Bloodstone (39 page)

“Where are the bloodstones?” Syryk whispered. There was one last chance he could still salvage this.

“What…bloodstones?” Ayliss hissed.

Ah-hah!
Satisfaction surged through him. The energy spike pulled their joined power in his direction long enough for him to divert one small burst. He sent it to Rees.
Find the old man!

Durren breathed. The ache in his side had subsided, and he felt surprisingly…weightless, as though he floated in the pool, but there was light in this darkness. Sparks and streaks of it, and a roaring noise in his head, and underneath that a regular
ka-thud, ka-thud
, like the beat of a heart—a very large heart. He gasped.

Drakkonwehr,
the Beast hissed.
So you have survived once more.

He must have passed out. Or passed on. Was this what dying felt like? Losing all bodily sensation and simply floating? But he was not dead. His mind, his soul, his consciousness still existed, trapped in a burning, leathery, glowing red body. But not just a body, a mind too—a mind surging with rapid-fire thoughts, ancient memories, strange, inhuman desires. By Kiros, he was
inside
the Beast—and privy to its intentions!
All those times I wished myself dead…you convinced me to live—for your own purposes, Beast!

My life is worth a hundred of your paltry lives, my age beyond your measure. If you value the petty spark that is your life, pray that I keep mine. There is much danger yet to be faced, son of Koronolan.

Durren had no more—in fact even less—reason to trust the Beast, but the urgency in its words was sincere. Now his consciousness had awakened, he realized the light was more than flashes of mind-light such as would shimmer behind closed eyelids. The darkness he perceived was outside where full night had descended on the fortress, and the flashes flared from the Dragon’s mouth as he saw through the Beast’s eyes. Everything looked distorted, elongated, yellow, and tiny. The figures he took to be humans were standing down in the courtyard, and—
Dear Koronolan!
—the Beast must be perched on the ramparts. As his eyes adjusted to the Dragon’s vision, he searched the figures for Mirianna, the boy, his sister—found Ayliss and, at her side, not Gareth but a face he hadn’t seen since he’d broken the bastard’s crystal.

Syryk!

Durren’s vision hazed. At least he thought it was his vision, but he couldn’t be sure now he and the Dragon were one. The rage pulsing through his consciousness, however,
that
was most certainly his. His hands itched for his Sword. Broken or not, he would plunge it to the hilt into the scheming bastard’s heart. But he had no hands, no Sword. Only an all-consuming desire to remove from the face of the earth the one person who had wrecked his life—No, by Kiros!—had wrecked the world!
Blast him! Step on him! Eat him!

Patience, son of Koronolan.
A chuckle rumbled in the Dragon’s throat.
I have already given him a taste of my power.

A taste! Damn you, Beast, there stands the bastard who put you inside of me!

No. That was as much your doing as his. He wove the spell; you broke it. That is the first demon you must face if you would be yourself again.

Though he had no body to absorb the blow, Durren’s consciousness reeled as if he’d been struck from behind.
What demon?
Yes, he’d broken the crystal column. Doing so was necessary to break the spell, to stop the mage from raising the Dragon. That was his duty as a Drakkonwehr. He’d done all he could to fulfill his pledge, even after his sister had—

But she hadn’t betrayed him or their heritage. He knew that now, had accepted it. That was why he was here in the Dragon’s body. Koronolan’s promise overrode the keeper of the Sword’s pledge. They had to raise the Dragon, to free it as promised. There was no demon in that. But Syryk—the mage deserved to die for his part!

The little mage has big dreams, Drakkonwehr, but you and I yet require his services. Your blood-kin and I understand this far better than you do.

Durren steamed. The Dragon’s heat had pushed his temperature beyond what his humanly body could bear. He wondered briefly where the shell that once housed his soul lay, wondering if this Beastly heat had consumed it, leaving an outline of ash for Ayliss to work her charms over. How could she make him whole again? Was it even possible? Yet here was the Beast holding out just such hope while rage made sparks sizzle around the edges of his vision. Demons, hah! He’d done no more than his duty, had acted because Syryk was going to win.

Was he? Or did you merely think he was?

“Illusion, Drakkonwehr…”
Syryk’s sibilant voice came to him like an echo through the threads of memory. The image of the mage gloating over Errek’s death—and Durren’s own part in it—played in all its vivid, minute, agonizing detail. He’d killed Errek by believing what he saw was true. Dear Koronolan, had he done the same by taking the Sword to the crystal? Had he intervened when intervention was not necessary? Had he in fact caused—? No! The idea was too outrageous, too mind-altering to consider.

Illusions may flatter us, confuse us, or betray us, Drakkonwehr. Or they may be images we cling to when the truth is too difficult to face.

Too…difficult…to face…
If he still possessed eyes, Durren would’ve closed them. But he had no eyes, and he had no means of stopping the thoughts that rushed up like an enemy horde to assail him. He should’ve trusted Ayliss. She had studied the scrolls, after all, which was more than he’d done. He’d always envied her knowledge, her quick mind, her mastery of Shadow Speech. But he hadn’t trusted her precisely because of how much she knew. His one advantage, which he’d daily thrown in her face, was no more than an accident of gender. He had not
earned
the Sword. He’d been
given
it. Hidden in his heart, etched into his very bones, he’d borne that knowledge, that he deserved nothing on merit. In all ways she was better. And he’d never forgiven her for it, had never stopped trying to prove himself and denigrate her.

There. That
was the truth slicing like steel through his defenses. She was the hero and he the jealous fool who’d cracked the gates of Beggeth and let the demon Krad loose in the land. He’d failed, more miserably than anyone but he and the Beast he’d entangled himself with knew.

Good. You have named your demon, son of Koronolan. What will you do now?

He’d lived fourteen years with the knowledge of his failure, and he’d yet failed to right it. Even, until now, to acknowledge it. Durren wished the Beast would let him go, let him give up whatever life-spark kept him earthbound. Then he could finally put an end to this never-ending misery, could absolve himself of the raw pain of thinking, of caring about the people—Mirianna, Gareth, Ayliss, even the old man and the fat fool—he was now helpless to protect.

You pathetic humans!
Flames shot from the Dragon’s nostrils with a rumbling roar.
It escapes me how you endure any trial long enough even to breed, yet here you are. And why do your kind persist at all? Because every now and then—once a century, perhaps—ONE of you understands this: Death is what you accept only when you have spent all that you are—to the very last drop of your sweat and blood—in order to save what you love. That, son of Koronolan, is what a hero, a true warrior, would do.

For far too long the Beast had lectured him. He’d listened before he knew the voice’s true identity—after all, the Dragon’s words aligned, mostly, with his conscience—but this scathing indictment exceeded all bounds!
How dare you speak of heroes, Beast! How in the Demon’s own Name would you know anything of duty, of honor, of sacrifice?

The Dragon growled, a long, rolling grumble that gathered power and volume and reverberated outward from the Beast’s throat until every inch of the Beast shook with it.

Durren recoiled, drew himself into a ball, but the maelstrom he’d triggered rose up and swamped him anyway. Memories slammed into his consciousness. One after another in rapid, red-hot, relentless succession, they bombarded his senses. Flames, searing heat, smoking flesh, explosions in the sky, a soul screaming as it plummeted to the earth, a nest of cracked stones. No, not stones—eggs with sticky, spilled, lizard-like shapes drenched in blood. The smell, the thick tarry blood steaming as it drained. A raging sense of loss, loneliness like a boulder crushing a soul alone, so very alone…

Into the aftermath, the raw silence where Durren’s nerve endings jangled with each eddying emotion the flood of memories had unleashed, the Dragon spoke quietly.
Have you seen MY heart now, Drakkonwehr?

Thoughts, bare fragments of ideas crawled out of his consciousness, yet he had to name the thoughts, not for the Beast, but for himself.
You…lost your mate, your brethren…yet you lived. You gave Koronolan your promise, you surrendered. You laid down to sleep because…because dying was less of a sacrifice than living as a prisoner, buried at the whim of the insignificant human who gave you one last chance to…to save what you love.

Like a flash of lightning illuminates a space, Durren saw a pool surrounded by rough rock walls and a pebble-strewn ledge. He recognized it as the pool deep below Drakkonwehr although he’d never once seen it lighted by more than phosphorescence. Just below the surface in the corner where the warm water welled up from the depths lay a jumble of five smooth boulders Durren knew as well as he knew the contours of his own body. They were of a size, rounded at one end and…gently pointed at the other. The image faded, but comprehension shuddered through him.

There are…eggs...

The last of my brethren. The future of my kind. Now do you understand, Drakkonwehr?

The Dragon’s world had crumbled. Durren had seen it as if he’d lived it in those moments of searing memory. The Beast would do all it could to save the precious last survivors.

You and I are not much different in that, son of Koronolan. You also lived when many times you longed for death. You wish to protect your mate, your blood-kin, your kind from the harm this little mage would unleash.

What do we do?

Now you must face your second demon. Do you know its name, Drakkonwehr?

Trust.
The word tasted like gall retched up from an empty stomach, but Durren forced himself to say it.
I have to trust you, Beast.

And your blood-kin, your chosen mate, and those frail creatures you consider brethren. You must trust their hearts are truly aligned with yours. And you must act as if it were so.

Hearts in alignment? Dear Koronolan, how would he know?

He couldn’t. That was the nature of trust. He had to leap, but by Kiros, there was no way of knowing where—or if—he would land. Well, he’d faced the Krad with nothing more than a knife and a torch, and he hadn’t known how that would turn out. He had far less to lose then, only the hope—the possibility—that Mirianna could—might—unlock the curse. Now she’d brought back his soul, had restored his heart, why should he fear the risks when so much more was at stake? Knowing the Dragon was waiting, that everything depended on the Beast’s powers and their joined knowledge, Durren opened his mind. And then with one last fervent wish he wouldn’t fall, he opened his still so fragile heart.
Let’s finish this.

The Dragon laughed, and smoke shot from both sides of the Beast’s mouth.
Come, son of Koronolan, let me show you how to fly.
Unfurling giant wings, the Dragon sprang at the stars.

Mirianna covered her ears, but her palms and fingers did nothing to mute the roaring and rumbling assailing her from all sides. The ground shook. Her body trembled, buffeted by the noise, the quaking earth, the fear engendered by the beast spewing columns of smoke and bolts of flame into the night sky.

She’d only imagined such creatures. They existed in legends, in tales told by traveling bards, written down and rolled up in scrolls like Owender’s
History of the People
, but surely not in full, enormous, flaming life. The creature was huge! And Durren—she must remember Durren was trapped inside it somewhere. The terrifying creature had to live because Durren had to live. The beast couldn’t possibly mean to harm her because it and Durren were one. While her heart knocked at her throat and her mouth tasted dry as the dust falling from the walls, she told herself all that. And she repeated it, again and again, until her mind opened wide enough to take it all in.

When she collected enough of her wits to reach out for Gareth, he was already gone, had most likely disappeared before the beast showed itself. For that she was glad. What he would make of the noise and sulfurous smell, she had no notion, but she suspected he would recover sense faster than Pumble, who stood transfixed by the sight. The boy was nothing if not resilient.

Ayliss and the man called Syryk had recovered their senses too, joining hands to face the beast. Ayliss called him a mage, but what Mirianna saw beyond the expensive cloak and fine boots—now torn, stained, and scorched—was a pale, thin man not much older or taller than Ayliss. Under close-cropped black hair, he bore the furrowed brow of a scholar. Nothing about him matched the description of the mages of old. Nothing, that is, except his eyes. The one glimpse she’d had as she threatened him with Gareth’s staff had shown her eyes of indeterminate gray, as subtle and shifting as quicksilver, under winged black brows. Ayliss had drawn his gaze away then, and Mirianna had been glad of it. There had been power in that look.

She shivered and bent to pick up Rees’s sword where she’d dropped it when the Dragon had materialized. Hand on the hilt, she froze. Where in the name of the Dragon was Rees? His knife still lay at her feet, and she picked that up as she made a slow turn away from the mesmerizing scene on the rampart.