Memory of Dragons Read online

  “Maeron?” she risked. What sort of response did she hope for? Again, no answer came. Though glad to be rid of his presence, she wished she knew why he had gone silent. She crept toward an open square ahead. There, a flock of pigeons bumbled around an aging wooden bench.

  If Maeron lurked nearby, following her, she had led him a fair distance from the train station. She could rush back there by a different route; the station was surely open now. She could board the first train leaving the station, catch her breath, and do what she must.

  Unless he anticipated that. Unless he waited for her there.

  Rhianon ceased the debate in a heartbeat. Uncertainty must not paralyze her! Steeling herself against her ankle’s certain protest, she hurried forward, turned left down a wider avenue, and raced toward the station as if the dragon itself snapped at her heels. At last, after cutting across the busy street outside, she rushed through the station doors. Out of breath, she sidestepped into a concealed nook behind a pasty vendor and from there looked for Maeron amid an aroma of bacon and eggs. The scent made her empty stomach whimper. She ignored the hunger — she would forget it soon, anyway.

  To her relief, Maeron failed to appear.

  Her hood was still up. With a curse for not doing so sooner, she licked her palms and rubbed them across her cheeks and forehead to clean off any remaining blood spatter. The gash on her forehead still stung; she staunched it as best she could with the inside of her hood. Drowsy travelers shuffled their way through the station. Rhianon left the shadows, bought a ticket, and hurried into the tunnel toward one of the first departing trains.

  Trains. Her first glimpse of the mechanical, serpentine wonders had staggered her with awe; now there was time only to climb the stairs to the platform, spot her train, and rush for an open door. With a final glance for Maeron, she boarded and then hurried down the train’s entire six-carriage length, scanning each and every seat before she hunkered at last into one at the rear.

  Was she safe? The train’s rearmost door stood just behind her seat. Her seat window had a clear view of the platform. If Maeron appeared, she had an escape route no matter which way he chose to board. Even if he had boarded after her, she hoped to spot him entering the front of the car in time for her to flee out the back.

  And so she sat, poised for either event, trying to decide what she might do if he saw her in time to take a hostage and hoping desperately it wouldn’t come to that. If he caught her, he would find the Draig Crystal, and all would be lost. Preventing that was worth the life of a single person, if Maeron forced her to make that choice. Yet could she look into the eyes of a terrified hostage and hold herself to that?

  She refused to believe what Maeron had told her. The crystal must remain in this world. It was why they had come here. It was what the others had died to protect!

  Her eyes darted across every face on the platform, darted over every possible entrance — almost as fast as her heart beat. The train would be underway soon. Just a little longer. Then, the only person she would need to sacrifice would be herself.

  Movement pressed her back to the seat as the train started to push its way out of the station. Rhianon didn’t relax for a moment, still watching, worrying one earlobe between her thumb and curled forefinger. The platform gave way to a view of the city as the train gained speed. Her gaze now held fixed on the carriage door ahead of her.

  Maeron’s voice did not return. Five long minutes passed before she allowed herself to believe that she had gotten away, that his mention of the station had been a bluff. Only then did she notice her own trembling.

  The surrounding seats sat empty. The rest of the train may as well have been too. Now, the final stage of her plan was upon her. The city of Bath lay behind her, and soon so would Tragen, her native world of Rhyll, and everyone in it that she was protecting.

  Now, she was a moving target again. Soon, she would vanish entirely.

  The pendant rested against her chest, waiting. She drew it by its chain out of the neck of her sweatshirt. A round onyx stone formed the center of a stylized silver sun. Eight tiny triangular rays blazed around it. It looked so harmless.

  In Rhyll, the mages of her home nation of Kish specialized in mnemonicraft — a magical discipline linked to memory itself. Rhianon had studied it since the day the Sentinels deemed her worthy, but among the most skilled at it stood Ambassador Maeron. It was through this skill that he tracked her.

  Memories are power forged in thought.

  With Tragen and the others gone, Rhianon held memories of Rhyll so rare that none on Earth, save perhaps Maeron himself, could claim them. He would use those memories like a scent for as long as it took to find her.

  That was where the pendant came in. That was what would set her free. It would scour her mind clean of every last memory of Rhyll, render her untraceable, and, she hoped, prevent Maeron from ever learning where she had hidden the Draig Crystal. It only required that she forfeit all she was.

  The train rocked along the tracks. She cradled the pendant, summoning her courage and, one last time, cherishing her memories of home: The red-gold brilliance of the Yutal Mountains at sunrise. The pride on the face of Sher, her adopted mother, as Rhianon worked her first spell. Talking together of simple teenage problems over the dinner firelight. Tragen’s kind, sad smile when he brought the news of Sher’s death, and Rhianon’s renewed sense of purpose when the Sentinels chose her to join Tragen and the others for this expedition.

  The others had already sacrificed themselves, she reminded herself. It now fell on her to do the same. Her jaw tightened with regret that she could not deliver upon Maeron the retribution he deserved, but she could not stand against him directly. Risking herself would only play into his hands. She had hidden the crystal at Worm’s Head. There it would remain. If by some dark miracle he found it, well, she had planned for that, too.

  “Enough stalling,” she told herself. “Do it.”

  Along with the pendant, she had prepared some cash and an envelope of far more mundane construction but no less vital to her plan. Rhianon checked that her pack still held them both, cupped both hands around the pendant and, before she could doubt herself further, willed its magic to life.

  Nothing happened.

  Stricken, she tried again, pressing it to her pounding heart with both hands.

  Nothing!

  No, she had enchanted it properly, worked the magic within the crystal’s aura, and finished the job completely before leaving the crystal behind. Even with this world’s omnipresent magical inhibition, she had already infused the needed energies inside the pendant. She forced back a desperate groan. It should work!

  Unless . . .

  Rhianon tore into her pack and dug for the shirt still soaked in the wolfhound’s blood. Maeron said death could power the magic. She remembered the tingle of Maeron’s own power when the blood rushed over her. The Draig Crystal had enabled her to trap the required magic in the pendant, its energy waiting for release like a boulder balanced atop a hill, waiting for a push . . .

  She pressed the shirt around the amulet until the thickening blood squelched from the fabric and over her fingers. The feel and scent of it turned her stomach, but she forced the nausea away and focused on the amulet, willing it to life again, begging wordlessly that the poor creature’s dying blood would give the pendant’s magic the push it needed.

  Seconds passed in an eternity until, at last, the magic flared, absorbing the blood and erupting across her thoughts like a jet of steam. Her heart pounded in elation, in fear. She clutched the pendant closer and awaited her fate: Rhianon, the last scion of the Sentinels of Kish, too young for what was asked of her.

  As the pendant tore down the fortress of her mind, Rhianon waited to fade along with it and reflected that she no longer had anyone to say goodbye to.

  TWO

  “When did she die?” asked the woman sitting next to him.

  Austin sipped his orange juice from the plastic airline cup and considered changing
the subject. He set the cup back down on the tray before him, and then nudged it a centimeter to the right until he had positioned it in the exact center.

  “A little over a year ago,” he said, “in April. The fifth.”

  He supposed there was little point in giving the precise day to a stranger on a plane, sincere as the woman’s interest appeared. Yet Rhi’s death had forever branded the date in his mind, and the detail had slipped out of its own accord.

  The woman nodded and turned her compassionate gaze away to the floor, as if somehow mulling it over. “A car accident,” she repeated. “I’m so sorry.”

  Austin nodded back, appreciating the sentiment but unsure how to respond. He was twenty-nine years old, it was thirteen months since her death, and he still didn’t know how to react to sympathy.

  “Thanks,” he managed. “It’s — well, it isn’t fresh. I mean I’ve mourned her, I’ve . . .”

  He shrugged, stopping short of claiming to have moved on. The pain was still there, deep down, if he thought about it too much. “I’ve dealt with it.” I’m not a heap on the floor anymore. “I can smile. As sad as the reason for this trip is, I’m still looking forward to it, if that makes sense.”

  “Have you ever been to Britain before?”

  “First time out of North America. You?”

  “About five years ago, meeting my husband’s family for the first time. It’s where he proposed.”

  “Do you see them much since?”

  “Only at the wedding.” She sighed. “I suppose if I’d known them better, I would’ve come with him two days ago, when we got the news, work be damned. But I’ll be there soon enough.”

  Their flight had left Seattle more than seven hours ago. In an attempt to ease his acrophobia, Austin had engaged his seatmate — a gentle-voiced, short-haired woman in her mid-forties — with the fact that their row, thirty-seven, was a prime number. Though she had feigned interest in his having selected the row for that reason out of sheer mathematical whimsy, she didn’t seem to relate.

  After that, she had said little and slept until the breakfast service, when conversation spilled from her like an overfull glass. Maybe it was the coffee, or maybe she was as antsy as he was at being cooped up in a flying metal tube. She was going to London for her father-in-law’s funeral. Though she had not said as much, she clearly regretted traveling separately from her husband. Soon after, the conversation had turned to Austin’s reasons for the trip. It surprised him that he had opened up so swiftly to a stranger. Maybe knowing he would likely never see her again made it easier.

  “It really is a beautiful country,” she told him. “Where was she born?”

  “I don’t actually know. She didn’t either,” he added. Austin considered how much more to explain. The brief list of what he knew appeared on the left side of his mental chalkboard. On the right side appeared a briefer list of what he would feel comfortable sharing. “Something happened to her, about a year before we met. Amnesia, or something. She remembered waking up on a train to London, and that was about it.”

  The woman grabbed his arm, wide-eyed. “Truly? Nothing at all? Did she see any doctors? Try hypnotism?”

  Austin glanced at her grip. She let go. He shook his head. “She did, once. No good, and I had to talk her into that much. I probably shouldn’t have.”

  “Why not?”

  He hesitated, and found the answer slipping to the chalkboard’s right side. “I feel like I pushed her. She didn’t want to, didn’t want to even try. We argued about it. I thought it would be a good thing, that she’d thank me if I could just get her to do it. I couldn’t imagine having that sort of mystery in my life and not wanting to figure it out.”

  “I don’t blame you.”

  “She didn’t either, I think. Mostly.” He smiled despite a twinge of melancholy. “I think she agreed partly out of curiosity, partly just to shut me up. I still felt bad about it afterward. I don’t know what I was thinking.” And hypnotism is questionable science at best, he reminded himself.

  After the failed session, Rhi had told him about the note she had found in the pack she carried. Written in her own hand, it had instructed her to flee the country. The note also asserted that recovering her memory would be fruitless, and advised against it. The money in the same pack got her as far as a new life in Seattle; a year later Austin had met her in the bookstore where she had found a job.

  “Do you know where you’re headed first?” she asked. “Or simply . . . following your heart?”

  “I’ve made plans.” Meticulous plans, even. There was no sense wasting precious time not knowing what he was doing. “There’s a place on the Gower Peninsula in southwest Wales called Worm’s Head.”

  “I’ve heard of it, in fact.”

  “She visited there every year, just because she liked it. It’s right on the water. Sea cliffs and a long beach. Beautiful sunsets, she told me.” He smiled, looking away into his memory. “She showed me pictures. We thought she might be from around there. We were going to visit together the next time, but . . .”

  “So you’re going there now.”

  “I am. A little late.” Again, he found himself sharing more than expected. “I’d looked forward to seeing it with her. At least I still get to see it.”

  “You’re still seeing it with her, in a sense.” She glanced down at her meal tray and fiddled with a muffin wrapper. “Though I’m sure you’ve heard that before. Sympathy card poetry. I don’t mean to make light.”

  “No, it’s true. But not how I’d like.”

  “I’m sure she’s glad to see you going anyway, wherever she is.”

  “Maybe.” He didn’t realize that he had said it aloud until the woman responded.

  “Maybe?”

  Austin uncrossed and re-crossed his ankles, hoping he wasn’t bound for an argument. “I’ve always thought this life is all we get. When you’re gone, you’re gone. All that’s left are the memories of us other people keep.” He recalled that the woman was traveling to a funeral and hoped he wasn’t upsetting her. To his surprise, he found her smiling.

  “I don’t think that’s all there is,” she said. “You really believe that?”

  “It’s what my parents taught me,” he said after a moment. His mental chalkboard erased itself, and then filled with potential arguments refuting an afterlife. “You don’t?”

  “No, I don’t. I don’t think I know all the answers, but it wouldn’t be right, otherwise.”

  Austin stopped short of telling her tragedy didn’t give a spit’s worth for right or wrong. He erased the chalkboard arguments. “I study physics, not metaphysics, so I’m sure I don’t know all the answers either. I only know I’ll never see her again, so I need to keep her memory.”

  “I — I didn’t mean to say you shouldn’t. I think it’s beautiful, what you’re doing.”

  They sat in silence. The plane shook, then dropped a short but startling distance. Austin’s eyes flicked to his juice, dancing with Brownian motion in the cup. To calm his nerves as the plane leveled out, he imagined how the juice might move in a zero-g freefall.

  His seatmate’s voice broke him out of it. “Do you have a picture? If it’s not too nosy of me.”

  Austin found his mood lifting at the opportunity. He reached for his dark blue carry-on bag stuffed under the seat in front of him. Inside was the travel journal a friend gave him a few days ago. Save for a few sentences written in boredom at the airport, its crisp pages remained pristine. Into the front cover he had tucked a photo of Rhi, her blue eyes shining. He showed it to the woman.

  “She’s lovely.”

  “She was,” Austin agreed. “She hated cameras. Posed pictures of her always captured that feeling, instead of how she really looked. This one’s candid.”

  “Her hair reminds me of a friend’s. Almost the same brown, even. I wish I could wear mine that long and have it look as good.”

  “She had a scar on one side of her forehead, though you can’t see it too wel
l there.” He pointed above Rhi’s eyebrow where her bangs concealed the scar. “She wasn’t shy about it, it was just windy that day. I liked it. It suited her somehow.”

  Rhi’s loveliness filled his chalkboard as he held the photo.

  “She used to write,” he continued. “Little things. Essays about things she saw or experienced. Snapshots of life, she would call them: her cat playing in the snow, or the feeling of a fall morning. I told her they were fantastic, that she should at least post them online or something, but she refused. I think she was insecure about it. She said the idea made her uncomfortable, but that never made sense to me. She painted with words.”

  “Do you still have what she wrote?”

  “Most of it. I put it into an e-book a while ago, with some pictures. I don’t know how many people will ever see it, but it’s out there now, online. I couldn’t just shove it all into a box. Her words deserve to be read.”

  “That’s a nice memorial. My father-in-law used to draw. Maybe we could do the same thing for him.”

  “I have a few hardcopies, for me and our friends. I can tell you where to find it, if you want.” He doubted the woman would hold any interest once the plane landed, but he had put the book online to share Rhi’s memory. It made no sense to be shy about it now. “This same picture is on the cover.”

  “What’s it called?” she asked.

  Voices in the Wind: The Writings of Rhi Euston. Had Maeron not clicked the link to see Rhianon’s picture on the front cover, he might not have made the connection. Patience could serve as both weapon and shield; it was a lesson learned in his earliest studies. Yet patience had its limits. After four infuriating years of searching, he had nearly missed his best lead since losing Rhianon outside of Bath.

  Rhianon had shortened her name and taken a new surname, but he recognized the photograph instantly. She had died, or so the book claimed. Likely true, Maeron considered. To surface after four years of silence merely to fake her own death would be folly. Tragen’s protégé was smarter than that. Even so, he would not believe it until he found proof.