Under the Ice Blades

  Free me.

  Angulus considered the creature. His first instinct was to say no, or at least not right now, but what if it could help them? According to the history books, some dragons had been allies to humans long ago. Some had also been foes, aligning themselves with enemy nations. And others had preyed upon humans, the same way they preyed upon antelope and sheep. There was already one dragon that Angulus knew little about flying around in his country. He couldn’t see adding another unknown element to the mix, especially one that would be extremely powerful when it healed from its injuries. This was a gold dragon, and the texts said they had been even stronger than the silver dragons such as the one Zirkander and the others had freed.

  “In exchange for what?” he asked. It might not be wise to outright deny the dragon.

  Kaika frowned over at him, but quickly returned her concentration to her work. She had snipped two wires and removed the clock from the rest of the device. He hoped that was going well. He also hoped her frown didn’t mean that she didn’t approve of his question.

  The dragon’s eyes closed partway, but the pupils, black slits in yellow irises, continued to bore into Angulus.

  Free me, it said again, power lacing the words, making them a command.

  Angulus caught himself taking a step toward the electrical box on the floor, but he stopped himself. Annoyance flared as he felt certain that the dragon was attempting to use some mind magic on him. He would not allow himself to appear subservient or contrite in front of this creature.

  “I am King Angulus Masonwood the Third, thirty-seventh ruler of Iskandia. I will not be ordered around by some animal.”

  Animal! the dragon roared in his mind, making Angulus rethink his stance on contriteness. Dragons made this world their home when your kind were beating your chests and howling at each other from the treetops.

  “Dragons have gone from this world. Humans rule here now.”

  Gone? The dragon’s yellow eyes opened wide again.

  Before Angulus could decide if he wanted to explain, a presence slammed into his mind. He gasped, staggering backward and reaching for his rifle. Something that felt like a rake scraped through his mind, scattering his thoughts like dried leaves. Was this an attack? He could barely think straight.

  He’d no sooner than managed to find the trigger of his rifle than the presence disappeared from his mind. Having it withdraw was almost as much of a jolt as when it had first entered. He found himself leaning his hands on his knees, supporting himself. If the rifle hadn’t been on a strap, he would have dropped it.

  You know very little, the dragon commented. Especially for a king.

  Angulus ignored the jab. He thought the creature sounded slightly less supercilious. Had it searched his mind and seen the truth there, that dragons were no more? Unless one counted the single creature that Zirkander’s team had rescued. He grimaced, hoping this dragon hadn’t found that thought, but it probably had. If it escaped, would it try to contact Phelistoth? And if so, what would come of that contact? Angulus wasn’t certain he should think of Phelistoth as an ally yet, not when it had originally come from the Cofah Empire. Even if Phelistoth had been an Iskandian dragon, he wouldn’t be sure how far to trust it. And what about this creature? What did it mean that it was here in this cave? Encased in stone? Was it a prisoner? Some Cofah-aligned dragon that Angulus’s ancestors had figured out how to trap long ago? If so, it wouldn’t think kindly upon the king of Iskandia.

  He looked up, wondering if the dragon was reading his every thought.

  The creature’s eyes had closed, and its head hung. Its mouth never opened, but something akin to a groan escaped its throat—and its mind. The ground shivered in response. Angulus should have realized it right away, but only now did he see that those wails had originated from the dragon, and the earthquakes must have too. Some magic-powered side effect of its agony?

  “Sire,” Kaika whispered, her eyes tense and full of pain when she looked back at him.

  That expression made his heart ache. Angulus wanted to run over and comfort her, not stand here and talk with a strange dragon.

  “I think you should take the sticks out.” She glanced up at the eight-foot lances skewering the dragon. Sticks. Hardly that.

  “You’re right. Its pain is putting us in danger.”

  Kaika frowned, disappointment flashing across her face. She opened her mouth, but closed it again, then nodded and went back to work. He had the distinct impression that she’d been thinking of putting a halt to the creature’s misery, not protecting their own asses. Maybe he was being a heel for not seeing the dragon as a being in pain and wanting to alleviate that, but he worried about what it would do if it had its full power. Dealing with it now, even in pain, he had the sense that it could kill him. Maybe it would kill him if he didn’t help it. But wouldn’t it be better to keep it weak until he figured out if it was a threat to his nation?

  Still, he found himself walking toward the box. Not because of anything the dragon was doing to him, but because of that expression from Kaika. He didn’t want to disappoint her. Ever.

  Maybe they would get lucky, and the dragon would be grateful to them for helping.

  As he knelt to examine the box, he caught the dragon looking down at Kaika. He couldn’t begin to interpret its facial expressions, but he hoped it had nothing inimical in mind.

  “Dragon,” Angulus said, to draw its attention back to him. “Who did this to you?” He pointed toward the lances. “And why?”

  It had to have been the Cofah operatives, but how had they known these statues were here? And why had they come only to blow them up?

  Humans. The other humans.

  No kidding. “Why?”

  The box hummed softly. Angulus found a control panel under a hinged flap, but there weren’t any instructions, and he wasn’t sure if he should randomly flip switches and turn dials. He might end up electrocuting the dragon. Though that would solve one of his problems, he couldn’t bring himself to contemplate killing a sentient creature that hadn’t done any harm to him, at least not intentionally.

  Instead of fiddling with the dials, he unscrewed the electrical cable from the back. It made his arm tingle painfully, and the box issued an annoyed blizzzt, but then the humming stopped.

  The dragon inhaled sharply. Angulus backed away to see its face better. The head nearly brushed the cavern ceiling over thirty feet above them. This gold was the largest of the statues, and he wondered if it had been in charge of whatever this group of dragons had been.

  “You want me to take the lances out?” Angulus thought the creature might bleed to death if he removed the one in its neck, but he knew nothing of dragon anatomy or a dragon’s ability to heal itself.

  Free me from my cage first, human king. The dragon’s breaths were short and shallow. Then I can use my magic to heal myself.

  “Cage?” Angulus eyed the lower half of the dragon, the half that still appeared to be carved from stone.

  Kaika glanced back at him. Was she hearing the dragon’s half of the conversation?

  The crystal holds me, and I haven’t the strength to destroy it. The dragon’s eyes shifted to look straight across the cavern to what Angulus had taken for a lamp mounted on the opposite wall.

  There was one in front of each statue. For the first time, he noticed that this dragon’s crystal had been damaged. It still glowed, but its glow was weaker than the others, and broken pieces lay on the ground under it. From here, they appeared as transparent shards of glass.

  Could these crystals truly have the power to encase dragons in stone without killing them? Angulus had read Zirkander’s report and knew Phelistoth had supposedly been placed in stasis for thousands of years because of an illness. Had something similar been done here? He shivered at the idea that he might be unleashing some ancient deadly illness that could affect his people.

  Destroy it, the dragon commanded. The rest of the way. Then remove these stakes. I will heal, and then I will help yo
u escape.

  Some of the creature’s haughtiness had faded, and it sounded sincere. But did they need the dragon’s help? Angulus had been smelling the earthiness of the forest since they entered this cavern, so he assumed there was a hole or cave mouth somewhere. If the Cofah sorceress had entered and then left after she and her people had done this to the dragon, the exit should be large enough for humans.

  Perhaps he should find out if the dragon could heal Kaika. He knew Sardelle had that power. If the dragon had magic, magic that was supposedly greater than anything humans possessed, could it heal too?

  The exit is not clear, the dragon told him.

  Images appeared in his mind, of their cavern winding through the rocks for a quarter mile, then coming to an opening, one that had been drilled—or melted—through an ancient rockfall. Daylight seeped in through the passage, which appeared similar to the one Angulus and Kaika had already crawled through. He was about to say as much, but the dragon showed him another image: two men and a woman walking through the cavern to the passage. The woman wore golden armor and carried a sword, the hilt glowing a soft silver. The sorceress? Angulus had never seen her, but that armor matched what Zirkander had written up in his report about attacking the sky fortress. How long had she been back in Iskandia, and how had she found this place? Angulus recognized the men with her as the ones he and Kaika had fought and felt confused. If they had left, why did they return?

  In the vision, the trio stopped in front of the tunnel, and one of the men held up a small package wrapped in brown. Another bomb, this one smaller than the ones perched on the statues. The woman spoke to them, gesturing back in the direction of the dragons. Angulus wished he could hear as well as see, but the words did not come through. Their faces grave, the men nodded to whatever the sorceress said. She crawled out through the hole. The men waited a few moments, then one placed the bomb and lit a fuse. He and his comrade ran back into the cavern toward the statues. The vision continued even after they had disappeared from it, closing in on the flame spitting along the fuse. It touched the package, and a fiery orange explosion filled Angulus’s mind. Again, he couldn’t hear noises, but when the smoke cleared, the tunnel had disappeared in a pile of rubble.

  “Why would they have trapped themselves in here?” Angulus wondered. If they had set the rest of the explosives, they would have known that the cavern would also blow up. He couldn’t imagine that the sorceress had ordered them to stay here and die. What would be the point?

  His gaze drifted to Kaika. Had the sorceress guessed that Iskandians might figure out that something was going on back here and come to investigate? Possibly disarming the explosives before they went off, just as Kaika was attempting to do? If so, did that mean that the Cofah sorceress did not want Angulus’s people to have access to the dragons? That killing the dragons—and her own people—was preferable to that? Then why not just blow up the cavern? Why halfway free this one and then torture it?

  I do not pretend to understand the motivations of humans. You are an impetuous and illogical species.

  “You’re not very good at asking for help, dragon,” Angulus said.

  The creature let out a long breath. A sigh? Did dragons sigh? Morishtomaric.

  “Is that a name?”

  My name, yes. And I am male. Not an it.

  The dragon sent another image into Angulus’s mind. This time it—he—was free of his statue prison and was flying through the cavern. Morishtomaric soared toward the rockfall, looking like he might crash, but the rubble abruptly flew outward, as if another explosion had been set off. Giant boulders arced through the air, then plummeted into a grassy valley far below. With the opening no longer obstructed, the dragon flew out of the cavern. In the vision, Kaika and Angulus ran out after him and climbed down to the valley.

  Definitely a vision, since in her state, Kaika would never be able to make that climb. The slope was steep, almost vertical, and Angulus did not know if even he could make it down. Still, he got the gist of the offering. The dragon would help them escape, and apparently, they needed its—his help.

  “Understood,” Angulus said and headed toward the crystal. “Kaika, how are you doing over there?”

  “Sweating. Bleeding. Making progress.”

  “All at once?” His instinct was not to make light of her injury, but that seemed to be what she wanted, so he went along with it.

  “I like to challenge myself.”

  Angulus stopped in front of the glowing crystal. Though he stepped on a few broken shards as he approached, they did not crunch under his feet, breaking further the way glass would. Instead, they prodded him, slicing into the sole of his boot. After that, he took care to avoid them.

  He lifted the butt of his rifle and thumped it against what remained of the glowing structure on the wall. Since it was already damaged, he expected more shards to fall away without much effort. The rifle bounced off, as if it had hit a boulder. He struck the crystal harder, but all that did was send a painful jolt up his arm.

  “Uhm, dragon?”

  Morishtomaric. Now that he had shared his name, he seemed adamant that it be used.

  Angulus didn’t know if he could pronounce it, but he tried. “Mor-ish-to-mar-ic? How did the others break this?”

  An image of a silver glowing sword flashed into his mind.

  “A soulblade?” Angulus guessed. “Uh, we don’t have one of those.” He waved the rifle to show what he did have. Would shooting the crystal do anything?

  Magic is required to break it.

  “Sorry, we don’t have any of that.”

  You wait for one who does.

  Angulus scowled. The dragon had read that much of his thoughts? That was alarming, and it felt like a betrayal to Sardelle that he had inadvertently informed a dragon about her.

  “I have no idea when she’ll be here, and she’ll be on the other side of that rockfall.”

  The dragon sighed again. Remove the stakes then. Perhaps I can heal enough to free myself. It glowered across at the crystal.

  So long as it broke them free of the rock wall, as promised.

  As Angulus walked back toward the box, he wondered if they truly needed the dragon’s help. Once Kaika disarmed the detonator, they would have access to numerous bombs. Couldn’t they use one to blow open a hole in the wall? Earlier, he had been leery of the idea of lighting charges from within the mountain, but one of her specialties was setting explosives for the controlled demolitions of buildings.

  Safer with me, the dragon informed him.

  Unfortunately, that was probably true. A bomb had already exploded at that end of the cavern, and with all of the earthquakes the dragon had caused, the walls and ceiling might have been weakened.

  The dragon shared another vision, this one quick and alarming, Angulus and Kaika setting an explosive, then being buried as the ceiling collapsed.

  “All right, all right,” Angulus said. He didn’t know if the dragon could see possible futures, but the situation seemed so likely that he believed it. “I’m going to have to climb up you to reach those lances.”

  The dragon hesitated, and he had the impression that Morishtomaric found the idea of a human clambering on him distasteful, but all he shared was, Very well.

  “Who locked you up in here in the first place?” Kaika asked. She had leaned back from the detonator, which was now disassembled into about twenty pieces, with wires cut and the clock face set aside. “And when?”

  “Yes, I’d like the answer to that question too.” Angulus should have thought to ask it himself. That plaque on the wall might have an explanation for all of this, but it was in an old form of Iskandian that he couldn’t read. His childhood language lessons had only focused on modern tongues. “Aside from a recent and unprecedented exception, it’s been a thousand years since dragons have been seen in our world.”

  The Cofah, the dragon said. We were protecting Oksarndiarshan, and—

  “Protecting what?” Angulus asked. He raised his eyeb
rows to Kaika and pointed at the disassembled detonator.

  You call it Iskandia.

  “Go on.”

  “The timer is no longer a problem,” Kaika whispered in response to his gesture, “but explosives are still in precarious places and should be removed. I can do it once I—”

  “No.” What was she thinking? Climbing around on thirty-foot-tall statues when she had a bullet in her torso? “I’ll handle it,” he added.

  After you pull out the stakes, the dragon said, eyeing both of them, as if to say he did not appreciate the interruption.

  Angulus snorted. The dragon should be worried about deactivating the explosives too. He certainly did not appear hale enough to withstand a rockfall crashing down on his head.

  “Yes, I’ll take care of that first.” Angulus handed his rifle to Kaika, worried it would hinder him when he climbed, then approached the dragon. Ancient instincts screamed at him that this was a foolish thing to do, that dragons had once preyed upon humans.

  The wing looked to be the most promising place to climb. The way it was folded created ridges, and it draped all the way to the floor, almost like a curtain. A stone curtain. Angulus touched the bottom of it, expecting it to feel hard and cold and lifeless, but he jerked his hand back. A tingle almost like electricity flowed through the stone.

  “What’s that?” He looked at the box to assure himself that he had, indeed, unfastened the power cable.

  Magic, the dragon said, his tone extremely dry.

  Angulus rubbed his fingers and eyed the crystal. Touching the stone hadn’t hurt, but it hadn’t been pleasant. Maybe his ancient instincts had been justified in warning him away.

  He glanced at Kaika, catching a weary and pained expression on her face. She noticed him looking and promptly smoothed her features. Her pain reminded him that she’d been shot, and even if the bombs weren’t in danger of exploding in minutes, they didn’t have all day. That bullet might have struck something vital.

  Gritting his teeth, Angulus climbed the dragon’s wing. His palms felt as if they had ants crawling all over them, but he kept going. Finding toeholds for his boots was a challenge, and it was more sheer force of will that took him to the first of the lances, rather than agility or climbing skill.