Stone Dragon (The Painter Mage Book 5)

by D. K. Holmberg

  Devan snorted, her pained face making it look like she wanted to say something more, and then shook her head. “But neither are here any longer. There is you. Maybe Jakes too. And my father on the other side.”

  “Jakes suspected there were others but he didn’t know what or who they might be.”

  “What we need to find out is why the Protariat is asked to send one person. And why that person was you.”

  That’s what we needed to know, but why did I get the feeling we wouldn’t find out any answers?

  Devan and I sat on either side of the metallic box. The little statue that was Nik rested in the middle of the box. I’d made a point of placing a pile of gravel and then a sheet of slick metal underneath him, so he had a stable platform. Devan had repaired the metal cage so that it was now reinforced, and designed to withstand anything he might attempt to do.

  I held the clear, glass orb in one hand. As it always did, the surface of the orb felt smooth, almost slick, like it had just been dunked in water. The patterns pressed into the glass caught the light of the day, the sun now slowly dipping behind the clouds. A haze of orange streaked across the sky.

  “Are you ready?” I asked.

  Devan fixed me with an amused smile. “You’re the one who has to be ready.”

  “You’re going to use one of your little friends, aren’t you?” I asked.

  Devan held out her hand. The dragon like creature sat in her palm. She blew on it, breathing life into it, and the figurine started to writhe slightly, slowly stretching out silvery metallic wings. As it stretched and grew, it took on more of the shape of the dragon, but never got much larger than a barn owl. It leaped from her hand and swirled around over the top of the box.

  “That’s it?” I asked.

  “What do you want it to do?”

  “I don’t know,” I started. “This one looks like a little dragon. I thought maybe it would be huge and cool and—”

  “Just deal with it,” Devan said. “All Nik needs is the threat of the attack. Hopefully, that keeps him in line, so he doesn’t try pulling anything again.”

  “Yeah, we could probably just sit a cat near the box, and it would scare him.”

  “A cat wouldn’t work.”

  “Why not?” I asked, palming the crystal ball between my hands and readying to push energy through it.

  “A cat is too dangerous. They would just try to eat him.”

  I laughed and split the focus needed to push power into the orb. It grew warm and possibly even a little more slippery. I made certain to hold onto it tightly, squeezing it between my hands. White light built at the center of the crystal, and as it did, I diverted it, pushing it into the sculpture of Nik.

  But not entirely. Feeding too much power to Nik would restore him completely. I wasn’t interested in that; what I wanted was for him to be large enough to move around and for me to see his hand, but not a whole lot larger than that. At least that way his power was restrained, if not restricted.

  I withdrew my focus and will from the patterns on the orb. The light flickered and faded, and the crystal cooled. Working carefully, I set it down in the middle of my lap, cradling it on my legs. If we lost the crystal, there wasn’t going to be any way to recreate it, especially now that Taylor was gone.

  I slipped the glass overtop of the box as Nik began his wake-up ritual. I’d seen it a few times before. First, he stretched his legs, then his arms, and finally he leaned back his neck, almost to the point where it looked like it would snap off. In statue form, he appeared made of some tan colored stone, almost as if comprised of sand.

  As he did, he looked up at me through the glass. His eyes went wide, and I realized that he stared past me, looking up at the dragon circling overhead. I imagined the glass made the dragon seem all the more impressive.

  Nik pulled his eyes away and glanced over at me and then at Devan. A bemused smile twitched the corners of his mouth. “Thought you’d bring some help this time, Oliver?”

  “Devan wanted to watch me kick your ass.”

  Nik twisted and looked toward this back. “I doubt you’d struggle much with me in this form.”

  I suspected he would still pose a bit of a challenge, especially if he got free. At least the cage kept him confined. That and the threat of the dragon circling overhead.

  “You get a new pet?” he asked.

  “Oh, you know me. I like to take care of strays. We have a few cats wandering the yard too,” I said.

  Nik’s smile slipped, and he shook his head. “You don’t need to threaten, Oliver.”

  “I do if you’re going to keep trying to escape.”

  Nik started pacing. I’d seen this trick before and blew a dusting of plain white chalk onto the metal. It would let me see what he was trying to do, what pattern he was determined to create, and would give me the opportunity to stop it if there was any power that could build from it. Each time I worked with him, I had to learn another trick. At least I couldn’t say he wasn’t teaching me.

  “Was that really necessary?” he asked, wiping the chalk off his face and knuckling it out of his eyes.

  “You tell me,” I started.

  Nik crossed his arms over his chest and tilted his head toward me. His short hair blended in with the rest of him, the same sandy color, so much lighter than it had been before he’d been made into a little statue. “Get on with it. What do you want to know this time?”

  I glanced over at Devan. I had lots of questions for Nik, and I knew there were many things he could teach, but we had specific questions today. “Is the Druist a member of the Protariat?”

  “Ah, now you’re getting to some real questions,” Nik said.

  “Real? I haven’t been asking any real questions?”

  He shrugged. “Nothing with any real meat to them.”

  “And how does asking of the Protariat have ‘meat’?”

  Nik stepped toward the edge of the cage and stood on his toes, peering at me. “It shows you’re learning what you’ll need to know.”

  “For what?”

  “For the reason you claim you hold me in this form,” he said.

  I sat back, the weight of the crystal ball settled in my lap heavy on my legs. “Are you saying I need to understand the Protariat to keep Devan safe?” I asked, looking across the cage and over at Devan.

  “I’m saying you need to understand the Protariat if you intend to kill the Druist,” Nik said.

  “I thought you weren’t willing to help me with that?” Killing the Druist Mage had been the reason I needed Nik, especially after seeing how he managed to handle me so easily. There was no way I was going to be able to compete with the Druist Mage if I could barely survive against his apprentice, and I didn’t doubt the Trelking when he said he saw I would need to defeat the Druist Mage. That left me with needing to learn as much as possible to keep myself alive and to be able to handle him.

  “That was before.”

  “Before what?” I asked. “Before you realized you were going to remain a little sculpture, at my mercy? Before you learned I might feed you to a dragon.” I wasn’t sure whether Devan’s sculptures even needed to eat, but it seemed like a good threat.

  “That was before the Druist Mage decided to send hunters across the Threshold.”

  I stared at him and heard the heat in his voice. What the Druist had done angered him. Nik might have changed, he might have become some powerful mage apprentice, but inside he was still the same painter I’d met when I first crossed the Threshold. That guy had been a friend, had been someone I could sit back and talk about the intricacies of power, discuss how to use patterns and the struggle with creating the arcane patterns.

  It was only when I progressed beyond what he was capable of creating, when I became truly valuable to the Trelking, that Nik had started to change and recede. He’d known what was coming, even if I was too naïve to see it. Nik had lived on the other side of the Threshold long enough to recognize there was a certain hierarchy and that a
painter without enough skill with the necessary patterns didn’t have a place.

  In spite of that, Nik hadn’t resented me. Well, maybe he had, but not openly. It wouldn’t have done him any good if he had. The Trelking continued to use me, to train me, and I continued to throw myself into my studies, learning ever more complex patterns, and thinking of other creative ways to use my painting. It wasn’t until I saved the Trelking’s life that I became truly valuable. From that point on, he decided I would have a place in his household.

  Now, I’d stolen his daughter away and hid from the fate he intended for me. What did that make me?

  Nik’s anger was about more than simply the Druist Mage sending hunters across the Threshold. There was a part of him, I suspected, that hurt for what he hadn’t been able to stop. That he hadn’t managed to save Taylor from the hunters. The connection between them had been realer than I knew. Taylor might have run from Nik, but it wasn’t because she feared him.

  “If you want to help, if you really want to help, then you’ll need to teach me, Nik.” I pulled the glass away from the box and leaned forward so I could peer into the cage.

  Nik stared up at me. I couldn’t read the emotion on his face, not with him this light shade of brown. For a moment, I considered animating him a little more, increasing his size, so he was less the bite size Nik and maybe a bit larger, but that was a riskier play than I was ready for.

  “You haven’t let me see her,” he said.

  “If I do, will you answer my questions? Will you help me to learn?”

  “If you don’t, I will do neither.”

  I met his eyes and couldn’t tell if he was only trying to bluff me or if he would hold out. I decided it didn’t matter. If he cared about Taylor, he deserved the chance to see her.

  “Can you watch him?” I asked Devan.

  She glanced up at the dragon swooping overhead. As she did, the metallic creature flew lower, circling right above the top of the cage. I shot Nik a warning glance and ran into the house.

  When Taylor had died, or whatever it was that had happened to her, and I’d used the cylinder on her to shrink her down to statue size, it hadn’t felt right leaving her in the shed with the others. Those statues were prisoners of a sort. I didn’t know what they were, but from what Devan had said and the way Adazi had gone after one of them, told me they weren’t necessarily the most savory of magical creatures. Taylor deserved better than to be housed with them.

  Unfortunately, I didn’t have any other place to keep her. The house was it. She’d been through the house—we still had some of her stuff bagged and stuffed in a corner—and had spent hours trying to read through some of my father’s journals in the sealed basement. She’d always seemed comfortable there, the most engaged and honest of any place I saw her while we were in Conlin, so that’s where I’d placed her.

  Hurrying to the wall with the series of arcane patterns, I triggered the door, and it opened. The light flickered along the stairs, and a series of patterns snaked along the handrail. From what I could tell, the patterns on the rail sealed the door to the basement. I couldn’t imagine the amount of time my father had put into placing those patterns on the railing, let alone on the wall at the top of the stairs.

  At the bottom of the stairs, I paused as I often did these days. When we first returned from the other side of the Threshold, when it had only been Devan and me, we rarely came to the basement. Oh, we came down to learn what my father might have left, to try and understand the secrets he’d kept here, but I hadn’t made any progress on understanding them, not until Taylor showed up. It was because of her I understood the purpose in the book he’d left me, that it was a guidebook for helping me to learn patterns. It was because of her I’d come to understand my father a little better, as strange as that might sound. She had come to Conlin thinking to take the book from me, to cross the Threshold before she understood what it was to help save Hard, and instead had unleashed a nightmare on the city. In the process, I managed to learn I could keep up with some of my father’s plans, could replicate some of his patterns.

  And so I missed Taylor too. Maybe not in the way Nik did. The gods know that when she first appeared, I thought she was attractive, but beauty only gets you so far. Maybe a little farther than if you were ugly, but you’ve got to have something more than looks, at least in my mind. The more I got to know her, the more I suspected there was something I hadn’t yet learned. Now I probably never would.

  I’d set Taylor on the desk. Next to her were the things my father had left me. There was the book of patterns she’d come here searching for, back before I knew anything about Jakes and the other shifters in Conlin. The golden key was there too, no longer quite as important unless we went over to Jakes’s shed, where it was my copy that would open the magical lock. I’d brought a few of the items I needed here, so I didn’t have to fetch them from his place, things like the orb and the cylinder. Then there was the blank sheet of ancient vellum, rolled up and stuffed into a leather tube Devan had made for it, thinking we needed to keep it safe until we knew exactly why my father had left it to me.

  The problem was, there was a reason he chose to leave it to me, but I might never learn it. The book and the key had both come in handy, but what use would I have for the vellum? Nothing, from what I’d seen.

  I grabbed Taylor, holding her carefully. More than any of the other sculptures—even more than Nik—it felt weird to be holding Taylor. She was lying on her back, the same way she’d been when we found her. Her eyes were closed, and she had arms crossed over her stomach, clasped together something like sleeping beauty. Her face had this serene look to it. Somehow, the only part of her that hadn’t turned a sand colored tan had been her hair where she’d modded herself, giving streaks of blue through it.

  I held her in my palms as I hurried back up the stairs, making a point to seal the door again behind me.

  Back outside, I found Devan leaning over the cage with Nik inside. The dragon had perched on her shoulder, looking over the cage and into it with sharp eyes. When it saw me rushing toward them, the dragon flashed its wings and took to the sky again, swirling overhead.

  I plopped down next to Devan and looked at Nik. He waited for me, eyes expectant.

  “Are you sure you want to see her like this?” I asked.

  “I’ve already seen her. I would see her again,” he said.

  Moving slowly, still uncertain whether he might try something, I placed Taylor over the edge of the wall and set her onto the ground. Nik hurried over to her and took her face in his hands. For a moment, I thought he might kiss her as if he expected he could wake her like in a fairy tale. There were kernels of truth in all fairy tales, but even for Nik, that would be pushing it.

  But he didn’t. He traced his fingers around the lower parts of her cheeks, trailing them to her ears and down her neck. When it seemed he might get frisky and cop a feel, I said, “What are you doing?”

  Nik hesitated. “The hunters attacked her, but she’s been modded. There’s a certain level of protection in that for her.”

  “Nik, I don’t know that—”

  “I understand you do not think there is anything that can be done. And likely there is not, not without the help of someone of real power.”

  I wondered if he meant the Druist Mage or the Trelking. Maybe even my father. The Elder was considered incredibly powerful. The more I learned about him, the more powerful he seemed.

  “But I would at least halt what happened to her if there’s anything I can do.”

  “Not in this form,” Devan said. “The transformation halted anything that would have happened.”

  Nik trailed a finger across Taylor’s lips and turned to face us. “You didn’t have to do this to her.”

  “I’m sorry, I couldn’t think of anything else I could do,” I said. I felt terrible I hadn’t noticed Taylor get attacked in the first place, and it was partly my fault she had. She’d only been there because of me.

  “No. Tha
t’s not what I’m trying to say. What I’m saying is…well, it’s thank you, I guess. Had you not done this, she would be forever lost.”

  “Listen, Nik. I’m not certain she isn’t lost. She was attacked by hunters. They steal painter magic, and if you hadn’t noticed, Taylor was a pretty powerful painter.” It hadn’t been much of a surprise the hunters had gone after her first. She would have been the most appetizing, and likely to them, she’d seemed the biggest threat.

  “She might be lost, but at least I can hope for healing. There are those who know how to reverse the hunter attack.”

  That was news to me. “Who?”

  Nik shook his head. “Does it matter? You won’t release me to go to them, and you’re not ready.”

  It still felt strange for Nik to tell me I wasn’t ready for something. I might have thought I’d changed, but I hadn’t changed as much as Nik had in the time since we knew each other.

  “That’s not the only reason you came,” Nik said.

  I glanced over him at Devan. “No.”

  Nik took a deep breath. As he did, I wondered whether it mattered for him to breathe or whether it was the simple familiarity of it that made him do it. Nik turned away from Taylor but stood so she would be at the edge of his vision.

  “I’ve been summoned to the Zdrn. I was wondering if you knew anything about it.”

  Nik frowned. “You could not have been summoned to the Zdrn. It is not time.”

  “You know what it is?”

  He started pacing around the box again, pausing every so often to glance at Taylor. Then he stopped. “If you were summoned, there would have to be a reason.”

  “Yeah, that’s sort of what I figured,” I said.

  Nik peered up at me. “Then you will need to determine what that reason is. There hasn’t been a Zdrn in centuries, though the Druist Mage knew one was due. The Zdrn is not the sort of place a painter would be summoned. And even if it were, answering the summons would be suicide…” He smiled. “Unless that is why you were chosen. Interesting.”

  “Well, the Wasdig that came for me made it pretty clear I was the one summoned. I have only a few days to be ready before he escorts me to the Zdrn.”