“We …?” she began to ask, but Shira’s head had snapped around at the sound of his voice.
“Bird brain! You’re awake!”
Xae smiled, the look more charming than awkward now. “Nice to see you, too, fuzz face.”
Mariah moved back as Shira nearly bowled the boy over with her own hug. After she did, she looked him up and down. “You must have grown a foot!” she said, staring at the long legs stretched out before him.
“He’s almost as tall as I am,” Mariah said.
“Maybe taller by now,” he joked.
Shira just stared at him and shook her head.
Although Mariah wanted the happiness of their reunion to last forever, their conversation with Kaddan was still weighing on her. They needed to find a way out of this place as quickly as possible. “Xae, what are you doing here, and who is with you? You said we a moment ago.”
“Where are we?” he asked.
“I’ll get to that,” she said impatiently. She hadn’t let herself think on it while he was still sleeping, but now she started to wonder, to worry. “Why are you here? Is everything all right in Wellspring? Did you get my message? Are Shira’s folks—”
He put up his hands, staving her off. “Everything is fine at home. That’s not why I’m here.”
Home. So quickly, he had come to see the little village as his place. She wished it hadn’t taken her so long, but now, she certainly shared the sentiment.
He turned to Shira. “I got your message. On the same day, I got one from Grof, from Grelem.”
Shira didn’t look surprised, although there was relief in her expression. “He’s okay?”
“He was.” Xae sat between them, pulling his legs up and resting his arms on his knees. He didn’t seem to be showing any ill effects from the dart’s poison. “He was with me, hiding out in the bushes, when I got hit with some kind of dart and ended up here. I don’t know where he is now.”
Mariah sighed. “We were captured, and our … we had a companion as well. We don’t know where he is either, and no one will tell us. Maybe Grelem is with them. You must tell us everything, Xae, please. Shira has been having … dreams, about her parents. She’s been worried sick about them.”
His lips thinned, and Xae reached out for Shira’s hand, wrapping it in his own as he spoke.
“The message was simple. ‘Please come.’ I flew out the next morning, worried that something had happened to one or both of you. When I arrived, the Hideaway was boarded up, and soldiers were guarding the door. After some searching, I found Grelem hiding out back. He had been living on his own in the woods, watching the inn, waiting for someone to come, ever since he sent the message.” Xae looked down at the hand that was holding Shira’s, seemingly reluctant to say more. But after a pause and a long, deep breath, he continued. “Soldiers came, Shira. Grelem had gone to the market for your ma, but when he came back, your parents had been taken into custody. He stayed out of sight but heard the guard demanding to know where you were, where Mariah was. They held your parents for a little while at the Hideaway, questioning them. Grelem was hoping the soldiers would leave, and they did but not before posting reward posters for both of you.” He swallowed hard. “They arrested your parents, Shira. And then they took them to Glenley. To the king.”
Shira stiffened and released Xae’s hand. “I … I …” She rose and began to pace the short distance in the cell from wall to wall.
Mariah wanted to go to her friend and comfort her, but Shira’s posture warned her off, so she stayed on the floor next to Xae, taking the hand Shira had abandoned.
As Shira paced, he told them the rest. He and Grelem had tried to follow the soldiers, although the group was days ahead of them. They had crossed the pass over the Highlands and made it as far as the southern edge of Laikos before they gave up. “I just couldn’t keep up on the ground. I didn’t want to leave the boy alone and didn’t know what the two of us could have done for Rose and Jahl on our own anyway.” There was turmoil in his eyes. He was especially fond of Shira’s mother.
“You did the right thing, Xae.” Mariah rubbed the back of his hand. “You would have just been walking into your own execution.” There was a time he would have willingly done just that to seek revenge for his father’s death and his family’s struggles on anyone who worked for the king. But he had matured a lot over recent months and was now more cautious and deliberate, knowing how much it meant to those that loved him that he stay alive and well. “How did you find us?”
Xae told them he had been prepared to turn around and take Grelem back to safety in Cillian before heading out again on his own to find Mariah and Shira. But before they broke camp that night on the edge of the forest, Ruby’s people had found them. When he spoke of the girl, his voice filled with wonder, and Mariah thought a touch of pink colored his pale cheeks. “She’s changed so much,” he said. “But she told us you had been to Laikos, that you were headed toward Direstrand, so after we rested with her people overnight, we changed course. Yesterday … I think it was yesterday, we searched Direstrand, looking for some sign of you, but there were so many of the guard there. We were afraid of being too obvious and being questioned ourselves.” He shivered visibly. “I was sure that if you’d really come through that cursed town that you’d have been captured. But then Grelem and I were hiding out behind this little tavern, trying to figure out where to go next when this girl about Grelem’s age showed up.
“There was something strange about her, and she asked what we needed as if she owned the place. I started to pull Grelem out of there, but he stopped, describing you to the girl and asking if she’d seen you, and said that you were a friend and that we had gotten separated. She ignored Grelem and instead came up to me. She stared me straight in the eye for a full minute before she said you’d gone west and pointed the way.”
“Eva,” Mariah whispered. “She sent us in this direction as well. She works for the Sovereign. Kaddan says Eva can smell who we really are.”
“Smell us?” Xae cocked his head. “Who did you say she works for?”
Shira had stopped pacing but had moved to the door and was staring down the dim, lamp-lit hallway, her back still to them.
Watching her, Xae continued. “We got started, but we were attacked. I changed, tried to hit them from above, but … I don’t know what happened after that.”
With nothing else to do but wait, Mariah filled Xae in on all that had happened since she left Wellspring.
By the time she was done, Shira had lowered herself to a sitting position and turned toward them, her eyes glassy with tears. “You’ve got to get us out of this cell, Mari. They got my brother!”
Mariah’s jaw tightened. Shira was right, but she had no idea how.
“You escaped the king’s dungeon when you were shackled to the wall,” Shira continued in a tight voice. “This should be easy.”
Maybe Shira thought so, but although she wasn’t chained, there was no window to fly through, no sewer grate to escape down, only an impossible door leading into a dark, empty hallway.
“How’d you do it back then?” Shira asked, desperation creeping into her voice. “You have to escape, prove to these people that you’re … special, that you’re the one they’re waitin’ for, so they’ll let us out. There are things … things we have to do.”
Mariah could see the plea on her face. Rose and Jahl had been taken by the king, and Grelem was imprisoned somewhere. And we can’t forget about the children, Mariah thought. That’s why I came back to this wretched place after all. But she didn’t speak, only nodded, her own chest clenching at the thought of Rose and Jahl imprisoned or worse. Were they locked away in a dungeon like she had been? Shackled to the walls in their own filth with little to sustain them?
How in the world could she get out of this cursed cell, let alone save Shira’s parents or start freeing the children that Rothgar had ens
laved?
I can only do one thing at a time, she told herself, and took a deep breath.
“Let me think,” she murmured out loud, and closed her eyes.
Chapter Twenty-Two
Proving
It seemed so long ago, her escape from the king’s dungeon. She had been miserable, aching, hungry, and thirsty, and yet, in some weird vision, Old Cat Eyes had come to her and insisted that she could not only free herself but that she could also liberate the old man sharing her prison. Tibbot had been hunched and wretched with a hacking cough that had made her wonder if he would live through another day.
She smiled now, thinking of the fox Ceo San as he had been so recently. Sometime in the last months, his cough had disappeared. Freedom certainly agreed with him. Where was he now? Had he been in contact with Daire Denholm yet? Would the Keepers do anything to help their cause?
Focus, Mariah.
In the tower dungeon, she had been shackled and chained to the wall. Tibbot had said the shackles were somehow enchanted. They had changed size with her whenever she tried to transform and fly away, keeping her tethered to the stone at her back. Her breakthrough had come when she had decided to wrap the chains around her arms and wear them. Before she had left Cillian, she and Bria had discovered that whatever she was wearing transformed with her or was somehow “stored away” for when she returned to her human form.
Was it only the wearing, though? Her strategy with the chains hadn’t worked the first couple of times. She had needed to imagine the outcome of her transformation, to believe in her escape. Was that the key here? Belief of some kind?
If she was so special, she should be able to do what no other Ceo San could do, something that would prove to the Sovereign that she was different. Maybe then they would believe that she was worth helping. Gods, she’d settle for just being free so she could do what she had set out to do, start helping more children, and help Shira’s parents as well. And maybe someday find her own parents. What she’d give to feel her father’s strong arms around her.
Growling, she shook her head and opened her eyes. Her friends were staring at her. “I just don’t understand. What’s so special about me? Both of you have more experience with being Ceo San than I do. It wasn’t that long ago that I couldn’t change myself at all.” As if to demonstrate, she turned to face them, letting her wings appear and span the cell, nearly reaching from side to side. This was the way she had lived for the first twenty-six years of her life, half-girl, half-hawk.
She supposed she expected Shira to say something funny or to send a jab her way, but her friend’s eyes were still shining, the worry over her parents obviously eating away at her. Xae looked at Shira as well before turning back to Mariah.
“Maybe that’s it. Maybe it’s got something to do with your being … stuck … for so long. There’s something about you when you have your wings like that. I’ve never seen anything like it.”
Surprising Mariah, Shira spoke, although she was looking down at her hands. “You’re blind, lady, if you think you’re normal, even among our kind.”
Mariah stared back, openmouthed for a moment before frowning at her friend. “Thanks, Shira.”
“You know that’s not what I meant.” Shira’s mouth quirked up in a half-smile. “Well, you’re not normal, but that’s a good thing. What I meant is that there’s not many I’ve met in this world that would risk everything for a stranger like you did for bird boy here.”
Mariah swallowed. Xae looked at her quietly, confirming Shira’s words with his dark eyes. She felt her cheeks warm with shame at how close she’d come to not helping Xae and his family, at how she’d nearly failed so many times once she had committed herself.
“Thank you, but I don’t think that’s what these people care about. Maybe if they weren’t like us, they’d be impressed”—or want to report them to the guard—“but they’re clearly not. What could I possibly do to prove that I’m this woman from the prophecy when I don’t even believe in prophecies?”
Her companions were silent in response. Several minutes passed, and Mariah’s frustration grew. Stalking to the door, she looked at her hand, willing a change. Four long, rough talons replaced her five slender fingers. Over the past months, their appearance had become as familiar to her as her human hands. Extending one claw, she stuck it into the lock, muttering, “Wonder if lock picking will impress them.”
Her claw clicked clumsily against the inner workings of the lock but did nothing. Her talons were made for grabbing and tearing, not any kind of delicate work. When she turned around, huffing in frustration, Xae bounded to his feet, taking her transformed hand and turning it over and over. He dropped it and then walked around her, examining her wings. “They shouldn’t be so big,” he muttered.
“What?”
Ignoring her question, he said, “Change all the way and spread your wings.”
Indulging him, she did so, turning around several times to show off the black and silver feathers.
He looked down and nodded to her, and she changed back, all the way to human this time. “I don’t know if it means anything.”
“What?” she asked again.
“When you’re human, your wings are much bigger than they are when you’re a hawk. I don’t think I can do that.”
Mariah already knew that Shira could affect a partial change, so surely Xae could as well. She’d seen Shira do it when she used her bear’s claws to kill Cam after he’d attacked her. “Have you ever tried?” she asked. He shook his head. “Well, go ahead. See if it works for you. Imagine your wings as big as mine.” The thought of those glossy black wings being big enough to carry his whole body sent a shiver down her spine, but she suppressed it.
Xae closed his eyes, and Mariah saw the back of his shirt puff out briefly before flattening again.
“Sorry,” she said, realizing that his wings had nowhere to go. “I have slits in the backs of my tunics for my wings. Bria helped, you know. Can you take your shirt off?”
His face colored, but he untied his belt and pulled his tunic over his head, revealing the pale skin beneath. Without looking directly at her or Shira, he transformed partially again, and beautiful, glossy black wings appeared. They extended from the middle of his back out a couple of feet in either direction, but Mariah knew they’d never carry him as a human. They were essentially the same as the ones he had in his full raven form. Shira stood, reaching out to gently touch one, and Xae started.
“Can you make them bigger?” she asked.
After eyeing her for a moment, he closed his eyes again, and his wings disappeared and then reappeared, their size unchanged. He tried several more times, with coaching from Mariah, before he gave up. “I can’t,” he muttered, pulling his tunic back over his head and tying it at his waist. “Maybe that’s it. You can affect your size, change the nature of your form on some grander scale than the rest of us.” He laid a hand on her arm. “Try it. Try changing just your wings.”
“All right, but this is just the way they are. I don’t think I can …” Thinking of her hawk form, not the full-sized wings she had worn since she was a child, she brought her wings out on her back.
Shira walked around her, and Mariah heard her sharp intake of breath. “You did it,” she said in amazement. “Now, make them bigger,” she commanded.
Mariah suddenly felt like she was back in Bria’s kitchen, with Bria tying flour sacks to her back and experimenting with her transformations. She remembered falling to the floor and whacking her beak painfully, but she indulged her companions, nonetheless. Before she realized quite what had happened, she heard a grunt from Shira.
“Watch it, lady!”
This time, her wings were nearly a third larger than the full-size ones she had worn moments ago when she had first changed, larger than they had ever been, and one of them was curled around, pushing Shira against the wall. Mariah quickly changed
back to her fully human form to find her friend brushing her face and mouth with a hand as if they were full of feathers.
Not sure what to make of this new development, Mariah threw up her hands and stalked to the door, staring intently at the hallway beyond, with its dirt floor and rock walls. “I don’t know what good this is going to do us. I just want to be out of this cursed cell!” He cannot hold you. The words that had helped her escape the king’s dungeon cut through her mind, and she saw herself flying through the door and into the darkness beyond, winging through dark tunnels until she reached the sunlight—the freedom—beyond.
In a blink, Mariah found herself in a cold, bright sky, circling around a deep ravine, with spindly trees rising up all around her. Was she imagining it? It was so vivid. She ruffled her feathers against the cold and realized that she was actually outside. She was free.
She gasped, but her lips had disappeared, replaced by a hawk’s beak. Where …? How …? She looked down, recognizing the road and the ravine they had been traveling through when the Sovereign had captured them. Her friends … they must still be back in the cell.
So, focusing hard, she imagined winging through those dark tunnels again, back to the corridor outside their cell but not through the door this time.
In another flash, she was standing on taloned feet, looking up at the other side of the cell door. She called out, and Xae and Shira, their mouths hanging open, crowded the door, staring down at her.
“How in the blazes did you manage that?” Shira asked through the gaps in the metal grate. “One second, you’re here, and the next, you’re out there.”
Before Mariah could change and tell them where she had been, voices rose in the darkness behind her, coming from around the bend in the hallway.
One voice stood out among the rest. “I tell you, I won’t stand for it. We can’t continue to hold these young women. Their legacy, if nothing else, should prove them to you fools.”
With a shock, Mariah suddenly found herself looking up at the old man who had visited their cell earlier, the one they had called Councilor. He came up short upon seeing her outside the door, the people following in his wake nearly bumping into him. They all froze, staring at her in surprise.
Revelation of the Dragon Page 20
