51: DRAGON HUNT
Jorat Dominion, Quuros Empire. Three days since most of the Blue Palace guards were animated from the dead
When Qown paused, he looked around, expecting someone to make a comment or have a question.
But instead, Kihrin simply gave a significant look to Janel. “Well?”
She chuckled and took her turn.
Janel’s Turn. The Ice Demesne, Yor, Quur.
Suless proved to be far more invested in magics that dealt with living creatures than inanimate ones, but no one becomes a god-king without being extraordinary at magic on a general level, so she did have pointers on what had to be done.
As I predicted, Thurvishar had more.
Still, it was nearly three more months before I felt ready to make the attempt. Then I was waiting on Brother Qown to come through on his end of the plan: the armor needed to protect me.
I’m sure you can imagine my relief when Qown sent me a message. When I arrived at his room, I discovered a suit of complicated, intricate plates, sewn to thick, pliable material, lying on his bed. Brother Qown stood next to it.
“Qown? What is … what is that?”
“Your armor,” he replied. “Well, not armor. Remember how I said metal provided excellent protection against razarras? This is it.” He waved a hand toward the suit as though presenting a prize. “I scribed the air sigil on the inside. Between that and the metal, you should have enough time to make your changes to the ore, before the razarras poisoning begins to affect you.”
“How did you ever manage—” I tried to pick up the suit and found I couldn’t.
It must have weighed several hundred pounds. I wondered how he’d managed to transport it. A team of servants? Some magic spell?
“What is this made from?”
“Lead, mostly.”
I just stared at him in disbelief. “I’m not sure where you managed to find this, but I’m even less certain how you thought this would work. I can’t lift this, let alone wear it.”
“Ah, well, in fact,” He cleared his throat. “The fine smiths at House D’Talus made this, on orders from High Lord D’Talus. Or at least, that’s what the paperwork the deliverymen brought with them says.”
I raised an eyebrow. “Do I wish to know how you managed such a feat?”
“The less you know about that, the better. As for wearing the suit, that’s easy. Only a few years ago, you would have been more than strong enough to wear that. So the solution isn’t to design a different suit, it’s to restore your strength.”
I walked over to him and put my hands on his shoulder. “How? The gaesh—”
He gently put his hands on my wrists and pulled my arms away from him. “There are loopholes. I haven’t been ordered not to take the sigil off your back. And as it happens, Relos Var asked me to help you. Clearly, this is helping you.”
“Relos Var?” I stepped away from Qown.
“Yes. A few years ago, truth be told. He never rescinded the order, so here I am, still helping.” He grimaced. “Unfortunately, I can’t promise this will be easy. In fact, removing the sigil may hurt a great deal.”
“What do you mean? Why?”
“Well, it depends. If I can erase what Senera wrote, then it’s easy. The difficulty comes if I can’t. Then my options for removing the mark become … painful. And surgical.”
My stomach tightened. “Are you suggesting skinning my back?”
He made a face. “Maybe a little? Just a few layers. I’ll heal any injury afterward. I’m much better at healing than I used to be. But there’s one other complication.”
“Tell me.”
“I don’t know what this sigil does. I mean on an intrinsic level, I just don’t know. I can’t find it in any books. Then I realized Senera doesn’t need books. She learned this from the Name of All Things, so she’s the only one who understands that sigil’s meaning. It drains your strength, but what if it also does more? We don’t know its purpose, only its symptoms. So I don’t know if Senera will be notified if we disrupt this mark, and I don’t know if removing the mark will have some other catastrophic effect. I realize you haven’t looked at your back through the Veil—”
“That would be difficult, yes.”
“Right. The sigil pulls tenyé off you and shunts it elsewhere. Which means if we stop the flow, someone may notice.”
“So you’re saying that when we do this, we need to be fast.”
“And we need to do it soon,” he confided, “because someone at House D’Talus will start asking questions—for example, about why they delivered a custom lead-lined suit of shanathá armor to Yor.”
“You’re going to be in trouble, aren’t you?” I found myself feeling a guilt I hadn’t felt in years, a reminder that Qown was only here in this mess because of me. And if everything went as planned, I’d very likely be doing exactly what I’d promised I never would.
Namely, abandoning him.
Qown grimaced. “I’ll be fine. I’m useful. Relos Var likes my work. Don’t worry about me. You have more important things to do.”
“I can’t leave without you,” I said.
“Who said anything about leaving? You just want to explore some caves under the castle, don’t you?” He gestured toward the armor. “And if you find any god-king’s buried treasure down there, bring it up, would you? Kaen won’t be happy when he receives the bill for this. Do you have any idea how much shanathá costs?”
I laughed, feeling the humor like a stab wound. In the years since we’d been brought here, it did indeed feel like Qown had been a part of the Yoran intelligence-gathering community, someone who earned his keep. But he also stood as hostage to my good behavior, and what I proposed was anything but good behavior.
“Qown … no. I won’t let them hurt you.”
He shook his head. “You’re going to have to trust me when I say they won’t.” His crooked smile made it clear he understood the irony of asking me to trust him. “Besides. It’s my decision. Leave me one thing that is my decision.”
I exhaled, fighting back my own sadness and despair. “Promise me you’ll stay safe.”
“I’m under orders from Relos Var to try,” he said. “When do you want to descend?”
“We’re looking for specific circumstances. For one, Aeyan’arric has to be here in the mountains, and two, none of the wizards should be present.”
Qown blinked. “Aeyan’arric? Why do you care about Aeyan’arric?”
“Because…” I sighed. “You really don’t need to know that.”
“Wait, I thought you were cleansing the Spring Caves so the Yorans could use them again.”
“That’s the side effect, not the goal.”
“Aeyan’arric wouldn’t matter unless you…” He stared. “You’re going to try to kill her, aren’t you? Even if you could—and you can’t—what good would it do?”
“It will keep her from icing over any more villages in Jorat or attacking any more of my—” I stopped. “It needs to be done. Stop asking questions. When are we going to do this?”
He thought for a moment. “Now.”
“What?” I blinked. I wasn’t ready or expecting now.
Qown nodded. “Now. Relos Var and Senera left this morning. I’m not sure where, but it seemed important—and they left Aeyan’arric. It’s as good a window as we’re likely to have.”
“Thurvishar’s not scheduled to have classes with the Spurned, but then he does make his own schedule.” I pondered the strange D’Lorus mage. “Still, even if he’s here, I don’t know he’d interfere. It’s not his pasture or his horses. But what of Gadrith?”
We had talked about Gadrith on many occasions, once Qown found out his real identity. We wanted nothing to do with him. There was a sort of sick humor to the fact Xivan kept herself alive in a very similar manner to Gadrith, and yet Xivan was beloved—at least among the Spurned. Maybe because Xivan wouldn’t murder everyone around her just because she felt peckish. I guess the fact she wasn’t a wizard—who presumably burned through far greater quantities of tenyé due to spellcasting—worked to her advantage.
“Gadrith hasn’t visited in weeks,” Qown said. “So if you’re going to do this…”
“Yes. Best to do it now.” I looked around his room, which still managed to feel monastic in the middle of a palace. I wasn’t ready, but maybe it was best this way. No chance to say goodbyes and thus betray my goals. No chance to accidentally let something slip.
Qown cleared his throat. “I’m afraid you’ll need to disrobe.” He handed me one of his robes for my modesty.
My mouth quirked. As if Qown hadn’t seen all of me at one time or another. I turned my back toward him and stripped down so he could examine the sigil and—hopefully—remove it.
“Give me a moment,” he said.
“Take all the time you need.”
However, it didn’t take very long at all. Then I heard him sigh.
“It didn’t work?” I looked over my shoulder.
“It didn’t work,” he agreed. “Whatever’s creating the mark, it’s not coming off just because I asked.”1
“Are you sure cutting off the skin will be enough?”
“Of course I’m sure. I—” I heard him pause. “Oh sun, what if it isn’t?”
I half turned toward him. “We’ll find out. Hopefully it will be like you said and you won’t have to remove all the skin.”
“Right. Lie down over here. I’ll just, uh … okay, I’m going to dull the pain. It’s going to feel odd, but it shouldn’t hurt.”
“I’d say knock me unconscious, but it’s nighttime so you wouldn’t be able to wake me again.”
“Oh, good point.”
I felt his fingertips against the skin, and then I couldn’t feel his touch at all. It did indeed feel odd, a numbness around the edges of my back, but I couldn’t feel my back’s center.
“You’re going to feel tugging. You might also feel some wetness.”
“That won’t by chance be blood, will it?”
“It might be, yes. Now let me work.”
I put my hands under my chin and tried not to think of how my dearest friend was skinning me alive.
So that was all I could think about.
“Okay, it goes a little deeper than I’d like, but not all the way to muscle. We should be able to excise this. Don’t move. When I’m finished, I’ll still need to heal you.”
“Oh yes, please do. I don’t feel like fighting a dragon while missing all the skin from my back.”
“Look, about that…”
“Me missing the skin off my back? Will it scar?”
“I’m not sure,” he admitted. “No, I mean, about killing Aeyan’arric. Have you ever thought about just … fixing the poison in the Spring Caves instead? I mean, you’d be a hero. They’d erect your statue in every cave system.”
“And Relos Var would keep right on asking Aeyan’arric to freeze villages. Damn it, Qown, what’s gotten into you—”
“I said don’t move!”
I felt his hand shove me back down to the bed again.
“Sorry,” I muttered.
“I can’t stress how important it is that you don’t move,” he said after a long pause. “This is tricky work, and I’d like to make sure you don’t scar … or anything else.”
I’ll be honest, I didn’t like that “anything else.”
I stayed still, but I thought about what he’d said. Yor had never been the least bit expansionist before Quur had come in and messed up their entire country. I remember the stories from my childhood about Suless and Cherthog, how necessary it had been to free the Yorans from their enslavement by god-kings. I think Quur was just running with what they knew: slay the god-kings, take their countries, add them to the empire. They’d done it with Jorat (albeit with actual cooperation), and they’d done it (much less willingly) with the city-states that made up the area once called Zaibur, now called Marakor. Of course, Quur had gone on to conquer Yor next. Had there ever been any doubt they would?
How disappointing it must have been to whichever emperor ruled back then (Gendal? I think it must have been Gendal) when all the god-kings had been conquered. South lay nothing but the Korthaen Blight, which no sane person would want, and the Manol, which no sane person would be fool enough to invade a second time.
But back to my point: Yor had every reason to hate Quur, didn’t they? Even if being freed from Cherthog and Suless might have been a blessing under other circumstances, Quur had literally poisoned the ground under Yoran feet. How many had died in agony for Quuros generals to break their siege? Didn’t Yor deserve to have that fixed?
I felt … I felt an odd solidarity. I wasn’t Yoran, in many ways didn’t understand the Yorans either. And yet, I knew what it was like to be played as a piece in someone else’s game. In everyone’s game.
I did indeed know what that felt like.
My back felt cold, and then something wet hit the table next to me. And I couldn’t look, because I knew what I would see.
I clenched my teeth to keep from shuddering and reminded myself I’d been injured a thousand times. This was no worse than those injuries, some of which had been very bad indeed.
Then my back started to itch.
“Is that supposed to happen?”
“What? What’s happening?” Qown sounded worried.
“My back itches.”
He exhaled. “Oh. Yes, that’s normal. Just ignore it.”
“Easy for you to say. I promise you if our situations were reversed, you—”
“Shhh. I’m concentrating.”
I ground my teeth together and stayed silent.
After a few minutes, the itch became hot and painful. Just as I started to ask him about it, Qown said, “It’s going to start burning. Don’t worry, I’m just removing the numbing. I’ll do something else about the pain in a minute, but I want to check the nerves.”
I felt a sharp, flaring pain that faded into a tingling. “Did you just pinch me?”
“I haven’t given you permission to move yet. Okay, that … that looks good. Does it hurt?”
I bent forward, stretching my back. Then I twisted. “No. It doesn’t.”
“Fantastic.”
I made a fist. “Uh … something’s wrong.”
Qown looked up sharply. “What? Wait. What’s wrong? You said it doesn’t hurt…”
“Yes, I did, but I also don’t feel any stronger.” I walked over to where I’d discarded my tunic and pulled it back over me before attempting to pick up the shanathá plate. “No, this is still too heavy for me to lift.” I must have looked panicked. I felt panicked. “Qown, my strength isn’t returning.”
He looked relieved. “Is that all? I expected that.”
“What? Didn’t our plan hinge on the idea my strength would return? You expected this?”
Qown pulled over a chair and sat down. He looked exhausted. Apparently, I really was that hard to heal.2 The fact that he’d managed it at all by himself spoke to how his own magical skills had grown. “Janel, you must have realized by this point Xaltorath never cursed you with strength.”
I froze.
He saw my expression and sighed. “Please. Just listen. You were a small girl in horrifying circumstances. Anyone’s mage-gift—what others call a witch-gift—would manifest under such pressure. And yours did. And what you wanted, little girl you, most of all—”
“You don’t know what I wanted,” I snapped.
“I think you wanted to be strong,” he said. “Too strong for your enemies, too strong to fall victim to a demon. That’s what you made yourself, even though physical strength had nothing to do with what happened to you. You became strong because you used magic to make yourself strong.”
I stared down at my hands. “Strong by casting a spell.”
I knew how to do that now. I had become the witch I had always feared my enemies would accuse me of being. That fact didn’t even shame me. But it felt like losing to admit my strength had been my doing all along. Like admitting I had used the demons as an excuse—I’m not a witch, I’m just cursed by a demon.
No. That thinking led to Xaltorath’s logic, her twisting chasms of guilt and recrimination. She had loved to suggest everything I secretly wanted caused everything that had happened. That I only played at being the victim because it absolved me of responsibility or choice.
To which I always reminded her that eight-year-old children don’t have responsibilities or choices.
I could do this. More so, I had to do this. If I couldn’t, then Aeyan’arric would keep right on freezing towns. Kaen’s plans would continue. The situation in Jorat and Marakor would continue to deteriorate. The horrible tainted ore the Quuros wizards had left in the cavern under the Ice Demesne would do as Qown feared—leach into the surrounding water and kill everyone.
Painfully. Slowly.
I shut my eyes as I remembered my childhood. Remembered my fear, remembered my hate, remembered my terror and pain. I felt the rage wash over me and knew that if I wanted, I could channel my rage into destruction and violence so easily. My proficiency at magic would never be anything like Qown’s healing. I felt, through a wash of red, one shining moment of connection when I felt Khored. I heard the screaming crows and felt the God of Destruction standing right next to me so I could just reach out and twist my fist around the red swirl of power feeding him.3
Not yet, little girl. Not yet.
I reached over to the table, picked up a goblet, and crushed it.
“Good,” Qown said, sounding shaky. “Good. Now let’s get you dressed.”
As I stood there, staring at the crushed cup, I noticed the other object on the table: thrown there during Qown’s operation on my back. Blood-side down, leaving a red smear: a large section of red-brown skin, marked with a black pattern.
“Do you have any plans for that?”
Qown looked startled and then appalled. “Yes, I planned to destroy it so there wouldn’t be any evidence.”
“Don’t. I think I have a use for it.”
We made our move in the middle of the night, or rather I did, since we agreed Qown shouldn’t follow. Qown would help from a distance, using his Cornerstone.
Good enough. Why carry a nonsentient deity in your pocket if you never use it?
I didn’t need a lantern. The caves were dark, but in the three years I’d been studying, I’d learned the trick of making my own mage-light.
I packed the armor into a large bag, each section wedged with dresses, scarves, and cloth to keep it from rattling. Then I made my way down to the tunnels, heading deeper and deeper down until they led to the caves.
I may have mucked things up in this next part.
You see, I hadn’t known the Spring Caves under the palace twisted and branched in quite such a tortuous maze of tunnels, chambers, and precipitous drops. My floating ball of mage-light threw harsh shadows against the walls, and I became turned around. I had no idea which direction faced down—let alone how to make it to Khoreval’s cave, before making my way outside to find Aeyan’arric. I hadn’t been down there in years.
I was lost.
And Qown couldn’t help. Qown had never been down in these caves. He didn’t have a clue where to go.
So not knowing what else to do, I put on my armor (wearing it proved less awkward than carrying it) and set out again, heading down a random tunnel. I was trying with all my might not to fall down a sinkhole, trip and break something, or in general make a bad situation worse.
The armor felt uncomfortably warm, but at least I could breathe fresh air because of the sigil. Qown had given me safety instructions—don’t pick up anything but the spear, don’t remove my helmet. And when I had finished with this whole business, I needed to throw the armor into a deep crevasse and melt it to slag.
I agreed with Qown on taking this poison metal business with appropriate seriousness, but I already regretted losing the armor. The metal alone would have paid my canton’s taxes for several years.
I almost gave up and started forming a HELP sign from pebbles so Qown would see it when he checked in. Then I saw a very golden glow reflected against the cave wall before me.
And Khoreval, when I had seen it last, had glowed golden.
I inched my way forward until at last I saw the same break in the rocks Xivan had warned me about, a few years before. Beyond it, I saw the Spring Cave’s blue smoke and toxic stone terrain.
Dealing with the smoke was the easy part.
The armor covered my entire body. Then a thin sheet of glass (well, it looked like glass) covered my eyes. Truly, the House D’Talus armor smiths had created a masterpiece.
My strength made climbing easier, but I still worried I might break off a handhold and plummet. Fortunately, on closer inspection, the cliff resembled a sharp incline rather than a straight drop to the main cavern floor.
But bones littered the floor, glimpsed through gaps in the blue smoke.
Small, warty yellow-orange pieces of razarras ore protruded from the otherwise black stone floor. Some of the chunks had broken underfoot too, leaving powdery residue. I began to understand what Qown had meant about destroying any traces of razarras clinging to my suit. Any dust kicked up into the air and breathed in would prove fatal. I walked toward the dais where the spear sat.
For the first time, I wondered if there might be traps.
A large black boulder stood in the cave’s center, near the spear. The stone was … hot. Red hot, radiating a heat I felt through the armor. I saw no reason for the heat; the boulder didn’t sit near lava or a volcanic vent, and no one had lit a fire near it. It just glowed hot.
Then I realized the same symbol marked on my back had been carved into the stone.
I stopped.
The presence of that symbol meant Senera had been here. That meant, as I had once suggested to Qown, Relos Var almost certainly knew how to neutralize the poison here. Yet he had chosen not to, for his own purposes.
But what purpose did the stone serve? Why that symbol?
I pulled the rolled-up skin—my skin—from the satchel. There had been no time to treat or tan it, so it was still a grisly souvenir of my stay with the duke—one I’d also have to destroy.
Although I didn’t much care if it turned poisonous, considering what I planned to do with it.
As I looked closer, I saw the two symbols were not identical. Close, but a few marks distinguished them. They seemed to be variations on a common base glyph. I didn’t understand what either meant.
I shifted my sight past the First Veil and saw what the Spring Cave had to show me. Not much, to be honest.
The most insidious feat the Quuros had performed was transforming these caves in a way that required no magical maintenance, in a way that couldn’t be overcome by a snap of another wizard’s fingers. Their poisonous metal ore wasn’t magical at all. But the blue smoke? Yes. Magic had powered it, and finally, that magic had begun to fade. If the smoke in Mereina faded at the same rate, well, then, in a few centuries, Mereina would be safe to occupy again.
There had to be a better way.
The large black boulder, nearly an obelisk, held astonishing amounts of pure tenyé.
If Xivan ever came down and found that boulder, she’d never need to execute another Yoran prisoner in order to feed. The boulder contained enough tenyé to power spellcasting of such strength … well …
Who had created it? Relos Var? Perhaps. Certainly, the presence of the sigil carved deeply into its side suggested Senera’s involvement and, in turn, Var’s. And as for the sigil itself?
Brother Qown had told me the sigil on my back hadn’t just been suppressing my strength but had been siphoning off tenyé to another location. I had a good idea where that tenyé had been going. Three years’ worth, stored up right there before me.
My tenyé.
“Actually, mine.”
I whirled around in the room and saw my mother, Tya, standing before me.
I didn’t even jump.
“What are you doing here?” I asked her as she walked past me, over to the spear.
“Breaking the rules,” she said, sitting down on the dais. “But as a wise man once said to me: fuck the rules. Is that human skin?”
I looked down at what I held. “Yes, but it’s all right; it’s my skin.”
She narrowed her eyes. “That’s not as reassuring as you may have intended. You don’t seem injured.”
“Qown healed me.” I took a deep breath, not wanting to talk to Tya at all. Not wanting her here, even though logically she could be very helpful. “How could Relos Var pull tenyé from you?” I shook my skin. “This wasn’t your back.”
She winced at my demonstration, which had splattered gore onto my armor. “Relos knew I wouldn’t let him kill you. Which would have happened, if I hadn’t lent you enough power to withstand that glyph. So for the last few years, he’s been draining the tenyé I’ve been feeding you and storing it away for a rainy day.”
“So you made the same mistake twice?”
“It wasn’t a mistake,” she insisted.
I scoffed. “You’re giving our enemies succor and aid! Xaltorath exploited me to gain favors from you, and now you’re letting Relos Var do the same thing. Why?”
She raised an eyebrow. “I just explained this.”
“No!” I almost pulled the helmet from my head in protest, torn between the certainty she’d protect me from the razarras metal and the overwhelming desire not to rely on her protection. “Horseshit. I’m not worth you giving in to Relos Var or to Xaltorath. I’m not worth letting them win! Why do you people keep using me as the excuse to lose?”
I wanted her angry. Oh, angry would have felt nice. Instead, she looked sad. “But you are. Janel, I love you.”
“No! You don’t even know me. You don’t know anything about me. How can you love me? I don’t even love me!”
I don’t remember removing the helmet, but it had vanished when I found myself in my mother’s arms. She smoothed my hair and kissed my forehead. “I love you,” she whispered. “I have always loved you. I loved you when you burned your harp on the Blight’s edge and prayed for me to guide your path. I loved you when Valathea sacrificed herself to help you free S’arric’s soul. I loved you when you marched into Khorvesh, newborn baby in your arms, and demanded no woman would ever be sold to a man there again. And I loved you even more the first moment I held you in my arms, still bloody from your birth—and I screamed so hard no mage on this planet could hear for three days when I had to give you up. I love you enough to humble myself before my enemies so you might live.” She leaned away from me for just long enough to look me in the eyes. “But when all is done, when this is all over, I’m not going to lose. I’m not going to lose, because my daughter doesn’t lose.”
I wiped my eyes and sniffled, choking back an inelegant knot of phlegm. “Three days?”
Her smile turned mischievous. “They call it the Great Silence. They’ve never been able to figure out what caused it.”
“How … dramatic.”4
She smiled. “I was in theater when I was younger.”
That made me laugh, even as I still cried. “Apparently, I was too, in another life. Seriously, you couldn’t put me in a body who can carry a tune? I can’t sing at all.”
“Sorry. You get that from me.”
“Of course. The Goddess of Magic can’t sing.” I wiped my eyes, aware I’d just killed myself from razarras poisoning unless Tya intervened. “So what now?”
Tya hugged me and kissed my forehead again. “Let’s go ahead with your plan. You wanted to do something about the metal and smoke here?”
“Yes.”
“I like that idea. Let’s do that together. Then how would you feel about letting your mother help you fight a dragon? Just us?”
I had to admit, I liked that idea rather a lot too.
Aeyan’arric played in the snow.
Tya and I stood on a mountainside in the Yoran mountains and watched the dragon below us cavort and roll in the snow like a cat with a feather, grinning and joyous. Except a cat playing doesn’t make mountains shake or leave giant grooves in granite rock faces. A cat doesn’t start an avalanche and then chase after it like it was a mouse.
She was so beautiful. The sun refracted off her scales, making a thousand rainbows, sparkling against the snow and ice—cold and perfect, winter manifested.
I tightened my grip around Khoreval and wished, just for a moment, that we didn’t have to do this.
Taking the spear had been an afterthought, despite all that planning. From the moment I held Khoreval, I felt its extraordinary magic, indeed strong enough to kill a dragon. Still, Khoreval seemed like a toothpick against Aeyan’arric’s size and majesty. I felt like an idiot for ever thinking I could fight a dragon without a goddess at my side.
The goddess in question must have been thinking along the same lines, at least about Aeyan’arric’s beauty, because she sighed next to me. “This breaks my heart. I knew her when she was a little girl.”
“You—” I looked over at her. “Wait, Aeyan’arric used to be human?”
“All the dragons used to be … well … yes, let’s go with human. Aeyan was the daughter of a good friend. As a child, her smiles were like the sun peeking out behind the clouds.”
“What changed her into a dragon?”
“A monster. Her uncle.”
“Her uncle—?”
“Relos Var. Her uncle is Relos Var. And he murdered his own brother, Aeyan’s father, because … honestly, I don’t know. Even after all these years, I still don’t know.” Tya’s expression set into something unfriendly, and she didn’t seem inclined to answer any further questions. “Hide up behind that ledge. I’ll lead her beneath you. Jump down and don’t miss.”
“That’s the plan? Jump on her and hope for the best?”
Tya laughed. “What were you going to do?”
I frowned and looked down at my bag. I’d planned to give Aeyan’arric a new scale decoration that would sap her strength, but that was before I realized Senera had personalized the sigil she’d marked on my back. So it probably wouldn’t work on Aeyan’arric, especially if it meant “steal energy from voras daughters of goddesses of magic.”
“You don’t happen to know what this means, do you?” I asked Tya, showing her the sigil.
She shook her head, looking rueful. “Strange as this may sound coming from the Goddess of Magic, I don’t.”
“I’d planned to throw this at the dragon to weaken her, but now I don’t think it will work.”
“So not too far removed from drop down from above and hope for the best, is it?”
I cleared my throat. “No.”
“Move quickly. If it doesn’t work, run. You can’t fight her with endurance or strength. Aim the spear at the space between her eyes.”
I nodded and moved up to the ledge.
Tya vanished.
She reappeared a moment later down in the valley, where Aeyan’arric sported. The dragon reacted immediately, spreading her wings and rearing back, serpent-like. She dispensed with polite conversation and quick banter.
Aeyan’arric attacked, breathing winter incarnate down at the spot where Tya stood. But Tya had already gone, so fast her veils left a blurred rainbow behind her.
I knew the timing would be tricky. I’d have to jump before Aeyan’arric reached me, and if I jumped early, I’d plummet to my death. If I jumped too late, the same result seemed likely.
By then, Aeyan’arric had almost reached my position. I jumped.
I landed halfway off the dragon’s neck and nearly lost both my own life and the spear as I scrambled to hold on to her scales and claw my way up. Aeyan’arric noticed me and swung her neck to the side, but she couldn’t bite me. She pulled up from her flight, reaching up with both fore-claws to snatch me from her neck.
Tya attacked as soon as Aeyan’arric looked away, filling the sky around us with fire. I felt my skin crack and blister before I raised the proper protection spells. I cursed myself for not thinking to do that beforehand.
Then I stabbed Khoreval downward, into Aeyan’arric’s neck.
The dragon screamed. Extraordinary, immense power channeled up from the wound into my body. This wasn’t a pleasant sensation. The dragon’s tenyé felt twisted and wrong, somehow rotten, as if the normal magical energies informing all creation had broken and realigned into chaos and disharmony. I screamed too, pushed the spear deeper into her neck, and screamed again when acidic icy blood sprayed over me.
Then we were falling.
Hitting the snow felt like salvation, not painful at all but a cool compress against painful burns. Aeyan’arric lashed backward against me, missing me only because I made such a small target. But Tya hadn’t left. After her fireball had faded, the Goddess of Magic returned in an instant, unleashing violet energy that began disintegrating the dragon’s claws and wings.
I reminded myself that I had more important things to do than pay attention to the pain, pulled the spear from the dragon’s neck, and slammed it down again, this time between her eyes.
Aeyan’arric collapsed.
I did too, covered in gore, dragon blood, and human blood, with injuries I didn’t dare to contemplate.
But we’d done it.
We’d slain a dragon.
Tya floated down next to me. She made a noise that reminded me so much of Dorna after I’d come home from playing in the mud that I almost choked. She laid me down on the snow next to Aeyan’arric’s head and healed my wounds.
“Wait here. I need to go find out if this worked.”
Shock roused me from my stupor. “What? What do you mean, ‘if this worked’?” I pointed to the dead body.
Tya shook her head. “That happens every time.”
I blinked at her.
“We’ve killed dragons before, Janel. They recover. They heal. Just like we do. You can’t kill any of the Eight. We just won’t stay dead. And you can’t kill a dragon. They just won’t stay dead either.” She touched the spear impaling the dragon’s head. “Rest here. I’ll confirm the results with Thaena. She’ll know if this worked.”
I nodded even as I sighed and leaned back. I almost told her I’d be happy to check with Thaena myself, but I wanted to stay awake. I felt and heard the tenyé swirl and shift. When I looked up, Tya had disappeared.
I watched the swirling clouds overhead. Storm clouds were dissipating, as if they had only ever gathered because their dragon queen demanded it. Now they could bring snow and rain and life to other fields.
I’m not sure how long I sat there. Not very long, I think.
Then Relos Var said, “When I ordered Qown to help you, this wasn’t what I had in mind.”