Blood of the King - Khirro's Journey Book 1 Page 0,105
now, as the warm wind blew again, he longed for wakefulness but couldn’t make it happen.
He faced the source of the warm wind.
The dragon reared on its hind legs, muscles bunched, smoke spilling from its nostrils like a blacksmith’s chimney. Its gray scales rippled as it moved, clacking together like waves receding from a rocky beach. Gray wings spread and retracted, its eyes shone red with glowing menace. The urge to flee grabbed Khirro but, unlike his flight along the lakeshore, this time the dream ruled, rooting him to the spot. The monster threw back its head and roared at the sky. Khirro covered his ears, shut his eyes, and willed the dream to end. When he opened them, the beast still stood before him.
Khirro’s mouth moved—to plead for mercy, or ask forgiveness—he didn’t know what might have come out if he found words. Instead, breath wheezed through his constricted windpipe. The dragon opened its maw revealing three rows of pointed teeth, a forked tongue, and blackness lit be a tiny spark.
Then the flames came.
They unfolded toward him like a banner unfurling in the wind. Time slowed. Khirro watched the flames—red and yellow and orange and white—as they twisted and curled, a living thing advancing upon him. The swirling conflagration hid the dragon and heat touched Khirro’s face. In an instant the inferno would engulf him, ending his life.
This is the guardian.
And then he woke.
His eyes opened to flames. Startled and afraid, he cried out, scrambling against moist dirt to get away, but something pressed against his back kept him there. Elyea sat up and put a comforting hand on his shoulder.
“What’s wrong, Khirro?” she asked, voice groggy with sleep.
Athryn and Ghaul, also arrayed on the forest floor near the fire, woke as well. Shyn came to them from where he’d been sitting watch.
Khirro breathed deeply to slow his thumping heart. He looked into the camp fire, recognizing the flickering flames for what they were but still chilled by the vividness of the dream. Had sleeping too close to the fire been the source of it? He looked at his companions, saw the concern on Elyea’s face, the sword in Shyn’s hand, the mask hiding Athryn’s expression, the annoyance Ghaul didn’t attempt to hide.
The lake wasn’t exactly as in his dreams. Instead of blue and clean and serene, patches of weeds and sludge floated here and there on the murky water; the rocks littering the shore were larger and more jagged. A brisk wind churned the lake’s surface, splashing choppy waves against the rugged shore. And the lake was bigger than in his dream with no tower standing on the far shore they could barely see. The trees were bigger, too—ancient cedars and redwoods, fir, pine and hemlocks crowded the lake, some of them large enough it would take a man five minutes to walk their circumference. Khirro hadn’t known trees grew so big.
“Where do we go now?” Ghaul asked. Khirro pointed to the far shore. “How far?”
“I don’t know. I saw it from here in my dream. The lake is much larger than I thought.”
Elyea shivered in the cool wind; Khirro removed his tunic and spread it over her shoulders. He made no comment when Ghaul shook his head and rolled his eyes.
“There is great magic here.” Athryn sat on a rock looking out across the lake, his mask removed to allow the cool wind to caress his face. Khirro saw only the unburned portion of the magician’s face; if he didn’t know him, he might have thought he looked like any other man. Athryn faced them, dispelling the illusion. “It is in the air and the water, the trees and the rocks. It is the power of the Gods made real.”
“What of the Gods?” Ghaul spat on the rocky shore and slapped the sword hanging at his waist. “Never have I slain a foe with one of your Gods. Give me steel any day.”
Khirro suppressed a smile at Ghaul’s bravado—this was how a soldier dealt with fear. Over the weeks, he’d come to realize brave men felt fear, too, only how they reacted to it differed. There were countries, Khirro had heard from traveling merchants, where people worshiped their weapons as gods. Perhaps Ghaul would have been comfortable living there.
Athryn turned back to the lake, saying no more. Khirro liked the man, but he’d said so