“Yes.” Ciardis nodded.
He looked out over the ocean with a fond and tired smile, “Weather is a particularly difficult power to master and manipulate. I don’t know what you’ve been told. But mages do not forsake that oath. In every instance the younger mage is to take all precautions to protect their lives. I expect you to do the same.”
“She will,” Linda said with strength in her voice. “I will be here to assure that she does.”
And then it began. Ciardis felt the pull from his magic to hers. He began drawing immense amounts as he shot down in a spiral—no, a maelstrom—of power into the element of water. She watched as he wove her enhancement power into his spool of power. He began to weave the two cords together in a simple stitch that fell into the wild and chaotic swirl of power that was the water element. No matter how much power he had, she instinctively knew that it wouldn’t be able to harness water. Not this fierce and wild beauty that moved with the freeness of a spirit in the ocean.
She felt him change tactics. Instead of trying to harness the water element, the Weather Mage began to coax it into playing a game. With flashes of lightning emitting from his fingertips and a calm soothing voice he called it closer. And closer it came until it was near enough that he could entrap it a complex web. Rather it was a game with an intricate stack of layer upon layer of flashing lightning. The elemental didn’t even notice when the web began to close around it. It was too entranced in playing as it bounced from point to point on the web and gave the Weather Mage the time he needed to still the waters surrounding the ship.
He began to tie off the ends of the magic neatly to form a self-sustaining cradle that would feed the elemental’s desire for the quest until the web dissipated. Back in her body, Ciardis blinked and stared into the concerned eyes of the Weather Mage and the Fire Mage. They stood in a tight circle.
In a low voice Linda said “Everything all right?”
“Fine,” said Ciardis faintly.
“Good,” the Weather Mage said with a curtness that Ciardis tried not to take offense at.
With a push, Linda sent Ciardis back to Prince Heir Sebastian’s side.
Turning back to their guest, she put her thoughts on the Weather Mage’s illness aside before Sebastian could pick up on it. In front of her she took in the dragon envoy. This dragon, all dragons, were from Sahalia. They nested nowhere else. No one knew why. Sahalia was an empire far off in the Western Sea, ruled by a loose amalgamation of a dozen families united only in the belief in the supremacy of dragons above all other species and a firm desire to wrest more power and wealth for themselves. For thousands of years, dragons had not left their empire’s shores. They’d seen no reason to leave the comfort of their homes for distant lands and certainly wouldn’t cross an ocean to do it. Even now they tended to avoid the lands of Algardis because of the Initiate Wars centuries earlier.
Their primary reason for being homebound?
Laziness.
The ocean trek would require a large amount of magical power and three days of constant flight to reach land. In fact, it hadn’t been until five centuries ago, almost two hundred years after the founding of the Empire and the Great War and three years before the start of the Initiate Wars, that many dragons began making the journey across the waters from Sahalia to Algardis. The merchants on both sides of the sea were ecstatic; trade was the best it had been since the founding of the empire.
It wasn’t until an intrepid dragon explorer, known as the Wanderer, had left Sahalia and returned to its shores with human followers that the journey across the ocean began to hold any interest for the ruling Sahalian families. To put it bluntly, the Wanderer came back with an oddity: humans. All the dragons soon wanted their own. First, the humans brought back on the long cross-ocean voyage started out as pampered pets, and then rapidly became servants to dragons who wanted their every whim catered to from trimming their nails to buffing their scales.
But there was also something weird in the rapid change of direction from ignoring Algardis to a sudden desire for a flurry of travel across the large ocean. Greed was one thing; ability quite another. Why was the voyage so easy for the dragons now? Even the less powerful dragons were able to make the journey. Ciardis had this question on her mind as she watched the dragon flap its wings and dispel the hovering state it was in. It was too large to land on the ship’s deck—that had been established. And then she felt its power rise again. First it was like pinpricks on her skin. Feeling the uncomfortable sensation, she tried to rub it away like an itch, but it only spread. She could tell Sebastian felt it, too.
And then the dragon spoke. When it spoke, letters illuminated the sky. The letters formed words, the words became sentences, and the sentences combined into a thought. When the thought was complete, the action began. And they watched as water rose from the sea, foaming. The water grew five feet, ten feet, and then stopped at fifteen feet, a giant wall of water. With another breath, the dragon formed a second sentence and the water flattened. In a shape of a disc, the water stilled fifteen feet above the ocean’s surface and the dragon landed on the platform with a satisfied huff.
She had heard Sahalian magic was different. A literal interpretation of words and spells. Until now, she hadn’t seen it for herself. As the Sahalian dragon stood waiting, Prince Heir Sebastian walked forward until he was five feet from the ship’s railing. In the calm of the Weather Mage’s shield, man and dragon stared at each other. Sebastian wore his light armor with a sword at his waist. The dragon’s scales gleamed like armor of its own.
With his head tilted back, the Prince Heir called out, “Welcome, Ambassador Sedaris, it is a pleasure to have you visit the Empire of Algardis.”
*****
The dragon chuffed and stared down at the gathering of humans arrayed below it on the ship’s deck. For a few moments it let silence descend over the humans, broken only by the exhale of its smoky breath. It wondered with amusement if the soldiers formed in single file behind the Prince Heir’s party were meant as a warning. If so, the humans had much to learn and much to remember. Dragons feared no one and nothing.
The pleasure is mine Prince Heir Sebastian, said a decidedly female voice echoing in their heads. Dragons generally chose to mind-speak, having way too many problems with accidental spells when speaking in the human tongue through their large jaws.
Ciardis felt surprise ripple through the gathered retinue. She was surprised, having expected the envoy with grandiose horns to be a male. But her surprise was nothing compared to the horrified shock that she felt permeating through the surrounding group.
Glancing around her she took in the stiff, almost petrified forms of the retinue. Several hands had dropped inconspicuously to blades at their sides. Now they want to get worried? What were these battle mages thinking minutes ago when a half ton dragon was looking like it would either fall onto the ship or into the sea?
Ciardis felt Sebastian’s fear radiating outward before she even recognized what the emotion was. He was too well-trained to grip the pommel of his sword but the frantic swirl of emotions in his head told Ciardis he wanted to. So it was female. Big to-do. Right?
Irritated, Ciardis would have given her right arm at that moment to know why everyone was so upset about the dragon’s gender. She couldn’t step forward to touch Sebastian and demand an answer. The protocol officer present would throw a fit.