by Lou Hoffmann
Mourning the life she’d taken along with the loss of some important piece of self-confidence, she sank down into the pool at her feet, finding some comfort in the rising water level, and cried. She knew she’d come here to do a job—a task she’d thought of and volunteered for—but now, she wasn’t sure she could do it.
Tiro rose up through the pool as an otter, shifted, and sat down next to her, pulling her into his strong arms. “L’Aria,” he said. “My child.”
She buried her face in his shoulder and sobbed out the story of what she had come to do and what had happened.
“I understand, daughter. I’ve kept your song close in my mind while I was out in the waves. I’ve followed your thinking and your heart. Don’t despair so. You did what had to be done. As far as singing these sad creatures to sleep so that they can painlessly leave this life, it is a good idea, but perhaps a job for two singers rather than one. Let me help?”
As grateful as L’Aria was to have her father there, as glad that he had heard her despair and come instantly to her aid, frustration struck a blow as she contemplated being unable to accomplish alone the task she had set for herself. She wiped away salty tears with salty water, and gathered herself to speak intelligibly.
“But Papa,” she said, “I didn’t want to need help for this.”
“Make no mistake,” Tiro said, rising and pulling L’Aria to her feet beside him. “Your magic is strong; your River Song is yours alone and different from mine. Already you have done things I could not do because it isn’t in my nature. You are the one who will sing these blighted drakes to their first and last peaceful sleep. I will sing for you, L’Aria, because of all the things my song does, that is perhaps what it does best, and because that is all you will need.”
And so L’Aria quieted her mind and breathed deeply of the magic-tanged, salty air in the undersea cave. She listened to the ever-lonely, ever-hungry cries of the drakes, each one speaking only to the emptiness inside itself. She listened to the sadness in her heart. She heard the drakes’ song of unfathomable grief, and then heard her response before she opened her throat to sing.
When she gave voice to her song of rest and respite, the beauty of it haunted her own ears. She saw in her mind the lovely quiet places of the earth and its waters, and then put each drake in a dream of one of those places. Then she realized what their hearts truly ached for, and her voice broke on a sob before she caught it up and sent out her song, stronger now, and with a new note of completion.
Because these blue creatures had been dragon children once. They had been warmed and cradled in their eggs by magnificent green dragon parents who sang to them of the life they would have. Dark magic had stolen that future from them, had twisted their bodies and minds. But they still had the souls of beautiful dragons. In their dreams, just this once, L’Aria gave them the life they should have had.
All the cries of anguish had stopped. Faintly, L’Aria could hear the drakes breathing, but much louder she heard their joy and contentment. Continuing her refrain, she looked at her father, and he took her by the hand. They left the sea chamber by water Portal. When they stood outside, L’Aria wove in a song to the water, and it rose up in a towering geyser in response.
A moment later, the song of the drakes went utterly silent. L’Aria wept for them as she had never wept before.
“Child, I fear this mission has taken a hard toll on you, and you’ve done what you intended, helping the cairnwights and their wolves get far enough north to restore their strength… I will speak to Bayahr. We will leave them, rest ourselves, and go to the waters as I told Thurlock and the others we would. We will try to discover the imbalance, repair it if we can, report it if we cannot.”
He took her by the shoulders and turned her to the sea, and when he spoke again, L’Aria heard a new note of happiness in his voice. It was the voice he always used when he surprised her with something delightful.
“Open your eyes and look there, daughter. The ships! I know you found them wonderful. Wonder no more, for I’ve spoken with the captain of one of those vessels, and we will journey with his ship for a time, sail down the coast to the mouth of the Sothiron at Shipwreck Bay. We will listen to the sea, and then if we have not yet discovered a source or an irregularity, we’ll make a tour of the rivers of Karrighan. What do you think? A good plan?”
L’Aria smiled and bit her lip. She tried putting her hand on her hip so she could respond with sass, in character. But the idea of sailing on the ship delighted her, and in the end, she simply turned to her father and threw her arms around him, laughing, and answered his question with an enthusiastic “Yes!”
THE FIGHT to stop the onslaught of zombies and thralls at the foot of the slope raged for only minutes, the enemy almost defeating itself in the confused crush. Han paused to catch his breath, wipe sweat from his brow, and survey the field. What he saw gave him hope—it seemed the battle was all but won. Most of the Terrathian death machines had been stopped, many of the Primes killed. Those of their captives who still lived had been taken into Sunlands’ army care and were being guarded by cadres of soldiers. Though the Earthborn snipers continued to ply their weapons from the ridges, their numbers were slowly diminishing, and only a remnant few zombies stumbled over the field. The wraith army Han had feared would overwhelm his forces had never materialized.
But he’d allowed himself to hope too soon. Though Thurlock’s magic had burned away or weakened most of the installations of mist-shadow in the valley, one large curtain of the substance remained dense, protected on three sides by rock walls and overhead by a ledge hefty enough to have trees growing out of it. Just when Han thought he could breathe, armed wraiths, mindless as ever, began to pour out of that blackness, surging into a swarm like rock beetles running from the sun.
And then a mournful cry cut through the valley like a knife. Han peered into the western sky and saw winged beasts in motion over the spiked peaks of the Fallows. His heart fell.
Just then he became aware of Maizie barking an alarm, automatically turned to Thurlock, but saw only weary bewilderment in his expression.
He called out, “Thurlock, sir, look! It’s dragons.”
He took a second look at the skies and corrected himself. Not dragons. Drakes. Blues. He’d counted eight flying, but he had to wonder if some flightless beasts wouldn’t follow. They usually did, and though they had no usable wings, they were most often fast on the ground and vicious. Han shook his head, near despair.
Then he looked back at Thurlock and saw the bewilderment had been replaced by sheer horror. He followed Thurlock’s gaze toward where Lucky and Rio… had been. They’d vanished.
Han hurried toward the old man, and Thurlock told him what he’d seen—a strangely opaque, ice-blue Portal, Relian taking Rio, and Luccan running in after him. Once Thurlock had recounted the tale and settled for a few breaths, he told Han his plan. “I can track them. I have ways. I know it is a bad time to leave you to the battle without my help. Mayli and her sisters will continue to reinforce and multiply some of the light-born magics I’ve laid over the field. That should help. I need to see to those two boys…. You know, Han, I could have dealt more harshly with Relian in the city.”
“Thurlock, no one is perfect, and you and I both know why you chose not do that. It was the right thing, then, I’m sure. And as for the battle, well, I thought it was done, but now… wraiths and drakes. So it’s back to the fray I go. It will be okay, sir.”
“Will it, Han?”
“We’ll have to make it so.”
With that, Thurlock retreated to the copse of sehldars with his staff, his pockets, his experience, and a teapot. Han trotted toward his nearby officers, trying as he went to come up with orders that made sense.
Then, a trio of red dragons flew over the peaks, carried in on a fresh wind from the Sunrise Sea.
With the same wonder he saw in the eyes of everyone around him, Han watched Naht’kah flying in with two of her very rare dragon children at her tai
l. Unlike the other soldiers, he’d seen her before, and his wonder was over the change in her. Lit from below by Thurlock’s light, she was more immense and glorious even than Han remembered from his waking dream in her company. Though the predawn moment was dim despite Thurlock’s ceiling of lights, her brilliantly colored, orange-red scales shone as if in sun; her underbelly glimmered purest white, prismatic in the glow of Thurlock’s magic.
And now she flew into the valley and sailed into a gliding circuit over the battlefield, surveying, avoiding threats with ease, her children—though themselves thousands of years old—seemed to want to stay protected under her great wings, and she shielded them. Then, suddenly, she turned and with a single mighty wingbeat drove herself slowly toward Han. Hovering before him, she addressed him in a sonorous voice that filled the entire valley.
“Han Rha-Behl Ah’Shieth, Elan Drakhona! The world has need of you. Rise and do battle. Together, we will pile the ashes of our enemies high, and scatter them to the corners of Naught with the wind from our wings.”
She flew straight into the fray, her smaller children mimicking her moves with somewhat less effect. Fiery breath was her prime weapon, and she used it to burn through the remaining black mist and turn the Terrathian machines to ash and black melt. Han joined her and in less than minutes, the surviving Primes, with their Echoes flashing in and out of solidity tried to run, fear rendering them human, humanity rendering them vulnerable to emotion. A great wave of sadness washed through their decimated ranks. Han felt it, because their humanity opened their minds to him. He almost felt compassion, but an immediate reversal turned them into a group of ancient, angry children, and they turned on one another and on themselves, flogging each other with the chains they’d used to hold captives, beating ropes across their own bodies as if to punish the helpless Echoes.
He thought of Henry’s vision—the web of all life—and the world-dragon’s thick cord woven through it shone in his mind. Within it, he easily found his own strand. Remembering the fill of flesh into his wings, the shaping of his body and limbs, the weight of his three horns and the feel of sharp teeth in his long snout, he stepped—deliberately and completely—into his dragon form. It took less than seconds. Instantly, he launched himself skyward, dove across the valley, and let loose a fury of hot red flame on the Terrathians. They’d polluted his world enough. Too much. It stops now.
Motion on the ground caught his eye, and he saw Luccan and Rio running for the ridge. Behl eth Dahn, he thought, thankful they’d come back so quickly and appeared whole. But then Luccan stumbled, and a winged blue went for Rio. He saw K’ormahk rear up and beat the drake away. Dragon Han had already started toward the two young men when another blue purposely dropped out of the sky directly over Luccan’s head. The drake was small, and Luccan reacted fast, and Ciarrah saved his life. But Han could see what Luccan couldn’t. A flightless blue coming straight at him across the valley, ridden by a wraith soldier—a soldier Han recognized even with his hollow, dead features. His name had been Valahnor, and he’d been Liliana’s protégé in Shahna’s Rangers.
Han’s fear for Luccan was at the forefront of his heart and mind, and he concentrated on getting to his nephew ahead of Valahnor’s grim wraith. But he still had room for anger at the betrayal, and beneath that, buried deep in his heart, grief that this should be the sad fate of such a man.
PART FIVE: The Sun Child’s Moment
Chapter Thirty-Six: What a Hero Isn’t
LUCKY FELL to his knees, startled to feel mud splashing up from the churned ground of the valley below the Giant’s Hand. He still held Rio tightly in his arms, and when a huge winged creature swooped low overhead and created a mighty wind, they tumbled together over the muddy, bloody field. They ended with tangled limbs and most of Rio weighting down Lucky’s chest, pushing his back into at least three sharp rocks hidden in the muck.
Rio gasped. “Sorry, Lucky. Sorry!”
“Don’t worry! I’m not hurt. I’m just so glad you’re awake!” He couldn’t help but give his boy a quick, sloppy kiss, expressing his sheer relief.
“Wha—”
Lucky supposed Rio was about to ask what had happened, or some similar question, but the winged beast flew overhead again and this time Lucky saw its glimmering blue bulk and smelled its graveyard stink. Before his panic could wreak havoc on his thinking, K’ormahk reared up and pummeled the blue drake, knocking it out of the sky. The great horse brought his hooves smashing down on the creature, beating it nearly into the mud.
“We need to get off the field,” he said, figuring once they were safe, he could determine what to do to help in the fight that still raged, judging from the warring breaths of ice and fire in the sky. He pulled Rio to his feet. “Can you run?”
Rio nodded and, clutching Lucky’s arm, beat feet for the low end of the ridge. Just before they got there, Lucky stumbled and rolled. Rio stopped some feet ahead and looked back at him, clearly planning to wait or return. But some sound or instinct made Lucky look up. A drake was dropping out of the sky and would smash him in the next instant.
“Ciarrah!” Lucky screamed it aloud, and somehow she was in his hand and stabbing upward. The blue’s blood splashed back on him, cold and viscous, and in horror, he hurled the impaled drake off his weapon and intended to keep running, but there were wraiths—wraiths!—everywhere, and drakes with their icy breath… including one careening toward Rio, wings folded, claws extended. If Rio didn’t get out of the way of that beast, he’d be a frozen snack.
“Run!” He shouted it, then repeated it even louder.
Before he got it out a third time, K’ormahk thundered past him, hooves flashing, wings back and high. K’ormahk reached Rio just as the blue beast pulled out of its dive and reached for him. The mighty winged horse again reared up on his hind legs and beat the drake with his sharp iron hooves. The drake had only one leg and couldn’t properly land, so when K’ormahk knocked it out of the air, it tumbled, screaming as its neck bent and broke. K’ormahk stooped long enough for Rio to climb aboard, then turned to rush to Lucky’s rescue.
Lucky’s face was still drenched in dark blood and it dripped down over his eyes. He swiped at them with the dirty hem of his shirt and cleared them enough to see, coming straight toward him, a flame-red dragon, gold sparking off his scales where they were struck by the beams of a newborn sun just climbing over the eastern peaks, defeating both the darkness and Thurlock’s golden answer to it.
The Dragon swooped down and stopped right next to Lucky, and Lucky felt a strange joy despite the battle still carrying on around him. “Han,” he said. What a wonderful thing!
But danger was coming his way too. He heard a rhythmic thump and squish, feet—very large feet—running through mud. He looked behind him and saw a wraithlike rider mounted on a flightless drake barreling toward him and Han, less than seconds away.
“Get on,” Han said, “And hold on tight.” It sounded exactly as it had in Lucky’s undream, when Lucky’s mother on her grim horse had chased him across a battlefield.
Lucky did exactly what he’d done in the dream: found a foothold in the joint of the wing and swung himself up, then secured a solid hold on Han’s two spiral horns. Han ran and beat his mighty wings and they went airborne. He turned in a great arc to face the wraith-rider on the huge flightless drake, dodged an icy breath and a series of arrows, and let loose a roar on a flaming breath.
It fried the drake, but as Han recovered his flight, the rider rolled and raised his mighty bow again. The arrow he nocked gleamed wetly and Lucky had a flash of understanding. “Poison!” he shouted.
The wraith had apparently been impervious to Han’s fire, but Lucky knew how to deal with an enemy wraith. He’d had practice. He drew Ciarrah, thought, “Beam,” and within an instant directed her deadly laser light to skewer the ghastly soldier through his hollow eyes. He fell into dust, and the wind of Han’s wings blew his remains away.
He hadn’t seen another flying creature approach from behi
nd, and he nearly lost his seat when he felt something thump into his back and clench his shoulders with claws that were sharp enough to do damage—though they didn’t.
A green-gold wing flashed in his peripheral vision, and he heard a familiar, deep, young voice call his name—probably only in his mind, though he wasn’t sure. He laughed, because even at a time like this, some things were just too sweet.
“Sahsha!”
She nuzzled his cheek in answer, but while Han headed across the valley to the ridge, the battle had flown into his path, and there was no more time for sweet greetings.
BEFORE LUCKY’S interlude with Mahros and Relian, the battle had been horrid and tense. Now, even though no more than minutes had passed on this plane, the terrors rampaging through the valley had become unspeakably more terrifying. Lucky’s blood surged with adrenaline, but despite everything around him, it seemed impossible to feel fear on Han the Dragon’s mighty back. Though in some corner of his mind smarter than the rest, he knew it wasn’t wise to get too wrapped up in battle lust, the rest of him gloried in it as he wielded Ciarrah against the wraiths that had flooded the battlefield. These wraiths were hardier than those he’d met in Hoenholm, and they seemed to think for themselves. Even though the Primes were all broken or gone, their ghostly soldiers continued to fight as if this was their war. Like their predecessors, they seemed impervious to physical harm—even from dragon fire. Ciarrah took them down, though, and about halfway through the lot of them, Lucky discovered his small green passenger dragon had something special to contribute to the fight. Her fire had something special; it burned the wraiths to cinders, just like Ciarrah.
But then—suddenly, it seemed—the wraiths were gone. Han rose to join Naht’kah in the fight against the remaining Earthborn snipers and the bow-wielding Ehstenners, ensconced as they were in blinds high up on the cliffs of the Hand. Along with the three other great red dragons, Han plied the sky, flying to the snipers hiding places and knocking them to the ground. Some died in the fall, others were burned in dragon fire. And all of Lucky’s battle fever left him in a shiver of cold reality. These people had lives, and he and Han and the others had just snuffed them out. Nothing could be more different than destroying wraiths and zombies—things already dead. Killing the Terrathians had troubled his heart, but killing fellow humans threatened to stop it from beating.
