The Wings of Dragons: Book One of the Dragoon Saga (23 page)

Rondel cocked a mischievous eyebrow. “What’s
the matter? Lose something?”

Growling, Iren smashed her against the wall
again.

The old woman didn’t seem concerned.
“Really, Iren, this is unnecessary.”

“
Like hell it is!” He
prepared to slam her into the wall a third time, but Minawë
intervened, rushing across the room and grabbing his arm in
midair.

“
Stop!” she cried. “Enough!
Calm down and let Rondel explain.”

Iren screamed in her face, “I won’t listen
to anything she has to say!”

From the other side of the room, Aletas said
matter-of-factly, “Why not? What can it hurt? You can’t go back to
Lodia. They’d kill you.”

Iren halted, mouth open, as his
confrontation with Balear came back to him. In the eyes of Lodia,
he’d thrown in his lot with Rondel. He’d become a traitor, marked
for life. “Fine,” he spat, releasing Rondel roughly before plopping
himself on the bed, his right arm folded over his splint. “But if I
don’t like what I hear,” he glowered at Rondel, “I’ll kill
you.”

The diminutive Maantec chuckled. “You can
try.”

Aletas groaned. “Rondel, you’re not really
helping.”

“
No, I suppose not,” Rondel
conceded, though she sounded far from sincere. “You never did know
how to have fun, Aletas. Fine, fine, might as well get down to
business. Let’s start with the simplest matter: why I’m still
alive.”

Despite Iren’s best attempts to maintain his
fury with her, he had to admit that particular subject made him
curious. After all, he’d checked her pulse himself.

She explained, “You know that I manipulate
the lightning in my body. By increasing its flow, I make myself
faster and stronger. What would happen if I decreased it?”

“
You’d get weaker,” Iren
guessed.

Rondel half-smiled. “And suppose I stopped
it entirely?”

Iren froze on the bed. “Impossible.”

“
The brain regulates all
the body’s functions, even involuntary ones, by electric signals.
Turn off those signals, and the body stops breathing, stops
blinking, even stops its own heart. For all intents and purposes,
it dies.”

“
Except,” Iren found
himself muttering, “the brain itself remains alive.”

“
Correct,” Rondel said,
“and critically important, otherwise I couldn’t start my signals up
again. I’d really die then. Of course, the brain can’t live without
air or blood for very long. A high-risk technique to be sure, and I
can only maintain it for a few minutes. In this case, though, it
lasted long enough. My senses continued functioning throughout my
death state. I saw you unleash your beam. I heard you fall and get
dragged away by your horse. And I saw Amroth finally reveal
himself.”

Iren frowned, confused.

“
I told you before,” Rondel
went on, deducing Iren’s expression. “I’ve suspected Amroth had an
ulterior motive from the beginning, but I couldn’t prove anything.
I played along with his scheme, hoping he would eventually reveal
his treachery. After you left, he did. He came out of the tunnel,
fully armed, and marched right up to Hezna. He drew his blade and
cut the monster’s throat.”

“
What’s your point? That’s
why we went on that mission in the first place.”

“
Only in the most basic
sense. Amroth didn’t just want to kill Hezna. He wanted what Hezna
had. The moment the Oni died, Amroth took the monster’s sword. You
couldn’t have recognized it, but I did. It was the Fire Dragon
Sword, the Karyozaki.”

Iren’s pulse quickened. That Oni had been a
Dragon Knight! “What happened to Amroth? Wouldn’t the dragon have
tested him?”

Rondel nodded, her expression ominous. “He
did, and Feng accepted him. I don’t have all the details, but I do
know this much. Amroth didn’t become the Fire Dragon Knight by
accident. He knew what he was doing.”

Iren sat pensively for a minute before
bursting into loud, wide-mouthed laughter. “You’re insane!” he
replied. “Absolutely crazy. You don’t honestly expect me to believe
this nonsense, do you? You betrayed Lodia to the Quodivar and
Yokai, and you think you can cover it up with this ridiculous
story? Look, even if I don’t have the letter, I still read it. I
know what it said, and I know who signed the bottom of it.” He
stood. “I’ve heard enough. Amroth befriended me when no one else
would. He rescued me as an infant, and he gave me a chance to
avenge my parents. I won’t let you make up lies about him! I’ll
kill you, Rondel, and when I carry your corpse back to Lodia,
they’ll know I’m not a traitor.”

Rondel didn’t react. Aletas, however, piped
up, “You think that will solve anything? Amroth will still put you
to death. He’s planned to from the beginning.”

Iren rounded on her. “How would you know?
This is Lodian business, anyway, and none of your concern!”

Aletas was unflappable. “It concerns us now,
foolish Maantec child, because the two of you came here. Traitors
or not, Lodia will see Ziorsecth as harboring you. Besides, I’ve
read the letter. It doesn’t implicate Rondel. Quite the contrary,
it proves her innocent.”

“
You’ve read the letter?”
Iren shook his head in disbelief. “How?”

Rondel’s grin returned, wider than ever.
“Because I brought it here!” With a relaxed stretch, she stood,
strode across the room to the bed, and hauled out a traveling pack
that had been sitting beside it. Opening the flap, she reached in
and removed the letter Balear had shown him, as well as the
tattered shirt and cloak he’d cast away.

“
Take a closer look at that
note,” Rondel said, handing it to Iren, “and the truth will come to
you.”

Iren read through the letter, but if there
was something there other than Rondel’s obvious betrayal of
Haldessa, he missed it. “It has your signature, and I recognize
your handwriting,” he pointed out. “Remember, I saw you write out
that waiver for Amroth at the castle.”

To Iren’s surprise, Rondel nodded.
“Impressive, you picked up on it faster than I did. You’re correct.
That handwriting perfectly matches what I used on the waiver. Find
anything strange about that?”

Iren stared at the letter, thinking back. He
recalled how Rondel had completed the waiver with exactly these
letters. She wrote slowly, painstakingly, her right hand shaking
with effort. Realization struck. “You wrote the waiver with your
right hand, so as not to reveal your Left identity. Amroth, Balear,
and I were all watching you. To write to the Quodivar, though,
you’d obviously do that in secret.”

Rondel smirked. “And if I were writing in
secret, why use my off hand? Would I not write with my left hand?
It would give me both better penmanship and an alibi should someone
discover the letter and ask me to provide a writing sample.”

With new interest, Iren looked over the
note, wondering if it could really be a forgery. He didn’t see how
that was possible. Even with Rondel’s blocky characters, no one
could perfectly duplicate her handwriting.

“
Do you recall Amroth’s
speech the night before we set off on our mission?” Rondel asked.
“He mentioned the many great artworks in the hall, and how he’d
painted some of them himself. A little thing, but in this case, it
explains much. Beyond superb combat skills, Amroth also possesses
masterful artistic talents. He can do almost anything with his
hands, including copy someone’s handwriting.”

“
To do that, though,” Iren
pointed out, “he’d need a sample of your writing.”

“
Ah, but he did have a
sample: the waiver. Do you honestly think that bunch of nonsense
was a legal document? I’ve traveled Raa for over a thousand years.
Lodia has never demanded such a waiver from anyone. Amroth made it
up for the purpose of obtaining a complete sample of our
handwriting.” She reached into the pack again and pulled out a
second sheet of parchment, which she passed to Iren. “The original
waivers have conveniently vanished, but guessing that Amroth had
some agenda, I memorized what he had us write. Take a
look.”

Iren read through the waiver text. “I,
Rondel Thara, do here absolve Amroth Angustion, my Great King and
Leader Azuluu, and all agents of the government of the Nation of
Lodia and City of Haldessa of any responsibility should I perish on
this dangerous mission. I recognize the task’s extreme peril and
small window for success, but my desire to bring justice to the
Sneaky and Monstrous Enemy of Lodia, the Quodivar, is
unquestionable.” Rondel had also copied the date and her signature
at the bottom.

“
Incredible,” Iren said
after he’d finished. The old Maantec was right; the document
contained every letter of the Lodian alphabet. In addition, when he
compared it to the letter to Zuberi, he found that the note only
used capital letters also found in the waiver.

“
Amroth said he delivered
the waivers to Azuluu’s legal assistant, but he lied. Instead, when
he left us, he ran back to his own room and copied my writing to
create the letter to the Quodivar. I followed him at a distance,
pretending to seek more alcohol, which, by the way, I also found
time to get. Once he’d written the letter supposedly from me, he
simply placed it with the castle post, more than likely bound for
an accomplice in Veliaf.”

Iren couldn’t believe it. He fell back on
the bed. The whole thing — the speech, Amroth telling him about his
parents, the mission to stop the Quodivar leadership — was all a
sham, all designed to gain Amroth the Karyozaki.

It all seemed unnecessary though. If Amroth
only wanted the sword, there was no need for such deception. He
didn’t have to frame Rondel, and he certainly didn’t have to send
the Quodivar and Yokai to Haldessa.

That thought made him bolt into a seated
position. “Rondel, what happened to the castle?” he asked. “If the
Quodivar received the letter, they would know how to attack
it!”

Rondel silently retrieved her fallen cup,
staring into the empty mug as though searching for answers in its
depths. “Iren, you guessed correctly that I left Haldessa in ruins.
The city has burned to the ground.”

Iren felt grateful he sat on the bed,
because he swooned. Nearly all his memories were of Haldessa
Castle. Up until the past month or so, he’d never gone anywhere
else. He knew every passage by heart. He remembered the city lying
just outside the castle walls, always bustling with excitement. How
he’d longed to take part in that! He tried unsuccessfully not to
think about the city’s populace. The Quodivar must have caught them
totally off guard.

“
This news would be bad
enough on its own,” Rondel said, “but I’m afraid it gets much
worse. You see, neither the Quodivar, nor even the Yokai, put
Haldessa to the torch.” She paused. Peering over her cup’s rim at
him, she continued in a deadly whisper, “Amroth did.”

Stunned, Iren barely managed to meet
Rondel’s gaze.

“
I arrived just in time to
witness it,” she said. “The Quodivar and Yokai had breached the
city and the castle. Amroth used the Karyozaki’s magic and set
everything on fire. The castle is nothing but an empty shell now.
It was horrifying. I’ve seen neither such magic nor such cruelty in
the thousand years since the Kodama-Maantec War ended. Many
innocent victims still lived when Amroth unleashed his attack. He
killed them all. Amroth wiped out the civilian population,
including the king.”

Iren’s head snapped up. It had to be a lie.
It had to be. He only survived today because Amroth had protected
him from execution. They’d fought side by side against the
Quodivar. They were friends. Surely, the captain wouldn’t betray
Iren. Surely, he wouldn’t betray Lodia.

His mind wanted so badly to deny it, yet the
forged letter stared mockingly back at him, its letters spelling
out their cold truth. Amroth had used him, hoping he would help
kill Zuberi and Hezna. Once Iren had accomplished that mission,
Amroth had always intended to get rid of him. The captain had even
gone so far as to specifically include Iren’s name in the letter to
the Quodivar, guaranteeing that Iren would be cited as a potential
traitor.

Numbly, Iren got to his feet. “It can’t be.
It can’t be.” He kept repeating the sentence, as if saying it
enough times would make it true. Rondel and Aletas just watched,
letting him work through the struggle on his own. Minawë stepped
forward and started to put an arm around him, but the physical
contact was too much. He bristled and shouted, “It can’t be!”

Before anyone could stop him, he rushed out
the door, down the steps, and was gone.

* * *

Iren had no idea why he was running, let
alone where he was going.

Still, it felt good to run. The pounding of
his boots on the thick mat of fallen leaves, the shouting of his
muscles as they begged for air, and the rapid breathing trying to
meet that demand all called for concentration. While he ran, he
didn’t have to think. While he ran, he didn’t have to see Amroth’s
face bubbling up in his consciousness.

He couldn’t trust anyone. He’d put his
confidence in Amroth, and the captain had slaughtered an entire
city. He’d considered Balear a comrade, yet the soldier had tried
to kill him. He was better off on his own, the way he’d lived in
Haldessa all those years.

For what felt like hours, he continued
running. He had no idea how far he went. It didn’t really matter,
as long as he put distance between himself and everyone else.

Perhaps if he’d paid slightly more
attention, he would have noticed the cliff. As such, he didn’t even
slow down as the forest abruptly ended, and he found himself no
longer running but falling.