Furee Born: The Dragon Mage Series Book IV (13 page)

Knowing what this was
costing him, she ignored the worry and anger and concentrated on the actions. 
She did not thank him again, like she wanted to, but when they had returned to
the safety of Forsaken, she would tell him how much his understanding of her
need to heal meant to her, and how very much she was coming to love him, fiery
tempered, overprotective dragon and all.

Melly did, indeed, have
word about Seatown.  Too far for a telepathic connection with her mate, she
used the wind to find out what she needed.  As such, she knew Rhune was with
Solan but not what had taken him to Seatown to begin with or why they were not
on their way back.

They would have to wait
to find that out unless Asha went into the weave, and she would not do that
when she was going to be traveling.  She had mostly stopped dropping unexpectedly
into the weave when she flew, but going in just before was almost a guarantee
that she and her mate would be plummeting to the ground at some point, which
was why they traveled with a buddy system, or they traveled on foot.

Immediately, Melly winged
back a wind message to her mate to let him know Furee, Asha, Braedon, and
Aarion were bringing Riva there.  While he could not send her a message, she
could send her own words quite far.  Since Riva had never seen what a wind mage
could do before she came to Dracon, she was always amazed at what the soft-spoken
wind mage accomplished.  It made her wonder what a half dragon, half wind mage
was capable of, especially when infected with the added dark power of a blood
stone.

I
t was not a comforting thought.

Where Dracon sat to the
far north beyond the great snow-capped peaks, its fragrant changing seasons
driven by dragon magic, Seatown rested just off the farthest southern coast. 
Just past the end of land and out into the wide blue ocean, Seatown was the
seat of Lord Theron.  No one really knew how he and his people had come to be
there, but he ruled over the coast line where sea trades flourished.  Much like
Dracon, which was geographically separated by ice peaks and impossible to
traverse mountains beyond the North Gate, Seatown was separated from the rest
of the human villages and kingdoms by a vast desert.  This was not always so; before
the blood mages worked their unnatural magic across that verdant space, it had
been at least habitable if sparse.  Two years after the blood mage reign
finally ended and the evils swept clean, the open spaces refused to support
life, and the memory of the black fortresses lived on in the ghosts of
sacrificed mages that still lingered.  Not to mention that even if you were
willing to cross that deadly expanse, you still had the sea creatures of legend
to contend with.  Few saw the effort as worth the gain; too many stories of an
inhospitable land and sparse food abounded about the south – stories that had
less basis in fact than fear.  The ever-growing population thrived in the humid
tropical climate while the rest of the kingdoms labored long and hard to feed
themselves.  Fortunately for Seatown, that was a well-kept secret.

Travelers were
discouraged, though some had managed to come back from that dreaded place with
wild stories of a prospering seaport and glimpses of the distant island beyond
the dreaded sea.  It was just that nobody believed them.  After all, the vast
desert had recently been renamed the blood sands for good reason. Anyone who
attempted to cross it would have to be touched in the head, and if not before,
the ghosts would soon drive them insane or simply kill them.  At least that was
the legend that was fast growing.  So, the people of the north with their hate
and superstition of mages stayed across that vast desert in their own lands and
left the simple coast people alone – for now.

Even in these meager
times, the people by the sea prospered.  Theron ruled from the Island of
Seatown where he kept his home.  No one visited the island without his
permission and lived to tell the tale.  Sea creatures and horrid beasts were
said to guard its sandy shores.  But what was not known even in legend was that
Seatown was entirely populated by mage-kind and the rare human family member
who lived among them.  And no one knew that the sea creature protecting those
shores was Theron, Lord of Seatown himself.  A dragon-wind mage hybrid who had
claimed it and claimed any mage he could rescue from the human lands.  He was
the only lord who had stood against the blood mage when they were at their
strongest.  While he had not openly battled them, he had managed to carve out a
small area of geographic safety – the only one for escaping mage before Dracon
opened its borders to a select few.

Having lived among the
human villages for so long, Riva more than anyone knew the difference between
the villages to the north and the mage island to the south.  Even the coastal
villages that owed their allegiance to Theron profited from the mages they did
not know lived on the island just at the edge of their sight.  Besides the
occasional storm swells that sent them scurrying into their homes to batten
down the hatches and hide, the coastal people enjoyed mild weather and abundant
fishing.  The growing season for their crops was long and mild, and sickness
rarely touched their shores and never for long.

It was heartbreaking and
ignorant that the people of the north killed out of fear the very beings who
could help their crops grow, end the spread of disease, make it rain, or a
hundred other things that would make a world of difference to the people of
those lands.  But the blood mage had sown their evil seed well and had longer
to do it.  In the minds of the northern villages, any magic was unnatural and
evil.  And they were not going to see differently as long as superstition and
fear ruled their lives.  That was a lesson Riva had learned at her own cost and
it was not likely she would forget it any time soon.  She had the phantom burn
scars to remind her lest she forget.  The villages of the north wanted a life
without magic.  That was exactly what they had.

Seatown, on the other
hand, prospered in the hands of the mage folk who lived there.  As overwhelming
as Dracon had been the first time she felt the magic there, it was almost more
so to see the mages living openly on the island of Seatown.  Dragons were
different, you expected them to be magical.  But Riva had been raised in a
place where you hid your magic.  Flying into Seatown on her dragon mate was
nearly as surreal as seeing earth mages working in their gardens and water mages
irrigating the crops.  Shapeshifters abounded in all forms and everyone
accepted mage folk and what they could do as ordinary.   Like every other time
she had been here, Riva was amazed and awed by the beauty of it.

General Solan and Lux
joined them on the beach when they landed on the soft sand, and she was
reminded of why she was here.  She did not see Lord Theron but that did not
mean he did not wait inside the castle gates.

“Rhune?” Riva asked as
the rest of the dragons landed and shifted behind her.

“Inside,” General
Fire-Eater said, his voice a low rumble.  “He is not harmed, nor was he drawn
here by some trick of Graedon,” he assured her, his voice turning ironic.  “Apparently,
the boy could not stand to be left behind one more time ‘under the yoke of the
overprotective dragons of his house,’ and so came to Seatown where he hopes to
begin his adventures among the brave mages who will ‘recognize his worth.’”

Riva blinked at his words
and the tone behind them, her lips tipping up despite the danger of the
situation.  “Did he actually say that to you?”

“He did.”

Riva laughed at the dry
delivery of those two words, then pressed her lips together when he narrowed
those swirling silver eyes down at her.  In his warrior leathers and high black
boots, two swords crossed at his back, he stood nearly as tall as the behemoth
Lux chuckling beside him.  Every line of his powerful muscled body promised
death to his opposition, and even the dark blackness of his hair seemed somehow
sinister as it swallowed the light that touched it.  Like his dragon form that
looked to be made of obsidian, he was all hard angles and deadly edges. 

“I take it you were part
of the ‘yoke of the overprotective dragons’ that did not recognize ‘his worth’?
”
Riva asked, trying unsuccessfully not to smile.

“I am.”

Riva pressed her lips
together to keep from laughing outright; the only dragon more feared than General
Solan Fire-Eater was Eben Kinkaid, and Rhune was pulling both their tails with
this stunt.  Before she could come up with something besides another laugh at
his expense, a small bird, a spin-tailed swift in a lovely unnatural shade of
bronze, zoomed around them and hovered like an angry hummingbird before General
Solan’s eyes.  General Solan was already narrowing his eyes in recognition when
Riva realized it was Clare.  A very angry Clare if her little sounds and
flapping wings were anything to go by.  So angry she had forgotten to shift
back to human before she started squawking about her brother.

“Clare,” Riva called,
trying once again to stifle a laugh, and not succeeding very well.  “General Fire-Eater
does not speak Swift.”

The bird stopped and
dropped nearly to the sand, then zoomed back up again.  A second later she had
shifted into the green-eyed woman warrior in tall boots, the brown and green
leathers favored by the huntsman clans, and with both a short sword and bow and
quiver strapped to her back, she could almost pass for one of their number. 
But no huntswoman had skin of creamy alabaster or red hair that gleamed with
gold tones in the sun, braided in elaborate twists and trailing down her back
to rounded hips; everything from her womanly figure and lithe, almost inhumanly
graceful movements gave lie to the illusion she was anything but mage.  Seen
next to the dragons, General Solan and Lux, she looked like a svelte forest
pixie among giants. 

Riva blinked at the sight
realizing that here, away from the overwhelming magic of Dracon, Clare could no
more pass for human than Asha who walked up beside her.  Especially with those
mage-green eyes sparking with angry fire.

“Are you telling me that
little ingrate scared all of us and left Morgan without a healer when she
started her labor out of some ridiculous quest for adventure?”  She practically
spit the words out of pretty pink lips.

Riva looked around,
noticing that more than one man was taking in the sight with pleasure.  A few
mages were even drifting closer to their little crowd despite the presence of
so many scary dragons.  But then the girl practically sparkled in her anger.

Riva looked from Clare
and Asha to her brother and saw that Clare was not the only one who had
changed, steeped daily in the magic of Dracon.  As the young woman continued
with her tirade, Riva looked down at her own hands and saw a glow to her skin
she had never thought twice about, and then grabbed her braid noticing an
almost rainbow shimmer in the black length of it.

What is it?
Furee
asked coming up against her back and taking her hand in his own.  Riva saw that
while his skin tone was darker than hers, it had that same glow she had ceased
to notice in Dracon.

Clare can no longer pass
for human.  And Braedon is even more changed since his mating with Asha.  It
just occurred to me to wonder if I was no different.

She looked back into her
mate’s eyes and realized his fiery hair had wrapped around her upper arms as it
tended to when they were close enough to touch.  But it no longer scared her to
see fire licking across her skin.  Nor did his eyes that currently burned with
a steady flame have her flinching away without thought.  The realization had
her smiling into those remarkable eyes, and as she watched, the fire in them
burned down to a soft smolder and some tension she had not been aware of left
the hard contours of his face.  Furee smiled, and for a second, she forgot what
they had been discussing and smiled back, getting lost in his fire for a long
moment.

It was the soft chuckle
of her brother that brought her back to the moment.  He had joined Asha to
watch Clare’s furious pacing, and as was their way, Asha was leaning up against
his side while they stood together somehow separate from everyone else, even in
such a group of allies and friends as this.

“As much fun as it is to
watch a beautiful mage in a temper, what exactly is she doing here?” Aarion
asked from his vantage point behind and beside Furee and Riva.  Riva turned to
see he was indeed watching Clare with a look of absorbed appreciation, a slight
exasperated smile on his too handsome face.

Lux shushed him, his eyes
clearly on the lady mage’s backside with a slightly more playful gleam in his eyes
that exactly matched the blue ocean behind them.  “Let her say her peace.”

Braedon snorted, and Riva
could not help her own laugh when General Solan Fire-Eater turned to give Lux a
heated glare, clearly not liking the direction of the man’s thoughts in regards
to his sister-in-law.  Lux just laughed, enjoying the drama as usual.

Did you know Clare was
following us?
Riva asked Furee, trying to hide her own
smile at the proceedings.

I did not
. 
His tone said he was unhappy at the development but resigned. 
Though I have
a hard time believing the dragon seer did not know she was coming.

Riva looked at Asha just
as the woman turned and smiled at her mate as if they shared some secret joke
between them.  She did not seem overly surprised by the girl’s arrival, this was
true. 
I think you might be right about that.  I wonder why she didn’t say
anything.

Probably for the same
reason Solan has not already escorted Rhune back to Dracon. 
His
thoughts turned rueful.
  It is not so easy to keep a shapeshifting mage
where they do not want to stay.

His words brought to mind
the first time Riva had come to Seatown when Asha as the dragon seer had
ordered Furee to take her and Clare back to Dracon for their own good.  Even
before spending the last two years steeped in the magic of Dracon, using her
transformative magic liberally, and training with the warriors in weapons and
forest craft, Clare had been a challenge.  Now seeing her pacing her anger
across the sands with animalistic elegance and practically radiating power,
Riva understood.  No one was going to keep this woman from going where she
wanted to go, even without the added weapon skills. 
Why say anything about
Clare and start an argument when it would not change the outcome.

Dragon seers are not
known for their lack of wisdom
, he answered ruefully.

Riva was still smiling at
Furee when Braedon cursed.  He lifted his falling mate into his arms before a
furious gust of wind came at them from the north, sending everyone’s clothes
and hair in a tizzy and pushing Riva more firmly into Furee at her back.