Eona - Alison Goodman [109]
“He’s too far gone,” Ryko said.
“No!” Frantically I shook Ido again, the back of his head thudding against the wall. “Wake up!”
Vida pulled my hand away. “Eona, stop!”
“If he’s not awake, I can’t risk healing him,” I said through my teeth. “The other dragons will come, and he won’t be there to stop them.”
Ryko stood. “He’s not going to wake any time soon. We’re going to have to carry him out.”
“It’ll kill him,” Vida protested.
“Maybe, but we can’t leave him here.”
The sound of running footsteps turned us toward the doorway. Dela rounded the corner, clothes piled in her arms. “Yuso is keeping watch in the front room,” she panted. “But he says hurry, we’ve only got a few minutes before the new guard shift.”
“We can’t get Ido awake,” I said. “I can’t heal him.”
She dumped the clothes on the filthy stone floor. “Let me have a look.”
Ryko made way as she leaned over and peeled back Ido’s left eyelid. The pale amber iris was almost all black pupil. Then something moved across the dark dilation—a slide of silver.
Dela recoiled. “What was that?”
Hua.
I lunged forward, lifting his eyelid again. The silver was dull and its shift across his eye slower than I had ever seen before, but it was definitely his power. “He’s not in the shadow world. He’s in the energy world.”
“Is that good?” Vida asked.
“It means he’s probably with his dragon already.” I released his eyelid and sat back, remembering the blue dragon reaching toward me. Was it possible that Ido had taken refuge in his spirit beast?
“Does that mean you can heal him?” Ryko demanded.
I looked down at my bound arm. A slow throb was building through the numbness, leaching energy with every pulsing ache. I was not sure I had enough strength to get into the energy world. And even if I did, the ten bereft dragons were so fast. By my reckoning, I had less than a minute to find Ido and heal him before they attacked.
“I have to try,” I said. “Everyone stand back. You saw what happened last time.”
All three edged away to the other side of the cell.
Help me, I prayed to any god who listened, and pressed my hand flat against Ido’s wet chest, above the brutally carved character. His labored heartbeat thudded under my palm. A tight knot of terror clamped my breath. What if I could not do it? What if I killed us all?
I forced my way through the fear, each deep inhalation easing my chest open until I found a familiar, deepening rhythm: the pathway to the energy world. My exhaustion dragged at me, a treacherous riptide that I had to fight with every breath. Under my hand, Ido’s heartbeat began to match mine, the ragged rise and fall of his chest blending into my own steady measure. The dim physical world around us twisted and bent into bright colors and streaming Hua.
Before me, the solid suffering of Ido’s body shifted into patterns of energy. Pain slashed and spun through his meridians in sharp, jagged bursts of Hua. Each of his seven points of power circled slowly, the silver pathways hampered by a thick black ooze. I looked closer. The points, from red sacrum to purple crown, turned in the wrong direction. I had seen it before in Dillon.
Ido was using Gan Hua.
Ryko, Dela, and Vida braced themselves in the far corner, Hua pumping through their transparent bodies in dazzling streams of silver. They could not see the Mirror Dragon above them or sense her power, but to me her vibrant energy radiated like a small sun, searing away the shadows of the dank cell. She focused her otherworldly eyes upon me and I felt my Hua leap to meet her huge, shimmering presence. Her sinuous neck stretched toward me, the gold pearl under her chin alive with surging flames. Cinnamon flooded my mouth, her warm, joyous invitation bringing tears to my eyes.
But I could not accept it. Not yet.
I dragged my attention from her glowing beauty and focused on the Rat Dragon crouched in the north-northeast corner, his wedged head bowed and pale flanks heaving. The power from the beast was sour and