Dragons Lost (2 page)

Cade stared at Lady
Mercy for a second longer. She stared back, and her eyes narrowed. Her lips—small
and pink—twisted into the slightest of smiles.

Do you dare defy me?
she seemed to ask; he could practically hear her voice speaking in his mind.
Her hand, gloved in white leather, strayed toward the golden hilt of her sword.
Do you challenge me to break you?

Cade wanted to resist.
Wanted to shift into a dragon right here and attack her, to burn her pretty
face, to claw through her steel armor. She couldn't have been much older than twenty,
only a couple of years older than him. Why should she bark orders, strut around
like a monarch, while he knelt in the dust?

He glanced down at the
babe held in his arms. Eliana gazed back at him, calm now, curious.

Cade exhaled slowly.

For you, Eliana. To
keep you alive.

He knelt before Mercy,
glaring up at her.

The paladin reached out
her gloved hands and plucked the baby from Cade's arms. She might as well have
plucked the soul from his chest.

As the firedrakes
snarled and leaked smoke, and as the villagers knelt, Mercy raised the baby
above her head. She walked around the square, displaying Eliana for all to see.

"A child was born in
the Commonwealth!" Mercy cried, her voice pealing across the village. "For
every hundred babes born in our land, ninety-nine still carry the old curse.
The old disease." Disgust dripped from her voice. "Ninety-nine are still born able
to change their forms, to become . . . dragons." Mercy spat into the dirt. "The
curse has brought nothing but pain to our people. For thousands of years, our
enemies hunted us. For thousands of years, we waged wars with dragonfire. For
thousands of years, our land bled and burned. But the Cured Temple saved you!
The Cured Temple liberated you from your disease! And the Cured Temple will
purify this innocent child, freeing her from the curse of our ancestors. She
will be cured!"

"Amen!" chanted the
villagers.

"Amen!" cried the
remaining paladins upon the firedrakes.

A curse,
Cade
thought, jaw clenched.
A disease.
He could not believe that. He refused
to. Perhaps he was the only one left in the world with magic still inside him.
Perhaps he was the only soul in the Commonwealth who could become a dragon. But
he refused to believe himself cursed. Those secret nights he spent flying over
the sea, free upon the wind, a golden dragon in the moonlight . . . those
nights had never felt cursed. They had felt like magic. Like wonder. Like a
great blessing from ancient times.

You will never know
such freedom, Eliana,
he thought, gazing at the babe held aloft in Mercy's
hands.
You will never fly with me in secret nights, know the warmth of fire
in your belly, the soothing chill of wind beneath your wings.
He lowered
his head.
You will be purified . . . you will be broken.

Again Cade had to curb
the urge to leap forward, to grab his sister, to shift into a dragon and fly
off. He could never escape, he knew. Not with a dozen firedrakes here, these
wild dragons who had once been babes like Eliana, whose human forms had been
ripped out instead of their dragon magic. The firedrakes would chase him if he
fled. They would kill him and his sister.

Cade clenched his
fists, trembling with rage. He wished there were others like him, others who
had never been purified, who kept their magic secret. Others who could join
him, fight with him against the Cured Temple—against the High Priestess,
against these pale paladins, against the firedrakes, against this whole damn
world.

But there are no
others,
Cade thought, eyes burning.
I am alone.

And so he remained
kneeling, the anger a rock in his belly.

Two priestesses
dismounted a black firedrake—identical twins clad in white robes, the left
sides of their heads shaven, the hair on the right side bleached white. They
carried forth a wooden altar and placed it in the center of the square. Each
priestess placed a bowl upon the altar—one black bowl, one white—each full of
leaves. Then they knelt and bowed their heads.

Cade stared at the
bowls, stomach souring.

A black bowl to test
them,
he thought, remembering the old prayers.
A white bowl to cure
them.

He would feel no less
disgust to see two blades on this altar.

"By the grace of the
Spirit," cried Mercy, "let the purification begin!"

The paladin stepped
toward the altar and placed the baby between the bowls. Cade growled, forcing
himself to stay still, as Mercy tied down the baby with straps. Eliana began to
weep. Soon, Cade knew, she would scream.

Cade glanced to his
side. Derin knelt there, and Cade noticed that the baker too clenched his fists
and gritted his teeth.

For twenty years he
tried to have a child,
Cade thought.
And now . . . now to watch this
child hurt . . .

Cade looked back toward
the altar. Mercy lifted the black bowl and held it above her head.

"Here I hold the leaves
of ilbane," the paladin announced. "The herb is harmless to all pure people."
To demonstrate, Mercy plucked a leaf from the bowl and pressed it against her
lips. "It will not harm any pure body, a body clean of the disease." She smiled
thinly. "But those with dragon magic, those able to shift into reptiles . . .
this ilbane will burn them like the very fire they spew. We shall test the babe!"

Across the square, the
other paladins—still seated upon the firedrakes—raised their fists. "Test the
babe!" they chanted.

Mercy grabbed a fistful
of leaves and held them above the bound baby. As Cade watched, he didn't know
what he preferred to happen. If Eliana had the magic—as most people did—the
leaves would burn her, a pain greater than fire, greater than shattering bones.
If she was pure—as only one in a hundred babies were—she would be marked as a
breeder, and once she was of age, she would be forced to become pregnant every
year, to pump out child after child in hope of eradicating the magic from
future generations. That fate seemed even worse than momentary pain.

Mercy unfolded Eliana's
swaddling clothes. Slowly, the paladin lowered her bundle of leaves . . . and
pressed it against the baby's chest.

Eliana's scream tore
across the village.

Cade's fists shook and
his teeth gnashed, but a part of him was thankful. The ilbane burned her. Eliana
was cursed with dragon magic. She would be spared a life as a breeder.

Mercy pulled the ilbane
leaves back; they left ugly welts across the baby. Eliana still screamed, the
poison spreading across her, reddening her skin, stiffening her muscles.

"The babe is diseased!"
Mercy announced to the village. "She must be cured!"

Cade glanced over to
Derin. His stepfather stared back, eyes dark.

As bad as testing a
child was, curing her was worse. Ilbane, the leaves from the black bowl, burned
like fire. But the leaves in the
white
bowl . . . they were like a rusty
spoon thrust into a person's chest, cutting and carving out the very soul.

Mercy reached into the
white bowl and pulled out a bundle of new leaves. These leaves were thicker, deep
green and aromatic. A single blossom bloomed among them, large as a fist—the
same blossom engraved into Mercy's breastplate. A tillvine blossom, sigil of
the Cured Temple.

"Tillvine!" Mercy said,
presenting the blossom and leaves to the crowd. "The most blessed plant of our
order. A plant to cure the disease. A plant to purify this innocent child from
the evil lurking within her."

A plant to rip out
her magic,
Cade thought, tasting bile.

He wondered, as he
often did, how he himself had been saved from the tillvine. The paladins knew
of every child born in the Commonwealth—they always knew—yet somehow Cade had
been spared. His parents had smuggled him away, had placed him here in this
village. Derin and Tisha never knew how it had happened, how he had escaped
purification.

Cade only knew that if
he were discovered, the paladins would not merely rip out his magic. They would
return him to the capital. They would hang him from the Temple before a crowd
of thousands. And they would let the firedrakes roast him alive as the city
cheered.

Mercy moved her eyes
across the crowd, villager by villager. When finally her gaze reached Cade, she
stared into his eyes, and a crooked smile found her lips—a smile as pleasant as
a wolf grinning over a dying deer.

She kept her eyes
locked on Cade as she crushed the tillvine blossom in her palm, squeezing drops
into the babe's mouth.

At first not much
happened. Eliana gurgled and tried to spit the liquid out. Mercy held the baby's
mouth open, dripping in more of the tillvine juice. The baby swallowed a few
drops and blinked. The villagers were silent. Many lowered their heads, jaws
tight, eyes closed.

Mercy stared into Cade's
eyes, and her smile widened.

"Watch," the paladin
mouthed.

And it began.

Like so many times in
the village of Favilla, the light of purification glowed.

At first only a thin
haze of light rose around Eliana; it looked like mist in moonlight. Then the
glow intensified, burning bright, coiling into strands. Eliana thrashed in her
bonds. She screamed. Her face reddened, and she seemed barely able to breathe.
The light kept rising from the baby, ripping out of her, blasting from her
fingertips, nostrils, mouth, leaking like blood, and rising, always rising to
the sky.

Cade leaped to his
feet. He took a step forward. He froze, fists clenched, knees shaking.

Mercy winked at him.

Eliana's screams rolled
across the village.

The light rose in
tendrils, hovering above the babe, taking the form of a dragon. Woven of
starlight, the apparition reared in the air, tossed back its head, and cried
out in agony. The ghostly keen was full of more pain, more mourning than
anything Cade had ever heard.

"The babe is purified!"
Mercy shouted. A servant approached, holding a bowl of embers and a brand.
Mercy lifted the red-hot metal, its tip shaped as a tillvine blossom, and
pressed it against Eliana's shoulder.

Flesh sizzled.

Branded, Eliana
gave a final scream . . . and fell silent.

Below the starlit
dragon—the magic torn free from the babe—Eliana couldn't even scream.

The baby wasn't
breathing.

She was turning
crimson, then purple.

"You're killing her!"
Cade shouted and raced forward.

The firedrakes leaned
in, blasting sparks and streams of smoke. Paladins pointed down their lances.
Cade ignored them, bounded across the square, and reached the altar. Above, the
astral dragon rose higher into the sky, its cry fading into a mournful whisper,
soft as a flute, then gone. As the starlit strands dispersed, Cade grabbed his
sister and shook her.

"Eliana!" he cried. "Breathe.
Breathe!"

The baby lay still in
his arms, and tears streamed down Cade's face. He shook her. Again. Again.

"Eliana, breathe!"

He placed a finger in her
mouth. He pressed against her frail chest, again and again.

"Breathe," he begged.

The baby coughed,
gasped for air, and screamed.

Cade lowered his head,
shaking, tears on his lips. "Thank the stars," he whispered.

His legs shook wildly,
and he leaned against the altar, nearly falling to the ground.

Overcome with
emotion, he banged his elbow against the black bowl, and its leaves spilled across
the altar.

A few of the ilbane
leaves—herbs for testing the magic in babes—touched Cade's hand.

Bolts of agony shot
through Cade—agony pure white and terrible, the pain worse than a thousand hot
ovens, than a thousand rusty blades. He leaped back as if struck by a viper.

The village seemed to
freeze.

Cade's stepfather had begun
to run after him; he now stood frozen halfway across the square. The firedrakes
stared down, the paladins on their backs aiming their lances. Mercy stared at
Cade, head tilted, eyes narrowed.

Cade looked at his arm.
Red, raw welts rose across it where the ilbane had touched him, where it had
sensed the magic within him.

With a movement so
swift Cade barely saw it, Mercy leaped forward, grabbed more ilbane, and shoved
the leaves against Cade's cheek.

He tossed back his head
and howled.

The pain blasted
through him, endless lightning, endless fire, blades digging through his
organs.

Paladins cried out in
rage. Firedrakes screeched. Derin shouted his name.

"A weredragon," Mercy
whispered, still holding the leaves against him. "An adult weredragon. Uncured."
She raised her voice to a shout. "A weredragon!"

She dropped the ilbane
and drew her sword.

Cade glanced at his stepfather,
seeing the terror in the old baker's eyes.

I'm sorry,
Cade
thought.
I'm sorry.

He summoned his magic.

For the first time in
open daylight, Cade shifted.

Scales flowed across
him, golden and hard as steel. Mercy's sword clanged against them, doing him no
harm. He kept changing. His body grew, doubling, tripling in size, growing
larger still. His fingernails lengthened into dagger-like claws. Fangs sprouted
from his mouth, and a tail lashed behind him. Wings burst out from his back
with a thud.

"Slay him!" Mercy
shouted.

Across the square,
firedrakes blasted down jets of flame.

Cade—a golden dragon,
larger than any hut in the village—beat his wings and took flight.

The firedrakes' pillars
of flame crashed down against the village square, singeing his paws. He rose
higher, soaring into the sky, and beat his wings madly.