Dragon Blood

His smile broadened. "You don't know much," he said, and tilted the staff just a little.

Pain coursed through me and I lost control of my muscles, falling limply to the floor, unable even to turn my face aside and avoid the painful contact of noise and hard-packed earth.

"Always so quiet, my Ward," whispered Jade Eyes, and he turned my head away from the ground, tsking when he saw the blood flowing from my nose. "I liked that about you. Some people like the screaming, but I enjoy your pain, not noise." He touched his fingers to my upper lip and held his hand up for me to see the dampness of my tears coating his fingertips. "I'm sorry you have to die. But I think that you might be able to take them from me, if I don't kill you before I release them."

"A dragon is no man's slave," I managed to say around the pain. "Nor should he ever be. I think that you'll be like my father and find that it is more than you can safely hold."

"Your father had a dragon?" he asked, and the pain ebbed into memory. "They say that there is a dragon at Hurog now. Jakoven said it was illusion."

I took a deep breath. "Listen to me, Jade Eyes. The dragons died to make that gem. You can't bring them back to life. The first rule of magic is not to tamper with the natural order of things. If you break Farson's bindings, you'll only unleash death."

"Yes," said the red tide of magic, "let me destroy."

But it didn't have the same living feeling as the black magic that coated me and drank my tears from my cheeks. It was just destructive magic, cold and powerful.

Jade Eyes drew back.

"Did you hear that?" I asked. "There will be no new Empire to rule if you free them."

His face changed abruptly to a hate-filled snarl and he jumped to his feet. "You think you know everything."

He slammed the end of the staff into my diaphragm and I curled up, gasping for breath that wouldn't come. Darkness hovered in front of my eyes, but I remembered my aunt's voice in my ear "Straighten out, boy. Give your lungs room to work." And I forced my legs straight and drew in a small breath of air. The next breath was larger.

I opened my eyes in time to see him touch the gem with his tear-covered fingers. The black mist of magic grew very still, as if it were waiting.

Jade Eyes snapped his fingers impatiently. "It must need blood, too," he said.

He rolled me flat on my back and drew his knife. He bent and cut the stained bandage from my waist, ripping the fabric off and setting the wound bleeding again. He took the staff and shoved the Bane into my wound.

I felt the icy touch of the gem, felt it feed on me. It sent slivers of agony arcing through my bones, and warm writhing pleasure through my muscles until I couldn't tell which was which.

"Up, Ward, damn it. If you lay like a lump because you've taken a bruise, you'll end up with a slit throat." The memory of my aunt's voice seemed tied into the mist feathering my cheeks with an icy touch that brought some clearness to my head.

With the force of will that had been toughened by my father and my aunt for different purposes, I reached up and gripped the staff with both hands and ripped it out of Jade Eyes's hands.

He must have been using magic on the Bane as well as my blood, because his body convulsed when he lost contact with the staff. He fell, momentarily unconscious, half on top of Oreg.

I pulled the Bane from my flesh, and it was harder than it should have been to do that. Using the staff to aid me, I struggled to my feet, my head hitting the pole that held that section of the tent roof rigid. Then I realized that Jade Eyes must have set a command upon the staff before releasing it.

He'd wanted me dead so no other would have a claim upon the Bane, and the red tide of magic, bloated from my blood, flooded my body in an attempt to carry out Jade Eyes's directive.

I knew the form of several binding spells. Oreg had taught most of them to me.

"If you don't know them," he'd said, "you can't break them."

I could see the bindings on the gem when I focused on it. The ties that held the Bane to follow Jade Eyes's command faded under my thrust of magic but not quickly enough. A red tide of pain sliced through me and breathing became difficult.

Hurog blood had given the Bane to Jade Eyes's control. I'd rested the fingers of my right hand on the bloody lump rising on the back of Oreg's head. True dragon's blood, or nearer to it than mine.

Red heat seared my flesh, empty blackness struck me deaf and dumb, and cool blue power touched my skin with ice. Blue for tears, I thought. I couldn't breathe, couldn't see, couldn't hear but for the sound of dragon breath in my ears. Blindly I raised my right hand and felt for the gem. I couldn't feel the staff or the Bane against my fingers, but the cold gem glowed with a wealth of power and I covered it with my hand.

One moment I struggled against the Bane and the next the rush of power was gone. I gulped in air, and my sight returned as if it had never left me.

The gemstone in the mouth of the bronze dragon glowed with cool purple-blue light. I neither felt nor saw either the heavy blackness of the trapped revenants or the red magic that answered to the master of the Bane.

I leaned against the staff, which was the only thing holding me up.

I couldn't sense any magic except for the slight pulse that made the gem glow, illuminating the tent with blueish light. I was too tired to probe the nature of the magic that caused the luminescence, but light could easily have been the result of leftover magic when Farson's spells were released. Blood and tears, I thought, remembering Oreg's belief that the magic could break free.

Oreg had made me kill him to break the spell that bound him to Hurog. It did not seem at all strange to me that those dragon spirits bound to the Bane would be willing to make an equal sacrifice.

There would be time to analyze later. Now there was a battle going on outside the tent—and as soon as I could stand on my own, I needed to get out and help. But even as the thought came to me, I realized that although there was quite a bit of noise, the familiar sound of battle had disappeared sometime while I'd been struggling with Jade Eyes and the Bane.

Jade Eyes.

I started to kneel down and check the mage, but just then he rolled off Oreg. I worried for a moment, because in my current condition a kitten could have knocked me over, but he lay limply on the floor, and Oreg sat up.

Oreg looked around, a hand to his head. He glanced at the Bane, let his gaze linger on Jade Eyes, and said, "Missed all the fun, did I? I can't believe I let him take me from behind."

"No more can I," I agreed, still propped up by the staff. "We need to see what's going on out there." I gestured vaguely toward the entrance flap. "But first, I think we ought to make certain Jade Eyes doesn't do anything we'll regret when he wakes up. There has to be a rope of some kind around here. Since I'm a little under the weather—not having slept through the excitement like some here—that leaves you."

"Jade Eyes?" said Oreg thoughtfully. His right hand moved, drawing the knife in his belt and bringing it across Jade Eyes's throat before I choked out a belated "Stop."

Oreg came to his feet, narrowing his eyes at me—or maybe against the pain of his head injury. "I've heard your nightmares," he said. "I'll not suffer him to live—I gave him a more merciful end than he deserved." To change the subject, he pointed at the Bane. "What are you going to do with that?"

"I want nothing to do with it," I said, rather firmly for someone who would have fallen but for my grip on the Farsonsbane staff.

"Wait until they come out," said Haverness's voice clearly from outside the tent. "You don't want to interrupt wizards."