Cara shook her head with a grin. It had been foolish of her to think that her arrival would go unnoticed, which also meant that the Queen knew she had also been there the day before.
“Or that maybe you just wanted to check on your friend,” Uthra said, with a hardy laugh.
Once again, Cara felt embarrassed at having thought that she could sneak Bradley into the Earth City undetected.
What amused her, however, was hearing that the Queen had emptied the market place because of her arrival.
She knew that the Queen could not care less about Cara’s safety. More than likely, she had ordered everyone to go back to their homes because she was afraid that all of Merrick’s followers would come out to show their support for him being seated as the new Ard Righ.
By emptying the market place, the Queen had shown her weakness.
“You can follow me, young lady,” Uthra said, as he opened the large double doors and motioned for Cara to come inside.
Cara and Uthra walked together, making their way down a dimly lit passage before emerging into a grand circular room crowded with all manner of people—warriors dressed like Uthra, dignitaries wearing fine silk clothes, and others who behaved like politicians working the room.
The chamber was well lit, and its walls glowed with polished gold while also being overgrown with shimmering green plants that flourished without sunlight. The greens and the gold played against each other, creating a majestic balance of color and mood.
As soon as Cara entered the room, the talking dwindled and then rose again as several of the council members stood to greet her.
A few of the female council members even hugged her—a very different welcome than she had received when her father was still alive.
At the far end of the chamber, a thick, gnarled tree stood—its roots interlaced with the floor and its trunk growing up through a hole in the ceiling. A two-seated throne made of roughly hewn gold was set deep into the base of the old tree, where the Queen usually sat.
At the moment, however, the throne was empty.
Things had changed so much, Cara thought, as she realized that the council was assembled before their royal leader, the Queen, had joined them.
“Come,” said one of the council elders, a white-bearded man in a black tartan with a gold sash. Cara recognized him as Mangus.
“Sit with us, and let us talk,” Mangus said. “What news do you bring? And how does Merrick fare?”
Cara moved to one of the seats at the large table made of polished divinium and stood behind it.
“Council members,” Cara said, “thank you for your warm greetings today. I have much to tell you all, but first I would humbly inform you of something of which you are already aware, I am sure.
“Yesterday I brought one of my human associates to your city to be cared for by your healers. You have my apologies, but time was of the essence, and the reputation of the Earth healers is the greatest in all of the Drayoom world. My friend suffered a great injury continuing the work of my father, Ohman.”
“Yes, yes, of course,” another council member said, this one with long grey hair, also dressed in a black tartan. “We are already aware of your associate, and have made sure that he is being well cared for.”
“What of Merrick?” asked one of the council members whom Cara did not recognize.
“Merrick is well,” Cara said. “He sends his regrets that he is not here with me, but wanted me to assure you that he will be arriving in the coming days and that he has missed the serenity of the Earth City and the warmth of its people.”
Cara knew that Merrick hadn’t said anything even close to that, but she was going to pave the way for him to at least consider leading the Earth Clan, whether he was afraid of his destiny or not.
Of course, if Merrick ever did decide to lead the Earth Clan, Cara would miss seeing him at Rune Corp every day. But having him in place as the Ard Righ would strengthen the bond between her company and the Earth Clan.
And as much as she didn’t want to admit it, it would be good for Merrick to be with his people and to grow into the Drayoom that Cara could see him becoming. Rune Corp was a special place, but he needed more exposure to the world of magic than Tysons Corner could give him.
He still had so much potential in him, even though he had grown so much since the first time they had met.
Less than a year ago, she had been Merrick’s mentor and had to answer all of his frequent questions about almost everything. She still had things to teach him, but he absorbed everything so quickly that she found herself struggling to keep up at times. And his questions kept getting harder and harder.
Cara was still in charge of the company, but Merrick was increasingly seen as the leader of her company’s strongest teams. Also, inside the Rune Corp walls and even with most Drayoom, Merrick had unwittingly become something of a legend—the only Drayoom known to have walked among the dragons, to have defied their will, and to have survived.
Other than Abred, no one in Drayoom history had ever done so before.
Merrick had gone from obscurity to being one of the most well known members of the Drayoom community in under a year. With his status, he could go places, visit other families, and cross boundaries that no one else could.
Best of all, Merrick was not letting his prestige and power go to his head. This was a blessing, since the last thing anyone wanted was for Merrick to become too much like his brother, Eudroch, used to be.
CHAPTER 28
AT THE TIME OF their arrival, Outpost 14301 had been located high above Tysons Corner. After a few hours of relaxing in the guest quarters and then gathering at the lookout post, Merrick and his team were told that the floating station was now somewhere over Baltimore, Maryland.
Just as Prince Takehiko had warned, Merrick and the rest of his party had all felt a little off-balanced before they acclimated to standing and walking among the clouds. But as they sat with the Prince, discussing what they would find and learn of once they arrived at the Cloud City, Merrick’s stomach started to settle down.
“I know that Wind Magic is keeping us afloat, but how is the cloud itself solid enough to keep us aloft?” Merrick said.
“Some of that is a family secret,” Prince Takehiko said with a healthy laugh. “I will say that not every cloud is like the ones on which we build. And we of course make full use of our divinium. If you look closely enough, you can see that the clouds are filled with tiny particles of it.”
“That’s amazing. I never thought of using divinium in such a diffused way,” Merrick said.
“Not as impressive as your company’s divinium, according to what the Emperor says. He claims that he witnessed it control both Earth and Fire Magic? Is this true?”
Merrick shifted in his chair, uncomfortable at the sudden change the conversation had taken.
He cleared his throat.
“Some of that is a Rune Corp secret, of course,” Merrick said with a congenial laugh. “Our divinium also holds some secrets of its own that we are just now exploring.”
“If there were some way to make our divinium behave in the same manner as yours, I imagine that knowledge would be worth a considerable amount. I know that my brother, the Emperor, will ask about this, and I mention it so that you may begin to think of how you might respond.”
Even as the Prince was talking, Merrick realized that he hadn’t even considered what the Prince was suggesting. Maybe Ohman had found a way to transmute regular divinium into something more. This was something that Merrick would have to bring up with Cara once he met up with her at the Earth Clan.
“I thank you for the advanced warning, Prince Takehiko,” Merrick said. “I promise to give the topic much thought before discussing it with your Emperor.”
The Prince seemed to sense that Merrick had closed the conversation topic, but Merrick wondered if the Prince could also tell how much doubt had been sown in Merrick’s own mind. Maybe searching for the source of their divinium was a fool’s erra
nd, and instead, he should have been searching through the data cubes back at Rune Corp, looking for Ohman’s hidden magical formula.
Despite his uncertainty, he realized that even if the Prince was right, it didn’t change the fact that they had to retrieve the stolen cube. With his mind once again focused, he looked around at his team and their surroundings.
At first, he thought about asking for a tour of the outpost, in case the cube was still here, but he found it difficult to believe that the Emperor would have returned to the Cloud City without it. Because of that, Merrick decided that it was time to push on with their travels.
“Prince Takehiko,” Merrick said, “you have been more than patient with us, but I believe we are ready to continue our journey to the Cloud City whenever you deem appropriate.”
“Splendid,” said the Prince. “Are you sure that your future wife is ready to go as well?”
Merrick looked over to Mona and realized that at his suggestion that they continue their trip, her face had turned slightly paler.
“Is everything ok, Mona?” Merrick said.
Mona looked up at him as if she had just come out of a stupor of thought.
“I’m ready whenever you and the rest of the team are,” she said. “I was just thinking about how high up we are and was letting my brain get the better of me. That’s all.”
Mona’s explanation seemed to satisfy the Prince, but Merrick knew her better than that. She was hiding something, and he made a mental note to talk to her later about what was really going on in her head.
After checking with the rest of the team, Merrick, Mona, Master Banzo, and Jonathan followed the Prince up a set of stairs to a crest in the giant cloud.
Once at the top, the Prince reminded them again of the safety elements of traveling through Araki.
“I will do my best to monitor each of you as we go along,” the Prince said. “I have no doubt that our trip will be an uneventful one, but please note that this leg will take a substantially longer time—on the order of five hours.
“We will be traveling through the body of the mighty Araki, but it is a sad fact that the wind does not move as quickly as the lightning, which I know Merrick and Mona have traveled with in the past.”
Both Merrick and Mona nodded.
“Prepare yourselves, then,” the Prince said.
Merrick grabbed Mona’s hand just before his molecules dispersed into the air around him. Merrick was still new to flying with this dragon, but he tried to settle in and to let himself be pulled along as if he were drafting behind a bicyclist during a very long race.
A five-hour trip was going to be a long time during which he had to stay focused on his creation name. But it did give him time to do some critical thinking before having to speak with the Emperor.
Merrick wanted to find the cube, and he assumed the Emperor wanted to know the secret behind its unique divinium. Each of them had something that they supposed the other one possessed.
The Emperor would assume that Merrick would know either where to find the divinium or how to make it. As soon as the Emperor knew that Merrick did not know either of those things, Merrick believed that he would stop becoming useful to the young ruler.
And he would only be perceived as a threat and nothing else.
As Merrick continued to flow through the troposphere like a disembodied wind surfer passing though cloud after cloud, he tried to maintain his focus while also thinking about how to best approach discovering the secrets of Rune Corp’s divinium.
He reached back into his mind and went through all the information and data he found while going through Ohman’s personal files on the data cubes.
Using Ohman’s creation name as the security key, Merrick had already looked through all of Ohman’s personal files that he could find. His searches revealed nothing regarding the special properties of the Rune Corp divinium—nothing to suggest whether the Rune Corp divinium was found or made.
As Merrick pondered anything that would lead him to a clue, he decided to try approaching the problem from a different perspective. Instead of looking for what was true, perhaps he could eliminate other things as being false.
He reasoned that if Ohman had figured out how to transmute divinium, he still must have had a regular source from which to obtain the base material. The logical place for him to do so would have been the Earth Clan.
Given current relations, Merrick felt confident that he could find someone in the Earth Clan to tell him whether Ohman had received his divinium from them or not. If Ohman hadn’t, then Merrick would feel safe in assuming that the Rune Corp divinium came from someplace special and apart from the magical stone that belonged to each of the families.
With that bit of logic set firmly in his mind, Merrick observed more of his surroundings as his molecules sped along the air currents on their way to the Cloud City. He had not asked about the location of the Cloud City, but given that the Prince had said it would take around five hours to get there, traveling over twice as fast as even the fastest wind Merrick knew of, Merrick picked out a few prime candidate locations. The primary one of these was somewhere over Japan, which would also make sense, given the Asian features of the members of the Wind Family.
Even though his essence was clustered together in pieces, Merrick could still sense the changes in the weather systems as they went along.
What he felt was chaos and confusion—and not just among the particles of the air. When Merrick flexed his self so that he could sense where the wind met the other elements, the connections everywhere were jagged and unnatural.
He was still getting used to how the weather and the wind moved, but he could already hear the molecules all around him speaking to one another as he passed through them. Their words were sad and unsettled. On the Earth below, human scientists were speaking plenty about climate change recently, but being enveloped and traveling as a part of the wind itself, Merrick could feel the change that was going on in a visceral way that was stronger than any scientific proof could ever provide.
Even though he didn’t expect the Emperor to be honest with him about anything, Merrick made a mental note to ask him about the changes in weather. Asking the question alone would give Merrick the opportunity to gauge the Emperor’s reactions and maybe decipher whether Araki was behind any of the recent changes in climate.
After passing through countless other weather systems, Merrick felt his speed start to decrease and his molecules begin to congeal. Even as he noticed this, Merrick popped back into corporeal existence. He found himself on another platform made of cloud, standing next to Prince Takehiko, who had already been joined by two warriors dressed in ornate black armor with curved katana swords sheathed at their sides.
Merrick turned his head to look and as he did so, Master Banzo, Mona, and Jonathan all winked into existence right next to him.
Again, Mona did not look well, and Merrick hurried to her side and put his arm around her.
“Tell me what’s wrong, Mona?” he said.
Mona swayed a little. Her face was pale, but she straightened up and stood tall, forcing a smile, Merrick suspected, in an attempt to divert attention from herself.
He knew that she was covering something up, but after a few more minutes of rest, she looked a little healthier.
“I don’t have my wind legs yet,” she said, with a laugh. “For some reason, I do much better traveling through Terrada. No offense, Prince Takehiko.”
The Prince faced Mona and made a slight bow to her and Merrick.
“There is no offense taken, Mona,” the Prince said. “I can only imagine that, even though you are a human, the Earth Dragon must have seen fit to ease your journey through its ethereal body because of your connection with Merrick. I mean no offense either when I say that my dragon most likely does not share that affinity with the Ard Righ. This kind of travel was never meant for humans at all, and the fact that you handle it this well is a testament to your strength. I am humbled by it.”
Merrick was pleased that the Prince was being so polite and kind about it all, but a small part of him felt something else. He wasn’t sure what it was, but was it possible that he was feeling a tinge of jealousy? If Merrick didn’t know any better, he would say that the Prince was showing signs of being attracted to Mona. He put that thought to rest and turned back to the vista that lay in front of them.
At last, they had reached the Cloud City.
Merrick heard gasps from the rest of his party as they turned to view the wondrous city.
Spread out in front of him for miles and miles was a giant cloud that formed the base for the gleaming city. Rising from the soft edges of the cloud, tall buildings and spires of pure white cloud rose impossibly into the air, giving Merrick the impression of a magical palace surrounded by one-story and two-story houses and buildings that were scattered all around it.
It was the closest thing Merrick had ever come to seeing a magical castle since he had entered the world of the Drayoom, and he wondered for the first time if he was up for the challenge of locating and then taking back the cube that he sought.
CHAPTER 29
CARA’S DISCUSSION with the Earth Council was going exactly the opposite way that her first meeting with them had gone six months ago.
When she had brought Merrick to the Earth City for the first time and pleaded for him to be taught the craft of magic, the council had barely allowed it.
Now they could hardly wait for his return.
“Tell us,” the council member with the white beard said. “Have you spoken with Merrick about his rightful place here with us? I mean no disrespect, but Merrick is a full-blooded Drayoom and should be with his people. Ohman chose to relinquish his throne and to live amongst the humans, but that does not mean that Merrick must take the same path.”
Cara did her best to stay calm as she reminded herself of her mission. Still, it was hard for her not to respond when she knew that her father had been forced out of the Earth Clan by the treacherous actions of the Queen, and that he had not left of his own accord. Despite the revisionist history that had already been accepted by the council, Cara continued the discussion.
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