Bloodstone (40 page)

After the glare of the Dragon’s flame, even the fire pit seemed dim and the shadows around it thicker. Yellow smoke, curling down from the ramparts in long ribbons, further hazed her view, but she was sure, heart-stoppingly certain, where before only her father’s shape had lain by the fire, now there were two. And one had pounced on the other.

“The bloodstones! Give me the damned stones, you old bastard!”

Mirianna charged. She had no thought but to save her father, and no idea how, yet somehow the sword hilt in her hand came down like a club on Rees’s shoulder. He grunted, and they broke apart, three bodies scrabbling on the pavement. The sword slid away. The knife she must have dropped, for Rees came up with it in his hand.

He crouched, panting, a feral beast but for the look of consciousness in his eyes. “I don’t want to hurt you, Mirianna. Just give me the damned bloodstones.”

“What bloodstones?” She needed to buy time, not just to insert more of her body between Rees and her father, who lay still tangled in his bedding, but to understand what was at stake here. “Pumble said you took them when you ran off.”

Rees snarled, and her hair stood on end. “The old bastard switched the gems. That pouch had nothing in it but worthless pebbles!” The disk he wore slid out of his tunic and spun on the end of its thong, a glimmering, gleaming slice of crystal moon.

“Papa, what’s he talking about?” Her gaze darted between the disk and Rees’s face. The mage used a crystal. Durren had broken it. Now the mage was here, with Rees.

Tolbert pushed himself up to a sitting position behind her. He coughed. “I—uh—I never trust anyone, lamb. For just such a reason.”

A melee of emotions rushed Mirianna—pride for her father’s unexpected cleverness, frustration for his stubborn insistence on keeping the gems in the face of such danger, fear for what the stones must mean to the mage that Rees would threaten their lives and pursue them to the very gates of Beggeth to obtain them.

“Where are they?” Rees waved the knife. Spittle flew from his mouth. “Hand them over!”

“They—they’re in my boot.”

Rees’s gaze flashed to the boots lying alongside her father’s bedding. “Get them out and hand them over. Carefully.”

Mirianna bent to the boot her father indicated. He caught her eye, and she saw her own fear reflected there, but something else too. She frowned, wondering in what other way she might have underestimated her father, but he only said, “The seam, lamb, above the ankle. There’s a hidden pocket.”

She found the pocket, but puzzled over how to open it until her probing fingers located a loose thread. What appeared to be stitched was merely tied. She pulled the thread and tipped the stones into her palm.

“Hand them over,” Rees demanded, inching closer.

Mirianna stretched out her hand and opened her fingers over his palm. He was sweating. So was she. She wiped her hand on her skirt while he scrutinized the dark shapes.

“They don’t glow,” Rees said, scowling.

“Not without sunlight,” Tolbert said, as if the fact were obvious.

“If you’ve tricked me again…” He thrust the knifepoint at Mirianna’s chin.

She flinched, but her father’s hand at her back steadied her.

“No! Of course, I wouldn’t. You—you could test it with flame. The heat of the fire would trigger the glow, but I wouldn’t—”

Rees flung a stone into the fire-pit.

“—do that,” Tolbert finished as the stone shot out spears of scarlet light.

Bathed in red, Rees grinned. “Finally.” He lowered the knife. “Now, what were you saying I shouldn’t do?”

Her father looked up, face aghast. “Well, it could melt, and then where would you be?”

For a moment, Rees simply stared. Then, with a look of horror, he dove at the fire.

The boot still in her hand, Mirianna pivoted, swinging it with all the force she could muster at Rees’s head. When he went down, she clobbered him twice more. Then, tossing the boot aside, she picked up the knife and dropped to her knees on Rees’s back. The air whooshed out of his mouth and he gurgled. “How do you like being climbed on for once?” she said, “Not much fun, is it?” Finding the disk under his hair, she cut it free of the thong.

She sat back and turned the slice of crystal in her palm. It shimmered in the fire’s glow, fluidly shifting colors like a spill of lamp oil in a puddle. The disk changed the surface, made it beautiful and alluring. But the illusion was as thin as the slice itself. She knew that, yet the crystal whispered to her, promised power. She needed power now, power to save Durren, her father, all of them. The crystal could help her—if she kept it. Used it. Let it use her.

While she rose to her feet, her father poked a stick into the fire and dragged the glowing bloodstone out between the stones of the fire ring. At once, the glow faded. Tolbert sat back on his heels and gasped with the effort. Beside him, Rees moaned. The other bloodstones lay where he’d dropped them, black clots in the powdered mortar dusting the paving stones. Mirianna slid the knife into her belt and one-by-one picked them up.

She’d touched bloodstone just once, in her father’s workshop, but only with her fingernail. Nothing had happened then. Now the stones on her palm tingled with little snaps of energy that zipped up her arm, across her shoulders, and down to the crystal disk pressed to her other palm. Everywhere the energy flowed, the fine hairs of her body responded, rising and falling in waves. In her hand, the disk shimmered as if lit from within. The colors shifted, merged, swirled, and she knew she should look away from the strangely hypnotic dance, but the vision was so beautiful and the energy zipping across her shoulders filled her with such a sense of power, she couldn’t. Instead, she brought her hands closer together and watched while the bloodstones hummed and the crystal disk pulsed and a red glow enveloped her.

“Mirianna…!” Tolbert gasped and shielded his eyes.

Syryk saw stars, orange and green and yellow stars, circling over his head. His brain told him they were not the night stars, and he was lying flat on his back atop paving stones sown with enough pebbles to dig a score of points painfully into his back. He wanted to listen to the rest of his brain’s message, but his body screamed for air and his left palm burned as if he’d planted it in hot coals. Beside him, someone groaned. His head wouldn’t turn, but he shifted his eyes enough to see Ayliss, her hair flung over her face in a wild frizz as if each strand had been separated by a jolt of some kind of power.

Power…

Syryk sucked in a breath and remembered the bloodstones. Rolling to his right, he saw the red glow he’d glimpsed an instant before…before what? Syryk blinked. One minute he and Ayliss had been holding the Dragon at bay, and he’d sensed Rees put his hand on the bloodstones. There had been a thrill of power in the crystal, and he’d turned a fraction, just a fraction of his attention in that direction. And then…
something
had laid them both flat. Rees didn’t have the power to set off the bloodstones. Rees didn’t have any power. But someone did.

The warrior woman and her strange red aura…

Syryk swore. He struggled to his hands and knees while his clothes smoked and his muscles trembled. Weeks ago he’d formulated a plan after emerging from the crystal, a beautiful, simple plan using the Master of Nolar’s resources to collect gems necessary to complete the Chant while enjoying bodily pleasures he’d previously foregone to pursue crystal craft and scroll lore.
By the Demon Master, this was not how the plan was meant to go!
First Ayliss had surprised him with the power of her blood, her heritage. Now this woman he’d hoped to use for the Chant had some sort of secret power.

He could barely move the fingers of his left hand, but enough sensation remained to tell him he still gripped his own crystal. Or else the skin had melted to it. Shaking off that thought, he cast around and saw Ayliss’s hand curled near her head. Between her blackened fingers he spotted the glint of crystal. He reached for it, hesitated, then pried it free of her hand. “Sorry,” he said when she moaned, “but I did what you asked, and now it’s my turn.” His conscience told him that wasn’t entirely true, but he would deal with his conscience later—if at all.

Staggering to his feet, a crystal shard in each hand, he spoke to the disk, to Rees.

But it was the warrior woman who turned, and the disk, now in her hand, shone blood red. She faced him, feet set, head erect, hair a cloud of curls about her face. The scarlet aura threw into relief cheekbones, jawline, and eyes that must have been blue before the glow turned them purple. There was a sword at her feet and a knife stuck in her belt.

Once more she held him mesmerized, but he couldn’t afford to stay that way. Even if she were as unskilled as he suspected, she had to realize being able to activate the bloodstones without sunlight was a gift nothing in the scrolls had predicted. He shuddered to think what else she could do with the stones if he gave her time to experiment. Drawing on the crystal, he spoke. “I paid for those bloodstones. Yield them to me. The Dragon is mine to command. You can’t hope to control it with that tiny piece of crystal.”

“Control it?” Her laughter—not at all the reaction he’d expected—broke his concentration. “I need to set it free and save Durren.”

The message his brain had been trying to deliver finally arrived.
The Dragonkeeper!
How could he have overlooked the Dragonkeeper in this already nightmarish scenario? That Krad rock was to blame. Clearly, it had done more than merely rattle his thinking processes. While his mind worked to catch up, Syryk’s stomach responded to the news, roiling acid into his throat, and his mouth spat out, “Oh, that’s just bloody perfect, isn’t it? Don’t tell me—let me guess. Drakkonwehr is riding that damned Beast of Beggeth, isn’t he?”

“No. He’s
in
the Dragon. He and the Dragon are one.”

Syryk reeled. Could this get any worse? How in the Demon Master’s Name had his plan gone so awry?

Wait a minute, I can use this!
An idea flashed into his brain, and his consciousness latched onto it like a man tumbling over a cliff grabs a root or vine. He had no clear idea what power the warrior woman had, but she seemed to have even less of a notion. If he kept her off balance long enough, he might be able to find an opening.

From the crystal he drew a slowly increasing flow of power that shifted his features, cleaned up the tatters and focused attention on his soothing, reasonable voice. “So, he’s trapped in the Dragon, and you want to save him? You can’t do it yourself, you know. Not with that tiny crystal. You need more power. I can help. Just join your crystal with mine, and together we’ll add the bloodstones.”

When her eyes narrowed, he made himself smaller, his pose non-threatening. “You can even hang onto them if you want. After all, that’s a woman’s power source. I wouldn’t know what to do with it.”

He was blathering now, but what he said didn’t matter. Everything depended on his voice. Watching her face, he studied his illusion of helpfulness, of safety reflected in her eyes. Even though his hand throbbed and his body ached, the spell was perfect, as usual, and first doubt, then indecision flickered in her eyes. Her hand moved a fraction, and his mouth watered. If he could just get his fingers on one bloodstone…

Durren and the Dragon flew up and up into the night sky while the fire in the courtyard diminished to a spark. They were soaring in a tight circle, and stars whipped by, no longer sparks of light but streaks in the black void. The Dragon’s heart raced and Durren’s raced in sync with it. So this was what freedom felt like, this exuberant sensation of breathlessness and speed as earthly bonds fell away and the sky wrapped its velvet blanket around them. When they leveled out, Durren laughed with the pure joy of the moment.

My sentiments exactly,
the Dragon said, and Durren understood how long both of them had been bound, he by the curse and the Dragon by the promise. But neither of them was yet fully free. He could tell by the slow looping passes the Dragon was making over the fortress, passes that didn’t widen.

You can’t fly away from here, can you?

I have been raised, but only blood can free me. One of your kind has brought into this place drops of my blood, and the little mage would lay his hands upon them.

Your blood? You mean bloodstones, don’t you?
A prickle raised phantom hairs on Durren’s nonexistent neck as his memory flashed over events since he’d found the gems. Mirianna’s father bought the stones Durren had traded to Ulerroth, but the old man wanted—needed—more. According to the fat man, Rees had taken them, but perhaps not if Rees came all the way to Drakkonwehr and brought Syryk with him.
Then we’ll get the bloodstones before Syryk can get his hands on him. Where are they?

The Dragon angled its head down, and Durren saw with hawk-like clarity an array of figures bathed in a red glow he knew all too well. Three sprawled on the ground. His heart lurched when he recognized Ayliss, but despite the great height, the Dragon’s vision showed him she still breathed. Rees lay face-down in the pose of someone unconscious, and the fat man had started toward him while the old man huddled near the fire pit. The boy was nowhere to be seen, and for that Durren gave thanks even as he spat out a bitter oath because that left Syryk and the woman he loved face to face and altogether too close.

Go! Now! Down!
Mirianna was alone, facing a master of illusion who must have doubled his crystal supply with Ayliss’s, and only Kiros knew how Syryk had gained that advantage.
Go! Stop him! Damn you, Beast! She needs me!

Yes, but not now.
The Dragon continued circling.
Your chosen mate is finding her own power, and you must trust her to use it wisely.

Her own power? What in Beggeth—?
Then he saw. That all-too-familiar glow
centered
on Mirianna, shooting out not just from the bloodstones on her palm but arising from her,
all
of her. He understood, at last, what he’d always known in the deepest way of knowing where the mind cannot comprehend how the heart can know a truth with absolute certainty—she had saved him. She would save them all, if he would just let her.