The Unbearable Lightness of Dragons

Chapter Sixteen

Riga is an odd combination of an ancient city and a modern metropolis. It was part of the Hanseatic League, which made it a valuable port for trade, one of the reasons why Baltic chose the area to locate his stronghold. It boasted beautifully preserved historic buildings, a scenic castle, and gorgeous Art Nouveau architecture that mingled with stately elegance alongside the more mundane trappings of modern life. I hadn’t been to Riga in centuries, but even modernized, it had a strong sense of the familiar as we drove out of the now-sprawling city limits and through the tiny suburb of Ziema, headed for the forest preserve that protected the remains of Dauva.

“It really is amazing that no one developed this area over the centuries,” I mused, as I pulled off the road serving as a boundary along one edge of the dense forest that covered about a hundred acres. “You’d think they would have needed the wood, if nothing else. But no one has touched it.”

“I ensured no one would,” Baltic said as we got out of the rental car.

I stopped in midstretch. “You did? How?”

Thala, who had been forced to sit in the backseat, sniffed. I half expected her to add something really nasty, but she just smiled at me. Oh, it was an unpleasant smile, but still, it took me by surprise. “You lived here and you do not remember the protections Baltic put into place?”

After eight hours of her presence while we travelled to Latvia, I was about at the end of my tether, but if she was going to suddenly switch tactics and play nice, then I would do the same. It had taken all of my persuasive powers to convince Baltic to come to Latvia when he preferred to be elsewhere. “In a way, no, I don’t remember what Baltic did to Dauva. My memory was wiped, thanks to your sister and her bigamous husband.”

“Bigamous?” Her eyebrows rose as her gaze flickered over me. “How do you mean?”

“Gareth married me twelve years ago in order to control my manifestations of gold. Only it wasn’t a legal marriage because he already had a wife—Ruth.”

She looked as if she wanted to laugh, but she managed to control the urge. “Indeed. How very . . . awkward . . . to find yourself married to a man who already had a wife. But that must mean that your child is his?”

I closed my eyes for a few seconds, wanting to do nothing more than turn her into a pineapple, or perhaps even a toe fungus. “Yes, Gareth is Brom’s father.”

“I am his father. The other is a usurper, nothing more,” Baltic said as he gazed at the forest, his hands on his hips.

“Gareth is his biological father, but he has nothing to do with us now. In fact, I don’t even know where he is. He and Ruth have gone to earth somewhere, taking all of our belongings with them. That doesn’t matter, though. Baltic, how did you protect Dauva? Was it a spell of some sort?”

“Spells, wards, two banes, and several songs,” he said, taking my hand and leading me down a narrow path that curved around century-old trees dripping with long streamers of moss and assorted vines of ivy.

“Songs?” I shuddered as I cast a glance behind us, where Thala walked, a small smile playing around her lips as she typed something into her cell phone. “Oh, you mean the magic kind, not the singing kind. Ugh. But . . . dragons don’t do much dark magic, and you can’t sing a song over a location as big as Dauva without invoking some pretty powerful dark forces, something like a dirge, and those aren’t done except by experts. Who did you get to do that?”

“I did them, all three. I am a dirgesinger,” Thala said with a look of obvious pride, but I heard a faint thread of warning as well.

“You’re half dragon, though, aren’t you? How can you be a dirgesinger? Dragons can’t handle the sort of dark power needed to sing a dirge.”

“They can if their mother is an archimage,” she said with another of her creepy smiles.

Oy. I made a hasty readjustment of my intention to have it out with Thala about her jealousy issues. I knew she was a necromancer of some esteem, because it’s not an easy task to resurrect a dragon, as she had done with Baltic. But if she was also able to cast the most profound level of dark magic spells commonly referred to as songs, it would behoove me to deal with her a bit more carefully in the future.

Baltic held back a branch, allowing Thala and me to pass. “Most of the magic has been broken by Kostya over the last few months in his attempts to access my lair, but we have begun the process of weaving new layers of protection over the ground as we reclaim Dauva. He might hold Dragonwood, but he will never hold Dauva.”

Baltic loved Dauva beyond darned near anything, certainly more than the house in England he had built for me. I knew this, and didn’t raise an objection when he had informed me two months before that reclamation and rebuilding of Dauva would take utmost precedence in his plans. I was confident that once we had straightened out the business with the weyr, I could start to work on negotiating Dragonwood back from Kostya.

“No more songs, though,” I told Baltic with a little shudder. “Those are just bad juju all around. We don’t need the sacrifice of innocents on our—” I stopped, the conjunction of words ringing loudly in my brain. “Sacrifice of innocents. I wonder if that’s what he meant?”

Baltic waited impatiently for me while Thala proceeded ahead of us deeper into the forest. “Mate?”

“Coming. Er . . .” I held him back for a moment, allowing her to get out of earshot. “Have you ever heard of Constantine using songs on anything? He didn’t try to have one sung over Dauva after we were killed, did he?”

His fingers tightened around mine. “I do not know what happened after he killed us, other than what Pavel has told me. He said that Constantine destroyed Dauva rather than let it stand as a monument to the black dragons. The spells I had woven around it while it was being built ensured that it would remain hidden from all eyes but mine, the songs and banes driving away the mortals, as well as concealing it from poaching dragons and other beings.”

“Hmm.”

He gave me an odd look, half curious, half annoyed, but said nothing more as we marched deeper into the forest. There was a sense of magic around us, dampening the noises from outside the woods, as if this area was isolated by time from the busy city beyond. Birds called softly to each other, leaves rustled with the passage of unseen little animals, and a slow, gentle drip of water sounded all around us as moisture slid from the leaves to the rich, loamy soil below. The air smelled of earth, green things growing unhindered by man, sunlight dappling the ground. My heart lightened as we made our way through paths long lost, flickers of memories teasing the edge of my mind just as streams of sunlight teased through the leaves. I took a deep breath, savoring the scent of the woods, happiness flowing from the living things around us through me, making me want to laugh and run through the forest.

“Dauva,” I said, my eyes closed, my hands out as I reached blindly for something that was no longer there. “It’s Dauva.”

“It is.” Baltic took my hand, and I opened my eyes to find him smiling down at me, his black eyes lit from within with pleasure. It was as if the centuries had peeled away, leaving us standing in a time that no longer existed. “Welcome to my home, mate.”

I smiled, allowing him to lift me off my horse as I looked beyond him to the grey stone towers that seemed to rise to the very sky itself. The drawbridge we stood upon was not wide, but it was long, covering the broad stretch of moat surrounding two-thirds of the castle. The far side ended in a sheer cliff that dropped perilously into a gully below. It looked impregnable, as solid as the earth from which it rose, the three towers as imposing as the solid granite of their walls. “It’s beautiful, Baltic.”

And it was beautiful, in a stark, massive sort of way. It was the heart of the black dragon sept, its foundation, its soul, and I knew as Baltic led me across the drawbridge to the outer bailey that it would stand as a testament to black dragons for all the ages.

The light shifted, darkening to that of a cloudy sky, the wind picking up with winter chill. I shivered and rubbed my arms, glancing around. “This is like at Dragonwood—the past is imprinted on the present.”

“Yes.” Baltic looked with mild interest as shadowy forms of dragons long dead flitted past us. Beyond, Thala was hunched over an outcropping of rocks and ferns that was overlaid on the image of the nearest tower. “You must be envisioning it right before the fall. Not a very pleasant time, mate.”

“I can’t help it.” I stepped aside as a small group of men charged toward the drawbridge, the hooves of their horses ringing with steely bites on the wooden planks. “Was that you?”

Baltic glanced after the horsemen. “No. I was in the tunnels, fighting Kostya and his men.”

The image of Dauva wavered, and pain lanced me, regret at what could have been and sorrow at what was. I blinked away accompanying tears, knowing what pain Baltic must have felt the first time he beheld the ruins of his beloved stronghold.

“It wasn’t supposed to end this way,” I told him, rubbing his knuckles on my cheek. “It was supposed to stand forever.”

“Only love lasts forever, chérie. We will last for all the ages; all else is trivial.”

“For someone who is commonly held as an example of all that is bad about dragons, you certainly are the most romantic man I’ve ever met,” I said, melting into his arms. “I love you, you know.”

“I know,” he said, his fire whipping around us as his lips teased mine.

I pinched his behind. He slapped mine, then wrapped an arm around me and spun me around. Visible through the partially translucent image of the castle, a small hill rose, covered in mossy rocks and giant ferns, their leaves forming great arches against the grey-brown stone. I glanced at the rocks, noticing the very faintest of images in the face nearest me, turning to the image of the tower next to us. On the lower quarter was an elaborate carved band depicting various saints. Scrambling up the far side of the mound, Thala appeared, frowning and kicking at small stones until she grunted her satisfaction and squatted, her hands drawing symbols in the air.

“The entrance to the lair?” I asked, accompanying Baltic to the top of the small hill.

“Yes. Kostya raided it a few months ago, but Thala arrived to protect it almost immediately thereafter, placing new songs and banes on it so that he could not take all that remained.”

I glanced at Thala as she examined the magic she’d layered on the entrance, wondering why she and not Baltic was in charge of protecting the lair. “You didn’t have guards on it once you knew Kostya was out and about?”

“It was not necessary. I knew that Thala would guard it. I had other things to take care of.”

“Other things like trying to steal May?”

His lips tightened. “I did not want the silver mate. I simply wanted the dragon heart.”

“Why?”

He slid me a questioning glance. “Why did I want the dragon heart?”

“Yes. From what Kaawa said about it, the only time it’s re-formed is either to re-shard it into different vessels or to use it for unimaginable power, like taking over the weyr, and I can’t believe you ever wanted to do that. You may be many things, Baltic, and you have committed acts that I may not have liked, but you’ve never been power-mad. So why did you want the dragon heart?”

“To re-form it is to summon the First Dragon,” he answered.

“You wanted to talk to him?” I searched his face for answers, but as usual, there were none there. Baltic was at his most dragon, his eyes glittering with a light that wasn’t human. “But . . . why?”

“Always you ask why, but the answer is ever before you,” he said, shaking his head with mock exasperation. He lifted my hand and kissed my fingers.

“It was me,” I said softly, reading the truth in the depths of his mysterious eyes. “You wanted to ask the First Dragon to bring me back. That’s why you tried to kidnap May. And attacked the sárkány. You were going after the shards, one by one, systematically forcing the wyverns into situations where they would have to hand over the shards. That’s why you were helping Fiat, isn’t it? Aisling said he held two shards. It all makes sense now. But, oh, Baltic, no wonder everyone thought you were mad. It was a crazy plan!”

“The promise of having you back was worth any sacrifice,” he said simply.

“Not that of innocent dragons. Could you have stopped Fiat from killing his own people?”

He was silent for a minute, brushing a strand of hair from my cheek. “I don’t know. I didn’t think he would go through with his plans. I thought . . .”

“What?” I prompted.

He hesitated. “I thought his plans too mad to be successful. I still think they were.”

Thala shouted for him, asking for his help to move a heavy rock. He gave my hand a squeeze, then climbed up to heave the boulder out of the way.

I thought about what he didn’t say—that Fiat’s plans couldn’t have been successful . . . not without help. Not unless someone else was involved, someone like the leader of a band of outlaw dragons. I looked at my watch. I had just an hour before I was supposed to meet with Maura back in Riga.

“I’m going to look around a bit,” I called to Baltic, waving a hand vaguely to indicate the trees. “It’s fascinating seeing Dauva as it was, even if it’s not real.”

“There is nothing to see out there but Constantine’s army.” Baltic climbed down and took my hand again, leading me past a fallen tree to where a ghostly tower thrust up out of the earth. The light shifted back and forth across the bushes and leaves, to solid stone and mortar, faint, distant noises reaching us as the castle’s few remaining occupants ran about preparing for the siege that would destroy most, if not all, of them. “Thala will be busy for some time unmaking the magic. We will go into the tunnels and watch as I battle Kostya.”

“I’ve already seen you die, thank you.” I pulled my hand from his. “And I don’t want to see it again.”

“That was only the end. We fought the traitors for almost a day before Kostya struck me down. You will enjoy watching me fight him. I did not wear heavy armor then, just a cuirass, but you always enjoyed seeing me wield a sword.”

“I’m sure you were beyond manly with a sword, but I think I’ll pass on the sight of you and Kostya hacking away at each other. I know how it ends, and honestly, I don’t think I could witness that again.”

“You control the vision, chérie, not me.”

“On the contrary, I don’t control it at all. It runs like a movie in front of me.” A thought occurred to me. If this was, in fact, the fall of Dauva, then I might be able to see if Constantine was killed here as well. It would make summoning his spirit a hundred times easier if I knew where to find it. “I’m just going to look around for a bit, if you don’t mind.”

“As you like. But it will only upset you if you see Constantine strike you down again.”

“I don’t intend to watch that, but I wouldn’t mind seeing where he died.”

“That would be satisfying. You will mark the place and I will dance on it later.”

I laughed at him, seeing the twitch of his lips that let me know he was teasing me.

“You think I am not serious?”

“I think you’re pulling my leg, yes. You have no reason to dance on Constantine’s grave, assuming I find it.”

“I have many reasons, but I will not go into them now. I am more concerned as to why you are so determined to find where he fell.”

“My little job for the First Dragon, remember?”

Baltic made a face. “You take that too much to heart. Do not go beyond the confines of Dauva. You are protected here, but outside you are not.”

“Protected from what?” I asked, picking my way over a fallen tree now consumed in moss and fungus.

“Kostya. He will no doubt descend upon us once he learns we are here.”

I didn’t think that was any too likely, but I kept my opinion to myself.

The snowy ghostly scene faded in and out of my vision, leaving me to believe it was a memory of the land I was seeing, rather than a personal vision. Those were much more immersive, whereas this was just faint images of a time long past. As I walked over the drawbridge toward the road that led up from Riga, faint snow whirled around me at the same time that birds chattered high above in the treetops warmed by the sun.

“This would be confusing as hell if it wasn’t so interesting,” I told a couple of snow-covered guards posted at the fringe of Constantine’s camp. Men and horses milled around in the darkness of night, small fires dotting the area, their flames flickering wildly in the wind and snow. Tents cast dark shadows against the present-day trees, giving the entire place an eerie appearance.

“All right, Constantine. Let’s have this out, you and I,” I murmured as I started to search the ghost camp.

He wasn’t in the big tent that I assumed belonged to him. As I prowled the shadowed camp, I passed a couple of men who spoke in French, pausing when one said he had two prisoners.

“Black dragons? Put them to death,” one man said with a dismissive gesture.

“They aren’t dragons,” the other replied, shivering and huddling into his fur-lined cape. “We caught them skulking around the north wall.”

“Humans? We have no need of them.”

“Human but not mortal—”

I continued on my way. Fifteen minutes later I was ready to give up. I had turned back toward the castle when I saw a flash of color from a high ridge of trees to the south. Stumbling over a snowdrift that was really a sprawling red-berried elder bush, I fought my way through the forest to the spot where, three hundred years before, I had pleaded with Constantine to leave Baltic alone, and was slain by the man who claimed he loved me.

“I really could go the rest of my life without seeing myself killed again,” I grumbled as I beat back a feathery tamarisk shrub that tangled in my hair. “At least I don’t have to see Baltic being—whoa!”

A brilliant flash of white light lit up the hillside for a moment, casting the figure of a man into snow-flecked silhouette. Just as the light faded, the man dropped to the ground. I stared for a moment, wondering just how many people were killed on that fateful day.

“And if it’s who I think it is,” I grumbled to myself as I slid down a small incline, smacking my ankle on a sharp finger of a dead tree branch, “I’d dearly love to know who was responsible for that. I have . . . Argh! Let go of me, you blasted plant!” I jerked myself free of a particularly grabby black ash tree and stumbled forward, the ground in the memory of Dauva rising, but falling in present day. I slipped down another moss-covered slope, half falling until I slammed up against a piece of man-made stone. Swearing, I got to my feet and scrambled around it, my eyes ignoring the greens and browns of the forest scene in order to focus on the past.

Ahead of me on a rise, the First Dragon stood with a newly resurrected Ysolde. He spoke to her for a moment, then faded into nothing. She nodded numbly and turned toward the castle, slowly picking her way down the drifts toward the drawbridge.

“Dammit!” I spun around and fought my way back in the direction I’d come, veering to the left in order to see if it was Constantine who had dropped in the blast of light.

“Well, this answers absolutely nothing,” I said a few minutes later as I stopped, panting with the effort of fighting through the dense undergrowth. Before me, slowly being covered by snow, lay the body of the man who had killed me. A sword lay next to him, half buried, crimson staining the snow around the blade. “You killed me, and someone came along and killed you right afterward?” I asked the body of Constantine. “Why? Just because you killed me? And who had the power to do that?”

The memory of snow and wind swirled around me as I sank onto my heels, watching as the snow drifted over Constantine’s body. Every now and again I heard faint voices carried by the wind, but they were worn thin by time.

“No wonder your father wants help,” I told the mound of snow that once had been a dragon. “You died with my death on your soul. I don’t suppose a formal statement of forgiveness right now would do the trick, would it?” I took a deep breath. “Constantine Norka, wyvern of the silver dragons, I forgive you for killing me.”

Nothing happened, but I didn’t honestly expect the First Dragon’s demand to be so easily met. Nothing is ever easy with dragons. I sighed and got to my feet, noting my location so I could bring Maura to it later.

I stopped by the lair’s entrance to check on how the progress was going. To my surprise, no one was there. A distant crack had me spinning around, but it wasn’t the sound of a tree falling, as I expected.

“The outer bailey has been breached,” I said sadly, watching as a stream of snow-covered men swarmed through the gate. The dragons headed straight for the inner bailey. I looked up to see the faint image of the walls, but there was no one left to defend Dauva now that its master was lying dead deep in the earth beneath the castle.

“I can’t watch it,” I said, my heart filled with so much sadness for what happened.

“Then don’t.” Thala emerged from a path leading to the north, giving me not more than the slightest glance. She nodded abruptly at the line of dragons as they rode into the inner bailey, right past where we stood. “You should go back to town if it is too distressing for you to see this.”

Once again, she surprised me. “You can see them? The people from the past?”

“Of course.” She bent over a smooth bit of glass laid out on a blue velvet cloth. “They do not matter. Nothing of the past matters. It is the present that should concern you.”

I didn’t agree with that, but I knew arguing the point with her would serve no purpose. “Baltic is off reliving his own memories, I assume?”

“So I gather.” She didn’t look up from her glass.

I hesitated, not wanting to destroy her good mood but needing to get something off my chest. “I know that you have quite a long history with Baltic, longer than I had with him, and that you view me as some sort of interloper in the relationship, but I assure you that I’m not trying to steal his affection. He’s told me himself that he owes you a lot for resurrecting him, and although I know you’re in love with him—”

Her head snapped up, a look of incredulity so stark in her eyes, I couldn’t doubt its veracity. “Love? Is that the only thing you can think of?”

I gawked for a few seconds. “You’re not in love with him?”

“No!” She gave me a scornful look before returning to her scrying glass.

“Then why have you been so jealous of me?”

“I am not jealous. Jealousy is a pathetic emotion borne by lesser beings.”

“Well, you were sure something. You refused to even let me be a part of your rescue.”

She made an annoyed gesture of dismissal. “I had been in a very trying situation for months. I was out of temper.”

I conceded that being held captive would make me a bit testy as well, so I didn’t belabor that point. “I’m sorry if I assumed you were jealous of my relationship with Baltic, but you must admit, you have been more than a little hostile during the last week.”

“We were very close to seeing our plans to fruition. Baltic’s attention to those plans wavered once you returned to his notice. I was rightfully annoyed that he would push aside efforts that have taken years to lay into place.”

“Plans to retake Dauva?” I asked, suddenly suspicious.

“And reclaim my mother’s sword,” she answered without looking up from her glass.

I wondered if that was really true. Her expression seemed benign, but I couldn’t help but feel that her explanation lacked the ring of truth. I shrugged to myself, and told her I was going into Ziema for a little bit while she worked on unmaking the magic. She murmured something noncommittal in response.

It took all of five minutes to drive to the small suburb of Ziema, which I had been told was the Latvian word for winter. I spent the time worrying about meeting a woman who could well be the head of a fell group of dragons.

“If she is, she’s got to be too smart to mess with me,” I told myself as I waited on the train platform for Maura. “She has to know I won’t let her get away with harming Baltic in any way.”

Seven minutes after our appointment time, a commuter train pulled in, disgorging a handful of shoppers from Riga proper. I discounted the few men who marched past with backpacks or briefcases and eyed the women with interest. Most of them carried shopping bags, and some had small children in tow. A few lanky teens giggled at each other as they hunkered over their cell phones, texting like crazy. The last person off the train was a buxom woman a few inches taller than me, with porcelain skin and dark brown hair to her waist, streaked with warm amber lights that shone in the sun as she paused on the platform, glancing around curiously.

I stood up. “Maura?”

She turned to me with a half smile. “Yes. You must be Ysolde. It’s an honor to meet you.”

She didn’t offer her hand, but I knew that many people in the Otherworld preferred not to be touched, given their sensitivity to things like reading thoughts.

“I don’t know how much of an honor meeting me can give, but I appreciate the sentiment.” I studied her for a moment while she studied me. Her eyes were a light brown flecked with gold and black, and odd little red lights that hinted of her dragon father. She was very fair-skinned, but had a smattering of freckles across her nose and cheeks. She looked to be in her early thirties, was on the plump side, and appeared just about as far from my idea of someone who raised spirits as I could imagine.

She laughed, and for a moment I thought she’d read my mind. “I don’t look anything like you imagined, do I?”

“I’m sorry.” My cheeks heated. “Was I gawking? I didn’t mean to be rude, but somehow I imagined someone who raised spirits to look . . . well . . .”

“More Goth?” she said, still laughing. “Dark and scary and mysterious? Not like Suzy Homemaker, right? It’s the curse of my maternal genes. My mother’s skipped me and I got my grandmother’s, instead. Nanna was from Scandinavia and was as round as she was short. I assure you that despite my appearance, I’m fully trained as a Summoner. And speaking of that, I don’t mean to rush you, but we’d better get started if we want to have a good chance of locating Constantine Norka before nightfall. Do you have a car?”

“Yes, I do. It’s not far to the remains of Dauva.”

“Oh, good. Can I drop off my bags at the hotel first?”

“Of course.”

It took us another half hour to swing by the hotel and leave off her things, let her change into clothing more suited to poking around in the forest, and gather up the items she needed to draw a summoning circle. I watched the clock warily, worrying that Thala would finish opening up the lair, which would mean Baltic would come looking for me.

“So are you out here by yourself?” Maura asked when we were finally on our way to the forest, her backpack of summoning tools sitting between our seats. “Or is your mate here?”

“No,” I lied, uncomfortable about doing so, but unwilling to expose Baltic to possible sources of danger. I decided to hedge my bets. “But I’m not alone. His lieutenant is here with me.”

“Ah. I don’t suppose he has any idea where to look for Constantine’s spirit?”

“She’s female, and no, I don’t believe she does, but that really doesn’t matter, because I think I’ve found the spot where he was slain.”

“Great. That ought to make things much easier,” she said with confidence that I found reassuring.

I pulled off the road at the entry point to the forest, deciding the time had come to do a little gentle probing on the issue of the ouroboros dragons. “So . . . how long have you been doing this?”

She followed me into the forest, pursing her lips as she thought. “About eighty years. Summoners are born, not made, so I really didn’t have much of a choice, if you know what I mean. Mom discovered that was where my talents lay, and sent me off to be trained properly.”

“Ah. You’re not involved with your father’s family at all?”

“No.” She slid me a curious glance. “As I said, he was killed by the wyvern after she kicked him out of the sept, so I don’t feel like I have to make overly nice to the red dragons.”

A telling statement, and yet one with which I could sympathize.

“You’re technically ouroboros, then. So are we. I don’t particularly like being separated from the weyr. It makes me feel . . . disjointed.”

“But Baltic has a new sept, doesn’t he?” she asked as we skirted a minute, murky black pond.

I wondered how she’d heard that if she didn’t stay in touch with dragons. “Yes, he does, but we’re not part of the weyr.”

“Well, it’s all the same thing, really, isn’t it?” She made a little gesture of dismissal. “You can’t pick your family, but you can your friends—that’s how I look at it. So I just make sure I pick good friends.”

“Other dragons, you mean?”

She slid me another curious look. “I’m ouroboros, as you just pointed out. Red dragons won’t have anything to do with me.”

“But other ouroboros dragons would,” I said with a complacence that I was far from feeling.

She stopped, eyeing me with a slight tinge of hostility. “I get the feeling you’re skating around a subject that you don’t want to come right out and say. What exactly is that, Ysolde?”

“I understand what it is to feel ostracized, and lost to everyone you love.” I chose my words with care. “I know how easy it is to be overwhelmed with the isolation, and how much it means when at last you find someone or a group of people to whom you feel you belong. I also know what it’s like to be in over your head, drowning with no sign of a life preserver in sight. I just want you to know that you’re not alone, Maura.”

She stood unmoving, her gaze searching mine, and then she suddenly made an exclamation of irritation. “It’s Emile, isn’t it?”

“Emile?”

“My grandfather.” She made another abrupt gesture, before hoisting her backpack higher on her shoulder and stepping out with a firm set to her jaw. “He’s been pestering me for the last decade to settle down, as he calls it, and now he’s obviously gotten you involved somehow. I can’t believe he’d do this! Why can’t he understand that I’m not going to live the life he wants me to live? I’m my own person, not an extension of him!”

I hurried to keep up with her, simultaneously alarmed and relieved that I didn’t have to couch my questions in obscurity any longer. “I’m sorry if you feel it’s overly invasive, but your mother and grandfather are very worried about you.”

“Is that why you brought me out here?” she asked, whirling around to face me, a scowl darkening her countenance. “You tricked me to come here just so you could try to talk me into going back home?”

“No, not at all.” I avoided the unpleasant thought that I had, in fact, done something very much like that. “I really do want Constantine’s spirit raised. I need to talk to him about something of great importance.”

She examined my face for a moment, then nodded abruptly. “All right. But the subject of my personal life is no longer open for discussion.”

I watched for a moment as she strode off into the woods, musing that I wasn’t so naïve as to be fooled by an obvious attempt at distraction, but feeling it would be best to let matters lie until after she’d raised Constantine’s spirit.

As we wended our way along the serpentine paths, I glanced at my watch, praying that Baltic would need the full two hours to get into the lair. “How long will the summoning take?”

“Depends on the spirit. Some are right there, ready to be summoned; others take a bit of coaxing. Let’s say an hour, to be generous.”

“Ah.” I pulled out my cell phone. “I’ll be just a second—I need to let . . . er . . . Thala know I’ll be a little late.”

Maura said nothing, just continued in the direction I indicated, making her way around the large ferns and dripping trees that isolated us from the game trail we’d followed. I walked slowly after her, allowing a bit of distance to grow between us.

“Yes?” Baltic’s voice was clipped as he answered my call.

“Hi, it’s me. How’s the opening of the lair going?”

“I assume it’s well. I am currently watching Kostya’s men be cut down by silver dragons.”

I stopped and frowned at an innocent baby linden tree. “That’s a little gruesome, don’t you think?”

“Not at all. I wish to see what it is that Constantine did to bring down Dauva, so I am remaining here, where the silver dragons are fighting Kostya’s force. Thala will alert me when the lair is opened. Where are you? You said you wished to see what remains of Dauva and the lair.”

“I know I did, and I do want to see it, but there’s a little bit of business that I have to take care of first,” I said softly. Maura showed no signs of listening to my side of the conversation, but I knew dragons had exceptionally good hearing.

“What business? That foolishness to do with Kostich?”

“Kind of. I told you that I wanted to find where Constantine died so I could have his spirit raised.”

“And I told you that was folly. Even if you could find the location, he can tell you nothing of any use. You will return to me, mate.”

“Yes, I will, just as soon as I’m done with this.”

“Ysolde—”

“I shouldn’t be longer than an hour, and then I’ll come back and see what progress you guys are making. Bye.”

Twenty minutes later, Maura and I arrived at the place where I’d seen Constantine fall. The snowy memory of the past still haunted the area, but it was less substantial, almost faded beyond the reach of vision. Maura squatted and pulled some items from her bag, arranging them in a tidy row before drawing a ward over her left hand and right eye. With some difficulty, she used a piece of chalk to draw a circle in the moist earth.

“Is that going to work?” I asked, watching with interest. “The chalk, I mean? You can’t really draw with chalk on dirt, and there are all those rocks and things in the way.”

“It won’t leave a mark on earth, no, but you don’t have to see the circle to know it’s there. So long as I draw it, it’s effective.” She sprinkled grey ash over the circle, closing her eyes and murmuring to herself. After a few minutes of that, she stopped, shook her head, and looked up at me. “Nothing. Are you sure this is it?”

“Very sure.”

“I can give it another shot, but I’m not getting even a little tremor.”

I looked at the memory of the snowy mound that had once held Constantine’s body. “I’d appreciate that.”

She rubbed the circle into the dirt and leaf detritus before drawing a new one with chalk and ash, saying as she did so, “Sacred be the circle, sacred be the place, enter here you who are not founded. Here do I draw the first circle of spirit; let it cast its light into you. Here do I draw the second circle of spirit; may it bind your being. Here do I draw the third circle of spirit; may it bring forth to my hand and heart and soul those who remain.”

I waited, but there was nothing.

“I’m sorry,” she said, rubbing out the circle again. “There’s just nothing. You know, I wonder if my ash isn’t the problem. This is an old bottle, over a year old, and perhaps it’s not as effective as it could be. I have a fresh batch back in the hotel room that I just made a week ago. We could pop back into town to get it and try again, if you like.”

A look at my watch warned me I had limited time before Baltic would want to know where I was. “Why don’t we give it another shot? Third time’s a charm, and all that.’

The look she gave me told me she didn’t think much of that, but all she murmured was, “You’re the boss,” before drawing another circle.

But this time I was watching closely, and I noticed that although the circle seemed complete, a couple of largish twigs made it difficult for her to draw correctly.

“Hang on, let me clear some of this away,” I said, kneeling to brush away a layer of leaf mold, hand-sized sticks, and small rocks. “I think the ground is sufficiently clumpy to keep your circle from closing properly. Try it now.”

She slid me a quick look from the corner of her eye, but obediently bent over the now cleared ground. As she had said, the dirt did not hold the chalk itself, but an outline of the circle was now visible as she drew it.

“It’s not quite closed,” I pointed out when she reached for the ash.

“I’m pretty sure it is,” she said, sprinkling ash.

I smiled and took the chalk up from where she had set it down, making a tiny little adjustment to her circle. “There. Now it’s closed.”

“Please do not handle my equipment,” she said sternly, snatching the chalk from my hand.

“Sorry. I just really want this to succeed.”

“I assure you that I do as well, which is why I suggested going back to the hotel to get the fresher ash.”

I gave her an encouraging smile. She heaved a tiny little sigh and spoke the words of summoning again.

This time there was an immediate difference. Hope rose within me as the air within the circle did an odd sort of shimmer, as if the individual atoms of light were forming together. The shimmer began to grow and elongate, coalescing into the figure of a man.

A familiar man.

I rose slowly, the hairs on my arms standing on end as Constantine Norka stared at me with shock and surprise chased by some emotion I couldn’t identify. He opened his mouth to speak, his hands gesticulating wildly as he did so, but his voice had no sound.

“You did it!” I gasped, staring with wonder at Constantine’s spirit. “That really is amazing. But why can’t we hear him?”

“He’s not grounded,” she said with an edge that had me wondering. With a little sigh, she made a few gestures that looked like backward wards, causing the translucent ghost to slowly solidify.

“Constantine?” I asked him.

“Ysolde!” He held up his hands, still clad in leather gauntlets, looking in wonder at them. “I was dead. I know I was dead. But now I’m not? You have had me resurrected? This woman does not look like a necromancer.”

“I’m not,” she told him, gathering up her things. “I’ve summoned your shade, not your physical self.”

“A shade?” He looked down at his chest, touching his stomach. “I feel real.”

“That’s because you’re in corporeal form right now. When you grow low on energy, you will fade into an insubstantial form.” Maura turned to me, her expression tight. I didn’t understand why she seemed so resigned when her mission had been a success. “I can’t bind him to you, I’m afraid. That’s the trouble with dragon spirits—they come back as shades, which can’t be bound without a whole lot of trouble. He’s more or less going to be able to do as he likes. I can release him, though, if he is willing.”

“I’m not dead?” He pulled out his sword, still strapped to his hip. He made a few jabs at a nearby fern. “I’m not. I’m alive.”

“No, you’re a shade,” Maura repeated. “Why don’t we go back to the hotel, and I can explain the ins and outs of shadedom to you both.”

He beheaded the fern, sliding the sword back into its sheath with a look of satisfaction. Constantine was a handsome man in his own right, a little taller than me, with a muscular build, golden brown hair, and eyes just a shade darker. “You saved me, my beloved one. You truly are my mate. The Summoner is wrong—I am bound to you, Ysolde. I am bound to you until the end of time.”