by Cara Bristol
“She refers to all dragons as her children, but yeah, with me and Rhianna she means it literally.”
“So you have fyre?”
She held up a hand with a sliver of space between her index finger and thumb. “The tiniest little spark.”
He cocked his head. “Would you be in any danger—if the Eternal Fyre went out?”
“I don’t think so because I’m like 99.9999+ percent human.” She snorted. “But I’d rather not find out I’m wrong, if you catch my drift.”
He chuckled. “How do they move it?” On his visits to try to see O’ne, he’d seen the flame hovering in thin air in the massive round sanctuary.
Helena shrugged. “I have no idea. I doubt if they have figured out how to do it. It’s never had to be transported before. It sprang into existence here on Draco—thus igniting the age-old question—which came first, the fyre or the dragon? The problem of how to move it might account for why the priestess hasn’t announced when she’s leaving.”
“What if everyone relocates to Elementa, and the sacred flame can’t be moved? What happens then?”
“As long as it burns somewhere, they would be fine, but the priestess would have to remain.”
“So she’d be left alone on Draco?”
“She’d have her guardians and acolytes. She prefers to keep to herself most of the time anyway. I’d visit her. So would Rhianna.”
“Won’t Draco’s continued cooling endanger her?”
“She can survive when others can’t. She protects the Eternal Fyre, and it protects her. It’s kind of a symbiotic relationship.”
And Helena and Rhianna were related to the priestess. Amazing. “How did you discover you had fyre? Did you sense it? Do you have any special powers now?”
Helena shook her head. “Never had a clue. T’mar picked up on it. Dragons can sense fyre in others. The fact that I have it allowed us to become mates.” She laughed. “I don’t have any special powers. Since T’mar and I mated, my sense of smell has sharpened, but that’s the only change I’ve noticed.”
“How did you find out you were related to the priestess?”
“She told me. She’d had visions that descendants of her daughter lived, so she pushed King K’rah to request a concubine from Earth for his son K’ev. As you know, that was Rhianna. When the priestess met her, she realized Rhianna came from her fyreline. In another vision, she saw me and had King K’rah send for a consort for T’mar.”
He jerked his head as a memory bubbled up. It had been about six months ago that he’d encountered the priestess. She’d said—he’d laughed it off—no…it couldn’t be…
Helena frowned. “What’s wrong?”
“The priestess once told me I had fyre.”
* * * *
The donatta waited for him where she’d dropped him off. With awareness of Helena’s ancestry and the epiphany that he, too, could be part dragon, he studied her with a fresh eye. A massive triangular head topped her long neck that flowed into a scaly, thorny spine. Talons the length of his entire hand tipped the claws of her hands and feet. Puffs of fire shot from her nostrils as she impatiently snapped her powerful barbed tail to and fro.
It blew him away that humans could have dragon genes with no outward evidence of it. Wouldn’t he feel it somehow? The human tailbone and an infant’s palmar grasp reflex were remnants of their ape origins. If he had a Draconian ancestor, wouldn’t there be some leftover trait? Vestigial horns or super-sharp toenails? An inclination toward pyrophila? Anything!
More disturbing was the possibility he could be descended from the priestess.
The possibility packed a disheartening punch, as if he’d been robbed of a chance for happiness, which, of course, was ridiculous. He’d already decided to return to Earth, and he’d had no chance of 10,000-year-old dragon priestess even if he wasn’t related to her. He did not see her as a mother figure. He saw her as a desirable woman. No awkwardness or weirdness there.
“What are you gawking at? Do you wish to leave or not?” The guttural voice of the donatta pierced his reverie. She’d shifted into demiforma and stood there naked, scaled, and tailed, glaring at him. If yellow eyes were a crayon, the color would be called baleful.
“Do I have fyre?” He tipped back his head the better to see her. At six foot five, he was taller than almost everyone on Earth. However, the demiforma donatta had six inches on him.
Her snout seemed to curl. “Don’t make me laugh. You’re just a pathetic human.”
So, she couldn’t sense it. What had made the priestess think he had fyre? If he was part dragon, he wanted to know it. The only way to find out for sure would be to seek out the source. Ask the priestess.
As excuses went, it was pretty flimsy, but he’d use any pretext to see her one last time. From what Helena had said, it didn’t appear the priestess would go to Elementa anytime in the near future, and he would return to Earth soon.
“Take me to the temple, please,” he requested.
The donatta sneered. “You stupid human. There is nothing there for you. Do you not know you reek of lust for the priestess? No dragoness would lower herself to consort with a human male. Why do you think she never appears when you arrive? She is there—she does not wish to see you. Now you believe you are part dragon? You wish!” She laughed so hard, puffs of smoke shot from her nostrils.
“Nevertheless, you will take me to the temple.”
Chapter Two
Her ash-white gown and hair puddling around her, the priestess knelt on the marble floor, gazing into the flame dancing in her palm. Millions depended on her, and she would be tested. She could see it in the red-and-gold flickers.
Unworthy.
Her back to the door, O’ne sensed L’yla’s arrival. Of all the acolytes, only she would be bold enough to invade her solitude.
“Prince T’mar and the first thunder of Draconians depart for Elementa the day after tomorrow,” the acolyte said.
“I am aware.” Helena would be on the ship. Soon after, Rhianna would leave. Although the separation would be temporary, and they would be reunited, she ached with anticipatory loss. Any separation from her daughters was too long.
The flame flashed before contracting again. H’ry also would board that ship, stop in Elementa, and then proceed to Earth. She peered into the fire, which had cooled from yellow to red.
“The others ask when we will move.”
Knowledge conferred power. Although the others might have sent her to inquire, more likely the ambitious acolyte had taken the duty upon herself so she could become the herald of good news.
Unworthy.
The priestess stroked the flame with a soft touch and replied, “When it is time.”
“The human has returned. He prowls the sanctuary.”
She did not reply. With an exhale, she coaxed the tiny flame to swell and fill her cupped hands.
“It is a desecration for a human to enter the temple.” L’yla spoke in a modulated, emotionless tone, but the acrid odor of disgust wafted off her. Words lied, but scent always spoke the truth.
The flame flickered, oranges and golds mixing with flashes of red. “And do my daughters also desecrate the temple?” the priestess asked in a low voice.
“No! Of course not! My apologies, priestess.” The sweet smell of fear filled the room.
“Leave me,” O’ne said.
“At once.” She bowed as she backed out.
Of the twelve acolytes, L’yla was the last one she would pick to assume the priesthood—not that any of them were ready. Perhaps no one could be. She hadn’t been prepared for the all-consuming duty. And the choice of successor wasn’t up to her.
The Eternal Fyre would decide, as it always had.
It had consumed three unworthy novitiates before descending upon her. She’d expected the same—had longed for immolation. Grieving for the child she’d been forced to abandon, she’d ached for the comforting blaze of death. Instead, the sacred flame had exalted her.
&nb
sp; She, the unworthiest of all. She, who’d focused on self. She, who had chosen exploration of the galaxy over becoming priestess until her babe had been torn from her arms.
As priestess, she’d gained immense power. Exacting justice on those who’d wronged her had been dragonling play, but vengeance could not fill an abyss of grief. Only after Rhianna and Helena had found their way to Draco did she stop praying for the Eternal Fyre to end her existence by choosing another priestess.
If L’yla’s prayers were granted, it would be her.
She wishes you dead. She would kill you if it would advance her aims, her dragoness said.
L’yla is ambitious, but she won’t go that far.
She would! Why do you not eliminate her?
She is inconsequential. The Eternal Fyre will never choose her.
O’ne held the flame close enough to her face to feel the kiss of heat. Long ago, she had experienced the kiss of a man. A human. For all that the union had resulted in the joy of a daughter, she hardly remembered him. Time had erased his appearance, his sound, his smell.
Or had memory faded because another had superimposed himself?
She recalled her first glimpse of H’ry striding through T’mar’s palace. Tall, purposeful, confident, armed. So solicitous of her. Ignorant of her identity.
He knew now, but still he persisted in his pursuit. Several times he’d come to the temple. She’d refused to see him, although she’d been aware of his presence each and every time. Perhaps the wise course would have been to order the guardians to refuse him admittance, but the shameful truth was she could not.
His visits meant too much. She waited with eager anticipation for every single one, remaining out of sight but absorbing his presence, his smell, the sound of his voice.
She reduced the flame to a modest flicker. She was wrong to allow him to visit and fill her head with wishful dreams. It tormented her, and it was cruel to him. Her selfishness fed his hope.
More tenacious than the average human, Henry Winslow, H’ry in Dragonish, was no ordinary Earther. Like her daughters, he had fyre. Unlike Rhianna and Helena, he had not descended from her line. Another explorer of the long-ago Earth expedition had sired a child with a human but then voluntarily abandoned him when the rescue ship arrived.
His fyre is inconsequential, the dragoness mocked her with her own words.
Every fyre matters. She felt the flicker of every life, individually and collectively. It overwhelmed her sometimes. As long as the Eternal Fyre blazed, they lived. If the sacred flame extinguished, they died. No one had any idea of the burden she bore.
Do not the fyres of those who tore your daughter from your arms matter? You did not hesitate to snuff them out.
She ignored the taunt and studied the flame in her hands for signs. H’ry would board the ship to Elementa and be gone from her life. As it should be. As it was meant to be.
Her fyre flickered, alerting her he had departed the temple, carried away by a donatta who loathed him. His servant reeked of dislike and would do whatever she could to cause him discomfort. It is not for me to get involved. Secular issues were the purview of the king and his sons. Besides, the donatta wouldn’t actually hurt him.
That didn’t make her feel any better.
Closing her hand, she snuffed out the flame and then stood to allow her gown and hair to settle around her bare feet.
What are you going to do now? her dragoness asked warily.
Don’t you know? She parried, amused.
You are secretive. You hide things from me.
Isn’t that the flame calling the fire hot? She often suspected the dragoness conspired against her. Being two minds sharing a single fyre and shapeshifting body, most Draconians existed in harmony and cooperation with their alter selves. The two wholes complemented one another, each being what the other was not.
Her dragoness had grown increasingly petulant, angry.
O’ne silenced the voice of her alter self and left the tiny contemplation cell, her white hair blending with the train of her gown to trail over spotless marble.
The Eternal Fyre hovered in the rotunda. As she entered, it flashed, its corona nearly filling the sanctuary. She waited until it settled into the center before beginning the ritual walk. Within the massive snapping, writhing flame, she could identify individual fyres, and she singled out the flickers of King K’rah, his queen, their children and granddragons, her twelve acolytes, and the temple guardians. She isolated the tiny sparks of Helena, Rhianna, and H’ry. Her own fyre flashed, distracting her for a moment before she dragged her attention back to the manifestation. She alone kept the flame stoked. As long as she lived, it would burn. As long as it burned, dragons would live.
Chanting in sacred Dragonish, she circled then reversed and completed another rotation, spiraling closer to the flame.
Unworthy. Why had the Eternal Fyre exalted her?
Was she doing the right thing? The more the vog on Draco cleared, the foggier clarity had become. Her insight had blurred. Visions came less often and were murkier when they did. Was that an omen she’d lost the favor of the Eternal Fyre? Or was she supposed to be patient and wait for guidance? It wasn’t only the acolytes who’d been questioning when they would move to Elementa; she had been wondering, too.
What if all the guidance she was supposed to receive had already been given? What was the point in waiting for signs that may never come?
Wait…or proceed?
As she approached the Eternal Fyre, it floated up to the dome, and she stepped under it. She raised her arms, tilted her head, and beckoned. It spun in a blazing roar, rotating faster and faster, condensing to a small swirling mass.
The fireball dropped.
Chapter Three
Hot gas spewed from a mile-wide fumarole bed as foot-long lava worms scuttled across craggy black rock into nests hidden in the fissures.
Nasty. Everything on this planet is nasty. Grimacing, Biggs swiveled away from the camera one feed, skipped over the volcanic eruption on the adjacent screen, and focused on the vids in another sector.
The control room door slid open to admit Parson Hicks.
“Another building has gone up.” Biggs jutted a finger at the feed of a massive white coliseum-like structure with a domed roof supported by twelve smooth pillars. “What do you think it is?” he asked the ops manager.
Hicks squinted. “Can you zoom in?”
He enlarged the image until the picture started to blur. “This is the best I can do. The camera location isn’t the best.” They had to hide surveillance devices where sharp beady lizard eyes wouldn’t spot them.
“Another palace?” Hicks guessed.
“Don’t think so.”
In a matter of months, an entire city of ash-white stone structures had sprung up across hundreds of square miles. Unoccupied, except by the worker drones building it, the city resembled a ghost town of the future, a metropolis already abandoned. If only. His gut tightened with the knowledge Elementa soon would be swarming with filthy flying space lizards.
They had toiled day and night to construct the opulent castles, bandstand theaters, statuary, towers, and monuments, many of them inlaid with vibrant, glittering jewels. As much as the lizards filled him with revulsion, he grudgingly credited them with being master architects and builders.
Besides its location—atop a hill quite a distance from Dragon Town—the newest white structure stood out because of its starkness. There were no self-aggrandizing motifs or statues, no intricate carvings, no jeweled mosaics, no adornments of any kind.
“I wonder how they’ll keep the white stone clean?” Hicks mused. “They should have used the black lava rock.”
“Space lizards aren’t too concerned with cleanliness,” Biggs said.
Ash and soot coated everything. There wasn’t a sector on the roiling planet where volcanos didn’t spew shit into the atmosphere. The omnipresent thick vog was corrosive, too. The buildings erected by his company and the Earth governme
nt had required constant, exhaustive maintenance.
They were gone now. Not eaten away by the Elemental atmosphere but dismantled rivet by rivet, beam by beam, panel by panel, and shipped back to Earth, along with the colonists themselves.
In a game of chicken, Earth had blinked and caved to the dragons. After fucking King K’rah’s eldest spawn, the president’s daughter had convinced her father to hand the Draconians what they wanted. The idiots had no idea the wealth of natural resources they’d thrown away—a grandmother lode of precious metals and diamonds and the largest deposit of petroleum anywhere in the galaxy. They’d walked away and metaphorically quitclaimed the deed.
However, Biggs, who’d all but invented contingency planning, had seen the writing on the wall, and, even before the dismantling had begun, had relocated his company to the ancient, defunct lava tunnels crisscrossing the planet. Being underground allowed him to operate undetected and avoid many of the irritations and inconveniences of being topside. Traveling around the planet via the subterranean highways was a cinch. He could go anywhere and keep tabs on everything. He didn’t have to worry about dragon attacks, volcanic eruptions setting buildings on fire, or being gassed to death by a toxic atmosphere.
And due to Earth’s stupidity, he now faced no competition from government or private industry.
If not for the dragons, everything would be perfect. He focused on Hicks again. “What do you have to report?” He knew the ops manager hadn’t dropped in for a chat.
“Two items.” Hicks mistook the question as an invitation to sit and sank into a chair. “First—the workers were drilling for palladium and discovered another massive reservoir of petroleum.”
“Figures. Do what you have to do to work around it,” he said.
A woke Earth had been weaning itself from fossil fuels, shifting to “renewable” energy sources, but on Elementa, fossil fuels were a renewable source, due to the abundance and proliferation of lava worms. All it took to convert the decaying organic matter to petroleum was heat, pressure, and a little time. Elementa had all three. The geology so inhospitable to human life and favorable to dragons accelerated oil production. The planet was a wildcatter’s paradise.
