The Unbearable Lightness of Dragons ld-2

by Katie MacAlister

  “Not hall,” I corrected myself as I looked around. “Lobby. Hotel lobby.” The world seemed to resolve itself before my eyes, as if it was slowly being brought into focus.

  “Thank god,” Aisling said as she and Jim pushed me into a large off-white chair.

  “Aisling!” I said with delight. “I know who you are! And Jim!”

  She gave me a crooked smile, then gestured to a waiter and demanded coffee. “Whew. You gave us quite a fright there. I was trying to figure out how to tell Baltic that we killed you changing Jim back, and then the First Dragon was suddenly there, and . . . well, I’m just glad your brain is back, too.”

  I frowned as she began her sentence, but by the time she was done, I had pulled together enough of my wits to respond. “The spell killed me?”

  “I don’t think so. Kostich said it was the backlash of arcane magic that was suddenly released when Jim was changed back into Newfie form. You lit up like a Christmas tree for a minute, then collapsed. We’d just figured out you were dead when pop! The First Dragon was there, calling your name, and bringing you back.” Aisling gazed at me with a kind of amazement. “I don’t think I’ve ever heard of anyone being resurrected twice, especially not by the First Dragon. Drake says he hasn’t made an appearance for centuries, not until May saw him when she re-formed the dragon heart. It’s obvious you have some sort of a tie with him.”

  I took a deep breath, grateful to feel air filling my lungs. “Well, I’m not going to complain, since I’m alive. I can only imagine what Baltic—” Horror made the skin on my neck crawl as realization struck me. “Oh, dear god! Baltic! He must have felt me die!”

  Frantically, I searched my pockets for my cell phone, but found nothing.

  “Oh, geez. I didn’t think of that. Your phone got blasted with the explosion of light. Here, take mine,” Aisling said, shoving her phone at me.

  My fingers shook as I punched in the phone number, remembering well the promise in Baltic’s voice when he swore he would not live without me.

  “Were you dead long enough to kill him?” Aisling asked, adding a hellish nightmare tinge to an already overwhelming sense of panic.

  “Please answer, please answer,” I chanted as the phone rang. Tears filled my eyes as I blocked the need to examine the worst-case scenario. “Please, Baltic, please—”

  A wordless snarl of anguish answered the phone.

  “Baltic!” I yelled into it.

  “Ysolde?” Heavy breathing was all that met my ears for a few seconds. “Christos! What are you doing to me? Where are you? Why did it feel as if my heart was ripped out anew? What have you done?”

  “Oh, thank god.” I covered the mouthpiece for a moment. “He’s all right, Aisling.”

  “Thank god,” she said as well, then grabbed Jim and pulled it after her to another grouping of chairs in order to give me a little privacy.

  “Where are you?” Baltic demanded again. A horrible noise followed, a combination of breaking glass and screaming metal, followed by a muffled explosion. “Bloody hell!”

  “What’s going on? What was that?” Fear gripped my heart despite the sound of his voice.

  “Pavel?” Another crash of glass sounded sharp in my ear, followed by Baltic grunting as more metal screamed. “The door is off. Are you hurt?”

  Distantly, I could hear Pavel answer, “Just my arm. Air bags saved us.”

  “Oh, my god, you were in a car? You crashed? Are you all right?” I stood up, spinning one way and then another, needing to go to him but having no idea where he was.

  “Yes. This car is defective. We will get another. Now you will tell me why I felt as I did the time Constantine killed you.”

  I took a couple more deep breaths, pointing out to myself that if he could talk, he was fine. “Something happened when Dr. Kostich helped me lift my borked spell off of Jim.”

  “Your what spell?”

  “Borked. You know, wonky.”

  He sighed, and in the distance I heard a whoomp noise. “Mate, I know you believe you are human, but you are six hundred years old. You do not need to adopt the language of mortals to prove otherwise.”

  “Actually, I’m more like six minutes old, but that’s neither here nor there. What was that whooshing noise I just heard?”

  “The defective car has burst into flames. What happened with Kostich? Why did it feel as if you died?”

  “I did die.”

  Stentorian breathing was all I could hear for half a minute. “Why,” he finally asked in a voice that sounded strangled, “did you die?”

  “I just told you. Kostich and I were lifting the spell off of Jim, and it went bad. The backlash of the release of arcane power killed me. The First Dragon resurrected me. Again.”

  Baltic swore profoundly. “I’ll never hear the end of that,” he muttered before raising his voice as sirens sounded near him. “Stay where you are. I will acquire a new vehicle and fetch you.”

  “Oh, no you don’t. You stay where you are and I’ll get a car and pick you and Pavel up. Is his arm hurt badly? Are you hurt in any way?”

  “Mate, do not give me orders when you have just come close to destroying me. Stay there. We will find you.”

  We compromised after five minutes of argument to meet at Aisling and Drake’s house.

  “Are you sure Drake won’t mind my showing up?” I asked Aisling as our taxi pulled to a stop at a graceful house in a exclusive neighborhood.

  “Not at all,” she answered, then added with a little grimace, “And if he does, tough noogies. I want you to see the babies. They’re beyond adorable, even though I’m hardly impartial. Jim, stop that. Your package is exactly the way it used to be. Ysolde, I hope you don’t mind being frisked. Drake’s security since the twins were born has almost gone past what’s tolerable, but he means well.”

  It took a good three minutes for me to be scanned, searched, and have an oral swab taken to determine whether I had any communicable diseases, but at last I made it into the foyer of the house, and Aisling bustled me upstairs to the nursery to see her babies.

  The twins were sleeping in identical intricately carved wooden cradles, swathed with lace and filled with a number of stuffed toy dragons. I duly admired them, chatted with their nanny, a young green dragon named Grace, and reassured Aisling that I would return at a later date when the twins were awake so I could admire them as they obviously deserved.

  “Drake wanted to name them both with Hungarian names, but I was adamant that I get a Celtic name in there—my family has always had Celtic names—so I picked Iarlaith, even though the pronunciation trips everyone up. Drake chose Ilona’s name. It means ‘beautiful. ’ Now, while we’re on the subject of children, tell me how Brom is doing. May said he had a grand time while visiting her and Gabriel, but I hope he hasn’t been affected by this stupid war.”

  “Not—”

  The door to the sitting room where we were having tea was thrown open, and Baltic stood in the doorway, bristling with indignation.

  “—in the least.”

  “Oh, dear,” Aisling said, eyeing him. “I hope Pál wasn’t overly zealous with his security precautions.”

  “Full cavity search?” Jim asked Baltic. “Metal detector up the ol’ wazoo? X-rays and soft-tissue scans?”

  Smoke swirled out of one of Baltic’s nostrils. His hair was mussed and loose around his shoulders, and he looked like he’d been grinding his teeth. He also looked like he was capable of tearing down the house with his bare hands.

  “Thank you for the tea,” I told Aisling, forestalling the inevitable explosion. “I think I’ve probably pushed Baltic past his tenuous grip on patience, so we’ll be on our way.”

  “Oh, so soon?” She looked disappointed. “Maybe Baltic would like to see the babies first?”

  He rolled one eye over to her. She flinched. “No, I see your point. Another time, then.”

  I took Baltic’s hand and leaned in to kiss him gently. He didn’t move, but his gaze, furious and,
as I suspected, without a shred of patience, scorched me. “Come, my darling. I will assuage your anger on the way home.”

  He said nothing, but a spark of interest flared in his fathomless eyes for a moment. “It’s going to take a hell of a lot more than assuaging, mate. You asked me about my fantasies the other day. I have one now, and it involves meting out the punishment you deserve for putting me through the last hour.”

  “Ooh, punishment fantasies,” Jim said, cocking a furry eyebrow. “Drake has a lot of those.”

  “Jim!” Aisling said, pointing a finger. “Out! Don’t you give me that look. I’m the demon lord here, and you just better remember that—”

  We left Aisling in the middle of scolding Jim. I took one look at the dark promise in Baltic’s eyes and allowed him to escort me out to the taxi he’d engaged, wondering just what form his idea of punishment would take, and whether I should make up a new batch of caramel sauce for it.

  Chapter Sixteen

  Riga is an odd combination of an ancient city and a modern metropolis. It was part of the Hanseatic League, which made it a valuable port for trade, one of the reasons why Baltic chose the area to locate his stronghold. It boasted beautifully preserved historic buildings, a scenic castle, and gorgeous Art Nouveau architecture that mingled with stately elegance alongside the more mundane trappings of modern life. I hadn’t been to Riga in centuries, but even modernized, it had a strong sense of the familiar as we drove out of the now-sprawling city limits and through the tiny suburb of Ziema, headed for the forest preserve that protected the remains of Dauva.

  “It really is amazing that no one developed this area over the centuries,” I mused, as I pulled off the road serving as a boundary along one edge of the dense forest that covered about a hundred acres. “You’d think they would have needed the wood, if nothing else. But no one has touched it.”

  “I ensured no one would,” Baltic said as we got out of the rental car.

  I stopped in midstretch. “You did? How?”

  Thala, who had been forced to sit in the backseat, sniffed. I half expected her to add something really nasty, but she just smiled at me. Oh, it was an unpleasant smile, but still, it took me by surprise. “You lived here and you do not remember the protections Baltic put into place?”

  After eight hours of her presence while we travelled to Latvia, I was about at the end of my tether, but if she was going to suddenly switch tactics and play nice, then I would do the same. It had taken all of my persuasive powers to convince Baltic to come to Latvia when he preferred to be elsewhere. “In a way, no, I don’t remember what Baltic did to Dauva. My memory was wiped, thanks to your sister and her bigamous husband.”

  “Bigamous?” Her eyebrows rose as her gaze flickered over me. “How do you mean?”

  “Gareth married me twelve years ago in order to control my manifestations of gold. Only it wasn’t a legal marriage because he already had a wife—Ruth.”

  She looked as if she wanted to laugh, but she managed to control the urge. “Indeed. How very . . . awkward . . . to find yourself married to a man who already had a wife. But that must mean that your child is his?”

  I closed my eyes for a few seconds, wanting to do nothing more than turn her into a pineapple, or perhaps even a toe fungus. “Yes, Gareth is Brom’s father.”

  “I am his father. The other is a usurper, nothing more,” Baltic said as he gazed at the forest, his hands on his hips.

  “Gareth is his biological father, but he has nothing to do with us now. In fact, I don’t even know where he is. He and Ruth have gone to earth somewhere, taking all of our belongings with them. That doesn’t matter, though. Baltic, how did you protect Dauva? Was it a spell of some sort?”

  “Spells, wards, two banes, and several songs,” he said, taking my hand and leading me down a narrow path that curved around century-old trees dripping with long streamers of moss and assorted vines of ivy.

  “Songs?” I shuddered as I cast a glance behind us, where Thala walked, a small smile playing around her lips as she typed something into her cell phone. “Oh, you mean the magic kind, not the singing kind. Ugh. But . . . dragons don’t do much dark magic, and you can’t sing a song over a location as big as Dauva without invoking some pretty powerful dark forces, something like a dirge, and those aren’t done except by experts. Who did you get to do that?”

  “I did them, all three. I am a dirgesinger,” Thala said with a look of obvious pride, but I heard a faint thread of warning as well.

  “You’re half dragon, though, aren’t you? How can you be a dirgesinger? Dragons can’t handle the sort of dark power needed to sing a dirge.”

  “They can if their mother is an archimage,” she said with another of her creepy smiles.

  Oy. I made a hasty readjustment of my intention to have it out with Thala about her jealousy issues. I knew she was a necromancer of some esteem, because it’s not an easy task to resurrect a dragon, as she had done with Baltic. But if she was also able to cast the most profound level of dark magic spells commonly referred to as songs, it would behoove me to deal with her a bit more carefully in the future.

  Baltic held back a branch, allowing Thala and me to pass. “Most of the magic has been broken by Kostya over the last few months in his attempts to access my lair, but we have begun the process of weaving new layers of protection over the ground as we reclaim Dauva. He might hold Dragonwood, but he will never hold Dauva.”

  Baltic loved Dauva beyond darned near anything, certainly more than the house in England he had built for me. I knew this, and didn’t raise an objection when he had informed me two months before that reclamation and rebuilding of Dauva would take utmost precedence in his plans. I was confident that once we had straightened out the business with the weyr, I could start to work on negotiating Dragonwood back from Kostya.

  “No more songs, though,” I told Baltic with a little shudder. “Those are just bad juju all around. We don’t need the sacrifice of innocents on our—” I stopped, the conjunction of words ringing loudly in my brain. “Sacrifice of innocents. I wonder if that’s what he meant?”

  Baltic waited impatiently for me while Thala proceeded ahead of us deeper into the forest. “Mate?”

  “Coming. Er . . .” I held him back for a moment, allowing her to get out of earshot. “Have you ever heard of Constantine using songs on anything? He didn’t try to have one sung over Dauva after we were killed, did he?”

  His fingers tightened around mine. “I do not know what happened after he killed us, other than what Pavel has told me. He said that Constantine destroyed Dauva rather than let it stand as a monument to the black dragons. The spells I had woven around it while it was being built ensured that it would remain hidden from all eyes but mine, the songs and banes driving away the mortals, as well as concealing it from poaching dragons and other beings.”

  “Hmm.”

  He gave me an odd look, half curious, half annoyed, but said nothing more as we marched deeper into the forest. There was a sense of magic around us, dampening the noises from outside the woods, as if this area was isolated by time from the busy city beyond. Birds called softly to each other, leaves rustled with the passage of unseen little animals, and a slow, gentle drip of water sounded all around us as moisture slid from the leaves to the rich, loamy soil below. The air smelled of earth, green things growing unhindered by man, sunlight dappling the ground. My heart lightened as we made our way through paths long lost, flickers of memories teasing the edge of my mind just as streams of sunlight teased through the leaves. I took a deep breath, savoring the scent of the woods, happiness flowing from the living things around us through me, making me want to laugh and run through the forest.

  “Dauva,” I said, my eyes closed, my hands out as I reached blindly for something that was no longer there. “It’s Dauva.”

  “It is.” Baltic took my hand, and I opened my eyes to find him smiling down at me, his black eyes lit from within with pleasure. It was as if the centuries had peel
ed away, leaving us standing in a time that no longer existed. “Welcome to my home, mate.”

  I smiled, allowing him to lift me off my horse as I looked beyond him to the grey stone towers that seemed to rise to the very sky itself. The drawbridge we stood upon was not wide, but it was long, covering the broad stretch of moat surrounding two-thirds of the castle. The far side ended in a sheer cliff that dropped perilously into a gully below. It looked impregnable, as solid as the earth from which it rose, the three towers as imposing as the solid granite of their walls. “It’s beautiful, Baltic.”

  And it was beautiful, in a stark, massive sort of way. It was the heart of the black dragon sept, its foundation, its soul, and I knew as Baltic led me across the drawbridge to the outer bailey that it would stand as a testament to black dragons for all the ages.

  The light shifted, darkening to that of a cloudy sky, the wind picking up with winter chill. I shivered and rubbed my arms, glancing around. “This is like at Dragonwood—the past is imprinted on the present.”

  “Yes.” Baltic looked with mild interest as shadowy forms of dragons long dead flitted past us. Beyond, Thala was hunched over an outcropping of rocks and ferns that was overlaid on the image of the nearest tower. “You must be envisioning it right before the fall. Not a very pleasant time, mate.”

  “I can’t help it.” I stepped aside as a small group of men charged toward the drawbridge, the hooves of their horses ringing with steely bites on the wooden planks. “Was that you?”

  Baltic glanced after the horsemen. “No. I was in the tunnels, fighting Kostya and his men.”

  The image of Dauva wavered, and pain lanced me, regret at what could have been and sorrow at what was. I blinked away accompanying tears, knowing what pain Baltic must have felt the first time he beheld the ruins of his beloved stronghold.

  “It wasn’t supposed to end this way,” I told him, rubbing his knuckles on my cheek. “It was supposed to stand forever.”

  “Only love lasts forever, chérie. We will last for all the ages; all else is trivial.”