Daughter of Dragons

Chapter 10-1

Chapter 10

Lathwi was trapped in a bog of utter darkness, and so exhausted from her struggles to escape its hold on her that she could barely muster the strength to continue breathing. Let go, the voice of Oblivion urged. Let go and float away.

Too weak to resist that seductive tug, she began to slip the moorings which held her to the earth. As she did so, the darkness disappeared, and she found herself suspended above a room full of people. This didn’t strike her as unusual until she realized that one of those people was her own self. How soft she looked in that strange bed! And how damaged! There was more bandage to her than flesh.

“I’ve done all I can do,” she heard somebody say. “The rest is up to her.”

Somebody else started to cry.

Understanding flooded through her then: the choice was hers. She could either climb back into that body or leave it behind for good. It did not seem like much of a choice—-she had no desire to be that small and weak again. And while she felt a curious sort of attachment to one of the people in the room, the bond wasn’t strong enough to make her want to stay.

Lathwi!

The sound of her secret Name filled her with wonder and concern. And while she was powerless to respond to the Call, the desire to do so sealed her fate. She went streaking back to her battered body and into a deep, forgetful sleep.

G

Spangles of pain flared across the empty canvas of her awareness like fireflies on a moonless night. She tried to crush them beneath the heel of her Will, but they scattered unscathed, and dared her to try again. She hissed, venting her annoyance.

“Liselle, come quick!” a voice boomed then. “I think she’s waking up!”

She rolled her eyelids open to find a shadow haloed by dusty sunlight standing over her. She blinked back a blur of photosensitive tears, then scowled as Jamus’ golden features came into focus.

“Lathwi!” he shouted. “Dreamer be praised! Do you know who I am?”

She could have been blind and still recognized this fool by his penchant for asking stupid questions. And because her answer had to be obvious by now, she did not bother to voice it aloud.

“No more shout,” she told him instead. “I hear fine.”

Liselle came sweeping into the room then. She appeared thinner than Lathwi remembered; older, too. The lines which rayed from the corners of her eyes were fresh and deep. The arches which defined the boundaries of her mouth were slack.

“Lathwi,” this new Liselle said, in a voice that wavered between fear and relief and private pain. “How do you feel?”

Lathwi thought the question odd until she tried to sit up. Pain shot through her sides and into her extremities. A whirlpool started spinning round and round in her head. With a surprised hiss, she collapsed back onto her back.

“Don’t try to move,” Jamus told her then. “Whoever beat you up did a good job of it. You’ve got broken bones in your right wrist and lower left leg, at least a half-dozen cracked ribs, and an assortment of other fractures—the most notable one being in your skull. I must confess: I’m very impressed. A beating like that would’ve killed anyone else.”

“Do you remember what happened?” Liselle demanded then. “Who did this to you?”

“I be on way back from hunt,” she replied. “Broken-Nose and others push me into alley, then hit me with sticks.” She bared her teeth at that part of the memory. The scabs on her cheeks cracked beneath their bandages. “I fight back, but I too soft, too weak to make them stop.”

She closed her eyes then, galled by that fact, but found no solace in the dark.

“Too weak?” Jamus hooted. “Great Dreamer, woman, give yourself a little credit! Those men were mercenaries. And they had you outnumbered at least three to one. Yet despite those rather significant disadvantages, you survived—which is more than two of them can say. No warrior of any caste or race could hope to do better.”

“He’s right, Lathwi,” Liselle murmured. “You did well. And you were lucky.”

“I no like what you call luck,” Lathwi replied, and then rolled onto her hip in search of a more comfortable position. The sensation of soft hides sliding against her flesh pleased her at first, but then triggered a wave of alarm. She should not be able to feel the hides! Se jerked the skins aside and confirmed her suspicions. She was totally n***d save for the curiously hardened bandages which encased her arm and leg.

“Where my scales?” she demanded, ready to get up and go searching for them in spite of the pain that was now gnawing at her bones. Without them, she felt exposed to an extreme; and the multitude of yellowing bruises that mottled her body were an harsh reminder of just how soft she was.

“Your mail is in the loft along with the rest of your belongings,” Liselle said, stepping in to cover her up again. “We had to remove it in order to tend to your wounds.”

“Bring here,” Lathwi told her.

“Why?”

“I need go find a man with broken nose.”

“You’re in no condition to be chasing after professional killers,” the sorceress argued. “And you won’t be for a long time to come, either. So why don’t you do yourself a favour and forget about that man?”

Lathwi pointed to the bandages on her face. “These be Broken-Nose’s notion of fun. He give to me after he break my bones. He want cut my nose off, too. I not forget that man, Liselle. Not possible.”

“All right then, don’t forget him. Just don’t go after him right away. You need to stay here for a while.”

The hint of urgency in Liselle’s tone roused Lathwi’s suspicions. She studied the sorceress for a moment, trying to make sense of her haggard, red-rimmed eyes; and the thin, bloodless line of her mouth. But thinking hard made Lathwi’s head spin, and that in turn made her stomach uneasy. So she gave up on trying to solve the riddle of Liselle by herself.

“Why you care where I go or not go?”

“Pieter’s dead,” Liselle blurted then, and then choked on a sob.

The news startled Lathwi, but she was not devastated by it. All creatures died in time, even the long-lived dragons. Surely Liselle understood that.

“Pieter’s dead,” the sorceress repeated, as if prompted by the thought, “but he died no natural death. Somebody—” She groped for a less horrible description of his murder, but then gave up and spat out the brutal truth. “He was torn to pieces. His remains were strewn from one end of my courtyard to the other.”

“You think Broken-Nose do?” Lathwi asked.

“No,” Jamus replied, with none of his usual flippancy. “As far as we can tell, you and Pieter were attacked almost at the same time.”

“Then who?”

“The Rogue,” Liselle said, in a tone dripping with gall. Prompted by Lathwi’s puzzled frown, she went on. “This rogue is a sorcerer who’s declared war on the rest of the sorcerous world. I believe he murdered Pieter in an attempt to draw me out of my stronghold and so murder me, too.” A guilty sheen of tears glazed her eyes then. “He would have succeeded if I had not taken ryzec earlier in the day.”

Lathwi rumbled. This information was interesting in a mild sort of way, but she could not see how it pertained to her comings and goings.

“You think this Rogue try to kill me, too? That why you want me to stay?”

“I believe he’ll try to kill you no matter what you do,” Liselle replied. “The reason I want you to stay is—” She paused to choke back bile. This was so hard to admit aloud! “—I don’t think I can withstand him by myself. I need you, Lathwi. I need your strength and your power.”

“Strength?” Lathwi snorted, a disparaging sound. “Look at me—I be weak as old prey-beast. How I help you when no can help myself?”

“You’re not weak, just inexperienced,” Jamus told her. “A little bit of professional training would cure you of that in a hurry.”

“He’s right,” Liselle hastened to say. “And if you stay here with me, I’ll pay for all the training you can stomach.”

Lathwi examined her priorities. Broken-Nose was one of them. But while she still ached to hunt him down and eat his liver, she could see where it might be smarter to first learn where his soft spots were. And a smart dragon took advantage of the opportunities which fortune cast in her path. She was smart; therefore, she would stay and take this training. But before she said so, she wanted to see how many other promises she could wrangle out of Liselle.

“If I stay, you still teach me sorcery?” she asked.

“Of course,” Liselle said.

“You teach me reading, too?”

“It would be my pleasure.”

Lathwi paused to contain her growing excitement, then gave voice to the hope which she had conceived on the ride back to Compara. “You teach me how to grow wings?”

“You’ve got more nerve than a one-eyed knife-dancer,” Jamus exclaimed, bristling with sudden indignation. “If it weren’t for this lady, you’d still be lying in that alleyway where we found you. And how do you repay her? By extorting pledges from her in her time of need! Fah, you’re no better than the thugs who beat you up.”

His accusations annoyed Lathwi. Why should he care if she tricked promises out of Liselle? The sorceress was no fool, she would not make any bargains that she did not wish to keep. And how dare he compare her to Broken-Nose and his pack of jackals? Those cowards would have cut Liselle’s nose off to get what they wanted from her.

“Don’t be so quick to condemn her,” Liselle chided him. “I’m asking a great deal of her, perhaps more than she knows. It’s only fair that she asks things of me in return.”

Then she swivelled her gaze back to Lathwi. “There is a way by which you might grow wings, but you’ll have to become more adept at sorcery before I’ll consent to teach it to you. Is that acceptable?”

“Yessss,” Lathwi replied. She would’ve agreed to almost anything so long as it contained the promise of dragon wings.

“Then you’ll stay?”

“For now.”

Relief washed over Liselle’s face, but it brought her no joy. Her expression remained flat and grey.

“So be it,” she said, and then pulled Lathwi’s covers up again. “Now get some sleep. I’ll bring you something to eat later.”

Lathwi closed her eyes. A moment later, Liselle and Jamus shuffled into the hallway and began to talk in heated whispers.

“You can’t trust her to keep her word,” Jamus hissed. “She’s a barbarian, her sense of honour is skewed. She could leave you in the lurch on a whim. But there are others who would help if you’d let them, those who held Pieter dear and who would, if given half a chance, hold you dear as well.”

“Jamus,” Liselle fired back, “who made the arrangements for Pieter’s burial?”

“I did,” he replied, “but what—”

“And who ordered a squad of the governor’s men to patrol the boneyards in hopes of uncovering my enemy’s hide-out?”

“I did. But—”

“And who has soldiers combing the slums of Compara for a curra-chewing sorceress who might very well be dead already?”

“Me—”

“And still you claim that I’m not letting you help. How much more can you expect to do?”

“For starters, you could let me move you into a place of safety,” he replied.

“I’ve told you a hundred times already: there is no safe place for me outside of this house.”

“Then let me station a guard in the house.”

“No, thanks. You’ve already got one man posted outside. I don’t need anyone else watching me.”

Jamus licked his lip, a gesture of surprise and newfound respect. He hadn’t mentioned that guard to her. “Maybe he’s not there to watch you. Maybe he’s there to watch Lathwi.”

“Quit your harping on her,” Liselle snapped then. “Like it or not, I need her here and she’s staying—”

“Only because you bribed her,” he jeered, his own temper rising alongside of hers.

“At least she’s forthright about her motivations. I’m not so sure I can say the same about you. How am I to repay you for your assistance? By inviting you into my bed?”

For a long moment, an icy silence ruled them both. Then Jamus strained a breath of air through his clenched teeth and said, “From what you’ve told me, milady, the man who murdered your nephew is plotting some sort of war against the citizens of this city. It’s my sworn duty to prevent such an ill from happening. And since you’re my only link to this sorcerer at the moment, I mean to protect you as best as I can. But know this, Liselle, and believe it: I expect nothing in return but your cooperation.

“Now, if you’ll excuse me, I must go.”

Angry footfalls stormed down the hallway then. A moment later, a pair of slippered feet went sulking off in the other direction. Sure that there was nothing more for her to hear, Lathwi allowed herself to fall asleep.