Sunset of Lantonne (67 page)

“Ilarra…”

“Show me.”

“This is unwise. We have hidden for centuries…”

“Nenophar, convince me I chose the right side in this. I need to know who I’m protecting and who I’m trusting in to protect me. Liris was very reasonable…make me believe I chose the right side in this.”

“Are you sure you wish to see this? I cannot undo memories.” His eyes pleaded with her to reconsider. He got up and walked a short distance into the cavern, turning to face Ilarra.

“I don’t know if I want to,” she admitted, “but I think I need to. I can’t trust my choice otherwise. For all I know, you’re like me. You could even be working for Dorralt and Altis. I just can’t know until you stop using the illusions.”

Nodding grimly, Nenophar looked down at the glowing ball of light on the floor in front of her. He walked until he had gotten about twenty feet from the edge of the room and the very limit of the light.

“Promise me you won’t scream,” he asked Ilarra. “The echo would be unpleasant, and I think having you showing terror would undermine our working together. Actually, maybe we should do this another time…”

“Nenophar, please just show me.”

He said nothing, but something about him began to change immediately. Within seconds, Ilarra could tell his body had become bulkier and taller than she remembered. In the dim light she could not be certain, as is his illusion was still making it hard for her to see what was different. The change accelerated, and Nenophar soon towered over her, even hunkered down onto hands and knees. His face contorted and lengthened as he became something entirely inhuman with long horns and fangs longer than Ilarra’s arm.

Nenophar filled the cavern rapidly, his long neck causing him to look down on Ilarra while his tail circled past her and trapped her near him. Giant, four-fingered clawed hands carried weight that caused the loose stones beneath him to crackle and shatter. Even his skin had changed to a dense mesh of tiny scales that ran in patterns of light and dark greens up to the lizard-like head. He stared at her with slitted eyes that reflected the light in the room.

The dragon lowered his head and rested it on the floor to stare Ilarra in the face without looking down at her. Despite his breaths hitting Ilarra like a strong wind, he maintained an expression she could tell was meant to be unthreatening, though it felt out of place on the enormous scaled face.

“I…won’t…scream,” Ilarra managed to eke out, though the smile she tried to give him felt more like a trembling of her face. “Nenophar?”

One of many names I have answered to across the centuries
, he answered in her mind without any movement of his mouth.
I will speak to you like this, as my mouth was not built for your language
.

Ilarra mentally pried her feet from their position and forced herself to walk until she could have reached out and touched the tip of his nose at her head’s level. That, she could not quite bring herself to do, so she walked around his head and studied the sharp fangs poking out from the edges of his mouth. Moving farther away from his mouth, she glanced up at the yellow eye that swiveled to watch her, and then she continued back past his pointed ears and long white horns.

When she reached his neck, she had finally built her courage enough to lift her arm and brush the scales glittering in the cavern’s faint light. The scales were smooth in the direction she brushed, each large enough it could barely fit in the palm of her hand. They were cool and dry, more like a desert lizard than a snake, which had been her first thought of when she saw them.

On a whim, Ilarra slid her hand the other direction, then screamed and pulled her hand away as the scales sliced through her flesh. Blood poured out of three separate inch-wide tears in her hand.

The moment blood had begun to drop from Ilarra’s hand, Nenophar let out a roar that caused rocks to fall all around the cavern and streams of dirt to come down in several places. He coiled sharply around her, blocking any movement of more than a few steps, curling until his head hovered over her. He growled deep in his chest, shaking the room again, and then opened his mouth to attack her, the kindness in his eyes gone.

Ilarra only had a second to react before his head snapped down toward her like a snake striking. She used that moment to form magic into a solid wall over her head. The dragon’s mouth slammed into the barrier and stopped, his teeth scraping loudly against it as he tried to get at her.

Looking down at her still-bleeding hand, Ilarra tried to think through why Nenophar would ever try to kill her. Her thoughts went to the animals that sometimes attacked Hyeth when she was younger. They had blindly rushed after anything wounded even if they had to go past elves they normally would have feared or avoided. At the edge of her vision, she could see his head rising far above the wall she had created. A faint light formed in his mouth and the cavern began to warm.

Willing herself to ignore the pain and cuts, Ilarra forced the wounds to close. In her exhaustion, the healing was slow, but in a second, the cuts had stopped bleeding and were closing again.

She raised her hand toward Nenophar, screaming, “Stop! Nenophar, I’m fine! Don’t do this!”

Smoke and flame licked at the partially open mouth of the dragon, then slowly began to dissipate. The dragon lowered his head toward her, turning sideways to study her with one massive eye.

“What happens to you if you eat me?” Ilarra demanded, letting the wall overhead disappear. “I’m guessing your life ends a lot sooner than later. That falls into the ending where I die first.”

Growling, Nenophar uncoiled and got up on his legs, moving quickly away from Ilarra toward the far end of the cavern. There he curled up into a giant scaled ball, resting his head on the base of his tail to watch her.

“What just happened to you?” she asked, following him slowly. He bared his teeth briefly, then calmed and allowed her to approach further. “That wasn’t like you, Nenophar.”

Your people are food, no different than a cow or sheep.
His voice was angry and barely controlled.
The scent of blood makes that more difficult to ignore, and screams…they encourage my people. Between the scents and the sounds, I wanted to tear you apart, no matter who you might be.

“And if you did?”

I would face the fate I most fear and would not be able to change it, even with all the might of the dragons.

“Then we need to work on your self-control, while you keep teaching me to fight Dorralt.”

Ilarra stood still in the dark chamber, letting Nenophar calm himself. She waited until his breathing had slowed and the tension had faded from his eyes.

Agreed
, Nenophar said.

Ilarra waited a short distance from Nenophar until he had calmed enough that she felt safer approaching him. When she did, his eyes watched her hungrily, following her every movement.

“What is our plan?” she asked, sitting down in front of Nenophar’s claws and trying to make herself look calm near him. “Do we flee? Do we fight?”

We must fight Turessi’s forces or there will be nothing that can stop them. Events will transpire that change the course of the world’s future, and without our powers, any others who could stop it will be too late.

“Then where does this start?”

Nenophar snorted and finally looked at her like a person and not a slab of meat.
Lantonne is the start of the events Turess predicted,
he explained, bringing his long snout down so that he could look straight at her with both eyes.
Something happens there that sets much of this in motion. We must defend the city if we wish to slow the Turessians.

“Do you know when?”

Soon
, he answered curtly, then winced.
Time is difficult for my kind, Ilarra. Soon to me might be today or it might be within a decade. The events are beginning and may already be underway. I cannot help but wonder if Therec’s presence in Lantonne is part of that or simply a distraction. Turess was quite specific in his requests that Lantonne be left out of all of his writings to keep some of his more dangerous items away from people like Dorralt.

“Items?” Ilarra asked, sitting up. “Turess left things in Lantonne?”

Lantonne, Altis, and a dozen other cities around his empire. They were never meant to be found. If Dorralt finds them, I can assure you the war will lean in his favor. That was part of my deal with Turess: I gave him the power to see how to save his people and then I did what was necessary to carry through on what he saw. Keeping those items safe until the right time was part of that.

“Then what happens if I go back to Lantonne and find the item for you? Would Dorralt even have a reason to march on the city if it’s gone?”

The dragon’s eyes narrowed.
No, he would not. This would put you or whoever is near that item at great risk though.

“Get me back there and I’ll find it,” she insisted. “Tell me everything you remember about the item. Once I have it, you’ll take me as far from here as you can and we’ll make Dorralt chase us halfway around Eldvar if he wants his war.”

From what I saw on the plains, the undead will reach Lantonne before the end of summer. There is too little time to find the staff and flee the area, Ilarra. If you wish to spare that city entirely, you have less than a week.

“Then you stall the undead as long as you can. I’ll find it. Buy me time.”

Nenophar snorted again, this time blasting Ilarra’s hair back.
Without me present, Dorralt will control you inside of a month. Either your brother or I must be near you, or the Turessian influence will grow.

Ilarra stood and walked to Nenophar’s nose, resting a hand on it if only to show him she was no longer afraid.

“Give me as long as you can,” she told him. “You’ve taught me to resist and I’ll keep doing that. If I take too long, whether I’m controlled or not won’t matter much when the undead come marching up on Lantonne. You say your fate is sealed by what happens there…let’s do everything we can to ruin this prophecy.”

The dragon’s head lifted slightly and bared row upon row of teeth. At first, Ilarra took a step back in fear that Nenophar had chosen to attack her again for some reason, then realized he was trying to smile. She dearly wanted to tell him never to do it again, but chose to smile back instead.

*

They rested in the cavern for several days, giving Nenophar and Ilarra a chance to finish recovering from fighting the Turessian. Both of them slept a long time, and then they went to the entrance of the cave network. For far from the first time, Ilarra was glad for Nenophar’s help learning to use her abilities…she no longer needed to eat or drink and time was so easy to let slip past.

About fifty feet below the absolute top of the mountain, Ilarra stood on the very lip of the rocky outcropping with the cave at her back. She felt more alive than she had in months, looking out over miles of mountains, foothills, and the plains beyond both. From comments Nenophar had made before, he could actually see groups of undead moving in the foothills miles away, but Ilarra could only enjoy the scenic location for what it was.

After waiting for nearly half an hour for Nenophar to make his way through the mountains without being seen, Ilarra smiled as a roar echoed off the mountains. She turned to see him emerging from a crack in a mountainside one peak over from where she stood. He crawled out onto the steep rocky side of the mountain, his massive claws allowing him to dig into the stone and hang, despite his weight.

Nenophar slowly spread his wings, blotting out the light that would have reached the lands below the mountain. His green leathery wings were half again as wide as he was from nose to tip of tail, making him look far larger than he already did.

After testing his wings with a cautious flap, Nenophar let go of the mountain and dropped away in a sharp dive. He caught the wind almost immediately and hooked back into the sky, rising far above Ilarra’s vantage point. Circling the mountains twice, he came back and headed straight for her.