WinterMaejic Read online

  The last picture showed a large formation of fire-breathing dragons sweeping down into battle.

  My breath caught in my throat as I looked away from the book. That must have been the battle where they were overcome. I knew that story. Yallick seemed to think that it was linked to Xyla—and to me—here and now. So that’s why he wanted me to study this book. I ran my fingers lightly over the images, feeling the texture of the ink and gold leaf.

  I began to turn the page, eager to see the next story, when Yallick called to me.

  “Donavah, I need you to go check on Xyla.”

  As I walked past the group gathered in the main room, Yallick caught my eye, and a pulse of understanding shot through me. He needed for me to be outside, out of earshot of the council. I frowned. After everything I’d already been through, everything I’d done, when would I be old enough to participate?

  I found the dragon sleeping yet again. The thin sunlight shone on her, although it didn’t seem to actually warm the air much. Well, it was going to get colder before it got warmer. I pulled my cloak more tightly around me.

  For a little while, I just stood and looked at Xyla. I still hadn’t gotten used to the idea that this breathtaking animal was my friend. She was the only known red dragon; the rest were white, silver, gold, copper—colors like that.

  The story was that the dragonmasters in Ultria had been trying to develop new hybrids, and the Ultrian Prince, Havden, had sent an egg from one of the clutches to Princess Rycina, the king of Alloway’s eldest daughter, as a gift to celebrate their betrothal. En route, the egg had been stolen, and by a very strange set of circumstances, ended up in my brother Breyard’s possession, whereupon it hatched. Breyard released the baby dragon into the woods near Roylinn, the magic academy where we were both students, but the egg had been traced and Breyard arrested. I knew he hadn’t stolen the egg, but he was tried and convicted anyway, and sentenced to death in the king’s dragon-fighting pits.

  I gave a little half-smile. If I hadn’t gone after him to try—foolishly and unsuccessfully—to prove him innocent, he would be dead now. For that little baby dragon, Xyla, had gone to Stychs—a mysterious place out of the world entirely—to grow, then flown Traz and me to the capital city, Penwick. Unfortunately, she’d been spotted and captured. Apparently thrilled to have acquired a new, unique, full-grown dragon, the king had decided to pit her against the biggest criminal in the land, egg-thief Breyard. As the “fight” began, Traz’s magic staff had broken the net of spells covering the arena. Xyla seized Breyard and disappeared—to Stychs as I learned later—and came back for Traz and me, and flew us all to safety.

  “You worry.” Xyla’s voice intruded on my thoughts. I hadn’t noticed her eyes open. Now she was watching me.

  “Yes, I am worried.” I walked over and leaned against her. For the first time, it occurred to me that she could swallow me whole if she were so inclined. I’d seen that just about happen in the one fight I’d watched between a dragon and a man. I instantly tried to blot that image from my mind, before Xyla could pick it up. No point in distressing her.

  “You worry too much. What is wrong now?”

  I knew I shouldn’t tell her, but I really couldn’t hide it from her. “The king’s men are coming. I’m afraid they’re going to attack.” I took a breath to try to steady myself and keep from breaking into a panic. “Oh, Xyla, the Royal Guard are coming after me again. Why can’t I just be left in peace? Why is everyone always hunting me down?”

  I could almost hear her mental sigh. “It is not you they seek. And we are safe. They cannot find us here.”

  “How can you be so sure? Even Yallick is worried; he’s called the council together.”

  “Then they shall decide what is to be done. There is nothing for you to worry about.”

  “That’s easy for you to say. You don’t have Yallick trying to drive all kinds of knowledge into your head.” Which wasn’t quite true or fair, but the thought of seeing the Royal Guard in their purple and scarlet uniforms sent shivers down my spine. Once I’d thought they looked handsome; now just a glimpse of those colors terrified me. And made me say things I didn’t really mean.

  “I thought you wished to learn from Yallick,” Xyla said, her voice sounding a little confused.

  “Oh, I do. I guess. It’s just that . . .” What exactly was it that was bothering me? “He seems to think,” I said slowly, trying to put my vague feelings into words, “that there’s something special about me, as if there’s a task I have to do. I mean, I’m just me. What special thing could I ever do?”

  “No one knows what they can do until they have to do it. You know that. And you have already done something special. Because of you, Breyard is still alive.”

  I sighed. “Yeah, that’s true. But still, I wish Yallick wasn’t so . . . so . . . intense. He kind of scares me sometimes.”

  “Yallick is a good man.”

  I snorted. “He might be a good man, but he isn’t always a nice one.”

  “He has had . . . disappointments.”

  There was, quite simply, nothing I could say in reply to that. I decided instead to try to return to the original topic of conversation.

  “I’m afraid we’re going to have to leave here.”

  “But where would we go?” Xyla seemed honestly perplexed.

  “I don’t know. But Xyla, if the Royal Guard try to capture you, promise me something, won’t you?”

  “What?”

  “Promise that you’ll get away. Go back to Stychs if that’s the only way to escape. Please.”

  “Donavah, I cannot go to Stychs.”

  “Why ever not? I mean, if that’s what you have to do. It’s better than getting recaptured.”

  “I cannot go to Stychs,” she repeated. “I am pregnant.”

  I watch her and wonder: what could have been were I not too old, were she not too young. It is not that I never wished to marry. No, only that I never found the right woman with whom to wed and to bear my seed.

  The rearing of children is hard—hard and unpredictable—and I do not believe that I regret having escaped the trouble of it. And yet . . . and yet.

  Donavah is mine neither to wed nor to rear. Rather, it seems to be meant that I am to teach her, teach her well and truly, so that she can fulfill her destiny.

  This is not an insignificant task. Indeed, it will surely effect a change on the entire world order.

  I accept my fate.

  I burst into Yallick’s cottage, and the group of mages turned and stared at me. The man who’d been speaking still had his mouth open, although no words came out. Anger kindled in Yallick’s eyes, but I spoke before he could.

  “Xyla is pregnant!” I announced to my stunned audience. I was panting from my mad dash, and I tried to get my breath. “Sorry to interrupt, but I knew you needed to know.”

  Everyone, including me, looked at Yallick. His eyes had become slightly unfocused, as if he were concentrating on something. The only sounds were the snapping of the flames in the fireplace and my breathing. I closed my mouth and tried to breathe more quietly.

  After several moments, Yallick’s attention returned to the group in front of him.

  “This explains it,” he said. “Why she has been sleeping so much. And, of course, it does affect our plans.” His gaze turned to me. “You may go now, Donavah.” A hint of a smile appeared. “Thank you for bringing this news.”

  I went back outside, wondering what to do with myself. I mentally reached for Xyla, but I could tell she was trying to get back to sleep, so I left her alone. A gust of cold wind blew past, and I shivered. I knew just the place to go: the meditation shelter. I would be snug there, even without a fire to keep me warm.

  When I arrived at the shelter, I took a few moments to take a really good look at it, as if etching it on my memory. O
nly a few weeks ago, I didn’t know of its existence, but now I felt as if it were an old friend I was leaving behind forever. Even though Yallick hadn’t suggested it within my hearing, I was certain that we would be going away. A current of sad farewell pulsed through the woods all around me. Maybe that’s what Traz had felt when he described it as being weird outside.

  I placed a hand on the granite boulder. The surface was rough and hard and . . . warm! How could that be? Surely even the most magic of objects couldn’t generate their own heat on a cold day? I walked around the boulder to the opening and ducked inside, where it was as toasty warm as if a huge fire were burning in a tiny room. First I opened my cloak, then took it off entirely.

  I sat on the seat and closed my eyes. Power whorled around me, and it had a distinct masculine feel. I tried to focus on it, to discover what it was. I seemed to perceive colors, even with eyes closed: purple, midnight blue, deep forest green.

  Without thinking what I was doing or why, I reached out a hand as if to catch a falling feather. Something tickled my palm. I concentrated on the sensation, trying to draw more of it to myself. I imagined power spooling into my palm like a ball of yarn winding itself up.

  When I opened my eyes to see if there really was anything there at all, I saw in my hand the image of a head: Yallick’s! It began to fade at my startled gasp, so I concentrated harder. The image grew stronger. Yallick’s eyes were closed, and his lips moved ever so slightly, as if he were whispering to himself. Free to gaze at him without having to worry about his sharp tongue reprimanding me, I looked at him more closely than ever before.

  He had a strong jawline that jutted out almost in arrogance—almost, but not quite. His long, white-blond hair swept back from a high forehead. The wrinkles around his eyes and mouth didn’t show, and he looked much younger than he actually was.

  Then his lips stopped moving. His blue-green eyes opened, and from them, a beam of light shot past my shoulder. I cried out in guilty surprise and moved as if to drop the image, which instantly disappeared.

  I looked around, wondering what had just happened. The warmth was quickly dissipating, and I pulled my cloak back on, shivering more in reaction to what had just happened than with cold.

  The shelter now felt strange and unfamiliar. I didn’t understand how I’d conjured that image. Had I done it at all, or was it something else? It had felt more like I was gathering strands of power. But how—and why—had it turned into Yallick’s image?

  I stepped back into the cold air and decided to take a walk. Following a path that lead the opposite direction from Yallick’s cottage, I walked quickly to keep warm. Dead leaves crunched underfoot, and every once in awhile I saw a forest creature scurry across the path or up a tree. Birds flitted amongst the branches, and I wondered how much longer it would be before they finally headed south to warmer climes.

  Eventually I crossed another path leading more or less back toward Yallick’s, so I took it. This was a new path to me, one I hadn’t explored in the weeks since we’d arrived here. At first, it was a wide track, even open to the sky overhead, but before long, the trees drew closer. The path began to wind, and even though it was nearing midday and there wasn’t a cloud in the sky, the light grew dim.

  I began to feel an unfamiliar vibration in the air. It was dark, and old, and wild. I stopped walking and tried to discern where it was coming from. There. A little way from the path, there was a patch of—well, it wasn’t exactly darkness—more like a blurry patch, where the shapes of the trees were fuzzy.

  I closed my eyes. The vibration had frightened me a little at first, not because it was threatening but because it was so strange; now it seemed to be drawing me to its source. Eyes still closed, I followed it. A piece of my rational mind warned me that I was surely going to crash into a tree, but I pushed the thought down and obeyed what seemed to be instinct. And I didn’t misstep.

  Then I stopped, as if at an unspoken command. The air crackled, dancing around me and making my skin tingle. I smiled. The sounds of the life of the forest around me became magnified. The twittering of birds echoed loudly, and the scuttling of small creatures was more like a herd of wild horses crashing through the trees. An incessant clickety-clacking was the sound of insects gnawing and marching their way through the nearby trees.

  Even before I opened my eyes, I knew that I must be in the middle of the grey patch I’d seen. Finally, I looked around.

  I stood in the center of a circle of stones. Not huge boulders, but small ones, small enough for me to sit on. Only one rose higher than my knees.

  The ground inside the circle was soft loam, and I thought I could see the footprints of bare human feet here and there. Bare feet? In this weather? They must be recent or else the rain several days ago would have washed them away.

  The trees were hoary and grey, with strands of lichen trailing off the branches like ancient beards.

  The vibrations began to pulse, and I could almost hear the music of the stars. I began to walk around the circle, and before I quite realized what was happening, I found I was dancing. My feet traced an intricate pattern, and I swirled and whirled and sprang spinning into the air. Round and round the circle I sped, feeling almost as if I could fly. I leapt from stone to stone, defying gravity itself. The stars smiled down on me.

  “Donavah!” Yallick’s gravelly voice stopped me in my tracks. He raised a hand, palm facing me. The energy all around me stilled. “It has taken me forever to find you. Come now.” His words were curt, but I felt no hint of anger in them. And his piercing gaze, while intense and almost curious, didn’t scare me as it so often did. “Come.”

  I took a few steps before it struck me that it had grown dark.

  We walked at first in silence. I kept waiting for Yallick to tear into me for being undisciplined and out of control, but he didn’t. Instead, he strode along at a comfortable pace, as if it were our usual habit to take a moonlit stroll through the woods.

  Eventually I stopped feeling awkward and told him about what had happened in the meditation shelter. He gave me a strange look, narrowing his eyes, then, as he so often had done before, asked me to tell him everything again. As I did, I tried to repeat word for word what I’d said the first time, but I quickly noticed that I kept saying things slightly differently. Like “threads” the first time and “strands” the second. Was it these tiny differences that helped him understand more clearly what I was trying to say? I stopped putting so much effort into my narrative and just let the words flow.

  By the time I’d been all the way through the story for the second time, we reached a stream not far from the cottage. With his long legs, Yallick leaped across. I used the stepping stones since I didn’t want to risk getting wet. As I reached the other side, Yallick held out his hand to help me up the bank. With a sudden and inexplicable feeling of disdain, I spurned his offer of assistance. He just shrugged and gave me an infuriating cockeyed grin.

  “So what do you think it all means?” I asked as we resumed our walk.

  “What do you think it means?” Before I could deliver the sarcastic retort that rose to my lips, he raised a hand as if to stop me. “I want you to think about it for a moment and try to formulate your own conclusion. Then we will consider it. Thus you will better learn how to judge things.”

  I thought about it. “Well, there was definitely power there. I could feel it on my skin.”

  “Good. What kind of power?”

  I thought some more. “Something to do with . . .” I hesitated because it seemed so stupid, then went on. “Something to do with you.”

  “Indeed. Because it was me that you saw?”

  I nodded. “But I don’t understand why. You were meeting with the rest of the council; you weren’t nearby. And you couldn’t possibly have been thinking of me.”

  “Perhaps not, although you should not be so quick to assume to know what
people are thinking.”

  I looked at him, but he was staring off into the distance as we walked. For a moment, I wondered how much attention he was really paying to this conversation.

  “What else?” he finally asked.

  I pondered, but couldn’t think of anything more to say.

  “You cannot think of any reason why you might have felt power in the shelter?” When I didn’t answer, he continued. “In the place where I had been meditating not long before?”

  Then it seemed so obvious I wanted to melt in embarrassment. I fell back a step or two, and Yallick turned to look at me. “What?” he asked in a sharp tone of voice.

  “You make it sound so simple,” I muttered.

  He stopped and made me stop, too. He stood facing me and took both of my hands in his. “Donavah,” and his voice was as gentle as I’d ever heard it. “Many things sound simple once you figure them out. But nothing is ever as simple as it seems. You have made great progress. To even sense the residue of my meditation—half the mages here could not do that. To shape that residue into my image . . .” He trailed off and sighed. He released one of my hands and tucked the other one into the crook of his arm, then started walking slowly again.

  I didn’t know quite what to make of all this, so I walked along at his side wordlessly. After a few strides, we fell into step, and I began to feel more comfortable than I ever would have expected in Yallick’s presence.

  He didn’t speak again until we reached the cottage. He paused as we entered the clearing, and I disengaged my hand from his arm. “I need to ask you for a favor before you retire for the night. I need you to help me move something.”

  “Sure. What?”

  The moonlight shone full on his face as he looked at me, and his eyes glinted as he said, “That.”

  I looked where he was pointing. “You’ve got to be kidding!” I squealed as I realized he meant the house-sized boulder behind his cottage.