by Shae Ford
Mercy’s sake, she must be ancient.
“I’ve never heard of a shapechanger who could take a dragon’s form. Are there others like you?”
She shrugged. Then she saw the grin on his face and cocked her head at him.
“Oh, nothing,” he said, still smiling. “But I think I might have figured out why we never ran into any bandits in the Valley. You didn’t, um, eat them, did you?”
She shook her head. The deep tones of her growl rumbled in his chest and probably would have been terrifying, if he didn’t know it for what it was: she was laughing.
Then he thought of something else. It seemed like ages ago that Roland had burst into the hospital, worried over the fact that the monster of Tinnark hadn’t taken his sacrifice. And now Kael realized why. “So it was you all along — you were the beast that tormented us!” he said accusingly.
She showed her pointed teeth and her rumbling laughter sounded deep inside her chest.
“I used to sleep with the covers over my head because of you. Amos said that if I didn’t behave, you’d carry me off in the middle of the night — it isn’t funny!” he snapped, as her shoulders shook with the force of her laughter. “I thought you were a bloodthirsty monster from the summit. You might have told us you were just some great silly girl.”
She wasn’t sorry, not in the least bit. He imagined she must have giggled every time Roland left an offering for her — and eaten it just to humor him.
“Lysander told me you once fought Setheran the Wright. Is that true?”
This staunched her laughter. She nodded once, and it was all he could do to keep from squealing like Aerilyn.
“Will you show me your memories of him? That’s what I’m looking at, isn’t it?”
She nodded, her face crossed between surprise and annoyance, then bent her head down so he could reach.
This time when the picture flashed, they were back aboard Anchorgloam. The waves glistened warmly in the fading light, he could hear the cry of gulls in the distance. A man bent over the rails directly in front of him. His thin face was shadowed by his hair — hair that burned as red as the setting sun.
“What have you got there, Seth?” Kyleigh's voice rang inside his head, as if he was speaking her words.
A smile creased his face, lines creased his eyes. He held up the bit of wood he'd been carving and Kael saw it was a deer. The creature was so full of life, so intricately detailed with every tuft of hair and every point of its horns standing tall, that he almost expected it to leap out of Setheran’s hand and go galloping across the deck.
“Do you think he'll like it?” Setheran asked. He had a deep, rumbling voice — one that didn't quite match his lithe frame.
“I can't imagine any child not liking that,” Kyleigh replied.
This made him smile again. “I hope you’re right.” Then he held the deer out to her. “Take this for a moment, will you? I've got to clean up the shavings before Matteo sees.”
“Yes, we wouldn't want that. He'd likely get his breeches in such a knot —”
Black. A burst of light. Rain struck his face, wind ripped at his wings. He crashed through the ocean's surface and it hurt, but he didn't care. He saw his own body lying cold and lifeless in the mud. A terrible fear tore at his throat and choked him with un-fallen tears. His lips were blue and parted, his chest didn’t rise.
Then breath came back to him. He watched himself double over and cough up the ocean, and relief struck him like a wave. It welled up and spilt out his eyes — just as another feeling burst from the very center of his chest.
It engulfed him, consumed him. It raged like a tunnel of fire: burning deeper and more dangerous than the sea. Though it threatened to drag him down and under, he found he didn’t care. Let the waves come! Let the rain fall! He would lose himself to this storm, purge his soul in the flames. Let it take him —
Kael ripped his hands away and fell onto his back. He struck the ground and gasped as tears poured down his face. Where on earth had they come from? He dashed them away with his sleeve. “What was that?”
She said nothing. She wouldn’t even look at him.
Whatever lurked inside her head had grabbed him and wrung him out like a wet cloth. His legs shook as he got to his feet. “Were those your … feelings —?”
“Kael! Kyleigh!”
A chorus of three voices rang out from the trees, followed by three people. Thelred popped out first, turned around and bellowed: “Found them! They’re over here.” He didn’t seem at all surprised by the fact that Kyleigh was now a large white dragon.
Lysander was next to appear. His right eye was swollen almost shut and ringed by a nasty, purplish bruise. He walked stiffly — his back arched away from the blade Aerilyn had digging into it.
“There, we’ve found them,” he grouched. “Now will you kindly release me?”
But Aerilyn wasn’t paying any attention to him. Her eyes found Kael and she gasped in relief. She dropped the sword and flung herself into his arms, smacking him in the back with the bag she had clutched in her hand. “Oh Kael! I’m so happy you’re alive. So very, very happy!” she said, her tears wetting his neck. “I thought you were gone for good. And then Kyleigh leapt in after you, and I thought I’d lost you both — where is she, by the way? I’ve got her armor.”
Kael turned her by the shoulders and she froze when she saw the white dragon smirking at her. She clamped a hand down on Kael’s wrist, looked the dragon over once, and finally squeaked: “Kyleigh?”
She barely had a chance to nod before Aerilyn grabbed her around her long neck.
“Why didn’t you tell me you were a, um …?”
“A shapechanger, more generally. And a halfdragon, specifically,” Lysander said. He tried to smirk, but ended up wincing instead.
Aerilyn’s arms fell limply back to her side. “A shapechanger?” She cleared her throat. “Well, it doesn’t matter. All that matters is that you’re my friend. And on that note — how dare you.” She jabbed a finger in Kyleigh’s face — a gesture made much less threatening by the fact that she had to point so far upwards. “How could you just go leaping off the ship like that? You might have told me you could sprout wings and fly! But no, you disappeared without a word and left us with naught but a pile of clothes, all slashed to ribbons—”
“Your clothes?” Kael sputtered. His face burned when he realized what that meant, and Kyleigh’s laughter started up again.
“It’s not funny,” Aerilyn scolded. “It isn’t ladylike to go frolicking naked in the woods.”
“Would you stop squawking and help her get dressed?” Thelred grumbled. “We’ve got too little time as it is.”
Aerilyn shot him an icy look. “Come along, Kyleigh,” she said haughtily. And they disappeared into the trees.
Thelred carried Kael’s bow and quiver across his back. He pulled them off, thrust them impatiently into Kael’s hands, and went to carve up the rabbits.
While Thelred got their breakfast ready, Lysander fussed over his eye. He touched it gingerly, wincing. Then he muttered a string of curses and snatched the discarded cutlass off the ground. “Women,” he said, thrusting the weapon into the sheath at his belt. “You can’t hold a man hostage with his own sword. It’s completely against the rules.”
Kael was sure he deserved whatever he got. “What did you do?”
Though he made a great show of scowling, a reluctant smile pulled at Lysander’s lips. “When we anchored in Copperdock, I promised to search for you the best I could. But your forest friends were determined to come ashore. For some reason, I don’t think they trusted me,” he mused. “Anyways, I told them they couldn’t come. And then Jonathan tried to mutiny, so I had to throw him in the brig.”
“You did what?” His words came out in a growl that made Lysander take a hasty step back.
“Don’t worry: he’ll have plenty of food. And I’ve told Morris to keep an eye on him,” he said quickly. “Jonathan made a scene, but Aerilyn was sma
rter. I was heading to the deck when she ambushed me — socked me in the eye, disarmed me and threatened me with my own sword.” At this point, Lysander was grinning to either ear. “She paraded me in front of my men and straight down to the docks. I can’t imagine the sort of ridicule I’ll have to endure when I get back … but,” he touched a finger to his swollen eye, “I think this means she likes me.”
Kael was about to tell him how very wrong he was when Kyleigh returned. She strode into the clearing, fully armed in black and with Aerilyn close behind. “Let me see.” She took Lysander under the chin and turned his head to the side. “Nicely done,” she said approvingly. “Though in the future, try to aim for the nose. It’s a great deal more painful.”
“Don’t encourage her,” Lysander said, batting her hand away. When the girls left to get their share of the rabbits, he leaned towards Kael and whispered: “What did I tell you, eh? If she didn’t like me, she would’ve swung for my nose!”
Chapter 27
Battlemage Jake
Shortly after breakfast, Lysander informed them that he’d given the crew permission to sail off at sunset. “If we haven’t returned by then, they’ll just assume we’re dead. So obviously, time is of the essence.”
Obviously, Lysander had no concept of geography. Because by the time they made it into Copperdock, it was almost noon. They could see the spindly towers of Wendelgrimm perched high on a cliff above town, leering over the rough stone houses like a vulture over corpses. Kael wagered it would take them at least another hour to make the climb, and then they’d still have to face the Witch.
And he had no idea how long that would take.
Copperdock turned out to be an awful lot like Crow’s Cross — with its winding streets and houses crammed end to end. The only real difference he could see was the complete lack of people. Small gardens stood overgrown and abandoned in front of their houses. Wagons stopped in the street, almost in mid-roll. Tattered laundry hung dirty and forgotten on sagging lines.
He imagined the people must have fled in quite a hurry. Once they lost their protectors, there would have been no one to stop the Witch from swooping down and gobbling them up.
He was trying to peer through the dusty windows of an old shop when he tripped over something lying in the road. A glass bowl rolled out from under his feet, sloshing half of its water and a small fish onto the cobblestone. The poor thing flopped helplessly until Kael managed to scoop it up and drop it back into the bowl.
“Watch where you’re going,” Thelred said.
Kael glared at him. “How could I know there’d be a fish bowl out in the middle of the road?”
“It’s not like they had a choice,” Lysander said. “The villagers are stuck exactly where they were when the Witch cursed them.”
Aerilyn looked horrified. She glanced at two bowls perched on a wagon seat. “You mean these fish are … people?”
Lysander nodded grimly. “It’s awful, I know. But that’s precisely why it’s so important that the Witch be stopped. Her death would not only free me, but the good people of Copperdock, as well.”
Kael couldn’t believe the fish were really people. He knelt down next to the bowl and stuck his nose to the glass. The fish swam up to him and stared back with watery eyes. It turned to the side, and that’s when he noticed how very strange its markings were. The coloring of its scales made the fish look as if it was wearing trousers with suspenders, and sporting a set of thick sideburns on either side of its face. Perhaps it really was a man trapped in a fish’s body.
“Don’t worry, I’m going to kill the Witch,” Kael said quietly.
The fish blinked in reply.
“And sorry for … knocking you over like that,” he added as he got to his feet, just in case the fish could understand him.
The others had moved on down the road, but Kyleigh stayed back. She must have heard his conversation with the fish, because she smiled and said: “That was kind of you.”
He couldn’t tell if she was heckling him or not, but to be safe he grumbled: “Leave off.” And stomped past her.
*******
The climb to Wendelgrimm was steeper than they’d been expecting. The winding dirt road was long overgrown. Years of neglect invited thorns, which snaked out from the stone and latched onto their breeches whenever they could. Some parts of the path were nearly crumbled away, leaving only a thin ledge between them and a dizzying drop into the violent ocean below.
Kael was used to steep climbing. The most annoying thing about it all was the fact that the road twisted so much. With every bend they came to, he could feel another handful of minutes slip away. He tried not to worry about the time and instead listened to the belabored breathing of his companions.
It gave him some satisfaction to see how Lysander and Thelred struggled with the climb. He thought it was good for them to get a little sweat on their brows. Aerilyn panted like a dog, but kept her chin stubbornly in the air. And then there was Kyleigh.
He thought, if he tilted his head just right, that he might be able to see a drop of sweat glistening on her brow. Other than that, her face was calm. Pleasant, even. Just to look at her, he might have thought they were going for a stroll through the woods — not climbing to what might very well be their deaths.
They’d made it a little more than halfway up when Lysander suddenly came to a halt. He drew his cutlass and held his hand taut, signaling for them to stop.
“What is it?” Aerilyn asked. She had an arrow drawn and ready to fire. Kael was proud of how steady her hands were.
He leaned around Thelred and saw someone standing out in the middle of the road. He wore plainclothes and had a staff gripped in one hand. From such a distance, he couldn’t tell if the man was facing them, or had his back turned.
“A spy,” Lysander said out the side of his mouth. “The Witch has posted a guard to thwart us. We’d better kill him quickly.”
Kyleigh stepped up behind him and peered over his shoulder. “That’s a statue, Sandy.”
“What?”
She picked a rock up off the ground and hurled it at the figure. It ricocheted off his head with a sharp thwap and sailed into the ocean.
Lysander cleared his throat. “Well how was I supposed to see that? Not all of us can have dragon’s eyes,” he mumbled. “All right, pressing on.”
They were nearly to the statue when a breeze swept in from the ocean. It blew past the figure and directly into Kael’s face, carrying with it a stench that burned his nose … and made him itch.
“Magic!” he said, but not soon enough.
The statue cracked down the middle and blasted into a thousand pieces. Kael put his arm over his head, trying to shield his eyes from the sharp bits of rock that stung his body. As the stone fell away, a man stepped out from the rubble.
He had a thin face and a long nose — hardly the look of a killer. And yet the eyes behind his round spectacles were cold and unfeeling. He raised his staff over his head and shouted something unintelligible, then brought it down with a roar.
It struck the ground, and the road in front of them cracked. It split from the cliff side and broke away, tumbling down into the waves below. Thelred managed to leap to the other side while the rest of them dove back the way they came. Kael heard Aerilyn scream and spun around in time to see her lose her footing. She was falling backwards, arms waving frantically as she tried to regain her balance, and he couldn’t get there fast enough to save her.
But Lysander could.
He dove and landed on his belly, grabbing Aerilyn’s hands just before the fall could take her. They froze like that for a moment, with his arms shaking as he held her over thin air. Then the weight of her body began to drag him over.
He dug the toes of his boots into the ground, sliding helplessly towards certain death as he tried to find something to latch onto. “Don’t worry — I won’t let go!” he said.
“Well you should!” Aerilyn’s voice shrilled from over the edge. “If you don’t
let go, we’ll both die!”
“Never!”
He was almost halfway off the cliff when Kael grabbed him by the legs. It wasn’t the best plan: the rocks were slippery and when he tried to get his feet situated, he lost his concentration. In that split second of distraction, he lost his mind’s strength — and the weight of two bodies dragged him to the edge.
He was preparing himself for the fall when Kyleigh’s arms wrapped around his waist in an iron hold. With one mighty step backwards, she dragged them all a foot towards safety.
Across the rift, Thelred stepped in front of the mage and raised his cutlass to strike. A spell hit him in the chest and he fell over with a grunt. Kael thought he was dead at first, then he moved. He got back on his feet, but couldn’t seem to lift his sword off the ground. He jerked madly, trying to wrench it free.
“Just let go!” Lysander snapped at him, his voice a little strained from being stretched out so far between Kael and Aerilyn.
“I can’t,” he shouted back. “My hand’s glued to the hilt!”
Lysander’s cry caught the mage’s attention. He looked up at them, saw the plight they were in, and sneered.
“Kael, you have to shoot him,” Kyleigh said in his ear. “You have to shoot him now!”
“I can’t! If I let go, the others will fall.”
“Let me take care of them,” she said quickly as the mage raised his staff. “Take your shot! Move!”
The staff was pointed in their direction, aimed for Kyleigh. Strange, muffled words were already on the mage’s lips. In a second, the spell would come whistling for them. It would strike Kyleigh in the chest and send them all to their deaths.
Kael decided quickly. He let go of Lysander’s legs, leapt to the side, whipped out an arrow and drew it to his chin. Blue light had gathered at the end of the mage’s staff when Kael’s arrow struck his shoulder. The blow knocked his aim to the side and his spell struck the cliff beneath them. Dirt and pebbles exploded out as huge slabs of rock crumbled off the cliff and crashed into the ocean with a spew of foam.
