Chapter 26
“Is this about more than female distractions?” Sylin asked as the dragon flew toward the island. “Does she object to us working to stop the curse?”
“I don’t know, but you can ask her while you’re swinging your shovel at her horned head.
” Rylana knelt beside her bow and quiver.
While keeping her eyes toward the dragon, she worked on the tranquility knots, grimacing at how hard they were to untie while she remained within the city’s claimed territory.
Sylin stepped behind a pile of rubble from the explosion and hefted her shovel.
“I will protect you,” Jildarin called, glancing toward the oncoming dragon, but he was busy willing his magic into his fire, quickly building its size and heat.
He also pressed his hand against one of the inner walls, pouring magic into it as well, and warmth emanated from the entire oven.
“But I must also protect the dough. The dwarf was able to make only one batch with the aquatic yeast that we brought.”
“It’s inconvenient when your ally is distracted by the need to protect bread ingredients as well as you,” Sylin observed.
“It’s all right. I’m ready.” With several arrows extracted from her quiver and her bow strung, Rylana stood and took aim. Even if she hadn’t landed a devastating blow during her previous encounter with the sisters, she had hurt one of them.
Before their aerial visitor reached the shoreline, the pillar glowed a brilliant golden, and a beam shot out over the water.
The dragon screeched and banked hard. As fast as she was, the beam still struck her in the shoulder near the wing.
Much louder, her second screech was filled with pain and must have traveled miles and reached all nooks and coves of the lake.
Flapping her wings hard, the black dragon flew away from the island, and the beam stopped, though the pillar continued to glow and sound its alarm.
“That’s a relief,” Sylin called over the noise.
“And more effective than shovels, I’m sure.” Rylana started to lower her bow, but movement in the trees made her swing about.
Her first thought was that the peacekeepers might have heard the pillar and come to investigate, but an intensely beautiful woman with lush blonde hair and voluptuous curves walked out of the woods.
No, that was the other sister, Loxvonla, shape-shifted into human form.
With a confident smile on her full lips and her silver eyes like liquid pools, she gazed at Jildarin.
Rylana aimed her bow at her. “Stay right there.”
“Will you shoot me, female human?” Loxvonla looked at the pillar.
It continued glowing, and Rylana realized with a jolt that it might send a beam at her if she did something violent while standing near it. Loosing arrows into someone’s chest—even a dragon someone—doubtless qualified.
“Only if you try to kill me first.” Rylana glanced at Sylin.
She was alternately watching Loxvonla and keeping an eye on the flying dragon, who was doing the aerial equivalent of pacing just outside the pillar’s range.
When their eyes met, Sylin fished in a pocket and withdrew a compact square with gnomish writing on the side and held it up, as if to say she wasn’t afraid to deploy it.
Great, but what was it? Before Rylana could ask, Loxvonla spoke again.
“I’ve not come for you, human. I’ve come for Jildarin-grozanarav, who is, this time, in the form that he seems to prefer. We shall mate in this way, if that is what draws him.” Loxvonla gestured to the curves of her body. “It is now my fertile time, and I will have offspring of his lineage.”
“He’s a little busy right now.”
A scraping noise came from the beach. The air above the rowboat shimmered, dense with magic, as the wooden craft shifted across the pebbles and into the water.
“Uhm,” Rylana said.
“Jildarin-grozanarav, your great power and magnificence during the war has brought us to mate with you,” Loxvonla called past Rylana, flicking her fingers as if to make her disappear completely. “I will have offspring as strong, fast, and blessed with stamina as you.”
“I believe this dough requires more proofing.” Jildarin had removed it from the box and was considering it. The air shimmered around him as he applied more of his power, not to the oven but to the dough itself.
“Jildarin-grozanarav,” Loxvonla said tartly. “You will pay attention.”
“The other one is coming,” Sylin said quietly.
The rowboat had floated out into the lake, and, as Rylana looked, the black dragon descended toward it with her wings outstretched.
Her size dwarfed the small craft, and Rylana couldn’t imagine her landing on one of the benches, but, before her talons would have touched down, she shifted into a human woman.
In that form, with black hair flowing around her shoulders, she was every bit as beautiful as her sister.
The dough resting in his hands, Jildarin kept gazing at it as he applied his magic to do… whatever needed to be done before it went into the oven. He only glanced at Loxvonla, not giving her his focus. He did deign to say, “I must bake this offering for the troll gods.”
“That is a strange thing for a dragon to do,” Loxvonla said, “but if we wait for you to finish, will you then mate with us?”
“Ah, yes,” Sylin murmured. “Having an enchanted pillar assaulting the air with its raucous alarms does put one in the mood for romance.”
Jildarin glanced in exasperation at Loxvonla, but his touch on the dough remained light, his magic rippled gently in the air about him. The fire burned heartily, and more heat than before radiated from the walls of the oven.
Meanwhile, the rowboat floated toward the island with the shape-shifted dragon standing in it. Foxvonla didn’t pick up an oar, but the craft progressed toward the beach nonetheless. Hair fluttering in the breeze, she gazed expectantly at Jildarin and dismissively at Rylana and Sylin.
What is my son doing? a female voice boomed telepathically.
Rylana nearly fell over. Was that Jildarin’s mother?
Rylana almost blurted a not now but made herself calmly say, We’re trying to end the troll-god curse, but these idiot sisters think it’s mating time. Won’t you please call them away?
My son is absently caressing… what is that? Her telepathic voice sounded like it came from the wetlands. Maybe she was again perched in a tree over there.
It’s dough. He’s making what the trolls consider sacred bread. It’s what they demand in offering.
How strange.
Yes, but we’ve done our research, and it’s what the troll gods want. Rylana hoped so, anyway. We’re running out of time to get it baked and give it to them before—
Another earthquake shook the land, as if the troll gods were monitoring the situation and didn’t appreciate the delay caused by the dragons.
“Jildarin-grozanarav!” Loxvonla cried with impatience.
“As I told you before,” Jildarin said, sliding the dough into the depths of the oven, “I will not mate with you or your sister. You are overbearing, demanding, self-righteous, and manipulative. No degree of beauty will change my mind.”
“But you will mate with a feeble and inferior human!” Loxvonla thrust a hand toward Rylana.
“She supports me and watches my back while I cook.” Jildarin nodded firmly at Rylana.
As much as she appreciated that he valued her, Rylana wished he would have clarified their relationship. She hurried to say, “We’re not mating. I just keep his books.”
“You are never more than four feet from him.” Loxvonla strode toward Rylana. “There is no doubt in my mind that you are doing more than holding his tail.”
“I don’t know what that means, but we sleep at least eight feet apart in the storeroom. With crates between us.”
“You spend the nights in his lair?” Loxvonla demanded, as if she hadn’t guessed that and it was even more egregious than having sex. “No dragon is so intimate with any but the most trusted of allies.”
Afraid Loxvonla would attack her physically, Rylana raised her bow again and chose a target. Not the heart, though she was tempted. The shoulder. But if she loosed that arrow, would the pillar strike her down with a beam?
“Take care of that one,” Sylin said, leaving cover to jog toward the beach. “I’ll stop the other.”
The rowboat carrying Foxvonla was landing, but Rylana couldn’t do more than glance at it. Arm outstretched, her palm pointed at Rylana’s chest, Loxvonla sent a wave of power rippling through the air.
As Rylana loosed her arrow, she glimpsed Jildarin leaping out of the half-excavated temple, but the power slammed into her first, pain blasting through her body as she was knocked back into him.
Worse, a beam did shoot out of the pillar.
Two beams. One struck her bow, blasting it from her hands.
The other lanced toward Loxvonla and knocked her into the trees.
Jildarin caught Rylana, else she would have pitched into the sunken temple.
“Stay there,” he said, releasing her and running toward Loxvonla.
She’d fallen when the beam struck but was already rising, fury in her eyes. That didn’t keep Jildarin from grabbing her. He roared as he spun her around him, then hurled her toward the beach.
The pillar pulsed with golden power, but maybe it didn’t consider that enough of an attack, because it didn’t shoot him with a beam. Loxvonla’s feet left the ground, far more than if a normal human had thrown her, and she flew all the way to the rowboat.
“What am I supposed to do with her?” Sylin called. “I only have one net.”
Jildarin roared again, sounding more like a dragon than a man, and stomped down to the beach.
Though the pain from Loxvonla’s attack lingered—it had taken all Rylana had not to drop to her hands and knees and cry out—she managed to straighten.
As Jildarin approached Loxvonla, who was rising to her feet, Rylana looked around for her bow.
The pillar had knocked it dozens of feet and to the other side of the temple.