Dragon's Treasure, page 13
“War is coming. I can’t stop it. I need every asset I can get. If I can’t have that mirror, then Leana’s magic will do.”
Over my dead body will I allow Noctere to look into that mirror. It warped far stronger men than him.
“You have something better,” I tell him.
“What?”
“Me.” I lean forward slightly. “I’m sure you’ve heard stories, Noctere. The stories your father told you might even hold a kernel more truth than the stories my mate heard. So you know I am quite capable at killing dragons. Do you doubt me?”
He swallows, then stares at me wide-eyed for a long moment. I decide to be patient; I suppose his entire world view has been forced to shift. “No,” he says finally.
“Good.” I stand. “Let’s end this, then. I have a mate waiting for me.”
24. Leana
Once I can’t see Osir at all anymore, I venture into the cave.
I couldn’t have imagined half as many jewels in the entire world. The whole cave glitters, every inch seemingly covered with piles of jewelry. All of it seems too grand for me to even look at, let alone touch. I feel the instinctive reaction to keep my hands firmly at my sides, before I break something—or be accused of stealing it.
But I hear Osir’s voice in my head, telling me this is mine now. That these are my jewels, that I have gone from a servant to the type of person who wears rubies.
There is a throne made entirely of gold against the cave wall, although why on earth Osir wanted that here and not in the castle throne room is a mystery. There are chests closed against one stone wall, and I curiously open one to find it positively stuffed with reams of silk, shimmering and light as butterfly wings, and lace, as delicate and intricate as spider silk.
What I could really use, I realize as I’m wandering through the piles of accumulated treasure, is food. I haven’t eaten since before I left for the castle, and it feels like I burnt through all my energy with my fire.
Of course, no food is forthcoming. If there ever was food here, it would have rotted away a century ago.
There is wine, but I ignore it. Knowing Osir, I’m sure it’s very fine wine, but I think it’s best for me to avoid that. I get a vision of me stumbling around drunk and destroying some prized possession of Osir’s and shiver. Or worse, I could stumble outside to the sheer cliff-face and fall.
My stomach rumbles again as I set the bottle of wine down, the sound echoing off the cave walls.
What if this cave becomes my prison? I can’t leave, after all, not without jumping to my death. Will someone bring me a bag of food once a week?
No. Osir wouldn’t do that to me. This is temporary, and I can survive being hungry for a night.
Besides being hungry, I am bone-deep tired. I can feel it in every muscle, in every step. It’s like I did a week’s worth of hard chores in one go, burning out all my energy and exhausting my body.
I almost lie right on the ground, but once again I hear Osir in my mind, scolding me for passing up the opportunity for a better bed.
It feels wrong to unspool reams of silk and lay them on the ground, but I know he’d tell me to do it. I make myself a nest, and lay down to sleep, hoping that he’ll be here when I wake.
∞∞∞
I wake from a dream of Osir. In my dream, he came back to the cave. We were safe, and he’d slid into my makeshift bed right behind me, wrapping his arms around me to hold me close while we slept. He still hadn’t managed to find any clothes.
I wake up alone, and somehow colder without his imaginary warmth at my back.
I stumble out to the ledge to see if I can spot him in the distance, some foolish hope blooming in my belly, but it’s not yet dawn and I don’t have a chance of spotting him.
I do see smoke curling up into the sky. Is that the village Osir spotted yesterday, or has the attack spread further?
Either way, we are under attack, and Osir is the best person to handle it.
There’s nothing else for it. I’ll just have to ignore my twisting stomach. Osir will be back soon.
I almost clean up the fabric I made into a bed last night, but then I stop myself. Maybe Osir will be back soon. And he can change to his human form now, and…
I went so many years without worrying about things like this, but now I imagine him pushing me back into the pile of fabric. He’d follow me down, lying on top of me. And this time it wouldn’t just be his words and my own touches that make me see stars. He’ll be able to do it himself.
I close my eyes for a moment, remembering him telling me to imagine that my fingers against my throat, my breast, were his mouth. I’d give anything to feel that for real now.
I open my eyes, peeking behind me. But alas, my need for him didn’t spontaneously summon him to me.
Even so, I leave the bed. Just in case.
Surely he’ll be back soon. And while I dearly hope he doesn’t intend to spend our lives in this cave, I have no objections to starting our lives together here.
In the meantime, I suppose I can continue to poke around his hoard. I have no doubt he was serious when he told me he wanted me to pick my favorite pieces.
His own two hands. He promised me he’d present me jewelry with his own two human hands, and that promise is about to come true.
There’s more jewelry than I could ever know what to do with. There’s thousands of pieces, probably, and I find my eyes physically incapable of taking them all in. I keep looking around at areas I know I’ve already looked over, and seeing new pieces like it’s the first time I looked that way. It’s simply unbelievable.
If he keeps calling this my hoard, I’m not going to know what to do with myself.
Wear it, I suppose. I think Osir would like that.
My eyes trail over diamonds and rubies, gold chains that could wrap around my neck a half dozen times and still likely have room to spare, silver so thin and spindly it looks like it will break with a touch. I don’t dare pick any of it up, although I’m sure Osir would tell me it’s mine to take.
I’m sure he’d say it, but that doesn’t mean I quite believe it. Besides, I was serious when I said I’d only take his hoard from his two human hands.
In the furthest corner of the cave is a strange shape with a cloth over it. I stop, trying to place what it could possibly be. Everything else has been out and prominently displayed, except the fabrics which were presumably stored to preserve them. But what does a simple cloth preserve?
With Osir’s voice reminding me that this is all mine echoing in my mind, I step over and pull the cloth away.
It’s a mirror. It stands as tall as a man, with ornately carved gold edges. The glass itself looks tarnished, and I see cracks along the frame on one side. My breath catches, already realizing what this must be.
There’s only one mirror Osir would consider worth keeping here. And there must be a reason he’s so sure no one ever found his hoard, despite him being sure people looked for it. Because he knows they would have searched. And he knows that they never found the mirror.
The mirror Noctere sent me for is here. I hold my breath, watching the glass that’s responsible for so many people’s suffering.
The slightly tarnished glass grows so cloudy I can’t see my own face, like someone is blowing smoke across the glass. “Who calls upon me?”
The voice echoes around the cavern, reverberating until it is loud enough to make me cringe. I don’t answer. I certainly haven’t called on it. I have no desire to talk to the mirror, and I debate throwing the cloth back over it.
“Speak, mortal,” the woman’s voice demands, shaking the room. An emerald necklace falls to the ground. “Who calls upon me?”
Do I call upon it? If it was my decision, I certainly wouldn’t. But I fear she won’t leave me alone until I speak, so I say, “My name is Leana.”
“Leana,” the mirror says, and the booming voice is replaced by an almost-gentle cooing sound. “Leana, I know your past and your future. Would you like a glimpse of it?”
“Do Osir and I get the life he promised me?” The question is out of my mouth before I can stop it. I want to know; I ache to know.
Let us get that life. Please.
His promises had once seemed so fantastical they bordered on cruel. Now I need them to survive.
The voice in the mirror hums infuriatingly, neither agreeing nor disagreeing. “Prove yourself worthy of my answers.”
I have nothing that would show me as worthy of anything. I’m just Leana.
“I challenge you with a riddle, mortal. And if you can answer me truly, I shall show you everything you seek.”
Do I really want to see what the mirror has to show? I remember everything Osir said about it. The damage it did, what it led him to do. His fear for his brothers, and Noctere, and the princes of Ashar. Perhaps I really should put the cloth back over it and hope it stops talking.
“If you wish to know how to secure your future with your mate, you’ll need to answer me,” the mirror warns, as if reading my mind.
I’m moving before I know what I’m doing, my hands wrapped around the frame. “Secure our future? Is something wrong?” I swallow. Perhaps it was selfish of me, but I never truly considered him in danger in this war. Dragons always seem so indestructible to me, and Osir seems particularly so.
I thought the hard part was over when I melted his chains. I thought our future was secure—that the only thing that could go wrong now would be if he came to his senses and changed his mind, although I’ve started to think even that wouldn’t happen.
I’ve grown spoiled, and content, and I should have known better. Something can always go wrong.
“Give me your riddle, then,” I say in a rush. “I’ll answer it.”
How could I say anything else? If Osir is in danger…
What if this damn mirror tells me he’s not coming back? That the future he convinced me could be real ended before it began?
“In hearts, I find my place to dwell.
A guiding light, I cast my spell.
To wield me right, a noble art.
But beware how I can break a heart.
What am I?”
The voice resonates around the cave, bouncing off the walls until every word has an echo, and I have to strain to fully understand what’s being said.
A guiding light…I know what Noctere and Osir told me about this mirror. He said it will show whoever looks into it their path to true power. So if the answer is something that creeps into your heart, a guiding light to wield…it must be power. That would be the only logical conclusion, right?
But it seems too easy. It seems almost like a decoy answer, and there’s a much more fitting one buried in the riddle.
Break a heart…I suddenly know the answer. “Compassion,” I say. I try to stand straighter, to tilt my head up, to act like I’m confident in this answer.
Compassion is the thing that creeps into your heart, and acts as a guiding light. It is noble and right. But being compassionate, being kind, can break your heart.
I think of Noctere, who I once childishly might have called a friend. Who tried to send me to die.
And I think of Osir, who returned my compassion tenfold.
The mirror makes a humming sound. “Not an answer I’ve heard before. But not an incorrect one, either. Perhaps it’s more correct than any other. You’re an interesting mortal. What should you seek from me?”
“I thought you only showed people what would make them powerful.”
“If power is all someone seeks, it’s all I show them. What do you seek, compassionate one?”
“Osir,” I say immediately. “Please. Tell me—will he be okay? Will we be okay?”
The foggy mist behind the screen fades away, and suddenly I see myself, lying in a bed as large and fluffy as any I ever saw in the castle. From the stone wall behind the bed, maybe it is the castle.
My hands are up by my head, gripping a pillow, and my mouth falls open into an oh. There’s no sound, but I hardly need sound to figure out what’s going on in the image.
Osir’s head appears in view, resting on my stomach after he presumably crawls up from between my thighs. His face is wet, and he’s grinning at me in a way I haven’t seen on his human face yet. It’s breathtaking.
I turn away from the mirror, unable to watch anymore without a stabbing longing building in my gut.
“So we get that…when is it?” I ask.
Osir will survive this war, then. But that could be years from now, for all I know.
“Soon.”
Soon. It sounds wonderful until I remember that this mirror showed Osir a vision of power that never came true a century ago. Soon might not mean the same thing to the oracle as it does to me, a mere human.
“When?” I press, but I don’t hear the answer before I hear something heavy land on the ledge outside.
Osir. This is my answer. Soon is now.
I think fleetingly of the pile of fabric I left out for exactly this purpose. Would he want to…?
I shiver, feeling my nipples tighten beneath my tunic. I want.
I run to the cave’s entrance, only to find the small opening blocked.
There are four men there, all big and broad, with dragon scales clearly visible on their necks. I involuntarily take a step back, but they only advance closer.
“Your fucking mad king is plenty distracted now, pet,” the one closest to me says. He’s not the biggest of them, but I instinctively know he’s the one to fear. His eyes are cold like death, a penetrating, brutalizing stare. His voice is practically a croon. It’s not dissimilar to the voice Osir sometimes has, when he’s saying sweet, tempting things to me. But this voice doesn’t feel soft and comforting like Osir’s. It feels oily, like filthy slime dripping down my spine, and I cringe.
I take another step back, but the four of them only draw closer.
“Convenient of you to let him out of that hole,” he says. “And good timing too, waiting until we were almost there. We were just going to torture this place out of him…but the two of you led us right here. And now he’s left the poor human all alone,” he says, the last words coming out with a mocking lilt. He takes another menacing step towards me, and I feel my heart in my throat.
He can’t burn me, but that doesn’t mean he can’t hurt me. A dragon only needs a single claw or tooth to kill a human. He could step on me in that form. Even his human form could likely kill me, considering how strong he looks.
These are the warriors of Ashar Noctere tried to send me against. The ones I knew my fire wouldn’t be enough to save me from.
And if I die, then so does Osir. I can’t let that happen.
I force myself to bring my fire to my skin.
The one with eyes like death snickers. “Cute. But we’re dragons, pet. Surely your mad king taught you a thing or two about us, before he locked the poor maiden away in his cave?”
“He’ll come back for me.” Whatever else might be true, I know Osir didn’t do that. He’d never imprison me here.
He laughs outright now. “Oh, I doubt that, pet. Poor humans can't be expected to understand dragons. They’re simple like that, aren’t they?” He asks his companions, but doesn’t wait for an answer. “You’re a pretty enough treasure to him, I suppose. Surely you look good to a dragon who hasn’t had company in a century. He’s brought you back to his hoard, pet. You’re no better than that necklace there. But even if he was so inclined, he’s busy enough right now.” He takes another step forward. “Speaking of treasure. We’re here for a mirror. Don’t get in our way and we’ll let you live out the rest of your existence in this cave.”
The damned mirror. Everything Osir said echoes in my head, and I know I can’t let them have it.
I turn and run back to the other end of the cave, with their footsteps pounding right behind me. The only consolation I have is that this cave is too small for four dragons, but even in their human forms, they’ll overtake me quickly.
But I don’t need to get all the way there. I hurl fire at the mirror. Better to let it burn.
“No!”
I stop, chest heaving, barely able to catch a breath as it ignites. I squeeze my eyes shut for a moment, hoping it all burns.
But when I open my eyes, the mirror is still standing. The frame is singed, and the glass has soot stains, but it’s clearly still functional.
The mirror is blank now, the scene I was shown having disappeared. Is the oracle simply done speaking to me, or did I just lose that future?
“You little bitch,” one of them says, voice low and threatening. “This should teach you a lesson about playing with things you don’t understand.”
I can hear it behind me, and I turn just in time to intercept the ball of flame he sent my way. It melts into the flames still wreathing my arms, touching my outstretched hands and becoming part of me.
I glow so brightly I need to squint. This is the third time in two days I’ve been struck by dragon fire, and it feels like holding the sun every time. I thought I’d grow more used to it, but I feel like I’m the last little piece preventing the world from exploding, a plug barely holding the dam.
“Thank you for making this easy,” I gasp, and then turn back towards the mirror, unleashing the full effect of the fire on it.
The blast knocks me backwards and blinds me completely, but I don’t stop. I aim my hands where I think the mirror is, hitting it with every bit of fire in me. This is a job that needs to be done right. There can be no room for mistakes.
The fire leaves me in a trickle by the end, and I feel like I’ve been bled dry. I’ve never run out of fire before, and a part of me is missing. I’m nearly positive it will come back, but that doesn’t stop the desperate, clawing feeling of wrong that it’s gone now.
I gasp, pushing myself to my knees to see the damage I wrought, to see if I at least succeeded in my task.
The mirror is a pile of still-burning rubble, sharp, shiny shards poking out, still glowing red at the ends.
I did it. I rendered the mirror useless. I protected it like Osir wanted.
