Revelations

  Eryndral, surely eager to reach the dragons on the other side of the rockfall, glowed fiercely. The blade cut through the boulders that had collapsed the tunnel more effectively than a normal sword could, but Rysha feared it wouldn’t be enough. There had to be ten feet of ice and rock between her and the ledge. Between her and Trip.

  Or was the ledge even there anymore? She’d seen it crumbling under his feet as ice poured from the ceiling.

  “Trip,” she yelled again, hoping he would hear her and answer. In this case, she wouldn’t object to telepathic communication, not one bit.

  “Ravenwood, stop,” someone—Dreyak?—ordered from behind her.

  Rysha ignored the command and kept hacking at the ice. But hands gripped her from behind.

  She almost whirled and attacked them, wanting to force her captors away, but Kaika yelled, “Stop, Rysha!”

  This time, the words sank in, the words of her superior officer.

  Panting, Rysha let the sword droop, let Leftie and Duck pull her away from the wall. But she wasn’t ready to give up.

  “We’re leaving Trip.” Rysha said, pointing behind her.

  “I know, but I don’t think there’s anything we can do, and we need as many obstacles between us and those dragons as possible.” Kaika grimaced. “We need more time. We can’t find the portal, and there are all these—hells, I don’t know what they are. I need my archaeologist.” Kaika jerked her thumb toward the tunnel behind her, toward another blue-lit opening farther down.

  “We can’t just abandon him, ma’am,” Rysha whispered, looking back again.

  Leftie, too, was staring bleakly at the compacted ice and rock, the solid wall between them and the dragons.

  “I doubt there’s anything left to abandon.” Kaika gripped Rysha’s arm and pulled her in the opposite direction.

  “No,” Rysha protested. “He can levitate. Or the swords can. And he’s got their magic.” She spun toward Dreyak. “You have dragon blood—can you tell if he’s alive? Sense him?”

  Dreyak’s eyes grew distant, as if he were checking, but he soon shook his head. “I cannot sense him. The magic all around and the proximity of the dragons with their domineering auras may be interfering, but…” He finished with a shrug.

  “Even if he kept himself from falling into the lava,” Kaika said, “the dragons would have finished him off. Soulblades aren’t enough against dragons. Trust me, I know. I’ve been in such battles before.”

  Kaika kept pulling her, but Rysha dragged her feet, her mind whirring, seeking a plausible argument to make them believe that Trip had survived, that it was worth clawing their way back out and into the fight to help him.

  “Rysha,” Kaika said, squeezing her arm. “This was what he wanted. He was willing to give his life to buy us time. Don’t make his sacrifice pointless.”

  Tears welled in Rysha’s eyes, and a lump thickened in her throat, but the argument persuaded her. Reluctantly, she let Kaika guide her forward.

  For the moment, nothing but silence came from the other side of the cave-in. Rysha hoped that meant that if Trip had died, he’d somehow managed to take out the dragons first. Better yet, she hoped he was sitting on one of those broken ice nubs, resting while the defeated dragons writhed and died in the lava lake.

  Absorbed by her thoughts, Rysha barely noticed the huge chamber that Kaika guided her into, another large area with blue illumination coming from the walls and the ceiling, though there was no obvious light source. Wherever the portal was, it wasn’t sitting in the middle of the chamber, as they’d hoped. But there were other things in the cavernous room. At least a dozen huge alcoves were set into the far wall, their contents in shadows, but still discernible. Dragons.

  Each alcove held an unmoving dragon, the creatures’ eyes closed. Were they dead? Or imprisoned? She’d read about the stasis magic that dragons possessed, chambers that kept their occupants alive but in a deep hibernation where they did not age and weren’t aware of time passing.

  “We’re looking for the portal,” Blazer said from the far end of the chamber, “but there’s only one other tunnel leading out of here, and Leftie already ran down it a ways. It winds deeper into the mountain and gets very narrow, far too narrow for what we assume is a large portal to have been carried through it. See those empty walls? We were thinking that they look similar to the one at the back of the entrance cave and might lead to secret passages or chambers.”

  “Which we now have no way to open if they have the same requirements as the last,” Rysha said.

  “Do you think these are dragons from thousands of years ago?” Duck asked, walking past the alcoves. “Or were they just put into these jail cells?”

  Rysha started to shrug, but she noticed plaques set into the ice walls next to each alcove. The names of the occupants?

  “We’re going to have to figure out how to get out one way or another,” Blazer said, pressing her bare hand against an ice wall. “The way back is destroyed.”

  “I’m always amenable to exploring alternative exit strategies,” Kaika said, patting her pack.

  “I know, but we need to find the portal first.”

  “Trip could have directed us to it,” Rysha said, sighing.

  She looked into an alcove at a gold dragon, its wings pressed to its sides, its head hung, as if in shame. Not that she’d ever read about dragons having shame. The plaque read Shulina Arya. Rysha had come across some names in her reading of history texts, but she wasn’t familiar with that one. There weren’t dates on the plaque, so she had no way of telling how long the dragon had been imprisoned. Even if she came across names she did recognize, that wouldn’t help her determine if the dragons had been stuck in this chamber months ago or a thousand years ago, not when they were so long-lived.

  “I wonder if it’s possible to let these dragons out,” Blazer said, “and get them to fight the gold dragons for us. Think those gold dragons were the ones who stuck them in here?”

  “Releasing imprisoned dragons didn’t work out well for Angulus,” Kaika said. “Technically, he only released one, but that made it trendy, and a sorceress came along and released some more.”

  “Didn’t Bhrava Saruth come out of that batch?” Blazer asked. “He’s been a good ally for the city.”

  “Yes, but Morishtomaric came out of there, too, and he was a nightmare,” Kaika said. “I’m pretty sure those gold dragons that just killed Trip came out of that prison too.”

  Rysha flinched. Just killed Trip.

  Were her teammates already convinced he was dead? Already so certain he couldn’t have survived?

  While Kaika and Blazer investigated the walls and sought secret doors, Rysha moved along the alcoves, checking other names. If they came across an occupant who’d been known to humans, one who’d perhaps been linked to an Iskandian dragon rider, it might be safe to let that one out. Assuming they could figure out how. What if it took a gold dragon—or Trip—to unlock the doors and thaw out the inmates?

  Duck let out a startled squawk.

  Blazer whirled toward him, a hand on her pistol. “What is it?”

  He was gaping at an alcove at the end. “Tylie,” he blurted.

  “What?” Kaika spun toward him.

  Rysha frowned in puzzlement. Had she heard that name before? It definitely wasn’t a dragon name.

  Kaika and Blazer ran toward Duck, barely noticing as they slipped and skidded on the ice floor.

  “And Phelistoth,” Duck said, still staring. “It must be.” He leaned to the side, looking at the next alcove over. “Here’s a gold dragon. I can’t tell these dragons apart, especially with their eyes closed, but doesn’t it look like this might be Bhrava Saruth?”

  “Ravenwood,” Kaika barked.

  Rysha was already heading over to read the plaques for them. All of the Iskandians had converged on those last two alcoves. Only Dreyak remained by the entrance, watching impassively and keeping an eye on the tunnel leading back to the rockfall.

  Duck
pointed into an alcove with a silver dragon in it, and Rysha jerked with surprise because the dragon wasn’t alone. A young human woman stood beside him, leaning against his haunches, touching him with a hand, as if to comfort him, or perhaps draw support from him. Her eyes were closed, just as the dragon’s were.

  Kaika touched the front of the alcove, and her finger encountered something that gave slightly on the surface, like gelatin, but she could not press deeply into it.

  “Phelistoth,” Rysha affirmed, reading the plaque. The names were written in Middle Dragon Script. “No mention of the human.”

  “That’s Tylie,” Duck said firmly, and Kaika and Blazer nodded in agreement. “She’s Tolemek Targoson’s little sister and one of Sardelle’s students.”

  Rysha spread a hand, not disagreeing with them. She’d just never met Targoson—the ex-pirate formerly known as Deathmaker—and hadn’t known he had a sister. But then, she’d met Sardelle for the first time at General Zirkander’s briefing.

  “She’s very sweet,” Blazer said. “How in the world did she end up in a dragon prison?”

  “Is Phelistoth sweet?” Rysha asked.

  “Not really,” Duck said. “He’s arrogant. And eats all of General Zirkander’s cheese.”

  “Clearly, the crime he was imprisoned for,” Rysha said.

  Duck snorted.

  “The woman—Tylie—may just have been captured with him. I hope she’s alive in there.” Rysha thought this looked like the dragon stasis magic she’d read about, but she couldn’t be sure. Maybe they were fancy coffins. A grim thought, that, especially with the young woman standing at the silver dragon’s side.

  “How do we let them out?” Kaika asked. “Sardelle and Tolemek wouldn’t forgive us if we found them, then left them here.” She looked into the next alcove. “And I’m fairly certain that is Bhrava Saruth.”

  Rysha checked the plaque. “That’s what this says.”

  “I bet he would help us against the other ones if we could get him out,” Duck said. “He fought those same two before to protect the capital. They were all tearing into each other in the sky over the harbor like cats squabbling in an alley.”

  Rysha grimaced, remembering that the most recent dragons to attack the capital had promised to return. If they’d indeed only waited three days, they would have come by now. Come and gone? She hoped the chapaharii sword Captain Ahn had been standing guard with had been enough to fight them off.

  “There aren’t any instructions anywhere in the chamber that I’ve seen,” Rysha said, looking around. “Those empty squares under the plaques might have a purpose.” She placed her bare palm on one, but nothing happened.

  Even if they were controls for opening the prisons, it wasn’t likely they would respond to her touch. Maybe if Trip were with them…

  Sighing, Rysha backed up. For the first time, she looked up. And she almost fell over.

  A huge purple donut made from crystal hung from the ceiling forty feet above their heads, its face toward them. It glowed softly, the light reflecting off the icy walls around it. Its surface was smooth except for another smaller crystal on the side toward them. Its three visible points protruded from the donut—the portal?—and three or four other points appeared to be sunken into it, staying there against the dictates of gravity.

  “Uhm, Major?” Rysha pointed.

  The others gaped or jerked with surprise when they followed her gaze.

  “That looks like a magical portal to me,” Blazer said.

  “Hells,” Kaika said. “How am I supposed to climb up there to blow that up?”

  The slick ice walls had no handholds, nor was there anything around that could serve as a ladder. Because the dragons flew, presumably.

  “If Trip were here, one of the soulblades could have levitated you,” Duck said.

  “Note to self,” Blazer said. “On future missions, don’t let the person with all the powerful magical tools sacrifice himself to dragons.”

  Rysha frowned at her, not finding the joke funny.

  “You’ve got a grappling hook, don’t you, Blazer?” Kaika slung her pack off her shoulders. “And Duck, you’ve got the rope. We’ll have to see if we can find something up there to catch a hook on.” She eyed the smooth crystal portal dubiously.

  A crack echoed from the direction of the lava lake, followed by the sound of boulders shifting and clunking to the ground.

  Dreyak drew his scimitar and faced into the tunnel. “The dragons are coming.”

  16

  I have good news and bad news, Jaxi announced.

  Trip’s entire body hurt, and his head felt like someone was bludgeoning it with a truncheon. As he hunkered under tons and tons of ice, he wasn’t sure he cared about any news. Only the knowledge that Rysha and the others should still be up there and might need his help made him lift his head and grunt to acknowledge Jaxi.

  The good news is, the dragons either believe you’re dead or assume you won’t continue to be a problem. I can’t read their minds, but they’ve stopped hovering outside of your blocked cave.

  “And the bad news?” he whispered, grimacing when warm blood trickled from his lower lip. Maybe he would stick to mental speech.

  They’re now hovering outside the blocked tunnel that the others went through. And unblocking it.

  Did Rysha—our people—get to the portal?

  They are in the chamber with it now, Azarwrath said, but they are unable to reach it, and they’re about to have visitors.

  Damn. He’d been willing to sacrifice himself so the others could finish the mission, but if he had only given them a few seconds, how was it worth it?

  I would prefer it if you not sacrifice yourself, Jaxi told him. I’ve been buried under rock for centuries before. It’s not an experience that I’m eager to repeat. Also, as shocking as it is to me, I’m finding that I miss Ridge and Sardelle’s squalling offspring and that I wish to see if Sardelle has delivered the new one yet.

  Is there a way out of here? Trip lifted his hands above his head to see if he could stand up. He was aware that Azarwrath had formed a barrier above him and also that ice boulders buried it from all sides.

  This is a tunnel, not simply a cave, Azarwrath said. It was blocked long before you entered it, but I sense that it continues on beyond a pile of rocks. It’s quite a maze of passages back there, but I believe it may be possible to find one that connects to the chamber where your comrades are now. As for escaping this cave-in, due to the unique geological nature of this tunnel system, getting out should be fairly simple.

  That was a long-winded way of saying that we’re surrounded by ice, and I love to melt ice. Jaxi’s pommel flared, and heat radiated from the blade.

  I am not long-winded, Azarwrath said.

  Please, you should have bonded with Professor Ravenwood. You two could have gone on the lecture circuit together. Make a hole in your barrier, will you? I’ll melt the ice through it.

  Done.

  Hold me out, Trip. Jaxi shared a mental picture of what she imagined. I plan to reunite you with your professor so you can give her a much more thorough kiss than up on that ledge. Though, you didn’t initiate that kiss at all. Or the first one. She’s going to think you’re not interested.

  Trip held Jaxi out, and a red beam shot through a gap in the barrier, melting into the ice in the tunnel behind them. Maybe she’ll believe I’m shy.

  Shyly not interested. When you reunite, promise me you’ll kiss her like you mean it.

  I’ll keep your suggestion in mind.

  Oh, no. That wasn’t a suggestion. I need a promise, or you’re not getting out of here.

  Azarwrath? Trip asked, though he wasn’t sure what he was asking. If the other soulblade would help if Jaxi didn’t?

  For the first time since I’ve met her, I concur with your Iskandian soulblade, Azarwrath said. You must show your lady that you are most definitely interested.

  Trip didn’t make a promise, mostly because he did want to kiss Rysha—fre
quently—but he didn’t want there to be any question that it had been of his own free will.

  Jaxi hummed, sounding contented, as her beam burrowed into the ice. It melted away huge chunks rapidly, but Trip paced his little enclosure as he watched. He could sense the dragons flying toward his comrades, and he wasn’t sure if it would be rapidly enough.

  • • • • •

  A wave of power slammed into Dreyak, hurling him backward into the chamber. He skidded across the icy floor and smashed into one of the alcove barriers.

  Rysha, the chapaharii sword in hand, rushed to take his place in the mouth of the tunnel as Kaika ran toward the spot from the other side.

  “I’ll handle this,” Rysha said, though the back of her mind screamed at her, telling her that was a ludicrous thing to proclaim, since she could see a gold dragon charging through the tunnel. “You need to destroy that portal, Captain.”

  “No doubt about that, but I haven’t found a ladder yet.” Kaika raised her own blade, its subtle green glow flaring to a blinding one as the dragon approached, half running and half flying. “Maybe I’ll climb up a dead dragon,” she growled.

  “No luck with the rope and grapple?”

  “Blazer’s working on it.”

  Another wave of power preceded the dragon down the tunnel, and Rysha sensed wind or something similar rushing past them, but the swords flared, and they did not feel the attack.

  “Slash and get out of the way,” Kaika ordered. “It can still stomp us.”

  With the dragons almost upon them, Rysha didn’t respond. The one in front—it was the male, she thought—charged them.

  Rysha waited until the last second, then swung as she jumped to the side, using the wall for protection. Her blade bit into the dragon’s shield, and that now-familiar jolt of electricity flowed up her arm. Had she succeeded in dropping the male’s defenses? She didn’t have Trip or the soulblades here to tell her.

  She started to jump back in as the dragon came fully into the chamber, but his head whipped toward her, jaws snapping. Dropping to the floor, Rysha rolled out of the way. Against all instincts, she made herself roll closer instead of farther away, hoping to come up under the dragon’s belly.