Dustin

Dustin didn’t really feel up to a game of chits, still disturbed by watching Maelys slip into Olthon like he were a pillar of stone, but Olthon poured him ale and insisted, so Dustin forced himself to play.

They chatted about inane things—things like grape grower politics and whether or not Dustin had found any more girls in the mountains to carry on his line—for several hours before the Rockfarmer had finally decided he’d stolen enough of Dustin’s chits and excused himself to go to bed.

Dustin lay down in the middle of the living area’s floor—less chance of catching something on fire in his sleep that way—and tried to settle his nerves. Something about what he had seen between the two Rockfarmers had deeply unsettled him, and no amount of gaming or drink or good-natured conversation had been able to ease the troubled feeling within.

There had been something wrong with Maelys.

That, he decided, was the crux of it. Maelys wasn’t acting right. She was usually confident, willful, and stubborn. When he had been talking to her, she had sounded disjointed, woozy, almost like a sparkweed addict longing for a fix.

During the game, Olthon had assured them that it was a Rockfarmer thing, that they made similar pacts all the time back in the Rockfarmer’s realm, but something about his words had rung hollow.

It was the tattoos, Dustin decided. The tattoos that had rippled across Olthon’s skin right before he had taken Maelys within him had reminded Dustin of something he had heard long ago, during the Great War and the first time the drakes had almost gone extinct. For the life of him, however, Dustin couldn’t put his finger on it. Immortality, unfortunately, didn’t come with a perfect memory, unlike the drakes’ scaly, distant cousins.

Stupid dragons. Dustin wondered if they were all dead, too. He doubted it. Aside from the one up guarding the ruins of Nefyti, he was sure he had caught glimpses here and there. Dragons were wilier than drakes, less brash by far and having the carnal drives of a wooden brick, but while drakes were constantly making more of themselves, as far as Dustin could figure, dragons reproduced a clutch every few eons or two. And while drakes were constantly trying to filter a rush of elemental energies—uncontrollable stuff like fire, darkness, wind, water—dragons had the luck of being born as nexuses of veoh. Walking reservoirs of the stuff, endless supplies made by their very bones, which were like gates to another dimension.

But they were dead, and aside from Dustin and a paranoid girl who called herself Khani—who had delightfully given Dustin her full support in his endeavor to rebuild their races—it seemed as if the drakes were dead, too.

Dustin winced. On his darker days, it occurred to him that he seemed to be the link, somehow. It hadn’t escaped his notice that the girls who agreed to help him were missing the next time he went looking for them, and he couldn’t help but wonder if something was going horribly wrong inside their wombs and they were dying out on the Slopes alone somewhere, infant fire drakes burning a hole in their guts. If it wasn’t for the fact that the male ice drakes were going missing, too, then he would have assumed it was him and gotten very suicidal, very fast.

But the last girl—Khani—had seemed to think they were being hunted. She had even made him promise not to tell anyone where he had found her, as if she were actually afraid of mortals.

Then again, it was mortals who had slain the dragons, using the dragons’ own bones as weapons.

Wily little monkeys, mortals. Using their opponent’s own power against them. Reminded him of Rhydderch, and he had often found himself damn glad Rhydderch had been on his side in the last war.

But had Rhydderch helped the Vethyles slaughter the Ganlins? It was something he could have planned, but did he? Dustin had known for approximately three hundred years that Rhydderch was actually Raedher Ganlin in disguise, and that Wynn Ganlin the First—a man who supposedly died with his Auldbluut in the fall of Old Ariod—Dustin’s maker—had somehow played a part in it. Back then, Dustin had been unwilling to remove Rhydderch’s curse until he could figure out exactly how a long-dead Auldheist responsible for defending Ariod against Thibault for over four hundred years had reached through time to curse a kid he’d never met. Now, though, with the drakes an endangered species and the Vethyles brazenly slaughtering entire families, he found himself a hell of a lot more likely to lift that curse, and damn Wynn and his schemes.

Dustin fell asleep to that thought.

He woke to an odd grinding sound against his wrist. Flinching, Dustin automatically tried to pull his hand away.

“Just hold still,” Olthon said, holding his hand in place with a thick leather glove. “I’m almost done.” The Rockfarmer was sawing through Dustin’s enchanted cuff with a serrated, fiery orange dagger that Dustin had never seen before.

Dustin’s heart gave an extra excited thump. “You’re taking them off!” Olthon had always claimed his weapon wasn’t strong enough to survive the Ganlin magics that had made Dustin’s cuffs, so he’d been unwilling to try.

“Yeah,” Olthon said amicably, “with the Vethyles killing everyone, I figured it was time to intervene. I bought this dagger after your last visit. I was gonna surprise you, but oh well. We’re getting these off you, and rot the Spyre and its feathered dandies.”

Dustin grinned, despite himself. ‘Rot the Spyre’ had been a common drinking salute that he and his friends had often toasted to, made famous by the foot soldiers in the last war with Etro. Rot the Spyre and its feathered dandies. They don’t even know what season it is without looking out the window. Rhydderch had said it particularly convincingly, whenever Dustin could get the wily young buck drunk.

Olthon kept sawing, forcing the blade through the metal like a hot spoon through soft fat. The heat coming from the blade actually made Dustin grin, reminding him of an old friend.

“The knife’s enchantment is holding,” Dustin noted, impressed. Nowadays, it took a strong enchantment to carve through something made by Wynfor Ganlin and his ilk. He found himself grinning like a love-drunk fool as he watched the blade melt through the metal, bringing him ever-closer to freedom. “Rot the Spyre.” He said it hungrily, focused intently on every fraction of an inch that the blade gained on his path to liberty. At about half an inch left, the cuff’s enchantments sputtered and started fighting back, forcing Olthon to put more of his back into it…

Unbidden, Rhydderch Vethyle appeared in the back of his mind, arms crossed, giving him that look that he had given him so many times in the past, during the last war. The look that Dustin was missing something so epic and unmissable that he was willing to stand around wasting both of their time until Dustin blundered his way into figuring it out.

“Oh shut up,” Dustin said, making a face.

The weird tattoos on Olthon’s skin swirled suddenly and the Rockfarmer froze, tensing. “Excuse me?”

Dustin made a dismissive wave. “Just remembering a war buddy from before your time. Hurry up.”

The blade continued to hesitate, and Olthon’s tension did not go away. “Like who?”

“Oh for the love of the gods, boy!” Dustin cried, slapping Olthon on the back. “Stop teasing me and finish it!” Seeing the cuff already four fifths of the way off, he was getting an overwhelming rush of excitement at the prospect of rising to greet the sun again. Sure, it was well past midnight, so he’d have to wait a few hours, but what was a few hours after a hundred and nine years of captivity?

Olthon hesitated a moment longer, then tensely went back to his work. The metal of the cuff was melting slowly, peeling away from the blade as if the sun itself were focusing its forces upon its target.

In fact, it reminded Olthon of much the same way a drake’s power would have melted the—

Dustin’s breath caught. The warm, welcoming feel of the blade, the odd way Olthon’s enchanted sword had felt so familiar the first time he’d seen it, Maelys’ odd daze after Olthon had returned her to her chair, the way the tattoos triggered an ancient memory…

Dustin’s hand caught Olthon’s dagger and held it before Olthon could finish cutting through the cuff, his hands absorbing the heat of the blade.

Feeling it against his skin, there was absolutely no question in his mind. The power emanating from this weapon had once belonged to one of Dustin’s kind.

Still, it took Dustin several moments to process that. In the background of his mind, Rhydderch Vethyle grabbed an apple and sat in a nearby chair, biting into it with interest.

When he finally did put it together, Dustin’s fingers tightened on the blade, punching through the metal there. Olthon gasped, but the Rockfarmer didn’t let go of the knife.

“I’d like to know why,” Dustin asked softly, “every time I come here, you ask me if I found any more drakes in the mountains.”

Olthon, who had gone totally stiff, laughed and carefully pried the blade from Dustin’s hand. “Careful of the blade, man. Shit. You punched holes in it.”

“Answer my question,” Dustin snapped.

Olthon stopped smiling. “I want to hear of my immortal friend’s latest sexual exploits.” He grabbed Dustin’s wrist and started sawing at the cuff again. “I mean, it’s not every day a guy gets to bed a drake. Now just hold still so I can get this over with, okay?” He was sawing faster, now. Almost desperate.

Dustin ripped the blade out of Olthon’s hand, pulling it away from the cuff. There was just a fraction of an inch of the ensorcelled metal left, which usually would have thrilled him, but now he was getting a cold chill. “Why did you never offer to do this before?” he asked, turning the blade over in his hand, looking for a maker’s mark.

“I had to find the proper weapon,” Olthon babbled, looking like he wanted to lunge forward and grab it from Dustin’s hand. “It had to be something old, from before the Aulds lost their power.”

The mark was the same that Dustin had seen on every Vethyle hip for the last hundred years. Two opposing loops in a figure-8 with Vs coming off the intersection of the 8.

Why in the hells was that making his skin prickle with goosebumps?

Dustin had always assumed it was initials for a name in some other language and had dismissed it—the good swordsmiths were often given to fanciful signatures—but he knew most of the other languages, and the symbol looked like nothing he had ever seen before.

Unless…

Flies. Dustin almost dropped the dagger. They’re flies!

He must have said it out loud, because Olthon made a nervous sound. “Doesn’t look like flies to me. Probably a couple of flowers or—

Dustin suddenly remembered where he had heard of something similar to those tattoos before. They had been on objects that Thibault would leave in the path of someone particularly troublesome to him, back in the Great War. Witnesses had said that just before their companion’s soul was absorbed into the object and trapped there, the object would come alive with ever-changing ethereal lines, like the bars of a cage.

“You need the cuffs off because they’re protecting me.” Dustin said it softly, barely audible, because he was so angry he was having trouble seeing through the ethereal flames that had begun dancing around him. The temperature of the room was rising, and the thatch overhead started to tremble under the rising gusts of heat.

Olthon looked up, and Dustin saw fear in his eyes. “I don’t know what you’re—”

“All those times I came to your home and you asked me about drakes,” Dustin said, “you were using me to kill my own kind.” His hand had fisted on the dagger and his fingers were melting through the hilt. “And now that I’ve told you I’ve run out of drakes to bed, you were gonna take me, too.” Dustin squeezed harder, intent on driving the drake’s soul free of its prison and burning the cottage to the ground.

Olthon glanced at the way the dagger was starting to sputter under Dustin’s grip, rapidly gaining heat and energy as the material holding the soul began to melt away. His eyes came up to meet Dustin’s. A moment later, he lurched to his feet, reaching for his sword.

Dustin was ready for him. He lunged, ramming what was left of the dagger into Olthon’s gut.

The Rockfarmer screamed and stumbled backwards, molten metal dripping from his abdomen. Dustin followed him down, climbing on top of him in his rage.

“How dare you?!” Dustin screamed, pressing Olthon’s neck to the ground with the chain between his wrists. The enchanted links had reformed after Maelys had dragged him through the mountain, reconnecting the bands while he slept as they always did, regardless of how many times he cut it. “I trusted you! You were a friend.” As Olthon struggled to rise, he got the chain wrapped around the Rockfarmer’s neck and yanked back as hard as he could.

Olthon, gagging and on fire, started twisting, kicking, crawling away as he tried to get out from underneath him.

“So did you wait for them to lay their clutches before you killed them?!” Dustin screamed, taking the boy back down before he could pull out of reach. “Or did you leave my children to die in their mothers’ wombs?!”

Olthon was hitting him, kicking him, but Dustin didn’t feel it now. All he could see, all he could think, was that this boy—whose life Dustin had saved twice over—had betrayed every hope, every ounce of trust and friendship he’d offered in good faith. He was a monster that had laughed at his jokes, played games, drank with him, called him a friend, and all along he was a parasite, sucking out Dustin’s hopes and dreams and stealing their souls for inanimate objects. Murdering his lovers and children.

His opponent was howling as his skin crackled and burned under Dustin’s grip. He was still scrambling to reach the sword, which had fallen to the side in the struggle. Dustin responded by grabbing the boy by the temples, searing his scalp with his hands, setting his hair aflame. “You,” he snarled into the boy’s ear, “Aren’t leaving this place alive.” He reached for the boy’s eye-sockets with his thumbs.

Olthon somehow managed to get a foot between them before Dustin found his eyes and kicked him away. He scrambled backwards and Dustin should have fallen in the opposite direction, but rage was a funny thing in a drake. In his natural form, the laws of physics did not apply, and like a lick of flame, he could move freely in any direction he wanted. In his mortal form, he should have been bound by gravity and tumbled into the opposite wall, giving Olthon a chance to escape.

But rage made for an entirely different game of chits. Dustin felt himself surge across the room like a meteor, slamming into the Rockfarmer and taking him down in a clatter of burning furniture.

“I will see you to hell!” he shrieked, pummeling at Olthon’s chest and head. “Go. To. Hell!”

Olthon, whose face was crisping like a roast pig, shouted through bubbling skin, “You can’t kill me!”

“Oh by gods I can,” Dustin snarled with insane laughter. “Even full-blood Rockfarmers can die, boy, and the full-bloods are long dead.”

“I have part of her soul!” Olthon screamed, as Dustin’s fingers sank into his flesh, sizzling. “You kill me, she dies!”

Dustin froze.

Olthon used Dustin’s shock to kick himself free and scrabble backwards. For long heartbeats, the Rockfarmer stood there wheezing in gasps, his skin black and flaking from his body. He was shaking all over. Parts of him were falling off.

“Go to Hell, drake,” Olthon said, and it sounded somewhere between a whisper and a sob. Then he stepped forward. It took Dustin a moment to realize that Olthon had somehow grabbed the ice sword in his escape, and now he was raising it over his head…

Dustin experienced a strange duality as the blade came down between his brows, separating his eyes further than they’d ever naturally been apart before.

“You have no idea what they took from me,” Olthon babbled, as he yanked the sword free and Dustin tumbled forward, still drunkenly trying to correlate the strange positions of his eyes. The ice blade was now popping and sizzling where it was covered with his blood, making a weird vibrating noise in Olthon’s hands. “Of course I used you,” Olthon sneered. “They left me here to rot.” This time, when he brought the sword down, it separated Dustin’s head from his body entirely, and Dustin had only a moment of consciousness to note Olthon dropping the now-ruined ice blade and running before his world exploded in an inferno of flames followed by total, unnatural darkness.