war, maybe they would not have thought that Amirand was so fractured to view dragons as a threat.” She directed an accusatory glare at Sal’.
