The Fire King (9 page)

“I cannot explain that,” she replied, in a voice hushed and wary. “Perhaps Serena called them away. Or they escaped.”

“Serena.” Karr shot her a quick look. “Is that the shape-shifter’s name?”

Soria ignored him, staring at the door, her empty sleeve twisted in her hand. Karr padded forward on light feet, testing the air. He smelled nothing, heard no one breathing, heard no creak of clothing or weapons. He nudged open the door. No one attacked.

Karr stepped outside, suffering a brief moment of utter, devastating loss. He could not explain it. He had spent most of life beneath the open sky, but when his toes dug into the dirt, a shock riddled his bones, and when he craned his neck to stare at a clear sky full of stars, his heart ached so fiercely he forgot to breathe.

You were dead, and now you are alive,
he told himself, pressing his fist over his heart.
This is the first time you have seen stars. It is your first time breathing in the night without the stink of stone and sweat.

He heard distant voices: women speaking, children laughing, men breaking into loud shouts that quieted instantly. Music thrummed, peculiar and shrill, interspersed with crashing notes and tumbling squeals that somehow carried a melody. He had never heard such songs.

Soria joined him, turning in a slow circle. He followed her gaze, and made out the lines of low, slanted roofs and walls that surrounded them on all four sides except for a narrow gate just opposite them.

“This is an old village,” she murmured, moving quickly to the gate. “Out of the way. A foreign presence inspires gossip but little else. If they think the government is involved, most mind their own business, too afraid to get involved.”

“It is a common story,” Karr replied, following her as she slipped past the gate. There were still no guards, but he smelled men and his eyes adjusted quickly to the darkness, allowing him to see fresh footprints in the dirt.

“Allowed to escape,” Karr murmured, almost to himself. “Granted the ability to run—all the better for a good long hunt.” He glanced at Soria, wondering what mysterious truths lingered behind her unflinching dark eyes. “It has happened to others of my kind but never me. I have always escaped before it came to that. Escaped, and killed my captors so that no one might follow.”

“You still can,” she said. “You have made no secret that you consider me one of them.”

Karr tested the air, his shoulder blades itching with the promise of wings. “You have not tried to hide your allegiance. And yet you help me. You are a human who defies a shape-shifter. You defy
me.
You speak my language.”

“Ah,” she said. “So as long as I pique your interest, you will keep me alive.”

He gave her a disdainful look. “I am not so fickle with lives. You will keep yours until I decide you have betrayed me.”

“No, not fickle at all,” she replied dryly, and walked away from him up a narrow street crowded with shadows and high dirt walls.

He watched her: slender, spine straight, empty sleeve flapping behind her in the breeze.
Let her go,
he thought.
Better to pretend she might have been true, rather than learn she was false. You do not want to kill her.

No, he did not. No matter what her allegiances, he did not want the stain of hurting her on his soul. He had enough regrets, and she was brave. Brave, when too few were.

He caught up with her. “Where are you leading me?”

“Out of here,” she said, her eyes scanning the shadows. “We need to find you clothes, and transportation.”

It was very dark. Clear sky, soft winds. A pulse throbbed through his heart, into his shoulders. “Are there archers along the walls?”

Soria blinked hard, staring at him. “No.”

“How odd,” he murmured, and dug his fingers into his thighs. Golden light filled his vision, pouring through him in throbbing waves, each one crashing down as scales and fur rippled across his skin, cascading from scalp to the soles of his feet. No iron bars held him, no cages. He dropped to his knees as his limbs lengthened, muscles shimmering. His spine cracked as his shoulders shifted, bones pushing outward, stretching until he gasped in both pain and pleasure.

He felt Soria watching, heard her speaking to him in low, urgent tones, but nothing she said made sense. He could not hear her past the roar of blood in his ears, and the thunder of his heart. Heat poured up his throat.

Give me wings,
he whispered to himself.
Give me life again.

Golden light flared so brightly he went blind, and he threw back his head, gasping. Fire burned against his tongue.

Until, abruptly, he could see again, and the night was warm and lush, and his skin shimmered with heat and glimmers of gold. Everything around seemed small and very far away, and he sat back on his haunches, studying himself as if for the first time.

His shifts had always been unpredictable, and this was no different. Below his waist he wore the skin of a lion, thickly muscled and silken with golden fur. His tail lashed wildly against the dirt road. Everything else was scales and ridges, his neck long as a sword, the claws of his hands obsidian black and razor sharp. Wings arched behind him, and he stretched them until he hurt—and then stretched them even more, hungry for that pain.

Shouts filled the air. Karr craned his long neck, peering over his shoulder, and glimpsed humans standing in the street, others running toward him. Men and children, and women holding babies. Staring with shock, and wonder. Staring, as if they had never seen a dragon.

“Karr,” Soria called urgently. He found her standing close, her hand raised to touch one of his claws. She was pale, and a tremor raced through her that was so violent she swayed. He caught her, and she was small in his grip, his long, scaled fingers easily encircling her waist.

“If I frighten you,” he rumbled, “close your eyes.”

Soria did not. She stared at him with such intensity he almost forgot himself. But he heard more shouts behind him, even a scream, and he clutched the human woman to his chest with as much care as he could. She let out a muffled gasp, but did not try to free herself.

The street was too narrow to beat his wings. Karr launched himself upward, landing gracefully on the walled edge of the courtyard they had just left. He could see the open door. Still no guards. No sign of the shape-shifting female from below.

Destroy it,
whispered a small voice.
Make certain.

He thought of the old woman who had tended him, and the red-haired man who had saved Soria’s life. He considered, too, the other humans inside that place who might be slaves. Enemies all, most likely.

Enemies like the woman in his arms.

Frustration burned through him, and anger—at himself, for his indecision and memories, which were still raging, full of death. He had died for those memories. Died to end them, and to protect his people. What few were left.

Anger filled his throat, bubbling from his heart. He swallowed it down and beat his wings against the air. His muscles ached from disuse. Karr wondered how far he would be able to fly.

He leaped into the air, catching the wind, and within moments glided above rooftops and then past them over an ancient wall into flat, vast grassland. He was surprised to see such a landscape; the desert scent was strong. In the distance, odd paired lights moved, and beyond that, even farther away, he glimpsed a glow against the horizon that was not dawn but something closer to fire. More lights, burning.

The air was deliriously sweet, and the stars crumpled across the sky in a ribbon of dusty light. Not as clear or vibrant as he remembered, but it was enough to make him heartsick, homesick, until he wondered briefly if it had been a terrible mistake to ask the others to kill him. Not simply because it had failed. Nor because it had needed to be done. It was good to be alive.

The woman clung to him, very small and still. He cradled her closer, listening to her heart pound.

Enemy mine,
thought Karr, as her scent mixed with the night. He tried to orient himself, searching for the North Star. He found it almost immediately, but the comfort that brought him was short-lived. Violent shivers suddenly stole through him—sharp, painful yanks on his innards that made him lurch in the sky. Strength bled from his wings. He felt as though someone was stabbing him through the old scar in his side.

He tumbled, losing altitude. Soria squirmed, gasping, and he clutched her closer. Her extra weight should not have been a burden, but he was not at his best. It was a struggle to hold her safe. He managed, though, regaining altitude as his wings beat furiously. Yet, the feeling lingered, as though someone had reached past his healed wound, digging into his body to twiddle fingers and knives and snarl at his guts. He imagined a presence around him, like the cold cling of morning mist, and the chill that rode down his spine felt like the teeth of ghosts nibbling at his bones.

“Are you sick?” Soria shouted, her voice nearly stolen by the wind. She was trembling in his clawed hands, shivering.

He could have ignored her. He almost did. He was under no obligation to speak truth, or even to speak at all. But he felt compelled, nonetheless, to answer, and craned his long neck to place his head near her ear. “I do not know. I feel … odd.”

“There is a city near here, to the northwest.” She turned her head, peering up into his eyes. “I might be able to contact someone who can help us.”

“No,” he said. “My people would not be found in cities. I must go to them.”

Something passed through her gaze—pity, he thought, or pain. It twisted at Karr, made him unaccountably afraid. She had that power over him, he realized. Just one look from her said more than entire nights made of words.

“You have been gone a long time,” she said.

It was suddenly hard to breathe. His wings faltered again. Karr tumbled, cursing, and managed to glide a short distance before finding his rhythm. “What are you saying? Are they dead?”

“I do not know.” Soria stared into his eyes, and this time he was certain it was pity he saw; pity and compassion. “I know nothing about who you are, or what you are. Or who your people might be. Do you understand? If your people are alive, almost no one remembers them.”

“You know my language. Someone must have taught you.”

She shook her head. “Not one of yours.”

“Then how—” Karr stopped, his heart aching, and decided to ask another question, one that frightened him almost as much as learning that his people might be gone. “How long was I in the darkness?”

Soria wet her lips, her lone hand clutching his arm even more tightly. “I’m not sure. Thousands of years.”

“No,” he breathed.

“Karr—”

“You lie!”

Her mouth snapped shut. Karr straightened out his neck so that he would not have to look at her. His hands, though, might as well have been full of eyes; he could see her through touch, and she was still trembling. Maybe with fear. Perhaps with anger.

He had called her a liar, but that was his own lie. Soria had told him the truth as she knew it; Karr could taste that much in her scent, could see it in her eyes. He could not deny his instincts, no matter how much he wished otherwise. But he did not wholly believe her—not truly—until he saw the city.

Erenhot
—known for little more than being a border town, a required stop for motorists and trains, as well as rich fossil territory. Soria had seen photographs of the giant dinosaur statues that lined the road. She wondered what Karr would say about those. Some of them probably looked like relatives.

She was being carried through the air, almost a thousand feet above the ground. Her childhood fantasy, flying, was less thrilling in the flesh. Soria was afraid to look beyond Karr’s chest, but every now and then she glimpsed the spur of a wing as it swept up and down, thrusting them through the air. Maybe she was hallucinating. This felt like a dream. She had suffered delusions after losing her arm and crawling through the woods; she had seen strange things in the hospital, lost between consciousness and death.

Yet, she was not imagining the winds that stole her breath away, or that buffeted her dangling legs with perilous strength. She tried to tuck them closer to her body, but she was in bad shape and that required more strength than her stomach muscles possessed. Her lower back ached with the effort, as did her ribs from the beating she had received. Enormous hands cradled her, lengthwise; skinny fingers, triple-jointed, covered in scales. Tipped in claws sharp enough to cut her to the bone if she twitched wrong.

And Karr might just cut her. He was a man, after all, subject to the same emotional frailties. He was a man who had transformed within a veil of light, melting from human into a creature out of dreams: part lion, part serpent, close enough to a dragon to be one and the same. He had scales iridescent as sun-warmed pearls, and the bones of his face shifted into an elegantly inhuman mask that was fine-boned and deadly. A long snout, sharp teeth, high cheekbones … and those same golden eyes, intelligent and thoughtful. If Soria had not witnessed similar transformations from other shape-shifters—cheetah, crow, leopard; men and women who could shed one body for another, quick as thought—she would have doubted her sanity.

“We cannot let you be seen,” she shouted to him, when the first lights of Erenhot—and Zamyn-Uud, a little farther across the border between Mongolia and China—flickered into view. “No one would understand!”

He did not respond, but moments later began a slow descent. Soria forced herself to watch, trying to memorize what it felt like to be carried through the air: floating, spinning, gliding with shakes and trembles as Karr battled the hard wind. Fear churned, turning over her stomach, but she gritted her teeth and suffered through it.

At the last moment, just as the ground loomed, she realized she had forgotten completely about her missing right arm: no ghost pains, no discomfort from her stump. Just peace.

Karr landed hard, jarring Soria. She clung to him, dizzy, afraid to let go, but his claws loosened, and when she slid free of his grip, her feet touched hard earth. Her knees were weak. He continued holding her. She found herself gripping one of his claws, her fingers wrapped around a long, dark hook that reminded her of some museum piece on predators. The tip very nearly cut her hand.