“But what that was?”
“I can’t guess.”
Near the shoreline, Smit stepped out from a small cave and put his hands to his mouth, shouting to be heard over the roar and crackle of the surf. “Think I found something.”
Marcus turned and started making his way over, Kit following close behind. If it was another false find, it was still getting close enough to sundown that they’d need to decide whether to end the day’s search or press on. The other players gathered around as well, until all of them were in a semicircle by a cliff face at the shore. Marcus had the feeling of a group meeting being called, which wasn’t quite what he’d been hoping for.
“What am I looking at, Smit?” Marcus said. “Apart from another hole in the ground, I mean.”
“I went down a bit. The stone changes down there. Gets smooth. Like someone worked it.”
Marcus eyed the darkness and sighed.
“Well, it’s not as though we had a better plan,” he said.
It took the better part of an hour to send Mikel and Hornet back to the cart and have them return with lanterns. Marcus went first. The first thing that surprised him was how deep they had to go in the cave before the walls changed. Either Smit had night vision like a Southling or he was braver than Marcus had given him credit for. And the second thing that surprised him was when they did. The roughness of the tunnel was smoothed, and distinct walls appeared. A slightly vaulted ceiling. A floor that would have been smooth and even if it hadn’t been for generations of debris building up on it.
“Kit?” Marcus said, scraping the wall with his thumbnail. “Does that look like dragon’s jade to you?”
“It does, a bit, yes,” Kit said.
“Don’t suppose you’re at all curious what’s at the end of this.”
“In point of fact, I am a bit,” Kit said.
They moved forward slowly. Cautiously. Marcus kept his torch high and behind him to keep the flames from spoiling his vision. After almost a hundred yards, the passage began to open and widen, and Marcus and Kit stepped out together into a great chamber. A massive black shape lay curled before them. Its snout was tucked under a massive wing like a bird in cold weather. A profound awe made Marcus drop to one knee. Awe and soul-pressing fear.
The animal was magnificent. Even covered by dust and lichen, the scales seemed almost to radiate darkness. Their torchlight fell into it the way it did into the great bowl of the night sky.
“Kit?” Marcus said in a whisper.
“Yes?”
“That’s not a statue, is it.”
“I don’t believe it is.”
The chamber the dragon slept in was massive. Images and writing covered the walls. None of it was anything Marcus could make sense of, but it was familiar all the same. The way a child knew to back away from a precipice, Marcus knew those images. They had been burned into instinct that had lasted for all of human history, and he felt himself responding to them now. Red-black streaks showed where iron sconces had been in the walls, the metal rotting away over time until there was nothing of them left but a stain.
“Follow me,” Marcus said, and moved off slowly, walking the perimeter of the chamber. On the farther side, there was a small alcove with a cistern in it that looked as though it had been collecting mold and mist for centuries at the least. When they had completed their circuit of the room, Marcus sat as still as he could manage, watching the great ribcage until he was certain that the slow rise and fall wasn’t the product of his imagination. It was breathing. Marcus felt himself trembling.
“Well,” Marcus said, his voice low.
“Yes.”
“If you have any thoughts you’d like to share about this, I’d be open to hearing them.”
“When I was at the temple,” Kit said, “we were taught that the dragons were an abomination. That the goddess preceded everything, including time and the world, and that the dragons, in their pride, had tried to claim the world for themselves, taking it from her. The fall of the dragons was supposed to have been the last great struggle between the goddess and the dragons.”
“So the one thing we can be sure of is that whatever happened, it wasn’t that.”
“Yes,” Kit said, “and still, there may be some grain of truth to it. The dragons, at least, were real.”
“Some evidence for that, yes.”
“And there was a fall. And the priests of the spider goddess disliked the dragons. Possibly they even feared them.”
“So maybe that glorious bastard over there is the natural enemy of the spiders.”
“Probably.”
“Or maybe it’s more dangerous than they are, and our best plan would be to back quietly out the way we came in and never come back here.”
“That’s also possible,” Kit said. “But whatever we do, it would be best to do it before the tide comes in. I think the water will block our way out.”
“I’d rather that didn’t happen,” Marcus agreed. “All right, then. So the choice is we try to wake that thing up or we leave now and never come back.’
“Yes.”
“And do you see us walking away from this?”
Kit was silent for a moment, and when he spoke, his voice was thick with regret and dread.
“Honestly? No. I don’t.”
“Me neither,” Marcus said, and rose to his feet. The dragon shifted in its sleep, a slight rocking back and forth that made the whole chamber tremble a little bit. “Stay here, Kit. This is about to get interesting.”
Slowly, Marcus approached the dragon. Drawing closer made the scale of the thing clear. It was as tall as three men standing on each other’s shoulders, and when it uncurled, it might be as long at ten laid end to end. Marcus doubted it would be able to open its wings in the chamber. And now that he thought of it, he wasn’t entirely sure how the great bastard had gotten in here in the first place. Or how it would get out.
The light of his torch glowed back at him from the dusty scales as he walked to where the massive head was tucked under its wing. Once, the books said, the dragons had been the masters of the world, and all of humanity had been their slaves. And he was about to try to wake one up.
“I hope this is a good idea,” he muttered, then cleared his throat. “Um. Excuse me.”
The dragon didn’t stir. Marcus went closer, put his hand on the thing’s head. Its skull was the size of a horse, and there was a strange beauty to it that Marcus felt himself drawn to by instinct. When he touched the scales, they flexed under his fingers.
“Excuse me. You need to wake up now.”
He looked over his shoulder at Kit. The old actor held up his hands. It was fair enough. Kit hadn’t woken dragons before either. Marcus sighed, then took a deep breath and shouted.
“Hey! Nap time’s over! Wake the hell up!” He turned back toward Kit. “I don’t think this is going to be that simple. Do you think maybe there’s some sort of ritual or … I don’t know. A magic drum or something?”
Kit’s eyes went wide and he took an involuntary step back. Marcus felt his own blood turn cold. Slowly, he turned back to the dragon. It hadn’t moved, but the one vast eye was open. Marcus saw himself reflected in the vast amber depths of it. He wanted nothing more than to run. There was no sense of threat from the vast eye. No malice. Only a danger as deep and profound as religion.
The worst it can do is kill me, Marcus told himself, and there was more comfort in the thought than he’d expected.
“It’s time to wake up,” he said again.
The dragon’s expression shifted from annoyance to confusion with a powerful eloquence. It was as if Marcus had known dragons all his life and become intimate with the small cues of their emotions. The intimacy of it was unearned, and it disturbed Marcus to his bones.
“You need to wake up now.”
The noise was low, like the rumbling of distant thunder. The dragon’s vast body began to shift, and Marcus danced back, his hand reaching reflexively for his sword.
&n
bsp; The dragon drew its head from under its vast wing and turned the near-physical weight of its attention on them both. When it spoke, its voice was perfectly clear and deeper than mountains. It was like hearing a great king’s orchestra strike a single complex chord, only the sound had a meaning besides its terrible beauty.
“Drakkis?” it said.
Entr’acte
Inys, Brother and Clutch-Mate to the Dragon Emperor
Before his eyes, Aastapal fell. The great perch-spires burned, and the library of stones shrieked in its pain. Morade’s soldiers held the sky to the south, ten thousand strong. Asteril’s cunning slave-run craft dove through the high air, daring to stand against the force of dragons. As he watched, one of the great mechanisms dove, its blades shining in the red light of the falling sun. It caught the wing of a soldier caste, and dragon and craft fell together, joined like lovers in their violence. Somewhere among the attackers, he could smell Morade.
“We must go,” Erex said, nuzzling his wing in an offer of comfort. Inys had met his lover on the feeding grounds there below them where the blood-corrupted slaves were slaughtering one another even now. “Inys, I smell him too. Your brother is coming. We can’t be here when he arrives.”
Inys raised his crest in acknowledgment, but couldn’t bring himself to speak. The empire was crumbling. Already Morade and Asteril had shattered the fifth orb. Old Sirrick was dead, her body fallen into the sea. She had been the wisest of them all, and the violence had bested her. What could they hope for now besides a short death?
“Inys,” Erex said again.
“I know,” Inys said. His heart thick with grief, he turned and launched himself toward the northern sky, leaving behind the burning city.
It had started as no more than the usual rivalry. Three clutch-mates vying for the emperor’s favor. Each of them had made their great works for presentation at the fire court. Asteril had spent decades laboring on his birds of living copper. Morade built his deep-water city and the holes in the ocean through which even the widest-winged could soar to reach it. Inys had composed a poem that linked the five levels of thought to the five fallen elements. It should have been only that. Inys had only thought what he’d done a prank. Mean-spirited, perhaps, but not outside the realm of etiquette. But as soon as the waters fell in on Morade’s great work, as soon as he saw the grief and rage in his clutch-mate’s eyes, he knew he had gone too far. And now Morade had as well, and innocent Asteril was gone, his scales dulled forever by the poisons he poured into the culling blades for the uncorrupt. Inys mourned his brother, but then he mourned everything now.
Morade’s forces outnumbered his own by a third again, and the slaves on which Inys had relied were taken from him, driven to self-slaughter and chaos by Morade’s cold-eyed lust for vengeance. That the world died made no difference to his brother, so long as Great Morade was the one who killed it.
Inys rose on the wide air, speeding with Erex to the secret hold and his meeting with Drakkis Stormcrow, the last of his slave-generals. They had attempted battle and they had failed. But Inys’s low cunning had begun this war. And perhaps his low cunning could end it.
The shadowed city lay buried on the barren coast, its perches and sunning grounds dug in low enough to be invisible to any but those flying directly above. Of all the strongholds the younger clutch-mates had kept, this one alone Morade and his spies had not discovered. The safety was fragile. It could not last. Inys sloped down through the cold air, blowing flame in the arranged pattern to announce his coming. Hidden deep within the flesh of the city, the great thorn-spears would be tracking him all the same. Erex followed close, riding his wake with the joy of long intimacy.
The entrance opened before them. Inys folded his wide wings and fell until the darkness of the shadows took him in. The effort of braking his descent strained the muscles of his wings and chest. The pain of it was almost pleasant. He sloped down to the lowest perch in the great hall, and Erex landed beside him. On the floor, the legions of the uncorrupt stood ready. The formation was the classical triangular units, twenty-eight slaves in a unit and twenty-eight units in a form. The strange, elongated scales that Asteril had designed, halfway between true scales and beast hide, made them seem half animal. On every back, there was a culling blade.
A slave in white walked forward, approaching the perch. Her pale hair hung down her back and her scarred face looked up at his as she made obeisance.
“All is prepared, master. Koukis has sent word that the Drowned are in their places. The island has been undermined and they await only our signal.”
“And my soldiers?”
“They stand at ready.”
Inys bowed his head, his wings widening in an expression of unease. Erex nuzzled him again.
“Tell the slaves to prepare themselves, Drakkis. I am sick at heart and want this ended. One way or the other, let us finish this madness now.”
Drakkis Stormcrow turned, lifting her arms so that all the signalers among the uncorrupt could see her. In each unit, her gestures were echoed. In silent array, the uncorrupt shifted. Then, trundling out of the depths of the hidden city, the dragons came. Ust and Manad were first, broadening their crests in respect before taking the two of the uncorrupt in each of their foreclaws, then, beating their wings to hover, two more in each of their hind. They rose up into the distant sky, the first of his desperate and improvised army. Then Mus and Sarin. Then Costa and Saramos. Forty-eight times, his allies came and gave salute. He saw the resolve in their eyes and smelled both distress and resolve in their scents. At the last, only one dragon came out. A third-year still pale at the tips of her wings, her scales the blue white of glaciers. She flared her crest, and Erex stepped down beside the child and flared her own. The sorrow in Inys’s breast was almost unbearable.
“Return to me when this is done,” Inys said, his gaze locked deep with his lover’s, “and I will make you the empress of the wide world.”
“If being empress is the price of being at your side, I will pay it,” she said. They blew flame at one another, he prayed not for the last time. And then Erex and her youngest cousin gathered the last of the uncorrupt slaves and rose to the sky. Inys stood alone in the great hall. Alone apart from Drakkis.
“We must go, master,” she said. Her voice was gentle.
“Is there no other way?” Inys asked, though he knew the answer. Drakkis did not speak. She knew her place. Morade had to believe Inys destroyed or he would not return to the island. There could be no echo of him in Aastapal or in this hidden fortress. There could be no scent of him in the wind or taste of him in the water. He reached down a claw, scooping up his slave, and then rose himself. By the time he reached the open sky, his soldiers were little more than dots on the distant horizon.
The sleeping chamber stood at the side of the sea. The green of its lid called to him as he sloped through the air. He landed gently beside Drakkis’s kite and let the slave loose.
“Do not fail me,” Inys said.
“My life is yours for the taking, master,” Drakkis said. “When the task is finished, I will return and wake you.”
Inys pulled up the lid of the sleeping box. The slaves had put a bed of soft cotton there for him, and tiny torches burned in sconces set along the wall. As he stepped down into his hiding place, Drakkis Stormcrow strapped herself into the kite.
“Drakkis,” he said.
“Master?”
“You are a slave plotting to kill dragons.”
“I am, master.”
“There are many people who would have me put you to death for that alone, Morade or not.”
“If it is your will that I die, then I will die. But I beg to live long enough to see you named emperor before that.”
Inys smiled. He had the impulse to blow fire at the slave, though he knew that even such small affection would destroy her. Instead, he folded his wings pulled the lid closed over himself and sealed the jade against all intrusion. Only a small path remained, too small for even
a new-hatched dragon to pass through. The passage that Drakkis would take when the war was over and Morade defeated.
Inys settled, closed his eyes. Invoking the silence was difficult. His mind was unsettled. It kept racing ahead of him, toward the sinking of the island and the surprise attack. The legions of the uncorrupt holding formation against the madness of corrupted slaves. The final battle of generations of war, which he could win only by subterfuge and dishonor. Only by sending his lover and his friends to fight in his place. Only by using the schemes and mechanisms of his cleverer brother.
But at last, the silence came. Time became nothing. He became merely flesh. All the cycles and systems of his body passed into nothing, waiting only for the voice of his slave to recall him to himself.
The silence was not meant for dreams, and yet dreams came formless and unreal. He had the inchoate sense of being adrift in a windless openness, floating without effort on an open and empty sky with neither land nor sea below him, but only an endless expanse of air. Then the sense of a presence, alien and unwelcome that almost drove him up from the depth of the silence. He felt uneasy and restless, like a hatchling trying to sleep when it wasn’t tired or else too much so.
Time passed without Inys. Even the sensation of waiting was gone. Inys surrendered to not-being.
Excuse me. You need to wake up now.
Awareness, but only the faintest prick of it, there and then gone again. Easy to ignore, easier to forget. The silence washed back in.
Hey! Nap time’s over! Wake the hell up! I don’t think this is going to be that simple. Do you think maybe there’s some sort of ritual or … I don’t know. A magic drum or something?
Awareness again, deeper. And this time, there was a sense of fear in it. He felt as if he were under a vast ocean, the weight of the water pressing him down. He had fallen too far into the silence. He had swum too near to death. Inys tried to come to himself, to reach up from the abyssal depths of his body to something else. He forced his eyes to open and had the sensation of light. He was still too deep to know what the light was or what it meant. He was not even seeing. Not really. Only he knew that somewhere, there was light.
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