Dragon Empress

PROLOGUE

Third Age, Year 738

Shivnath paced the edge of eternity, waiting.

Ages passed before she sensed something. A spark. A pulse. A single magicthread wriggling into existence from nothing. Secluded in the depths of Argos Moor, she concentrated on the energy signature of the thread, so beloved and feared.

Necrovar’s final enchantment would soon come to fruition.

Shivnath watched as more threads popped into existence. Pairs of matter and anti-matter appeared and annihilated one another. The two essential parts of Valemagic existed in balance and bloodshed: spontaneous creation and immediate destruction. An invisible battle of cosmic scale.

Occasionally, a particle would escape the deadly kiss of its bonded partner. A molecule of dark matter would break free, and Necrovar’s enchantment would seize it. Threads were drawn from the outer reaches of the universe to converge on Selaras, to fulfill the Shadow’s spell.

“

Here

,” Shivnath whispered, focusing the energy.

Necromagical threads twisted into a familiar shape. Over the course of decades, a skeleton came into being. White scales grew from sinewy flesh to coat the small body. Wings sprouted, horns bloomed, and a face she hadn’t seen in a thousand years slowly knitted itself together.

“

Valerion. My drackling.

”

Valerion was the only creature Shivnath loved unconditionally. Even if she hadn’t been bonded, she knew she would have loved her son.

But bonded she was. It was her curse.

“

You will not be safe with me

,” she told the forming body. She knew Valerion could not stay in her domain, but she could keep him close. The young Chardon could take care of him.

“Curse the wretched demon,” Shivnath hissed. If Arisse hadn’t meddled, Valerion would never have joined the war. He wouldn’t have sold half of his soul to Necrovar.

In that moment, Shivnath longed to destroy Arisse. Perhaps that was a result of her bond to Helkryvt—he’d poured too much jealousy and hatred into her—but she couldn’t destroy the Chardons without destroying the essence of Pure Changemagic. And if she destroyed Changemagic, she would doom the world.

For Valerion’s sake, she would swallow her pride and work with her brethren guardians.

<Arisse.> She reached out to the nebulous, ever-changing mind of the young goddess. <I have news. Valerion has returned.>

A hurricane swirled within Arisse—a tempest of disbelief tinged with desperate hope. <It shouldn’t be possible. Where is he? Why did you sense him when I could not?>

Shivnath’s lip lifted in a sneer. She had kept Valerion’s identity secret from her brethren deities, pulling strings so subtly that no one sensed her touch. <I know everything.>

<It is a miracle,> thought Arisse, brimming with an incomprehensible mix of emotion.

<The world owes Valerion a debt.> Shivnath, by contrast, kept her mindvoice cold and her thoughts detached. She couldn’t risk any emotional overspill. <Will you accept the task of protecting him? He is crippled without his magic.>

<It would be my honor, but I am a god. And he is . . . I do not know what he is. There is no safe place for us to be together. The binding laws—>

<Let me worry about the binding laws.> Shivnath severed her mental connection to the Chardon and did some calculations. She couldn’t bear the idea of sending her son away. She couldn’t lose him again.

There was only one option. She gritted her fangs and narrowed her eyes.

<Kraken.> She extended a tendril of thought to the host of Pure Watermagic. After the world-changing end of the Great War, storms and earthquakes had reshaped the planet as nature struggled to find balance. Her mountains, which had once bordered a wasteland, now plunged into the sea—and the sea belonged to Kraken. He was Water itself.

<It has been an age since last I heard

that

voice,> came the deep, rippling reply. <To what do I owe this honor? Why does the great and powerful Shivnath wish to speak with me?>

Shivnath bristled at his unctuous tone. <I need a favor.>

<I don’t do favors, but I’m always willing to bargain. You scratch the barnacles off my back, I scratch some off of yours.>

Instinctive fury clawed at Shivnath. The emotional response had been ingrained in her during her time with Helkryvt, who’d never been able to control his temper

<Agreed,> she thought, stamping down on her destructive impulses. She would have to barter with Kraken, anyway. If she desired something from him, she’d have to offer something to balance the exchange.

<Then we are in business. How may I be of service, O Mighty One?>

His mindvoice was oily as octopus ink, utterly flippant. Shivnath squeezed the hot coals of anger in her chest, squeezed them until they cooled to cruel determination.

<I am doing some renovations on the Smarlands,> she informed him. <I would like a small piece of your domain.>

So it was that Shivnath and Kraken struck their bargain. Kraken, greedy and shortsighted fiend that he was, desired nothing more than food. Shivnath had no love for the Allentrian humans—they were at fault, in part, for Valerion’s demise—so she snaked her way through several loopholes and promised Kraken he could feed on her mortals whenever they ventured into his domain.

In return, the miserable mollusk allowed Shivnath to claim a portion of his domain as her own. Using earthmagic, she created a haven for Valerion by raising land out of the sea. She took stone and made it fertile; she took saltwater and made it fresh; she put her heart and soul into it, as much as she could when her heart was broken and her soul was poisoned.

<I have a gift for you,> Shivnath told Arisse when her masterpiece was complete. <I created a space between domains where you and Valerion may live.>

It took Arisse a while to respond. <You did this in accordance with the binding laws?>

<I haven’t been destroyed by Valemagic, have I?> Shivnath retorted with a snap.

That quelled Arisse’s interrogation. She was too desperate to reunite with Valerion to question her good fortune.

Shivnath glanced at the corner of her cave. The necromagical enchantment was nearly complete. Valerion wasn’t conscious yet, and she wished more than anything that she could let him stay.

But she couldn’t jeopardize his safety. The truth about him—both of them—was too dangerous. So she brought his body to the haven she’d created, settling him gently in verdant, windswept grass. Beneath his closed lids, his eyes fluttered.

<Here he is.> Shivnath sent a mental picture of his location to Arisse, retreating to watch from the safety of her mountains. <This land is called

Aeria

. It means

perfect

in the draconic tongue.>

No sooner had Shivnath sent the information than Arisse appeared beside Valerion. Another creature stood at her side, small and wobbly and hideously deformed.

Shivnath, who presided over the Aerian valley on a cliff, bared her fangs. <What is that?>

Arisse whirled through a series of dizzying changes. The tiny goblin muddled through several changes as well, though none of the forms it took were recognizable.

<You have kept secrets from the world.> Arisse looked up from her place on the emerald plain and locked eyes with Shivnath. <I have kept a few of my own.>

Something sinister slithered through Shivnath, seeping from the hollow place in her chest where Helkryvt’s presence had once been. This time, she did nothing to fight the darkness searing her veins and hazing her vision.

She dug into Arisse’s mind, traced threads of memory, tore through the fabric of the past to find the truth.

“A

child

?” Shivnath’s voice was thunder, and her wrath was a storm. It manifested in clouds that filled the sky, blocking the midday sun, turning the world dark.

Arisse changed forms again, becoming a sleek, sky-blue dragon—the ultimate insult. “I know it is in violation of the binding laws to interact with mortals, but Valerion was not a mortal. If he had been, I couldn’t have meddled with him. The binding laws allowed me to continue my dalliance—”

“This is hardly a dalliance.” Shivnath’s magic was in her mental grasp. Threads hovered around her, each one a deadly spear pointed at the treacherous Chardon.

“It is not,” Arisse agreed, shrinking to a small form. A human form. The same body she’d worn when she had defied law and reason and followed Valerion into the Great War. “I loved Valerion. I never stopped loving him. But he was not mortal then, nor is he now. And our child is not a mortal—she is a hybrid.”

Shivnath had to admire Arisse for the sheer gall of it. It took a master to know a master; Arisse had weaseled her way through loopholes, hoodwinking the gods of Selaras better than anyone ever had.

Except for Shivnath herself, of course.

She yearned to put the Chardon in her place . . . but then Valerion stirred. Arisse turned her back on Shivnath and ran to his side. And Shivnath, who knew she could not destroy Arisse or her halfbreed demonspawn, withdrew. An ache built in her chest as she watched her son awaken.

“Arisse?” he whispered.

“Yes, my darling soul-star. I’m here.”

Shivnath cringed away from the words as if they were whips lashing her scales. Valerion shouldn’t have any memories of his past, yet he’d remembered Arisse.

He had forgotten Shivnath when he’d done nothing more than change the shape of his body; how was it that he’d been resurrected from scrap molecules of necromagic, yet he knew the contemptible goddess the moment he took his first breath?

Shivnath retreated to the depths of Argos Moor in disgrace while Valerion met his daughter. Arisse summoned his old sword from where she’d squirreled it away. The fact that the Chardon had claimed it still made Shivnath’s blood boil.

One day

, Shivnath vowed,

I will set everything righ

t.

Shivnath watched over the mismatched family for the next thousand years. They were happy in Aeria, and the blade of her resentment dulled.

But her semblance of peace was not to last.

Valerion’s resurrection enchantment began to fray at the seams. As he decayed, the molecules of his body emitted necromagical radiation. The process was slow at first, almost unnoticeable, but it accelerated. Darkness oozed out of Valerion into his surroundings, poisoning his perfect haven.

<I am sending my daughter away from Aeria,> Arisse told Shivnath one morning. <If she remains, the radiation will infect her. She will cross your mountains and seek a life with the mortals.>

Shivnath did not deign to reply. She didn’t care what the child or Arisse did; she cared only for Valerion.

But because Valerion loved his child, Shivnath vowed to protect her.

So it was that Shivnath kept one eye on the hybrid, who assumed human form and settled in the Smarlands, and the other eye on Aeria. She watched, numb and disdainful, as Arisse failed time and again to heal Valerion’s terrible curse.

It was no good. If there

had

been a magical cure, Shivnath would have woven it herself. Nothing could undo what had been done.

Unless . . .

Unless it was undone by the hand of its original wielder

. She seized on the dangerous thought. Her mind churned into motion, concocting schemes and calculating risks.

But Helkryvt was imprisoned. Nothing could stitch the Etherworld together with Selaras. That enchantment had been fueled by the pure energy of Valerion’s body and soul, powered by all the gods of the world, tethered and locked.

Locked it must remain. Shivnath knew this. It would jeopardize the balance. She couldn’t risk it.

But bubbling up from the darkest depths of her soul came a thought, a truth, a voice that sounded very much like Helkryvt’s:

I don’t care. I sacrificed everything for this ungrateful, wicked world, and what do I have to show for it?

She made her choice. Tracing the threads of her bond through the rolling, endless loop of spacetime, she walked between universes, searching.

<

Helkryvt

.> The word slipped from her mind and was forged into a thought—a thought that reached her bondmate on the other side of eternity.

<

Shivnath

,> came the faint reply, not so much reaching her brain as filtering into her soul. <

My beloved betrayer.

She closed her eyes. She had a lot of explaining to do. The Etherworld had been her idea. The gods could not have destroyed Necrovar, after all, without destroying the balance.

<

I suspected it was only a matter of time before you came crawling back to me,

he continued. <

Did you think you could be rid of me so easily?

<

I didn’t want to be rid of you.

That was as close to an apology as she would ever come.

<

You had a funny way of showing it.

<

I never wanted you gone, but you were on a dangerous path, one I could not let you follow.

<

I sought to reclaim my missing half.

The venom in his mindvoice seared the inside of Shivnath’s skull. <

Everything I did, I did for you, Dragon. We could have ruled side by side, you and I—but you

ruined EVERYTHING!>

The accusation shredded what little was left of Shivnath’s heart.

<

I did what was best for Selaras,

she replied at length, in a mindvoice aloof and stoic. She would not let him see her turmoil.

<

You did what was best for you

,> he retorted. <

Your duty to the balance has never been as important to you as furthering your selfish schemes. I know you wanted me gone because of Valerion.

<

It is Valerion I wish to discuss

,> she admitted.

<

I see. You transcended the quantum-magical laws of nature not to speak to me, but to plead on his behalf. I am, as always, second best.>

<Your power can save him from unraveling

.>

<

He will never unravel. I gave him the gift of life after death in his own, true form. I did it to make you happy. But your bastard dragon-child played a foul trick, and because I do not have his full soul, the enchantment is snarled. As a result, he is unable to die.

<

Unable to die, perhaps,

thought Shivnath, her withered heart silently weeping, <

but he is suffering

.>

<

As he should,

the Darkness spat. <

A punishment fitting of his crime.

<

Take that back.

<

Or what? There is nothing more you can do to me, Dragon. You are a universe away. Even if you weren’t, I would never help you.

In that other universe, swathed in the shadows of her cave, Shivnath hung her head. <

I know I’ve hurt you, but I can fix my mistake.

There was a pause that lasted an age.

<

How?

How, indeed? Caught between her love for two creatures who hated each other, she’d made a choice that had effectively doomed all three of them.

But she was

Shivnath

, the master of manipulation. She knew the binding laws inside and out—and she knew how best to break them.

<

I will set you free.

She sensed the equivalent of a mental scoff from him. <

Your lies and tricks are useless now.

<

It isn’t a lie. I will bring you home. You can return the half of Valerion’s soul that you stole—

<

He gave it to me willingly, Dragon. Make no mistake of that.

<

Do you want to come back to me, or not?

she snapped. <

Do you want to be free?

<

I will never be free until I am whole. But I thank you for bridging the gap between our worlds; you’ve created a handy little rift in the tapestry of the threads that bind me. Maybe I won’t need your help returning to Selaras.

<

You’ll need me once you’re back,

she countered.

<

We’ll see about that. I have always preferred creation, but you . . . you I might destroy.

<

We don’t have to fight,

Shivnath told him softly.

<

I don’t see that we have any choice.

“There is always a choice,” said Shivnath, telepathically and aloud. She narrowed her eyes and steeled her heart. “I will find the answer. When I do, I will put everything right.”