“It’s not a trap,” Ivan said, trying to remain stoic, but Anders could tell whatever he saw shook him to the core.

Anders stepped closer and peered into the shadows where Ivan was gawking. He could see a large ominous shape, somehow darker than the blackness of the forest, slumped in a pile on the ground. Taking longer than Ivan, Anders slowly recognized what it was. His heart sank and he called to Zahara.

It’s safe to approach, but you should prepare yourself mentally.

What is wrong? Zahara asked, sensing his sorrow.

You’ll see when you get here, he thought as he and Ivan approached the dark mass.

Anders walked slowly alongside Ivan, approaching the wilted body of a dead dragon. The dragon was much larger than Zahara, indicating the creature was more advanced in age. Lying on the ground next to the dragon was its rider, who also seemed to be lifeless. There was no blood on the ground as he’d seen in his dream or back at the initial point of attack that they found in the crater. Anders thought that this dragon and rider pair couldn’t be the ones from the crater or his dream. That meant the other was still out there and most likely wounded, or he or she, too, was dead. Given the lack of blood at the scene, Anders speculated that Merglan had killed them using some kind of spell or curse. He and Ivan came to a halt just short of the bodies, staring at the gruesome scene.

The dead dragon’s body lay mangled and contorted in a terrible way. Zahara shielded her emotions from Anders when she came to stand at their side.

After sniffing the ground and air around the lifeless body, she once again opened the line of communication between them, I didn’t know them very well, only from our short venture from Cedarbridge to where Merglan attacked them.

I’m sorry, Zahara. It’s not what we were hoping to find, Anders said, trying to bring both of them some comfort. “What do we do now?” he asked Ivan. “Should we bury them?” As the question left his mouth, he regretted asking it when he thought about how long it would take to dig a grave for the enormous dragon, and, to add to the ill-thought-out question, they didn’t have a shovel.

“We should burn them,” Ivan said shortly. “When a dragon dies, you shouldn’t bury it. Burning them transfers their magic back into the form that flows within the earth. Once their energy is restored to the natural force of the earth, they’ll be allowed to rest in peace. We should clear out the trees around the body, however. We don’t want to set the entire forest ablaze.”

“Won’t it take too much time to clear out all of these trees?” Anders asked looking around at the thick stand of pines surrounding them. “We don’t have any tools with us other than our weapons. I don’t know how long it would take me to fell a tree with my sword.”

“Zahara can knock them over for us,” Ivan said. “Can’t you?” he asked.

Zahara took the opportunity as a chance to honor a fallen member of her race. Of course, I can, she said, positioning herself between a nearby tree and the body of the dragon. She pushed hard against the base of the tall tree with her shoulder. Anders watched as her talons dug deep into the soil as she heaved against the tree, pushing it to the ground with a crash.

As she continued to plow over the remaining trees near the dead dragon, Anders and Ivan carried the rider’s lifeless body over and laid him next to the dragon. His neck was broken and his head had twisted around in an unnatural position.

“Who were they?” Anders asked Ivan when they lay the elf next to his dragon.

“The elf was a young rider named Keanu. He was a hundred and eight years old, which is fairly young for an elf. He wasn’t a rider during The War of Magicians though, so I didn’t train with him. He had since bonded with this dragon. I’m not sure the dragon and I have ever met before, but I was an acquaintance of Keanu. It’s evident to me that he wasn’t ready to engage in battle with Merglan. They needed more training,” Ivan said.

As Zahara finished taking down the last of the trees surrounding the two bodies, Nadir caught up to them. Anders noticed that he was breathing heavily, apparently beginning to fatigue from running through the rugged mountains. His face scrunched with remorse when he joined them. A tear rolled down his cheek as he knelt next to his fallen kin. He spoke in his native tongue as he ran his hands over Keanu’s face. Before he rose to his feet, he removed the sword and belt from Keanu’s body. With his head held low, he walked over to Anders and handed him the blade, “Take this in his honor.”

Anders held out his hand and took the blade, but before he accepted the transfer, he asked Nadir, “Are you sure?”

Nadir nodded, “This is what Keanu would have wanted, for Lazuran to go to another rider.”

Anders stood, eyes wide and mouth slacked in awe. He’d never been given anything from someone who’d passed on before, especially not a bonded rider’s sword. Nadir placed the sheathed sword into his hand. Before taking the generous gift, Anders glanced to Ivan for approval, who nodded, making it clear that he was to accept the gift.

Anders examined the ornate craftsmanship of the stunning blade. Starting at the hilt, Anders eyed the dark wooden grip. Its handle arched slightly providing the sword with a comfortable two-handed hilt. Several sapphire crystals had been embedded into the handle, the crystal in the pommel atop the grip being the largest by three times. The huge blue crystal would keep his hands from sliding off the grip in battle. As he wrapped his hand around the grip, he noted how little the crystals protruded into the flat of his hand. If he had not seen them first, Anders wouldn’t have known they were there at all by the feel of the hilt.

Slowly he exposed the first several inches of Lazuran. The thinly crafted steel reflected what little light shone from the starry sky that night. He could make out Lazuran’s elven name etched into the blade near the shortened guard. Anders paused before revealing more of the curved blade, rolling it slightly and watching the light glint off the blade’s steel. With a final display of grandeur, Anders withdrew the elven sword from its scabbard. The steel rang as it came cleanly out of the leather sheath. For an instant, Anders felt the blade come to life. It sounded as though it was speaking to him. He nearly dropped it, but an unexpected surge of energy passed from the blade directly into his arm. He thought he saw a blueish hue emerge from the sapphire crystal in the pommel, but when it startled him, the hue vanished as suddenly as it had first shone.

Shaking off the unexpected sensation and chalking it up to the excitement of holding such a spectacular blade, Anders hefted it, letting the weight of it register with his grip. He thought a sword of such greatness would be heavier. To his surprise, Lazuran was light in his arm, lighter than his dagger that was less than a third the size of the elven blade.

Anders was about to test the sword’s balance during a set of swings the Rolloan warriors had taught him when Zahara let them know she’d finished clearing the area of trees and was ready for the fire.

“How should we start the fire?” Anders asked. He’d never had to burn the bodies of the dead before. The few funerals he’d been to in Grandwood were burials.

“Can you do it?” Ivan asked Zahara.

Zahara shifted uncomfortably, her weight moving from side to side, I haven’t been able to produce a steady stream of fire on my own yet. My mother had just started teaching me when we were separated.

“That’s okay,” Ivan said. “If you can initiate the flame, Anders and I can keep it going.”

“We can?” Anders asked.

“I’ll show you how,” Ivan said rolling up his sleeves and preparing for the spell necessary to expand a flame.

Anders nodded. “Ready?” he asked Zahara. She gave him a look that told him she was nervous to begin. Groaning lightly, she pointed her snout toward the bodies, opening her massive jaws. For a moment nothing happened, then a thin spray of flame shot out of her mouth. It lightly spread over the bodies of the dead dragon and elf. It was enough of a spark to catch the elf’s clothing and the duff on the forest floor beneath the dragon. Ivan showed Anders how to channel his energy into the flames. As he followed suit, the smoldering and smoking turned into small flames. Anders focused his energy and reenacted Ivan’s spell. With the two of them working to spread the flames, the fire quickly consumed the dead bodies. After the fire had caught sufficiently, they stood in silence and watched the dragon and rider turn to ash.

Chapter 21

Natalia

No one spoke as they watched the elf and dragon return to the elements through the flickering flames. Anders wasn’t sure what to look for when the spirits of the two beings passed back into the energy force flowing within the very fabric of the forest around them. He stood in silence, slightly confused but reserved and respectful. The sword Nadir had passed on to him hung from the belt threaded through the scabbard and cinched tightly around his waist. There wasn’t anywhere to place it while he rode on Zahara, so he decided to wear the belt, strapping the sword opposite the one he was already wearing.

When he placed the sword on the belt, he felt different somehow, more experienced or knowledgeable. It could have been his reaction to receiving the gift of such a fine blade from a rider he hardly knew and was now watching the rider’s cremation process. The sensation he felt could have been his imagination, but he thought he could feel something slightly different.

“We need to find the other rider,” Ivan said suddenly. “What exactly did you see in your vision?” he asked, turning away from the flames and addressing Anders.

Ivan’s expression was severe and Anders didn’t dilly-dally with his response. Closing his eyes in an attempt to better recall precisely what happened during his dream, he said, “I was standing in darkness. The ground was dirt without grass. I heard the cries of a woman, faint at first, but as I ran closer, her cries became clearer. She was calling for help. When I found her, she was pinned under her dragon, lying in a pool of its blood. I couldn’t see her face because her hair covered it, but I do remember that I found them at the base of a large oak tree.” Anders opened his eyes. Ivan, Nadir and Zahara were all staring at him with jaws open as though he’d done something unexpected. He raised his eyebrow and asked them, “What?”

How did you do that? Zahara asked.

Do what? Speak? He replied growing increasingly more confused by their almost frightened looks.

You spoke in a strange tongue and the vision you were describing came to life in front of you in a blue expression of lights.

What do you mean? I closed my eyes and just told you what happened in my vision, in the tongue I am using now.

“Anders,” Ivan interrupted their telepathic conversation. “Do you realize what you’ve said?”

Shaking his head, Anders replied, “Zahara just told me I was speaking in a different language and some blue lights showed you all the images I was describing?” As he said the words, he still didn’t quite believe that he’d spoken any language other than Landish, the only language he spoke.

“You spoke in an ancient dialect, one that has not been used in hundreds of years. There’s been only one individual I know of who could speak it and that person died long ago. I can’t tell you that I’m fluent, but I’ve heard enough of it to know what it is. As for the blue lights,” he paused, narrowing his eyes. “I can’t say I’ve ever seen anyone use them for depiction in such detail.” Relaxing his gaze on Anders, he said, “Let’s find our missing rider. If Anders’ vision is correct, then the dragon may not recover, but the rider could still be alive.”

Ivan started for Zahara, while Anders shook his head trying to make sense of what had just happened. As he placed his hand on Zahara, finding a scale to grip before hoisting himself onto her back, he heard a whisper.

Turning to Nadir, he asked, “What was that?”

Nadir furrowed his brow and answered, “I didn’t say anything.”

Anders turned back to Zahara and hesitated, straining his ears for the whisper he thought he’d heard.

“Come on. We haven’t time to lose,” Ivan called to Anders whose leg was halfway bent about to step up onto Zahara’s thick leg.

He finished his ascent to the middle of her back between her shoulder blades and sat down. As soon as Anders’ rear hit her scales, she was off, jumping up through the gap she’d created in the trees, flapping her mighty wings to quickly carry them over the mountains once more. Nadir continued his pursuit from below as they continued their search for the missing rider.