The flame had been the size of a pea when last seen, and the entire incident seemed silly until the removal of the scarf blinding me revealed a flame the size of a fist. The surprise was so total I threw the stick away before it burned me. It landed at the base of the Waystone.
I turned to Kendra, confused.
She said, “Your flame grew larger with every step. As you grew nearer to the Waystone, your magic increased.”
I had no words to speak.
She continued, “I suspected this might happen. Now, try to draw lightning and make it rain.”
“What? Only mages can do that.”
“Try,” she repeated.
“How in the hell do I know what to do?”
“Shut up. Close your eyes and try.”
“I closed them and imagined a storm building, the clouds growing darker, the turmoil of the air, and . . . a crack sounded. Not the intense crack and boom of a real storm, but more like the sound of a dry stick snapping. I felt wetness touch my face. My eyes flashed open, and we were standing in the rain, the five of us.
A few steps away the ground was dry. The rain stopped, the clouds dispersed, and then we were in the bright sunshine again. Only rising steam from the ground indicated what had happened. I said, “What happened?”
Emma said, “You made a storm if you want to call that little thing that. The lightning bolt was about as big as my little finger, and the ground didn’t get more than damp.”
Kendra was beaming. She said, “You made a storm! A small one, but you did it.”
I saw her point. “Why is my magic so much more powerful near a Waystone? When we were in Mercia, your dragon had to be near me for any magic to work.”
“I think she still is, in a way.”
“You talk in circles,” I snapped.
She said, “I think we just answered a pair of questions, and maybe more. Remember when we looked inside that container thing on top of the mountain in Mercia? Remember there was an egg there? A dragon egg?”
“Yes, a mage stole it during our fight with the Wyverns.”
“Exactly. The stone well was rounded inside, so it perfectly fit the egg. We decided then it must have been valuable, or they would never have carved out the location from solid rock or sent the Wyverns to fight us over it.”
So far, I agreed with her.
She pointed to the Waystone. “What if all of them have dragon eggs inside? What if that is what powers Waystones? The essence in dragon eggs.”
I wanted to explain she was wrong. To tell her it was another silly idea from the vapid mind of my sister, who was overly sentimental and romantic. But I couldn’t. Instinctually, I knew she was right.
Not that I understood the implications. It struck me as reasonable that the Waystone must have power gathered from somewhere for them to function, no matter what they do. I moved closer to the Waystone and placed a bare hand on the warm stone wall. It was warmer than it should be, but all of them were. There were the same engravings similar to the Waystones at Mercia and Crestfallen. I hadn’t examined the one at the Vin mountain pass closely but assumed it was the same.
I said, “If I set up a blind in those trees, like some people do to hunt deer, and watched this Waystone long enough, I’ll wager a mage either comes or goes. I don’t know how he would get inside, or on top, or whatever they do, but these are like bears seeking out honey.”
Kendra said, “And the closer you are, the stronger your magic.”
“The same for mages,” I said. “They are already strong, but here they control more magic.”
Kendra’s shoulders slumped, and she stood motionless as her eyes darted around the clearing and back to the Waystone. I started to speak, but she held up a hand to stop me, while she thought. Then she turned, her face pale. Her knees buckled, and she sat on the hard ground. “Damon sit down and let me talk for a few moments. I think I’ve figured out more and need your attention.”
I sat. She had only acted in a similar fashion a few times in our lives. The last had been at the death of a friend, so I took it seriously.
She muttered, “It’s the eggs.”
“They power the Waystones, you said.”
“Yes, but we missed the critical point. Where do the eggs come from?”
“Well, they’re dragon eggs,” I said thoughtfully while trying to see where she was going with her thoughts and thinking myself clever for saying so.
She allowed a limp smile to form. “Exactly. That’s what we missed. There is only one dragon.”
I saw the implications instantly. If dragon eggs powered the Waystones, and there was only one dragon, all the eggs had come from Kendra’s dragon. That explained the fortified cave and why mages kept the dragon chained on the mountain in Mercia. They needed the eggs.
She said, “The mages have to come after me to regain control of the dragon.”
“We can hide,” I said.
“No, they have to come, no matter where we are or how many of them there are. They have to get the dragon back.”
“The eggs are that important?” I asked.
“They are,” she said. “The unfertilized eggs are somehow preserved, one in each Waystone, I think. Every Waystone is connected to another or to others, but only to the nearest few. They are in turn connected to others to form a web.”
“I can see that.” I prompted. We’d already decided Waystones were not only centers of magic, but a means of travel for mages and for their communications. They were the cornerstones of the entire magic network the mages used.
“The eggs must eventually wear out or die. Lose their power. They can’t last forever. They must be replaced with a new egg, or the entire Waystone system will begin failing. The mages powers will fade and die. It may take years, but entropy rules the universe. There is a gradual decline unless new eggs replace old ones.”
“And that is only possible with new dragon eggs. But you freed the dragon so there will be no more eggs.”
Her eyes were wide. Tears ran freely down each cheek. “Don’t you see? They are coming for me. They have to. All of them.”
I glanced at the Waystone as if making sure a hundred mages didn’t emerge from it and take us as prisoners. As usual, she was right. Probably the only reason they hadn’t come yet was that ever since Mercia we’d been on the move. First to the port, then the ship, and there we’d escaped in the dead of night to travel on an unused mountain pass, before disappearing into the vastness of the Kondor desert.
But they would come.
We sat beside a Waystone. They might start streaming out of it, one at a time until a hundred faced us. “I think you are right about everything. For now, we should avoid all Waystones, and we need to keep moving and rescue Elizabeth.”
She stood. “There is too much information to absorb at once. We’ll talk more after we have the time to process what we think.”
I took another furtive look at the Waystone, and instead of seeing a thing of ancient beauty, I saw a creation more like the tip of an arrow pointed at my heart. My first goal was to get away from it.
Flier, who had remained quiet the entire time said, “What about the girls?”
They were also an interesting point we hadn’t thought of. I looked at Emma and thought that if her powers increased too much more, we might all be in trouble. Not that she had ever intentionally misused them, but once she had knocked me unconscious for an entire afternoon. If a Waystone had been near, it might have been worse because she didn’t know how to control her magic.
Flier snapped to attention, his head tilted to one side. He whispered urgently, “Hide.”
We darted into the trees and knelt while peering back into the harsh sunlight where the Waystone stood beside the road. Down the road was movement. Movement meant a stranger. An enemy. As we hid, the movement became one man. It was not one of the king’s patrols or slavers, but a single person walking alone. As he moved closer, he leaned on a crooked staff as he walked, and his robes were those of a wandering priest.