Revelation of the Dragon

by J Elizabeth Vincent

  When he was gone, Ruby spoke, her posture relaxing. “Friends, I am so glad to see you. I had no idea if you were still alive.”

  Mariah realized her mouth was still hanging open, and she closed it slowly. It was Shira who replied.

  “We could say the same for you. What in the gods’ domain is goin’ on here, girl?” She gestured at the pack.

  The young woman was silent for a long moment. “My father’s reign here is done. I now lead the wolves of Laikos.”

  Chapter Fifteen

  The Ways of Wolves

  Mariah still didn’t understand it. The ways of these wolves were beyond her.

  She sat on a large, flat rock in a shallow hollow in the forested hills, Shira and Han to either side, a roaring fire before them. Darkness had fallen.

  People, mostly women and girls, and wolves surrounded them in a rough circle around the fire. A few of the older kids had brought them food and mugs of tea before settling down themselves, all at levels below Ruby, Mariah noticed, who sat on a boulder just above the height of Mariah’s own seat. Everything here was a dominance game, she realized.

  Wolves patrolled at the edge of the firelight, and more sat among them.

  Shira had done nearly all the talking with Ruby since the ghastly scene with her earlier in the day. Mariah, her fingers wrapped around a rough clay mug that one of Ruby’s people had given her, sat and listened, a lump still sitting heavily at the bottom of her stomach. Her meal sat uneaten on her lap. She kept imagining the dead wolf … the man … in the strips of meat on her tin plate, even though she knew the meat was likely venison. When she was sure no one else was looking and she would brook no offense, she offered the plate to Han.

  His brows knit. “Are you sure? It’s been a long day, Mari. You must be starving.”

  She pushed it at him. “Please. Just take it.”

  He did so without further protest.

  Surprisingly, Han’s presence had gone mostly unremarked, and Mariah was doubly glad that he had left his armor behind, the armor that would have marked him as a king’s man. The wolves had lost many to the king’s army and wouldn’t have taken kindly to him. Mariah had told Ruby that he was an old friend from home who had taken up her cause; that was at least partially true, although she still worried about how committed he was. After all, not long ago, he had been pursuing them.

  She jerked when he put a hand on her shoulder a few moments later. “I’m going to go check on Shadow. She’s been jittery all day.”

  “If being around these folk didn’t make her nervous, Shira would never forgive her.”

  He chuckled, and Mariah thought he would get along better with Shira if she would just give him a break, but her friend didn’t trust him yet, and Mariah wondered if she ever would.

  Shira and the horse, however, had somehow managed to find a mutual understanding. Shadow no longer shied away when she approached, but Shira never attempted to do more than give her a good scratch. And when she transformed, she always made sure that she did so well away from the mare.

  Mariah nodded at Han as he rose. She managed a brief, if strained, smile before she turned back to the fire. As the sound of his steps faded into the din of the gathering, Mariah began thinking of the things that had been said earlier, on their walk through the woods to this central meeting point, the Den, as the wolves called it.

  “You,” Ruby had gestured at one point to Mariah and Shira, “you and Xae, you taught me that I don’t have to be bound by rules I don’t believe in. I do not have to endure what no human”—she stressed the word—“should have to endure. Like you, I learned that I can bring change. So I have. It was hard at first, but once it started, there was no stopping it. It was as if the whole pack had been sitting on a precipice, just waiting for a push.”

  Mariah had listened patiently to her story, having trouble believing this was the same reticent girl who had accompanied them from Laikos to the Ceo San slave camp less than a year before.

  Ruby’s ripple effect had started with her uncle, Faylan, the one they had been ordered to save from the slave camp when they had rescued Xae’s family. The girl had waited until they were back within the borders of Laikos, back within the purview of the wolf pack, and she had killed him. Mariah got the feeling that she hadn’t planned it, that the man had done something to instigate her attack, but Ruby refused to explain.

  In a voice so low that only Mariah and her companions could hear, she said she had panicked at that point, almost run away from Laikos forever. She had nearly gone to Grof to find Shira, to check that her friend had made it home okay and to escape the consequences of her hasty actions.

  “I did not consider going to Glenley, even though you did not follow us out of the camp.” She touched Mariah’s hand. “I’m sorry, but that place holds death for my kind, for all of us.” There was awe in her voice. “How did you escape?”

  “I had help,” Mariah said softly. Her mind kept drifting back to the wolf Ruby had so efficiently disposed of. Apparently, he hadn’t been the first. She reminded herself that the ways of the pack were different than what she was accustomed to, but she still felt a little sick. The feeling only intensified when she remembered how nonchalantly Ruby had helped her bury Cam after he had attacked Shira and was killed for his trouble. Were they so different? She had killed, too, after all.

  Shira piped up. “She is special, that’s for sure. Apparently, she’s got a god or two on her side.”

  Or two? Mariah remembered Shira’s earlier talk about Biorna and suddenly realized that her friend hadn’t mentioned the great bear goddess since before they fled from Eaglespire. Had the dreams stopped, or was Shira just keeping them to herself now?

  She had never gotten the chance to ask as Ruby and Shira had continued to catch up. Shira had asked Ruby about the state of things on this side of the Highlands, but Ruby didn’t know much because she hadn’t left the forest. “You see, after I killed Faylan, I remembered my sisters and the pups. I couldn’t leave them. They were already at my father’s mercy, and they would bear the consequences for my crime if I fled. By the time I reached the Den, I had decided to fight, to die if necessary. My parents had allowed wolves like Faylan to treat omegas like me and anyone under them however they wished. But my time outside the forest reminded me that we are not only wolves: We are human. We do not have to act like animals, with no regard for anything beyond our immediate hungers.” After staring at her hands for a long moment, the girl aimed an unreadable glance at both Shira and Mariah. “Forgive me.”

  Mariah didn’t quite understand everything that had happened, but apparently, some of Ruby’s sisters and other wolves, especially older ones who remembered what it was like to live beyond Laikos, had stood with her. No, she wasn’t the strongest wolf, but they had made her so with their backing. Her father and stepmother had been routed from their reign, and for the present, the pack followed Ruby.

  Now, sitting around the fire, Mariah tried to believe things were better, but the earlier events still troubled her.

  When everyone had eaten, most of the wolves dispersed. Han hadn’t returned, and Mariah, Ruby, and Shira were the only ones left at the fire.

  Ruby rose and came over to them as the last wolf left. She sat down on Shira’s right, level with them for the first time since they had reached the Den.

  “So, you know what has happened with me and my people. I would know about yours, especially Xae and his kin.” She looked down at her hands again for a moment, avoiding their gazes, and Mariah was reminded for a moment of the shy girl Ruby had been not that long ago.

  Smiling genuinely for the first time all day, Mariah said, “Xae is doing well.” How long would it take for him to get her message and come flying back to Varidian? She wished desperately that she hadn’t needed to send it. “He is hardly the same now that he has his family—well, most of them—back. I don’t think we knew who he truly
was before.” Maybe the same was true of Ruby.

  “Bird boy?” Shira laughed. “Surely, I know him. I’ve never known such sass. I see it even in his letters.”

  Mariah grinned. “Yes, I suppose there is still some of that. He misses you, Shira, and we’ve all worried about you, Ruby.” She reached out and laid a hand atop the girl’s. Ruby looked at it for a moment before placing her other hand atop it.

  “Thank you.” Lowering her voice, she said, “It is very nice to speak to you as equals. Leadership is demanding. It is difficult.”

  Her admission softened something in Mariah, and she felt her tension ease.

  They spoke at length about what had happened to each of them after they had been separated at the slave camp and how they had each gotten safely home. Finally, they talked about Mariah’s return and their new mission.

  “So, you are saving children again? Those two little ravens were only the beginning, I suppose.”

  Mariah nodded and told her more about all the camps she had seen, how much greater the problem was than even she suspected. “I wish I could free everyone. But the children are the least able to help themselves. At least we can stand for them. Maybe it will start something greater.”

  Ruby cocked her head, and the gesture seemed to bring her wolf closer to the surface. “What do you mean?”

  Mariah struggled with the words. “Well, I suppose I mean something like you’ve done here. If we are successful, even just a little bit, perhaps others will stand up and continue our work.”

  Ruby was silent for a long moment before she spoke. “Do you mean to cause a revolt against the king?”

  Mariah was stunned. “I hadn’t thought of it that way.”

  “How else could what you are doing turn out? Either you will be slaughtered, or you will succeed in causing an uprising.”

  The parallels between what she was attempting and what Ruby had done among her own pack suddenly became vivid. Was she herself somehow indirectly responsible for what was happening here as well? Undermining the king was so much worse. Causing others to do so? To put themselves in harm’s way? Initiating a movement like this could be considered nothing short of treason, but if she were honest with herself, she had stepped over that line months ago. Still, she hadn’t really considered the wider consequences of what would come of her mission if it were successful, at least not beyond the freedom of the children she was trying to save. She had thought of herself as more a fox in the henhouse, sneaking in, freeing children, and then fleeing. She had no desire for outright battle, for dominance, not like what was going on in these woods.

  “Course we are,” Shira said before Mariah could answer. “That man’s needed to be taken down for a long, long time.”

  Apparently, Mariah was the only one who hadn’t taken what they were doing through to that particular conclusion. If they were right and they ended up in direct confrontation with the king or his forces, it could end only one way. They were going to be crushed, along with anyone who chose to support them.

  “I don’t know,” Mariah looked down at her hand, still enclosed by Ruby’s. “I can’t think about that, or I’ll end up running back to Cillian, back to my mountain. It’s too much.” Shira reached out and rubbed her back gently, and it gave her the courage to continue. “All I know is that we are not enough as we stand. There are only four of us. Last time, there were only four, and we barely made it out alive. I’ll do no one any good sitting in the king’s dungeon again or, worse, being taken and forced to fight for him.” Her head swam, and she stiffened, reflexively gripping Ruby’s hand harder. The king stood there in her mind’s eye, smiling. A hawk—her hawk—sat upon his shoulder, tethered to his belt with a thin gold chain and a tiny cuff around her leg.

  “Mari?” Shira laid a hand on her shoulder, and her vision refocused on the women and the forest around her.

  “I won’t,” she choked. “I won’t fight for him.”

  Unaware of what she had just seen, Shira moved her arm around Mariah’s shoulders, steadying her, and Ruby withdrew her hand and stood up to pace. “What would you have of me?” the wolf girl asked.

  Mariah took a deep breath before she answered. “As much help as you can spare. People who are willing to fight, to help us free children, and to destroy as many of the camps as we can. The largest camp I found is just over the mountains, in the Meiri Plains near the coast. It’s isolated. A contingent of your wolves could do a lot of damage to its security, its structure.”

  The young woman stopped at the edge of the firelight, staring into the darkness of the trees beyond for long moments. When she finally turned back, her eyes were glassy with unshed tears, but the set of her jaw was firm.

  “I am sorry, friends. I owe you much, but I can’t. Not now. My father, he has not given up yet. He is still out there in the woods somewhere; I believe to the north. And he has wolves that support him, too many, men like Connell, the one I took down this afternoon.” She sighed, her expression grim. “And he has only redoubled his efforts since Ember was slain not a week ago. He will keep trying to undermine my dominion until he succeeds. The pack must remain together and strong until he is either dead or forced out of these woods. If I took any significant number away to do your bidding, he would destroy everyone left behind.”

  “What about a few …” Shira began.

  Ruby shook her head. “No. I can’t. If I split them now, my people will lose faith. They will begin to move back to him, and all I have done, all we have done, will be lost in that uncertainty.”

  This young woman was wiser than her age would suggest, at least when it came to knowledge of her pack. “But how will your pack survive if the king continues on this course?”

  “I don’t know, friend. All I know is that I must protect my pack for as long as I can. If I do not, they will fall back into their old ways or maybe worse. Too many things have changed. We may seem free here, our children protected from the king’s actions by our borders, but those borders may as well be prison bars. Without someone to keep my people moving forward, they are likely to keep fighting until all are dead.”

  “What about the children?” Shira piped up. “The children that escape?” Mariah hoped there were some. Their mission seemed to be dying before they could even start. “Can you provide them safe passage?”

  “It is not stable here! My father—”

  “Please, Ruby,” Mariah interjected. “You don’t have to decide now, but please consider it. The king and his men avoid this place. It could be a sanctuary for those on this side of the mountains.”

  “We are not entirely safe here. Even without this civil war, the king’s slaves on the wing can easily infiltrate our borders.”

  “I am aware,” Mariah spoke through clenched jaws. She had been attacked in the northern part of Laikos by an owl, one of the king’s slaves, and she had killed him in self-defense. And he had thanked her, so grateful he had been to be freed from his bonds.

  Ruby’s pale gaze met Mariah’s, and they stared at each other for a long moment before the girl looked away. “I will consider it. I must discuss it with my sisters in the morning.”

  “Thank you.”

  “You may bed down here near the fire. My wolves will keep you safe.” She gestured in a vague circle, and although Mariah couldn’t see them, she knew there were guards hidden among the trees. And with that, Ruby was gone.

  From the other side of the fire, Han stepped into the light, leading Shadow, and Shira jumped up, confronting him. Mariah mused that she looked so much shorter standing in front of the enormous man. But it didn’t stop her from jabbing her finger at his chest.

  “What’re you doin’?”

  “I didn’t want to interrupt,” he said.

  “So, you just stood there in the dark, snoopin’ instead?”

  “Shira, please—” Mariah started.

  “Where’ve y
ou been anyway?”

  “I went to feed my horse,” he said, holding up Shadow’s lead in one hand and a bag of feed in the other. “But she was too nervous … all the wolf smells, I’m guessing. So, I decided to bring her back here.”

  Mariah tuned out their voices as they continued to bicker and began rolling out her blankets out on the ground as close to the fire as she dared. Her thoughts were still on Ruby’s last words. Had the girl formed some sort of council with her sisters? Even an informal one? Mariah felt a surge of surprise and pride run through her, even though her own requests had been all but denied. For surely these people would be better off if they were ruled by more than one voice. In her eyes, ruling themselves like animals had only made them act more like them.

  She chuckled to herself. She knew nothing about governing anyone more than herself, and even that was tenuous at times.

  “So, the wolves will not help?” Han’s voice interrupted her thoughts as she lowered herself to the ground and unwrapped the ever-present brown scarf off her head.

  Shira stood next to him, waiting for Mariah’s response. When had they stopped arguing?

  “I don’t know. They have no people to spare, but perhaps they’ll be able to shelter those that need it. I don’t know yet. Perhaps in the morning, Ruby will have better news.”

  Han squatted down and reached out to touch Mariah’s shoulder. She blinked in surprise. “Mari, we can’t wait too long. The king is already looking for you and for Shira. The longer you wait—”

  Shira edged in with her own blanket roll, nudging Han aside with one hip and nearly knocking him over as she took her place next to Mariah. “We know, soldier man. Don’t you remember which one of the king’s men was chasing us first?”

  Remembering their guards, Mariah hushed her. “I don’t think it’s a good idea to talk about that here, Shira.”

  “Fine, but doesn’t he know we can take care of ourselves?”