The Dragon’s Price (The Sorcerer's Saga Book 4)

by Rain Oxford

  “It’s not like she’s my goat.”

  “It’s exactly like she’s your goat.”

  We reached Mason’s room, where Mason’s full-length mirror was in the corner. “We need a plan,” Merlin said, kicking the door shut so that the goat couldn’t follow us in.

  “Do you think Baltezore is already there?”

  “I doubt he knows a portal to this world, but I have been wrong before.”

  “What about Mother?” Thad asked.

  “I figured out a way to stop her from taking me when I’m transporting.”

  “What’s that?”

  I mentally called my bat to me. Magic flowed out of me into the staff. A moment later, the bat appeared and tried to land on Thaddeus’s head. When Thad swatted at him, I held out my staff and he landed on it.

  “When did you get a bat?”

  “Why did you release your monkey if you were just going to summon a bat later?”

  “I’m going to release him when I’m done, too,” I said to Merlin. “Bat, did you distract my mother?” He squeaked in a very bat-like fashion, and unfortunately, I had no idea what he was saying. I wasn’t even entirely sure he could understand me. “Merlin?”

  “Do I look like I speak bat?”

  The bat squeaked again.

  “He’s telling you he did,” Thaddeus said. Everyone, including the bat, stared at him. After a moment, he blushed and shrugged. “I’ve spent a lot of time with animals.”

  “Great! Ask him if he was hurt.”

  The bat made a different squeak, more like a chirp. “He can understand you, and he wasn’t hurt.”

  “Can you do it again?” I asked the bat, who squeaked in response.

  “He wants a reward.” When Thad pulled out another apple, the bat took it and vanished.

  “I’m surprised you’re so good with animals.” I knew he sold animals as companions after escaping my mother, but I hadn’t actually seen him with them.

  “If you care about them, they can sense it. They may be afraid, but if you’re calm and nonthreatening, they’re much less likely to attack.”

  While Thad was talking, Mason was making a transportation portal. The image in the mirror was Vactarus’s dining room. The ghost himself was sitting at the table, reading from a book, while the housekeeper stood motionless in the corner.

  “It doesn’t look like anything is wrong. Here’s the plan; Merlin and I will go through. You two stay here and watch in case there’s any danger.”

  “I should go first just to be safe,” Merlin said.

  “You went first last time.” Without giving him time to argue, I stepped through the mirror.

  * * *

  I knew the instant we stepped through that we had walked into a trap. We were in the dining room as the mirror had shown us, except the gargoyle housekeeper was a pile of rubble on the floor. That wasn’t the worst damage, however; Vactarus was a marble statue, frozen in the midst of a spell, his hands outstretched in an offensive position.

  I pointed my staff at him. “No, Ayden, we need to save the egg first,” Merlin said. “Is it in the magic room where you got your staff?”

  “No, it’s in the study, on the second floor.” He was already running before I could finish my sentence. I followed and caught up to him at the door, where he was trying to scratch his way through. I opened the door and we both stopped. We were too late.

  The chest was in the middle of the room, open, and Baltezore stood over it. He was a tall, thin man with dark brown hair and gold eyes. There was something very fake about him, like he was in disguise. His conceited expression didn’t match his average, forgettable appearance.

  “How did you break the blood lock?” Merlin asked.

  I gaped at him; he’d spoken out loud!

  Baltezore, however, didn’t look surprised. He smirked. “Quite easily, Merlin.”

  “What color are Cennuth’s eyes?” I asked Merlin in his mind.

  “They are blue. Why?”

  “In my dream where Baltezore was pretending to be Cennuth, his eyes were green.”

  “Very astute of you, Ayden,” Baltezore said.

  “What? You heard us?”

  “You cannot even comprehend my power. Too bad you will not live long enough to realize how powerless you are.”

  Turn him to stone, I thought to my staff as I pointed it at him. Magic shot through me urgently and burst out of my crystal with a deep blue color… only to strike an invisible force short of Baltezore.

  When he started to reach into the chest, Merlin attacked. Baltezore made a gesture with his hand, his eyes glowed green, and a staff appeared in his hand. It was black with blood-red thorns and a galaxy stone. Unlike mine, his was black as night with shards of deep blue, resembling the night sky. It was also twice the size of mine. His galaxy stone flashed with a sinister green light and Merlin froze.

  “Merlin!”

  He didn’t respond.

  Baltezore spoke in another language, his galaxy stone flashed again, and Merlin turned to me. Merlin’s eyes were glowing just like when he had first been cursed, before he could control himself… and then he snarled at me.

  “Merlin… I don’t know what he did to you, but you can fight it.” There was no recognition in his eyes. “I couldn’t hurt you when I was under the raven’s curse and I know you won’t hurt me under this one.” I hoped that speaking in his mind would help.

  He didn’t even seem to hear me.

  Despite what I’d said, I was afraid. No matter how much I trusted Merlin, I knew it wasn’t Merlin who was about to attack me. I turned and ran the instant I saw him about to lunge. Making it into the hallway ahead of him, I slammed the door shut and latched it. He crashed into it, but it held.

  Barely.

  “Merlin! You have to fight the curse! You have to save the egg!” I yelled. He slammed into the door again. The metal lock snapped and the door burst open. Not wanting to see my best friend sink his fangs into my neck, I covered my face. I had dropped my staff, but it wasn’t like I could fight him anyway.

  I saw a flash of light through the gaps of my fingers and lowered my hands in time to see my father standing between Merlin and me. He aimed his wand at Merlin and everything seemed to slow down. I could only watch in horror as black magic shot from his wand into my friend. I felt a stab of pain through my entire body as Merlin howled. It was the most horrible sound I’d ever heard. The next thing I knew, he was lifeless on the ground.

  I scrambled to his side. He wasn’t breathing. My father’s firm hand gripped my arm and tried to pull me away. “No!” I screamed. “Help him!”

  “I’m not a necromancer,” he said calmly.

  “He needs a healer! Take him to a mage!”

  “I am not here to fix your mistakes. It was you who came here unprepared and it is you who must deal with the consequence.”

  “I don’t know how to save him.”

  “If I didn’t know you could do it, I would have let him kill you. No son of mine will be coddled.”

  Merlin had tried to teach me healing magic, but I never even got close to succeeding. I reached for my staff and it shot into my hand. Since I didn’t know what the damage was inside of him, I couldn’t visualize it getting better. Instead, I imagined how it felt to drink a healing potion and pushed those sensations into Merlin’s mind. At the same time, I focused my entire mind on my determination to heal Merlin.

  I will heal him. I couldn’t do this alone, and I couldn’t forgive myself if my best friend was killed because of me. I’d promised him I would break the curse. Heal him. I opened my mouth to demand that my magic heal him, but what I said was, “Kvikr!”

  The word seemed to flood me with overwhelming power, which forced its way out of me and into Merlin. My crystal was glowing so bright that it was nearly blinding. Heat burned its way up my throat and I couldn’t utter another word. I coughed, spraying blood over him and myself. Right before darkness clouded my vision, Merlin moved.

  *
* *

  I was alone in complete darkness for a very long time. I didn’t dream, I didn’t feel anything, and I didn’t see anything. At one point, I thought I tasted something, but the blackness was so empty that I assumed I had only imagined it. Eventually, I heard Merlin talking to me, but when I tried to focus on it, I felt pain.

  I ignored it because I preferred the emptiness to the pain and shame. At first, at least.

  Although I didn’t want to face him after failing to stop Baltezore, the emptiness was unbearably lonely. If this was death, I deeply regretted not paying a necromancer to make me a ghost.

  I had no idea how long I was lost in the darkness before Merlin’s voice became too loud to ignore. I wanted him to stop. I wanted him to work with Magnus and everyone else to fix my mistakes, because I couldn’t look him in the eyes and hear that he was disappointed. My father had never been “disappointed” because he never accepted failure. If I didn’t meet his expectations, he demanded that I try again.

  Then it occurred to me that Merlin couldn’t fix my mistake; he still didn’t have his magic. I failed to save the egg, but if I died without breaking his curse, then I was failing him. Merlin had risked his life for mine multiple times, taught me to be myself, and showed me that I could do anything I set my mind to.

  If I was going to die, it wouldn’t be this way; it wouldn’t be in defeat, and it wouldn’t be without breaking the curse I put on Merlin.

  I focused on Merlin’s voice and accepted the pain that tried to overcome me. I refused to fear pain, because it meant that I was alive. Strangely enough, I heard my father’s voice. I tried to wake, but it was like my eyelids were glued shut and my body was a rock.

  “Ayden, can you hear me?” Merlin asked in my mind.

  “Yes,” I said, though I wasn’t sure he could hear me.

  “Wake up, young sorcerer. Please wake up.” His voice was soft, not from distance but resignation, as if he had lost hope that I would wake.

  “Don’t give up on me now. Keep talking.”

  “I know you are fighting; I can sense it. The one good thing about losing my immortality is that I do not have to see those I care about die. I forbid you to surrender.”

  I pushed myself harder. I focused with every fiber of my being. I will wake up.

  “Open your eyes, Ayden, you have work to do,” my father demanded loudly.

  It startled me, shattering the darkness like glass, and my eyes opened automatically. I gasped as my heart raced. Merlin, who was next to me on the bed with his paw on my hand, jerked up into a sitting position. He spoke a stream of words in another language. I patted his paw and took in my surroundings.

  I was in my room at Magnus’s castle. Three chairs had been brought in. One was empty and the other two were filled with Thaddeus and Mason. My father stood beside the bed. His expression showed no concern or relief, not that I expected any. Kille Rynorm rarely showed emotion.

  “It took you long enough,” my father said. He didn’t sound irritated, but definitely impatient.

  “Please go away, I need to talk to Merlin.”

  “I’m not leaving. You have work to do.”

  “I want to talk to Merlin alone.”

  “Are you asking or demanding?”

  I sat up. “Get out of my room,” I demanded.

  He smirked and patted my shoulder. “In that case, I’ll be in the library.” He left.

  “You, too,” I said to Thad and Mason. They got up and left, muttering as they did. When Merlin and I were alone, I turned away from him. “You’re right that I’m too trusting. I trusted Vactarus, I trusted Sven, and I trusted Baltezore. I should have questioned him. I should have realized Cennuth wouldn’t have come to me. You said yourself that Cennuth never taught you anything you didn’t ask to learn… except for respect. I should have known it wasn’t him.”

  “Do not stop being you. I like that you are so trusting… it is the rest of the world I want to fix.”

  “I don’t understand.”

  “Part of what makes you special is that you wear your heart on your sleeve. You use your brain and your heart. You will make mistakes, but so does everyone else. I would rather you trust the wrong person than mistrust everyone.”

  “I’m sorry I ever considered asking Baltezore for help. I kept thinking that he could break your curse for me. Now I realize I was trying to take the easy way out.”

  “The fact that you are admitting that tells me that you have learned from your mistake. That is all anyone can ask of you.”

  “It doesn’t matter though; we’re too late. Baltezore has the egg.”

  “The vision the crystal showed you was the egg hatching. Maybe Baltezore intends to hatch it.”

  “Why?” Before he could answer, I got it. “The galaxy stone!” He flinched from the volume of my voice. “Sorry,” I said quietly. “I don’t know if you saw it before he… cursed you… but he had a galaxy stone. We don’t know what his does, but we know it has some kind of control over dragons. He wants to hatch the egg and use the dragon. Can we find out what his galaxy stone does?”

  “Perhaps.”

  “On the upside, he was wrong; he told you that he would return on the day she hatched and that you would give her to him.”

  “That does prove that even his powers of divination are fallible.”

  There was something I was missing, something Baltezore had done. It was something he shouldn’t have been able to do…

  “Oh! My staff! Where’s my staff?”

  Merlin sighed. “Beside you, Ayden.”

  It was leaning against my nightstand, and my wand was lying on top. On the floor beside it was my bag. The crystal on my staff had changed again; it was now black with bright blue and silver speckles inside. It looked like the night sky, full of stars.

  Chapter 17

  I had been asleep for a day and a half. Merlin explained that after I healed him, my father transported us to the castle, Mason rushed to get me a healing potion, and Thad tried to hide in his room. Merlin said it took an entire day for Mason to convince Thad to be in the same room with my father.

  During that time, my father hadn’t explained to anyone why he was there or what had happened at Vactarus’s mansion.

  “Can we save Vactarus?”

  “We will likely be able to revive him, but we should wait until it is safe for him to do so.”

  “How come you were able to talk?”

  “Extreme circumstances, apparently. I have since tried to talk aloud and failed.”

  “I’m---”

  “Do not apologize. If you admit to failure, it means you have given up trying.”

  I nodded, understanding. “So, how are we going to defeat Baltezore?”

  “We need a solid plan and at least two backup plans. Alas, I have not developed one yet. Baltezore has always been the one enemy I could not defeat. No matter what I did, no matter how strong my powers of divination got, he was always a step ahead of me. I could not even find him until he wanted to be found.”

  “Well, now you have me and everyone else here. We’ll come up with a plan together, where no one dies except Baltezore.”

  At that moment, the door burst open and Mason poked his head through. “Mist and her parents are here. They’re not going to be happy to learn that the sorcerer they came here to hide from is here.”

  “What about your mother and brothers?”

  “They apparently said they were going to help my sisters.”

  “Is that normal?”

  “No. My father’s a warrior; the first rule in our family is that we are a team. Part of that means we know where the rest of the family is at all times. We don’t rely on other people to tell us where we are. My mother should have contacted me herself.”

  “Merlin and I need to update you and the others on everything that has happened since we left.”

  * * *

  We gathered around the dining room table, where Magnus had prepared fruit, vegetables, bread, and roast
ed bird. I was pretty sure Magnus only made meat available because of my father, but I wasn’t going to waste the opportunity. Even though I had fully accepted my sorcery, I still never conjured meat.

  Despite the fact that Mason’s family was gone, the room still felt very crowded. It was me, Merlin, my father, Thaddeus, Magnus, Mason, Gideon, Mist, Mist’s parents, Houda, Ryker, Evelyn, Roulis, Jeb, and Blue (who was still under a silence curse). Blue was clearly still afraid of me, but she was more afraid of my father.

  Then again, most of the people at the table were afraid of my father, so the mood was somber. When I explained everything that had happened since Merlin and I left, the mood soured even further.

  It was silent for a while as everyone absorbed that, but then Houda asked, “Do you think Blue has been working with Ilvera?”

  Blue shook her head frantically.

  “We know she was,” Gideon said. “She attacked Merlin.”

  “I meant since then.”

  “I do,” I said. “Blue is the only one I can think of who would.”

  “But she’s been asleep,” Houda said. Her baby started fussing, so she rocked him gently.

  “Not the entire time,” Mason said.

  “It does not sound to me like Blue is in the best position to help your mother gather everyone together,” Merlin said. “No one trusts Blue. Your mother is intelligent enough that I believe the person working for her is the last person we would expect.”

  “But that would be me.”

  “I think it is not a Sjau.”

  It wasn’t my father because we were too suspicious of him and I highly doubted he would take orders from her. He was sitting across from Magnus, his chin in his palm. It unsettled me how calm he was, as if no matter what happened, he was going to come out on top. He studied everyone around the table apathetically.

  “It has to be Thaddeus,” Jeb said. “He’s the only one with anything to gain from it.”

  “You shut your mouth!” Thaddeus demanded, standing fast enough that his chair fell.

  “Is it Thaddeus?” I asked Merlin. Somehow, that felt worse than suspecting my father. I wanted to believe that my brother had changed, but it made sense that he was working for my mother to gain her favor.