She rubbed her temples. Not many selves?
Vocalize.
“Uh… what does ‘many selves’ mean?”
Demons consist of all the creatures they have eaten. Those eaten lose volition, not identity.
“So Gan isn’t one demon? It’s a whole bunch of them, but Gan’s the one in charge?”
Gan is mostly imps, bugs, and other nonsentients— though I do hear at least one surprisingly old demon inside it. Gan is also Gan. Demon identity is not what you are used to. The dragon turned his gaze on the little demon. You will now tell me why the human is half-souled.
Gan cowered. “Oh, Great One, mighty of wing and mind, how would this feeble one know? I’m a demon, and such a small, insignificant demon, barely more than an imp. What do I know about souls?”
You are right, small bite. The demon does not deceive well, though the din of its mind makes it difficult to sort through what passes for its thoughts. The dragon’s tail flicked out suddenly. It whizzed over Lily’s head and thudded into Gan, sending the demon tumbling. I have all your surface names and thirty-two of the deeper ones, Izhatipoibanolitofaidinbaravha—
“All right, all right! Don’t say it all!”
I can acquire the rest of your names if I choose. Or simply pull pieces of you off, but that would dirty my sand. Be truthful. What happened to the human ?
If demons had been able to cry, Gan would have been sniffling. “I just wanted to get away—when that mage fire hit the staff, it hurt! I can cross all by myself,” it added, puffing its chest a bit. “Hardly anyone can do that, but I can. But I was already tied to Lily Yu, so when I crossed, she came, too. And she’s tied to the wolf in some weird way, so he got dragged along, and… and everything went wrong.”
“You mean you did it?” she exclaimed. “You brought us here, not the staff?”
Gan heaved a windy sigh and nodded.
“Then you can take us back.”
“No, I can’t.”
Rule lowered his head, growling.
Gan scowled. “I tried! You think I’d rather be eaten by dragons than go back to Earth? Well, they didn’t eat us, but I thought they would, so I tried to cross. I tried and tried, but I couldn’t.”
Because Lily Yu did not come along completely. When you tried to possess her, you became partially lodged inside her. You brought that part with you, but left behind the named half. She is both here and there. The effect is rather as if you’d jammed something against a door. It won’t open for you.
Horror squeezed the air from her lungs. “I’m—I’m missing more than memories? Are you sure?”
The dragon flicked her a glance. The black-and-silver eyes were too removed, too dispassionate, for anything as personal as contempt or compassion. I do not say what I am not sure of. I wonder if your other half is a ghost? Neither of your sundered selves will live long, of course, but it would be interesting to—
Rule howled and launched himself at Gan.
Ah, but he was fast! By the time Lily got to her feet he’d already hit once, bounced away before the demon’s roundhouse swing could connect, and was circling for another leap.
The dragon’s tail smashed into him in mid-air.
Lily cried out and stumbled over to him. He wasn’t moving.
Foolish. I had expected better. He seemed to have some sense.
“Shut up,” she said fiercely, kneeling. His heart was beating, she discovered when she pressed her hand to the bottom of his rib cage. But his ribs had already been cracked or broken. The lashing tail could have staved them in, punctured a lung.
“I guess you don’t care that I’m bleeding over here,” Gan said grumpily.
No, she didn’t. The demon was alive and talking, while Rule… wait, his eyelids twitched. Then they blinked open.
Her breath shuddered out. “Where are you hurt?”
Slowly, as if it hurt, he lifted his head. With his nose he indicated his left foreleg.
Not his gut or his chest, then. Not a punctured lung.
A minor concussion as well, he thinks. But the leg is more of a problem. You will need to set it.
Okay. She drew in a breath and ran her hand along the leg. He jerked. “I’m sorry.” She’d learned what she needed to know, though. Her fingertips glistened red. “There’s a bit of bone sticking out through the skin. It needs to be set, splinted.” Without anesthetic. She didn’t want to think about how much that would hurt. “I… I don’t know how to do it.”
She looked at her hands. They were shaking. But that made sense. She was dying. She had memories of only a couple of days of life, and she was dying.
Such drama. You aren’t dying yet.
“You said—”
I was interrupted. You’ll die of your condition eventually, but the demon is keeping you alive for now.
She looked at Gan.
It sat in the sand, scowling. A chunk of flesh and muscle was missing where its shoulder met its neck. The wound seemed to have already stopped bleeding, but its orange skin was heavily splashed with blood. Red blood, like hers.
Rule really had meant to kill Gan. “You’re keeping me alive?”
Its lower lip stuck out like a sulky child’s. “Why do you think I made you take ymu? He needs me, too.” Gan gave the dragon a wary glance. “To keep you alive. He probably plans to trade you to Xitil. If dragons aren’t eating demons, they’re trying to get more territory from us.”
“Is that what you wanted me for?” she asked the dragon. “To trade?”
Perhaps. The demon is correct about my desire to keep you alive. If your wolf had been thinking, he would have realized that. Why else would I suffer having a demon brought here ?
Rule lifted his head and looked straight at the dragon.
You would question me, wolf?
She couldn’t tell if the trace of emotion coating that thought was amusement or irritation. She knew what she felt, though. Frustration. Everyone could understand Rule except her. “What did he say? Or think, or… whatever.”
He wonders why I’m here at all. Why dragons are living with demons.
Gan snorted. “Living with us! Eating us, more like, when you can. Trying to get more territory the rest of the time.” It looked at Lily. “No one knows why the dragons left Earth. I was just an imp when some of them showed up here, but even imps heard about the battles. Dragons live by magic, see, but they can’t be affected by it. That was their big advantage. Well, they’re good fighters, too, but we outnumbered them thousands to one. But—”
But you did not unite to attack us, allowing us to prevail over the local lord and his court. Nor did you learn from this. When Xitil allowed Ishtar’s enemy to guest with her, the other lords should have banded together and destroyed them both. They never even considered it. This was folly of a monstrous degree.
“Big wars are wasteful,” Gan said. “Unpredictable. Xitil will destroy the avatar.”
I am unsurprised by your attitude.
Ishtar’s enemy? Hadn’t Gan used that name, too? Lily shook her head. “Look, all that is interesting, but the timing’s bad for history lessons. I need something straight to use for a splint, and something to fasten it with. Cloth, rope, leather… something I can tie around the leg and splint. And if you know anything about setting bones…” Her voice faltered. “I could use some help with that.” She had no reason to think the dragon would offer it.