Up in Smoke - Katie MacAlister [74]
He nodded. “I know where they are.”
“Why do we have to find the other shards?” I asked, confused.
“The shard that resides within each vessel cannot be separated from it unless the vessel itself is destroyed.”
“Urgh,” I said, not liking the sound of that.
“Exactly,” she said, nodding. “It can be formed into the dragon heart, however, and then resharded into appropriate vessels. That is how Ysolde eventually decanted her shard—she brought together the shards, re-formed the heart, then separated the pieces again into their current phylacteries. Current with the obvious exception of you.”
“I thought you said that when she tried to bring the pieces together the heart objected and the phylactery was destroyed,” I said, more confused than ever.
“That was the first time, when she tried to use the heart for her own purposes. The dragon heart is immensely powerful,” she answered, her dark eyes serious as she considered me. “It has the ability to destroy entire septs, child, possibly the entire weyr itself. The shards themselves contain much power, but they are nothing compared to the sum total. To wield such a thing is beyond most beings, dragon or otherwise. Ysolde meant well, but she did not have the ability to control the heart, and it recognized that fact, causing the first failure. But when she sought to re-form it for the purpose of ensuring the safety of all the shards—for by that time, the weyr was in disarray, with many septs close to complete annihilation—it allowed her to do so.”
“So you’re saying we need to repeat that? To bring together all the shards, re-form the dragon heart, then break it back up again into the individual shards and put them in nonhuman vessels?”
“It is the only way to separate the shard from your being,” she said, nodding.
I glanced at Gabriel, filled with hopeless dismay. “How am I supposed to do that? Ysolde was a dragon, wasn’t she? Is this dragon heart going to allow me to re-form it when I’m only your mate?”
“We have to try, Mayling,” he answered, his jaw tightening.
I nodded but said nothing. There was nothing else to say—either we succeeded in re-forming the dragon heart and separating it back into shards, or I’d be stuck being a vessel for the remainder of my days. There was Magoth to think about—he hadn’t been able to access any of my abilities thus far, but who knew whether the dragon shard would be accessible by him? I couldn’t risk giving him any more power than he had.
Given Magoth and the number of dragons out there who would literally kill to gain power over others, there was simply no other option.
Chapter Thirteen
“Gabriel is nervous,” Maata said out of the blue the following day.
I stopped pacing back and forth across the small room to which we’d been shown. Outside the room, thousands of people passed through the Auckland airport, but inside it, noise was muffled to the point of being almost inaudible, as was the conversation I could see Gabriel holding with a couple of customs officials, one of whom had reservations about my (admittedly hastily forged) passport.
“I don’t blame him. I wish he’d just let me shadow to get through customs. There’s going to be hell to pay if they discover the passport isn’t genuine.”
She smiled. Maata didn’t often smile, and it made me wonder how she came about being one of Gabriel’s elite guards. She was a pretty woman, her appearance reflecting more Polynesian influence than Aboriginal, and that stirred up even more curiosity about the woman who would literally give her life for her wyvern. “You think he’s worried about mortals? He’s dealt with much worse, I can tell you. He’s worried you won’t like his home.”
I gave her a puzzled look. “Why on earth would he think I wouldn’t like it?”
“He’s worried you’ll compare it to Drake’s homes and find it lacking . . . find him lacking.”
“Oh, for the love of the twelve gods. I’ve told him before I don’t care about that. I know he doesn’t have a lot of money like Drake.