“That’s good,” I managed, pulling my bra strap back up and grabbing my shirt off the floor.
Zav squinted at Nin as if he had incineration in mind again. I patted his bare chest and stepped in front of him to hide his nudity—and the evidence that he’d been enjoying our kiss.
By now, Nin had realized her mistake and recovered from her initial gawking.
“Sorry.” She lifted a hand and turned away. “I wanted to let you know. Also, he wants to see you when you are, uhm, not busy.”
She fled down the hall.
“We will continue,” Zav stated, turning me back to face him.
I was debating if I wanted to agree or not. That had been turning into something extremely promising, but I also longed to know why Ti had sought me out, and who was chasing him and why.
Before I finished the internal debate, Zav released me and scowled up at the ceiling. “Velilah’nav has returned to the area.”
That made up my mind for me.
“Doesn’t she have a job?” I tugged my shirt over my head.
“She is the first heir of the princess of Danlykosh Eyrie.”
“I’m going to take that as a no. Maybe you can have a chat with her about leaving us alone, and I’ll find out what our gnome guest wants.”
Zav was still scowling when I left.
14
As I entered the basement, I sensed Zav leave the house, off to tell Velilah to sit on her tail and rotate, I hoped. Night had fallen outside while Zav and I had been distracted, so I didn’t have to worry about searing Zoltan’s sensitive skin with daylight. Voices met me as I entered. Voices speaking not in gnomish but in Thai.
Nin’s grandfather had been moved to a faded yellow chair, the one piece of furniture in the basement that wasn’t laboratory equipment or a coffin, and Nin stood beside him, clasping his hand. He was still as wan and pale as Zoltan, but he managed to speak slowly, answering her questions. He had blue eyes that grew round when he saw me. He patted her hand and pointed.
“Yes,” Nin said, switching to English. “This is my friend, Val.”
He surprised me by also switching to English, though his accent made him harder to understand than Nin. “The Ruin Bringer who carries one of the fabled Dragon Blades.”
“That’s me. Apparently.” I dragged up an old apple crate that had come with the house and sat on it facing him. “How’s it going, Ti?”
He regarded me gravely and rubbed a shaky hand over his bald pate, then scraped his fingers through the wisps of white hair around his ears. “I feared I would not make it. I was so ill, and the orc mercenaries came after me.”
“Yeah, we met them. They said they’d be back with reinforcements. Care to tell us why?”
“Very much so, yes.” Ti looked at Nin, and she patted his hand. “I spoke to your mother and knew you lived in this city. I hoped to visit you if I survived this trip, but it is true that you are not the reason I risked everything to escape and return to this world.”
“Escape?” I asked.
Nin didn’t look surprised, so maybe she’d already gotten the story.
“Yes, Ruin Bringer.”
“You can call me Val.”
“That is very informal.”
“I’m an informal kind of gal.”
“You are said to be a great dragon slayer.”
“I’m an informal kind of dragon slayer. And we better get something straight.” I had no idea what rumors were flying about in the Cosmic Realms, but if the rest of the lesser species thought I could kill dragons, that was a problem. Especially if they were seeking me out because they wanted dragons killed. “I battled a dragon with the help of another dragon. Lord Zavryd-thingie.”
Ti’s white brows drew together.
Damn, if I was going to start thinking of him as my boyfriend and having sex with him—would we ever get a chance to do that?—I should learn to pronounce his name. Maybe I would have him write it down on a sticky note for me, spelling it out phonetically, so I could practice. Or at least pull it out of my pocket for introductions.
“Zav helped me. And by helped me, I mean he did all of the work. But he is a noble dragon and doesn’t slay other dragons, so I was the one to jump on Dob’s chest and plunge Chopper into his heart.”
I was either shortening too many names or speaking too quickly, because Ti looked to Nin for a translation. She gave him a version in her native tongue, and I heard the name Dobsaurin.
“You can pronounce their names?” I whispered.
Granted, Dobsaurin was a lot easier than most of the dragon names, but they were all simpler when shortened.
Nin smiled crookedly. “My last name is Chattrakulrak. I can pronounce anything.”
I snorted. “I’ll bet.”
She patted her grandfather’s hand again and nodded for him to go on. She looked a lot more relaxed now that he was awake. I wondered what the total would be on Zoltan’s invoice. He wasn’t around, so I assumed he’d hopped into his coffin for a cat nap.
“You have killed a dragon.” Ti nodded to himself, as if he needed to believe I was capable of that, though doubt lurked in his eyes now.
I hated to disappoint the guy, but if he’d come looking for a dragon slayer, he needed to hire Zav, not me. Zav was pretty badass. He’d even taken down the female after telling me that females among his kind were more powerful. Later, I would find him a T-shirt that said he was my #1 Dragon.
“Many years ago, I was kidnapped from this world because I was known to be a talented crafter among my people, and a gnomish crafter was what my captors believed they needed. You see, they’d had another gnomish crafter before me, one who made an impressive prison that funneled the power of the molten core of Nylunia—the gnomish home world—deep within the Crying Caverns. His wife was a gnomish scientist who crafted a special type of bacterium that invades the bodies of certain species and makes them very ill. They were a team working for my captors until the scientist died of old age and her husband took his life, grief-stricken by her loss and feeling great guilt over what they’d done.”
I shifted on the hard crate, wishing I’d brought a cushion. And popcorn. This story was going to take a while. “Is this the same bacteria that infected you?”
“Yes. But I was originally told it was developed to affect wyverns, cockatrices, hydras, and dragons.”
“Dragons?”
“Dragons. And the prison was designed to hold the dragons that were weakened by the bacteria and place them into a magical hibernation where they did not age and the infection did not advance. This way, they were held helpless but not killed, because it is a great crime for a dragon to kill another dragon, one punishable by death.”
“So I’ve heard.” I frowned, realizing the implication of his words. “Dragons were your captors and behind everything?”
“Yes. Once weakened by the bacteria, the dragons could be contained in this prison indefinitely. Some have been there for centuries.”
“How old was that gnome couple when they died?”
“Five or six hundred years.”
I looked at Nin. “I hope you’re investing in the stock market. If you live even a quarter as long as a full-blooded gnome, compounding interest is going to be your friend. Big time.”
“I am learning about investing and do have mutual funds and stocks in a self-managed SEP IRA.” Nin smiled at me. “But you should be doing the same. A half-elf can live much longer than a quarter-gnome.”
“You know a dragon tried to light me on fire today, right?”
“That happens most days, does it not? You are still alive.”
“For the moment.” I turned back to Ti. “Your captors snatched you to take over maintenance of their dragon prison? How many of these sickly dragons are there?”
“More than twenty. Dragons are not a fecund species, so that is a great many for them, especially since most of these are from one clan.”
A hollow feeling of dread and certainty dropped into my gut. “What clan?”
“Stormforge.”
“Zav’s family.” I rubbed my face, wishing he was still here. No, maybe this was for the best. When he heard about this, he might destroy the house in his fury. Unless he already knew. Did he? “Do they know?”
“It is unlikely. In the twenty years I was a captive in the Crying Caverns, only two dragons visited, aside from the ones that were brought in sick and placed in the life cells.”
“Life cells?”
“That is the name for the enclosures that force the sick dragons into hibernation. Since they never wake, they cannot work on healing themselves or breaking out.”
“For centuries.”
Ti nodded. “That is what I’ve been told. None of the dragons that were imprisoned there when I arrived have ever been taken out.”
If they were still alive, would it be possible to free them? Or, if taken out of the cells, would they die of the bacterial infection?
Maybe I was getting ahead of myself. “Are you sure they’re alive and those aren’t actually tombs?”
“I could still sense their auras when I walked past them, and I understand enough of the magic of the machinery to read their statuses. They are ill and unconscious but not dead. The life cells keep them alive.”
“If these bacteria were designed for dragons and dragon-kin,” Nin said, “why did it almost kill you?”
Ti grimaced. “My captors infected me with it as soon as they brought me to the caverns. I was not put in a life cell, because they needed me to work, to do the maintenance on the machines and place new dragon prisoners into cells as they were brought in. They used some magic to halt the spread of the infection in my body—that is what they told me. They said that as long as I remained in the Crying Caverns, I would live, but that if I left, I would die. I was never positive that was the truth, that gnomes could be killed by the bacteria, but I was always afraid it was so. Afraid enough that I stayed and did not try to escape back to Earth and my family.” He gazed sadly at Nin and shook his head. “Even my wife whom I loved very much. And still love.”