The Dragon Legion Collection(34)

“So, together, they create a united whole!” Katina said with delight. “I’m water. You’re fire.”

“One of us must have earth and the other, air.” He squeezed her fingers as they walked more quickly. “The future Pyr associate air with ideas and dreams and prophecies. That’s you.”

“And what about earth?”

“They associate it with practicality and reliability.”

Katina laughed. “That would be you.”

They continued in thoughtful silence to the Kastalian spring and Katina wondered if she were the only one feeling a tentative hope for the future. “We wash ourselves here,” she told the boys. “To purify our bodies before we enter the temple.”

“Isn’t Kastalia a naiad?” Alexander asked quietly and Katina nodded. “Maybe she’s the forebear of your kind.”

Katina didn’t know. It was difficult to learn much about her powers, since revealing her nature usually meant being ostracized by others and she’d been rejected at the shrine.

But when she reached for the water of the spring, it surged toward her like a tide. The water splashed high, sprinkling her, as if greeting her home.

“Did you do that?” Lysander asked, but Katina could only shake her head.

“The water recognized you,” Alexander murmured and Katina thought he was probably right, even though nothing like that had ever happened to her before.


She reached into the water as if to embrace it and was startled to see a dozen women’s faces in the water. They smiled at her, their hair streaming back over their shoulders and their voices as light as a rippling stream. “Welcome, sister,” they said, and Katina realized that her companions hadn’t heard them.

Welcome, sister.

When she raised handfuls of water to her face, the water caressed her skin like a thousand kisses.

Could her home be at Delphi?

They passed through the gate to the Sacred Way and climbed the steep road past the treasuries. Alexander pointed out the monuments from Sparta to the boys. The sun was setting, painting the entire scene in orange and gold when they climbed the last increment to the temple itself.

A sacrifice had been made on behalf of all supplicants earlier that day, so they only had to pay the pelanos. “The Pythia should have stopped already,” complained the attendant. “But today, she insisted upon remaining. She said she’s waiting. I’m not sure for whom.”

Alexander and Katina exchanged a look that was filled with hope.

They all held hands as they proceeded into the temple’s interior, which was filled with shadows. The boys walked between Katina and Alexander. Katina could see the silhouette of the laurel tree that grew in the central sanctuary, its branches stretching as high as the tallest columns. She smelled the fumes that rose from the cleft in the earth and heard the Pythia murmuring to herself. She saw the glow of the sacred fire on the hearth of the temple, the fire that was used to light the hearth fires throughout Greece. She smelled the laurel leaves that had been burned on the altar, along with barley.

It was hazy and dark within the temple, a place beyond time and as distant from her own world as Katina could imagine. She remembered so clearly the first time she had entered this place, how she had walked through this same entry with her parents, how she had seen the young men pledged to Apollo’s service standing at the perimeter, how the sparks had danced between her and Alexander. It had seemed then to have leapt from the altar of the temple.

Alexander held tightly to her hand as they proceeded, and she saw a line of other young men standing silently in the shadows around the perimeter of the space.

Were they all Pyr, as well?

One attendant gestured that they should continue to the small space where supplicants waited, out of sight of the Pythia, for her pronouncement, but the old woman cried out.

“Fire and water, come to me!

This is a union   I must see.”

Alexander and Katina stepped toward the oracle, leaving the boys to wait. The air in the core of the temple was even more hazy and the smell of the fumes was strong. It seemed dangerous and unpredictable, on the verge of chaos beyond their understanding. Katina saw that blue light begin to glow around Alexander, the glow that indicated he was on the cusp of change. He was watchful and intent, prepared to defend her against any threat.

They fell to their knees together before the enthroned Pythia and bowed their heads, Katina’s gaze drawn to the long cleft in the earth that divided the temple, the one that emitted the strange vapors. That crevasse worried her, although she couldn’t say why. It hadn’t troubled her when she’d been here before.

Then the Pythia spoke and she listened with care.



“Evil must face its just defeat,

By Pyr trained to soldiers elite.

Apollo makes this task your price,

A life of service will suffice.

You, naiad-spawn, lost and found,

Have gifts beyond any count.

Here you will learn skills still unknown;

Here you will bear sons more of your own;

Here you and Pyr will live as one;

Here you will lay future’s cornerstone.”



Katina gasped with delight. Alexander would be staying in Delphi, and she would remain with him. She knew he would love training the young Pyr as his service, and that he would excel at it. They exchanged a glance and his hand tightened over hers.