Northern Storm ac-2

by Juliet E. McKenna

  The sapphire light glowed bright, a swelling column reaching up from her upturned palms into the vast emptiness of the sky. It held steady, pulses of brilliant light running up and down its length. Velindre drew her hands just a little distance apart and focused all her mageborn instincts on the space between them. The azure beams within the column of light flickered and then began coiling in on themselves. The light grew brighter, paler, lightning-white with pulses of sapphire shooting down from the uppermost sky to vanish into the incandescence building between Velindre’s outstretched hands.

  Now she had to create the illusion of a dragon. She drew out a thread of blue-white magic to mark the long line of the creature’s back above the shoreline before her. Chilling the air, she studded its back with spines like icicles, rising from a ridge of thick scales grey as frost. Spreading her hands, she ended the tail in a heavy blunt spike and turned her attention to the arrow-shaped head, long, lean jaw white as the purest cloud, opening to reveal a mouth of blue shadow and an array of ice-white teeth cruel as a mountain winter.

  ‘Don’t stand there admiring it,’ scolded Azazir. ‘Give it some substance. Don’t stop gathering the magic’ Velindre struggled to maintain her grip on the pulsating mass of elemental energy. The column of azure light was rippling alarmingly, sapphire pulses shooting skyward. The dragon began to fade, barely sketched as it was. She bit her lip, tasting blood in her mouth as she fought for control over the fickle element.

  Slowly, painstakingly, Velindre wove the magic together and strengthened her creation. She gave it long elegant limbs where sapphire light made bones and sinew and cloud clothed them in muscle and scale. She hammered out white armoured plates for its flanks before moulding smaller belly scales, opalescent as sunrise clouds. Mist coalesced into vast translucent wings shimmering with faint rainbow haze.

  ‘Very pretty,’ murmured Azazir with scant admiration. But can you make it fly?’

  Sparing just enough attention to ensure that her carefully drawn creation did not fade, Velindre concentrated on gathering every scrap of elemental power that she could find between the uppermost skies and the valley she stood in. She felt herself suffused by possibilities, her hair spreading in a halo, her skin crawling with the touch of untamed energy. Focusing on the brilliant heart of the column of light, she forced the elemental might into the maelstrom of magic, confining the roiling power in an ever tighter circle. Some remote, dispassionate part of her mind wondered how many times she had told arrogant pupils never to summon more magic than would be released in their spell. How foolhardy was this? All the same, she concentrated every fibre of her being on winding the circle of power ever tighter, ever smaller. A pinpoint of sapphire light flared in its burning white heart.

  ‘That’s it!’ Azazir crowed. Now cut it loose, throw it to the dragon or we’ll both be dead!’

  With a thrill of horror, Velindre realised that the sapphire spark was doubling in size with every beat of her heart. It was sucking the power out of the sky of its own volition. There was no way she could contain it. Distantly she recalled Otrick musing on just how the wizards of fearful mainland fable might have wrought their legendary destructions. Now she knew. If she didn’t confine that raw, burgeoning power within the simulacrum of the dragon, mages and non-mageborn alike all the way to Hadrumal would see just such a disaster unfold.

  She hacked at the column of braided air with pure blue energy. In the instant before the sapphire spark could burst free to scour the valley even more bare than Azazir had made it, she thrust the elemental power into the motionless form of the dragon. The cerulean light vanished, recoiling in all directions, whipping back up to the highest reaches of the sky.

  The dragon shivered and blurred, distorted as a distant mirage. Then azure fire kindled in its eyes and it yawned, long slatey-blue tongue tasting the air. It sprang upwards, spreading its great wings and flexing them, tail lashing wildly. Velindre caught her breath as it slipped down the sky, awkward and ungainly. Then she saw the creature catch the whisper of a breeze and seize it, curling the air to support itself with pure instinctive magic. The dragon soared high, graceful and beautiful. It looked from side to side, gathering the winds to itself until a nimbus of blue magelight surrounded it.

  Velindre reached out to the aura and shivered. It was that pure, invigorating power that had seduced her in the heart of the storm, yet now it was something more, laced with the dragon’s uncomplicated delight in its union with the element that had borne it. She couldn’t help herself; she drew the magic to her, opening herself to it. The dragon’s head whipped around and it dived to land on the shoreline with a faint thud, talons gouging the dry mud. Cocking its head to one side, it glared at Velindre, hissing faintly. ‘Let it know you’re more powerful than it is,’ Azazir warned.

  ‘How?’ Velindre asked in a strangled whisper. Her knees felt like water. She licked her dry lips and her tongue found a raw edge on a chipped tooth; she’d clenched her jaw that hard. Close to, the beast was more tenifying than fascinating.

  ‘Think of it as an unruly apprentice.’ Azazir was callously amused.

  Velindre locked gazes with the dragon. It took a stealthy pace towards her, mouth opening wider. Those teeth were incredible, like shards of indestructible ice. She flung an abrupt bolt of lightning just in front of the dragon, smudging its white purity with a shower of dust and stones. The creature retreated, head sinking low between its forefeet, icy spines flattened to its long neck. The light in its eyes faded a little and its long tail curled around its hind legs. Its long blue tongue flickered out to taste the ground where the lightning had landed and it extended a curious forefoot to the blasted hole. ‘Good,’ Azazir approved. Now—’ Whatever he might have said was lost in the water dragon’s emerald fury as it stormed up out of the lake. It ran across the surface of the water, shrieking a challenge that echoed around the barren valley. Unfurling its pale-green wings, it sprang into the air before it reached the shore and plunged down, vicious talons extended on all four feet.

  The cloud dragon writhed out of the way barely in time. The water dragon lashed out with its spiked tail and caught the newcomer full in the side, ripping at its white scales. Purple blood oozed from the wound. The white dragon whipped its head around and fastened its teeth on the green dragon’s hindquarter, worrying at its leg. The water dragon screeched and extended its wings, flapping wildly and whipping up a cloud of dust as it fought to pull away. The cloud dragon held on until it was standing at full stretch on its hind legs, wings outspread to keep its own balance, still tearing at its rival’s flesh. Green-brown blood from the water dragon’s vicious wound stained the pristine whiteness of the cloud dragon’s face and neck.

  The green dragon opened its mouth to breathe a torrent of burning spittle at its tormentor. The white dragon recoiled and released it, sinking back on to its hind legs, still ready to spring, its head weaving from side to side as it licked its bloodied teeth with its slatey-blue tongue. The water dragon wheeled in the air, holding its wounded leg tight to its long body, remaining clawed limbs still extended in warning. The white dragon darted up and this time the green dragon’s lurid breath caught its wing, searing the white membrane like acid. The cloud dragon shrieked in uncomprehending agony, tumbling through the air as it tried to escape the pain. The green dragon pursued it, wings pumping to rise above the shining white creature. Once it was above it, it tore at its white head and neck with its glaucous foreclaws, agate-spiked tail lashing at the wounded white wing. Now the cloud dragon’s head was soiled with its own purple blood, one eye torn to a blind, mined socket.

  It rolled in the air, falling away, trying to escape. The green dragon shrieked its triumph and groped down with its unwounded hind leg, desperate to rip into the white dragon’s unprotected belly. Its exultation was cut short as the cloud dragon breathed a lacerating hail of icy blades straight in its face. The green dragon threw its head back and the cloud dragon shot upwards, jaws fastening on the water dragon’s throat.
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  Wings beating frantically, it forced the creature back, rising above it for the first time. Now the water dragon was on its back, the soft hide between belly and hindquarters exposed, only one clawed hind foot raking the air to defend its vitals. It tore frantically at the cloud dragon’s armoured neck and shoulders with its forefeet, claws skidding off the thick ridged scales.

  Forelegs flailing to defend its head from the water dragon’s tearing claws, the cloud dragon ripped with its hind legs, opening great gouges in the jade-green scales of its foe’s belly. The water dragon lashed back with its tail. Throwing a muscular coil around the white dragon’s own tail, it hollowed its back, wrenching those vicious hind claws away from its wounded underside. Writhing upwards, it bound itself so close that the white dragon had no room to claw at it again. With a single powerful beat of its wings, the green dragon forced the two of them out over the surface of the lake. Then it folded its mighty wings closed with a snap that whipped smoky spray from the water.

  The white dragon flapped hysterically, but with holes gaping in its wing, it couldn’t escape the dead weight of the water dragon pulling it down. It released its killing bite, head straining upwards. The green dragon thrust down with its head, brownish blood muddy on its emerald scales, dark tongue questing for the waters below. With the cloud dragon still caught in the coils of its tail, it fell into the lake. Both creatures vanished into the depths, trails of purple and muddy green blood blurring the crystal purity of the water.

  Not so strong, your little effort.’ Azazir drew a deep, satisfied breath. The shining pallor of fish scales gleamed beneath his skin and green light shone in his eyes.

  The battling dragons erupted on to the surface of the lake in a blaze of sapphire and emerald light. They reared up, batting their wings for balance, each ripping away scales from the other with foreclaws and teeth. The cloud dragon was hissing, the water dragon’s cry a resonant moan that sent a shiver down Velindre’s spine.

  She watched, tears filling her eyes, as the two creatures’ struggles grew weaker, blows landing without strength, evasions becoming clumsy and useless. Finally the cloud dragon collapsed backwards, head drifting on the subsiding ripples. Its motionless wings spread outstretched on the water and its tail dangled away into the depths. The water dragon fell forward on to its enemy’s body, claws scraping ineffectually. It gaped, stretching its sinuous head forward to rip at the cloud dragon’s throat, but this last effort was beyond it. It collapsed, tongue lolling over its teeth.

  Velindre watched, tears falling unheeded down her cheeks, as the creature she had woven with her magic dissolved. The wings blurred to mist, sapphire bones momentarily revealed like a spread of fingers before they vanished. The long, lithe body turned to grey fog tainted with the dusky purple of a storm cloud. The head was the last to fade, the remaining azure eye now dull and lifeless, turned to Velindre in mute reproach. She shivered as it disappeared.

  ‘Draw the magic to you, don’t let it blow away on the wind,’ Azazir rasped.

  Velindre watched the green dragon fading, its wounds widening, cutting the creature into butchered remnants that drifted apart on the water, mercifully growing fainter, with scales, claws and teeth the last to disappear. She saw Azazir transmuted to a hollow semblance of man once again, filled with green-hued water, emerald madness in his eyes.

  Now do you understand?’ He turned to her, eerie intensity lighting his face. Now will you stay?’

  ‘Yes, I understand,’ she said tersely. ‘I understand why Otrick so rarely summoned a dragon. I understand why he kept such magic to himself. He would never create such a creature so lightly, to see it fade and die so soon, still less to watch it killed like that.’ Revulsion choked her.

  ‘So you understand nothing,’ Azazir said with contempt. ‘You had better leave.’

  ‘Gladly,’ snapped Velindre, but not in my underclothes, thank you all the same.’ Cutting violently through the confusion of magic that now permeated the lake, she searched the barren rock of the bottom. She brought all her scattered belongings to land at her feet in a flash of sapphire light.

  ‘Better hurry,’ warned Azazir as he rubbed his hands together. His fingers were flowing through each other as the dry mud beneath his feet turned liquid once more. The dry rocks began to shine in the sunlight as they were coated with cold moisture.

  Velindre looked up to see that the sky was still unclouded and snapped her fingers to summon a flame of pure fire. It burned elemental red, hanging in the air, and she set her clothes drifting around it, steam rising from the sodden cloth. She pulled on her damp boots, stamping as her stockings rumpled uncomfortably beneath her heels. Finding a silver-backed brush in her sodden bundle, she dragged the bristles angrily through her protesting hair.

  ‘What are the differences between a true dragon and simulacrum?’ she demanded. ‘What else do I need to know?’

  ‘What else?’ Azazir’s voice rippled with the myriad streams now cascading down the sides of the valley. ‘Why should there be anything else?’

  ‘Because there always is,’ Velindre said grimly, subduing her imperfectly brushed locks in a tight plait. ‘Especially with wizards. You said there was a void at the heart of a simulacrum. What is there within a true dragon?’

  ‘I wondered if you’d remember to ask about that.’ Azazir’s laughter was like a winter brook tripping over stones. ‘Maybe you might be Otrick’s equal, one day.’

  ‘Well?’ demanded Velindre.

  ‘A true water dragon has a heart of emerald.’ Azazir looked out at the lake and excited ripples raced towards him. ‘Ruby for a fire dragon, sapphire for one living among the clouds. Amber for a dragon born of the earth, for some reason. That’s the other thing the hunters were ready to risk their lives for, to cut out a dragon’s heart. There are no purer gemstones.’

  ‘They killed them for jewels?’ Velindre was astounded.

  ‘So, will you be trying this again?’ Azazir looked at her, his head on one side, expression—as far as it could be seen—contemplative. ‘Or will you just run back to Hadrumal, tail between your legs, too frightened to admit where you’ve been?’

  ‘Otrick would summon a dragon in times of direst need,’ Velindre said carefully, noting that she was now standing in mud up to her ankles. ‘I imagine I would do the same, if I could see no other way of saving myself or some vital situation.’

  ‘Be careful where you work such magic,’ warned Azazir softly. ‘The dragon will go hunting out of blind hunger, not realising what scant time it has to live its borrowed life. It won’t only hunt meat. It senses the void at its heart, even if it doesn’t understand it. It’ll seek gems to fill that emptiness and it will rip apart a building if it gets so much as a sniff of a diamond ring.’

  What happens if it finds them?’ Velindre wrenched her ill-fitting skirt over her head before fighting her way into her bodice, now shrunken in oddly inconvenient places.

  ‘I imagine it’ll win a true life for itself,’ mused Azazir as he gazed out over his lake, which was starting to glow green once more. ‘Then you would have a lot of explaining to do in Hadrumal.’

  Velindre gathered up everything else she cared to salvage inside her blanket and tied it into an awkward load. ‘I’ll bear that in mind.’ She took a deep breath. ‘I don’t suppose anyone will come here again, not from Hadrumal, but if they do, there’s no need to say I was here .

  Azazir ignored her, walking away. Angered, Velindre reached out to hold him back but her fingers simply rippled through his arm. He gave no sign he had even noticed, first striding, then running towards the lake. He dived into the crystal waters and vanished in a flash of emerald radiance.

  Velindre looked up to see the roiling grey clouds that had capped the valley before returning in full force.

  She closed her eyes and sighed. Where should she go: to Hadrumal or Relshaz? She had this secret now and there was no unlearning it. Was it a secret she wanted to share? What would Dev, of all unreliable, untrust
worthy people, do with such knowledge? But these wild wizards had the lore, if one of them could forge a dragon to plunder the Aldabreshin islands. Could she bring herself to hand such dangerous power to Dev, so that he could raise a dragon of his own to rip the interloper to pieces? How long could it be before the Archmage got wind of this dragon loose in the Archipelago? Wouldn’t it be better to be in Hadrumal when that happened and be on hand to present the assembled worthies of the Council with a solution? Necessity would force Planir to overlook her visit to Azazir. Let them deny her the rank of Cloud

  Mistress then.

  But could she live with herself if hoarding this hard-won lore meant that Dev died and innocent people besides, even if they were savage Archipelagans who would murder a mage as soon as look at her? She was cold, dishevelled and exhausted. Her body ached for the reassurance of a warm bath, clean clothes, food and wine. She needed peace and solitude to make sense of this whole unnerving experience, but she couldn’t face the lofty isolation of her silent room in Hadrumal. She needed people around her after the desolation of Azazir’s madness. People who wouldn’t be asking any questions until she had some answers.

  Velindre opened her eyes and seized the last wisps of air still struggling to escape imprisonment inside Azazir’s unnatural storm. Picturing one of the more discreet inns among the bustling cacophony of Relshaz, she fled the silent lakeshore in a flare of sapphire light

  Chapter Fourteen

  You’ve got a funny idea of pleasure, my lord,’ Dev mused as he climbed up on to the Mist Dove’s bow platform. We barbarians would generally prefer living in luxury with a beautiful woman open to our every suggestion to spending a full turn of the moon up to our arses in blood and slaughter.’