Rise of the Valiant (29 page)

Aidan, still
groaning in pain, braced himself as the man lowered his boot for his face,
knowing his skull was about to be crushed. He would give anything to have his
father by his side now, to have his brothers here—or most of all, to have Kyra
here. He knew she would protect him. Now, he would have to meet his fate alone.
If only he was older, bigger, stronger.

As the boot came
lower and Aidan raised his hands, cringing, bracing himself, a sudden snarling
noise cut through the air—one that made his hairs rise on end. Aidan looked
over and was shocked to see White rushing forward. The huge, wild dog, somehow
finding a reserve of strength, lunged and jumped onto the man’s chest, sinking
his fangs into him before he could stomp Aidan.

The man shrieked
as White snarled viciously and shook his head every which way, biting the man
on his hands and arms and chest and face.

Finally, the
man, bloodied, rolled to his side, groaning.

White, still
snarling, mouth dripping with blood, was not done. He stepped forward, clearly
aiming for the man’s jugular, preparing to kill him for good. But White then
stumbled and keeled over, and Aidan realized that he was still too injured to
finish the man off.

The man, sensing
an opportunity, did not wait. He quickly crawled to his hands and knees, then
stumbled to his feet and ran all the way back to the front of his cart, woozy
on his feet. He pulled himself back up, and sitting unsteadily, lashed his
horses.

They took off,
Aidan was dismayed to see, at a gallop. In but moments the wagon disappeared
into the night, leaving Aidan and White utterly alone in the black woods, days
away from civilization.

Aidan lay there,
his body still wracked with pain, too exhausted to stand, and he was surprised
to feel a tongue on his face. He looked over to see White leaning over, lying
down, too, and licking him.

Aidan reached
out and hugged the dog, and the dog, he was surprised to see, leaned his head
into his chest.

“I owe you my
life,” Aidan said.

White looked
back at him with eyes that seemed to respond:
And you saved me, too
.

Aidan knew that
by doing what he had done, he had probably just forfeited his only chance at
survival. Now here he lay, alone, on this cold night, hungry, beat up, a
wounded wild dog beside him, the two of them without anyone to help them. Yet
Aidan didn’t care. He had done the right thing, and nothing mattered more than
that.

Aidan couldn’t
give up. He couldn’t just lie there and die—and he couldn’t let White die,
either. And if they didn’t start moving, he could feel, they would both soon
stiffen up and freeze to death.

Aidan mustered a
supreme effort and got himself unsteadily to his feet, clutching his ribs where
the man had kicked him. He then helped White up, dragging him to his feet, too.
The two of them stood there, facing the long, open road ahead of them. Aidan
knew they would most likely die out here—but no matter what happened, he had
saved this animal.

Aidan put one
foot before the next, White limping beside them, and the two of them set off
together—one small boy and one wounded dog, alone beneath the stars in the
vast, black forest—taking their first steps on the impossibly long walk to
Andros.

Theos circled
high over Escalon, above the clouds, out of sight of the humans, soaring from
one end to the other, taking in, with his magnificent vision and focus, the
vista below. He flew into the sunset, flapping his great wings, moving across
hills with each flap, covering more ground than these humans could in days, as
he searched. Until he found what he was looking for, he would not rest.

This land of
Escalon was so different than his home on the far side of the world, so much
smaller, and devoid of the lava and ash, of the endless stretches of black rock
that made up his homeland. It was also devoid of the omnipresent screeches of
his fellow dragons. It was almost too quiet here—and it unnerved him. It
reminded him of how alone he was, how far from home he was. But for this
mission, he would venture to the ends of the earth.

Theos narrowed
his eyes and far below, through the clouds, he spotted Kyra, before the tower.
He watched her with a mix of curiosity and respect, more protective of her than
she would ever know. He kept an eye on her when he could, as the role she had
to play in the coming war was too important, their connection too strong, and
her life too fragile. She was not a dragon, after all.

Theos flapped,
kept flying, past Kyra, past the tower, and back across Escalon—still
searching. He lowered his head and increased his speed and in moments was able
to cross half the land. He spotted Kyra’s father in the mountains, atop Kos,
preparing, no doubt, for the great war. He turned and flew north, and saw
Volis, unguarded. He flew further and, not far from The Flames, he saw the
great hole in the earth, the giant emerging from the tunnel and the great army
of trolls following on its heels.

He criss-crossed
Escalon, and in the far corners he saw some legions of Pandesia beginning to
rally, they, too, preparing for war.

Theos, though,
did not have much interest in these human dealings. He could destroy them all
in a second if he wanted to. All of their movements, their machinations, were
ultimately inconsequential to him. It was Kyra he cared about—for a very
special reason.

And one other.
The only thing more important to him even than her, the only thing that made
him stay, the only thing that had made him come here to begin with. He searched
again and again, screeching in frustration, for the one thing he had to find.
The one thing that had made him vulnerable.

His child.

Theo screeched
again and again in frustration, shaking the very air as he flew once again over
the Wood of Thorns, near the place where he was wounded, searching, scouring
the land. He scanned the forest below, through the trees, over the
hills—everywhere. But it was nowhere to be found. It was as if his child had
vanished, as if the very egg he had come here to protect had disappeared.

Who could have
taken it? And why?

Theos screeched
again, a screech of urgency, of despair, as he soared up into the heavens,
ready to tear apart the fabric of the world, to rain fire on all of mankind if
he did not, soon, find what he was looking for. He could feel the rage burning,
mounting within him, and as his eyes glowed yellow he knew that he could no
longer control it. He had to let it out on someone. And those cities below,
milling with humans, would have to be as good a target as any.

He tucked into a
dive, sped for the city below, and opened his mouth to breathe fire. It was
time for the great war to begin.

Lying all alone,
just north of the Wood of Thorns, in an empty plain beneath an ancient tree,
its branches concealing it well, sat a single egg.

A dragon’s egg.

Large and purple
and hard, covered with scales, it sat there alone, as if waiting for its father
to arrive. It was so out of place here in Escalon, not surrounded by molten
fire, by lava and ash, by circling dragons, hovering, protecting, waiting for
it to hatch. It could already feel it was different than all the others.

It sat there,
waiting to die—or to hatch. It could feel how vulnerable it was.

Despite all
odds, it had survived. Animals had come, sniffing out of curiosity, yet so far
they had left. But now, he sensed, another one came. More than one—a pack of
wolves. They were fast approaching his egg, and they were hungry. This time,
they would kill him.

He knew he was
not meant to hatch anytime soon, but this dragon summoned all his willpower,
forced himself to move within the egg, to defy the natural waiting period. With
all his might, he moved one arm, then one shoulder, then his knee. He did what
no dragon was supposed to do, what no other dragon was able to do. For he was
different. He was, he sensed, more powerful than them all.

As the final
rays of the sun began to set, far out of earshot of all humans, in this barren
countryside, there came a single crack.

Then another.

A small claw
emerged, its fingernails reaching for the sky as if to claw it. This was
followed by another.

Soon, the egg
began to shatter, and finally, the arm, then the head of a baby dragon emerged.
The son of Theos.

The wolves
stopped in their tracks, for the first time in their lives experiencing fear of
another creature.

The dragon
leaned back and took his first glance at the world, the sky, and he blinked. It
was not the world he had expected to see. He screeched. It was a young sound
still—yet even so, terrifying enough to scare away anyone close.

For this dragon
already wanted to breathe, to live, to kill.

He arched back
his neck and breathed, his first breath, and out came a stream of fire. The
fire of life. And the fire of the death to come.

The pack of
wolves turned and ran, never looking back.

They were smart
to run. For the first time in a millennium, in the land of Escalon, a dragon
was born.

Kyra blinked and
looked up to see her mother gazing down at her, her face a silhouette, masked
in a silver light, as light shined down from behind her. She had long golden
hair, Kyra could see, and she could feel the kindness, the compassion,
emanating from her, though her features were obscured. Her mother smiled down
as she reached out a hand, her fingers long and smooth and slender.

“Kyra,” her
mother whispered to her.

It was a whisper
that reverberated throughout Kyra’s soul, the sound of a voice she had not
realized she had been longing to hear her entire life. Kyra basked in the
warmth of her mother’s love for the first time in her life, and it felt good.
She felt as if a part of her, long missing, had been returned.

Kyra took her
mother’s hand, shocked by her touch, like a bolt of lightning racing through
her. She could feel the warmth spreading through her hand, then up her arm and
her entire body. She slowly sat up as her mother pulled her gently, as if to
embrace her.

“Kyra,” her
mother said. “It is time. Time for you to know who I am. Time for you to know
who you are.”

“Mother,” Kyra
tried to respond.

But the words
stuck in her throat. No sooner had she uttered them when suddenly, when she
leaned forward to embrace her mother and reached out to feel nothing in her
arms. As quickly as she had appeared, her mother had vanished.

Kyra blinked and
saw a strange and exotic landscape before her, one she could not decipher, with
twisted trees, burned branches—and yet no matter where she looked, her mother
was nowhere to be found. She looked down and saw herself sitting at the edge of
a cliff, about to fall off, the ocean waves crashing like mad beneath her.

“MOTHER!” she
cried out.

Kyra sat up
breathing hard as she woke, disoriented. Leo nudged his head on her lap, and it
took her several moments to collect herself, to realize it had been a dream. It
had been the most vivid dream of her life—more like a mystical encounter.

There came a
gust of wind, followed by another, foreign sound. It sounded like footsteps
approaching, crunching on the grass. Kyra instinctively tightened her grip on
her staff and sat up, on alert.

Kyra blinked
into the morning sun, realizing she’d slept here the entire night, shivering from
the cold, from the ocean spray, and she tried to see. Dawn was breaking,
spreading across the horizon, it still more dark than light, and as she
blinked, struggling to see in the fading darkness, there slowly came into view
the silhouette of a man. He was dressed in long robes, wore long hair, she
could see that much, and he wielded a staff as he walked. He approached, and
Kyra felt her heart slamming in her chest as she wondered.

Could this be
him? Her uncle?

As the sun
slowly rose behind him, making him a silhouette, Kyra struggled to make out his
features, but she could not. He stopped before her and Leo, oddly, did not
growl, but rather watched him, as if he, too, were transfixed. The man stood
there, looking down at her in a silence that never seemed to end, and Kyra was
too breathless to speak. This was the moment, she knew, the moment that would
change her entire life.

“Kyra,” he said
finally, his voice resonating, rolling off the wind, the hills, as ancient as
the tower behind her. “I have been awaiting you.”

Finally, he
pulled back his hood and looked right at her, and her heart stopped in her
chest.

She could not
believe who it was.

COMING SOON!

Book #3 in Kings
and Sorcerers

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