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No. The General is an elf.
I rock backward, my breath caught in my throat. My mind tumbles from one burst of memory to another; Varitan shooting fire at me, transforming me into my dragon shape for the first time. Rensivar smacking his hands together, saying you defeat an enemy with another enemy. The men of Valgros running forward into magical oblivion.
But, why? Why did Rensivar command the army of Valgros into the Iron Mountains if he was only going to defeat them with his magic?
Time slows. I swear I can hear the beating of my own heart in the soft darkness beneath the pines. I stare at the elves before me, the man with his hand frozen in midair and Varitan in his General’s uniform sneering at both of us, his sharp, alien features awash in light from the blue fire atop the pillar. Are these the enemies of Valgros, these two elves who appear to be locked in some sort of magical struggle? Are they the enemies of Rensivar, or of the Iron Mountain? What in the King’s blessed name are they doing here, hidden by magic, on the eve of the Queensmoot?
Oh. The truth of it smacks me like a punch to the gut, and I feel almost like the mountain tips sideways beneath me.
Dragons don’t have magic. Dragons can take a human form, but magic? That always belonged to the elves, with their wicked ability to alter reality. That’s what the elves did in all the stories I heard in the orphanage; they made dancing lights, or a beautiful fawn, and they lured human children into the forest and then pulled them into some other, crueler world.
Elves make you see things that aren’t there. They light you on fire or knock you unconscious. Elves have magic, and elves take you to another place. Not dragons. I raise my hand to cover my mouth; the knots of scar tissue on my fingers bite into my lips.
Rensivar didn’t lift my curse, did he? He didn’t give me back my dragon form.
No. Varitan did that. The General has an elf. Varitan must have cast the illusion that hid the Army of Valgros until someone flashed the signal to attack. A tremor rocks my body, and I can’t seem to look away from the cruel twist on Varitan’s lips.
He gave the signal to attack, didn’t he? Who else could it have been? Not the man who’d just tried to punch him, I would guess; he looks like a disgruntled servant. No, Varitan in his General’s uniform told the brave men of Valgros to charge, and charge they did. Straight into the magical hole in the world that Rensivar now claims he created.
Something hot and bitter rises in my throat. Rensivar ordered the Army of Valgros here to be destroyed. So that he could destroy them, in the Tarn of the Maiden, in front of the Queensmoot. He’s claiming magic he doesn’t have to win a battle that he orchestrated.
My eyes burn, and my fingers grasp at my waist, feeling for a dagger that isn’t there. Varitan narrows his eyes, opens his mouth, and something moves in the darkness behind him. Another figure steps from the shadows, a woman with her hands cupped together in front of her chest. Before I can take a breath, the woman raises her hand. Something small and shiny flies through the air. It strikes Varitan in the back of his neck.
Varitan spins toward the woman, moving almost gracefully. His arms stretch toward her, and a strange staticky light flickers between his fingertips. It rises like sparks, drifting toward the pillar of blue fire.
And the man brings his fist down on the back of Varitan’s head. Varitan collapses slowly, then all at once, like a sack of potatoes spilled from the back of a cart. He sprawls out across the grass, and the light from the pillar of blue fire casts strange shadows across his still-snarling lips.
Everyone gasps at once. The woman runs toward the man, and the blue fire sags forward. The man catches it in one arm.
Oh. Oh, by all the blessed kings of Valgros. My gut twists as I realize what I’m seeing. The man who punched Varitan holds another elf against his chest, one whose body is wrapped in a dozen loops of thick chain. I’d thought he was a lamp, or some strange kind of campfire.
No. This has to be the General’s prisoner, the one whose magic was keeping the Army of Valgros hidden, and perhaps the one whose magic destroyed the army. But what kind of torture is this, burning his head while his body is chained? Blue flames leap and dance above the man’s shoulder, springing out of the chained elf’s eyes, and kings above, I think I’m going to be sick.
The elf with the flaming eyes growls something. His voice sounds like stones scraping together in the dark; I can’t make out the words. The man helps him to his feet, and then they turn together.
And all three of the elves stare at me; the man, the woman, and the one with the burning blue eyes. My throat goes dry. I forget how to breathe. The elf in chains starts to smile, bloody lips cracking to reveal bright teeth, and I swear upon all the names of all the kings who’ve gone before, that smile is going to haunt my nightmares for the rest of my life. The blue flames pouring out of his eyes surge forward, as if they’re trying to spring from his skull and envelope me.
The ground shivers beneath my feet. I glance down. Thin tendrils of dark mist are rising slowly from the grass. Something deep inside me, some desperate desire to survive, howls to flee, to run away into the night and never look back.
But as the ground yawns open between my legs, I know I would never make it. Black tentacles rise from the split in the grass almost hesitantly, wavering in the night air as if tasting it. The crack widens around Varitan, spreading with a low ripping sound like a piece of linen caught in a fence. The man who’d turned me into a dragon for the first time, the man who’d told me that my true self was a gift from Rensivar, slides into the violet-tinged nothingness without a sound. The fingers of his left hand twitch against the ground as his shoulder tips forward; a tentacle of smoke wraps around his wrist, then drags him down. The same strange amethyst light that swallowed the entire army of Valgros draws him in like a cloak, until all I can see of the man who’d once shot a jet of flame at me in Rensivar’s tower is a soft purple glow, like fog rising from the ocean at dawn.
The ground trembles. I tear my gaze away from the place where Varitan just vanished and stare at the crack splitting the earth between my feet. Thin tendrils of dark smoke rise from the opening and drift almost lazily across the grass. One of the threads snakes across the toe of my boot.
My head snaps up, and I stare at the three elves before me. The one with blue flames pouring out of his eyes is still smiling at me, smiling like all the wicked elves in all the wicked stories I’ve ever heard, like he’s about to cut my heart from my chest and serve it to his children. The other two are watching me with wide eyes and hard faces.
They look nothing like the elves I’ve seen before, the ones wearing elegant silk and velvet who serve frost wine or offer condolences on the death of the dragon queen. No, all three of these elves look like they’ve been traveling rough for months, if not for their entire lives, and for some reason I think of Doshir, of the way we rode from Cairncliff to the Iron Mountains, pushing ourselves and our horses as hard as we could, desperate to stop the attack that just happened.
I glance down. The crack between my legs has spread; now my boots are each perched on opposite sides of a great chasm. Tentacles crawl out of the abyss to wrap around my ankles. Heat pulses from the tentacles, through the leather of my boots, and into my skin.
I raise my eyes, then shake my head. It seems almost too great a thing to argue, so instead, I lift my hands, my palms up and facing forward. I have no weapons. I did not attack—
“You have no Champion,” a dragon’s voice screams from beyond the trees.
The man who punched Varitan glances through the trees, as if the current draconic power struggle unfolding in the alpine cirque behind him was a matter of some minor annoyance.
“Oh, but I do,” Rensivar replies.
My gaze drifts toward the treetops and toward the massive dragon just beyond. Rensivar has settled into the Throne of Claws. His jaw hangs open, and his eyes are fixed on the little grove hiding the elves.
