Once the dragonfear was overcome, the elves would not be affected by it again. Now the archers aimed for the vulnerable parts of the dragon’s body, aimed for the tender flesh the scales did not cover, under the front legs, so near the heart. They aimed for the joints where the wings attached to the dragon’s main body. They aimed for the dragon’s eyes.
The other elves lifted their heads now. Dozens at first, then hundreds shook off the dragonfear and grabbed up bow and arrow, spear and lance, and joined the battle. Cries of horror changed to fierce exultation. At last, they were able to face in combat the foe who had brought despair and ruin and death to their land and their people. The sky was dark with arrows and with the dragon’s falling blood.
Maddened by the pain, Cyan Bloodbane made a mistake. He did not retreat from the fight. He could have withdrawn, even now, grievously hurt as he was, and flown away to one of his many lairs to nurse his wounds. But he could not believe that the puny people who had been subject to his will for so long could possibly do him mortal harm. One enormous breath of poison would settle them. One breath would end it.
Cyan sucked in that breath and let it out. But the breath that should have been a killing cloud came out a gasp. The poisonous gas was little more than a mist that dissipated in the morning’s soft breeze. His next breath rattled in his chest. He felt the arrows sink deep into his bowels. He felt their points perilously close to his heart. He felt them puncture his lungs. Too late, he tried to break off the battle. Too late, he sought to flee his tormentors. His torn and broken wings would not hold the air. He could not maintain his altitude.
Cyan rolled over on his back. He was falling, and he could not stop his fall. Plummeting to the ground, he realized in a final moment of bitter despair that his last wrenching moves had carried him away from the battlefield, where his body crashing down on top of the elves might have taken many of his enemies with him. He was over the forest, above the trees.
With a last defiant roar of fury, Cyan Bloodbane fell onto the trees of Silvanesti, the trees that he had twisted and tormented during the dream. The trees were waiting to receive him. The aspens and the oaks, the cypress and the pines stood firm, like bold pikeman. They did not break beneath his weight but held strong and true as their enemy smashed into them. The trees punched through Cyan Bloodbane’s scales, pierced his flesh, impaled him on their splintered limbs. The trees of Silvanesti took their own full measure of revenge.
Silvanoshei opened his eyes to see Mina standing protectively over him. He staggered to his feet, dazed and unsteady, but improving with each passing moment. Mina was watching the battle against the dragon. Her face held no expression, as she watched the arrows meant to pierce her own body penetrate the body of her foe.
Silvan barely noticed the battle. He could see and think only of Mina.
“You brought me back from death,” Silvan whispered, his throat raw from the gas. “I was dying, dead. I felt my soul slipping away. I saw my own body lying on the ground. I saw you kiss me. You kissed me, and I could not leave you! And so I live!”
“The One God brought you back, Silvanoshei,” said Mina calmly. “The One God has a purpose for you yet in this life.”
“No, you!” he insisted. “You gave me life! Because you love me! My life is yours, now, Mina. My life and my heart.”
Mina smiled, but she was intent on the fight. “Look there, Silvanoshei,” she said, pointing, “This day you have defeated your most terrible enemy, Cyan Bloodbane, who put you on the throne, thinking you as weak as your grandfather. You have proved him wrong.”
“We owe our victory to you, Mina,” Silvan said, exultant. “You gave the order to fire. I heard your voice through the darkness.”
“We have not achieved victory yet,” she said, and her gaze was farseeing, abstracted. “Not yet. The battle has not ended. Your people remain in mortal danger. Cyan Bloodbane will die, but the shield he placed over you remains.”
Silvan could barely hear her voice over the cheers of his people and the furious howls of the mortally wounded dragon. Putting his arm around her slender waist, he drew her near to him, to hear her words better.
“Tell me again, Mina,” he said. “Tell me again what you told me earlier about the shield.”
“I tell you nothing more than what Cyan Bloodbane told you,” Mina replied. “He used the elves’ fear of the world against them. They imagine the shield protects them, but in reality it is killing them. The magic of the shield draws upon the life-force of the elves to maintain its life. So long as it remains in place, your people will slowly die until at last there will be no one left for the shield to protect. Thus did Cyan Bloodbane mean to destroy every one of you, laughing all the while because your people imagined themselves to be safe and protected when, in reality, they were the means of their own destruction.”
“If this is true, the shield must be destroyed,” said Silvan. “But I doubt if even our strongest sorcerers could shatter its powerful magic.”
“You don’t need sorcerers, Silvan. You are the grandson of Lorac Caladon. You can end what your grandfather began. You have the power to bring down the shield. Come with me.” Mina held out her hand to him. “I will show you what you must do.”
Silvan took hold of her hand, small-boned, fine. He drew close to her, looked down into her eyes. He saw himself, shining in the amber.
“You must kiss me,” she said and she lifted her lips.
Silvan was quick to obey. His lips touched hers, tasted the sweetness for which he hungered.
Not far distant, Kiryn kept watch beside the body of his uncle. He had seen Silvanoshei fall. He had known that his cousin was dead, for no one could survive the dragon’s poisoned breath. Kiryn grieved for them both, for his cousin, for his uncle. Both had been deluded by Glaucous. Both had paid the price. Kiryn had knelt beside his uncle to wait for his own death, wait for the dragon to slay them.
Kiryn watched, astonished, to see the human girl, Mina, lift her head and regain her feet. She was strong, alert, seemingly untouched by the poison. She looked down at Silvanoshei, lying at her side. She kissed the lifeless lips, and to Kiryn’s amazement and unease, his cousin drew in a breath.
Kiryn saw Mina act to rally the flagging spirits of the elven archers. He heard her voice, crying out the order to fire in Elvish. He watched his people rally, watched them battle back against their foe. He watched the dragon die.
He watched all with boundless gladness, a gladness that brought tears to his eyes, but with a sense of unease in his heart.
Why had the human done this? What was her reason? Why had she watched her army kill elves one day and acted to save elves the next?
He watched her embrace Silvan. Kiryn wanted to run to them, to snatch his cousin away from the girl’s touch. He wanted to shake him, shake some sense into him. But Silvan would not listen.
And why should he? Kiryn thought.
He himself was confused, stunned by the day’s awful events. Why should his cousin listen to Kiryn’s words of warning when the only proof he could offer of their veracity was a dark shadow that passed over his soul every time he looked upon the girl, Mina.
Kiryn turned away from them. Reaching down, he closed his uncle’s staring eyes with a gentle touch. His duty, as a nephew, was to the dead.
“Come with me, Silvan,” Mina urged him, her lips soft against his cheek. “Do this for your people.”
“I do this for you, Mina,” Silvan whispered. Closing his eyes, he placed his lips on hers.
Her kiss was honey, yet it stung him. He drank in the sweetness, flinched from the searing pain. She drew him into darkness, a darkness that was like the darkness of the storm cloud. Her kiss was like the lightning bolt, blinded him, sent him tumbling over the edge of a precipice. He could not stop his fall. He crashed against rocks, felt his bones breaking, his body bruised and aching. The pain was excruciating, and the pain was ecstasy. He wanted it to end so badly that he would have been glad for death. He wanted the pain to l
ast beyond forever.
Her lips drew away from his, the spell was broken.
As though he had come back from the dead, Silvan opened his eyes and was amazed to see the sun, the blood-red sun of twilight. Yet it had been noontime when he had kissed her. Hours had passed, seemingly, but where had they gone? Lost in her, forgotten in her. All around him was still and quiet. The dragon had vanished. The armies were nowhere in sight. His cousin was gone. Silvan slowly realized that he no longer stood on the field of battle. He was in a garden, a garden he dimly recognized by the fading light of the waning sun.
I know this place, he thought dazedly. It seems familiar. Yet where am I? And how do I come to be here? Mina! Mina! He was momentarily panicked, thinking he had lost her.
He felt her hand close over his, and he sighed deeply and clasped his hand over hers.
I stand in the Garden of Astarin, he realized. The palace garden. A garden I can see from my bedroom window. I came here once, and I hated it. The place made my flesh crawl. There—a dead plant. And another and another. A tree dying as I watch, its leaves curling and twisting as if in pain, turning gray, falling off. The only reason there are any living plants at all in this garden is because the palace gardeners and the Woodshapers replace the dead plants with living plants from their own personal gardens. Yet, to bring anything living into this garden is to sentence it to death.
Only one tree survives in this garden. The tree in the very heart of the garden. The tree they call the Shield Tree, because it was once surrounded by a luminous shield nothing could penetrate. Glaucous claimed the magic of the tree kept the shield in place. So it does, but the tree’s roots do not draw nourishment from the soil. The tree’s roots extend into the heart of every elf in Silvanesti.
He felt the tree’s roots coiling inside him.
Taking hold of Mina by the hand, Silvanoshei led her through the dying garden to the tree that grew in the center. The Shield Tree lived. The Shield Tree thrived. The Shield tree’s leaves were green and healthy, green as the scales of the green dragon. The Shield Tree’s trunk was blood-colored, seemed to ooze blood, as they looked at it. Its limbs contorted, wriggled like snakes.
I must uproot the tree. I am the Grandson of Lorac. I must tear the tree’s roots from the hearts of my people, and so I will free them. Yet I am loathe to touch the evil thing. I’ll find an axe, chop it down.
Though you were to chop it down a hundred times, a voice whispered to him, a hundred times it would grow back.
It will die, now that Cyan Bloodbane is dead. He was the one who kept it alive.
You are the one keeping it alive. Mina spoke no word, but she laid her hand on his heart. You and your people. Can’t you feel its roots twisting and turning inside you, sapping your strength, sucking the very life from you?
Silvan could feel something wringing his heart, but whether it was the evil of the tree or the touch of her hand, he could not tell.
He caught up her hand and kissed it. Leaving her standing on the path, among the dying plants, he walked toward the living tree. The tree sensed its danger. Gray vines twined around his ankles. Dead branches fell on him, struck him on the back and on his shoulder. He kicked at the vines and tossed the branches away from him.
As he drew near the tree, he felt the weakness. He felt it grow on him the closer he came. The tree sought to kill him as it had killed so many before him. Its sap ran red with the blood of his people. Every shining leaf was the soul of a murdered elf.
The tree was tall, but its trunk was spindly. Silvan could easily place his hands around it. He was weak and wobbly from the aftereffects of the poison and wondered if he would have the strength to pull it from the ground.
You have the strength. You alone.
Silvan wrapped his hands around the tree trunk. The trunk writhed in his grasp like a snake, and he shuddered at the horrible feeling.
He let loose, fell back. If the shield falls, he thought, suddenly assailed by doubt, our land will lie unprotected.
The Silvanesti nation has stood proudly for centuries protected by the courage and skill of its warriors. Those days of glory will return. The days when the world respected the elves and honored them and feared them. You will be king of a powerful nation, a powerful people.
I will be king, Silvan repeated to himself. She will see me puissant, noble, and she will love me.
He planted his feet on the ground. He took firm hold of the slithering tree trunk and, summoning strength from his excitement, his love, his ambition, his dreams, he gave a great heave.
A single root snapped. Perhaps it was the root that had tapped into his own heart for when it released, his strength and his will increased. He pulled and tugged, his shoulders straining. He felt more roots give, and he redoubled his efforts.
“For Mina!” he said beneath his breath.
The roots let go their hold so suddenly that Silvan toppled over backward. The tree came crashing down on top of him. He was unhurt, but he could see nothing for the leaves and twigs and branches that covered him.
Angry, feeling that he must look a fool, he crawled out from under. His face flushed with triumph and embarrassment, he wiped the dirt and the muck from his hands.
The sun shone hot on his face. Looking up, Silvan saw the sun, saw it shining with an angry red fire. No gauzy curtain obscured its rays, no shimmering aura filtered its light. He found he could not look directly at the blazing sun, could not look anywhere near it. The sight was painful, hurt his eyes. Blinking away tears, he could see nothing except a black spot where the sun had been.
“Mina!” he cried, shading his eyes, trying to see her. “Look, Mina! Your God was right. The shield is down!”
Silvan stumbled out onto the path. He could not yet see clearly. “Mina?” he cried. “Mina?”
Silvan called and called. He called long after the sun had fallen from the sky, called long into the darkness. He called her name until he had no voice left, and then he whispered it.
“Mina!”
No answer came.
33
For Love of Mina
aldar had not slept since the day of the battle. He kept watch all the long night, standing just inside the shadows of the caves where what remained of the forces of her Knights had taken refuge. He refused to relinquish his post to anyone, although several had offered to relieve him of his self-imposed duty. He shook his horned head to all proposals, sent the men away, and eventually they quit coming.
The men who had survived the battle lay in the caves, tired and frightened, speaking little. The wounded did their best to stifle their groans and cries, afraid that the noise would draw down the enemy upon them. Mostly they whispered a name, her name and wondered why she did not come to comfort them. Those who died did so with her name on their lips.
Galdar was not watching for the enemy. That duty was being handled by others. Pickets crouched in the thick foliage on watch for any elven scout who might happen to stumble upon their hiding place. Two elves did so, early this morning. The pickets dealt with them swiftly and silently, breaking their necks and throwing the bodies into the deep and swift-flowing Thon-Thalas.
Galdar was furious when he found out that his men had actually captured the two elves alive before killing them.
“I wanted to question them, you dolts!” he cried in a rage, raising his hand to strike one of the scouts.
“Relax, Galdar,” Samuval admonished, placing his hand on the minotaur’s fur-covered arm. “What good would torturing them have done? The elves would only refuse to talk, and their screams would be heard for miles.”
“They would tell me what they have done with her,” Galdar said, lowering his arm, but glowering viciously at the scouts, who beat a hasty retreat. “They would tell me where she was being held. I would see to that.” He clenched and unclenched his fist.
“Mina left orders that no prisoners were to be taken, Galdar. She ordered that any elf we found was to be put immediately to death. You vowed to obey her
orders. Would you be foresworn?” Samuval asked.
“I’ll keep my vow.” Galdar growled and took up his post again. “I promised her, and I will keep my promise. Didn’t I keep it yesterday? I stood there and watched her taken captive by that bastard elven king. Captured alive by her most bitter enemy. Carried off in triumph to what terrible fate? To be made sport of, to be made a slave, to be tormented, killed. I promised her I would not interfere, and I kept my word. But I am sorry now that I did so,” he added with a bitter oath.
“Remember what she said, my friend,” Samuval said quietly. “Remember her words. ‘They think they will make me their captive. But in so doing I will capture them, every single one.’ Remember that, and do not lose your faith.”
Galdar stood at the entrance to the cave all that morning. He saw the sun rise to its zenith, saw its angry eye glare through the shield, and he envied it fiercely, for the sun could see Mina and he could not.
He watched in wonder the fight with the green dragon, saw the sky rain blood and green scales. Galdar had no love for dragons, even those who fought on his side. An old minotaur adage, dating back from the time of their great hero, Kaz, maintained that dragons had only one side: their own. Galdar heard the dragon’s death roar, felt the ground shake from the beast’s fall, and wondered only what portent this held for them. For Mina.
Captain Samuval joined Galdar to watch the fight. He brought the minotaur food—rat, caught in the cave—and drink. Galdar drank the water, but he refused the rat meat. The men had little enough to eat as it was. Others needed it more than he did. Captain Samuval shrugged and ate the rat himself. Galdar continued his watch.
Dragons of a Fallen Sun Page 60
