Eona - Alison Goodman [110]
Lord Ido? I called silently. Are you in there?
The beast slowly lifted his head. The large eyes were not depthless, like the Mirror Dragon’s. They were amber and clouded with pain.
Ido’s eyes.
“By the gods, you are in your beast!” I said, shocked into speaking aloud. “How is that possible?”
Eona. Ido’s hoarse mind-voice was full of disbelief. What are you doing here?
I pushed past my own astonishment and answered him mind to mind. I’m here to heal you.
Heal me?
Yes, but I need your help. The other dragons will come and I can’t hold them back. I need you to block them like you did before. In the fisher village.
Ido’s dragon eyes met mine, their sudden human shrewdness at odds with the ferocious blue-scaled head and fanged muzzle. Why do you take this risk? What do you want?
For all his torment, he had not lost any sharpness of mind.
I want you to train me.
Ahh. The big wedge head slowly cocked to one side. And what do I get from this bargain?
You get your life! What more do you want? Yet part of me admired his attempt to shift even this dire situation to his advantage.
The thin dragon tongue flicked. I will have one other thing.
You have no power to bargain, Lord Ido.
You have no power without me.
The blunt truth jerked my hand off his human chest. Across the cell, the dragon’s head lowered, watching me. Ido knew he had hit home. I could call his bluff, but we were both running out of time.
What do you want? I asked.
The red folio.
Of course. Ido had always wanted the folio. He had stolen it twice already, but had never got past its black pearl guardians. Rapidly, I gauged the risk; the Woman Script and codes would keep any secrets I did not want to share. Even so, I knew Ido could use information like an assassin’s knife. A compromise, then.
You cannot have the folio, but I will tell you what it holds.
Agreed. But I could feel his dissatisfaction.
Are you ready?
The huge opal talons spread, bracing for my power. Be very fast, Eona. I am almost too long gone.
For the first time, I heard a note of fear in his mind-voice. I pressed my hand against his cold, bloodied chest and gathered all of my own waning strength into the call to my dragon. Even as the first vowel of our shared name rang out in the cell, her power rushed through me, filling my seven points of power with raw golden energy that thrummed in a song of joyous union.
My vision split between heaven and earth, the cell heaving with bright Hua around the darkened shape of Ido. Heal him, I thought. Heal him, before they come. No time to slowly sing the body whole. No time to delicately knit flesh and bone. Heal him, now! Through dragon eyes, we saw the gossamer threads that stretched between the man and his beast, the earth world and energy. Too frail, too dark. In the distance, we heard the shriek of sorrow ten times over—the other dragons were on their way, keening the loss of their Dragoneyes. And under their shrill song came another sound: a bell, ringing over and over again.
The pulsing patterns of Hua that we knew as Ryko ran to the doorway. “The alarm! They must have discovered us. Eona, hurry!”
We felt our power coil, tight and strong, drawing energy from every point—the earth, the air, the waters, the heartbeats of a thousand living things—into one huge, pulsing, healing howl. We were Hua, and we slammed our raw song into Ido’s earthly form.
He screamed as our power wrenched him back into his tortured body, then exploded through every inner pathway. Hua roared through him, a fireball that fused torn flesh together, welded bone, and purified his leaden life force back into bright silver streams.
Ido fell on to his hands and knees, gasping. He looked up at us, and for a moment the planes of his energy face shifted into solid flesh, his shoulders and back once more dense muscle and smooth skin. Then his features shivered and shaped back into the rush of healing Hua. The silver coursed through his seven points of power,