The Traitor's Heir

Twenty-Four

Quara had sat beside her sister's bedside for nearly as long as the great golden dragon lurked in the room, clinging to her hand, and watching as they waited for her to stir.  Once Quara had drifted off to sleep sitting up and had jerked awake, thinking for a moment that perhaps Lina had squeezed her hand, only to find that her sister was still lying completely still in the bed.

Ausfela never rested, but stayed all the while by Lina's side, her enormous eyes unblinking as they waited, listening to the slow, steady sound of Lina's breathing.  News from the outside world flitted into the dimly lit room.  The great red dragon had been captured and was now being held prisoner somewhere in the labyrinth of tunnels that extended down below the city itself.  There was hope that with time he might come to realize that he had been fighting for the wrong side for over three thousand years and that his loyalties were misplaced.

Quara still couldn't walk on her own, but as long as her feet were wrapped it was no longer excruciating to let them touch the floor or couch, even when the blessed numbness of the salve that was slathered on the bottoms of her feet three times a day began to wear off before the next application.  Her feet still looked terrible when she caught sight of them when the bandages were being changed, but she was repeatedly reassured that after a month or two they would be as good as new.

On the eighth day Quara sat by her sister's side, sewing a new tunic for Lina to wear when she woke.  Quara appeared to be the only person in the entire city who would not entertain the idea that any other outcome was possible.  The old shirt that Lina had been wearing since they began their journey was a complete loss, stained with black dragon's blood to the shoulders from the moment when she'd plunged the knife into the dragon's eye.  Ausfela had told Quara the story of her sister's bravery every single day as they waited for her to wake, so that Quara could nearly see the moment in her mind's eye.  More often though, she sat and thought of the moment when she had woken to the searing pain of fire climbing up her legs and had seen her sister plummeting towards the lake.

As she sat and sewed she turned over in her mind the things that she had learned from the story of the early history of the struggle against the Emperor.  The story had not unfolded the way she had expected once she had realized that it was the same story, or a version of it, as the one that she had read back in the Caverns in her sister's little hiding place.  The reading of that first story had felt as though it had taken place ages ago, and not a mere week and a half.  She pushed away thoughts of her family and how her parents and siblings must be worried sick by now, searching for them within the enormous Caverns, likely believing that they had fallen into some chasm and disappeared forever.

Sometimes she felt like maybe they had.  They had slid down into the bowels of the earth and while they had risen back up into the sky on the back of a dragon could anyone really say if they would ever return.  Maybe they had, in a way, fallen to their deaths.  The task before them loomed large and the dangers were abundant.  Although the army outside the doors of their little home meant that staying put hardly meant that they would have been safe, she reminded herself at least twice a day.

She didn't really know how she should feel about being descended from the man who she had thought was the villain in that first story, the man who had held the cup that poisoned the princess.  She had to admit that when Ausfela first began speaking of royalty back in the dragon caves she had hoped that they might be descended from the King in the story, that they would learn that he had gone on with his life and married, and that the evil Emperor who had haunted their land was descended from the traitor who had held the cup.

Quara felt that she knew what her sister would think if she woke to hear the story.  She would be convinced that it was their duty to end the years of strife that had resulted from that horrible evening.  Perhaps it was their duty, Quara thought, leaning back in her chair.  But sometimes she found herself asking herself why she'd agreed to explore the City in the first place, and would nearly convince herself that the entire story of their royal lineage was simply a horrible mistake.  They had simply stumbled into the right place at the wrong time.  Maybe two other girls, the real royals, had followed the same path and were supposed to be down there in that horrible darkness about to meet Ausfela, but now the way had been blocked by the falling stairs.