“This is not for you,” Elizabeth said.
“I’m beginning to think this has been entirely for me,” Fes said.
“You should not interfere.”
“I think it’s too late for that. Where is her father?”
“He’s dead.”
Fes frowned. “I don’t think so. I think all of this has been about his visit to the Great Market. There was a purpose to that visit.” The realization had come to him almost too late. He had begun to understand that there was something odd about the fact that they all had traveled from Toulen with Indra. With her ability, with the dragon blessing that she had, there would’ve been no reason for him to have brought her out of Toulen. It would’ve been too dangerous, and it would have drawn the attention of the empire.
Which it had.
But then, Fes suspected that was the point.
“Leave this place,” Elizabeth said.
“I will. There’s nothing left here. The remaining relics are gone.”
She frowned. “I will find them.”
“I don’t think you will. Last time I was here, there were dozens of dragon skeletons, and a haze that hovered over everything. That’s gone, along with the relics.”
“What did you do with them?” Elizabeth snapped. She turned toward him, power flowing from her and toward Fes. He deflected it, pushing away with his daggers.
Carter approached, holding her knife to Jayell’s throat.
“What did I do? You’ve got it wrong. This was someone else.”
Elizabeth’s face darkened. “Azithan.”
Fes shrugged. “I think so. But it still doesn’t help me understand what you have been after. Why have you come here? What did you think to accomplish?”
He looked over at the horses and saw an enormous pack strapped to one of the unsaddled horses. That had to be the dragon skull, didn’t it?
And if she was bringing the skull here, she must have…
The reason for coming here suddenly made sense. “You were trying to resurrect one of the dragons. That was why you brought the skull here?”
Elizabeth stared at him.
He had assumed that she wanted the skull so that she could give it to the emperor for power, but what he had seen of Elizabeth had shown him that she wanted power for herself, not to gift it to someone else. That was the entire purpose of having something like the golem serving her. Which meant that she had brought the skull here, thinking that she could resurrect a dragon.
Fes started to laugh.
“Do not mock me,” Elizabeth said.
“It seems to me that you are incredibly mockable. You can’t really have believed that the dragons could be restored simply by bringing the skull here.”
“It amazes me how little you know.”
“Considering how very little I’ve been a part of this, that shouldn’t amaze you at all.”
He glanced over at Jayell. If only she would have managed to find some item that would allow her to use her fire magic, but everything she possessed was spent.
And Fes wasn’t entirely certain that attempting to break her free was the right answer. It was more important to figure out a way to remove the dragon skull from Elizabeth’s possession.
“You were a fool in coming here,” Elizabeth said.
“It won’t be the first time. And it probably won’t be the last.”
“On the contrary, this will be the last.”
She raised her hand and a streak of orange flame shot from her.
The suddenness of it was overwhelming.
Fes barely had a chance to bring up his daggers, slicing at the spell so that she didn’t burn him to a crisp.
“Do you really think that you can withstand me alone?”
“Whoever said that I am alone?” he asked.
She frowned and at that moment, the Toulen warriors appeared behind him. He could feel their presence, even if he couldn’t see them very easily.
Elizabeth’s mouth tightened into a brief frown and she nodded at Fes. “Interesting. I had not thought that you would manage to gain allies. The stories about you have made it sound as if you did not work well with others.”
Fes glanced over at Carter. “I don’t work well with others. But you have someone that they want back.”
“I doubt very much that they are interested in her. They care more about the artifacts I have stolen from them.”
She swept her hands in front of her, and a wave of flames leaped from her.
Fes dropped to the ground, rolling out of the way. The heat that burst off her was enormous, rivaling what he’d felt from Azithan. A line of fire prevented the Toulen warriors from getting too close.
Fes crawled to his knees. “Do you think I need them to help?”
“That was not to prevent them from helping you. It was to prevent you from helping them.”
A rumbling thudded through him.
The golem.
How had the creature managed to escape and get here so quickly?
He looked back and saw the Toulen warriors changing their positions, arranging themselves in such a way that they could defend against the golem attack, but there wasn’t anything that could be done. To prevent them from being slaughtered, destroyed by the golem, Fes would need to stop Elizabeth.
Was he strong enough?
He took a step toward her. Heat radiating off her pushed him back.
“You will find that I have gained access to power I did not have the last time you saw me,” she said. “And I think we both remember how that ended for you.”
Fes shoved his daggers into the sheaths. He reached for the dragonglass sword and unsheathed it. Her eyes widened slightly.
Fes smiled. “And I have gained access to something different since we last saw each other, too. Did you want to find out who has grown more capable than who?”
She glared at him for a long moment and then nodded with a satisfied smile. “Let it begin,” she said.
Heat built and the spell that she was using on him began to wrap around him, attempting to confine him in place. He had felt it before and remembered how she had managed to hold him. If she succeeded again, he would be of no use to the Toulen warriors.
He would be of no use to Indra.
He managed to bring the sword around and took a step forward, pushing it in front of him. Slowly—almost as if he were crawling through mud—he began to part the spell.
He wasn’t sure that he would be able to maintain it. The pressure pushing against him was incredible, much more than when he had faced her the last time. She was right—she was much more powerful than when he had confronted her before. With what he saw now, he wasn’t sure that he would be able to reach her.
Indra watched him.
He could see it out of the corner of his eye, and as he did, he felt a strange wriggling in his pocket again. The wriggling persisted, and suddenly, there was a tearing, and two of the totems she had made for him dropped out.
Fes barely had a chance to look and see what she had done. His focus remained on Elizabeth and the way that she continued to push her power against him, trying to constrict him, squeezing him.
Another step. He was still too far from her for his own comfort. Each attempt to get closer took considerable effort. Each attempt to get near her required that he surge forward, demanding every ounce of strength that he could summon.
Would he be strong enough?
He pushed again.
Something rumbled behind him, and he thought it was the thundering of the golem, but he didn’t dare look back and see.
He was probably ten steps away from Elizabeth. Ten steps to reaching her, and ten steps to finally managing to stop her.
And he could move no more.
He tried to take another step, but every time that he attempted to, he was prevented from moving.
He pressed out with the sword, but there was nothing in it that helped.
“You could have been a threat,” she said. “Unfortunately
, you know too little. The dragon will be mine. I will return the creature, and I will control it, and I will use that power to control the empire.”
“That’s it? You want to overthrow the emperor?” Fes asked between gritted teeth. “That seems so… boring.”
“Boring? The empire has ruled for a thousand years. I will see the empire stopped, and I will have the power soon.”
“But you won’t. The relics aren’t here. Azithan has gotten here ahead of you. Maybe he will be the one to overthrow the empire.”
“Azithan?” she sneered. “Azithan serves blindly. He has never stopped to consider the benefits his power might enable him to have. He has never stopped to consider how he might be stronger than the emperor.”
“And you have?”
“I have the foresight to plan.”
“It seems as if your plans were mistaken,” Fes said. “If they weren’t, you would have figured out that you needed to come here and secure the relics first.”
Why was he debating with her? The only purpose it served was forcing her to burn off power, but considering how much power she was throwing at him, and all the power that he had detected on the journey to the Draconis Pass, he didn’t think it mattered. It would be unlikely for her to use up all of the dragon relics she had on hand. Even one massive relic would be enough to do what she had done so far.
“Azithan won’t reach Anuhr in time.”
She took a step toward Fes and he could not move.
The heat around him sizzled in the air. She pressed downward with it, forcing it around him, enveloping him in it. The burning seemed to press through his skin and into his blood, reminding him of the visions of dragons that he’d had and the power that he had detected in those dreams.
Fes attempted to fight off the sensation but could not. Every time he tried to push away the heat burning through him, he failed. It was as if whatever Elizabeth did held him, restricting him and keeping him from accessing that part of himself that just might be able to free him, that part of him that was tied to the Deshazl.
She stepped in front of him, making a slow circle around him, a predator prowling. “Yes. You could have been so much more,” she said. “And yet… You refused to acknowledge what you are and what you can be. I doubt even he knows.”
“You doubt that he knows what?”
It was incredibly difficult for him to get the words out. When he tried, it came out as nothing more than a grunt.
She leaned in and the heat that sizzled off her squeezed him together, forcing his arms to his sides. Fes struggled, but nothing came of it. There was no strength left in him.
He could do nothing against this kind of magic.
“I doubt that he knows what you could have been,” Elizabeth said. “And with you out of the way, you will not be able to develop into the weapon that you might otherwise have become. With you out of the way, I won’t have to worry about you attacking me again.”
The steady thundering that Fes attributed to the golem intensified. It had to be near. If that were the case, then it meant the Toulen warriors had failed, that the golem had overpowered them. And it meant that Elizabeth would have won.
What would happen with Indra?
He turned away from Elizabeth, ignoring the heat of her gaze, and looked at the young girl. She was so small and frail, and the tightness and weariness in her eyes angered Fes. A child her age, not much older than he had been when he had lost his parents, not much older than his brother had been, should not be forced to suffer the way that Indra had been.
Worse, had it been her father’s fault that she’d been endangered? Had coming to the empire placed her in this position?
Rage began to simmer within him, mixing with Elizabeth’s heat.
Fes turned his attention back to Elizabeth.
“I can see that you still struggle. I admit that I am impressed by the fact that you have survived as long as you have. Considering everything that has been thrown at you, you should have died long ago. But now is your time.”
She turned to face him and raised both of her hands. Heat began to burn from them, causing both hands to glow a soft orange that shifted, becoming a bluish green. The heat was enormous, the intensity unlike anything he had faced before.
She cupped her hands together, forming a fireball.
Fes had faced a fire mage attempting such magic once before and had been lucky to survive that time.
Confined as he was, he doubted that he would be able to escape this time. The way that Elizabeth held him, trapped within the magic of her spell, would prevent him from doing anything or going anywhere.
Giving up wasn’t in him. He would fight through his dying breath if that was what it took.
Embracing the anger, rage boiled within him. Unlike before, where he had focused on wrongs that were done to him, this time it was because of what had been done to Indra. The heat boiling within him seemed to push back against the magic Elizabeth was forcing upon him.
Another moment, not much more than that, and the fireball she had created would explode upon him.
All he needed was to get to the ground and avoid the explosion of heat, but unless he could somehow push against her magic, he didn’t think that he could.
What was it that Jayell had said to him?
It wasn’t the dragonglass daggers or the dragonglass sword. The magic was within him.
Fes wasn’t even sure that he believed it, but it might not even matter, not with what he was pushing against.
Taking a deep breath, he embraced the fire burning within him.
Pain flared through him, a searing sort of sensation that engulfed him.
Elizabeth released the fireball.
Fes screamed.
Chapter Twenty-Four
The fireball hovered in front of him.
Fes blinked. Somehow, he was still alive.
Somehow the fireball had not roared through him, destroying him.
He wasn’t entirely certain how, but maybe that didn’t matter.
All that mattered was that he lived.
The pain burning through him somehow allowed him to move his arms.
Fes brought them up and gripped the dragonglass sword in his hands.
Elizabeth staggered back a step. The fireball hovered, not moving. She pushed on it with her hands cupped together, trying to force it onto Fes, but the effort of whatever she was doing was not enough, not against what burned within him.
It had to be Deshazl. What other explanation was there?
There wasn’t another explanation. The only thing that Fes could account for was the fact that he had that connection, that he was descended from Deshazl, and that he somehow had a connection to the dragons. He had no idea what that meant other than the fact that he still lived.
Using the sword, he slashed through the fireball. It fell apart, cleaved in half, and the flames fell harmlessly to either side of him.
Elizabeth began to form another fireball. This one had the same potency as the last, but Fes was no longer trapped as he had been when she had attacked him the first time. He slashed at it, cleaving it before she had a chance to complete her spell.
“How do you control the golem?” he asked.
She shook her head. “You will not know. You will—”
Fes unsheathed one of his daggers and jammed it into her shoulder in a fluid movement. As he slipped it forward, the heat from the spell that she used to try to confine him slid off of him, as if the dagger—or Fes himself—was no longer confined by the magic.
“How do you control the golem?”
She screamed again, her eyes wide. Heat surged from her, waves of it that washed over him. Fes struggled to ignore the heat, struggled to ignore the power that she was somehow able to command, and fixed her with a heated expression.
Taking a moment to look over his shoulder, he saw Jayell now holding Carter. Power built from her, radiating from her necklace, pressing into the other woman. Carter glared but said nothing.
“I don’t have any problem killing you. You wouldn’t be the first fire mage that I killed, but I have no reason to do so unless you don’t tell me how you control the golem.”
She started laughing, an angry sort of cackle. “Killed me? If you kill me, it will be unleashed. The golem will continue to hunt until every person who was responsible for my demise is gone. Do you think you are powerful enough to overpower that creature? How long do you think you can withstand its attack?”
Fes jabbed his dagger deeper into her shoulder. “How do you control the golem?”
She fixed him with her glare and said nothing.
“Fes?”
He glanced over to see Indra approaching carefully. A look of horror crossed her face, leaving him flushed with embarrassment. She didn’t deserve to see him like this.
“It would be a small item. Nothing more than the size of the palm of your hand,” Indra said, appearing next to Fes. “It will look something like one of my figurines, but it will be different. The power within it will be different. And it will be made of the same sort of stone that the golem is made from.”
Elizabeth glared at Indra. “You know nothing. You have been nothing but a way to my discovering what I needed. You know—”
Fes jabbed his other dagger into her other shoulder, silencing her with a scream. He kicked her legs, knocking her down.
“You have to hurry,” Indra said. “I don’t know how much longer I can contain the creature. I didn’t have much strength remaining from the last time.”
Fes glanced back and saw the two totems that had been in his pocket now holding onto the golem, keeping it from moving to this side of the fire. How many of the Toulen warriors were lost? How many had died before the totems had managed to reach them and help hold the golem?
Fes dropped his knee onto Elizabeth’s chest. He held her down and began searching her pockets. There were a few dragon relics, and he slipped those into his pocket only to find them falling to the ground. He glanced up at Indra.
“Sorry,” she said.
“Hold onto those,” Fes said.
He continued to look through Elizabeth’s pockets, searching for whatever he could find that might be the marker that helped control the golem but found nothing.
Dragon Blessed Page 25
