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aithne[Didn't take me as long as I thought. I think I hit the highlights, at least, and got pretty much all of the important stuff in.]
5/9/978, afternoon
Palil:
So there we were, staring at the Slayden temple that was sitting staring right back at us. "Who's going in?" I asked.
Sondirra chose to stay behind, and it was I, Lida and Elfrida, Galen and Tchar, and Beamer who began to make their way towards the temple. Bambi had taken off to find the back door that Blaise had reported was there, and we were looking carefully around as we walked through the concentric ring of disabled traps that surrounded the temple.
The temple itself was a large pyramid, built in a stepwise fashion. We were making our way towards a pair of great stone doors. Once we reached the place where Blaise had said she'd stopped, Galen started tracking someone who had walked out of the temple. The footprints weren't visible in the mud, but there were unclear marks as if someone heavy had been leaning on a staff.
"Bambi found her the entrance. She's about to go in--what the hell?" He looked up to the north, where Bambi had gone, and that was when I heard on the wind the sound of wings.
Sondirra!
Be there in a sec-- She was running to me, and around the temple sped a group of white dragons. Half of them split off, and the other half--
I spread my wings and Sondirra ducked underneath just before the one attacking her threw its breath weapon. The one on me didn't bother with a breath weapon, just stooped on me full-force, as if I were a bison or a sheep.
That one was a male, and he raked me with claws and teeth, fouling one of my wings so I couldn't take off. The other landed and snapped at Sondirra, who'd loosed her guisarme and was attacking from a crouched position beneath me--probably the safest place she could be right at the moment.
In short order, I realized I was grievously outmatched. One I could have taken, but the other would finish me. The others used one of Beamer's dimension doors to retreat, I saw out of the corner of my eye, but neither Sondirra nor I could move. I smacked the one at my side with my free wing and tore into the one before me. If this was how I was going down, I was taking at least one of these with me--
Palil, take this! I ducked my head and Sondirra poured a potion in my mouth. Sweet, with an aftertaste like blood. A teleport potion.
Where?
She wrapped her arms around one of my front legs. Over to the rest--
And so we were gone.
The scene I saw there made me gasp in dismay. Seven white dragons were attacking Gannon, trying to take out the red dragon. That he was still alive was a miracle--and then I saw Haven hanging on to one of his wings, chanting. Jordan was there, as well, crouched underneath Gannon and striking out viciously with a sword.
Without even thinking about it, I lunged forward and grabbed one, closing my jaws on its--her, from the smell, it was female--neck, hauling her back and away from Gannon. I was bleeding heavily, but she was wounded as well, and we rolled, each raking the other with teeth and claws.
Finally, I got in a death-blow, and looked up to realize that Gannon and Jordan were no longer in the center of the cluster of white dragons. The battle was wrapping up quickly, and I found one of my healing potions and took it, not sure what was coming next.
My hide was all over mud and blood, hardly a scrap of white showing at all. Finally, the last fell, and quiet fell as well.
I looked at the female I'd killed, and saw that she'd fallen with her wings to one side. Under her right wing was a tattoo, much like the one I have under my wing. But not the same. This one had Reuben's mark on it.
"Paloma and Hypatia messaged me and said that they were under attack. We should check in," Sondirra said. She was going for her potion case even as she said it. Jordan was walking around, taking dragon heads and tossing them in the pile.
While she was doing that, I checked to make sure we didn't have anyone dead or too wounded to fight. Fortunately, we were mostly all right, though Gannon was going to have a mass of new scars on both of his sides. He looked utterly exhausted, and I didn't blame him.
We turned our attention to the aftermath of battle, then.
Sondirra:
"We're all still alive," Paloma said. "Tatiana and Shira died, but we had Raise Dead potions for them. What happened?"
"I don't know what's happening, we all came under attack at the same time."
"It's Reuben's troops--"
"Were yours without bondmates?"
"Can't find any."
"Clean up and hang tight. I'll let you know what's happening when I find out. Sondirra out."
I reached for another potion, and discovered that Hypatia wasn't responding. I was about to try the rest, when a message came in to both Palil and I.
"Palil, Sondirra, this is Coulter. Are you alive?"
"Alive and kicking, all of us, and Jordan's team is fine. Paloma's team is whole. I can't raise Hypatia. What's happening there?"
I could almost hear Coulter's tired sigh. "Coordinated attack on Yafa's MI, and a general attack on Petrozav. Counting your teams, we have five teams confirmed alive. I lost several of my own teammates. Tertia and Yafa are dead, Petrozav is a frozen wasteland at the moment. The chaos is only beginning here, but I'm sure there are already a few leaders of the regular military that are plotting to take over."
Palil and I breathed out at the same time. Yafa and Tertia are dead. That changes everything, Palil said. "We will regroup. We may have some resources to send to you to try and restore order. It'll take us a couple of days to get to them, though."
"Do what you feel you need to. At the moment, MI is scattered and uncoordinated. Coulter out."
The spell ended, and Palil and I sat in stunned silence for a minute or two. "We need to tell the others," Palil said.
"Yeah." I looked around. "Hey, where's Bambi? She missed the battle."
Beamer was nearby, and said, "She found her way sort of in to the temple--there's a whirlpool at the bottom She can't get any farther in, though."
"We still have to go in through the front door, then," Palil said. She raised her voice, calling. "All right. Everyone gather round. I only want to have to say this once." Once everyone was near, she told everyone what Coulter had told us. She minced no words.
"We'll question the prisoners, explore the temple quickly, then eat and depart," she said. "The nearest portal is two days away. We need to get there."
When we tried to question one of the two we'd left alive, though, he ground down with his jaws, and then blood ran from his mouth. He sighed out his last breath and was gone. Palil ground her teeth in frustration. "Kill the other one. We'll question the corpses." We found, in the dead ones, crystals lodged un their back teeth that contained some sort of poison. We collected those, thinking they might come in handy later.
The corpses were not much more enlightening. They were Reuben's forces, having all volunteered for suicide missions after they'd lost their bondmates. They knew nothing, they were just soldiers following commands.
"We'll drag the bodies into the swamp before we leave. Someone will be eating well for a few days." I sighed. "Tchar, can you scry on Hypatia? Let's see if she's alive but unable to respond to messages.
She was there, all right. She looked like she was going through potions, looking at them, and throwing most of them out. Her face was spattered with blood, and her arms were bloody to the shoulder, as if she'd been carrying someone badly wounded. I took a message potion, and spoke. "Hypatia, we have you on a scry. Can you write answers to us? What's your status?"
She scrambled for a pen, ink, and paper. She wrote, "3 dead pairs. Me, Corona, Blaise, Tarrant live. Potions destroyed. Can't transport bodies."
I closed my eyes, visualizing the map. "Paloma's the closest. I'll send her. Pair up with her once everyone's back and come and meet us. I'll tell Paloma when and where. Palil out."
Before Tchar dismissed the scry, I saw Hypatia's shoulders sag in evident relief. I couldn't imagine what today had been like for her. I took a breath and told Paloma about Hypatia, and to meet us at the portal two days north of our current position when they could. They estimated it would take them four days. "We have the boy, by the way. He was going to warn us of the white dragon attack. A little late, though. We'll keep him, he might come in handy."
We exchanged a little more information and signed off. Then we turned, and went carefully towards the temple doors.
When we got there, the stupid things wouldn't budge, no matter how much Palil pulled and pushed on them. "I don't think they're original to the temple," Beamer said. "Look, the stone's a little different."
From behind me, I heard Jordan ask, "Want me to give it a try?"
I turned and grinned at him. "Go right ahead."
Palil stood back from the doors, her eyes suspicious. Why do you think he can-- she started to ask me as Jordan fitted his fingers into a crack between the doors. Her voice fell silent as the stone began to move. I felt Palil's shock as Jordan accomplished what she, the strongest of the dragons on our team and probably one of the strongest of those present, had not been able to.
I glanced over at her, and I saw that her wings were dropped and her eyes were wide with utter astonishment. I have to admit, I was laughing to myself. The look on her face was priceless.
Beamer threw a questioning look at me. "That wasn't sarcastic. You knew."
"I'll tell you about it later. Come on, let's head inside," I said. I took a long breath; I hadn't had this conversation with Palil yet, and this wasn't how I'd wanted to bring up the subject of what Jordan's sword did. The cat was out of the bag, though, and I was going to have to explain stuff.
Inside, the temple was enormous. The corridor was wide enough for Palil to walk down it with wings spread and not touch either wall. The walls were scraped, however, as if rasped by dragon scales.
We checked the side rooms as we walked, until finally Beamer stopped at a wall. "Bambi's whirlpool room is behind there," he said, pointing at a place in the wall that was filled with smooth stone. "That door's weird, though. Look," he said, pointing at the top. "It opens with those vials."
It turned out that the vials were full of acid that would flow down the door and dissolve the stone. It wasn't a trap, it was how the door was meant to work. I supposed a temple to the black dragon god would have something like that, though.
Bambi triggered the door from her side, since the acid wouldn't harm her, and once the acid had flowed into a grate in the floor, we stepped into the whirlpool room. "Slayden temples, six of them," Bambi said, pointing at the ceiling. "All along the southern coast."
"Pretty," I said, looking up. "Isn't that one--"
"Right where the one rose up out of the swamp at Novgorod, right," Bambi said.
We looked around some more, making our way to the end of the hall and a very large room. It was mostly bare, except for shards of crystal everywhere. From the impression left behind in the unbroken crystal, it looked like there had been a huge dragon body here until recently. There was a large hourglass and a smashed smaller crystal in the corner of the room, the apparent remnants of a timing device.
"It's like the frost giant body separation, only they didn't distill the body down," Tchar said.
"Guys, check these out!" That was Lida, pointing at the wall behind us. Mounted on the wall was a rack with five staves in it, with one space on the rack empty. "Looks like whoever it was took one."
"It's like the marks that were left," Galen said. "I'd swear one of these made those marks in the mud."
"They're magical," Beamer said. He got close and with Lida started to look at the markings on the staves. "Black dragon clan markings, I think, but these aren't in use any more. They've got to be ancient." He reached out and laid a hand on one of them. "Oh, that's weird. Feels like the top of my head is buzzing." He eyed the staff, and said, "My name is Beamer. Who are you?"
The voice was deep and dark. "I am Annan."
"You are a black dragon?"
"I am. I and my brothers and sisters--Kotild, Nina, Duff, Baird, and Fallon--chose to become a set of staves when we were old."
"Pardon the generality of the question, but what happened here?"
The story unfolded as we listened, spellbound. Long ago, a black dragon named Orion had had a vision of the future. He was a cleric of Slayden and one of the best diviners of his age, and he could see clearly enough to pinpoint exactly when his help would have been needed. He knew of the Eight, and knew that Tertia would not be particularly fond of the Slayden faith. So he and his companions, six in all, had sunk six Slayden temples, and frozen themselves inside of them. The plan was for Orion to wake first, then take the staves and go locate his companions. They would then find humanoids to bond with, and give the staves to their bonds. He only took Nina with him."
"Wait, wait," I said. "They're all adults, right? Ancients? Can they bond when they're adults?"
"Dragons can bond any time they wish. Humanoids, as well. No matter how young or old they are."
We all looked at each other, and outside I could feel Sondirra drop something she was holding with a crash. Holy shit, she said. You don't have to bond right after hatching?
We knew they were lying to us about humanoids only being able to bond between five and fifteen. How many other lies about bonding have we been told?
No idea, but we've got to get word of this out!
I agreed. That was for later, however. "You said that Orion was going to take all six staves. Why didn't he?"
"Something has gone wrong. Perhaps the other temples did not rise, or the dragons they contained are dead."
I thought about it. "At least one other temple did rise. The rest are in relatively secluded locations."
"Then the others are dead."
We looked at each other, and Beamer said, "I think we need to talk to this Orion."
"We'll be at the portal north of us in a couple of days. If he's willing, have him meet us there," I said.
Beamer messaged Orion, explained who we were and what we were doing, and Orion did say he'd meet us at the portal. He was relatively close to us, but too far to go swing out of our way to get him. We asked about the staves, and Orion told us to go ahead and take them. "The others are dead. They have no use for them. I will see you in two days."
The message spell faded. I was by the rack of staves and put a claw on the third one down, the one that was named Kotild. "My name is Palil," I told her. "What do you do?"
Her voice was light and pleasant. "We were put into the staves as a set, so when we are in the possession of dragon bonds, we enable communication between members of the set as if they were bonded. We also convey the dragon's abilities to the bond--keen scent, eyesight, hearing, immunity to whatever element the breath weapon is, no matter how far they are away from their bondmate. That is all we do--for now."
I heard an eventually in that statement. "And later?"
"It depends on the bond, their personality and needs. We give according to what is needed, after we are carried for a while."
I stood stock-still, and thought about that for a moment, then shook my head. "Let's gather these up, we can distribute them later. Sondirra's telling everyone what we found. The dragons should hunt and the humanoids should eat, and then we'll leave north." Tchar groaned, and I shrugged. "I know we're all exhausted, but we have to make time. We can be there tomorrow night if we move quickly, but we have to get some miles in tonight."
Everyone grumbled, but picked up the staves and got moving.
Sondirra:
"MI255, to me, if you would?" I called as everyone emerged. I took my team off to the side, and took a long breath. "I promised you an explanation. This is it."
I was holding a wrapped bundle, having gone to get it while everyone was inside the temple. I unwrapped it to reveal Jordan's sword. "This is Eldil. One of Gannon's many-greats grandmothers. Gannon's and Jordan's families have been linked for many years, and Jordan's the most recent of this line to carry the sword. She gives her bearer her strength and speed and healing capability, among other things." I covered the sword again, gripping it harder than I really needed to. "When Jordan gave Palil this sword, he didn't tell her it was a dragon sword. He thought he was going to lose the gifts of the sword when he gave it up, but he did not. Jordan has the strength of a great wyrm wrapped up in a human body. That's why he was able to open the door when Palil couldn't."
I sought Palil's white eyes with mine. Please understand, I pleaded silently. He meant for it to be a sacrifice. And it still is. This is his family's blade, Gannon's ancestor. He trusts you enough to let you keep her.
All I got from her was calm. Something about that calm scared me almost out of my wits. I couldn't tell what she was thinking, or what she was about to do. Something in her had changed in the last few hours, and right now I couldn't tell if she'd broken, or if something else had happened.
Without comment, she turned and walked away, her wings held stiffly. I'm going to go kill something, she said shortly, then took off. The rest of the dragons followed her.
I let out a breath I'd forgotten I was holding, and watched her till she was out of sight. There was still a cold feeling in my gut that wouldn't go away, but I ignored it. Getting everyone fed and packed up was more important, right now.
We distributed the staves--I got Kotild, Beamer got Annan, Galen took Fallon, and Jordan took Baird. Duff we saved for Paloma when she arrived. I wished we had one more, to give to Hypatia, but Orion had Nina and I didn't really want to ask for her.
Palil:
There was a hunting grounds about ten miles to the east, and we took advantage of it. Scared the herd of cows, unfortunately, with eight dragons descending on them from all sides. I was one of the last to take mine, waiting until everyone else had their kill, and when I made my kill I dragged the unfortunate cow over to Gannon, who was eating a little apart from the others.
"You all right?" I asked, settling down next to him.
He was gutting his kill, seeking out all of the tender bits first and charring them with small bursts of breath weapon. "I hurt. I'm not looking forward to the flight tonight."
"I know." I started in on mine, slitting the skin of the belly and blowing into the inside to freeze it. "It's necessary, though. We're short on time."
"But why? What are we going to do when we're there?"
I realized that he hadn't been with us when we had talked to the portal who'd told us about all the people held in stasis. "There's an army of five hundred white dragons and their bonds trapped in stasis in the portal system. I want to pull them out and see if I can talk them into helping. There are also other people in there. If I have to destroy the portal system, I want the ones I think I can trust out."
He'd stopped eating, and stared at me. "You're kidding me. Five hundred?"
"Left over from the frost giant war. They may come in handy."
"They probably will." He fell back to eating.
We ate in silence for a while. I hadn't realized how hungry I was. Being injured and then healed is a burden on the body in more ways than one, as is battle itself. I finally looked over at him. "Sondirra finally told me where Jordan's strength comes from. And why he was able to open the doors when I couldn't."
He glanced at me, then immediately turned most of his attention back to his dinner. "Oh."
"Why didn't anyone tell me? Sondirra knew, you knew, Jordan knew. Everyone but me!"
Gannon sighed. "I can't speak for your bond, Palil. But she may have had the same trepidation as I did. I--and Jordan too, incidentally--was afraid that you'd decide that Jordan knew that he would keep his strength, making giving you his sword an empty gesture. It wasn't. He believed he would lose it until right after he gave it up. Honestly..." He lowered his wings. "I think he was almost looking forward to being without it. It is a gift. It is also a burden that almost broke him a number of times. He was given the sword too young, while he was still growing both in body and in soul. He's finally grown up enough to be able to handle it, but it was chancy for a while there. He couldn't control it very well."
I crouched a little lower, drawing my wings inward. "My one advantage was that I could kick his ass if I needed to. Now I find out that I probably never could. And now--" I shook my head and started tearing at my meal. "We found some staves in the temple. They're meant for dragon bonds. Among other things, they allow communication between those who hold the pieces of the set as if they were bonded. Sondirra just gave one to Jordan, as a leader of a team."
He raised his head, clamping his wings to his sides. He did not move his mouth, but I could hear his words anyway, shock and despair in them. Then I truly have been replaced.
I reacted without thinking. Stretching my wing upward, I sidled up to him, draping my wing over him. "Gannon, Gannon, it's all right. It's going to be all right. Sondirra won't replace you. She can't. She's my bond." He stood stock still for a moment, then leaned into me tentatively. I rasped the scales of my neck against his, comfortingly. "You're not going to lose him..." I trailed off, blinked. "Gannon? You didn't say that aloud, did you."
I could feel his muscular form tense. "No. But you heard me anyway."
I craned my neck so I could look him in the eye. "The staves don't just link the bonds. They link us, too."
"I'm not sure how I feel about that," he muttered. But he didn't step away from me. After a moment, he relaxed again, and we leaned into each other once more.
"Think of it this way--imagine what kind of a fighting force we'll be, able to communicate with each other silently. Like how we fight with our bonds, only on a larger scale." And we won't have to use message spells any more to speak with each other, I added, just to see if it worked for me, too.
A good thing, since I think we're not going to get a potion resupply any time soon.
I almost laughed. We're on our own. For real. I rasped my scales against his again, this time to comfort myself. It helped. It helped more than I was expecting it to, for some reason.
He looked down at me. You're very calm, considering. Between Jordan and the fact that the world appears to have just gone to hell, I'd expect you to be a lot more upset than you are.
I'd been wondering about the same thing. I was silent for a moment as I weighed what I was feeling. "I have two options," I said aloud. "I can keep fighting this, keep trying to hate Jordan, keep holding you at a distance. But Jordan, and with him you, keep getting deeper and deeper into my life. I will go mad trying to keep you out, and probably alienate Sondirra into the bargain. She is patient, but she's no saint. Or--" I let out a long breath. "I can give in. The problems we face are so huge that that make my personal problems seem--insignificant." As I spoke the words, their truth rang in me. It had been growing ever since Garnet had died, this sense that the energy I was spending to resent Jordan for who he was to Sondirra was wasted and would better be turned to other things. "I don't really believe that Jordan's going to hurt Sondirra any more. Not on purpose. And at this point, all of my plans for the future are completely gone. I'm not sure we'll survive another week, much less long enough to serve out our two years."
Gannon took a long breath, thinking about it. "Well. I do hope we all survive. But if we don't--" He fell silent.
"What?"
"It's been good to know you, Palil. To be your friend." He leaned into me a bit more than he had been. "It's made things easier, in a way."
"Me, too." I leaned hard against him and then lifted my wing from him. "We should probably finish eating."
"Good idea." We both fell to, both too busy eating to talk any more. The feeling of calm persisted in me, a feeling as if something in me were unwinding.
I reached out and touched my bond's mind, gently. Sondirra?
I could feel her sigh with relief as she felt my touch. There was a lingering sense of tension about her, still. There you are. We're almost ready here. How about you?
I lifted my head and looked around. Almost everyone except Gannon and I had finished eating. Looks like we'll be on our way back shortly.
You all right, Palil?
I lowered my wings. I am. I talked to Gannon. Sondirra, here-- What I sent her then was wordless, a tumble of emotion and impression. Things I'd seen in Jordan and refused to acknowledge, things that Gannon had shown me that I'd kept at wing's length. The work we'd done, and had yet to do. The knowledge that the attack had been partially our fault, that we had been the snowflake that started the avalanche. The fact that the staves enabled communication between dragons as well as their bonds. I wish you had told me about the sword and Jordan, Sondirra. I think I understand why you didn't, though.
I wanted to, I just couldn't find the right words! I didn't want you to think what Jordan gave you wasn't meant to be a sacrifice. I could feel frustration and love in her as she spoke. You've been so determined to see the negative in everything he does that I was afraid you were going to use it as fuel for the fire. Do you understand now why he gave you the sword?
I think I do. A little, at least.
You don't have to think what he did was all right to forgive him for it, Sondirra said, slowly. I don't. There's still some touchiness between us about it, even. But he understands how wrong it was. He hates the fact that he did it. And I don't think he'll ever do it again.
I'll consider it. We're done here. I'm coming back. There was a wave of love and joy from her, as she turned her attention to what was around her. I looked over at Gannon. "Ready to go?"
He flexed his wings, wincing. "I had better, before I stiffen up too much more."
I stepped away from him and stretched into a run, my wings lifting me into the sky. Gannon was right behind me, and the others followed. When we arrived at the camp, the packs were together and the camp that had been set up here was almost eradicated. We hauled bodies off into the swamp, and then came back and got harnessed up. We'd made makeshift harnesses and saddles for Folke and Hedda, because the former prisoners were coming with us. We'd messaged Chaim and asked him to meet us at the portal we were going to, to take Hedda and Damaris back with him.
Gannon was next to me as Sondirra finished putting the packs on the harness. I saw Jordan duck around him, checking his straps, and then apparently thinking nobody was watching, he raised his arms to Gannon. The red dragon snaked his head down over Jordan's shoulder, and Jordan closed his eyes, his arms around Gannon's neck.
It was a brief moment of affection between the two of them, and something about it left me with an odd feeling of warmth in my chest. I didn't know what the two of them were saying to each other, but the truth was that Gannon had almost died today, several times over. We had almost lost him.
I had almost lost him.
I ignored the stab of grief I felt at that thought as Sondirra mounted up and strapped herself in. Later, I told myself. I'll think about it when the world's not busy falling apart on me. To Sondirra, I said, Can you ask Jordan to keep an eye on Gannon for me? I'm worried about him. Have Jordan let you know when he's getting to the end of his strength. If this wasn't so urgent, I'd stay here for a couple of days, but as it is--
He'll let us know. Shall we?
We took off, not bothering to keep formation. The sun was setting as we left, and it was about midnight when Sondirra warned me that Gannon needed to land soon or he was going to fall out of the sky. I wasn't feeling particularly energetic myself, so we found a decent spot to camp by moonlight, and settled under the open sky. I closed my eyes and feel asleep almost immediately.
The next day was a very long one. We started out about an hour after sunup, and flew almost until midnight that night. Sondirra had gotten her supply of messenger potions out at the beginning of the day, and conversation was flying between all of the members of the linked group. What had at first started out as the occasional overheard thought was turning into a constant chatter. I wasn't able to feel the bonds other than my own, but I was able to hear and feel the other dragons.
We checked in with Albina first that morning, and she said she was alive and well and it was business as usual where she was, in Reuben's capital. "I can't tell much of anything from here," she said to us. "The officers don't know a thing. I need to get inside the palace, but I can't figure out how."
"I may be able to get you in," Sondirra said. "Hang in there. I'll let you know."
The next one we checked in with was Coulter.
"We've finished checking in. We have fourteen MI teams still surviving. Most lost at least one member."
I felt Sondirra suck in a breath. "Out of how many?"
"A hundred and twenty-one. MI has more or less been crippled. The situation in Petrozav is worsening; as word spread, the leaders of the regular military are starting to try and claim territory. Yesterday, Petrozav was a frozen waste. Today, it's knee-deep in blood. We have Kane and Kavan and the rest of the former MI248 with us. They were instrumental in our survival."
"Is Oberan and his team still alive?" I heard her voice shake slightly, felt her gut-clench of fear.
"Alive and well, he checked in yesterday. His next check-in is for a week from now. Isla's forces are starting to bait ours, along our border with her. It's only a matter of time before someone does something stupid, and Isla will claim that we attacked first. Reuben blinded us, and if she has a chance Isla will finish what he started."
"Leaving her own border with him undefended. I understand. We'll do what we can."
"I don't know how much I'll be able to speak with you after this," Coulter said, his voice betraying some emotion--worry, fear, grief, I couldn't tell. "Stay in touch as you can, and do what you need to do."
What is going on there? Sondirra asked me. He almost sounds like he doesn't think he's going to live much longer--
Is Majesta dead? If she is, he's probably the walking wounded, which is why it doesn't sound like he's trying to take over.
Maybe. Probably. I'm not going to ask. We're his reports, not his friends, as much as I regret that. If we needed to know, he'd tell us, Sondirra said. She turned her attention back to Coulter. "We understand, sir."
"Good. Coulter out."
I forgot to ask about Harbin and Eaton, Sondirra said, cursing. Damn. Hope they're still alive.
I shook my head. It's...not likely. They were in the center of it. Maybe, though.
Hope's pretty much all we have right now, my bond said. Hope and maybe a chance.
Sondirra messaged Oberan to tell him about Albina and ask him to get her into the palace if he could. He said he'd do his best.
We stopped briefly in the evening to eat (I hate those strange food cakes, but they're a sad necessity sometimes), and then flew until nearly midnight. When we came down, Gannon stumbled and almost fell as he landed. Hey, steady there! I said as I settled to the ground.
Guess I overdid it a bit, he said, hanging his head. Gods, I hurt.
I tried to send comfort over my connection with him, as I often did to Sondirra. I couldn't tell if it worked. Short flying day tomorrow, and then it's all talking for a few days.
I think I may sleep through most of it, he said, groaning.
I snorted. "We're going to need your brain, Gannon. You might get to sit, but you don't get to sleep through everything."
Sondirra and Jordan both gave us strange looks as Gannon groaned and twitched his tail at me. Almost the moment that Jordan hauled the last of his harness off, he was asleep. I wasn't far behind him.
Sondirra:
The new bonds that the staves were making were really weird. Unbonded people sometimes think the way that a bonded pair will sometimes turn their heads at the exact same moment to look at something is weird. Imagine that effect multiplied by four. I could tell that we were mildly creeping some of our teammates out.
I'd gotten a headache about noon that day, and fortunately I'd brewed up another batch of Haven's remedy a few days ago. It didn't work quite as well as it did when it was freshly made, but it killed it enough that I was able to nap in the saddle most of the afternoon. I volunteered for first watch, since I wasn't tired enough to sleep yet.
I was sitting and oiling my crossbow when Beamer wandered up to me. "Hey."
"You're taking first watch, too?"
"Might as well. I had a question. You left something out when you were explaining about Jordan's sword. Why did he give it to Palil?"
I chuckled. "That's a long story, and it wasn't really relevant right then. Jordan wanted to apologize to Palil for being a bully when we were in school. When he did, he completely impulsively gave her his sword, and told her to give it back when she forgave him. She hasn't, yet. I think he wanted to give her a pretty unmistakable show of faith."
"Hunh." Beamer stared off into the woods, thinking. "I suppose that's one way to go about it. Is she liking him better now?"
I shrugged. "She's stopped muttering about killing him. And now she knows she probably couldn't even if she wanted to."
We talked about that for a bit, then the conversation turned to other things. It was a warm night, and the sky was clear and full of stars. It was nice, for once, to forget about everything that was going on that we couldn't do anything about just yet.
A few hours later, and Beamer went to wake a couple of the others to stand watch so we could get some sleep. Jordan was sleeping next to Gannon, on the opposite side from where Palil was sleeping, wrapped in blankets. I brought my own over to him, crouching and laying a hand on his shoulder. "Hey. Room enough for me in there?"
He started, then appeared to realize who it was. "Mmm. Always." I shucked my boots and crawled in with him, adding my blankets to the pile. I curled up, and he curved his body around mine. Jordan murmured, "I've been seeing a lot of the Major lately and not much of Sondirra. Nice to have you back for a little while."
"I know, I know," I told him, keeping my voice down. "I have to be the Major for a while yet."
"Not a complaint, just an observation, love. Besides," he said, his breath warm in my ear, "you're sexy when you're ordering people around."
I chuckled, and we spoke only a little more as we were drifting off to sleep.
The next morning, we got up, had a cold breakfast, and flew to the portal. We got there an hour before noon, and it turned out that both Chaim and Orion had beaten us there. Chaim was wearing more clothing than he usually did. Orion was in full form because he'd just come back from hunting, and was about as large or a bit larger than Tertia had been. Instead of being mottled like Tertia and Bambi, however, he was a deep jet black all over.
Orion's small form was of the tallest human I'd ever seen, looking like he was maybe in his sixties, about as old as Chaim looked. A hale and fit sixty, though.
We all introduced ourselves, and talked for a little while about stuff. "The staves told us that you're going to find someone to bond with," Bambi said. "We didn't know dragons could bond as adults."
He looked at us strangely. "You've had that information kept from you? When were you told dragons could bond?"
"Right after hatching. All of us found our bondmates on the hatching grounds."
Orion blinked. "Dragons can bond any time in their lives, as long as they find someone to bond with. I can feel the person who will be my bond somewhere in the world, and I know approximately where they are, but I won't know who they are until I see them. I was almost twenty years old when my first bond was born, and then I had to wait for her to grow up a little and be socialized as a human before I could really swoop down and take her away."
Bambi pinned her wings back. "Your first bond? You can re-bond?"
Slowly, Orion said, "Yes. Many choose not to, but some, especially those who first bond to humans, do. Let me guess. Dragons bonded to humans are completely devastated when their bondmate dies of old age. Without hope of ever bonding again, many of them suicide rather than face life alone." He shook his head. "I can't imagine having a human bond without knowing that I could bond again after they died."
We all looked at each other, silent. Even the silent chatter between those of us who were linked was quiet. How many more lies have we been told? Palil asked me. How much of what we know about ourselves is false?
I was thinking about it. "Bonded pairs are required to go into the military. Humanoids are only allowed to bond between the ages of five and fifteen, when they're old enough to learn but young enough to be impressionable. The dragons are always infants when they begin their training. Brainwashing, more like. They take twelve years to do that, then we serve two years in the military to pay that back."
Orion lashed his tail. "It seems like a wasteful squandering of one of the gifts of the gods, to keep it under control for military purposes. Chaim has been catching me up with events in the world I've missed."
"It's been almost a thousand years of relative peace, but now it's all coming apart," I said. "And it looks like we're the ones who need to figure out what to put in its place."
"I will help, as I can," Orion said.
We talked for a little while after that, and then Palil wanted to get on with what we'd come to do. The first order of business was a bath for both dragons and bonds. It wouldn't do for us to look like we were fresh from the battlefield, even though we were. We found a nearby lake, and the dragons rinsed off the mud and blood on their hides while the rest of us washed the necessary bits pretty quickly--the water was damned cold! Then it was back to the portal for a change of clothing for the bonds.
Palil took a breath when all that was done. "All right. I'm going to try to bring out just the leader of that army. Everyone, keep full form." She stepped forward and spent a couple of minutes talking quietly to the portal, then stepped back. The fog inside the portal swirled, and from it stepped a white dragon with a female elf on its back. Female, probably seven hundred years old or so, Palil commented to me and the other dragons. I passed that on.
Palil stepped forward, dipping the front edge of her wings in greeting. "Greetings. My name is Palil. This is my bond, Sondirra."
The dragon spoke. "My name is Diamond, and this is Iantha." She glanced around the assembled company, and then back over her shoulder. "Where is my command? Am I the only one who survives?"
Palil shook her head. "The rest of your command is still held in stasis in the portal. The priest who put you in there died before the battle you were being saved for came."
Iantha dismounted at that point, coming to stand by her bondmate's front leg. She was tall and rawboned, with a hard look about her that spoke of years spent fighting a war. "What happened? Where are we?"
"North of the swampland in the mid-eastern part of the continent," Palil said. "As for what happened--I have good news, and bad news. The good news is that the war with the frost giants is over, and we won. They were more or less wiped out. The bad news is that the war was won three thousand years ago."
Diamond's eyes widened, and her wings mantled slightly. Iantha looked briefly stunned. Diamond asked, "So why have you brought us out now? I assume you want something of us."
Palil said, "That is a very long story, but to sum it up, the continent is divided up into four territories. One of those territories is trying to conquer the others. He's managed to kill the leaders of the territory we come from, and throw it into chaos."
"A dragon?"
I shook my head. "An elf named Reuben. He had a falling out with his bondmate that ended in a serious injury to Reuben and Jezik's imprisonment."
"That's very strange, a dragon and their bond fighting like that. Does that happen often?"
"More than we'd like. especially when you have one of the longer-lived races as a bondmate. People change."
Diamond considered this. "Well, we are here to fight, and it sounds like the world needs some help at the moment. I need more details, but we're tentatively in." She glanced around the group. "These are...your teammates?"
Palil nodded. "Some of them." She gestured with a wing. "This is Bambi, her bondmate is Beamer. The blue is Tchar, and his bondmate is Galen. That's our squad. Those five pairs there are another squad, I'll introduce you later. The old white dragon is Chaim, and the old black dragon is Orion. We have some others with us, but they're not really of us and not privy to this particular discussion."
"They're all different colors. It seems very strange."
"Why?"
Diamond shook her head. "We always fought in single-color groups. Ten pairs were a wing."
"Some of the other militaries have ten-pair groups. We do five-pair groups. We've lost two pairs on the way. As for the colors..." She shrugged her wings. "There aren't that many of us. I was the only white dragon in my class of twenty pairs. Only bonded pairs go into the military, and once your bond dies, you're out."
The larger white dragon tilted her head. "What, you don't re-bond?"
"We only learned that re-bonding was possible today. We've had a lot of information kept from us." Palil shot a look at Chaim, who looked back mildly. I had to admit that, well, we'd never thought to ask him if dragons could re-bond.
"That's very strange. Well, I suppose I can't expect the world not to change in a hundred generations. What do you need us to do?"
I could feel Palil thinking. Our territory? In evident response something Gannon said, she said, If we can keep things from completely falling apart over there, it'll slow Reuben down a bit.
Good idea, I told her. but they'll need someone to take with them, someone who can lead them.
Chaim is going to hate me. Palil sighed silently, then said aloud, "One of our most pressing problems at the moment is the fact that one of the four territories is falling into chaos even now."
"Then we should go restore order, at least temporarily."
"And you will need a leader," Chaim's cultured voice broke in. "Someone who was in the original group, preferably. Someone who has an acknowledged successor." There was a deep reluctance in his voice.
Palil dropped her wings, and turned to face Chaim. "This wasn't my first choice. But I can't see any other way. We would send Kamal in, but he'd never survive on his own."
"I never wanted to rule. But, since you ask, and because there is a need, I will go. Hopefully, I will only have to keep the post for a few years before Kamal can take over. I will take Hedda and Damaris with me, they will be safe with me."
I could see both sorrow and relief in the lines of my bondmate's body. "Start in Petrozav. You may have to go city to city, chasing the news of Tertia and Yafa's death."
"We will. Bring out the rest from the portal so they can be briefed. We'll go after that's done."
It took a couple of hours to get everyone out of the portal and briefed. As that was going on, most of us settled down away from the portal, trying not to be underfoot. Gannon was napping under a large tree, and Jordan was sitting with his back against him, sharpening his sword.
I saw Palil watching the two of them, her eyes unreadable. I nudged her with my shoulder. You all right?
Yes. She shook herself, shaking her wings out. Frost giants next. Once these folks are gone. We'll use our small forms, try to put them at least a little at ease. I hope they decide to talk first rather than fight right away.
I did, too.
Palil:
Before Chaim left with the army, he pulled me aside. "Can I have a word?"
I nodded. We walked together a bit away from the rest. I say, wrapping my tail around my feet. Chaim asked, "How many are joining the life transfer?"
I tilted my head. "Isn't it only transferred between dragons and bondmates?"
"No, it can be taken from any that wish to donate life to the person."
My heart skipped a beat. No, Palil, don't jump to conclusions. "So the more people who join, the less is taken from each?" I asked.
He dipped his wings. "Yes. It's not very effective to take from humans."
With a terrible suspicion, I said, "But--the other long-lived races can donate. Elves. Drow."
"Certainly."
The conclusion I had jumped to had been entirely correct. "I--didn't know. When do you need to know by? My bondmate and I are likely going to need to have a few long discussions about it."
Chaim inclined his head. "Soonish, the first of the potions are brewing. You have about a month before I have to key them to the individual."
I thought about it. "I'll let you know when it's decided. This is the sort of thing I know Sondirra's going to jump at, and I...am not so fond of the idea."
Mildly, Chaim said, "It should be her choice even it it's not yours." It was a rebuke, despite his tone, and I knew it. "I can do it with two, three or any number."
I lowered my head and said, "I know. I'll let them know."
"If we all survive, that is."
"Which is a chancy proposition at best. We'll see, I suppose. Good luck to you."
"Same to you," Chaim said, and turned to go. I sat there, my wings tight to my body, thinking. It was the sort of harebrained thing Sondirra would jump into without a second thought. If she decided to seriously try to convince Jordan that he ought to do this--as far as I knew, he was still against it--she could probably bring him around to it. If my estimation was right, the life transfer would take a third of her lifespan and give it to Jordan. Four hundred years, or so.
Four hundred years that I would be without her.
I thought briefly about trying to keep this from her, and sighed. It never worked. She always found out at some point.
So, the next question was, could I bring myself to participate? It would mean that Sondirra and Gannon would have longer lives. My own life would be shorter, but if I could spend it all with my bond, I rather thought that, like Gannon, I would take the option.
But I would be giving that lifespan to Jordan. Who I might not hate, but neither could I find it in me to like him.
It was a tangle of a problem. I wished I could talk to Paquita about it, but because she was under such deep cover, we had to restrict messages to merely the essentials. I shook out my wings and rose, telling myself that there was work to be done and that I'd better be about it.
Sondirra:
We waited until the army was away through the portal, then Palil told everyone to change shape, and she would go pull the Peacekeeper and her entourage out of the portal. She did so, and as the frost giants stepped out, we were arrayed before the gate. The Peacekeeper, in the center of the group of giants, was about eight feet tall, with long blue-tinged white hair that she wore loose. They were wearing robes made of rich fabrics and furs, and with a magic-detecting spell they fair glowed with magic.
The Peacekeeper looked sharply at me and Palil. "You are not those we were to meet."
Palil stepped forward. "No, ma'am, I am sorry. My name is Palil. This is my bond Sondirra. Something unfortunate happened when you went into the portal. It is roughly three thousand years after you stepped into it."
She was taken aback. "Then the war is over."
"Long over. The dragons won, I am afraid."
"What happened?"
As best she could, Palil told the story. It was much the same as she'd told the white dragons, with a few different bits of emphasis. When she was done, the Peacekeeper said, "And you have brought us out for a reason, then."
"In part because I'm afraid that the gate system may be destroyed sometime soon. When it goes down, everyone trapped inside will die."
The frost giant looked askance at us. "I would think you would prefer to let us die."
At this point, I spoke up. "You're frost giants, but you're still people."
"How times change. In my own time, no dragon or dragon bond would have said that."
I shrugged. "It's been three thousand years. The frost giants have faded into legend. Well, granted, the few we've met have mostly tried to kill us, but we were pretty sure you wouldn't."
"Well, then. What is it you would have of us?"
Palil spread her hands. "Of the three leaders left to us, one, named Isla, has quite the temper. We fear that she may do something rash soon, like attack the territory to the east of her that's just lost its leader. Her troops are already trying to bait ours into attacking. We'd like to make a peace with her, if we can. We released one of her twin sons and his bondmate from prison. Unfortunately, Folke--Nasser's bondmate--says that his twin Zadok is alive but incoherent. Scuttlebutt is that he and Penn have disappeared. We assume he's a captive of Reuben."
The Peacekeeper raised an eyebrow. "Twins. Gemini dragons?"
"The same." Palil folded her hands together. "We can, if we want, restore Nasser and Folke to her."
"They could be used as leverage, or as a gift to show our good faith. I would very much prefer to restore both of her sons to her at once, as a show of faith. If you can find this Penn, I may be able to negotiate something."
"We would like her to step down, if you can manage it. Her acknowledged successor is Penn, but Nasser being back may change that. But if nothing else, if you can get her to calm down, that would be a first step."
The Peacekeeper smiled thinly. "She will be calm the moment I arrive, I guarantee." I blinked. There was a very strong sense of calm coming off of her. I thought I knew why she'd been sent to try and negotiate peace.
Palil took a breath. "Very well. The nearest portal to Pskov is about two days' dragonflight north. Can you make that journey on your own, or do you need escort?"
"We can cover the ground quite quickly. Since you have one of Isla's sons, I would speak to him for a time before we leave."
"That can be arranged. This way." Palil led the frost giants over to where Nasser and Folke were, and they sat down and spoke with each other for about an hour. Palil had to speak with the portals to allow the Peacekeeper and her entourage to pass through--the portals were originally set to kill any frost giants that passed through them--and they left. We may end up putting Nasser and Penn in the portals as well, Palil murmured to me.
Hate to say it, but we might need to. Looks like what we need to do next is find Penn.
Orion may be able to help. I'm going to go spend some time talking to the portal. Can you organize feeding everyone? She hesitated. If you can, get Gannon to stay here and have someone bring back something for him. He needs more rest than he's gotten.
I chuckled. I'll do my best, sunshine. Have fun. I went to round up everyone and share out cooking chores, and to send the dragons off to find something to kill. In the back of my mind, I could hear Palil talking to the portal, getting lists of names and reasons why each person had been trapped in the portals by the clerics of Karop in the first place.
There was a huge, terrible urgency in her mind, as if she could feel the weight of what was happening in the world pressing down on her. I didn't blame her. If you want to change the course of a boulder, a little force early on is a lot easier and more effective than a lot of force later.
Then again, I thought that the boulder had been rolling for a long time now, and we were just now seeing it.
Maybe it was too late.
Never. It's never too late to do something.
Where there's life, there's hope.
Right?
Quotes:
"Beamer ultimately doesn't care about their ACs. Beamer ultimately doesn't want to be here."
--Derek
5/9/978, afternoon
Palil:
So there we were, staring at the Slayden temple that was sitting staring right back at us. "Who's going in?" I asked.
Sondirra chose to stay behind, and it was I, Lida and Elfrida, Galen and Tchar, and Beamer who began to make their way towards the temple. Bambi had taken off to find the back door that Blaise had reported was there, and we were looking carefully around as we walked through the concentric ring of disabled traps that surrounded the temple.
The temple itself was a large pyramid, built in a stepwise fashion. We were making our way towards a pair of great stone doors. Once we reached the place where Blaise had said she'd stopped, Galen started tracking someone who had walked out of the temple. The footprints weren't visible in the mud, but there were unclear marks as if someone heavy had been leaning on a staff.
"Bambi found her the entrance. She's about to go in--what the hell?" He looked up to the north, where Bambi had gone, and that was when I heard on the wind the sound of wings.
Sondirra!
Be there in a sec-- She was running to me, and around the temple sped a group of white dragons. Half of them split off, and the other half--
I spread my wings and Sondirra ducked underneath just before the one attacking her threw its breath weapon. The one on me didn't bother with a breath weapon, just stooped on me full-force, as if I were a bison or a sheep.
That one was a male, and he raked me with claws and teeth, fouling one of my wings so I couldn't take off. The other landed and snapped at Sondirra, who'd loosed her guisarme and was attacking from a crouched position beneath me--probably the safest place she could be right at the moment.
In short order, I realized I was grievously outmatched. One I could have taken, but the other would finish me. The others used one of Beamer's dimension doors to retreat, I saw out of the corner of my eye, but neither Sondirra nor I could move. I smacked the one at my side with my free wing and tore into the one before me. If this was how I was going down, I was taking at least one of these with me--
Palil, take this! I ducked my head and Sondirra poured a potion in my mouth. Sweet, with an aftertaste like blood. A teleport potion.
Where?
She wrapped her arms around one of my front legs. Over to the rest--
And so we were gone.
The scene I saw there made me gasp in dismay. Seven white dragons were attacking Gannon, trying to take out the red dragon. That he was still alive was a miracle--and then I saw Haven hanging on to one of his wings, chanting. Jordan was there, as well, crouched underneath Gannon and striking out viciously with a sword.
Without even thinking about it, I lunged forward and grabbed one, closing my jaws on its--her, from the smell, it was female--neck, hauling her back and away from Gannon. I was bleeding heavily, but she was wounded as well, and we rolled, each raking the other with teeth and claws.
Finally, I got in a death-blow, and looked up to realize that Gannon and Jordan were no longer in the center of the cluster of white dragons. The battle was wrapping up quickly, and I found one of my healing potions and took it, not sure what was coming next.
My hide was all over mud and blood, hardly a scrap of white showing at all. Finally, the last fell, and quiet fell as well.
I looked at the female I'd killed, and saw that she'd fallen with her wings to one side. Under her right wing was a tattoo, much like the one I have under my wing. But not the same. This one had Reuben's mark on it.
"Paloma and Hypatia messaged me and said that they were under attack. We should check in," Sondirra said. She was going for her potion case even as she said it. Jordan was walking around, taking dragon heads and tossing them in the pile.
While she was doing that, I checked to make sure we didn't have anyone dead or too wounded to fight. Fortunately, we were mostly all right, though Gannon was going to have a mass of new scars on both of his sides. He looked utterly exhausted, and I didn't blame him.
We turned our attention to the aftermath of battle, then.
Sondirra:
"We're all still alive," Paloma said. "Tatiana and Shira died, but we had Raise Dead potions for them. What happened?"
"I don't know what's happening, we all came under attack at the same time."
"It's Reuben's troops--"
"Were yours without bondmates?"
"Can't find any."
"Clean up and hang tight. I'll let you know what's happening when I find out. Sondirra out."
I reached for another potion, and discovered that Hypatia wasn't responding. I was about to try the rest, when a message came in to both Palil and I.
"Palil, Sondirra, this is Coulter. Are you alive?"
"Alive and kicking, all of us, and Jordan's team is fine. Paloma's team is whole. I can't raise Hypatia. What's happening there?"
I could almost hear Coulter's tired sigh. "Coordinated attack on Yafa's MI, and a general attack on Petrozav. Counting your teams, we have five teams confirmed alive. I lost several of my own teammates. Tertia and Yafa are dead, Petrozav is a frozen wasteland at the moment. The chaos is only beginning here, but I'm sure there are already a few leaders of the regular military that are plotting to take over."
Palil and I breathed out at the same time. Yafa and Tertia are dead. That changes everything, Palil said. "We will regroup. We may have some resources to send to you to try and restore order. It'll take us a couple of days to get to them, though."
"Do what you feel you need to. At the moment, MI is scattered and uncoordinated. Coulter out."
The spell ended, and Palil and I sat in stunned silence for a minute or two. "We need to tell the others," Palil said.
"Yeah." I looked around. "Hey, where's Bambi? She missed the battle."
Beamer was nearby, and said, "She found her way sort of in to the temple--there's a whirlpool at the bottom She can't get any farther in, though."
"We still have to go in through the front door, then," Palil said. She raised her voice, calling. "All right. Everyone gather round. I only want to have to say this once." Once everyone was near, she told everyone what Coulter had told us. She minced no words.
"We'll question the prisoners, explore the temple quickly, then eat and depart," she said. "The nearest portal is two days away. We need to get there."
When we tried to question one of the two we'd left alive, though, he ground down with his jaws, and then blood ran from his mouth. He sighed out his last breath and was gone. Palil ground her teeth in frustration. "Kill the other one. We'll question the corpses." We found, in the dead ones, crystals lodged un their back teeth that contained some sort of poison. We collected those, thinking they might come in handy later.
The corpses were not much more enlightening. They were Reuben's forces, having all volunteered for suicide missions after they'd lost their bondmates. They knew nothing, they were just soldiers following commands.
"We'll drag the bodies into the swamp before we leave. Someone will be eating well for a few days." I sighed. "Tchar, can you scry on Hypatia? Let's see if she's alive but unable to respond to messages.
She was there, all right. She looked like she was going through potions, looking at them, and throwing most of them out. Her face was spattered with blood, and her arms were bloody to the shoulder, as if she'd been carrying someone badly wounded. I took a message potion, and spoke. "Hypatia, we have you on a scry. Can you write answers to us? What's your status?"
She scrambled for a pen, ink, and paper. She wrote, "3 dead pairs. Me, Corona, Blaise, Tarrant live. Potions destroyed. Can't transport bodies."
I closed my eyes, visualizing the map. "Paloma's the closest. I'll send her. Pair up with her once everyone's back and come and meet us. I'll tell Paloma when and where. Palil out."
Before Tchar dismissed the scry, I saw Hypatia's shoulders sag in evident relief. I couldn't imagine what today had been like for her. I took a breath and told Paloma about Hypatia, and to meet us at the portal two days north of our current position when they could. They estimated it would take them four days. "We have the boy, by the way. He was going to warn us of the white dragon attack. A little late, though. We'll keep him, he might come in handy."
We exchanged a little more information and signed off. Then we turned, and went carefully towards the temple doors.
When we got there, the stupid things wouldn't budge, no matter how much Palil pulled and pushed on them. "I don't think they're original to the temple," Beamer said. "Look, the stone's a little different."
From behind me, I heard Jordan ask, "Want me to give it a try?"
I turned and grinned at him. "Go right ahead."
Palil stood back from the doors, her eyes suspicious. Why do you think he can-- she started to ask me as Jordan fitted his fingers into a crack between the doors. Her voice fell silent as the stone began to move. I felt Palil's shock as Jordan accomplished what she, the strongest of the dragons on our team and probably one of the strongest of those present, had not been able to.
I glanced over at her, and I saw that her wings were dropped and her eyes were wide with utter astonishment. I have to admit, I was laughing to myself. The look on her face was priceless.
Beamer threw a questioning look at me. "That wasn't sarcastic. You knew."
"I'll tell you about it later. Come on, let's head inside," I said. I took a long breath; I hadn't had this conversation with Palil yet, and this wasn't how I'd wanted to bring up the subject of what Jordan's sword did. The cat was out of the bag, though, and I was going to have to explain stuff.
Inside, the temple was enormous. The corridor was wide enough for Palil to walk down it with wings spread and not touch either wall. The walls were scraped, however, as if rasped by dragon scales.
We checked the side rooms as we walked, until finally Beamer stopped at a wall. "Bambi's whirlpool room is behind there," he said, pointing at a place in the wall that was filled with smooth stone. "That door's weird, though. Look," he said, pointing at the top. "It opens with those vials."
It turned out that the vials were full of acid that would flow down the door and dissolve the stone. It wasn't a trap, it was how the door was meant to work. I supposed a temple to the black dragon god would have something like that, though.
Bambi triggered the door from her side, since the acid wouldn't harm her, and once the acid had flowed into a grate in the floor, we stepped into the whirlpool room. "Slayden temples, six of them," Bambi said, pointing at the ceiling. "All along the southern coast."
"Pretty," I said, looking up. "Isn't that one--"
"Right where the one rose up out of the swamp at Novgorod, right," Bambi said.
We looked around some more, making our way to the end of the hall and a very large room. It was mostly bare, except for shards of crystal everywhere. From the impression left behind in the unbroken crystal, it looked like there had been a huge dragon body here until recently. There was a large hourglass and a smashed smaller crystal in the corner of the room, the apparent remnants of a timing device.
"It's like the frost giant body separation, only they didn't distill the body down," Tchar said.
"Guys, check these out!" That was Lida, pointing at the wall behind us. Mounted on the wall was a rack with five staves in it, with one space on the rack empty. "Looks like whoever it was took one."
"It's like the marks that were left," Galen said. "I'd swear one of these made those marks in the mud."
"They're magical," Beamer said. He got close and with Lida started to look at the markings on the staves. "Black dragon clan markings, I think, but these aren't in use any more. They've got to be ancient." He reached out and laid a hand on one of them. "Oh, that's weird. Feels like the top of my head is buzzing." He eyed the staff, and said, "My name is Beamer. Who are you?"
The voice was deep and dark. "I am Annan."
"You are a black dragon?"
"I am. I and my brothers and sisters--Kotild, Nina, Duff, Baird, and Fallon--chose to become a set of staves when we were old."
"Pardon the generality of the question, but what happened here?"
The story unfolded as we listened, spellbound. Long ago, a black dragon named Orion had had a vision of the future. He was a cleric of Slayden and one of the best diviners of his age, and he could see clearly enough to pinpoint exactly when his help would have been needed. He knew of the Eight, and knew that Tertia would not be particularly fond of the Slayden faith. So he and his companions, six in all, had sunk six Slayden temples, and frozen themselves inside of them. The plan was for Orion to wake first, then take the staves and go locate his companions. They would then find humanoids to bond with, and give the staves to their bonds. He only took Nina with him."
"Wait, wait," I said. "They're all adults, right? Ancients? Can they bond when they're adults?"
"Dragons can bond any time they wish. Humanoids, as well. No matter how young or old they are."
We all looked at each other, and outside I could feel Sondirra drop something she was holding with a crash. Holy shit, she said. You don't have to bond right after hatching?
We knew they were lying to us about humanoids only being able to bond between five and fifteen. How many other lies about bonding have we been told?
No idea, but we've got to get word of this out!
I agreed. That was for later, however. "You said that Orion was going to take all six staves. Why didn't he?"
"Something has gone wrong. Perhaps the other temples did not rise, or the dragons they contained are dead."
I thought about it. "At least one other temple did rise. The rest are in relatively secluded locations."
"Then the others are dead."
We looked at each other, and Beamer said, "I think we need to talk to this Orion."
"We'll be at the portal north of us in a couple of days. If he's willing, have him meet us there," I said.
Beamer messaged Orion, explained who we were and what we were doing, and Orion did say he'd meet us at the portal. He was relatively close to us, but too far to go swing out of our way to get him. We asked about the staves, and Orion told us to go ahead and take them. "The others are dead. They have no use for them. I will see you in two days."
The message spell faded. I was by the rack of staves and put a claw on the third one down, the one that was named Kotild. "My name is Palil," I told her. "What do you do?"
Her voice was light and pleasant. "We were put into the staves as a set, so when we are in the possession of dragon bonds, we enable communication between members of the set as if they were bonded. We also convey the dragon's abilities to the bond--keen scent, eyesight, hearing, immunity to whatever element the breath weapon is, no matter how far they are away from their bondmate. That is all we do--for now."
I heard an eventually in that statement. "And later?"
"It depends on the bond, their personality and needs. We give according to what is needed, after we are carried for a while."
I stood stock-still, and thought about that for a moment, then shook my head. "Let's gather these up, we can distribute them later. Sondirra's telling everyone what we found. The dragons should hunt and the humanoids should eat, and then we'll leave north." Tchar groaned, and I shrugged. "I know we're all exhausted, but we have to make time. We can be there tomorrow night if we move quickly, but we have to get some miles in tonight."
Everyone grumbled, but picked up the staves and got moving.
Sondirra:
"MI255, to me, if you would?" I called as everyone emerged. I took my team off to the side, and took a long breath. "I promised you an explanation. This is it."
I was holding a wrapped bundle, having gone to get it while everyone was inside the temple. I unwrapped it to reveal Jordan's sword. "This is Eldil. One of Gannon's many-greats grandmothers. Gannon's and Jordan's families have been linked for many years, and Jordan's the most recent of this line to carry the sword. She gives her bearer her strength and speed and healing capability, among other things." I covered the sword again, gripping it harder than I really needed to. "When Jordan gave Palil this sword, he didn't tell her it was a dragon sword. He thought he was going to lose the gifts of the sword when he gave it up, but he did not. Jordan has the strength of a great wyrm wrapped up in a human body. That's why he was able to open the door when Palil couldn't."
I sought Palil's white eyes with mine. Please understand, I pleaded silently. He meant for it to be a sacrifice. And it still is. This is his family's blade, Gannon's ancestor. He trusts you enough to let you keep her.
All I got from her was calm. Something about that calm scared me almost out of my wits. I couldn't tell what she was thinking, or what she was about to do. Something in her had changed in the last few hours, and right now I couldn't tell if she'd broken, or if something else had happened.
Without comment, she turned and walked away, her wings held stiffly. I'm going to go kill something, she said shortly, then took off. The rest of the dragons followed her.
I let out a breath I'd forgotten I was holding, and watched her till she was out of sight. There was still a cold feeling in my gut that wouldn't go away, but I ignored it. Getting everyone fed and packed up was more important, right now.
We distributed the staves--I got Kotild, Beamer got Annan, Galen took Fallon, and Jordan took Baird. Duff we saved for Paloma when she arrived. I wished we had one more, to give to Hypatia, but Orion had Nina and I didn't really want to ask for her.
Palil:
There was a hunting grounds about ten miles to the east, and we took advantage of it. Scared the herd of cows, unfortunately, with eight dragons descending on them from all sides. I was one of the last to take mine, waiting until everyone else had their kill, and when I made my kill I dragged the unfortunate cow over to Gannon, who was eating a little apart from the others.
"You all right?" I asked, settling down next to him.
He was gutting his kill, seeking out all of the tender bits first and charring them with small bursts of breath weapon. "I hurt. I'm not looking forward to the flight tonight."
"I know." I started in on mine, slitting the skin of the belly and blowing into the inside to freeze it. "It's necessary, though. We're short on time."
"But why? What are we going to do when we're there?"
I realized that he hadn't been with us when we had talked to the portal who'd told us about all the people held in stasis. "There's an army of five hundred white dragons and their bonds trapped in stasis in the portal system. I want to pull them out and see if I can talk them into helping. There are also other people in there. If I have to destroy the portal system, I want the ones I think I can trust out."
He'd stopped eating, and stared at me. "You're kidding me. Five hundred?"
"Left over from the frost giant war. They may come in handy."
"They probably will." He fell back to eating.
We ate in silence for a while. I hadn't realized how hungry I was. Being injured and then healed is a burden on the body in more ways than one, as is battle itself. I finally looked over at him. "Sondirra finally told me where Jordan's strength comes from. And why he was able to open the doors when I couldn't."
He glanced at me, then immediately turned most of his attention back to his dinner. "Oh."
"Why didn't anyone tell me? Sondirra knew, you knew, Jordan knew. Everyone but me!"
Gannon sighed. "I can't speak for your bond, Palil. But she may have had the same trepidation as I did. I--and Jordan too, incidentally--was afraid that you'd decide that Jordan knew that he would keep his strength, making giving you his sword an empty gesture. It wasn't. He believed he would lose it until right after he gave it up. Honestly..." He lowered his wings. "I think he was almost looking forward to being without it. It is a gift. It is also a burden that almost broke him a number of times. He was given the sword too young, while he was still growing both in body and in soul. He's finally grown up enough to be able to handle it, but it was chancy for a while there. He couldn't control it very well."
I crouched a little lower, drawing my wings inward. "My one advantage was that I could kick his ass if I needed to. Now I find out that I probably never could. And now--" I shook my head and started tearing at my meal. "We found some staves in the temple. They're meant for dragon bonds. Among other things, they allow communication between those who hold the pieces of the set as if they were bonded. Sondirra just gave one to Jordan, as a leader of a team."
He raised his head, clamping his wings to his sides. He did not move his mouth, but I could hear his words anyway, shock and despair in them. Then I truly have been replaced.
I reacted without thinking. Stretching my wing upward, I sidled up to him, draping my wing over him. "Gannon, Gannon, it's all right. It's going to be all right. Sondirra won't replace you. She can't. She's my bond." He stood stock still for a moment, then leaned into me tentatively. I rasped the scales of my neck against his, comfortingly. "You're not going to lose him..." I trailed off, blinked. "Gannon? You didn't say that aloud, did you."
I could feel his muscular form tense. "No. But you heard me anyway."
I craned my neck so I could look him in the eye. "The staves don't just link the bonds. They link us, too."
"I'm not sure how I feel about that," he muttered. But he didn't step away from me. After a moment, he relaxed again, and we leaned into each other once more.
"Think of it this way--imagine what kind of a fighting force we'll be, able to communicate with each other silently. Like how we fight with our bonds, only on a larger scale." And we won't have to use message spells any more to speak with each other, I added, just to see if it worked for me, too.
A good thing, since I think we're not going to get a potion resupply any time soon.
I almost laughed. We're on our own. For real. I rasped my scales against his again, this time to comfort myself. It helped. It helped more than I was expecting it to, for some reason.
He looked down at me. You're very calm, considering. Between Jordan and the fact that the world appears to have just gone to hell, I'd expect you to be a lot more upset than you are.
I'd been wondering about the same thing. I was silent for a moment as I weighed what I was feeling. "I have two options," I said aloud. "I can keep fighting this, keep trying to hate Jordan, keep holding you at a distance. But Jordan, and with him you, keep getting deeper and deeper into my life. I will go mad trying to keep you out, and probably alienate Sondirra into the bargain. She is patient, but she's no saint. Or--" I let out a long breath. "I can give in. The problems we face are so huge that that make my personal problems seem--insignificant." As I spoke the words, their truth rang in me. It had been growing ever since Garnet had died, this sense that the energy I was spending to resent Jordan for who he was to Sondirra was wasted and would better be turned to other things. "I don't really believe that Jordan's going to hurt Sondirra any more. Not on purpose. And at this point, all of my plans for the future are completely gone. I'm not sure we'll survive another week, much less long enough to serve out our two years."
Gannon took a long breath, thinking about it. "Well. I do hope we all survive. But if we don't--" He fell silent.
"What?"
"It's been good to know you, Palil. To be your friend." He leaned into me a bit more than he had been. "It's made things easier, in a way."
"Me, too." I leaned hard against him and then lifted my wing from him. "We should probably finish eating."
"Good idea." We both fell to, both too busy eating to talk any more. The feeling of calm persisted in me, a feeling as if something in me were unwinding.
I reached out and touched my bond's mind, gently. Sondirra?
I could feel her sigh with relief as she felt my touch. There was a lingering sense of tension about her, still. There you are. We're almost ready here. How about you?
I lifted my head and looked around. Almost everyone except Gannon and I had finished eating. Looks like we'll be on our way back shortly.
You all right, Palil?
I lowered my wings. I am. I talked to Gannon. Sondirra, here-- What I sent her then was wordless, a tumble of emotion and impression. Things I'd seen in Jordan and refused to acknowledge, things that Gannon had shown me that I'd kept at wing's length. The work we'd done, and had yet to do. The knowledge that the attack had been partially our fault, that we had been the snowflake that started the avalanche. The fact that the staves enabled communication between dragons as well as their bonds. I wish you had told me about the sword and Jordan, Sondirra. I think I understand why you didn't, though.
I wanted to, I just couldn't find the right words! I didn't want you to think what Jordan gave you wasn't meant to be a sacrifice. I could feel frustration and love in her as she spoke. You've been so determined to see the negative in everything he does that I was afraid you were going to use it as fuel for the fire. Do you understand now why he gave you the sword?
I think I do. A little, at least.
You don't have to think what he did was all right to forgive him for it, Sondirra said, slowly. I don't. There's still some touchiness between us about it, even. But he understands how wrong it was. He hates the fact that he did it. And I don't think he'll ever do it again.
I'll consider it. We're done here. I'm coming back. There was a wave of love and joy from her, as she turned her attention to what was around her. I looked over at Gannon. "Ready to go?"
He flexed his wings, wincing. "I had better, before I stiffen up too much more."
I stepped away from him and stretched into a run, my wings lifting me into the sky. Gannon was right behind me, and the others followed. When we arrived at the camp, the packs were together and the camp that had been set up here was almost eradicated. We hauled bodies off into the swamp, and then came back and got harnessed up. We'd made makeshift harnesses and saddles for Folke and Hedda, because the former prisoners were coming with us. We'd messaged Chaim and asked him to meet us at the portal we were going to, to take Hedda and Damaris back with him.
Gannon was next to me as Sondirra finished putting the packs on the harness. I saw Jordan duck around him, checking his straps, and then apparently thinking nobody was watching, he raised his arms to Gannon. The red dragon snaked his head down over Jordan's shoulder, and Jordan closed his eyes, his arms around Gannon's neck.
It was a brief moment of affection between the two of them, and something about it left me with an odd feeling of warmth in my chest. I didn't know what the two of them were saying to each other, but the truth was that Gannon had almost died today, several times over. We had almost lost him.
I had almost lost him.
I ignored the stab of grief I felt at that thought as Sondirra mounted up and strapped herself in. Later, I told myself. I'll think about it when the world's not busy falling apart on me. To Sondirra, I said, Can you ask Jordan to keep an eye on Gannon for me? I'm worried about him. Have Jordan let you know when he's getting to the end of his strength. If this wasn't so urgent, I'd stay here for a couple of days, but as it is--
He'll let us know. Shall we?
We took off, not bothering to keep formation. The sun was setting as we left, and it was about midnight when Sondirra warned me that Gannon needed to land soon or he was going to fall out of the sky. I wasn't feeling particularly energetic myself, so we found a decent spot to camp by moonlight, and settled under the open sky. I closed my eyes and feel asleep almost immediately.
The next day was a very long one. We started out about an hour after sunup, and flew almost until midnight that night. Sondirra had gotten her supply of messenger potions out at the beginning of the day, and conversation was flying between all of the members of the linked group. What had at first started out as the occasional overheard thought was turning into a constant chatter. I wasn't able to feel the bonds other than my own, but I was able to hear and feel the other dragons.
We checked in with Albina first that morning, and she said she was alive and well and it was business as usual where she was, in Reuben's capital. "I can't tell much of anything from here," she said to us. "The officers don't know a thing. I need to get inside the palace, but I can't figure out how."
"I may be able to get you in," Sondirra said. "Hang in there. I'll let you know."
The next one we checked in with was Coulter.
"We've finished checking in. We have fourteen MI teams still surviving. Most lost at least one member."
I felt Sondirra suck in a breath. "Out of how many?"
"A hundred and twenty-one. MI has more or less been crippled. The situation in Petrozav is worsening; as word spread, the leaders of the regular military are starting to try and claim territory. Yesterday, Petrozav was a frozen waste. Today, it's knee-deep in blood. We have Kane and Kavan and the rest of the former MI248 with us. They were instrumental in our survival."
"Is Oberan and his team still alive?" I heard her voice shake slightly, felt her gut-clench of fear.
"Alive and well, he checked in yesterday. His next check-in is for a week from now. Isla's forces are starting to bait ours, along our border with her. It's only a matter of time before someone does something stupid, and Isla will claim that we attacked first. Reuben blinded us, and if she has a chance Isla will finish what he started."
"Leaving her own border with him undefended. I understand. We'll do what we can."
"I don't know how much I'll be able to speak with you after this," Coulter said, his voice betraying some emotion--worry, fear, grief, I couldn't tell. "Stay in touch as you can, and do what you need to do."
What is going on there? Sondirra asked me. He almost sounds like he doesn't think he's going to live much longer--
Is Majesta dead? If she is, he's probably the walking wounded, which is why it doesn't sound like he's trying to take over.
Maybe. Probably. I'm not going to ask. We're his reports, not his friends, as much as I regret that. If we needed to know, he'd tell us, Sondirra said. She turned her attention back to Coulter. "We understand, sir."
"Good. Coulter out."
I forgot to ask about Harbin and Eaton, Sondirra said, cursing. Damn. Hope they're still alive.
I shook my head. It's...not likely. They were in the center of it. Maybe, though.
Hope's pretty much all we have right now, my bond said. Hope and maybe a chance.
Sondirra messaged Oberan to tell him about Albina and ask him to get her into the palace if he could. He said he'd do his best.
We stopped briefly in the evening to eat (I hate those strange food cakes, but they're a sad necessity sometimes), and then flew until nearly midnight. When we came down, Gannon stumbled and almost fell as he landed. Hey, steady there! I said as I settled to the ground.
Guess I overdid it a bit, he said, hanging his head. Gods, I hurt.
I tried to send comfort over my connection with him, as I often did to Sondirra. I couldn't tell if it worked. Short flying day tomorrow, and then it's all talking for a few days.
I think I may sleep through most of it, he said, groaning.
I snorted. "We're going to need your brain, Gannon. You might get to sit, but you don't get to sleep through everything."
Sondirra and Jordan both gave us strange looks as Gannon groaned and twitched his tail at me. Almost the moment that Jordan hauled the last of his harness off, he was asleep. I wasn't far behind him.
Sondirra:
The new bonds that the staves were making were really weird. Unbonded people sometimes think the way that a bonded pair will sometimes turn their heads at the exact same moment to look at something is weird. Imagine that effect multiplied by four. I could tell that we were mildly creeping some of our teammates out.
I'd gotten a headache about noon that day, and fortunately I'd brewed up another batch of Haven's remedy a few days ago. It didn't work quite as well as it did when it was freshly made, but it killed it enough that I was able to nap in the saddle most of the afternoon. I volunteered for first watch, since I wasn't tired enough to sleep yet.
I was sitting and oiling my crossbow when Beamer wandered up to me. "Hey."
"You're taking first watch, too?"
"Might as well. I had a question. You left something out when you were explaining about Jordan's sword. Why did he give it to Palil?"
I chuckled. "That's a long story, and it wasn't really relevant right then. Jordan wanted to apologize to Palil for being a bully when we were in school. When he did, he completely impulsively gave her his sword, and told her to give it back when she forgave him. She hasn't, yet. I think he wanted to give her a pretty unmistakable show of faith."
"Hunh." Beamer stared off into the woods, thinking. "I suppose that's one way to go about it. Is she liking him better now?"
I shrugged. "She's stopped muttering about killing him. And now she knows she probably couldn't even if she wanted to."
We talked about that for a bit, then the conversation turned to other things. It was a warm night, and the sky was clear and full of stars. It was nice, for once, to forget about everything that was going on that we couldn't do anything about just yet.
A few hours later, and Beamer went to wake a couple of the others to stand watch so we could get some sleep. Jordan was sleeping next to Gannon, on the opposite side from where Palil was sleeping, wrapped in blankets. I brought my own over to him, crouching and laying a hand on his shoulder. "Hey. Room enough for me in there?"
He started, then appeared to realize who it was. "Mmm. Always." I shucked my boots and crawled in with him, adding my blankets to the pile. I curled up, and he curved his body around mine. Jordan murmured, "I've been seeing a lot of the Major lately and not much of Sondirra. Nice to have you back for a little while."
"I know, I know," I told him, keeping my voice down. "I have to be the Major for a while yet."
"Not a complaint, just an observation, love. Besides," he said, his breath warm in my ear, "you're sexy when you're ordering people around."
I chuckled, and we spoke only a little more as we were drifting off to sleep.
The next morning, we got up, had a cold breakfast, and flew to the portal. We got there an hour before noon, and it turned out that both Chaim and Orion had beaten us there. Chaim was wearing more clothing than he usually did. Orion was in full form because he'd just come back from hunting, and was about as large or a bit larger than Tertia had been. Instead of being mottled like Tertia and Bambi, however, he was a deep jet black all over.
Orion's small form was of the tallest human I'd ever seen, looking like he was maybe in his sixties, about as old as Chaim looked. A hale and fit sixty, though.
We all introduced ourselves, and talked for a little while about stuff. "The staves told us that you're going to find someone to bond with," Bambi said. "We didn't know dragons could bond as adults."
He looked at us strangely. "You've had that information kept from you? When were you told dragons could bond?"
"Right after hatching. All of us found our bondmates on the hatching grounds."
Orion blinked. "Dragons can bond any time in their lives, as long as they find someone to bond with. I can feel the person who will be my bond somewhere in the world, and I know approximately where they are, but I won't know who they are until I see them. I was almost twenty years old when my first bond was born, and then I had to wait for her to grow up a little and be socialized as a human before I could really swoop down and take her away."
Bambi pinned her wings back. "Your first bond? You can re-bond?"
Slowly, Orion said, "Yes. Many choose not to, but some, especially those who first bond to humans, do. Let me guess. Dragons bonded to humans are completely devastated when their bondmate dies of old age. Without hope of ever bonding again, many of them suicide rather than face life alone." He shook his head. "I can't imagine having a human bond without knowing that I could bond again after they died."
We all looked at each other, silent. Even the silent chatter between those of us who were linked was quiet. How many more lies have we been told? Palil asked me. How much of what we know about ourselves is false?
I was thinking about it. "Bonded pairs are required to go into the military. Humanoids are only allowed to bond between the ages of five and fifteen, when they're old enough to learn but young enough to be impressionable. The dragons are always infants when they begin their training. Brainwashing, more like. They take twelve years to do that, then we serve two years in the military to pay that back."
Orion lashed his tail. "It seems like a wasteful squandering of one of the gifts of the gods, to keep it under control for military purposes. Chaim has been catching me up with events in the world I've missed."
"It's been almost a thousand years of relative peace, but now it's all coming apart," I said. "And it looks like we're the ones who need to figure out what to put in its place."
"I will help, as I can," Orion said.
We talked for a little while after that, and then Palil wanted to get on with what we'd come to do. The first order of business was a bath for both dragons and bonds. It wouldn't do for us to look like we were fresh from the battlefield, even though we were. We found a nearby lake, and the dragons rinsed off the mud and blood on their hides while the rest of us washed the necessary bits pretty quickly--the water was damned cold! Then it was back to the portal for a change of clothing for the bonds.
Palil took a breath when all that was done. "All right. I'm going to try to bring out just the leader of that army. Everyone, keep full form." She stepped forward and spent a couple of minutes talking quietly to the portal, then stepped back. The fog inside the portal swirled, and from it stepped a white dragon with a female elf on its back. Female, probably seven hundred years old or so, Palil commented to me and the other dragons. I passed that on.
Palil stepped forward, dipping the front edge of her wings in greeting. "Greetings. My name is Palil. This is my bond, Sondirra."
The dragon spoke. "My name is Diamond, and this is Iantha." She glanced around the assembled company, and then back over her shoulder. "Where is my command? Am I the only one who survives?"
Palil shook her head. "The rest of your command is still held in stasis in the portal. The priest who put you in there died before the battle you were being saved for came."
Iantha dismounted at that point, coming to stand by her bondmate's front leg. She was tall and rawboned, with a hard look about her that spoke of years spent fighting a war. "What happened? Where are we?"
"North of the swampland in the mid-eastern part of the continent," Palil said. "As for what happened--I have good news, and bad news. The good news is that the war with the frost giants is over, and we won. They were more or less wiped out. The bad news is that the war was won three thousand years ago."
Diamond's eyes widened, and her wings mantled slightly. Iantha looked briefly stunned. Diamond asked, "So why have you brought us out now? I assume you want something of us."
Palil said, "That is a very long story, but to sum it up, the continent is divided up into four territories. One of those territories is trying to conquer the others. He's managed to kill the leaders of the territory we come from, and throw it into chaos."
"A dragon?"
I shook my head. "An elf named Reuben. He had a falling out with his bondmate that ended in a serious injury to Reuben and Jezik's imprisonment."
"That's very strange, a dragon and their bond fighting like that. Does that happen often?"
"More than we'd like. especially when you have one of the longer-lived races as a bondmate. People change."
Diamond considered this. "Well, we are here to fight, and it sounds like the world needs some help at the moment. I need more details, but we're tentatively in." She glanced around the group. "These are...your teammates?"
Palil nodded. "Some of them." She gestured with a wing. "This is Bambi, her bondmate is Beamer. The blue is Tchar, and his bondmate is Galen. That's our squad. Those five pairs there are another squad, I'll introduce you later. The old white dragon is Chaim, and the old black dragon is Orion. We have some others with us, but they're not really of us and not privy to this particular discussion."
"They're all different colors. It seems very strange."
"Why?"
Diamond shook her head. "We always fought in single-color groups. Ten pairs were a wing."
"Some of the other militaries have ten-pair groups. We do five-pair groups. We've lost two pairs on the way. As for the colors..." She shrugged her wings. "There aren't that many of us. I was the only white dragon in my class of twenty pairs. Only bonded pairs go into the military, and once your bond dies, you're out."
The larger white dragon tilted her head. "What, you don't re-bond?"
"We only learned that re-bonding was possible today. We've had a lot of information kept from us." Palil shot a look at Chaim, who looked back mildly. I had to admit that, well, we'd never thought to ask him if dragons could re-bond.
"That's very strange. Well, I suppose I can't expect the world not to change in a hundred generations. What do you need us to do?"
I could feel Palil thinking. Our territory? In evident response something Gannon said, she said, If we can keep things from completely falling apart over there, it'll slow Reuben down a bit.
Good idea, I told her. but they'll need someone to take with them, someone who can lead them.
Chaim is going to hate me. Palil sighed silently, then said aloud, "One of our most pressing problems at the moment is the fact that one of the four territories is falling into chaos even now."
"Then we should go restore order, at least temporarily."
"And you will need a leader," Chaim's cultured voice broke in. "Someone who was in the original group, preferably. Someone who has an acknowledged successor." There was a deep reluctance in his voice.
Palil dropped her wings, and turned to face Chaim. "This wasn't my first choice. But I can't see any other way. We would send Kamal in, but he'd never survive on his own."
"I never wanted to rule. But, since you ask, and because there is a need, I will go. Hopefully, I will only have to keep the post for a few years before Kamal can take over. I will take Hedda and Damaris with me, they will be safe with me."
I could see both sorrow and relief in the lines of my bondmate's body. "Start in Petrozav. You may have to go city to city, chasing the news of Tertia and Yafa's death."
"We will. Bring out the rest from the portal so they can be briefed. We'll go after that's done."
It took a couple of hours to get everyone out of the portal and briefed. As that was going on, most of us settled down away from the portal, trying not to be underfoot. Gannon was napping under a large tree, and Jordan was sitting with his back against him, sharpening his sword.
I saw Palil watching the two of them, her eyes unreadable. I nudged her with my shoulder. You all right?
Yes. She shook herself, shaking her wings out. Frost giants next. Once these folks are gone. We'll use our small forms, try to put them at least a little at ease. I hope they decide to talk first rather than fight right away.
I did, too.
Palil:
Before Chaim left with the army, he pulled me aside. "Can I have a word?"
I nodded. We walked together a bit away from the rest. I say, wrapping my tail around my feet. Chaim asked, "How many are joining the life transfer?"
I tilted my head. "Isn't it only transferred between dragons and bondmates?"
"No, it can be taken from any that wish to donate life to the person."
My heart skipped a beat. No, Palil, don't jump to conclusions. "So the more people who join, the less is taken from each?" I asked.
He dipped his wings. "Yes. It's not very effective to take from humans."
With a terrible suspicion, I said, "But--the other long-lived races can donate. Elves. Drow."
"Certainly."
The conclusion I had jumped to had been entirely correct. "I--didn't know. When do you need to know by? My bondmate and I are likely going to need to have a few long discussions about it."
Chaim inclined his head. "Soonish, the first of the potions are brewing. You have about a month before I have to key them to the individual."
I thought about it. "I'll let you know when it's decided. This is the sort of thing I know Sondirra's going to jump at, and I...am not so fond of the idea."
Mildly, Chaim said, "It should be her choice even it it's not yours." It was a rebuke, despite his tone, and I knew it. "I can do it with two, three or any number."
I lowered my head and said, "I know. I'll let them know."
"If we all survive, that is."
"Which is a chancy proposition at best. We'll see, I suppose. Good luck to you."
"Same to you," Chaim said, and turned to go. I sat there, my wings tight to my body, thinking. It was the sort of harebrained thing Sondirra would jump into without a second thought. If she decided to seriously try to convince Jordan that he ought to do this--as far as I knew, he was still against it--she could probably bring him around to it. If my estimation was right, the life transfer would take a third of her lifespan and give it to Jordan. Four hundred years, or so.
Four hundred years that I would be without her.
I thought briefly about trying to keep this from her, and sighed. It never worked. She always found out at some point.
So, the next question was, could I bring myself to participate? It would mean that Sondirra and Gannon would have longer lives. My own life would be shorter, but if I could spend it all with my bond, I rather thought that, like Gannon, I would take the option.
But I would be giving that lifespan to Jordan. Who I might not hate, but neither could I find it in me to like him.
It was a tangle of a problem. I wished I could talk to Paquita about it, but because she was under such deep cover, we had to restrict messages to merely the essentials. I shook out my wings and rose, telling myself that there was work to be done and that I'd better be about it.
Sondirra:
We waited until the army was away through the portal, then Palil told everyone to change shape, and she would go pull the Peacekeeper and her entourage out of the portal. She did so, and as the frost giants stepped out, we were arrayed before the gate. The Peacekeeper, in the center of the group of giants, was about eight feet tall, with long blue-tinged white hair that she wore loose. They were wearing robes made of rich fabrics and furs, and with a magic-detecting spell they fair glowed with magic.
The Peacekeeper looked sharply at me and Palil. "You are not those we were to meet."
Palil stepped forward. "No, ma'am, I am sorry. My name is Palil. This is my bond Sondirra. Something unfortunate happened when you went into the portal. It is roughly three thousand years after you stepped into it."
She was taken aback. "Then the war is over."
"Long over. The dragons won, I am afraid."
"What happened?"
As best she could, Palil told the story. It was much the same as she'd told the white dragons, with a few different bits of emphasis. When she was done, the Peacekeeper said, "And you have brought us out for a reason, then."
"In part because I'm afraid that the gate system may be destroyed sometime soon. When it goes down, everyone trapped inside will die."
The frost giant looked askance at us. "I would think you would prefer to let us die."
At this point, I spoke up. "You're frost giants, but you're still people."
"How times change. In my own time, no dragon or dragon bond would have said that."
I shrugged. "It's been three thousand years. The frost giants have faded into legend. Well, granted, the few we've met have mostly tried to kill us, but we were pretty sure you wouldn't."
"Well, then. What is it you would have of us?"
Palil spread her hands. "Of the three leaders left to us, one, named Isla, has quite the temper. We fear that she may do something rash soon, like attack the territory to the east of her that's just lost its leader. Her troops are already trying to bait ours into attacking. We'd like to make a peace with her, if we can. We released one of her twin sons and his bondmate from prison. Unfortunately, Folke--Nasser's bondmate--says that his twin Zadok is alive but incoherent. Scuttlebutt is that he and Penn have disappeared. We assume he's a captive of Reuben."
The Peacekeeper raised an eyebrow. "Twins. Gemini dragons?"
"The same." Palil folded her hands together. "We can, if we want, restore Nasser and Folke to her."
"They could be used as leverage, or as a gift to show our good faith. I would very much prefer to restore both of her sons to her at once, as a show of faith. If you can find this Penn, I may be able to negotiate something."
"We would like her to step down, if you can manage it. Her acknowledged successor is Penn, but Nasser being back may change that. But if nothing else, if you can get her to calm down, that would be a first step."
The Peacekeeper smiled thinly. "She will be calm the moment I arrive, I guarantee." I blinked. There was a very strong sense of calm coming off of her. I thought I knew why she'd been sent to try and negotiate peace.
Palil took a breath. "Very well. The nearest portal to Pskov is about two days' dragonflight north. Can you make that journey on your own, or do you need escort?"
"We can cover the ground quite quickly. Since you have one of Isla's sons, I would speak to him for a time before we leave."
"That can be arranged. This way." Palil led the frost giants over to where Nasser and Folke were, and they sat down and spoke with each other for about an hour. Palil had to speak with the portals to allow the Peacekeeper and her entourage to pass through--the portals were originally set to kill any frost giants that passed through them--and they left. We may end up putting Nasser and Penn in the portals as well, Palil murmured to me.
Hate to say it, but we might need to. Looks like what we need to do next is find Penn.
Orion may be able to help. I'm going to go spend some time talking to the portal. Can you organize feeding everyone? She hesitated. If you can, get Gannon to stay here and have someone bring back something for him. He needs more rest than he's gotten.
I chuckled. I'll do my best, sunshine. Have fun. I went to round up everyone and share out cooking chores, and to send the dragons off to find something to kill. In the back of my mind, I could hear Palil talking to the portal, getting lists of names and reasons why each person had been trapped in the portals by the clerics of Karop in the first place.
There was a huge, terrible urgency in her mind, as if she could feel the weight of what was happening in the world pressing down on her. I didn't blame her. If you want to change the course of a boulder, a little force early on is a lot easier and more effective than a lot of force later.
Then again, I thought that the boulder had been rolling for a long time now, and we were just now seeing it.
Maybe it was too late.
Never. It's never too late to do something.
Where there's life, there's hope.
Right?
Quotes:
"Beamer ultimately doesn't care about their ACs. Beamer ultimately doesn't want to be here."
--Derek
