The Sword and The Mountain (Kathardra book 1)

“Will you look after Zar?” Lessa asked Storm, climbing into the saddle for one of the last times.

“I will,” Storm answered.

Lessa put her fists on her hips and frowned at Storm. The dragon’s mood was somehow smug.

“I suppose it’s time,” Zar said, reluctantly climbing to Storm’s saddle.

Lessa followed him up and Storm walked out the front door and climbed into the sky.

The entire day Lessa clung to Zar’s back, now and then her silent tears would be wicked away by the air streaming by them. Despite Lessa’s cheek being pressed to Zar, Lessa felt like there was a wall between them.

She knew Zar was mad at her for not staying in Kathardra. But he would never tell her that.

That night, after a simple dinner Zar set to pitching his small tent. But Lessa grabbed his hands and pulled him against Storm with her. For most of the night, she lay awake listening to Zar’s heartbeat in her ear, Storm’s wing protecting both of them against the cold weather.

In the morning neither of them spoke, and neither could eat. They silently climbed on Storm’s back and she flew several more hours to the giant trees of the southern woods. Storm landed directly in the clearing where the portal home was.

Despite the rest of Kathardra being dormant and snowed on, or at least frosted, the giant trees were still green and alive. The air drifting between them was warm and humid.

“I can’t believe I couldn’t feel this before,” Lessa said, putting her hands out and feeling the magic currents flowing between her fingers, almost like little invisible streams in the air all around her.

Zar nodded before he spoke, “Imagine if you could see it. There is so much magic here it’s nearly blinding.”

Without any preamble, Zar put his hand in the air and a blast of magic washed over Lessa, it was so powerful she stumbled back away from it. “How, did I not feel that before?”

Zar shrugged his limp shoulders, looking anywhere but at Lessa.

Lessa grabbed Storm’s nose in a tight hug.

“I love you Storm. Please take care of Zar. You will be in my heart always.”

“Ok.”

Lessa swiped the tears from her eyes. “I don’t know what is wrong with you, but this isn’t funny,” she said out loud.

“I’m not trying to be funny,” Storm said flatly back. “I do love you too, Lessa.”

“Will you come with me?” Lessa asked Zar, “Just for a short time. There is no way my parents will believe my words alone.”

“And because I’m not willing to say goodbye, yet.”

Zar nodded once, he took her hand and they stepped through the portal together.

In addition to the feeling of being smashed into a vacuum, the cold Lessa now felt encased in magic as she moved through the portal. In under a second, she was standing ankle-deep in snow in her front yard.

Towing Zar behind her, Lessa marched through the snow to the front door of the farmhouse. She raised her fist to knock and hesitated. She had never knocked on this door before. She grabbed the handle and turned it.

“Mom! Dad! Brody!” she yelled out into the house. Silence answered her words.

“Is anyone home?” she called again.

Nothing.

Still dragging Zar behind her, Lessa rounded the corner from the living room into the kitchen.

“I don’t think they’re home…” she mumbled.

Lessa came to a stop before the refrigerator. A picture of her with blocky words was held to the front with a magnet. It took her a minute to decipher the non-Kathardrean words under her picture; ‘missing'.

Lessa rounded the kitchen to the stairs, looking for any signs of her family, but they clearly weren’t home. At the end of the hall, Lessa twisted a doorknob and pushed the door to reveal her bedroom. The bed was unmade, and some of her clothes were on the floor.

She laughed a little, “they haven’t touched anything.”

“Is this your room?” Zar asked over her shoulder, sounding more animated than he had since they left the mountain.

Lessa nodded once and Zar slid around her and into her bedroom. She watched him slowly circle her small bedroom, he studied the pictures she had on top of her dresser, the decorations on her walls. He stroked an owl feather she had found and kept years ago. He pulled a print of her from her mirror frame, he stared at it for a moment before he slid it into a pocket. His expression challenged her to defy his thievery but she said nothing.

“Let's go wait outside,” Lessa said, taking Zar’s hand once more and pulling him with her.

She sat on the front porch swing where they had a view of the driveway, Zar sat stiffly next to her.

As was her habit Lessa adjusted her sword so that it wasn’t digging into her hip painfully as she sat.

She stared down at the sheathed blade and blinked many times. Her sword was still a sword. In this world, it had been a knife, attached to a horse’s saddle for emergencies. But the sword had been through too much to change back to a knife. As Storm could only ever be a dragon now. And Lessa…

“Oh stars, Zar, I’ve been an idiot.” Lessa laughed humorlessly.

“What do you mean?” he asked, sounding like he didn’t dare to hope.

“I don’t belong here any more than Storm does. I have to go back to Kathardra.... Just not yet.”

“When?” Zar asked, a drowning man reaching for a lifeline, he sat up straighter.

“I don’t know. But I’m going back!” Lessa gasped, "That stupid overgrown lizard! She figured it out days ago! That's why she was acting so indifferent!"

She turned to Zar excitedly, he reached for her, and Lessa’s ears perked at a once familiar sound.

“Dad’s truck… It’s Dad’s truck!”

Lessa jumped to her feet and stared at where the skeletal trees swallowed the gravel drive. The long white truck emerged from the trees.

Her heart started pounding hard, she hadn’t seen them in so long.

Lessa ran toward the truck, before it even stopped her mom spilled out of it. Lessa embraced her hard, her tears started flowing freely and her mother was sobbing loudly, her embrace threatening to smother Lessa.

Brody had waited for the truck to stop and he jumped out and slammed into Lessa’s side. Her father was last, coming from the far side of the truck but he ran at her and grabbed them all. Never before had Lessa seen her father cry, it was strange to see the tears sliding down his weathered face.

“Where have you been?” Theresa asked, cupping both of Lessa’s cheeks.

“I told them, Lessa!” Brody interjected, outraged. “I told them where you were, but they didn’t believe me!”

“I’ll explain inside... And there is someone I’d like you to meet.”

With her hand in Zar’s, sitting on the living room couch Lessa started. “What Brody told you was the truth.”

“Lessa Ann Rader, don’t you dare lie to us!” her mother warned.

“I think,” William said, “we should hear her out.”

Theresa started simmering but she remained quiet.

Lessa told them everything. It was abbreviated, and she glossed over the more dangerous aspects of her exploits but she tried to remain truthful.

“Lessa I don’t know how you can possibly expect us to believe any of this,” her mother said with barely concealed outrage.

Lessa pursed her lips wondering if she had made a mistake with her honesty.

“Clearly,” William said, “there is an easy way to tell if she is lying or telling the truth.”

Theresa’s eyes turned on her husband, annoyed that he was even entertaining it. “Lessa, you said you learned how to use... well, magic... Show us.”

Lessa’s eyes widened at her dad, she glanced at her angry mother and looked down at the coffee table between all of them. At her gesture, it rose off the ground and started rotating loosely through the air.

Theresa gasped and recoiled from the floating table, William stared at it passively.

“Cool,” Brody said with excited eyes.

“Put it back,” Theresa said, pressing into the back of the couch.

Lessa carefully lowered the table back down, her eyes bounced between her parents warily.

“Well, you’re back now. We can put all of this behind us.” Theresa said.

Chewing her lip, Lessa looked at her dad, he was staring at Zar. Zar was staring back at him.

“What else can you do?” Brody asked eagerly.

“Will you be staying for dinner?” Theresa asked Zar with a forced smile.

“Well that was awkward,” Lessa said, bringing Zar blankets so he could sleep on the couch.

“I thought it went well,” Zar said as he took the blankets from Lessa.

“Brody asking if I ’really killed a king, and my mom changing the subject every time we talked about Kathardra, is dinner going ‘well’ to you?”

He winced. “It could have been worse.”

“I guess so. I’m not sure if my mom is ever going to come to terms with what happened.”

They both sat on the couch.

William appeared in the doorway his arms folded and he leaned against it.

“Hey, Dad,” Lessa said.

“Hey baby girl,” he said, expression tightly controlled.

Lessa sighed heavily, sass on the tip of her tongue. He had no idea how many times she had been alone with Zar in the last months, and nothing untoward had happened. But he still felt it necessary to chaperone.

“I’ll go to bed in a minute,” she said, trying to get rid of him.

“It’s bedtime now.”

Able to suppress the verbal sass, Lessa couldn’t contain the eye roll.

“Goodnight,” Zar said, pushing her away from him.

She rolled her eyes again and went up the stairs to her bedroom.

Lessa unbuckled her sword and hung it over her bed frame, she unlaced her boots and laid back on her bed. It crossed her mind that she could put on pajamas, but it felt frivolous.

Falling to sleep without talking to Storm was proving to be impossible. After failing to sleep for hours Lessa crept from her bedroom and down the stairs. She remembered to skip the third and the seventh, they’d squeaked as long as she could remember.

“Are you awake,” she whispered in Kathardrean to Zar’s form on the couch.

“Yes,” came his equally quiet reply.

At once Lessa stretched out onto the couch in his arms.

“If your father catches you here he will strangle me with his bare hands," Zar whispered in her ear.

Lessa giggled into his chest but pulled his blanket around her anyway.

It was just after dawn when Zar woke Lessa, “I have to go,” he said.

Blurry eyed Lessa sat up and nodded. “Let me get my boots,” she climbed the stairs and shoved her feet into her boots, not bothering to lace them. Feeling wrong without it Lessa grabbed her sword as well.

Zar stood by the front door waiting for her and Lessa followed him outside. Again, without waiting, Zar raised his hand and activated the portal. The wave burst of magic washed over Lessa.

“When will you come back?” Zar asked, turning back to her.

“I don’t know.” Lessa could feel her eyes misting. “It might take some time, Zar. Maybe even years.” she bit her lip and peaked up at his reaction.

A patient smile was on his lips. “I don’t care how long I have to wait. As long as you’ll come back someday.”

“You won’t forget about me? Will you?” she asked, suddenly panicking.

For a moment he stared quietly, but he deftly unbuckled his sword from his waist and held it up to her. “I will return for you, my love. Keep this to remind you.”

Tears ran rapidly from Lessa’s eyes as Zar took her own sword from her hands and buckled it around his waist.

“Hey,” Zar said, cupping her cheek and swiping a tear away with his thumb, “don’t do that.”

Lessa closed her eyes and pressed into Zar’s hand, relishing his skin on her own. His hand shifted to the back of her neck and he tipped her head up. And then suddenly his lips were on hers.

A gasp escaped Lessa’s lips and her eyes sprang open, looking up at him with wonder. A satisfied smile spread on his face and his blue eyes smoldered.

Lessa threw her arms around Zar and smashed her lips to his. The world stopped spinning as Zar kissed her over and over. Her lips danced with his, his hand fisted in her hair, and the other pulled her body against his. Lessa clung to his shoulders, feeling like the world might fall away from her feet if she let go.

After the briefest, and longest of moments, Zar pulled her hands away from him, “I really do have to go. I will love you forever, Lessa.”

“I love you too, Zar, always.”

He took one more step back and Lessa watched him disappear, the last part of him in her world was his hand.

Slow paces brought Lessa to the front porch, she sat on the steps. A great rift had opened inside of her, an emptiness grown where Zar fit. She was no longer whole, incomplete without him near.

But what overshadowed the pain, the longing and emptiness inside was the singular fact that Zar felt the same, the two had become one. And she knew that someday she would go back to Kathardra with him, and stay forever.

“Someday,” Lessa said aloud, hugging Zar’s sword to her.