Dragon's Heir, page 25
And I took an exaggerated step back.
“Stop!” it cried in alarm.
It sent another lasso of power out that lashed around my waist and jerked me back from the edge. The power burned where it touched me, even through my shirt, and after it retreated, I felt so nauseated I nearly threw up. I shoved down the bile with monumental will. I didn’t want to let my guard down in front of this thing, even for a second.
Well, I thought grimly. At least that worked.
Not to mention that two could play at the stalling game.
“Cease this pointless resistance,” the voice rasped in a rush, as if trying to distract myself from my suicidal thoughts by…making me more despondent.
It seriously needed some psychology coaching.
“Your weapon is gone, your lights are vanquished. I have filled the tunnels with darkness and illusions. The Heir of Flame will never find you in time.”
Just like that, I remembered my last weapon.
Never, eh? I thought.
Moving swiftly, I brought the whistle up to my lips and blew, sending an absurd amount of power into it, hoping more power meant further reach.
The whistle, of course, was silent to my ears. Before I could wonder if it had worked, the orange gem flared, and though I heard nothing, I felt…something.
Something coming nearer. Something burning with power and carefully harnessed rage. Coming in fast.
Not a moment too soon, because after another stab of power from the dark, my whistle grew too hot to press to my lips and hold, and I dropped it back to my chest with a hiss.
The darkness was twenty feet away, and the stench was mind-numbingly bad. I was finding it hard to keep my breakfast/dinner soup down now.
“Stop making this difficult, child!” But for the first time, I heard an element of nervousness in its own voice. That’s when I knew I wasn’t hallucinating the oncoming storm. “I am not your enemy, nor is the Devourer!”
I decided it finally deserved the full impact of my Earthren curse, so I said it in full, and savagely so. “Bull. Shit.”
I got a bit more satisfaction from that, knowing it could understand me. Though…it might still not even know what a bull was, come to think of it. But surely it knew what the other thing was, since it smelled of the stuff, and it could get the idea from there.
But I had to keep stalling, so I didn’t leave it at that. “You know what your ‘friendly’ Devourer had its minions do to welcome me to the neighborhood, the moment I arrived? It had them strap me to an altar to sacrifice me.”
The epiphany hit me like a hammer to the chest, knocking out the air that I had won back.
“You need me alive.…” I said breathlessly. “…to sacrifice me.”
I remembered with crystal clarity how, only hours ago, I had guessed out loud to Ben that the Devourer was trying to kill me to end me as a threat. And while that had an element of truth to it, now I realized why Ben hadn’t answered, why his eyes hadn’t met mine, but instead stared sightlessly ahead, glowing with fury.
Ben already knew what the Devourer intended to do to me. Or guessed. So no doubt Kor had, maybe even Yvera. Probably I would have too, if I hadn’t been so new to the way things worked here. But it made sense to me now, in a sick way. Why merely kill your enemy when you could also use their death…to your advantage?
Suddenly…that drop behind me didn’t sound so bad after all.
For the first time, the rasper chuckled. And that deathly sound was enough to send goosebumps down my spine. “I was not lying when I said you were precious, that the Devourer has waited millennia for you. Or rather, to be more precise…for your Blood. Which I have only a few drops of now, but soon—”
If he said anything more, the words were drowned out in a bestial roar. Somehow, even with the unsettling element of humanity mixed in, I recognized the sound.
A solid wall of golden fire surged down the tunnel, burning away the darkness. I caught one glimpse of a floating skeletal frame in a tattered robe—only a black outline in the searing light—before it was swallowed up in an ear-splitting shriek of agony.
I wasn’t speaking metaphorically: the banshee-worthy shriek damaged my eardrums and send a blinding flash of pain through my skull that had me crouched with my own scream of pain.
And that is why I didn’t see or feel the enemies swooping in behind me until it was too late.
Ben had been my reason for stalling.
This…was rasper’s.
Cold, stony hands scooped under my shoulders and wrapped around my chest. I screamed, the sound faint in my ears, but as I rose into the air in buffeting flaps from the wings behind me, all I could do was thrash and kick my legs. The arms were as solid and unyielding as rock, not only making them impossible for me to pry off me but also making my gravity-induced pressure against them bruising.
The second-worst part of it all was how much better I could see the moongate from this view. Unbeknownst to anyone but me, the arched double doors still sat, glowing from the light of the two moons in the cloudless desert sky.
A breathtaking view. Or it would have been, but for the small army of stone, batwing angels like my captor lifting me away from it.…
The worst part was hearing Ben’s agonized shout in my head.
SARAH!
I looked down, but if he had glimpsed me, he was now out of my sight, given my rising angle above the opening.
My eyes stung at the pure unfairness of it all. Again, with my hope so close…and so far.
Both so close I could feel them.…
Wait.…
Feel?
But there it was. Two connections, two pulls, two anchors. One going to the moongate…the other into the tunnel.
Time slowed, each wing flap from my captor taking minutes, heartbeats lasting eons. I could feel what Ben felt, almost see what he saw as he put one foot in front of the other in slow motion, as his flameheart throbbed inside his chest.
It really is a fire, I thought in a daze. A literal fire, in the region where his heart should be. Never mind right then how that could function as an organ. My much greater concern was that the fire was burning dangerously low, even as it pulsed dangerously fast.
Ben was nearly at the end of his strength; it was night, and he had used nearly all he had to get this far, to get this close to me. And yet still he ran, even knowing it was too late to save me from a fate worse than mere death. Still, he reached for me, with his mind and heart, not even understanding how. Still, he pleaded with me, begged me, even though he didn’t know what for.
But, as another crystal-clear memory from this morning came to me, suddenly I did.
If I was going to die…then it would be how I chose. It would be serving, rather than harming, the ones I loved.
Ben, I said, opening the void where my power rested. I hoped he could hear me. Our connection was so strong at this point that I was almost certain he could.
Take it. Use it, if you can, to find my family…and tell them I loved them.
Without waiting for his reply, I poured nearly everything I had down the conduit between us…and into him.
Nearly.
I would have given it all, every single, last drop. I would have thrust it all on him, even as his understanding of what I was doing grew and he cried, Sarah, STOP!
I would have died for him. And…not just to have something worth dying for.
But a Presence entered that void, and Its voice echoed through that eternal moment.
Cease, my child. All is not lost this night. Reach out for your other anchor…and pull.
Hoping I had done enough for Ben, and figuring I had nothing else to lose, I stopped pouring into him just before I ran dry. Then I reached for my other connection, the one to the glowing gate only I could see…
…and pulled.
Chapter eighteen
Mad
Koriben
“ NO!” I roared with my mind and voice and power.
But I felt the enigmatic yet undeniable tie between Sarah and me sever as swiftly as a sharpened ax slicing through a neck.
Just as I reached the mouth of the tunnel.
I looked out, chest heaving, flameheart roaring with a strength that should not have been possible, as if Sarah had dumped an entire sun inside of me.
An entire soul.
How could a heart be so alive and so dead at the same time?
When it was consumed with rage.
My burning eyes riveted at once at the flight of arrel in the sky. I didn’t know which one had taken Sarah—and therefore, which one now held her lifeless body.
I didn’t care.
“Ben?” Yvera said, panting voice uncertain as she slowly approached me.
She might as well not have existed. I couldn’t hear her through the blood pounding in my ears. I couldn’t even see her through the red in my vision. I simply backed up to get a running start.
“Ben!” Yvera shouted in disbelief, reaching for me.
Too late this time. Her fingers only just grazed my back as I charged forward and dove off the cliff.
She had cause to worry. Not that I cared or even consciously heard her. What I was doing should not have been possible in the middle of the night, even with two bright moons, let alone after having spent all my fire.
But I didn’t need a sun now. Not with a supernova inside me, taking the place of my heart.
I changed. I expanded. I exploded. Muscles, sinew, bone, teeth, wings, tail—all came into being with the force of a Brightflare mine detonation. I changed so fast and became so massive that my tail shook the mountain behind me when it struck, causing a landslide. And I wasn’t even bruised.
Then, popping my jaw with satisfaction, I roared.
That roar alone caused more rockslides—everywhere this time, across the Korpeth range. Precariously balanced boulders that had somehow withstood the test of time and been the inspiration for countless Strongshield ink paintings and poems collapsed. Desert trees that had fallen into and been held up by their neighbors for perhaps years made their final descent with thundering cracks. Ground animals screamed, night birds fled the skies, a pack of argen howled.
That roar echoed for elden. It would have shocked anyone with ears from Goldek Gate to Kellig Hold and perhaps beyond.
That roar shook the world.
Which was just what I had intended. I wanted everyone, everywhere, even those who had no part in creating my suffering, to feel something of it—and tremble before me.
The arrel—a stone creation all the Devourer’s own, made in solemn mockery of Royal half-forms—scattered. Which was just as well, because I craved the challenge.
The only singular, miniscule voice that remained of my humanity screamed at me that Sarah’s body was somewhere among them, that I should take at least enough care to retrieve it.
But what good is it now? my agonized fury raged. Her body was going to be burned in any case, for surely that was what even her family would have done, had I delivered it to them. Better to do it now, and cleanly, and erase as quickly as possible any remnant of the empty shell, before I ever had to see it.…
I never said I was in any state of reason. In fact, I was entirely mad.
In every sense of the word.
Fire spewed in great sweeps from my jaws. That alone wasn’t enough to kill those paradoxical beings of flying stone…but it made them brittle.
Heedless of the temperature with my scales protecting me, I knocked the super-heated arrel out of the sky with limbs and tail. Either that alone was enough to make them crack apart, or the blow, combined with the heat, used up the magic that gave them existence and they fell from the sky like the rocks they were and shattered on impact, creating more delicious destruction.
In desperation, some arrel aimed for my wings, but even as large as I was, I was too agile for them. I dove, corkscrewed, rose, and twisted in the air in a deadly, flame-filled dance they couldn’t match. I was a behemoth of destruction, too large and powerful to defy, let alone survive.
Never did I see Sarah’s body. But never did I look. Never did I want to.
It wasn’t Sarah anymore.
Neither was I Ben. Or Koriben, or an Heir, or a Sunfilled, or even my father’s son.
All identity was replaced with loss, and all thought with rage.
And then…all too soon, there were no more arrel.
That…that wasn’t enough. No, not nearly enough. That had only whetted my appetite. My hunger roared, and so did I out loud.
I lashed my tail against a pillar of sandstone, sending it crumbling. I landed on top of the highest peak and bellowed into the night as I smashed my foot into the ground, sending gaping cracks through the stone.
Then, with my mind and power, I added words to my roar.
IS THAT ALL YOU CAN DO? IS THAT ALL YOU SEND AGAINST ME? I DEFY YOU, DEVOURER. SEND YOUR LEGIONS. SEND YOUR LISH. I WILL DESTROY THEM ALL. I WILL AVENGE HER DEATH ON YOU A HUNDREDFOLD. I WILL BURN, AND I WILL BREAK. I WILL CRUSH, AND I WILL TEAR—
A voice unexpectedly cut into my mind, piercing like a sapphire spear through the red. A voice I…knew. Using a name I recognized as…mine.
Saying…the last words I had expected to hear.
Ben, you torched idiot—she’s alive!
Chapter nineteen
Idiots
Sarah
For the second time that eternal day/night…I woke excruciatingly slowly.
But, oddly enough, smell came first: moist, relatively warm air wafted in and out of my nostrils, so different from before. Sight came next as I blinked open my crusted eyes, even though my mind couldn’t make much of my blurred and unfocused vision. The perspective was strange, too. Like gravity had tilted sideways.
It took maybe five seconds for me to realize that the world wasn’t on its side—I was.
Focus returned slowly, like a camera lens adjusting, and I saw a stone balustrade and roaring waterfall beyond. I blinked rapidly, realizing another problem: the light. I had just been in darkness. Hadn’t I?
But now all was bright around me, and that was painful, but it was also safe, and.…
A light hovered in my range of vision, bobbing in concern, as if asking me what I was doing collapsed on the floor. I was indeed, prostrate as if I had fallen on my side while reaching for something.
What.…
Then it all came rushing back to me with painful suddenness, and I gasped in more than mental pain. Because I felt aches and bruises and cuts everywhere, not to mention a throb in the back of my head that was sending spears of suffering through the rest of my skull, as if not content to suffer alone or in silence any longer. My mouth felt as dry and rough as sandpaper; I swallowed, but nothing went down.
And then there was the ringing in my ears…my hearing still not entirely healed from the rasper’s final revenge.
I moaned and curled inward, wanting to just sink back into oblivion.
I had just…surged to one of my gates. Just like Ben could do to his. I wondered if it just about killed Ben every time he did, just like this. If so, I could understand why he did it so seldom.
The light continued to hover. Then another joined it. Then another, and another. The combined light was searing, and I snapped out, “Will you just go back to bed and leave me alone? Everything’s fine now, right? Let me just…be.”
But the lights were bobbing against me now, as if pleading with me to move. Finally, the ringing in my ears died enough for me to recognize an urgency in their hum.
Apparently, I wasn’t quite out of adrenaline, since one more shot kick-started my system into life again.
“What is it?” I croaked, propping myself up on my forearm.
They whirled around me in relief for a second, then formed a line leading toward the north end of my hold. Well, that message was as clear as a neon arrow: I was meant to follow.
I moaned. “This had better be dang important. Like, life or death important.”
The lights kept up their urgent hum.
Like a shipwrecked survivor crawling with her last strength onto a beach, I first pulled myself forward with my arms. Fortunately, movement seemed to warm my aching muscles and lend me further strength, and I was able to push up onto my knees and then to my feet a few moments later.
I still felt more zombie than human, but I was able to shamble after my moving dotted line of lights.
The human part of me still apparently had a sense of humor, because I thought with weary amusement, I feel like I’m Pac-Man.
Though this dotted line simply kept moving on ahead of me, so perhaps a better analogy was.… What was that one in which you swallowed things to increase the length of your tail and tried not to run into yourself? I still wasn’t swallowing anything, though, so that didn’t fit either.…
While the thirty percent of my brain that was still functioning tried to figure out what classic arcade game my life had turned into, I found, to my surprise, that my lights were leading me through the tiered seating room (still hadn’t figured out what that one was for) and to.…
The ice room.
I needed a better name for that.
Ice…Rose Room?
Nope, still not it.
Fortunately, the lights spared me the effort of opening the doors and did so by themselves with a few mysterious twirls. I followed them inside with even greater reluctance, at a total loss. Plus, my body still remembered how exhausting my last entry into this room had been.
Fortunately, the room’s illuminating crystals stayed on this time, even after the doors shut behind me.
To my surprise, I noticed there were some additions to the room. Three, to be exact.
Three suns floating over three of the seven pillars, with a planet orbiting each one. I was grateful that I wasn’t here to solve that puzzle now, because the lights floated to the furthest northern end of the room, the one that had, in the previous two times I’d been in it, formed the tip of the hold’s leaf shape.
Right now, that was tip somewhat concealed behind a giant pane of solid ice, so smooth and clear that I would have mistaken it for glass, had it not been for the frost around its edges.
