by Shae Ford
Fortunately for him, Kyleigh and His-Rua returned before Kael could think up a way to clobber him through his scales. When Rua saw them coming, he quickly drew his arm away and filled the air with a crackling song.
Kael was just glad to see that Kyleigh’s eyes were dry.
She ran to him the moment His-Rua set her down. He held her tightly while she kissed him and tried not to think about valtas, or the Kingdom — or any of the hundred worries that nagged at the back of his head. He wouldn’t force her to endure his pain.
He didn’t want her to have to carry him, not even for a moment.
“Is everything all right?” Kael said when she released him.
She frowned. “Of course it is.”
“Well, I only ask because you seemed fairly upset —”
“It was just a shock, is all,” Kyleigh said with a shrug. “I wasn’t expecting to find a dragon’s grave down there.”
Not just any dragon’s grave — the grave of your soul and her mate, Kael thought to himself. She was still trying to keep secrets from him. He pulled away before she could feel his frustration and turned to the dragons. “Is that it, then? Are we free to go?”
The whistle of His-Rua’s voice rode the air lightly while she watched him — then her gaze sharpened upon Kyleigh.
“Yes. We’re free to go,” she translated.
But the way she glared back at the white dragon made Kael think there might’ve been a little more to it. He looked up at Rua — who suddenly seemed very interested in the pattern of the clouds. It was as if he hadn’t just spent several days yelling things into Kael’s head, or telling him everything he knew about the valtas.
“They’re going to watch us from here and make sure we get on our way. I don’t expect we’ll ever come back,” Kyleigh added. Her gaze swept across the rolling hills and jagged mountains one last time before she clapped him upon the shoulder. “Are you ready?”
No, he wasn’t ready. The trouble in the Kingdom hung over him like a tempest. Its clouds bellowed and spat lightning onto his path. Its cold rain washed down his neck. But he knew there was no avoiding it.
“Yes. Let’s go.”
Kyleigh slipped into her dragon skin, and Kael tried to push the tempest aside as he climbed onto her back.
Make for the seas, halved one. Do not stop, do not turn. Our mercy is a gift … it would be foolish to cast it aside.
Rua’s warning came to him through Kyleigh’s thoughts — softer than when he spoke directly, but somehow more menacing than before. Kael turned just enough to glance at the pair of dragons who crouched behind them. Rua had his mate tucked against his side, his eyes closed in content.
Kyleigh’s wings rose and Kael held on tightly as her body lurched into the air. They flew for hardly a moment before Kyleigh’s voice came inside his head: What are we going to do about the Kingdom? Have you got a plan?
No, he didn’t have a plan. Kael scowled to keep his frustration from coming too close to the surface. He stared at the great mountain as they passed, wishing for its chill. The cave leered at him from between the crags. He thought its cold stare might take his mind off of things. He thought it might give him something else to …
Wait a moment.
A memory woke as he gaped at the mountain. Voices rose in his head:
… our hatching grounds have gone cold …
… now our Motherlands are empty.
… even if I told you where it was, you could never reach it. Rua’s eyes blazed in his memory, pounding force behind his words. The blade lies in the dark and the cold, forgotten … along with all the other dead things.
“Kyleigh?”
Yes?
“What if I told you the dragons had a powerful weapon — one that might end the war with Midlan?”
I’d say that couldn’t possibly be true. Then, after you insisted that it was true, she added before he could retort, I’d say we ought to … borrow it, for a bit.
The cave was coming closer. They were almost even with its mouth. “All right. But what if I told you it would be dangerous?”
How dangerous?
“Exceptionally so.”
Well, I’d be a little less intrigued —
“And what if I told you that if we go to all this trouble, the weapon might not even be there?”
I’d say you were mad. Kyleigh sighed heavily. Her head turned so that he could just see the blazing edge of her eye. But if you think it’ll give us any chance at all against Crevan, I’m willing to try. It’s not as if our odds could get any worse.
Kael smiled — half in relief, and half to keep his throat from clamping down upon his next words: “Turn right. Head for the mountain.”
Kyleigh’s wings stuttered mid-beat. The mountain? No, we’re still far too close to Rua. He’ll tear us to pieces —
“No, he won’t. There’s a cave inside the rocks. Do you see it?”
She followed the line of his finger and groaned. Kael —
“Go!” he yelled, twisting to look behind him. Even from a distance, Rua’s eyes stood out against the shadowed hills. They settled like daggers upon Kael’s face —and he could feel the warning carved inside their every molten vein. “You have to go, Kyleigh! You have to go now!”
There was a considerable amount of defiance in her roar as she turned to glare at him — but her fury died in her throat when Rua snapped open his monstrous wings.
His warning ripped through the air the moment they pulled off-course. It echoed all around the hills and the crags, sharpening as His-Rua joined in. Kael could feel their fury on the back of his neck when Kyleigh landed. She plopped him none-too-gently upon the ground and shoved him towards the cave’s mouth with her horns.
She pushed him through the darkness towards the back of the cave. When the walls grew too narrow, she had no choice but to get into her human skin. Her hands took the place of her horns and her yells cut against the rock as she forced him on.
Kael was still trying to adjust to the darkness. “Is this the right w —?”
“We’ve only got one way, and we’ll follow it until it ends,” Kyleigh snapped.
He stumbled under a thrust of her hands. “Being angry at me isn’t going to solve anything —”
“Shut it and move! If we don’t get out of this tunnel, we’re …” Her words trailed into an impressive string of swears.
“Wh —? Oof!” Kael bounced off the solid rock wall in front of him and into Kyleigh — who promptly shoved him back. “That isn’t helpful!”
She pounded the meat of her fist against the wall with a furious snarl. “You’d better start digging, whisperer!”
Kael thought she might’ve been overreacting a bit. “Calm down, will you? They can’t reach us in here.”
“They won’t have to.”
The dangerous quiet in her voice unsettled him, and he went straight to work.
The rock bent like clay beneath his hands. If he concentrated on letting his vision soak into the wall’s flesh, he found he could peel entire strips off at a time. But he’d only just started to make some ground when Rua’s voice startled him.
It burst through the cave in a howling wind — one that filled the deepest corner of the mountain with heat and shook the grit from the walls. Kael knew by the way his song crashed through the tunnel that it was their final warning: come out or be destroyed.
Kyleigh pressed in behind him. “Hurry!”
“I’m trying!” Kael gasped. He scraped as fast as his mind would let him, but there seemed to be no end. His hands ripped through layer after layer of frozen earth. No matter how much of the rock he pushed aside, there was always more.
Rua’s voice came again — quieter, this time. Kael thought that perhaps he’d given up when he heard a sharp, whistling reply.
“What are they saying?”
Kyleigh’s hand twisted in the back of his shirt. “Well, I suppose the good news is they’ve decided not to torch us — they don’t think fire will kill
you.”
Kael was almost too afraid to ask: “What’s the bad?”
Before Kyleigh could answer, the cave rocked with a boom.
A giant’s footsteps thudded against the cave: rhythmic quakes that came one after the other in a furious barrage. Kael remembered how Rua had shaken the hills with a slap of his tail just hours before. He had no doubt that was what the dragons were doing now.
They would beat their tails against the mountain until the cave collapsed — crushing them beneath it.
Kael had so much of his mind bent on digging that he couldn’t brace himself in time: the tremors slammed his head against the wall and dragged him to his knees. Kyleigh jerked him up by the elbows and wedged her shoulder into his back.
“Keep digging — I’ll hold you!”
With Kyleigh bracing him, Kael put every last ounce of his will into digging. His hands clawed their way through the rock as the cave shook fiercely. Kyleigh held one arm above them, trying to shield him from the bits of stone that broke from the ceiling. The cave moaned and trembled on in the space between blows.
Soon much larger rocks would fall — and not even Kyleigh would be able to stop them. But Kael didn’t give up. He bared his teeth and moved the rock aside. He clung to his focus even as the world crumbled around him.
Finally, he made it through.
Kael lurched forward when his hand burst through the rock and into the open air beyond. “I see the other side!”
“So do I!” Kyleigh snapped back.
That wasn’t exactly what he’d meant. But with the tunnel groaning the way it was, it was difficult to argue. “I’m almost there. Just a little more —”
“No time!”
Kyleigh wrapped her arms around his middle and threw herself against the wall, shattering the thin layer of rock that remained. Kael clenched his eyes shut as they fell into the darkness beyond — hoping they wouldn’t fall far. By the time they struck the ground, the cave had collapsed with a thunderous moan.
Kael’s stomach was lodged somewhere between his throat and his chest. He heard Kyleigh scramble to her feet beside him. She crouched over him, the worry on her face illuminated by a pale beam of light.
“Are you hurt?”
“I’m fine, I prom — ow!”
She punched him straight in the middle of the chest. “If I cared for you even an ounce less, I would kill you — you stupid, stubborn mountain boy!”
Kael tried not to move. If he so much as flinched, he thought her glare might very well melt his flesh. “I have a plan,” he said defensively.
She swiped a hand around them. “Well, if your plan was to infuriate the dragons and get us stuck in the middle of a Fate-forsaken mountain, it worked. There’ll be no wiggling our way out of this one. We’ve got a dagger fitted so far up our …”
Her words trailed away and the anger on her face melted into surprise as she gaped at something behind him. “What is it?”
She reached absently for his hands and pulled him onto his feet, her eyes still fixed on what lay behind him. When Kael turned, he saw she had every right to be surprised.
They stood inside what had to be the heart of the mountain: an enormous cave that stretched to either end of Kael’s vision. Its walls were smooth and glistening with damp. Smaller caves peppered their sides, and the shadows of their mouths looked like dragon scales.
Each layer of stone flowed into the other — cascading from the top to the floor like the swirls of a river’s flesh. The walls and spires of Thanehold could’ve fit inside it quite comfortably. He didn’t think his eyes would’ve been able to reach the ceiling at all, had it not been for the cracks.
Thin branches of light crisscrossed over the top of the ceiling and shed their rays into the chamber below. They shone like stars in the darkness, and covered the world beneath them in a blanket of ghostly light.
Kael dragged his eyes from the ceiling and saw that the cave’s floor was covered in strange mounds. Most were about the size of a child, but some sat taller than Kael. The mounds lay like stones in a frozen river — smooth orbs with ripples breaking all around them. They were spaced a few man length’s apart, and covered the floor from one end to the next.
Kyleigh was already kneeling before the closest mound: an orb that stretched the length of her torso. Her eyes closed as she pressed her ear against it. After a moment, she raised her head. “Cold,” she whispered, her lips drawn taut.
Kael had been about to ask her what she meant. But when he came up beside her and saw the unmistakable shape of the mound, he figured it out for himself.
“Dragon’s eggs,” he whispered. He’d guessed these were the hatching grounds His-Dorcha had spoken about. But it still surprised him. He supposed he hadn’t really ever expected to be standing inside of them.
Kyleigh seemed entranced by the eggs. She moved silently between them, her mouth parted in shock. “They need a tremendous amount of heat to hatch. Once they’re laid, dragons carry them to someplace warm … they come from miles and miles away, from every corner …” She kept one hand on the egg as her eyes swept around the room. Her other hand touched the floor. “I know what this is.”
“You mean, you remember it?” Kael said carefully.
She shook her head. “Just dreams — just bits of things. But I’ve seen a place like this before, deep inside the Motlands. This was once a fire lake.”
Kael remembered the story well. Kyleigh and the mots had once chased an army of trolls to their fiery deaths inside a molten lake. He’d had a difficult time believing such a thing could exist beneath the earth. But the ground in the Motherlands had always felt strangely warm. And when he pressed a hand against the blackened floor, he swore it didn’t feel as cold as the rest.
“It’s crusted over,” he thought aloud. “Why haven’t the dragons fixed it?”
Kyleigh pointed to the ceiling. “Even before it grew shut, that opening was much too small for a full-grown dragon. I’m sure they knew their hatching grounds were going cold, but they couldn’t do anything to stop it.”
Kael’s gut twisted at those words. Part of him didn’t think it was a bad thing that there were fewer dragons around. But part of him felt something else — an echo of what Kyleigh’s dragon soul had said in her memories. He couldn’t be sure, but he thought he might’ve seen a trace of that anguish in Kyleigh’s stare for a moment. But just as suddenly as it’d appeared, it was gone.
She got to her feet. “All right, where’s this weapon you were telling me about?”
“I’m not entirely sure, but it’s got to be around here somewhere,” Kael said carefully. He stepped away from her and began to weave a path through the eggs.
She followed closely. “Well, what does it look like?”
“It’s, ah … small.”
“What color is it?”
“I don’t know. White, I think.” With so many eggs lying about, casting shadows across the floor, he realized they could spend days hunting through the cavern without any luck. There had to be an easier way to find the sword. “Are you sure the dragons can’t fit in here?”
“I’m almost certain. I don’t think they’d simply let their hatching grounds go cold.”
“Then how do they get the eggs in?”
Kyleigh pointed upwards. “They drop them. Their shells are hard as stone. Once they’re grown, it still takes weeks of clawing for a hatchling to make its way out. I don’t think an egg can even be cracked from the outside.”
Kael focused on the largest gap of light in the ceiling and traced its rays down to the floor. If Rua had dropped Daybreak into the mountain, it would likely be around that spot. He nearly tripped over a half-submerged egg in his rush to get to the ray’s end.
He searched along every brightened patch, between all of the surrounding eggs. He was certain the sword had fallen somewhere close. But the longer he searched, and the more empty ground he came across, the colder the room seemed to get.
What if he’d misunderstood
?
… what if Rua had tricked him?
Soon the light turned brazen and began to fade into evening. Kyleigh was right: they were trapped. Even if Rua and His-Rua had flown away, they would be spotted the moment Kyleigh took to her wings. With so many dragons gathered at the red mountains, it was too much to hope that they wouldn’t be spotted.
And he doubted if even Daybreak would be able to protect them from the ensuing swarm.
It had been a foolish thing, to drag Kyleigh here. He’d been so focused on defeating Crevan, on reaching the end of something that he hadn’t paid attention to the step in front of him. They were about to go tumbling to their deaths, and it was entirely his faul —
“What’s this?”
Kyleigh had her back turned to him, so he couldn’t see what it was that she held. “What does it look like?”
Her hands dragged against something smooth. “Just some shoddy old sword —”
“Don’t!” Kael leapt to his feet and grabbed her hands before she could draw the blade. She said something, but he couldn’t hear her. He could barely even breathe.
From its rounded pommel across its charred grip, through the nicks in its belt and all along the cracks in its leather scabbard — this blade looked exactly like the one in Kyleigh and Rua’s memories. There was no doubt the sword they’d found was Daybreak, the blade forged from a ray of the burning sun.
The sword of Sir Gorigan, himself.
CHAPTER 43
The Hatching Grounds
“Are you all right, Kael? You look as if you’re about to faint.”
Kyleigh waved a hand in front of his face, jarring him from his thoughts. “I might faint,” he croaked. “I just very well might.”
“I know we’re not in the best of places, but we’ll find a way out.”
“Yes … sure …”
“Kael.” She wrenched his head back by the roots of his hair, forcing him to meet her frown. “Why do I feel as if you aren’t listening?”
He tried to pull himself out of his shock, but it was difficult. “I’m sorry, I just … realized I’d never actually expected to find it.”
Kyleigh followed his eyes to the sword and said incredulously. “Is this what you dragged us in here for? A crusted old sword? Brilliant.”
