Reawakening (6 page)

Barrett spent the next few days smiling foolishly, and Dit bounced in his saddle with a high grin. Ia rolled her eyes and muttered at the pair of them.

“Why you’re complaining, I don’t know,” Tarn told her. “You don’t sleep in earshot.”

“Don’t you mind?” She was staring at him thoughtfully.

He shrugged. “A quick relief, it was, for both of us. Not love.”

“Love,” she sneered. “Love’s just a lie sold to children to make them think that a life of drudgery is a privilege.”

“And a lie’s what Sethan and Cayl have, is it?”

She huffed. “Fine. There’s the odd exception. I just don’t see why you’re so unconcerned about it.”

Laughing, he looked ahead. The land was turning drier with each day they rode, the plants thinning from vines and cypresses to dry grasses and the occasional wild olive. Soon, so soon, they would be in the desert, and he would feel Alagard’s indignant, exuberant energy rush through him again.

“I’m waiting,” he told Ia, “for something bigger than a lie.”

B
UT
ALTHOUGH
they were at the edge of the desert now, Alagard did not come.

The desert did not feel the same. Tarn thought at first it must be his human form, so he crept away from the caravan in the night, walking for an hour until he was well beyond anyone’s view. There, in the shadow of ragged red rocks, he transformed, sliding back into his true form for the first time in months.

He waited for a furious dust devil to swoop down on him, but the desert stayed still and quiet. It felt cold, far colder than the night merited.

The sense of love was gone.

That wasn’t all. As he stood there, lifting his wings into the night winds, he realized the desert was quiet. Where were the small creatures, the lizards, the big-eared fox, and the little mice? They weren’t out and foraging, and all he could sense was a dim and quivering fear.

He considered taking wing and searching out whatever had changed this place but decided against it. In this form, against the star-bright sky, he was unmissable. Better not alert every creature and spirit in the desert to his presence.

Sobered, he turned human and made his way back to the camp. He had plenty of time before his watch, but when he crept back in between the wagons, he found someone waiting for him.

“With me,” Cayl said. “Quietly.”

Tarn followed the man back to the red-trimmed wagon. He could see a light, but the canvas walls were thick enough to hide any movement inside. He crawled in after Cayl to find Ia and Sethan waiting.

The interior surprised him. He would have expected ostentatious luxury from Sethan, but it was plain. There was a simple bed, made up neatly, behind the driver’s seat. The rest of the space held a low wooden table and cushions. The wagon contained no crates of books to be traded, and no obvious place to store them.

“You were right,” Cayl said to Ia. “He was out in the desert.”

Sethan, in contrast to his setting, wore a thick embroidered robe, belted with a purple silk sash. His feet were swathed in fur-lined slippers, and he cradled a steaming cup of tea. His voice, however, was unusually sharp and direct. “And what did you find out there, spellsword?”

“Nothing,” Tarn told him, wondering. He’d once had a command tent that looked like this, with maps scattered across the tables and grim, soft voices conferring over where to face down the Shadow once they drove it out of Eyr.

“The question needed an honest answer,” Sethan snapped.

“I answered it,” Tarn said and turned to speak to Cayl. “Where are the desert animals? Where is Alagard himself?”

“The local elemental?” Ia asked. “He’s right, Sethan—we’ve usually had a visitation by now.”

“How do you take a resident spirit out of his desert?” Cayl wondered. “Could something be keeping him away? Some attack elsewhere in the desert?”

“Beloved, it should be,” Tarn said. “It was before. Now the love has gone.”

Sethan rolled his eyes but simply said, “And that means?”

“Alagard himself is vanquished or constrained.” Tarn thought a little further. There were methods that could control even the greatest nature spirits, but he was loath to share them. “Perhaps corrupted, so his love for the land is turned to disdain.”

“Now he talks,” Ia grumbled. “What has the power to do that?”

“A greater spirit,” Tarn admitted. He could have done it himself, but he wanted to win Alagard for his hoard, not enslave him.

“How does this fit into the larger mess?” Ia asked.

“I’m not sure yet,” Sethan murmured, leaning over his maps. “I’ve never heard of anything like this.”

“We say that a lot,” Cayl observed. “Tea, Tarn?”

“Aye,” Tarn said. “The larger mess?”

Cayl passed him a mug and asked, “Have any of the company gossips told you how Sethan and I met?”

“Not yet.”

“I was a lawman,” Cayl began reminiscently, “up in the foothills of the Astarans, on the River Seil. Barges were passing through the village and then vanishing before they reached the next trading post. I investigated and could find no natural cause. I was out of ideas when this pretty young bookseller came in with the next barge, boasting about all the arcane lore he’d learned from his books. I persuaded him to help me solve the problem.” His smile faded.

“Which we did, naturally,” Sethan said, reaching out to squeeze his lover’s hand. “It was a nixie prince, suddenly roused to fury and objecting to human freight on his river. We survived the experience—”

“Not without cost,” Cayl murmured.

“We survived,” Sethan repeated, lifting Cayl’s hand to his lips. “The experience made me take notice, however, of how many similar stories were arising.”

“So they investigated,” Ia said. “Being a lawman and a nosy bastard, as they are.”

“The elementals had been dormant or disinterested for centuries,” Sethan explained. “Now they are awakening, but not all at once. We mapped it, with Ia’s help, and found our source.”

“The reawakening began in Tiallat twenty years ago, about the time the Savattin got kicked over the border. It spread steadily from there.”

Ia snorted. “Causing absolute fucking chaos. Human society isn’t equipped for that level of magical intervention. Maybe back during the Dragon Wars we could cope, but we’re too set in new ways now.”

Tarn nodded agreement. He had been walking through the new world for months now, and he still barely understood it. He and his kindred had always been considered the most intelligent of the great spirits. If he could not adjust, how violently must those lesser elementals be reacting?

“And you?” he asked. “Who are you, with your battle room and your cunning plans?”

“More or less what we seem,” Cayl said. “A lawman, a caravan master, and a merc. We just have other friends, powerful, worried friends, in Shara and Hirah and all across the land below the mountains.”

“I have this dreadful fear, you see,” Sethan said idly, “that all this is happening for a reason, and that reason is to be found in Tiallat.”

Tarn was disappointed. Curling his lip, he muttered, “Spies.” It had never been his favorite part of war.

“Partly,” Ia said. “No one really knows what’s happening over there. I reckon you know the value of good intelligence, being who you are.”

“I?” Tarn said.

“Ia has a theory about you,” Sethan said. “It’s so outlandish it may even be true.”

“We reckon,” Cayl continued, “that there really was a dragon flying over Tarenburg in the spring.”

“It fits my projections,” Sethan said, waving at his maps. “This wave of reawakening should have reached Amel by now.”

“And here you are,” Ia said, “straight out of Amel with your ancient armor and no knowledge of anything except the Dragon Wars.”

“And don’t forget his frightfully big sword.”

“Sethan…,” Cayl grumbled.

“Which probably was forged by dragon fire, to have survived so long with a keen edge.”

They had him caught, and Tarn flushed with chagrin. He’d thought he was being so subtle. He’d passed for human before.

“Now,” Ia said, “I’ve studied this. Up until about a century ago, there were persistent rumors that the descendants of Tarnamell’s host had survived up in the mountains. But the stories all stop then. I’ve always thought that Drake Clan either died out or hid themselves so well that everyone gave up looking.”

“Drake Clan, you think?” Tarn asked, relaxing a little. He still had them fooled a little, and he was loath to admit anything more. If what they were telling him was true, this new world was more dangerous than he had realized, and he had no desire to reveal all his weapons too soon.

“Sent out by reawakened dragons to discover how the world has changed,” Cayl said.

“Fucking cheeky to sneer at us for being spies,” Ia pointed out, crossing her arms.

Tarn considered his path. He liked them all, but he hadn’t known them long enough to trust them. What, then, to reveal and what to keep secret?

“One dragon only wakes,” he said at last.

They all sighed, shock and relief gusting through the wagon.

“Which?” Ia asked, leaning forward urgently, and he remembered this was her passion. Of course she would be curious.

“The last to sleep is the first to wake,” he replied.

Her eyes widened, and she brought her hand up to her mouth. “Tarnamell?” she breathed. “The dragon king himself?”

“Yes,” Tarn said and then admitted reluctantly, “The others were so tired after the battle. They may sleep until the end of time.”

“But your king has woken?” Cayl said urgently. “What woke him?”

Tarn cast his mind back to those first blurry moments of waking, before loneliness and yearning had thrown him onto the wind. At last he said, “A shadow moving through the world.”

“How helpful,” Sethan grumbled, but the other two were somber.

“The kind of Shadow he fought before?” Ia asked sharply.

In almost the same moment, Cayl said, “A Shadow in Tiallat?”

Tarn shrugged. He had hardly been awake. How was he supposed to know?

Sethan sighed and put his cup down on the map table. He’d finished off his tea and was starting to look weary. “All this is fascinating, my loves, but merely tells me that Tarn here is in the same straits as the rest of us.”

“The things he must know!” protested Ia.

Sethan held up his hand. “More to the point, should we continue with the caravan? There’s plenty of political intelligence that suggests Tiallat would like to control the desert routes. Now some power has attacked the desert at an elemental level. Is it safe to continue?”

“No,” Cayl said. “But is it ever?”

“We have friends traveling with us,” Sethan said, his eyes tired.

Tarn cleared his throat. “The situation in Tiallat—well, every guard knows, and I have spoken to many traders too. We do not ride blind.”

“We really need the extra information,” Ia said, rubbing her forehead. “I don’t like putting these folks in danger, either, but Tarn’s right. Everyone knows this is a risky run.”

Cayl drew a map closer. “We could reassess the situation when we reach Istel.” He turned to Tarn. “It’s a trade city, our halfway point, where we swing east toward the pass across the Illiat Range. They’ll have more recent news out of Tiallat. If we are forced to turn back, we’ll be able to sell some of what we’re carrying there, and buy water and salt.”

“We make the decision at Istel, then,” Sethan said and pushed back a little from the table. “Now, I’m for my bed, so those who aren’t sharing it should make themselves scarce. Tarn…. Oh, why am I bothering? You don’t talk anyway.”

“I will keep my silence,” Tarn agreed and bowed to them. “Sleep easy. The firstborn watches over you.”

“Land of a thousand gods,” Ia muttered and followed Tarn out into the cold desert night.

As he stood his watch that night, he gazed up at the stars, so much brighter here than in his old kingdom, and thought of the fierce, protective, bright-hearted spirit of Alagard held somewhere by the Shadow, and grieved. If the Shadow had truly risen again, in whatever form, Tarn was bound to fight it. If he had been created for any purpose, it was to combat the Shadow, cold, hungry horror that it was.

He had never imagined fighting without his brethren, but he would if he must, even if it brought him low. In any case, he vowed he would not die until Alagard was free to whirl across the desert again.

Chapter 7: Defending

T
HE
ATMOSPHERE
of the desert did not improve. The sun pounded down on them, harsh and relentless, and there was no comfort in the brightness of the sky. The desert itself seemed simultaneously drained of color and full of blinding, painful reflections of the fierce sun. The high twisted rocks that rose out of the dry ground cast shadows too narrow to offer relief. Constantly they found the road riven by crevasses, and had to divert their path under great arches of blood-red rock, where the wind sang hollowly in the curves of the stone. The poles and flags which marked the route had bowed or broken under the force of the wind, sitting half-buried or reaching up in jagged splinters to snag at the horses. A thin wind blew constantly, sending sand scraping across any exposed skin and into any chinks in their clothing to itch and scratch. Everything chafed.

At night, it was so cold their water supplies tried to freeze solid and had to be carefully tended until dawn by Tarn and the other fire mages, lest they split their barrels and leave the caravan thirsty. Tarn could have kept himself warm easily, there being some merit to having fire in his belly, but he chose instead to crawl in with Barrett and Dit. They had stopped fucking the night away, complaining about the sand that crept in everywhere and made all friction unbearable.

Their human warmth and the awareness of their lives curled close against him was a comfort, and he was sure they appreciated his warmth in equal measure. It didn’t help him sleep, though, and he spent long hours staring at the canvas overhead, made bright by the moon, and wondering how he could find Alagard and set the desert free.