Adorations and worship to the angels who commented last time round. Thanks to:
Debbi, Bonebaby, Anaita, Arc-en-Ciel, Hidden Jewel, Rowan, Yume, Adelaide E, Persephone, Nabby, Jangles, Dream Wind, Cacat-angel, Daugain, Phire Phoenix, Shelli, Frak of the week, Megami-Sama, Girltype, Dianna, The Mistress of Frost, Goddess, GoddessNMB1, Yodel, Doughnuts-mmm, Belladonna, Oli, Sitara, Charmaine, LinnetJo, Ceallaigh, Stacy, Sharmeen and the wonderful Pyrope,
Lyrics are Finch's Awake, (Album: What It Is To Burn). Much love,
Ki
Chimera Part Thirty Five
Silence broken with words unspoken
Now she's on her knees.
Ryar ap Sangager had always had the voice of a nightingale: it was what Bhari remembered most about her. The richness and poignancy of it throbbed in all those songs that had sounded out the swansong of the old world.
There was no such beauty in the scream that was torn from her. Her thin hands were clamped to her face as if Ryar was trying to block out the sight of this world, this life, this awakening.
Bhari glanced over at Hael and saw the strangest thing. He was smiling, as if that sound stirred his soul like music.
That smile. In that instant, the scene before Bhari flickered and blurred. She stood in her blazing past again, a goddess, brazen and fearsome.
Back to the moment when she, spying on his homeland, had first met Hael. Kheo had just been crowned then, and after devouring her own homeland, and conquering Fireblade's, the new king sought to add to his triumphs.
She had found herself a quiet cave deep in the tropical, woody land to hide the information she garnered, a stash full of maps and snippets of rumour that messengers came to collect every day. Close enough from the main city to sneak in and out; far enough for the messengers' comings and going to be unnoticeable.
It had been just another evening in a long trail; she had waved away the nervous courier with a bundle of papers, and collected Kheo's latest list of suggestions for stirring the murky political waters of the forest people. Bhari had thought herself alone, and settled herself for a night of deciphering Kheo's awful writing.
She never even saw him, until he spoke.
"Bhari."
She spun to find a young man sat on the ground cross-legged, quite calm. At once, she knew he was a Drax; his power had tugged at hers like lodestone, drawing her attention to the merry sparkle in his eyes.
"That is what they call you, isn't it?" The boy had deliberately looked her up and down, then leaned back on his hands. "The Deceiver. The Destroyer. Kheo's kitten."
She had been more proud then. A little twist of her powers had called the earth beneath him. Plants leapt to snare his hands with unnatural toughness, creepers twining about his throat. The mud rose to cover his feet, and hardened into granite.
Held utterly still, the knowing slant of his smile had only widened.
"No one's kitten, boy." Just to show him which of them was free, she had stretched-
She had tried to stretch, and found the air about her immovable as marble. Those green eyes laughed at her, but without malice. A delighted mischief lit them, an exuberance lost to Kheo, cruel in Fireblade.
"An Air Drax," she said smoothly, her face immobile. "You Westerners haven't had a Drax born in years."
His smile vanished, replaced by wariness. "What if I am?"
"There are better places for you than cowering under straggling leaves." An odd excitement pattered in her heart. Another Drax; to make them five, and whole.
"If you think I'm leaving here, you're much mistaken. You won't make me like Ryar ap Sangager."
"Ryar made herself that way."
"Perhaps." The boy had a quirky face; unusual in an age where the preferred form was symmetrical, startling perfection. Yet she found allure in the dimple that popped up in his left cheek, and the smattering of freckles on his nose. "But I have to wonder, Bhari, what you're doing in my homeland. I've heard no word of a diplomatic visit."
"And the cloudforest leader whispers his every plan in your ears, does he?" she said scornfully.
"As a matter of fact, he does. He is my brother, after all."
His brother? But that would make him...
"Hael," he confirmed. "I see you've heard of me."
Heard of him? There was no one within a thousand leagues who had not heard of this unusual being who would keep no slaves. Rumour said he had been the mysterious dragon to gift the humans some of his blood, and so transform them into the mortals called witches.
And he was no boy. He was twice her age, maybe more. Hael had walked the earth with the first of their kind. Only his brother, and Fireblade's mother were older.
"You have been mentioned in passing," she had acknowledged coolly, flexing her power against the shield of air holding her inert. "Though no one mentioned you were a Drax."
The bonds about her vanished. Unprepared, she had fallen forward onto the ground, grazing her knees.
"No one knows." He met her shocked eyes with equanimity. "You're the only one who has ever sensed it. You're the only one I've ever been able to feel this way."
"Not even your brother?" Casual. Air. The one they were missing. He would fill the gap she felt hollow at the base of her ribcage when they combined their powers. The only Five Drax living, and they complemented each other perfectly. It could not be coincidence. "Not even your mate?"
"I have no mate," he said cheerfully. "Thick head and fickle heart, I'm afraid. As for my brother..." He exhaled slowly, the look on his face startlingly young. "I have heard his views on Drax too often. Born in a dark age, and not fit to live in a burning one. Monstrous misfits. Throwbacks. No, no one knows."
"That's a dangerous game to play," she had said.
Hael only shrugged. "Maybe."
They fell silent, and she had only looked at him. It seemed there was a breach in her heart that he filled perfectly; he was the caress of breezes on a hot day, the swirling of feathers on air, the draught in her lungs.
Even on that first day, his charm had crept into her heart with the stealth of a skilled thief, and prised her open to the creep and assault of his very self.
"I should report you," he mused aloud, breaking that tranquillity. "My brother would be most interested to find you in our home. Kheo has eaten up the deserts, and the mountains – would he devour us too?"
"Ally with you." Dancing carefully about the point. Ally was a safe word. "Kheo merely wishes to confer. But he feared an embassy would be taken for..."
"Spies?" He raised dark brows, and the mischief arched in his eyes. "And how am I supposed to take the spy?"
"Any way you want." Her voice was carefully cool; it was intended as a flippant reply, nothing more.
But he stood then, every movement made as if he had all the time in the world to savour. Yet it was the move of a predator, idling over some interesting plaything. Her – a plaything!
He was in front of her suddenly; so fast that she had neither seen nor felt him move. His power roared before her – he had been holding back, all that time, hiding his true capability from her – and it was more than ever her own would be. It ripped about her senses like a hurricane, twisting and tearing.
His jade eyes were still laughing, still young as if the years were only a cloak he wore as he wished.
And then Bhari knew she could quite easily be his plaything, if he willed it so. There would be no choice in the matter.
She waited, a trembling begun deep inside her. All her life, she had been untouchable, her power the bedrock beneath her. Until now. But this wasn't fear. It was...
Anticipation.
"How exciting," he had murmured, and lifted a hand to stroke her cheek. The look in his eyes, she knew too well; the deep, disquieting hunger of desire. "You aren't at all what I expected."
"No?" She was the seductress then, tilting that head just a fraction to let him see the tantalizing line of her collarbones, moving her body so the light caught along the line of it to paint her in curving gold. "Do tell."
"Now that is what I expected," he said and drew back, his power fading about her.
Bhari was baffled. She had seen that craving, felt the thrill of mutual attraction.
Still there.
"It would be easy to let you tempt me, Bhari," he said very softly, with the barest huskiness on her name. "I remember all too well when you had another name, and men fell like rain at your feet. I only saw you once – but you haunted my dreams with that smile, and the way you shone in a barren land. But I remember too why they called you Deceiver, and why they named you Destroyer. I think I will resist temptation, and keep my homeland from your clutches."
"Hael..." She had begun, hardly believing the change of atmosphere. She had had him, right there...
"Find your way to my brother by evenfall," he advised. "Or he will be finding his way to you with an army."
And in the end, after that extraordinary first meeting, she had. She had bargained for an alliance, and bargained for Hael to walk beside her in the treacherous years to come. At the time, she had dreamed of how it would be among the five of them – how wonderful it would be, how at last she would find the gaps within her soul filled and fitted.
Childish dreams, yet even in the worst of the war, she had clung to them reverently and wished them real.
"Get a grip on yourself, or I may get one on your throat."
The words were lazy, wry and dropped like claws tapping on her skin. One by one, the threat, the humour sank in and inched her from that dead past into this living present.
Ryars Valley, where they were only fables.
His hands were hard on her arm, the nails digging deep enough to draw blood. She was caressed by his silky voice, carried on the chilly air.
And in his gushing green stare, there was that easy, impish laughter, and it lit her with a warmth that was new, and startling . Only now did she realise how cold she had been.
It was truly Hael.
Only now did she realise that she had loved him.
"On my throat?" Bhari arched her eyebrows, and let the barest hints of passion lace her voice. "That is not where you usually lay your hands."
His laugh rippled like smoke into the air, as he had always been smoke in her hands. "Is it not? How careless of me."
That humour, with the same light nip as his teeth on her neck, how she had missed it. It woke the pain too, recollections of those days fallen like leaves, crushed to dust when he was not there. When he was no longer hers. She only breathed in deep; he was here now, he was hers again and that was enough.
"Ryar..." The moan was Fireblade, and Bhari turned to see him sag to his knees. The fires were quenched, and Ryar's return had driven nails into his soul. Fireblade broken, and it only saddened her.
Once, it would have delighted her to see that self-styled fire god humbled. Rage had made her petty, and pain had made her cruel in the Burning Days, but those things were gone now. All that she had detested in the old world was gone, long flown on the wind.
All that she wanted was here.
He that she wanted with the heat in her hands and the wanton glide of her body and the turmoil of her soul. Hael, and the other two who knew every thought in her mind, every idea that skimmed her perception, however they had disagreed.
"Ryar," the fire Drax whispered again.
Fireblade crawled to her, on his hands and his knees like a beggar in the dust, and the look on his face was beyond what Bhari could stand to see. His soul was naked then, stripped of every disguise, every mask and lie that kept love hidden, and hatred veiled.
Willow-slender, Ryar stared, all star-shining skin except for the wondering eyes that watched only Fireblade. The fallen god, and the risen worshipper. She stared, and then she reached out a trembling hand.
Her fingertips brushed the tiger's hair. And she drew back her hand.
"You're real," she breathed. The words chimed like a prayer in the arching chapel of the sky. "I'm real."
Fireblade tilted his head up to her, captured her hand so tightly it had to have hurt. He shook before her.
"I'm alive." She snatched her hand back; it was trembling. Fear exploded in her eyes like wounds, draining into the night with terrible certainty. Her voice was a howl, ripping apart the air. "What have you done?"
She looked wildly from face to face, lily-pale.
"What have you done?"
X - X - X - X - X
He opened his eyes onto a frozen swirl of colours, and a headache worthy of a barrel of vodka. Jepar Jubatus lay as still as he could, swallowing back nausea. How hard had Blue hit him?
The smell of blood told him it was serious, as did the high buzzing in his ears. Lucky it hadn't been silver Blue had hit him with; he'd be dead now.
As it was, he felt pretty close. There was nothing to do but stare up at the ceiling in this strange chamber, and wait until he was healed enough to go and snap Blue Malefici's vicious spine.
The ceiling...
He knew the tunnels underneath Ryars Valley had been built by Fireblade, and that supposedly the dragon had lived here once, but he'd never believed.
Yet the etchings above him stood out stark and true. He saw now the truth of the legend.
It was hard to see how the mural had been made; paint would not have lasted through the years, and there was a curious glittering grittiness to it. But finally, his eyes made sense of the patterns; those were gemstones set and gleaming in their thousands – no, millions even.
It was divided into sections, rather like a story board. The first was clear; Fireblade with a hand resting casually upon the furred shoulder of the cheetah that lay at his feet. Like a ghostly reminder, he heard his sister's voice murmuring in his ears clearly as if she stood beside him.
"Whatever the stories say, the truth is that we began as slaves. In the dragon times, the world was only a bauble for them to bat at like a kitten playing. They were carefree, and powerful. The combination is always dangerous, and never more so in the three who tore the world apart."
The woman in the next panel he knew; Bhari had given Alisha her dragon powers and her face was unchanged. There was a coy tilt to her black eyes, and more grace than the stilted lines gave her. Fireblade stood there too, head held high. The one in the middle could only be Kheo, the crownless king, who chose to destroy what he ruled.
"There were two others, though the stories speak less of them. Hael is the great mystery; he is almost never mentioned, yet when he is, the chronicles are curiously neutral about him. Our own records speak of him as...kind. Yes, kind is the right word."
The next panel was clearly the midst of the war; bones and ashes lay heaped at the feet of the five who stood there, while lightning, pearly white, danced behind them. Bhari's face was a feral snarl, held back by the man next to her. If he was Hael, he appeared to be holding her back with one hand, while green swirls streaked from the other.
"Ryar, of course, we all know of. Leader of the rebels, who urged her people to stand and fight. Legend speaks of her as an avenging angel, fierce as the man she loved and lost. Legend is also entirely wrong. Most of the stories of Ryar and Fireblade were written long afterwards – apparently it was a taboo subject for many, many centuries. We, however, have an early version written by one of our ancestors. Ryar ap Sangager was a woman all thought cowed into submission, destroyed utterly by Fireblade's cruelty. To the last, she was afraid of him, yet to the last she defied him. In her own way, she is as mysterious as Hael."
Kheo blazed in diamonds and sapphires; cut only in blue and white, he seemed an alien being landed amongst them all, filled with power to the brim. Fireblade was to one side, clutching two tiny figures in his hands like dolls, though Jepar suspected they were witches, while at his feet lay a woman with turquoise tears on her face.
"The Five had a unique bond." Gatajri's voice echoed inside his mind, more mature now – a conversation from years later, when she had grown into the distant woman who had seemed less family and more a work colleague. "Ryar's betrayal snapped it. It was an odd thing, this combining of their powers. It created something almost like a soulmate link between them. Every piece of evidence I have found says it only occurred when they were together, and it allowed them to reach beyond the physical and the tangible. It allowed them to destroy the soulmate bonds that existed at that time, and to create new bonds between those who should never have been together."
In the last panel, Ryar stood alone, the sky black marble, hands raised in a gesture of defiance. Animals of every kind thronged her. A halo glimmered in tarnished gold about her.
"They came close to annihilating us all. One man's pride nearly broke us – and one woman's decision saved us. For his pride, we are lowest of the low in our own world – and for her decision, we accept it with grace. We are the oldest of all the Nightpeople, and we are the strongest. In the end, we proved strong."
He lay there long minutes while his bones creaked and healed, and at the edges of his returning senses, he felt a stirring in the world. A change.
He knew that swirl of energy; he had felt it before, with Alisha. And just the other night, when Chatoya took her powers. Dragons there, lots of dragons, Blue there...Toya there!
Regardless of his frail body, Jepar leapt to his feet, swaying as pain slammed his head like vicious nails. No, no, he didn't have time to be unconscious...blasted Blue...
His vision was greying out. Oh, this was not good.
With the last of his power, Jepar threw all his thoughts at the mind he still hoped was there. Toya's in trouble – dragons... Fireblade and Blue – stop them, Lisa, stop them!
With a leaden moan, he slumped inelegantly back to the floor, not to awaken until it was all long over.
X - X - X - X - X
Crack.
The side of his face was numb now from where she had hit him again and again. Sandrine held nothing back; each punch was a heavy slam, and it felt as though she was slowly knocking his wits away. Not that there had been many to start with; if he'd been a little less impulsive, he wouldn't be here. Damn it, damn him, damn them all
"Who were you talking to?" The cold, dead words made him ache deep inside.
He was so tired now – tired of the hurt, the regret, the rage.
"Who?" she demanded. Slap, and all Cougar Redfern wanted was to lay his head down, and close his eyes forever.
He'd thought all the rage in him would never burn out, that it was steady as the sun. Angry, and lonely, and lost. He could live with being lonely and lost because anger had kept him warm, but even that was seeping away from him.
Strong fingers gripped his chin, and smeared blood away from his face. He recalled times when they had been caring, the touch of someone more than a friend.
Sandrine was so close he could feel her humid breath, the only heat in this dank vault. "Was it that blond boy?"
"Does it matter?" he answered wearily.
Pain ripped through his side, and he screamed soundlessly. She had torn out the stakes that had held him pinioned, and saw-toothed sensations scraped at his body. Cougar hung, gasping for air that didn't seem to be there.
The scrape of metal on metal reached him dimly, a neat, tight click. Suddenly one arm was free, and before he could react at all, she had unlocked the other chains and he was in a curled, shaking heap on the floor, wrapping himself up around his wounds. He would have run if he'd been able, but his muscles felt like over-stretched elastic, and the stone floor seemed enough of a bed right now; he just had to shut his eyes-
She kicked him in the ribs.
"I don't think so – but then, I'm not the one calling the shots." Her hands pulling at him, dragging him up. She was much, much stronger than he had realised, wrenching him upright however hard his shoulders shrieked in protest. "Anybody else?"
And then she brushed her knuckles over his cheek. It was an old, fond gesture and it brought back so many of the moments he wanted to bury in his heart. This girl and her long, soft throat, the fairytales with their ever pleasant endings that had fascinated a fourteen year old who'd never really understood happiness until he saw it in her, and the one chaste kiss – his first – that they had shared.
But that girl was gone. All those old loyalties – mouldering bones in a shallow grave.
"No one," he said dully. His one final piece of defiance. "No one at all."
X - X - X - X - X
Another jugful of water – and the ice-cubes in it - crashed onto Lance's face and he promptly inhaled a good half-pint of bitingly cold liquid. His limbs felt dull, though his mind was racing.
"Shit, we're out of water," said a voice he knew as Lance struggled back into the waking world.
"Try this," someone else advised. "It was in the fridge. If that doesn't work, I can turn the toaster into a defibrillator..."
"Yeah. That'll be smart when he's covered with water." Vaje, he thought with a chime of recognition. "Oh, give me that. If he is having a laugh, he won't do it again."
Do what-
Two litres of pancake batter hit him, just as Lance got control of his motor functions.
Blind and spluttering, he sat bolt-upright to grab the throat of whoever was nearest. When he'd blinked away the mixture, he was holding a furious Ross, who was going an unsightly shade of red.
"I think he's feeling better," remarked Vaje, who had the sense to get out the way. Lance, oozing batter, took a moment to send a venomous glare his way before he let go of Ross. "Guess you weren't faking."
"Faking what, exactly? Being dead? I don't get my kicks that way."
"We all know how you get your damn kicks," muttered Vaje with that bloody irritating roll of his eyes. "Two at a time usually."
"Three's a crowd," he flicked back. "I like crowds. And if I'm right, we're going to head for a big, fanged crowd very soon, down at the lake."
Ross glanced over with bright, alert eyes, rubbing his neck. Bright and alert. Lance would normally have applied those words to a dead gloworm before Ross. "First news – you were right, Lance, Malefici does know the legend of the Drax. So do you know what's going on?"
"Let's see...four Drax. Fireblade – here, alive. Fire. Chatoya Irkil – somehow got hold of Earth. Ryar ap Sangager – Water, and newly resurrected. We've got trouble, kids."
Vaje was wearing his best slack-jawed yokel expression.
"That's three. What about...?" The shapeshifter had an expression on his face that said he could probably guess the answer, but it was just too awful to voice.
"Air. The last one. Malefici."
There was a thump as Vaje's forehead hit the table. "We're screwed," the coyote groaned. "Oh god, the one guy you don't want to have world-destroying supreme power, and it's just handed to him on a big platter like a pile of Ferrero Roche. Does anybody else feel an apocalypse coming on?"
"We can at least go out fighting," Lance announced. "If we can take out one of them..."
"Not so fast," said Ross, grinning. He looked so cute, Lance's sister would have been bouncing him on her knee.
"What can you find to grin about?" demanded Vaje.
"Power has a price."
It was the first teaching of Pursang. "We know that," Lance snapped. "And?"
"And the power that the Four summoned had a very high price. Very high. For them to use their powers alone – nothing. For them to combine their powers between two – again, nothing. But for four of them to meld their powers into one required...sacrifice."
"Sacrifice?" he echoed uselessly.
Ross's sweet smile flashed like a firework, but what lay in his eyes was cooler, and shrewd. "A sacrifice for each of them. Four bodies – preferably witches, as the power in their blood acted as a catalyst."
Ryar had sacrificed people? The thought whirled past in Lance's mind, painted in bleak horror, but he pushed it aside. Worry about that later.
"Did it take long?"
"The old scrolls say a short time. But you know how victims can be. They just scream and kick and bite, and won't go to a nice, quiet death."
"Oh, absolutely. How inconvenient." Vaje was leaning away from Ross. "You'd think they'd be queuing up, wouldn't you?"
"That was sarcasm, wasn't it?" The short vampire's mouth had taken on a decidedly petulant glance. "You know, Vaje, I've always thought your heart really wasn't into the job. You're so...merciful."
"Anyway," cut in Lance with what he hoped was a commanding stare, before this got into another petty, murderous discussion that ended up with blood all over the floor. "What you're saying is that there's time."
"There's time," confirmed Ross. "You bring weapons?"
"Not for this," Vaje said. "Just a few bits."
"We'll have to improvise," declared Lance. He gestured to the house. "We're good at that."
"I call the electric drill," was Ross's contribution as the short vampire positively bounded out of the room.
Vaje slanted an amused look at the Australian, and he was glad to see the despair had faded from his eyes. The way the coyote cracked his knuckles meant business. Just like the good times. "You sure you want him sober all the time?"
"And the cleaver..." The vampire's voice drifted down from the hallway.
He sighed. Every silver lining had a cloud. "I can live with it. And if we're lucky, we'll be living with it after tonight."
There was time. Time to kill.
No more feeling so useless,
Can I beg for one more, she said
Taking with arms wide open, longing for sleep again
But now I'm awake