Dragon's Heir, page 26
The lights hovered around it, their hums urging me forward.
I did so. Then winced at my reflection on its surface. I…had seen better days.
“Mirror, mirror, on the wall,” I murmured, and idly reached out to touch the surface with a finger.
I should have known better.
One of the last drops of power I had surged through my fingers and into the ice mirror.
An instant later, it became a movie screen, and the whole room my surround-sound theater.
I staggered back as a deafening roar exploded in the room, and I cried out as I flinched away while covering my poor, abused ears. Meanwhile, I blinked at the scene in front of me, trying to make sense of it.
Well, there was a night sky, some desert, some mountains.…
Looked a lot like where I had just come from, actually. My perspective could have been on the side of one of those mountains. In fact, there was something familiar about that plateau I was looking out on.…
Wait.…
I knew that roar. Even though it had an edge I didn’t think I’d heard in it before, and I was certain I never wanted to again.
Then a familiar figure literally dropped into view and rose from his crouch. To stare straight at me.
“Sarah?”
“Kor?” I stammered. “Can you see me? And…hear me?”
Was this not just some recording or metaphorical vision?
Was this what was happening right now?
“I can,” he said quickly, rushing up to me. Or…to whatever surface he saw me through. “You will describe to me in detail how you are doing this—and how you got back there—later. But we have a bigger problem right now. Way bigger. Right now, I need to know two things for certain: Are you healable and not immediately dying? And are you not in any immediate, life-threatening danger?”
Well, that was oddly specific. And encompassing a lot of states between total wellness and excruciating agony.
“Yes, and yes,” I said, dryly. “Thanks for the concern.”
“You’re welcome, but I have to admit, I have ulterior motives—”
Just then, another roar ricocheted through my magical, invisible surround-sound system. If it was bad for me, it must have been even worse for Kor, because he bent over with pain with his hands clasped over his ears.
“Ben, you torched idiot,” Kor shouted furiously, squinting in pain as he forced himself upright. His voice echoed in a way that made me wonder if he was using both his mouth and mind to project the words. Probably a necessity to make himself heard through the roar. “She’s alive!”
The roar abruptly cut off. My ears rang in the silence that followed.
“Kor,” I said uneasily. “What’s going on? Is Ben—”
A golden…dragon…suddenly appeared in my field of vision, just beyond Kor. It landed on the mountainside with a force that brought Kor—ever smooth, ever graceful Kor—down on his knees, and it peered down at the two of us with one enormous eye, all that it could use at one time to examine insects like us while it was this close.
But…that was impossible. That couldn’t possibly be Ben. I knew by now how big Ben was, but this.…
Unless this ice mirror was getting proportions way out of whack, only the dragon’s eye and the inside corner of its toothy maw could even fit on my “screen.” Kor, standing in front of it on the plateau…looked like a grasshopper facing down a bear.
And yet, as soon as Kor climbed back to his feet, face it he did—feet braced, shoulders down and back, fists clenched, chin up.
I had my gripes about Kor…but now I knew to never, ever call him a coward.
“Look,” Kor said, pointing back at me. His voice kept that dual vocal, yet echoing quality. “Just look at her, Ben. That’s Sarah. She’s back in her hold. She’s alive. She’s alright. She’s safe.”
Ben.
He had called that…that Godzilla-shamer…Ben.
“She’s alive. She’s alright. She’s safe,” Kor repeated, as if speaking to a child.
Or…someone who was dangerously unstable.
My heart pounded as I stared into that slitted golden eye. I put both hands on the mirror—and was reminded that it was made of ice and not glass by the burning chill. Yet, in that moment, I didn’t care.
“Ben?” I stammered.
The dragon’s lip curled, and it let out an ominous, low growl. Its teeth bared, and it leaned back, enough that I had a terrifying glimpse of its entire maw opening.
I think I could guess what was coming next.
“No, Ben, no!” Kor cried, pure terror entering his voice.
I still didn’t think he was a coward. If he hadn’t been scared now, I would have thought him a fool. I was frozen in fear, and I wasn’t even there.
Kor rushed on, speaking as quickly as he could. “You’ll bring the shelter down, and half the mountain with it! First Flight are in there, the rest in the tunnels, and Yvera too! You could kill them all!”
My heart froze.
“Kor, what’s wrong?” I choked. “Why is he doing this?”
He looked back at me, eyes wide. As if I were his only hope. “He says it’s an illusion, that I’m tricking him! Sarah, you have to give me something! Some way to prove to him it’s you.”
I still didn’t understand what was going on, what had possessed—and super-sized—Ben, and why on Earth proving that I was me would solve things. But if Kor said that was what I had to do.…
I looked up at that maw that was glowing from a fire building deep inside…and blurted out the first thing that came to my mind. “Your mother taught you to make your bed!”
“Sarah.…” Kor said in a strained voice.
I continued in a rush. “She taught you to make your bed, because if you couldn’t do the simple things, the hard things would be harder. She always knew you would become the Heir, long before you did. You told me all of that, remember? As I was helping you make your bed, here, in my hold. We were alone. No one else could have known you had told me that but me.”
Kor turned back to Ben. He didn’t shout the words out loud this time, but I could almost see him thinking them at Ben with all his might.
Ben stopped inhaling. The flickers of flames at the back of his throat died. He slowly closed his maw. Then he turned his head to look at me again.
“You showed me how to fold the corners,” I said, babbling now, too relieved that it appeared to be doing something to stop. “I told you I was a tosser, you said that you slept like a log. You sang as you cooked us dinner. A song about a star of some kind, falling in love with a moon? You stopped when you noticed me watching. You said your mother taught you to sing, and cook. And that your father told you to keep it up, even after she was gone. When you talked to me on Yvera’s scale, you wouldn’t let me look at your bedroom because it was messy. I told you I liked tsha, that it tasted like sunshine. You made me breakfast when you came back, said it was the least you could do after getting me up to open the gate for you.”
Ben continued to stare, watching me.
Then…just about the time I ran out of breath…he began…shrinking.
That’s the only word I could think to describe it. He just became…not less than he was before, but condensed, concentrated. Reining it all in into a smaller, more controlled package. Until finally, he became his normal size, half on, half off the plateau—because he had condensed forward rather than to the center. But he didn’t stop there. He kept changing back, except slower than normal, slow enough that I looked away because the sight was a bit nausea-inducing for my already overstrained body and pounding head. I glanced back when he lost his scales.
Finally, he was, at long last, human again.
Ben again.
Except…as far as I could tell from his crouched position on all fours…completely naked.
He raised his head, blinked dazedly at Kor and me, and wobbled.
“I…need a dek,” he said woozily.
And then collapsed.
A few hours later, I cracked open the new Romskal gate—blazoned with a set of scales inside a sun—to let Kor in for the second time.
The first time had been shortly after Ben had collapsed, when Kor and Yvera had carried his unconscious body in. Both had been anxious to get him into my hold as quickly as possible. I thought it was to heal him, but as soon as they were inside, Kor had let out a breath of relief.
“He should be safe enough here,” he had panted to Yvera.
She only grunted in reply.
I felt a chill. “What do you mean? I thought the danger was over out there.”
“Danger is never over as long as it’s night,” Kor grunted. “Flame, he’s heavy.”
And Kor had the relatively lighter end: Ben’s legs. Yvera had her arms hooked under Ben’s and was leading the way backward toward the dormitory. Ben’s head lolled lifelessly, and that distressed me more than I was going to admit. I just followed along beside them, feeling helpless.
The only good thing I could see about the situation was that they had found Ben some pants. And left his chest bare.
Although I tried very hard not to take advantage of that last benefit.
“But,” Kor added darkly. “Ben had to go and make it even more dangerous by challenging the Devourer to send its legions.”
I gaped. “No.”
Kor cast me a sidelong glare. “Is that the most shocking thing you’ve seen or heard tonight? Speaking of which, I need some answers. Now.”
So while Kor and Yvera panted and carried Ben all the way to his bedroom, Kor asked them, and I answered as well as I could. That seemed to satisfy him for the time being, at least. After the wings unceremoniously dumped Ben on his bed, Kor examined me, healed me of a hit I’d taken to the back of my head since it seemed to be my most worrisome injury, and declared that he had to go back, muttering something about leftwing-type stuff he had to do that reminded me of the US political cliché “damage control.”
A couple hours later, he contacted Yvera by scale, who passed the message along to me, then I hurried back to the gate to open it again.
When I cracked the doors open wide enough for him to slip through, I saw with relief that dawn was lighting the desert sky, hopefully bringing at least a temporary reprieve from the threat of “legions” coming down on the innocents of the Wirthen Desert.
I also saw with surprise that most of the fighters who had stayed with us that night were at a respectful distance away from the gate. Less respectful were their unashamed stares at me and at the gate that had materialized on their mountain slope.
“Er…Kor.…” I said, looking back at them as he slipped through the ice. “What happened to secrecy?”
“Ben happened,” Kor snapped. He groaned and put a hand to his forehead. “Don’t worry. I only told them what was necessary. And then swore them to secrecy.”
As I closed the doors, I thought of what I saw as dramá proclivity for gossip and near utter lack of privacy, and I said skeptically, “And that’ll be enough?”
Kor looked at me balefully. “Blood oaths, Sarah. Every single one of them swore with their blood. They can’t tell even if they were tortured to.”
Fortunately, the doors closed fully just then, because I suddenly felt weak. “What?” I whispered.
He sighed and slung an arm over my shoulder as we began a slow walk back to the dormitory. “What do you think took me so torched long? Well…that was one of the things, but it took the longest.”
“Was that…necessary?”
“Yes,” Kor said with grim simplicity.
I sighed but let him leave it at that. “You look tired.”
“I am torching beyond tired,” Kor said, rubbing his eyes with his free hand. “But I’ll get some rest soon. Speaking of which, how is Ben?”
“No change,” I said fretfully. “Still sleeping like the dead. Are you sure.…”
Kor moaned and removed his arm from my shoulders. “For the last time, Sarah, he’ll be fine. He’s not even hurt—or if he was, his change back healed him. He’s just burned dry. He just needs to sleep for a day, and then eat his weight or more. Then he’ll be the Ben you know and adore again, don’t worry.”
My cheeks heated. “But did you have to put him in a coma?”
“Magic-enhanced deep sleep,” Kor corrected with a finger. “Not a coma. There’s a slight medical difference, but it’s there. Besides, the answer is yes. We couldn’t risk him waking up before all of…that…was out of his system.”
I took a deep breath. “You still haven’t told me what that was. Kor…what happened?”
Kor looked at me sidelong. “The short of it? You happened.”
I stared back. “Me?”
“I’m not saying it was your fault. Hellwinds, if I had been in your shoes, with the limited knowledge you had, I might have done the same thing. But yes, Ben was like that…did those things…because of you.”
“I don’t understand.”
Kor sighed. “Many drakón…become more draká in times of great emotional strain, Yvera being the prime example, but the Royals.…”
He paused, then seemed to choose his words with care. “When someone who is…shall we say, close to a Royal is endangered or killed, Royals have been known to go a bit…mad. Berserk, really. And that’s exactly what Ben did when he thought he thought you were dead. He probably didn’t even realize what was happening to him. In fact, the person you think of as Ben might not have been in there for most of that time.”
“What did he do?” I whispered as we stopped in front of the dormitory arch.
Kor rubbed his forehead.
“Compared to what he could have done in that state? Not much. He wiped out the arrel—those things that were flying away with you,” Kor added hastily when I blanched. “Nothing more than glorified spelled rocks with barely enough sentience for independent action, so don’t you lose sleep over them.”
Kor took a deep breath. “Other than that, he knocked down stuff, smashed some rocks, gave everything living within leagues a minor heart attack, but…that’s it, I think. The greatest fallout is more about information, but I’m trying to mitigate what I can of that now.”
Kor shook his head wearily. “We got lucky. Very lucky. Mostly thanks to you and that…ice communication spell of yours. Of course…Ben’s berserker rage might have been much easier to contain if it weren’t for you, too.”
I suddenly put it together. “I gave him power,” I breathed in horror.
“To put it mildly,” Kor said with folded arms. “Sarah…I don’t know how to describe to you how what you did changes everything.”
“What do you mean?”
Kor held up a finger. “One: Giving someone else power directly has never been done before. It was thought to be impossible. I can use my power on you; that’s how I healed you. I can give you gems infused with my power that can save you having to charge them yourself. But that is it. My spark is my spark alone. Yours is yours. That was…until you gave me a boost sometime at the beginning of this interminable day.”
“That’s why you asked me what I’d done, and told Ben you had to think.”
“Exactly. That alone could have been our Realms-shattering event of the day. Figures that we would only have to go up from there.”
He sighed and held up a second finger. “Two: Ben changing at night should not have been possible. Someone as powerful as Ben can remain in that state for a while after the sun goes down if he has already paid the price of the change. But not even a Royal has ever been able to shift in the middle of the night without a direct boost from the Tree of Flame, and Ben was across the cosmos from Her. That fact was no doubt what the Devourer had been counting on when it sent its minions to take you.
“But Ben’s change is not as huge a leap, since we already know by now that you are strengthened at night. Put that together with number one, and the result is not too surprising. To us. But only the four of us, plus maybe the King, had known that quality of yours before tonight. Now everyone who heard and saw Ben is going to be wondering how in the blazes did he change at night on Romskal. And everyone, of course, includes the Devourer and any consumed with sense. Because of course, in that state, Ben wasn’t going to be torched subtle.”
My eyes widened in understanding. “That’s what you meant, about the main fallout being information. That is why you made the First Flight swear blood oaths.”
“Yes,” Kor said grimly. “But I can’t track down every torched soul who heard and saw Ben that night and make them do the same. And there will be many. Ben was heard and seen for elden. Word is already spreading like wildfire. I just contained the worst of the gossip—I hope—with the most immediate and knowledgeable witnesses.”
Kor grimaced. “Alright, that’s not giving them enough credit. They’ll do their best, I think—in addition to the oaths. They’re the First Flight of Goldek Gate. That means they’re its elite. They’re dutiful to a fault, and they’re not stupid. They know the significance of what they saw and took part in tonight, and I made sure they knew how important it was to do what they can to keep this quiet. I spun a story, and I made sure they could recite it forwards and backwards.”
“What story?”
“Not important right now,” Kor said with a weary wave. “I’ll tell you later, since you’ll need to stick to it too, but I need to get going on more containment work, and I still haven’t fully answered your question.”
“There’s more?” I asked, baffled.
“One more thing,” Kor sighed. “And it is, perhaps, the most significant, believe it or not.”
“What?” I whispered.
Kor held up a third finger. “Three: Ben didn’t just change. Surely you noticed his…size.”
I could only nod.
“A drakón’s size, as I think you’ve already learned by now, is determined by the drakón’s capacity for power. I’m the strongest magic user among us not because I have the largest capacity—I don’t, that’s Ben—but because I’m the most efficient and effective at using what I have.”
