Chapter 41
Three days after I awakened, I was able to get up on my own, use the restroom and brush my teeth. I was worried that my teeth had been going to fall out because of Jasra starving me. They bled a little but not bad and seemed to be firmly in their sockets. There was a mirror in the bathroom although to call it that was a misnomer. It was more like a swimming pool in a spa. Gold, scarlet, peach and rose hand carved wood, tiles, thick carpeting, everything a luxury loving Queen would want was in there. Even a walk-in shower I could have parked a car in. Doc wouldn’t let me take a shower only promised me a sponge bath.
I stood in front of the baroque mirror and saw me. All of me except for what was covered by a soft cotton gown that wouldn’t have looked out of place in Bellevue. My hair was long, full of curls that covered my neck; black and filthy. I actually found pieces of pine needles, tree bark and stone chips in it. Along with several sore spots where my dragon skull had made contact with the tree trunk and rock spire.
My arm was in a plain white plaster cast and a sling arrangement held both my shoulder and arm to my chest. What I could see of my skin was a gross rainbow of black, purplish blue and sickly green with a 4X4 gauze pad in the center.
My legs under the garment had scrapes and boot prints, a hard knot where I’d broken it as the mule, a smaller dent in the muscle of my thigh where Jasra had broken the dragonet’s femur. Strangest of all, my left eye was its normal golden yellow but the other was the blue of the star stone, faceted like a jewel and almost as bright as I remembered it when it was glowing. It would not come out and if I closed my normal eye to look only through the stone, I saw the world as a whole different reality. As if the veil between one realm and another no longer existed. I was still the same image as I remembered from that long-ago day when I was seventeen. No wrinkles, no gray hair and that look of sadness my face had worn from my life with Jurt was gone. It felt as if I was a totally different person than that corbel, his Blackbird. I was Raven and I was the Black Dragon and that was enough for me.
I didn’t know what time it was, I hadn’t seen a clock anywhere in the room or in fact, anywhere in the country. While I was standing there, I heard a knock at the door and Jenny came in when I said I was up. She held a tray and on it was an honest to God hamburger, fries and a shake. She handed me a linen napkin which I tucked under my chin and followed her out to the table that went across the bed so I could lay back to eat. Tried eating a juicy loaded burger with one hand. Crap dripped down my chin onto the napkin and she wiped it off my mouth as I chewed.
“God, I missed this, I mean, I enjoyed eating as the Dragon but you get tired of the same old thing. Cow, deer and beefalo.”
“Really? You were a Dragon? Tell me about it,” she encouraged. So I told her what I could remember and she asked a lot of questions–mostly about what I looked like. She said she hadn’t seen me when the king had taken me to the arena nor when I’d escaped.
No matter how much I whined, I couldn’t get anyone to bring me clothes or let me out of the room. I tried sneaking but Murphy was watching me and when he wasn’t, Tegan or Pire was. Marcus and Roelle had come to me shamefaced and frightened, begging for my forgiveness and to tell me that they loved each other. I wasn’t surprised. In fact, I was glad as she was much better suited for him than for me. I sent them away with my blessings and Gramps sent them back to Amber so they were one less thing he had to worry about.
I could watch the soldiers scurrying down the hallways and hear their frantic pleadings to be seen by the General Staff yet no one would let me know what was going on outside the walls. Doc F had removed the IV once I’d started eating solid foods and had me on some high doses of antibiotics, some mild painkillers and I suspected, a sleeping pill. After my last meal, I usually fell asleep and slept through the night. When I woke in the morning, it took me quite a while to get with it, I was so logy I wasn’t sure what was happening around me.
I wanted to spend some time with Lyndseye but it seemed like both my family and circumstances were conspiring to keep us apart. She was a Princess and protocol dictated she not be left alone in a male’s presence even though she had spent months with Tegan and me. Finally, I threw a temper tantrum in full view of everyone and convinced them it would be safer for me if they just let me sit in on the war planning. I found out that Jasra’s war forces were already on the way to the Capital City by both sea and over land. They had told me that crossing the Sentinels was impossible but somehow, Jasra had figured out a way to bring over half of her forces through the ‘impassable mountains’.
I saw Linz but this beautifully coiffed and dressed regal Princess wasn’t the stalwart warrior I’d known and I was tongue tied around her.
Murphy was with the War Council and on flying spy missions when he wasn’t watching me. From the grim looks on everyone’s faces, I knew that the news wasn’t good, either. I was fretting to do something, anything to get out of the room. I swore when I closed my eyes, all I saw was red. I felt better, my appetite was good almost as big as if I was the Dragon. My sleep under the influence of doc’s pills was a dead zone. I didn’t dream and I didn’t remember anything of the night and most of the morning. When I complained, he vehemently denied I was getting anything like that and when I examined my pills, all I saw were the regular forms of antibiotics and Tylenol #3. My nose couldn’t detect anything in my food or drink. So I gave up and waited like a good little boy.
On the afternoon of the next day, Flauvel came in and checked my shoulder and arm. He seemed pleased with the amount of healing I was showing. My ribs and the hole in my chest were almost healed over; it was my leg that bothered me most, it ached constantly.
“You’re healing fast but then, all you Amber folk do,” he said. “If you don’t expire immediately, you heal quickly.”
“You’ve known Gramps long?”
“Thirty years or more if you count Amber time,” he returned and looked at me seriously. “Raven, has anyone molested you?”
I shook my head. “Who would dare? I’m a Dragon and as a mule, I would have kicked their heads off. Why?”
“Murphy and all of us were worried it might have happened again.”
“Nope,” I grinned and it startled him. “I haven’t had time for sex, doc. Of any kind. Now will you let me get some clothes on?”
“Not until that shoulder knits. I don’t want you trying to move it and mess up Marcus’ and my wiring job.”
“Marcus? Wires?” I asked pulling the gown down to my knees. He handed me a velvet robe which he helped tuck over the contraption on my shoulder.
“Your shoulder’s wired together by magic and modern technology. It and your collarbone were smashed into several pieces. You have six fractured ribs and a hole in your chest, and you fractured the xyloid process–that’s the little bone that you compress when you do CPR. Any lower and that rock would’ve torn open your abdominal cavity and strewn yards of your Dragon guts across the landscape.” He paused. “I thought your scales were invulnerable?”
“Jasra’s weakened that spot with magicked weapons. My Achilles’ heel, if you will.”
We heard a commotion outside my door and I slipped off the bed to follow doc to the portal, leaning against it as soldiers fully kitted ran down the broad avenue towards the War Room. Their cries were easy enough to decipher. They were yelling, ‘the Red Witch is coming!’ I turned to Flauvel. “What’s protecting the city from her magic?”
“King Luke said there’s a strong spell around the city limits up to the arena where he had placed you.”
“But Jasra knows all of his spell castings.” I pointed out. “Its weak spots and how to disengage it.”
“He said he redid it after she left.”
“Flauvel, I have to be there to stop her. Nothing and nobody else will.”
“No, Raven. You’re not strong enough yet. Not fit. And you don’t even know if you can become the Dragon.”
I limped over to one of the huge windows covered w
ith soft thin curtains and velvet red drapes. Threw them aside and looked out on a scene straight from a medieval war camp. Soldiers occupied every inch of space in the courtyard yet nowhere did I see any civilians. Above, I could see through the star stone that was my new eye, the shimmer of Luke’s protection shield as it sparkled when anything touched it. Faint fingers of red poked tentatively at its curved surface and when it sparked, the fingers drew back as if burned.
My grandfather spoke at my elbow and startled me. “Raven. She’s just outside the city limits. With over 200,000 men. Secrest has guns.”
“Guns? I thought gunpowder didn’t work in shadow, except Earth?”
“CO2 guns. Fires a .22 shell with compressed gas. In a vital unprotected spot, it’s fatal. What do you think you’re doing?”
“What I was meant for,” I told my grandfather and leapt through the windows. I heard their cries of horror and as soon as I was clear of roof and building, I sang as I had to the dragons in my dreams–spread my wings and rose above the Palace as the Black Dragon. I soared the entire perimeter of the shield and checked out the layout of Luke’s forces as well as what I could see of Jasra’s. I wasn’t sure if I could exit the magic barrier to engage her troops. At least not without Murphy on my back to part it for me.
I was on my second circuit when I saw him coming and he glided into position, dropping on my back between one wing beat and the next to grasp my neck trying to steer me. “Back to the palace,” he ordered and I resisted, finding that I could still converse with him.
“No, Murphy. You can’t stop me, this is what I was born to do. This is my destiny. You’re either with me or against me.”
“Are you sure, Raven?”
“As sure as I’ve ever been about anything in my life, Murph,” I said listening to the voices of the soldiers below us. Some were cheering and others expressing doubts whose side I was on. “You need to open the shield and we have to go to the Sentinels. The Seven Sisters will Dance tonight and I have to sing to them.”
Murphy was silent and then, he flew ahead of me, pointing straight for the very apex of the shield. As his wings touched the shimmering magic of the barrier, it folded back and I squeezed through the hole ignoring Luke’s soldiers’ cries of disbelief and the jeering voices of Jasra’s army.
We flew towards the mountains and I ignored my body’s protests that it was not ready for the task I’d set before us.
Chapter 42
We flew on and I could feel the land below me throbbing with the destruction wrought upon it by Jasra’s forces. Worse, I saw the mountains brought down by technology that could only have come from earth. Somehow, Secrest had transported EBM’s to the other side of the mountains and bored tunnels through large enough to transport both armies through. As we left, I saw two vapor trails behind us and dropped in a dive so quick that Murphy fell off me. My tail grabbed him by an ankle and I jerked him out of the path of Stinger missiles. Still legible on its sides, the USAF symbol.
“Holy shit!” I said, and blew twins streams of fire at their exhaust blowing both up before they could reacquire me. After them came flying creatures but they had a hard time both with keeping up and flying high enough. Murphy and I could reach the very tops of the Sentinels where the air was too thin but even there, the creatures and their riders outsmarted me. They went through the tunnels making the distance they had to travel shorter than ours and would surely be waiting for us on the other side.
It was a struggle to fly high, what I could see of the land below me looked like the view out a jet’s window; the ground was a patchwork of brown and green, blue and silver rivers and lakes where even my Dragon sight could not pick out towns or villages.
We hit the frost line and all we could see was rock covered with snow as I forged nearly straight up this indomitable mountain range. The Himalayas and the Andes were hills to these giants and still we climbed.
Murphy could feel me struggling and tried to dismount; I wasn’t sure if even he could fly this high enough to cross the peaks.
We flew until the sun was lost behind these giants and the sky darkened only to be lit by the most incredible array of stars I had ever seen. Dancing above our heads were the stars called the Seven Sisters Who Dance and maybe because the oxygen was thin, they seemed to move in an elegant display just for me.
We crested the top and several miles to my right, I could see the hovering swarm of wyvern’s and harpies waiting below us; so far below that I could barely discern their riders. Secrest might have defeated the mountain’s passage but he hadn’t counted on the lack of oxygen. Luckily for me, I could hold my breath long enough to get over and Murphy didn’t even need to breathe.
“Now what?” He asked and I headed for a lower peak where I could rest yet was high enough to deter the enemy’s air forces.
My hind legs reached for the crag and I perched on all fours, folded my weary wings and rested. The mountain under my feet swelled as if it were breathing and warmed sending plumes of sulfur scented gas into the air.
“Murphy, no matter what happens, don’t let go of me,” I said and he nodded as he huddled between my legs, wrapping his arms around me.
I sang. I sang until the notes rang against the mountains and lifted in the crystal-clear air. I sang until it reverberated and whole slopes of snow avalanched below and above us. I sang until I heard the cries of wounded and dying so sang louder drowning them out. I sang until the mountains began crumbling away shooting huge house-sized pieces of rock into the sky. The more I sang, the faster the mountains crumbled and from deep within cavities in the rocks, dragons emerged. Dragons of every color and size imaginable. They flew in a tight spiral like a swarm of bats emerging from Carlsbad Caverns and their song joined mine until the very foundations of this realm shook with the might and majesty of it.
With almost a casual indifference, the horde banked and dove on Jasra’s winged forces decimating them with claws and flames while I continued to sing.
When the last note trembled on my tongue, I wanted to collapse. Instead, I stood straight my wings extended on the only piece of mountaintop still standing for a thousand miles.
Before me hovered over ten thousand dragons, each and every one named and individual. I knew every one of them from my dreams and the leader greeted me.
Hail, Dragon Prince, Blackbird. I Am the Light That Dances Across the Night Sky Before the Dark Of the Moon.
Moon Dancer, I greeted. Must I face you in challenge to ask of you to fulfill your vow?
No, your song was challenge enough, Blackbird. We will aid you in exchange for the Shadow Realm we may call our own.
His eyes were a deep purple, deeper than his coat which shown with the rich color of an amethyst. I asked if his kind were still prone to the blood madness that inflicted them if they ate humans. He told me that his clan would not jeopardize their promised realm for the nasty lean flesh of man. Wyvern’s, griffons and harpies were a different story.
I showed them images of Jasra, Secrest and their men warning them that she possessed magic and magical weapons not of this realm. He laughed at my fears. Murphy climbed on my back and we flew down to the valley floor to rest, eat, and search out firestone, for them to stretch their wings. They roosted on the cliffs from their talons and had decimated the floor of corpses of Jasra’s winged Furies, burning the riders’ bodies to ash.
Murphy told me to sleep, he would watch over me and I trusted him enough to tuck my head under my wings. I heard their endless song in my dreams and soared with them as they went back in their memories to a time when they ruled this land and were the most powerful creatures on this Shadow. I wanted to join them; their promise of a life with them was offered and the old Raven would have jumped at the chance. Immersed in their minds and culture, he could have forgotten his past or wreaked vengeance on all mankind for what had been done to him but I wasn’t that broken, tortured boy any more.
My soul felt lightened and for the first time since I’d awakened from death
as the Black Dragon, I felt as if I truly had a soul. I laughed in joy and woke myself and Murphy. Although he never slept or needed to but I’d seen him in a state much as a real statue would be---stone and immobile.
“Go to sleep, idiot,” he grumbled. “The sun hasn’t even come up yet. Were you laughing?”
I grinned. “Yes, Murphy. I’m happy.”
“Happy? We have wyverns, harpies and men with guns hunting us, a red witch and a soldier from earth, are a thousand miles from the City and you’re happy?”
“Yes, believe it or not. For the first time in a long time, I am.”
He looked me in the eyes. “Raven, I love you.”
“I know, Murphy. You’ve been my mother, my guardian, my best friend for my whole life. Without you, I wouldn’t even be alive. I love you too.”
“Don’t you dare kiss me,” he said and I broke out in delighted laughter.
Slowly, around us, the Horde woke with a rustling of wings, talons scratching on the rocks. As one, they lifted and went hunting. When they were done feeding, they would return and wait for me to lead them to war.
Murphy rode on my back to the amusement and curiosity of the dragon. They had never seen a creature such as he---composed of stone and yet alive. I explained that he was a friend that had cared for me as a child and they were equally curious that I was both human and dragon.
We flew high but not as high as the mountains had been, now we were merely skimming across the top of Mt. Fuji sized mountains or the granddads of the Rockies. I found flying with Murphy on my back to be no effort at all and my blue eye a beacon that lit the way before us like a search light calling all to my side.
Faint bomb bursts scattered below us and I saw the dark masses of stationary soldiers and equipment. Dropping lower, I checked out who flew what standard. These men were forces from Minsk, tattered but still holding in formation and when they looked up to spot us, there was a deafening silence until I spiraled close with the intention of landing. I asked the Dragon Horde to remain aloft until Murphy and I could discern this group’s intentions.
As I dropped to the ground, I became the man again and to my embarrassment, was still naked. Murphy folded his wings around me and one of the soldiers gave me his cloak, wool and lined with gold braid and buttons. He was a high ranking officer then.