“Why did you summon the champions? It wasn’t supposed to work.”
She rolled her eyes. “That’s why I had them summoned. Empty gesture to silence the kingdoms threatening war, which could interfere with finding out who could close the gate.”
“You knew we weren’t them at once, didn’t you?”
“Of course. I would never forget those four. The question now is how you came to be here in their stead and where they are. Giving me the answer is the only reason you’re still alive.”
Eric wasn’t looking forward to being tortured, however she was planning to do it. He had to stall for time. “Why didn’t you just do something to us then? Why let us complete the quest, or appear to?”
“I wanted to know who you were. My spies soon assured me that you were not up to the quest’s challenge, which meant that by fooling you into believing the gate had been closed, I could undo the damage that Perndara had done to my plans. And it worked. Armies have already stood down. You even found out for me who stole the scroll.”
They had indeed. But Raith was on the other side of the gate, still alive, unless the dragons over there had gotten him, which seemed likely. “What of Perndara? She fought us and if we’d done the spell to close the gate, she would’ve been pulled through. Since we weren’t doing it for real, we would’ve known it didn’t work.”
“She was supposed to pretend she couldn’t handle you and fly back through it before you tried. As it turns out, she couldn’t handle you for real.”
The dragon looked at him as if realizing he was a bigger threat than believed. Maybe they could use that to their advantage, but he had no idea how. The entire quest had been a trap. They’d achieved nothing, would not be going home, and Honyn would be destroyed. They had snatched defeat from the jaws of victory.
“So now what?” Ryan asked from where he still sat on the floor.
Nir’lion sneered. “Now you will wait for my return, when I will learn from you and your elven friend in the dungeon how you have come to be here instead of the Ellorians.”
“Wait for your return?” the rogue asked, relieved she was leaving.
Nir’lion turned to the window, smashing it and sending shards of glass to the floor. “The armies of Honyn are unsuspecting once more, and the time has come.”
She climbed onto the window ledge and leapt into the sky as storm clouds rolled in. She dropped out of sight at once. Eric raced to the window to see her morph into an enormous golden dragon bigger than the one they’d killed, her wings snapping out to catch the wind. As she soared away, a great rumbling shook the room, sending loose mortar falling from the ceiling and dislodging blocks from the walls. From the gate room, dragon upon dragon soared into the sky, some slamming claws into the ruin in a first swipe at the world they would destroy. The darkening sky filled with death on wings, silver, blue, red, green, golden, and black dragons headed in every direction and roaring with bloodlust. As if at one with the impending dragon storm, the sky unleashed a crack of lightning and torrents of rain began to lash the tower.
Eric turned around, glad to see Ryan rising now that Matt had used the Trinity Ring on him. It now had only one spell left and the other rings were spent, so if Anna didn’t start healing people soon, someone might stay hurt next time.
Anna interrupted his thoughts on asking, “How did you come to be here, Your Majesty?”
The queen sighed. “She came to me in human form as an emissary from Nurinor, bearing the gift of a golden mirror she placed in the royal suite. One moment I stood alone with it, and the next something invisible wrenched me through it. I’ve been trapped here since. I heard the fight with the other dragon and had hoped to be rescued, but no one came.”
Eric said, “I assume you heard the part where we’re not the real champions and have somehow been substituted for them. Before you ask, we don’t know how or what’s going on. We’ve learned a lot and done okay on the quest, aside from being fooled by Nir’lion.”
“Yes, I’ve known for some time. And there’s no shame in being fooled by her. I was. The magic of dragons is very powerful.”
“So what do we do now?” Matt asked, eyeing the portal mirror in the other room.
Eric saw his gaze and said, “I doubt she would have left us here with that if we could use it.”
“We’ve got to get out of here,” answered Ryan. “She made a mistake bringing us here because the Dragon Gate is downstairs. We just have to get to it.”
“Right,” agreed Eric, surprised by that, “but that means it’s probably really hard to get out of here or to it.” He listened at the door but heard nothing. “I’m not sure where we are, though it seems like a tower from the view.”
“The northwest corner,” offered the queen, looking skeptical. “There are guards outside and at the bottom of the tower.”
“Okay,” said Ryan, lowering his voice, “assuming we can get out of here, let’s plan what we’re doing. Do we just close the gate or go get Raith, too?”
Eric said, “It’s been a week since he went through. Do we have any reason to believe he’s still there? He could’ve come back. The gate has been unsealed all this time. Or the dragons could’ve killed him.”
They looked at Matt to see if he was getting any images in his head. “He might still be there,” the wizard admitted, “but there’s no way to tell. Soliander has an earth golem guarding the place.”
“I think
