55. The green lady
55
THE GREEN LADY
Anahrod thought she could be forgiven for assuming Viridhaven was nothing more than fable and myth.
The Cauldron, though?
She’s always known that the mountain itself was a real place. People pilgrimaged there. Judging by the shrines stretched from base camp to summit, the only reason Ivarion wasn’t officially a saint was because the Church was still debating how to canonize someone still technically alive.
It must’ve been a beautiful mountain once. Now the Cauldron was a squat thing, shorter than any surrounding mountains. It was as though Eannis had scooped up half the mountain, leaving behind a shallow bowl that steamed and hissed and never saw snow. The volcanic heat turned the mountain into a lady who never entertained visitors without a verdant coat of vegetation. Its slopes were full of life that normally existed much closer to sea level.
Although perhaps the Cauldron wasn’t a lady, given her fondness for green. More like a troll.
Anahrod attached her mask so she wouldn’t suffocate in the toxic fumes. Peralon flew a circle around the bubbling heart of the Cauldron, searching for a place to land.
Anahrod felt Ivarion before she saw him.
She felt his rampancy from the moment Peralon approached: a howling, writhing inferno, unmitigated and ruinous. His sympathy and affinity with a volcano seemed appropriate; he was as destructive and as unstoppable.
Ivarion seemed petite at first, but that was just a trick of perspective. He was a massive dragon, curled up like a hatchling resting in the shadow of its mother.
He was beautiful, but Anahrod didn’t know—really, could never know—how much her perceptions were influenced by her repeated dip into Peralon’s memories. He certainly thought Ivarion was the most beautiful dragon to ever exist.
[What do you need from me?] Peralon asked.
[Just set me down,] she said back to him. [The clothing Kaibren made should protect me from the heat here. I need to be closer.]
She had no idea if she could confirm Gwydinion’s theory, but if he was right about the corruption, all she needed to do was pull the taint from Ivarion into the Rampant Stone. Ivarion would do the rest.
She unfastened her mantle, folded it, and laid it on top of a low boulder. She sat down on the blanket and concentrated on the dragon.
The caldera wasn’t silent. Peralon’s scales rasped against each other with a soft hissing noise. Lava burbled. Pebbles bounced down the sides of the caldera as scree shifted.
Quiet enough. As quiet as anything ever was. The scent of sulfur was more distracting.
She reached out to Ivarion.
It felt like shouting down into the caldera, an echoing clatter of noises that clashed against each other and amplified into cacophony. Little wonder Varriguhl hadn’t been able to reach his dragon. Ivarion’s mind was buried so deeply inside that echoing crevasse, she had no idea how anyone could extend a metaphorical hand to help him climb up. Loops of energy, corruption, and hate flowed around the vast, ugly abyss of tainted magic before entering the mountain and bubbling up again, more powerful than before.
She started with the obvious and tried to shunt the corruption into the Rampant Stone.
It didn’t work. At all.
A magical shield protected Ivarion and the mountain both. They were joined, one. No one could add or remove corrupting energies. Neveranimas had created a near-infinite, self-sustaining curse. The only way to change the flow of energy at this point would be from inside the system—and anyone inside the system was trapped.
If this were a proper fable, the evil witch would’ve left a way to free the cursed prince. True love or some such. Alas, Neveranimas hadn’t been so considerate.
[Peralon,] Anahrod said, [how does Ris keep you free from corruption? How exactly ?]
He didn’t answer right away. Then Peralon said, [It’s the bond itself, I think. The taint naturally tapers off or disappears entirely.]
[It was the same in her earlier lives, too?]
He raised his head. [She told you?]
[Yes, but I need an answer.] She continued staring at the sleeping dragon, brows knitted with frustration.
[Yes, it was so then as well.]
She scowled. It made no sense. Plenty of dragons had riders and were per fectly capable of falling into rampancy. What were Peralon and Ris doing that others weren’t?
The answer smacked her full force, so immediate and obvious that she put her hand to her mouth and groaned.
They switched places.
Not a one-sided assault like Tiendremos and Jaemeh, not a hateful thirty minutes or so like she and Neveranimas had done. Peralon and Ris switched places for hours and hours. She went flying; he read books. He could take control of her body to talk to humans while she used his body to keep them safe.
Varriguhl had once commented that they had perfect synchronization. Of course they did. They had perfect trust. They were the dream that candidates longed for when they went to Yagra’hai, that hope of a partner who both completed and understood them that bubbled so warmly in bright eyes before reality ruthlessly smeared it underfoot.
But what did that mean for Ivarion?
She sighed. That’s what Gwydinion had meant when he said Varriguhl could fix this. Even if no corruption could be added or subtracted from outside the system, a bonded dragonrider was a kind of secret entrance. The bond was an exchange of souls—or at least, a tiny part of their souls. Enough to allow a dragonrider to push out the poison.
That was wonderful. That was fantastic. There was just one small, tiny, troubling matter that merited consideration.
As Peralon himself had pointed out, Anahrod wasn’t Ivarion’s rider. She didn’t think being “kind of” his rider was going to count for much here either—it would have to be a full bond. She and Neveranimas had switched places, but that had been an attack, a hijacking. Anahrod had done what she needed to do to survive, but that didn’t mean she was proud of it.
Neveranimas couldn’t have initiated such a switch herself. Similarly, Tiendremos and Jaemeh had been a bonded pair in the eyes of the world, but Jaemeh had been forced every time.
All of which brought her back to the unshakable fact that Ivarion wasn’t conscious enough to agree to such a bond, even if she…
If she would agree…
She scowled. Funny how the same pride, the same stubborn insistence on freedom, no matter the cost, continued to be her best and worst qualities.
[Anahrod?] Peralon’s voice was a gentle nudge.
She straightened.
[You can’t find a way, can you?] She hated how understanding he sounded. How he was only upset because he’d let himself hope.
[I’m not done yet,] she told him. [I am the most stubborn creature—human or dragon—that you have ever met, and for once in my life that is going to work to my favor.]
There had to be a way.
If only there was a way to trick the curse into letting her inside.
She stood and turned to face Peralon. [Do you remember what my brother was going on about back at the Bay of Bones? Something about fooling Neveranimas’s tracking spells by metaphysical mislabeling? Did you understand what he was talking about?]
[I believe so, yes. It’s the same method that I had planned to use on the Rampant Stone when we originally stole it—to keep Neveranimas from tracking it.]
She nodded. [Wonderful.] She paused. [What does that mean?]
[Tracking spells operate on principles similar to what Naeron used to find you, or to find your brother. Establish sympathy between multiple objects and as long as you have one of those objects in your possession, you can find and affect the others.]
Anahrod blinked. [Are you telling me that Naeron can hurt me through one of my family members? Just because we’re related?]
[There is a reason the dragons made a good-faith effort to eliminate anyone with such a magic talent.]
She exhaled. Never mind, that was a distraction. [Right. Back to sympathy. Can I create sympathy between, say, myself and the Cauldron?]
He chuffed. [That is highly unlikely. This is typically where the “metaphysical mislabeling” comes into play—forcing sympathy where none otherwise exists. But I do not think it will work here.]
She frowned. [Why not?]
[Because such methods aren’t robust. They don’t hold up under significant strain. What your brother did was mild, attempting to fool a sympathy already based on a distortion. But one reason a rampant dragon is so devastating is because the corruption that takes over them is ultimately magical. It is a lake full of water bursting out from a fractured dam. Rampancy has force and momentum. I doubt such “mislabeling” would hold up for more than a few seconds.]
She straightened. [Only need a few seconds. Can you do this?]
[Yes…] He sounded reluctant.
[Then “metaphorically mislabel” me with the mountain,] Anahrod said. [I’m as hard-headed as a mountain. Just ask my mother.]
[Are you certain? I don’t know what this will do to you.]
She waved away the concern. [Only one way to find out.]
Ivarion’s mind was buried deep. On a metaphysical (metaphorical?) level where he existed in a perpetual loop linking himself to a mountain through winding ribbons of corrupted magic and power, he was trapped inside the mountain.
The easiest way for her to find him would be if Anahrod was the mountain itself.
[Ready?] Peralon asked.
[Ready,] she replied.
For the barest second, she didn’t think it had worked. She thought that this too had failed, that Neveranimas was clever enough to counter this as well.
Then her world turned into fire.