Warrior

  “We’d better go.” Jason glanced around the dim room. “Will Uriel be joining us?”

  “The king will have need of him for quite some time. Perhaps he will join you later. For now, his purpose lies in the Northlands.”

  “What purpose?”

  “Jason …” Although she remained invisible, her voice carried a smile.

  “Okay. Something else I don’t need to know. I suppose I shouldn’t ask why the king held him here for so long.”

  Her shaking head appeared for an instant along with her lovely smile. “The king will provide you with supplies and take you and your father to a point where you should be able to breach the wall.”

  “Just the two of us? What about you?”

  “I am going to Darksphere. I am needed more there than here.”

  “Is Elyssa there?” Jason asked. “Is she’s safe?”

  “Although I have withheld much information from you, if I knew the answers to those questions, I would gladly tell you. Yet, seeing that you initially set out to find Frederick, I think she would likely search for you in the Southlands wilderness. Her guess might be that you would eventually travel there.”

  “That makes sense.” Jason looked at the blank space where Cassabrie stood and imagined the red hair, green eyes, and beautiful smile he had seen in the star chamber. For some reason, Koren appeared in his mind, the living Starlighter who needed his help far more than this spirit one did.

  He reached out and caressed where her cheek ought to have been but felt nothing. Then a gentle grip surrounded his wrist and guided his hand. When his palm touched the tingly field, her face appeared, a bare outline, but visible enough.

  “I am a better man for meeting you. Thank you for everything.”

  Her smile shone brighter than ever. “Perhaps someday we’ll meet again.”

  They stared at each other for a moment, but a sudden noise broke the silence. A dragon flew in and dropped a limp body from its claws. The body rolled a few feet, its arms, legs, and cloak flopping. A dozen paces away, the dragon crashed and cut a swath in his wake. Branches cracked. Vines snapped. When he came to a stop, the floor sagged with his weight. Now wedged between rows of sharp wooden spears, he squirmed, sinking through the splintered growth with every twitch. Gasping, he cried out, “Help the girl!”

  “Hold still!” Jason shouted. He leaped for the girl’s body and scooped her into his arms. As he hurried to the bed, he looked her over. Warm to the touch, she was pale and still, dressed like a Starlighter but without the characteristic red hair. Somehow her skin glowed as if illuminated from within.

  As he laid her on the bed, he searched for Cassabrie. “Take care of her! I’ll try to help the dragon!”

  “I’m here!” Cassabrie’s hands appeared, pushing up the girl’s eyelids. “Go!”

  Jason dropped to his hands and knees and crawled across the bobbing floor. As he neared the dragon, he called out, “Try not to move!”

  With a loud sigh, the dragon settled and laid his neck across the floor, pointing his head toward Jason. Blood poured from a puncture wound between two scales at a point just behind his front leg, and one of the broken branches pierced his neck just above the base.

  Jason stopped within reach of the dragon’s snout. “We’re going to get you out of this. I’m not sure how yet, but just stay calm. We’ll call for the white dragon. Maybe he’ll know what to do.”

  He coughed through his reply. “Please … Take care of the girl. I think … something has … punctured my heart … There is no hope for me.”

  Jason scooted closer and touched the dragon’s neck. “Who are you?”

  The dragon spoke in a whisper, allowing his words to flow more easily, though blood trickled from his nostrils and mouth as well. “I am Tamminy, the bard who once sang prophecies for Magnar. The girl’s name is Petra.”

  “Why are you here?”

  His voice lowered even further, forcing Jason to lean close. “She swallowed a stardrop, a piece of inner starlight. She did not survive.”

  “She’s dead?” Jason looked back at the girl. “Cassabrie?”

  Cassabrie’s head appeared, shaking sadly. “She is warm, so I thought she was alive, but she isn’t breathing, and she has no pulse.”

  Jason imagined swallowing a fiery hot stardrop and feeling it burning down his esophagus. It must have eaten away Petra’s organs. Why would she do such a thing?

  He turned back to Tamminy. “Why did you bring her here?”

  The dragon lay still, his eyes closed.

  “Tamminy?” Jason set his ear close to the dragon’s snout. No sign of breathing. He looked again at Cassabrie. “He’s gone.”

  “Why would he bring a dead girl here?” she asked. “This is a place of restoration, but we don’t bring people back to life.”

  “Maybe he thought that since no one …” He couldn’t finish the thought. It might have sounded like he was ridiculing Cassabrie’s claim that no one died here. Obviously that was true no longer.

  He laid his hand on Tamminy’s head. “So what do you do with a dead dragon?”

  “Or a dead girl.” Cassabrie’s voice cracked as she cried out. “So much death, Jason! So much darkness! When are we going to bring an end to this madness?”

  “I don’t know, Cassabrie.” He pressed his lips together, trying not to lose control. “I just don’t know.”

  A faint wisp of light shimmered atop the dragon’s back. Jason tried to focus on it, but it vanished as quickly as it had appeared. “Deference?” he called.

  No one answered.

  “What is it?” Cassabrie asked.

  “I saw something, a spark of light. I thought it was Deference.” He returned to his hands and knees and crawled slowly that way. “If I can just—”

  “No, Jason! Let me.” Cassabrie ran from the bed and scrambled up Tamminy’s side. She waved her hands, keeping her location visible—halfway between the base of the neck and the beginning of the tail. “Where did you see it?”

  Staying on his knees, he straightened and motioned with his hand. “A little to my left, your right.”

  Cassabrie shifted, her arms still moving. Then she crouched and reached out. “Don’t be frightened. I won’t hurt you.”

  Another girl came into view, sitting and pushing back with her feet, but she said nothing.

  Both girls stopped and faded from sight. “What’s your name?” Cassabrie asked.

  The other girl stayed quiet.

  “We need to get off Tamminy’s back. If he falls through the floor, we will fall with him, and it’s a long way to the soil that feeds the roots of the healing trees.”

  A pair of hands joined, and the bodies of two girls appeared as they walked down the dragon’s side to the broken floor.

  Cassabrie led the new girl to Jason.

  “Petra?” he asked.

  Trembling, she nodded and dipped into a clumsy curtsy.

  Still kneeling, he bowed his head in return. “Is that your body in the bed?”

  She glanced at it briefly before giving him a stiff nod, her lips tight.

  “Why don’t you speak?”

  She touched her lips and shook her head.

  “I see,” Jason said. “You have no voice?”

  She shook her head again and made a grunting sound. She opened her mouth and pointed inside, but her head disappeared, preventing him from seeing what she was trying to show.

  “I think I understand,” Cassabrie said. “Someone cut out her tongue. She has a voice, but she can’t form words.”

  Jason winced. What kind of sick, twisted demon would do such a thing? “I’m so sorry to hear that.”

  Petra waved a hand of dismissal, then touched Jason’s shoulder and pointed at the bed.

  “Okay,” Jason said, rising carefully to his feet. “Show me.”

  Petra led him to her dead body and set her fingers on the lips.

  “You swallowed the stardrop,” Jason said. “Tamminy told me that.”

/>   Petra nodded. She traced the course from the lips to the stomach and slowly spread out her fingers.

  “I get it,” Cassabrie said. “The stardrop is in your stomach and spreading light and warmth through your body.”

  Nodding again, she grasped the front of the dead body’s dress and drew her hand forward as if pulling out a thread.

  Jason glanced between the spirit girl and the dead body. Seeing the dead girl and her look-alike ghost side by side was truly bizarre. Since neither one could speak, it seemed impossible to figure out what was going on or what to do next. Sorting it all out through nonverbal signals would take forever.

  Cassabrie gestured with her hands. “I think I understand. Arxad takes the spirit out of a promoted human and sends it here, but this time Tamminy did the transporting. That means Arxad isn’t available for some reason.”

  Petra nodded vigorously.

  “I heard that Tamminy was the high priest before I was born,” Cassabrie continued. “He and Arxad were friends, so maybe Arxad taught Tamminy how to do it.”

  For the next several minutes Jason and Cassabrie took turns asking Petra questions and guessing the meaning of her signals. It seemed that Tamminy had to conduct an emergency extraction of Petra’s spirit because the stardrop she swallowed was about to kill her. Arxad was gone, but she had no idea where. She swallowed the stardrop to keep it away from another dragon, and she hoped to be brought here. Why? That part was still unclear, but they did learn that Koren was supposed to swallow the stardrop. On this point, Petra was adamant.

  Cassabrie laid her glowing hand on the dead girl’s stomach. “So there’s a stardrop somewhere in there.”

  “Why doesn’t it just burn a hole right through her and fall out?” Jason asked.

  “I don’t know. Darkness maybe? Moisture? Acid?”

  Jason imagined the ball of light sitting in her stomach, its ability to burn flesh somehow dormant while its power to emit light and heat continued. “If Koren needs to swallow a stardrop …”

  Cassabrie’s eyes grew wide. “We have a way to get one to her safely.” She then clenched her eyes shut and shook her head. “You can’t take a dead girl’s body all the way back to the dragon village. It’s morbid. It’s impossible.”

  “Impossible?” Jason repeated, letting himself smile. “I don’t think I’ll ever use that word again.”

  “I also learned that lesson, perhaps too late. As the king has told me, an impossible task requires only a possibility not yet imagined. But I haven’t imagined a solution yet.”

  “Well, if we encase a stardrop in something that mimics the conditions inside Petra’s stomach, we could take it with us.”

  Cassabrie’s voice sparks flew. “So we need to make a container of flesh, something dark, wet, and acidic, but I think it would have to be tougher than Petra’s stomach if you want it to survive the journey.”

  Jason nodded toward Tamminy’s body. “Will dragon flesh do?”

  eighteen

  Elyssa sat under a dense forest canopy. The liberated cattle children surrounded her, some sitting quietly, some standing and looking around, and a few sleeping in the undergrowth—thick ferns with mushrooms of various sizes poking through the gaps. The long journey had exhausted them. After traveling several miles, often hiding under trees and then making dashes through clearings or across shallow creeks, they had climbed steadily to a higher elevation where the moist ground and lush foliage gave proof of frequent rain.

  Sitting close, Erin touched Elyssa’s shoulder. “I hear rustling.”

  “I heard it, too. Shhh …” Looking toward the sound, Elyssa gripped Wallace’s sword. It was probably Wallace returning from a search for water, but she had to be ready to fight, if necessary. The children had warned her of the strange beasts in the area, and they jumped at every sound.

  A dragon-like head poked out of the bushes, small and low to the ground. With blue eyes and a darting tongue, it looked directly at Elyssa and slithered out a few inches before stopping, revealing a long neck, but its body remained hidden in the brush.

  She stood slowly, picking up the sword as she rose. “Children,” she said softly as she waved a hand, “don’t be scared. Just move as quietly as possible to the other side of the clearing.”

  Gasps and muffled squeals accompanied the sound of shuffling children. Elyssa kept her gaze locked on the head. She lifted the sword higher. Could she decapitate the creature with one blow? With a head the size of a dog’s, how big might the rest of it be?

  Just before she swung, the creature darted back and disappeared. Elyssa leaped toward it but too late to strike. She caught sight of it as it stole away in the underbrush. Running on at least fifty pairs of short legs, it looked like a huge reptilian centipede, maybe a hundred feet long, easily big enough to kill and swallow one of the smaller children.

  Wallace broke into the clearing, cradling four-year-old Phanuel in his arms. “I saw it,” he said, breathless. “Is everyone all right?”

  “We are. How is Phanuel?”

  “Better. I found a creek.” He laid the boy in the ferns and knelt beside him. “I bathed him in it. I think the fever’s breaking.”

  “That’s good news.” Elyssa looked up at the sky. No dragons had appeared since they entered the wilderness, and with twilight approaching they would likely stay undetected. “Should we make camp here or start our search for the refuge right away?”

  “Make camp. This is a good spot to create our own refuge. I can take a search party out tomorrow to look for an established camp, and we can keep sending parties out until we find it. I saw fruit trees, and the creek has fish, so we’ll be fine for quite a while.”

  “Except for the beasts,” Erin said.

  “Well,” Wallace said, taking Erin’s hand, “I don’t think we need to worry about them, not with Elyssa and me on guard.”

  Elyssa handed Wallace the sword and searched his expression. It didn’t take a Diviner to figure out that he was worried about the beasts. In fact, his pale cheeks indicated more. She leaned close and whispered, “You saw something else?”

  He took her elbow and pulled her to the side. “Nothing like that snake with legs, but maybe something worse.” His chin taut, he looked into the branches above.

  “What, Wallace? Tell me.”

  His expression grim, he stared at her. “Birds.”

  She almost laughed. “Birds? You mean winged creatures with feathers?”

  He nodded, again searching the branches.

  “How big were they?”

  Still looking up, he made a circle with his fingers, indicating the size of some of the mushrooms at their feet.

  This time she couldn’t hold back a chuckle. “I’ll be sure to watch for the sparrows.”

  “Don’t make light of them.” He glanced at the children before lowering his voice further. “Down at the creek I saw about a hundred of them attack a deer. They stripped it to bones in just a few seconds and then flew away carrying his empty hide intact. It was the scariest thing I’ve ever seen.”

  Elyssa gulped. “That’ll give you nightmares.”

  “No kidding.” Wallace pointed the sword at one of the older boys. “At night and when we go on searches, we’ll need Dylan and others his size to take turns with us guarding the camp.”

  For the next hour, Elyssa, Wallace, and the children cleared their campsite of undergrowth and built a roaring fire. When they finished, Solarus had set, leaving them in twilight as the children filed back to the clearing, tossing newly collected firewood on a pile.

  The fire swelled, crackling and popping. Sparks flew into the rising smoke and faded in the dying light. With a ring of children gathering around, Elyssa crouched next to Wallace and patted his knee. “Soon we’ll have our own wilderness refuge. It’s really shaping up.”

  “Everyone did a great job.” He kept his eye on the smoke. “I hope we’re not signaling any predators or pursuers.”

  “I don’t think we have any choice.” A co
ol breeze filtered down from the higher elevations. Elyssa rubbed her fingers together. “Rain is coming.”

  “Rain?” Wallace lifted his brow. “I was wondering if it might, but …”

  “Is there a problem?”

  He nodded at the children. “Where are we going to put them all? I don’t think anyone wants to sleep in a mud puddle.”

  Elyssa looked beyond Wallace at the heap of sticks, vines, and ferns they had removed from the clearing. She imagined a lattice of sticks tied together with vines and covered with interlaced ferns. These makeshift lean-tos wouldn’t be watertight, but they would help.

  She reached across Wallace and pulled a long vine over his lap. “Let’s get to work.”

  Lying on her back, Koren blinked. A thin haze coated her vision. Daylight filtered into the room from a hole in the ceiling far above. But what room?

  As she turned her head to look around, a terrible ache stormed from ear to ear. Letting out a quiet moan, she lifted her hand to massage her forehead, but something pulled back, and a clinking sound reached her ears. She lifted again, bringing her hand into viewing range. A manacle clasped her wrist, and a chain led away toward the floor. Boots again dressed her feet and calves, perfectly laced to the top. The crumpled heap of fabric that had served as a pillow turned out to be her cloak.

  The recent events trickled back into her mind. Stardrops. The she-dragon. Being slammed against the floor. Petra and her glowing face, poisoned by the stardrop’s energy.

  She took in a slow, trembling breath. Tears welled. Was Petra dead? Tamminy had said a normal human couldn’t even hold a stardrop for long, and swallowing one was surely fatal. And what had become of Tamminy? Even if he escaped, he would always be a fugitive.

  Blinking again to clear her vision, she turned to search for her captors. Zena stood near an opening to a corridor. Instead of her usual black dress, she wore a gown of white, similar to the dress Koren once had. With her arms crossed and a frown sagging her face, Zena seemed ready to shout an insult. Yet her words carried across the room like a mother’s plaintive call. “Koren? How are you feeling?”