by Terah Edun
But as she stared at the Muareg, her breath held tightly, Ciardis was beginning to think that these elementals weren't as rare or as mythical as everyone was led to believe.
“First the Landwight, then the mountainous Cold Ones, now this,” she whispered to herself. “What next, fire drakes?”
“I think fire drakes are a bit much,” Terris said in an awed tone from nearby.
Ciardis blinked and glanced over at her friend, then sighed.
Terris's mouth was agape and she looked decidedly…excited.
Ciardis would have preferred an emotional range of anywhere from awestruck to cautiously wary. Surprised and delighted were not what she wanted anyone in this party feeling, especially the woman who considered gryphons with clawed feet the size of her forearm as “cute.”
Ciardis edged over a bit, determined to nudge her best friend out of her stupor.
Now is not the time to pick up a new kith pet, Ciardis spluttered in her head.
To her surprise, Terris turned to her and said in a shocked tone, “Of course not!”
Ciardis blinked. “Not what?”
Terris put her hands on her hips and narrowed her eyes.
“Did I say that out loud?” Ciardis asked.
“I'll give you one guess,” the Kithwalker said dryly.
“Umm, right, what I meant was—”
“That kith and inhuman mages with abilities like kith are two completely different types of entities,” Christian said.
Ciardis looked over her shoulder with a raised eyebrow. “Did everyone hear what I said?”
A chorus of “yeses” echoed from her surroundings, and Ciardis had the decency to blush. Her shoulders hunched a bit at her faux pas. She would be the first person to tell you that kith were as intelligent and emotionally responsive as the humans who surrounded them. Some even more so than their bipedal counterparts. But calling the Muareg a kith was almost but not quite as insulting as referring to Christian's koreschie heritage as savage.
Her eyes flashed over Christian's half-visible face in the glowing light of the Muareg's magic. He was anything but savage.
She knew that.
“My apologies,” she stammered as an unseen hand clasped her shoulder and squeezed tightly before releasing just as quickly. She didn't know who it was, but it made her feel slightly better. Enough for her to tilt her head over at her bemused best friend, who nodded and smiled, and turned a patient gaze back to the Muareg that still begged for their attention in their midst.
Whatever he's doing, Ciardis thought as she watched, it's taking quite a while.
You know, sarin, some initiatives take time, whispered a sinuous voice in her mind.
Ciardis groaned internally. Just what I need, when I thought I'd gotten rid of all of the interlopers in my head.
The dragon sniffed. I will forget you said that.
Ciardis twisted her mouth in a half-grimace. I wish you wouldn't.
After the dragon was silent for some moments, Ciardis sighed in relief. Perhaps she left.
I'm still here, said the dry voice of the Ambassador of Sahalia.
It took everything Ciardis had in her not to yell aloud in frustration at the continuous intrusion into her private thoughts.
Instead she settled for turning slightly to the side and giving the dragon in human form the most baleful look possible. Ciardis made sure to keep the Muareg, with his glowing eyes and glowing object that was beginning to resemble the ribs of a fat, round cage, in her wary line of sight, though. She had, after all, invented a new rule sometime during her myriad adventures—always keep the glowing thing with the potential ability to kill you under surveillance. Open surveillance, or otherwise it didn't really matter.
She had the feeling the rule was going to come in handy on this side trip that was turning into the trek from the lower realms of hell.
Sarin, she heard in her head. It felt like the vocal version of a well-fed cat poking its prey…just because it could.
Trouble was, she didn't feel like being anyone's mouse.
What? Ciardis snapped back. She didn't bother modulating her testy tone. The dragon ambassador was getting on her nerves, and she knew that Raisa was well aware of that fact.
It might have had something to do with the fact that the woman seemed to live to drop in and out of Ciardis's life like a surprise guest, and left just as much as turbulence in her wake as an entire stampede of cattle.
Well, well, chided the dragon, someone's testy.
I don't know about you, but some of us are about to be run through a gauntlet of hundreds of brigands with few weapons and fewer resources, Ciardis tossed back. That is, if we want to move to the gates of Kifar unmolested and undetected.
Ciardis would swear to her dying day that at that moment she could feel the dragon swishing its tail in amusement. Which was as odd as it sounded, because she wasn't looking at Raisa, and even if she was, she knew that the ambassador was currently in human form.
It was almost like she could feel the dragon's movements as a separate extrasensory perception. Inside her head.
She decided to file that away as no way, no how.
She needed to be able to feel dragon emotions as much as she needed a set of tentacles on her back.
What has you so rankled? the dragon asked. Her voice was soft. Almost…patient. But it would be a mistake to think of the dragon as anything but calculating. To what end goal, Ciardis had no idea. But dragons and patience tended to not be two words put together much.
Ciardis twitched her shoulders in unease. She wanted this conversation to be over. Right now. This was the longest mental conversation she’d had with the ambassador since they'd met. Normally she wouldn't have minded getting better acquainted with someone who obviously had a card up their figurative sleeve that they were just waiting to pull. Ciardis knew it. Raisa knew it. It would be better to know what that card was than to have it sprung on her like a bad meal.
But this was neither the time nor place for congenial chitchat. And, quite frankly, it disturbed her that the dragon thought it was.
Perhaps she just doesn't feel the situation warrants her much danger, Ciardis thought with dark amusement. It was moderately funny, considering that most recently it had been the dragon ambassador who was the one captured and under threat.
Raisa had been as angry about that experience as any kidnapped individual could be expected to be.
Now she was as cool as a cat basking in the sun. And twice as annoying.
Ciardis didn't bother castigating the dragon for invading her thoughts. She wasn't dumb. Open mind meant open invitation to her kind, after all.
As well to certain males of my own species, Ciardis thought wearily.
A small smile graced the dragon's plump human lips briefly.
Aren't you forgetting something, Ciardis? Raisa asked in a sinuous whisper.
Ciardis raised an eyebrow. She had lost her train of thought a long time ago, not that she'd admit it.
Sarin, said the dragon in that dry and ever-patient tone that Ciardis realized too late wasn't patience but irony. The dragon knew something the human didn't, and it amused her greatly.
Ciardis gritted her teeth and said in her thoughts, Spit it out already.
A moment of silence.
If you wish, but perhaps if you weren't so focused on your personal problems, the dragon said right back, you'd see that the Muareg that stands right in front of you is both more and less complicated than you make him seem.
Ciardis turned cautious eyes to the creature of the desert. She couldn't discount Raisa's advice. But she also had no idea what she meant.
Perhaps that confusion in her thoughts was enough to push the dragon to have pity on a poor Weathervane, because this time the dragon ambassador spoke up without prompting.
An amused chuff sounded in Ciardis's thoughts. Almost a cross between a dragon's snort and a human's cough. There is one more elemental.
That belongs to this land? Ciardis asked.
> That you've already encountered.
Ciardis wouldn't give Raisa the satisfaction of a gasp of surprise. She didn't have to, though. After all, the dragon could read her mind.
Before Raisa could say it, though, a ray of light went off in Ciardis's head. The elemental of the sea.
A fitting counterpart to this new one you've discovered, wouldn't you say?
The dark amusement in Raisa's voice couldn't be hidden.
Ciardis swallowed harshly and turned back to look at the Muareg that stood in the dead center of their little group.
And what would you call him? she asked in a wary tone.
Why, the elementals of the sand, Raisa said with unrestrained glee.
Friends of your people? Ciardis sniped back, knowing full well that the Muareg had been more servant than friend to dragons in general.
They certainly do not present friendship to yours, the dragon coolly shot back.
Is this what you've been glowering over for the past day? Ciardis said, not to be outdone. Sulking like a child as you overlooked the horizon.
The dragon didn't take the bait to rise in anger. Which was just as well.
Instead Raisa looked Ciardis dead in the eye and solemnly said, That and more.
Ciardis shifted uncomfortably. She wanted to know more.
She wanted to know what the dragon knew, she needed to know where Raisa had come from, and for a moment it felt like the most important thing in the world. More important than the quest that the Algardis emperor had sent her on, more important even than figuring out what it was the Muareg was doing.
Then Raisa quit playing games.
She turned her head toward Ciardis in a move too sinuous for her human body, her eyes shifted to their reptilian state and scales appeared on her face, and the world disappeared.
4
From one moment to the next she didn't wonder anymore. She knew.
Time fell away. Sounds fell away.
All Ciardis could understand was that she was in the presence of the dragon ambassador.
Not standing beside her but standing within her.
It felt like being enveloped in a heat quite unlike anything she had ever experienced.
It wasn't the dry heat of the desert surrounding them. Nor was it the wet, thick heat of summer in the east.
It was the heat of the breath of a thousand kith at her back.
The heat that cloaked her in an almost-binding cocoon of power.
It was at once both restrictive and reassuring. Because within that heat was a signature. The signature of the dragons who had come before her. The memories of their past lives and the thoughts of their present. It felt like being home.
Ciardis had a second to realize that these weren't her memories. They were too foreign. Too strange.
“Why are you doing this?” Ciardis shouted.
She knew that she was imprisoned in her own mind, but she could physically feel herself responding. So she spoke from her mouth and tried, unsuccessfully, to thrash and flail with her hands.
Ciardis heard Raisa say in a flat tone, “Because it is necessary.”
“How is this necessary,” Ciardis said while feeling her blood pressure rise. “I need to be where I was. With the group. Focusing.”
“Yes,” snapped Raisa. “Focus. Focus on who you are. What you could become.”
Ciardis let anger seep into her tone. “I am focused.”
“You are distracted,” corrected the dragon.
Ciardis laughed. “And who isn't?”
“Your companions,” said the dragon softly. “The people dying in the winter vales to give you a chance. The emperor as he schemes one machination after another to keep his petty throne.”
Ciardis paused. “And you?” she asked.
“And me.” Raisa sighed heavily. “Though in none of the ways you think. Even my being here this long is not what I imagined.”
“Here?” Ciardis said while projecting a sense of her imprisoned mind.
“Here,” said Raisa, showing her something else.
The lands across the seas. The lands where she and Ciardis's physical presence still remained.
“Algardis,” Ciardis said.
“Yes,” said Raisa in a weary tone. “I need to be home. My home. But I cannot leave until my task is done, and that is to instill some common sense in your thick head before it’s too late and you lose the war before you’ve won your battles.”
Ciardis bit her lip and said in a grudging voice, “There are more fights and battles than I could ever win. But I do want to try. I am trying.”
Raisa grunted.
“How can I change?” Ciardis challenged her. “How can I adapt? How can I survive?”
The dragon's voice positively radiated with approval. “Those are the questions you should have been asking all along. Now go.”
“Go? Go where?” Ciardis asked.
Then she felt herself drop into more memories.
Scents and sounds she'd never experienced. Flashes of memories that she'd never recalled before. Memories that she didn't believe she would ever encounter.
The heat of hot magma on her neck as she basked in the fire pools.
The feel of her wing dipping under the weight of her companion as he banked left to sharply fall away into a night sky brighter than anything she'd ever seen.
The sound of syllables screeched in a decibel range that would have shattered a normal ear.
A human ear.
But she wasn't human and this wasn't her.
She was curiously at peace about that fact.
But she figured screaming and thrashing, even if she could move, would do nothing.
She was locked inside her own head, after all.
Well…her head and the dragon ambassador's.
“Raisa?” Ciardis said out loud. Looking for the voice that guided her before. She'd thought they'd been making actual progress. She hadn't been able to see the dragon then, but at least she had known she was there.
Ciardis turned around and around, trying to get her bearings. She wasn't standing on anything. But she wasn't falling either.
She was just there.
In empty space that felt like being cloaked in a pleasant fire.
Ciardis knew that she was still speaking inside her mind, but it only felt right to vocalize her thoughts rather than think them. It made sense that the ambassador would still be able to read her thoughts and sense her emotions, even from within their minds as they were. But it didn't mean that it felt right.
“Here I am, sarin,” Raisa said in an unreadable tone as she materialized in front of Ciardis.
Ciardis felt her jaw drop.
For some reason she'd expected the dragon ambassador to appear in her reptilian form. Or something similar. It was, after all, what she should primarily identify with. And they were in Raisa's mind with Raisa's memories and Raisa's thoughts.
But no.
Her appearance was still human. And what was more, it was regal.
With wide eyes, Ciardis looked the ambassador up and down like you would a prize bull at market. Raisa took a moment to do the same to Ciardis, walking around the Weathervane with an unsettling gaze as the wind whipped the loose curls of their hair into a frenzy. Ciardis felt the sand formerly locked in her hair fall down her back, but she stood stock-still. She silently took in the brilliance of Raisa's billowing blue silk robes, the stickpins that fell out of her hair one by one, and the jewels on her wrists and neck that sparkled. Ciardis could barely breathe as she waited for it to happen. Something that would break this vision. Instead she froze as the ambassador reached out to brush a hand against her cheek. A momentary flash of power leapt from the pale skin of the dragon in human form to the human with the dusky complexion of one who had been sunning herself for a very long time.
But more than power slipped between the skin-to-skin contact.
More than the pleasure of having another being touch her when she'd gone without physical sen
sation except for fire and heat for what felt like a dozen years.
But instead of just an impact, the flesh-to-flesh touch prompted a realization.
With a twisting stomach and a stoic face, Ciardis suddenly knew that this wasn't a fantastical memory. It wasn't a dream either.
It was very real, and they weren't in Algardis.
Not anymore.
“Where are we?” the slightly frightened Weathervane asked.
The dragon narrowed the lids of her lined eyes in a sultry stare.
“Why, Weathervane? Are you frightened?” Raisa asked in an almost mocking tone.
Ciardis's lips twitched into a frown. She felt like doing a lot more, including wiping that smug look off Raisa's face with her wind-bound hands, but she still couldn't move an inch.
She hovered like ghost in the ether, waiting for the dragon's power that cloaked her to release her. This was a prison of mind and power, one that she couldn't break even as her muscles twitched for relief from the stasis and her mind yelled for its freedom.
Ciardis Weathervane didn't like being a prisoner to anyone just one bit. If she hadn't tolerated it in the cold, desolate space of the north, she certainly wouldn't here.
But squirming muscles and glaring eyes weren't doing much good here.
Perhaps instead of taking those lessons on shielding so quickly, I should have pressed Vana for more, Ciardis thought as she reminisced on her small and hurried lessons on the run toward the Ameles Forest.
Ciardis felt her unease grow as she sank further into the swirl of thoughts, of memories, of visions, and of ideas. None of which were her own. But more than just the amalgamation of dreams of the past and future, it was her place in the present that most disturbed her.
Ciardis squared her shoulders as she fought to keep from flinching when Raisa trailed her fingers searchingly on her jaw. She'd never been frightened of the ambassador before, and she wasn't about to give Raisa the satisfaction of showing fear now. If she could watch the ambassador break the neck of another dragon in her mighty jaws and face her after that, then this…vision, séance, meeting…whatever it was, was nothing in comparison.
Although Ciardis didn't fool herself.
This female was no less deadly in her human form, and far more calculating.
