for us to leave. Since packing was simplicity itself for drakón, about ten minutes of that was Ben going through my things to handpick what went into my backpack to best ensure my survival and comfort (in that order), and the rest of it was debating in my kitchen where we were going next.
To no one’s surprise, Kor had already thought and researched the matter, and equally unsurprising, he thought we should go to his home world, Oshal, first. Yvera flatly disagreed, thinking we should go to hers, Ekrel. The only thing the drakón appeared to agree on without having to discuss was that we were not going to Ythra.
I had been the one to suggest it, thinking wistfully of seeing Ben’s home and meeting the King in person. So far, I’d only heard about him or talked with him once over scale, but I had a feeling that being in the same room as him would be another experience entirely, one I was looking forward to with surprising fervor.
I also thought Ythra was the choice that would make everyone happy. After all, the part of Yvera’s angst that wasn’t about me was about not being in the center of the action, and Kor had seemed to feel some of the same. I also hadn’t forgotten that note of longing in Ben’s voice when he had gazed at the image of his home world.
“No,” Ben said simply, while Kor shook his head grimly and Yvera snorted.
“No,” Kor agreed. “Better do that one last.”
“Because of the symbolism?” I asked, baffled.
“Because Crownhold is in torched chaos right now,” Yvera said. “If we aren’t going to ride the whirlwind, we’d better stay clear of it.”
“A bit of an overstatement,” Kor corrected. “It’s very calm, purposeful chaos. This is Kavarian, Alyish, and Eskala, after all.”
“Avva and his wings,” Ben explained at my blank look. “Alyish is his rightwing—a legendary general who has proved himself an exceptional strategist and warrior over his decades of leading the Warflight.”
“My great-grandfather,” Yvera said with a proud smirk.
Figures, I thought.
“And the leftwing, Eskala,” Kor said with a dreamy look that had me staring. “Perhaps the most brilliant mind to have ever graced the Six Realms.”
Yvera elbowed him in the chest, making him squawk in protest. “What was that for?”
“I’ve told you—stop this mooning over Eskala. It’s wrong.”
“She’s single!”
“And three times your age,” Yvera said with a gagging sound.
“And remarkably well-aged,” Kor said, dreaminess undeterred.
“She’s not a wine, you dimtorch!”
“In any case,” Ben said loudly, addressing me. When the others fell silent, he lowered his voice to a normal level. “Rumor is now fully circulating across the Six Realms that I and my wings have found a Moontouched Earthren. Avva hasn’t acknowledged the rumor or announced you yet, since he’s waiting for your final decision. Even so, you set one foot in Crownhold, or even Ythra, and that’s tantamount to open acknowledgement, and then the political games begin. Not only would that be unfair to you, we can’t afford to be distracted right now—or be distracting. No, we’ll do Ythra last, when hopefully everyone is fully focused on the Tree’s defense.”
“I see,” I said slowly, gut twisting. Most of my interest in seeing Ben’s home withered, leaving a dread for when I’d have no choice.
Could I really do this? Enter this world of power and politics as one of its major players? Every time I thought that just maybe I had what was in me to take the Tree’s offer.…
I’d tried to control my expression, but unfortunately, Ben must still have seen something of my doubt and dread.
He gripped my shoulder, face softening. “It will be alright, I promise. I’ll be there, we’ll all be there, to help.”
I heard Yvera’s quiet snort, but I only nodded to Ben, hoping he’d just drop it. “So…where do you think we should go, then?”
Ben gazed back at me and said seriously, “I think that’s up to you.”
Yvera groaned. “Ben, why are you asking the ignorant Earthren to make all the important decisions?”
“I don’t know,” Ben told her flatly. “Maybe because last time she did, we discovered this hold.”
“Last time, we nearly died,” Yvera snapped back.
“The Tree told us to stay, and the Tree told us to listen to her,” Ben said, eyes flashing. “You have a problem with that, take it up with Her.”
Yvera flinched as if he’d slapped her and stepped back, falling silent. I wondered if Ben’s words held a double meaning for her.
Ben let that silence sink in as he put both hands on the table and met both his wings’ gazes by turns, because even Kor had looked skeptical.
“When are you two going to get it?” he said finally. “Who was the one who felt like there was some reason to linger on that mesa?”
Neither of them answered. Yvera wouldn’t meet his gaze, Kor met it coolly.
“Who was the one who even saw that first moongate? Who was the one who opened it? Who commands all the moongates we’re looking for?”
Still silence.
“Ben—” I murmured.
“No, Sarah. You need to hear this, too.” Without taking his eyes off his wings, Ben pushed off the table and straightened. “We have ten days to search five worlds for invisible, insubstantial gates powered by a magic that we can’t detect or understand that have remained undiscovered for a thousand years. Ten days. To do that, we’re going to need more than knowledge, more than skill. We’re going to need Sarah. Because without her instincts telling us where to go and what to do, we might as well give up now.”
The silence hung long and heavy this time. I had a difficult time swallowing, and my stomach now felt twisted into knots with dread. If that speech was supposed to make me feel better, it had failed.
“Here’s a thought,” Kor said quietly. “If it’s so important to the Trees that we get to Earth, and if They control our access to the gates, why are They sending us on this mad rush of a hunt for all the others before they’ll give up Earth’s? Why the search at all?”
“Kor,” Yvera snapped, looking livid.
“You’ve thought it,” Kor snapped back. “As much as you try to convince me otherwise, I know you have a brain in that head of yours, so you’ve thought it. Don’t put on self-righteous airs just because I’m the only one who dares to say it out loud. Don’t give me some ashes about ‘there must need to be an order to things.’ The Trees have always had complete control of the gates, from the swearing of the First Covenant. They could open the gate to Earth, but They haven’t. Instead, They give us this ridiculous task, with a deadline that we can only meet with Their help. Why?”
Yvera looked so furious she was white. Ben didn’t seem shaken; he only gazed back, arms folded, face expressionless.
“The Trees have been in perfect control of all of this for the entire past torched year of our lives—and beyond,” Kor cried. “We searched and searched for Sarah, when the Tree of Flame could have told us exactly when and where she would appear—and neither of you ever asked why. You just did what the Tree told you, like usual. Well, I’m fed up and asking why. Why send Sarah now? Why try to restore the Moontouched when it’s almost too late for them to do us any good? Why, when time is apparently so precious, send us on this torched hunt when our duties should lie elsewhere? Why? So They can watch us and laugh as we race around through Their hoops, then pat us on the heads as if we were good little hatchlings and give us our treat? Why?”
Kor let that sink in. Then he pointed at the archway out into the Rim. “If all the Trees cared about was our survival, we would have been standing here a year ago—at least—and the gate to Earth would already be out there. We would be walking straight through it, presenting Sarah to the Tree of Ice, getting her invested, and getting her right back here to be trained and educated properly, and outfitted with wings and a clan of her own, so that by the time the Devourer came—on the day the Trees knew it would be coming all along—she would be even somewhat prepared to help us meet it. But in their infinite wisdom, that’s not the way They wanted it to be. They have the answers. They have the power. Yet this is how They chose to use it, all supposedly in the name of saving us. So, I ask the question that is on all our minds, but I am the only one who will say it: why?”
I looked at Ben, as did Yvera. My heart was thumping, wondering what answer he would give. I certainly didn’t expect the one that came.
“Kor,” Ben said quietly, almost gently. “If you wish to take a leave of absence to go ask the Tree your questions, it’s granted.”
Kor snorted, folding his arms. “As if She would answer me.”
“She tends to not reward a confrontational attitude,” Ben agreed mildly. “I’ve learned that from personal experience.”
I blinked. Ben? Confrontational with his Tree? I’d never heard him talk about Her with anything but reverence. I had a hard time imagining what would make him mulish with Her. I must not have been the only one, because Yvera was visibly startled.
“I don’t have an answer for you, Kor,” Ben continued, spreading his hands. “All I can say is that, even though everything you said has merit, I still trust Her—I still trust Them. I’ll still do what They say, as needless as it seems to us now. Call that stupidity if you want, but I don’t exactly see another solution. Do you?”
“No,” Kor said darkly.
Ben rounded the table between them and offered his hand to Kor. “So where does that leave you, Korinth Starkissed? Once again following your naive Heir on another seemingly dimtorch quest, or…not?”
Ben’s words had been mild, but from Yvera’s inhale and the flash in Kor’s eyes, I guessed something more significant was going on than I could see on the surface.
Kor clenched his jaw for a long, tense moment, and his fingers dug into his folded arms. Finally, he huffed and broke Ben’s gaze, scowling at a distant corner of the kitchen. “Of course I’m coming. Your chances are dim already, but they’d be abysmal without me.”
“They would indeed,” Ben said with a thin smile.
When Kor finally took his hand, they just gripped, without shaking, eyes locked.
“Thank you, Kor,” Ben said with relief when they let go. “I was not looking forward to finding another leftwing. There’s not a one that could have replaced you.”
I had to suppress a gasp as I finally realized just what had been at stake.
Kor sniffed. “True.”
Sobering, he said grimly, “You realize I’m still going to ask ‘why’ when the Tree is concerned—in private. I’ll present a unified front, like a good leftwing, but when we’re alone.…”
“I wouldn’t ask for anything less from you. Honestly, I’m surprised it’s taken this long to come to this.”
“I don’t trust the Tree,” Kor said, rolling his eyes. “But, Flame only knows why…I trust you.”
“You realize that makes no logical sense?” Ben teased lightly. “Since I just do what the Tree tells me to.…”
“I know,” Kor growled. “So, if you want to keep me as a leftwing, I advise you to not put it in so many words like that again. It is one of the very few things I put excruciating effort into not thinking about.”
Ben smiled. “Noted.”
He turned back to me. “Now that’s resolved, let’s figure out where we’re going.”
My mind froze with stage fright. “Er…what are my options again?”
Kor sighed in resignation, but when he came over to the table where I was sitting, he placed a hemisphere of dark crystal on the surface and tapped it.
A hologram of each of the Six Realms and their suns appeared, stacked one on top of the other. Each sun was in the center and stayed still, forming a perfect vertical line, and their planets hovered around them in their various orbits. They even showed the illuminated and dark sides, the tilts of the axis.…
“Oh!” I exclaimed, looking at the six stacked solar systems. “It’s like an interstellar clock!”
Yvera rolled her eyes, but Kor nodded in approval. “Exactly. And a calendar. See, if I turn on the overlay.…”
He tapped the hemisphere again, and this time the paths of the orbits appeared, each differently colored, with hundreds of notches, some longer than others.
“These show the days,” Kor said, running his finger through the notches. His finger paused at one of the longer ones. “And these show the start of the months.”
He tapped one of the runes that hovered between two long notches; I presumed the rune would give me the name of the month if I could read their script.
“Traditionally, each realm has its own calendar.” Kor pointed to several orbits. “But for simplicity’s sake, the standard across the realms is that of Kaldrir.”
He pointed to the topmost sun, one of the largest. I dimly recognized the broad desert swaths of its orbiting Ythra.
“That’s why the Tree of Ice gave us the days by Kaldrir,” I murmured, fascinated. At some point—I didn’t even know when—I’d pushed to my feet and kneeled on the stone bench for a better look, so my eyes were nearly level with that highest sun.
“Correct,” Kor said in a carefully neutral tone. “We would have assumed that without further information, but it’s good She made that clear.”
Trying to change the topic for his sake, I pointed to the lines that had appeared through each planet when he’d turned on the calendar overlay. Different runes hovered at the end of each. “What do these mean?”
Kor gladly continued the lesson. “Those help you discern the season in each hemisphere—”
“Yes, yes,” Yvera said impatiently. She jabbed her finger at Ythra. “But as you can see, day one is burning away, and we haven’t even left this torched hold. Save the lectures for when we’ve saved the Realms, will you?”
“Yv,” Ben warned, putting a hand on her shoulder. He grimaced apologetically at me and Kor. “Sorry to cut this short, but though she didn’t have to be so rude about it, Yvera has a point. Thank you for getting out the solarus, Kor. It’s a good visual aid for this.”
He dropped his hand from Yvera’s shoulder and, catching my gaze, named each planet below Ythra as he pointed to it. “Ekrel of the Battleblood. Oshal of the Starkissed. Romskal of the Strongshield. Yonvey of the Brightflare. Ykran of the Peacegrowth.”
Ben’s finger lingered over Ykran. “That’s where we found the first gate.”
At the last planet, I thought. Interesting.
Tuned in carefully to my budding instincts, I followed that latest unfurling. “I promise this question is relevant to my decision: what’s behind the order of these?”
I gestured from top to bottom.
“Ythra was the first planet,” Ben said carefully. “The birthplace of draká. Traditionally, the realms are arranged thereafter in the order in which we discovered and settled them.”
“That’s the simple answer,” Kor said with a smirk. “Following my Heir’s orders, I won’t get into the controversy behind it.”
I could well imagine there was contention about the order. Such struggles may seem petty to some people (usually the people at the top), but as the third child of eight, I was all too aware that order mattered.
“Remind me,” I said quietly. “The original controversy around the Moontouched was about the order in which they were to receive their own realm, correct?”
I took the silence from the drakón ringed about me as confirmation and the encouragement I needed to keep following this feeling to its conclusion.
“I was brought to this planet.” My finger hovered over Ykran. “The one belonging to the clan too peaceful to fuss that they were left until last. I’m guessing it’s even one of the last places you guys looked for me.”
More silence. Ben was going red from sheepishness, Yvera had folded her arms and looked away, and Kor was watching me with that intent look of his that made his eyes almost seem to glitter.
As a distracting aside, I got an inkling where his clan had gotten their name.
Reining in my focus—because I was on to something, I knew it—I continued. “It seems to me that means something. Say the Trees aren’t cruel or crazy. Say there is some reason for all this running, or, well, flying around. I still have no idea what that might be, but I think we have our first hint here. If you insist on going with my gut, then I say that next we go to…”
My finger hovered over the next planet up.
Yonvey, Ben supplied silently, saving me from my embarrassment at having already forgotten the name.
“…Yonvey,” I said with conviction, hoping Kor and Yvera didn’t notice the slight heat rising to my cheeks.
Then the last will be first.… Kor murmured silently to me.
“What?” I asked, nonplused.
“Nothing,” Kor said, a bit too casually. “As good a reasoning as any, I suppose. Just wish I’d known that in advance so I could have done better research on potential moongate locations.”
“Well, Kor, I think we’ve found a general order you can predict from now on,” Ben said quietly. When I glanced at him, his eyes were on the display, his expression heavy.
I felt a twinge of regret. I hadn’t meant my explanation to be directly condemning, but I knew Ben well enough by now to know that he would take on needless guilt anyway.
“Great,” Yvera grumbled. “Brightflare.”
“What’s so bad about the Brightflare?” I asked.
Don’t get her started, Kor said urgently.
Nearly at the same time, Ben forced some vigor into his voice to forestall Yvera. “Well, now that we know where we’re going, it’s time to fly out.”
to this , I thought with some surprise.
After wrapping up in my kitchen, we went back through the moongate (the only active one we had unlocked and thus our only way back into the Six Realms) and onto the mesa in the Peacegrowth world of Ykran, and now we were in the air once again, soaring over the jungle where I’d first appeared.
It was only my fourth time flying on Ben’s back, and only the second with a saddle, but already I felt surprisingly at home as I gazed out into the cloudless blue, as I watched the dragons’ giant shadows skim over that undulating green carpet of jungle canopy below. As long as Ben’s wingbeats remained steady and his flight path level, I found something oddly meditative—almost trancelike—about flying. Even my contemplation of the height I would fall if the saddle somehow failed me was almost dreamily fatalistic.
I idly wondered how difficult it would be for Ben to catch me.
It was also getting easier to think of the giant, gold-scaled behemoth just underneath me as Ben. Seeing another transformation on the mesa had added a layer of solidity to the connection, and so did hearing his inner voice check in with me occasionally, coinciding with the golden dragon’s enormous head turning as far as he dared to glance at me. I didn’t understand how there could be something so familiar about his eyes, even with them changed to black reptilian slits set in golden orbs, but there was.
Speaking of which.…
Ben’s head swiveled, eyeing me. Still doing alright?
I took out the blue flag and waved it to indicate yes.
Good. We’re almost there, don’t worry. You should be able to see Kergin Hold in a few dek.
I still didn’t know what dek were, but if we were almost there, then I assumed it wouldn’t be long, so I turned my focus to the horizon.
Sure enough, in about five minutes or so, I saw a mountain range rise in the distance, with specks of varying colors flying in and out of it like bees around a hive. Those “bees” formed into dragons, of course, and a small group of them broke off in their circling loop and began flying in our direction, a scarlet one letting out a trumpeting bellow that Ben answered. It clearly was a greeting of some kind, not aggressive—I recalled those kinds of roars with piercing clarity—but the sound, on top of startling me, was loud enough that I felt the vibrations even through the saddle, and my ears rang a bit afterward. Finally, his warm, spicy scent enveloped me in a dizzying cloud as the wind blew his breath back to me.
Well, I thought faintly. At least it doesn’t stink.
Far from it, actually; something about that scent made me hot inside, and longing curled itself like a new and voracious kind of hunger in my stomach.
Sorry about that, Ben said sheepishly, perhaps belatedly realizing in part what effect his answering bellow would have on me. He must have simply guessed, because he didn’t spare a glance backward as he and his wings approached the other group.
The rest of their communication, if any, must have been mind to mind, because the others didn’t make any other sound I could discern other than the thunderclaps of their wings as they circled and merged with our group, ringing around us from all sides like airstrip workers guiding us in. Or perhaps they were an honor guard; surely they had recognized Ben, from their silent conversation if not by sight or the bellow.
I studied the rapidly approaching mountains in fascination.
Now I saw why everyone had dismissed Elspeth Hold, the first hold I’d seen and the one where I’d met Svyer, as being a backwater outpost. For example, it had had only one landing pad, whereas this one seemed to have ones dotting the range—more than I could easily count. The number of dragons on them and flying about was dizzying to me, not to mention the drakón and amón scurrying about on the pads, moving around cargo, talking in groups, making repairs, and shimmying up and down the mounting platforms.
We angled for one of the highest and yet largest pads, taking up the widest available peak; even then, it was shored up on many sides with giant blocks of stone so that it formed a perfect oval, and at its center…
…could only be a sungate.
The enormous arch made of smooth stone blocks towered at least hundreds of feet tall and several hundred feet wide. Inside it…was fire. An enormous wall of fire, waving, flickering tongues licking beyond the arch but never spreading beyond—filling the arch in its entirety but confined to it perfectly. I could see now why it was called a sungate; it even burned nearly as bright to my eyes, making it hard to even look at closely. Insofar as I was able to, I eyed the fire nervously.
We were really going to go through that?
We had come at the gate from the side, so we circled around. I assumed that was because we were aiming for the long strip of the oval to land, and I organized all the anxious questions I had for Ben, readying them for the moment he changed back and could hear me normally. Even when we came around to face the gate and the honor guard suddenly veered off, I still didn’t realize what was coming next.
Get ready, Ben said.
I assumed he meant for the landing, but then he drew in his wings more closely than I’d expected, and we fell into a sharp dive.
Going far too quickly to land.
“Beeeeee—” I screamed.
Before I could even finish, before I even could fully comprehend what was happening, I was surrounded by fire. Heat overwhelmed me; it didn’t burn, but it sure stung and crackled, going up even my nostrils and into my open mouth. It was gone in an instant, however, and in the next instant, I wished it was back, because it was preferable to the sensation of being compressed and stretched and shot through a cannon of light through a dark void—the most extreme rollercoaster ever, with G-forces that no being should ever be able to withstand. I might have gone momentarily insane trying to comprehend what was happening to me.
Then the void spat us back out through another roaring mouth of flame, and we were flying through the open air once more, shooting over a grassy plain and slowly climbing with each mighty wingbeat.
“—erg,” I choked as a late, incoherent end to my scream.
Ben, I am going to kill you, I thought in a daze.
Oblivious to his impending doom, Ben said, And that’s that. Not too bad, right?
I took in a deep lungful of air, slowly forcing myself to loosen my death grip on the saddle and forgo thoughts of murder in favor of examining our new surroundings.
More dragons flew and circled around us, more walked or sat on the ground below, with an even greater hubbub than there had been on the other side. For once, the hold didn’t appear to be in a mountain. When I glanced behind, I saw the sungate had been on the highest rise around, but rolling plains stretched as far as I could see. The plains immediately below were dotted with orderly mounds, and drakón and amón descended or came up from them, so I presumed the main settlement was still underground.
An enormous wall made of off-white stone ringed the settlement, and on top of it rested a dome as translucent as a soap bubble; as we flew through, I only felt the slightest of tingles. Beyond lay fields upon fields of farmland, forming a quilt of greens, tans, and browns. I observed placid-looking beasts like giant, hairy rhinos pulling plows through the dirt and carts down the neat grid-roads.
Sarah? Ben asked, anxious this time. As soon as he leveled out, he glanced back at me.
Since I didn’t know how to make death threats using flag signals, I did the next best thing: I ignored him.
Sarah, are you alright? Ben demanded urgently.
I met his reptilian eye, glaring hot daggers at him.
Alright, I can see you’re mad, he said cautiously. You can yell at me later. Just let me know now if you are physically sound or if I need to land now to heal you. Blue for fine, red for healing.
I grumbled to myself, but I got out the blue flag and waved it sharply. He swiveled his head back to face front.
Thank you, and sorry. Like I said, you can yell at me all you want when we land, but remember that might be a deken or so.
We had discussed this. Guessing that the Moontouched might once again have built the moongate somewhere remote for the sake of secrecy, we had emerged from the most rural sungate on Yonvey. We would fly around the countryside until we got hungry and the drakón tired, then we would stop for a midday meal. Then we would get back in the air until we had to seek some place to spend the night. All of this was to give me as much exposure to as much of Yonvey as possible, hoping I would simply feel if a moongate was nearby.
It wasn’t much of a plan, but…even Kor had to admit that it was our only option. Especially after we all saw the gate on Ykran vanish completely as soon as I closed it behind us, just as Ben had described it had done before for him. There was a reason the gates had not been discovered yet; the Moontouched had made them to be undetectable to anyone but—presumably—other Moontouched. We could only hope that we wouldn’t have to spend another dangerous night in the open to find the next one.
I had a bright candle of hope that it wouldn’t be necessary again. I now had something of a feel for the moongates, like another sense entirely. The closest comparison I could come up with was a sense of magnetism, a pull for something deep inside of me. I could feel something of that magnetic field even after the Ykran gate had vanished, something that lingered there.…
My main worry now was about how close I had to be to feel it again.
The drakón flew as low to the ground as they dared whenever they could, but they had to balance my potential need for proximity with the perhaps equally urgent need for discretion. I realized now why Ben hadn’t even shifted into humanform before going through the gate. He had warned me they would try to go through quickly to avoid as much scrutiny as possible—particularly questions about where we were going from people who didn’t need to know. Even so, Ben and his wings were too recognizable, especially together, for us to have gotten out of the Brightflare settlement we had emerged into without being noticed, and word would quickly spread as to where in the Six Realms the Heir was now. Avoiding settled areas from then on as much as we could and flying high as possible when we couldn’t were our only ways to keep our exact location from being tracked.
So, temper cooling, and twisted stomach settling, I settled into the rhythm of the search, straining with all my might to feel what might be out there to feel.
I hadn’t felt a thing by the time we landed near a small stream. I eyed the shade underneath the trees lining the banks longingly; the clear blue sky had seemed lovely at first, but eventually the glare in my eyes and UV rays on my skin became too much. Fortunately, I had light brown Latina skin from my mom; if I’d been as pale as my British-Norwegian dad, I might have been as pink as a strawberry by then.
Kor helped me down as he had before, with no slips this time, while Yvera remained in drakáform to pace up and down the bank, eyeing the placid herd of large, fat animals that looked something like a cross between a hippo and a hairy cow. They had to have been domesticated or stupid to not spook at three dragons landing within eyeshot; they just kept chewing right along.
I didn’t know why Yvera was watching them. Were they dangerous? Did she think they could hide assassins somewhere in their herd? She couldn’t possibly be thinking of eating.…
My stomach churned, and I lost a bit of my appetite.
Ben approached me warily in humanform, hands in his pockets, shoulders hunched slightly. “Still mad?” he asked.
“What?” I asked absently, shifting my attention to him. Then I remembered and scowled. “Not really, but you know you deserve a slap or something for that, right?”
“For what?” he asked sheepishly.
“For not preparing me better! Ben, that wasn’t just intense, that was…insane, and I don’t mean that in a good way. I think I lost my mind for a moment back there. You just—just—dove right in—”
“I warned you we’d go through quickly,” he protested.
“You didn’t say you weren’t even going to land,” I cried, gesturing at the ground with both hands. “That dive alone gave me a heart attack.”
At his flash of concern, I rolled my eyes and held up a hand. “No, not literally. And then I didn’t know if the fire was going to burn me—”
“I wouldn’t have brought you through if it would have,” Ben snapped, his own temper flaring.
“What if it could have, Ben?” I said grimly. “I don’t know if you’ve noticed this by now, but I am not like you.”
That gave him pause. He hesitated before speaking again, just looking at me.
I took a deep breath. “I don’t know how any of this works. I know this sounds ignorant and silly right now, but…I’m not just human—I’m of ice. What if.…”
Ben inhaled sharply. “I.…”
I sighed. “It was all just very intense, very sudden, and without explanation. Consequently, I felt like I might just be about to die in three different ways in as many seconds. Can you understand why I was just a little mad?”
“Yes,” he groaned, putting a hand to his forehead. “Flame, Sarah…I’m sorry.”
He didn’t make it easy to stay mad at him. I took another deep breath and then stepped up to him, putting my arms around him. “Don’t do it again,” I muttered, but I felt the last of the tension melt away as Ben put his own arms around me and held me close.
“I can’t promise not to be so idiotic again,” he said ruefully, “since it seems to be ingrained in me. But I am sorry, and I promise to try harder to explain things like that in the future, and to think more about how things could be…different for you.”
“Thanks,” I said with a sigh.
“Mind if I check?” Ben asked awkwardly as he took a step back. His hands lingered on my shoulders. “Now that you’ve got me thinking.…”
“I’m pretty sure I’m OK, but go ahead,” I said, shrugging. He had already done a healing check today, but secretly, I was all for another round.
When his warm power sunk into me, I had to bite my tongue to hold back a sigh of pleasure. You’d think after all the sun exposure I’d had that his heat wouldn’t feel so good, but you’d be wrong. Speaking of, though.…
Ben’s power lingered on the surface of my exposed skin, sending pleasant tingles everywhere, and he sighed. “You’re sunburnt. Of course.”
“Am I?” I said, struggling to keep my voice from sounding dreamy. “It’s harder to tell, with my skin tone.”
“You’d be feeling it in a deken or two,” he said with a frown of concentration. Presumably to aid in the healing, he moved one hand to my throat and brushed the fingers of the other down the side of my face. The intentness of his expression kept me from thinking his touch was a caress, but it felt enough like one that my treacherous heart picked up the pace anyway.
“Does that hurt?” Ben asked in concern, eyes flicking down toward my heart. I sincerely hoped his sense of my heartbeat came only from the healing connection and that he couldn’t detect it normally.
“No,” I said tightly. Which wasn’t very convincing.
“Hold on, I almost have the sun damage healed,” he soothed.
Goodness, I could smell him now—that warm, enticing aroma I’d caught on his dragon breath, like sand and salty surf on a tropical breeze, like sunbaked desert stone with a hint of juniper and creosote. Was it stronger right now because of his use of magic? Whatever the cause, it was making my head swim dangerously. I found myself caught between a fervent wish that he’d never stop and an urgent need for him to finish before I did something a lot more forward than I should at this stage of trying to win him. Especially in front of Yvera.
“There,” he said, pulling away.
As his power faded, I was left feeling colder than I had any right to, standing on that plain, with the warm sun beating down.
“I should have thought to put sunbalm in your pack,” Ben sighed, rubbing the back of his neck as he eyed the bag I was wearing. “I think I have some.…”
“If not, I do,” Kor called.
Ben and I turned. Kor, showing surprising initiative, had already spread a blanket and begun setting out a lunch. Yvera, now human, stood nearby, looking pointedly away.
Kor paused in laying out the food and, with the next shapeshift of his hand, produced a small round tin and held it out.
Ben strode over and took it. “Thank you,” he said gratefully, then passed the tin to me. “This should help. You smear it on—”
“I understand,” I said, popping open the tin. “We have something similar.”
Similar, but not exactly like. I did indeed find a balm inside the tin—clearish, hard, and waxy. It warmed and melted easily enough at the touch of my finger to allow me to scratch out a thin layer. The herbal smell was pungent but still pleasant, almost minty, an improvement over the usual chemical smell. When I rubbed it on my arm, it spread surprisingly well, warming to a gel that absorbed into my skin without a trace.
“Nice,” I said appreciatively as I approached the blanket.
Yvera, I noted, had meanwhile made good use of her long legs by nonchalantly crossing the distance to position herself on the only free side of Ben, since Kor was on the other. That was fine by me. Sitting across from someone is sometimes just as good as sitting by them. I was certain Yvera’s scowl as I sat down came from her realizing that now Ben was looking directly at me.
It was so petty I almost rolled my eyes. Yvera must not have gone to high school.
“You took the gems out,” Ben noted, looking at my hair.
“Yup,” I said, picking up a roll. “As soon as I could once we were in the air. I only left them in while we were in the hold to avoid hurting the lights’ feelings.”
“Shame,” Kor said with a frown.
My lips twitched as I briefly met Ben’s gaze. “Why? Because they were…shiny?”
Ben choked on a bite of purple-and-red fruit. Yvera looked at him in concern, but he just waved to show he was fine.
“No.” Kor’s frown deepened, and he didn’t appear to realize what I was referencing. “They formed a complex spell weave that I was looking forward to further dissecting.”
We all stared at him.
“What?” he protested. “None of you saw it? The weave was quite advanced and delicate, true, but it was obviously not just for show.”
“They were part of a spell?” I said, gaping.
“What was its purpose?” Ben demanded. For some reason, his cheeks were slightly red.
“Like I said, it was complex, advanced, and delicate, and I was hoping to study it further,” Kor retorted. “All I caught were the uppermost layers. Something about protection and strength, I think. Seemed appropriate to me for sending off their Heir into the dangerous unknown.”
Guilt twisted in my stomach even as my heart warmed. I dug the pins out of the pocket of my pants and showed them to Kor.
“Can you tell anything from these?”
“May I?” Kor said, holding out his hand.
I spilled the pins into his hand. He poked them around, his gaze intent for the next several minutes, occasionally picking one up to hold it to the light. Meanwhile, I ate, not even needing Ben’s encouragement now; I was ravenous, and that was even after snacking a couple of times during the flight.
Kor finally sighed in frustration and handed the pins back to me. “I couldn’t glean much. The diamonds were the anchors, but the spell was in the weave, the net of magic the lights cast as they put them in, and that was so delicate that it’s long gone by now. It might not have been disrupted with one or two pins coming loose, but all of them.…”
My fingers froze in their grip around the pins. “Wait…these are…diamonds?”
“Of course,” Kor snorted after taking a swing from his canteen. “What did you think they were?”
“Something much less valuable!” I spluttered. “I can’t just wear these in my hair!”
Kor and Ben stared at me.
“Why?” Kor said. “They seem suited to the purpose.”
Yvera snorted and climbed to her feet. “I’m going to look around,” she told Ben, jerking her thumb over her shoulder. She tossed her braid and strode off, calling, “Try not to get yourself killed while I’m gone.”
“Oh no,” Ben called back dryly, rolling his eyes. “That’s exactly what I was planning on doing.”
“Yeah, well, find another hobby.”
With that, Yvera leaped forward and shifted into her dragonform. After causing a small windstorm with her flapping wings, she launched into the air.
“It’s been tough on her,” Ben sighed as he looked over his shoulder to watch her rise into the sky. “Being cooped up in that hold for so long.”
So that was another reason her temper had been short lately. I felt sorry for her. I didn’t excuse her, since she really should work on her anger management, but I could feel sympathy.
“I honestly thought she might murder us, one by one,” Kor said placidly, popping a grape-like blue fruit into his mouth. “And you know she’d start with me.”
Are you so sure of that? I thought dryly.
I held out the pins. “Can we get back to the fact that my lights put a bunch of priceless gems into my hair as ornaments?”
“Not just ornaments,” Kor said impatiently. “And hardly priceless. They’re one of the lowest gem denominations for a reason, after all.”
“Wait, hold up,” I said, throwing up both hands. “You use gems as money?”
“Of course. They’re hard, useful, small—”
“—and darn rare!”
“Hardly,” Kor said in surprise. “Any halftorch alchemist can turn pebbles into quartz, and so on. Diamonds aren’t the absolute easiest to make, but they aren’t the hardest.”
“Not to mention all the natural ones we find in our digging underground,” Ben added. “Natural ones are the best for magical purposes, so those we generally don’t use as money, unless it’s at a much higher value, but mortal-made ones are fair game.”
I gaped. Blinked. And closed my mouth. I supposed…that all made sense. If you could make gems.…
“But what keeps some good alchemist from literally making their own money?”
“Why shouldn’t they?” Ben asked in surprise. “They’re providing a useful service. Same as any trade. Especially if they charge them up first.”
“But…inflation…fraud.…” I trailed off as I realized I didn’t know nearly enough about economics to know just why people making their own money was a bad idea.
The drakón just stared at me.
“Fraud?” Ben frowned. “You mean producing flawed gems? That could be a problem, I suppose.…”
“It most certainly is, Ben,” Kor said with a snort. “Just because cases of knowingly selling flawed gems don’t fall under your jurisdiction doesn’t mean they aren’t a bite on the tail.”
Ben sighed. “I get it. The point right now is that gemmakers generally charge them up before selling them—it’s one of their greatest values added, after all—but even if they didn’t, anyone, even amón, can test if the gems are any good by giving them a bit of spark.”
“By what?” I asked.
Ben reached over and tapped one of the gemstone—diamond—ends of the pins in my hand. The moment he did, the diamond flared with golden light and then dimmed to about the brightness of a candle.
“Even amón have that much power to give,” Ben explained. “How do you think they would have lit the doorgems in the guest wing?”
I hadn’t thought about that—but for crying out loud, I’d only been in the Six Realms for four days.
Ben seemed to realize that at the same time, or read it from my expression, because he smiled sheepishly and continued. “If there had been any internal flaw in that gem, it wouldn’t have lit, making it useless and worth nothing more than a bauble. We trade gems and crystals because they’re useful.”
“What are they used for?” I asked in fascination, holding the now-golden diamond up to inspect it.
“Everything,” Ben said with a shrug. “You’ve seen plenty of examples already. Everything is powered by gems or crystals, one way or another. For drakón, they provide an energy-saving anchor—uh…a way to root the power we give so that it keeps going without us needing to concentrate or give it more energy, at least for a long while. For amón, gems are the only way they’d save up enough spark to work magic-based devices at all. That’s why charged gems have the best value to amón. Because gems are a way of carrying and storing power. See, even if you have all the gems you need, or if the device you want to run has the gems built into it already, you can take a fresh, charged stone.…”
Ben took the golden-diamond pin from me and touched it to another, normal diamond. Like one candle lighting another, some of the light from the golden diamond ran into the second. When Ben pulled the golden diamond away, both pins glowed, if only just enough to discern in broad daylight.
“You can even give it all,” Ben said, tipping the first diamond to touch the second again. This time, all the light from the first spilled into the second; the first became as dull as the others, and the second as bright as the first had been. Or…nearly.…
“A bit of energy is lost from the transfer,” Ben said, confirming my suspicion. “So it’s not a perfect system, but it works well enough for us. It’s often not worth making the gems interchangeable, so the power loss is expected.”
I thought that all through…and realized something that suddenly made it all make much more sense to me.
“Oh! So you’re not really trading gems at all. Your real currency is…power.”
Wasn’t it the same everywhere?
Ben blinked at me, as if he had never quite thought of it that way before—even though this was his world. Worlds.
Kor chuckled and elbowed Ben. “I told you this one was smart.”
I ignored Kor in favor of thinking through another realization, and this one was more disturbing. “If power is the most important thing…what’s keeping drakón from always being richer than the amón?”
They were already at such an advantage physically, let alone defensively.… Then add essentially an infinite source of income?
Kor clapped slowly. “Got it in one,” he said with a grin.
Ben sighed. This, at least, was a problem he was familiar with. “For one thing, drakón are strictly forbidden from exacting a price for charging an amón’s gems; the only thing they may ask for is a rough equivalent in food, which is fair, considering the drakón is going to need to replenish themselves somehow for the energy they give. They’re also forbidden from directly selling charged gems. Gemmakers and gemchargers—who have to be drakón because of the amount of power involved—legally have to work with a gembank and a gemseller, both of whom must be amón-run, and the gembanks and sellers can only compensate the drakón beyond food and other necessities in a certain percentage of sales.”
“It gets complicated,” Kor said with a smirk. “Just trust me on that. There’s a reason he normally leaves that sort of thing to me.”
Ben grimaced. “I have to admit, monetary policy is not my favorite subject.”
“I can see why,” I said with a wry chuckle.
“Point being,” Ben said, rubbing his forehead, “we know it’s a potential problem. That it…was a problem, centuries ago—”
His eyes flicked to mine, then looked away.
“—but that we’ve tried everything we can think of to give amón a fair chance, ever since,” he finished grimly. “Probably half the oaths I’ve taken as Heir tie back somehow to making sure amón are treated equitably. Every drakón who becomes one takes at least the standard three, and…we think it’s been working.”
“Drakón are also distributed more evenly in the population than they used to be,” Kor pointed out to Ben. “That, my dear Heir, has made a difference just as much as any well-meaning Crown efforts have.”
“They are?” Ben asked in surprise.
Kor sighed. “When are you going to pay better attention to my papers?”
“Maybe when they stop being so.…” Ben chose his next word carefully under Kor’s glare. “Long?”
Kor grunted. “Well, here’s the summary of the last one: drakón used to emerge solely in family lines—direct descendants of the swearers of the Covenants, in fact.”
“I know that,” Ben said impatiently.
“That formed the common perception that drakón can only come from lines that have had a drakón. But if you account for all the current drakón and study a statistically significant sampling of their bloodlines, as I have, then an interesting trend emerges. True, there’s a drakón in every single line at this point, but there is for everyone in the Six Realms by now, and more and more drakón are emerging from bloodlines that haven’t had a drakón in generations, some as far back as four or five, and traditionally strong drakón lines are having fewer drakón emerge.”
“The ‘weakening of the Blood,’” Ben said distastefully.
“That’s just it: it’s not a weakening. We have the same number of drakón we always have. It’s a distributing.”
Ben was quiet for a long moment, thoughtful. “Does Avva know about this?”
“Yes, since he was one of the advance readers, and it came out with his seal,” Kor said, rolling his eyes. “And I co-authored it with Eskala.”
“How did I not know about this?” Ben groaned, covering his eyes with one hand.
“Well,” Kor said grudgingly. “To be fair, it’s my latest published paper, and it’s taken nearly an entire year to clear the review chain. It was published only last month. Though I tried to bring it up, you were preoccupied with that aldak infestation on Romskal.”
“Now I think I remember,” Ben said with a sigh. “And I think I remember you talking about it before, around the time all this…started, a year ago.”
“Like I said,” Kor repeated grudgingly. “You’ve been preoccupied.”
“But this is blasted important,” Ben said in exasperation. “Kor, this is huge. It’s a shove right back at the elitists, right where we needed it most.”
“Hmm, yes. I wonder why I wrote it.” Kor’s words were dry, but then puzzlement and a scowl came over his face.
He muttered to himself, “It took nearly a year to publish, just before.…”
His hard, sparkling sapphire eyes met mine, and I felt a shiver of understanding.
Oblivious, Ben got up and paced a bit. “Not weakened, not diluted. Distributed. Blessed Flame, Kor. You’re a torched genius.”
Kor answered through clenched teeth. “Perhaps less of one than I had thought.”
Ben still didn’t seem to hear. “Tell me Avva has made good use of this.”
“Oh, he has—through Eskala, mostly, to maintain some semblance of neutrality. She’s been very busy with the elitists this past month.”
“Hence why she’s a co-author,” Ben said absently. “Even though you probably did most of the work.”
“Yes, well, Eskala also helped me—ahem—shorten the paper a bit. Among other things.”
A purple dragon circled overhead. Are you two done yet? Or are we going to be here until nightfall?
“I’m done,” I said quickly, rising. Even though I was pretty sure Yvera didn’t care and hadn’t included me as one of the “two,” Ben wouldn’t leave until he knew I’d had my fill, and I was not going to be responsible for our near deaths again…
…for as long as I could help it.