Iyahi-Ila sat up in bed, leafing through a book about architecture. The topic failed to hold his interest, but beautiful illustrations filled almost every page, showing him what the ruins he knew used to look like. Long ago, lifetimes ago, when dragonkind had made cities. If he thought about it intently enough, he could almost see the drawings come to life, with winged shapes moving between the lines of ink, pausing in the shadow of a graceful arch, laughing and shoving one another through open doorways. Living.
Anyway, it passed the time until Kiile-Kili could visit again.
The healer Enci had had him moved out of the infirmary and into a private suite. Iyahi supposed that must mean he would be staying at the castle a while longer. Not that he was ungrateful—he might well have died without Enci’s intervention—but he missed his brothers. Kiile came to visit him. The others did not. As for the dragons themselves, well, they hardly made for good company. They were few, so painfully few, and many of them had a habit of speaking in hushed tones, as though passing by a sickbed. Everything was too still and too quiet. It unnerved the Hawk prince. Perhaps that was why he looked at pictures and imagined ancient cities full of life.
Right now, his own people were probably laughing and singing and telling tales. In their endless travels across the plains, their seasonal circuit tending territory from Rustwater to the flats below Sulfur Springs, the Hawk Clan was almost never silent. It annoyed the gore-stones out of the Raven Clan.
Iyahi missed them.
With a sigh that heaved the loneliness out of his chest and into the stillness of the bedchamber, he pushed the book aside. If he wished it hard enough, perhaps that boy from the archive would visit again. The apprentice scribe had seemed friendly, if terribly shy. They could talk about the books he had brought, or about his work and his studies. Anything, really, just to hear another person’s voice. Iyahi sagged against his pillows. His leg throbbed in response, reminding him to take more care in moving. Reminding him that he would never be a warrior. Well. At least he had avenged himself.
He held up his hand, letting the scattered light from the beveled glass of the window fall across the back of it, where his new tattoo would be. His first kill. Likely his only one, but his people would sing songs and tell tales, and the deed would never be forgotten. Kiile would see to that.
Iyahi let his hand fall back to his side. He was weak, he reminded himself in a voice too much like his father’s. He would never master the warrior’s arts, never stand beside his brothers in battle. Perhaps he would never even tend a stinging cordvine ever again. What use was he to his people? Perhaps he should simply stay here, among the too-silent dragons. He looked around the room, and for a moment the shadows seemed to deepen, and all the edges sharpened. For a moment, he could see the magic running through the very stones of the castle.
More kinds of strength than merely physical, whispered a voice too near, yet distant and strained. Thought a clever boy like you would have noticed.
Iyahi scowled around at the empty bedchamber as everything faded back into mundane, familiar shades and shapes. Of course he knew that. His own brothers demonstrated a range of unique and useful strengths. Still, he’d rather had his heart set on being a warrior.
A soft knocking came at the door, a tapping so light Iyahi assumed it must be Gavi, bringing him something to eat. He liked Gavi well enough, despite all his father’s admonitions not to trust halfdragons. His father had been wrong about many things.
Iyahi cleared his throat and called for his visitor to enter. The door swung open, but it was not Gavi who stood there. It was the prince of Seyzharel.
“My lord?”
Prince Baleirithys hesitated. He looked like a watery reflection of himself, as though forgetting his own shape. Then, resolving himself, he stepped forward and shook his head. “You’ve nearly died twice beneath my roof. You owe me the use of my name.”
Iyahi gave him a tired smile. “Perhaps.” He tried to push himself into a more upright position. His hip screamed agony through his entire leg, and he sagged, probably pale and sweating. Prince Baleirithys started forward, composed himself, then turned to close the door, almost all in a single fluid motion. This man had spent many decades concealing his emotions. Concealing his pain.
Prince Baleirithys crossed the room and, with effortless grace, settled himself into the chair where Kiile belonged. Then, apparently abandoning pretense, he leaned his elbows on his knees and he rested his chin on his knuckles. His wings settled close against his back, the better to hide his thoughts. His keen dark gaze scrutinized Iyahi. “That foreign spell,” he said, “the one that triggered your trance. What did it feel like?”
Iyahi’s stomach gave a sick lurch. He had tried to forget. He could never forget. Picking up the book again, just to have something to hold, something solid to anchor him, he drew a shuddering breath. “It felt like…” Like everything and nothing. “Like the space between the stars and the darkened sky. Like…” How did one explain such things? “Like the hesitation between sound and silence.” He met Prince Baleirithys’ searching stare. “And it tasted of fear.”
The corridor dissolved. Only a moment ago they had all walked more or less together down the square, dimly lit passageway, and now they stumbled to a collective stop atop a barren plateau. His tail twitching, Atchi glared around at the rocky scenery. That had been unnecessarily dramatic.
“No turning back,” remarked Seikhiel, with more than his usual wryness. Atchi glanced at him, eyes narrowing. Would Seikhiel truly have wanted to turn back? Into Interspace?
Why?
Van-Dal took in the rocks and the purpling sky. He rocked onto the balls of his feet, his wings flaring to test the wind, and he scanned the horizon. A small grin crept across his face. “Come, friends,” he said, inviting everyone but looking only at Tharaiyelagh. “Tonight we dine at my father’s table.”
Atchi’s nose wrinkled. Yes, it certainly did smell like the Second Sphere: dry, naked stone with a hint of sulfur. Bel stepped up to the edge of the plateau and looked down. Pointedly, he turned back to face Van-Dal. “Easy enough for you, but how do those of us without wings get down from here?”
“We’re not going down. The draccs are down there.” He pointed out across a landscape dotted with similar plateaus in varying sizes and heights. “We’re going across.” In the distance, one stone jutted higher than the others. Van-Dal seemed to indicate that as their destination.
Bel opened his mouth for further objection, but at that moment a ball of white light shot toward them out of the sky, and some curious things happened. Akieryon thrust his brother behind him and assumed a defensive stance. Tempest let go of the magic that concealed his dragon form, and he stretched his wings protectively above everyone close to him. Ragheiyont reached for a dagger that was not there. Van-Dal took a smooth step in front of Tharaiyelagh, but kept his hands clear of his weapons. Most curious of all, however, was the panic that flashed across Seikhiel’s face. He looked prepared to flee. Instead, he stepped forward and lifted one hand. The little orb of light came to hover in front of him.
“Seikhiel,” said an excruciatingly weary voice from within the light. “Secondary of the Fifth Sword. You are to report back immediately.”
The light vanished.
Seikhiel stood motionless, staring straight ahead, blank and ashen. Lightless. He drew several slow, careful breaths. Then he turned to Luccan.
“Take care of this dragonling,” he said, and Luccan nodded.
“What!” Ragheiyont yelped, hurt and panic warring across his face. “No! No, y’can’t—”
Seikhiel had already moved on, extending a hand to Van-Dal. “It was an honor to fight beside you.” Van-Dal clasped his hand and nodded. “Bel,” Seikhiel said, continuing like a condemned man, “try to stay out of trouble.”
“Don’t think you can get away this easily,” Bel said, and Seikhiel forced a thin smile for him.
Then he stopped in front of Atchi.
He sighed. “I guess…” Atchi waited for more, but it never came. Seikhiel had no words for his old friend. The shadows in his eyes ran deep, and perhaps he truly believed that this was their final farewell. Atchi yanked him forward into a brief, tight embrace. Seikhiel allowed it, but remained painfully tense. Then, with only a small amount of nudging, he faced Ragheiyont.
Tears already streamed down the young dragon’s face. “Y’can’t leave me,” Ragheiyont whispered, his blue eyes huge, pleading. “I just… We just…” He gulped shuddering breaths. “Please,” he managed. “Everything is better when you’re here.”
Seikhiel caught him by both hands, and he tugged Ragheiyont to him. Their foreheads touched, and their gazes locked. Their shared sorrow choked the air around them, and Atchi found himself aching with imminent loss. “You can’t follow where I am going,” Seikhiel said. “Perhaps someday we shall meet again.” He sounded unconvinced. “Please.” His voice softened, and Ragheiyont held his breath. “I need you to remember, always. Every drop of blood was worth it.”
“Wha—?” Ragheiyont grabbed for Seikhiel, who was already stepping away from him. “Worth what? No! No!“
A soft white light surrounded Seikhiel, and then he was gone.
Ragheiyont sank to his knees. He huddled arms and wings about himself, and he doubled over, bowing his head to the bare stone of the ground. His keening cries rose up on the wind, his grief suffusing the air, choking his companions with mere proximity to his pain. Luccan crouched swiftly at his side, murmuring to him and touching his arm, his wing, his plumage. Ragheiyont’s wailing faded to whimpers, but he remained on the naked stone, defeated.
“Raya.” Van-Dal moved to the other side of him. “You have to get up.”
“Donwanna,” sniffled Ragheiyont. Atchi followed the direction of Van-Dal’s brief glance, and he saw a tight formation of winged creatures on the approach. Van-Dal sighed.
“And I don’t want to carry you,” he said. “But I will do it.”
Ragheiyont lifted his head, his tearful gaze meeting Van-Dal’s steady stare. “Something’s very wrong,” he whispered, and Van-Dal nodded.
“I know, Raya, I know. But you can do nothing to help him if you stay here.”
Tharaiyelagh watched them with sharp eyes, but he said nothing as Van-Dal and Luccan eased Ragheiyont upright. Tempest’s wings had relaxed, but the rest of him remained tensed, ready to spring to action.
“That spell,” he said, mostly to himself. “I don’t know that form of sending.”
Akieryon, who had gone as white as the magic that had unsettled them, nodded. “That was Feriel,” he whispered, his hoarse voice carrying over the barren plateau. “But he sounded… wrong.”
“Wrong how?” demanded Szearbhyn. Akieryon shied from the sharpness in his voice.
“I don’t know. Afraid?”
“I don’t like it,” whined Ragheiyont. “He shouldn’t have left.”
Luccan stood, then pulled Ragheiyont up after him. “He’s a soldier. He follows orders.” His voice had an edge of bitterness, one Atchi privately agreed with. His attention flicked to the sword at Luccan’s hip. Warbringer. The source of many conflicts between his two friends. If Seikhiel’s commander had never sent him to confiscate the dread sword…
A sharp whistle split the air. Everyone turned now, some of them noticing the approaching dragons for the first time. “Friends of yours?” Szearbhyn grumbled as Van-Dal hailed them. The incoming dragons fanned out, two of them breaking formation to circle wide around the plateau, their eyes sharp for any danger. The other three awaited a subtle signal from their prince, then executed a coordinated landing that ended with them kneeling before Van-Dal. Tharaiyelagh tried to edge away, but he found himself held in place by a tail wrapped around his ankle. Van-Dal lifted one hand, and the three newcomers stood. They wore black uniforms, each with an unreasonable amount of weapons hidden in unlikely places. The one with triple loops of satin braid at his shoulder addressed the prince.
“My lord, we’ve been watching for your return.”
“So I see.” Van-Dal looked to the one on his left, a dragonling of perhaps two hundred years. Only a little older than Ragheiyont, anyhow. “Go and have rooms prepared for my companions.”
“We only require one room,” Tempest said, indicating himself and the twins. Van-Dal nodded.
“A proper suite for Prince Tempest and his Clutch,” he said. “Single rooms for everyone else.”
Clutch? Tempest repeated silently. He still had much to learn, it would seem.
The young dragon sprang into the air and sped away toward the distant castle. The apparent leader opened his mouth to continue his report, but the other one interrupted. “Your royal father,” she said, bouncing on the balls of her feet as she spoke, “called off the dracc hunt to send us after you, and then you weren’t at Seyzharel.” She jabbed a claw at her prince. “Where did you go?”
“Tamn,” warned the leader. Tamn ignored him.
“Is this why you ran off on us?” she persisted, gesturing to Tharaiyelagh, who blushed mightily. “Still can’t resist a pair of pretty blue eyes?”
Tharaiyelagh looked like he wanted to sink into the stone beneath his feet. Atchi sidled over to Bel and propped his chin on his old friend’s shoulder, eager to watch the drama unfolding before them. This Tamn, with her short-cropped plumage and her sharp tongue, had a great deal of potential to entertain him. Her tail lashed back and forth. Luccan’s gaze unconsciously followed it.
“Why should my father stop the hunt?” Van-Dal demanded, ignoring his unruly subordinate. The leader’s tail twitched with barely suppressed emotion.
“The tremors, my prince. Calcite Ridge has split, and half of it collapsed into the gorge. Our Lord King is calling back anyone whose mission is not of the utmost urgency.”
“You’re having tremors here, too?” Tharaiyelagh sounded like someone whose mind had already sprung to work on the problem, but an answer would not easily be had.
Van-Dal shifted to stand a little in front of the chancellor—between him and Tamn, to be precise. He frowned against one upraised finger. “I’ve been in Interspace,” he said without preamble. “We all have. All the worlds feel uneasy. We have much to discuss with my father. Come—” He had started to direct the other dragons to the wingless members of their company when Tamn let out a cry of pure joy.
“Oh, Van-Dal!” she exulted, surging forward, her wings raised in play, her tail whipping after. Atchi barely had time to step back before she was upon them, wrapping both arms right around Bel’s waist. “You’ve brought me a redhead!” Bel immediately shifted forms, hips broadening into full curves, waist narrowing, mighty muscles tensed for action. Unbothered, Tamn nuzzled against Bel’s broad shoulder. “If you think this will dissuade me,” the dragon singsonged, “you’re very, very wrong.”
Bel scoffed. “Giving you a better grip.”
“This is why you haven’t met Baleirithys,” Van-Dal complained.
“How about I come visit you tonight?” Tamn purred against the side of Bel’s neck. Bel grinned broadly, showing twice as many fangs as the dragon had.
“I hope you’re scorch-resistant,” Atchi said, drawing a sidelong glare from his old friend.
“Don’t waste your strength worrying about Tamn.” The leader of the group smiled almost apologetically at Atchi. “My name is Rhel. Shall I escort you to our castle?”
“You mean carry.” Atchi’s gaze slid toward Luccan, who recoiled from another of the dragons. He grinned. “It’s acceptable.”
Prince Baleirithys stayed much longer than Iyahi expected. They spoke of magic for a while, and then the conversation drifted, to family, to Kiile, to the future he had secured for the Hawk Clan. Iyahi wished he could think of the future without imagining himself with a limp, perhaps leaning on a stick or a staff, probably tiring easily. Something in his chest ached, and he tried to push it away.
Prince Baleirithys ached too. Iyahi could see it, but he struggled to understand it. Something had gone wrong, had disrupted the world of opulence and relative safety he had built around himself. He shared as much in his silences as in his words, and swiftly Iyahi had sensed they two shared a similarity, a unity of suffering if not of spirit. The voice beyond the edges of the shadows whispered words he could not understand. “Why do you not kill your father?” blurted the boy who had done patricide himself.
Prince Baleirithys blinked at him, the thread of the conversation forever lost, cracks spidering across the fine porcelain of his composure. “I… can’t.” His brows drew toward the blue stone set upon his forehead. “Not if I want to rule. To kill the king is to forfeit my inheritance.”
“What if he wasn’t the king?” Oh, now, what did he mean by that?
“I don’t think there is legal precedent for removing a monarch.”
“He hasn’t been a ruling monarch for over three hundred years,” Iyahi pointed out. “You’ve acted as regent all this time, and you’ve never considered how to get rid of him?”
“It is not my place,” Prince Baleirithys said, absolutely firm on the matter. Iyahi sighed.
“Right, well, maybe I’m discussing this with the wrong prince.”
Baleirithys’ gaze sharpened. “You leave Tempest out of this.”
“Why?” Something buzzed at the edge of Iyahi’s awareness. The shadows in the room sharpened. Something painful lay just ahead.
“Because he will disinherit himself.”
“Hmm.” Iyahi could feel his control of his own words slipping away. He tried to catch it, but it ran like sand through his grip. “Your dragon laws. Are they so inflexible? Where was the law when your so-called king unleashed Hoarding Sickness among his own people?” He should stop speaking. “When he sold his generals and slew a healer?” Why could he not stop? “When he skinned Ceirithi’s face?” Who was Ceirithi? “Tell me, Son of South, where is the justice in your precious law, that it would allow the chains and the cold and the burning hunger—”
“SILENCE.”
Iyahi’s unwanted words stuck in his throat, stopped up at last, and he sagged in exhaustion. Exactly how hard had he fought against them? Prince Baleirithys had gone paler than ever, but he regarded Iyahi with a calm sort of fascination. He stood up.
“You need training,” he said, his voice somehow strained and flat at the same time. “Your raw power is a threat to everyone around you. I know nothing of your gift, but I will research it. In the meantime, I will teach you of the magics I know. We will begin tomorrow, if that is agreeable to you.”
Iyahi’s heart stuttered wildly in his chest. The prince of Seyzharel was offering to teach him magic? Had anyone ever received such an offer? Certainly not anyone of the Hawk Clan. He opened his mouth to agree—perhaps to shout his reply—but he found his voice still stuck. He nodded too vigorously, bouncing in place and sending a fresh twinge through his hip. What did it matter? He would learn magic from Prince Baleirithys himself!
“Good.” Baleirithys gave him a tired smile. “If you will excuse me, it seems I have much reading to do.”
Of course. Iyahi grinned after him as he opened the door. Prince Baleirithys waved one hand as he left, and Iyahi’s voice returned to him. Of course.
Until tomorrow.