Sounds filtered through the darkness, borne on waves of energy that struck Ayebis as oddly familiar, yet impossible to identify. He tensed, choking back his astonishment at being disturbed in this way, at this hour. Or at all, after so many years of quiet.
He rose from his place of rest, bare feet silent on the dirt floor as he moved toward the entryway. The sounds came again. A shuffle, a muffled whimper, followed by a glittering explosion of panic that streaked through his brain like a thousand falling stars.
Ayebis stood still and absorbed the mental meteor shower, more curious now than afraid. Yet tendrils of fear snaked up his backbone, a communique of alarm not his own, but broadcast from whoever was skulking around outside his door.
The sounds had diminished, except for the whimper. It came at irregular intervals, never the same noise twice. But the panic…
Wait. Glittering explosion?
Why glittering? Why that impression, that particular empathic cue? He knew only one creature that glittered, and then only because it was a trick of the light bouncing off reflective dorsal scales….
Ayebis pushed the door open and squinted into the blackness beyond it. “Vyshta?”
The darkness parted, a dragon-sized portion of it becoming less black in his field of vision. Who knew such a large beast could creep so silently, with such stealth? As Vyshta edged closer, muscles rippled beneath her leathery hide, but her scales lay flat, absorbing light rather than refracting it. She moved like the night itself, liquid and shapeless, until she crossed a patch of moonlight and Ayebis saw what she carried in her mouth.
He stifled a curse. Did his eyes deceive him?
Vyshta lowered her massive neck and brought the contents of her mouth shoulder-level with Ayebis. Oh, sacred land—his eyes didn’t deceive him at all. There, draped across her powerful jaw lay a human child, not moving, possibly not alive. Tiny pale legs poked through the spikes of Vyshta’s teeth, what were once fine linen knickers plastered to them with drying blood. Wisps of blond hair stuck to a cherub face, all stained with red.
“What is this?” Instinctively, Ayebis reached for the child.
Vyshta unhinged her lower jaw until the hapless tot poured into Ayebis’s outstretched arms. A boy, from the looks of it, whimpering but otherwise unresponsive. It was the same sound Ayebis heard earlier, just weaker now, barely audible. Thank the stars for it, though. Otherwise he might have feared the worst. Hard to tell from a glance that the kid was even breathing.
“Fetch me some houndsfoot.” He spoke aloud, walking quickly toward the house with the child. But with the words he sent images to the dragon, detailed and specific. “Flowering, if you can find it. Spidercap root. And creeping nettle. Bring these at once. There’s no time to waste.”
Vyshta slipped backward into the darkness and disappeared. She had abandoned all caution, because Ayebis heard the whoosh of displaced air as she took to the sky. Ordinarily, she was as silent as death. Her panic had changed everything.
He would ask questions at her return. Many questions. Right now, his only priority was the life of this human child. Vyshta had not been wrong to seek him out. Ayebis had known and practiced the art of healing magic for as many centuries as the dragon was alive. They were both ancients, mystics of the land. But in all that time, he’d never known Vyshta to make contact with any human, child or adult. She held herself completely apart from civilization, content for her species to be remembered in stories passed down through village grandfathers and never acknowledged as fact.
This might not remain the case if humans believed a dragon was responsible for such grievous injuries to their offspring. Ayebis needed an explanation from Vyshta, and he needed it quickly. He needed truth to exculpate her if he were to mend any perceived breach of a centuries-old peace accord as skillfully as he could mend this child’s broken body.
Vyshta didn’t use words. She communicated through images and feelings, and never before had her impressions been so vivid. Ayebis had no trouble understanding what she had witnessed.
His hands stayed busy as Vyshta flooded him with scenes of violence. Peel the houndsfoot buds to reach more delicate petals inside, watch through Vyshta’s eyes while a dappled horse reared in terror. Sprinkle the petals into simmering water as a human male darted from the cover of forest, burlap hood covering his face. Stoke the fire for a rolling boil, cringe at what was now just a borrowed recollection, but only a short time ago had been the dying moments of a young woman’s life.
Ayebis harbored no doubt that Vyshta had witnessed a murder. The amount of shed blood alone would have convinced him, but the nature of the assault itself suggested purposeful execution, not highway mischief. Two men, moving in practiced tandem, dragged the young woman from her horse and eviscerated her before she hit the ground. Her torso erupted in a snarl of vital organs yet death wasn’t instant—she remained alive to scream when the weight of her dappled horse crashed onto what was left of her body.
Though he’d seen much atrocity over the centuries, Ayebis nonetheless recoiled as the woman moaned and then gurgled. The horse thrashed on top of her for a moment more, blood spurting from a gaping wound in its neck. Blades had been the weapons of choice on both rider and mount, and they had done their work well.
What caught Ayebis by surprise, even with the child suspended before him now in a magical millisecond of time, were the wails coming from beneath both the dead horse and the dead woman. They jolted him back to the reality he now dealt with. Perhaps the blood caked onto this child—or at least most of it—had a different source. Perhaps the injuries weren’t so grievous. Maybe there was hope.
His focus returned to the boiling kettle of houndsfoot and he lifted it from the fire, looking for a safe spot he could set it aside to steep. All the while, Vyshta made no attempt to dampen her emotional response, either past or current. Wave after wave of her outrage jolted through Ayebis, so keen it was almost painful. He had no trouble intuiting the moment she had decided to act. Neither could he fault her for it.
In the forest, flames had spewed from Vyshta’s nostrils in twin streams of molten fury. The men vaporized in seconds. Her fit of horror and rage spared not even bone to indicate a human had ever stood on that spot of ground. Not one scrap of metal from a fitting, not one shoe nail, not a shred of tissue or textile remained. Gone as if they had never been there, leaving nothing but a smoldering patch of leaf litter that spoke nothing of men but everything of dragons.
Ayebis watched Vyshta’s memory unspool, saw from her perspective the way her clawed forelimbs tossed the horse’s body aside, moved the woman’s gutted corpse out of the way, and gingerly freed the young boy who’d been trapped underneath the weight of it all. Thank the stars, most of the blood indeed did not belong to the child. But such a crush injury could quickly prove fatal. Ayebis had seen it before. Fortunately, he knew what to do about it. He glanced down at the pot of houndsfoot he held, so preoccupied with his proper course of action that he almost missed what happened next on the forest trail.
Vyshta collected the boy into her mouth and secured him among her rows of teeth. Satisfied that he could not slip and fall to a certain death, she turned to make a run for the sky. Just as her hind claws cleared the ground, a startled cry rose from the path below. Another traveler, happening upon the scene, confronted with the gruesome evidence of a dragon strike, but nothing to indicate it had been justly provoked.
For the briefest of moments, Vyshta had entertained the option of protecting herself at all costs. But maybe, just maybe the lone traveler hadn’t seen her soar quietly over his head and disappear beyond the treetops. Maybe he had been too startled by the carnage on the ground to wonder about the rush of wind buffeting his face on an afternoon that had otherwise been dead calm. Maybe she was safe—but the more likely possibility turned the fire in her veins to ice.
Ayebis felt her chill of panic as if he’d experienced it himself. He set the kettle down lest he spill scalding houndsfoot all over himself and everything else in the room. How to reassure her in this moment? He had no reassurance to give. Very likely, search parties were already forming in the village below. These dragon hunters would not take Vyshta alive. Nor would they rest until she was dead.
You are safe here for now, Vyshta. Bed down in the orchard tonight. Tomorrow I will go into the village to see what I can learn.
Crush injuries were curious conditions. They could leave a victim outwardly unmarked, perhaps a little sore, a little swollen. Sometimes they included bone breaks, sometimes they didn’t. But in every case, cell membranes ruptured and contaminated the blood, which could cause a heart to stop beating or kidneys to fail.
Various other catastrophic events could happen, but Ayebis didn’t bother with those details. The trick was in the magic. That was the starting point. After that, human bodies would heal if given the opportunity. Especially young, healthy individuals, and this child certainly had youth on his side.
Shortly after the boy’s arrival, Ayebis had suspended him in a bubble of anti-time, which kept all body processes—both good and bad—in complete stasis. While held there, the boy could neither die nor actually live, so it wasn’t a long-term solution. But it bought a little time for Ayebis to understand what had happened and make preparations to deal with it.
Earlier, Vyshta had gathered necessary ingredients from the forest for Ayebis to concoct a very non-magical medicine. Removed from telepathic range, her fear and concern could not distract him. Those negative energies, while understandable, were not helpful.
While she was gone, he’d had time to examine the boy undistracted. The bones of a human child were soft, pliable. They could take a great deal of distortion without suffering a break. Ayebis had been unable to detect any indication of fracture or dislocation. So much the better.
Magic could heal, and magic could kill. Potency and effect were bound with intention. Ayebis released the child from anti-time, allowing him to drop straight downward into a flowing stream of life energy that he’d diverted from nature itself. It was visible, this stream, pulsing around the boy’s body in iridescent streaks of green and blue. These were the colors of vitality and healing, and Ayebis let them do their work.
During the wait, he finished his houndsfoot concoction and added honey. This tea would rehydrate the boy, support his kidneys as they worked hard to flush any remaining detritus from ruptured cells. The honey would provide energy. He made a broth of the spidercap and nettle, anticipating that the boy might be hungry when he woke. After half an hour, he checked heart and respiration rate. Both had become stronger, more steady. The tot was only sleeping now, no longer comatose. Ayebis let him be for a while longer. Rest was good medicine, too.
Anyone could have a difficult awakening after such a trauma. So Ayebis prepared for it. He decided against the administration of natural sedatives because of their tendency to depress vital signs. Instead, he wove a net of empathic detachment, lending his ability to control emotion to the child’s own mental resources. Then he forced himself to be patient. And sure enough, just before the first rays of sunlight peeked above the horizon came the first fluttering of eyelids and trembling of lip.
“You are safe here, child.” Ayebis spoke out loud. “There is nothing to fear now. I am a friend.”
The boy woke with a cry, tiny fists flailing. Ayebis wrapped his own hands around them, tightening his long fingers to offer a reassuring squeeze.
“Maaaa!” The boy cried, fat tears spilling from his eyes. “Maaaaaa!”
“Mama?” Ayebis hoped the word would trigger an appropriate response, but it did not. The boy continued to stare past him, eyes fixed on something remembered, nothing that was actually in the room with them. “You call for your mama?”
“Puh … pppp..maaaa!”
Papa? Mama? Ayebis could only guess. And that wouldn’t do anyone any good whatsoever. He needed to know things. Names. Locations. The reason a woman might be riding alone in a forest with a child concealed beneath her cloak.
Perhaps because the child was cold. Perhaps because she was hiding him. But from whom? From robbers? From his own family?
For the first time, Ayebis questioned the relationship between the child and the woman on the horse. He’d presumed they were mother and son, but did he know that for fact? No. It was a reckless assumption. One he needed to prove or disprove immediately.
“What is your name?” He probed the boy’s aura in search of anything identifiable. An image, a word… but he connected with nothing but despair. “Do you speak?”
From his nest of flannel blankets and pillows stuffed with goosedown, the boy let out a wail that set every molecule in the room vibrating against the one beside it. Ayebis gritted his teeth and waited for the wave to pass. Sometimes being so keen to sense the emotions of others carried a discomfiting price.
“Do you speak?” he asked again, more firmly this time.
Nothing from the boy except a flood of confused emotions.
The boy couldn’t be more than two or three years old, but he should have a bit of language development by this age. Was he without words since birth or had the violence of the previous night rendered him mute? What could the boy reveal about the woman on the horse, through either images or speech? So many questions, and such a fragile psyche to parse.
Ayebis let go of the boy’s hands and turned to open a window, hoping for a bit more light as the sun climbed over Kylleloche Peak. But barely had he taken a step when he hit a wall of psychic energy so dense that he physically rebounded. Stunned, he took a hard look at the boy, who now stared directly at him. In that instant, he saw the faces of the two men Vyshta had incinerated, but from a much closer perspective. Through the boy’s eyes, Ayebis had no trouble identifying the assassins by their oversized pupils and double rows of teeth, details Vyshta had never gotten close enough to see.
These men were not from the village. They were Skalthars, mutated humans from a corrupt bloodline who lived in caves along the mountain cliffs. They were known for two things—ruthless barbarism, and sworn fealty to an overthrown king who had been dead since Ayebis himself was a tot.
That king’s surviving bloodline still occupied the land east of Kylleloche. Though they hadn’t made a reach toward it in centuries, they still coveted rights to the throne.
Ayebis let the ramifications of his new understanding settle. Then, without hesitation or flinch, he paced a circle around the boy, using the tips of his fingers to reverse the polarity of time within the boundary drawn by his feet.
The boy’s expression never changed, and the tear tracking down his cheek crystallized in place. Suspended once more in anti-time, he would be safe there indefinitely. Ayebis locked the doors to his healing chamber and summoned Vyshta on his way out.
“I’m going to the village,” he told her without speaking. “Stand watch. If anyone comes near this edge of the forest, destroy them.”
The road to the village had been much grander in the days when kings ruled the land. Broader, smoother, and well maintained, it had connected the coastal plains to the east with Sigaleath proper, which lay further west. The mountain pass over Kylleloche had long been demolished, blockading the route taken by the former king’s exiled family when they fled for their lives.
This day, Ayebis traversed the rutted and overgrown path with care. In places it seemed hardly more than a goat trail. He remembered a time when carriages pulled by teams of horses could pass side by side with scarcely a concern of brushing wheel hubs. But the people had demanded freedom—freedom from monarchical rule and the high taxes required to maintain their national corridor in such pristine condition. Ayebis had often wondered how long before ego and avarice would erode the foundation of liberty and put the entire continent into bondage that could not be broken by the execution of a single leader.
He didn’t have to travel far into the village before he saw the first parchment flyers calling for organization of a dragon hunt. They hung in nearly every shop window, on every lamp post. Crude sketches of a dragon that looked nothing like Vyshta, a generous offer of payment to anyone who brought back proof of kill. Nothing about a missing boy or a murdered woman. Minds were set. Slay the dragon, solve the crime. Not one glimmer of notion that human involvement could have played a role, or of hope that the child could be alive.
Ayebis ducked under the lentil of a tavern doorway and removed his hood. As unobstrusive as he tried to be, his towering height and cornsilk hair would never allow him to blend with this crowd.
A hush rippled through the tavern, followed by quiet murmurings of recognition and surprise. It had been a long time since Ayebis had shown his face in town.
“Magician.” The bartender spoke first. “May I take your wrap?”
Ayebis shook his head. “No, thank you. I’ll have an ale, please. House, if it’s craft.”
He slid onto a wooden stool at the bar and waited for his drink. Every eye in the room bored holes through his skin.
“What brings you to us, Magician?” One of the patrons took a stool directly beside him. “The bounty?”
Ayebis managed to smile as if the question amused him. “The company. Of course.”
Laughter skittered through the crowd but it was tense and short-lived. Ayebis glanced around, gauging the people who watched him. Laborers, mostly, with thickened necks and meaty fists, missing teeth and unkempt beards. They wore burlap and cotton, all in varying shades of dirt. The days had gone when men took pride in their appearance, dressed in fine linen dyed with the brighter colors of nature.
The boy had been wearing knickers. Definitely fine, definitely linen. Underneath the bloodstains, a nice shade of pale yellow. Curcumin and walnut grounds, most likely, steeped into the fibers before the loom. A child of such status would be known to these people. Particularly amid rumors that he had been carried off by a dragon.
The bartender plunked a tankard of ale in front of Ayebis. Flecks of foam went airborne and landed on the roughhewn surface of the bar. Ayebis dabbed at them with his sleeve. “Is there a bounty for safe return of the child?”
Nervous laughter turned to guffaws.
“That child be in a million bits by now,” one man said.
“Dragon scat,” said another.
“And what of the family?” Ayebis cradled the mug between his palms. “Have they given up hope?”
“Lost both their offspring to that scaly devil.” The bartender wiped his hands on a cloth that looked filthier than the clothes his customers wore. “Who do you think is funding the bounty?”
Ah. So—the woman on the horse was the boy’s sibling, not his mother.