The rippling dream-stuff of the walls suddenly gave way behind me, and with the rush of pain that accompanied it, I gasped and coughed and floundered, reaching my hands upwards—
“Remember, sisters and brothers, and sons and daughters of the First Dragon! Remember!!”
I awoke to chaos, flame, and fury – as well as the booming voice of Fargal all around me. I was lying on the floor, my body trembling and aching just as it had done before – but the mountain skies above me were rent and torn with flame and black smoke.
Fargal was trying to maintain her deep dragon magic amidst the battle against Inyene’s mechanical dragons. I heard screams of dragon torment, as well as the grinding screeches of metal. I was lying right beneath Fargal’s head, and there was a tight-packed circle of crooning dragons, weaving their heads and necks back and forth in a keening, whistling singsong. When I concentrated, I could hear the thoughts of each dragon, as they recited the names of their forebears, in a long, unbroken line…
“Hycalax, Fulr, Virander, Kalax, Sut, Koraxan, Fedilan—”
The names were a chant, rolling endlessly from their dragon throats. Somehow, whatever Fargal was doing was allowing them to recall the names of those shades of dragon souls that they had lost, to sing them back into the circle of their being – and free them from the Stone Crown…
“Skreeee!” But suddenly, one of the second or third line of the huddled dragons was lifted bodily into the air by – something – and thrown upwards into the crisscrossing flights of metal dragons and living ones, as it emitted a blood-curdling scream.
“Don’t stop! Keep remembering, my kin!” Fargal didn’t pause for a heartbeat, as she started to croon and weave her head back and forth in a heavy beat…
But our huddle was being attacked, and every part of my body shook and ached… There was nothing I could do to help them, was there?
“Ymmen!” I screamed, as there was a sudden convulsion through the huddle of dragons, as if their backs had been hit by some terrible force.
“To the dragons! Protect the dragons!” I heard someone shouting in the inferno. It sounded like Abioye – could it have been…?
“Gulthan, Nyx, Zantar, Urolian, Gthor, Magorax, Ysix...” The chanting continued, but then there was a sudden screech of pain, and I felt a wave of hot flame bursting over all of us.
“Aiii!” I screamed, rolling further under Fargal’s great form, before, suddenly, the chanting wavered – and then stopped altogether. I scrabbled to look back, to see that our circle was now broken and scattered on one side, and there, standing in the circle of smoking rock and devastation, was the monstrous form of the mechanical dragon that was Inyene’s steed, and with Inyene herself astride it.
“Kneel before your queen!” I heard Inyene screech, shoving forward her own scepter, crowned with purple-glowing Earth Lights…
“Fiend!” There was a rush of noise and scales as Ymmen – just a black blur – threw himself out of the sky and onto the head of the monstrous abomination, for there to be a resounding flash of purple-white curse-light.
“Ymmen, no!” I screamed, finding the sudden strength to leap to my feet and start to sprint forward—
But Ymmen was flailing with his wings and legs, wrestling with Inyene’s steed that was larger and stronger than he was. I could feel Inyene’s pain from the magical bolt intended for me still searing into him, and yet somehow there was a screech and a crack of splintering metal, as my Ymmen managed to half-turn the beast and pound its gigantic head into the stones—
“Ach!” A woman’s scream, as Inyene threw herself from her saddle, tumbling down the stolen scales of her beast and rolling across the stones towards me—
“Inyene!” I challenged her, my hands reaching for the nearest weapon I had and finding the fat-bladed dagger that I had strapped to my thigh, the one with the curving dragon-head for a pommel, and which Abioye had given me from the Tomb of Lady Artifex, the Dragon Rider.
“Fool!” Inyene gasped from the floor, she still had her Earth Light scepter in her hands which she thrust out towards me and there was a crackle of green curse-light this time—
“Ach!” I jumped, just narrowly missing being burned to a crisp as the magical bolt shot past me into the air… And as I rolled, something happened.
The Stone Crown, which had only ever done this with Inyene before, as if it recognized its rightful owner – fell from my brow, hit the floor, and rolled between us. In one crystal-clear moment, both Inyene and I locked eyes with each other, and then flung ourselves towards it, our faces snarling and our hands reaching out to grab it at the same time—
Chapter 24
Two Queens
“Ach!” I screamed, as I was once again thrown into the torment and the pain of the inner Stone Crown. I could feel my hands clasping its pocked and cold surface, but my eyes were filled with the coalescing shape of another woman, a dead one.
‘Give it back to me! It is mine!’ the ghost of the High Queen Delia was demanding, and between us we held on to the Stone Crown in her cavern of trapped dragon souls.
Only, it wasn’t just the High Queen Delia, was it? Her features were different from before, and even as I watched, they morphed and changed between the dead Delia and the younger Inyene Their likeness was uncanny. So like each other in fact, that I wondered if Inyene hadn’t been right all along about her and Abioye’s true heritage, which might even have explained why the Stone Crown was so eager to release its magical hold on me whenever Inyene was around…
“I’ll never let you take it!” I hissed, pulling as hard as I could on the Stone Crown that we wrestled between us. But this Delia-Inyene was strong, and the magical powers that the two combined only made them stronger. She wrenched the Crown to one side, flinging me against the wall and the dragon cages.
But I couldn’t let go. I clung on for dear life, dear sanity, even as this strange ghost and living queen flung me again to the other wall and the next.
‘Just let go! It is rightfully ours!’ screeched the Delia-Inyene poltergeist, as she dragged across the floor and I suddenly knew just precisely what I had to do.
This was a dream, wasn’t it? Or something near to it. The things most important were replicated here. My body, my blood, the Stone Crown itself…
The Lady Artifex’s dagger, I thought, feeling how I still held it in my hand as I was being dragged forward, ready for the next attack—
I let go of the Stone Crown. And, as Delia-Inyene stumbled back, I snatched up the dream dagger of the Lady Artifex and jumped forward – to plunge it into the chest of the ghost that had tormented me for so long.
“Aiiiii!” There was a hissing, shuddering scream as the Delia-Inyene poltergeist convulsed, her now skeletal hands still wrapped around the Stone Crown, as if even in after-death she would never give it up…. But death too, comes even to the undead. She let out final wail that grew thinner and thinner, weaker and smaller—
And the Delia-Inyene amalgam let go, the Stone Crown appearing to dissolve in my hands. But it wasn’t just the Stone Crown that vanished – but everything else too, the dragon cages, the cavern, the lights and the pain… Only darkness remained, which swallowed me whole.