Joach stopped, as did the others. Moris and Flint exchanged glances. They had heard the silent words, too.
The girl spoke from atop the dragon. Her voice shook. “He says to come no farther,” she warned.
Flint answered her. “We heard, Sy-wen. It’s dreamspeak, the tongue of Ragnar’k. We’ve listened to his dreams and muttered words for ages. But I’m surprised you can hear him, too. You’ve no weaver’s blood in you.”
“We have bonded,” she said simply, quietly.
Bonded, the dragon echoed.
Moris stepped forward and spoke to Ragnar’k. “We do not mean you or your . . . bonded . . . any harm.”
The girl named Sy-wen swallowed hard. “What is happening? Who were those demons? What happened to Kast?”
“I’m not sure, my dear,” Flint answered.
“I want to get off this dragon,” she said, a trace of worry in her voice.
“Fear not; I don’t think he would ever harm you.”
Never harm you, the dragon again echoed.
The room shook again, and a large boulder crashed only a few spans away.
“We need to leave here,” Moris said. “It’s about to collapse.”
Joach eyed the exit longingly, then looked back at the dragon. “I don’t think Ragnar’k will fit through those passages.”
“We can’t leave him,” Flint said.
“But the boy is right,” Moris argued. “He’ll never fit.”
“I’m getting down,” Sy-wen said, reaching and beginning to slide around the dragon’s neck. She shook all over.
The dragon snuffled at her but did not try to stop her. Bonded, he repeated and nudged her chest. His nose flaps parted to take in her scent. Smell good.
Whether from the tickle of its nose flaps or his dreamspoken words, Joach saw a ghost of a smile play about her lips. Then her feet touched the stone, and she almost fell, catching her weight just in time by grabbing an edge of wing. “I must get used to this,” she said, straightening.
As she pulled her hand from the dragon’s flesh, Ragnar’k blew inward with a folding of scales and flesh. Neck and tail coiled in on themselves. Wings snapped down and melded into a spinning cocoon of rippling textures.
Sy-wen yipped in fright and stumbled back into Flint’s arms.
“Steady, my dear,” he consoled.
In a handful of heartbeats, the flurry of bone and flesh settled into a familiar form. Kast again stood before them, naked as a newborn. All eyes were wide in surprise, but Kast’s were narrowed in suspicion.
He ignored his own nakedness. “What happened?” He searched around the cavern. “Where’s the fire demon?”
“So many questions,” Flint said with a wry twist to his lips, “but before we search for answers, you’d best cover yourself, Kast. There are ladies present.”
The large man seemed finally to recognize his nakedness and the red-faced girl who was trying her best to avert her eyes. He grumbled and accepted a cloak Moris retrieved from one of the dead brothers.
“What now?” Kast asked, cinching the cloak. It was miserably too small for him, barely reaching his knees.
“Much strangeness has happened this day,” Moris said as the cavern shuddered again. “But this place is no longer safe, and I don’t mean just this cavern, but all of A’loa Glen. We need space to piece this all together, to figure out what truly happened here, and more importantly, to plan. A dark time lies ahead. The Praetor knows he is exposed and will lock down the city with his black magicks. I, for one, don’t want to be here when he calls the beasts of the Gul’gotha to the island—not until we’re prepared.”
“I think we all agree with that,” Flint said.
All heads nodded.
“Then let’s be off,” Kast said, heading for the tunnel.
“Wait,” Joach said, his eye falling on an object he did not want to leave here. He ran quickly across the floor and reached for Greshym’s discarded staff. It still lay on the stone where Shorkan had dropped it. Joach remembered Greshym’s agonized cry just before he was whisked away. The darkmage’s eyes had been on his abandoned staff.
“Perhaps it’s best if you leave the foul thing,” Flint said.
“No. It’s his focus of power. He covets it,” Joach said as he carefully picked it up. It felt like ordinary wood, if not a bit oilier than most. Tears rose to his eyes, and his words began to choke. “He stole my home, my parents. So I’ll take this from him now, and one day I’ll return and make him truly pay.” Joach’s voice hardened. “But first I must find my sister before they do.”
“What do they want with your sister?” Flint asked.
Joach strode past him. He was tired of secrets. “She’s a wit’ch.”
24
KAST FOLLOWED LAST behind the others. None spoke. All of them were lost in their own reveries. Kast still could not fathom what had happened to him. He remembered the demon in the flaming cloak descending upon them; he recalled Sy-wen reaching for his cheek . . . then nothing. The next he knew he was standing naked before the others, staring dumbfounded around him.
As he strode behind Sy-wen down the passages, he rubbed at his neck and cheek. It still itched with a mild burn, as if his tattoo had been freshly needled into his skin. What did this girl have to do with all this? On Jarplin’s ship, they had shared some strange spell-cast union. He remembered the events in great detail: the death of the Hort brothers, the bloody dagger in his hand, Sy-wen’s cool bare skin against his arms as he carried her from the ship’s kitchen. All this he remembered with a fresh clarity, but this time, he recalled nothing. There was a gaping hole in his memory.
And he hated it.
What had truly transpired? Why did the mer’ai girl now glance back at him with a trace of fear in her eyes?
The passageway gave a sudden, violent shudder. Kast barely kept his footing. Ahead, Sy-wen fell to her knees. A cracking roar echoed to him from behind, followed by a roiling wall of rock dust that flew up from the deeper corridors to swallow the company. Choking, Kast pulled Sy-wen to her feet as the dust cleared. He meant to keep a supporting hand on her. But she pulled from his grip, shying away from him.
“Thank you,” she mumbled, stumbling forward, not meeting his eye.
Flint called back. “The dragon’s chamber must have finally given way! We’d best hurry. This whole level may go!”
The pace increased. The group bunched together in their haste, almost running down the winding passageway.
Urgency washed away Kast’s noisome ponderings. The Bloodriders knew when to focus on a task, and right now, freeing themselves of this subterranean maze was critical. Answers to the mysteries of today’s events would have to wait.
The passages were still hazy with floating dust. Kast could barely see the large dark-skinned man who led them, but his words traveled back clearly. “The Grotto is our only hope,” Moris said, breathless from the run. “Pray the sea channel is still open.”
Flint answered him. “We may have to swim. There’s only the one skiff.”
“What about Conch?” This from Sy-wen.
“We’ll just have to wait and see, my dear. After all that has occurred, I don’t know if the healers . . . if they had enough time to mend your mother’s dragon.”
Kast understood the meaning behind the hesitation in Flint’s voice. The seaman feared the healers may have abandoned the dragon, fleeing for their own lives.
The redheaded boy named Joach spoke into the long silence that followed Flint’s statement. “So there’s another dragon?”
Kast’s brow crinkled with the boy’s words. What did he mean by another?
No one answered the boy’s question. The party became silent except for their raspy, dust-choked breaths as they ran.
Just when Kast was beginning to wonder if Moris had gotten them lost, they rounded a bend in the corridor, and the acrid tang of medicinals struck his nostrils. But under its bitter odor was the scent of home: the smell of the sea.
&
nbsp; They had reached the Grotto.
The company poured out of the tunnel onto the pebbled shore of the underground lake.
Red-glazed pots lay tipped or broken on the shore, obviously hastily abandoned. Only one of the eight healers still stood in the ankle-deep water beside the huge jade-scaled dragon. Bald like the others, but with skin as red as a peeled plum, he raised scared eyes toward them; then his expression settled into relief when he recognized Flint.
“Where are the others, Brother Ewan?” Flint asked.
“Gone back into the tunnels,” the healer said, wiping a damp palm over the crown of his head. “Some ran to aid the others. Some simply ran. One tried to make off with your skiff, but my knife’s edge changed his compulsion toward thievery.”
“And the dragon?” Flint asked, his eyes on the girl, who had already waded into the water to lay a hand on the beast’s nose. The dragon was too weak even to raise its head, though it did acknowledge her presence with a weak nudge at her fingers. Joach had wandered near but kept his distance from the pair.
“He still breathes,” the healer declared, then added in a lower voice, “but barely. The balm of bittersroot has eased his pain, and he rests; but I fear he will not survive.”
Moris approached Flint. “We must be off now. If the dragon is too sick, it would be best to leave him. To survive this day, we must move quickly. An ailing dragon will slow us.”
The healer, Ewan, supported his words. “If he moves, he’ll die. I doubt he could make it out the sea tunnel before he expires.”
Flint took their dire news with a darkening frown. “I told her I would save her dragon,” he mumbled.
Moris laid a hand on Flint’s shoulder but remained quiet.
Kast knew there were no words that would help. Sometimes life offered only cruel choices. Bloodriders knew this all too well. Still Kast could not ignore the tears on Sy-wen’s face as she knelt beside Conch, pressing her cheek to her friend.
“Then there’s no hope?” Flint asked.
Silence was his answer.
“I will tell her,” Kast heard himself say before he knew his tongue had moved.
Flint glanced at him with a slightly surprised expression. Then his eyes grew serious, and he nodded.
Kast walked toward the girl, his legs suddenly heavy.
Behind him, Ewan mumbled to the others. “It’s a shame that the healing properties of seadragon’s blood can’t heal a dragon’s own wounds.”
His ruminations were ignored until Flint suddenly blurted out, “Can the blood of another dragon help Conch?”
Kast slowed his pace toward the girl. Did Flint have a plan?
The healer’s voice was hopeless. “Certainly, but it would take quite a bit. The seadragon’s injuries are severe, and we’ve only a few drops in the Edifice’s apothecary . . . not nearly enough to help this one.”
Kast sighed. The dragon would die. He continued walking, his boots splashing at the water’s edge.
“Wait, Kast,” Flint called to him.
He stopped and glanced back.
Flint hurried toward him, his eyes bright. Moris followed. “Sy-wen,” Flint urged, “come over here.”
She raised her head from her friend’s side at Flint’s words but did not stand. “He’s dying,” she said with such despair in her voice that Kast took a step toward her.
“I know, I know, but this is no time for crying. Your tears will not help him, but something else may.”
She sniffed and wiped at her nose. “What?”
“Just come here. If you want to save Conch, you’re going to have to help.”
Sy-wen looked at him doubtfully, then pushed to her feet. Joach helped her over the slippery stones to join them. “What do you want me to do?”
“I need you to call forth the dragon again.”
Kast saw the frank terror in her eyes. What was Flint blathering about?
Sy-wen’s voice shook. “I couldn’t . . . I don’t know how.”
Flint persisted. “What did you do to call Ragnar’k last time?”
Sy-wen glanced at Kast. He frowned back at her. Did she expect him to have an answer? Then he felt her gaze shift from his face to his neck. She raised a finger and pointed to his tattoo.
All eyes swung toward him. Involuntarily, he took a step back. “What?” he muttered. “What are you all gawking at?”
Flint’s eyes had grown wide; then he snorted a laugh. “So that’s where the little snake ran off to?”
“What?” Kast repeated.
Flint reached for Kast’s sleeve. “Come,” he said and tugged him to the water’s edge. He pointed to Kast’s reflection in the still water. “Look at your tattoo.”
Kast scowled. What did this fool—? Then it was his turn for his eyes to widen. His hand reached up to touch the tattoo etched into his skin during his manhood ceremony. The seahawk was gone. A dragon blazed upon his skin now. He glanced at Flint. “What’s going on?”
Flint pulled him back to the girl’s side and explained what they had all witnessed in the cavern.
As he listened, Kast found it harder and harder to breathe in the moist cavern air. “Are you saying I changed into this dragon . . . this Ragnar’k?” Disbelief was thick in his throat.
Flint ignored him. “Child, how did you trigger the transformation?”
She refused to look Kast in the face. “I touched him—” She waved her fingers, almost apologetically. “—on his tattoo.”
Moris spoke next. “It makes an odd bit of sense. They were oath-bonded when Ragnar’k merged with them. His essence must have been caught up in the spell.”
“Touch!” Flint added, his expression wide with sudden understanding. “Ragnar’k vanished back into the tattoo once the girl dismounted from his shoulders. Just as touching is necessary to maintain the original oath-bond, it must be necessary to keep the dragon in the flesh.” Flint turned to Sy-wen. “Can you call him forth again?”
Sy-wen took a step away.
Kast was too stunned to move. He did not know how to wrap his mind around the idea that some dragon lay inside him.
The boy Joach, fingering the mage’s staff in his hands, asked a question that must have been in all their minds. “Why do you want the dragon back?”
“I want his blood,” Flint said simply, as if it were obvious. “I believe Ragnar’k’s blood might cure Conch.”
Sy-wen’s nervous fear faded. “Do you think . . . Conch might live?”
“The mer’ai use dragon’s blood to heal wounds, do they not?” Flint kept his voice calm and quiet.
Sy-wen nodded, then shot a quick glance at Kast. “But I can’t ask him . . . ask him to become that dragon again. What if he gets stuck that way?”
The same thought had been rolling in Kast’s own head. He balked at letting the beast take him over again. What if it refused to return to the tattoo?
Then Sy-wen’s eyes found his own. He watched hope and fear mix in her eyes. She refused to ask this of him, but her silence was stronger than a thousand pleaded words.
Kast reached out to her and grabbed her hand. His haste made his fingers rough. He did not want to retreat from his decision. “Do it,” he said, and pulled her fingers toward his neck.
She resisted at first, struggling to free her wrist.
He stared her in the eye, and suddenly old words, buried deeper than flesh, appeared in his mind: There will come a day when we will call you again to our sides, again to be our sharks above the water. Do you make this oath willingly and bind your people to us?
He answered aloud in the old tongue of his people. “My blood is yours to cast upon the seas.”
She started at his words. He could see something stir in her, her expression glazing over. Their two peoples were forever linked by blood oaths, promised words, and ancient magicks. He saw an ancient midnight sea appear in her eyes. “Thank you,” she whispered, no longer resisting him.
He let her wrist free, and she reached to touch him.
&n
bsp; Sighing, he closed his eyes.
Her fingers touched his skin—and he was gone.
SY-WEN SAT ATOP the dragon again, its flesh hot through her thin leggings. The others had scattered to all sides as, at her touch, Ragnar’k had unfolded and spread around and under her, lifting her atop his scaled back. She looked down upon the others and could not clearly explain the tears that trailed down her cheeks.
Sy-wen, the dragon whispered to her, almost a purr, as if tasting her name on his tongue. Bonded.
She found one of her hands reaching to rub his neck, finding the spot Conch liked scratched.
Good. Fingers good. The dragon stirred under her, then . . . Others are here. The dreamspeak held a note of menace.
“They’re friends.”
He seemed to accept her statement, changing his attention quickly. Hungry. Blood scent strong. Sniffing, the dragon’s snout lowered and swung toward the lake. His voice boomed in her head. Little dragon will taste good.
Sy-wen noted with alarm that it was referring to Conch. Cannibalism among seadragons was not unknown. “No, the little dragon is a friend, too.”
Flint approached closer to them, Moris at his side. “Sy-wen, can you explain to Ragnar’k what we want?” Flint asked. “I think you’ll have to convince him.”
Sy-wen swallowed hard. “Ragnar’k, the little dragon is hurt and needs help.”
His fierceness and hot hunger touched her. Pain strong. I will eat the little dragon, and it will not hurt anymore.
Sy-wen tightened her voice. “No. I wish him healed. Your blood will help the little dragon.”
An intense feeling of irritation and exasperation entered her from the dragon, but she also sensed resignation and acceptance. Bonded, he said simply, acknowledging her wish.
She waved Flint over. “He’ll do it.”
Flint drew a blade, but Ewan was at his side and pushed the old man’s hand down. “I have a bleeding lance,” he said, his eyes huge as he stared at the great beast. “It will leave less of a wound.”
Nodding, Flint waved the healer forward.
“Grab two of those pots,” Ewan ordered. “That should be enough to help the seadragon.”