Page 127 of Saving the Last Heir
“Who broke the moonstone?” he asked.
The reason I’d recognized the old man was because of the photos I’d used to find him earlier in the year. He was Ayumundi. Once the reunions had run their course, Dad took me, Shyanne, Mom, and the historian into a quieter corner of the house, though the sounds of laughter and revelry still echoed through the halls.
I still hadn’t really recovered from the shock, but managed to clear my head enough to listen to the man as he sat across from us.
Dad reached over and patted the historian on the knee. “Mr. Ayumundi, can you?—”
“Just Ayumundi,” he said, bristling and pulling his knee away. “Nomister,damn it.”
Dad shot me a look, and I shrugged. In all my travels and research, the hunt for this man had revealed two things. One, he didnotlike being a part of regular society and chose to live far from others. Two, many people didn’t like him due to his abrasive nature.
“All right then,Ayumundi,” Dad said. “It sounds like you know more than I do about what happened. I know I was locked away somewhere. I was gone for a long time, but… I still don’t really know where. I remember nothing but solid blue skies as far as the eye could see. No ground, no clouds, not even the sun. Nothing. I was just gliding through the air.”
Ayumundi waved a dismissive hand at him. “Yes, yes. The reliquary. That’s where you were. Where we all were.”
Shyanne let out a short gasp, and we turned to look at her. She sat beside me, one hand on my thigh, the other over her mouth.
“I did this?” she whispered.
“Yes,” Ayumundi said. “You said you broke the moonstone. That was a magical reliquary holding us captive.”
“Wait,” I said, holding my hands up. “I thought The Vanishing was a sickness? One brought about by the elders who wanted to make us more powerful?”
“That was the initial thought,” Ayumundi explained. “I’d been researching how to reverse it for years. I even tried to find the initial spell the old dragons used. It was during that hunt that Idiscovered the truth. The winged dragons didn’t mess the spell up. The drakes, a man named Francesco Anitoli, interfered at the last second, causing the spell to be miscast.”
“Oh my god,” I muttered. “That’s Joseph Anitoli’s father.”
“Correct,” Ayumundi said. “He conspired with many of the other criminal drake families to alter the spell to weaken us, and cause our souls to become untethered to the earthly world, and easily be pulled into the ethereal prison of the stones they’d created. Unlike his mobster son, Francesco was a skilled magician and also a good secret keeper. It wasn’t until his death that word began to trickle out. It’s why Joseph came for me.
“He came to my home with some of his men. Threatened me if I said anything. Those threats didn’t matter, though. I was already sick when they got there. All they did was hang around for a few days to make sure I didn’t go anywhere, and then”—he snapped his fingers—“I went into the prison too. Bastards.”
Dad curled his hands into fists, mimicking my own reaction. Those monsters.
“Are all the drakes in on this?” Shyanne asked.
Ayumundi shook his head once. “No. Just the…er…most unscrupulous ones. The families with no moral compass, who only want to see the winged dragons eradicated. The Anitolis in America. A family named Hoover in Western Europe. Others all around. Six in total. If we want to free all the winged dragons who have vanished, all six reliquary orbs will need to be destroyed.”
“But the sickness will still happen,” I said. “How do we stop that? If the orbs are gone, will the people who get sick die? Will they be transported somewhere else? Somewhere even worse?”
“Give me a few weeks,” Ayumundi said. “Find me a few healers in the returned dragons, and we’ll have it sorted out.”
“Excuse me?” Mom said. “Sorted out? That fast?”
Ayumundi turned and gazed out the window at the night beyond, going silent. As we sat there, I wondered if he would even respond. When I was about to speak, he turned and looked at my mother.
“I’d nearly figured out the ingredients needed for the cure to the sickness itself. I’m not a healer, though. I need that expertise to finalize it. I need my books. I don’t suppose anyone has those.”
“We’ve got a few,” I said. “We tried reading them, but they’re in some sort of code.”
Ayumundi gave me what I could only describe as a predatory grin. “Good. My cipher held. Fantastic,” he said and rubbed his hands together.
“You’re saying there’s a cure to The Vanishing in those damn books?” I said, voice rising. “If you’d written them in plain English, we might have stopped this earlier.”
“Bah,” he said, waving a hand at me. “It would only have cured the sickness that weakens the dragon. It wouldn’t have broken the spell that pulls their soul into the orb. Calm down, boy, and get me some healers to help.”
My shoulders stiffened, but my father patted my back and nodded at me. I relaxed, though I was still pissed that this strange little man had decided to stay a hermit rather than come forward with what he’d known.
“I think we can find some healers,” Dad said, rising from his seat. “I’m fairly certain one of the dragons who returned withLeo Rosen is a healer. There may be more returning soon. Let’s give Mister—uh, I mean, let’s give Ayumundi some privacy to rest.”
