Dragonoak: The Complete History of Kastelir (57 page)

I charged towards the stables, colonnade in sight when a sharp, twisting sensation knotted my stomach so tightly that I found myself doubled over, clawing at my skin through my shirt. I gripped the wall, took a deep breath, and found myself face to face with Katja. She was so distraught by the news of a dragon that she had no idea what was flowing out of her.

“Rowan! My goodness, did you hear?” she asked, running over to me. She put a hand on my shoulder, steadying me, as if there wasn't an easier way to stop the sickness.

“Claire,” I said, through grit teeth. “She's gone to fight the dragon.”

“Sir Ightham, she's.... ? Oh, Rowan, dear. I'm sorry. I'm so, so sorry. But don't lose heart. She knows what she's doing, doesn't she?” Katja asked, and comforting me seemed to help her find her footing. Whatever emanated from her faded, leaving a wave of nausea behind that had nothing to do with her. “She's a Knight, tried and tested. She'll slay the dragon and be back before you know it.”

Every time I heard the word dragon, whether from Katja's lips or my own, it sunk into me as though it was an accusation. I had known. All this time, I'd known what Felheim was capable of, and I'd buried the truth so deep down that some days, I managed to convince myself I'd imagined it. Yet I'd known, and I'd done nothing to prevent this.

“How... how are they here?” I asked, desperate to believe that it was nothing but a coincidence. A dragon had tumbled down from the mountain and mistaken a village for a meal; there was nothing more to it.

“No one can say. We haven't even known for the better part of an hour. We received word this morning, from the settlements overlooking the town of Hawlthan. It's
gone
, Rowan. An entire town, gone...” Katja said, teeth worrying her lower lip. “Come. I must speak with mother and uncle. Surely they'll have formed some manner of plan.”

The faint din of Isin caught up to me, city awakening to grim news bellowed through the streets, and I let Katja take my arm and lead me away from the stables. I hadn't been thinking clearly. I never would've been able to catch up with Claire, Kouris, and Akela, let alone help.

And, I thought dully, what would I be able to do with any ash the dragon created, other than watch it slip through my fingers?

Katja guided me to the throne room. Everyone in the castle seemed to have the same idea; we only got through the chamber by virtue of Katja being who she was. People recognised her instantly, faces lighting up as though she had all the answers to all their problems.

“With all due respect, Your Majesties, we have long-since said that dragons may find their way to Kastelir—” a man in long, green robes tried, only to be cut off by King Atthis.

“And you have long-since claimed that the pane would rebel and the phoenixes would rise once again,” King Atthis snapped from atop the stairs. “
Next
.”

The King and Queen sat in their thrones, silence pooling in the empty seats between them.

A soldier stepped forward, a young man with two yellow stripes on one shoulder, and said, “Your Highnesses, if I might take our forces along the perimeter, I could...”

“You could
what
?” Queen Kidira asked when the soldier faltered for half a second.

“I-I could buy Isin time, if nothing else,” he said, trying to stare at Queen Kidira and King Atthis at the same time, all the while avoiding eye contact.

“You would not buy Isin
seconds
,” King Atthis said, evoking a flutter of agreement from the scholars and politicians gathered around him. “We do not need to send our soldiers out merely to die. Hawlthan had forces of its own, and reports say it was but ash within minutes. I will not have you waste time with heroics while the people of Isin work themselves into a panic. Half are still drunk from the conclusion of the Phoenix Festival, and most haven't slept. Send your soldiers out into the streets to ensure that the citizens do not tear Isin to the ground before the dragon has the chance to.”

“I...” the soldier tried once more, silenced when neither King Atthis nor Queen Kidira blinked. Drawing in a breath, he snapped a salute, leaving with no words left inside him.

“No good,” Katja mumbled under her breath, realising that she wasn't going to get to speak to the King and Queen any time soon, and certainly not in private.

I slipped out of the chamber with Katja, head spinning, ringing. Claire was out there, Kouris and Akela too, and I was barely certain of how I was managing to put one foot in front of the other. People stopped Katja, eager for her advice, and I heard, as if underwater, her tell them that she really was very sorry, but she didn't know more than anyone else; that their best bet was to seek an audience with the King and Queen.

She stopped once, placed a hand on my shoulder and told me to wait where I was, able to tell how dizzy I'd become; how disorientating the world around me insisted on being. I leant against the wall, eyes closed, trying to reach out to Claire, to rip back the tendrils of death that rushed towards her, but couldn't begin to tell whether what remained of Hawlthan was to the east or west. In that moment, as Katja rummaged around behind a closed door, I felt as utterly powerless as anyone else would.

The thud of the door swinging shut behind Katja brought me back to my senses. I didn't know how long she'd been in there, but it was long enough to find what she'd been looking for. She returned with a hefty black cloaked draped over her arm, and I couldn't say why.

“This is it. This is our best chance, Rowan,” she said, and when I opened my mouth to ask what she meant, she brought a finger to her lips, shushing me.

We worked our way lower into the castle, to parts I'd yet to explore. We weren't surrounded by servants and kitchens and dormitories; the ceilings became low, the corridors narrow, walls lined with torches that burnt away, despite the emptiness. Guards had been stationed there, before news of the dragon reached Isin.

Katja took one of the torches, brandishing it against the darkness, looking around skittishly as she moved towards her destination. She turned each time she mistook one of my footsteps for someone following us, and the fire reflecting in her eyes made it all too easy to mistake her nerves for excitement.

“Where are we going, Katja?” I asked, but she silenced me again. The distraction of the dragon was the only thing stopping me from digging my heels into the bare stone beneath and never moving again, but even without my thoughts twisting through the corridors and escaping the castle, rising up, up like smoke, my surroundings worked their way under my skin.

I didn't like it, not one bit. There was something waiting for us at the end of the corridor, something that was reaching out to me, slipping in between the light from the torches and the darkness, beckoning, almost—

“
No
,” I breathed more than said. I managed to stop, and Katja had no choice but to do the same. “The crypt. You're taking me to the crypt.”

Feigning ignorance wasn't going to help. The inexplicable pull of the door made me want to press my palms flat against the dark stone walls, to hook my fingers around the steel rings that held the torches in place.

I wanted to make myself immoveable, deaf to what Katja would ask of me.

“We need to turn back,” I said slowly, lest I startle the flames around us. “This isn't a good idea.”

“Rowan—” she protested, kneeling down to place her torch on the floor. I swallowed the lump in my throat, and she cupped my face with both hands, smiling weakly. “Rowan, dear. I know it's a lot to ask of you. I know it's more than I should ever ask of any one person, but
please
. I'm begging you. Think of the good you'll do. Sir Ightham, Kouris and the Commander are riding across the country at this very moment, and all for the good of Kastelir. To protect the Kingdom. I'm not saying that you ought to have gone with them—perish the thought! They are soldiers and we are not. We only ought to do what we can. This is your duty to Kastelir, Rowan.”

She looked at me, wide eyes barely blinking, and I was already defenceless. I'd wanted this. I'd wanted to bring King Jonas back. I'd begged Kouris and Claire to let me try, yet I was desperate to turn my back on the one person who'd been fighting for necromancers, for people like me, for longer than anyone had known what I was.

“I can't. Your mother, King Atthis, they'd...”

“They
need
him back, Rowan. Surely you've seen the mess Kastelir has already made of itself, the disaster we're on the cusp of. Should the Agadians get their way...” She drew in a slow breath, jaw tightening as she shook her head. “You won't simply be bringing back one man. Nor will you merely be returning my uncle, or indeed a King; you will be bringing together a country intent on tearing itself to shreds.”

My heart raced faster than my thoughts, powers swirling inside of me like a torch in the dark. After all I'd witnessed, after all Akela had told me of Kastelir, I was finally in a position to fix things. Katja wasn't merely pleading her case to
me
, begging because I was her friend and willing to help where I could, when I could; I was the only one who could bring Jonas back, who could stop Kastelir becoming what Akela feared it would.

And I was leaving.

Once the dragon was slain and Claire and Kouris were back, we were leaving.

“Okay,” I said in a voice stronger than my own. “But not here, and not now.”

“The entire castle is busy, it's our best chance—” Katja blurted out, not realising that I'd agreed, straight away. Her hands trembled and she stepped back, heel knocking the handle of the torch and sending it rolling in a semi-circle across the floor. The shadows shifted, making her eyes darker, and a shaky breath rushed out of her as she whispered, “Thank you. Oh, Rowan,
thank you
.”

Without taking her eyes off me, she crouched and felt around for the torch handle, retrieving it and taking slow steps back towards the crypt door. Something heavy lodged itself within us and between us, and I didn't question her. I didn't ask her why she was pushing the crypt's tombstone of a door open, in spite of what I'd just said.

No torches were lit within, and Katja held hers up high, making the cave of a room all the deeper for the flickering shadows that painted it. It was a crypt meant for Kings and Queens alone, and only so much room had been set aside for it; being there with Katja, next to King Jonas' temporary resting place, made the prospect of death seem very small indeed.

“We'll—we'll take uncle now, back to my apartment in the city,” Katja said, staring down at the sarcophagus' stone lid.
Take
him
, she said; not
steal
his corpse
. “We can – you can – do what needs to be done there.”

I said nothing, lest I give myself the chance to change my mind. Brow furrowed, Katja stared down at the lid of the sarcophagus, reassuring herself that she could do this, and hooked her fingers around the edges of the lid. I did the same, and on the count of three, we both put all our strength into lifting it. I focused not on helping the daughter of a Queen steal the body of a King while a dragon plagued the country, but on the stone biting into my fingers, catching and tearing skin that healed straight over. I almost offered to heal Katja's fingertips, until I realised that her hands were doing the same.

Sweat clung to my forehead, but we moved the lid enough to see the body within and hoist it out. The corpse didn't unsettle me as I'd expected it to. When I looked down at King Jonas' body, my mind didn't fixate on his sunken face, on how still and empty he was; I saw ways to fix him, to drive out the force that would see him reduced to bones, then dust.

Leaning over, I reached for his shoulder, jumping back when Katja yelped, “Rowan! What are you doing?”

“I'm moving him,” I said slowly, making sure I'd understood the question, “We need to get him to your apartment, Katja.”

“Not like that!”

She bundled her hands into fists at her sides and I took a step back, certain I must've been missing something.

“Then how are we going to get him out of here?”

“Your powers! Goodness, Rowan, use your
powers
, wouldn't you?”

I blinked, staring at her as blankly as King Jonas stared at the backs of his eyelids. Katja held her arms out in an expectant half-shrug, lips slowly parting when she realised I had no idea what she was asking of me.

“You don't know? You
don't
know, do you?” Katja said, and she would've laughed, were we anywhere else. “Goodness, I don't have time for this, I don't have time to teach you, I... it's a corpse, Rowan. It's a corpse and you're a necromancer. Think of yourself as a puppeteer. It's on strings, invisible strings, that only you can pull.”

She ran her fingers through her hair, twisting a handful of it in a fist atop her head. Katja might not have had time to teach me, but I didn't have time to let her down, either. Ignoring how absurd it sounded, I moved back to the King's body and told myself that moving a corpse without touching it was no less ridiculous than raising the dead with a thought.

I stared down at him, trying to picture what would happen if I lured death towards myself without giving it the chance to be torn from the frame it had chosen. I focused so hard that my temples ached and my eyes burnt, willing Jonas' corpse to rise, to clamber over the edge of the sarcophagus.

The corpse's fingers twitched and the shock almost sent me ricocheting into an early grave.

Katja held her breath, fingers pressed to her lips, and I tried it again, mind screaming
move, move, come to me, come to me.
The sight of King Jonas' limbs moving independently of one another was worse than the sight of his corpse, worse than he must've looked with his face paling, blood rushing from his wounds. He moved like a spider with too many legs, too many joints, and I found myself stepping back as I lured him towards me.

Each movement he made, every step he took, tore my nerves, sending jolts through my spine and wrists, making me uncertain of how to stand. Wanting it to stop, I thrust out an arm. The corpse did the same, and my vision cleared as I stared at it, slowly realising that the way he'd reached out hadn't cost me anything at all. My body hurt no more for that movement, and I stepped to the side, watching as the corpse mirrored me.