Of course, she said. Don’t waste your time worrying about me. Do what you have to do.
He said to those nearby, “Stand back.”
When everyone had retreated to give him sufficient room, he shimmered into a change, and expanded, until the massive bronze-and-black dragon appeared once again and dominated the clearing. The dragon arched his long, serpentine neck and looked down at Calondir, who stood in front of him.
“Now,” Dragos told him.
The plate armor that Calondir wore didn’t hamper him in the slightest as he leaped onto Dragos’s back and settled into place at the base of his neck. The tall stern figure of the High Lord shone like bright silver against the dragon’s duskier colors.
Pia stared, unable to look away or blink. Even considering how long she might live, she knew she was looking at a unique sight. A great roar welled up around her from the throats of Wyr and Elves alike. Dragos mantled, bared his teeth and roared back, the deep-chested, Powerful sound ripping the air, until every hair on her body raised and gooseflesh rippled along her skin.
Hell’s bells, it almost made her want to bash somebody in the head.
She looked around. Many of the Wyr had changed into their animal forms too, including the harpy, the pegasus and all the gryphons. This time, like Dragos, the pegasus and gryphons each carried one rider. As she had expected, Quentin rode the pegasus, and Carling was astride Rune. She wasn’t familiar with the fighters that Bayne, Constantine and Graydon had chosen to carry, although Bayne’s rider was a tall male with weather-beaten features and military-short white blond hair. He looked familiar enough that she thought she had seen him around the Tower once or twice.
As Pia glanced at her own psychos to see how they reacted to it all, she discovered half of them had shifted too. Eva, Miguel and Hugh remained in their human form, while Andrea, Johnny and James circled them. Johnny was a lean wolf with a shaggy pelt, while James looked more like a German shepherd mix, heavier in the chest and haunches. The biggest surprise, to Pia, was that Andrea in her Wyr form looked like an Irish wolfhound and stood taller than the other two. They all held their heads low to the ground, showing sharp, white fangs as their alert gazes roamed restlessly over the area.
Pia asked Eva, “Just out of curiosity, what do the rest of you look like?”
“I’m kinda like a Rottweiler,” Eva said. “Miguel’s another wolf. He’s darker than Johnny.”
“I look like a gargoyle,” Hugh offered in a helpful tone.
Pia laughed.
“Since the Elves and the Wyr are supposed to fall in together, do you mind if I stick with you guys?” a light, feminine voice asked. “Thought you might find it useful to have someone with you who knows what to expect on the other side.”
Pia, Eva and the others turned to face Linwe. The Elf wore leather armor much like Pia’s, only hers bore scrapes from obvious use. Like many of the other Elven warriors, she had a sword strapped to her back, along with a full quiver of arrows, and she carried a longbow that was as tall as she was.
Pia opened her mouth, but Eva spoke first. “I don’t mind if you hang with us, as long as you know, we’ve got just one agenda.” The captain jerked her thumb at Pia. “And she’s it. Don’t get in our way, and we won’t have any problems.”
“I understand,” Linwe said. Like so many other Elves, she still looked hollow-eyed from grief but otherwise was calm and alert.
“I’m glad you asked,” Pia said to her, just as, out of the corner of her eye, the gigantic wall of bronze-and-black flesh that filled the clearing suddenly moved.
Pia’s heart jerked as she looked up. Dragos strode out of the clearing, and all the larger Wyr followed.
Time was a funny thing, she thought. Instead of marching on in a measured pace, it seemed to flow like a river. Quiet days pooled together, languid with a sense of sameness, and events swirled and eddied, and time seemed to pick up its pace. Then there was the tumbling, dangerous rush of white water over rocks, and the heart-stopping terror of relentless inevitability as the water fell over the edge, and you knew that no matter what you might do or wish, you could not stop that flow from falling.
All you could do was surrender to the experience and flow with it.
When it came their turn to move, Pia and others fell into place and followed all the others to the crossover passageway that led to the Elven Other land.
When Dragos came to the Elven crossover passageway, he noticed for the first time how every inch of the floor and sides were carved, and he curled a lip in disgust. The passage was a symbol of everything he hated about the Elves, their arrogance and their Power to change the landscape around them. How like them to take something that already had so much natural Power and beauty and warp it into a vision of their own making.
He snapped his wings closed against his back, uncaring if he jostled the imperious gnat that he allowed to temporarily perch on his back, and he stalked through the passage. Frigid wind howled around his head and shoulders, as the surrounding scene flickered and changed. The burned husk of night lightened into indeterminate day, and in another first experience, he came into the Elven Other land.
Metal scraped as Calondir drew his sword, and Dragos had to control his impulse to snatch the Elf off his back and fling him away. Tensed for battle he looked around, taking in details quickly.
Like the other end, the passageway on this side was surrounded by a cluster of trees, but these were snow laden. Evergreens sprinkled a white landscape that was broken with scattered rock. The temperature was well below freezing. The cold didn’t bother Dragos in the slightest, and Wyr were, as a general rule, a hardy race with many natural defenses, but his thoughts winged to Pia and the baby anyway. Would they be warm enough? He should have made sure she had a lined cloak to go with the armor.
No one was in sight, and the acrid taint of smoke swirled on the biting wind, along with the scent of Elves. Had the smell blown over the passageway from Lirithriel Wood, or had something else burned here too? His gaze ran along the visible tree line, which was intact. The snow was trampled at the passageway entrance, which was no surprise, and footprints led away on a path that wound through a break in the trees.
Mindful of those behind him, Dragos kept moving. He nodded in the direction of the path. “Where does that go?”
“To my home here, just on the other side of the tree line. It overlooks a valley.” Calondir shifted and said, his voice edged, “Can you tell if that smell is from Lirithriel or if something else has burned here?”
“Not yet,” said Dragos. “We’re too close to the passageway.”
“I don’t like this. It’s too quiet.”
“They’re here,” he told the High Lord. “And they’ve only had a few hours’ start. We’ll take to the air and find them.”
“For now, we should make for the house and see if it is still intact,” Calondir said. “Winter nights get bitter here, and we should make use of all the shelter we can get.”
As Dragos strode down the path, he remembered his questions. “Where are the others that traveled with Gaeleval? What happened to the one who was wounded?”
“They’re dead,” Calondir said shortly. “Their bodies were found in the apartment where they and Gaeleval stayed.”
That didn’t surprise Dragos. They had fulfilled their function by leveraging a way into Calondir’s home. Once Gaeleval had taken their will, he wouldn’t have needed to actively wield the Machine, which was why none of Calondir’s seers had sensed any issue. The seers would have had no cause to probe too deeply into anyone’s mind.