50. Running for the bones
50
RUNNING FOR THE BONES
“Hey girl, remember me?” Gwydinion walked toward the titan drake slowly.
As promised, she was harnessed and ready. Her injured leg had fully healed, and she wasn’t caged, but why would she go anywhere else? The Scarsea were pampering her like she was a visiting goddess.
Overbite still missed Anahrod, though. The gargantuan titan drake associated his smells with hers: she was friendlier to him as a result.
He had to fight to remain standing when she nudged him.
“I’ll take that as a yes,” he said, laughing.
Then her head snapped up to the sky. Overbite whimpered and slinked backward under the canopy shade. A second later, loud booms rang out—the same noises he’d heard when the Scarsea had destroyed Jaemeh’s flyer with thunder lances.
He didn’t know what the range on those weapons was, but if they were firing, the dragons were too close. More explosions sounded, thunderclaps rattling against each other like gods playing drums.
He had no more time to spend on renewing his friendship with Overbite—he just had to hope that the idea that he was encouraging her to run away from the dragons was enough motivation. Right now, he didn’t care so much about direction as long as it was “away.”
He clipped himself to the harness as she ran. Her speed was soon so fast he ducked to protect his eyes from the wind.
Gwydinion had never experienced Overbite running flat out on all six legs. He hadn’t imagined how fast she could move—maybe not faster than Peralon, but certainly more than most dragons. He lay flat against the titan drake’s back and shielded himself with the leather satchel.
Thunder lances echoed behind him, the sound mixed with the roaring of dragons.
Gwydinion wondered how quickly Neveranimas would realize her quarry had fled. He was of two minds about it—the faster she did, the fewer lives would be lost, but the longer it took, the more time he had to escape.
After a few minutes, Overbite slowed her pace. Still fast, but titan drakes in the wild likely didn’t need to maintain such speeds for longer than it took to fasten their teeth around dinner’s throat. Unfortunately, this meant it wasn’t a case of “if” the dragons would catch up to them, but “when.”
Gwydinion studied the Rampant Stone swinging full and heavy from the tied-off knapsack. In theory, he could send the first dragon they encountered rampant. It still might attack them, but Gwydinion thought it likely that a wing mate would suffer before the rampant dragon ripped its way through the canopy to him. Still risky, though.
Gwydinion pursed his lips, and then reached for the stone. It’s not like his attention was required for anything more than literally hanging around.
Perhaps Neveranimas had a few useful secrets to learn.
Neveranimas landed on the caldera’s edge. A shudder ran down her scales. Under the best of circumstances, she wasn’t a fan of fire or heat, and this place burned heavy with both.
This wasn’t just any caldera either, but the Cauldron; so named because the open pool of boiling lava reminded humans of a cooking pot. The dragon name for the mountain was Prugukuzhanuak—even most dragons had taken to using the human name instead.
The mountain had once been the tallest in the region, possibly the tallest in the world. These days it was a truncated stratovolcano that had been bubbling away since before Neveranimas’s birth.
Legends claimed that the volcano’s eruption had wiped out the first human city, Viridhaven. She liked the story, even if the volcano had done a much poorer job of wiping out humanity itself.
She was not there, however, to reminisce on happy events. Neveranimas was there because of Ivarion.
“So, this is your bower, pathetic worm.” There was no danger that the enormous red dragon might take offense; he was incapable of hearing anything at all.
Ivarion curled up on a spit of land emerging from the lake, his tail half submerged into the molten rock. He seemed to be sleeping.
Neveranimas knew better.
She understood the why, but the how remained a mystery. Ivarion had responded to his rampancy in a manner both confusing and intriguing. She double-checked her heat defenses before landing on top of the red dragon. It wasn’t dignified—at least not for Ivarion—but he should’ve thought of that when he took a nap in the middle of an active volcano.
If only she could kill him and be done with it. Unfortunately, whether through extreme cleverness or stupidity, he’d taken a rider mere days before going rampant. Thus Vari-whatever would know the instant his dragon died. Everyone would make a fuss, and since she couldn’t teleport all the way from the Cauldron to Yagra’hai, an alibi would be problematic.
She couldn’t just kill the rider either—he never left his damn school.
So here she was, hoping to discover what Ivarion had done.
She focused on the magic skeins wrapped around him, tying him to the rock, cradling him like a hatchling in the shell. He lived—worse, he’d continue to live. Even dragons who slept for years either woke or starved, but Ivarion had tied his life to the volcano itself. As long as the volcano burned, so would he—indefinitely. As the volcano sustained him, in exchange, it took his fury.
In a short time—perhaps only a few years—Ivarion would wake, fully cured of his rampancy.
She reared onto her hind legs, narrowed her eyes, tried to tear the enchantment into shreds. Ivarion had a fire affinity, but not an earth affinity—he wasn’t a “volcanic” dragon as slang described them. In theory, if she reinforced the natural boundaries, reminded both volcano and sleeping dragon of their proper places, the spell would crumble.
It did not. His enchantment defied her.
Neveranimas bared her teeth and growled. She refused to contemplate the idea that this overgrown scale kite could defeat her at magic.
But maybe…
Neveranimas opened the front of her pectoral necklace and removed the tiny rainbow feldspar stone into which she’d poured so much effort.
She felt an extraordinary sense of satisfaction as she used the Rampant Stone on Ivarion—satisfaction that transformed to fury when nothing happened. The magic pulling his anger into the ground shielded him from further corruption. He was simultaneously rampant and immune to rampancy.
She roared her rage. He was worse than a soft-hearted fool; he was a soft-hearted fool with the power to enforce it. She’d never thought him interested in magic—hadn’t the previous First Dragon picked him as her successor because he was “untainted in spirit”? What did that mean for a dragon if not someone who refused magic? And yet he created this… this…
The spellwork was elegant.
She hated him so much.
Neveranimas flew to the caldera’s inside ledge and paced, ignoring the resulting hissing steam. She’d never found a problem she couldn’t solve, never encountered an obstacle she couldn’t overcome, by trickery or magic or both. She wouldn’t be bested by a fool whose primary qualification for authority had been a supreme lack of ambition.
Neveranimas paused. She couldn’t remove the spell, but might it be possible for her to add to it? Let the volcano sustain him, let him give the volcano his rage. But what if the volcano gave that rampant fury right back to Ivarion again? The spell allowed him to take from the mountain—indeed, required it. If she changed the spell to mingle anger with life-giving energy, he had no way to reject the “gift.” To do so would be to kill himself.
She sighed in pleasure as the spell took, as the binding changed, as the enchantment shifted from healing to a prison from which he’d never awaken.
She ran her tongue over her fangs as she studied him. Now that she’d solved the major problem, she could concentrate on prevention. This had all happened because the little snake had stolen one of her dragonstones, which, given his nature, could only mean that he’d suspected her.
It wasn’t theft if it could be defined as “confiscating evidence.”
She shuddered to think what might’ve happened had Ivarion found the Rampant Stone, but fortunately, he hadn’t, and since she soul-marked all her dragonstones, she’d been able to track the one he had taken.
She needed a better vault. Something more secure. The humans were good at making those, weren’t they? At least they were good for something.
Neveranimas left to plan and scheme once more.