Eona: The Last Dragoneye

shock. The arrow had come from high in the west cliffs. The closest cover was the upturned boat. I scrabbled to Ido on my hands and knees. He was on his side, hands pressed around the arrow shaft, panting. All color had drained from his face, and a soft sucking sound came from around the long metal arrowhead as blood welled between his fingers. The arrow had punctured his air. I had seen such wounds before: always fatal. I had to heal him. Fast.

“Ido, look at me.” His eyes were muddy, the skin around his lips already tinged with blue. “We’ve got to get behind the boat.”

Protest tightened his pale face, but I grabbed him under his left arm and pulled. The slight movement forced a groan out of him, and barely shifted his body. He was so heavy.

“Try,” I urged. “Try.”

He gulped for air and pushed his heels into the sand as I pulled on his arm again, but it did not help.

“Can’t,” he whispered. The effort to speak brought blood bubbling to the corner of his mouth.

“Eona!”

The frantic call jerked my head up. Two men were running across the sand toward us, swords drawn: Kygo, powering across the soft, sliding surface, and Caido, struggling to keep up with his emperor’s speed. Beyond the seawall, the other two guards were marshaling the villagers.

“We are surrounded!” Kygo yelled.

“Get down!” I screamed, torn between relief and fear. I pointed behind them. “Arrows.”

Immediately, both men ducked and zigzagged, but kept running. Kygo arrived first, showering Ido and me with sand, Caido close behind.

“Holy mother of Shola,” Kygo swore, taking in Ido’s injury. He grasped my arm. “Are you all right?”

I nodded. “I have to heal him. We don’t have much time.”

“You take one arm, I’ll take the other,” Kygo ordered Caido. “Get behind the boat, Eona.” He pushed me toward it.

I heard Ido’s wet moan as they hauled him to his feet and dragged him across the sand after me. I scrambled behind the boat and pressed myself against its solid shield. Kygo and Caido rounded the prow at a lopsided run, Ido slumped between them. Caido dropped his sword and braced Ido against his chest. With a small grunt of effort, he eased the Dragoneye down next to me. Kygo crouched at the end of the boat and cautiously peered around the edge.

“I’d say at least two companies, coming in from high ground,” he said. “And so far, only one arrow.” He looked back at Ido. “Straight for the main threat.”

“We’ve been betrayed,” Caido said.

“But is it one of the villagers?” Kygo returned to his tense watch. “Or one of our own?”

I pressed my hands to Ido’s ashen face. Icy skin, but damp with sweat. He was close to the shadow world.

“Ido, stay awake. I need you to block the ten dragons when I heal you.”

He widened his eyes, trying to focus on me through his shallow, labored breaths. “Again?” His smile was no more than a twitch of blue lips.

“Will your healing power destroy the arrow?” Caido asked.

I shook my head. “I don’t think so.”

“Then we’ll have to get it out.” He touched the sleek feathered end protruding from Ido’s back. “That fletching has to come off before I can pull the shaft through his body,” he said. “Your Majesty, I’ll hold him still, if you cut.”

Kygo nodded and shifted into position, sword raised. “That fletching is imperial,” he said.

Caido nodded. “Short bolt for a mechanical bow.” He pulled Ido’s limp body against his chest, holding him in an iron grip. “Go,” he said.

One downward slice of Kygo’s blade and the fletching dropped to the sand. It was a clean, fast cut, but it still pushed the remaining shaft farther into Ido’s body, ripping a muffled scream from him. I grabbed his clawed hands.

The distant, unmistakable clash of metal against metal sent Kygo crawling back to the end of the boat. “The villagers have put up tuaga, but it’s not going to hold that many men back for long.” He looked around at us. “They are going to drive everyone onto the beach. No way back and no way forward. A death ground.” He picked up his sword. “Caido, guard Lady Eona.”

“Kygo, what are you doing?”

“They’ve broken through!” He launched himself into a low zigzagging run across the sand.

I rose on my knees, enough to see over the boat. With sword raised, Kygo was heading for three soldiers advancing across the beach. Along the seawall, villagers were using hooks and poles to defend their barricade against a vicious attack from ten or so pikemen. Ryko and Dela had marshaled a group of men to hold back more troops who were slowly forcing their way through the maze of tuaga spread across the main road. A line of long-bow archers, some of them women, stood on the seawall, firing into the ranks caught in the bottleneck created by the bamboo spikes.

I swallowed my fear and turned back to the task. “Caido, get that arrow out of Lord Ido.”

With a nod, Caido dug his knees farther into the sand, bracing himself. “My lady, at the moment it is plugging the puncture. When I pull it out you’re not going to have much time.”

“Do it.”

Caido’s thin face tensed. He reached around and hammered his palm against the stub of shaft in Ido’s back, pushing it through his body. Ido gasped and arched against the agony. With brutal speed, Caido grabbed the barbed shaft from the front and wrenched it out of Ido’s chest in a wet sucking release.

I dug my own feet into the sand, pressing the gateways into the earth’s energy. “Quick, lie him down.”

The Dragoneye grunted as his back hit the sand. I pressed my hands against the wound, blocking the escape of air, as Caido scooped up his sword and crawled to the edge of the boat.

The resistance man tensed, rising into a crouch. “My lady,” he said urgently. “His Majesty is in trouble.”

“Go,” I said. “Go.”

He pushed himself up as the sound of sword meeting sword clanged with quickening intensity. Caido roared a battle cry and ran to his emperor’s aid. I snatched a glance over the boat again. Kygo was fighting three men, the desperate struggle sending up showers of sand. For a moment I was frozen, caught between Kygo and Ido, both fighting for their lives.

Under my hands, Ido’s chest jerked in shallow pants, his blood warm and sticky on my skin. Right now, he was in more peril. I forced myself to take a shaking breath. I could do this; I had done it before. Another breath, this time steadier. Finally, on the third, I saw Ido’s solid body shift into energy, his seven points of power dull and getting darker with each labored beat of his heart. There was no silvery flow through the meridians along the right side of his body. On the next breath I called the Mirror Dragon, opening myself to her power with the urgent command: Heal.

Hua tore through me in joyous union, filling my body with the ecstasy of golden song and the majesty of dragon-sight. Below us, the battle on the seafront was a swarm of bright dots coming together and breaking apart in a desperate dance. We saw the blue one — his thin tether to the earthly body fading— trying to circle us, trying to protect, but the other ten had already felt our presence.

Heal! We gathered power from the endless ebb and flow of the sea, from the wild energy of the approaching cyclone, from the crisscross of lines that pulsed deep in the earth. We were Hua and our golden howl roared through the pathways of Ido’s body, knitting flesh and sinew, fusing dark pathways back into the smooth silvery flow of life. As one, his seven points of power burst back into spinning bright vitality, the black gap in his crown still present, still resisting my influence. Ido gasped — a long, raw breath that leaped through his Hua. The Rat Dragon shrieked, power pulsing across his blue scales, opal claws spreading. His energized body coiled into readiness, his huge head swinging left to right, scanning the below-world. The ten dragons were coming — and their need was greater than ever before.

“Eona!” Ido pulled me down on top of him. The sudden contact wrenched me back into my earthly body. His eyes, so close to mine, were all silver. “We can use the ten to stop the soldiers.”

Then I was back with the Mirror Dragon, the lift of her power pulling me into her sinuous strength. We rolled through the heavy clouds, our ruby claws slashing at the pressure that closed in on all sides. Beside us, the blue one shrieked again, twisting to meet the energy that circled in a high-pitched keen of ten sorrowing songs.