The Hearts of Dragons (26 page)

A year ago, Iren
Saitosan had trained under Rondel. They’d spent four months practicing
together. In all that time, Iren had only once landed a blow on her.

Those experiences
flooded Iren’s mind as he stared across the distance between him and Rondel.
Back then, not only had Rondel held back on her attacks, but she’d also been
unarmed. Now she had her Liryometa. More important, their fight today was no
sparring contest. Only one of them would walk away.

The pair circled each
other. Iren couldn’t help but wonder what the old hag was thinking. She’d
trained him in both magic and swordsmanship. She’d saved his life more than
once. All the while, she had known this day would come. Did she feel any sorrow?
Any fear? Any doubt?

If so, she hid them
well. Rondel’s face looked as intense as during any other battle Iren had seen
her fight.

Despite her grim
expression, though, Rondel didn’t attack. She watched Iren and mirrored his
movements as he slowly stepped in a long circle.

Melwar had warned Iren
about that tactic. “Rondel will not make the first strike unless she sees a
sign of weakness,” the Maantec lord had told him yesterday after Hana, scouting
along the Aokigaharan border, saw the old woman enter Shikari. “She depends on
Lightning Sight to give her an edge. She will combine it with her high speed to
react to your movements and get inside your guard before you can counter.”

Iren knew Melwar was
right. Last year, Rondel had used the same strategy against Amroth. The Lodian
king had countered by using magic without moving, but in the end, Rondel had
still won.

Only one living person
had defeated Rondel: Hana. Yet Melwar had insisted that Iren—not Hana—fight Rondel.
At first Iren had thought Melwar made that decision to give him a chance for
revenge, but now he realized that wasn’t the case. Hana must have seen both
Rondel and Minawë on her scouting mission. If Hana fought Rondel, then Iren
would have had to fight Minawë. Even if she was Rondel’s daughter, Iren
couldn’t bring himself to attack her.

Iren wondered whether
Minawë or Hana would win their fight. He’d gone three-quarters of the way
around the circle, so his back was to them. Their battle sounded more exciting
than his and Rondel’s. The area shook every few seconds as plants and rocks
clashed.

A particularly nasty
explosion sent dust and shrapnel flying past Iren. Rondel ducked and shielded
her eyes from the storm.

Iren saw his
opportunity. He used magic to accelerate himself and raced toward Rondel, stabbing
the Muryozaki at her chest.

He thought he had
connected, but then Rondel’s body blurred and disappeared. With a curse, Iren
swiveled his head around to look for her. Now that he had moved, Rondel’s
strategy would begin.

A rush of air moving
toward him caught his attention. Iren leapt aside as the Liryometa thrust
through the space where his head had been not a second earlier. He swore again.
The strike proved what he had hoped might not be true. Rondel wasn’t holding
back. She intended to kill him, just as he intended to kill her.

Before Iren could think
of a counter, Rondel disappeared again. Unwilling to stand still and wait to be
attacked, Iren took off at random.

He ran flat out. As he
did, his eyes swept the battlefield in search of Rondel. The effort was futile.
Without Lightning Sight, he couldn’t track her rapid movements.

Rondel appeared in front
of him. Iren barely managed to slow down enough to avoid impaling himself on
her blade. He swung the Muryozaki in a horizontal arc, but Rondel blocked it.
The vibration of the clashing weapons rippled through Iren’s arms.

Flicking her wrist,
Rondel turned Iren’s katana and stabbed at his gut. He backpedaled, but he
couldn’t get away. Rondel’s dagger pierced him. A jolt of lightning went with
the blow and launched Iren backward.

When he skidded to a
stop, he couldn’t move. Iren knew what Rondel had done. She had used a similar
technique last year to paralyze him, though she hadn’t stabbed him that time.
The attack had ended that match. Had Rondel wanted to kill him back then, she
would have had plenty of time to do so.

Unfortunately for Rondel,
Iren had improved since that training match. He had used Divinion’s magic to
heal himself while he flew through the air. Before Rondel could reach him to
deliver the killing blow, Iren was back on his feet and uninjured.

Rather than rejoin the
fight, though, Iren took advantage of the distance between him and Rondel to
retreat. He didn’t intend to escape; he knew he couldn’t. He just needed a few
seconds to think.

Rondel wasn’t any faster
than he was. They should be fighting evenly, but they weren’t. Rondel was
dominating.

Her advantage came down
to Lightning Sight. With it, Rondel could track Iren no matter how quickly he
moved. By contrast, Iren could barely see the old hag.

But his eyes weren’t the
problem. They were capable of keeping up with her. The problem was Iren
himself. He couldn’t interpret what his eyes saw fast enough to judge which way
to block, let alone to counter.

Then like the igniting
of a flame on a moonless night, the answer shone in Iren’s thoughts. He kept on
running, but he forced himself to calm down. His breathing slowed. His muscles
relaxed even as they worked at full power. His mind went blank, and he settled
into the technique Melwar had forced him to master: No Mind.

The blurring of Iren’s
surroundings stopped. When his brain no longer had to worry about interpreting
what it saw, his eyes were free to convey every detail. Only his instinctual
mind could react to those details, but that was all he needed to win.

No longer in control of
his body, Iren watched as he spun around to face Rondel. She was mere feet
behind him, but he was ready for her attack.

She must not have
realized his new state, because she tried to run around him and stab him in the
back. Iren tracked her, and when she attacked, he blocked effortlessly.

The unexpected maneuver
caught Rondel unprepared. Iren saw his chance. He spun his blade off Rondel’s
and flicked it up.

The satisfying gush of
red from Rondel’s side told Iren the blow had connected. It wasn’t enough to
defeat her, but now Rondel would feel shaken. She had believed Iren couldn’t
keep up with her, but he’d proven her wrong.

Rondel’s grim expression
deepened into a frustrated scowl. She launched a blistering assault, her dagger
a flash of light as it danced. Iren blocked each strike as he waited for an
opening. It wouldn’t take long. He and Rondel had equal speeds, but Iren had
greater reserves of magic. Eventually Rondel would have to slow down or risk
her dragon overwhelming her. When that happened, she would die.

The hag’s face contorted
with panic, and Iren knew he would win. Rondel made her mistake. Her foot
caught on a stone. The momentary distraction halted her strikes and left her
vulnerable on her left side. Iren disarmed her and sent the Liryometa flying.

In his No Mind state,
Iren reacted at once to Rondel’s exposed form. His katana swept toward her
neck. The battle was over.

Inches away from
contact, the impossible happened. Rondel, still off-balance, ducked Iren’s
blow. The Muryozaki cut empty air.

The attack had left Iren
wide open. Rondel looked up at him with a cold smile. Her hands glowed blue.
She reached up and put both of them on Iren’s chest.

The shock ripped through
him as strongly as the pain from breaking his magical barrier. Iren screamed,
and the agony ripped him out of No Mind. He went limp. The Muryozaki fell to
the ground, and a moment later Iren collapsed as well. Smoke rose from his
body.

Rondel kicked away the
Muryozaki. She crouched in front of Iren, and he had an odd feeling of
nostalgia. The hag had done the same thing after defeating him last year in
Ziorsecth.

“You used No Mind,” she
said. “Melwar must have taught you that.”

Iren couldn’t answer, so
Rondel continued, “Do you think I’m that inexperienced? I know all about No
Mind, including its flaw. Doing away with conscious thought isn’t all Melwar
claims it to be. True, it will improve your reaction time, but without higher
thought, you can’t plan beyond the next move. You can’t analyze, so you misread
signals. You saw my panicked expression, so you assumed I panicked. Your
instinctual brain couldn’t fathom that I might fake such an expression. The
same is true of my stance. I didn’t trip on that rock, and I was never off-balance.
I made it look that way to trick you. I even let you disarm me. I planned it
all in advance, knowing No Mind would fall for it.”

Iren tried to move, to
speak, to spit at her, to do anything at all, but he couldn’t. He could hardly
breathe.

“I have to admit I’m
impressed,” Rondel prattled on. “You’ve improved a lot. I put all the magic I
could manage into that strike, and it still didn’t kill you. I’d hoped that it
would. It would have been cleaner.”

Her patronizing incensed
Iren. If Rondel wanted to kill him, she should shut up and get on with it.

Rondel seemed to read Iren’s
thoughts. “Well,” she said, “I guess I have to make a messy end of it.”

She retrieved her fallen
rondel and returned to Iren. Her diminutive frame towered over him. As the
blade descended, Iren promised himself he wouldn’t give her the satisfaction of
another scream.

Using the air current
surrounding him, Balear charged, moving faster than he ever had before. As he
neared the Fubuki, he leapt into the air. The wind carried him to twice the
Fubuki’s height. He crashed down and swung his sword at the monster’s head.

The Fubuki looked
startled for a second, but it recovered. It raised its hammer to block Balear’s
strike. The weapons clashed. Balear felt the hammer give.

His opponent must have felt
it too, because the monster stepped sideways and out of the path of Balear’s sword.
It then let its hammer drop, causing Balear to fall to the ground.

The spear end of the
Fubuki’s weapon whirled toward Balear, but the beast didn’t get a chance to
attack. As the Auryozaki struck the earth, it threw up a cloud of snow, dirt,
and rock that repelled the Ice Dragon Knight.

Sensing an opening,
Balear lunged. The Fubuki roared in frustration and retreated. As it did, it
created a wall of ice between it and Balear. The Auryozaki pierced the barrier
and splintered it into thousands of pieces. The resistance the wall provided,
though, slowed Balear’s attack enough for the Fubuki to get out of range.

Balear charged again,
but then he realized his predicament. He aborted his attack and leapt back as a
rain of ice shards from the destroyed wall pierced the spot where he’d been
standing. Other shards careened in midair and launched themselves at him,
controlled by the Fubuki’s magic. Balear was soon dodging for his life as
hundreds of frozen blades aimed for him.

Just as he was certain
the shards would find him, magic welled in him again. Balear threw his hand out
to one side and called up a small tornado around his body. The blades struck it
and bounced off, flung in every direction by the vortex.

The tornado took more
energy than Balear had expected. When it cleared, he sank to one knee. His
previous spells hadn’t felt draining on their own, but in total they had pushed
his body to its limits. He could use magic, but not to the degree that someone
of a magical race like the Maantecs could handle.

“Stand up!” a voice
roared. “Are you going to let him kill you? Keep fighting!”

Balear glanced around.
The Fubuki hadn’t spoken, and Balear couldn’t see anyone else.

“I’m not out there,” the
voice said. “I’m in you, and in your sword.”

Realization dawned.
“Ariok?”

The dragon’s presence
brushed against Balear’s mind. He recoiled, but Ariok said, “Wait! I want to
help. When I saw you training in the forest, I knew you were preparing for an
impossible task, yet you insisted on pursuing it. Your tenacity impressed me,
so I sent you some memories of past Sky Dragon Knights.”

“Then those weren’t
dreams,” Balear said. “They were real events.”

“That’s right,” Ariok
replied. “I knew that if you had those experiences, your body would know how to
release my magic even if your mind didn’t.”

“But it’s not enough,”
Balear said with a frown. “I can’t beat him, and if I can hear your voice, then
that means I’ve used too much magic. You might take over my body, like Feng did
to Amroth.”

“No,” Ariok said, “I
have no intention of raging like Feng. Some of us dragons have more honor than
that. Let me take over the battle. Become a dragon, and we’ll defeat this
monster together.”

Balear considered a
moment, but then he shook his head. “I can’t agree to that. I don’t know a lot
about magic or dragons, but I know enough. I can’t let you take control. I’ll
win this battle myself.”

As Balear spoke, the Ice
Dragon Knight attacked. Balear leapt back to avoid a hammer swing that would
have pulverized him. He tried to step forward and counter, but he fell to his
knees. Confused, he stood back up and attempted to take a step. His feet
refused to leave the ground. When he looked down, he saw the reason. Ice
encased his legs up to his knees.

Balear struggled, but he
couldn’t escape. The Fubuki waved its spear, and the ice spread to Balear’s
waist. It then extended out and trapped his arm so that he couldn’t swing the
Auryozaki. He swore. The monster had won.

“You never could have
killed me, human,” the Fubuki said as it approached. “When I fought you before,
I had to use almost all my magic to maintain the cold. In the winter, with my
magic free for combat, I could defeat even Hana.”

Balear’s jaw dropped at
the name. “How do you know Hana?”

“That traitor gave me
this Toryokiri,” the Fubuki snarled, holding up its hammer, “and then she tried
to kill me!”

“That can’t be true. Why
would Hana give you that weapon?”

The beast sprouted its
cruel smile. “You think she’s your friend,” it said. Its voice dripped with
mockery. “You think she helped you. But Hana serves Melwar, and he ordered her
to give me this Ice Dragon Hammer last winter. They wanted my help to wipe out
Lodia.”

Balear swooned. It
couldn’t be real. Hana . . . who and what was she? Balear had
trusted her. No, it was more than that. He’d loved her. Yet all the while,
she’d plotted Lodia’s destruction.

He wouldn’t believe it.
Hana wasn’t the one who had butchered everyone in Veliaf. The Fubuki was lying
about her.

It would suffer for
that!

“Ariok!” Balear called.
“You want control? Take it. Take it and kill this bastard!”

The Fubuki raised its
spear to pierce Balear’s chest, but a gust of wind threw the monster to the
ground. The wind pulled in tight around the ice that held Balear in place.
Then, with a wrenching screech, the ice exploded.

Balear screamed as Ariok
clawed into his mind. His body stretched in every direction, and the pain made
losing his arm seem like getting a splinter. His feet grew until they shredded
their boots. His fingers and toes lengthened into sickle-shaped claws. Blue
scales covered his skin as his body elongated into a serpentine shape. A pair
of great, bat-like wings sprouted from his back.

His face changed last of
all. His nose and mouth morphed into a square muzzle, and two long whiskers grew
out from his upper lip.

Ariok roared in triumph.
The dragon took flight, and as he did, he swept aside Balear’s consciousness.
The Lodian had no control over his body’s movements, but he still had his
senses. He could see the Fubuki far below him. He could feel the cold air
rushing over his wings.

And he could smell. Oh,
he could smell. It was as if he had been blind and had regained his sight. He
could smell the snow and the ice, and he could differentiate between the two.
He could smell the carcasses of the slain Fubuki, and he could smell the fear in
the one that remained.

The Ice Dragon Knight
fled. Balear could sense Ariok’s indignation. A human, a Maantec, or a Kodama
would have had the honor to stand and fight. The Fubuki, by contrast, raced for
Akaku Forest. It no doubt hoped for safety among the thick trees.

Ariok shrieked. His
voice shook the ground. The Fubuki stumbled, but it managed to keep going.

Flying low, Ariok passed
the Fubuki and landed in front of it. The Fubuki skidded to a halt. Its blood-red
eyes searched frantically for a way to escape.

The Sky Dragon didn’t
give them time to find one. Ariok waved his front leg, which still clutched the
Auryozaki. Balear heard a bizarre sucking noise, and then the Fubuki’s right
arm snapped up. The beast strained to move it, but Ariok somehow held it in
place.

The sucking sound grew
louder, and the Fubuki’s left arm snapped up too. Then its feet lifted off the
ground. It floated in midair.

Balear gasped in his
mind as he realized what the dragon had done. Ariok had pushed all the air away
from the spaces around the Fubuki’s wrists and ankles. The air wanted to return
to those voids, and the resulting force gripped the Fubuki’s limbs as securely
as the strongest chains.

The voids wrenched on
the Fubuki, and it howled in torment. Balear couldn’t forgive the monster for
what it had done, but all the same, he pitied it. He knew what would happen
next.

With an easy motion of
the Auryozaki, the Sky Dragon ordered the voids to separate. Balear wanted to
close his eyes, to block his ears, but he no longer had control of his body.
The Fubuki’s final scream as Ariok drew and quartered it would haunt Balear the
rest of his life.

“It’s done,” he managed
to say inside his mind when the Fubuki’s shout faded. “Now return me to my
body.”

Ariok’s face appeared in
his consciousness. “Return you to your body? Why would I do that?”

“Because you promised!
You said you wanted to help me!”

“And I did want to help
you, so you, stupid human, would free me.”

“You tricked me!” Balear
yelled. “You didn’t want to protect Lodia. You wanted to escape. You lying,
treacherous worm!”

Ariok’s smile gleamed
full of blade-like teeth. “So guess what happens now?” The dragon shifted his
gaze from the Fubuki’s tattered remnants to the village of Veliaf.

“No!” Balear cried, but
Ariok thrust aside the man’s mind as effortlessly as a spring breeze tosses a
leaf.

With a single wingbeat
the dragon was airborne. He surveyed the frozen village below him. Nothing
moved within it. It was likely everyone was dead, but perhaps a few remained
alive, clinging to life and hoping the ice would recede.

The dragon hovered above
Veliaf and pointed the Auryozaki down. Wind from behind him rushed into the
village square. There it condensed into a sphere the height of a man.

Terror gripped Balear.
He’d seen a spell like this before. He recalled the flash as Iren’s Dragoon
magic ignited and defeated Feng. It had been an amazing yet horrifying sight.

The air continued to
gather, and Balear could only watch. “Don’t,” he said. He repeated the word
over and over until his mental self was crying.

Ariok ignored him. The
Sky Dragon swung his Ryokaiten to release the magic binding the wind sphere
together. Freed of its constraints, the pressure released in a hideous blast.

In less than a second,
Veliaf disintegrated.

Balear wailed as the
frozen town’s shattered pieces settled over the countryside. “Why?” he moaned.
“Why, Ariok?”

“Because mortals
imprisoned us. I’ll teach them to mock us and play at being gods.”

The dragon faced south,
and Balear’s fear increased. Ariok had Balear’s memories, as well as those of
every knight who had ever bonded with him. He knew the locations of all the
cities in Lodia, and likely many outside the country as well.

“Which one should I
destroy next?” Ariok asked. “Ceere’s closest, but Terkou has more people. It
makes for a difficult decision.”

Balear had to stop this.
No one else could. There were no other Dragon Knights for hundreds of miles. He
had to subdue Ariok’s consciousness.

But he had no idea how.
Ariok’s mind had overwhelmed his own, and the dragon’s strength only grew as it
pulled more magic from the Auryozaki.

That gave Balear a
desperate idea. During the battle with Feng, Rondel had tried to defeat the
dragon by knocking the Fire Dragon Sword away from Feng’s body. Without the
connection to his Ryokaiten, the dragon couldn’t sustain a physical form.

Balear attacked Ariok’s
mind. He wormed his way into the part that controlled the dragon’s front leg.
“Throw away the sword!” he commanded. “I won’t let you destroy Lodia!”

Ariok’s mind was a
hammer, one stronger than the Fubuki’s. It smashed against Balear’s
consciousness, and he knew that if he blacked out, he would never wake up. He
would die, as Amroth had died.

Even so, he wouldn’t
give up. He’d sworn to protect Lodia. Amroth had trusted him to do it. Rondel
had trusted him to do it. And for the first time, he realized his father had
trusted him to do it too.

With the full strength
of his will, Balear took control of Ariok’s front claws. It was all he could
manage, but it was enough. With a mental scream, he forced them open. The
Auryozaki plummeted.

Ariok roared and shot
down in pursuit of his fallen Ryokaiten. At the same time, he threw his will at
Balear. The dragon picked up Balear’s mental form and threw him. Balear’s
vision failed, and his only sensation was that of falling into a black, endless
abyss.