Part 3

The Dragons of Shadow

The soul so wounded does live still,

the heart still beats within;

when descends the deathly chill

and love and hope fray thin,

do not allow me wait in vain

for times that will not be.

I at least can feel thy pain

and heal thy heart for thee.

~ from ‘Ode to the Zara’

(collections of surviving arts of Alti)

“Genetic markers for magical ability do not, of course, dictate the actual ability of the practitioner. At present, they are known only to correlate roughly to one’s prowess and capacity. Nonetheless, it is widely accepted that genetic testing for magic users will be an increasingly valuable tool in the future.”

~ Bek Trent, M.A.S.O

It was warm. She was warm, safe, ensconced in her bed sheets. This was the first thing Silver realized as she struggled slowly from the depths of a heavy slumber, blinking her eyes open. The second was that the world was bright, painfully bright, driving the dark reaches of her mind away from her conscious self. The light that flooded her eyes made her squeeze them closed again, turning her head away.

That proved to be a mistake.

Pain seared through the muscles of her neck, throbbing in hot bursts all through her back and chest so sharply that the breath caught in her throat. The reflex caused her to cough, and that brought a renewed flood of pain. Black spots danced before her barely opened eyes. With no more sense than a beast caught in the ruthless jaws of an unassailable foe, she held her breath, waiting for the sensations that overwhelmed her to subside. Unconsciousness threatened to suck her under again. She could feel it, just at the edges of her mind. Maybe she welcomed it.

But Silver’s body, now that it had been awakened, resisted sliding back into nightmares of fire and magic. There was no way for her to know how long she had been asleep. Days, maybe. Long enough for her muscles to protest every breath she took.

Gradually, as she lay willing herself to absolute stillness, the pain subsided. Her raw nerves settled, retreating to hot points of rage beneath her skin. More cautiously than before, Silver tried to raise her arm to shield her eyes before opening them. The movement was slow and clumsy, and her arm felt like a lead weight balanced at the end of a long stick.

Her waking memories were coming back to her now. None of what she had thought were nightmares were actually nightmares - the fire, the demon, her fall into the roiling river waters...What would the MASO think of her now? Deep in her gut, she knew the Zara had come because of her. Why or how, she had no clue, but she could not shake the certainty that it was her fault. What if the agency refused to take her back? What if they stopped her from graduating and starting college in the Fall? Graduation should have been the least of her worries. Silver knew that. But rational thought had no place amidst her pain or her exhaustion.

It felt like her whole world had crumbled down around her. No family. No money. No graduation. No college. None of the things she had spent most of her life striving for, whether because she wanted them or because her other options hardly felt like options at all, were available to her now.

The burn of tears behind her eyelids surprised her. So did the sob that crept up through her chest, escaping her parted lips. The pain that came with it only worsened the sting.

“I was supposed to be a vet,” she choked. How many times had she and Kerie and Skye sat around the lunch table, fighting over where they were going to go, what they would do – those moments felt hundreds of years away. “I wanted…to study genetics.” She grimaced. “Everyone was supposed to…” she struggled to breathe around her own ugly tears, and around the image she had imagined for herself. Her parents touring the university with her. Lena and Ren coming to visit the dorms, amazed that she managed to live by herself. Driving home on the weekends, and packing her car sometimes for a trip out west to visit Kerie and Skye.

Unable to stop herself, she sobbed in silence, the tears plastering her hair to her cheeks and making her face uncomfortably damp, but the pain too much for her to turn away. She finally stopped only when she began to seriously fear that she was going to suffocate in her own snot. Bone-deep weariness pressed her down into the softness of the bed. Slowly, calm stole through her. It might not last, but for a moment at least, she was too weary to take her own despair anymore.

And as Silver lay there, unable to move without hissing in pain, hardly able to open her own eyes, she came to a realization she had never anticipated. For once, she had no idea where she was headed. She had spent her whole life, whether she realized it or not, working from one goal to the next. Maybe that was what she had sensed standing up on the bleachers above the school – that the familiar dreams she had grown up with might be comfortable, but that was all they were. Idealized fantasies. She was mourning the loss of something that she had never had, something she would never have.

Maybe the things she had spent her life planning for herself were not the things she was meant to do. Maybe they were not really even the things she wanted to do. Maybe, there was more to the world. Maybe…

Maybe, like a ship without mooring, she was lost at sea. The familiar shores she had spent her life looking back at had slipped away some time in the night, too late for her to notice her mistake and correct her course. Now she had two options. Try to find her way back, however unlikely her success seemed, or stay her course and hope there were not thousands of miles of open sea ahead of her.

Only one of those options made sense. Her family was gone, so there was no point in turning back. Silver did not know, after what had happened to her, if she would ever find them again. All she knew was that, if there was even the slightest chance that she would, it had to start with her believing they were alive somewhere. She had to search for them. And she had to kill the Zara, whatever the cost.

“Live or die, Silver,” she whispered aloud. The sound of the words was soothing somehow. “Give up, or fight till your last breath.” Like a light in the endless darkness, her answer was as clear to her as a beacon. It always had been.

A headache throbbed at her temples as she lay in silence, until finally she turned to stare blankly at a wood-paneled wall. The wood was dark, perhaps freshly stained, and there was a single chair leaning up against it. Someone might have sat there, not long ago. It was angled so that they could have watched her sleep if they so chose. At the foot of the chair was a wool blanket, folded neatly. A single oil painting decorated the walls, a plane frame with two violet orchids. She had the sense that the room was very small, and it only had a single door.

Eventually, her eyes had adjusted enough for her to peer in the direction of the light source, a large window whose panes were crusted with so much ice she could see nothing outside. Judging by the lighting, she could guess that it was snowing thickly. Unfortunately, her headache was growing more painful, and she once more squeezed her eyes tightly closed, hoping to block out the pain.

It was voices that woke Silver a second time. She could not hear them at first, since they were punctuated by the clattering thump of footsteps growing ever closer to her room. Slowly, however, her understanding became sharper, as if she were only in that moment reaching the surface of the surging river waters she had thought would be her grave. It helped that the light from the window was gone. She must have slept until dark.

“It’s a bad omen, I’m telling you. Howling, every night, like a damn ghost, it gives me the willies. All that blood…and then we find her.” Silver recognized a man’s deeper tones beyond the doorway.

“She was brought by Sheserillis,” a woman answered, “You know as well as I do that we have no choice but to help her. The river spirits do not choose their witnesses lightly.”

“Spirit’s not the problem, Cara. It’s the ice bird’s injuries that’ve got me spooked. What cuts a twenty-foot beast to ribbons and leaves it for dead? It’s bad enough thinking what we’ve brought on ourselves bringing the child in, but the eggs too. Whatever’s out there—”

“Honey, the jishereanal happa have watched over this part of the forest for centuries. If both the MASO and the beasts have begun to move, we know what we’re dealing with. I told you this day would come,” the woman, presumably Cara, answered.

“Doesn’t make us ready.” Several seconds of silence passed, broken only by the sound of their movement in the hallway.

“We’ll never be ready, Lieno,” Cara’s voice was soft. The other voice was a long time in answering. Lieno, Silver repeated to herself, hoping she could at least remember the names of her would-be saviors.

“This is different. You said those are the river spirit’s eggs? Never heard of such a thing. I know when you’re lying to me, and I know when it’s for all of our own good. But the MASO wants them, Cara. You heard their offer. They made their position clear.”

“I know.”

“This is it, then? You’re sure? All this time, we warned them, told them to stop digging, told them to stop with the secrets. They’re too many secrets for all of us to shoulder. And the beasts aren’t like magic. Can’t just wrap them up in a magic veil and write them away with pretty words. We’ll be the ones to break it all.”

When Cara’s voice came again, it was carefully consoling. “Exactly as you said, we can’t be wrapped up in a magic veil and written away…”

“This’ll bring us to ruin, spooks and beasts and pretty words, all of it.”

“Even if she was—”

“Then we’ll speak with her now,” the man said, cutting the woman off. Silver felt a flare of panic as footsteps approached the tiny room where she lay. They were coming, and she had nowhere to hide. It was doubtful she could even stand.

With a muffled groan, Silver managed to sit up, clutching at her stomach and chest, where it felt as if someone were stabbing her repeatedly with a hot knife. The door flew open. In that moment, she found herself staring just as warily at the man in the doorway as he stared at her. There was suspicion in his dark gaze, the light of someone resigned to the inevitable, but opposed to it nonetheless. His expression made his feelings clear as well. There was no humor in his face, and the thick, dark hair that framed his bony skull and ample cheeks gave her the impression of a bear glaring at her from across the room. For an instant, he was more frightening to her than Zara. Then he spoke.

“Thought she’d be in worse shape after how she looked when we found her.”

It was clear Lieno did not think Silver would understand, probably because he was suddenly speaking some other language. A part of her wondered if she was using the same trick that had let her understand the river spirit to understand his garbled tongue. Regardless, Silver determined to pretend she did not understand a word of what he said.

The man took several quick steps toward her bedside to make room for the woman Silver assumed must be Cara. Silver only had the briefest impression of deep blue eyes and fiery red hair before the man blocked her view.

“So, who are you? What happened to you?” he asked in English. Silver’s wary mind worked quick, sharp little circles as his calloused hands rose to cross over his chest. There was no way he did not do manual labor for a living.

“Why did the Sheserillis bring you to us?” he probed. Silver started to speak, but the woman interrupted Lieno before he could.

“Be gentler, Lieno.” Cara had put a hand on the man’s shoulder, moving back into view. Silver reluctantly drew her gaze away from the bear-like man to stare at the woman she suspected was his wife. Cara was nothing like him, certainly. She was thin and nearly as pale as Silver, with sapphire eyes and hair like burnished copper. There was something doll-like about her, from her narrow hips to her delicately pointed chin. She wore a loose blue sweater and tight jeans, and her fingers pinched the fabric of that sweater as she regarded Silver thoughtfully. While Lieno’s expression remained dubious, Cara’s was motherly. “She’s not much older than Gilgrin – imagine if he was in her position.”

The man’s eyes flashed as he cast them up and down the bed. Silver had the sense he was gauging her height. “She’s one of their agents, Cara, and if what you said is true, our danger increases every second we waste here,” he explained.

“We’re safe, for now. The Zara can’t pass through the Veil.”

“Not yet, anyway,” Lieno huffed. “What’s your name,” he repeated then, meeting Silver’s gaze.

Silver answered this time, deciding that Cara was a person she absolutely wanted on her side.

“Explain what happened,” Cara asked gently.

With a questioning glance at Lieno, Silver explained. “I work for the MASO. Those eggs were stolen from the agency by the Zara, and I chased after them with the river spirit. We fought…the Zara almost killed us both, but the ice bird,” she continued, recalling the cry that had echoed through the forest moments before she lost consciousness, “I think it must have intervened at the last second.”

Lieno stared at her, processing what she had said. “You’re saying the Zara broke through the MASO’s defenses.” She could feel the calculating reassertion of his gaze. Silver nodded quickly, then winced and paled as pain shot through her neck and shoulders.

The man turned to Cara. “Not as safe as we might like to think, if the MASO’s circuit failed.” Cara frowned slightly. Lieno turned back to Silver. “You managed to get your prize back, agent. You plan to return to the MASO with it?”

From his expression, Silver decided this was no idle question, and she had no answer to it. Lieno seemed to take as much from her continued silence. After a long moment, he exhaled through his teeth. The tension washed out of his shoulders.

“Well, Silver, my name’s Lieno. Since you’ve been so kind as to tell me the truth, and I can tell because of Rayori there, I’ll tell you something you might find useful.” He had pointed briefly at the open door, and now Silver saw that there was in fact one more girl standing in the doorway behind Cara; a teenager with the deep red hair of her presumed mother, but much darker eyes. The teenager currently had her hair twisted around one finger, lips pulled up in an impish grin. “The MASO’s not the only bunch interested in you.”

“What do you mean?” Silver asked as she turned her attention back to Lieno.

“See for yourself.” Again, he pointed at the door, and now there was another set of eyes peering at her. Inhuman eyes like chipped peridot. In an instant, she knew them and their owner. This beast had saved her life.

Silver stared mutely as the wolf entered the room with its head low, graceful, swift, eyes touching on every human, ears swiveling from side to side. They met in silence, regarding one another like strangers.

“Elorian,” she heard herself say softly. Both ear swiveling abruptly forward, the beast raised its head. She could read the beasts words in its expression more clearly than ever before.

“We meet again, human.” But there was more meaning, words that had no place in any spoken language. The wolf planned to stay with her.

“Seems they know each other,” Lieno said in the language Silver was not meant to understand, glancing between her and the wolf.

“Allow me to mediate, Lieno,” Cara gently inserted herself more into the center of the room, running a reassuring hand down her husband’s arm. “It seems clear there’s no danger in this room. Get some rest.”

Lieno gave her hand a return squeeze, but did not seem concerned about leaving them alone. Rayori went with him as he left, and the door snapped shut in their wake. In the silence that followed, the woman regarded both Silver and the wolf with an expression Silver could not quite understand. There was warmth in it, at least.

“My name is Cara. It’s lovely to meet you, Silver. For this small village of Icthuria, I am the one who speaks with the beasts. I can’t understand them the way you can, but they make their words clear to me.”

“You mean I really…how do you know I can—?” Silver began, but Cara’s smile interrupted her. Serene, expectant. Somehow, Silver had the sense that Cara had expected the outburst.

“It’s obvious. I’m very good at sensing magic, and yours is distinctive. I also know this wolf, and the pack of tree wolves she runs with. That’s why I’m here.”

The woman reached behind her, pulling the wooden chair out from the wall to sit. She gestured to the wolf, who settled comfortably at the edge of the bed, eyes turning sometimes to Silver as if expecting her to suddenly disappear.

“If you’ve worked with the MASO at all, you must know about the mythical beasts. Do you know anything about the tensions between them and mankind?”

Silver answered warily. “A bit.” Cara offered a weaker smile.

“There’s a lot to tell, and it might be better for you to hear it from them than from me. In their own words. But there’s one thing you have to hear. The dragons, Silver, were the kings of beasts. Srinn, they called them. However diverse the beasts were, and however powerful, very few ever went against the wishes of the dragons and survived. That was what it meant to be king of beasts – the apex predator in both might and magic. There were many gifts the dragons brought to this world, but to the beasts they were an irreplaceable power. In their absence, the world has never been the same.”

“How did they end up extinct?” Silver asked when the woman paused for a moment. Cara seemed to consider the question for a moment. The wolf filled the silence with a thunderous rumble.

“Driven to extinction by one of their own.”

Cara, as she had said, clearly did not understand, but also clearly knew the wolf had answered. “There are some who say they simply left. Hunted by mankind, ruled by violence and power, dreadfully intelligent…some say they sought peace and were lost in what the beasts call the Divide. What the beasts believe depends on who you ask.” Cara paused, eyes brightening. For an instant, Silver thought the woman would look away, but she did not. “Silver, I have no right to tell you what to do, but please…don’t return the dragon eggs to the MASO.”

Silver furrowed her brows. Cara seemed to understand her surprise, but said nothing about it.

“The MASO is the lynchpin in our current world order. Without them, there would be very few of us left who know about the mythical beasts, and fewer who could forge any sort of peace with them. Right now, a darkness grows in the heart of the forest, and it feeds on the chaos among the beasts. Many of them are no different than us, and yet humanity slowly soaks up their territory, destroying their way of life. We won’t be forgiven…Now the MASO says they want to recreate the dragons, for science, or for the future of magic. If they succeed, it will drive a deeper wedge between us and the beasts. The MASOs dragons will side with mankind, giving the agency incredible power over the beasts. Those eggs the river spirit helped you protect from the Zara are the greatest treasure the beasts have ever dreamt of.”

“But why would the Zara want them?” Silver asked, glancing between the red-head and the wolf, and wincing with every movement. Even her eyeballs ached in their sockets.

“The dragons are the key, Silver, to ruling over the beasts. Whether there will be peace between men and beasts depends entirely on those two eggs.”

“And what do you want me to do about that, exactly?” Silver asked.

Cara gestured to the wolf, who was watching her piercingly. “Walk with us, human. Speak for us. Be our voice among men. We will fight for these two, and one day they will be srinn of beasts once more. We will find a peace in which men and beasts coexist, and magic is not forgotten.”

Silver felt herself shaking her head, the weight of both the wolf and Cara’s words weighing heavily on her. Every movement sapped whatever strength she had regained in the hours since she had fallen back asleep. Hunger carved a hollow in her aching belly.

“This…I’m just…” she rubbed her eyes wearily, “I’m too hungry for this.”

Cara made a small sound of realization, standing suddenly.

“Of course you are! Let me go and grab you something from the kitchen. In the meantime,” the woman stopped, pulling a wide, deep drawer beneath the bed outward. The wolf shifted just enough to avoid being touched. Nestled inside were Silver’s clothes from the MASO, which were woefully inadequate for trekking through the woods, and to her surprise, the dragon eggs. “I thought these would stay warm in here, and they seem to like your company.”

“Excuse me?” Silver questioned. Cara smiled at her.

“Even unborn, they sense you and your magic. Now, I’ll be back in a bit.” With that, the woman hurried from the room. Behind her, the door clicked softly – the sound of a lock. So it was that they were left alone, girl and beast. With Cara gone, the house was draped in the noiseless, lifeless cloak of the indoor night. Between them, there was no sound, until finally Silver broke the silence.

“You asked me to have courage.”

The beast flicked its hooded ears, the meaning so clear to her the wolf might as well have spoken. “So I did.”

“Is this why you saved me? Just to be the ‘voice of the beasts’?” The wolf’s lip raised a little, a clear denial. “Then why?” Silver asked.

“Because you were in danger.” Silver stared hard at the beast, and it laid its ears back as it shifted its head to its paws. “Because I have watched you. I wanted you to live.”

Inexplicably, Silver felt heat in her face once more. Tears blurred her vision. The wolf had saved her, but no one else. Her alone. In silence, she felt the beast move closer to her, the warmth of its fur pressing against her bare arm. Its animal scent filled the space around her; it was the scent of something wild – warm, familiar – but wild, and it sent fresh tingles of fear down her spine. This was the scent of the open world, a place she had never known.

“It’s strange, Elorian,” she finally whispered, and her voice echoed strangely in the stillness, the name that she had somehow known the moment they met alien on her tongue. The wolf remained there, strangely intimate, but she was silent again until her stomach growled and she frowned in frustration.

“I can’t go home. I really can’t. I knew the moment I turned and saw the house on fire. I couldn’t shake the feeling, even then, that I would have a place to return to at the end of the day, a warm bed, a place to hide from everything terrifying in my life. Like the night I saw the Zara for the first time. What I wouldn’t give for that night…” she lapsed into silence as her eyes blurred.

More tears, and for what? Tears that would bring back what?

Nothing.

“My home is…it’s gone forever. Suddenly that seems like such a long time.” The wolf did not seem to mind when Silver finally leaned into the thick fur of its neck to hide her tears. It merely watched her in silence, green eyes bright with sorrow. She remained like that for a long time, comforted by the only one in the world who had witnessed her pain on the night she lost everything.

“Why only me?” she sobbed. “Why did you only save me?”

The wolf was silent. Why would it not speak anymore?

“If you had only come a little sooner…” Silver continued.

Its words, when it finally did speak, surprised her.

“You still live, human?” She stayed silent for a long moment, unsure how to respond.

“What kind of question is that?” she finally asked thickly.

“Answer.”

“Yeah. I do.” She sat up so that she could look the wolf in the face, and wipe the tears from her cheeks. The wolf averted its green-eyed gaze.

“You asked why forever seems so long?” Silver tipped an eyebrow, and nodded, listening.

“Forever is not something for humans. Humans, beasts of flesh and blood, things that humans do not think of as alive, all die in time. Forever is neither long nor short. It does not exist.” She stared at the wolf, uncomprehending, and somewhat startled by the bluntness of this statement, made more impactful by the fact that the wolf used no words to convey it. Its belief was plain in every facet of its being.

“I could not have stopped you that night if you had run back into the flames. Slowed you, maybe, but not stopped. Why did you hesitate?” the beast asked. Silver made no answer. “All things know, to live in the absence of one’s pack brings suffering. But to die ends all things. You did not see your family lose their lives, human. I believe you knew…so long as you live, there is a chance you will meet them again.”

The wolf finally turned its gaze back on her, and Silver felt her face break into a broad but sad smile. Still, her laughter at that moment was genuine. The wolf cocked its head as fresh tears ran down her cheeks, this time from laughing too soon after she had stopped crying. She wiped them away once more.

“Why do you make such obvious things sound so profound?” she asked through her laughter, “I don’t even know why I’m happy right now. It’s definitely not normal. Then again, none of this is.” She leaned back into the bed, allowing the last of her laughter to fade into a satisfied sigh. “Cara was right. I don’t think we’re so different, wolf. Not so different at all. If I plan to find my family, I have to believe they’ll be trying to find me, too, right? I have to trust in them. But I also…can’t bring the Zara back to them. If I keep these eggs safe, will you help me, Elorian? We have to kill the Zara.”

She glanced slyly at the wolf, who dipped its head in acknowledgement, and at the edge of the bed, dropped something as black as space. Silver stared at it, unsure what the wolf had brought her.

“A gift, human. Scales of the Zara, and proof of my resolve. I do not know much of magic, but among beasts we know that such things hold great power. Let us use them to destroy the beasts of shadow.”

“Together?” Silver asked softly.

“Together,” the beast affirmed.