A Burning in the Bones (Waxways #3)

Chapter 44 Mercy Whitaker

44 MERCY WHITAKER

Mercy had never flown on the back of a wyvern.

She likely never would again. Her stomach turned uncomfortably with every drop or rise in altitude. The creatures had always seemed beautiful to her, but at a distance. All sweeping wings and bright colors and breathless speed. There was nothing beautiful about the way she was currently bouncing against the wyvern’s backside, uncertain if the ropes fastening her to the creature’s back had been tied tightly enough to withstand their velocity. Nor did it help that she was pinned in beside Dahvid Tin’Vori, who appeared to have somehow fallen asleep.

Their crew of seven was split across three wyverns. They were the most formidable hunting party she’d ever traveled with. Theo Brood was the governing leader of one of the great houses. Dahvid had supposedly won a Ravinian gauntlet, which everyone knew took more than a smile. The other four members of their party weren’t famous, but that didn’t make them any less useful.

Margaret Woods was the only student who’d volunteered to come. She’d won every junior gladiatorial contest in the city over the last year. And now she was armed with a null sword. Two of the crew were siblings—Win and Guion. One had a talent for long-range spellwork while the other was specifically trained in close-range combat. They were bonded. A rarity between family members, but their father had been training them to join an elite battle squad for one of the great houses. He thought the idea of bonded warriors would make them more appealing recruits. The final person to volunteer was a pioneer named Redding. Mercy thought his skill set—survival techniques and a familiarity with mountains—might prove the most useful of all. They still didn’t know if the location was deeper into the mountain chain, or in the foothills below.

She’d not received any more letters from the houndmaster. That troubled her. She worried that she’d sent him into unnecessary danger by letting him travel to Running Hills. What if the Makers had intercepted him there? Hopefully, he’d survived the initial journey and was now escorting the other two hounds to the same location that they were currently flying to. In a perfect world, they’d have the dogs to help them navigate down into the actual burial chamber. Mercy had read a little about them before their departure. The chambers were dragon-made. The best guess of “experts” on the subject was that dragons, upon sensing their coming death, would burrow underground. Once there, they’d carve away the stone and the dirt and make a burial chamber in which to die. No one actually knew if this was true, however, as no one had ever witnessed the actual process.

Gods, we’re actually going down into a dragon’s burial chamber.

There was no one to blame for her situation. This had all been her idea. Now she was stuck leading an expedition into a cursed place to execute magic she wasn’t entirely sure would work. It was one thing to perform a severance procedure in ideal operating conditions. Quite another to attempt the same on a dead dragon. Before long, the mountains began to loom larger on the horizon. Each individual peak growing more distinct. Mercy glanced over and found Dahvid’s eyes were finally open. A striking blue color that reminded her of the ocean. She was trying to think of something to say when he turned his neck as far as the harness allowed, and vomited.

She’d seen many disgusting things working at the hospital, but she’d nearly always been masked and gloved. The wind-caught splatter of bile on her forehead was less than ideal. She couldn’t even reach up to properly wipe it away. Dahvid shouted an apology before slamming both eyes shut again. So, he hadn’t been sleeping. He’d been nauseous. Mercy buried her own face against the wyvern’s bristle-furred back in an effort to wipe it away, and then spent the next hour dreaming of a warm bath.

The first sign that they were closing in on the right location came from the wyverns themselves. Mercy’s stomach dropped as they pulled into a sudden turn. Their mount widened its wings, peeling off in a new direction. The rider tried to turn the creature back. It worked, but only for a moment. Once again, the creature pulled away—all while making squabbling sounds that reminded Mercy more of a giant chicken than a creature that could eviscerate her with a single strike from its claws. A quick glance showed the other wyverns were behaving the same way. The riders exchanged a series of hand signals before beginning the descent.

That was the worst part yet. A tight coil that had her stomach turning and turning. They set down with a jolting thud. As the wind subsided, Dahvid started a proper apology, but Mercy was rushing to unclip herself. She’d managed to loosen just one buckle before spewing her own breakfast over the right wing—and on Dahvid’s boots. It was instant relief. She wiped her mouth with a sleeve before looking up at her riding partner.

“Guess we’re even.”

He grinned at that. The others were dismounting, but again she saw the wyverns giving their riders trouble. Resisting basic commands. All three of them lowered their heads to the ground. Once the riders were clear, they put their wings out too, flattening them against the earth. Almost as if they were trying to blend in with the rocky hillsides. Their crew gathered off to the side, eyeing their surroundings. It took a few minutes for the head rider to settle his mount and join them.

“I’m sorry—they won’t fly any closer. They sense something dangerous in these hills. Doesn’t matter how well we’ve trained them. Their ancestors knew that when a dragon was nearby, you don’t go any closer. You either hide or you run. That’s what they’re doing.” He gestured to where the wyverns were cowering in the grass and dust. “See the lowered heads and wings? We don’t teach them that. They’re born with the instinct.”

Mercy nodded. “So, we travel the rest of the way on foot. Do you have coordinates?”

The head rider nodded. “I can aim you the right way, but the rest is up to you. Here.”

Before he could dive in too deep, she waved Redding over. She felt it was best if the actual pioneer in the group received their bearings. The rider walked him through the landmarks. A specific tree in the distant hills. A gap between two mountains. He carefully aimed them like an arrow—and then gave them a rough estimate of the expected paces. Redding noted everything in a small journal before nodding to the rider. Mercy thanked him.

“Ockley wanted two wyverns to return to Kathor,” she said. “Do you think you’ll be able to keep one of them this close to the burial site? Or are they going to be spooked the whole time?”

The rider turned, orienting himself with the landscape behind them, before pointing.

“I’ll wing my wyvern back to that overlook. See it there? With the jutting rocks? A little distance should settle him, but we’ll still be close enough to help. Remember there’s a radius around the burial site that my wyvern won’t enter. If you need me, you’ll have to backtrack outside that circle and we can pick you up.”

Mercy nodded. “Thank you. And sorry about the…”

He waved her off. “Everyone spews on their first ride. Happy hunting.”

His wyvern had started issuing a high-pitched whine. She watched him rush over to comfort the creature before turning back to her own crew. Preparations were underway. Theo Brood had unloaded a reinforced chest. He popped the lid open and began passing out cloaks and gauntlets. As well as a number of half shovels. It had taken a few days to secure all the necessary equipment. Some of the spell-woven clothing came from the Shiverian family’s personal armory. A few other pieces had been donated by the Winterses and Proctors. They wouldn’t even be able to approach the chamber without them.

“One cloak for each of you,” Theo said. “They have sensory dampening charms woven into the fabric. Your magical output won’t be impacted, but it will keep the dragon from sensing your spells right up until the moment they depart from your vessel. It should be enough to let us safely cast magic inside the burial chamber. Just make sure to put your suits on first. The cloaks won’t fit inside them….”

The smoke-gray jumpsuits had been specifically created for the government workers who tended to one of the dragon burial sites located just outside Kathor’s city limits. Mercy—and so many other Kathorian children—had visited that location on field trips growing up. It was almost startling now to think that they’d been allowed so much proximity to such a powerful creature. Although, if memory served, that dragon had been almost completely drained by drug farmers. Most of its scales removed. The talons all stolen. When she’d first seen it in person, the corpse had been little more than a skeletal frame slumped over the barren stones. Their dragon was likely to be far more intact. It was possible it hadn’t been harvested at all.

“Arakyl,” Margaret tested the name aloud. “I don’t remember that name.”

All of them were working to get their jumpsuits on over their clothing.

“I didn’t either,” Mercy admitted. After Josey’s revelation, she’d done her best to research the name and the grave location. Ren Monroe had been incredibly helpful for that part. Really, she’d commandeered the entire process and found twice as much information in half the time. As if she’d been born inside a library. Together, they’d pieced together a rather imperfect portrait.

“The burial chamber was first discovered twelve years ago. It is the most recent discovery by a few decades. There were articles printed, a lot of excitement, but only during that first week of discovery. The city claimed the rights to the location. For magical research. Harvesting was scheduled for later in the year—but then the ceremony was cancelled. Someone supposedly ‘debunked’ the site as not being real dragon bones? Interest fell away after that. There’s not a single mention of the location in any report. Not even in the private documents we read from the great houses. It’s like everyone decided to ignore the place. The dragon’s life is a mystery too. We could only find one story that even mentions the name.”

Everyone was adjusting their suits. Tugging at sleeves and pulling zippers up to their throats. Margaret was the only one who really didn’t have a perfect fit. Being a head taller than the rest of the group left her ankles exposed. Mercy offered her the spare pack of bandages.

“Wrap your ankles with this. You don’t want any direct exposure to the gases in there.”

Mercy watched as the girl began winding the thick fabric around each ankle. Everyone else offered a thumbs-up. They were armed and ready. Dahvid’s deeper voice broke the silence.

“What was the story?”

She’d been half hoping no one would ask. Ren had found the tale in a book that primarily focused on how to create and sustain villages. The bulk of the book had focused on survival methodology, but each chapter opened with a short anecdote. There was no way to verify the story they’d found—but that hadn’t stopped Mercy from memorizing what she read, hoping for clues.

“Once, a man got lost in the woods. Two dragons stumbled upon him at the exact same moment. As the terrified man stood there, cowering before them, the dragons debated who should be allowed to eat him. One was named Arakyl. The other was called Provenance. After a lengthy debate, Arakyl suggested that Provenance eat the man first. Once he was finished, they could go back in time and then he would be allowed to eat the man the next time. Provenance agreed to those terms. He devoured the man—bones and all. When his stomach had settled, the dragons used their magic to travel back through time. Of course, the man had also heard their plan. As soon as he appeared in the woods, alive and whole, he bolted through the forest, sprinting all the way back to his village. While the memory of being eaten alive haunted his thoughts, he also believed he’d been clever enough to avoid death. Little did he know, the dragons had been searching for his village for months. It was well hidden… until his panicked escape led them right to it. That night, they feasted on the entire town.”

Margaret frowned. “Why couldn’t they have just let him go right from the start? Wouldn’t he have run back to the village anyways?”

“That would have been suspicious,” Win commented. “If a pair of dragons just let him go for no reason. He would have suspected something, right? The time-magic tricked him into thinking he’d actually outwitted them.”

Guion shook his head. “It’s just a story, you prat.”

Before the brothers could dig into a proper fight, Theo spoke. “Those stories aren’t meant to be taken literally. They’re just shadows of a bigger truth. You have to extrapolate. There are two lessons: the first is that Arakyl was working with another dragon. That’s rare. Most dragons were solitary creatures. Wandering the land alone. The second is that he was patient enough to delay his hunger for a far larger prize. That’s also rare. Think of all the other stories. A lot of them focus on how impulsive dragons are. But Arakyl was patient enough to follow a bigger plan. Which means he’ll have considered what to do if someone attacks his burial chamber. We need to go in there understanding that he’s probably two steps ahead of us.”

Nods all around. Mercy didn’t bother pointing out that the lesson she’d taken from the story was that Arakyl was uniquely violent. Most of their stories about dragons didn’t involve entire villages perishing. Dragons normally viewed humans as interesting toys. They would hoodwink them or take away their most treasured possessions. A taunting of sorts. Like cats playing with mice before eating them. There were even stories about dragons taking a particular interest in one person. Torturing them over time, for no apparent reason. She could not think of any tales where dragons hunted at such a large scale. But she didn’t say this to the group. Better to let Theo’s cautionary charge lead them onward.

The group began walking west, over the rolling hills, and the air grew colder as they went. She couldn’t help thinking of the old maps that the first Delveans had drawn of this continent. Before they’d ever dared to sail here. There were always three words written in the upper corners. A warning for sailors to not approach the very place they would one day settle and claim. The only land she had ever known.

Here be dragons .

Now she intended to ignore that same advice—and find one for herself.