At that moment, a hole blasted in the side of the ship that held Paik—a powerful result of Helga's taibe. The Seer Fey Grand-Master slammed his staff onto the deck. In reaction, a wall of water rose to the north, crashing at breakneck speed down the Channel toward the bateaus, the shoreline, and the people huddled on it. In the east, another water wall rose, rolling their way. Kinna desperately counted—at least two-hundred souls had eked from the walls, and more were crawling through the gap.
“He means to sacrifice his own ships to conquer our city!” Kinna cried.
Chennuh's armored wing sliced along the stone walls of the castle as he descended, but before he could land, a sound arrested them.
In a moment—a long moment that stretched into infinity—Lincoln's voice somehow lifted above the wind, the rain, the shouts, and the screams. Paik's vessel surged from the water in a strange dance, heaving first one way, and then the other. The Grand-Master slipped, tilted, and plunged into the Channel.
When he hit the swirling surf, lightning ripped across the water, straight toward Helga. All the anger and furor he had built narrowed into that one bolt.
Helga burst into flame, and a force shuddered in an outward circle from her body, shocking everything and everyone in its path. The waves Paik had conjured collapsed in writhing fury. The civilians huddled on the shore, some slumping into unconsciousness beneath the powerful taibe.
Helga's body, brilliant and white, a dancing fire, keeled across the rock, burning higher and higher, lighting the entire battleground.
A bugle sounded the universal retreat, and the Lismarian vessels slowly began to turn. Kinna and Cedric's Dragons beat the air, their Dragonfire chasing the vessels. In the water, Paik struggled.
Chennuh landed on the rock behind Helga's fire. Lincoln scrambled onto the Dragon's back, clinging to the fins behind Kinna, his powerful voice singing, and the currents obeyed him, shoving massive gaps between the Lismarian vessels and West Ashwynd's, pushing the enemies to the east.
Kinna searched the waters for Paik, but he'd been scooped into a passing vessel. Enormous harpoons twanged from special bows aboard the Lismarian warships, aimed at the Dragons, bouncing off their scales, but rebuffing their advances as the vessels retreated. Paik stood on the deck of a ship, his staff missing, his face contorted with anger.
Chennuh roared across the waters. The Lismarian ships dimmed behind the mist. Smaller boats cut through the water after them, propelled by oarsmen, following the parent ships.
Dragonfire breathed all around as Ember took to the air, spewing his flames across the fleeing boats. Two more caught fire; the rest disappeared behind the lashing curtains of rain and fog.
Chennuh quieted beneath Kinna, his thoughts dark and turbid. Kinna's trembling hand smoothed the scales of his neck. She couldn't look at the rock beneath Chennuh's snout where the flames still lit the night.
Silence descended as people and creatures settled into shock. Only the wail of a babe broke the stillness. Kinna stared at the civilians huddled against the wall.
Lincoln's white knuckles strained against Chennuh's fins. His gaze never left the scales beneath him. “I could have done something different. Surely, there was another way.”
Kinna moved her stiff lips. She suddenly felt old and dry. “You can't flog your conscience, Linc. It will destroy you.”
“She told me to do it.” Lincoln's voice was arid, as dry as ashes.
“She—told you to do what?”
“For the Greater Good, she said.” He rubbed his sleeve over his nose and sniffed. “If I hadn't, Paik would have killed all those people and you and Cedric and finished The Rebellion before we've gotten fairly started. She settled it with me earlier.”
“Settled what with you earlier?” Kinna demanded.
“That if it ever came down to a choice between her life and the Greater Good, I was not to hesitate, not even for an instant. She demanded it.”
“Did she know it would result in her death?”
“Yes. I'm sure she did. It is the nature of taibe, used in this way.” He scratched one of Chennuh's scales. “I knew what would happen. When I tipped the boat, throwing Paik overboard, it broke his taibe when he lost his connection with his staff... but the magic sought a target and could not be unmade.” His voice broke as he motioned at the flames on the rock. “I could have redirected the taibe, but it was too great, and would have slammed into every one of those people on the shoreline, and the shores would be ablaze with their bodies instead. So my mother had to take the brunt. She had to. It was the way the Stars intended.”
Here he glanced up, and almost like an omen, the clouds parted, and a single stream of brilliant moonlight flooded the calmed waters below.
“She is up there now, taking her place among the great Seer Fey of the past.” He kissed his fingers and then raised them to the sky. “Peace surround your journey, mother of vision.” The murmured common blessing was the only sound. Chennuh remained carefully quiet; even the water seemed still.
Helga was gone, but her vision, Kinna could and would carry out. She swore it to herself upon the Andrachen blood that ran beneath her skin. Sebastian would fall, and Helga's vision of justice and restoration would live on.
Chapter Two
Ayden, Four Weeks Earlier
Ayden wished he were dead, since it was becoming increasingly apparent that he wasn't. Dim light flickered across his consciousness in time with someone's movement, and now and then, he felt cool, soothing hands on his forehead. The hands sometimes moved to painful portions of his body—his leg where he must have broken something, his collarbone that had been snapped, his thumb and two fingers of his left hand.
A quiet tsk accompanied the probing fingers. “I don't understand,” a voice murmured. It sounded familiar, but he couldn't place it. As yet, his eyelids were far too weighted to slide open.
A deep rumble echoed around him—something living and warm—bringing a measure of comfort to contrast the hardness of the ground. Thoughts not his own filtered through the shadowed darkness—he saw himself lying on the ground, the speckled sunlight chasing across his body, and a figure with long, dark hair stooping over him.
Ayden opened his eyes.
“Hello.” Iolar, the Elf he'd become acquainted with before the siege of ClarenVale, leaned over him.
“Iolar.” Ayden's voice was rusty with disuse. He tried to sit up, but the Elf caught his shoulders and pressed him to the ground.
“Not yet. You should have some broken bones; I want to make sure you don't reinjure them.”
“Should have?”
“Aye.” Iolar glanced down at Ayden's leg and then at his collarbone. He pointed. “These were completely fractured; your bones were protruding from your flesh. I went to splint them while you were unconscious, but when I began the process, I found nothing wrong.” Amazement tinged his voice. He shook his head. “I don't know exactly how it happened, except that it was a miracle of the Stars.”
Ayden dropped his head against the soil and moved his gaze to the Mirage she-Dragon who snuffed smoke across him. He reached a hand toward her and brushed her smooth scales. “Not a miracle. A quirk of the Amulet. It saw fit to give me the Healing Touch.” He traced the scaly design on Luasa's foreleg. “What happened, Iolar? I don't remember anything since I was in the courtyard of ClarenVale with Kinna.”
Iolar shook his head. “The Poison-Quill took you and Luasa over the wall of ClarenVale, and the Poison-Quill didn't make it. You and Luasa hit water, and no one thought you made it, either. Frankly, I can't understand how you did come out of that lake alive. It is beyond all reasoning.” Iolar sank back onto the ground, eyeing the Dragon warily. “I saw you fall from my perch on the Marron Mountains, and I never saw you resurface. When I crept down to the lake under cover of darkness, however, you and your Dragon were washed up on the far shore from the castle beneath the tree cover extending from the gorge. I had decided to take your body back to Her Grace, Kinna Andrachen, but then your
Dragon awoke and refused to allow me to leave, even to get help. She's done all the hunting herself. She seemed to think if I stayed with you, I could cure you.”
Kinna's name plunged through Ayden like a hot knife. “Kinna, she is well?” he asked.
“Aye,” Iolar said. “From what I have heard, she and His Grace, Cedric Andrachen, have escaped to West Ashwynd. They are out of Sebastian's hands.”
Ayden released a breath he didn't realize he had been holding. “Thank the Stars,” he murmured.
“Aye,” Iolar agreed, “and thank them for your own life as well. I still can't fathom how you survived that fall.” His dark eyes were tinged with awe.
Ayden smiled and then sobered. “As much as I would like to owe my life to you, I believe the Touches I received from the Amulet are what kept me alive, and by extension, my Dragon as well.”
Iolar arched an eyebrow. “The Amulet, the one we had so recently discussed when you and Her Grace found me wounded in West Ashwynd?”
“The very same.” Ayden ignored Iolar's protests as he struggled to sit up. The woods around him whirled in a circle for a moment, gradually slowing to stillness again. He shook his head carefully. “How long have I been thus?”
“Four days.” Iolar motioned through the trees toward the arching stone walls of ClarenVale. “I have been giving you tea and broth I've made from rabbits while you were unconscious. However, I've got the pickings from the Dragon's latest kill if you think you can handle it.”
“Aye, that sounds wonderful,” Ayden said, his stomach clenching at the mere mention of food. Iolar turned to the remains of a fire and brought him some meat-covered bones. His steady gaze rested on the Dragon as Ayden tore the flesh from the bones with his teeth, swallowing almost before he could chew properly.
Iolar stood. “Perhaps your Dragon will allow me to go seek some more small game now that you're awake. It's obvious you need more nourishment. Don't move far from this area.” He gestured around the glade. “Sebastian's soldiers are not far off, and Lismaria prepares for war with West Ashwynd. Knowing what Her Grace, the Lady Kinna, thinks of you, Sebastian would take advantage.”
Ayden felt a flush rise on his cheeks. “What else have you heard? How many escaped with her?” He glanced at Luasa, who stared intently at him. He felt the Mirage's thoughts. “Her Dragon, Chennuh? Do you know if the creature made it as well?”
Iolar shook his head. “She and her brother are safe in West Ashwynd. Beyond that, I know nothing.” The cat-like slits of his pupils narrowed even farther as he studied Ayden, and then he rose, slinging a bow over his shoulder, followed by a quiver of arrows. His footfalls faded into silence before he'd even disappeared from sight.
Ayden polished the last of the meat from the bones. His stomach still churned with hunger, but he felt much stronger. He checked his leg and his collarbone where he somehow knew he should feel pain. There was nothing, not even a twinge.
Ayden ran his hand across Luasa's snout. The Dragon bumped his chin with her muzzle, deep grunts of satisfaction issuing from her throat. She was pleased he was awake. Urgency laced her thoughts, though; she didn't want to stay where the Elf had told them to remain. Her mate Chennuh was likely in West Ashwynd with Kinna; she wanted to find him.
Ayden chuckled, scratching up her nose and around her eyes. “Aye, I missed you, too, you beggar,” he murmured as the Dragon pushed closer to him, nearly knocking him off-balance.“We'll get back there, Luasa, I promise. If Sebastian is planning to attack West Ashwynd, we find ourselves on the wrong side of the Channel.”
Luasa snorted smoke in his face, and Ayden coughed. “I know, she doesn't need me. Thanks for the reminder.” His tone was light, but he sighed and turned away, facing the castle in the valley below him.
Kinna didn't need him; she was a queen in her own right. She had an entire line of kings behind her, and soon she and her brother, Cedric, would be monarchs of West Ashwynd. She had no need of a common Dragondimn who had spent his youth in fighting dens where he turned people to ash if they came too close. Ayden swallowed. In his mind, Kinna lived at the top of an insurmountable peak, worlds away from his own position amid the filth and squalor of those in the mundane walks of life.
He shook his thoughts clear of her. He couldn't have her, and there was no use dwelling on the dream he'd allowed himself, even briefly, to consider. Kinna and Cedric faced an impending war. Ayden hoped he could still help them.
He eyed the road that wound along the foothills of the Marron Mountains to the drawbridge of the enormous castle and citadel of ClarenVale. Soldiers wended along the bridge in companies of ten or twenty. Small portions of Sebastian's army remained on the slopes in tents as creature cages creaked down the slopes toward the city. Civilians lined the road, standing in small groups, gesturing to the soldiers and the tents and the creatures.
Ayden could see portions of the courtyard inside the main gate of the city where people hawked their wares beneath canopies that whipped in the chilly mountain breeze that flowed off the Marron Mountains.
Four days, Iolar had said—four days had passed since Ayden had fallen over the battlements into the lake below the castle walls. Already, the Lismarians were returning to normal life, only with a new king and new colors flapping on the banners that lined the city and hung over the gate.
After killing Nicholas Erlane, Sebastian had declared himself King.
Ayden started to turn away, but a flash of turquoise hair caught his eye, only a stone's throw away. Ayden sucked in his breath as he pasted himself to a tree, sending a thought to Luasa to stay silent. Her form, though too large to hide easily, still camouflaged neatly beneath the leaves of a spruce grove, the wiry branches brushing her mirrored scales. Ayden could feel her warm breath behind him, but no sound stirred the air.
The turquoise-hair belonged to a Pixie he'd seen before, the psuche partner of Julian, Kinna's former betrothed. Revulsion twisted inside him as he remembered Kinna's shock only days earlier when she'd discovered that Julian had used her father's imprisonment as a means to force her into marriage. She'd called Julian a snake.
Rightly so.
Ayden peered through a fork in the tree trunk. The Pixie wended up the hill beneath him, and a moment later, Julian walked into view. His mouth frowned in his tanned face, and his dark, shoulder-length hair swung as he glanced down the hill at the road before continuing after the Pixie.
A stitch of jealousy bit Ayden's gut as the young man pulled himself easily over a boulder, his lithe grace even more snakelike now that Ayden knew what he was. He had suspected before, but Kinna had staunchly defended him—her best friend from childhood. Now they both knew better. But it didn't stop the revulsion from creeping up Ayden's throat in the form of bile.
No one else accompanied them. Ayden followed them up the mountain slopes, intrigued by their palpable tension and obvious secrecy. He tossed a thought at Luasa to stay put, but of course she ignored him, darting with her reptilian agility between trees, pausing for a moment near him, moving again with a flash of speed. He'd named her for the swiftness of the wind, and her movements lived up to the moniker. Despite her size—she was over twenty spans in length, smaller than Kinna's Dragon Chennuh, but much larger than Ayden—she could move as silently as a cat stalking its prey.
The castle and city grew small as they wound up the steep slopes of the Marron Mountains. The trees thinned as they gained altitude, but stony outcroppings and steep ledges provided camouflage. They stopped at last where an enormous boulder crowned a hill. An alcove between two pillared rocks housed a bent figure.
Ayden paused when the Pixie and Julian halted, again pasting himself to a tree. Luasa crouched behind him, her mirrored tail sliding silently through a gap where an enormous boulder had split in two. Ayden rubbed her scales as he angled his head to hear.
“Sage.” The name croaked from the alcove. “It has been too long.”
“Aye, Mother, so it has.” Sage's husky voice cut across the rocks with clarity.
Ayden peered around the tree trunk. Mother? It was a term of respect; it did not necessarily mean a familial relationship, but...
The bent figure lifted her hands free of her robes and cradled Sage's cheeks. She embraced the younger Pixie, and her milky eyes stared whitely at the sky. Julian stepped forward and bowed, and when he spoke, he answered Ayden's unasked question. “Kayeck, you are a great and wise Seer Fey. It is an honor to meet Sage's mother. I apologize that it has taken this long to make this meeting happen.”
Ayden's skin crawled at the oily obsequiousness of Julian's words. He grimaced.
The crone laid a claw-like hand on Julian's head. The tall lad had to bow to stay beneath her grasp.
“Aye, too long.” The hazy eyes stared through Julian. “Tell me, Julian, of your partnership with Sebastian, now called King of Lismaria. I am curious to know how one once loyal to the Queen of West Ashwynd has so suddenly turned his colors.”
Julian's tan cheeks flushed a deep crimson. “Mother, it is not so—”
“It is so, Julian Pixiedimn. Your thoughts are melded with my daughter Sage's, and your motivations read themselves to me as a script. How long have you played with my daughter's heart?”
Julian started to speak but subsided when the crone dropped her hand from his forehead. She gripped the stone beside her. “What is it you want from me, my daughter?”
Sage ran her hand through her short, turquoise hair, ruffling it into spikes. “Mother, you must trust me when I say that I know Julian's mind better than you, great Seer Fey that you are. He is my psuche partner.”
“Ah, you may know Julian's mind, but do you know his heart?”
Anger and jealousy reddened Ayden's vision from his place behind the tree. Julian had used Kinna to get to the position he held under Sebastian, and though the lad had claimed to love her, he had treated her contemptuously. Such actions would have been fine, but for the softening Ayden had seen in Kinna's expression when she’d spoken of her friend. Heartache made him grit his teeth as he remembered the kiss he and Kinna had shared in the Oracle's cave, followed by her rejection of him—because of Julian.
Unleash the Inferno (Heart of a Dragon Book 3) Page 5
