Page 25 of The Dragonrider and the Void
There’s so much I need to tell her,he thought. Most of which was intimate, and the kind of conversation that he would prefer to have in a more private setting. The Morsythians were far enough away, but Cheyanne and Yarla were well within earshot.
Here goes,he thought, walking up to Lark and White Eye. Similar to Ingamar’s response toward him, White Eye lifted his horned head at Venrick’s approach and released a throaty growl.
“I come in peace,” he said to the dragon.
Lark scolded White Eye with a tsking noise, and said, “Knock it off. He didn’t know what we were trying to do when he shot you.”
“I’m sorry, White Eye. I really did think you were there to kill us. I wouldn’t have let the arrow loose if I’d known you were on a different mission,” he pleaded, his hands open in front of him.
White Eye snorted, puffing a plume of sulphury smoke at Venrick as he lowered his head. Lark instantly chuckled, playfully hitting the dragon on the shoulder.
“What?” Venrick asked, edging closer.
“He’s glad you’re not a good shot,” she chuckled. “But he knows what you did to help me.”
“At least he’s not shooting fire balls at me, the way Ingamar did,” Venrick joked.
White Eye growled again. Lark put her hand on his paw to calm him.
“Lark, I wanted to talk before, but with the storm and the threat of a Nordraven rider finding us…”
“Nordraven patrols won’t venture far in this weather,” she said, crouching next to White Eye. “We have until morning, at least.” Lark’s gaze looked past Venrick toward Cheyanne, who was working on Yarla. “Was she like that when you found her, whoever she is?” she asked.
“Her name is Yarla. We knew each other when I was a child,” Venrick said. He moved in to lean on the cave wall near her. “The darkness in her veins has lightened up a bit.”
A blue glow passed from the Yogo in Cheyanne’s staff in response to her whispered spells. The thin line connected to Yarla, feeding a trickle of magical energy to replenish what the elf had lost.
“I didn’t know magical energy could be collected from another living creature,” Venrick said, his voice sounding hollow.
“That is why the rimeshade are such a threat to our world,” Lark said. “They can take power from another magical being and immediately use it for their own purposes.”
“But that’s not all they were doing in Haven’s Edge,” Venrick said.
“What do you mean?”
“I found jars of dragon blood. They were distilling the magic out of it. Pure magical energy, not from a Hyalite or a Yogo. They were also collecting power from the blood of other magical races,” he said, motioning to Yarla. “I found her hanging from a cellar ceiling, her life and power being drained into a jar. We knew each other as kids in Gambria.”
“That can’t be. Rimeshade are powerful but they can’t separate the power from a living creature for use by someone or something else. They alone can use the magic they collect,” Lark said, looking toward her dragon.
“The rimeshade was expecting a Magus to come to Haven’s Edge,” Venrick said.
“This rimeshade are not working alone,” Lark said, knitting her brows in thought.
“They’re working with members of the Magi Order. Likely a directive of Hierro De Vonte, the Archmagus in Astral City.”
“That’s the same Magus who was working with Joc when they put that curse on you. He was trying to use you to get to me and the Hyalite we stole. They have to be working with Barrik again,” Lark said.
“I don’t know if Barrik was involved with this, but when I first arrived in Haven’s Edge, I overheard the rimeshade’s orcs saying they were close to perfecting the process. Distilling the magic from magical blood must’ve been what they meant,” Venrick reasoned.
Lark’s hand moved to the pendant around her neck. It was something she did whenever?—
“Perfecting it for what?” Nix asked an instant after appearing in a pinwheel of sparks.
“Nix, I thought we’d lost you,” Venrick said in disbelief.
“I wasn’t lost to Lark, just gone for a short time,” she said, her dress rippling in her own fire.
“Nix, what do you know about rimeshade trying to distill magic from another magical being’s blood?” Lark asked.
