Sixteen
Get up.”
The voice is relentless. Isobel touches the ring for courage. They have not gone so very far, not this time. Landon will find her, surely, and Jehenna will grow tired of tormenting them, soon or late.
They stand together in a circular, cavernous space, lit by a ring of flaming torches. The ceiling is high and lost in shadows. A stone, bloodred in the flickering light, thrusts upward through the darkness—
through this cavern and into the dungeons above
through the dungeons and into the field where the maidens and the dragon meet—
Time slips, and she is a small child here. A dragon looms but she is not afraid of her, not of Mellisande. The creature is sad and angry, but not at Isobel. Fear beats at them both, child and dragon, bonded by mutual captivity. Something evil happens here, something dark. Isobel is a part of it, but again time fractures and she doesn’t know if it is happening, has happened, or is yet to come. A thousand warnings clamoring inside her head and no way to silence them, no way to shut them out. No way to change what will have always been…
Isobel shudders and closes that door in her mind, tries to focus on the now and not the then. Her bare feet and legs are cold. The power from the stone thrums through her body in a constant vibration. If she listens to it, tunes herself to its rhythm, the voices fade and the fear ebbs.
Power.
A man comes running, tripping over the hem of his long scarlet robes and almost falling. He smells of fear and his face is the color of curdled milk as he throws himself onto his knees, forehead pressed against the black stone.
“My Queen.”
“You know me, then.”
“We have waited your return, My Queen.” His hands are shaking, and he twists them in the robe. “Gant always said you would someday return.”
“And where is Gant?”
“He died, My Queen.”
“You are High Priest, then?”
“Yes, My Queen.”
“Has he passed on to you what must be done?”
“Yes, My Queen. Every word of the ritual has been preserved.”
“Bring her.”
“Yes, My Queen. At once, My Queen—”
He scurries off through a stone door.
A shuffling, scraping sound vibrates through the soles of Isobel’s feet. Metal screeches against stone and the dragon is coming and this has happened before, and before, and before, only this time something is different.
Mellisande is old. Always there has been a smothered rage, a longing for the sky, but now Isobel feels a deathly weariness when the dragon enters the chamber. A web of silver mesh wraps the girth of the great belly and traps the folded wings against the creature’s back. The once-fiery eyes are faded to dark amber; the heavy head hangs low.
Jehenna staggers as though she has been struck, her face bloodless. “What have you done to her?” she gasps.
The priest cowers, looking from the Sorceress to the dragon in confusion. “Idiot!” Jehenna shrieks, slapping him on one cheek and then the other. “You have let her grow old!”
He cowers onto his knees, his voice shaking. “My Queen. She is fed daily, exercised regularly. She is bathed and polished and bedded in fresh stone. She has been pining for you, so Gant said.”
“She wants to go back to her mountain.” Isobel is surprised to hear her own voice break in; she has not planned to speak, but the dragon’s misery can hardly be borne.
“What would you know about what she wants or does not want?”
Isobel knows this is a time to close her mouth and claim ignorance. An unexpected courage stiffens her spine. “I’ve always been able to read her.”
“You? You are insane. You think you hear voices everywhere—”
“Hers is louder. Can you not hear her? The silver pains her; she longs for the sky and the light, to hunt and catch her own food rather than eat the human cattle—”
“Enough of this. Be silent.”
Isobel holds her tongue while slow tears trace a path down her cheeks.
“Ah well,” Jehenna says at last. “Her blood is weakened, but it must suffice. Soon, very soon, I will have no more need of her.”
“My Queen, it will take time to contain a younger dragon—”
“I’m not talking about a dragon, fool. For now”—her voice rises into command—“I require blood.”
The dragon breathes out a flameless blast stinking of carrion and brimstone, whirling Jehenna’s hair and gown in a gust of dragon wind. But she is bound by the silver and Jehenna’s will, and she turns and lumbers away to stand broadside along the raised dais at the center of the chamber.
The priest follows, carrying a stone knife as long as his arm. His hands are shaking; he looks as though he might fall.
“Give it to me.” Jehenna snatches the knife from him. “I’ll perform the rite myself.”
This is it, now, the dark and evil thing, and Isobel is powerless as the woman—her mother—takes her hand and leads her up the steps and onto the dais. Here the stink of rot and decay spins in her head. A basin, carved from dragon bone, sits next to the towering stone, stained black with the blood of countless years.
Isobel feels herself begin to wail, a child again. She stands where she is placed, her body shaking with cold and fear, that endless sound flowing from her throat unbidden. Jehenna presses the tip of the knife against the scar at the base of Mellisande’s throat. Leans her weight against the toughness of the dragon skin. A small pop as the blade enters, a hiss as it withdraws. Blood splashes smoking into the basin. Where it strikes the stone it sizzles; puffs of steam go up with a smell of brimstone.
“Isobel, hold out your arm,” Jehenna commands, and Isobel obeys. A web of scars mars the whiteness of her skin, drawn there by blades of her own choosing over the years. The stone knife slashes across her flesh once, twice, bright blood spurting and falling into the basin, swirling into the black. Jehenna cuts her own wrist and adds her blood to the mixture.
Hope leaps in Isobel’s breast as she watches her bright blood flow into the basin. Perhaps she will be permitted to die at last. But then she remembers Landon, and she doesn’t want to die, doesn’t want to be part of the dragon’s pain or Jehenna’s power, but she cannot move until the command is lifted.
Time blurs. Crimson and black swirl before her eyes, the smell of hot iron and stone fills her nostrils, the voices clamor and shout.
When she comes clear again the priest is wrapping her bleeding wrist with a bandage, stanching the flow.
Jehenna’s hands, smeared with crimson, are already raised in invocation. “Blood of my blood, heart of my heart. As you live, I live. With my death, yours.” She dips a smaller stone cup into the basin, swirls it, and drinks.
The effect is immediate. Lines on her face smooth away; her hair thickens, brightens. She smiles and turns to Isobel, holding out the cup. “Drink and say the invocation.”
As a child, a small child, before her father locked her mother away, Isobel stood here in this place. She drank the blood then, felt it burn in her throat and bind her to the dragon. But she is not a child now; she is grown and has returned to Surmise. The stone speaks to her, vibrates through her; the stone is power and strength and an unexpected sanity.
“Why?”
“How dare you question? Drink.”
“I don’t understand why you want to prolong my life. You’ve never wanted any good thing for me.”
Hatred distorts the beautiful face, burns in the hazel eyes. “He cast me aside because of you. His precious heir. You are my revenge, and so you suffer. It gives me pleasure to prolong your pain.”
Isobel shakes her head, realizing that something has shifted. The voice does not compel her to drink. She has power of her own, has finally tapped into it after so many weary years. She walks across the dais to the dragon and presses her bare hand over the still-bleeding wound, crooning softly to the dragon’s pain. The blood, hot and caustic enough to etch stone, does not burn her, and the flesh begins to knit itself together beneath her touch.
I owe you a gift, Mellisande says into her mind. What would you have?
It is a voice she knows, one of the many that has filled her head with a torrent of sound for so many years. There is no relief in this recognition, only a responsibility she cannot answer. I am beyond your help, she returns, nor do I have the power to release you.
Let me ease your suffering, at least.
And with these words the voices go silent one by one by one until in Isobel’s mind nothing remains but her own thoughts, orderly and clean.
Behind her, Jehenna begins to murmur a spell. The air thickens with webs of realities, and Isobel knows that even with this unexpected gift of silence her mind has been broken for too long; she lacks the strength to save herself. She feels the door open behind her but does not turn, keeps her focus on the dragon.
My thanks for this. I wish—
“Nahl! Put her through the door.”
Strong hands grab her and pinion her arms behind her back. Isobel twists, kicks, manages to turn and spit into the priest’s face. Something needs to be done, something she so nearly has the understanding to do, and she will no longer submit passively to her fate. But the priest is stronger and drags her away from Mellisande, across the stone.
A door stands open and she knows what lies inside, increases her struggle. She clings to the door frame, plants her feet, throws all of her weight backward to put the priest off balance. Keep faith, she hears the dragon say, the New One is coming, she may free us yet. And then a blow to the back of her head and the world goes dark.