Dragon Blood

Chapter 3

“And how’d a Moorfainian get inland?”

The man put another arm under the crook of the girl’s knees and lifted. She coughed and choked as he jostled her to the bed of a wooden cart. The woman flitted after them like a nervous bird.

“There,” said the man, placing the girl on the weathered planks. “You’re safe. Now, let’s try again. What’s your name?”

The girl stared into the cloudless sky for a long time. The man and the woman watched her, waiting. Finally, she closed her eyes in defeat.

“I don’t remember.”

When next she opened her eyes, she was on a lumpy pallet in a modest room. The peaked ceiling was crosshatched with rafters, making the space seem smaller than it was—though it wasn’t large to begin with. A cabinet crouched in one corner, sporting a washbowl full of blood-darkened water.

“How do you feel?” The man leaned into view to peer at her. Kind eyes sparkled out of his face. Those eyes reminded her of something. Someone.

“Here, don’t cry.” He dug in the pocket of his vest and pulled out a cloth to dab at her cheeks. “Wha’ hurts?”

“Everything,” she murmured.

“Aye, we saw the lightning strike as we were returning to town. We went to investigate—Pergran can’t afford a fire, not in this drought—and found you. Wha’ hurts most?”

Her throat tightened. “My heart.”

“Can you breathe?” he asked. His expression was concerned, open and warm. Who did he remind her of?

“Not my heart.” She raised an aching hand and laid it on her chest. Her dress was in tatters. A patch of rough, uneven skin met her touch. “My soul.”

“Hmpf. Talking of souls. You sure she’s not Moorfainian?” asked a sharp voice. The portly woman was also present, kneeling on a cushion by the door, mending holes in a blanket.

As the adults argued about Moorfainians, a sword caught the girl’s attention. It rested upright in its dirt-caked scabbard, propped against the wall. She reached for it with burnt and b****y fingers. As she strained sideways, she saw small, spade-shaped red leaves plastered over the lacerated flesh of her arms.

The man noticed her movement. “Tha’ yours, then?”

“Unnatural for a girl to have a weapon,” the woman declared.

“We thought the metal might’ve drawn the lightning—but there wasn’ a cloud in the sky when it struck,” said the man. “Can you tell us wha’ happened?”

A sob caused the girl’s torso to spasm, which in turn caused a fresh wave of pain to radiate through her. Her wounded heart and leaking eyes were remembering things her brain could not.

“I don’t know what happened,” she whispered.

“She speaks awful strange,” the woman observed, giving her husband a meaningful glare. “Foreign words.”

He ignored her. “Any detail. Your name?”

The girl glanced at the sword, and something surfaced from the depths of her damaged mind: “Soulstar . . . Keriya Soulstar.”

“I’m Caimos Cairi, and this is my wife, Seema. So, Kayah,” he said, mangling her name with his accent, “where’s your home?”

Keriya couldn’t remember anything before she’d been born from light and agony. “Where am I now?”

“Pergran,” said Seema.

“Maybe if I saw it?” Keriya suggested weakly. To appease Seema, she dredged up words from the old language. Interesting that she remembered how to speak, but knew nothing of the past few months—years—of her life. “On a map, if you have one?”

Caimos gestured to Seema, who stood and bustled off. She returned with a large book, which she gave to her husband. He thumbed through it until he found what he was looking for.

“The Dor’av province. Here’s Pergran.”

The book was an atlas, but nothing about the Dor’av province looked remotely familiar. Keriya didn’t recognize the printed runes, either.

“Sorry, but . . . is there anything else?”

Caimos raised an eyebrow but obligingly flipped the page.

“This is all of Jidaeln,” he explained, pointing. “There’s Pergran, the capital, and the Weln and Sayrune rivers.”

Keriya shook her head, at a loss.

“Told you she wasn’ Jidaelni,” said Seema.

“Don’t mean she’s Moorfainian, neither,” Caimos returned, moving on. “Wha’ about this? A map of the Western Shore. Here’s Jidaeln, there’s Syrion and Moorfain,” —he shot a pointed look at his wife— “and down there’s the southern countries.”

Keriya remained silent. Seema looked relieved that she hadn’t recognized Moorfain, but a crease appeared between Caimos’s eyes. Slowly, as if he wasn’t sure why he was bothering, he turned one more page. He gave Keriya no prompts this time.

“That’s Jidaeln?” Keriya asked, tapping a small outline on the right side of the map.

“Yes.”

“What’s this?” she asked, her hand leaving the continent, traveling west.

“The Waters of Chardon,” he told her, sounding nonplused. She moved her hand across the ocean onto the left page. Her fingers brushed a series of inked lines.

“And this?”

“Shouldn’ be in the atlas no more, if you ask me,” Seema sniffed.

“That’s Allentria,” said Caimos.

“Oh.” Keriya let her hand fall to the bed. She stared at Allentria, which looked impossibly far away from Pergran. Halfway across the world, if this map were to be believed.

“Bunch of blood-burned dregs,” Seema was saying. “No honor in any one of ’em.”

“Nothing looks familiar?” Caimos asked Keriya.

“No.” She rolled away from him and slid her feet onto the dusty floor.

“Here, lie down!”

“I appreciate what you’ve done for me,” she said, “but I can’t reimburse you for your kindness because I have no money. And you won’t find anyone to return me to because I’m alone.”

Even as she said it, she knew it was true.

She approached her sword, but her legs were too weak to support her. She would have fallen had Seema not caught her around the waist. Keriya stifled a grunt of pain.

“You’re in no condition to walk,” the older woman snapped.

“Why are you helping me? I can’t give you anything,” said Keriya, allowing Seema to settle her on the pallet.

“Our family manages,” said Caimos. “We’re only doing wha’ any proper-minded folk would. When you’re better, you can earn your living. Ra knows we could use an extra pair of hands ’round the tavern, once your hands are healed.”

“I know how to wash dishes,” Keriya said slowly. Hadn’t she worked at an inn once, long ago? Yes . . . she had worked there with—

But she didn’t want to pursue that line of thought. She shied away from it, nausea roiling in her stomach.

As Seema propped her up with pillows, Keriya caught sight of herself in a small, oval mirror that rested on the floor beside the cabinet. Two red-violet eyes glinted like droplets of discolored blood in her pale face, which was covered with half-healed scabs. White hair hung limp and lifeless around her shoulders. Her cheeks were sunken and her expression weary. She looked down, losing the staring contest with her reflection.

“Dishes will do fine,” said Caimos.

Keriya closed her eyes. Caimos and Seema withdrew, leaving her to rest. More tears leaked between her lashes, though she didn’t know why. She couldn’t remember anything.

No, that wasn’t it . . .

She didn’t want to remember.

CHAPTER TWO“There is great courage in failure—so long as failure is not the end.”

~ Keleth Stellarion, Seventh Age

A low hum swelled in the air. Mount Arax convulsed. Fletcher, Roxanne, and Seba tumbled down the slope, landing in a heap. Smoke unfurled from the volcano’s mouth as a spasm rattled the earth. A plume of scarlet lava jettisoned into the sky. Blinding liquid oozed over the lip of the plateau.

“We’re going to die,” Seba said in a hollow voice.

“Keriya . . .” Fletcher stared at the burning summit, horror-struck. “She needs us. We have to . . . to find a way—”

Roxanne grabbed Fletcher’s hand. “We have to run.”

No sooner had she helped him to his feet than another explosion knocked them flat. Fletcher looked pleadingly at her. “Can’t your animals help? What about the phoenix you met? He’s a fire wielder. You can call him. He’ll come.”

Roxanne’s eyes were wide and anguished as she looked at him. “I don’t think anyone’s coming to help us, Fletch. Not this time.”

Keriya shot up in bed with a strangled cry. She took a few steadying breaths, fighting to suppress the horror of the dream that haunted her every night.

The window tempted her near, and she stumped over to survey the oasis city of Pergran. Mudstone buildings, most in want of repair, huddled together along cobbled streets. Caimos and Seema ran an inn called The Golden Veil, which was one of the tallest establishments in town. From her attic room, Keriya could see beyond the city walls all the way to the boundary of the growing fields, prominently marked by a series of angry red posts and barbed wire.

“Good thing I’m awake early,” she murmured.

She shuffled around the room, collecting her threadbare wool dress, her worn-out shoes, and a leather satchel stocked with provisions. Lastly, she went to the corner and grasped her ancient sword.

The weapon was coated in a thick layer of age-old filth. She couldn’t remember where she’d gotten it—she’d struggled to remember many things over the past two months, after the accident that had turned her world upside-down—but she knew it was valuable. Powerful, somehow.

A sound from the hall startled her and she turned, yanking the grimy blade from its equally grimy scabbard.

“Ra’s sake, Kayah!” Seema said as she entered the room. “Put tha’ horrid thing down before you take someone’s eye out!”

“Sorry.” Keriya sheathed the sword with shaking hands.

“I know it’s your off-day, but we need help in the common room.”

This cut into Keriya’s plans, but she could hardly complain. Since she was leaving the Cairis today, she figured one last morning of work was the least she could do for the people who’d nursed her back to health. She nodded and gently laid the weapon on her pallet.

“There’s spare clothes in the cabinet,” Seema added, eyeing Keriya’s shabby brown frock.

Keriya wasn’t fond of the revealing garments Jidaelni women favored, so she went downstairs in her old dress. She donned a washcap and a pair of dark-tinted glasses—sunshields, Seema called them—before heading into the common room. The sunshields were for the benefit of the patrons; people here were superstitious, and most assumed she was from some hostile foreign country. Those who didn’t thought she had a rare strain of albinism and constantly suggested medications to her.

When she entered the seating area, she saw soldiers in mottled, sand-colored uniforms scattered among the regulars. Keriya went to an empty table and cleared the plates.

It had been a morning like this when she’d begun plotting her departure from Pergran. The inn had been packed with soldiers on that occasion, too, and Keriya—who’d learned quite a bit of the Jidaelni tongue by that time—had eavesdropped on their conversation.

“You’re lucky you’re only heading to the capital,” one man had said to his fellows. “We’re being transferred to the Syrionese Border Outpost!”

“It’s cause of the Moorfainians, I’ll wager,” another had speculated in dark undertones. “Antigonus Leech is planning something, mark my words. We’re reporting to the Xamarai to receive additional battle training.”

The conversation had piqued Keriya’s curiosity, which was a welcome change from her baseline of numb detachment. After asking around, she’d discovered that the Xamarai were elite warriors who had a military school on the other side of the growing fields. Their land was private, and civilians were f*******n from entering by royal decree.

Today, Keriya would cross into that f*******n territory. Though her stomach clenched in painful anticipation, she was pleased that there were no aches in her joints as she worked. She’d healed as much as she needed. Now it was time to move on.