Legacy of Fire

1

Kaoran had taken seven steps with Isolde in his arms when the mountain decided to close the way.

The wedge he had left beneath the root creaked behind him.

Water struck his boots above the ankles.

A few more steps would bring him to the bend, where he could set Isolde down without losing her to the current.

Kaoran moved sideways to shield the bandage between their bodies.

The wedge snapped before he reached the dry stone.

A rock fell into the tunnel. The impact threw mud against the ceiling.

Kaoran pulled the young woman against his chest and turned to cover her head. Another stone bounced off his shoulder. Pain ran down his left arm and settled in his elbow.

“You’ll have to wait,” he told the mountain.

The mountain answered with a tremor that knocked him off balance.

Isolde opened her eyes. Fever had clouded her gaze, though part of her understood they were falling. She closed her hand around Kaoran’s cloak. The red glow of her fingers traveled through the fabric and found the roots overhead.

The roots tightened.

The stone stopped moving for a heartbeat.

Kaoran used that moment. He passed beneath the arch, found the rope he had secured there, and climbed down into the narrow channel.

The water reached his knees. Isolde weighed little for her height; the blood she had lost accounted for some of that lightness.

The rest belonged to days of hunger, cold, and exertion that no body should have had to endure.

She tried to speak.

“Save your breath,” Kaoran said.

“Rheskan.”

There was barely a voice behind the word.

“He’s alive.”

Isolde’s fingers loosened on the cloak. The fire dimmed, and the roots began to groan again.

Kaoran had seen the young dragon above the ravine, wounded and furious, searching the water.

He had also seen the blue stones drawing him toward a side passage.

He knew the difference between being alive and being safe.

The answer he had given fell within the truth, and in that tunnel it was enough.

He reached the first fork. The path to the right led toward the pool where he had found the boot. Water would have covered the lower ledge by now. The left climbed a shaft of roots and emerged near the clearing, but that way required both hands.

Kaoran laid Isolde on a high shelf of stone. He wrapped her in the cloak and pressed two fingers to her neck.

Her pulse was still weak. Each beat came after a different interval.

“I’m going to tie you to me,” he explained. “The knot will be behind your shoulder. If you wake up and decide to hit me, use your right hand. The left barely closes.”

Her eyelids fluttered.

“Who are you?”

“Kaoran Thennar.”

The name prompted a small reaction. A crease between her brows. Perhaps Maelia had mentioned him. Perhaps the fever had turned those syllables into something else.

“Old warrior,” Isolde murmured.

Kaoran passed the rope beneath her arms.

“Old, certainly. The rest depends on who’s telling the story.”

The knot held, allowing him to carry her on his back. Isolde groaned when the wound brushed his shoulder. Kaoran adjusted the tension, placed a folded bandage between her body and the rope, and tested the weight with a small movement. Each adjustment eased the pressure on her ribs.

The shaft rose a little more than twenty paces. He had climbed it before and knew three places where he could trust his footing. The collapse had changed one of them.

He wedged his boot into a crack, found the thickest root, and pulled himself up. His left knee protested. His body tried to shift the weight to his good side. Kaoran corrected the movement before the rope could tug at Isolde.

“One thing,” she said against his back.

“That’s it.”

“Do one thing.”

Kaoran recognized the words he had read in the trail of her decisions. Breathe. Kindle an ember. Reach the next root. The young woman had built a discipline of her own while the river tried to carry her away.

“Now we climb,” he said. “We’ll argue with the water afterward.”

He moved from one foothold to the next.

The first root held. The second shed dirt. At the third, the mountain roared again, and a deep heat passed through the wall. Isolde stiffened on his back. Red light appeared beneath her right hand.

Kaoran felt another pulse behind the stone.

It was too large to belong to Rheskan.

Ydrael was still inside Cendral.

The ancient dragon was bearing part of the mountain’s weight.

Every beat that kept a passage open cost him something no human there could measure.

Kaoran had heard stories about him when he still wore a uniform.

The Houses described him as guardian, weapon, inheritance, or threat, according to the day’s needs.

None of those words could explain that will enclosed in stone.

Isolde rested her forehead between Kaoran’s shoulders.

“Let it go,” she whispered.

Isolde’s hand grew hot against the rope. Kaoran had known that deep pressure since entering the gorge, but he did not know how much of it reached her. Signals from Cendral faded before revealing their source.

“Who are you talking to?”

“Ydrael. I’m asking him to let go of the mountain.”

A stone struck the bottom of the shaft. Kaoran drove his boot in until he found a firm foothold.

“There are still people below. We heard them.”

Isolde let out a breath against his neck.

“He can die too.”

Kaoran adjusted the rope that held her weight. He understood the effort in those words: asking someone to flee while others were still trapped. It had taken him years to bear a question like that.

“Has he answered?”

“I had an answer before the rupture. Now there’s heat. Sometimes I think it’s coming back.”

“Describe it when you can. I can feel the wall trembling.”

Isolde spread her fingers over his shoulder. For a moment the roots tightened; from below came a voice calling to another through the water. Kaoran kept climbing. He could use that open passage, and as they crossed it, he chose to trust that the dragon would have the strength to hold it.

“He’s still alive,” she murmured.

Kaoran reached the rim of the shaft and hooked one knee over the ledge. The effort drove the air from his lungs. He crawled onto firm ground and loosened the rope around Isolde.

She lay motionless.

The pulse in her neck was still there. Her skin burned. The bandage beneath her ribs was soaked again.

Kaoran cut her shirt open with the knife. The cloth had stuck to the wound. He poured a few drops of lukewarm water over it and waited for it to loosen. Isolde woke when he lifted the edge.

Her hand found the knife.

The movement was swift in intent and clumsy in execution. Two fingers of her left hand closed weakly around the blade. Kaoran caught her wrist before she could cut herself.

“That can wait,” he said.

“Don’t touch me.”

Her voice came out clearer. More frightened, too.

Kaoran released her wrist and set the knife on the stone, within reach of her right hand.

“I have to change the bandage. You can do it yourself if you can keep your eyes open.”

Isolde looked at the blood. For a few seconds she seemed to understand where she was. She saw the roots, the water coming through the tunnel, and the rope. Then she looked at Kaoran.

“Did you pull me out of the river?”

“You got yourself out of the river. I followed the trail.”

“Darian…”

Kaoran put the cloth where she could see it. She had spoken that name in the chamber, her eyes closed and her fingers wrapped around his. Now she was looking at the knife.

“He cut the platform,” Isolde said. “He blocked my way.”

“I saw the fall from the west.”

She turned her face toward the wall.

“I’d given him my hand.”

Kaoran waited. A drop fell from the ceiling onto the knife’s guard. He moved the blade a few inches to keep it dry; Isolde followed the movement with her eyes.

“I trusted him to hold on to me,” she added. “I’d been waiting for him.”

The edge of the bandage came loose. Kaoran brought the clean cloth closer and stopped before touching her shoulder.

“Can you hold this?”

Isolde took it. Her fingers trembled and the fold came undone, but she managed to press it against the blood. Kaoran showed her where he needed to put his hand to lift her.

“Tell me first,” she said.

“Now.”

The young woman let him place his palm behind her shoulder.

Kaoran worked slowly. The wound penetrated beneath her ribs, its edges ragged.

The blade had gone in at an upward angle.

The river had washed away dirt and blood at the cost of chilling her body dangerously.

The swelling around the cut was beginning to harden.

“There’s infection,” he said.

“How much?”

“Enough to kill you if you stay here.”

“Then move.”

Kaoran tightened the bandage.

Isolde clenched her teeth. A tear crossed her temple and disappeared into her wet hair. She pretended not to notice. So did Kaoran.

“You still have to get out of the gorge,” he said. “Outside there are three guard posts, a swollen river, and my mare, who has little patience for strangers.”

“Dragons tend to be that way.”

“Bruma has no wings. She makes up for it with a bad temper.”

A trace of a smile crossed Isolde’s lips. It did not last. The fever dragged her under again.

Kaoran picked up the knife and rope. The pendant’s cord had tangled around Isolde’s right hand. She tightened her grip on the metal as he brought the blanket closer.

“Leave it,” she asked.

Kaoran drew his fingers back. Through his own clothes he felt the fragment he had wrapped in a cloth in the chamber: the edge of the hawk that would fit that break.

He would return it when she could open her hand.

For now, he covered the young woman’s shoulders and left the cord outside the blanket.

The upper exit lay behind a curtain of lukewarm water. As he crossed it, the cold air of the ravine struck his wet skin. Kaoran lifted Isolde again and made his way between ash-covered rocks. The sky was beginning to lighten.

Several hours had passed since he entered the gorge.