Sword Bearer (Return of the Dragons 1)

Or was it water?

Even with my eyes opened, without my third eye I could see it glowed with green energy. Was my third eye really shut, or was it always awake now?

The water flowed like liquid ice over the burning blood of the Gulk. She poured another cup, and I felt cleaner, and the stinging eased. With the third cup I felt human again, just thoroughly soaked with the liquid. It was odorless, so perhaps it was water, after all. If so, it was water full of positive energy, good clean pure natural magic that washed way the contamination that had begun to enter my skin.

She grinned at me, as I stood there dripping. “This, unlike the Gulk blood, should do wonders for your skin.”

“Thanks,” I said.

“Normally, the blood of the Gulk burns and disfigures its attackers horribly. I don’t know why this didn’t happen to you, unless...”

“It did sting me. Burned me a little, too.”

Kara’s face lit up.

“You’re the three-blooded prince, Anders, right?”

I nodded. I didn’t know where this was leading.

“It must be the merpeople blood. That means that you are master of sea creatures, and your skin is resistant to magic.”

“I can’t be attacked magically?”

“Resistant, not invulnerable. I learned about the merpeople in school, but I’ve never seen them.”

What a fool I was. I’d read about the merpeople too, just never paid much attention. And why hadn’t I paid attention? Because I hadn’t believed. I had thought the merpeople were just one more thing made up to fill an old book. I had to hold back a laugh. What an idiot I was. Talk about not believing in yourself.

Kara looked at me, dripping wet. “What’s so funny?”

I shrugged. “Nothing, I just never thought the merpeople were real.”

Kara smiled. “And now you find you have merpeople blood.” She paused for a moment, then smiled again. “I thought princesses were made up too, just in storybooks, until I found out three years ago that I was one.”

I guess I looked surprised.

“We Kriek, as you’ll find out, have no visible manifestations of rank, and all decisions are carried out in town meetings. I couldn’t attend the meetings until I was 10. That was when I found out my father led the meetings, and when I questioned him about it, found that he was the Kriek king, and that I as his daughter...”

“Are a princess.”

She nodded. “We should get you out of these wet clothes.”

Now that was embarrassing.

“I don’t have any others.”

She smiled. “Perhaps we’ll just dry these off then, until you can shower and change.”

She spoke a word then, that I had not heard before: sec.

The clothes dried on my body, without any heat. The water just went out of them, vanishing. But they still didn’t smell too pretty.

Kara wrinkled her nose. “I would destroy those clothes as soon as possible. They will never be free of the stain of dark magic.”

“That creature called me Herr, before it died. Just like the keiler.”

“I would ask Woltan, or my father what this means. I trust you’re not a dark lord, yourself?”

I shook my head. “Let’s get back to my father,” I said.