“You didn’t tell me.” Anger burned still, but lower, retreating to a tight, sullen heat in her belly. “I take it you didn’t find anything.”
He grimaced. “I had to light the candle with a match. Didn’t have enough juice left to raise a fever, much less start a fire. It’s hard to get a salamander to notice a non-magical fire. I struck out.”
“I didn’t,” Cynna said.
He gave her an unfriendly look. “No. So I’ve had to rethink some of my assumptions.”
Lily‘ drummed her fingers. “I don’t see what any of this has to do with lying to me to protect me.”
Cullen held out both hands, turning them palms up. “The way Isen saw it, either Rule was dead and you were delusional, and feeding that delusion wouldn’t be healthy. Or else he was alive and we’d have to find a way of going after him. Of course, I don’t know how to do that, but assuming we made it past that little road block, it was apt to be a suicide mission, so—”
“Wait a minute. You sound as if you know where he is.”
His eyebrows lifted. “I thought you’d figured that out.
You said you knew he was in the realm most analogous to ours, physically.“
She wanted smack him. “I don’t know what that means!”
His mouth flattened. “Hell, luv. He’s in hell.”
A thousand feet up Lily discovered that ymu might keep her from sleeping, but she still needed oxygen. Or maybe it was fear, pure and simple, that made her pass out.
She came to as they descended. This would have struck her as lousy timing if she hadn’t been so surprised to still be alive—and so busy trying not to throw up. From the ground, the dragons’ flight had been grace itself. Experienced up close and personal, the ride was jerky as the great wings sculled through the air, tilting first one way, then the other.
Mountains again. These were green and gold, dust and rock—and hurtling toward her with stomach-wrenching speed. It was hard to breathe. The dragon’s talons felt like hot steel bands clamped around her middle, leaving her head, arms, and legs dangling. Her hands and feet were numb. Cold air rushed passed, filling her ears with its ocean noise, making her eyes water and her nose run.
Rule was close.
The heart-song of his nearness hummed inside her as they spiraled down and down, giving her one clear note to hold onto amid the cacophony of fear and pain. He hadn’t died. The dragon hadn’t eaten him.
It looked like they’d die together in about thirty seconds though, when they smashed into the side of the mountain. No, wait, there was a crevice—it looked too narrow for the dragons’ wings, but they tilted madly and sailed through, leveling off over the ocean.
Oh, God, the ocean. It was the first familiar thing she’d seen, though the colors weren’t right. Blue. She remembered blue, a shifting symphony of blues. This ocean shimmered through lichen colors—yellow ochre with bands of rust and dusty olive, reflecting the odd sky.
No beach. The water rolled right up to the rocky cliff face they flew along. Then the cliff fell back. They tilted, turning into a wide inlet.
More cliffs—rocks meeting ocean, then a thin strip of beach that widened—
They dove at it. As if the dragon had suddenly discovered gravity, they fell faster and faster. Her eyes watered madly from the rush of air. She couldn’t see.
She wanted to touch Rule, just to touch him once more—
The dragon put on the brakes. Those huge wings pulled sharply forward, cupping the air.
Her body tried to keep going. The talons didn’t let it. Too airless to scream, she blacked out again. Only for a moment, though, this time. She was dizzily conscious when, with the beach two stories beneath her, the bands around her middle opened and she fell—
About five feet, into soft, warm sand. She hit awkwardly, catching a glimpse of the long tail passing overhead before the creature powered itself up again with a windy flap of its wings.
She made it to her hands and knees and retched. With nothing in her stomach, the process was both brief and unproductive, but she missed seeing the second dragon drop its burden, only catching a glimpse of its long tail as it vanished upward again.
Dizzy and miserable, she sat back on her heels and looked around.
She was in a giant sandbox. End to end, it stretched about half the length of a football field. (Football, she thought… men in uniforms chasing a funny-shaped ball, fighting to possess it…) The sides were rocks—not masonry, for although they were fitted, they hadn’t been shaped. She was twenty feet or so above the beach.
And twenty feet away, Rule was pushing to his feet.
“Rule!” She tried to stand, but pain shot through her left ankle and she plopped back down in the sand.
A moment later a furry head rubbed her arm.
She twisted and flung her arm over his back, wanting to bury her face in his fur. He yipped.
She pulled back. He was panting softly. “You’re hurt.”
He touched his nose to his side.
The talons must have gripped too tight, or maybe he’d cracked something when the dragon dropped him. “Your ribs?”
He nodded and then touched her leg gently with one forepaw. The pad was rough and scratchy.
“I twisted my ankle when I landed. No biggie.” She ran a careful hand over his side. Nothing protruded, anyway. If there was internal damage…
A squeal brought her head up. She watched as another dragon finished its kamikaze run at the ground, dropping a small, noisy orange demon in the sand about fifteen feet away.
So Gan was alive, too. Her relief surprised her.
Of course, relief might be premature. Maybe the three of them were carryout.
To her left were tall, rocky bluffs riddled with crevices. Next to their sandbox was a broad hollow in the cliff face, like a skinny kid pulling in his stomach—too shallow to be called a cave, but deep enough that half the sand was in shadow. She had the uneasy suspicion that bowl-shaped concavity wasn’t natural, that something had dug out the rock.
Below the sandbox was beach, wide here, but tapering into nonexistence about fifty feet in one direction, seventy in the other. At the end of the beach farthest from the mouth of the inlet, grass grew.
Beach grass, she thought. Ammophila arenaria.
A damp tongue licked her cheek. She turned, startled… and realized both her cheeks were wet, and the salty taste in her mouth wasn’t just from the sea. “I know the name of it,” she murmured, threading her fingers into the wolf’s ruff. “I know the name of the grass here.”
The ocean drew her. The water was the wrong color, but it smelled right. It was quiet here, the waves small. As she watched a wave slid up the sand in a delicate froth, lost interest, and retreated.
“The dragons have a nice sandbox.” She ran a hand through the sand, letting it dribble between her fingers. It was grainy and loose. It would be hard to walk on and all but impossible to run across. It was also warm. Nearly skin temperature, she thought, which was odd. The air was cool.
“We could climb out,” she said, studying the rocks. “The cliff is high but rough enough to supply plenty of hand-and footholds.”
The wolf poked her shoulder and pointed up with his nose. She tilted her head and saw half a dozen shapes silhouetted against the dull sheen of the sky. Guards?
If so, climbing out wasn’t an option. For the moment, though, they weren’t threatened. She drew a shaky breath and wished for clean water to wash the foul taste from her mouth.
Rule lay down beside her. He touched her ankle with his nose and looked at her with a questioning lift around his eyes.
“It doesn’t hurt much.” But it did hurt. Maybe the ymu was wearing off. She looked at Gan.
The demon sat in a small, orange huddle, rocking itself back and forth, moaning.