“Impossible.” I repeated what Fargal had said as my heart crashed. How on earth could I ever get enough dragons together to combat the Crown? I knew that there were some that Torvald still had, but it sounded as though Fargal were talking many more again…
“And we have no time…” I whispered disconsolately as I looked at the floor. Inyene was harrying the Middle Kingdom and sending it into disarray. I had seen the evidence of it myself on the way here. How long would Torvald hold out while I tried to convince every dragon in the world to come here to aid in Fargal’s undoing of the Stone Crown?
And then I remembered the Lady Red, and the hatred that I seemed to inspire in the dragons around me, just for being the one cursed to have this terrible circlet upon my brow…
“You call,” Ymmen said, and I looked up to him to see that he was looking straight at me with those two red and gold eyes. “You use the power of the Stone Crown. You use it to reach the other dragons – all of the dragons, those with partners and the wild.”
“No, but—!?” I was confused. I thought that Ymmen and Fargal had told me never to use the Stone Crown to control and command any more of their kind?
“Not command!” Ymmen said, his voice suddenly fierce. “Ask. Accept what their answer is. Eldest Sister said the Stone Crown IS kin to dragons. And it can reach out to all of them. Use it to ask only…”
“But why would they ever listen to me?” I whispered. Especially if all of the other dragons felt that it came from the abomination that was the Stone Crown?
I felt a shift in Ymmen’s mind in the space where we merged together, into one thing. It was a feeling of grim acceptance. As I have often thought before, dragons are not creatures that are prone to worry. But that did not mean that they couldn’t feel regret.
“You can only ask. Not command. If they come, they come,” he said, and his words gave me no solace at all, until he added; “but – if they see you as I do, and as you have shown yourself to Eldest Sister, then I cannot think that any dragon would say no to such a fierce heart, Little Sister.”
Tears welled up in my eyes at his words. To have a dragon be proud of you is truly a remarkable thing.
“Thank you.” I nodded to the black dragon who felt like the other side of my heart and turned to nod deeply at Fargal. “And thank you,” I said as I raised myself back up again. “I will try,” I told them both out loud. “I do not know if it will be successful, but if there is any way that I can help right this terrible wrong, then I will.”
And at that, I turned sharply on my heels and started to walk back from Eldest Sister’s lair, down the truncated cavern-corridor. Behind me, Ymmen paused for a heartbeat as he must have been paying his own dragon-respects to the oldest of his kind, before he too, accompanied me out of these roots of the world. We were filled with strong and terrible stories, and we were heading out towards the ends of the night.
Chapter 20
The Call of the Crown
“Do you think we can do it?” I whispered to Ymmen as we flew upwards and upwards through the Circle of Grom. The exit above us was still only a slightly lighter patch of gray against the black. It was before dawn, and we had been down there most of the night, somehow.
“You can do it, Little Sister. You can call the dragons,” Ymmen said, sending a wave of his dragon warmth up through my body and heart. “Show them your heart,” he repeated his earlier advice. “That is all that any of us can ever do in this world…”
I didn’t know if Ymmen was tired or whether I had just not noticed how long the journey was when we had descended down this stone well into the heart of the mountains, but I felt a dream-like tinge to my experience as we circled and rose, circled and rose. The ethereal light of the Earth Lights (pieces of star stuff! I remembered) had faded now, far below us, and finally – after what seemed like an age – I felt a cold brush of air against my face, and with that, we rose into the world of the everyday. I shivered, and could hear the rising howls of the storm winds above. My time down there with the Eldest Sister didn’t seem real – only the terrible purpose that I now felt told me that it was.
With a final, powerful beat of his wings, Ymmen pushed us up through the Circle of Grom and into the air, to see that the sky was indeed snow-laden, and that it was also indeed lightening to a washed-out sort of gray.
Apart from, that is, the dull pinkish-looking burn on the horizon, far to the east of us.
“That’s not the sun,” I knew instinctively – because there, a few hand’s breadths away from that weird pinkish glow was the lighter and more diffused edge of the dawn. And indeed, this pinkish glow looked too bright and too unnatural. I had never seen dawn clouds (or any other cloud, for that matter) like it.
“’Ware! Danger!” Ymmen hissed, his flight juddering for a moment as he turned himself into the wind in order to shriek towards the wide ledge where the others had camped.
The others who were now running from their tents and their protected, sheltered iron fire-stands, clutching to their cloaks as they scrambled to buckle on swords and armor in these freezing winds.
“Abioye!” I shouted, although there was no hope that any could hear me, as the mountain gales snatched my words from my mouth. Two of the Dragon Riders had already mounted their Sinuous Blue, and it was struggling to break free from the snowy ledge, beating its wings furiously to gain purchase.
“Tamin? Montfre?” I whisper-gasped as we, too, fought the falling storms that seemed to be winging their way down the mountain sides towards us. Of course, no one could hear me, but I saw one of the small figures – no bigger at this distance than a child’s dolly – suddenly stop their crazed dash and turn, holding a gloved hand up to shield their eyes as they looked up at me.
It was Abioye. Some unseen thread had shivered between us, alerting him to our arrival. I raised a hand to see him gesturing towards a lee of rock beside the camp, where the wind was only slightly less fierce.
Ymmen fought the vile winds that kept him from safe purchase at seemingly every turn, before eventually letting out a roar of frustration as he sank his rear claws into snow and ice and clutched at the partially concealed boulders below.
“Be careful, Little Sister, this wind has teeth within it!” Ymmen said, and I could only agree as I tucked my borrowed Dragon Rider’s cloak around me to form a sort of a poncho and pulled the hood as I slid and skittered down his shoulder to where Abioye caught me and held me close for the briefest of seconds. He wasn’t as warm as a dragon, I thought – but still, I had to admit that it felt good all the same.
“What is that?” I had to raise my mouth to shout into his lowered ear over the storm gales. “What is going on?”
“It’s the alchemical fires!” Abioye told me, gasping through the cold. “Special signal fires that Torvald uses. She’s under attack!”
Inyene, I knew. She had finally decided to make her assault on the citadel.
“And the Dragon Riders have to leave. The captain told me—” the wind snatched at his words, and so he had to start again. “—Torvald’s armies are spread too thin! All Dragon Riders are flying to defend their capital!”