Broken by Magic: An Epic Fantasy Adventure (Dragon Gate Book 3), page 9
“The hatchling wasn’t injured, was it?” the mercenary doctor asked. “I have a medical kit along.”
“No.” Malek shook his head, rested a hand on Jadora’s shoulder briefly, and rose to join Jak.
That familiarity surprised Rivlen, and she couldn’t keep from frowning in disapproval. Since they’d captured Jak and Jadora, Malek had insisted on treating them as guests rather than prisoners. Rivlen understood that Malek and Uthari had an interest in Jak, because of his magical abilities and because he might be trained and turned into an ally—after all, she’d had that same thought—but why show such… camaraderie to an archaeologist? Or herbalist. Whatever Jadora was. Rivlen didn’t quite know.
Malek glanced at Rivlen as he walked past, and she schooled her face in a neutral expression and went back to keeping an eye on their surroundings. How Malek treated his prisoners was of no concern to her, and enemies might grow aware of their arrival at any time and send a party to check on them—or attack them.
Malek joined Jak to stare intently at the attachment.
“The portal accepts that it was a mistake,” Jak said, relief in his voice. “It doesn’t believe Shikari is a dangerous dragon.”
“No kidding,” Tinder said.
“But the portal wasn’t responsible for the attack.” Jak’s shoulders drooped. “I think it’s telling me that it can’t do anything. But maybe… wait.”
“I don’t think he has much longer,” Jadora whispered.
The hatchling wasn’t moving.
Jak grimaced, tears leaking from his closed eyes, and his face twisted with concentration. He shifted his hand from the portal to the attached device.
“Jak,” Malek warned, reaching up.
Rivlen frowned, half expecting the device to hurl Jak twenty feet, perhaps while spitting lightning bolts.
“This did it,” Jak said. “This can undo it.”
Malek paused short of grabbing Jak’s hand to pull it back. The device hadn’t reacted to his touch.
No sooner had Rivlen had the thought than a wide blue beam shot out of it. Malek grabbed Jak and pulled him back, but it was targeting the hatchling. Since Jadora was next to the creature, it also bathed her in blue light.
Malek released Jak and sprang to her side, pulling her out of the beam and into the grass.
“I don’t think it’s dangerous,” Jak said. “Not this time.”
“You don’t think?” Malek asked, his hands on Jadora’s shoulders as he stood protectively close.
Rivlen gaped, a flash of insight coming to her. Malek didn’t treat Jadora like a prisoner because he liked her.
Romantically? The thought was so preposterous that Rivlen scoffed and almost dismissed it outright. The notion of someone as powerful as Malek developing feelings for a sense-dead plebeian was ridiculous. Still, he held Jadora’s shoulders far longer than necessary, if his only interest was to pull her out of danger. Not until the blue beam disappeared did he let her go and step away.
“Thank you.” Jadora smiled at him.
Rivlen, reminded that she’d been assigned guard duty, shook her head and went back to watching their surroundings.
“Did it heal Shikari?” Jak ran back to the hatchling and kneeled on the road, touching the blue scaly torso. “Are you any better, little fellow?”
The hatchling was still breathing but didn’t respond.
One of the butterfly-winged crickets hopping around in the grass landed on the road a few feet from them. Jak squinted at it, summoned a gust of wind, and blew it toward him. He caught it in his hand and held it by the wings above the hatchling’s snout.
Rivlen nodded, pleased that Jak was working on developing his skills. That wasn’t anything she’d taught him. Had Malek? Or was he figuring out more versatility on his own?
“Exotic foreign bug delivery,” Jak whispered, swinging it back and forth from its wings. “You just have to wake up and chomp it down.”
“This isn’t how I envisioned adventuring to other worlds going,” Tinder said.
“I’m finding this much better than our last trip,” the doctor said. “The sun is warm, there aren’t any glaciers, and no giant bats or dragons are trying to kill us.”
“Give it time. The bats took a while to show up on the last world. And we didn’t find the killer dragon until the end.”
The hatchling’s tail swished across the stone blocks, and its yellow eyes opened. Its tongue darted out, plucked the insect from Jak’s grasp, and pulled it into its mouth.
“He’s alive.” Jak grinned brightly at all of them.
“Fascinating,” Malek murmured, though he was looking at the device attached to the portal instead of the hatchling. He placed his hand on it, first lightly, waiting to see if it would reject him, and then more firmly. “How is this attached?” he murmured, peering closer.
“I don’t think we can take it with us,” Jadora said.
“If it does what I think, it could solve one of our larger problems.” Malek sounded wistful.
Jadora joined him. “You think it attacks all dragons that try to fly out of it and into this world? All dangerous dragons?”
“Perhaps all dangerous magical predators,” Malek said.
“I don’t know about that, but it showed me the beam attacking some of the brown-and-gray mottled dragons.” Jak waded into the grass, capturing more insects for his hatchling. “The portal did, I mean. The other device didn’t communicate with me in any way. I think it might have been the portal relaying my message to it that resulted in the healing magic. It realized it had made a mistake and gotten a good dragon.”
“Don’t you think it’s a little early to assume that your hatchling is good?” Malek asked. “He ate your bootlaces, destroyed your pillow, and chewed on Tonovan’s leg.”
“That last thing is a definite sign of goodness,” Jak said. “Or at least good taste. Besides, his scales are the color of the fun, frolicking dragons from the visions our portal shared with me.”
“Fun, frolicking dragons are automatically good?”
“Sure,” Jak said. “Same with fun, frolicking mages. And the converse is also true. I’m positive Tonovan never frolics.”
Rivlen snorted. She had no doubt. But she didn’t know many good mages who frolicked either. Training was serious. If one wanted to achieve one’s goals—and avoid being targeted and destroyed by one’s enemies—one had to be serious.
“Do you ever frolic, Malek?” Jadora asked.
“Not with anybody watching. Will you give me your opinion on this seam?” Malek pointed to where the device attached to the portal. “It looks like it was permanently soldered, or some magical equivalent, to the original artifact. That alone wouldn’t be remarkable, but this all appears to be dragon steel, which humans—at least humans on our world—do not know how to melt and manipulate.”
“Are you truly thinking of removing it?” Jadora stepped up to his shoulder to look.
Malek hesitated. “I know Uthari would value this, especially if we could affix it to our portal and keep any killer dragons or giant worms from coming through, but no. We cannot steal it from this world. Presumably, it is rightfully theirs, and they also have a need for it.”
Jadora nodded. “Good.”
Rivlen raised her eyebrows. She wasn’t sure she would make that same decision. If Uthari would value the object, he would also value and reward those who brought it to him. Even though she did not approve of thievery or acting without honor, were she alone, she might have been tempted to take it, for the good of their people. If someone here had made it, they might be able to make a replacement.
“That does look like dragon steel,” Jadora murmured. “You’re right. This is fascinating.”
“Maybe we could bring someone with magical engineering expertise—the prisoner Tonovan captured last night, perhaps—to study it and replicate it, but he would first have to learn how to work dragon steel.” Malek lowered his hand. “As far as I can determine, the entire device is made solely from it.”
“It’s possible it’s an artifact as ancient as the portals and that a dragon made it long ago,” Jadora said. “We have difficulty accurately dating dragon steel since it doesn’t rust or corrode or show any signs of wear like other metals.”
“Would a dragon have affixed it long ago to the portal?”
Jadora hesitated. “Possibly.”
“To protect this world?”
“Possibly.”
“Then why this world and not ours?” Malek asked.
Jadora shook her head and stepped back to consider the portal. “I don’t know.”
Malek considered it a moment longer, then turned his attention to getting ready to travel, picking up one of the skyboards they’d brought along. Like Rivlen, he’d cast his aside as soon as that blue light had shown up.
He frowned down at the boards, then nudged one with his foot.
“Problem?” Jadora asked.
“The skyboards are dead,” Malek said.
Rivlen checked the ones she’d carried through the portal and realized he was right. They’d been fully charged before they left, but now, all four were devoid of the magical energy that powered them.
“Maybe that device zapped them along with the hatchling,” she said.
“It must have.” Malek shook his head and put them in the grass behind the portal. There was no point in carrying them if they had no power.
The group would have to walk. At least the city wasn’t far away.
Grass crunched as Jak lunged to catch another cricket that he’d batted in his direction with his magic. He was using far more power than necessary to capture the insects.
Rivlen stepped into the grass, intending to give him a few tips. The sooner Jak improved his power as a mage, the sooner he could stand with her against Tonovan, an idea that she continued to find appealing.
As a mature woman, Rivlen probably shouldn’t appreciate that Jak made jokes about Tonovan, but she agreed with his assessment. The general did not frolic. And she doubted he ever had fun unless it was at someone else’s expense.
“Uh oh,” Jadora whispered, her gaze locked to the portal.
Rivlen paused, eyeing it warily, expecting another blue beam to shoot out.
“Are you sure?” Malek must have read her mind and been responding to her thoughts.
He joined her in front of the portal, gazing at the symbols around the inside of it.
“Several of them are… blank.” Jadora pointed at different spots.
Rivlen was too far away to see what they were looking at, but she remembered Malek magically pressing what had been one of several symbols on the inside of their portal to activate its magic.
“What is it, Mother?” Jak knelt by the hatchling, feeding it more crickets. The creature was animated now, sitting on its haunches and peering toward the grasses, head cocking when insects chirped.
Jadora looked gravely back at Jak. “Some of the symbols—some of the destinations—have been rubbed out somehow.”
“Rubbed out? They were engraved in the dragon steel, at least on our portal.”
“Yes, and on this one too. You can tell that they were once there, but now, they’re gone.”
“The Dragon’s Tail constellation is missing,” Malek said, “and the matching symbol.”
“What does that mean?” Rivlen asked, though she feared she had gotten the gist.
“That we can’t go home,” Jadora said.
6
The hatchling kept climbing out of his sling and onto Jak’s shoulder.
“You’re supposed to be resting,” he told his charge. “You were almost dead a few minutes ago.”
Shikari cheeped and chewed on the brim of his hat. Jak removed it to protect it, and Shikari shifted to nibbling on his hair.
“This isn’t how I imagined fatherhood,” Jak muttered.
Their group was walking down the coastal road toward the city, the sea roaring beyond the blue-green grass. Seagulls—or this world’s equivalent—shrieked as they wheeled and dove over the waves.
“Aren’t you more like a pet owner than a father?” Rivlen walked beside him, giving him tips on catching insects with magic while drawing upon a minimal amount of power. Such a task, as she’d informed him, should not leave him weary and with sweat dripping from his brow.
She hadn’t believed his excuse that the sweat simply indicated he was hot from the sun. The air and temperature were pleasant here, cooler than the jungle they’d left.
“No,” Jak said. “He’s definitely not a pet. When he grows up, he’ll be as smart as we are. Probably smarter. We don’t know how to build portals.”
“Won’t you have to take him to his people, so they can raise and educate him, before he turns into a dragon genius?”
“Probably. I hope we come across some good dragons on this journey so I can ask them about him. About everything.” Jak heard the longing in his voice and tried to squelch it. Finding dragons—and befriending and riding one—might have been a childhood dream for him, but Rivlen would likely find the whole idea silly.
“Maybe they can tell you why hatchlings like the taste of your hair.”
Jak tugged a lock out of Shikari’s mouth and adjusted him so that he faced forward instead of toward Jak’s head—and ear. He’d already felt the nip of sharp dragon fangs on one of his lobes, and the wide brim of his hat was in constant danger.
“He eats crickets, flies, and worms. My hair might be a delicious treat after such dubious fare.”
“We should still be able to get back home,” Mother said, her voice floating back to them.
She and Malek were walking ahead of Jak and Rivlen, with Tezi, Tinder, and Fret taking up the rear.
“We can travel to a portal on another world and from there back to ours. Assuming portals on other worlds don’t also have our symbol rubbed out.” Mother shook her head. “I’d dearly like to know how that was done, how someone worked the dragon steel. It’s possible that dragons did it, but I would hypothesize that it was done later, by someone who wanted to add further protection for those who live on this world. Maybe the same person or being who installed that device did it.”
“The symbol for the ice world we visited was also rubbed out,” Malek said.
“I noticed. Several others that were rubbed out were written about in the druid tome, indicating worlds that deadly creatures came from. The natives here—or someone looking out for them—destroyed the possibility of travel to those places. But since we traveled from one of the rubbed-out worlds, that means eliminating the symbols only halts the possibility of people going to them. It doesn’t stop arrivals. That must be why the device was added.”
“It’s interesting,” Jak said, “that they felt the need to so permanently mark the portal to deter travelers leaving from this world. You’d think they could have just put up a sign. Don’t go there, there, or there, and definitely don’t go there. Dragons are waiting to eat you.”
“A sign could be removed or destroyed,” Mother said. “This was a more permanent solution. They must have felt they needed it.”
“They must have more than one key here.” Jak rescued another tuft of hair from the hatchling. That earned him an ear licking. He gently plucked his charge off his shoulder again and stuck him back in his sling. “Maybe many more. Otherwise, whoever had it would simply keep it to control who could leave this world.”
“That’s very possible,” Mother said. “There could be many keys out there. Maybe Torvil also had many once, and they were all lost over the millennia.”
“What happens,” Tezi asked, “if we go to another world and the symbol that would let us go home is destroyed there too?”
“I doubt it’s been destroyed on every portal,” Mother said. “This is likely just how this world has chosen to deal with the problem of monsters.”
“There aren’t monsters native to our world,” Malek pointed out. “None like the giant worm or dragon that tried to kill us.”
“True,” Mother said. “Maybe they rubbed out our symbol because our druids took down the portal, moved it away from where it could function, and buried it. The people here might have done it to make sure nobody tried to use it. I… don’t know what happens when the portal on the other end isn’t available. I had assumed you wouldn’t be able to make a connection, but I’m not certain. There’s much we don’t know.”
“Let us hope we can gain answers from the people here.”
“Lord Malek,” Rivlen said, “do you think it’s wise for us to stroll up to their front gate and walk in? Perhaps we should observe their city and people from afar first. Even though I’m certain that with our prowess we can handle ourselves, if a fight erupts, they might, with great enough numbers, overwhelm us. It’s possible they don’t like visitors.”
“You make a valid point, Captain,” Malek said. “Ideally, we would observe the civilization undetected from a distance for several days before approaching, but Uthari made it clear to me that the situation with the other mageships is precarious and that he would prefer we gain as much as we can and return as soon as possible.”
“What if we get captured by enemies and can’t return?” Dr. Fret whispered.
“That won’t happen,” Sergeant Tinder said. “If any enemies try to capture us, I’ll blow them up.”
“You’re going to blow up people who have the power to manipulate dragon steel?” Fret asked.
“We don’t know that the people in this city are the ones who did that,” Tinder said. “And even if there are powerful mages, mages blow up as nicely as terrene humans.”
“You have to get through their defenses.”
“True, but once you do, boom. Chunks everywhere.”
“You’re macabre,” Fret said.
“Like a song by the Brooding Bard,” Tinder agreed cheerfully.
Rivlen rolled her eyes. From what Jak had observed, she didn’t think much of the mercenaries. He was surprised she even spoke to them.
“We could split up, my lord. Perhaps part of the group could go in and attempt to gather information while someone powerful enough to effect a rescue, if needed, waits outside the city.” Rivlen touched her chest.
