Dion threw himself down. ‘What’s wrong with her?’
‘She collapsed straight after,’ Liana said.
Dion clenched his fists. He had known as soon as it happened that Chloe had saved his life, and not for the first time. Now she was paying the price.
He placed his hand over Liana’s. ‘Best to leave her holding it.’ He then put his palm against Chloe’s forehead. He almost flinched. He had never felt skin so hot. ‘Give her water,’ he said. ‘Keep her cool.’
‘They’re coming!’ Cob cried.
Dion straightened and looked at the sky. Palemon had begun his attack. A row of dragons descended from the main host, soon followed by the next. The army was heading straight for the citadel.
‘Sire!’ a captain called out to him from another section of wall. All around the battlements, men had their hands on the sackcloth covers, ready to drag them away from the ballistae. The weapons were already primed. It only remained to reveal them.
‘Should we uncover?’ the captain called.
‘No!’ Dion replied, slicing the air with his hand. He swept his gaze over the defenders. ‘The ballistae are our only advantage. We must reveal them at the very last moment. Understood?’
The soldiers nodded.
‘You heard the king!’ the officer shouted. ‘Be ready, but don’t reveal until the order is given.’
Dion watched the dragons approach. ‘Archers, nock and draw!’ he called.
The sound of creaking bows filled the air.
As they neared, individual dragons became clearer. Scarlet scales shone. Wings swept down. They were already past the place where Dion had knelt to Palemon.
Dion’s thoughts were grim. His men would put up a good fight, but the citadel would be taken; there was no question of survival. He and all the other defenders would die. He prayed that somehow Liana would manage to get away with Chloe. He owed Chloe his life, yet he wished she had never come to Fort Liberty.
Dion’s only dark satisfaction was that with the dragons flying so close together, he would destroy dozens of them when he unleashed his ballistae.
He could now make out individual riders on dragon back. A sorcerer pointed his staff and a ball of flame streaked toward the citadel to burst against the stone. He saw Palemon holding a spear at the ready as he led from the front.
Dion carefully judged his moment. When he knew that they couldn’t halt their charge, he bellowed.
‘Ballistae ready! Uncover!’
All around him soldiers dragged sackcloth away from their weapons. The ballistae were facing the descending dragons and tilted up at the sky, perfectly angled to cause the most damage.
‘Wait for it!’ Dion called. He needed to take out as many as he could in the first volley. ‘Wait . . .’ Finally he shouted at the top of his lungs. ‘Fire!’
17
Chloe had no idea where she was. One moment she had been standing on the battlements of the citadel on Fort Liberty, the next she was here.
The place looked familiar. She was standing on a hard floor inside a tall, cylindrical tower with curved walls. It appeared to be newly built, and was hollow from the base to the very top. When she tilted back her head, she saw a circle of blue sky above.
She raised her hand to shield her eyes and gasped: her entire arm was transparent. She looked down at her feet and could see through to the paving stones beneath.
She whirled when she heard voices.
Nearby was a broad archway, the only exit she could see. The voices were coming from that direction.
A woman was walking past the archway. She was following a corridor, and Chloe only saw her briefly, but she wore a thick silver robe in a strange style, with a trim of blue stripes and folds along the hem like the shell of an oyster. Her hair was straight and reddish-brown, flowing down her back almost to her waist.
A companion walked beside her, a man in a gray robe. But it was the woman Chloe felt drawn to. Without active volition Chloe hurried to catch up with her. Leaving the vaulted shaft, she passed through the archway and followed the pair as they traveled a passage that led down, into the earth.
The woman was slim and supple, walking with natural grace. The young man at her side had close-cropped black hair, and it was obvious that he deferred to her.
‘So it happened during a test?’ the woman asked. Her voice was sharp and incisive; she was accustomed to being obeyed.
‘Yes, Tamis. It was here, in the Sky Tower’s shaft. Magus Erin was testing the copper chains. Seeing what their limits are . . . if the chains still work with the changelings as they did with the eldren.’
‘Go on,’ Tamis said.
‘Magus Erin ordered the dragon to charge the wall. He wanted to see if it would blindly obey, even to the point of harming itself.’
‘I understand the test,’ Tamis said impatiently. ‘I was the one who told him to do it. What happened?’
‘The dragon obeyed the command, threw itself hard enough to break its wing. But then . . . there was an . . . accident. It turned on Magus Erin.’ The young man’s voice was shaken. ‘Tore him in half.’
The pair reached an open door, made of solid gold. Chloe wondered why this place looked familiar. Had she been here before? But her memories were hazy. She now couldn’t remember much at all. She struggled to hold on to her own name.
‘We managed to contain the dragon and put it back in its cage,’ the young man said. He glanced at Tamis. ‘But the changeling is still crazed. The chains no longer control it.’
‘Show me,’ said Tamis.
Chloe followed them into a cavernous chamber, with walls, floor, and ceiling made of smooth stone. The young man led Tamis toward a row of a dozen iron-barred cages, each immense in size. Trailing behind, still mysteriously drawn to the woman in the silver robe, Chloe glanced into one of the cages as she passed.
She started. The cage had an occupant.
A winged monster stared back at her. Its eyes were glaring from its wedge-shaped head, tapered at the end where its jaws revealed sharp teeth each as big as a man’s fingers. Its back was broad, and its leathery wings were drawn in to its body. Its scales were as red as fresh blood.
Tamis and her companion ignored the dragon as they walked past the cell. Only a few others had dragons, perhaps six of them. The pair stopped at the cell at the end and gazed inside.
For the first time, Chloe had a good look at Tamis. She had aquiline features, with a small, pursed mouth and sharp eyes. Her face was intelligent, but also severe.
Chloe watched, ethereal and unseen, as Tamis and her younger companion inspected the red dragon within.
It was obviously injured, with its wing at an awkward angle. Dark, malevolent eyes regarded its jailers. A growling rumble came from deep within its chest. It suddenly snarled, its white teeth displaying dripping red blood. The young man jumped, but Tamis showed no reaction, instead appraising the injured dragon with interest.
‘And the copper chains do nothing?’
Her companion recovered his composure. ‘Nothing at all.’
‘So it appears the bond has been broken,’ Tamis mused. She was pensive for a time, while the injured dragon in the cell continued its threatening rumble. ‘Two options present themselves,’ she finally said. ‘There may be a fault with the magic of the copper chains; however, I am doubtful. After all, they worked for many years on the eldren without mishap. No, far more likely there is a flaw in the magic of the arch.’ She met her companion’s eyes. ‘Holding an eldran in its form is one thing, but transmuting a human into a dragon may be beyond even Nisos. I know the archmagus, and he barely comprehends the forces he aims to control.’ She came to a decision. ‘I will need to leave Malakai. I must go to Aleuthea and see him.’
‘What do we do with this one?’ the young man asked.
‘Destroy it,’ Tamis said. ‘It is dangerous.’ When her companion didn’t move, Tamis turned to face him. ‘Well? I have yet to see one of the changelings die. I am curious about what w
ill happen.’
The young magus bowed and scurried out of the chamber. Chloe stayed with Tamis, giving her as much attention as Tamis was giving the dragon in the cell. Time passed, but Chloe had little sense of it. The thought worried her slightly. Should she be here? Where exactly was she? And when?
It was an effort, but the more she tried to focus her thoughts, the more she was aware of being in another place, and not with Tamis at all. Suddenly she knew: she was having a vision. But rather than a vision of the future, this was a vision of the past.
‘Chloe?’
She heard Liana saying her name over and over. A gentle hand patted her forehead with a cool, damp cloth. Chloe’s eyelids fluttered. Her head felt unbelievably hot; pain spiked in her skull, making her long for oblivion.
She heard another voice. Dion was bellowing with all his might. There was ragged fear underneath his command. ‘Ballistae ready! Uncover!’
Chloe’s eyelids closed again.
It was too difficult to hold on to her other life, and it drifted away, so that soon she no longer worried about it. Tamis’s companion had returned, this time with two strong soldiers, armored men in chain mail, both carrying powerful crossbows. Tamis gave them a curt order and the muscles in their arms bulged as they began to wind the strings on their weapons. Each soldier then fitted an iron crossbow bolt and waited for Tamis’s next command.
‘The creature is unstable. It must be a clean blow to the skull,’ Tamis said. She stood back and nodded at the nearest soldier. ‘You first.’ She glanced at the second. ‘Be ready in case he misses.’
‘I never miss,’ the first soldier said.
He raised his crossbow and pointed it at the red dragon’s skull. The creature became agitated, eyes darting, as if it knew what was coming. The soldier’s finger squeezed the lever.
The weapon’s string released with a sharp snap. An instant later the iron crossbow bolt speared the injured dragon in its forehead. It shivered. Its limbs twitched. Its wings gave a final shudder. Then its eyes glazed as it died.
But then something unexpected happened. And for the first time, Tamis looked afraid.
Sudden shrieking filled the air.
It was the most deafening sound imaginable. Piercing animal cries resounded throughout the chamber. They were shrieks of utter rage, beyond all defining. Bangs and crashes came from everywhere. The groan of straining iron caused Tamis’s face to pale.
Tamis ran to the next occupied cage and stared inside. Chloe followed close on her heels.
The dragon was throwing itself against the walls of its cage. Its eyes were wild with madness. Tamis leaped back as it thrust a limb out through the bars, swiping at her with razor-sharp claws. It bit its jaws around the wrist-thick iron, closing them hard. A single white shard fell to the ground, then another. It was trying to reach Tamis with such malevolence that it was breaking its own teeth.
The creature in the cell then opened its wings and flung itself up against the ceiling. It dropped and then swept its wings again. Its arched back smashed into the stone above, bringing down dust, and then bits of rock. Thudding booms came from all directions; the other dragons were doing the same thing. The ground was shaking. Chloe knew what Tamis was thinking: the chamber was underground, below the tower. If the onslaught continued, the ceiling would collapse around them.
Tamis stumbled to the nearest crossbowman. She grabbed his shoulders and shouted above the din. The young man in the gray robe was pressed back against the rear wall, speechless and fearful, frozen into place.
‘Kill them!’ Tamis cried at the soldier. ‘Kill them all! Quickly!’
She released the soldier and with a pale face he hurried to the iron bars, loaded crossbow in hand. He took a shaking breath and aimed his weapon at the dragon’s head. As it shrieked and cavorted in the cage, he waited until its head was level and then fired.
He judged his moment perfectly. The dragon fell, dead before it struck the ground, killed by the iron bolt shot through its skull.
He struggled with the crossbow as he loaded another shaft. Meanwhile his companion finished loading and ran to the adjacent cage. Another strike killed the next dragon.
Every death only made the survivors more crazed. The horrific shrieking grew in volume and intensity. The iron bars creaked every time a monster threw itself at them.
Tamis went to the young man and grabbed his upper arm. She pulled him into action and led him toward the golden door.
More snaps sounded like the cracks of whips as the soldiers dispatched the remaining dragons. The shaking of the ground eased. Finally there was only one dragon screaming, and then a soldier fired and it died too.
Chloe followed Tamis and her companion as they left the chamber. Eventually the young man could walk on his own, and, finally, stunned by what they’d witnessed, the pair climbed the corridor until they reached ground level. They came to the bottom of the tower’s shaft, the place where Chloe had first found herself.
The young man leaned breathlessly against the wall.
‘What just happened?’ he asked. He met Tamis’s eyes, his face desperate for answers.
‘The bond between dragons,’ Tamis said grimly. She had recovered her composure, although her face was still pale. ‘When an eldran dies, they all feel it, but this is something different. When a changeling dies, it is clearly enough to drive them wild . . . No’ – she shook her head – ‘more than wild. What I saw there was more demon than dragon. It was evil. It wanted me dead. Nothing else mattered.’
‘What do we do?’ The young magus wiped a hand over his face. ‘This is more than a flaw. We both know they keep hundreds of changelings beneath the Great Tower in Aleuthea. All it takes is just one to die and they could bring the entire structure to the ground.’ He swallowed. ‘They could get free.’
‘I am leaving you in charge here,’ Tamis said. ‘Close the door. Seal off the tunnel. This magic is far too dangerous. The experiments of Nisos are over.’
The young magus nodded slowly. ‘I will see it done.’ He drew in a slow, shaking breath. ‘But what about Aleuthea? Tamis, you must go there immediately.’
Tamis nodded. ‘I will put them all down. Nisos will not stop me. We cannot let them loose upon the world.’
18
Dion watched as the red dragons descended, wings sweeping down, filling the sky with their numbers. He had eighty ballistae pointed up at them. His men had just uncovered them, and now the ugly, black contraptions were revealed.
He waited until the last possible instant, but then he could wait no longer.
‘Fire!’ he roared.
The tension on the weapons’ strings was so great that when the ballistae fired, they jumped in a strange collective dance. They released a mighty clatter, a sequence of snaps that drowned all other sound. Dozens and dozens of sharp iron bolts filled the air.
Soldiers wearing chain mail and holding spears, axes, and swords were all riding their dragons toward the citadel. Black projectiles whistled through the air in their midst. Some missed, angled too high or low.
But many hit.
Dion saw a red dragon struck through the chest, deep in the vicinity of its heart. Another nearby reared back as a metal shaft suddenly sprouted from its throat, releasing a gush of crimson blood. Two iron bolts killed one more. A rider was thrown from his mount when a shaft lanced into the middle of his chest.
The projectiles easily pierced the dragons’ tough hides: Xenophon had delivered on his promise. The numbers of the enemy were swiftly whittled down; thirty or more fell from the sky, plummeting toward the plain outside the citadel’s gates.
The archers fired at the same time. The occasional arrow struck a dragon’s soft underbelly or a soldier’s face or throat, but most bounced harmlessly off their targets.
Dion opened his mouth, about to cry out to his soldiers to ready their shields. But his shout came out as a croak. His eyes widened. He never finished what he was going to say.
A convulsion ri
pped through the dragons.
As one, almost in unison, they halted their mad charge. Their wings spread out as they reared back. Their jaws parted.
And they screamed.
It was a sound Dion never wanted to hear again. He gritted his teeth, watching as the riders struggled to get their mounts under control. The riders jerked on the reins of copper in their hands. Their faces were panicked. Dion didn’t know what they were sensing through the copper chains, but he knew one thing.
Something was wrong.
He exchanged a swift glance with Cob. Nearby, Roxana was clutching the old sailor’s arm. The soldiers manning the citadel had forgotten their weapons as they watched the spectacle in front of them. Even if Dion had called out to them, they wouldn’t have heard him above the din.
Then, quick as a snake, a dragon arched its neck. It closed its jaws over the neighboring rider and tore the man’s head free, releasing a spray of crimson liquid.
The sight of blood began the frenzy.
The dragons’ shrieks died away, and now they were snapping at the riders. Jaws opened to bite warriors in two. Men screamed before their cries were cut off. Scarlet dragons with no riders on their backs flew at those that still had them, grasping with their claws and tearing their tormenters free. Palemon’s men began to jump off their mounts rather than face the dragons’ wrath.
Whatever was happening, there was purpose to their actions. Dion saw dragons tear off each other’s copper chains, as eager to remove the chains as they were to destroy their riders.
‘By all the gods,’ Dion whispered. ‘They’ve turned wild.’
Palemon was swooping in the attack when he saw a volley of arrows and iron shafts launch from the citadel. The hail of projectiles killed a dragon beside him, throwing the rider from its back. Nonetheless, the charge continued. He might lose a few men and dragons, but not enough to change the battle’s outcome. Victory would still be his.
But then his dragon suddenly pulled up, wings billowing around it as it stalled. It was bucking as it shrieked. The piercing sound came from all around. Palemon glanced about in panic. He struggled to remain in his seat and saw that his warriors were having the same problem. His men grimaced while they tried in vain to control their dragons. The creatures were screaming.
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