“It was inevitable,” she said. “Have you ever tried having a relationship with a conceptual entity who exists simultaneously on multiple planes? Communication issues doesn’t evenbeginto cover it.”
She said all this casually, but Julius could only stare at her in wonder. “So there reallyarehigher planes?”
Amelia nodded. “Higher, lower, outer, side to side, though the term ‘plane’ isn’t really accurate. The other realms aren’t flat, two-dimensional fields. They’re independent realities that bump up against our own. Think of it like a bunch of balloons caught together in a net. Some are as large as our own, others are smaller than this balcony, but each one has its own boundaries, rules, and magic. Plus, they’re infinite as far as anyone knows, which means you never run out of new places to visit.”
“So you’ve been to other worlds?”
“That would be the Planeswalker part of my name-tag,” she said proudly. “Honestly, though, getting in is the easy part. Anyone with enough power and leverage can brute force their way into another plane. Navigating safely once you’re inside, though?Veeeeeerytricky. You never know if you’re going to open a portal into a world of liquid methane or the surface of someone else’s sun, not to mention you can lose your home reality forever if you don’t take care to leave a good path back.”
“Or have a Kosmolabe,” Julius said excitedly. “My mage always said hers could be used to navigate the outer planes.”
Amelia went very still. “Your mage has a Kosmolabe?”
Julius bit his tongue. That had been a stupid,stupidthing to say. Talking to Amelia had been so easy, he’d let himself forget what she was: a powerful dragon who, thanks to him, had just discovered something she wanted.
“Had,” he said quickly. “Shehadone, but only for a few days before it was lost.”
Amelia gave him a skeptical look. “That’s too bad,” she said slowly, looking down at the dark desert. “Kosmolabes are incredibly useful, and, from what I can tell, unique to human sorcery. Anyone can use them, but their creation seems to hinge on the human ability to push magic around. I should know, too. I spent the better part of a century trying to fix a broken one.” She turned back to him. “So do you still have this mage?”
Julius was sorely tempted to lie. Friendly as she seemed, he didn’t like his eldest sister’s interest in Marci one bit. Dragons, especially old ones, tended to view humans like pets you could just trade around. But lying to an ancient, extremely magical dragon was a bad, bad idea. In the end, he decided to stick to the truth, albeit through the worst possible interpretation.
“She still works for me, yes, but she’s very young,” he said apologetically. “She got the Kosmolabe by accident and lost it just as quickly. I’m afraid she wouldn’t be much use to you.”
His sister looked horribly disappointed, and Julius fought the urge to take it all back, if only so Marci would never find out he’d ruined her chance to meet an ancient dragon mage.Sorry, Marci.
“More’s the pity,” Amelia said with a sigh. “I love humans. They’re so much more open-minded than dragons. I was delighted when I heard they finally got their magic back. The last time I was here, it looked like things would be locked upforever.”
He couldn’t have heard that right. “You’ve been out in other planes since before the meteor hit and brought back magic?”
Amelia nodded. “I actually wasn’t planning on coming home for another half-century, but Brohomir’s pigeon said it wasdreadfullyimportant, so here I am.”
Well, Julius thought, at least that explained why he’d never seen Amelia before. She’d been outside this realm of existence since before he wasborn. He was still trying to wrap his brain around that when he realized what else she’d said. “Wait, Bob’s pigeon cantalk?”
“Of course she can talk,” Amelia said, glancing over her shoulder at the glow of the throne room behind them. “Though she didn’t say anything about howboringit would be. From what I can tell, this whole party’s nothing but an elaborate mouse trap for the White Witch.” She snorted. “Talk about a waste of time. Why anyone would want to do anything with Ice Queen Svena is beyond me. She’s obnoxious.”
Julius blinked in surprise. “You know Svena?”
“Nearly lost my tail to her three hundred years ago,” Amelia huffed. “Of course, I’d already taken off one of her wings at the time. I’d have had the other one, too, if she hadn’t kicked me into that mountain.” She chuckled wistfully, lost in the memory. “Really, though, you can pretty much count on every dragon over a thousand knowing each other at least by name. That’s the part about immortality they don’t tell you: live long enough, and attrition makes your pool of acquaintances pretty shallow. Svena and I have a special bond, though. We’ve been the only two dragon mages worth the title since Imotella the Undying made her name hilariously ironic in the 1400s.”
“But,” Julius said, confused. “I thought the Three Sisters had been our enemies forever?”
“Oh, we try to kill each other whenever we can,” Amelia said. “But that doesn’t mean we’re uncivil about it. Sometimes it’s fun to call a temporary truce and go out drinking. We’re the only two dragons left who know enough to actually appreciate each other’s work. Besides, when you’ve kicked around as long as we have, the difference between an ancient enemy and an old friend is just a matter of perspective.”
That struck Julius as incredibly sad. He had aberrant views about friendship for a dragon, though, and he didn’t want to insult his sister, so he kept his mouth shut. He was about to ask Amelia what kind of work she and Svena did when his sister’s head suddenly whipped around.
“Speak of the devil,” she muttered.
Julius didn’t have to ask what she meant. He’d felt the cold wind, too. Considering they were literally standing on the edge of a mountain at night, that was hardly out of the ordinary, but this wasn’t just a chilly breeze. It was an arctic one, biting cold and wet with hints of glacial ice, and it was coming frominsidethe throne room.
“What’s going on?” he whispered.
“You’ll see in a second,” Amelia replied, walking off the ledge and back into the throne room like she was striding into battle. “Heads up, Buttercup. We’ve got company.”
Before Julius could ask what that was supposed to mean, the throne room doors flew open with a bang as the icy breeze grew into a gale. The wind was so strong, it almost blew Julius off the balcony, and the cold was even worse. In seconds, the temperature had gone from pleasant fall evening to chest freezer, turning their breaths into crinkly puffs of frost. Ice was actually spreading across the floor in front of the doors, covering the stone steps that led down to the throne room in a mosaic of frost that thickened as Julius watched. There were icicles, too, growing rapidly in long, perfectly clear spears that hung like teeth from the doorway’s arch. They were nearly to the floor when the howling wind stopped as suddenly as it had begun, leaving the throne room silent and still as a winter night.
And it was in that silence that the white dragons appeared.
Chapter 3
