Wind Rider (Return of the Dragons 2)

dragons around me, to all my friends, and to the wizards down on the ground below. In my mind I connected all the friendly wizards, all the dragons. I took control, and said a spell, sucked all the energy from the sun as I spoke. My word was purifying heat, and clean, out to all the frujen that surrounded us: brennen.

Never before had I felt so much power flow through me. The air burned, and my voice was fire; I was no longer a human — I was a dragon, spitting fire. I wanted to bite and snap but I knew that I must not touch the burning frujen, that their very touch was poison, that they were polluting the air that we breathed. Knew that only in burning them with clean fire could we eliminate the poison that clouded over the city.

And on they burned.

And when the last of the frujen was burned away and nothing remained but polluted ash over the city, then I slumped on my mount and felt limp and powerless, as if I too had burned away to ash. Relax little one. I will protect you until you get your strength back.

I felt her glide down towards the city below.

We must get rid of some of these ladders. But then I will take you down and they will feed you. Great magic requires food and rest. There is nothing left inside you that you have not burned up. Such great magic I have not seen since the last riders rode our kind.

I looked down and saw ladders on the walls again, with kobolds and trolls climbing up the walls. From below came arrows raining up to hit us. I was too weak to put up a shield. I ducked, and hid myself behind the dragon, and the arrows broke against Yesenia’s hide.

Then she was diving, and spouting flame, and three ladders caught fire, and broke, and there were sonic booms around us as the sound dragons blew holes in the enemy, and the fire breathers burned the ladders and the rams.

The battle must have raged on for some time after that, but I did not rage with it. I could do no more.

Yesenia flew me over to the other side of the wall, and I lost consciousness.

BACK IN THE WHITE ROOM

When I awoke in the white room I wondered for a moment if everything I had experienced in the last few days had been a dream; it felt like nothing had changed; but the feeling of calm and sameness was momentary. My senses came back to me, slowly, and I realized I was not alone in the hospital wing; I heard and felt the pain from the rooms around mine, and slowly, I got to my feet.

I still felt numb.

Not only were my hands and feet lacking in sensation, but my hearing was dull and my vision blurry. I sat back down on the bed. On the table next to the bed was a plate of food and drink.

The pain that throbbed in my head was not my pain, it was another’s, it was from Elias, and the others. Pain from the living. From the dead, I felt nothing but an empty ache. I felt small and weak, but realized I needed to eat now, before I walked out of the room.

I filled my mouth with a roll, chewed mechanically and swallowed, then drank a gulp of juice. I tried to think of nothing, to hear and feel nothing with my already dulled senses.

I ate. I drank. And I ate once again.

Slowly, warmth flowed back to my members. I felt tingling in what had been numb, and felt blood flowing throughout my body as warmth radiated out from my stomach.

I realized I was parched as well as hungry, and drank the juice in great swills.

We had won the battle. Had it been worth it? It was too early to see if we would win the war.

I wanted to get up and see my fallen friends. Karsten was gone. I could feel his absence, an ache in my stomach. He had been a better baker than a warrior, and would he have even ever been a warrior at all if it were not for me? Now it would be my turn to plant a seed in the forest.

There would be many seeds planted. I didn’t want to think how many.

Elias too was slipping. All the power he had in him, all the power around him in the city still didn’t seem enough. I wanted to put my hands on him and try to suck the poison out of him. To suck it out of all those who still lived and suffered next to me.

But I was too weak to even get out of bed. From somewhere far overhead, dragon song came into my mind then, soothing, and drowned out some of the pain from those still suffering all around me. Yesenia and I were one now, I knew, she loved me unconditionally, no matter how many people I had caused to die. We would never be separate for as long as I would live. She sang me a song I knew, a song I remembered from long ago, from my grandmother, or maybe my great-grandmother. A song I had sung with Kalle, one day that seemed so long ago, when we had trained on the packed dirt of the practice field. A song that I had forgotten then, but somehow my blood had remembered, and Yesenia had pulled out of my head now, or from my blood. A song that brought back memories of long ago, of pleasures long forgotten, of my childhood in the far north.

Sometime later I slept. And dreamed of a world without bloodshed, without evil lords, without battles and pollution and hate. But even as I slept, part of me knew it was just a dream.