Evanescent (Chronicles of Nerissette) Page 17

  “Yet now he’s back. With an even larger army. An army filled with the troops of your aunt, the empress of Bathune.”

  “I know. I was there when they attacked.”

  “You chose to flee,” Tevian said.

  “My castle was overrun, and we were forced to retreat.”

  “A retreat was the best option,” Ardere said quietly from this seat. “It was better to give our troops a chance to regroup and fight another day.”

  “You brought a wizard into Dramera,” said another man, this one in a red hat with curly black horns on it.

  “My friends and I stopped two more before they could follow.”

  “And that makes the one who found his way here acceptable?” he asked.

  “The wizards are coming anyway,” I snapped. “One is now wounded. He’ll be an example to the rest of what they can expect when they come.”

  “That you will flee and leave others to fight your battles? The wryen Kitsuna of the red dragon clan fought the wizard while you ran into the forest,” Tevian argued.

  “She was trying to protect me.”

  “One day soon, Golden Rose of Nerissette, it will be time for you to stop running and stand and fight.” The old man in the blue robes sneered down at me from the dais like I was some sort of kid he was punishing in the principal’s office.

  “Then that’s what I’ll do,” I said. “Just as I did the first time we faced him. Like I would have done today if our walls would have held.”

  “Enough of this!” the man in red robes roared. “The Rose did what any of us would do. She is not to blame here.”

  “She told us that he was defeated,” the man in blue said.

  “She told us that he disappeared,” the dragon in red corrected. “We took that to mean he was defeated and most likely dead. We told her he was gone forever, and as an outsider, she chose to believe us—the elders of this world.”

  “That’s—” the man in blue started.

  “I told her that he was gone,” Ardere said, his voice even. “I told her that if he had disappeared into the light then he was most likely dead. I was the one who told her and the crown prince that a search for him would be pointless. John of Leavenwald and I convinced her not to send the men.”

  “Then you were a fool,” Tevian snarled.

  “I was,” Ardere said. “That doesn’t change the fact that the queen acted on my advice and now we are here, at war again—this time against a larger army.”

  “The Fate Maker won’t wage war against us if we claim neutrality,” the man in blue said. “Even though the prince consort is one of our own. We can cut him loose, break our alliance with the world of men, and let them fight amongst themselves. When the war is over the Fate Maker will have no quarrel with us. We’ll live in peace as we did before.”

  “Your loyalty to your own is touching,” Winston said drily. “But even if you cut me loose and do not fight, he’ll come here next. He’s not going to be happy living in peace now, not now that he knows there’s a chance for the dragons of Dramera to rebel against him. For him it’s all or nothing.”

  “He’ll settle for what he can get easily,” Tevian said, his voice filled with razor-sharp anger.

  “He wants the tear.” I paused as every single dragon on that dais sucked in a breath, their eyes wide. “He wants a relic that melts the walls between this world and the Bleak itself. Now, does that sound like a man who’s willing to take only what he can easily conquer?”

  “No.” The man in blue shook his head. “But the tear doesn’t exist. It’s a legend.”

  “Yes, it does exist,” I said loudly. “And I have it.”

  All of them went silent. The man in the blue robe’s mouth was gaping open.

  “Liar,” Tevian said.

  “I have it.” I lifted the chain of the necklace up and let the crystal swing in front of my chin. “I have the Dragon’s Tear.”

  “By the light of the Pleiades,” Ardere said, his eyes wide. “Are you sure? Are you sure it’s the tear?”

  “Yes.” I nodded. “It’s the tear. Timbago was its guardian.”

  “Timbago?” Winston asked.

  “He gave it to me. Before he…” I swallowed and didn’t meet his eyes.

  “Can you bend the tear to your will?” the man in red asked and I turned to look at him, holding my tears in check.

  “I don’t know. I haven’t exactly wanted to mess around with it. Not with the whole ‘melting the walls between us and the Bleak’ thing. It’s not like we can use it anyway. Everything we found says that you have to know where the weak spots are in the other worlds in order to move between them. So it’s not really a very good portal.”

  “You silly girl.” Tevian stood and stepped off the dais, coming toward me. “The tear isn’t a portal.”

  “It’s not?” I swallowed as he wrapped his fingers around mine, cupping the crystal.

  “No.” He looked down at me and his eyes glittered. “It’s the key to the greatest prison in all of creation. It melts the wall between here and the Bleak and then it allows you to trap your enemies inside the nothingness for all time.”

  “That’s why the Fate Maker wants it,” I said. “He wants to imprison me and put Bavasama on the throne.”

  “Or…” Tevian smiled at me. “You can trap him.” Timbago’s words echoed through my mind—that’s what he’d told me to do, too. “Now, close your eyes and concentrate. Concentrate on the crystal in your hand and nothing else.”

  I closed my eyes and focused everything inside of me on that crystal. The way it felt in my hand. Its smoothness. The coolness of it against my fingers.

  “Now,” Tevian whispered. “Melt the wall between this world and the Bleak.”

  Melt, I thought. Just fade away.

  “Oh crap,” Winston muttered behind me, and my eyes flew open.

  There, just in front of me, was a square of darkness the size of the door to my old bedroom in the World That Is. Through the blackness all I could feel was…nothing. It was like I knew somewhere deep inside that if I stepped through that door nothing would follow me. Not love or hope or fear or hatred or anything else. On the other side of that black square was a never-ending world of emptiness. The Bleak.

  I closed my eyes again and returned all my energy back to the door. I tried to force my mind forward to close it and lock it so that the nothing couldn’t come through. Once I’d pretended to lock the door in my head, my hand began to warm, and I opened my eyes again to find the room the exact same as it had been before. Except for the dragons all staring at me, mouths hanging open and funny, ceremonial hats askew.

  “It seems the Golden Rose has, in fact, found the tear,” Ardere said with a cough.

  “Yeah, told you so.” I resisted the urge to stick out my tongue. “The question is how do we destroy it? Because I don’t know anything that breathes a fire a million times hotter than what all of you can do.”

  “The problem, Your Majesty,” Tevian said as he let go of my hand and stepped away from me, “is that neither do we.”

  Chapter Nineteen

  “How long has it been since you slept?” Winston asked as we made our way out of the Dragos Council meeting an hour later.

  “I…” I tried to think but suddenly just the word sleep had my eyes growing heavy. “The night before the Great Hall. I had a nightmare about Esmeralda.”

  “Two days then.” Winston steered me down a side street that hadn’t been damaged.

  “Where are we going?” I asked.

  “The black dragons have a guest house on this street,” Winston said. “You can bed down there and get some rest.”

  “But the army is coming and we’ll need to get things—”

  “Allie.” Win stopped and turned to face me, his hands on my shoulder. “We need sleep. You need sleep. Just a few hours.”

  “What if something happens while I’m asleep?”

  “Then someone will come and get you.”

  “And if the
wizards attack again?”

  “I’ll have guards posted outside the house,” he said. “And I’ll be asleep in the black dragon lodge house, across the street. We’ll both be safe.”

  “Okay.” I nodded slowly.

  “Okay?” he asked.

  “Yeah, okay, you’re right, I need to sleep.”

  “Good. Come on.” He motioned me toward a large, hulking black house with two tall, dark-skinned men standing in front of it.

  “Your Majesties,” one of the men said and they bowed their heads.

  “Good night.” Winston kissed the top of my head, and I gave him a quick hug.

  “Good night.” I started up the steps, and when I reached the top I turned to watch him making his way across the street to the tall house with blue shutters directly across from us.

  “Your Majesty?” one of the guards said. His fingers brushed across my sleeve. “If you’ll follow me, please? We’ve got a bed for you. The wryen and the dryad are already inside.”

  I followed him through the front door and up the stairs to a large, airy room on the third floor. On the floor were two piles of blankets. Kitsuna had curled up on one and was snoring softly, while Mercedes had splayed herself out, spread-eagled, her mouth hanging open.

  “I’ll arrange to have breakfast provided for you when you wake,” the guard said as he backed out of the room, not meeting my eyes.

  The minute I was alone with my sleeping friends I let my shoulders slump and exhaustion overtook me. As the last of the adrenaline began to wear off I realized there was nothing left that I could do. I yawned, my jaw cracking.

  I quickly made my way over to the blankets that had been set aside for me and toed off my boots. Kitsuna had taken off her sword belt and put it beside her pallet, and I did the same with my own, setting it gently on the floor so that the clatter of the blade wouldn’t wake my friends.

  “Right,” I muttered as I climbed between the blankets and closed my eyes. “Time to—” I yawned again and let my eyes drift close.

  “Your Majesty.” I heard Timbago’s voice, and when I opened my eyes I was back in the palace and the sun was shining. Instead of trying to wake up I sat at the palace’s kitchen table and waited for the goblin who couldn’t really be there.

  “Ah.” He waddled into the kitchen and came to stand beside me. “There you are. I had wondered when we would talk again.”

  “You’re—”

  “Never far, Your Majesty. Even though you may feel differently from time to time.”

  “I’d rather you actually be here and not just some strange appearance in my dreams.”

  “So would I,” he said, “but that was not what was meant to be. Now you must be the Golden Rose I’ve always known you can be.”

  “I don’t know if I can.”

  “You can be so much more than you believe is possible.” He took my hand in his, and I felt a pinch as he pressed something sharp into my hands. I held it tightly. “You just have to make the choice to act even if you’re afraid. Make the choice, Queen Allie. You know what you have to do.”

  “Imprison the Fate Maker inside the Bleak.” I swallowed, my throat thick. My voice box felt like it was clenched in an ogre’s fist.

  “Imprison him and then destroy the tear so that he can’t ever come back,” Timbago said.

  I shook my head. “According to the Dragos Council there is nothing in Nerissette that burns hot enough to destroy it.”

  “There is.” He shook his head at me. “Even if the dragons do not understand what it might be.”

  “Then what is it?” I asked.

  “You’ll know when the time comes.” He gave me a grim look. “But first you must imprison the Fate Maker and come back to the palace to be the Golden Rose that the people of Nerissette deserve. The Golden Rose that they’ve been waiting for.”

  “I will,” I promised him, the pain in my palm stinging as I clenched my fist. “And we’ll find some way to show people what you did. We’ll make a monument so that no one will ever forget how brave you were. How brave all of you were.”

  “That won’t be necessary, Your Highness.” He shook his head and reached down to pat my closed fist. “Be glorious and our choice will have been the right one. It will have been worth it.”

  “Nothing will ever make it worth it to me…”

  “I’ll never be far away,” Timbago said. Then he stepped back, letting go of my hands. “Remember that, my queen. None of us will ever be far away.”

  “Timbago?”

  “Yes, Your Highness?”

  “How did Winston get the tear?” I said, finally asking the question that had been niggling at the back of my brain. “On the night of my coronation he put it around my neck, but the Tear was hidden in the palace. You were its guardian. So how did Winston end up with it?”

  “Simple, Your Majesty.” The goblin smiled at me. “I gave it to him, just like I gave it to you in your apartments, and then I made him forget.”

  “Why?”

  “Because the sorceress and I…” Timbago bowed his head. “Each of us had a destiny. A role to play. Her fate was to bring you here. Mine was to keep you safe. And now I have.”

  He took another step back, and I could see that he was starting to fade.

  “Don’t—” I grabbed for him, but my fingers passed through his reflection instead. “Don’t go.”

  “I must.”

  “Just one more question. Please.”

  “Anything.”

  “Did it…” I faltered. “Did it hurt? When you…you know.”

  “Not even for a second.” He shook his head. “But it’s time for you to wake up. Wake up, Your Majesty. Wake up.”

  “But—”

  “Wake up.”

  And the next thing I knew he was gone, the palace was gone, and the world was nothing but darkness and someone shaking me.

  “Allie! Come on, Allie. Wake up.” Mercedes shook me again, and I groaned. “Wake up or I swear by the trees I will slap you.”

  “Don’t,” I moaned. “I’m awake. I’m awake.”

  “Your Majesty,” a rough-sounding voice said as I struggled to open my eyes.

  I cracked an eyelid open and found myself staring at John of Leavenwald’s haggard, soot-covered face. He had a streak of mud down the side of his left cheek, and I couldn’t help wondering how it had gotten there. The way the sunlight filled the room now, I must have been asleep for hours.

  “They’re all dead. Everyone who stayed behind to defend the Crystal Palace.” I peeled back my blankets and stood up. “They’re dead and the mermaids are missing.”

  “I know.” He didn’t look at me, his eyes fixed at a point over my right shoulder. “Lord General Sullivan told us when you returned last night, while you were in the meeting with the Dragos Council.”

  “The Fate Maker and my aunt, the Empress Bavasama, they killed everyone they could, and now that I have the tear and know how to use it I’m going to make them pay,” I said. “I will make them suffer for every life they took.”

  I tightened my hand into a fist and felt a sharp jab in my palm. I ran my thumb along the edge of whatever had poked me and instantly knew what it was that Timbago had given me in the dream. I didn’t know how he’d managed to make it materialize in real life after giving it to me in a dream, but somehow he’d saved the last shard of the Mirror of Nerissette. There was so much I still had left to learn. And I could only do that if I stayed on the throne. I slipped the shard into the pocket of my pants and stared at John of Leavenwald.

  “Your Majesty.” He fixed his gray eyes on mine. “If I get the chance I’ll kill him before he ever gets close to you, but if you feel you must get revenge yourself all I ask is that you let me hold your cloak.”

  “I don’t wear a cloak.”

  “It was a figure of speech, my queen.” He smiled at me. “Now if you’re awake, and we’re done planning your revenge…”

  “What?”

  “The last of your army has
arrived. I offered to come wake you so that we could convene a Council of War.”

  Chapter Twenty

  “What do we know?” I asked as I followed John to a grassy knoll just above the edge of the lake where a hastily set up white awning held tables inside. I glanced around—all of them were scattered with papers and maps.

  “The dragon scouts searched Nerissette last night, and we’ve found the Fate Maker’s army,” Ardere said. “They are near Tahib.”

  “What’s that?” I asked, my face growing pink. I didn’t even know my whole kingdom yet, and I’d almost lost it twice.

  “Tahib is an oasis where the Firas hold their annual gatherings each year. It empties out during the wet season when the Firas are traveling.”

  “And that’s where his army is? Why would they go there?”

  “We don’t know,” John said from beside me as he pointed to the map. “It makes no sense. In the time it took for his army to make it to Tahib, they could have reached the Cliffs of Fesir and brought the war to us.”

  “They could be resting there, regaining their strength,” Rhys suggested.

  “Or waiting there for more troops,” Tevian said, staring at the map, his fingers tracing along the place where the White Mountains curled along our borders. “There, the White Mountains are no more than foothills. It would be easy for Bavasama to send more troops across the border at Tahib.”

  “More troops?”

  “It is possible, Your Majesty,” John said as Winston put his hand on my back and we leaned over the map.

  “So what do you recommend we do? You’re all warriors—if it were you, why would you lead your army into the middle of nowhere?”

  “More soldiers,” John of Leavenwald said, the other men nodding in agreement. “They’re waiting for more troops. Fresh troops from Bathune to help them fight against us.

  “Right, okay.” I took a deep breath. “They’re adding soldiers to their army. That’s bad. We need to figure out some way to stop them before that happens.”

  “So we go out to meet them,” Eamon said. He and his woodsmen guards stood outside our awning, armed to the teeth and staring at us. “We send our troops out and finish their army before the reinforcements arrive. We quit running like weak children and stand and fight.”