“Phelistoth?” she called.
Several boulders flew into the air, and the dragon’s head—now more dust-colored than silver—emerged from the pile. He tilted his fang-filled maw toward the sky and roared, a great reverberating roar that would have made a lion turn meek.
Tolemek’s reaction was to step back—far back—but Tylie ran closer, as if she meant to climb up the rock pile to the dragon’s head. Even if they had some connection, all those sharp teeth worried him, along with the fact that she could be pummeled by one of those boulders. He scrambled after her, but Sardelle surprised him by stretching out an arm to stop him.
He could have charged through her, but the dragon had stopped moving and was staring down at them with baleful eyes. Somehow Tylie didn’t find this alarming. She had reached the top of the rocks—the dragon was still mostly encased, aside from his head and long sinewy neck—and balanced on a boulder to reach out and touch those dusty scales.
Sardelle is explaining the situation, Jaxi announced. Apparently, she believes she’s more tactful than I.
Tolemek watched Tylie, ready to catch her if she tumbled—or if the dragon’s humorless yellow eyes turned toward her. She’s explaining the part of the situation where the dragon should make sure not to crush my sister?
Actually, the part where I need his help healing all of you.
Remembering Zirkander’s situation, Tolemek felt selfish. It surprised him to realize that he didn’t want to see Zirkander die, not anymore. Seeing him humiliated or his ego battered, that would likely remain a pleasurable experience, but he agreed with the others that it wouldn’t be fitting for him to meet his end out here.
Charitable of you, Jaxi thought dryly, but there’s still a chance you’ll become infected. From what the dragon has observed, one in two people who come within five miles of him become infected. The suits those geniuses are wearing don’t matter one way or another. Also, if you eat something that was infected, you could also be hanging from your toenails over a lake of lava. Most of the villagers with symptoms probably hunted animals that came down off the mountain.
“Oh.” Tolemek should have guessed that when they started seeing the carcasses. “Any way we’ll be able to heal the rest of the people on the island?” He probably should have asked the question in his head, since nobody else knew he had been chatting with Jaxi, but Sardelle nodded, as if she had already been thinking about that.
“I’m asking, letting him know it’s a problem for miles in all directions and seeing if there’s anything he can do. It’s actually because he’s a dragon that he’s so virulent. The same power that lets him telepathically communicate with a girl on the other side of the world gives anything infesting him a boost. Humans probably need to be in very close contact with each other to transmit the disease, so I’m hoping it will die out eventually with him no longer infectious.”
“And us,” Zirkander said.
“And us.”
“Colonel Zirkander?” Tylie called from her spot beside the dragon.
Tolemek blinked. He hadn’t told her Zirkander’s name, had he? Certainly not his Iskandian rank.
A dragon’s telepathy skills make mine look small and quaint, Jaxi thought. They don’t speak or hear, not like humans, but they know what everyone around them is thinking, person, animal, or soulblade.
Zirkander pushed himself to his feet. “Is it time to sacrifice me to the dragon?”
“He’s going to attempt to destroy the virus in your brain,” Sardelle said. “He says he can see it now that he knows what he’s looking for, and that he can target only the virus, not the rest of your body.”
“He can see it?” Tolemek hadn’t even seen it with his microscope.
Jealous? Jaxi sounded amused.
Maybe.
Me too. He’s kind of smug about it, really. And arrogant. He’s talking about how he could have cured all of the dragons who had been afflicted with this virus if he’d simply known about this. As if he’s even done anything yet. I’m the one who healed him, and what does he say? He offered advice on improving my technique.
Does this virus have anything to do with why there aren’t any dragons left around today? Tolemek asked, trying to ignore Jaxi’s little tirade. Did others die before being put in a stasis chamber?
I don’t know. You’ll have to ask Ridge’s history-loving lieutenant, but I don’t think there’s anything in the books about a great disease or plague that humans suffered at the same time. They should have been affected too if it was the same disease. Also, if the dragons saw their ends coming, they could have used more stasis chambers. I don’t think there have been fossils found that implied a massive dragon die-off. I was always told that they simply left this world.
“How close do I have to get?” Zirkander had walked to the edge of the rubble heap. He seemed to find those big yellow eyes baleful, as well, because he wasn’t hurrying to get closer.
Tylie patted the dragon on the neck, then scrambled back down the rocks. She joined Tolemek, clasping his hand and smiling up at him. “He can help us. All of us.”
“Good.” Tolemek didn’t see the confusion in her eyes that had been there when the dragon had been unconscious.
Step back, a voice much deeper and stronger than Jaxi’s announced in his head. In everybody’s head, judging by the way the entire group hustled backward.
The dragon pushed himself to his feet, sloughing more rocks away. His head and upper body disappeared from Tolemek’s view, above the lab’s ceiling. He stretched like a cat waking from a nap. Boulders rolled away from him, as if they weighed less than drops of water. Since he had been barely conscious before, this seemed a vast improvement, but Tolemek didn’t know if he was fully healed or not.
Of course he is. Jaxi sniffed—an impressive sound for a sword. I do excellent work.
Jaxi was visible now, too, the hilt of the blade poking out from under a rock. Sardelle retrieved her, wiped her off, and sheathed her. Tolemek knew from experience that this wouldn’t silence Jaxi.
Of course not. It would be tragic if it did.
The dragon’s head lowered into view and turned toward Zirkander. You.
Chatty, isn’t he? Tolemek thought.
A single dragon eye flickered toward him, and he decided to keep his thoughts silent, insofar as he could.
Zirkander took a few uncertain steps forward and placed his foot on a boulder. “Do I—”
Something invisible smashed into him. His arms flew out, his head fell back, and his entire body stiffened, as if he had been struck by lightning. He toppled backward, landing hard on the stone floor.
“Ridge!” Sardelle blurted.
Tolemek’s first thought was that Cas’s father had shown up again with some new attack. Indeed, Cas had taken a step forward, her rifle raised. Zirkander’s eyes were open, but they didn’t move. He didn’t move. Sardelle raced to his side. Tolemek stared at the dragon. Had he done this? Instead of curing Zirkander, had the dragon killed him? Why? Because he was Iskandian? Hadn’t anyone explained that the Cofah had been the ones keeping him subdued? Using him?
“Tylie,” Tolemek whispered, squeezing her hand. “What just happened? Does the dragon know we’re on his side?”
Tylie only smiled.
Zirkander gasped and blinked.
“Ridge?” Sardelle whispered, laying her hand on his shoulder.
He blinked a few more times and focused on her. “I… what happened?”
“You were dead,” she said, “for a moment. Your heart wasn’t beating.”
He suspended the animation of the entire body so he could more easily target the offending invaders. Jaxi sounded smug, as if this had been her idea.
“That’s alarming.” Zirkander smiled and lifted a hand to her face. “I’m glad you were here to hold my hand. Big sword and all.”
She leaned down and kissed him.
“That’s even better,” he murmured.
“Do we all have to do that?” Cas asked, lo
wering her rifle.
“Kiss each other?” Tolemek wrapped an arm around her. “I recommend it.”
“I meant get hurled to our asses.”
“Ah. I don’t—”
A wave of power slammed into Tolemek and his heart stopped. Terror clutched his mind, all rational thought gone, and then he lost consciousness.
He didn’t dream or remember anything else until he woke up, lying flat on his back, staring at the broken remains of the ceiling panels above him. He gulped in air, having the sense that he hadn’t been breathing before then. Confusion encased him, and for a moment, he didn’t know who he was or where he was. It was those dangling ceiling panels that brought him back to the world, back to the ziggurat.
“Cas?” he croaked, rolling onto his side. He almost rolled into her knee.
“Right here,” Cas said, dropping her hand to his chest. Her short hair stuck out in a hundred directions and the way she slumped to one side suggested her ribs hurt. “We were all knocked out, except for the colonel. He got to stand guard—sit guard.”
“Sit guard,” Zirkander grumped from a few meters away. “Let’s not tell the general about that one, all right?”
Duck and Sardelle still lay on their backs, their eyes open but blinking with confusion. Zirkander sat next to Sardelle, cradling her head in his lap.
“Duck,” he said, “you all right?”
“I’d be better,” Duck said weakly, “if someone was holding my head and fondling my hair.”
“Uh,” Zirkander said. “I guess I could if you want to crawl over here.”
“I meant a woman, sir.”
“Well, if you’re going to be picky, I can’t help you.”
Tolemek hunted around for Tylie and found her climbing to her feet already. She looked like she had been knocked out, too, but she walked toward the dragon on unsteady legs. He had settled on his stomach, his tail stretched out behind him, and he watched her approach, his eyes not so chilly as they had been when regarding Tolemek and the others. Tolemek still wouldn’t call the expression inviting. There was a distinctly reptilian alienness to Phelistoth’s face, reminding him that this was not a human being and couldn’t be counted on to act or feel the way one did.
Tylie walked up to the dragon’s side and leaned against him, her face to his scales.
“Is that, uh, safe?” Zirkander asked quietly, glancing back at Tolemek. As if he knew.
“He did save your life,” Sardelle murmured, gazing up at Zirkander, not shifting her head out of his lap yet.
“He did. But I can’t say I got the impression he was incredibly pleased to be doing it.” Zirkander touched his palm to his chest and shuddered slightly. “He doesn’t have a gentle touch.”
The dragon’s tail had been lying straight out behind him, but it swished a couple of times, then curved around his body. Tolemek had a vision of Tylie being squished by it—even flat on the ground, it came up to her waist—but it curled around her, almost gently. Protectively.
Thank you, came a whisper into Tolemek’s mind. Tylie. She smiled at him, a gleam of excitement in her eyes that he hadn’t seen since she had been a little girl, plotting some adventure in the woods behind their house. Be safe.
Are you going somewhere? Tolemek asked, a hint of panic welling in his chest. This sounded like a farewell. Sardelle came to teach you.
Later.
The tail tightened around Tylie and lifted her into the air.
Zirkander’s mouth dropped open, and he patted at his side, groping for his rifle.
But Phelistoth merely deposited Tylie on his back, then released her. She sat astride him, as if he were some giant horse, then dropped to her belly, an arm stretched out on either side of his spine. Tolemek reached out, wanting to object. That didn’t look safe at all. Didn’t the dragon riders of old have some kind of saddle? A way to strap in?
Duck pointed at her. “Is she going to—”
The dragon’s legs bunched, muscles rippling beneath the sleek scales, then it leaped straight up into the air, disappearing from view. Tolemek’s heart lodged in his throat. He raced forward, certain Tylie would fall off and be crushed when she tumbled to the ground. But somehow, she hung on as the dragon cleared the ziggurat, spread his wings, then shot even farther upward. He broke through the latticework over the crater and sailed toward the stars. Tolemek’s last glimpse showed him soaring away with Tylie still on his back.
“Uh,” Duck said. “Did the dragon just kidnap Tolemek’s sister?”
“She wanted to go.” Tolemek sighed, feeling bleak—and small. What could he offer Tylie compared to that?
Cas walked over and took his hand in both of hers. She looked up at him, her eyes full of sympathy. They also seemed to say that she was still there for him. “Ready to go home?” she asked.
“I better be. I’m completely out of grenades, potions, and other compounds.” Tolemek slipped his arms around her, closed his eyes, and dropped his face to her hair.
“Completely?”
“Completely.”
“I’m almost out of ammo,” she said. “I guess we better hope we don’t have any trouble reclaiming our fliers.”
Epilogue
By the time the weary group limped into town, the noon sun beating down on their shoulders, Tolemek wanted nothing more than to sleep for a week. Perhaps a month.
Little had changed in the pirate haven. New ships were docked in the harbor and new people wandered in and out of the taverns. He didn’t see any sign that the virus had reached the area yet. Maybe it never would. Tolemek would hope for that because without the dragon, he wouldn’t know how to heal those afflicted.
He looked skyward, hoping he might spot Phelistoth and his sister soaring among the clouds. In the jungle, the canopy had been too dense overhead for him to glimpse much of the sky. Alas, he didn’t see anything other than seagulls. They had probably left the island, the dragon wanting to stretch its wings after three thousand years. Tolemek worried for Tylie. She had never been on her own. How would she get by?
“She’ll be able to find you when she comes down, I’m sure,” Cas said from his side, catching him looking up. She carried her weapons as vigilantly as she had when they had first embarked on the mission, including the dragon-slaying sword that she had wrapped in a cloth and strapped to her pack. The thing looked like it weighed at least ten pounds. If she felt tired after the week’s events, she didn’t show it. Of course, knowing her father was out there, probably wanting to put a bullet between Zirkander’s shoulder blades, might keep her alert.
“I told her I lived in Iskandia now,” Tolemek said. “I wish I’d been more specific.”
“Do you really want a dragon knowing where you live?” Duck asked.
“So long as he shows up with my sister.”
“The king might be upset if he heard about a dragon perching on the roof of your lab building.”
“Can’t be any worse than the hideous one Zirkander has dangling in his flier,” Tolemek said.
Zirkander had been in the lead, setting a determined pace along the outer streets of town, wanting to check on his fliers before anything else, but he frowned back at them at this. “My luck dragon is not hideous.”
“And it’s not in his flier,” Cas said. “It’s in his pocket.”
Zirkander’s fingers twitched toward his pocket, but he stopped himself. “It kept me alive, didn’t it?”
“Barely, sir,” Duck said. “Maybe you should get a bigger one. Maybe Phelistoth will come perch on your house.”
“I don’t know if base security would allow that.” The field where the fliers had been parked came into view, and Zirkander’s attention shifted forward again. He stared, nearly tripped, then broke into a run.
The fliers were still there, but strings of bones were draped all over them—human bones. In addition, the craft were surrounded by pointy poles thrust into the ground with skulls stuck on the top of them. Entire skeletons dangled from the tops of some, and as th
e breeze blew in from the ocean, the bones rattled and clanked. More than a few of the skulls had rusty knife hilts sticking out of them.
“Uh?” Cas asked. “I better go see what that’s about.” She jogged ahead, not running quite as quickly as Zirkander. But then, she wasn’t as in love with her craft as her commander was. Her rifle, now, that was another matter.
“There’s Moe,” Sardelle said, waving toward the wiry man walking toward the field from another street, a book open in his hands. He had not noticed the return of his son yet.
“Dad!” Zirkander called from the cockpit of his flier. “Care to explain this?” He tossed a femur to the ground, then hefted a skull over his head.
Moe lifted his head and closed his book. “Oh, good afternoon, Ridgewalker. I was coming to check on your devilish contraptions. You wouldn’t believe how much trouble it’s been watching over them.”
Zirkander lowered the skull and looked into its empty eye sockets. “Oh, I might.”
By this time, Cas had climbed into her own flier, and grumpy curses wafted out of her cockpit, along with bones being flung left and right.
“Those are fallen souls who died horribly on account of the curse,” Moe said.
Tolemek, Duck, and Sardelle reached the fliers, and Duck also diverted to check on his craft. Tolemek waited, curious to hear the story.
“That’s the story you spread?” Zirkander asked.
“I didn’t even need to spread it. Fallen souls and curses are part of the local legend, thanks to the indigenous people. And pirates, being a superstitious lot, are quite willing to believe such tales. All I had to do was supply the fallen souls.” Moe waved toward the poles and their skull decorations.
“And you did this for a reason, I presume.”
“Oh, yes. Pirates kept trying to steal your fliers, and the natives were flinging mud at them and other less than savory items.”
Cas tossed a soggy bag out of her cockpit and made a face. “Yes, found one. This hot humid climate turns things aromatic quickly, doesn’t it?”