easily in one muscular arm—even though they were nearly as large as I was and packed full—and held it out to Ben.
“Well, time to pack up.”
“I can carry…” My voice trailed off as both drakón looked at me, Svyer with amusement as she still held out the bag with one arm and Ben with a raised eyebrow as he took it from her.
“…some of it,” I finished in a mutter, flushing.
Svyer chuckled. “Let Ben handle it, Sarah. He’s drakón, after all.”
“That doesn’t mean he’s a beast of burden,” I said hotly.
That startled a laugh out of him, and I was still glad of it, even if it was at my expense. A strange sadness had been lingering in his eyes ever since he’d come into my room, and I was happy to see it dispelled for a moment.
“I don’t think she knows how this works, Svyer,” he said with a crooked smile at his cousin. “There aren’t any drakón where she’s from.”
“How what works?” I demanded.
He looked at me hesitantly, then at Svyer. Svyer gave him a pointed look back. Then Ben looked helplessly back at me. Something was familiar about that kind of exchange—and then I remembered when Ben and Yvera had been debating about how to get me to understand them.
“This is a drakón thing, isn’t it?” I asked with a sigh. “One you think I might not like.”
“Not necessarily,” Svyer corrected.
Ben frowned at her. “It might frighten her. She’s not used to…us.”
So, Ben had noticed how nervous their dragon forms made me.
“She’s going to see it happen eventually,” Svyer said pragmatically. “Better right now while she’s in private and braced for it.”
“Svyer’s right,” I said, raising my chin. “Go ahead. Whatever it is you are going to do. I can handle it.”
Ben looked at me dubiously, but he rolled up his sleeve and held out the arm holding my bag so I could see it clearly. For a moment, I nervously thought he was going to cut himself again, so my eyes were darting around, looking for a knife. Which was why I nearly missed when the change began.
Ben’s skin…started crawling. At least, that’s what it looked like at first. Then I realized it was becoming something else. Hardening. Cracking. Scaling. Turning gold and shimmery. Fingers elongating, joints rearranging, fingernails lengthening, sharpening, taking on a metallic sheen.
My stomach churned, but I swallowed the bile and kept on as blank an expression as I could manage. Ben was showing me this transformation for a reason, no matter how self-conscious his still very human face was becoming, so I tried my hardest to not react.
“And…that’s it,” he said bashfully, pulling his arm back as it quickly shifted into human skin and fingers again.
“Interesting,” I said, proud of the neutrality of my voice. “But…what was that for?”
Both drakón stared at me.
“Didn’t you see that?” Ben asked in confusion, holding out his hand. His…empty hand.
I gaped as I looked around for the bag. It wasn’t anywhere to be seen. “Your…where…where did it go?”
They stared at me for a second longer, then both burst out laughing.
“Like hiding a ball from a babe,” Svyer said with a grin.
“Watch the bag this time,” Ben said, his smile more merciful as he came over and grabbed the other one.
He took a few steps back, perhaps for my comfort, and held out his arm again. Just in time, I remembered his instruction and focused my attention on the bag. My stomach was much happier that way, but I also found it difficult to ignore Ben’s fingers turning into reptilian digits and his nails into talons out of the corner of my eye.
Then it happened. Whatever it was. One moment, the bag was clutched in his transformed hand, and the next, the bag was gone. As simple, clean, and sudden as that.
I would have thought the bag had merely turned invisible, but Ben’s fingers relaxed and straightened, no longer holding anything.
“But…how?” I gasped as Ben withdrew his hand again. “And why…and where?”
I didn’t know why this phenomenon was nearly as earth-shattering to me as the existence of dragons…but it was. This disappearing act was defying every law of the universe I’d learned, and I couldn’t stop looking for either bag, sure at least one of them would turn up somewhere.
“We don’t know exactly.” Ben shrugged. “The answer to any of those questions. Just that when drakón change, whatever we are holding, whatever we are wearing…goes somewhere. Somewhere we can access when we change again.”
“Surely you’ve wondered where our clothing comes from when we change back,” Svyer quipped with a wink at Ben.
My cheeks grew hot as I realized I most certainly hadn’t. “I’ve…had a lot to take in,” I said in my defense.
“Understandably,” Ben said.
I looked up at him, biting my lip. He didn’t stand any differently, so it didn’t look like he was carrying a burden, but.… “Does that…weigh you down in any way?”
“Not at all,” he assured me while Svyer snorted. “I don’t feel a thing. That’s why it makes more sense for me to be ‘carrying’ them for you.”
“But the bags…they are connected to you in some way? Or…can anyone access them in this…other place?”
“No, only I can,” he said, and then grimaced. “Although that means I’ll have to get you anything you might need. I’m sorry. I’ll bring the bags out whenever we stop for the night.”
“Which is why I put this together for you,” Svyer said, bringing something out from behind her back with a flourish. I realized how she seemed to produce things out of thin air—because that was what she was doing.
I shook my head to silence the physics questions for now as I saw what was in Svyer’s hands. “Oh, Svyer,” I breathed.
It was a dark leather backpack, with a drawstring top and a flap with a buckle in the shape of a tree. The leather was just a shade or two lighter than the coat in my hands but embossed with the same silver swirling fronds.
Svyer shoved the pack into my arms. “That should have some essentials you’d want to keep with you,” she said brusquely, eyes blinking. “No—don’t open it now. I’ve held you up long enough, and you need to get going if you’re going to have enough daylight left. If you can’t figure out how to use what’s in it, ask Ben or Yvera.”
My eyes stung again, and I hung the coat over my arm and the bag from one hand so I could throw my arms around her again. “Thank you.”
“Like I said,” Svyer countered softly. “This isn’t goodbye.”
“No,” I agreed, saying the words like a promise. “It’s not.”
time, flying was a lot easier.
The saddle made a stark difference in my comfort level. From the more stable positioning—further up, at the juncture of Ben’s dragon neck and shoulders—to the more natural hip-width saddle seat, to the straps for my legs and optional handles for my arms, I felt about as secure as was possible while being on a behemoth’s back a thousand feet above the ground. I had also appreciated the hold’s mounting platforms and especially Svyer’s patient guidance in getting me settled, which contrasted with Yvera’s scant help and blasé warning the night before. This time I could trust Svyer’s hand squeeze and verbal assurance that I would be safe.
The coat was warm; the wind didn’t pierce the leather, and the fur kept my body heat inside without being stuffy. With my legs close to Ben’s furnace of a body, I found myself at a surprisingly comfortable temperature despite the height and buffeting wind. I even lowered the drawstring hood after a half hour to regain my peripheral vision.
That was the last thing: the view. I didn’t know what the difference was. Perhaps being rested, being healed of every injury from yesterday and probably health problems I didn’t even know I’d had, not being wound up with adrenaline from a near-death experience, being able to fully trust the dragon carrying me, or flying during the daylight—or perhaps a combination of all those things. All I knew for sure was that today, the view that had kept me frozen witless yesterday was breathtaking.
Trees—enormous trees—as far as the eye could see, and I could see pretty dang far from up here. The mountain range we had spent the night in faded quickly from view, leaving only an even canopy as the main visible feature from horizon to horizon. The leaves rustled in the wind of our passage like the hiss of the sea, a mesmerizing sight to watch and soothing to hear. I couldn’t see anything below the canopy, and though I kept an eye out, I didn’t see any wildlife aside from the occasional soaring bird. Maybe—considering my first encounter with the creatures of this world—that was a good thing.
The complaints I still had were the bright sun and heavy wind, which both stung my eyes and made enjoying the view more difficult. I wondered if flight goggles were a thing in this world; I would have to remember to ask Ben.…
If I don’t get home today, I reminded myself.
But Ben said I could come back. No doubt he would have moved on, but if Svyer, at least, wanted me to visit, then presumably this would not have to be my last flight on dragon back. That thought was satisfying. Maybe I could get used to this—maybe even look forward to it.
I was a bit in awe of Ben’s open invitation. That wasn’t how these things were supposed to work, was it? Once you fell into a magical world, it was all or nothing, right? I was a realist, so I knew well that you couldn’t ever have the best of both worlds. You always had to choose.
There had to be a catch. Which meant it was probably in those laws I’d have to agree to, so I shouldn’t get my hopes up. Svyer had said I wouldn’t have a problem with any of them, but when it came right down to it, she’d only known me for less than a day, and she was another species to boot. Or…hybrid species. Or something. At least, she was from a different culture, a different world. She hadn’t thought much of people who stared at me or of authoring a paper about my human anatomy with no way of obscuring my identity, so privacy was not as valued here as it was to me.
What would I be willing to agree to for free passage between our worlds? What would I be willing to give, or give up? I…didn’t know. I’d only seen the smallest fraction—not even a day’s worth—of what this world and its people offered. Part of my time here had been life-threatening, but then again, part of it had been thrilling, even magical and wondrous. If you counted the thorough healing that was making me feel better than ever, then there were even net benefits that would last me for some time to come.
They had said I was the first human being to set foot on this world for…how long? A thousand years? But if Ben was going to open a “gate” between our worlds, I wouldn’t be the last. Not even close.
I knew that some people in my position wouldn’t hesitate. I was riding on a dragon, for crying out loud. (Yes, that dragon was a sentient person who was doing me a favor, but that fact didn’t lessen any of my awe, and I doubted it would for anyone else.) I’d seen architectural marvels and experimented with ingenious engineering in what everyone here had dismissed as a backwater settlement. I’d seen—I’d felt—magic. Real, powerful, unmistakable magic. There were people on Earth who would literally kill to come here.
I shuddered at that realization. Leave aside those people—the ones who should never be allowed to discover this place—that still left masses and masses of innocent, well-meaning humans who would not just be thrilled to come but would greatly benefit. Healing, true healing, could save lives—could change human society as I knew it. Never mind that there could still be plagues that resisted a magical healthcare system; millions could live who would have died from cancer, or failing organs, or accidents. Millions more could have better lives than they could have ever dreamed of. Lives could be extended, death could become a rarity.…
I swallowed as the implications of what I had seen and experienced in perhaps less than twenty-four hours began spinning in my head, and those were only the ones with the most potential for good.
But even I—a normal, young, healthy human being—had nearly died in one day from exposure to the kinds of diseases that had grown among these superhuman people. If humans came here in mass, or if Ben’s people went there…it could be the Black Plague all over again, except with far greater speed and even greater numbers to lose.
That was just disease. What if…war broke out between the humans and these people? Their drakón were, after all, terrifying to behold. If they weren’t careful in how they approached us, they could get missiles sent at them first, questions asked later. If not war, at least some level of conflict was likely given humanity’s track record dealing with the other. Even if, miracle of all miracles, the two races mingled peacefully, there were other races to consider. After all, my first reception in this world didn’t come from drakón.… What if unlawful, bloodthirsty creatures like the ahglen slipped through to Earth? They…they could cause a massacre.
My stomach twisted itself into knots that, this time, had nothing to do with the flight.
Regulations or no…was Ben prepared for the shockwaves he would send across Earth by doing so?
Was I?
Could anyone be?
I felt as if I’d been contemplating accepting an incredible present containing a golden ticket, only to discover it was Pandora’s box. Except instead of being filled with all the horrible things in life, this dragon world probably had an even mix of wonderfully good and perilously terrible. There were so many, many things that had to be considered before any kind of permanent gate could be established between our worlds, and I was far from the kind of person to think of them all, let alone make the kinds of Earth-shattering decisions that could change humanity forever, for both good and ill.
Ben’s invitation to me alone was one thing. I’d consider it, but I would warn him of the dangers I’d thought of before accepting. If it was all or nothing—if he either had to throw the gate wide open or not at all…then my responsibility was clear. I couldn’t be that kind of catalyst for change. I couldn’t bear the weight of civilizations on my shoulders. I’d have no choice but to tell him thanks, but no. Not even if that meant I could never come back.
Not even if—which was more likely in the all-or-nothing scenario—that meant I could never go home.
Not, at least, until I’d done my very inadequate best to prepare these people to control the flood of change.
My heart sunk as I thought about how long those efforts could take if that impossible task fell to me, as I scrubbed my inexperienced brain raw trying to think of and then explain to Ben’s people every implication, and then they debated. Weeks, possibly, but probably more like months, or even years. Maybe never, if they decided it wasn’t worth the risk, as they were within their right to do. I was, after all, only one lost human; they had to weigh the good of two races against my one wish to go home. In that case, I knew which way the scales tipped.
I would accept that judgment. My heart sunk and my eyes stung from more than just the wind as I contemplated that likely outcome, but I would try to be brave and accept it. In a way, it would come as a relief. I wouldn’t have the deaths of millions from war or disease on my conscience. My fate would be my own, with the only others affected being my family on the other side.
My heart wrenched. That would be the worst part—abandoning them to their grief and questions forever, for the greater good. But I liked to think that, if I could explain everything to them, they would understand, too.
Ben’s mental voice interrupted my morose thoughts—which, surprisingly, given his current size, wasn’t “loud,” but it still had a kind of depth and power to it that no other mental voice I’d heard had. No matter the gentleness of his tone, it still made me flinch and sent shivers down my spine at the same time.
Are you alright, Sarah? Yvera says you’re looking…sober.
His hesitation made me think she had said a different word, and Ben was being tactful. I glanced at the purple dragon flying slightly above and to his right. It seemed his rightwing and leftwing took the directional parts of their titles seriously, because Kor was on his other side, with Ben flying point.
“I’m fine,” I said with a sigh, and then realized too late that my words were just snatched away on the wind. Unless Ben had incredible hearing on top of everything else, he probably hadn’t caught that.
My eyes fell on the rolled-up streamers on short wooden rods tucked in holsters within easy reach on the saddle. As Svyer was helping buckle me in, she had explained they were for amón to communicate with drakón while in flight. She’d said there was a whole signal system she couldn’t get into in the time she had, so she’d instructed me to use the three colors to communicate the one-word responses yes and no and danger.
I was fairly sure those were the three words she told me to associate with the three flags…but for the life of me, I couldn’t remember which ones meant what. There was a sky blue, a dark red, and a black, none of which seemed to correspond to the words in my mind. I thought I remembered being surprised that the dark red wasn’t danger, so that narrowed down the possibilities somewhat. That meant the red was probably either yes or no.… And I didn’t think it was yes.…
That left my best guess at yes being the light blue.
Wait, what had he asked me again? Had it been in the negative? No, I remembered: Are you alright? Which meant the proper response was indeed yes.
I sighed as I reached for the stick with the blue streamer. This method of communication was going to get old, fast.
Not to mention I also felt a bit ridiculous unfurling the streamer and waving it as obviously as I could, like my sister Abby trying to get our parents’ attention in the very back of our passenger van.
At least it seemed to work. I saw Ben turn his enormous head to the side enough to see the flag and then look straight ahead again.
Are you sure? he pressed. I’m sorry to pry, but we can’t take any chances after that darkfever. Do you feel sick at all?
I was touched and annoyed at the same time. Never in my life had I been as fussed over as I had been in the past twenty-four hours, and it was a disconcerting experience.
Ben had asked me two questions, though, with different answers, which meant another flag. I reached for the dark red and unfurled it. I waved the blue first in my right hand, and then the red in my left, hoping once again that I’d remembered the correct meanings.
Belatedly, I realized that waving the flags in different hands meant Ben had to swivel his head a bit more to see them, but from his tone, he didn’t seem bothered. Alright. We’re almost there, anyway. But if you ever feel even the slightest bit ill, let me know as soon as possible by waving the black one. Even if I don’t see it, Kor or Yvera will, and they’ll let me know.
I didn’t have a flag for thank you, so I simply waved the blue yes again in acknowledgement, and that seemed satisfactory, because after glancing at it, he said nothing more.
caught sight of a break in the trees—a clearing. The clearing, I soon realized, as we flew closer, and I saw the rubble that Ben and Yvera had reduced the crude stone altar to. Back to the scene of the crime, it seemed. That only made sense; it was where I had emerged, so it seemed as likely a place to send me back as any. Still, I couldn’t help scanning for any sign of ahglen.
If they ran from Ben alone, then they’re not going to show up when there’s three of them, I told myself.
If they were smart, that is. But.…
Ben touched down first, in the center of the clearing, flapping his wings hard and fast at the very end to make his landing softer. Yvera and then Kor came down next, on their respective sides of him, taking no such care with their landings, each of which caused a tremor in the ground.
Yvera, Ben said in the echoing way that I was realizing probably meant he was speaking to more than one person.
On it, Yvera said with a snort that puffed an alarming amount of smoke, and she circled the clearing with great sniffing sounds, nose low to the ground.
Kor, Ben said, golden head swinging to his much smaller friend.
I’ll get started in a moment, Kor said with a laughing edge to his mental voice. But wouldn’t you like me to help Sarah down first? Or were you planning on changing with her on your back?
Oh, right, Ben said sheepishly, and somehow his giant reptilian face managed to look chagrined. I had to bite my tongue to keep from laughing.
The laugh died quickly when Kor’s enormous midnight-blue head swung near me. When I said that he was smaller than Ben, that didn’t mean he was small by any measure of the word. If Ben was around the size of a Boeing 747, then Kor was the size of a medium blue whale.
In other words: still mindbogglingly huge and able to swallow me in one gulp.
Here, Sarah, why don’t you try climbing onto my hand? Kor said, holding out his hand, scaly palm up next to Ben’s neck.
“Oookay,” I muttered, but I couldn’t think of a better idea, so I unbuckled my legs and stood up in the saddle. I grabbed one of Kor’s scaled, taloned fingers (I noted with morbid interest that he only had three fingers, much like a bird or dinosaur, except one was an opposable thumb) and slowly transitioned my weight to one side of the saddle. Then I stepped over the saddle and put my foot on Kor’s hand in the same motion, all the while trying hard to not look at the drop that awaited me if I fell. If Kor’s reflexes were fast enough, I supposed he could try catching me, but I might not like the results of the quick, crushing movement that might be required to do so. Finally, I scooted onto Kor’s hand, bringing my other foot with me.
Kor lowered his hand to the ground with a gentle slowness that surprised me. The thing was, I didn’t know how long this new niceness would last, so even though I might forgive, I probably shouldn’t forget. I didn’t think he intended me to; that had been the whole point, hadn’t it?
When his hand came to a stop, I was only a few easy feet from the ground, which meant all I had to do was lower myself onto my bottom and slide off, touching down on blessedly solid ground.
“Thank you,” I said with a tad too much fervor, because I heard his human chuckle a moment later.
I turned, blinking, to see him already standing a few dozen feet from me, arms folded, smirking.
“Man, you guys can change fast,” I said.
“When we want to,” Ben said, walking over to me with his hands in his pockets. “Kor was showing off, though. He’s always been the fastest shifter among us.”
“Faster than even Yvera,” Kor said in the violet dragon’s direction.
I heard that, you little whelp.
I winced as I heard the deep, enormous, bestial snarl that accompanied her words. I imagined it would be the sound an angry T-Rex would make. Yet Kor just stood there, as blasé as if he’d only poked fun at a teddy bear. He even had the nerve to wink at me when he caught me looking.
“Kor,” Ben reminded him when he reached my side.
“Right, right—on it,” Kor said with a wave as he began walking away from us toward the altar.
“What’s he supposed to be doing?” I asked Ben quietly.
“He’s also the arcane expert among the three of us,” Ben said, then chuckled. “Well, he’s pretty much our expert on everything. Anyway, he’s going to determine, as far as he can after this much time and our destruction, what the ahglen were hoping to accomplish by sacrificing you.”
I shuddered. “Any ideas?”
“A few,” Ben said with a severe frown in the altar’s direction. His golden eyes glowed for a moment, presumably from the echo of his fury from yesterday. The glow died before he looked back down at me. “Most of which wouldn’t have worked. The only thing they could have accomplished would have been utter catastrophe.”
“I assume you mean more catastrophic than my death?” I asked, surprised how casually I could speak about it now.
He grimaced. “That would have been a tragic enough loss, but yes, more than that. Far more.”
“How so?”
He sighed and sat down cross-legged on the ground. Then he patted the ground next to him. “You might want to sit down. This is going to take a while.”
“‘This’?” I asked him uneasily, settling down next to him.
“The explanation I’ve owed you for a while,” he said with a heavy sigh. “Since before I knocked you down in this clearing, in fact. But various things have gotten in the way of me giving it so far.”
I blinked at him. “I thought you were…going to open a gate or something for me.”
“Yes, but before I do that, there are a few things we need to discuss,” Ben said, looking down at me soberly. “What the gates are, for one thing. What we are, for another. What I am, in particular. And what you are, most of all.”
“What I am?” I said in surprise.
He sighed, running a hand through his golden hair, spilling it around his face like fluid sunlight for one distracting moment. “That’s getting ahead of ourselves. First…how much do you already know? What are the legends you know about the Six Realms, about the Tree of Flame, about the sungates, about us?”
His expression grew increasingly concerned the longer my blank look lasted. He leaned in. “Nothing? You have been told…nothing?”
“Should I have?” I asked.
“It’s only been less than a thousand years,” Ben said, eyes wide.
“And that’s a very long time in human history,” I said. “Records weren’t good back then. And I don’t know how long you drakón live, but for humans now, it’s only about eighty years. I don’t even know what it would have been back then.”
Ben stared. Then shuddered and sighed. “I guess…that would explain it.”
He paused. “Wait—that can’t be right. You knew one word without my blood to translate for you. Drakón.”
“Dragon,” I corrected. “That’s what I know you as, anyway. I guess you’re right about that, but dragons are the only legend I’ve heard that means anything to me here.”
“What do you know about drakón—or ‘dragons,’ then?” he said with a guarded look.
I hesitated.
He grimaced. “Nothing good, I take it?”
“No, it just depends on the story,” I protested.
“What do the oldest stories say?” he pressed, leaning forward.
I bit my lip.
“Sarah. I won’t be offended, I promise. I just need to know what your preconceptions are if I’m going to explain properly.”
I looked down and pulled up grass shoots with my fingers. “The oldest stories? That I know of? Well, for one thing, none of them change into humans. They’re just how they are as…dragons.”
“And?” he encouraged.
“There’s not much detail in the oldest ones. Wings, scales. Breathes fire. Incredibly big, incredibly dangerous. Steals sheep and cows—uh, those are animals humans raise, livestock,” I explained when his face scrunched in confusion.
“Oh,” he said, face returning to a careful neutral. “Go on. What else?”
“Uh…likes treasure—sleeps on hoards of it under the mountains. Again, stolen.”
Ben snorted but waved for me to continue.
I hesitated.
He sighed. “Sarah, out with it.”
“Well, the human-dragon interaction never went peacefully, let’s put it that way,” I said tactfully.
“As in…?” he pressed.
I threw up my hands. “Why does this matter so much to you?”
“Because the real conflict between amá and draká is why I need your help,” he shot back.
I stared at him, heart giving an extra hard thud or two. “The.… You need my help with what?”
“Torch it,” Ben cursed, covering his eyes with one hand. “Sorry, I.… Sorry. ‘Course I’m messing this up already.…”
“Hey, hey, don’t worry about it,” I said. “I’ll tell you if it’s that important, but I’m just warning you, it’s not pretty.… It always ends in death. Usually lots of humans first, then the dragon when they manage to…end it. And.… Yeah. That’s all there is to it.”
I did not mention all the damsels that were singled out and consumed in those legends. I didn’t think Ben needed that detail on top of everything else.
Ben let out a heavy breath. “So, just to make sure I understand this correctly, the only thing the oldest legends about us—about drakón—say that they are big, vicious, fire-breathing robbers and murderers?”
I hesitated. “The Western version, yeah.”
He sighed, face set. “No wonder you looked at me like.…”
Like he was a monster.
“I just had no idea what to expect,” I said. “I know you now. But yesterday.… Ben, you scared those ahglen witless to drive them off, and I did not know if I was going to be next. What other kind of reaction was I supposed to have?”
“I see,” he said, looking away.
I wracked my brain to come up with something to wipe the grim look off his face. “The legends about the Eastern dragons are nicer, I think. I know less about those, but I think they’re more like…gods? Control the elements, are wise, sometimes help out? Those are drawn a lot differently than you look, though. They’re a lot longer, almost like snakes, and I don’t think they have wings.”
“Well, that’s…interesting,” Ben said, his face getting even darker.
After a moment, he raised his head and took a deep breath. “That is…all you know? All the average Earthren knows?”
I bit my lip, but I nodded. “If by ‘Earthren’ you mean ‘human from Earth’…pretty much, yeah.”
“What about your Tree?” he asked, as if throwing out one final detail I had to know—like the sky being blue. “The Tree of Ice?”
I just blinked at him. “The what now?”
“That means nothing to you?” Ben said, aghast. “You don’t even know your Tree exists?”
“I am…going to have to go with a no on that one.” Regardless of whether such a thing did, in fact, exist on Earth, I knew nothing of it. Not even a legend.
“Well,” Ben said heavily, leaning back on his hands. “When Avva told me I had my work cut out for me, he wasn’t kidding.”
He glanced at me sidelong for a moment, and I could swear he seemed almost…nervous. Abruptly, he said, “How about some tsha? I need some tsha. Any good story needs a fire, in any case.”
“Tsha?” I asked with a blink.
Ben’s face scrunched as he tried to think of an explanation. “Hot…leaf…juice?”
“Oh, you mean tea!” I burst out laughing and for a few moments, I couldn’t stop.
Interesting that the translation magic hadn’t just given me the word tea. Perhaps there was enough of a difference that a new term was needed.
“What?” Ben asked sheepishly.
“Nothing,” I gasped, wiping my eyes. Chuckles still occasionally escaped. “But just…in the middle of the clearing where I nearly died yesterday…at the start of ‘the big explanation’…and coming from you.… Tea. I would never have pegged you for a tea guy.”
“Is that a…bad thing?” he asked tentatively.
“No, no, go right ahead,” I said with a wave of my hand. I hiccupped out another chuckle. “Don’t mind me. Just nerves, probably.”
“You’re not the only one,” I heard him mutter to himself as he leaned forward.
This time, his sleeve covered most of his arm, so the transformation as he brought out each item he needed wasn’t as dramatic. The speed of the change was also much faster, more fluid, leading me to think Ben had deliberately slowed down the process before to help me follow what was going on. I marveled at the ease, the unconsciousness of what he was doing, as if he were just pulling things out of a bag. With just a flex of his semi-reptilian fingers—not even enough change required to remove digits—he had a small brazier in his hand. Just like that—empty air one moment, brazier the next, which he set down on a clear patch of ground between us.
Next, he brought out a waxed paper bag filled with small disks of what looked like charcoal and began filling the brazier with a neat pile. He began speaking as he worked, his voice coming more naturally now that he had something to occupy his hands.
“I think it’s best if I start at the very beginning, the parts that are basically myth to us, too, so I’m going to tell it to you like I first heard it—like a story. A story about the draká.”
“Draká?” I asked.
“Full-blooded.…” Ben frowned at the sky, struggling for the right word for a moment. Then he waved his hand vaguely. “What we can become, that creature. But the original, unmixed with human blood. One that couldn’t become this.”
He gestured at himself, his human form. Human-like, anyway.
“Oh,” I breathed. “You mean, just like I’m a full-blooded human, there are full-blooded dragons—I mean…draká?”
“Exactly,” he said with a relieved smile. Then the smile died. “Except, there are no more draká. Just as, before you came, there were no more humans.”
“Why?” I asked quietly.
“That’s what the story is about,” Ben said, taking a deep breath. “This world, we call it Ykran. However, I was born on Ythra. In case that didn’t translate—Old Draká often doesn’t—that means ‘mother.’ It’s the world where the draká were created.”
“Created?”
Ben shrugged. “As far as the Tree has told us, yes.”
I was about to ask what the Tree was when Ben continued. As he spoke, he set aside the bag of charcoal and hovered his hand over the pile.
“At the very beginning of that world, there was the Tree—the Tree of Flame.”
At the same time he said the word flame, he touched his hand into the middle of the pile and a tongue of fire about the size of a candle flame leaped from his finger into the charcoal, setting it alight. The flare raced across all the pre-treated coals until they all were on fire.
Meanwhile, Ben began setting up a grate on top of the brazier.
His voice was soft with reverence. “The Tree of Flame is what it sounds like—an enormous Tree, one burning with everlasting fire. Legend tells us the Tree was involved in the draká’s creation. At the very least, She is the source of the flameheart inside us now.”
“She?”
“She always uses female avatars when She speaks to us,” Ben said with another shrug. “All the Trees do, as far as we are aware.”
“There are other trees? Like the one you said was on Earth?”
“Yes, but I’ll get to that,” Ben said patiently. “In the beginning of this story, there was only the one.”
“Sorry, I’ll shut up now.”
He smiled. “Don’t worry about it. It’s good to see that you’re curious, and I’m explaining a lot of things that must be new. Although this might go a little faster if you let me just talk for now.”
“I’ll do that, then,” I said, miming zipping my lips closed.
He cocked his head curiously at the gesture, but he didn’t remark on it as he continued. “The draká were created to be the guardians of the Tree, and when they protected Her and followed Her counsel in their stewardship over the rest of Ythra, they prospered. When they ignored Her and became greedy, they faltered. And that is what led to their downfall.”
As he spoke, Ben brought out a teakettle and a metal canister, took off the lids, and dumped a few scoops of leaves inside the kettle. The whiff I caught from the leaves was interesting: herbal, but also sharp, almost spicy. Then Ben capped the canister, put it “away,” and “pulled out” a canteen of water, the contents of which he began dumping into the kettle.
“Draká, as you’ve seen, are huge creatures, requiring huge amounts of energy—more than is possible without also being magical, in fact. That has never changed. But back then, draká got their energy just as any other creature does: from food. Specifically, from fresh meat, and the bloodier the better. That meant they had to keep many herds of large creatures, which meant vast fields for grazing, which required the draká to create new plains and replant vegetation in the old. It was a careful balance, but it worked for thousands of years because the draká were prudent and obedient to the Tree.”
Ben set the kettle on top of the brazier grid with an ominous pause. “Then came the Great Famine.”
He glanced at the sun, and then his eyes rested on me. “There’s a lot more to it, but for the sake of time, let’s just say that the draká began to ignore the Tree’s counsel, becoming greedy and complacent—never a good combination. When the Great Famine struck, one thing led to another, and soon the draká were tangled in a cycle of hunger and bloodshed. They’d had conflicts before, but never like this. It wasn’t more than a year before the entire world was affected. Things were looking dire enough.…”
Ben’s normally soft and warm eyes became hard, cold gold. “That was when the Devourer struck.”
I felt a chill, like a whisper of a winter breeze going down my neck. Strange that such a feeling should come over me on this pleasantly warm day, sitting next to the burning coals. I had begun to get hot. But when Ben said those last words.…
Ben cast a startled glance at me, as if he’d felt it too. Then he looked grimly over his shoulder at the altar Kor was still examining. I was distracted for a moment by the incredible sight of midnight-blue patterns floating in the air around the altar, turning and spinning around each other like gears in a machine. Kor’s back was to me, but he appeared to be watching the patterns with folded arms, as if they were displaying data on a screen for him to interpret. Occasionally, he would raise a hand and make some motion that would send the patterns spinning in new directions. I was so overcome with fascination, I forgot about the chill.
Until Ben raised his hand, and where he pointed, a line of fire appeared on the ground—too bright and uniformly gold to be like the natural flame he’d used to light the coals. All the while, his eyes glowed, just as they had when he’d looked at the altar before. I felt a different chill—not the ominous kind of before, but one that was awe and a bit of fear.
Ben traced the fire around us in a wide circle, large enough that there was no danger of either of us accidentally touching it. When the circle was complete, he lowered his hand, and the glow in his eyes faded. The fire, however, did not. It stayed at a low level, only a foot or so at its highest, and it didn’t seem to give off any extra heat, thank goodness. It also didn’t seem to consume anything beneath it or spread, and yet it kept on burning.
Eerie.
“Sorry about that,” Ben said with a grimace, and it took me a moment to realize he wasn’t meaning the fire. “I should have set that up to begin with, but I didn’t realize.… Well, I suppose that confirms one of our theories about what those ahglen were up to. Probably no more than what Kor has already discovered for himself, though.”
“What?” I asked as I shifted positions, bringing my knees up and wrapping my arms around my legs.
Ben opened his mouth and then closed it. “It won’t make any sense unless I keep going, sorry. But don’t worry—you shouldn’t feel that again, not with the ward around us.”
“Then go ahead,” I said, since it seemed like he was waiting for permission.
He nodded. “Some people wonder if the Devourer caused the famine in the first place. Its timing was just so perfect. But the Tree hasn’t told us for sure, so it could be that it was just waiting for the right moment of weakness, caused by the draká’s folly. It’s that patient, after all—it isn’t mortal, like we are. It can wait centuries if it needs to.”
“What is it?” I asked, nearly in a whisper.
Ben’s eyes were hard as he answered. He cast another glance at the ring of fire around us, and for a moment, the flames flickered higher. “The Devourer is…an enemy of sorts. Well, the enemy. The only true one in every sense. It’s what its name implies: it’s a force that consumes all life, leaving nothing in its place.”
“When you say ‘nothing.’…”
“Nothing,” Ben said grimly. “Worlds consumed by the Devourer are only rock. I saw one once, in a vision from the Tree.”
He shuddered. “It was not something I ever want to see again.”
I swallowed. “So, it’s a…force of some kind? That just…makes everything living vanish?”
“It’s a hunger,” Ben corrected seriously. “The hunger, the kind that only destroys, the kind that only gets hungrier the more it consumes. The Devourer. It’s not just a force, either. It has a mind of some kind. It calculates. It waits when it needs to. Sometimes, it doesn’t entirely consume its victim right away if it thinks it can use it to get more victims in the future. That’s how it has gathered its army.”
“Oh, great,” I said under my breath. “Why am I not surprised it has an army?”
Ben’s lips flickered with a humorless smile. “Looks like you encountered some of its more recent victims yesterday.”
My jaw dropped. “The ahglen? I just thought those were a bunch of bloodthirsty…ogre…things.”
“Unusually bloodthirsty, even for ahglen,” Ben said. “Or perhaps unusually greedy, I should say. Even if they might kill an amón or a drakón if they get the chance, they rarely try to extract blood. They know that just paints a target of guilt on them from miles away. The Devourer must have consumed some of their life force, making them susceptible to its influence.”
“But why?“ I asked, flabbergasted. “Why would the Devourer want them to sacrifice me?”
“A very good question. One I’m hoping Kor and Yvera might have answers to by the time we’re done.”
“Yvera?” I realized I hadn’t seen or heard her—either in human or drakáform—for some time, so I looked around the clearing and didn’t see her anywhere.
“She’s following your trail,” Ben explained. “You didn’t emerge here, did you?”
“No,” I said with a frown, looking around again. “It was in the jungle somewhere…but I can’t remember which direction.”
“Wherever it was, that’s where Yvera’s gone. We’ll want Kor to look at the spot too before we leave, just to be thorough.”
He cast another glance at the sun. “But if we’re going to have time for that, I’m going to need to speed this up, sorry.”
“No, by all means,” I said with a shudder. “Please fast forward on the dark, Devouring bits.”
Ben laughed tightly. “Unfortunately, I’m just getting started. I already mentioned it has an army. Well, the only reason it needs one is because of the Trees. As long as a world’s Tree remains healthy and strong, the Devourer can’t enter Her world and consume its life.”
“But what about the Devourer’s army?” I asked.
“Exactly,” Ben said, pleased at how I’d caught on. “The consumed—that’s what we call still-living creatures under its sway—can enter a world with a Tree. That is where the Tree’s children—in this case, the draká—come in. The draká were created not just to be stewards of Ythra but also to protect the Tree from the consumed—otherwise, all life on Ythra would have been doomed.”
A shrill piping sound made both of us jump and look at the fire, where the kettle was cheerfully shrieking away.
“Sorry,” Ben said with an abashed laugh as he took the kettle off the fire. With his other hand, he produced a mug and poured the contents of the kettle into it.
When he offered it to me, I relaxed again into a cross-legged position and reached out to take it from his hand without thinking—and then jerked my hand back with a hiss.
“What—oh, the heat,” he said with a sigh. “Sorry.”
“No worries,” I said with a chuckle.
Still, he scowled to himself as he set the mug gingerly next to me. He produced another mug and poured the tea for himself, muttering something I couldn’t hear.
As a distraction for him, I cast my mind back to what we had been discussing. “Did the draká know about all of this—the Devourer and everything?”
Ben nodded grimly as he set down the kettle. I tried not to stare as he raised his mug up to his lips and took a gulp—even with the liquid still steaming.
“They did,” he said after a swallow. “But, in a way, they had known for too long. The Tree had warned them for ages that the Devourer was out there and that it would be keen to consume a race as full of energy as theirs. To the Devourer, Ythra was the ultimate feast, so they should have been on their guard. But like I said, the draká had become complacent. Greedy. Worst of all, they stopped listening to Her. So, first came famine. Then war. Then, when they had allowed the Tree to become weak through neglect, the Devourer could open its darkgates all over Ythra and sent in its army to finish them. It nearly succeeded.”
“What stopped it?” I asked quietly.
“Blood,” Ben said, taking another sip. “Blood, freely given, gave the Tree the strength She needed to close the darkgates. It took seven of Her most faithful protectors sacrificing their lives, and many more died in the battle to defeat the consumed army at Her very roots. Even then, the draká weren’t able to find and destroy them all. Once the Devourer has penetrated a world, it’s nearly impossible to remove its influence. When the army is defeated, its creatures scatter and hide. To this day, we’re still struggling to root them out of every world of ours it’s infiltrated.”
He grimaced. “In a way, the draká were lucky to be the way they were. Even if a Tree’s world repels the initial invasion, the Devourer usually still wins through attrition. The very thing that made the draká such appealing targets also made them able to survive the first few years after. If only just. But when the dust settled, they knew they wouldn’t last much longer.”
“Why?”
“Two reasons,” Ben said, taking another sip while holding up two fingers. “One, starvation. As I mentioned, draká needed to consume fresh meat. Famine and war had already made their herds scarce, and the full-world battle against the consumed hadn’t helped. Even with the draká’s drastically reduced numbers, there wasn’t enough livestock left to sustain them.
“Two, fertility. There weren’t enough draká left to defend themselves and the Tree from the remaining consumed. Draká lived for centuries, but they reproduced slowly—it would take lifetimes before they returned to the numbers they had before, much less had enough of them to be safe in their own world. Their victory against the Devourer was feeling hollow as they stared their extinction in the face.”
“What did they do?”
“They did what they should have done in the beginning. All of them—all but the ones who could be spared from guarding and herding, anyway—came to the Tree and asked what, if anything, could be done to ensure their survival. And She told them: they had to change.”
“In what way?” I asked, propping my elbow on my knee and my head on my fist.
“In the most fundamental of ways,” Ben answered, lowering his mug to his knee. “They needed to become something new, something not so dependent on meat, especially fresh meat. Something that could reproduce more quickly. Something that was even more powerful to drive back the consumed and hold the Devourer at bay. There was only one way they could do that: they needed the willing help of another Tree’s children.”
My eyes widened. “Humans.”
“Yes,” Ben said with a smile that was becoming rare in the seriousness of this conversation. “But humans were on another world, which meant the draká needed a gate to get there. The draká’s first encounter with gates had been the Devourer’s kind, so they were hesitant. But the Tree told them its gates were a subversion of the Creators’ design. She could teach them how to create proper gates, ones the Devourer and its consumed could not use, but only on certain conditions. So the draká made the First Covenant.”
Ben held up a finger with each rule he spoke. “First, to guard the gates as they guard the Tree. Second, to only use the gates to go where the Tree permitted. Third, to never take whatever lay beyond the gates by force, only by trade or gift. And fourth, to never claim a world with another Tree’s children as their own.”
“Sounds pretty smart of the Tree to me,” I mused, thinking of humanity’s poor track record with peaceful exploration.
“That’s what the Tree is—the wisest being we know of, other than the Creators. And They let Her deal with us.”
I didn’t know how to feel about that. So far—having accepted the existence of dragons and magic and monsters by necessity—I’d also accepted Ben’s word that there was a Tree of Flame. He sounded so certain, I got the impression he had seen Her for himself. However, any other cosmic entity was a mental stretch I wasn’t quite ready to make. I wasn’t going to dispute it or disrespect his belief, but neither was I going to touch on the subject until I’d had longer to grasp the tangible realities around me.
“So the draká promised to abide by those rules,” I prompted.
“They did,” Ben confirmed. “And the Tree showed them how to build the first sungate. The one that would take them to Earth.”
He sighed. “It wasn’t easy for them. To dedicate the draká and resources to building a gate was a sacrifice. An even greater one was the further lives it took to give it power. But they had no other choice if they wanted their race—and their world—to survive. Then the gate was open, and the Tree’s chosen Seven went through.”
“You’re just at the Seven?” Kor said in amusement as he strolled back over to us. “Better hurry this up, Ben, or we’ll be here past dark. And you know what that means.”
He said the last words in a sing-song tone.
“I’m trying.” Ben rolled his eyes and took a sip from his mug. “It’s not like you would have done any better to summarize our entire history.”
“I offered,” Kor told me innocently. “He said no. Can you believe it?”
“Because you would have had her here until the next night,” Ben said with a sigh.
“True enough,” Kor said with a chuckle as he reached us—stepping over the line of golden flame with perfect unconcern. I winced, but his boots didn’t show so much as a scorch mark. Maybe the flames were harmless after all.
Not that I—as an unproven human—was about to test that.
Kor picked up the kettle. “Ah, tsha. That’s so you. Any left?”
Ben shrugged. “Maybe. Now be quiet and let me finish. Better yet—go find Yvera.”
“Sure,” Kor said with a huff as he set down the kettle. “Send me into the jungle by myself after the prickly arkukan. I see how it is.”
“You’ll be fine,” Ben said. “If it were that dangerous right now, Yvera wouldn’t have left me with just you for protection.”
Kor grinned. “Ouch. Thanks for the jab and your concern.”
“Seriously, Kor,” Ben said with a pleading look. “Will you please help Yvera find the spot where Sarah emerged, if she hasn’t already, and take a look at it? You know you’re way better at analyzing magical traces than me, and you’ll save us that much time.”
“Fine, fine,” Kor said with a flippant wave as he strode off again. Once again, he walked straight through the flames with no visible sign of pain or damage.
He called over his shoulder, “Just so you know, Sarah, I’m only doing this because Ben asked nicely. Not because I’m susceptible to flattery.”
Ben snorted into his mug.
“He is, isn’t he?” I whispered with a grin.
Ben flashed an answering grin back at me. Completely. Works every time. Try it next time he’s annoying you.
“I can feel you talking about me, you know!” Kor shouted from across the clearing. “It had better be wonderful, complimentary things about my brilliance and selflessness!”
Ben and I held it in for as long as we could. But as soon as Kor disappeared into the trees, we burst out laughing—hard and long enough that I nearly spilled the mug sitting next to me, and Ben sloshed a few drops of his tea onto himself.
“Oh, that felt good,” Ben said when he got his breath back.
“Been a while?” I asked sympathetically.
“You have no idea,” Ben said, rubbing his eyes with his free hand.
Heart clenching in sympathy, I asked, “What’s been the problem?”
“I’m getting to that,” he said with a sigh. “Speaking of which, Kor has a point. I’d better hurry if we’re going to be out of here before dark. I know you don’t understand why we need to yet, but just trust me when I say that it’s important.”
“So I’ve gathered,” I said. I tested my mug, discovered it was cool enough, and rested it on my knee. “So, you were saying about the…Seven?”
“Ah, yes, the Seven,” Ben said, sipping his tea again. “To make a very long story short, the Seven representatives encountered a group of humans, got the humans to stop running away or trying to kill them—”
Ben’s eyes flickered to mine with a rueful smile, no doubt thinking about my Earth legends. “—and after a long time of explaining and negotiating, the humans agreed to help.”
He sighed. “It was a lot more complicated and painful than I just made it sound. There are volumes written about that time alone. It’s a good thing Kor isn’t here, or he would have cried.”
I chuckled. “I’ll bet.”
“Anyway, it happened—they came to an agreement. Problem was, the humans didn’t know Earth even had a Tree, let alone where it was. For whatever reason, their relationship with their Tree had never been as close as the draká’s had been.”
He glanced at me. “I guess not much has changed.”
I just shrugged ruefully.
He sighed again. “The first task for the humans and draká to tackle together was to find it. So they did—in a vast and frozen land across the sea. Then, once they found the Tree of Ice, the Seven draká and seven humans made the Second Covenant—this time, together.”
“What were the terms this time?”
“We…don’t know,” Ben said. “It was ancient magic, we think. It was the first true magic. What we do know is the result: at the end, the seven humans and the seven draká became something new: fourteen drakón.”
“Dragon…humans,” I breathed.
“Yes,” Ben agreed. “Fourteen beings able to be in an amá or a draká state. Except neither state was what it had been before. The transformation of the Second Covenant allowed them to absorb the fourteen flamehearts the Tree of Flame had sent with them. Now, the draká no longer craved meat—or any food at all. As long as they had sunlight, or barring that, any other source of light or warmth, the flameheart inside them could give them the energy they needed.”
“That’s why you all like warm things so much,” I said in satisfaction. It felt good to figure the rules out.
“Exactly,” Ben said with a smile. “Especially at night, when we can’t rely on the sun. And we can change into a human and eat a variety of foods to gain energy instead, and because this form is so much smaller, we need far less food than a draká would to sustain ourselves through the night.”
“And that’s why you’re so anxious to do things during the daytime, when you have enough energy.”
“That’s a big part of it, yes.”
“You said both states were changed,” I said. “How was the human state different?”
“Lots of ways, some of which you’ve discovered already,” Ben said. “They all stem from one monumental change: amá weren’t magical creatures, in the sense that they didn’t draw on the power of the Tree to supplement their life force as the draká had to. Even the draká had never had enough energy to spare for anything other than sustaining life. But when they could become amá, all the energy of a draká compacted in the efficient form of an amá meant there was power to spare. For the first time for either race, the drakón could work magic.”
“Wait,” I gasped. “The only reason you can do magic is because you can become human?”
“Yep,” Ben said with a crooked smile. “In fact, most of us can’t do so much as light a candle while we’re in drakáform. It requires all the energy we have just to exist that way. Even I struggle to do anything more basic than that. Kor is one of the best of us at it, and part of the reason is his smaller size.”
“The smaller you are, the more powerful you are?” I asked eagerly.
He grimaced. “It’s not…as simple as that. The more powerful you are, the bigger you become—because that means you have more energy to grow to and sustain a larger drakáform. The other factor in how much we can do in either form is how…efficient our bodies are in using the reserves we have. Someone Kor’s size typically has smaller reserves than, say, Yvera, but Kor is efficient in how he uses his reserve, so he can do more magic either in draká- or amáform than she can.”
“I suppose that makes sense,” I said. “What about you?”
“Me?” Ben asked self-consciously, tapping the side of his mug with one finger.
“I know I haven’t seen many drakón yet, but you’re pretty much bigger than anyone I have. What does that say about your capacity and efficiency?”
“Efficiency is learned,” Ben said, eyes flicking away from me. “Like…training to run further and faster. The more you work at it, the better you are. Kor is as good as he is because he’s trained harder than pretty much anyone at using magic. Plus—now, don’t tell him I said this, or he’ll never let me forget it—he’s a torched genius. He really is. His memory, combined with his ability to process and manage so much at once.…”
Ben shrugged. “I don’t have the brain he has for it, nor have I dedicated the effort he has, so I won’t ever match him for mastery. I’m better than Yvera, though, if you really need some kind of measure.…”
He winced. “Don’t tell her I said that, either.”
“I bet Yvera has spent her time on other skills,” I said reasonably.
“Exactly,” Ben agreed hastily. “She has. She’s not lazy. She’s just not as interested in the arcane…unless it involves killing things.”
I chuckled. “What about your capacity? I’m just trying to get a full sense of the rules here.”
“I’m not exactly the typical example,” Ben said ruefully.
“Why’s that?”
“I was getting to that part. If you’ll let me continue…?” he asked with a crooked grin.
“Oh, right,” I said sheepishly. “Where were we?”
He thought for a moment. “Right after the Second Covenant?”
“Oh, yeah.”
Ben took one last swig of his tea and set the mug on the ground with a sigh. “So, now the drakón could do magic. That was good, because they only had so many of them, so sacrificing themselves for anything else wouldn’t have been ideal. The group built another gate and brought through the now-drakón humans and their entire clan, and for the first time, humans and draká began living together on Ythra.
“It was a difficult but exciting time. Most of the humans became drakón, but it happened gradually for the rest of them, as the Tree of Flame chose a draká here and a human there as She saw fit. Even the ones who remained human for the rest of their lives were invaluable. The humans had an ingenuity and dexterity that the draká lacked, and combining those skills with the draká’s size and strength and the drakón’s magic, Ythra recovered quickly enough to save the draká.
“A couple of centuries passed, mostly peacefully. I’m not saying everything was perfect. The two—now basically three—races had a lot of work to do to understand each other, get along, and explore their new abilities. There were disagreements and some fights and tragedy, but to a large extent, the two civilizations merged and then thrived.
“It wasn’t long before the growing population became too much for Ythra alone, so the Tree guided the dramá to worlds that didn’t have a Tree or Tree’s children and allowed each of the seven clans to settle their own world one by one.”
“Seven clans?”
“Oh, right, sorry,” Ben said, rubbing his forehead. “That’s…important.”
He took a deep breath. “So, the Tree selected each of the original Seven draká for their individual qualities. Those qualities in turn influenced or enhanced their transformation into drakón, as did the humans that paired with them for the Covenant. The first human and draká became co-leaders of their clan, and every other draká or human who wished to become drakón pledged themselves to one of those seven clans. From then on, the drakón took on the same characteristics as the clan they’d joined.”
“What characteristics? Can you give me an example?”
“At the most superficial level: color,” Ben said with a rueful smile. “Surely you’ve noticed our unusual…vibrancy.”
“Oh, so the color of your hair, your eyes—that shows your clan?” I asked excitedly.
“Yes: gold, violet, blue, scarlet—you get the idea. Yvera, the violet: she’s Battleblood. Kor, blue: Starkissed. Svyer, green: Peacegrowth.”
“And you?” I prompted.
“Sunfilled,” Ben said ruefully, holding up some of his golden hair. “But we’re not supposed to focus on the colors. They’re only skin deep. The qualities can be over-stereotyped, too. Scholars debate how much is inherent, how much is socialized, and so on. Especially when the clans separated into their own worlds, it became much more muddled which was which. On the other hand, it’s hard to argue with the fact that some types of magic and some skills just seem to come easier to one clan than the other. Peacegrowth has the best healers: that’s just a fact. Battlebloods are larger than pretty much anyone except Sunfilleds, which inclines them to be the best warriors, and so on. The Tree Herself says it’s meant to be that way: that it’s supposed to encourage us to rely on and work with each other to be stronger than we can be apart.”
“Does it work?”
Ben became quiet for a moment, looking at the ground. “It has. With…one tragic exception.”
He sighed and ran his hand through his hair. When his eyes flicked up to mine, they once again had that strange look of…nervousness. “That’s one of the most important things I have to discuss with you, but also the hardest.”
“Oh?” I prompted. My mind then made the intuitive leap. “Is this…about what you need my help with? The real conflict between humans and dragons?”
His lips pressed into a thin line before he nodded. “Yes, it does. It happened only a couple of generations after the first drakón. By that point, there were no more humans, but there were plenty of amón—descendants of drakón who didn’t become drakón themselves. Amón…began to feel as if they were treated less favorably than drakón. I won’t go into all the reasons, but they had good cause to feel that way. And the clan that had the most amón by far was the Moontouched.”
Ben’s fingers plucked absently at the moss at his feet, and he didn’t meet my gaze. “The Moontouched as a whole, even the drakón among them, held the least sway at Crownhold. Their motions were often dismissed, their votes counted for little; their people struggled for positions in government, or for land and holds of their own.
“The Tree tried to intervene. She declared Moontouched should be the next to receive their own world, but the rest of the clans argued it should be Brightflare’s, who were causing trouble to become the next. Even the Queen at the time sided with Brightflare against Moontouched, citing the need for peace. The final blow was when Moontouched’s Lord died during the dispute and the Crownsmeet rejected his Heir because she was amón. When she went to Crownhold to defend her claim, she…she was killed.”
Ben squeezed his eyes shut and clenched his jaw; his hands gripped his thighs until the knuckles went white. I felt a pang for him. He had nothing to do with this tragedy, one that had happened centuries ago, and yet he looked as if he felt personally responsible.
Impulsively, I touched the back of his hand. He started, and his eyes flickered open to meet mine in surprise. I smiled softly. I didn’t know what he needed from me, but I tried to show that I understood, that I didn’t blame him, and that neither should he.
He let out a breath, and his muscles relaxed. To my surprise, he turned his hand over slowly and gave mine an answering pressure of wordless thanks. Then he let go and gently pulled his hand back, so I withdrew mine.
“We still don’t know who did it or why,” Ben said heavily. “Doesn’t matter—it should never have happened. Even though the thought that any of us could do such a thing is sickening enough, the Queen should have prevented it. But…I can also see why she was unprepared to. Murder, by one of our own, not a consumed, at such a high level.… It had never happened before and never has since. Her assassination sent a shockwave through the fabric of their society.
“Before the other clans could collect themselves and respond, the drakón mate of the murdered Moontouched Lady declared the clans were no longer worthy of their association. He gathered the Moontouched and requested that the Tree grant them leave to return to Earth, the one world where they could belong and be safe. The Tree granted his request. Almost before the rest of the clans knew what was happening, they were gone. And when they left, the original gate to Earth fell to pieces.”
“Why?”
Ben stared into the trees. “Unbeknown to the other clans, the Lady Moontouched’s mate made a second request to the Tree, this one in secret: that, for their safety, She allow them to destroy the gate on Earth once they were on the other side. So She did, and as a final token, She destroyed the original sungate Herself. That was how seriously the clans had wronged their Moontouched kin—the Tree allowed them to cut themselves off. The Seven Clans were no more. And so, at least partially, was the Second Covenant.”
“What?” I asked with a start.
Ben glanced around, but on seeing the clearing was still empty except for us, he looked back at me, golden eyes intense. The circle of flames around us roared higher than ever before, perhaps to three feet.
“I have to admit, I had another reason to get both Kor and Yvera out of the way,” Ben said grimly. “What I am about to tell you, you must swear to never speak of to another soul. Not even to my wings. Avva—the King—has authorized me to tell you, but you alone.”
I stared at him. “Why me? If not even Kor.…”
“Avva has his reasons about Kor,” Ben said wearily. “We both trust him, but Kor—as you’ve discovered for yourself—is a force to be reckoned with. Let’s just say that he can be a bit too proactive as just an Heir’s leftwing. As for Yvera, well.…”
“I get why with Yvera,” I said with a smile.
Ben gave a tense chuckle as he rubbed the back of his neck. “Seeing as you’ve hardly interacted with her so far, that’s saying something.”
“But why me? Why has the King said you could tell me, if you can’t even tell them?”
“Because you’re perhaps the only one who can do anything about what’s wrong,” Ben said. I was so stunned I nearly didn’t notice how his hands were clenching his knees again.
“Me?” I said, putting my hand on my chest. “You don’t even know me. Not really. I haven’t even told you my last name, let alone where I’m from—specifically—or what role I have in Earth’s society, and I’m telling you, it’s nowhere and nothing. I’m barely a legal adult who just graduated high school a few months ago. I’m a nobody. I get overlooked even in my family.”
“None of that matters!” Ben exclaimed. When I winced back from the force of his words, he flinched in turn and put his head in his hands. “Torch it.”
He breathed deeply for a few moments and then lifted his head. His expression when he looked at me again was controlled. “Sorry. I know I’m doing an awful job at explaining all of this. But…I’m also serious. None of those things you said or could say about yourself matter. Not so much as the fact that you are the first human to set foot on this planet ever and the first in the Six Realms—in a thousand years. I just explained this to you, Sarah—the original gate is destroyed. It’s a ruin right now, weathered stone blocks left in a heap. The runes are so faded, they’re almost gone. Any hope we had of travel to or from Earth was gone…until yesterday. Until you.”
He let that sink in, gold eyes burning. “Now. What do you think that says about you?”
I swallowed, heart pounding. My reflex answer was nothing. Nothing at all. I just fell through a magical ice hole in my neighborhood creek and somehow ended up here.
Something, though, made me push aside that reflex response and that whisper of doubt. Maybe it was the distressed intensity of Ben’s gaze, the tightness in his whole body, muscles all gone rigid. All his tells were adding up to one thing for me: He cared deeply about this, at a forceful and personal level, and he was trying hard not to let that desperation show.
Maybe it was that desperation that made me silence my denial to look deeper inside of myself for something, anything, to tell him that wouldn’t crush him with disappointment.
Though the denial was gone, I still didn’t have an answer for him. My mind was drawing one endless blank. But at least it was a listening one.
“I don’t know,” I said quietly. “What does it say about me?”
“The Tree of Flame wants you here,” Ben responded just as quietly but with a much greater intensity. “For that matter, your Tree, the Tree of Ice, must want you here, too. Because our Tree of Flame would not have taken you—a human, one of Ice’s full children—without Her Sister’s permission.”
“They can…talk to each other?” I said with a hard swallow. “Even with the gate.…”
“All Trees can speak to each other. At all times, across any distance of the universe. Somehow, all of Them are connected. Maybe They’re not even different Trees at all, just different aspects of—”
Ben cut off and looked sharply over his shoulder at the tree line behind him. I glanced more slowly, thinking that it must be Kor and Yvera returning and catching us in the middle of this secretive discussion.
There was no one there.
“Sarah,” Ben said, a different intensity in his voice now. “Get on my back.”
“Excuse me?”
He turned around toward the jungle and rolled onto his knees in the same motion, offering his back to me. This time when he spoke, it was in his mental voice, and the force of it was like the shocking snap of a rubber band across my consciousness. I have to change—now—and I don’t want to leave you defenseless on the ground when I do.
“Defense.…” Fortunately, my brain was faster than my mouth, because before I was even finished with the word, I was forgetting the bizarre awkwardness of Ben’s request and stumbling to my feet.
Not a second too soon, because as I was lunging for him, I caught a glimpse of the reason for all of this.
Tall—as tall as Ben at least, even with legs bent backward midway down like a beast’s. Which made sense, because, despite the whole upright thing going on, that’s what they looked like: shaggy, dark fur; long, thick arms with wickedly gleaming claws; gnarled manes rising to canine heads; lips pulled back into snarls revealing yellowed teeth; bloodshot eyes that stared at us with ferocious hunger.
I didn’t know what Ben called them, but I knew what they would be in my world.
My worst nightmare.
Werewolves.