The Flames of Dragons (8 page)

The next day Balear returned to the square on Kataile’s third level. Ahead of him the fountain was still smashed, but aside from that, everything about this place felt different from two days ago. All one hundred and ten officers had shown up and given Balear their utmost attention, even Pito.

Their path forward was simple. Balear, Riac, and Dirio couldn’t teach a thousand men by themselves, so instead they would teach the teachers. The trio would work with the officers to hone their skills with various weapons and formations. The officers in turn would instruct their squads and companies.

All around Balear the officers drilled, sweat heavy on their brows and uniforms even though the afternoon was cold. They were breathing hard, yet no one showed any sign of backing off in his efforts.

No one, that was, except Balear himself. His thoughts kept returning to what Elyssa had said. His father had left a message just for him? The way Elyssa had described it, it must have been written after Dad had left Tropos for good.

What had he written, and why would Elyssa threaten Balear with its public release? Balio Platarch was one of Lodia’s heroes, especially in Kataile. Countless merchants lived and prospered today only because he had saved them from pirates. What in that scroll could be so damning that it would override that legacy?

Balear shook away the question. He needed to focus. Whatever the scroll said, the message would be meaningless if Kataile fell.

Balear scanned the officers, looking for someone who needed help. As he did, he spied Riac. The veteran circled among the men, correcting errors and offering words of encouragement.

Balear smiled to himself. He’d had a stroke of luck in finding that one. Riac was more motivated than any of them, and he could speak to the Katailans with a familiarity that Balear could never have.

As he continued to look over the assembly, Balear’s smile shifted into a grimace. Out of the corner of his eye he noticed an auburn-haired woman walking down the steps from the fourth level to the square. Even before he saw her face, he could tell by her precise walk who she was.

“Lady Orianna,” he said when she arrived, “I’m glad you could make it. Welcome to our training session. It’s going well.”

“Indeed,” the mayor replied. She looked over the men. “I can’t tell if you’ve inspired their loyalty, or if they’re just curious what stunt you might pull next.”

“As long as they train with everything they have, I don’t really care about their reasons.”

The pair watched the officers in silence for some time. At length Elyssa murmured, “Now that you have them motivated, what comes next? You can’t win this war with a few drills.”

Balear hesitated. The image of a scroll flashed before his eyes. Elyssa had him at her mercy. He had to keep her happy.

But more important, he had to protect Lodia. He couldn’t do that by lying to Elyssa, so he said, “You can’t win this war.”

The mayor reacted as well as Balear had expected. She whipped to face him, her eyes sharper than the Auryozaki. “What?” she snapped.

Balear forced himself to stay calm. Elyssa might not like it, but she would respond to logic, and Balear had reasoned it through after his first day with Kataile’s officers. “No matter how much your soldiers train, they’re only a thousand men,” he said. “With a force that small you can’t conquer even one city, let alone all of them. Also, if you sent your forces on a campaign, you would leave Kataile defenseless. Another city could sweep in and conquer you.”

“Then what do you want me to do, oh great general? Sit here and wait for them to come to us?”

The corners of Balear’s mouth rose. “That’s exactly what I propose.”

“How is cowering here supposed to win us the war?”

Balear shook his head. “I just told you, you can’t win the war. If you want to sit on Lodia’s throne someday, your only chance lies in a peaceful solution. You need to convince the other mayors to hold the Succession Council.”

“That seems far-fetched, considering I don’t have any communication with them.”

“True, but if I’m right, that won’t matter. For now, we need to—”

Balear cut off. It couldn’t have been.

“Balear?” Elyssa said. “Balear!” She waved her hand in front of his face.

He ignored her, his attention on a group of civilians rushing along the square’s periphery. They were headed down to the docks. A merchant ship was leaving for Tacumsah this afternoon, and the last longboats out to it were due to depart soon. The people rushing were probably last-minute boarders.

And in the middle of that group had been a young woman with sleek black hair.

Balear had only seen her face for a second, but that had been enough. That face haunted his dreams.

It belonged to Hana.

The memories flooded back. Hana. The woman who had rescued Balear and Iren in Orcsthia, the woman who had hidden her Stone Dragon Knight powers at the cost of Balear’s arm, the woman who had cried over him minutes before abandoning him for his best friend, was here in Kataile.

Balear barely noticed Elyssa’s hard gaze on him. The soldiers kept practicing, but he no longer paid them any mind either. All his focus was on the Maantec hiding in plain sight among the crowd.

He had to talk to her. He stepped toward the throng.

“Where are you going?” Elyssa snapped. “We’re not finished here.”

Balear looked at the mayor, then back at the group of merchants. In that brief moment, Hana had disappeared.

Had he really seen her? Maybe it was an illusion, a trick of his imagination. There were so many questions he wanted to ask her. He could have just seen someone who looked like her.

He couldn’t take that chance. If the woman Balear had seen was Hana, then she must be headed for that ship to Tacumsah. She could be on it in moments. The merchants had already left the square and started down the stairs toward the docks. They traveled at a run now, racing to avoid missing their ride. There was no time to delay.

“I have to go,” he said.

Elyssa surely made some remark, but Balear didn’t hear her. He was already racing to catch up with the merchants.

Balear chased them down Kataile’s steep steps into the port district. The tang of fresh fish assaulted his nostrils. Short, wooden shacks dotted the area seemingly at random, turning the whole port into a maze.

The crowds were dense here. Balear couldn’t even pick out the merchants anymore, let alone one person among them.

He wouldn’t give up. “Hana!” he shouted. If she heard him call her name, maybe she would turn her head in response. “Hana!”

His shout had the opposite effect. Balear already stood out thanks to his missing arm and the seven-foot-long sword on his back. Half the people in earshot turned to regard him.

It didn’t stop him. He charged through the crowd, parting it like a ship through water. “Hana!” he cried as he ran. “It’s Balear! Hana, wait!”

A whistle sounded from the bay. Balear cursed. It was a ship’s call, signaling to other vessels that it was leaving port. Balear reached the docks just in time to see two longboats rowing hard toward a caravel two hundred feet out.

“Hana!” he cried one last time, though he knew it was futile. The people on the longboats couldn’t hear him over the water, and they were too far away for Balear to identify anyone.

All the same, he waited at the dock until the longboats reached the ship. Then, as it turned toward open ocean, Balear trudged his way back to the square.

Elyssa was waiting for him where he’d left her. Her foot clicked against the stone as she tapped it repeatedly.

“What on Raa were you thinking?” she demanded.

The one-armed general looked over his shoulder toward the ocean. The ship was a dot from this distance. “Nothing,” he finally said. “A ghost from the past. I was imagining things. Let’s get back to work. What were we discussing again?”

*   *   *

Hana Akiyama stood at the
Sparkling Dawn
’s stern as the caravel left the Bay of Kataile. Her hands gripped the rail so hard she left divots in the wood.

Balear had been right there, shouting her name. It had taken every shred of willpower she possessed not to turn around.

She couldn’t let herself see him. When she returned to Shogun Melwar’s side, he would ask her if she had seen the Sky Dragon Knight in her journey. This way she could tell him the truth. No, she hadn’t.

Minawë and Lyubo had tracked their quarry since dawn. They had yet to lay eyes on it, but Lyubo insisted they were getting close.

“These tracks couldn’t have been made more than an hour ago,” he said, gesturing at the spots in the mud. “They’re close together too, which means he’s moving slowly. We’ll catch him before we have to get back to the group.”

Minawë hoped so. Everyone was counting on them.

She wiped her brow. Midafternoon in the rainforest was a poor time to be active. The humidity clung to her skin, and her leather outfit gripped her in all sorts of uncomfortable ways.

“Hold up,” Lyubo said. “Let’s take a break.”

“And let him get farther ahead?”

“He isn’t on the run. Besides, determination’s no good if it gets you killed. You’ll dehydrate tracking all day. You need to drink up.”

Minawë lifted her water skin, but Lyubo put out a hand. “That’s for emergencies,” he said. “Here in the wild, you rely on the forest as much as you can. Check these out.”

He walked to a nearby tangle of vines each as thick as Minawë’s forearm. “These will be our water supply,” he said.

Minawë cocked an eyebrow.

“Watch.” Lyubo pulled out his machete and hacked off a three-foot section of vine. He raised one end, and a few drops came out the bottom. He let them fall on his hand.

“They’re clear,” he said, “and they don’t burn. This one’s good to drink.” Lyubo tilted back his head and raised the vine above it. Minawë thought he’d only get a little, but water gushed from the vine like it was a giant cup.

Lyubo wiped his mouth. “Now you try,” he said. He handed her his machete.

Minawë cut off a chunk and raised it above her head. Before she could tilt it though, Lyubo grabbed the vine. “Test it first,” he said.

She shrugged and lowered the plant. She did as he had and let a small amount pour onto her hand. It was milky white and stung her skin.

“Some of the vines are poisonous,” Lyubo said. “There’s no way to know which ones unless you test them. If you’d drunk that, it probably wouldn’t have killed you, but you wouldn’t have had a comfortable night either.”

Minawë dropped the vine and tried another one. This time the liquid ran clear. She looked to Lyubo, and he nodded. She raised the vine above her head and drank. The water was warm but refreshing.

“All right,” Lyubo said when Minawë had drained the last drops, “let’s get after our quarry again. He won’t escape this time.”

They traveled another hour before Minawë felt a tingle from the plants around her. She reached a hand out and touched one of the trees. Her eyes closed. A few hundred feet out, something large shuffled through the forest. It was bigger than any Kodama by at least a hundred pounds.

She gulped. “He’s close,” she whispered. “He isn’t aware of us yet, but he’s facing our direction. He’ll see us before we get in range.”

Lyubo’s gaze drifted to where Minawë’s hand touched the tree. He examined the spot for a few seconds before saying, “In that case, let’s get up in the canopy.”

He swung his arm around a low-hanging branch and leapt up. Using the multi-layered forest, he climbed higher and higher like a monkey.

Minawë frowned. She didn’t think she could manage the complex maneuvers Lyubo had just done. Fortunately, she knew a better way. Pulling out the Chloryoblaka, she transformed into a sparrow and fluttered up to meet her fellow Kodama.

Lyubo folded his arms. “That’s cheating.”

Minawë returned to her Kodaman form, ran a hand through her long green hair, and winked. “Not for me.”

“We’ll work on your climbing tomorrow,” Lyubo pressed. “You may not always be able to rely on Dendryl’s magic.”

Minawë doubted that would be the case. Still, the idea of learning to leap among the trees like Lyubo got her excited, so she kept her feelings to herself.

Lyubo looked ahead of them down to the jungle floor. “You were right,” he said. “There he is.”

Minawë followed his gaze. Sure enough, she saw a shifting brown mass two hundred feet in front of them. “I can’t get a solid view through all the brush,” she said.

“That’s no problem,” Lyubo replied. “We’ll go from tree to tree until we get a clear shot.”

He took off, moving with a practiced precision that made Minawë jealous. She changed back into a sparrow. Cheating or not, she wasn’t about to let her poor climbing spook their opponent.

A hundred feet from the target, Lyubo stopped. Minawë transformed again. She could see it clearly now.

“So that’s a tapir?” she whispered.

Lyubo nodded but said nothing.

It was a weird animal, to be sure. It walked on four legs like most of the forest creatures Minawë had grown up with, but it was shorter and stockier than them.

It was heavier too. Only Ziorsecth’s bears could match it in weight.

The animal’s strangest feature, though, was its snout. Instead of a short nose, it had a long trunk that extended past its mouth. The tapir was using that trunk to grasp low-hanging branches and strip them of leaves.

“I have a shot,” Lyubo murmured.

Minawë eyed up the scout. He had his bow out and an arrow nocked. Lyubo was a skilled marksman, and Minawë had no doubt he would hit the tapir at this range.

Yet something made her reach out and touch his bow. He looked at her quizzically, and in answer she pulled out the Chloryoblaka. He smiled and put his own bow away.

Minawë sized up her target. To Lyubo the tapir was food for the traveling Kodamas. To Minawë he was something more. She had connected with plants and animals in the past. She heard their voices in her sleep, and at times even when she was awake. Lyubo could hit the tapir, but his single arrow wouldn’t bring down a beast this large. The Chloryoblaka had more power in it than Lyubo’s short bow. If they were going to kill this animal, Minawë would do it quickly and cleanly.

After a long wait, Minawë exhaled. Her fingers released.

She felt a brief stab of pain as the tapir died and its voice ended. “Thank you,” she said, “and I’m sorry.”

Lyubo was already climbing down the tree. Minawë transformed into a sparrow and flew to the tapir’s body before changing back.

“That was a great shot,” Lyubo said. “I don’t know if I could have done that.”

“Let’s just get it dressed and head back,” she replied. She appreciated his praise, but it wasn’t something she wanted to be praised for.

Lyubo took the hint and got to work in silence. Minawë helped. She had felled the tapir; the least she could do was be respectful of it. At first Lyubo tried to keep her away, but he soon gave up.

The meat was a lot even for both of them to carry, but Minawë refused to let any of it go to waste. Lyubo packaged it in two skins he’d brought with him in his pack, and he handed one to Minawë. Dinner for the group secured, they started back toward the others.

Minawë led the way. In spite of the wrapped meat weighing her down, she walked without hesitation.

“I’m impressed,” Lyubo said from behind her. “This path should put us on a direct line back to the others. But how did you know exactly where they are? That takes complex estimates of how far both we and they have gone today as well as precise knowledge of directions. It’s a challenge even for me, and I’ve scouted in Aokigahara for centuries.”

“The forest tells me,” Minawë said. “The trees know what’s moving among them. They have to so they can protect themselves from threats. If you can hear their voices, they’ll tell you what’s around.”

“Can they tell the difference between a Kodama and a Yokai?”

“It’s not that they have names for them, but you can get a good idea from what they do know. I sensed the tapir because it was big, heavy, and alone. I can sense the group because of the number of people and the way they’re walking.”

Lyubo paused. “That’s how Lord Narunë knew you and Rondel were approaching our camp.”

“The trees’ roots likely felt the vibrations of two animals moving toward him, both on two feet. He figured it had to be us.”

“That would be an amazing skill for a tracker to have,” Lyubo said.

“You can’t do it?” Minawë asked. “I thought since Uncle could do it, lots of Kodamas could.”

Lyubo shook his head. “You two are part of the Kodaman royal family. I don’t know of anyone in Sorengaral who tracks by listening to the trees.”

Minawë smiled. “It’s not that hard once you can hear the trees’ voices. Why don’t I teach you? We’re at most an hour from the others, and we have plenty of daylight left.”

“Why not?” Lyubo said. He set down his pack and the meat he’d been carrying. “My arms could use a rest anyway.”

Minawë put her load next to Lyubo’s and walked to the largest nearby tree. “This one will do well,” she said. “She’s old, so she’ll have a lot of stories.”

Lyubo didn’t look convinced. Minawë placed her left palm against the tree’s bark. “Like this,” she said.

Her fellow Kodama mimicked her. “What am I supposed to hear?” he asked.

Minawë shut her eyes. “It isn’t what you’ll hear,” she said. “It’s what you’ll feel. Trees aren’t like Kodamas or tapirs. They live slow, steady lives. Their voices are vibrations, hums in the forest.”

There was a pause, then, “I don’t hear anything. Or feel anything. It just feels like bark.”

Minawë already had the thrum of the tree’s voice echoing through her mind. How could she help Lyubo experience it? Uncle Narunë could connect with the trees even though he wasn’t a Dragon Knight, so surely Lyubo could do it too.

An idea came to her. “I couldn’t hear the voices for most of my life either,” she said. “I had to be the Forest Dragon Knight before I became sensitive enough to connect with them.” She pulled the Chloryoblaka from her back and held it out with her right hand. “Grab onto this,” she said. “Keep your other hand on the tree. Maybe you’ll hear the tree through me and Dendryl.”

Minawë let herself sink deeper into the tree’s soft rhythm. The old woman indeed had lots to tell. She told of fires old and new, of rains that flooded, of countless animals that had wandered past. But she did not know what to make of the pair touching her, nor of the circle the three of them made.

The circle . . .

Minawë’s eyes snapped open. She looked to her right. She hadn’t noticed before because she’d been connected with the tree, but now it was obvious. When she’d told Lyubo to hold the Chloryoblaka, he’d misunderstood.

He’d grabbed her hand instead.

“I never realized trees could share so much with us,” Lyubo said. “You’ve opened a new world for me.”

Minawë said nothing. Lyubo opened his eyes and looked at her. “What’s wrong?” he asked.

She pulled away. Her heart smacked against her chest. “It. . .it’s nothing. It’s getting late. We’d better hurry, or Uncle will worry about us.”

They gathered their supplies and the meat from the tapir. Within a few minutes they set off.

Their journey back to the others took another hour. The whole time, Minawë kept silent.

It wasn’t because Lyubo had upset her. It was because he hadn’t.