The Dragon of Despair (105 page)

“But you have not done the rituals,” the dragon reminded Peace. “I am not yet yours to command.”

It was a hint, not a taunt.

Looking down at his remaining hand as if seeing in it everything he had already lost, Peace nodded.

“I know, but if there are no further protests…” Here he looked at Firekeeper, who shook with shame. “Then I will.”

Grateful Peace felt himself smile. Somehow, now that all the decisions were made, his fear was gone.

He sought the opening of Melina’s incantation and substituted the dragon’s true name for the bastardization born of fear that had come down through time:

“Despairing Dragon, I invoke and command you…”

ELISE COULD HARDLY BELIEVE HER EYES
when Firekeeper suddenly broke away from the attack she herself had instigated and darted to the pool alongside the wall on which the outline of a dragon had appeared. Elise’s shock that Firekeeper would abandon her allies in the midst of a battle was nothing to what she felt when the wolf-woman sank down onto her haunches and stared blankly at the wall.

Firekeeper must have been ensorcelled!
Elise thought, looking side to side for help.

Apparently unaware of Firekeeper’s plight, a growling and snapping Blind Seer was holding the near side of the bridge. Derian and Edlin were fully occupied by battles of their own. Doc was binding a slavering madwoman who Elise thought must be Grateful Peace’s sister, Idalia. Peace stood near, his expression twisted with concern.

I guess I’m the only one left
, Elise thought, and darted toward Firekeeper, meaning to shake the wolf-woman out of her stupor.

“Stop!” Grateful Peace shouted, rushing to intercept Elise.

For a moment Elise thought the Illuminator had changed sides, but Peace hastened to explain.

“Look across the bridge. Melina continues her spell. Firekeeper certainly must be trying to stop her. Our task must be to keep Firekeeper safe—and to stop Melina if we can.”

Glancing in the direction Peace pointed, Elise realized he was right. She realized something else, too. The man now fighting Blind Seer was none other than Toriovico, the Healed One.

The bloodied wreck of the man who had been Blind Seer’s prior opponent was eloquent enough proof of what the Royal Wolf could do. It seemed to Elise, though, that the wolf had recognized his opponent and was trying his best not to harm him, though his self-imposed restraint was becoming increasingly difficult to maintain.

Toriovico possessed the strength and flexibility of a dancer. He also had more than a little familiarity with the long-handled axe he spun and jabbed at the wolf. Thus far the wolf had defended himself by darting back and forth, giving ground when necessary, but it was clear that if Blind Seer was to continue to hold the bridge—and defend Firekeeper—he could not use such tactics much longer.

Visions of what would happen to them all if Blind Seer killed the Healed One nearly paralyzed Elise. The repercussions would not be reserved for this side of the White Water River, but would certainly carry over into Hawk Haven and Bright Bay. The entire group of them might even find themselves exiled. Yet in defending Firekeeper—who seemed to be the only one of their number who had any chance of reaching Melina, no matter that her manner of doing so was outlandish—Blind Seer was doing the right thing.

Elise ran toward the bridge, not certain what she would do when she got there, but knowing that she must do something. She had drawn close enough that the sulphurous taint of the water mingled with the raw scents of spilled blood and torn bowel, when revelation came.

“Toriovico!” Elise shouted as loudly as she could. “Toriovico! Dance!”

Elise felt like a complete idiot, but she continued shouting, “The Harvest Joy dance, Toriovico! Remember it? Dance!”

Toriovico’s attack grew less forceful, his limbs jerking as if two sets of commands were warring for control of his muscles. Confronted with this much less effective assault, Blind Seer was no longer threatened. Elise was horrified to see the gigantic wolf drop back a few paces, then crouch and spring toward his opponent.

Her scream tore into audible shreds the words she had been trying to form, distorting them into an inarticulate cry that mingled warning and despair. Toriovico faltered in his internal battle, then brought his long-handled axe around in a too sloppy and too slow defense.

At that moment Blind Seer’s leap carried him over the Healed One’s axe, bringing the wolf to balance for a precarious moment on the curving rails of the bridge before he leapt down again, landing squarely on the chest of a man who, unseen from Elise’s lower perspective, had been about to press his own attack.

The man fell, his head cracking solidly against the stone floor of the bridge, but another defender held the base of the bridge against the wolf’s advance. In the cramped space Blind Seer could not gather the momentum to leap as he had before.

His new opponent held a long sword and shield. Behind him, a woman slowly rose from the side of the man Blind Seer had pushed into the river, readying her own long-handled spear.

Elise became aware of other developments as well.

Although Melina’s attention had seemed entirely centered on Citrine and the continuation of whatever convoluted ritual they were working between them, the sorceress proved she had some awareness for what went on around her. As the battle grew violent enough that it might disturb even Citrine’s fixed concentration, Melina raised her own voice, shouting her incantations loudly enough that distinct passages could be heard even where Elise stood.

Against the power of Melina’s voice, Toriovico’s attention was shifting. Once again, the Healed One raised his axe, his motions regaining some of their former grace and power as he turned toward Blind Seer’s defenseless back.

Not seeing anything else to do, Elise raced forward. Grasping the haft of Toriovico’s axe, she shouted in New Kelvinese:

“Dance, Toriovico! Dance! It’s what you love. It’s what you are. Dance!”

Only after she had spoken and felt his hazel green eyes focus on her did Elise feel strange about calling a foreign ruler by his first name. Yet she knew she’d done the right thing. She must reach his essential self and somehow she knew that deep inside Toriovico no more thought of himself as “the Healed One” than she thought of herself as “Lady Archer.”

Even as she steeled herself to meet Toriovico’s gaze and will him to win his internal battle, Elise felt a warm, strong presence next to her. She glanced to one side and there was Derian, pulling the axe from the Healed One’s now unresisting hands.

“His Majesty doesn’t seem quite sure,” Derian said, trying the heft of the weapon and shoving past to help Blind Seer, “whose side he’s on. Get him off this bridge.”

Elise nodded, guiding the unresisting but strangely numb Toriovico off the span’s curve and to the farther shore.

Edlin darted to intercept her.

“I say, Elise. What’s wrong with Peace?”

The Illuminator had crossed to stand next to Firekeeper, his face so pale and strained with concentration that the tattoos stood out as if they’d been etched with green ink on bleached paper.

“I think he’s trying magic,” Elise answered. “Help Derian. Silence Melina. That’s the best thing you can do to help him.”

With a final worried glance at his mentor, Edlin did as Elise had ordered. Elise continued to guide the still unresisting Toriovico, stopping where Doc was neatly binding a very battered young woman, inspecting her wounds as he did so.

“Don’t waste your gift on these,” Elise told him bluntly. “We may need it to save others who have more right to it.”

Doc looked unhappy, but nodded.

“This one’s only bruised,” he admitted, “but neither Derian or Edlin were gentle with her. The man I’m worried about is the one Blind Seer pushed into the river.”

Elise shook her head, marveling at a nature so committed to healing that the fact that the man in question would have gutted Firekeeper and her wolf meant nothing now that the threat was ended. Oddly, Doc’s skewed perspective did not annoy her as it might have in another, only warmed a part of her soul she hadn’t known until then was cold.

“Help me with this man instead of worrying about one across the river,” she suggested. “The Healed One seems trapped within Melina’s control. I thought he was breaking free, but now I’m not certain.”

“What was he doing when you thought he was breaking free?” Doc asked, for all the world as if he were diagnosing a more usual illness.

“I tried to get him to dance,” Elise said. “I remembered he told us that was what broke the spell before.”

Doc nodded, rising to his feet.

“That therapy seems more likely to succeed than anything I can offer. I’ll see if I can help the others.”

Unlike Elise or Edlin, Doc seemed able to sense that neither Firekeeper or Grateful Peace were in immediate danger. His attention was riveted by those battling on the bridge.

The fighting there was constricted by both the narrowness of the bridge and Blind Seer’s bulk, but blood was flowing nonetheless. Making matters more difficult was that neither Edlin nor Derian wanted to do overmuch harm to their opponents—not knowing who they were or how they fit into the local hierarchy—while for their part those opponents were determined to do as much harm as possible.

This stalemate was broken all at once and in a manner that no one but Melina might have hoped—and certainly not in the manner she would have expected.

With a sound like ice breaking on a river, the far wall of the cavern cracked and shattered, showering the room with countless fragments of obsidian. Though her eyes squeezed shut on reflex, Elise felt blood well up from minuscule cuts on every piece of her exposed skin.

The clatter of weapon against weapon ceased as both sides dropped to the ground, seeking in vain protection against the hail of glass. The shrill shrieks and cries of panic that rose within every throat were swallowed lest an open mouth give entry to the obsidian shards.

Then, with a tinkling patter, the cutting rain ceased. Elise dared raise her head and open her eyes. The first thing she beheld before slick blood dimmed her vision was the vast bulk of the dragon, freed from its prison, poised sinuous against the farther wall. Its scales were black washed with red, taking color chameleon-like from its surroundings. Its eyes were amber, slitted like a cat’s but as cold and hard as polished stones.

Carefully shaking her sleeve free of myriad shards of glass, Elise wiped the blood from her face. Near to her, she saw Toriovico doing the same and knew that shock had finished what dance had begun. The Healed One’s gaze was alert and full of questions for which Elise did not have the answers.

Indeed, now that Elise’s vision had cleared, she saw that the subterranean chamber had been severely altered.

The hot river had sunk to a trickle. The curved wall against which the dragon had first been outlined was completely shattered, creating a dark cave back into which the dragon’s bulk uncoiled. The bridge on which battle had raged only moments before had snapped inward, spilling those who had stood upon its arch into the now empty riverbed. A weak howl echoed by a human cry gave Elise a slim hope that Derian and the others had survived.

Firekeeper and Peace stood near the now empty pool. No color had returned to the Illuminator’s face, but somehow he looked more relaxed. Firekeeper was not. The wolf-woman was collapsed on one knee, her head hung low, her bloody features washed with tears.

Looking from Firekeeper to Peace, Elise’s skin crawled as she realized something else. Peace was unmarked by the explosion that had ravaged the young woman who stood not an arm’s length from him. What had he done to protect himself? Suspicion filled Elise and she glanced around for confirmation.

On the farther bank, Citrine and Melina held much the same poses they had before, but like Elise their features were obscured by a sheen of still flowing blood. For a shocked moment Elise thought they might have been killed where they stood, so still did they stand. When Melina stirred, Elise half expected her body to topple forward in death.

Then, without even bothering to wipe the blood from her face, Melina took a few staggering steps toward the dragon—the dragon, Elise now realized, that had been bound by Grateful Peace.