The Unbearable Lightness of Dragons

  His dark eyes were amused—at least they were until his gaze slid past me to where Baltic stood. Then they narrowed, his lips tightening. Whoever he was, he wasn’t pleased.

  “Baltic,” he said, his gaze returning to me, “your mate is the source of much trouble, it seems.”

  Baltic’s arm went around me, pulling me tight to his side. “She is no trouble to me.”

  The dragon’s lips twitched, but he merely turned his head to consider Antonia von Endres as she was plastered to the stone wall of the villa’s tower. His eyebrows rose. “You seek to destroy the mage, daughter of night?”

  I hadn’t intended on answering him, since my temper was riled by Antonia, but something about him compelled me to say simply, “She tried to steal my mate. I tolerate that from no one, not even an archimage.”

  “She is not worth your ire.” His gaze rested on me a third time, the amusement back in it as he leaned toward me and said softly, “Do not fail me, little one. All my hopes rest with you.”

  “Hopes?” I asked stupidly, not understanding what he was saying. “What hopes?”

  He said nothing, just turned and walked back the way he had come, into the deepest part of the shadows. It was at that moment that I realized that the crowd of dragons making a half circle around us had been completely and utterly silent, as if they were collectively holding their breath.

  “Who was that?” I asked Baltic, touching his arm as he looked after the man, a strange expression on his face. “Why did he call me daughter? He’s not my father.”

  “That, my love, was the father of us all,” Baltic said before turning to face Antonia. “Quench your fire, and let her go. She has news that I seek regarding Constantine. That is all I desire from her.”

  Absently, I tamped down on the fire, allowing the strange stream of power that flowed around her to dissipate, just like water seeping into parched earth. “The father of us all? Not . . . by the rood, that was the First Dragon?”

  The words echoed in my head as I watched Baltic confront a furious Antonia, my mind dazzled by the fact that the ancestor of all dragons who ever were and ever would be had spoken to me. Not just spoken to me . . .

  “Told me his hopes rested with me,” I said, blinking as the velvet night brightened into a cloudy day. I looked up at my Baltic, who gently stroked my back, his breath ruffling my hair as cars whizzed past us. “Did you see that, too?”

  “Your vision? No. But I remember it.” His lips twisted. “Antonia threatened to destroy you for almost a century. Only the fact that she would have had to deal with the First Dragon if she had done so stopped her. And now you will question me for weeks as to what the First Dragon meant, and I will tell you repeatedly that I do not know. It is the truth, mate; I did not know then, and I do not know now. Nor do I particularly care.”

  I pulled back and gave him a long look. “You don’t like the First Dragon, do you?”

  He made a face. “My feelings toward him do not matter.”

  “Uh-huh. What about Antonia? What was all that business with her?”

  “As you said, it was business. She had an interest in Constantine, and I sought to find out where he was.”

  “Hmm. And that water?”

  He looked surprised. “I do not remember water. You attempted to burn Antonia alive, not drown her—not that you could have done either, but you came close to succeeding with your dragon fire.”

  “There was some other form of power I was tapping into. It felt like I was standing in a stream of it, flowing around and through me.”

  He shrugged, and looked pointedly at his watch. “We will be late picking up Brom if you do not continue. Would you prefer for me to drive?”

  “No,” I said, resuming my seat and snapping the seat belt over my chest. I gave him one last look before I pulled out into the stream of traffic. “But I do want you to tell me one thing.”

  “What is that?”

  I gripped the steering wheel with grim determination. “If you weren’t at Dauva overseeing the reconstruction for the last couple of days, just where the devil were you?”

  Chapter Nine

  “We’d almost given up on you,” May said, smiling as she greeted us at the door of Gabriel’s house. “Brom was ready to go, but then a bird hit one of the back windows, and he went outside to see if it was stunned or dead. I’m sure this is completely against the agreement Baltic made with Gabriel, but would you like to come in for a few minutes? I can promise you that no one will hold you prisoner or otherwise harm either of you.”

  “I do not wish to enter the silver wyvern’s house, no,” Baltic said somewhat stiffly. He looked at me. “Are you speaking to me yet?”

  “No.”

  He sighed. “My mate is making a futile attempt to punish me, but she will follow my desires in this as in everything and not enter—Ysolde!”

  I pushed past him into the house, glancing around the cool hallway. “I’d love to chat for a bit, May. Hello, Gabriel. We’ve come for a visit.”

  “No, we have not! For the love of the saints, woman, I just finished telling the silver mate that we did not wish to enter!” Baltic stormed in after me. “Why do I speak if you will not heed my words?”

  I raised an eyebrow at him.

  “No,” he said, answering the unspoken question. “I am a wyvern! I do not need to explain to you, my mate, the one who says she loves me beyond all else, the one who has promised to obey me, my every move.”

  “Obey?” May asked, her eyes widening with mirth. “Oh, dear.”

  Gabriel’s lips twitched in an otherwise somber expression.

  I kept the pleasant smile on my face despite the desire to whomp a certain dragon upside his handsome, if annoyingly stubborn, head. “We’re having a little argument. Baltic feels he can go traipsing off who-knows-where without bothering to tell me, and I feel he can shove his head up his—”

  “Ysolde!”

  “You are welcome to our home despite the current situation between the weyr and you,” Gabriel said, clearly fighting a smile. He gestured toward the room from which he had just emerged. “Would you care to sit down?”

  Baltic opened his mouth to say no, but I shot him a look that promised no little amount of retribution in the very near future, and he, no doubt sensing he’d pushed me about as far as he could without me exploding into a million bits of frustration, wisely opted to humor me.

  “Where’s Jim?” May asked as she had a few words with the woman I remembered as her housekeeper.

  “We dropped it off at Drake’s house,” I said, tightening my lips at Baltic.

  “Oh?” She looked from me to Baltic, who was engaged in glaring at Gabriel. “Was there some sort of trouble?”

  “Not if you call the fact that Baltic barely slowed down, let alone stopped, so I could say hello to Aisling and good-bye to Jim trouble. Which, incidentally, I do.”

  “Demons can’t be hurt by merely bouncing off the pavement,” Baltic said with a sniff.

  May’s eyes widened even more. Gabriel seemed to have some sort of a coughing attack.

  “Look,” I said as I faced Baltic. “I admit that it might have been a mistake to release it from its inability to hear anything we said, especially since I was not speaking to you at that time, and it picked up on that immediately. I also admit that its innuendoes and incessant whipcrack impressions were extremely annoying, not to mention offensive, and no, it shouldn’t have told you that you could wear its kilt because clearly I wore the pants in the relationship—which is totally untrue, and I have no desire to emasculate you like it hinted—but you could have let me come to an actual complete stop rather than just pushing Jim out of the car as I slowed to park. For one thing, that was rude, and for another, Jim’s kilt flipped up, baring everything while it was sprawled all over the sidewalk, and if I could possibly go just one day without seeing its human-form genitalia, I’d really appreciate it.”

  May gave up the fight and whooped with laughter, Gabriel joining he
r.

  “I knew you would not be able to resist speaking to me,” was all Baltic said, smiling smugly.

  “Gah!” I yelled, then marched out of the room, tossing over my shoulder, “May, can I have a few words with you?”

  “About Ysolde’s agreement with May regarding her help with the release of your lieutenant . . . ,” Gabriel said as we exited.

  “What agreement?” Baltic asked.

  I closed the door on what was sure to be an eye-opening conversation for Baltic, turning to May to ask, “I’d like to check on Brom quickly, but after that . . . do you have somewhere that we can be private for a few minutes?”

  “Certainly. No one goes into the study.” She opened a door. “I’ll wait here for you.”

  “Thanks, May.” I hurried down the dark, narrow passage that led to the tiny back garden, pausing just outside the door to smile at Brom as he squatted on his heels, one hand gesturing as he chatted, the other stroking the head of what must have been the stunned bird. Maata was next to him, nodding her head as he expounded some point or other, looking up with a genuine smile as she noticed me.

  “Sullivan! Maata found a bird that hit the window, but it’s not dead. She says it’s a wren, but it needs a few minutes before it can fly again. Are we going right away, or can I watch the bird?”

  “We have a few minutes. Good afternoon, Maata. How’s your mother?”

  She looked startled for a moment, then answered politely, “Well, thank you. Have you . . . er . . . met her?”

  “In a manner of speaking. Five minutes, OK, Brom?”

  “OK.” His head bent over the bird again, and a brief hope flared that he might shift his morbid interest in making mummies from deceased animals to the care of live ones. “You just never know with him,” I said aloud as I entered the study.

  “Baltic?”

  “Brom. Is it too much to hope he’d become a vet? I would think that was a nice, normal, beneficial profession. There’s not much of a call for the ability to mummify things these days.”

  She smiled. “We’ve enjoyed having him visit, mummy fascination and all. What was it you wanted to talk to me about? Something to do with Baltic?”

  “Tangentially, perhaps. I’d like to try to summon the First Dragon.”

  She blinked at me in surprise.

  “I tried doing it myself, but my magic . . . well, you know about that.”

  “Yes, I know.” Her lips twitched.

  “So I got to thinking about what was different when I summoned him before, and your suggestion about having dragons around, and discounting things like stress and unhappiness with the weyr being collective asses, I decided the difference must be you.”

  “Why me?” she asked, looking startled at the idea.

  “You have a tie to the First Dragon.”

  “Yes, but so do you.”

  “Exactly. We both have a relationship with the First Dragon, and perhaps your presence is needed in order to make a connection with him. Are you willing to give it a try?”

  “Right now?”

  “If you have the time, yes.”

  She hesitated for a moment, then nodded. “All right, but we should probably be as fast as possible. Your wyvern isn’t the most . . . er . . . conversational of all the dragons I’ve met.”

  “That’s the understatement of the year,” I said, standing up and shaking out my hands while mentally clearing my mind.

  “What should I do?”

  “Just stand near me, as you were during the sárkány,” I said, my eyes closed as I concentrated. “Maybe have a mental image of the First Dragon.”

  “Ready,” she said.

  I took a deep breath, pulling hard on Baltic’s fire as I spoke the words. “Light exists within me, darkness I left behind, on my left hand sits that which was made, on my right sits that which has passed. Bring forth your grace that we might—by the rood! That was quick. Er . . . hello.”

  Before the last of my invocation had been spoken, the air in front of us began to collect itself in a shimmery sort of swirl that quickly solidified into the form of a man who despite his human appearance was quite obviously not human.

  “Daughter of light,” he said, a slightly puzzled look in his fathomless eyes. He glanced at May, who stared at him with delight beaming from her face. “Daughter of shadows,” he said, acknowledging her. “Why have you summoned me?”

  May slid a look toward me.

  “I’m the one who summoned you.” I squirmed a little under the regard of his eyes, his gaze seeming to strip me to the deepest parts of my soul. “I had some questions about what you said to me the last time we . . . er . . . met.”

  He waited, saying nothing, just looking at me with those uncanny eyes. “You said I had let you down before, and to not do it again. I’m sorry if I’m unusually dense, but I don’t understand what it is you want me to do. If you could just tell me, I’d be really grateful.”

  His eyes closed and he turned as if he was leaving, but the world seemed to slip away at that moment, the walls and furniture and the house itself seemingly melting into a white nothingness.

  A cold white nothingness.

  “May?” I asked, rubbing my arms as a blast of arctic wind knocked me back a few feet.

  “Right here. It’s another vision, isn’t it? Like the one you had at the sárkány?”

  “Yes. I think . . . yes, up there. That’s me.”

  “Isn’t this when the First Dragon resurrected you?” May asked, shivering next to me as we watched the past version of myself trundling down a hill suddenly stop and turn to look upward.

  “I think so. I certainly don’t look terribly with it, do I?”

  “Well, I imagine being resurrected would take a lot out of you,” she pointed out.

  “What is it you wish of me?” the past me asked, and May and I turned to look in the direction she was calling.

  The whirl of wind and snow lessened for a few seconds, revealing the figures of two men.

  “Death of the innocent has stripped honor from my youngest son,” one of the men said. “You must return it to him.”

  The past Ysolde stared at him dully for a few seconds before simply turning and continuing on her way down the snowy slope. May and I gaped at the First Dragon and the man beside him until a blast of wind and icy snow had us reeling backward.

  I covered my face against the sting of it, wiping away tears triggered by the cold. When I looked up, May and I were standing in her library. I was somewhat heartened to see she had an expression of incredulity on her face, since I knew I was beyond flabbergasted.

  “That was . . . that was Constantine, wasn’t it?” she finally asked me.

  I nodded. “I did hear the First Dragon right, didn’t I? He said his youngest son?”

  “Yes.” She blinked a couple of times and shook her head as if to clear away mental fog. “Constantine Norka was the First Dragon’s youngest son? I didn’t know he had real children, since he calls other dragons by the names son and daughter.” She looked up at me with speculation. “He particularly seems to like calling you daughter. I wonder if you really are?”

  I shook my head. “My parents were first black dragons, then silver when they left the sept with Constantine. There’s something . . .” I bit my lip, trying hard to remember something that was said to me relatively recently. “Kaawa, I think, told me that the dragon septs were originally formed by the First Dragon. His children were the first wyverns.”

  “I think I remember reading that in one of the weyr history books,” she said, looking thoughtful. “He had one daughter and three sons, and they formed the original four septs. But I never remember seeing Constantine’s name included, although it makes sense if all the other original wyverns were children of the First Dragon. I wonder why Gabriel never mentioned it?”

  “That’s a very good question. Another good one is what the hell I’m going to do. ‘Death of the innocent stripped honor from my youngest son.’ That has to be Constantine
killing me. So how on earth am I supposed to return honor to my own murderer? Does it even matter since he’s dead?”

  She hesitated, then pointed out, “It’s the First Dragon’s son, Ysolde. I’m sure it matters to him.”

  “Good point.” I thought for a moment. “How do you return honor to a dead man? I could formally forgive him for killing me, but beyond that, I’m totally at a loss.”

  A slam of a door nearby had us both smiling wryly.

  “That sounds like the end of patience on the part of one or both of them,” I said as we left the library. Baltic stood by the front door, his arms crossed and a fierce scowl on his face as Brom chatted enthusiastically with Gabriel.

  “I hope he hasn’t talked you guys silly,” I said with a smile at my son.

  “Not at all. We enjoyed having him, and I know Maata gets a kick out of taking him to the museum to see the mummies. I’m pleased Baltic let him come visit us despite all the stuff going on with the weyr. And speaking of that, I assume we’ll see you tomorrow?”

  “Er . . .” I eyed my volatile mate with some misgiving. He really did look at the end of his not-very-substantial patience. “I haven’t told Baltic it was tomorrow, but he knows he’s going to have to attend, so, yes, we’ll be there. I look forward to seeing the house again, although I have to admit I’m a bit surprised that Kostya is allowing us there.”

  She paused as we entered the foyer. “I think he wants some help with Cy,” she said slowly, an unhappy look in her clear blue eyes.

  “It seemed to me the last time I saw them together that all was not well there.”

  “No,” she said slowly, her expression brightening when she glanced at Gabriel. “I expect Cy has done what she always does and moved on to another love interest, although I really had thought this time she’d stick it out. . . .”

  Baltic transferred his frown to me. “Mate, we have been here long enough. I have stood as many insults as I will tolerate. We will leave now. Brom, take your things to the car.”

  “Thank you for having Brom stay with you,” I told Gabriel as I moved to Baltic’s side. “From the increased amount of his luggage, it looks like he was far too indulged, but I’m sure he couldn’t have had a better time.”