"Oreg?" I called as I ran.
Surely only Oreg could have gotten past Jakoven's safeguards, but he still didn't answer me. I looked for him with my magic and found him so near the Bane, I thought for a moment that the artifact's magic had misled me.
I stumbled over a body, burnt and torn, and I took a few precious seconds to examine the forehead and eye that were left. Fear that it was Oreg almost kept me from seeing Arten, Jakoven's archmage, in the shape of the brow.
A few feet farther on I found another body, unrecognizable, but the fire that still fed on his flesh was full of Oreg's familiar magic—he was one of the high king's wizards.
Jakoven's tent was dark and still, but the entrance flap was open. I tried to feel Oreg's magic, but if he were using any, it was swallowed up by the magic of the Bane.
Gods, I thought, my mind playing out various scenarios as I slowed to sneak up on the tent. Oreg got through the traps set by Jakoven and tried to break the spell that held the Bane and failed. Or he was tired and was caught by a trap Jakoven set.
I ducked beneath the flap and magelight flared in the tent. There had been so many bodies on the ground, it had never occurred to me that anyone but Oreg would be in the tent with the Bane. But Jade Eyes smiled his beautiful smile at me.
For a moment all I could see was him. My body, remembering what he'd done to it while wearing that smile, broke into a cold sweat. Then I saw Oreg's limp body on the tent floor.
Ignoring Jade Eyes, I took two steps forward and felt Oreg's neck for a pulse—sighing in relief when I felt it. I didn't like the knot that was rising on the back of his head, though. Stala always said that if you hit a man in the head hard enough to knock him out, you had a good chance of killing him.
"Welcome, Ward," whispered Jade Eyes. "I've been waiting for my opportunity to claim the Bane since I first saw it. It is appropriate that you should be here, just as you were when it first called to me."
Crouched beside Oreg, I looked up at Jade Eyes and recognized the madness in his eyes. I wondered if, like my mother, he tasted his own potions or if he was simply crazy. Either way, the slender staff topped with a dragon holding a glowing ruby in its mouth scared me sick.
The Bane's angry red magic blew my hair away from my face and came back to bit me in the shoulder. The blow was as hard as any I've taken, and it was completely unexpected, because there was no change in Jade Eyes's face or body that told me what he intended. It knocked me forward onto my arms, and one of the cuts that had closed reopened. I felt that breeze come back to taste my blood.
"Oh," he breathed. "They like you. Can you hear them? They called me and called me. I visited them every night, but I couldn't break Jakoven's protections. I came in tonight and found your wizard had done all the work for me."
"Who?" asked a voice in my head, breathy and soft I almost couldn't hear it over Jade Eye's words. "Who are you?"
Hurog, I thought.
"We know you." This time the voice was several and much stronger. I saw three dragons, though my eyes were closed. "Know us, too."
" … been working on a spell to release them," continued Jade Eyes, apparently unaware of the other conversation I found myself a part of. "Dragons are immortal. If I can release them from some of the restrictions that Farson placed upon them, they can be dragons again in truth. They will serve me as dragons served the Emperor. Alizon is right," he said intensely. "Jakoven should not be high king."
The blackness began to flow under the violent red of the gem, just as it had the first time I saw it. I realized that this part of the Bane's magic seemed black to me, not because it was evil, but because it was so dense. It slid down the staff in a slow, heavy flow and began pooling on the floor of the tent, covering my hands and lapping over Oreg's body.
This was different, separate from the red magic, and it became more different all the time. It tasted like dragon, though I hadn't realized that dragon magic had a feel to it—a commonality between the magic of Oreg, Hurog, and the Bane.
"It's almost drained now," said Jade Eyes, incorrectly, I thought.
Farsonsbane was hiding its power from him. I shivered when I realized that I understood the Bane because of the connection Jakoven had forged between us with my blood and tears. The magic I saw as red was the power controlled by the mage wielding the Bane. I knew because the Bane told me so. The dark magic was power hoarded by the Bane itself, held in check by the binding Farson had imposed upon it so long ago.
"Jakoven used most of the magic on Buril—after making certain that Garranon wasn't there," continued Jade Eyes, unaware of the secondary communication between the Bane and me. "Peculiar of him, don't you think? I thought he was finished with Garranon. He hasn't taken Garranon since he found me last year. But I know something that Jakoven didn't."
"What's that?" I asked, watching the blackness touch Jade Eyes's feet and wash back like the sea hitting the sand.
"That it is your tears the dragons need—they told me so. Hurog means dragon, he said. But he didn't go far enough. I looked it up. Did you know that Hurogmeten means Guardian of Dragons?" He crouched, unaware of the blackness that flowed around the tent. "Your tears will give my immortal dragons back their lives and they will serve me."
He was wrong. The Bane contained the revenants of dragons, and dead things could not be given anything but the semblance of life.
"Dragons aren't immortal," I said, touching my dragon's neck again, because I couldn't see him breathe underneath the layer of blackness that Jade Eyes couldn't perceive: He was not a Hurog. Against my fingers, Oreg's pulse beat steadily. "Dragons live a long time, longer than the dwarves. But they aren't immortal."
His smile broadened. "You don't know much," he said, and tilted the staff just a little.
Pain coursed through me and I lost control of my muscles, falling limply to the floor, unable even to turn my face aside and avoid the painful contact of noise and hard-packed earth.
"Always so quiet, my Ward," whispered Jade Eyes, and he turned my head away from the ground, tsking when he saw the blood flowing from my nose. "I liked that about you. Some people like the screaming, but I enjoy your pain, not noise." He touched his fingers to my upper lip and held his hand up for me to see the dampness of my tears coating his fingertips. "I'm sorry you have to die. But I think that you might be able to take them from me, if I don't kill you before I release them."
"A dragon is no man's slave," I managed to say around the pain. "Nor should he ever be. I think that you'll be like my father and find that it is more than you can safely hold."
"Your father had a dragon?" he asked, and the pain ebbed into memory. "They say that there is a dragon at Hurog now. Jakoven said it was illusion."
I took a deep breath. "Listen to me, Jade Eyes. The dragons died to make that gem. You can't bring them back to life. The first rule of magic is not to tamper with the natural order of things. If you break Farson's bindings, you'll only unleash death."
"Yes," said the red tide of magic, "let me destroy."
But it didn't have the same living feeling as the black magic that coated me and drank my tears from my cheeks. It was just destructive magic, cold and powerful.
Jade Eyes drew back.
"Did you hear that?" I asked. "There will be no new Empire to rule if you free them."
His face changed abruptly to a hate-filled snarl and he jumped to his feet. "You think you know everything."
He slammed the end of the staff into my diaphragm and I curled up, gasping for breath that wouldn't come. Darkness hovered in front of my eyes, but I remembered my aunt's voice in my ear "Straighten out, boy. Give your lungs room to work." And I forced my legs straight and drew in a small breath of air. The next breath was larger.