THE FORESTS OF KALREIN

FROM BROKEN DREAMS

CHAPTER III

“...when none can slow the dark advance

the green enlists a second chance...”

Leiro Nvwnle Dynde XIV:III

1:3:3:4/5, III:IX

Thanks to Jorn’s powers as a speaker, Larin had mastered Kholl’s sibilant language in the weeks since her escape. She learned to recognize the sharp whistle when the dragons warned of someone’s approach, and she vanished to the loft each time until they were alone again. Rather than admit the stable brat could best his mind reading, Haisrir reported that Jorn had never seen the runaway blonde. After several days of hunting parties scouring the landscape in ever-widening circles, the baron called off the search.

“Well, Rikal’s had her clutch,” Jorn announced, climbing back to the loft in the predawn light. “She ate her afterbirth today, and probably won’t eat again for a few days at least. She’s giving us her food for now.” Hauling up the pail from below, he withdrew a cast iron pan filled with bloody chunks of wyvern steak, hacked from one of the much larger cuts the dragons consumed each day. “I hid the rest – we’ve got about three days’ worth now, and twice that if she’s off her food again tomorrow.”

“That’s great news!” Rations for the barony’s slaves consisted of stale flatbread, which Jorn split with her, and the occasional dried fruit, which luckily contained live seeds. The both of them would have starved long ago if Larin hadn’t grown fresh fruit from those seeds each day. “Can you cook it first, or...?”

Jorn snorted, clearing straw from a blackened slab in the corner. “This isn’t the first time someone’s gone off their food, you know,” he teased, stacking stones in a tight square and crumbling thresh into the center. “Finding wood’s the hard part, but I keep a stash in the cellar.” After positioning the splintered remnants of a table leg over the thresh, he cleared the floor in a wide circle and lit the fire from a lantern, monitoring every spark in case it made for the tinder surrounding them. “It’s not the best place to cook,” admitted Jorn, “but it is the least conspicuous.”

Once the initial flames died back and Jorn balanced the pan over the heat, Larin returned to growing seeds into fruit. Each one took effort like she’d never known outside Kholl’s barren landscape, and the task became no easier despite the repetition. Moreover, her injuries had yet to heal – a collar of blueish bruises still circled her neck, and she preferred to sling her right arm when standing – but the wyvern would help, and her stomach growled for it.

They ate with their fingers, plucking hot lumps of meat straight out of the pan and devouring them in ravenous silence. When they were gone, Jorn mopped up the pan’s drippings with a piece of flatbread, offering Larin a stuff-cheeked smile and the sodden morsel, then repeating a second for himself. “So, how many kits are there?” Larin inquired as she chewed, worry lancing through her chest at the shifting corners of Jorn’s eyes.

“Twelve,” he sighed, wiping his mouth with the back of a hand. “Twelve big healthy ones, and that’s a large clutch.” Shaking his head, he elaborated, “There’s a thirteenth too, but he won’t make it. Even Rikal says so.” The new mother could not have been happier with her strong beautiful children, but she’d lamented that the runt pained her more than a stillborn would have. At least with a stillborn, she’d said, she wouldn’t have to watch her child die.

“Why not? What’s wrong, is he sick?” pressed Larin, brushing her hands on her sturdy pants. She’d long since woven her thin shift into much warmer clothing, though it’d taken her hours of grueling concentration. Without the extra magic she’d drained from Jorn as she worked, it might have taken days to get the job done. Fortunately, he found speaking an effortless talent, and he’d offered his magic whenever she needed it. “Or is he just too small?”

“He’s tiny, Larin. I’m surprised he wasn’t stillborn–”

“Is he still alive?” she interrupted, jumping to her feet. “We might be able to save him.”

Jorn scrambled for the ladder, sliding down with his boots braced tight against the rails. “Rikal!” Clambering down after him, Larin recounted the sea wyvern runt she’d grown to a healthier size in Kanata. Though she’d depleted her energy then, she hoped Jorn’s supplement could overcome her hampered magic and save the kit’s life.

Weary at the back of her stall, the blue mother watched them approach, her black eyes gleaming with hope. Near her foreclaws slept a dozen kits the size of foxes, frail and glistening with long legs and whip tails. Their muscles would bulk in the weeks to come, and their hides weather with age. Tell her I will not blame her if he dies, requested the blue, lifting her tail to resettle it behind her thirteenth child.

Barely larger than a rat, the green kit sagged in Larin’s palms when she cradled him into her lap. She drew a long breath, eyes flickering closed, and she poured herself into the baby dragon. Her magic evaporated before she could exhale. “Jorn,” prompted the girl, “I need your help. This time, try to flow your magic into me.” Draining Jorn had taken more effort than the weaving itself, but at least he’d sensed the energy moving through him. “You remember what it felt like?”

“Yeah.” He could never forget something so vitalizing, like the wind had eddied through his lungs and out his arm. Recreating that wind in his mind, Jorn reached out. “Here.”

His fingertips brushed her shoulder and she choked, power crashing through her in a shining deluge of white. It replenished her, vivified her, spun around her with growing speed and kept coming, pressing upon her chest and making it hard to breathe. She focused somehow, channeling the magic back out and into the baby green she held.

Faster and faster, the light rushed until Larin felt her body eroding with the flow of it, in through Jorn’s hand to jolt her whole form before surging out her palms. Ears ringing, she clung to her purpose, directing the flow for as long as she could, but even the sensation of the squirming child pulverized in the face of the onslaught. “...Larin!” After an eternity, Jorn’s voice drifted to her like forgotten dreams, so far away she couldn’t recognize her own name. There was only that powerful white, bits of her senses drifting like debris within the foam.

“Larin!” He’d barely touched her! She swooned and Jorn eased her onto the straw, brushing her hair aside with frantic fingers. The now oversized kit pranced over to Rikal, who broke into a croon at his triumphant whistle, but Jorn hovered over Larin long after her pulse stopped fluttering.

She’d changed as she’d fallen. One moment she’d looked herself, and the next instant a breathtaking woman slumped into Jorn’s arms, her beauty waning before his eyes. Larin’s burst of color drained away, that vibrancy eking out of her and settling back into the young woman he recognized, but she’d looked like Larin the whole time – exactly the same, yet somehow completely different.

“Mother, please be all right... Larin! Larin, wake up!” Had he killed her? What’d just happened?

She breathes, Rikal soothed. Let her rest. She smells exhausted.

From his stall near the back door, Lithon called, And the kit? He couldn’t contain his anxiety any longer. How is he?

He is perfect! exulted the blue, trumpeting into the air. He is large now, practically a dragonet already! Though obviously the kit hadn’t become an adolescent, Rikal’s claim spurred Lithon to burst from his stall, splintering the gate and tearing up the threshed walkway. He reared his foreclaws onto Rikal’s door and gazed at the clutch, trumpeting at the green kit.

“What’s going on in there?!” a voice shattered across Jorn’s thoughts. Within moments the joyful cries silenced, and Lithon pushed off the stall door to land facing Haisrir as he stormed into the building. “What have you done? Get that brute shut back in! You’ll pay for letting it destroy that wood!”

Rikal jumped to her feet faster than Jorn did, settling herself between the door and Larin. Do not wake now, she urged the unconscious girl.

Squeezing out behind the bristling red, Jorn latched Rikal’s door and shrugged. “The blue just had her clutch this morning,” explained the stablehand, shoving Lithon toward his stall. “There wasn’t much I could do. The red got overexcited, Master Haisrir.”

Head low and glaring his challenge, Lithon refused to budge. I will finally bite this monster in half, he informed Jorn, ignoring the young man’s protests and leaping at the elf with an outraged bellow. Haisrir threw up a hand and the red hung frozen in mid-air, until a spiteful jerk of the elf’s fingers flipped Lithon into the far wall. Bleeding and stunned, the dragon crashed to the straw and lay still.

“Maybe that will teach it,” sneered the elf, strolling up to Rikal’s door and surveying the clutch. Each kit would sell for a small fortune once they weaned.

“Was that even necessary?” Jorn growled, gesturing to the crumpled red. “When the baron finds out you–”

“He won’t find out!” corrected Haisrir, whirling to cuff Jorn in the temple. From where she lay, Rikal growled in warning but couldn’t move without unveiling Larin. “I’ll cut out your tongue and feed it to these beasts if that’s what it takes!”

For a fragile moment, Jorn’s outrage battled his better judgment. But a week of split lips and fractures seemed well worth Larin’s safety, so with a crazed grin, he hauled back and slammed the elf square in the nose. Blood spurted, coating Jorn’s knuckles in a red slick darker than any blood he’d seen. “Just keep her safe!” he shouted to Rikal, bolting for the stable door. Screaming in fury, Haisrir stumbled backward and gave chase, halting the stablehand two stalls away and pummeling his face to the floor. Jorn curled up and Haisrir kicked him until the speaker coughed blood onto the trampled straw.

Over his panting, the elf’s sharp ears picked up a moan from the blue’s stall, which she covered with a quick wail. Suspicious, Haisrir cast his focus through the area and scraped up a few sluggish fragments of thought. Leaving Jorn to retch on the floor, he jerked the door open, flicked Rikal a few feet into the air, and pulled Larin’s limp body into the corridor. Haisrir snatched her by the shirt, delivering a spiteful kick to Jorn’s ribs as he passed. “You haven’t seen her,” he spat, dragging Larin toward the door. “And you? You’ll be sorry you ran!”

(continued...)