Wrath of the Storm (Mark of the Thief 3)

"You are pawns in a great war of the heavens," I said. "But you are not the war itself. If you fight, you will both lose. Leave this place. There is enough room for both of you, but you cannot remain here."

Growls were exchanged, and for a moment, I thought they would ignore me again. Then the lions ran off in one direction while the wolves ran in the other.

And deep inside me, I felt the Mistress recoil as if the animals' refusal to fight was a defeat. I felt just the opposite. This was a victory. It was proof that Diana had not yet won her war.

And if it was up to me, she never would.

"You cannot run away so easily as these animals." My whisper to the Mistress was quiet, but would sound like thunder in her dragon ears. "I'm coming. This ends tonight."

I closed my eyes, this time focusing on the gold in the cave, on the dragon who had been locked in there for so many days, and on the eerie cold wind that blew through the tunnels, so deep beneath the earth that no air should've moved at all. It was no common breeze, of course. That was Caesar's ghost.

I felt that wind first. It caressed my arms and the skin of my face, and I shivered against it. Then I detected the change in darkness, now an absolute black. I opened my eyes, though it really didn't matter if I did. And I listened again for any hint of exactly where in the caves I might be and, more important, where Aurelia and the Mistress were.

The first time I'd ever entered these caves was on a rope lowering me into an outer room filled with the bones of others who had failed in their quests. Here was where I'd found the bulla and its animal guardian, Caela. I doubted the Mistress was in that room -- the doorway was too small for her to pass through, and I had a vague memory of that doorway being mostly collapsed anyway. So I must be in the larger room.

I swiveled my foot slightly and hea

rd a clink beneath it. Gold coins. Any move I made on top of this ever-shifting pile would give me away.

Or perhaps my presence was already known. Heavy footsteps rumbled the room, and then came a voice, angry and rough as bark. Normally, I'd have heard it in my head, which was bad enough, but this time it echoed in the cave around me.

"I expected to receive the girl," the Mistress said. "But in her wisdom, Diana gave me something better. She gave me Nicolas Calva instead."

"Instead?" I cried into the darkness. "Where is Aurelia?"

The Mistress laughed, and with it came a breath of fire. It singed the hairs of my arms before I got a shield up. The fire had been meant to cause more damage than it did, and was also a mistake since it revealed her location. Unfortunately, it also revealed mine.

I charged toward the Mistress, but slipped on the coins, creating a jingling chorus directly beneath me. It hadn't been so long ago when stealing this gold had been a great temptation. What I would have given then for even a single coin from this room. Now I cared nothing for the treasure here. It would feed me for a week or a year, or even a lifetime, but what could it offer of anything that mattered?

Wealth had failed to keep Valerius's heart beating. It had also darkened the hearts of the Praetors. Until his heart was healed through love, it had threatened the most basic humanity within Radulf. And although Aurelia had inherited a vast amount of wealth from her father, she had never valued it for any purpose other than how she might use it to help others. Now everything she once had was gone, and that had only made her more dear to me.

"I defeated you before," I shouted to the dragon. "Tell me where Aurelia is, or I will do it again!"

"The girl is very strong," the Mistress said. "Diana has come to admire her bravery."

Using the Malice, I shot a full wall of magic toward the Mistress, which would've knocked her entire body backward. I couldn't see it in the darkness, but I did hear a great crash against the cave wall, and the silence that followed. Dirt rained down on us from above.

"Let the cave collapse," I said. "I will get out. Your bones will join the others down here!"

"And what of the girl?" the Mistress countered. "Will you ever find her without my help?" She followed that up with another flame, brighter than before. I released magic of my own to repel the flame back to the dragon's belly, and this time I saw where it hit. She scorched herself and yelped before everything went dark again.

The Mistress rotated her body, letting her tail swipe across the stack of gold near me. My only warning that it was coming was the sound of moving coins. I started to duck, but still was caught across the chest by the tail, which threw me against the far wall; then I dropped to the ground.

"Let me speak to Aurelia!" I shouted.

"Make the Jupiter Stone, and I will give you the girl," the Mistress said.

"Give her to me, and I won't make you into roasted dragon," I countered.

That elicited more fire from her breath, but it only went around my shield, allowing me to get even closer to her.

With my magic, I raised every object of gold inside this cave, and used the wind to send it swirling around her. The strong current of air it created pulled the dragon's fire into itself, becoming a pillar of golden flame that stretched to the roof of the cave. With the heat from the fire, the gold melted and then cooled in streaks that rose from the ground like a gnarled, twisted golden cage.

"What is this?" the Mistress growled. "Am I not imprisoned enough within this cave?"

Apparently not.

The dragon crouched, giving itself as much room as possible within its golden cage, then reared up, letting its wings flail outward. The golden bars shattered, and the dragon fluttered to another end of the cave, then roared fire directly at me.