Redheart (Leland Dragon Series) (27 page)

Chapter Forty-Eight

Jastin Armitage crouched on the orange stone in the dank chamber, fists so tight his fingernails cut his palms. His teeth were sore from clenching.

The Red should have left her dead. She would have been better off as a memory than the freakish beast she had become. To Jastin, she would always be that stubborn, innocent girl who’d closed her eyes to the world forever. That stinking, massive thing belched from the earth was not Riza, and never would be. That thing was a monster, and Riza could never be a monster.

“You are puddling on my wistful crystal.” Layce Phelcher’s soft voice stirred Jastin from his heartache. “Are you going to tell me it’s raining in Leland Province?”

Jastin stood, his bones resisting. Rain made his joints creak, and cold rain made them downright crabby. He didn’t like to feel his age, but today, he felt older than ever. “It’s raining in Leland Province.” He stared flatly at Layce. “It’s raining buckets. Doesn’t look like it’ll be stopping anytime soon.”

To his surprise, she smiled. “Venur Riddess won’t like that news.”

“I had nothing to do with it.”

Layce opened her palms. “Well, technically you did. We all have our parts to play in order to see the ending as it was meant to be.” She reached out and guided Jastin off the stone. “You did go back there with the dragon’s pouch. Terribly romantic, the way I see it, but your brother-in-law won’t think so.”

Jastin pulled his arm from her grasp. “Your job was to get me from here to there and back, not lecture me constantly in-between.”

“And your job was to start a war, not a thunderstorm.”

“A thunderstorm? In Leland Province?” A new voice rang into the empty room.

Jastin straightened his shoulders as he faced the looming man in the doorway. “I’m flattered your batty wizard thinks I can control the heavens and their rain,” said Jastin. “But I’m only a soldier, Vorham.”

“Yes. With unfortunate timing.” Vorham Riddess moved away into Layce’s bedroom and Jastin followed. Light from a torch chandelier bathed Vorham’s dark brown face and glittered his wiry black hair. Again Jastin saw the same, deep-set brown eyes of his beloved wife. But in Vorham’s broad face, those eyes seemed too small and confined. Vorham’s height, which was a full two inches taller than Jastin’s, only furthered the man’s menacing image. Most of Esra Province was afraid of Jastin’s brother-in-law. Not Jastin.

“Well?” Vorham pressed his palms together.

“Things were unsettled when I left. There were a few surprises.” Jastin slipped his drenched vest from his bare back and it dropped. Layce clucked and scooped the thing off her rug. “Blackclaw was in prison, and the Red was poised to take over.”

Vorham’s face burned red beneath his brown skin, turning it the color of a ripe beet. “So it’s true.”

“But it’s not the end of it.”

Vorham pressed toward Jastin. “Jastin. You’ve never failed me as a soldier. But.” His arm slithered over Jastin’s shoulders. “You were surprised, which surprises
me
. I don’t like it.”

“The Red is not a threat. He’ll be easy to take down.”

“It’s not the leader, my brother. Leaders come and go. Black, Red, strong, weak, human, dragon.” He urged Jastin forward, speaking as he guided him into the hall. “What I’ve lost is the moment. I’ll never get that back.”

He paused. “My men are waiting for the call to battle. Dragons are supposed to be threatening Leland Province, which is supposed to be weak and starving, and desperate for my help.”

He pressed Jastin to the wall. His breath smelled of sour wine. “But Leland has been reprieved! There’s a new dragon leader! There’s no more drought! No war!”

Jastin stood firm against his brother-in-law’s rant, accustomed to it. Bored by it. Powerless men shout to affirm their manhood. Despite being the richest Venur in Esra Province, Vorham Riddess was a weakling, and always would be.

“The Red will fail,” said Jastin. “He’s feeble and sentimental. You haven’t lost your chance.” He yanked a swatch of purple silk from Vorham’s flamboyant tunic, and dried his face. “Rain or no rain, Leland suffers.”

Vorham narrowed his eyes. “Rain or no rain, you are slipping. If I can’t use you to help me get Leland and its mountains, I’ll do it without you.”

Jastin snarled. In an instant, he’d wrapped the soft silk around Vorham’s throat, squeezing. “Don’t insult me, Vorham. I lost more than you did today, and not because I’m slipping, but because you are. You couldn’t see past your own greed.”

The man clutched at the fabric, his tiny eyes popping.

“I’ve spent weeks hungry and filthy, doing the work you couldn’t do yourself. You sat back and waited for Leland to be delivered to you on a platter. It was your plan that failed. Not mine.”

Vorham wheezed.

“Say it,” said Jastin. “Your plan failed.”

Vorham opened his mouth, but he only rasped.

Jastin loosened the grip of the fabric, just a little. “Say it!”

“My plan failed,” Vorham managed to croak.

“You might rethink your decision to strangle Venur Riddess just now.” A lilting, familiar sort of voice came over the sound of scraping claws as heavy feet drew near. Jastin turned his head to find the glittering face of Fane Whitetail. The White offered a chilling smile.

Jastin looked back at Vorham. His eyes were fluttering and he weakly pounded a fist against Jastin’s shoulder. Jastin released the fabric from the man’s throat.

Vorham gasped and clutched the wall. “You son of a—”

“What is that thing doing here?” Jastin threw the satin sash at Vorham’s feet.

“Are you referring to me?” asked Whitetail, pressing his paw to his chest. “This thing that had the situation neatly under control until you let a woman sidetrack you from the plan?”

Jastin pounded his finger into Vorham’s chest. “You think I needed a bodyguard? A backup? When were you going to tell me?”

The White cleared his throat. Vorham looked at the dragon, then back at Jastin. He straightened his back, tugged his tunic into place, and briefly rubbed his throat where it was beginning to welt. Then he fixed his beady eyes on Jastin’s face. “He was no bodyguard. He was a babysitter.”

Jastin flared. If he’d had his sword, he might have slashed his brother-in-law then and there. But he could only seethe, fists clenching and unclenching.

“It’s no fresh news that you’re not the soldier you once were, Jastin,” said Whitetail. “Do not take it so personally.”

“Don’t you tell me how to think,” Jastin snarled through clenched teeth.

“Let me remind you that the Red causing this trouble is the very Red you were responsible for all those years ago,” said Whitetail. “The Red we thought was dead.”

Vorham grunted as he bent to retrieve his sash. His thick belly made his fingers miss the first time, and he struggled to try again. He caught it. “Using Whitetail was a judgment call,” Vorham said. He straightened and neatly replaced the sash across his tunic. “My mission was too important to risk. Too important.” Vorham’s face loomed closer, his chubby mouth curling in anger. ‘Timing, do you see? Timing.” He turned on his heel and marched away. “I should put him down, as a benevolent master does for an ailing dog.”

“A bit extreme,” replied the White, who bowed his head so low his muzzle scraped the floor. “If you will allow to me to say, honorable Venur.”

Vorham paused. He paced around Whitetail. “A woman, of all things. I couldn’t have planned for that. How could I have planned for that?”

“You did more than any other human could have managed. All is not lost. The opportunity will come again.” The White strode off toward the feast hall and Vorham followed, stomping and frothing at the mouth.

Jastin watched them go, his anger turning cold and stiff in the pit of his stomach. “This is far from over,” he said.

He became aware of Layce standing near his elbow. “Far from over,” she echoed. Then she turned her blue eyes to his face. “You left behind many things. Your weapon. Your horse.”

“I’ll go back.”

“Will you go back for the woman?”

Something inside him twisted. Grief nearly overpowered him, but he fought. He reached for his anger and held tightly to that, instead. It strengthened him. Fueled him. “No,” he said, and walked away. “She’s dead.”

Chapter Forty-Nine

Kallon awoke to the dark, unnerving silence of his sleeping chamber. Six nights at Mount Gore Manor, and still he missed the drone of crickets and chitterbugs, the lullaby of wind and whispering tree limbs that had eased him into unbroken sleep most nights he spent alone in his now-distant cave.

Alone. For the sixth night on the mountain, Kallon’s heart fluttered. Could this be the moment he’d been dreading to wake up to since Riza’s transformation? Was this the night he’d find her human and untouchable again, the spell broken?

He rolled over and reached a paw in the darkness. There she was beside him, soft and warm and loving him.

There was a soft call. “Kallon.”

He squinted at Riza. Her ruby lids were closed, her snout contentedly purring. He couldn’t resist a gentle stroke against her temple. She stirred, blinked open one eye, and gave a sleepy smile. “Still restless?”

He nodded, but it wasn’t Riza making him restless, except in that way she’d been doing since the first time he laid eyes on her changed, crimson face. Perhaps even before that.

“Kallon,” came the call again. Not an audible voice, but a pull inside him that made him look toward the door. Someone was waving a lantern or a torch in the hallway. Golden light chased shadows past the door and up the stone walls.

“Go back to sleep,” he said gently to her, and hefted to his feet.

She rolled her head onto a mound of velvet fabric and closed her eyes.

He eased past her, trying to be as soundless as possible. He lifted his claws so as to not clatter them against the floor. He peered through the door and out into the hall.

There was no lantern after all, just a glittering spray of yellow brightness that drew away, leading him down the corridor. Suddenly he knew that light. He almost didn’t follow.

In the time that he’d come to call Mount Gore Manor his home again, he’d struggled to feel as though he belonged here. The vast rooms and carved hallways glittered with artisan scrollwork across ceilings and floors. Fat arteries of marble pulsed through iridescent granite walls, and the entire place, all twenty rooms worth, felt cavernous and regal. His old home should have felt smaller compared to his memories as a fledgling, but it was the opposite. The manor was overwhelming. He would never truly fill it.

Watching the golden radiance bathe the hallway and cast light into even the most remote cracks and corners only emphasized the foreign feel of the place. Still, he couldn’t help but step out, chin lifting and snout working. “Where are we going?” he asked.

“Forward,” said the voice that belonged to the light.

Kallon followed.

The brightness shifted around a corner, and for a moment, Kallon was swallowed by darkness. He surged forward, fighting a panic that surprised him. Reaching the light again, he stuck his snout into the warmth and settled into a loping rhythm. He glanced over his shoulder and found nothing frightening. His reaction was foolish and embarrassing, but he stuck closer to his guide, anyway.

They finally came to a room that Kallon had never seen the inside of, even as a youth. He paused at the double door. A chain had been looped through the massive iron handles, but dangled without a clasp. “This room is restricted,” he said. “Did you unlock it?”

“No,” said the voice that was now clearly inside the room, muffled through the bulky doors.

Kallon pulled open the right door, but the left swung open as well. Inside the room three torches lined the wall, all of them burning. Wooden boxes were stacked atop each other and wedged end-to-end, forming low walls that filled the room like a hedge maze. Dust was a gray carpet over everything, the boxes, the torch sconces, the floor. In the center of the room, watching Kallon with a tipped head, lounged the young Gold.

Despite the low torchlight, the Gold’s scales managed to sparkle as though in the noonday sun. “Who let you in here?” Kallon asked.

The Gold pointed his nose toward a corner. Claws had scuffled through the dust, leaving scratch marks on the floor. A box had been hastily tossed to the top of a stack, knocked sideways and left unlatched. Scrolls were spilled out in a puddle of parchments, some dropped to the floor.

Kallon scowled. He scooped up a parchment. “Whoever is responsible for this will have to be dealt with. This room is locked for a reason. We can’t have just anyone…”

Kallon stopped. His eyes fell onto the words of the scroll. “Any citizen of Leland Province who feels the chosen leadership is failing in its responsibilities to the greater whole may challenge any council seat to be replaced,” Kallon quietly read aloud. He looked to the Gold. “This is the scroll concerning the Ritual of Challenge.”

The Gold nodded. “There has been some confusion in the aftermath.”

Kallon narrowed one eye. He replaced the scroll into the wooden container, righting the box and closing the lid. “Understandable. The spellcatch needs to be replaced, though, and the room sealed again.”

“Does it?”

“Of course.” Kallon gesture his paw around the room. “These scrolls are our laws, our stories. Our heritage.”

“These scrolls are forgotten,” said the Gold. He crossed one front paw over the other.

Kallon felt a brush against his shoulder and glanced over to find Riza, sleepy-eyed and smiling. He hadn’t even heard her approach. He looked at the Gold, looked again at Riza. He opened his mouth to introduce.

“Hello, Riza,” said the Gold.

“Hello again,” she said, and rested her head against Kallon’s neck, still smiling.

The Gold gazed at her, tipping his head. He smiled, and as the corners of his eyes crinkled, even the torches couldn’t compete with the shine from his face. Kallon wouldn’t have thought the dragon could
get
any brighter.

“As I was saying,” Kallon said, and shifted to move back, “This room is too important to leave unprotected.”

“Why?” Riza asked. She crossed over to a stack of boxes and cut a claw through the film of dust.

“You wouldn’t understand.”

“Why not?”

“You are new to this place.”

“So are you.”

Kallon reached a paw to stop her from trying to open the box’s latch. “Riza. All of Leland history from the time we first learned to write is contained in this room.”

She paused. “All your history? Everything?”

“As much as our scribes could record over the years. History annals, journals. Letters of transmit between province leaders.”

“Love letters?”

Kallon smiled. “I hardly think the scribes would consider something like that important enough to keep for all time.”

Now Riza smiled. “Love can direct the decisions of a great leader as much as anything else.” She gazed at him through half-lids, a sultry curl of smoke escaping from her nostrils.

Kallon was so overcome with a sudden tremor that he felt it at the base of his tail. How did she manage to make his feelings sneak up on him like that?

She eased past him to take in the full sight of the stacks. “It’s so overwhelming. I can hardly think where to begin.”

Kallon stared. “Begin what?”

She blew away the dust from a silver placard trying to shine beneath the latch of a chest-shaped box. “Ancient Skies. I wonder what that means.” She wedged her claw under the edge of the lid. “I don’t see a keyhole, how does it open?”

“It’s a spellcatch. You need two separate dragons to release it. It prevents just anyone from…”

She carried the chest to the Gold, who obligingly pressed his thumb to the lid. Riza mimicked him, and the lid popped open. “Oh! How clever,” she said. She reached inside.

“Riza!” Kallon moved so quickly he rattled a stack of crates. “That parchment is delicate. You’ll be violating bylaws just by touching it.”

“I’ll be careful.”

“I can’t let you.”

“Yes, you can.” She settled to the floor, curled her crimson tail against her haunches, and began to read.

Kallon was helpless. He shook his head. But her touch was gentle as she held the paper, and it didn’t seem in any danger of disintegrating. He watched her eyes move across the words. Her mouth curved up into a tiny smile of awe. “Look,” she said, and lifted her face toward the Gold. “You’re in here.”

The Gold bowed his head.

Riza’s eyes returned to the scroll. “I’m a part of this now. It’s my history, too.”

The Gold regarded Kallon. “And you now know more of that history than most dragons. Including Kallon.”

“What is that supposed to mean?” asked Kallon.

The Gold slowly stood. He stretched, arching his back and curling his tail in tightly against himself. “You have much reading to do, Kallon Redheart.”

“This is amazing,” Riza murmured, shaking her head. “I might not even believe it, except I’ve met him for myself.”

“Who?” Kallon leaned forward to look down over her shoulder.

She gazed up at him. “Of course we can’t risk the parchments with the general public, that would be foolish.”

“Exactly,” said Kallon. “So you do understand.”

“But I can’t be the only dragon to wonder who I really am. Now that I’m a part of your world, I need to know how I fit in. What do I believe? Why do I believe it?”

“I can help you understand that.” Kallon moved to her and rested a paw on her shoulder.

“You could try, but even you cannot answer all of my questions.” She looked at the Gold for several minutes. He was still silent, and watching their conversation with that small, patient smile. Then she gazed around the room again. “Just think of the stories waiting in all of these boxes. Just think of the answers. The lessons. Who decided it was best to keep them behind locked doors? And why?”

He followed her gaze around the room. In the back of his mind, his own voice echoed with the wisp of a memory. “Why, Father?” he’d asked, standing outside the bulky doors, his claw poking curiously into a massive lock. “Why are they secret?”

“Not secret, my son,” his father had said, “but important. Too important to risk damage and decay.”

“Too important to risk damage and decay,” Kallon heard himself say. “My father told me that.”

“So your father decided to keep them locked away?” she asked.

Kallon shook his head. “No, I don’t think so. Perhaps his father. I remember being told that ‘as our history goes, so go our ideals. If our ideals are lost, then all is lost’.”

He felt the glittering eyes of the Gold. “These ideals are forgotten,” the dragon said. “As forgotten as the reasons they were even written down.”

“You know it’s true, Kallon,” said Riza. “Blackclaw wouldn’t have been able to affect this province as he did if the dragons had remembered what they’d been taught. Why they’d been taught it.”

“Yes.” In his heart, her words rang true. He’d been wrestling with that thought since he first knew Blackclaw was a traitor. He just hadn’t realized until she voiced it now.

“I wonder if the scribes stopped writing altogether whenever it was decided to store the parchments,” said Riza. “Eventually, we’ll have to fill in the gaps.”

“How can we do that?”

Riza looked from the Gold, back to Kallon, and smiled. “Surely there are dragons who remember.”

“Yes,” Kallon said. “The council members would be a good start. But that doesn’t help us with the scrolls we have now.”

“Why can’t we copy them?

“Copy them?” asked Kallon. “Do you have any idea how long that would take?”

She rolled the parchment she’d been holding. She settled it into the chest. “Orman will help, and our own wizards.”

Kallon turned his eyes to column after column of written words, hidden away inside ancient boxes. “I do wish my father were in here somewhere.”

“Of course we’ll have to organize them, put them in order.” Riza stood. She set the closed chest on a short, carved box. “And we’ll make sure that every dragon can read and study them as they desire.”

“Listen to what you’re saying, Riza. All of Leland history copied and organized? Available to any dragon who wishes it?”

“Yes, Kallon. Listen to what I’m saying.”

He released a long breath. “It’s impossible. Years of work. Overwhelming.”

“Years of work, yes. Overwhelming, yes. Which is probably why no one took the trouble to do it already.”

“A library,” Kallon said, shaking his head, still unable to fully grasp, but knowing she was right. “Here at the manor.”

Riza smiled. “You can remind us all why we choose the way we choose, and why we believe the way we believe.”

He shook his head again, but he smiled, too. “Not me. The words themselves will do that.”

He then realized the room was dimmer, lit only by the feeble torches. He hadn’t even seen the Gold leave. There were footprints in the dust, though, and he regarded them for a time, before looking back to Riza. “We’ll need the council’s approval.”

Her smile widened and he saw a glimmer in the emerald of her eyes. “Let’s go ask.”