Patterns in the Dark (Dragon Blood Book 4) (16 page)

Sardelle nodded.

“Lieutenant Ahn,” Zirkander said. “While I’m glad that your scouting mission was so fruitful—” he wriggled his eyebrows, “—did you see any pirates, cannibals, or other threats while you were out there?”

“No, sir. I did climb a tree—” Cas wiped her hands on her trousers, grimacing at the sap, “—but I didn’t see any cooking fires or anything that would indicate there were people behind us. I did see a snake larger than I am. It hissed at me, and I left the tree. This place is… Let’s just say that I would like to request a nice, flat desert for our next mission. Or perhaps even a city. With cozy inns. Baths.”

Sardelle shared a wistful smile with Cas.

“I’ll let the king know of your preferences,” Zirkander said. “If he’s still talking to me when we get back.”

Cas grabbed her pack. Figuring the group was ready to press on, Tolemek put away his slides and his microscope.

Tolemek?

The mental call startled him, and he dropped the microscope case.
Jaxi?
he asked. It didn’t
sound
like Jaxi, but nobody else had ever spoken into his mind. The voice seemed distant, almost as if the speaker was calling to him from a mountaintop.

Tolemek, are you coming?

He leaned forward, using a rock for support. It couldn’t be. She had never spoken to him.

Tylie?
he asked.

Tolie, be careful. Don’t get sick.

He gulped. It
was
her. He’d had numerous nicknames in his life, but nobody except for his sister had ever called him Tolie. And that had been years ago, when she had been too young to pronounce his whole name.
Sick? Tylie, what do you mean?

Nothing except silence answered him. Could she hear him? No, probably not. He had no idea how to send out his thoughts.

Tylie?
he asked again, hoping she might be monitoring his mind somehow, the way Jaxi sometimes did. But could she know how to do that? When she had never been trained?
Tylie? Are you there? Can you hear me?

Silence.

Someone touched his shoulder. Tolemek straightened, reluctantly accepting that his sister wasn’t going to contact him again, not now. Maybe if they got closer, she would be able to.

“Are you all right?” Cas lowered her hand to his forearm, resting it there.

“Did anyone else hear that?” Tolemek met Sardelle’s eyes, assuming she would be the other person who might have heard a telepathic communication. Or if not her, Jaxi.

She shook her head. She wore the same concerned expression as Cas.

Tolemek tried to smooth his features. “I thought I heard—no, I
did
hear Tylie.”

“Your sister?” Zirkander asked. “I didn’t know she could do that.”

“Neither did I.”

“You haven’t seen her for a while,” Sardelle said. “Those with the gift do often figure some things out for themselves, even without training.” She tilted her head. “What did she say?”

“Don’t get sick.” Tolemek eyed the case with the slides in it.

“Ah.”

“Good advice for all,” Zirkander said. “Let’s go find that third flower, eh?”

Chapter 8

The blue flowers were everywhere. They blossomed on vines that snaked up the trunk of every other tree as the group climbed higher. Cas had seen a few more of the blood bellies and
marsoothimums
,
as well. At first, Tolemek had seemed pleased by the discovery, but he was wearing his pensive—gloomy—expression again, staring at the trail ahead of him instead of admiring the landscape.

Granted, Cas wasn’t admiring the landscape, either. She kept trotting off to the side or up ahead, searching for spots where she might look out behind them. Even though they had stumbled onto a trail and the trees they were walking through had thinned out, she hadn’t spotted anything more malevolent than birds and monkeys.

“Sardelle?” she asked after scampering down a tree and returning to the group. “Can you sense anyone back there? That’s a thing you can do, isn’t it? You have before.”

“Usually I can,” Sardelle said, “but as I was telling Ridge, the density of life in the jungle makes it difficult to pick out individuals. Also…” Her gaze drifted up the slope.

“Yes?”

“I feel the dragon. Strongly. He’s such a presence that he blots out my ability to detect lesser life forms. Sort of the way you have trouble hearing someone sneaking up on you when you’re in the middle of a room full of talking people.”

“Oh.”

Sardelle tapped the hilt of her sword thoughtfully. “Jaxi and I did both think there was something familiar about that person who left the dirigible. I didn’t say anything because even then, the dragon’s presence was affecting my ability to discern different entities. I also thought it might just be that the ship was full of Iskandians and that they would seem more familiar to me than the pirates and natives in town.”

“I’ve wondered about that person myself,” Cas said. “I also believe it’s possible some of those pirates got away and may still be after us.”

“If they are, I don’t think they’ll find a treasure up here. Unless they want the dragon blood.”

“There
are
some who would pay a great deal for those vials.”

“Perhaps so.”

“Sardelle?” Zirkander called softly from his spot at the head of the column.

She and Cas jogged to catch up with him. Their trail had intersected a second perpendicular one, and the colonel had stopped, looking down at something.

“Don’t get too close,” Tolemek said.

Probably good advice, but as usual, Cas’s height meant that she had to push past the others to see what they were looking at. Tolemek’s hand dropped onto her shoulder, halting her, but she had already spotted the large dead animal slumped against a tree on the opposite side of the trail. She had never seen a tiger before, but recognized the black stripes on the orange fur. The black feathers were more confusing. The fact that the carcass had been gnawed on and pecked at made it difficult to figure out what she was seeing, but it looked like a giant bird had crashed into the creature. And then died. No, that didn’t make sense. She tried to take a step closer, but Tolemek’s hand tightened.

“Are those
wings
?” Duck asked.

“It’s a winged tiger,” Sardelle said. “I’ve read about them but never seen one. Remarkable.”

“It would be more remarkable if it wasn’t dead.” Zirkander shuffled back. “Look at the size of him. The muscles. That is—was—a top-level predator right there. And in the prime of his life. Things like that don’t just pitch over and die.”

Tolemek looked at him sharply. “Are you suggesting this is related to the dead humans?”

“You tell me, scientist.”

“I don’t know. I would have assumed it got in the way of some other top-level predator and lost the fight.”

“There’s not much sign of that.” Cas pointed. “No claw or tooth marks on its face or neck. Something’s been munching on its organs, but small creatures. Scavengers.”

“Munching on its organs, Raptor?” Duck asked. “Sometimes it’s a little chilling the way you talk about death. But maybe that just means you two—” he waved his fingers at Tolemek, “—are meant for each other.”

“Er.” It was such a random place for such a comment that Cas didn’t know how to respond.

Tolemek lowered his hand from her shoulder. He didn’t look like he knew how to respond, either.

“I don’t sense that it died of physical trauma,” Sardelle said, then looked at Tolemek, her eyes solemn. “It’s displaying the same swelling of brain tissue that the humans we examined did.”

Zirkander pushed his fingers through his hair a few times. “Does this mean…
everything
can catch this… whatever it is?”

“Viruses, if that’s what this is, usually have a limited range of hosts they can infect.” Tolemek shrugged down at the dead tiger. “But perhaps this one can affect all mammals.”

“Including those with dragon blood,” Sardelle whispered.

“What?” Zirkander asked.

“Unicorns, winged tigers, soaring lizards… some of the other near-mythological creatures. We’ve discussed this before. It’s believed they have dragon blood, the same as that fresh-water octopus. I don’t know if that creature was affected by the virus, but this one was.” Sardelle met Tolemek’s eyes again. “My theory that we may have more immunity to a virus, if that’s what this is, may not be worth much.”

“I knew the risks when I went into the village,” Tolemek said.

Cas frowned up at him. She didn’t know a damned thing about diseases or viruses or whatever they were dealing with and had no idea if Tolemek and Sardelle were in more danger than any of the rest of them, but the idea that he might have put himself at risk to learn more for everyone else’s sake gave her a sense of discomfort she didn’t quite know how to interpret. Guilt? Concern for him? Both?

“We’ve probably all been exposed at this point,” Zirkander said. “Sardelle, any thoughts on where we might find the dragon? I’ve been angling toward the top of the mountain, but that’s a vague destination. There are more trails up here than I expected too.”

“That way, I think.” Sardelle pointed at the corner of the intersection between the two trails, where a solid knot of trees made travel unlikely.

“Helpful.” Zirkander quirked his brows at her. “Will Jaxi be sarcastically carving the way again?”

“Duck and I will look for tracks,” Cas said. “Given how quickly the brush grows over the trails here, someone’s been maintaining these, and recently too.”

“Sir,” Duck said, “is she allowed to volunteer me to scrounge around in the dirt near diseased corpses?”

“Just the other day, you were remarking on how I have seniority over you,” Cas said.

“Remarking on it? I was lamenting it.”

“Just don’t get close to the body,” Zirkander said. “We’re leaving that for Tolemek.”

“Really,” he said.

“Don’t you want to get your microscope out and look at some brain bits?”

“Brain bits, Zirkander? How is it your people consider you a national hero?”

“We have low standards for heroism in Iskandia.”

“Obviously.”

Cas turned up the side trail while Duck walked farther on the one they had been following. Neither would qualify as a road, but this one appeared to have seen more use of late, though not since the heavy rains of the day before. Most of the prints were washed out, leaving her to judge the traffic by the compactness of the earth and the recently hewn branches on either side. She crouched to examine a rut that cut through the mud, running down the center of the trail. It was too deep and narrow to have come from a wheeled vehicle, but perhaps from a runner on a sledge or travois? Such as might hold a crate full of vials?

She squinted down the slope, then up the other direction. As Zirkander had said, the top was a vague destination since they didn’t have a map with an X marking the dragon spot. They had already reached an area that looked like the one in the mural, but the entire top of the mountain might house those flowers. At least if they headed to higher ground, they might find better views of the surrounding land.

“I think this is the most likely route,” Cas said.

Zirkander had been walking along the same trail as she, except heading downhill. He touched the ground and looked back. “You have the runner mark up there?”

“Yes. I was thinking it might have carried a crate.”

“Me too. Up it is, unless you’ve found something over there, Duck.”

“A few old footprints,” Duck said. “They were made by boots, not those hide shoes the natives wear.”

“Evidence of the same here.” Cas pointed to a two- or three-day-old print that had survived the rain.

Zirkander joined her, nodding up the slope. “We’ll see if we can follow that rut back to where it came from.”

This trail was wide enough for two people to walk side by side. Zirkander stayed up with Cas while Tolemek and the others stretched out behind them. She caught Sardelle giving the dead tiger a long frown before following. Usually, Cas would stay in the back, to watch the route behind them, but she wanted to ask Zirkander something, something that it might be better if Sardelle and Tolemek didn’t hear. Sardelle, especially. The notion that she might hear Cas’s question, anyway, through Zirkander’s thoughts or however that worked, made her uncomfortable, but she was concerned that nobody had brought the subject up.

“Sir,” she said quietly, “about the dragon…”

“Yes?” He responded quietly too. Maybe he knew what she was going to ask and already shared her concerns.

“We’re here to get rid of the source of the dragon blood, right?” She might want to help Tolemek, as well, but it was her duty—being a part of Zirkander’s squadron—that had brought her here. “What happens if the dragon is truly an ally to the Cofah and voluntarily giving his blood? Do we… try to, uhm.” She wouldn’t normally hesitate to speak her mind, but the fact that everyone from Sardelle to her sword to Tolemek’s sister might be able to monitor her made her nervous. “Do we try to kill it?”

His face had gone grim before she had spoken the final question, and there wasn’t a hint of surprise in his eyes now. Yes, he had been pondering this question too.

“We have to eliminate the threat to Iskandia,” Zirkander said. “To have come all this way and to have… broken so many rules, to do anything less would be unacceptable. I don’t want to see the capital destroyed someday because the Cofah have unmanned fliers that can bomb the city without ever risking a Cofah life. And that’s only a hint to what they might be able to do with that blood. We have to assume that there are other labs out there and that the one we destroyed will be rebuilt.”

Cas nodded. Good, he
had
been thinking about this. “Two questions then. How does one kill a dragon? I know they didn’t have bullets back then, but from all the stories I’ve read, arrows and javelins didn’t do much. It was usually dragons that killed other dragons, wasn’t it? Some of them sided with humans, with specific nations, and fought with them, right? But if they’re as powerful as they sound, I’m not sure why they would have bothered.”