Draka Chapter 338: Always (Patreon)

Tomorrow came far too fast.

I would have liked to spend more time with Kira and Ardek than I did, but they were so involved in their own things—the healing and the kids, mostly—that I didn’t want to interrupt. I took the moments I could, showing interest in what they were doing and just talking about anything that seemed to interest them, but when the time came and my worries started gnawing at me again, it didn’t seem nearly enough.

I overcompensated by spending as much time as I could with Mak. We didn’t do much the day after I told Herald, but that wasn’t the point. Being around her was enough. So it didn’t matter to me if I just accompanied her to visit some supplier, if I watched as she sat by a portable desk in the yard, writing letters, or if we visited the estate that would soon be ours to get another look and discuss if anything needed to be added, removed, or just changed. It wasn’t the activities that mattered, but the time spent in each other’s company.

On the morning of the last day Mak came out to talk to me. Kira had come and gone, Sandstorm had left to wander the streets, and we were alone in the yard.

“It’ll be soon, won’t it?” she asked me.

“What will?”

“My test.”

With a heavy sigh, I laid back down, resting my head on the ground. “Am I that obvious?”

Mak grabbed a small, empty crate from beside the door and put it down a foot from my head, turning it upside down so she could use it as a stool. “Yesterday, you lay here and watched for two hours as I wrote letters and did accounting,” she said. “You didn’t even nap. And as much as I enjoyed the company, that just isn’t normal for you. I just couldn’t think of any reason you’d be so keen to spend time with me that you’d bore yourself to death, other than it being almost time.” Then she swallowed, and in a small voice she added, “And that you think I’ll fail.”

“It’s not a test,” I told her, looking up into her eyes and willing her to understand. “There’s nothing for you to fail. What I fear is that once you can see me and think about me clearly, you’ll be furious about what I’ve done to you and what I’ve made you do. I hope not, I really do, but…”

“So why?” she pleaded. “If it’ll make us both miserable, why do this at all?”

“I’ve told you why. Whether you stay with me or never want to see me again, or anything in between, I need to know that you’ve decided for yourself. It gnaws at me to know that you don’t have a choice in loving me, or staying with me. And it’s not because of my pride; I don’t think so, at least. It’s because no matter how happy you are, you’re a prisoner, and I’m your jailor, and I can’t live with that. I love you too much.”

She didn’t accept that. There was nothing I could point to that made me so certain, but I knew that she didn’t. But she also couldn’t find a way to continue arguing, so instead she just asked, “When?”

“Tonight,” I replied, and she took a deep breath, letting it out with a shudder. “Herald knows and will be with you,” I continued. “I’ll be freeing Kira and Ardek, too, for the same reason. Please don’t tell them yet. I want them to hear it from me.”

“Okay,” she said weakly.

“Mak. Little hurricane. Dear sister. I hope you believe me when I say that this is something I have to, not something I want to do. And I hope so very much that the only change you feel is that the compulsion disappears. If not, I pray that you’ll forgive me one day. However long it takes, I’ll wait. I can be patient if I have to.”

Mak didn’t answer that. She sat silently for a long while, before suddenly asking, “Can we go somewhere?”

“Anywhere,” I replied immediately. “Where do you want to go?”

“The campsite. The tree. I want to go to the tree. I… I’d like to fly.”

That surprised me a bit. She’d become more tolerant of flying lately, but I doubted she’d ever like it. But if she asked, nothing would stop me from agreeing. “No problem,” I said. “Now?”

“I should probably tell someone, but yeah. I’d like to go immediately. If that’s alright.”

Five minutes later we were in the air, heading north. Herald had convinced her to put on a thick tunic and trousers rather than the casual wrap she’d been wearing, but otherwise we hadn’t delayed. Sandstorm had come up from wherever she’d been to see where we were going, but I’d told her that we’d like some time alone and she’d respected that.

That, or, more likely, she’d been enjoying exploring the city too much to really want to go anywhere.

We arrived at the lake and its campsite twenty minutes later. I couldn’t say if Mak kept her eyes squeezed shut the whole way or if she enjoyed the view, but I did know that she spent the whole time pressing herself to me as firmly as she could. Which of course made me hold her tighter; if she wanted as much contact as possible, I wouldn’t disappoint.

It was still fairly early, and a single tent stood on the campsite with two horses on long tethers nearby. I let them be. It was the tree that was important, and I carefully set Mak down by the lake before landing. A basking lake lizard threw itself noisily into the water in fear for its life, which never failed to amuse me.

Mak stretched and limbered up a little. She then took first one tentative step toward the lonely old tree, with its branching trunk and wandering roots, then another, and another, and soon she’d gotten close enough to stand in its shade.

I followed silently, unwilling to disturb her. She’d avoided this tree whenever we came by, so her wanting to come here was important. It meant something. I just didn’t know what.

She stood there in silence for the longest time, and it took me a moment to realize that she was standing right where she’d been when I came to meet her on the night that everything changed. No one could have convinced me that was a coincidence. And, as if I needed any confirmation, she finally said, “I don’t know if I love this tree, or hate it.”

“What makes you say that?” I asked. It was easy enough to see why she’d have some complicated feelings, considering what the tree had meant for the early parts of our relationship. But she was the one who’d asked to come here. This was about her, and her thoughts.

“Sometimes I think I’d like to come out here and chop the damned thing down. If I didn’t know how much it means to you and Herald, I might have done just that already. But at the same time… if I hadn’t stood here that night, with the lantern… if the Night Blossom had never taken me and Herald, if I’d never… if Tarkarran never showed me how weak I was… Mercies, for all the horror of those days, for all the pain and fear and misery that followed, it was the point where my life turned for something so much better. Not the money. Tam and Val were already on their way. The money would have come regardless. But everything else. I came out of it so much better than I’d been. Stronger, more confident. Happier. Is that mad?” She turned to me, her eyes pleading with me to give her the answer she wanted. “Am I mad to be happier after something like that?”

“No, Mak,” I told her, and the relief that radiated from her was almost palpable. “No. Madness doesn’t figure into it. You’re strong. It takes strength to find something positive in the awful things you’ve gone through.”

She closed her eyes, nodding silently, and just breathed for a moment. Then she turned back to the tree, taking the last few steps until she could put her hand on its trunk. “If I could go back and change everything,” she said, “I would. But only for Herald’s sake. If they’d never taken her, I wouldn’t change a thing. I know that I wasn’t the only one who suffered for my carelessness. I know that it was terrible for you, too. But we both came out of it so much better than I can’t help but think that it was for the best. I would not be who I am, and you… would you even exist?”

“I don’t know. Maybe I was always there, growing, but not conscious. Maybe I was created in the moment I realized you’d betrayed me. Or maybe it was the knock on the head that did it. I really don’t know.”

“I can’t imagine it,” she whispered, leaning into the tree. “A world without you. I love your other aspects no less, but what difference does that make? It’s like imagining a world without Tam or Herald. Loving one doesn’t make the thought of never having known the other any easier.”

Then, as I watched, she closed her hand, extending just one finger. With her nail, harder and sharper than any steel, she began to carve something into the bark. Letters, obviously, from how she moved her finger, but with how we stood I couldn’t see, and I didn’t want to disturb her.

“There,” she said after perhaps a minute had passed, stepping back from her work. “In case I forget.”

When she moved out of the way I took it as permission, and approached. Carved into the bark were four words, each on its own line:

Love

Loyalty

Family

Always

There was no signature. Nothing to indicate that the words were meant for anyone in particular. But I knew, and Mak knew, and that was enough.

“Mercies, but I hope they still mean the same to me tomorrow morning,” she whispered.

“Me too,” I said, nuzzling her head gently. “Me too.”

Neither Mak nor I particularly felt any need to return to Karakan once she was done with the tree. We visited my hoard, where she made a silver angel among my coins just to see what would happen. Then, just for the sake of it, we went west, crossing the mountains and flying above the unexplored forest there until Mak suggested finding a Rift for her to top herself up at. That was as easily said as it was done; we were spoilt for choice. The first one I checked had a goblin village around it, which I left alone, but the next one was unattended. I let Mak take as much as she could first, then drained the rest myself, and once I’d woken up we continued.

“We should go low along the coast!” Mak suggested.

“Sure,” I replied, agreeing readily. “Any particular reason?”

“Herald quoted some journal about a city on the western coast. Stelyin, I think? This is as good a time as any to find it, isn’t it?”

“And you’d like to be the first human to set foot in it for five hundred years?” I asked.

“I sure wouldn’t mind!”

For over two hours we flew along the coast, looking for any sign of Stelyin. When we finally spotted something that looked distinctly man-made, it was in a place I’d already taken us past once before. It was a port, or the faint outline of one. The western sea, which Mak named the Endless Sea when I asked, was much rougher than the Sarey, and all that remained of the breakwaters were two overgrown, badly eroded stumps. But the shape was there, the breakwaters bookending the hint of a straight shoreline that could have once been a quay, and once we knew where to look the signs were easy to find.

We didn’t linger. I found a somewhat less overgrown spot to land, one where I only had to crash through a few branches, and we wandered around the uneven forest for a while, finding the tops of ruins sticking up out of the ground. But from the lack of any magically preserved or monumental buildings we quickly determined that what we’d found was much more likely to be the port of Stelyin rather than the city itself, which was most likely upstream on the wide, muddy river that emptied into the sea only a stone’s throw to the south. And so, that was where we went.

We weren’t precious about it, either. With no idea where the city might be we stayed on foot, and between me being a dragon and the strength and agility that I lent Mak, we simply tore through the undergrowth. Mak’s biggest problem was a lack of mass to barrel through any dense bushes or brambles, but I had that in spades; in the rare cases where she couldn’t go over or around something, she simply let me go first.

Nothing bothered us. Nothing was stupid enough to dare.

No more than a mile upstream from the port we found a beautifully preserved bridge, still in good enough shape that no one would have batted an eye at driving their cart over it. A mile after that, the collapsed remains of a wall had partially dammed the river, creating a small lake that spilled over the rubble. To the north and south, parts of the wall still stood, covered in climbing vines and topped by bushes, but still clearly visible among the trees.

“This must be it, right?” Mak asked, easily climbing the slope that had formed over those parts of the crumbled wall not covered by flowing water. “Why would there be a… what, fifty foot wall here if it’s not the city limits?”

“Nah, yeah,” I agreed. “I’m with you. So now what? Want to see if we can find the forum? I’m assuming they had one.”

“If you wish,” she agreed, looking around with great satisfaction. “Plenty of day left. No idea which direction that might be, though. Keep following the river? There should be a bridge or three.”

“And any bridge should be on a major street,” I said, following her logic. “Yeah!”

“Alright, then!” she said, giving me a radiant grin before she began picking her way around the lake. Me, I just dived in. It was shallow enough that my belly barely touched the water most of the time, and when it did, I just didn’t mind.

On the edge of the water Mak called out, “Show-off!” and picked up her pace, laughing as she raced me to the other side. And with anyone else I might have considered letting her win, but that girl was fast; she beat me fair and square.

We found a bridge not far from the lake, but could see a larger one upstream. At that one we stopped, looking north and south. It didn’t take much to imagine a wide road there, from how the landscape bulged to each side where years of growth and decomposition had covered the buildings there.

We went north. The port had been north of the river, so we figured there was a good chance the forum was as well. And we were right. We soon arrived in a place where the ground became relatively flat for a hundred yards in every direction. There we wandered to a spot almost arbitrarily chosen as the center, and stopped.

“What do you say, Mistress?” Mak asked. “Shall we stop here?”

“Are you happy with what we’ve found so far?”

“I think we can safely say that we’ve discovered a city. Whether it’s Stelyin, the gods only know. But I’m satisfied.” She turned and smiled at me, and there was a hint of smugness in it. “Whatever city this is, it’s ours. We found it together. That will always be true, no matter what. And you brought me here because I asked. Because you wanted to do something with me. I won’t let myself forget that.”

“It is ours, isn’t it?” I said. Looking around, it wasn’t much. An oddly shaped piece of forest with some stacked stones sticking up here and there. But that wasn’t the point. The point was that we were there, the only people to visit this place for half a millennium as far as we knew, and no one else knew about it. Just us. It was ours. And if this was a farewell of some kind, there were worse ways to spend our last day than discovering a lost city together. “Yeah. Ours. Always.”

“I think I’m ready,” Mak said softly. “I still don’t like it. I wish you wouldn’t. But I think I’m ready.”

“Alright,” I replied in the same tone. “Let’s go back and tell Kira and Ardek. No point in putting it off.”