Even if it meant he would never fly.
* * *
Tyrez ducked to enter the alcove.
The doorway was tall enough for most, but at close to seven feet in stature, the Dragon shifter was accustomed to stooping for pain-free entry. Dragons built things of sufficient height. Humans were a different story. His forehead often bore the full brunt of the experience if he became too distracted to practice the fine art of ducking.
He’d spent most of the night in the human realm, searching for the woman who was also a Mover. She’d just about single-handedly defeated the group that had battled against her by throwing things at them with her mind. And then, when she’d failed and they’d killed her pack, she’d escaped through the gateway before disappearing on the streets of Winnipeg.
The helping Sabres tracked her as far as a bridge before losing the scent. They’d try again tonight. It was much easier to hide Dragons and Sabres in the dark. But for now, Tyrez and his brother searched the Warlock’s lair for clues.
“He picked a good spot to hide.” His brother Razir scanned the pair of tunnels that forked off the large central chamber. “I don’t think Dragons have visited this realm in at least a hundred years.”
Tyrez shrugged, thinking of the forest of enormous trees that they’d battled the Dires among. “Impossible to fly through those sharding trees.” He turned away from the tunnel that contained the gateways leading to the surface and the human realm. He focused instead on the one with several alcoves hewn in the rock—quarters for housing the residents.
Lanterns, hung along the walls, lit the entire hideaway. Inside them, a glowing substance swirled as if alive.
The brothers paused in the entryway to the first alcove. Fully furnished with thick carpet underfoot, the room seethed with the Warlock’s dark energy, enough that Tyrez got nauseous just entering it. He and Razir exchanged grim looks before Tyrez left to explore the rest of the cavern.
Back out in the tunnel, something niggled at him. He passed the next alcove and continued.
His brother was more efficient. “They kept the woman here,” Razir called as he poked his nose into the alcove Tyrez had bypassed. “There’s a chain attached to the wall.”
Tyrez’s instincts urged him to keep moving along the tunnel, but he dutifully peered into the next room. It smelled of Dire shifter, and the crystal in his blood detected the life essences left behind—in this case, powerful alpha energy.
“This must have been the alpha’s.” He spoke loud enough for his brother to hear, and Razir answered with a grunt.
There was something here that called to Tyrez. It led him past the Dire’s room to one at the very end of the tunnel.
As soon as he entered it, a tremor ran through him.
“I’ve got the Oracle’s room,” Tyrez called to his brother.
“How the hell did he capture himself an Oracle?” Razir’s voice betrayed both his frustration and his angst. “We would have known if one had been born. There hasn’t been one recorded in over a thousand years.”
It was Tyrez’s turn to grunt acknowledgment. “There are Seer lines among the underworld Dragons,” he mused. “If one had died delivering a child, we wouldn’t know about it.”
“Yeah, but Mother says most newborn infants can’t handle the backlash of power. That it either kills them outright, or drives them mad.” A rattle sounded from out in the tunnel as though Razir picked something up and shook it, but his thoughts remained on task. “So if Rindek managed to be in the right place, at the right time, to nab the infant, how did he get so lucky as to acquire one that could function?”
Tyrez ground his teeth together as he scanned the Oracle’s room. “Yeah, well, he did. And now he’s using him to build himself an army.”
“The last thing we needed”—Razir grumped—“was for this Warlock to be able to see into the past, presentandfuture. How did we get so lucky?”
Tyrez breathed deep as he sampled the energy. The Oracle had spent a lot of time in this room. And for much of it, he’d been in pain.
His teeth ground together. Who knew how long the Warlock had held him here? As a Torshin, mercy would elude Rindek. The Torshin people had been notorious for their selfish brutality throughout the realms, until Tyrez’s ancestors finally defeated them. For good, they’d thought at the time.
Now it was apparent that they’d missed one. At least, it was the hope of both the Dragon Matriarch and the Emperor that onlyoneTorshin Warlock was missed.
“I’m tired of being one step behind this bastard,” snarled Razir, still out of sight. “And what we felt in his quarters—he’s sharding strong.”
“Too strong to be just a Warlock?” Tyrez asked, casting his eyes around the Oracle’s room.
His brother hesitated before replying. “Maybe.” More sounds echoed down the tunnel—metal drawers opening and closing. “He stashed crystals here, but they look like they’ve been stored a while. He wasn’t using these ones to do his thing. Did he have more someplace else?”
Tyrez gritted his teeth. “If he wasn’t using the crystals . . .”
Razir finished the thought. “Could he be an Archmage?”
