Light Dragons 02 - The Unbearable Lightness of Dragons

as he took charge of the kiss, allowing me to feel both his passion and his love.
    “Farewell, my heart,” I said as he picked up his bag. “Come back to me safe.”
    He paused for a minute at the door, a curious look on his face. “You said the exact same thing to me three hundred years ago.”
    “But then you were going out to battle Constantine. You won’t be doing that this time,” I said, smiling a little at the bittersweet memory.
    “Perhaps. Perhaps not,” was all he said before leaving.
    I stared at the door for a few minutes wondering what the hell that meant, but chalked it up to Baltic’s indulging in a little mystery. He liked to do that, claiming it was his way to bring back all the many missing gaps in my memory. To be honest, I thought it was more his way of teasing me, but since I enjoyed puzzling out a good mystery, I didn’t quibble.
    Two hours later I watched the sun begin its descent into the gentle hills to the west before considering the chair that sat before me. I stood in a back corner of the velvety green lawn, well away from the house and anything that might accidentally get in the path of my sometimes wonky magic.
    The frog that sat on the chair in a glass jar looked back at me with shiny black eyes.
    “Just in case something goes wrong and I turn you into a banana, I want to apologize now. I don’t think it will, but I feel obligated to warn you that with the interdict on me, my magic doesn’t quite do what I intend it to do. Also, in case the banishing does work, please note that I have fixed in mind a location two miles from here next to a stream, so you should be able to find a new home there. I hope you won’t mind relocating. Are you ready? Good. So am I.” I closed my eyes for a moment to gather my thoughts, and remember exactly what I had said two months ago when I inadvertently summoned the First Dragon by means of a banishing spell.
    “Taken with sorrow, all I cast from me,” I said, taking strength from Baltic’s dragon fire, which still mingled with my own deep inside me. “Devoured with rage, banished so you will be.”
    I opened my eyes, but nothing happened. The air didn’t shimmer; no dragon formed out of nothing; the frog wasn’t even gone. He belched at me and ran his tongue over his left eyeball, clearly not the least bit impressed.
    “Maybe I didn’t concentrate hard enough. Let’s try it again.” I took another deep breath, focused my attention on thoughts of the First Dragon, and repeated the spell.
    All was silent around me except for the chatter of birds in the distance and the subdued hum of a couple of bumblebees as they flitted amongst three scraggly wild rosebushes.
    “Right,” I told the frog. “I see what the problem is. The first time I did this, I wasn’t trying to summon the First Dragon—I was trying to banish everyone else. So I’ll focus on that instead. You ready for a little journey? Here we go.”
    I recited the spell a third time. The frog fell asleep.
    “Stars and stripes forever,” I snapped, storming around the chair. I tried it four more times, but I didn’t banish so much as a blade of grass. “And I didn’t even get a banana.” The now-freed frog made an unsympathetic noise as it hopped away into the garden.
    I was about to return to the house when a sort of fog swept over me . . . a cold, biting, familiar sort of fog.
    “I will let you live only because you are my godson and namesake.” The man’s voice, deep and rich with sorrow, pierced the blinding whiteness.
    I shivered and wrapped my arms around myself as I tried to peer through the wind and snow that were storming around me.
    “I ought to kill you where you stand,” another man’s voice answered, and like the first, it was familiar. I moved toward them until two figures were visible in the nearly blinding storm. “You drove Baltic to this, drove him mad, and now he is dead. I may have killed him, but the blood is on your hands, Constantine Norka.”
    “Flee while you can, Kostya,” Constantine answered, his shoulders slumped in weariness. “Go far away and hide until the remaining black dragons are no longer sought.”
    “I am not afraid of you! I am not afraid of battle!”
    “It would not be a battle; it would be a slaughter. Flee, I tell you. You are Toldi’s son, and I can do no less, but do not try me further. Go now, before we bring down the castle.”
    “You don’t have to destroy Dauva,” Kostya said, his face dark with anger.