The Dragon Circle (3 page)

Only one way to tell. Deep breathing seemed to help the process. He'd read somewhere about mystic adepts who spent years learning how to breathe. Must have something to do with the infusion of oxygen into the red blood cells.

“I don't have years.” He keyed a few notes about breathing into the reader.

Then he exhaled as much air as he could through his mouth, clearing his lungs of any leftover toxins and chemicals. When he felt as if his chest and backbone had nothing between them, he drew in a long healing breath through his nose.

Immediately, his vision intensified. Each basket and article of clothing strewn about the cabin he shared with his wife Hestiia came into sharper focus. This breath he exhaled as deeply as the previous one. A second conscious inhalation brought the now familiar dazzle around the edges of his vision. Rather than banish it, he nurtured it, giving the sparkles and half images a little time to develop. This time the aura remained as he got rid of that breath and took the third.

The void opened clearly before him. Pulsing chains of light and life invited him to explore. He reached for one that scintillated with every color and yet seemed to have no true color at all. . . .

The void snapped closed.

Kim landed on the packed-dirt floor with a thud. Rubbing his butt, he righted his stool and climbed back up on it.

His head ached and his stomach growled. He thought he heard a chuckle in the back of his mind. A chuckle with the deep bronze bell tones of Iianthe. Or did all of the dragons have the same bass voice?

Amazingly, all of his impressions and sensations revealed themselves in precise wording on the reader.

But what did it mean?

“Am I working magic?”

(
Magic is in the perceiving
,) the dragon voice said.

It continued to chuckle.

Konner gulped. Before he could change his mind, he locked down communications and secured the hatch to the bridge. Then he jumped into a long dive for the launch bay where he'd parked
Rover
.

Before launching the shuttle, Konner tried to call his brothers again from the cockpit. The comm port remained silent. He set the device to repeat the call.

“Come on, Loki. Answer the damn phone.” The light continued to blink red.

Konner vented the bay atmosphere as he opened the bay doors. He used the explosive release of the remaining air to push his shuttle out into the darkness of high orbit. He oriented to the planet beneath him.
Sirius
held position on the night side, over the horizon from the southern continent where he and his brothers had made homes among the Coros.

He passed his hand over the computer screen once more, in a pattern only he knew.
Sirius
disappeared from his sensors. His confusion field continued to work.

“What's so damn important you dragged me away from my work?” Kim O'Hara growled through the comm port.

Kim, the least likely to respond. The youngest brother had embraced the primitive life of the Coros. He'd taken a native wife. He'd announced his plans to remain dirtside when Konner and Loki returned to civilized space.

“Trouble coming. I need you and Loki to meet me at the landing site. Be there in one and twenty.” Konner discomed before Kim could argue with him. Before Konner's own fears could choke him into immobility.

Ninety digital minutes later, they waited for him in the open meadow west of the village and tilled fields. The shuttle's landing draft blew their red hair and beards into their faces. Loki's blue eyes flashed with anger and he braced his long legs for confrontation. Kim leaned his lanky body against a boulder.

All three brothers had the same overt characteristics. But studious Kim was taller and more slender, audacious Loki broader, the shortest of the three with more brute strength. Konner was very much the middle brother in build and temperament, the placater, the one who tried to hold them together as a family when troubles threatened to split them.

“What?” Loki asked the moment the hatch irised open.

“Trouble. Get in.” Konner pushed the shuttle toward a rolling launch before Kim had time to slap the portal controls closed. Both Kim and Loki stumbled as they fought for balance in the rapidly moving vehicle.

“What?” Loki asked again when they had all strapped in.

Konner tossed him the beacon.

Strained silence stretched. Konner realized he was holding his breath only when the pain in his chest became unbearable.

“Who?” Kim asked.

“Melinda. Who else.”

“Aurora markings on the casing. Definitely manufactured in one of her factories,” Loki mused turning the thing over and over. “But then she manufactures all of these things.”

“Who else could modify it so that
I
would not find it until I reset one particular crystal. None of my sensors noticed it. None of my routine inspections noticed it. The bit of recessed LED that shows was shadowed by an equally red directional crystal. The casing is painted the same gray-green as the rabbit hole. We got that color by mixing a bunch of leftovers from other ships. Only Melinda would have the audacity to try to match that paint or bribe the few people outside the family who had access to it.”

Another long silence.

“So what do we do with it?” Loki asked.

“The lava core of the volcano.”

All three brothers shuddered.

“I thought we decided never to go back there,” Kim said.

“We have no choice.”

“Are the IMPs within the star system yet?” Loki asked.

“Didn't take the time to do a full search.”

“Mum will never forgive us if we get caught,” Kim reminded them.

“Mum isn't going to like anything about this run.” Konner checked the computer setting. Still on mute. None of them needed Mum's voice droning in their ears right now, even if it was just a mechanical device reporting the information of their interface displays.

“Can't we just dump this at the bottom of the deepest ocean?” Kim asked. His fingers ran over the sensor array with precision.

“Not deep enough,” Konner replied. He kept his attention on the engineering rather than the mountain range looming ahead of them.

“What if we shot it into the sun?” Loki prompted. He piloted the craft with ease, posture relaxed, dominant left hand resting upon the joystick. He liked to interface with the ship directly rather than rely on computer readouts.

“Take too long to reach the sun's corona if we launch it from orbit. Besides, the window is wrong.
Rover
doesn't have enough power to get us away from the sun's gravitational pull once we get close enough, and we can't move
Sirius
until the crystals finish growing.”

“How much longer on that?” Loki asked.

Kim frowned and turned his head away rather than face the issue of leaving the planet.

“A week at least. Maybe a day less,” Konner replied. Even then he'd be cutting it close to make it back to Aurora in time for Martin's court date. He only had one chance to gain custody of the boy and he would not miss it.

They reached the yawning mouth of the mountain caldera all too soon.

They sat for a long time after Loki set
Rover
down inside the bowl of the volcano. The dust settled. The shuttle ceased to click as it cooled. Still they sat in silence. Waiting.

For what?

“We have to do this,” Konner said finally.

“I'll stay and guard
Rover
,” Loki said flatly.

“None of us should have to face this place alone. We all go, or we all stay.” Kim swallowed deeply.

“We killed a man in there,” Loki reminded them all.

“We killed a monster who tried to kill us and our villagers any number of times.” Konner gathered a portable illuminator and a canteen. He tossed other survival gear to his brothers.

“We all go and face our personal demons together.” Konner decided for them. “Come on. Let's get this over with before the IMPs have any more time to find us.”

L
OKI STOPPED in the shadow of the ragged cave entrance. The sun beat down in a blinding glare upon the dry bowl of the caldera. High, steep walls of the blown-out mountain rose nearly one point five kilometers above him, trapping the heat and the dust, keeping out the wind. Nothing disturbed this lonely and hidden outpost in the Southern Mountains.

Even in the shade, sweat poured from his brow and back. He smelled himself and did not like the acrid taint of fear.

Deliberately, Loki scuffed the dust with his foot. Anything to delay entrance into the cave. He spotted traces of footprints, remnants of his retreat from this place a few weeks ago. He discerned the shape of his boots, Konner's lighter steps, Kim's bare feet, the tiny prints made by Hestiia, Kim's wife. In the middle, he barely made out the shuffling smudge made by Taneeo, the village priest. He'd been weak, ill, and sorely abused when they rescued him from violent Hanassa's clutches.

Then he saw something else. Someone with firm steps and a confident stride had been here. The most recent visitor had worn soft boots—unusual among the local population. Male by the length, breadth, and depth. Those prints were fresh.

“Wait!” Loki called to his brothers. They had already entered the relative coolness of the first chamber.

“What now?” Konner asked impatiently. He swept his illuminator along the walls, creating more shadows than it banished.

“Someone has been here. Recently,” Loki said. He clamped his teeth shut to keep them from chattering.

“Rovers camp here when they travel the pass,” Kim explained.

“Yeah. Rovers.” Loki gulped. He took a swig from his canteen.

His family had given him the nickname of the Norse god known for his adventurous spirit and lack of caution. He was always the first one to wade into a brawl and usually the last man standing. Why did he fear this place so?

Because you took a life within these caverns,
his conscience reminded him. That inner voice always sounded just like Mum. Anger began to replace his hesitance. Anger at Mum for her martyr complex and her manipulation of all three of her sons. Anger at himself for listening to her for so many years. Anger at Hanassa for being the bloodthirsty priest of the false god Simurgh. Anger at the dragons who had originally spawned Hanassa and then kicked him out of the nimbus for his lack of honor and his taste for human flesh.

He let the anger propel him forward. He caught up with his brothers and took the lead.

He could not help watching the ground closely for that alien footprint. It danced off to the side, then rejoined the direct route to the lower levels. A few paces farther on it disappeared again. Loki breathed a little easier.

The three brothers wound their way silently through the maze of caverns into the large room with a natural dais. At the entrance they all paused and held their breath.

Someone had placed a large, high-backed chair made of silver bloodwood in the exact center of the platform. Before it, a massive boulder had been carved and shaped into an altar. Outlines of a dragon dismembering naked humans, male and female, young and old, helpless and in their prime, appeared half finished on all four sides of the stone.

“The chair . . . it looks like a throne,” Loki gulped. He could not stand to look at the grisly altar. He drank deeply from the canteen to keep his stomach under control.

His lover, Cyndi, would love that throne. She looked good in red with her blonde hair and fair skin.

“Who can tolerate sitting on that wood? The sap toxins would burn right through clothing.” Konner squirmed uneasily.

“Hanassa would sit there. I don't think he'd notice a little thing like discomfort,” Loki said quietly. Cyndi would also find a way to discount or avoid skin rashes and welts. Enhancing her looks was her primary occupation. That and defying her father.

“The dragons dumped Hanassa's body into the lava core,” Kim reminded them. “He could not have survived. I know it, you know it. The dragons know it.” He slapped his illuminator on his thigh with each statement.

“Maybe the Rovers?” Loki offered. Anything to banish the thought that Hanassa might still live to plague them.

Or his ghost might haunt them. Who else would
want
to erect and carve that altar? The rock looked untainted. At least it had not yet been consecrated with human blood.

“Maybe Rovers.” Konner sounded as if he did not really buy that explanation. The Coros blamed all misdeeds and bad luck upon the homeless tribes. “We need to get moving and destroy the beacon,” he said. Now he took the lead and marched across the cavern toward the lava tube tunnel that would take them downward, into the bowels of the mountain.