Dragon War

Chapter 8

“Keriya?” Viran approached her.

Keriya shuddered and roused herself, blinking at the empty courtyard.

“Well done,” Valerion said softly. “Shivnath must be watching over you today.”

At his words, she regained some of her senses. She straightened, her brow furrowing.

“Come on,” said Viran, offering her a hand. “The sooner we get through this portal, the sooner you can rest.”

“You two go first,” she said. “I’m not sure what will happen if I move a thousand leagues away from where I wielded the spell.”

“Ah. Good point.” Viran was dealing with magics beyond his ken. Distance played a major factor in energy output for spells, and there was no knowing what drain the portal might put on her if she traveled through it.

Valerion went first, plodding down the steps. Viran moved closer to Keriya to keep her steady in the dragon’s absence—only to keep her steady, not because he longed to comfort her, not because her mere presence was a comfort to him.

“Your turn,” she whispered once the dragon had gone through.

Precious seconds were ticking away, but Viran didn’t move. This was as alone as they’d been since they’d come to Noryk. Since they’d come to Allentria.

“I . . .” The words failed in his throat. Whatever he wanted to say, now was—as always—not the right moment. “Thank you,” he finished softly.

She gave him a small but genuine smile. “Something sank in from your lessons, after all. Who’d have thought those math equations would come in handy?”

He couldn’t find the words to explain that he wasn’t talking about her wielding feats. Unable to express himself, he strode down the steps and stepped through the portal. There was no physical sensation to indicate he’d traveled halfway across the continent in a single step. The quality of the air was different here—heavy, damp, and loamy, with a hint of salt from the coast—but that was it. His ears popped belatedly. A supremely anticlimactic reaction.

Viran turned to Keriya.

“I’ll be back before the fleet lands,” she called.

“What—?”

Her mindvoice was unexpected, and unexpectedly cold. He hadn’t had mental contact with her since before the attack, and he sensed an undercurrent of darkness in her words. A swirl of dangerous emotion and half-hidden images eddied into his brain alongside her thoughts.

“Keriya, no—”

Viran couldn’t get his cry out before she hefted Sethildras. He was still connected to his source, so he saw the moment she dropped the portal spell and wove light-threads around herself.

He lunged, but it was too late. The portal vanished, and instead of returning to Noryk he stumbled onto a patch of soggy, trodden moss. He was left staring at his army spread across the cleared field, already working with resident elves to make camp.

“What happened?” Valerion growled, stalking toward him.

“She teleported.”

“Then where is she?” the dragon demanded loudly. A few nearby soldiers paused in their work and glanced at them.

“She’s gone to Shivnath,” Viran whispered. “I saw it in her mind before she broke contact.”

Valerion’s pupil narrowed to a sliver of distress. “Has she gone looking for help?”

Viran sighed. “Knowing Keriya, I think it’s far more likely she’s gone looking for a fight.”

With a flash, Keriya arrived beside a body of water whose shores she knew like the back of her hand. She had explored them as a child, young and willful and blissfully ignorant.

Lake Sanara crested with pewter waves beneath the washed-out midday sun. To the south, Keriya’s childhood home nestled at the base of a vast mountain range.

The traumas she’d suffered in Aeria, physical and mental, had left indelible marks on her. She had no fondness for this wretched place and its inhabitants—with the sole exception of Erasmus, who had raised her—but as she stared at it, her heart gave a painful twinge.

“I’m not that person anymore.” She sheathed Sethildras and knelt—or rather, her shaky knees gave way—to drink from the lake. “I don’t miss it.”

That was the truth. She did not, and would never, miss Aeria. Perhaps she only missed the simplicity of her old life, the monotonous misery and pressure-free unimportance of being an outcast child with no future and no one depending on her.

The water soothed her parched throat, and soon she was able to breathe freely again. The strain of wielding lingered, but it was less an ache in her soul and more an itch. She would recover. She’d held herself together admirably despite the strain of war and the ghosts of her past that lingered in the darkest corners of her mind.

When her thirst was slaked she lay on her back and stared at the heavens. Fluffy clouds scudded across a sky that she had permanently marred. The mountain peak where she’d torn open the Rift was west of here, and the rips in the fabric of spacetime were still visible. Sparkling black lines spiderwebbed from the main point of destruction like infected veins.

“Wonder what the Aerians think of that,” she chuckled. The villagers had no idea there was a great, wide world on the other side of Shivnath’s Mountains. They did not know people were fighting and dying for that world every day.

She thought of the army she had abandoned and her heart sank.

I had to leave, whispered the voice in her head. I’m out of time. It’s now or never.

She needed to talk to Shivnath. She’d made a dangerous promise on the dragon’s behalf to Kraken, an ancient and dangerous god who controlled watermagic.

Kraken had captured her during her return trip to Allentria—and in exchange for her freedom, Keriya had offered him a meal of epic proportion. She’d promised him that he could attack and feed on the Moorfainian fleet when it made landfall, roping him into the war and ensuring her escape in one terrible, brilliant move.

The problem was, Keriya hadn’t told Shivnath what she’d done. Now that the Jidaelni fleet was nearing Allentria and the Moorfainian armada might arrive any day, there could be no more avoiding that conversation.

But first, she thought, feeling her eyelids droop, I need a nap.

Her body was shutting down after a strenuous three days of working on the spell. It was a miracle she’d managed it.

Maybe Shivnath is watching over me.

That was not a happy thought. The dragon god was a powerful mind-reader and a habitual meddler. She had manipulated Keriya, there was no question about that.

Whether she had lied was about to be determined.

CHAPTER FIVE“When trust breaks, so too does the heart.”

~ Syrionese Proverb

“Insubordination!” Caelburn blustered, storming across the room. The elven port settlement had a spacious inn where the army officers had paid for lodging. “She’s a delinquent at best, a traitor at worst.”

Viran clenched his jaw. If he had to listen to this vitriol for one more second—

“Keriya isn’t a traitor,” Fletcher repeated, his usually patient tone laced with sharpness.

“She has a history of disobedience. In Year 607 she ignored an edict from the Council of Nine. In 608 her actions led to the death of Thorion Sveltorious and the return of Necrovar.”

“In 609 she summoned the dragons to Selaras,” Roxanne cut in rudely.

“And where has that gotten us?” Caelburn demanded. “They’ve terraformed our land to their liking and offered nothing in return. She refuses to make them fight alongside us.”

A growl from Valerion silenced the bickering mortals. The dragon was glaring in through the inn’s open bay windows since he couldn’t fit through the front door.

“We have already explained why Keriya cannot force the Eminarchs to do anything,” Valerion hissed. “Thorion was, as I understand it, a child. He latched onto Keriya immediately, without reservation, and they forged a bond. These dragons are sovereign—they are beholden to no mortal whims. They are wise and ancient, powerful beyond reckoning.”

“Which is why we need them to fight,” said Caelburn. “But this scofflaw, who’s been given too much authority and leniency, has decided to make her own rules. No thought for the chain of command. No concern that she’s stranded fifteen-hundred troops—”

“General Soulstar was within her rights to go,” said Viran. “Empress Aldelphia gave her commanding power for the remainder of the war.”

“A war that won’t last a week if she continues to desert her post,” said Caelburn. “You expect me to believe none of you know her plans?” He surveyed the occupants of the room. It was the same motley troupe that had traversed Shivnath’s Mountains, found Aeria, and returned to Noryk: Fletcher and Roxanne, the royals, and Valerion.

“She did not desert. I gave her leave,” Viran lied.

Caelburn paused in his pacing. His eyes narrowed. “I’m beginning to see some suspicious patterns, Commander-General. Do not promote favoritism among the ranks. If you gave her leave, your generals should have been informed.”

“She has a secret and sensitive mission that must be dealt with before the Jidaelni fleet makes landfall,” said Viran. “Or rather, before the Moorfainian armada does.”

He knew of the deal Keriya had struck with Kraken. He also knew that deal violated several of the binding laws, the mandates that kept the gods of the world in check. If Keriya couldn’t smooth things over with Shivnath, there would be hell to pay when Kraken—whose violent nature was sung of in sea shanties and epic ballads alike—arrived to claim what he was owed.

Caelburn scowled, but it seemed mention of their approaching enemy had stymied his anti-Keriya tirade. “Permission to return to my troops.”

“Granted.”

Caelburn spun on his heel and marched toward the heavy oak door of the meeting room. He yanked it open and slammed it shut behind him.

Fletcher blew a breath through his cheeks. Roxanne folded her arms and shook her head.

“Seems old Dragoneyes is up to her usual antics,” Effrax drawled. He sat in the corner, his prosthetic leg propped on an artfully carved chair. “Now that stiff-britches is gone, mind telling us what’s really going on?”

“I would if I could,” Viran said heavily, “but she didn’t say a word to me.”

“To any of us,” said Fletcher. “She’s been . . . off, somehow, since we arrived in Noryk.”

“Can’t possibly be because we’re at war,” Effrax returned blithely.

“Is she planning to return?” Seba asked, planting her fists on her hips.

“Of course,” said Fletcher.

“When?”

“Whenever her current mission is complete,” said Valerion. The subtle growl in his tone made everyone subside.

“Is it dangerous?” Fletcher asked at last, glancing at Valerion.

The dragon sighed. “I pray the answer to that is no.”

A sense of foreboding whispered through Viran. How angry would Shivnath be when Keriya revealed the deal she’d made with Kraken? Gods were f*******n from interacting with mortals, meddling in their affairs, or hurting them . . .

But Keriya technically wasn’t mortal.

Keriya was on a mountain, staring at a sky the color of rust. She lay n***d on the ground, her body bruised, her spirit broken. Shivnath loomed above her.

“You failed,” said the dragon god.

Keriya was kneeling before the Eminarchs next, pinned down by their cold, distant gazes.

“We do not claim you,” said Nordrion. “You are not recognized among us. You are nothing.”

“Why?” Keriya demanded.

a dark tenor whispered in her mind.

Keriya jerked backward, trying to escape the Shadow’s voice in her head. She fell off a precipice and tumbled into a black abyss.

Down she fell, past galaxies and universes. Stardust coalesced around her, becoming a ring of mountains. The darkness of space resolved into a sunken sea. She hurtled toward the center of the calm waters, approaching an island. Twelve stone obelisks stood watch in a circle, guarding something.