CHAPTER EIGHT

 

It took him a moment and he was aware that Clare tensed beside him, her gasp of shock audible. His eyes never left his sister. "You did not see this?"  He did not say the words as accusation, but she flinched just the same. Beside Asha, her mate shifted just enough to issue a subtle warning to Theron to tread lightly. Theron ignored him and waited for his sister to answer. He did not blame her for the blade she was forced to straddle occasionally with the gift she had but he needed to know just the same if this was part of a longer game, or some other power was present that hid from even the dragon seer.

"I have seen many things." She looked away from him and he could feel her guilt like a blanket that smothered them both, and he knew she remembered the choices she had made for him and how he had nearly died because of it. Then she looked back at him and raised her chin, the past firmly in the past. "But I did not see this, and worse, for some reason even when I look specifically I am continually unable to find Lord Rendal among the weave. I am still learning, and my control is...questionable."  She shared a look with her mate who grunted in agreement but stayed silent. She looked back at Theron and he saw the fire in her eyes turn from ice to green mage fire as her temper reacted. "But Lord Rendal should not be that hard to find, but whenever I look for him, I see nothing."

"Could he be dead?" Clare asked what Theron was thinking.

She shook her head. “You don't understand. I see nothing of Lord Rendal anywhere in the weave, past or future. It is as if his thread was…" She seemed to be searching for a word; her hand rose and then fell with her frustration. "It's as if his thread was just... burned away." 

She took a breath and her focus came back to the great room and the people listening. "Lord Rendal must be found."

He raised a brow at his sister. “And you think I can help you find a dragon lord in Dracon better than the dragon knights and the wind mage already at your disposal?"  His doubt was obvious in his tone. He looked from her to General Fire-Eater. "I have felt the Lady Melisande's power myself. I do not believe I can do any more than she."  Not when his control was questionable, but that he would not say aloud in this gathering. He would be damned if he would air his weaknesses before his people, or the dragons.

His sister shook her head at him and nearly smiled. "You always did think everything was about you."  Then her eyes went to his mate and he felt every bone in his body lock as her meaning became clear.

Clare cleared her throat and patted the hand that had suddenly clasped down on hers like a vice. Easy there, big bad; we are just talking here.

Neither her words nor her misplaced humor reassured him. The bad feeling in his gut was spreading. What did his sister know about his mate that he did not?  And how was that possible when he had shared her memories and feelings when they mated? Shouldn't he know what the hell was going on?

"What exactly do you think my mate can do for you?"

"That's easy," Rhune said loudly in the sudden hush that had swept the room. Theron had not seen him, as he was so much smaller than the rest of the party surrounding him. He stepped forward as he spoke, so that everyone could see him. "She can ask the bugs and mice at Isolation where Rendal is."  He was practically hopping on his toes in his excitement to contribute. "I would do it, but I have to become all the different creatures to talk to that creature, and I have to be close enough to hear them, which Morgan says is too dangerous."  He made a face telling everyone what he thought of that. “Clare can go to Isolation and just ask them all at once without shifting.”

"Rhune," Clare said mildly enough, though there was a bite to her tone that matched the one in her eyes, "what did we say?"

Rhune suddenly lost his enthusiasm and looked uncomfortable, which quickly turned to belligerence when he explained, "We said we wouldn't talk about it, but they already had to know; why else would Asha come get you?"

Asha pressed her lips together and looked from Rhune to Clare, who had turned her questioning eyes to the dragon Seer, then back again. She shrugged, looking at Rhune with an apology in her eyes. "I saw Clare find him. I did not know exactly how it would be done."

"Oh,” Rhune said, immediately deflated. He kind of slunk back into his dragon guard, not looking at his sister. His words when they came were nearly muffled and obviously muttered low. "I didn’t think of that.

More than one person laughed, but Theron was finding nothing funny. "Clare is not going to Dracon."  His words fell like a crash into the whispering and chuckling crowd. But it was his mate’s response that had the silence reigning over the entire assembly.

"That," she said, the quiet tone of her voice doing nothing to hide the steel behind her words, "sounds like my decision to make, not yours."

Everyone around them took a collective step back, even the dragons. It could have been the green mage fire suddenly shooting out of his mate’s eyes, but Theron was betting on the rumble of thunder and sudden winds that started to whip around them.

His mate’s voice in his head was even softer than the one she had just used, and colder. I think it was just this day we had the conversation about you dictating my life. Or was I dreaming that?

His answer was not nearly as soft. You are not walking into a danger even my sister cannot see.

We talk about it; you do not dictate to me as if I am a child in your care.

He gnashed his teeth, and only then realized they had elongated in his mouth as his dragon reacted to thoughts of her in danger. You are no child, but you are under my care. You were raised with dragons; you know what it means to have a mate.

She looked incredulous at what he felt was a very logical argument, especially in his current frame of mind.

Do you imagine my sisters allow their dragons to dictate to them?  She did not wait for him to answer but went on resolutely, I need to help the dragons if I can. I owe them that much.

He hissed out a breath. Why?  Why must you do this?

You know why.

"Tell me why. What could be a good enough reason to send my lady into danger among the dragons?"  The word came out grim and out loud and she answered it the same way.

"Because my family is in Dracon and I could not live with myself if I could have done something and someone ends up dead because I did not."  She sighed, and the anger seemed to leak out of her. She placed her hand on his chest and leaned into him, her eyes on his, determined. "And because we all need this to be over. All of us.”  She swept the room with her hand, indicating mage, huntsman and dragon. "We all need this to be done with, so we can finally breathe easy again and get on with living our lives."

He covered the small, warm hand on his heart and held her to him. "Fine," he said and did not even try to control the wind whipping about them angrily, or the clanging thunderstorm outside. "But from now until this is finished, you get no farther from me than this."

She raised her chin and smiled at him. "Then we do it together."

***

Isolation Mountain was colored in her mind by rage that was not her own. Theron's mother had been killed here, his sister imprisoned. No matter how beautiful the outside land, and glorious the dragon magic that surrounded it, there was no escaping that dark ugliness, or what she found when she tuned into the creatures that inhabited the place. There were few in number; even the rats seemed to steer clear of the unnatural darkness that tainted Isolation deep in its bowels.

"There are only a few creatures here," she said. They had landed in the topmost tower room of Isolation and while Furee had escorted Riva and Rhune directly to Aarion, who lay still unconscious in his rooms where the knights had taken him, Solan, Lux, Adair and Asha had stayed with her and Theron in the tower. Clare had wasted no time in sending out magic feelers to the animals and insects that resided here.

She grimaced at the feelings she was getting from the animals. "They are warning me away. It seems they had left this place when it became a bad place and had just begun to return. Something happened recently that has them running again."  She blew out a breath and sent her magic back out to them. "They are in a panic. I'm not sure they are going to be able to help us as much as we thought, but..."  Clare narrowed her eyes and knew from the shadows she was making in the room that her green mage light was burning bright. A moment later she hissed and turned to look at Theron, who was still looking like he could chomp steel, and standing close enough that his heat coated her back in warmth. "They are warning me away from the dark place. I know the feel of that magic. It is the blood stone they run from. Someone has disturbed its sleep."

She had not thought he could look grimmer but with that announcement his face went granite hard and his eyes fired black ice at her. She did not want to ask him the next question, but she didn't need to; he lowered the shields he had pressed tight around them both enough that he could feel the darkness of the mountain. When he finally spoke, it was with a harsh and grated voice, almost more dragon than man.

"I can feel the stone. You're right. Whatever magic Kinkaid worked to cloak and contain it, someone else is working against it and the stone can feel it."  He looked at Clare and the blackness of his eyes pulsed with small shimmers of red, a leftover from when he wore the dark magic of the stone in his very body.

"Rendal does not have the power to take on Kinkaid. Could he be working with someone else?"  Braedon said, remembering his own battle with the dragon lord.

Solan shook his head. "No one living has the ability to undo Kinkaid’s magic."

"What about something not alive?"  Aarion said from the doorway, flanked by both healers and backed up by Icarus and Datulos at his back. All of them looked grim. Aarion looked haggard. “Something wholly of the dark?”

Asha shook her head. "My father cannot be behind this. We have all tried to reach him and he is nothing more than a shell, his consciousness and brain function so minute that even his dragon magic will not keep him alive for much longer. He is fading. I have seen his body die in the web and there is no other outcome to find there."

"Not to mention he is under constant magical constraint and observation. If he was using any magic Kinkaid would know it. Distracted he might be with the new twins, but that he would not miss."

"I do not think it is Graedon’s dying body we are dealing with,” Aarion said. "I think something else has infected or changed Lord Rendal. Whatever I saw looking back at me today from his eyes was not Lord Rendal."

Asha looked sick. "Rendal is gone from the weave," she said in a whisper. She looked at her mate and Braedon stepped forward and pulled her into his arms while she spoke. "If it is because something has taken him over, he would still be in the weave, and we should have seen the struggle, felt the magic. Rendal would have fought. He was a fool, but he was a dragon lord. He was not weak."

"Rendal was Graedon's creature," Solan said with rage flashing through his quicksilver eyes. "Perhaps he believed his lies enough to let something inside his barriers, something that worked on him quietly. Something we missed?"

"Until it was too late," Aarion finished grimly.

“But if that is why he is not in the weave it would mean that whatever took him over ripped him from existence totally, shredding his soul until there was nothing left.” Asha went pale at her own thoughts.

"The man was a dangerous idiot," Braedon said, looking as sick as the rest of them felt. "But no one deserves that."

"My father," Asha started, looking waxen in the light.

"Has already paid for his crimes,” Solan interrupted her with steel in his voice. “Whatever Rendal has become, he needs to be stopped. All the rest is speculation.” 

"If we cannot find him even in the weave how do we make that happen?"  Braedon said in clear agreement.

"The stone," Theron said with the same grim intention in his ragged voice. “Even now it calls to me. It calls to me. Even now," Theron repeated, his struggle against that call obvious in every line of his body.

He had moved so close to Clare his hold was almost painful, but she did not protest, just forced him back enough that she could turn in his arms and wrap herself around him. He did not seem to notice, but his arms tightened just a fraction more. He looked at the others in the room with black eyes of fire. The wind whipping around them Clare felt as both a caress and a cage. He was taking no chances with her, or himself. "It could be I am not the only one who hears the call. If Rendal is of the dark, he may also hear it."

"Then we find him first."

"And here I thought I would not have the chance to fulfill my vow of killing him,” Aarion said.

“Why Lord Rendal?” Braedon mused, looking at Aarion. “Surely if some dark thing was taking someone over it would have chosen someone more powerful.” His mate caught his meaning and shook her head.

"He doesn't have enough power, or he would have done it by now," Asha said, looking at Aarion as well. They all looked from Asha to Braedon and then at the new leader of House Earth. Their conversation and the meaning behind it slowly dawned on them. "If it is some kind of thinking darkness it could have— it would have—chosen someone with more power than Rendal, but the only ones who were at Isolation were Knights of The Light."

The dragon knight held up his hands as if in surrender at their looks.

Asha shook her head. "Aarion still has a thread in the weave with many possible futures ahead of him, and as far as I can tell no one else has gone the way of Rendal. Doing what he did would have drained even Graedon in all his power. Taking a knight of the light over. No, I do not think we have to worry about that," she paused and met her brother’s black eyes. "Unless he gets the blood stone, then he will be capable of any atrocity."

"Then we find him now and be done with this," General Solan Fire-Eater said simply and with grim purpose. He looked at Aarion. "You will stay here."

The rage Aarion had been successfully hiding bloomed as gold fire in his eyes.

Solan shook his head. "You can barely stand without aid."

That it was the truth only seemed to heighten Aarion’s anger. He opened his mouth, no doubt to argue, but General Solan spoke again.

"And you will slow us down."  The brutal honesty of those words had Aarion’s mouth snapping shut before a word escaped.

General Solan turned to Theron. "Can you find the stone?"

Mated to Clare’s wind mage sister, he would know what a wind mage was capable of, but it was not the ability to hear whispers of secrets on the wind that Solan referred to this time.

Theron understood that and nodded once sharply. "I can follow the call."  He squeezed his mate. "You stay here."

Clare gave him a look. "I am in this."  No way was she letting him face the stone alone. Let the others handle Rendal, but she was going to see to her mate.

"We are going to need Clare," Asha said, before he could voice the argument on his face, and the voice this time was coated with power, and her eyes had shifted to glowing diamonds.

"No," he growled, and his hold tightened enough to hurt.

"I have looked into the weave, brother," she answered quietly. "If you don't keep her with you she is going to die—you both will."

"I am trying to save her," Theron hissed at his sister, ignoring the seer shining back at him.

"And she is the only thing that will save you," his sister answered back with complete calm against his anger.

"Enough," Solan said with authority. "I sympathize with your need to protect your mate, but we have no time."  Honest and to the point, his eyes told Theron he knew what was at stake and they were all going to have to live with it. "Follow the call of the blood stone and you find it and Rendal, before he succeeds in unlocking the stone and killing us all."

Unhappy but knowing the general of the knights of the light was right, he shifted his hold on Clare, keeping her as close as physically possible. And with one more warning look down at her she interpreted easily enough as a warning to stay close, he did exactly as the General asked. Riva, Rhune and Aarion stayed behind, Furee and Adair charged with the safety of them all should the others not succeed.

Adair would have argued as well, but Solan stopped him. “Rendal is your father and I know this cannot be easy for you.”  Solan held up a hand when the knight would have spoken. “I am not doubting your loyalty. You could not have become a knight of the light if your heart was not of the light. But I would not ask you to confront your own father, whatever has come before. If we do not return you and Aarion are House of Earth. Your people will listen to you, and they will need you to get them to safety.”