“They stop here.” Rolant frowned, looking at the ground. They stood in a small clearing of dry land next to a rocky ledge. The forest was quiet, perhaps too quiet, but she couldn’t detect the presence of the Var. “They just vanish.”
Mede looked up the cliff and slowly stepped back. Directly above where the tracks ended was a small inlet in the stone. She lowered her voice to a whisper. “A cave. There.”
In unison the dragon men looked upward and backed away from the cliff to see where she indicated.
“We can climb it,” Saben said.
“Mede and Dylan, you are the smallest. We’ll need you in case there is a tight space. You two will climb with me. The rest of you stay down here on watch,” Rolant ordered before leaping to scramble up the steep rock wall. His footing slipped but he quickly righted himself. Mede and Dylan obeyed, following him up. The stone was mostly smooth and the occasional jagged pieces did not allow much in the way of handholds. As she neared the top, Rolant reached down for her arm and jerked her up and over the edge, before doing the same for Dylan.
They stood on a narrow ridge in the cave’s opening. A rope ladder was coiled on the ground near the entrance. Mede kicked it down in case the others needed to fight their way up. Rolant had to shift into human form to squeeze through the narrow opening into the dim cave. His dragon body wouldn’t have been pliable enough to pass.
Mede followed him, forced to use her human hands to claw her way through. “There is no way they could have brought Cynan through here.”
Rolant pointed to a thick smear of blood on an interior rock.
Dylan emerged through the opening and instantly went to touch the blood. He sniffed it. “It’s Draig.”
* * *
Llyr looked out over the forest from the office balcony. The stone railing kept him from leaping over the side. The desire to go after Mede became so strong he could barely contain it, but the fall would probably kill him. She was out there in the distant Var forest, trudging through marshes and the gods only knew what else. His talons clawed into the stone.
The palace was more fortress than grand castle. If someone looked up at him from the ground, they wouldn’t see the windows or balconies attached to the royal quarters. The exterior was carefully carved to look natural, like the cliff edge of a mountain. The surrounding valley would be where the wedding festival would be held. Beyond that, the small village was nestled near the enormous trees. He could make out the rock-lined roads placed on an even grid between wooden homes. The village was a reminder as to why he couldn’t go after Mede. Like all Draig villages, it was under the protection of the House of Draig, his father’s house. Under his family’s rule, the people of his land prospered. No one went hungry. No one went without shelter unless they wanted to. Everyone worked and contributed to the best of their abilities.
His gaze went from the village toward the Var marshlands. Prince and man. How could he choose which path to take when they led him in opposite directions? The people of his village? Or Mede, his heart, his very reason for living? Even now she might be in danger.
He clawed the stone harder, scratching it in his frustration. At the sound of one of his parents finally joining him, he turned eagerly. “I know of Cynan. I saw Rolant on my way here. What else has happened?”
Queen Lorna lifted her hands and moved forward as if to calm the wild beast brimming inside her son. She was not a dragonshifter, but she handled the Draig well. The queen had come to Qurilixen when she was just old enough to marry. She had the dark hair and eyes of her people and did not cower from obstacles put in her path. As the only daughter of a poor Serean craftswoman, her mother had taught her to make furniture at a young age to help around the workshop. She’d done this instead of going to school and had not known how to read anything but Serean blueprints for the first twenty years of her life. That childhood had left her with tiny scars on her hands that she never tried to hide.
“Relax, my son,” the queen said. She placed her hand on his chest. “Your heart is beating too fast with worry.”
“Lorna, are you in…” The king’s voice always had a raspy quality to it, as if his vocal cords had permanently locked in a half shift and affected his tone. “There you are.”
King Tared was very much like Llyr—born heir to the title, passionate about his people, and protective of his family—insomuch that the two men even looked like replicas of each other, plus or minus a few battle scars. Rolant looked more like a combination of his parents, with the king’s coloring and his mother’s Serean features.
“What is happening? I should be with the others looking for Cynan.” Llyr gestured behind him toward the borderlands.
“Good, then you know the most urgent half,” the king said.
“There’s more?” Llyr stepped away from the ledge.
“All know Cynan camps alone,” his father put forth. “I don’t think we were meant to discover he’d gone missing so quickly. It’s possible he was taken for information about the Dead Dragons, or our military, or the palace. He has privileges with all three.”
“Cynan would not have gone down gently.” Llyr knew that much for a fact. The warrior was very strong.
“We are not sure what happened. There were drag marks at his camp. It is possible he did not even get a chance to fight.” The king studied his son. “What do you know of our female dragon? This Lady Medellyn?”
“I’ve met her,” Llyr said carefully. He guiltily thought of the stone hidden in his pocket. “She is with the Dead Dragons going after Cynan.”
“You let a woman go?” King Tared’s voice rose in surprise at the very notion.
“She’s tougher than many men of our kind. Rolant assures me she is trained for war and she is a member of the Dead Dragons. You decreed all Dead Dragons within a five minute hard run were to be gathered for the search party.” Llyr had to look away from his father’s probing gaze. “You ordered her to go, my king.”
“Why not a woman?” Queen Lorna demanded of her husband.
“Women are to be protected at all costs. Men are warriors. Women belong in the home under our protection. That is the way the gods created the genders.” The king defended his position, but Llyr had a feeling his father would be apologizing profusely to his wife once they were alone.
Queen Lorna made an unamused humming noise but said nothing more. Yeah, his father was going to be doing a lot of begging later.
“Why do you ask about Lady Mede?” Llyr drew his parent’s attention back to himself.
“I received a missive from the Var king inquiring about our female. He has requested to be allowed at our wedding festival.” King Tared shook his head in disbelief. “In all my years, I have never heard of a Var being invited to attend our sacred festival. I cannot find reason for the request. We’ve had a female dragon for years. Why ask about her now? The timing is too close to Cynan’s disappearance. Until now, I had thought King Auguste wanted our peace to last. The Var stay on their side. We stay on ours. Neither side has anything to do with the other. I like it that way. This request makes me uneasy.”
Llyr’s heart pounded violently. What did King Auguste want with Mede? And she was out there, at this very moment, in Var territory. Was the kidnapping a trap? “When Mede did her initiation run into the Var forest, she came back with blond fur, not the fur from a marsh farmer like most of the runners. What if that is how King Auguste heard of her? If she’d met up with someone from the royal palace, they would have told the king about it. She is beautiful and strong and makes an impression.”
“There is nothing more we can do about this but wait for word about Cynan.” The queen touched her husband’s arm. “We should go to the temple and ask the gods to protect them. It is more productive than speculating.”
“Come son.” The king gestured that Llyr was to follow.
“Give me a moment,” Llyr said, trying to maintain control. “I’ll be along shortly.”
His mother gave him a soft smile. His father gruf
fly nodded. They both left.
Why did the Var king want to attend the Breeding Ceremony? King Auguste had been married once, but his mate had died. He wasn’t sure exactly how it worked, but the Var were not like the Draig. They didn’t always mate to one woman. They could, but they could also take half mates. In theory, he supposed a Var could take a full mate, and then a half mate. The very idea was strange to Llyr. How could a man love more than one woman? How could a man marry if he wasn’t completely in love? If Llyr’s mate was to die, he’d never recover from the loss.
Llyr turned back to the village and the borderlands, torn worse than before. Did he risk his life to save the woman he loved, who might not even be in danger? Or did he uphold the honor of his title and do what tradition, his parents, the gods and Draig law demanded of him?
What should he choose?
How could he choose?
Chapter Ten
Mede lifted her tunic shirt and drew the blade from her waist. She waited while Rolant and Dylan did the same. Her eyes shifted so she could see in the dim cave light. The stone was red like it was near the Draig palace. The tunnel opened up into a large cavern of crystal formations that refracted streams of light and turned them into prismatic rainbows of color. Small inlets revealed nothing but rock and dirt. Fresh footprints scuffed the dirty floor and they followed them east toward a lower subsystem of tunnels. Though there were possible turns, they kept on the worn trail. The tracks ended near a steep decline.
When Rolant hesitated, Mede jumped down first. The stone was damp and the air musty. She carefully stepped over tiny puddles of liquid. Suddenly, she stopped, holding up her hand for the other two to do the same. A thick iron door had been built at the end of the tunnel, in a place where there should be no reason to have a door.
She placed her hand on it. The door moved at her touch, hitting its frame before bouncing open just enough to let light spill out into the tunnel. She listened, able to detect what could have been shallow breathing.
Rolant grabbed her arm and pulled her behind him with a look of warning. He leaned to peek into the light. Slowly, he opened the door. It moved soundlessly on its hinges. The man stepped into the light. Mede followed, ignoring the fear in her gut and the pounding of her heart.
They were in high-tech laboratory. The stone of the cave floor had been lined with metal. Chairs were pushed away from tables. Papers and files were scattered over desks. Whoever had been here was gone now.
“What is this place?” Mede asked, looking at Dylan. He moved to a computer monitor and began looking at the files.
“Is that my sister dragon, or am I hallucinating?”
Mede stiffened and rushed toward the voice. Cynan was locked in a cage next to a dead Owain. The almost non-existent smell of decay indicated the death was recent. Black liquid trails ran out of Owain’s nose and eyes to puddle around the floor. It was too dark to be blood and had a strange odor to it.
“Cynan!” Mede reached for the cage door and shook it. The latch was too strong to break. To the others, she yelled, “I need a key.”
“No, stop,” Cynan said wearily. “You must leave this place.”
“We came for you.” Mede studied his face. He looked sick. Dark circles marred the flesh beneath his eyes. He coughed, too weak to lift his hand. A tiny rivulet of black liquid trailed over his chin. “What happened? Who did this?”
“Var captured me. Had to be Var. They invaded my campsite, darted me with something, and the next thing I know I wake up here next to this loud, smelly bastard surrounded by four alien scientists.” Cynan’s eyes moved briefly to Owain. “At least he’s quiet now.”
“Where did they go?” Rolant asked.
“I don’t know.” Cynan closed his eyes. “The scientist injected us with something. When this marsh farmer started getting sick they panicked and hauled ass out of here. Couldn’t even do the decent thing and put us out of our misery.”
“We’re taking you home,” Mede said. “Dylan, open the door.”
“By all the gods,” Dylan whispered. His face paled as he turned away from the monitor to look at her. “I don’t think we can.”
Cynan coughed again. Black came out of his nose dripping to his chest.
“Help him!” she demanded.
“There’s nothing he can do,” Cynan insisted. “Leave me. Seal this place behind rock.”
“No.” Mede shook her head in denial. Tears slipped from her eyes and she didn’t care who saw them. She reached her hand into the cage, trying to touch Cynan. “Give me your hand.”
“Mede, don’t touch the black, it’s highly contagious. He’s right. We can’t do anything for him. We have to leave him. This substance they injected him with, kills shifters. If we take him from here, we’ll kill everyone who touches the infected person. Right now it’s not airborne, but if it spreads, it’s only a matter of time before it mutates and adapts…”
Mede slumped to the floor. Her hand dropped to the bottom of the cage but she didn’t pull it out. She pressed her face against the bars.
“Argh!” Rolant yelled in anger, slashing his hand over the table. Little containers scattered around the laboratory. Mede ignored the tirade. Rolant only acted how she felt.
“Keep looking, Dylan,” she whispered. “There has to be a way to stop this.”
“Find something,” Rolant repeated the order.
A black tear trailed out of Cynan’s eye. Mede wasn’t sure how long she stared at him, desperately wanting to comfort him and unable to reach him. She spoke in low tones, not sure what she really said to him, only that her voice seemed to bring him some comfort. She saw his pain and wanted to take it away. The shallow rise and fall of his chest was so gentle she wasn’t sure it even moved.
“We’re going to avenge you,” she promised the man. “They won’t get away with this.”
“He’s gone, Mede,” Rolant said, touching her shoulder.
“I’m sorry,” Dylan stammered. “I tried. I…”
“It was good we could at least be here with him,” Rolant stated. “No one should die alone.”
Mede turned hard eyes to the prince. He is Draig. He was not meant to die in a cage. She shrugged off Rolant’s hand. Turning, she eyed the laboratory. Then, seeing a white jacket, she grabbed it and pulled it to her face. The scent of a doctor was there.
She turned to Dylan. “Say the blessing. Send him to sit beside the gods. Don’t leave his spirit in this place. Then lock this chamber and bury it under so much rock no one will find it for hundreds of years. Leave everything inside.”
Dylan shifted and began chanting the ancient words of burial.
Mede couldn’t control the dragon as it came over her in a hard ripple. She shredded the jacket in anger and tossed the pieces aside. “I’m going to hunt these aliens down and rip them apart.”
She tore from the laboratory, ran through the tunnel, and then jumped up through the hole. Rolant kept pace with her. She heard his angry breathing and knew he would not try to stop her. Sprinting, she didn’t stop until she was at the cave’s entrance in the side of the cliff.
Mede scanned the forest from her high perch. Her eyes narrowed as she focused her vision. Birds flew in the distance as if startled. With a growl, she fell more than climbed down the rock face. The others gathered around her.
“What happened?” Arthur demanded.
“Dead,” Mede managed, the word barely making it out of her throat.
“Mede?” Llyr stepped before her. The shock of seeing him froze her in place. He must have joined the group while she was in the cave. His eyes met hers in question. “What happened?”
Rolant leapt down. “Cynan’s dead.”
Mede breathed hard. Llyr reached for her, but she turned from him. Now was not the time for tenderness. “Dragons to arms!” she yelled, running into the forest. Without question, they followed her lead, shifting for whatever battle was to come.
Every one of her senses had focused on her task—find the alien sci
entists and kill them. Rage swelled inside her, driving away all thoughts of prudence. It was easier to be angry than to admit her grief. She slashed her hand at a limb, severing it with her talons. Her body moved as if of its own accord as her brain chanted for revenge.
She heard a small laugh the same moment she picked up the scent from the laboratory. The noise infuriated her. How dare they laugh? How dare they breathe?
“Laugh at me all you want. We don’t deserve to live, not after what we’ve done,” a man said. He spoke the Old Star language with a thick accent she didn’t recognize. “On my home world we’d be executed for it. Death for death.”
“This isn’t your home world, Cragen, and we’re not bound by this planet’s laws. Soon we’ll be gone and it won’t matter,” another man answered. He sounded younger than the first, with a nervous energy she could practically smell radiating through the forest. Mede followed the sound. “The stuff dies with the test subjects. No one will even know what we did. It doesn’t matter. This stupid little nowhere planet doesn’t matter.”
“We shouldn’t have taken this job,” a woman answered. “Genetic targeting is too hard. Shifter DNA is too similar and transformative by nature. Look where they put us? There is no decent city on this primitive planet.”
“You’re the one who said you could alter and accelerate the Black Crawl, Shann—shh, I heard something,” a second woman said.
“You’re being paranoid,” the younger man scolded.
Mede burst through the trees, talons drawn. She went directly for the scent matching the jacket she’d found. A redheaded woman screamed as Mede lunged for her. The alien’s shiny silver dress sparkled like a target.
Dragons sprang out of the forest. The whiz of a laser shot past her to sizzle against a tree. All of the warriors had been trained to use lasers, but they were considered a dishonorable weapon because it took little skill to point and shoot at a target. If anything, the Qurilixian preferred blades for fighting. Or talons.
The Dragon's Queen (Dragon Lords) Page 12
