The Dragons of Noor

by Janet Lee Carey

  Miles nodded, glimpsing for a moment a purpose for the ceremony here, before another battle.

  “You understand me,” she said. It was a private speech between the two of them. The Damusaun expected him to honor the pledge he’d made to her not to kill. She had a shape-shifter fighting alongside her. A help. A risk. A danger. If he killed in dragon’s form, everything would be lost. The Dragon Queen’s gift to him had also served her own purpose. She meant to bind him to his word through this meer sign.

  “I understand,” he said.

  The Damusaun held him in her gaze a moment longer, then addressed the rest of the company. “Our patrols have not seen any more trebuchets. To the best of our knowledge, we have destroyed them all.” The dragons beat their tails happily.

  “Still, I warn all to fly with care,” she added. “Now we fly to destroy the Cutters’ cache of saws, axes, and root poison. The last Waytrees must stand!”

  TWENTY-EIGHT

  PROMISE

  And they gathered beneath the trees to sing the death knell.

  —THE MISHTAR, DRAGON’S WAY, vol. 3

  Miles clung to Dramui’s neck ridge as she flew soundlessly over another Cutters’ camp. Higher up the moonlit mountain, he caught sight of the Damusaun. Behind her, Hanna and Kanoae flew on their terrows. His sister had spent all afternoon and night searching the last remaining azure grove, looking for the right Waytree to usher her into Oth before it was too late. Miles’s dry throat stung. He licked his chapped lips. Find the way, he thought. Bring Tymm home.

  There were so few Waytrees left now. The dragons had fed the fire walls to keep the Cutters away, yet somehow a few men had managed to sneak past with more root poison. The dragons were betting the Cutters stored their cache of poison with the saws and axes in the huts they’d found, but they couldn’t be sure.

  Taunier rode Findarr over a burning storage hut. Miles felt the intense heat as Dramui dove down. Findarr soared to the left, and Taunier waved his arm to herd stray islands of fire back toward the hut. Dramui added her flames to the others’, torching the walls and devouring the roof. Taunier brought his arms together. The roaring inferno engulfed the Cutters’ saws and axes, turning them into molten puddles.

  Men raced up from the camps, shouting and firing their crossbows. Through the heat and smoke, a dragon’s piercing cry rang out. Miles looked up to the mountainside just as Kanoae’s terrow lurched back, flapping her wings wildly. A second black whirring ball cut through the air. The Damusaun turned and sped toward Kanoae’s terrow, but not before Hanna’s terrow doubled over, plummeting toward the ground after Kanoae’s.

  “Anteebwey!” Miles screamed the devil’s name. The Cutters must have found a way to hide another trebuchet!

  “Turn about, Dramui! Hanna and Kanoae were hit!”

  His dragon was dodging arrows and Miles was too impatient to wait for her to wing him up the mountainside. Abandoning Dramui, he plunged into the air. His back split. The bones in his arms branched out, his skin stretching into wings. The sudden shape-shift knifed his hands, turned his fingers into sharp talons. His neck lengthened, snakelike. A long tail grew from the base of his spine. Sharp teeth jutted from his roaring jaws.

  The word he roared was “Hanna!” But it came out as fire.

  A group of taberrells found the newest trebuchet and set it aflame. More shouts. More screaming. Miles left the raw sounds of battle behind as he sped toward the high meadow where he’d seen the terrows fall.

  In the windy meadow he alighted near the Damusaun. Kanoae and her dragon lay in the blowing grass along with Hanna’s terrow. All three were torn open by the spiked balls, their blood black in the dim light. Antig, Shagin. He knew all the dragons’ names now, from hatchling to elderling, for they’d spent long hours together in the cave, and those who fight together come to know each other well even in a short time. The smell of blood, dragon, and human filled the air. He did not need to come any closer to see that Kanone and the terrows were dead.

  The Dragon Queen cradled Hanna. Miles tried to speak as dragons do. No words came; instead, he made a croaking noise. The Damusaun looked up, but it was Hanna’s face he sought. Her skin was pale; her eyelids white. He leaned in closer and pricked his ears to listen for a sign of breath. Wind in the grass, the clicking of katydids, battle sounds in the hills far below. His dragon’s heart pounded as he waited for the quietest of sounds that must be there, had to be there.

  The Damusaun began to sing. Her dragon’s voice was deep and rough, but Miles understood what she was offering. The Dragon Queen had found his sister’s keth-kara, just as the Falconer had found Miles’s self-sound last year, when he was at the point of death.

  The she-dragon sang softly, searching for the right intonation. She would not find it. It would take a human voice to sing the sound. Hanna’s face had a hollow look. Shift back now, he thought. Sing! But fierce rage at the Cutters still burned inside his chest. He’d have to let go of his wild anger to return to his human shape. He strained to quell the burning, and found the powerful dragon’s form lent him the strength he needed. For Hanna. Let go for Hanna.

  Miles focused to shut out the sounds of battle. A playful breeze blew a strand of light brown hair across his sister’s cheek. Her face was very still. Taking a deep breath, he filled his chest with the cool night air, the deep blue scent of azure needles, the salt smell of the sea. Even as Miles’s chest expanded and the fire in him cooled, his body shrank, his wings and tail disappeared, sharp teeth and talons vanished.

  Standing before the Damusaun, he sent the cool air he’d taken from the night back out again as pure sound. The keth-kara the queen was singing changed with his human pitch, the notes correcting themselves between the two of them. Hanna’s keth-kara was earth and sky together, just as it should be for a sqyth-eyed girl.

  He sang the song of Old Magic eOwey intoned at Hanna’s beginning, and as the sounds blew out between them, he heard the wind sing them back and saw his sister’s brows lift as if in question. She turned her head, put out her hands, and sat up. Miles wanted to rush over and throw his arms around her, but he recognized her strange inward look and held himself back. Hanna’s face was awash in dream as she climbed out of the Damusaun’s arms. Turning, she began to walk toward the azure trees growing at the far edge of the high meadow, the only untouched grove still standing on the mountain.

  “My sister dreamwalks,” he whispered. Relief flooded through him. She was all right. She would live.

  He heard again the sounds of battle from the mountainside. “I have to go,” he said suddenly. “But someone needs to follow Hanna when she dreamwalks. Could you do that please, Damusaun?”

  “I will.”

  The queen opened her wings. “If you are thinking to shift again in this fight, Miles, remember your vow.”

  Miles’s eyes fell on the bodies of his friends in the grass. Kanoae’s arm was draped across Antig’s golden neck. Her foot was wedged against Shagin’s tail, as if the three of them were curled up in sleep.

  He’d left Dramui fighting alongside Taunier and the other dragons farther down the mountainside. How many more would have to die? His throat constricted as he blinked back tears. “But they’re killing us, Damusaun.”

  A low growl came from her throat. She wasn’t forbidding him to shift, only to control his need for revenge. He bit his lip, tasting his salt tears for Kanoae, the dead terrows at her side, and, before that, for Endour.

  The Damusaun’s neck scales rippled as she waited for his answer.

  Miles wiped his dripping nose. “Don’t you want to kill the Cutters for what they’ve done?”

  The Dragon Queen raised her tail and bashed the ground hard enough for Miles to feel the rumbling in his feet.

  “I would crush them with my talons,” she hissed. “Break their bones and burn them if I could. But kill one manling, just one, and we’ll destroy the pardon seven hundred years of peace has earned us.” The Damusaun coiled her tail about Miles’s legs and drew
him nearer. Her eyes were two suns in the morning twilight. “If you shift again, you have to promise me, pilgrim.”

  He felt the rippling muscles in her tail. She called him pilgrim, though he was not the Dreamwalker or the Fire Herd mentioned in the prophecy. Bring to us our heart’s desire, one with mastery over fire. From across the eastern sea, come to us, O Pilgrim. The song line was for Taunier, but he’d gleaned something from his dragon-shifts, he realized. He could have mastery over fire. Not the visible kind that burned on the outside, but the rage that burned within. The dragon’s form had empowered him to do it.

  The queen released him and drew back. Miles hated the Cutters for what they’d done, but now he loved the Damusaun more. He would not come between her and her homeland in Oth.

  “I promise, Damusaun,” he said.

  TWENTY-NINE

  EVVER’S PLEA

  Some call the azures Forest Fathers,

  for they are the oldest Waytrees in Noor.

  —THE WAY BETWEEN WORLDS

  It was snowing in her dreamwalk. Hanna opened her hands to catch the frail blue flakes. Thriss hummed in her ear as the snow twirled down. Each flake was long as a lady’s finger, slender as a bone. They were warm and dry as they piled up on Hanna’s upturned palm. Not snow, then. She drifted into the blue flurry of falling azure needles.

  Low voices filled the predawn gloom. She was dreamwalking—moving in easy strides up the mountainside. Thriss coiled about her neck and pressed the top of her head against Hanna’s chin. Woodland giants took shape before Hanna in the dusk, azure trees stripped of their needles, the wind undressing them as it sang around their branches.

  Root poison was killing them, stripping them of their needles. She walked closer to the ancient trees. Mist or smoke entwined their bare branches. Above the singing, the far-off sound of a babe’s cry drifted through the woods. Hanna entered the old forest where the trunks quavered. Where was the child?

  Naked branches knocked together like great hollow rattles as azure needles drifted down from the high canopy. Wind tugged at Hanna’s cloak and hair, drawing her in with invisible hands.

  Dawn’s pale copper beams filled the glade. The wailing was quieter now, and as Hanna entered a small clearing on the hill, she saw it had not come from a babe at all but from an old, bony woman curled up on a log. Her dark-skinned face was pinched, and her eyes were closed.

  “Hello?” At Hanna’s soft greeting, the old woman stirred, opening her eyes. Both were milky-white. She was blind.

  Reaching through the cascading needles, Hanna touched the woman tenderly on her shoulder. The green knit shawl came apart in her hand like spiderwebs.

  Touching the shawl awakened Hanna. Such a light gesture, but she blinked and looked about, suddenly aware of her bruised thigh, her throbbing head. She only half remembered that she’d been shot down and fallen from the sky. The old woman was still on the log. The azure needles were still falling. They hadn’t disappeared with her dreamwalk: something new. Was it the closeness of the azure trees that blended reality and dream? Down the hill beyond the little clearing, she caught a glimpse of the Dragon Queen pacing in the long grass. Hanna felt confused, the way she always felt after one of her dreamwalks.

  She addressed the old woman. “I’m Hanna. What is your name?”

  “Zabith.”

  Needles drifted onto Zabith’s white hair, her dark, wrinkled neck. Her name whispered through Hanna’s mind. Miles had told her of the Forest Meer from Othlore who’d sailed east last winter. But this blind old woman seemed powerless, not like any meer she’d ever met. Hanna helped her up from the log. Zabith had been tall once, but she was partly stooped now, and she looked frail. “Why were you crying?”

  Zabith did not answer. She traced Hanna’s cheek with her dry fingertips, then moved up and touched her eyelids. It felt as light as a moth landing on her skin.

  “You are sqyth-eyed,” she said.

  “How could you know that?”

  “A Forest Meer can also be a seer.” Zabith let her hand drop.

  A seer who’s blind? thought Hanna.

  “The trees are dying,” Zabith said.

  Hanna looked uphill. All the azures in her view were losing their needles. “But there must be a few healthy Waytrees hidden in the last grove up here,” she argued, unwilling to give up hope just yet. “The dragons have been trying to protect them.”

  Zabith covered her mouth and spoke huskily through her parted fingers. “Too late. No one can save them now.”

  Hanna gripped the old woman’s shoulders. “How can we help? Tell me what to do.”

  Zabith sniffed and tightened the wrap of her shawl. “You’re late. Very late. We were not sure you would come. And where is the boy?”

  The old woman talked of one thing, then another. She was a meer, but perhaps the illness that took her vision had also taken her mind. Hanna rubbed her throbbing temples. “What boy?”

  The swirling blue needles were turning color. A thick rust-colored carpet buried Zabith’s feet and piled up around Hanna’s ankles.

  Bring the boy the torches follow to the heart of Taproot Hollow.

  The answer had not come from Zabith; it had come from the Waytrees up the hill. The last stand of giant trees on the mountain looked skeletal without their needles.

  Following the voices, Hanna climbed the hill with Zabith. The azure trunks creaked and moaned, a sound the Leena used to make on the ocean swells. The crunching needles underfoot added their dry sound to the deya voices. Just ahead, the tall deyas wavered flame-like as they emerged from their Waytrees. Male and female deyas, twelve to fifteen feet tall, stood before the mammoth azure trunks. Tendrils of mist coiled around their rooted feet, entwined their colorful robes, and shrouded their long, proud faces.

  “Hannalyn.” The voice came from one or all; she could not tell. The sound had the heaviness of earth about it, as if the deyas were speaking from their roots instead of their mouths. Hanna did not wonder how they knew her name. The deyas were ever watchful. They would have seen her arrive and would have witnessed all the changes going on about them. Silent and observant in their trees, they came out only when they wished to do so, or when the death of their Waytree forced them out.

  It was alarming to see so many of them leave their trees at once. Deyas could not live apart from their grandtrees for long.

  “Please,” Hanna said, “go back inside your azures. The dragons still fight the Cutters. Try and keep your homes alive.” The short speech awakened Thriss, who poked her snout out from under the cloak, rubbed the top of her head up against Hanna’s chin, and purred.

  One deya stood before the rest. His long face was as gray-white as his mossy hair and beard. He was not the largest spirit, but he looked to be the oldest of them all.

  “I am Evver,” he said. “We must go, Hannalyn. Our roots were weakened with poison. Now they are torn. Soon, there will be no Waytrees left to hold the worlds together.”

  Behind Evver, the deyas whispered, “Sqyth-born one. Sqyth-born.”

  Evver held up his broad hand to quiet them. He bent down to look at Hanna’s sqyth-eyes.

  “You are the Kanameer. Servant of the Old Magic.” The deya’s deep voice poured over her like a waterfall. But his next words surprised her.

  “You will lead us through Taproot Hollow to All Souls Wood.”

  Hanna tried to steady herself. She was supposed to lead them to All Souls Wood? But she’d come here to ask them for passage to Oth. Looking into Evver’s deep green eyes she wanted to say, I’ll take you to the wood. Instead, she said, “I’m not sure how to find the way.”

  A loud cracking sound came from the grove. Evver’s face darkened. “The breaking comes,” he whispered. The deyas behind Evver buried their faces in their hands. A low creaking and groaning poured from the silhouetted forest. The last giant trees on the mountain began to sway, as if a great wind had come up from the sea, but the air was all too still.

  Hanna watched in horror as b
lack lines shot up the enormous trunks, followed by earsplitting cracks as the trunks broke in two, and branches came raining down. The deyas turned and fled down the hillside. Hanna grabbed Zabith, but the old woman couldn’t run fast enough. Just as the nearest falling tree was about to crush them both, Evver scooped them up in his great, long arms and carried them down the hill.

  The deya set them down in the damp grass. Three more mammoth trees toppled down. Holding on to Zabith, Hanna felt the falling in her body, the riveting sounds as the trees struck the ground, hitting her bones like a hammer. She was breaking, falling, as she felt all the hope go out from under her. She cried until her throat felt swollen, her nose clogged, her eyes stung.

  The last tree fell and the mountain stilled. Rust-colored azure needles swirled down. Hanna checked on Thriss hiding under her cloak.

  “Evver,” Hanna said in a shaky voice. He bent down to hear her better. “Thank you for saving us.”

  “You are welcome, Kanameer.” He returned her gaze with piercing green eyes. “You are the Dreamer who will lead us to All Souls Wood,” he said. “But where is the boy?”

  She bit her lip, wishing that she could help this kind deya. “I’m sorry, Evver. I don’t know who you mean.”

  “You do,” he said. His confidence startled her. She stroked Thriss’s slender tail. When she and Zabith had first followed the deyas’ voices up the hill, they’d heard them softly calling, Bring the boy the torches follow to the heart of Taproot Hollow.

  Words from the game Blind Seer. She went over the last verse in her mind:

  Dreamer, travel through the night,

  Take Blind Seer robbed of sight.

  Seek them there, seek them here,

  before the children disappear.

  Bring the boy the torches follow

  To the heart of Taproot Hollow.