The Last Dragon: Book Three

CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

Damon

My sister said, “Damon, keep up. We must hurry to rescue Elizabeth.”

I glanced guiltily at Emma who was struggling to keep up at my side and back at Kendra. The small girl was slowing our pace. She had complained all morning. I turned to Kendra. “Are there any mages or sorceresses in Vin? And where is your dragon?”

Anna’s voice appeared in my head, strong and clear, *She’s going to get you in trouble with your sister. She’s going slow on purpose.*

*I think she is weary. It has been hard on her.*

*Don’t trust her.* Anna said in my head, like any jealous sister.

I had to laugh. Kendra thought I was laughing at her, and sure enough, I got one of those looks again. Anna had been right about me getting into trouble with Kendra—sort of.

Kendra said in a sour tone as we walked through the soft, beige sand, “Flier said the Waystone is just over the next hill in the edge of the trees. There is also a road we can follow. His farm is down the road where we can hopefully get local clothing and food. And maybe some useful information, too.”

“Why are you so interested in seeing another Waystone?”

She said, “Because I have an experiment for you to perform.”

“We’re in a hurry, I thought.”

“It won’t take long, in fact, we can start it as soon as we reach the road ahead.”

I respected her insights and knew that if she wanted to conduct some sort of experiment, there must be a valid reason, even I couldn’t see it yet. We reached the road, and she paused. She motioned for Flier to join us.

While holding a small branch for me to accept, she said, “Create a flame at the tip of it, the largest size you can.”

Willing to go along with her, I drew heat from our surroundings and made a flame at the tip of the branch. It was the size of a pea.

“Larger,” she said.

I tried, and the flame remained the same.

She said to Flier, “Blindfold Damon, please.”

Anna giggled, and Emma smirked as Flier used his scarf to wrap around my head and eyes. I held the branch in front of me as Kendra took one elbow and Flier the other. They walked me down the two-rut road, warning me of potholes, but otherwise, they were quiet.

“Bigger,” Kendra said. “Make the flame larger.”

Nobody else talked. We walked, and they made sure I didn’t trip in holes, or over rocks. They warned me before each, and Kendra repeated her instructions about the size now and then. Otherwise, nobody spoke. I grew irritated, my head grew sweaty under the scarf, and I was about to object and end the experiment.

Kendra said, “Stop here. Remove the blindfold. Damon, keep the flame as large as you can.”

The flame had been the size of a pea when last seen, and the entire incident seemed silly until the removal of the scarf blinding me revealed a flame the size of a fist. The surprise was so total I threw the stick away before it burned me. It landed at the base of the Waystone.

I turned to Kendra, confused.

She said, “Your flame grew larger with every step. As you grew nearer to the Waystone, your magic increased.”

I had no words to speak.

She continued, “I suspected this might happen. Now, try to draw lightning and make it rain.”

“What? Only mages can do that.”

“Try,” she repeated.

“How in the hell do I know what to do?”

“Shut up. Close your eyes and try.”

“I closed them and imagined a storm building, the clouds growing darker, the turmoil of the air, and . . . a crack sounded. Not the intense crack and boom of a real storm, but more like the sound of a dry stick snapping. I felt wetness touch my face. My eyes flashed open, and we were standing in the rain, the five of us.

A few steps away the ground was dry. The rain stopped, the clouds dispersed, and then we were in the bright sunshine again. Only rising steam from the ground indicated what had happened. I said, “What happened?”

Emma said, “You made a storm if you want to call that little thing that. The lightning bolt was about as big as my little finger, and the ground didn’t get more than damp.”

Kendra was beaming. She said, “You made a storm! A small one, but you did it.”

I saw her point. “Why is my magic so much more powerful near a Waystone? When we were in Mercia, your dragon had to be near me for any magic to work.”

“I think she still is, in a way.”

“You talk in circles,” I snapped.

She said, “I think we just answered a pair of questions, and maybe more. Remember when we looked inside that container thing on top of the mountain in Mercia? Remember there was an egg there? A dragon egg?”

“Yes, a mage stole it during our fight with the Wyverns.”

“Exactly. The stone well was rounded inside, so it perfectly fit the egg. We decided then it must have been valuable, or they would never have carved out the location from solid rock or sent the Wyverns to fight us over it.”

So far, I agreed with her.

She pointed to the Waystone. “What if all of them have dragon eggs inside? What if that is what powers Waystones? The essence in dragon eggs.”

I wanted to explain she was wrong. To tell her it was another silly idea from the vapid mind of my sister, who was overly sentimental and romantic. But I couldn’t. Instinctually, I knew she was right.

Not that I understood the implications. It struck me as reasonable that the Waystone must have power gathered from somewhere for them to function, no matter what they do. I moved closer to the Waystone and placed a bare hand on the warm stone wall. It was warmer than it should be, but all of them were. There were the same engravings similar to the Waystones at Mercia and Crestfallen. I hadn’t examined the one at the Vin mountain pass closely but assumed it was the same.

I said, “If I set up a blind in those trees, like some people do to hunt deer, and watched this Waystone long enough, I’ll wager a mage either comes or goes. I don’t know how he would get inside, or on top, or whatever they do, but these are like bears seeking out honey.”

Kendra said, “And the closer you are, the stronger your magic.”

“The same for mages,” I said. “They are already strong, but here they control more magic.”

Kendra’s shoulders slumped, and she stood motionless as her eyes darted around the clearing and back to the Waystone. I started to speak, but she held up a hand to stop me, while she thought. Then she turned, her face pale. Her knees buckled, and she sat on the hard ground. “Damon sit down and let me talk for a few moments. I think I’ve figured out more and need your attention.”

I sat. She had only acted in a similar fashion a few times in our lives. The last had been at the death of a friend, so I took it seriously.

She muttered, “It’s the eggs.”

“They power the Waystones, you said.”

“Yes, but we missed the critical point. Where do the eggs come from?”

“Well, they’re dragon eggs,” I said thoughtfully while trying to see where she was going with her thoughts and thinking myself clever for saying so.

She allowed a limp smile to form. “Exactly. That’s what we missed. There is only one dragon.”

I saw the implications instantly. If dragon eggs powered the Waystones, and there was only one dragon, all the eggs had come from Kendra’s dragon. That explained the fortified cave and why mages kept the dragon chained on the mountain in Mercia. They needed the eggs.

She said, “The mages have to come after me to regain control of the dragon.”

“We can hide,” I said.

“No, they have to come, no matter where we are or how many of them there are. They have to get the dragon back.”

“The eggs are that important?” I asked.

“They are,” she said. “The unfertilized eggs are somehow preserved, one in each Waystone, I think. Every Waystone is connected to another or to others, but only to the nearest few. They are in turn connected to others to form a web.”

“I can see that.” I prompted. We’d already decided Waystones were not only centers of magic, but a means of travel for mages and for their communications. They were the cornerstones of the entire magic network the mages used.

“The eggs must eventually wear out or die. Lose their power. They can’t last forever. They must be replaced with a new egg, or the entire Waystone system will begin failing. The mages powers will fade and die. It may take years, but entropy rules the universe. There is a gradual decline unless new eggs replace old ones.”

“And that is only possible with new dragon eggs. But you freed the dragon so there will be no more eggs.”

Her eyes were wide. Tears ran freely down each cheek. “Don’t you see? They are coming for me. They have to. All of them.”

I glanced at the Waystone as if making sure a hundred mages didn’t emerge from it and take us as prisoners. As usual, she was right. Probably the only reason they hadn’t come yet was that ever since Mercia we’d been on the move. First to the port, then the ship, and there we’d escaped in the dead of night to travel on an unused mountain pass, before disappearing into the vastness of the Kondor desert.

But they would come.

We sat beside a Waystone. They might start streaming out of it, one at a time until a hundred faced us. “I think you are right about everything. For now, we should avoid all Waystones, and we need to keep moving and rescue Elizabeth.”

She stood. “There is too much information to absorb at once. We’ll talk more after we have the time to process what we think.”

I took another furtive look at the Waystone, and instead of seeing a thing of ancient beauty, I saw a creation more like the tip of an arrow pointed at my heart. My first goal was to get away from it.

Flier, who had remained quiet the entire time said, “What about the girls?”

They were also an interesting point we hadn’t thought of. I looked at Emma and thought that if her powers increased too much more, we might all be in trouble. Not that she had ever intentionally misused them, but once she had knocked me unconscious for an entire afternoon. If a Waystone had been near, it might have been worse because she didn’t know how to control her magic.

Flier snapped to attention, his head tilted to one side. He whispered urgently, “Hide.”

We darted into the trees and knelt while peering back into the harsh sunlight where the Waystone stood beside the road. Down the road was movement. Movement meant a stranger. An enemy. As we hid, the movement became one man. It was not one of the king’s patrols or slavers, but a single person walking alone. As he moved closer, he leaned on a crooked staff as he walked, and his robes were those of a wandering priest.

“Avery,” I whispered. It was my old nemesis from Crestfallen. I’d last seen him on the Gallant in Trager as the city was about to burn at his demand. He was going to attempt a rescue of his friend who had become king. He was alone, so his friend was not with him.

We emerged and ran to greet him. His staff rose in self-protection until he recognized us, and a grin split his face. He hugged us and later cried as he told the story of his friend. The King of Trager was dead, as were all his close relatives. The now familiar story brought sadness to us all.

I said, “Why are you here instead of returning to Dire?”

“Princess Elizabeth is in danger. The Council in Vin has been in contact with the one in Trager. I don’t know how, but even before her ship departed Trager, they knew she was coming. In Vin, they’re waiting, and we think there’s danger,” Kendra said.

“So, you are on your way to Vin, too?” I asked because he was walking the wrong way and Avery was far too clever to make that mistake.

He shook his head. “What can one wandering priest do against the ruling body of an entire city? I came to the Waystone here because Kendra is linked to them and I hoped to find you here—and I did.”

“Linked?” Kendra asked.

He said, “It was reported to me that you visited the Waystone at Crestfallen several times over the years. Then again, the one at Mercia. It was reasonable to assume you would come to this one in Vin. Waystones draw you. I don’t know how or why, but with you, they are like a moth to a flame on a moonless night.”

“That was not part of our plan to come here,” she stated flatly.

“Yet, this is where I found you.” He wore the impetuous smile that had annoyed us since our first meeting so many years ago.

Worse, he was right. Without knowing about her magic, he’d centered his search to locate us, and I wondered if he secretly controlled any magic at all. His actions were as if he could tell what Kendra thought, but I knew it was not magic. Avery understood people and their motivations and knew what they would do before they did, not just my sister, but everyone. I changed the subject. “What is the Council in Vin going to do to Elizabeth?”

“Use her as bait to draw her brother, the heir apparent to Vin or to another part of Kondor to rescue her. How they are going to do that is not within my sphere of knowledge.” Avery had looked at me without flinching or blinking. He was telling the truth and wanted me to know it.

The heir apparent was the king’s eldest son and Avery’s master. While the ideas he presented bordered on unbelievable, one fact stood out more than any other. Avery had always been on the side of his master. I would never question his loyalty.

The obvious answer was that once she was a prisoner, they would use the Waystones to notify the King of Dire and suggest that his eldest son could save her if he traveled to Kondor. No doubt, he’d have an accident or be killed, and the King of Dire would again fall ill. A council was probably already in place to rule for him.

Dressed as a wandering priest instead of the rich garb he normally wore at Crestfallen, Avery was more believable and much more likable. He leaned on his crooked staff as if exhausted. We’d left him in Trager where he was attempting to rescue his old friend. “How did you get here?”

“As the city burned because of your dragon, I ‘fled’ to upper Trager with the other refugees to escape the flames and managed to find a back way into the palace where I found proper clothing to wear. Dressed properly, I moved to the private quarters of the king and found them deserted. The next logical place was the dungeon. There I had a few conversations with the keepers.”

“Conversations?” I broke in.

He shrugged. “We talked. Yes, I held a knife, and each of them bled, but in contrast to what they do to people, it will not set heavy on my mind. The third one, a man who enjoyed inflicting pain, couldn’t handle it himself. He admitted taking the life of the king and enjoying it.”

“Did you enjoy taking his?” Kendra asked in an awed whisper. She was as amazed as me at the actions of a palace buffoon we’d laughed at, outwitted numerous times, and often ignored as impotent in our politics.

Now we both questioned our pasts. Avery was far more than we’d ever guessed, and that indicated he was far more dangerous. He’d allowed us our little victories; I had no doubt. As for outwitting him, that had never happened.

Avery said, “I thought it would bring a taste of satisfaction. It didn’t. He deserved to die, and there is no regret unless it’s that I should have taken longer instead of one merciful slash of my knife against his neck.”

*He is a good man,* Anna’s voice muttered in my head. *Trust him.*

“What can we do to help Elizabeth?” Kendra asked.

Avery said, “I rushed here to meet with you. I think we should split up and make our separate ways into Vin, then meet and compare what we learn.”