Was this all really happening? He wondered if perhaps he were still lying in his hammock back in the Mossknot hut, fast asleep and dreaming. He would awaken to the smells of mold and fish heads, to the cries of the little ones. And his father would smack him on the head and tell him to prep the flatboat. Only Mogan Mossknot was not his father. His father had been Sorian, king of the black dragons. And this was no dream.
Myrian was right. The old owl-mage had told them they needed to head north, to the seat of the blue dragon’s crown. There they would need to find Corban and Miranda Everfrost and convince them to pledge themselves to the alliance.
Myrian said she knew the way. Magda had said the black sun had affected the entire world, and that included the Icelands to the north. His elation at becoming a fully-realized dragon and learning to fly was tempered by the thoughts of the demon and the difficult fight that lay ahead.
But first things first. He just hoped everyone at Everfrost Keep had not slaughtered one another.
12
MYRIAN
The air grew cold as they entered the lands of frost and snow. She looked down at the dark green trees, capped with white like icing on a pastry. The sun was a beautiful thing to see, especially after she had wondered if she would ever see it again. But its light did not seem as strong as it should be. And though it warmed her outstretched wings as she flew, she still felt cold.
Myrian turned her head to look at Zak. The revelation that he was a dragon, and a prince as well, was shocking. When she had first seen him, standing in that flatboat wearing what amounted to rags, she had seen something in him. He had an inner nobility to him. He was handsome as well, despite his lowly appearance. But then he had opened his mouth and revealed himself to be an unmannered rube.
What the high owl-mage saw in him, she had no idea. He was the son of Sorian Nightshadow, or so the other old owl had said. But though that might make him royalty, he had not been raised in the traditions, nor taught how to be who he was supposed to be. And that probably made him more of a liability than anything if they were supposed to wage war with an ancient demon.
She was uncomfortable enough with her own ability to stand among some sort of chosen alliance. She did not want to have to play mother to a fledgling prince who had lived in a swamp hut, playing rat his entire life. He might very well get her and whoever else might be crazed enough to join them killed. Then again, if Magda was right, they might all die anyway. That was the only reason she had agreed to this ridiculous quest instead of returning home.
Myrian turned her eyes ahead once more and spotted their destination. Her heart sank. She had visited Everfrost Keep when she was ten years old, and she still remembered it well. Instead of brick and mortar, the dragon artisans that had built the castle long ago had used their breath, sealing the stones in place with ice. They had crafted high towers and slender spires. She remembered the great walls of the keep with piles of fresh snow on top and long shiny icicles dangling like a row of fearsome teeth from their edges.
But now she saw no towers or spires. And only two of the four walls appeared to be standing. The place looked more like ruins than the seat of the most powerful dragon clan in the north.
She turned back to Zak, whose eyes were half-closed, a look of serene joy on his face. He was enjoying himself, oblivious to the scene of destruction ahead. She felt a rush of anger rise up within her and tried to tamp it down.
“Zak!” she yelled, satisfied at the sight of him flinching, his eyes widening as he wobbled in mid-air, momentarily losing his balance. He recovered quickly, looking around for danger before turning to her to see what was wrong.
“The keep is in ruins,” she said, nodding at it. “We will make a wide pass before landing.”
He narrowed his eyes at her, looking annoyed that she had snapped him out of his reverie. She could also see that he did not look entirely pleased at being bossed around.
Well good, she thought. He needs to learn his place. Zak was new to all this. He didn't know what he was doing, and she certainly wasn't going to let him think he was in charge in any way.
He said nothing, not even giving her a nod. But when they were close enough and she banked to circle the keep, he fell in behind her.
As they flew, keeping a wide berth, she surveyed the damage. It was worse than she had initially thought. The two massive walls that were downed had collapsed inward, destroying large chunks of the interior. Though it was not snowing now, some had fallen since the damage. The ruins lay in a blanket of white. She could see nothing or no one moving among them.
Once they had circled, she decided to land near the front gate, which hung open, the grating bent and twisted with ice. She saw no archers or spearmen, and if they were hiding, ready to spring out once they landed, she and Zak could take to the air once more. But she did not think that would happen. The place looked dead.
They would investigate anyway. Perhaps someone was still alive down there after all. And that made her think of Moonglow Castle. Was it like this there as well? Part of her yearned to head towards the Still Plains. But she took a deep breath and started to descend. She had chosen this path, and she would follow it. She had made a promise.
She intended to come in for a soft landing, but misjudged how deep the snow was. Her claws plunged into the fresh bed of white, sinking up to waist level if she had been in human form. A great plume billowed up as she landed, and she felt the cold in her claws and legs.
Myrian turned to check on Zak, just in time to see him hit the snow sideways. The impact made a thunderous whoosh, throwing up a wave of fresh snow. She shut her eyes as the blast hit her across the face and chest, almost knocking her back.
She opened her eyes to see Zak tumbling down the path that led away from the gate, throwing up torrents of snow in a wild frenzy of legs, wings, and tail. He smashed into a small pine tree, mercifully bringing him to a stop in a crumpled heap.
He lay upside down, his tail hanging down in front of his snout, his wings splayed out to either side. She almost laughed, but he looked as if he might actually be hurt. So she stifled the impulse and bounded through the snow to his side.
Zak let out a low moaning growl. “You did not teach me how to land,” he said, his deep voice strained with pain.
“You need to beat your wings hard as you drop to slow your descent,” she said.
“Good to know,” he groaned, letting himself fall over onto his side. The impact threw up another puff of snow, and he let out another moan.
“Are you all right?” she asked, hoping he could not see the smile in her eyes or hear it in her voice. Even if he had been injured, dragons healed quickly. And if it were bad enough, she could always use her breath. But it looked as if his pride had been hurt more than anything.
“I am well,” he said, rolling over onto his back with another groan. “Never felt better.”
She snorted a short laugh, unable to help herself. “Good,” she said. “Take human form again. We need to look inside.”
She transformed first. The snow was indeed up to her waist. Her armor kept her from freezing, but not from feeling the cold altogether. She hugged herself and rubbed her upper arms.
“Come on,” she said, her breath frosty in the cold air.
He twisted his head and looked at her with that same annoyed expression as before. But then he closed his eyes, relaxing instead of straining, and she watched him shift for the first time from a dragon back into a man.
He learns quickly, she thought. Hopefully he will learn what he needs quickly enough, for all our sakes.
As his body shrank, his scales meshed into his first suit of armor. He still lay on his back, nearly buried in the snow. But she heard him groan once more as he pulled himself to his feet.
The suit looked good on him, clinging closely to his lean, muscular frame. He looked much less like a peasant now, though his black hair was tousled from the crash landing, his right eye swollen and his lip cracked and bleeding. He limped towa
rd her through the snow, wincing and grabbing his ribs as he moved.
“Are you sure you are well?” she asked, unable to keep the amusement out of her voice this time. But there might be danger inside, and she did not want to be poking around with someone who could barely walk.
“I'm fine,” he said, straightening up. Even as she looked at him, the swelling in his eye went down. The trail of blood on his lip had already frozen. He looked well enough.
“Good,” she said. “Follow me. Be vigilant. And if we encounter anyone, I will do the speaking.”
He was pushing his fingers into the scales of his suit, feeling it for the first time. Then he shook the snow out of his black hair and looked at her as if hearing her for the first time. “Who put you in charge?”
Myrian sniffed a little laugh of disbelief. Was he making a jape? “You put me in charge,” she said. “By virtue of being like a child.”
She saw the red rush up into his face. “You would call me a child?” he said. “You've lived your life lounging on pillows while servants waited on you hand and foot. You know nothing of fending for yourself, much less leading anyone.”
Now it was her turn to feel the heat flush her cheeks. “I am not the one who just hit the ground like a stone ball smashing into a set of pins.”
“And I don’t remember seeing the white dragon lording over all the others, including me, on the owl’s little scroll.”
Their voices had kept rising during the exchange, to the point that they were now yelling at each other in the middle of the silent, frozen landscape.
Gods, he was so infuriating! Myrian thought. Perhaps finding out he was dragonborn royalty had gone to his head. But they had no time for all this.
“I am going inside,” she said, lowering her voice. “If you would care to accompany me.”
Then she turned and headed for the broken gate.
13
ZAK
Gods, she was infuriating!
She had lived her life pampered within the walls of a castle, and she thought they gave her dominion over everything, including him. He watched as she turned and headed for the gate, and he could not help his eyes wandering to her bottom, shiny, round, and white. He chided himself for longing for her, and also for being drawn into such ridiculous arguments. The very world was at stake. They had no time for such nonsense.
He sighed and followed her. His crash landing had hurt. Badly. But she was right about one thing. He was healing quickly, as he always had.
He felt the swelling in his eye recede and the ache in his ribs, several of which had almost surely snapped, fade to a dull throb.
The snow was high though, up to the middle of his thighs, and his sore body protested as he slogged through it after her. The iron gate was broken, twisted and covered in ice, but the snow was much less deep once they passed through it.
They walked through it slowly, side-by-side. He heard Myrian gasp and turned his head in the direction she was looking.
A group of people, ten of them at least, were off to the left just inside the gate in a icy tableau. They were dead, all of them, frozen in place by what looked as if it had been a blast of breath from a blue dragon. Icicles hung from them, but horizontally, away from the direction of the blast.
Zak stared into the dark sockets of their bare skulls. The force of the attack had ripped the flesh from their bones and frozen it in place behind them like some kind of ghastly flesh shadow. He had never seen anything like it. The acidic sourness of bile crept up the back of his throat, and his belly threatened to heave up its contents. But he looked away and took a deep breath, managing to keep his breakfast down. He could not throw up in front of Myrian. He would never hear the end of it.
She turned to him, her eyes looking shocked and distant. If she noticed how pale he was, she said nothing about it.
“Come,” she whispered. “Let’s keep looking.”
And look they did. They walked through rooms and halls, the walls broken and smashed, stones and ice lying upon the ground. And time after time they saw what looked like the aftermath of some grotesque war. Frozen corpses were everywhere, dead and preserved, posing as if for a role in some macabre drama.
Many were guards, gripping spears or swords, their armor half-torn from their bodies. In what looked like the main meeting hall, two dragons were frozen and intertwined in death. One’s claws punched into the other’s neck just as it was unleashing a torrent of breath upon the other. The frosty blast had encased them both, like flies in amber.
“They're dead,” Zak said. “All of them. There's nothing for us here.”
“But why would the High Mage send us here, then?” Myrian asked.
“She may be wise,” Zak said. “That doesn't mean she's all-knowing.”
“We should check below,” she said. “In the dungeons.”
He sighed. It seemed like a waste of time. If anything, they were less likely to find anyone alive beneath the castle. But they were already here, so he humored her.
“Do you know where the entrance is?” he asked. “Even if you did, it could be buried under rubble.”
“You are not being very helpful,” she said. “Perhaps we should split up and look for it.”
“And perhaps we should head for The Burning Sands,” he said. “They might have fared better than the blue dragons.”
“And perhaps we should be thorough while we are—”
She stopped, tilting her head to one side.
“We have been thorough,” Zak said. “We have been all over—”
“Shh,” she said.
Oh, now she was shushing him? He felt the irritation bubbling up inside again, a unique sensation that only she seemed capable of eliciting from him. Then he heard it, a faint sound coming from somewhere below them. It sounded like the rush of wind in a narrow tunnel, but intermittent. He furrowed his brow and listened, hearing it stop, then start again.
“What is that?” he asked.
“I might be able to tell,” Myrian said, “if you quit talking for one second.”
He wondered if the prophecies said anything about how irritating the white dragon would be. But he held his tongue and listened intently. The noise grew fainter, stopped, then started again more loudly.
“There,” he said, pointing to his right. He was sure of the direction it was coming from. Then he stepped over chunks of icy stone and headed that way.
He heard Myrian follow. Yes, he was certain. The sound was growing louder as he stepped over another broken wall and kept moving. Soon he came upon an open staircase leading underground. The rushing noise was definitely coming from down there, but the passage was as black as pitch.
No doubt there were torches below, but they had all been snuffed out and neither of them had brought flint and steel. As they stood there by the top of the stairs, the whooshing sound faded away, then started up again, louder than ever.
He nodded down into the darkness. “You're the leader,” he said. “After you.”
She peered experimentally down into the darkness, then stepped back. He hadn’t actually expected her to go down the stairs. He’d merely meant to deflate her ego a little, then perhaps discuss how best to proceed. But she surprised him by falling forward on all fours and beginning to grow.
Zak stumbled backwards, nearly tripping over a chunk of stone as Myrian shifted into dragonform. He didn’t understand. There was no way she was going to fit through the passage as a dragon.
But once she was fully transformed, she took in a deep breath, her chest swelling. Then she lowered her head to the top of the stairs, opened her jaws, and exhaled. Her breath glowed white, so bright it nearly hurt his eyes. Out of her mouth flowed a great shower of sparks, dancing down the stairs and bouncing off the walls.
No, not off the walls. Whatever she had breathed out, it was now sticking to the walls, and the stairs, and everything else it touched. Once she was done breathing out, Myrian turned her head to him, her serene draconic eyes looking down at him
with a satisfied air of contempt.
Then she began to shrink again, scales becoming armor as she took her human form once more. Zak took a step forward, looking at her, then down the stairs. The passage was now illuminated with bright white light. Every surface was spotted with flecks of her breath. He could see all the way to a landing at the bottom of the stairs, which then turned to the left.
“Nice,” he said, genuinely impressed. “I didn’t know you could do that.”
“A scribe could fill a library with things you don’t know about me,” she said, stepping past him to head down the stairs.
He supposed that might be true. Maybe he had misjudged Myrian Moonglow. Perhaps she wasn’t just a spoiled little princess after all. He followed her down the stairs.
They did turn to the left, descending another flight past stacks of crates, now spotted with Myrian’s breath and glowing accordingly. Once they reached the lowest level, less of her breath had made it this far. But the blue icy walls down here seemed to glow with their own inner light.
He saw what looked like cells on either side of the room, but a great sheet of ice blocked them from going any further. Zak took a step towards the thick ice wall and put his palm flat against it. He wondered how thick it was. This couldn’t have been how their dungeon was constructed, with only two cells. There was something beyond this wall, something—
A huge circular shadow bloomed on the other side, making him pull his hand away and jump back. The whooshing sound was almost deafening. He stood near Myrian and watched the wall. It was sweating, huge rivulets of water streaming down its surface.
Then he heard a loud snap, and a spider web of cracks popped out across the surface. He wasn’t sure he liked this. Something was on the other side all right, and it was trying to break through.
“Should we run?” he asked, taking a step backwards onto the stairs.
Myrian put her hand on his arm. “Wait.”
The webbing of ice cracked and crumbled, huge chunks falling to the floor into slush. The wall fell open. Behind it crouched a huge red dragon, smoke trailing out of its nostrils.
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