Another shiver and her fur bulged, cracks appearing here and there. “Do you wish me to end it?”
She shook her head. “You killed the son of the Emperor, the magician. I saw it in my dreams. I saw you right the balance of the western desert. But there is always a power waiting to take the reins. That power rises now. Bright ones, this power is dark, far darker than the magician’s magic. His was made of manipulation, of turning hearts against hearts, of trickery.”
She drew a shuddering breath. “This one . . . his is naught but death. And you . . . if you walk into the east, you will find more than you bargain for. Beware, the north will test you.”
I glanced at Maks who’d crept closer. We both were eye level with the hyena who writhed at our feet, whimpering between her words. I opened my mouth to ask her a question, but she cut me off with a yipping cry.
“My death will come, but I give you what words I can. He gathers an army. He will take the east and the west if he is not stopped.” Pain-filled eyes locked on mine. “Do you understand, Zamira, guardian of the desert? Do you understand, Lila, guardian of the skies? Do you understand, Maks, guardian of the bright ones?”
I nodded. Lila nodded. Maks nodded.
A sigh slid from her. “Then I have warned you. Will you go on?”
I didn’t need to look at my friends to know that answer. “This beast, he will come for the west? That’s what you’re saying?”
“Yes,” she whispered and shuddered again. “I escaped him. I knew I’d find you here before the Blackened Market. I saw it in my dreams. You have a chance now. Seek out an army of your own, and you will face him on the fields of poppies. The flowers will hide the blood that rains upon the ground.” Her skin popped in several places and a sigh slid out of her as if air from a balloon was being released.
As we watched, her skin and bones seemed to melt, sinking into the dry desert ground, the sand soaking in everything she was until there was nothing, not even a mark to claim her passing.
I stared at that spot and wrinkled my nose as I whispered a quiet prayer for her passing. “Time’s really up for us then.”
Lila snorted and tightened her hold on my shoulder. “Well, if that isn’t a start to a shitty day, I’m not sure what is.”
2
Maks put his hand on my elbow as we turned back toward the horses after watching the messenger dissolve into the desert ground. “I know you, Zam.” I kicked my feet through the sand not yet hot from the morning sun.
“Uh-huh, I know you too,” I winked up to him, “in the most biblical of senses.”
His lips quirked and the smile that wasn’t truly on his mouth was there in his eyes. “I’m talking about knowing how you are, and how you think. I don’t expect you to not want to deal with this beast the hyena was talking about. But we are on the hunt for dragon eggs that have been stolen—we gave our word to find them.”
I slid my hand over his and locked fingers with him, just long enough to give him a squeeze. “I know. But this is a warning. Whatever is going on in the east, blazing in blind is stupid. I’ll take a heads-up for a new nasty any day.”
He didn’t let me go, but instead tugged me closer so our lips brushed against one another. Lila stuck her face between us, claw tips digging into each of our cheeks as she pushed us apart. “None of that when I’m on your shoulders. Sucking face all the time like a couple of horny teenagers. Act your ages, will you?”
I threw my head back and laughed. “I wasn’t going to kiss him, Lila.”
“Speak for yourself,” Maks muttered. “I was totally going to suck face with you.”
Lila grumbled and waved a tiny fist at him as though she were an old man on his front porch, yelling at kids as they disrupted his peace. Which only made me laugh all the more.
“Look,” I finally said as I pulled myself onto Balder’s back, my laughter slowing. “A warning is good. I don’t see us deliberately looking for this beast. We are looking for the missing dragon eggs, that’s our priority. I completely agree with you.”
I felt their eyes heavily on me. I turned and Lila and Maks had the same look on their faces, despite being very different species.
Disbelief was etched plainly there. “You basically got called out by a shaman hyena to protect the desert. And you’re not going to listen?” Lila asked.
I threw my hands in the air. “You both just said you didn’t want me looking for this beast. I said I wouldn’t. Now you want me to?”
“No,” Lila said. “But what if the eggs are tied to him? Would that be so unfathomable?”
“Good word,” Maks said. Lila launched off my shoulder, flew to his, and then gave him a tiny high five.
I stared over the endless brown ground, thinking, trying to put together what lay ahead of us, but I was no seer of the future. What I could see was the edge of the Blackened Market. Burned down, destroyed, but it was where the trail of the dragons’ eggs picked up. A beast from the east, huh? Maybe it was just a warning because whoever had the eggs saw us coming and thought to scare us off. Maybe it was a hyena pulling one last joke, which was not so out of the ordinary for the creatures.
But the image of the hyena’s skin pulsing and popping as though something else lived inside her was rather fresh in my mind and there was no joke about how she’d died. Which meant I wasn’t about to discount her final words.
“Let’s see what the market has to offer first,” I said, “then we go from there.”
Lila and Maks gave each other a look and I stuck my tongue out at them. Childish, but it broke the knot of tension that had been tangling inside my guts. Those who could see some bits and pieces of the future, like shamans, really shouldn’t be ignored. Not that they were always right, but by the same token, their words could be used to avoid shitty endings. I didn’t want a shitty ending for any of us after all we’d been through.
The two horses picked up on the swirling energy and broke into a quick trot covering the ground at a steady pace. Balder stretched his nose out enough to be in front. Batman could have tried to beat him, but he was not the boss of the two of them and didn’t like being in the lead. Try telling Balder that, though.
He stretched farther, putting distance between us and Maks and Batman. I didn’t try to hold him back because I was eager to see what the Blackened Market—or what was left of it—held for us in terms of clues.
Lila had grown up in the Dragon’s Ground, and for years, a huge portion of the unhatched eggs had been stolen. Seeing as dragons were not the most prolific of breeders, those losses were a blow not only to the mothers, but to the entire population as well.
Maks and I had promised the female dragons we’d find their babies and bring them back. A promise I didn’t regret, but wondered just how the hell I was going to manage to keep it when we had so little information to go on. Which brought us here to the Blackened Market. Truly blackened now, razed by fire in a fight that we may or may not have started. I narrowed my eyes, looking over the scene. The charred and broken timbers of the buildings, the sand crystalized in places from the heat.
The marks of blades that had cut deep into the wood.