by Devin Hanson
“He is that powerful?”
“I hope so.”
A wailing cry rose from the defile, followed by the roar of scores of voices shouting in response.
“Then we will buy him time, and hold to hope.” Iria flipped the sand mask back down over her face. “Sometimes I envy you your tiny gods.”
The attack came seconds later. The attackers poured through the defile on foot shouting ululating war cries. Among them were the dun-colored robes and sand masks of Rangers. Iria had no time to become afraid, no time to count the odds before she was enveloped in a swirling melee.
There was a rush of fire, compressed down to a tight lance that burned a black line across her vision, and a pair of riders fell. Jules was at her side, her runed blade shearing through flesh, leather and steel with equal ease, her other hand outstretched directing an invisible shield.
Iria barely felt as though she had time to breathe more than a few times before they were surrounded. Only the Lady Vierra’s alchemic shield kept them from instantly being overwhelmed, but it was still an impossible fight against overwhelming odds. Arrows from Rajya came flicking into the press, killing and wounding many before a group broke off from the main press and closed with her.
A lick of fiery pain seared on Iria’s shoulder, and she cut down the man who inflicted it just as a smile of victory spread across his face. She had other wounds, nothing serious yet, and a scalp cut that was sending blood running down over her sand mask, partially obscuring her vision. Jules was limping, blood red on her leg, and her leathers rent in several places, but she fought on with fierce determination.
What was the Speaker waiting for?
Jules was shouting something, unfamiliar Salian words that she didn’t have the time to puzzle out. Then the shield keeping the riders off their backs failed. In the seconds of shocked hesitation as the riders realized the invisible force wasn’t holding them back any more, Jules drew and fired, six shots that hammered out into the night in one continuous, echoing roar.
For a moment longer, the attacking riders were stunned by the sheer volume of unexpected sound and the sudden death of half a dozen of their comrades. Fear and surprise turned to rage, and they surged forward, knowledge of their imminent victory plain on their faces.
Andrew opened his eyes, the rune Song pounding against his mind, demanding to be let free. The echoes of Jules’s salvo rang in his ears, and he saw with a start that the battle was already joined.
He was prepared now, though, and the Song surged from his lips, his focused will guiding the threads of alchemy together into a whirlwind of death. Fire lanced forward, spears of raging inferno that seared through flesh and cracked bone with the intensity of the heat. Riders springing toward the beleaguered women were slapped down with gusts of wind and crushed between planes of iron-hard air. Stones ripped themselves from the sand and crashed into the attackers with bone-shattering force and then exploded in clouds of shrapnel.
Through it all, the women surged back into the fight, swords flashing as they turned the fight back against the stunned attackers. In less than a minute, the combined efforts of Andrew, Jules and Iria had reduced the number of riders by half. Andrew saw the moment the riders’ will to fight collapsed into terror, their calls for victory turned to screams of horror. The ones closest to the basin were turning back, pushing against the tide of men still filtering down through the defile.
Confusion reigned. The Song demanded to be sung, and Andrew obliged. The walls of the defile erupted in explosions of stone, and blinding spears of fire shot from his outstretched hand. Through the surge of the Song, Andrew saw that the men in the defile were running away from something inward toward the basin.
Shifting shadows high on the basin cliffs caught his eye. The Song died in his throat as the last of the riders fell. Jules and Iria were running away from the defile toward him, their steps kicking up sand. He felt light-headed as the song faded and he fought to hold onto consciousness as blackness swept his vision in waves.
There was something else happening, something important that he had to be awake for. With an effort he held onto the fleeting shreds of his awareness and saw the first of the desert dragons bound down from the cliffs. He felt the crash of the dragon’s impact through the rock he sat upon, and the jolt seemed to bring focus to his mind.
He stood, swaying, as the dragon leapt toward Jules and Iria, and screamed out, “Stop! I am Avandir, kossirith of Avandakossi! You will not harm these in my care!”
The dragon skidded to a stop, throwing up a bow wave of sand, and Andrew felt a surge of relief that faded away as he got a good look at a living desert dragon for the first time. This one was thirty feet long from the spines of its snout to the lashing barbed tail. Powerful shoulders rose massive behind a heavy head on a long neck. The hindquarters were gathered, built for powerful leaps. The dragon roared, and Andrew saw the serrated teeth, lambent with blue energy that flickered and traced about the tips. Its skin was knobby, covered with bone-like protrusions but without the characteristic scales of the northern dragons.
More dragons were coming through the defile and leaping down the cliffs. A dozen of them at least, enormous, powerful creatures. Jules and Iria stood back to back inside a circle of dragons that paced and rumbled earth-vibrating growls. The ground quivered beneath their footsteps. Andrew snatched up the scale, only lukewarm now to the touch, and slid down the rock, ignoring the thorns that scratched parallel lines of blood from his exposed skin.
Up close, the dragons seemed even larger. Even the average-sized dragons were higher than he could stretch his hand up at the shoulder. He made to walk toward the women and a dragon blocked his path, roaring in his face. Cinnamon hit him in a wave. Abruptly, he recognized what was wrong, the error in his assumptions.
These dragons were male.
Chapter 13
Miranikossi
Andrew thought furiously, trying to bring up every comment Ava had ever made about the male dragons. Assuming the dynamic was the same with these flightless dragons of the desert, things did not look promising.
Male dragons were the opposite of female dragons in many ways. They were larger, nearly twice as large among the northern dragons, and the males were much stronger and more durable. Andrew had once witnessed close up a single male dragon annihilating a fleet of armed and armored airships with barely a scratch. Cannonballs just bounced off its scaly hide. The males were also significantly less intelligent. Where female dragons were just as intelligent as humans, males had no verbal skills to speak of, though they did seem to recognize a kossirith and would refrain from killing them.
These desert dragons, if anything, were brighter than their northern counterparts. They weren’t speaking, but they did obey his command not to kill the two women.
Speaking of the women, where was Rajya?
“I go to check on my friend,” Andrew said clearly to the dragon planted in front of him. It snorted, blowing sand across Andrew’s boots, but didn’t move to block him as he circled around the pack of dragons orbiting around Jules and Iria.
Andrew found Rajya without too much trouble. The balai was surrounded by half a dozen riders, her sand mask in place and her sword in her hand, but the wounds that gaped no longer pulsed with blood. She had died sitting down, having killed all her attackers but was too badly wounded to keep fighting.
“Burn it,” Andrew cursed bitterly. It was his fault. If he hadn’t gotten so lost in forming the rune Song, if he had built it faster, paid more attention to his surroundings, he could have saved her.
He was too late to save Rajya, but maybe he could still save the other balai and Jules. There would be time enough for mourning later. He strode back to the encircling dragons and once again the massive male blocked his path.
“Let me by,” he demanded. “I would speak to a kossi if one is near, but I will not be kept from my friends.”
The dragon grunted and yawned at him, his jaws spreading wide enough to easily bite A
ndrew in half, but he shifted to the side and let Andrew through. The other dragons allowed him to pass as he approached them, and soon he found himself within the circling dragons and in view of Jules and Iria.
“Andrew!” Jules cried as he made his way past the last of the dragons, and she threw herself at him. Surprised, Andrew caught her and returned the embrace that made his ribs creak.
“Speaker,” Iria said, once Jules had released him, and bowed her head briefly.
“I found Rajya,” Andrew said quietly, and shook his head at Iria’s questioning look. The balai lieutenant’s face fell. “She died with her sword in her hand and enemies about her feet.” Andrew didn’t know if that would be a comfort to this strange woman, but she smiled and dipped her head again.
“It is an end all balai know will come. She met hers with honor.”
“I’m sorry,” Andrew said, “I didn’t even see her during the fight. If I had known–”
“How could you have?” Iria cut him off, “You did what you could, and it was enough.”
“Are you wounded?” Andrew asked, seeing for the first time the glisten of fresh blood on them.
“Not badly,” Iria replied, “though a few minutes to bind them would not go amiss.”
“They won’t attack,” Andrew said, “at least for now. You have time.”
Iria nodded and drew a few lengths of clean white cloth strips from her belt pouch, and set about bandaging the collection of shallow cuts she and Jules had earned in the melee.
“We heard you call out to the dragons,” Jules said, “Why aren’t they attacking?”
“I’m not sure, but they’re male,” Andrew said, and took a moment to explain what that meant to Iria.
“Such dragons have not been seen outside the Sunwell for many years,” Iria said, nodding toward the dragons circling them. “All I have seen before have been half this size.”
“The females,” Jules guessed.
A disturbing parallel came to Andrew’s mind and he felt the blood drain from his face at the thought. “The last time male dragons attacked in force was two thousand years ago, after the betrayal of the Incantors. They came looking for where the females had gone and wiped out every major city humanity had.”
More dragons had entered the basin while they spoke, until there were scores of the mighty creatures lining the cliff edges around them and pacing about the basin floor. The thorny trees had been crushed flat, and Andrew no longer heard the whicker of distressed horses.
Jules looked up at the dragons all about them and shivered. “I thought they were following the riders for some reason.”
“I’m sure they were,” Andrew said grimly, “but only as a target of opportunity. This is no mere hunting party.”
“They strike at the cities of Nas Shahr?” Iria asked.
“I’m sure that is their intent,” Andrew said sadly. “Too many females have been killed by the Incantors.”
“Can we stop this? Can you stop this?”
Andrew closed his eyes for a moment, imagining this horde of dragons falling upon Nok Norrah. It would be a bloodbath. The entire city would be slaughtered, men, women and children. The thought chilled him. “I will do all in my power,” he responded.
“Do this, Speaker, and I will swear myself to you.”
Andrew’s eyes snapped open, saw Iria looking at him in deadly earnest. “Say what?”
“I swore my oath as balai to protect Nas Shahr in every way possible. This threat to my land is more than any balai could stand against. If you can save my people, my life would belong to you.”
Andrew swallowed, shot a glance at Jules and saw her nod, just a tiny tip of her head. What did Jules mean? He was no lord to accept vassals. What would he even do with one? What would Iria expect of him? The thought made him re-examine his relationship with Jules. At some point in their travels together, she had gradually changed from the aloof noblewoman, to a friend and confidant, to… what? She guided him, guarded him, and taught him. But somewhere along the line their relationship had changed from ‘assist Jules in a diplomatic mission’ to ‘protect the Speaker.’ He wasn’t even sure Jules had realized the shift. Did he already have a vassal in Jules? The thought worried him, and he wondered what Jules’s reaction would be if he asked her that.
Probably best to do it from a long distance. Preferably while already mounted on a good horse.
“I would be honored,” he finally said. “But I have done nothing yet.”
Some sort of frission was happening among the dragons, and Andrew turned toward it, glad to put the conversation on hold, at least for now. The circling dragons stopped and made way for the same enormous dragon that Andrew had first called to a halt. The dragon let loose a roar that vibrated through his chest and left his ears ringing. Saliva stretched between its fangs, and again that blue lambent glow danced around the tips of the teeth and raced up and down the strands of saliva.
Then the dragon stepped aside and made room for a positively dainty dragon by comparison. The female, there was no doubt about that, was slim of shoulder and, while still being nearly as long as the males, seemed slender and graceful against the brute power of the male dragons.
She came to a stop before the humans and regarded them silently. Her eyes glowed golden, winking as the nictitating membrane flicked over them.
“You are a kossirith,” the dragon stated.
Andrew felt a wave of relief go through him. The dragon spoke and he could understand her! Perhaps he could still salvage the night and call off this avenging army before the cities of Nas Shahr were razed to the sand. “I am called Avandir by Avandakossi,” Andrew replied. “She has called me kossirith.”
“I know that name.” The dragon spoke slowly, as if unused to discourse. “She was young when the world split. It is well that she has found a kossirith. I am called Miranikossi.”
Andrew hadn’t heard that particular description for the Incantor betrayal before, but it was fitting enough. This dragon must be incredibly old if she was referring to Ava as “young.”
“The timing of your passage,” the dragon continued, “does not seem a coincidence.”
“It is not. I believe we hunt the same thing you do.” Andrew felt the beginnings of a plan stirring in the depths of his mind, a possible way to return the dragons to the desert in peace. “You seek the corrupt ones, the kossante, the dragon eaters.”
The female remained impassive, but the males grew agitated at the word, bellowing their hatred into the empty night sky.
“Once it was so,” the dragon agreed after the males quieted. “But the hunt grew long, and we have failed. The eldest among the koss remember the splitting and the cause. We go to put an end to the corruption before it grows too deep to root out.”
In a way, Andrew understood the dragon’s plight. If they were anything like the northern dragons, they bred only rarely. The females getting picked off in the desert one at a time was a devastating loss to them. Human lives were fleeting when compared to the scale of dragon existence, and even Ava had difficulty telling one human apart from another. The corruption of the Incantors must seem an impossible thing to isolate.
“We too hunt the kossante,” Andrew gestured at the two women behind him, “We fought against their forces just prior to your arrival.” He pointed to Jules, “She is ith, and both are sworn enemies of the kossante.”
“It is good that you know the dangers of the kossante,” the dragon said in her slow, halting pace. “But the past shows that humans are unable to effectively strip the corruption from their dwelling places. That is why we march. To cleanse what you humans cannot.”
“I would bargain for the lives of the humans who live in these lands,” Andrew said, and held his breath while the dragon pondered. The dragon delayed for so long that holding his breath turned figurative rather than literal, and he could sense the women growing impatient behind him, but at last she spoke again.
“I do not see what you can accomplish that the hu
mans of old could not.”
At least she hadn’t rejected him out of hand. And he actually had an answer for this. “The kossante are unwary. They are not used to being hunted like before the splitting. It is my belief that they gather to the south and could be eliminated in a single strike.”
“We too have sensed the growing corruption beyond the dead lands. It is why we march to the south. You speak boldly, and I do not sense deception in your words.” The dragon tilted her head, regarding the males about her for a moment before she spoke again. “The kossante are a mighty foe but I admit the slender possibility of success. Even so, there is little I can do to restrain the males, such a fury they are in.”
“I do not ask for you to turn them back, even I know such a task is impossible. Would they be satisfied with the death of the kossante?”
“Perhaps. They will not stop until the corruption is cleansed, that is sure.”
“Then I ask for a stay to your assault for a time so I can cleanse the corruption.”
“This I cannot grant. The males will not be restrained in their purpose.”
Andrew thought desperately for a solution. What he really needed was to already be in Khar Bora. If Ava was here she could fly them there directly, but the dragon was still somewhere far to the north, and he didn’t know if she would be willing to carry Iria. Navigating through Khar Bora remaining hidden from the Incantors without the balai’s assistance would be impossible.
“It is not my wish to see the cities of man returned to the sand,” the dragon said while Andrew tried to come up with a solution. “My memory is not so poor that I forget the days before the splitting. Many times have I thought back to those years; I see in you a hope that this land has long been without.
“The males travel quickly, but they still gather their numbers. The eldest among them are above the fury and can be reasoned with. You have spoken with their chief: Nerivakosso, he is called. He could be persuaded to bring you swiftly to the city by the dead lake.”
