Revelation of the Dragon Read online

  Revelation of the Dragon

  Legends of the Ceo San: Book 2

  J. Elizabeth Vincent

  Revelation of the Dragon © 2020 J. Elizabeth Vincent

  All rights reserved. This book or any portion thereof may not be reproduced or used in any manner whatsoever without the express written permission of the publisher except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.

  First Printing, 2020

  Mistweave Press

  P.O. Box 691

  Luray, VA 22835

  jelizabethvincent.com

  Printed in the United States of America.

  To get updates on future publications and occasional free stories, please join J. Elizabeth Vincent’s mailing list at https://landingpage.jelizabethvincent.com/free-ebook.

  Map created with Campaign Cartographer 3 and Photoshop CC 2020 by J. Elizabeth Vincent

  Cover design and interior design by Janell E. Robisch

  Copyediting by Alan C. Robisch

  Contents

  MAP

  Prologue: Posturing

  Chapter One: Blessings

  Chapter Two: Old

  Chapter Three: News from Grof

  Chapter Four: Joining

  Chapter Five: Infiltration

  Chapter Six: Ice and Snow

  Chapter Seven: Rubble and Ruin

  Chapter Eight: Discovery

  Chapter Nine: Run

  Chapter Ten: Trap

  Chapter Eleven: Interrogation

  Chapter Twelve: Trust

  Chapter Thirteen: Allies

  Chapter Fourteen: Leadership

  Chapter Fifteen: The Ways of Wolves

  Chapter Sixteen: Ambush

  Chapter Seventeen: Westward

  Chapter Eighteen: Direstrand

  Chapter Nineteen: The Sovereign

  Chapter Twenty: The Banished One

  Chapter Twenty-One: Reunion

  Chapter Twenty-Two: Proving

  Chapter Twenty-Three: The Council of the Sovereign

  Chapter Twenty-Four: Prophecy

  Chapter Twenty-Five: Meddlesome

  Chapter Twenty-Six: High Chosen

  Chapter Twenty-Seven: Hawk Rising

  Chapter Twenty-Eight: The Capital

  Chapter Twenty-Nine: Cloistered

  Chapter Thirty: Dragon-Etched

  Chapter Thirty-One: Betrayer

  Chapter Thirty-Two: Redemption

  Chapter Thirty-Three: Rothgar Draydon

  Chapter Thirty-Four: Surrender

  Chapter Thirty-Five: Reversal

  Chapter Thirty-Six: A Taste of Freedom

  Chapter Thirty-Seven: One More Task

  Epilogue: Voyage

  About the Author

  Books & Stories by J. Elizabeth Vincent

  MAP

  Prologue

  Posturing

  The scraping of the heavy iron chain across the marble floor grated, as if something were dragging its claws across the nerves of his spine, starting at the bottom and slowly digging its way along his bones and muscles until his brain felt as if it might burst out of the top of his skull.

  The scraping paused, and a low rumble filled the room. The air heated around Rothgar, and his jaw tightened as an all-too-familiar burning scent filled his nostrils. The tips of his black hair had been singed. Again. The little tendrils of smoke now curling in front of his face paid testament to his humiliation, but he shook it off. He would not tolerate it.

  He was not the one chained and bound, was he?

  “You will tell me eventually.” Keeping his back to his prisoner as if he cared nothing for the precious moments he was wasting, Rothgar Draydon enunciated each word carefully, his hands relaxed at his side. He wouldn’t let Arrynas see his irritation. “There is nothing you can do to protect her. You can’t protect dear Mother, so why do you think you can protect this one? She’s ignorant, weak, and reckless. It’s only a matter of time before she is in shackles again, this time for good.”

  The girl had been in his dungeon, hadn’t she? Rothgar balled his hands into fists unconsciously, wishing he could kill the guards and maids that had been on duty the day she’d broken out. But he had already done that, hadn’t he? He couldn’t well kill them again. He hadn’t even gotten to interrogate the girl before she had escaped. And she had gone and taken that stubborn idiot fox with her as well!

  When the rough grating noise began again, Rothgar knew his prisoner had turned around and started pacing in the other direction across the solarium, but he kept his back turned.

  Arrynas surprised him. His great head, with its muddied red scales, appeared next to the king, heat radiating off it. Rothgar twitched despite himself, scrambling out of the dragon’s reach and spinning around to face him from several yards away.

  The head alone was taller than Rothgar, and its wide green eyes glowed with a menacing internal light. “Be careful whom you threaten, young one. I remain here only because it amuses me, and I will not be happy if you harm her or your mother.”

  The king’s cheeks burned, and he berated himself for his weakness. “I will threaten whomever I please,” he spat. “It is you who forgets his place.”

  It wasn’t the first time the beast had claimed he could leave anytime he chose. But here he was, nearly three decades gone, still confined in the solarium of Draydon Keep. Rothgar’s eyes came to rest on the thick black chains that snaked out from under the beast’s enormous body, scanning them for broken links. Dalinore had insisted that they could not be broken, even by this creature, but he wasn’t sure how much he trusted her. She had betrayed her own after all. What would keep her from betraying him? And hadn’t she been the one to create the very shackles the girl had escaped from?

  The dragon laughed, interrupting his thoughts. The deep sound resounded off the stone and glass around them, jarring the king to his very bones. “She is your doom. That is all that matters, is it not? What I do—or what you do for that matter—is hardly a ripple in the water.”

  The king’s sword was out of its sheath before he could even think, and despite his better judgment, he had the weapon poised at the edge of one of the great green eyes as his silk waistcoat began to singe and burn from the beast’s proximity.

  “If it pleases you, feel free to try,” Arrynas mocked him. “You know I am not so easy to kill. Haven’t we been through this before?”

  Rothgar remained stock still for several seconds until his sword grew so hot that he was forced to let it clatter to the floor, lest he lose his fingers. Leaving it there as if it didn’t matter, he stalked away toward the great double doors that led to the rest of the castle. Without looking at the beast again, the king raised his voice. “One day, dragon. One day, your power will be mine, and when it is, you and that girl will know true suffering.”

  With that, he exited, leaving his prisoner alone until he was needed once again.

  PART I

  RECONCILIATION

  Chapter One

  Blessings

  Mariah closed her eyes and took a deep, slow breath. She let the sounds of the raucous cawing wash over her and through her. She clamped her lips closed so that a scream wouldn’t escape her mouth before she spoke. They deserved this, deserved to be able to fly and play without fear of reprisal or retribution. Mariah’s eyes were still closed when she spread her wings to their full span and, with gentle flaps, let herself rise off the ground until she was on a level with the clamoring ravens.

  “Ayla. Nya. It is time to go to bed. We have to leave for Wellspring
first thing in the morning. What about your mom? I’ll bet you must miss her by now.” She could have used Simone’s help right about now.

  The croaks of the two small birds grew raucous, but they were filled with joy, and Mariah allowed herself to smile a little bit too.

  “I’m putting out the torches in exactly 1 minute.” If I don’t set some limit, we’ll all be too tired to fly. It was hard, and she knew her tone had completely offset the threat.

  But the sun had gone down hours before, and the chill in the air called her to her blankets, despite the fire crackling in the pit nearby. However, the little scoundrels, her guests in Firebend, obviously intended to draw things out as long as possible.

  When Mariah had taken the Tamsin girls to the cavern of the dead volcano where she made her home for their first visit a few months ago, they had obeyed her every word. In fact, they had almost seemed afraid of not listening to her. Their weeks in the king’s prison camp, or drudge camp, as it was known, had instilled a fear in them that still disturbed Mariah. A firm voice or a stern look could still send them to their knees, heads down and shaking.

  She considered it a personal triumph that they now usually treated her as an indulgent aunt. When they got back home this time, it was going to take days for their mother to set them straight, but Mariah hoped that the time she had given Simone and Zach to finish up the little cottage would be worth it. When they got back to Wellspring, Ayla and Nya would finally have their own room in their own home with their mother and brother. The family would no longer have to share a room in the Ansell farmhouse with Lia and Levin.

  Mariah let herself drift to the ground and crossed her arms, her wings brushing the stone floor as she gathered them in. As she waited, the ravens fluttered around her head until she sighed, reached her arms out to either side, and let them land. “How will you clean your teeth like that? Girls, you must change. Please.” She let sincerity fill her last word, and after just one more croak, the ravens fluttered to the ground, and both transformed into young girls.

  Ayla, the older of the two jet-haired children and taller by half a foot, pushed her sister by the shoulder toward the little tarn in the center of the cavern. It was too cold for a bath in their human form at the moment, but they could still wash up. “You go first. I want to talk to Mariah.”

  Unlike Lia, Levin, and Xae, the younger Tamsin children had never taken to calling her Mari. Their always calling her Mariah felt very formal, but Simone insisted they did it out of respect. After all, Mariah had saved their lives. The two girls and their mother had been prisoners in the drudge camp in Varidian six months ago, with a life of slavery and forced combat for the children their only future. With the help of their brother Xae and a couple of new allies, Mariah had freed them. Later, the Tamsins had fled to the kingdom of Cillian, where Mariah had spent most of the last eight years of her life.

  Visions of the drudge camp trickled into Mariah’s mind once again, as they often did. There, surviving parents and relatives were kept as prisoners and slaves, threatened and abused to encourage the Ceo San children to obey the king and those under his command.

  Ceo San were a very special commodity to the king. With their ability to change into animal form at will, they were essential to his plan to conquer the world. So, he had made it law that each and every one belonged to him and must be surrendered. Until they were old enough to serve, the Ceo San children in the drudge camp worked the farms that fed the soldiers and trained until they knew nothing else and wanted nothing else but to serve Rothgar, even if it meant they were chained and bound to a Trapper like the lowest animal.

  Mariah and her friends had managed to infiltrate the camp and escape with Simone and the girls. Well, almost anyway. Helping the others to get free, Mariah had been captured and thrown into the king’s dungeon. There, she had found unexpected help and eventually escaped. An image of Old Cat Eyes floated through her mind, as clear as if she had seen him just yesterday. Through a vision, the strange man had encouraged her to escape and to free her fox man cellmate. Where did Tibbot go, I wonder? He said he had no family.

  The girls continued to bicker, and Mariah waited for them to settle things.

  Rubbing a hand through her silver hair, which was now trimmed back into the short, messy style she preferred, Mariah sighed. Another one of their companions, Ruby, who had come along to rescue her own uncle from the king, was still unaccounted for as far as she knew. The submissive wolf, along with her Uncle Faylan, had disappeared during the escape from the drudge camp. She still didn’t know whether they had made it back to Laikos or had been captured or killed. As of her last letter, Shira hadn’t learned anything either.

  “No! You go first!” Nya’s voice went from a quiet murmur to a shrill soprano in a flat second, piercing Mariah’s thoughts and causing her to rub her temples. “I want to talk to Mariah. You can wait.”

  Before they could start arguing again and before Mariah’s mind wandered back to the drudge camp and those who had been left behind, she stepped forward between the two children and put an arm over each of their shoulders, curving her wings around them in a soft embrace. Nya’s small fingers reached out, her black eyes wide, and brushed the silver and black feathers gently as Mariah spoke. “The tarn is more than big enough for both of you. Now, clean your teeth and wash your face and hands so we can go to sleep. I promise that we can all talk a little before I put the torches out.”

  “Oh, oh!” Nya burst out. “Will you read us another story? From The Dragon King?”

  “Again? We just finished it last night. Ayla, don’t you want to read something different?”

  The older girl, her black eyes identical to those of her siblings, shook her head. “No! I want to hear the dragon king stories too!”

  The girls were both perfectly capable of reading the book themselves, but Mariah had taken to reading to them the first time they had been together as a way of breaking through the awkwardness of getting to know one another, and they had never quite gotten out of the habit.

  The girls were fascinated by legends of the Ceo San, particularly those of the Dragon King, who was rumored to be the first of the Althamir to have walked the lands of Whitelea. The Dragon King: First of the Ceo San was Mariah’s favorite book as well. She had lost her first copy along with her handmade leather backpack when she had been taken prisoner in Varidian, but Bria and Zach had replaced both just a couple of months before as a birthday gift for Mariah.

  As the girls got ready for sleep, she banked the fire in the main cavern and then moved into the little alcove that served as her bedroom. There were now two pallets on the floor near Mariah’s hammock, ones that could be easily rolled up and set in the corner when the girls went home.

  The Dragon King was lying open on the top of her little bookshelf, and Mariah picked it up and stroked the leather cover gently, savoring the feel of the embossed letters on her fingertips.

  It took about another half hour and quite a bit of reading before the raven girls began to blink and yawn. After Mariah put the book aside, Ayla rolled over quietly and went to sleep. But after Mariah extinguished the torches in the main part of the cavern, she came back to her alcove to find Nya still awake, sitting up with her elbows on her knees and twisting her long strands of hair around her fingers.

  Her previous exuberance was gone, and her voice was small and timid. “Can we please leave this torch lit?”

  Although Mariah knew it would mean less sleep for her, she nodded. “Of course, Nya.” With nothing more than a thought, Mariah’s wings disappeared as she sank down in the small space beside the young girl and put an arm around her. “Are you okay?”

  Nya nodded but snuggled closer. “Do you think Mama is okay too? Maybe we should have stayed home … You know, to help.” Her eyes were haunted. Sometimes, the girls tried to protect their mother as much as she tried to protect them.

  “I’m sure she’s fine. S
he wanted you and Ayla to come to Firebend. Remember, Bria and Zach are with her, and you’ll see her at lunchtime tomorrow.”

  “Good,” Nya said. “I want to see Mama. I miss her.”

  In their weeks in the drudge camp, Trappers and soldiers had told the girls that only the strictest obedience would be tolerated. Willfulness resulted in their mother being punished, even hurt. Even after all these months, Mariah still didn’t know the extent to which the children had been expected to behave or what they might have been forced to do. A shiver ran up her spine at the thought. She gathered Nya into her arms and sat back into her hammock, letting the girl curl into her, her head resting on Mariah’s arm.

  How many children were left in that camp now? Were there other camps that she didn’t know about? Camps where children were brainwashed, hurt, overworked, and forced to watch their loved ones suffer, all for the whim of one man who called himself king?

  Chapter Two

  Old

  The next afternoon, Mariah and the girls arrived at the Ansell farm around lunchtime, just as Mariah had planned. Although the air was cold and crisp, it had been a pleasant flight for Mariah. This time of year, with winter just upon them, it was hard to know what to expect.

  She had transformed herself completely into a standard-sized hawk instead of remaining half-human, so there had been no real opportunity to talk. Except for sleep, it had been the first time Nya and Ayla had been quiet in a week. Sure, they had started with plenty of cawing back and forth to each other, but soon, with no response from their temporary caretaker, they had quieted.

  The feel of the wind under Mariah’s black and silver wings and the gentle warmth of the early winter sun freed her mind so that she felt rested even after the half-day flight.

  Now, the girls, still in their young raven forms, both perched on the peaked log roof of the new cabin, which sat about a hundred yards behind the Ansell’s barn. The birds alternately hopped, ran, and flew across the roof, zigzagging through the smoke from the chimney and testing out the sturdiness of their new home. Bundled up in their coats, Lia and Levin, Bria and Zach’s two older and completely human children, were on the ground, yelling at them and bounding around the house while the ravens called to them with ebullient croaks.