Broken by Magic: An Epic Fantasy Adventure (Dragon Gate Book 3), page 47
After more than thirty years of relying upon his magic, it was a frustrating feeling. Just as going into battle against a dragon without his power had been. He’d barely knocked Jak down before those talons caught him. If he’d been any slower, or if the dragon had seen him coming and magically thrown him aside, Malek might have failed. The dragon could have pierced Jak through the heart and killed him instantly. Him and the hatchling.
“I suppose I should be nervous for the impending showdown and not looking around curiously at everything,” Jadora said from behind him. “I want so badly to take samples, but I know there’s no time to stop.”
“Duck.” Malek bent low, hoping Jadora was quick enough to obey, as the board flew too close to a tree branch, five-pointed blue-green leaves stretching toward them.
The leaves and a few sharp twigs brushed their hair, but neither of them was knocked off. This time.
“Thank you.” Jadora straightened.
“Take out a knife. With the way Jak is navigating our board, you’ll be able to cut samples from all the branches we’re almost running into.”
Jak glanced back, his face tight with concentration, and Malek reminded himself that Jak hadn’t had much practice navigating skyboards, especially ones he wasn’t riding. Rivlen, who controlled the board Fret and Tinder rode, as well as the one she shared with Tezi, had a much easier time keeping their flight smooth.
“I seem to remember branches clawing at my hair,” Jadora said, “when I rode into the jungle with you.”
“Small branches.”
“I did appreciate that, when you noticed, you conjured a barrier to protect me.” She squeezed his shoulder.
Malek appreciated her touch and the fact that she hadn’t changed at all toward him since he’d lost his power. If anything, she wished he would stay this way.
That was a loathsome idea, especially given their destination and goal. Jak’s suggestion that the hatchling might somehow be able to figure out how to remove the kerzor without doing any damage to his brain seemed ridiculous. Even if dragons did have ancestral memories or knowledge that they were born with, he couldn’t imagine it applying to surgery on humans. Still, if Malek thought there was even a slight chance it would work, he might be tempted to take the gamble. The idea of continuing to live without access to his magic was difficult to accept.
There wouldn’t be time, however, to ask Jak—and the hatchling—to try. If the dragons were indeed in that valley on the map, and only twenty miles from the city, the group ought to be getting close. Even though the undergrowth was thick and the forested slopes difficult to navigate, the skyboards zipped along quickly, far superior to walking on foot.
Malek caught himself trying to stretch out with his senses to check for dragons before remembering that he couldn’t. He barely kept himself from asking the others if they sensed anything. If they did, they would tell him. Not knowing all the things he’d known before was grating.
“If, by some chance, we succeed and are allowed to return to our world,” Jadora said as the skyboards took them over a river and followed it upstream, unimpeded by trees, “do you think we could take Zethron back with us?”
Malek stiffened, not wanting to talk about the man who threw poems through the window for Jadora, but he kept himself from saying that. His reaction was immature, and he knew it, but sharing those kisses with Jadora, drug-inspired or not, only left Malek more irritated at the idea of some suitor trying to woo her. He recognized the emotions as illogical—it wasn’t as if Malek could woo her—but struggled with sublimating them.
“If he still has a means to travel through the portal, we couldn’t necessarily stop him,” she continued, “but he’s tried to help us, so I’d hate for him simply to be captured by Uthari or one of the commanders from the other fleets and thrown into a cell. If he’s telling the truth, he just wants to explore.”
Zethron wanted to explore with Jadora, Malek had little doubt.
Again, he shoved aside the petty thought. The jealous thought.
“I am reluctant to trust any of these people at this time,” Malek said, “but if he let me—let Rivlen—read his mind and scour his thoughts so we knew for certain that is all he wanted, I would not object to it.”
“But would you stand up for him if your king wanted to capture him? If the formula I have does indeed allow us to one day manipulate dragon steel, it would only be because of Zethron’s help that I found it. He also gave me a lead on the Jitaruvak.”
“I understand. I’m not sure how much sway I’ll have over Uthari when I get back—” Malek waved at his temple, “—but if mind reading reveals that Zethron has no ill intent toward us or our world and truly just wants to visit, I will tell Uthari that and urge him to allow it.”
“Thank you.”
Malek looked back at her. Her braid streamed out behind her as they sailed above the water, a chilly mountain breeze caressing their cheeks, and he thought she looked beautiful. The urge to say something about Zethron and what a poor suitor he would be came to him, along with the desire to ask her if she preferred him, but once again, he quashed it.
Jadora raised her eyebrows, doubtless wanting to know why he was gazing at her.
“Do you think I should let Jak’s hatchling operate on me?” It was a far more salient and appropriate question to ask in these circumstances.
“That sounds ludicrous.”
“Yes. Do you think I should?” Malek wasn’t sure how much the hatchling had helped Jak with transferring power from the carriage to the skyboards, but he was positive Shikari had helped. He did seem to grasp a great deal for such a young creature.
“Not… any time soon. We should further study the dissected kerzor we have.” Jadora patted one of her pockets. “Ideally with the help of a few mage engineers and healers. You should get several expert opinions on whether and how it might be removed. Futzing around in the brain is no small matter.” She returned her hand to his shoulder and frowned with concern. “If something were done poorly and further injury were caused, it could kill you. Or render you without any of your faculties at all.”
“That would be disturbing.”
“I know it’s difficult for you to be without your power, but what if you ended up in a coma and unable to think or walk or do anything?” Her voice broke on the last word, and she blinked several times and looked away.
“I wouldn’t like that. I would ask, if that happened and there was no hope of restoring me to health, that you would take a knife to my throat and end my life.”
She shook her head, distress contorting her face.
Maybe he shouldn’t have brought this up, but now that she’d mentioned the possibilities of a failed surgery, he worried that he might end up like that. And that his comrades might try to keep him alive indefinitely out of some vain hope that something would change. The idea of living like that—of not living like that—distressed him far more than the thought of falling in battle to a dragon.
“You wouldn’t have to do it yourself,” Malek said gently, though he would prefer that she did. “You could have Sergeant Tinder cleave my head off with her new axe. She’d probably like that.”
“Malek.” Jadora dashed her sleeve across her eyes. “This isn’t a joke.”
“I know. I wasn’t joking.”
“That’s awful.”
She dropped her face against the top of his backpack. He wished he weren’t wearing it so she would be resting her head on him. Though he’d disturbed her, so maybe it wasn’t appropriate to wish for that.
Malek shifted sideways on the skyboard so he could wrap an arm around her waist. “I apologize for distressing you.”
“Thank you.” She smiled sadly at him. “There was a time when you didn’t say please and thank you or apologize to me. I like this improvement.”
“Because we were…”
“Enemies?”
“I never thought of you as that,” he said, even though he knew she’d considered him one. He wasn’t positive she’d stopped thinking of him that way, even if she had developed feelings for him. They both knew she shouldn’t have developed those feelings. And neither should he. “I was professionally aloof, as is appropriate for a zidarr.”
A waterfall roared up ahead, and Rivlen and Jak guided the skyboards away from the river and through the trees again. They followed a cliff angling deeper into the mountains.
“We’re getting close,” Jak called back. He glanced twice when he spotted Malek holding his mother.
Malek should have let her go, but it made sense for them to hang on to each other, to help keep each other steady. At least with the way Jak navigated the boards, it did.
“Don’t take any unnecessary risks against the dragons, please.” Jadora must have noticed Jak’s glances, but she didn’t extricate herself from Malek’s embrace. “I can imagine you feeling a little reckless if you’re not sure there’s a way to return your powers, but give us time to figure something out. I’ve got my microscope and can help your healers and engineers. I’m sure that with all those mages your king brought, he has someone who’ll have good ideas.”
“Any risks I take will be necessary.”
“That wasn’t that reassuring of an answer.”
He tilted his head, not disagreeing but not being able to offer anything better. Without his power, he judged the probability of surviving this fight low. All he could do was put his faith in Jak and hope that he was right, that there was a dragon-steel ziggurat waiting in the valley and that it would somehow help them.
26
The skyboards slowed down as they crested a tree-filled ridge and the valley on the map came into view. A canopy almost as dense as that in the jungle of Zewnath kept the land in perpetual shade.
As Jadora peered around Malek’s shoulder to get a better view, she decided it was more of a crater or depression than a valley, though the dense undergrowth and trees made it hard to discern details. She couldn’t see all the way to the far side, and at first, she didn’t spot anything like Jak’s ziggurat and worried they’d flown to the wrong place.
The only terrain feature of note was a hill in the center of the crater, its slopes smothered with blue-green plants and clumps of grass. But as they flew closer and her eyes adjusted to the dimness, she realized it wasn’t a hill.
The ziggurat rose up in tiers with the blue-black vertical sides almost completely hidden behind vines and leaves. Moss carpeted the walls and flat roof of a square structure at the top. That structure was large enough to hold a dragon, maybe two. She could almost imagine one crouching in there, masked by shadows.
Was it some temple where rituals had long ago been performed? For some reason, she envisioned humans trekking to this place from the coast, leaving sacrifices for the dragons.
Except if they were right, the elder dragons—or, as Jak called them, the good dragons—had made this place. If they’d been friends to humans, they shouldn’t have demanded sacrifices.
“I don’t sense any dragons.” Rivlen looked over at Jak.
They’d slowed the skyboards as they followed the slope down into the crater and headed warily toward the ziggurat.
“If they’re not here, I think they’ll come.” Jak peered toward the sky, though the canopy hid it, then toward the sides of the crater. Most of them sloped gently upward, as carpeted with moss, vines, and foliage as the ziggurat, but a few dark cliffs were visible, bare vertical stone defying growth.
Jadora didn’t know what stone those cliffs were comprised of, but they were black and sleek, almost like obsidian. Here and there, slightly lighter colors were visible, veins that ran through the stone like ore in a mine. The veins were the same blue-black as the ziggurat and their dragon-steel weapons.
“Is that raw ore that dragons turn into their alloy?” Malek was peering in that direction too. “Or maybe what we thought was an alloy isn’t. Does dragon steel exist in its basic form in nature on some worlds?”
“I wonder if it’s possible to take a sample,” Jadora said, though if the natural ore was even half as hard as the finished product, they certainly wouldn’t be able to chisel it out of the rock.
“And put it in a vial?” Malek smiled over his shoulder at her.
“Rocks go in cases, not vials.”
“A scientific mandate?”
“Something like that.”
Tezi pointed at something yellowish-white amid a plant that reminded Jadora of a water lily. At first, she thought Tezi might have noticed the flower blooming, but no… There was a bone half-hidden by the leaves. A human femur.
The memory of the bone-littered tundra on the last world they’d visited came to mind.
“I don’t know if this is their lair,” Rivlen said, “but it looks like the dragons come here to dine.”
“Any large predator could be responsible for that,” Malek said. “Some of the arena creatures are from this world.”
“Oh, good. Maybe we can run into even more things with the power to kill us.”
Malek frowned slightly at the sarcasm.
When Jadora had first joined Rivlen and Malek on the Star Flyer, Rivlen had been the image of military professionalism in her crisp uniform and polished boots, and she’d added my lord to almost every sentence directed to Malek. Some of that had faded in this last week. Hopefully because they were in a strange situation, and she was far from her command, not because she’d lost some of her respect for Malek now that he no longer had his powers.
“Let’s investigate the ziggurat while we wait,” Jak said. “Mother’s acid may be here. Something should be.”
“Something conveyed by two squiggles on a map?” Rivlen adjusted the paths of their skyboards to sail around the base of the ziggurat so they could see it from all sides.
“Yes.”
Jadora worried about the dragons—if they didn’t show up here, how would the group find them and the kidnapped ruler?—but the scientist and explorer in her wanted to scramble all over that ziggurat and look for signs of language or some verification that the elder dragons had indeed built it.
“I don’t see any sign of natural vents, like I expected,” Jak said after they’d circled the base of the ziggurat.
There also hadn’t been a door or any access to the interior, at least not an obvious one. It was possible a hidden entrance lay somewhere under all the moss and vines.
Jadora peered at the structure on top. “Let’s check up there.”
“It could be a trap,” Malek said.
Rivlen looked at him. “A trap set by dragons?”
“Just because you don’t sense them doesn’t mean they aren’t here. Their own magic, or the magic of the dragon steel, could camouflage them.”
A bird squawked from the treetops. The noise made Jadora jump and only then realize how quiet it had grown since they’d entered the valley. Eerily quiet. Maybe Malek was right and the wildlife knew what the humans couldn’t detect. That dragons were here somewhere, lying in wait.
In Jak’s sling, only the top of Shikari’s head was visible as he peered out. He seemed focused on the forest rather than the ziggurat.
“Well.” Jak flew closer to the mossy side of the lowest tier. He pushed aside a vine so he could rest his hand on the dragon steel underneath. “We want to find the dragons anyway, right?”
“I thought we might develop more of a plan before confronting them,” Malek said.
“I’m going to try to establish a rapport with this.” Jak patted the structure and closed his eyes.
“A rapport with an ancient ruin is our plan?” Tinder asked dubiously.
She and Tezi had drawn their weapons, as if they expected the dragons to spring out at any second. Tinder had her new axe in one hand and a grenade in the other.
Jadora had a few of her small explosives and vials of acid, but neither would do anything against a dragon. The only way she might be able to help was if she could unravel the mysteries of this place and find something they could use in a battle.
“Rivlen?” she asked softly, pointing to the structure. “Will you fly me up there so I can look inside?”
She would have hopped off the skyboard and climbed the ziggurat on her own, but it was more than twenty feet between each tier, and there were no stairs. As far as she could tell, humans wouldn’t be able to ascend it without climbing equipment, so maybe it had never been intended for them. Though she supposed mages could have levitated each other to the top.
“And get eaten by a dragon?” Rivlen asked.
“Hopefully not.” Jadora held up one of the explosives. If nothing else, she could toss it into the maw of a dragon trying to devour her.
“Fearsome,” Rivlen said of the little ball, but she did levitate Jadora and Malek’s skyboard toward the top. She went with them, Tezi stuck riding behind her.
As they flew upward, Jadora searched for signs of writing or decoration behind the vines, but if anything marked the ancient metal, she couldn’t see it through the vegetation. Once they reached the top, their skyboard slowed to a hover. The square structure was empty, with walls only on three sides. Interestingly, the insides of them were made from something other than dragon steel. They were dark gray instead of blue-black, looking more like slate or some other stone.
Up here, the air smelled strange, reminding Jadora of burnt hair. She wrinkled her nose at the unappealing scent and searched for the source. No breeze swept through the protected crater, so it had to be coming from nearby.
“No trapdoor?” Rivlen waved to the floor of the structure. It was also made from the gray stone. Or perhaps that was an aggregate material like cement? “I expected the entrance to be up here. Or is this whole thing solid? Maybe there isn’t an inside or an entrance.”
“There’s something in the floor in there.” Malek pointed. “See that dark slit?”
Rivlen nudged the skyboards closer, and Jadora spotted it. A perfectly straight eight-foot-long and one-inch-wide slit in the floor.
“A vent?” She thought of Jak’s squiggly lines on the map. Was it possible that whatever the lines indicated was inside the ziggurat? Or under it? “That could be our acid.”
