Light Dragons 03 - Sparks Fly

after them?” May asked Gabriel.
    “She has the sword. I suppose we should.” Gabriel glanced toward the First Dragon before making a bow.
    “You stay here-I’ll go. He’ll never let you get the sword, but he’d let me have it,” I told Gabriel before racing past the First Dragon.
    “Running is so tiresome unless one is being chased by a being with a barbed cat,” Magoth said in a bored voice.
    I heard the others calling after me as I ran, but I ignored them, focusing on trying to remember the lay of the land. Dauva sat on the rim of a solid granite ledge that dropped several hundred feet down to a marshy wooded area, leaving only one side and the front vulnerable to attack. That was one reason why it was so successful at resisting attacks, but that didn’t matter to me at the moment; what did matter was where the game trail I raced along was taking me. I had a vague sense that the ledge was fairly close by on the left side, but the terrain had changed in the last few hundred years, and I could no longer rely on landmarks to guide me.
    The sound of crashing bodies through the underbrush warned me the others were following. It just drove me faster. I had to get that sword before Baltic, assuming he could get it away from Thala. I hoped Constantine had the presence of mind to come after me, so he could restrain Thala, but I had a feeling he wasn’t going to be as trustworthy as I’d hoped, not after the most recent experience with him.
    “I really hate it when I’m right about things like this,” I panted a few minutes later when I emerged from the heavily wooded area to a narrow stone ledge. I stopped a good dozen feet from the edge, but I had to take a minute to catch my breath before I could address the two people who stood there.
    “-betray me now as you have done in the past?” Baltic was in the middle of saying. He stood facing Thala, who held the black sword box in both hands. “What have you done with my talisman?”
    “What do you think I did with it?” she answered in a snotty voice, a cruel smile on her face. She pulled a narrow gold chain out from under her shirt, allowing a flat disk of gold hanging from it to dangle before him. “If it means so much to you, you should take better care of it.”
    “I did. You betrayed my trust there, as well.”
    “I did tell you it was folly to trust anyone,” she answered with a little shrug, then yanked the chain off her neck and threw it at his feet. “Let it not be said that I am not generous. I am through with it, so you can have it back. You may thank me for giving your mate one less thing to fuss over.”
    Baltic didn’t even look at the talisman lying in the dirt. “Do you think I care what you do, so long as it does not involve the light dragons? If it is your desire to avenge yourself against the archimage, then do so, but do not involve me or those I am responsible for.”
    “You really believe that’s what this is about? Revenge? ” Thala laughed softly, gesturing toward him with the sword. I eyed it, wondering if I could snatch it and shove her over the edge of the cliff. It was high enough that the fall would likely kill even an immortal ... . Mentally, I shook my head as the idea occurred to me. I couldn’t do that to her, not even when she had tried to destroy us. “Perhaps it is about revenge ... of a sort. But not the type you or your precious Ysolde would understand.”
    She didn’t even look toward me as I edged a hair closer to her. I wanted the talisman, but more important, I wanted that damned sword.
    Behind me, voices called as the others tried to find our path. I assumed they were having a bit of difficulty finding us since they didn’t have Savian to find our tracks.
    “The sword is mine,” Baltic said, holding out a hand. “It was given to me, not you.”
    “That was a mistake,” Thala said, smiling. “Not one that will be repeated. Now if you don’t mind, I’m going to kill you once and for all, and then I think I’ll kill your mate, and after that-”
    I never did find out what horrible plan she had in mind, because Baltic sprang at her before she could finish her threat, sending her flying backward a good eighteen feet, right up against a sharp obelisk of stone that seemed to have erupted out of the earth. The force of the blow knocked the sword box from her hand, causing me to scramble forward and snatch it up before she could grab it again.
    I tied the broken leather strap around my waist even as