Yargazon leaned over her and spoke in a deceptively gentle voice, a sharp contrast to his questions. “Tell me what I need to know. Then this will all be over. All you have to do is tell me the truth.”
She wanted to blurt it all out, give him anything, anything to stop the agony. She could feel her joints straining, ready to break. Bruises and welts covered her body. The shackles cut into her, and blood seeped over her skin, mixing with her sweat. His words were too much. She almost believed him: if she would just tell him everything, he would stop the pain. But she knew he was lying, that if she revealed she had held back, they would intensify their efforts. Gods forgive her, she didn’t know how much longer she could keep her secrets.
“Sir?” The voice came from across the tent.
Yargazon straightened up and turned toward the entrance. “You’re early,” he said, beckoning to someone.
Footsteps crunched and another officer appeared, a gangly man with a black mustache. “We’re ready to leave,” he said.
The general nodded with approval. “You should make Quaaz easily by tomorrow.” They were speaking quietly, but with Yargazon so near the rack, Ginger could hear.
“My messenger arrived from Quaaz at sunset,” the man said. “He says our people are positioned and ready within the palace. We expect them to move at noon tomorrow.”
“Good.” Yargazon rubbed the back of his neck. “We march in the morning, both the cavalry and foot troops. We should arrive in the late afternoon. By then, the assassinations must be done.”
“They will, sir.” The man started to speak, then stopped.
“What is it?” Yargazon asked.
“It’s the queen, sir. She would make a valuable hostage.”
“So she would.” Yargazon exhaled. “More than that. It would be fitting to have her as my prisoner. It’s an abomination she ever ascended the throne.” He stood thinking. Then he shook his head. “We can’t risk it. As long as she lives, she might escape and rally her people. Look what a symbol the atajazid offers to ours, though he is only seven. No, she must die, and all her heirs. No one with a claim to the Topaz Throne can be left alive when the atajazid takes it as his own.”
“But you still want her Aronsdale consort alive?”
Yargazon nodded. “He’s not native to Taka Mal. Many people object to his being here. But he is related to King Cobalt. We can use him as a hostage in bargaining with the Misted Cliffs.”
Chills wracked Ginger’s body. She couldn’t believe Jazid would turn on Taka Mal and murder the royal family. It was an ugly plan—but effective. No one at the palace would expect it. The queen was probably hosting highly-ranked officers from Jazid even now, offering them sanctuary from execution in their own country. They would be well-placed to betray their benefactors. They could kill the queen and her baby, and gods only knew what they would do to her Aronsdale consort. The addition of the Taka Mal army to theirs would double the Jazid forces. They could attack the conquering army in Jazid with renewed strength to take back its throne for their boy king.
One of the interrogators walked over to the general. As the man with the mustache saluted and left, Yargazon turned to the warrior. “Is there a problem?”
“Sir, I don’t think she knows anything, except how to scrub floors and cook the damn pumpkins. She’s just a girl. If she had anything to tell us, she would have already broken.”
Yargazon looked past him at Ginger. “She seems too slow even to think for herself.”
“It will do permanent damage if we pull her much longer.”
Please, Ginger prayed to the dragon and the sunset. I know you can’t or won’t interfere with our lives. But I entreat you. Make them stop. She didn’t know why she tried; even if the Dragon-Sun or the Sunset could have helped, they were gone from the sky. The night was the time of Jazid’s Shadow Dragon.
The general walked to the rack and stood with his hands clasped behind his back as he considered Ginger. His gaze had a dark hunger that terrified her.
“Very well,” he said. “Take her down and clean her up. Have someone bring her to my tent. I will be in a meeting, so leave a guard with her.”
“We’ll take care of it, sir.”
Yargazon inclined his head. Without another glance at any of them, he strode from the tent. When he went beyond the torchlight, Ginger could no longer see him, but the canvas crackled and metal somewhere rattled. Distorted shadows swung back and swung forth in the torchlight.
As they released her from the manacles, tears ran down her face. She could barely move. They pulled away the scraps of her tunic and bathed her with tepid water from a basin they brought out of the shadows. One of them pulled a soldier’s tunic over her head, and another brushed her hair. The third gave her a tin of water and waited while she drank not one, but four cups. She tried not to think of what waited for her in Yargazon’s tent. She sat on the rack, neither looking at them nor responding to their ministrations. Instead, she turned her concentration inward to the power seething within her. She let it build, but it had no focus. Without a shape, she could do no spells, and it was too dark to see anything but the rack, which was misshapen.
When they finished, one of the men said, “Can you walk?”
She didn’t think she could move. Her skeleton felt as if it would fall apart. She had to force herself to stand up. The tent tilted around her and the edge of the rack rushed up—
Someone caught her as she fell. He kept his hand under her arm, holding her upright until her vertigo passed. When she inhaled, trying to steady herself, another man took her other arm. With two of them holding her up, she stepped toward the entrance. Another step. Another—
And she saw it.
The ring was iron and as wide across as her outstretched hand. She couldn’t see what it was hanging from, only that it was slowly swinging back and forth by the entrance, probably disturbed when Yargazon had left. She stared at it—and the power roiling within her suddenly had a focus.
She envisioned flames.
The spell exploded unlike any other she had done. Driven by her agony, it erupted from every wall of the tent, every surface, every object within, even from the ground under her feet, though the packed dirt had nothing to burn. The world blazed.
Her interrogators caught fire. They shouted and dropped her arms, beating at their flaming clothes. Except it wasn’t just their clothes; fire engulfed them until they became living torches. One of the warriors threw himself on the ground and rolled back and forth. Another stumbled into a table piled high with scrolls. Fire roared across it, destroying the record of secrets the interrogators had wrested from their victims. The third man staggered back and fell across the burning rack.
Their cries pierced the night. The spell flared wildly through Ginger, and she felt a backlash as if it were happening to her. But it wasn’t: she was the only person or thing in the tent that wasn’t burning.
Ginger lurched into a run. She could barely stay on her feet, but the desire to be alive and free were even greater than her pain. She raced out of the blazing tent and darted behind a spur of rock, leaving behind the roar of flames and the screams of the monsters who had tortured her.
People were shouting and running across the camp. Ruddy light from the torches in front of the general’s pavilion backlit them, but she doubted they could see her behind the rocks. The first place they would go was the tent. She crept away from the inferno, staying low behind the boulders.
When Ginger had put the overhang between herself and the tent, she took off in a limping run, down a slope toward where she had seen the horses. Shouts rang out behind her, but they were about the fire. She had no doubt it was too late for them to salvage the scrolls. She couldn’t bring back the Taka Mal officers who had died at Yargazon’s hand, but she had at least ensured Jazid would never have use of what they knew.
The calls receded as she ran from the camp. The rocky ground cut her feet, but she didn’t care; nothing could stop her from leaving this place. As s
he approached the corral, she tried to summon a spell to calm the horses. She had no shape, so she felt the front of the tunic until she found a round button. It was too small to give her any real power, but she managed enough to keep the horses from trumpeting her presence to the camp.
With her joints and her battered muscles protesting, she climbed up on the corral fence. The surge of desperation that had fueled her race from the tent had taken its toll, and now she could barely keep moving.
“Closer, sweetings,” she murmured to a horse. He nickered and wandered over, then nuzzled at her hand.
“I’ve nothing to give you,” she whispered, trickling her spell over the animal. Her every joint seemed to protest as she climbed onto its back, and the rough hair of its coat scraped her thighs. She had no bridle or riding blanket, nothing to hold onto but its mane. It smelled of oats and mud and horse.
The animal shuffled and shook its head. Her spell was fading; if she didn’t leave soon, the horses might become agitated and draw attention. Right now, the roar of flames and the calls of the people battling it masked her small sounds, but it wouldn’t be long before they realized she wasn’t in the tent.
“Come on,” she urged. Using pressure from her knees, she coaxed the animal toward the gate. Too late, she realized she should have opened the corral first. She hated the thought of getting off, but she had no choice; even if she had known how to jump a fence, she doubted they had enough room to gather speed.
At the gate, she laboriously slid to the fence and then to the ground. When she opened the gate, the horse walked out. Another followed and nibbled the sparse grass poking out of the rocky ground.
“No,” she whispered. If any horses wandered into the camp, it could alert Yargazon’s men to what she had done. She herded the second animal back inside and closed the gate. The one she had chosen neighed, and she prayed no one heard. If anyone was approaching, though, they were doing it more quietly than her ears could detect. She climbed back on the fence and clenched her teeth as splinters jabbed her feet. The horse stamped when she pulled herself onto his back, and she strained to hold her wan spell of comfort. With shouts from the camp ringing in her ears, she prodded the horse into motion and headed north.
Dragon-Sun, Ginger thought. I know these dark hours aren’t your time. But I entreat you. If you truly find favor in me, help me keep this precious freedom.
She rode northward, based on the stars. Although the moon gave some light, it wasn’t enough to risk letting the horse run full out over the rocky terrain. It was a steady mount, and it accepted her presence, which probably meant it was a pack animal rather than a war steed. A charger might not have let her ride him even with a spell of soothing.
As they sped up, wind ruffled the horse’s mane, and a chill cut through her tunic. She could have formed a warmth spell, but she needed to conserve her strength. The silence of the night surrounded them, broken only by the clicks of sand-chirpers. So far, she heard no pursuit. So far.
Her spell finally died. Mercifully, the horse continued without it. As the pound of her heart eased, she sagged in her seat. She hurt so much. She had drained her resources, but she managed a tiny spell that eased the distress in her joints.
An oddity registered on her mind. The air was clammy. In the desert, especially during summer, this much moisture never thickened the air. Puzzled, she lifted her head to look around.
Fog covered the land.
Ginger slowed the horse, and it neighed as if to protest the unearthly mist. Although the sky overhead was clear and stars shone like crystals, on the ground, a luminescent fog swirled in the moonlight. A tendril curled around them, and the horse balked, then stamped his feet and backed up. She offered him another spell, calming him enough so he didn’t bolt, but he stepped restlessly. The mist hid the land, and it was rising, already at her elbows. She could barely see the horse beneath her.
“This isn’t natural,” she muttered. Streamers swirled around her face, cool on her skin, and the world turned white. The horse was growing even more agitated; if he bolted now, with the ground hidden, he could stumble and snap his leg.
“It’s all right,” Ginger said, letting him walk. Within moments, though, he stopped. He neighed in protest, yet when she prodded him, he refused to go. The mist was holding them in place. It curled more thickly around her waist and under her arms. When she pushed at it, her hand slid along a huge coil wider than her body.
A scaled coil.
It lifted her off the horse and swung her high into the air. Below her, the fog boiled—and solidified into a figure on the ground. It was huge, longer than a caravan of twenty wagons and higher than the spire of a clock tower. Gigantic wings that could span half of Sky Flames unfurled from its back and covered the land in impenetrable mist. Two silver eyes larger than her head glowed in its elongated snout. Its mammoth tail was even longer than the creature, and its coil gripped her body. It held her by the thinnest portion at the end, yet even that was thick enough to cover her torso.
The Shadow Dragon opened his mouth and roared white flames.
19
Shadows
The dragon covered the land.
Ginger’s mount had bolted and was racing south, beyond the body of the dragon. The horse looked tiny from up here, where the dragon had hoisted her into the air, though he remained on the ground. When she realized just how high he was lifting her, she squeezed her eyes shut.
Cold air blew past her face. She opened her eyes—and found herself staring into one of the dragon’s eyes. The silver orb had a slitted black pupil that either reflected the stars or else had stars within it. It also reflected her terrified face. His head was longer than Ginger’s body, and fangs thicker than her leg glinted in his mouth. Smoke curled from his nostrils.
He swung her closer.
Priestess. The thought reverberated in her mind.
Why do you capture me, Shadow Dragon?
You called me.
I called the Dragon-Sun!
The sun cannot hear you at night.
She bit her lip. What will you do with me?
I have not decided. He turned his head and studied her with his other eye. The smoke from his nostrils wafted around her, acrid and hot. You are a favorite of my enemy.
Ginger felt a strange calm. She was frightened, yes, but she had survived so much these past days that fear no longer had power over her. I am no enemy of yours, she thought to the dragon. I think I am not so favored by the sun, either, given what he has allowed to happen.
We cannot affect the events of humanity, Ginger-Sun, even when those we favor suffer.
Dryly she thought, Yet here you are, affecting events. Her escape, to be precise.
When a holder of power calls us with enough strength and enough need, we can manifest in the world of humans.
A holder of power? What is that?
One who wields a power of fire or shadows. Such humans are rare. I know of only one in the last two hundred years.
Who?
You.
I am no power. Lately I can barely keep myself alive.
You are strong. If you were not, you would be neither free nor coherent now.
She wasn’t convinced she was coherent. Maybe what happened in Yargazon’s camp had taxed her mind until it snapped. I didn’t call on the sun. He came to the earth of his own volition.
You indeed called him, when your people sought to burn you. He descended and asked you to be his wife. You refused him. Why?
I serve the Dragon-Sun gladly, she thought. It is my honor. But in matters of the heart, I had given my word to a human man. A man like me. How could I be the consort of a fire dragon?
I do not know, he thought. We can rarely manifest.
Why?
It unbalances nature for the sun to leave the sky or the night to become a void. When I formed, it left nothing where shadows had lain. The balance must restore itself.
This was a power she neither wanted nor could fathom. She might be
able to call forth the dragons, but she had no say over what they chose to do. I didn’t know.
You are a force, Ginger-Sun, one we cannot control. He scrutinized her with one eye. I must decide how I will respond.
She feared he meant to end her life so she could no longer summon them. His tail rested against her hips, and she felt the powerful muscles in the coil. He could easily crush her.
The dragon’s great wings lifted into the air and swept down, creating an immense gale that blew Ginger’s hair back from her body. Arching his neck, he breathed white flame into the sky. The coil of his tail tightened—and he leapt off the earth.
“Gods above,” she whispered as they soared into the sky. Then she clamped her mouth shut, lest she invoke another deity in the pantheon her husband claimed didn’t exist.
The ground fell away with heart-stopping speed. The dragon swung her through the air in huge, slow arcs as his tail swept back and forth. Freezing air rushed past her bared skin.
Shadow Dragon! Don’t drop me!
I will not.
The ground passed below with dizzying speed. His wings beat the air in great arcs, their span so large she couldn’t see far enough to discern where they ended and the night began.
It’s a long way down, she thought.
I must fly. He curled his tail forward until she was near his head.
I can waste no time, for when the sun rises, I will become shadows again.
Where are we going?
That depends on whether or not I see what I seek in time.
What do you seek?
If we find it, you will know.
Will you let me live?
Yes, Ginger-Sun. A sense of surprise at her question came with his thoughts. I saw what they did to you, and how you resisted. You have bravery. Goodness. It is fitting you are favored by the sun. His eye blinked slowly. But take care in calling us, for it harms nature. This does not please us.
I’ll be careful.
Good. He swung her back in a majestic curve until his tail was once more behind him.
She wasn’t certain how long they flew, but he didn’t slow down until the horizon had reddened with the first tints of dawn. As the light increased, the dragon became translucent. She braced her hands against his tail to reassure herself of its solidity.