CHAPTER TWO

 

Clare studied Seatown from high on the parapets of the island fortress. In her most familiar form as the phoenix she could see everything in detail, to the smallest grasshopper in the distant fields. She could hear the jungle denizens awakening with the rising of the sun over azure waves and smell the fires that were being lit in the newly repaired thatched cottages inside the protected limits of the town. Theron had built the place well. Defensible and comfortable for its growing population. She knew that some of the Huntsmen had returned in the night because she could feel the pulse of new mage power on the island and wondered who she would meet this day. She knew all of that with both her mage senses and her connection to the animals of the island.

What she did not know was how to get two stubborn mage warriors to tell her where her mate was hiding. In the long hours since she had announced her claim on the Lord of Seatown she had made no progress. When it was made clear to her that Theron would return when he was ready, and they had no information to give her, none that they would give her at any rate, she had floundered about for about an hour in a temper she did her best to hide from everyone and then she got bored with that and decided to do what her sister Morgan would do in her place. She set about working on a new plan.

Today she would immerse herself in the lives of her new people and she would move into Theron's room...once she sniffed out which one it was. It was not lost on her that the lodgings offered to her did not reflect her status as the new lady, but rather named her as an honored guest of Seatown. Once she had been shown to her room by an awed maid and Lux, who wasted no time in putting the little maid to blush, she had immediately deserted the place and Lux in favor of another form. Once she got over her frustration, she found this perch, watched and listened, to everything. Archer and Cree might be transformative mage warriors, but they had no clue what she was capable of.

By morning she had information from all corners of the island. There had been a great deal of talk during the night about her. Speculation was running rampant, and the tide of public opinion was not in her favor. While she could do nothing about being "too young" for their Lord, the belief that she was an uppity dragon princess raised in the lap of luxury with no knowledge of hardship she could and would debunk. The whispers that she was either lying or contriving to claim a man who did not want her stung a bit, but that was only a few people and all of them disgruntled sounding females, so she let it slide off her back. These were her people; it would do her no good to hunt down the voices and proclaim challenge for her mate, as her phoenix nature wanted.

Today she would work with the people and change those opinions by helping to rebuild Seatown. She would do everything she could to stamp her claim on Theron in every way she could find, until she found the Dragon lord himself. And he better hope she found him sooner rather than later, because the longer he left her alone, the worse it felt, and she would make sure his suffering was on par with her own.

***

The day had well and truly begun when Clare swooped and soared over the populace and searched for her first chance to help around the island. Most of the mage had been assigned different jobs depending on their abilities. Earth mage and water mage were quickly regrowing both the jungle that had been burnt around the outskirts of the city, and the farms that produced the food, so they congregated where jungle met cleared land.

Clare flew over that, watching the progress for a short time, knowing if there was help needed that was probably not where she could be of use, but curious all the same. There were about thirty earth mage and about half that water mage, and together they were making progress that would have awed a normal human into a fearful stupor. You could watch the regrowth making its slow but steady progress, but Clare had seen what a truly powerful Earth mage could really do and was coming to the realization that the power her sister Morgan was capable of was a rare and dangerous gift. She could have had all that they were trying so hard to accomplish done in a day, and without the body deep weariness these mage faced when they finished a short session of using their powers together.

Clare tried to recall if it was the dragon blood that had amped her sister’s power to such an extent but remembered some of the time before, when they were in hiding from the blood mage, and knew, even then, Morgan was more powerful than any of the earth mage that Seatown had to offer.

And nowhere in any of the transformative mage did she see any that could transform into more than one animal. Her brother Rhune and she could become any animal they saw nearly from birth. Even the most powerful warrior twins had only the one form besides their human one. Clare could tell that not just by the magical signature her phoenix could see in each person, but by the scents that told Clare as many secrets as her eyes and ears revealed. But she did not think the rest of them could use their animal senses in any but their animal form.

It was enlightening, to say the least, and made her question what it was in her family line that produced such powerful mage. They were not the only line of power she knew of; Theron himself was as powerful a wind mage as her sister Melisande was and that was saying something, but then Theron was half dragon, so it stood to reason he would be.  Braedon, Theron’s new brother-in-law, Asha's mate, was gifted in fire beyond any she could see here, and Braedon's sister Riva was as powerful a healer as she had ever sensed anywhere. So that was another mage family besides their own that was powerful even without the addition of dragon magic.

 And the powerful female from the hall, she added in her thoughts. A bite of anger clouded the thought she tried and failed to shake off. She was powerful, though Clare did not yet know what she was so powerful at since she could not immediately identify the flavor of her magic. Usually she could tell with a look what a mage had abilities in, but she was one of the few she could not classify so easily. It was almost as irritating as her glossy hair and pretty eyes to Clare's senses. With that thought Clare abandoned the outskirts of Seatown and headed toward the keep and the mystery she suddenly needed to solve.

The color of the woman’s magic was something she had never seen before. It almost looked like the golden brown of Earth magic but seemed to have the muted purple tone of a healer. But that did not seem possible, as healing magic was a totally different form of magic than Earth. She had never seen a healer able to do anything but heal, besides her brother, but his second power was transformative, and that worked a lot more closely to what a healer did than the Earth, Fire, Wind or Water. It dealt with the body, and creating change, so it at least made sense. When Theron had nearly died, Riva had been able to use Clare's power to supplement her own, something none of them had believed was possible before then, so Rhune at least made sense to Clare, but an Earth Mage and a healer in one?

That did not feel right, probably because the woman had one color, not two like Rhune, or even Morgan, who was mostly golden brown, but had other colors threaded through her aura: a sprinkling of crystal air and blue water. The woman, Clare remembered, was very nearly an aubergine with her muddled brown and purple tones.

Thinking back on it, she was now determined to see what it was the lady was capable of, because judging from the power Clare had sensed at her core, she could rival the rest of them for power, and she was new to Seatown. Where was she from, and what could she do? How had she hidden in the human world, and who had brought her to Seatown? 

The problem with sharing the essence of many animals, Clare thought self-deprecatingly, was that some of those traits rubbed off on her. It made her not only single-minded when she went into hunt mode, but at the same time easily distracted and prone to react without thinking. It was not all enhanced senses and ability to see magic. Those traits were an obvious boon, but the rest of it?

She sighed. Her curiosity was now killing her, distracting her from what she needed to be doing. Her phoenix eyes narrowed on a sight below her and she reminded herself she had a plan, even if the question of the pretty mage female with all the power was an itch she needed to scratch. It was time to reign in her dual natures and stick to the plan.

With that in mind Clare swooped down over the demolished mill and circled, taking in the mix of transformed mage and those still in their human form working to clear the debris from the water that surrounded it and get the mill wheel back up and running. The waterway it sat on was a smallish lake, fed into by a river that led directly to the ocean, probably carved by their earth and water mages for the sole purpose of housing the mill. Usually it would have a free-flowing tide that moved the wheel, but the building had collapsed and blocked the current. The mage were working to clear it and had progressed slowly in the deep, debris-strewn water.

 Lux was standing separated from the rest of them in his warrior form, his eyes narrowed to the sky as he watched her while everyone else remained oblivious to her approach.

"Wondered where you got off to," he said by way of greeting. His booming voice drew more than one eye their way, and the surprise looked they both received told Clare that most of them had not heard either her or Lux arrive.

"Why aren't you helping them?" she asked in a much more subdued tone, instead of replying to that.

"I don't swim," he said with one of his usual big shrugs.

She blinked at him. "You don't swim?" she asked incredulously. "You are House of Water."

"Let me rephrase," he said easily, still talking in his usual loud tone, so that everyone who had not already done so turned and glared in their direction. "I don't swim while unorganized mage lob boulders over my head and fling about random stray magic."

That at least made sense, though seeing the unhappy looks they were getting, the mage did not appreciate Lux's candor. A big, burly bald man, nearly matching Lux in height, who wore the uniform of a warrior stomped toward them and pointed a finger the size of a sausage at Lux. "You think you can do better, dragon?"

More than one person gasped at the challenge to the big dragon, but Lux just laughed in his face. "If you can get the rest of the children to stop with the play time, Quill, I'll show you how it's done," he answered in his usual jovial fashion.

The miller, Quill, flashed him a rather scary smile with a lot of teeth. "You want to wager on that, big talker?"

It was only when Lux answered that Clare realized they knew each other well, and apparently liked each other in that loud, obnoxious warrior way. "Aren't you tired of losing your best ale yet, mage?"

"Aye, I am, so put your money where your big talk is, so I can get some of my own back, dragon."

Lux laughed good-naturedly and then backed up, giving himself some room. Before he could transform into his blue dragon Clare spoke. "I'll help."

Lux stopped and looked at her doubtfully, while the miller laughed, "Oh, aye, sure, a lot of help you'll be too, lady."

Lux's eyes went straight to humor when he turned to look back at the miller again. He might doubt that she should help, given her status as lady, but he knew her abilities well enough to know she could help. "You have a problem with the lady helping me win that wager?"

"Helping you?" the miller snorted. "I'll double it if you can find a way for a pretty bird to help you lift heavy rocks out of water. It would be worth the show." 

Hmm, apparently not everyone knew she had more than one form. She did tend to favor her phoenix when she flew the long journey to Seatown. Most probably assumed that was her form. An exotic, powerful form, but one form just the same. This was going to be fun.

This time it was Clare who smiled a challenge at the nearly seven-foot-tall bald warrior mage who, from his scent, turned into some form of mammoth. "Who said anything about a bird?" she asked, the challenge clear in her tone. Then she transformed into a creature that, like her phoenix, had only ever been seen before in legends long past. One moment a young, slender female stood watching them with big green eyes, the next, a six-headed water snake twice the size of any dragon appeared. Multiple sets of eyes turned as one and looked at Quill, and every one of the six heads smiled, showing six identical sets of serrated teeth, each about the length of the man’s forearm.

He backed up, along with every other person there, quickly. He cursed, even as Lux guffawed and then transformed into his now small-looking blue dragon. Clare did not give them a chance to do more than curse before she slithered quick as a snake past their fleeing forms toward the mill and the water around it. She adjusted her size as she needed to, and used her massive jaws to grab big chunks of fallen debris and transfer it to the small pile they had started on the banks before she arrived.

She felt the shift in water when Lux joined her. She looked over and he winked his big blue dragon eye at her, his humor apparent, before he got to work as well.

It took them no time at all to finish clearing out the waterway, and both of them took a moment to enjoy moving through the now free-flowing current before they returned to the shores of the small lake and burst out of the water, sending it splashing over shrieking mage who had wandered too close to the shore to see the blur of movement under the churning water that was the dragon and the hydra, a creature no one had seen outside of stories from legends past.

Clare transformed back into her true form at the same time Lux in warrior form appeared at her side. They both turned to see Quill with shaking head and disbelief plain on his features as he came toward them.

 "I would not have believed it, had I not seen it with my own eyes," he mumbled, looking her over with a new wariness in his eyes. Beside him Archer and Cree had joined the miller.

Archer was the one who asked her, "You have two other forms?"

She blinked at him, tilting her head to study the blank look on both brothers’ faces. "No," she finally answered. "Not two. I have any form I want to have."

Cree sucked in a breath. Interesting—they did not usually give away their reactions. For him to have shown her that much meant she had truly surprised him. "You can change into anything?" he asked low.

"Yes," she answered after a short moment to consider. She had thought she had worn a different form before the brothers, but apparently not. "I am not the only one," she added, considering the men. "My brother Rhune can transform into any animal he can see."

"And you?"  Archer asked.

"Can turn into any animal I can dream up."

"And you dream of hydras and phoenixes?"  Archer met his brother’s eyes as some communication passed between them. Then they returned to her to finish. "Anything else?"

"I dream of many things," she said simply. She thought about adding a warning for them to keep in mind who they were dealing with, but she understood from their newly wary eyes that it was unnecessary. They got the message just the same.

***

Since she had a rare and powerful gift of transformation she was not hindered by the ability to change into just one animal, nor did she balk at being used for manual labor, something the free and unpretentious people of the island appreciated, once they got over their shock of seeing a mage that could transform into literally anything. Then they had to adjust their thinking a second time when their new Lady showed no hesitation to transform into a lowly ox and haul debris away when that was what was needed.

It was a productive morning in many respects, Clare thought with some small satisfaction.

Lux spent the first few hours of his time that day following her around and handing out dire warnings to the mage that congregated to see her, but eventually he calmed down enough to help as well. His usual humor returned, and he did a great deal to lighten the hearts of the townsfolk. Especially the females. And since Clare liked a good joke, did not mind hard work and put on no airs despite her connections and powers, eventually the people relaxed and embraced both the dragon and the lady into their midst.

It was not as if she had nothing to show for her time on the island among her new people, but she was no closer to finding Theron than the day before. The warrior twins made themselves scarce after discovering she was more than they knew. They did not, unfortunately, rethink their stand and blurt out what she wanted to know.

The sad truth was she missed him. Whatever tenuous connection had begun between them in that cave was still calling to her. So much so that each passing hour it got more insistent that she find her mate. And she missed her family, and everyone she had left behind at Forsaken. It was not so bad when she was busy, but at night, or like now, when the new sun shot dragon fire across the blue sea, she thought of her mate, and her family and felt...torn.

It did not help that she had not heard a word from them since she left home. Exactly how mad at her were they?  She had expected someone to try and fetch her immediately, but they had not followed her as she expected. Had she been disowned, and no one bothered to tell her?  Before she could really wallow in her self-pity a call came from the guards at the North lookout. Clare felt her heart start to race and a cry of excitement shoot to her lips.

  She looked to the North and saw the tiny dots in the distance that she had missed, deep in speculation and work as she had been. Nearly at once her excitement died. It was not Theron returning home.

A moment later exasperation colored her thoughts as she recognized who was approaching. Forgetting for the moment her earlier wishes to hear from her family again, she swept right into consternation. She just knew they were here to meddle.

By the time she swooped down to the beach where the new visitors would land she was joined by both the battle twins, a grinning Lux, and most of the townsfolk were at least watching from a distance. While they were starting to get used to the dragon visitors, the ones flying to her now were worth a second look. Baby dragons especially were never seen outside of Dracon, and she had to admit that this one was adorable. Even if he was the bane of her existence.