“And the sword you carried with you?” Nathaniel wondered.
“Legendary sword. The dwarves found it is made of mithril, and they’ve began making more of them. Mithril pierces the dragon scales rather easily.”
Nathaniel looked to Matrees, and the queen nodded. “We’ve seen that ore before, but paid it no mind. If it is as important as you say, maybe we should start mining it.”
Wylan nodded. “If the dragons ever make it through your magic barrier, it would be very helpful.”
“And you really have dwarves and elves in your city?” Nathaniel asked.
“Yes. They are from the mountains, and their homes were destroyed by dragons. They came to take refuge with us. So far it seems to be working well.”
“And they’re part of this dragon guard you have?” Matrees wondered.
“Some of them, but others help in other ways. Mostly the dwarves make our weapons, and the elves help the dwarves in rebuilding parts of the city that are inhabited.”
“Fascinating,” Nathaniel said. “And this dragon tamer is the reason for the friendly dragons?”
“I think so,” Wylan said. “They keep pretty well to themselves, but I suspect there are a few of them that don’t need much control to stay friendly.”
The king and queen looked to one another.
:Be careful,: Lissandra said. :I’m unsure how much we can trust them.:
:What makes you say that?: Wylan wondered. :They’ve been nothing but nice to us, and they’ve been trapped in their city for ten years. I think it’s natural to want to know more of how the world is doing.:
:Maybe…: the wyvern soul didn’t sound convinced.
“And your arm?” Matrees asked. “That happened from a dragon?”
“Healing, actually,” Wylan said. She told them her story—how her parents were attacked by a blue dragon that destroyed her home, and her quest for revenge. When she’d battled the blue dragon, her arm had been torn from her body, and though the healers tried to reconnect it, it wasn’t until her wyvern soul stepped in that the arm was healed. “The arm isn’t completely mine,” Wylan finished. “It shows the soul within me.”
The king raised his eyebrows. “So much information to take in. This has been most enlightening.” He leaned forward, his voice dropping to barely more than a whisper. “Tell me, are the emperor and empress still Douglas and Clarissa Chaldrin?”
Wylan nodded.
“Pity,” Nathaniel said. “I’d wished they’d been eaten by dragons.”
Wylan gasped.
Matrees waved her hand, as if batting away the shock. “We owe them no allegiance now, not when everything’s fallen down around us. They are worse than tellik shit.”
“And that’s about all they spew, too. Hateful curs,” Nathaniel said. “Be mindful of them. They were up to no good before the dragons came. I can’t imagine much has changed.”
Wylan thought about how the emperor and empress hadn’t really put in much of an appearance since she’d been around. In fact, it seemed the dragon guard ran things in Darubai. However, that could just be how it looked to her. It was likely Garrett took his commands from the emperor and empress, and she didn’t need to know, so she hadn’t been told. She didn’t voice any of these concerns to the king and queen, however. She only nodded.
“Well, I feel we’ve probably tired you out, and there’s one more person who’d like to see you before you rest,” Matrees said. She rang a bell beside her plate, and the door opened. The female guard bowed her way in.
“Wylan is ready to see Kelvin now,” Nathaniel announced.
Besides drifts of sand, the streets of Darubai were empty after the storm. Leaghan tried to ignore the additional debris of buildings, and the few charred remains of people that lay by the wayside. Wyverns were already winging through an orange, evening sky, gathering bodies, and taking them to Dragon Aerie where they’d be buried amidst the Fire Fruit Forest. It was a new custom, the thought being that those who died could lend their aid to the trees, helping them grow so that they may, in death, get their revenge on the dragons who killed them, as well as protect the city they’d lived in.
Drifts of sand through the city street made walking hard, but with the help of her staff, Leaghan sloughed her way through, following Josef and Marcella. She’d never been to the Dwarven District, and when she got there, Leaghan was in awe of how well the dwarves had put their part of the city back together. There were no missing roofs, there were no broken houses. The giant statue in the center of the square was every bit the image of dwarven design, and looked nearly lifelike.
Nearly lifelike. There was a blemish near the hem of the dwarf’s dress that most people wouldn’t be able to see, but Leaghan had better eyesight for most, and she knew dwarf statuary. To her, the blemish was hard to miss. Someone had slipped with their chisel.
The only destruction she saw was that of the mithril forge. Leaghan recognized the look of dragon attack, but something didn’t seem to fit. The destruction looked to come from within the forge, rather than outside which was normal for a dragon attack.
“How did it happen?” Leaghan asked, looking up to Josef.
Josef explained what he knew of the attack and how a rogue dragon destroyed the forge in what seemed a suicide attack.
“Can they blow up?” Leaghan wondered, looking to Marcella.
“It’s possible that he was consumed by his fire, I suppose.”
“Because this looked like he blew up,” Leaghan said, turning back to the forge. “What is it that I should be looking for?”
“Just the energy,” Josef said. “We know this is an unusual crime scene, and that’s why we’re investigating it.”
Leaghan nodded. “And you’re going to help me?” she asked Marcella.
“As much as I can,” she said.
Leaghan took the lead, stepping over drifts of sand and into the forge. There was a new anvil sitting in the center, but besides new bricks in certain spots where the fire would be, there wasn’t anything more within the forge. Piles of sand…there were piles of sand, and there wasn’t any way Leaghan could clean those out, so she took up a spot on the edge of the fire pit. Marcella sat beside her.
There was a strong, cloying smell in the air, like cloves, or patchouli. It was spicy and earthy all at the same time, and it reminded Leaghan of home. The smell helped relax her, but it also held a note of danger about it. She couldn’t be sure if she was smelling danger on the perfume, or if she was already sensing the energy of the forge.
She looked around the spacious, circular building, and tried to imagine what it had been like in those moments a huge dragon head barreled through the door, and took the forge up in flames. It would have had to be a terrible concussion of fire to destroy the items within the forge. Of course, she’d seen some of the power dragons commanded, and dragon fire was certainly more powerful than regular fire. It was a wonder that the forge even stood. Dragon fire was unlike any other fire in that it could kindle things most flames couldn’t, and when it burned, it burned everything around it to ash.
“How do we do this?” Leaghan wondered, pulling herself back to the present.
“You just relax and let me in. Then, I want you to open yourself to the magic in the air around the forge.” Marcella took her hand, and Leaghan relaxed under her grip.
Leaghan worked her way through the relaxation techniques that Marcone had taught her, getting her mind ready for magic. The only difference was, this time she wasn’t getting ready for any kind of magic she’d studied before. Instead, she was getting ready to sense other magic.
Marcella was artful in her powers. Leaghan barely noticed when the yellow wyvern slipped into her mind, and opened her mental eyes to see through the elf’s eyes.
When she was fully relaxed, Leaghan opened her eyes, and looked around. There was less a sense of seeing magic, and more a sense of feeling it. Close to her body, she felt the creeping swell of magic, and she knew that was the magic of her robes and
her staff. They had a certain feel to them, an essence that spoke of Leaghan, of wizards.
Beside her, and within the doorway, she felt different energy, energy that was old, magic that was serpentine and vengeful if unleashed.
“That’s our magic,” Marcella said. “You can sense the dragon power in us, that’s good. Now you know what yours feels like, and what ours feels like. Can you sense more?”
She didn’t need to try. When she felt beyond the ancient, knowing power of the wizard, and the wild, serpent magic of the dragons, her mind was flooded with a vision. It was something that had happened to her. She was back in the keep, and outside her door was the red wyvern, his eyes glazed over and slightly milky, his face relaxed, and possessed.
The smell of cloves and patchouli filled her nose, choked the breath from her, and brought tears to her eyes.
“Possession,” she said. She coughed, and clutched at Marcella’s hand as she fought for breath. When she gained enough, she spoke again. “This person stinks. Strong perfume. Cologne maybe.”
“They’re possessed by what?” Josef asked. There was an edge to his voice, as if things were falling together, a puzzle fitting itself together as he watched.
Leaghan shook her head. She couldn’t help but see Andraal, and wondered if this might be him. It didn’t have the feel of the arch-mage, but did that mean anything? If he was within another person, wouldn’t that mean he would feel like that other person?
“I keep seeing the red wyvern that attacked me in the keep.” Breathing was easier now. The moment she acknowledged the smell, it started to abate, as if it was vying for her attention, and once it had it, it no longer needed itself to be known. “But more importantly, I see his eyes, the way they looked, the way his face was set and focused.”
Josef grunted a confirmation. But circled around the forge, glancing out windows, as if he was looking for something. He bent out the window and picked up a leathery looking length of orange rind.
“Fire fruit?” Leaghan wondered.
“You know who it is?” Marcella asked her. “Can you feel anything about the energy that might show you who it is?”
Leaghan glanced to Josef, and she saw his eyes trained on something through one of the open windows.
“I know who’s behind it,” Josef said, and with that, he darted from the forge, and took off down the street.
“Josef!” Marcella called, and ran to the doorway after her friend, but he was already gone. What was more, the wind was picking up again, and sand was swirling through the streets. The storm was coming back, and Leaghan worried it would bring the dragons once more.
Marcella punched the doorframe and let out a beastly growl that was more wyvern than it was human. “I have to go after him.”
Leaghan nodded. “Go. I will get myself back to the keep.”
“I can’t leave you alone,” Marcella said.
“Do you want me to come along?” Leaghan asked.
Marcella nodded, drawing her dragon saber from her belt and the wind swirled her ebony hair and blue dress around her in a torrential cloud. It looked strange seeing such a hard weapon in the hands of a woman who wore such soft dresses.
Leaghan banished her magic sight and joined Marcella. The wind outside the forge took her by surprise. Using her staff, she leveraged her way through the wind and the rushing sand. Amidst the clouds of sand, purple lightning flashed.
“They’re coming back!” Leaghan yelled to Marcella.
The yellow wyvern nodded.
“Where’s Josef?” Leaghan asked.
“I can sense him, just follow me!”
A throb of power came from behind them; Leaghan barely had time to turn before a blast of black lightning surrounded her. She waited to feel the lightning enter her body, tear her limb from limb, boil her blood in her veins, anything. She didn’t expect to see a soft glow of white light surround her, and send the lightning arching off into the sky.
“You’ve failed me!” Andraal said. He was wearing the little boy’s body once more, his mouth black and hanging open in rage. His eyes were like inky pools of power, swirling with rage. “You said you’d send the dragons away, and you failed!”
Lightning shot from his hands again, and again the protective orb surrounded Leaghan. The lightning flashed away once more.
“I need more time!” Leaghan called back to him. “I haven’t got the power. I don’t have the blood like you did.”
“Leaghan!” Marcella screamed, and tried to pull her into an alley and away from the fight. Leaghan stood firm, but managed to push the wyvern into the alley, away from Andraal.
“You had years to prepare, and hundreds to bleed for your cause. You gave me no direction!” Leaghan called back.
“A simple spell,” Andraal called back to her. “So simple, it doesn’t even require a wizard to do it.” She wasn’t calming him, if anything Andraal seemed to be further incensed by her excuse. “If you’ve even bothered to search for my library, then you’d have found the schematics for the cube!”
He doesn’t know I’ve found it, Leaghan realized. If I found his library. He still doesn’t know that I’ve gone in there. It was small, but it told Leaghan one thing—Andraal wasn’t all-knowing. Andraal wasn’t watching her every move.
He held up his hand again, but as he was about to fire another round of lightning, something snapped within Leaghan, and she felt the magic pouring back into her, the magic she’d worked so hard to keep out, to keep in check. She didn’t want this magic. This was the wild magic, and all it wanted was control.
“Tell me more of this cube!” Leaghan shouted, but it wasn’t her voice, it was the voice of magic. It hummed through her body, it echoed through the sand storm. Tendrils of lightning danced over her skin, and she could feel light building behind her eyes. The ward that kept the wild magic at bay was threatening to break. She couldn’t hold it back much longer. If he continued to fight her, the barrier would be down. For all she knew, he wasn’t trying to kill her at all, but to up the stakes, and to do that, he was fracturing the wardings that kept the wild magic away.
Andraal seemed to consider the new Leaghan. He dropped his hand and nodded. “That’s the spell you need.”
“How do I make it? What does it do?”
“It traps magic within it,” Andraal told her, his voice carrying to Leaghan on the surging wind. She felt the pressure on her wards ease even as some of the hostility left his voice. “Use it to bleed the wyverns, there’s magic in their death. Bleed them, and channel the power into a protective spell. Strengthen the wards, that’s all they need is maintenance, and they will work once more.”
“How do I make it?” she wondered.
“Forge a box. I don’t’ care how you do it, just do it!” Andraal spat.
“It will be done!” She had no intention of doing it, but she needed him gone if the wards were to heal. Even as she assured him, she felt the small fissures in the ward dissipate, she felt the warding become whole once more.
“I will be back, and when I come, these dragons had better be gone.”
He vanished, and with him went the pressure on her wards. She sagged to her knees, the wind howling around her a lonesome testament to the fear she felt coursing through her veins. She closed her eyes against the sting of sand, and tried to avoid gasping for breath. Her hands were shaking as she raised the sleeve of her robe to her nose and mouth to keep the sand at bay.
The robes had protected her. At least the magic circles she’d inscribed on them were working. She probed the ward that kept the wild magic at bay, but she couldn’t feel any place where they were out of sorts.
She sighed in relief, and pushed to her feet, turning to the alley where she’d pushed Marcella.
How could he have been so stupid? How didn’t he notice the smell the first time he’d entered the forge? It took magic to tell him something that was in plain sight? The smell—cloves, patchouli—it belonged to one person that he knew, and that person was on the
military council.
Matthew Vortagen.
If what Leaghan said was true, then Matthew might not even know he was part of the attack. It made sense, though. Sure, he couldn’t have brought the dragon into the forge, but he had dragon fire as a means of attack. It was completely possible that the dragon hadn’t even caused the damage, but Matthew did trying to blame the dragons.
And the fire fruit. He’d been so dumb. The fire fruit could have helped him. Wylan had fought a blue dragon when she’d first arrived in Darubai. She’d consumed fire fruit, and it helped her control the water the dragon summoned around her. Furthermore, she’d been able to stop the dragon from using the water magic again. If the fire fruit allowed a person to negate the power of a dragon, could it also bring that power out, maybe in an explosion?
It was beyond Josef why anyone who hated dragons that much would destroy their means of fighting dragons, but he couldn’t deny what they’d found.
Possession, he thought. That’s what Leaghan said it was. How on earth could he have been possessed? But he’d seen the same evidence with Nevik. When Nevik attacked Leaghan, it was as if he’d been driven by another force. Josef didn’t want to believe it, but he’d personally taken Nevik to a guarded chamber in another wing of the keep, and halfway there, Nevik became himself again. He didn’t know what he’d done, and he hadn’t been aware of anything after he’d had dinner. It was as if he’d fallen asleep, and only woke up moments before Josef put him in solitary. Tellik shit. What next? He didn’t want an answer to that question.
The wind was getting stronger, and he’d lost sight of Matthew in the rush of sand that beat through the streets. Now and then he thought he saw a shadow darting through the streets, but honestly, Matthew could be anywhere at this point. He might not even be human any longer. The thing that kept Josef going was that he hadn’t found a shred of clothing, and it was unlikely a wyvern on the run would have taken the time to strip and carry his clothes with him.
Dragon Forged: Chronicles of Dragon Aerie Young Adult Fantasy Fiction (Plague Born Book 3) Page 16
