The Urgal’s voice sounded as if muffled by woolen batting: “He has too much blood in lungs, not enough in body. You must take him to one of your healers, dragon. And quickly too.”
There was jostling and shifting then, and the shapes of the chamber tilted as the Urgal picked him up and climbed onto Thorn’s back.
Murtagh struggled against the Urgal’s hold, wanting to speak, but the words would not form. Frustrated, he groaned, for there was something that needed saying, something important.
The world rose beneath him as Thorn stood, and his eyes rolled back.
The familiar pounding rhythm of Thorn’s trotting jarred Murtagh to wakefulness.
A dark stone ceiling swept past overhead, faster than a man could run. Deep booms echoed through the tunnel—as if from an enormous drum—and alarmingly loud cracks, and the mountain shook about them.
Flakes of stone fell as thick as snow.
“Faster!” growled Uvek as stones clattered about his head and horns.
Flames billowed out before them as Thorn swept the interior of a cave toothed with stalactites and stalagmites. Fingerrats in their hundreds squealed as the fire seared them. The vomitous stench of burnt hair filled the cave.
More of the grotesque creatures swarmed up Thorn’s sides. Uvek swung at them with a hammer-like fist, and they fell broken to the beslimed ground.
Thorn snapped and tore, and then he was moving forward again.
Amid the shrieking of the fingerrats, Murtagh remembered what needed saying. “Alín,” he murmured, but no one seemed to hear or care.
Time had little meaning. He was awake, but reality faded in and out around him: a series of disjointed impressions that gave him no sense of place or progress, as if he had been and would forever be caught upon Thorn’s back, subject to events without reason or explanation.
He felt as if he were choking. Every breath was a struggle, and when he failed the struggle, darkness would encroach, and another island of reality would wink out.
In his brief moments of awareness, he kept trying to talk to Thorn, but he could not seem to catch the dragon’s attention, and the failure was greatly distressing.
He saw caves and tunnels without end. Vaulted chambers filled with rotting mushrooms. Shadow spiders darting about the creviced stone, avoiding Thorn’s seeking fire. Pillars of crystal and walls of strange carvings that looked older than even the dwarves’ ancient works.
The paths Thorn followed were different from those Murtagh had, and he did not recognize their surroundings.
The mountain continued to shake. Twice he heard huge falls of stone, and Uvek shouting, “Turn, turn!” And always Thorn’s rasping breath, as if the dragon himself were struggling to breathe.
The faintest light appeared above them, orange and sooty, as a bonfire high upon a hill. Murtagh squinted, tried to raise his head.
A line of rough-hewn steps ascended the stone face before Thorn, rising toward the ruddy mouth of the cave. Salvation. Freedom.
Uvek bellowed something, and Thorn raced forward, grunting as he scrambled up out of the depths of the mountain. Hollow booms echoed throughout the widening cavern, louder than ever before—deafening crashes of thunder that vibrated through Murtagh’s bones.
He gasped and coughed. Clotted blood stopped his throat; he couldn’t cast it clear, couldn’t get the air he needed.
Steps shattered underneath Thorn’s weight. The cavern shuddered, and boulders plummeted from the raw ceiling and cracked and bounded around them. A piece of stone as large as a cart glanced off Thorn’s left shoulder, knocking the dragon to one side. He lurched, and Murtagh’s head whipped around at the impact.
Stars spangled Murtagh’s vision as black gauze wrapped close around the edges.
The whole cave seemed to be collapsing. Entire sheets of stone fractured free and tipped downward until they disintegrated into a shower of splinters and tumbling rubble. The sound was numbing, staggering, impossible to comprehend.
“Faster, dragon!” Uvek shouted.
The clots in Murtagh’s throat slipped the wrong way, and he inhaled them. The breath stopped in his chest. He couldn’t cough, couldn’t make a sound, couldn’t…
His head snapped back as Thorn leaped forward again. The mouth of the cave was shrinking as the ceiling collapsed, the orange light of freedom diminishing.
A particularly large boulder crashed down in front of them, and Thorn slipped and fell forward onto his chest.
The impact was brutal. Murtagh’s vision went white, his chest seized, and he felt himself sinking into oblivion even as thunder descended around them.
No! he thought.
The world ceased to be.
PART V
Reunion
CHAPTER I
Acceptance
He was warm, and a soft weight lay upon him, holding him down with comforting closeness. That much he knew.
A haze of milky brightness formed in front of him. He blinked, unable to make out any details within the smear of light.
It seemed important to rise, but his limbs refused to respond. He lay limp and slack, save for his breathing.
The flow of air into his lungs was smooth and unlabored.
Again he tried to move. His arms stirred slightly, and a small groan escaped him.
A hand—dark and smooth—descended to press against his chest.
“Stay. You were badly hurt. Rest while you can.” The voice was gentle, reserved, but still firm.
He knew the voice. How many times had he heard it in his dreams? How many times had he yearned (and feared) to hear it again?…Yet he wondered: Was he dreaming still?
Once more he struggled to sit, but the effort defeated him, and he sank back into softness. Despite his inner protest, his eyelids descended, and the waiting darkness embraced him.
And he knew no more.
The golden light of late afternoon fanned across the plaster ceiling. A sweet smell of flowers pervaded the air, and water—as of a small brook—trickled nearby, while soft coos of drowsy doves sounded among rustling leaves.
A gentle breeze stirred a pair of white muslin curtains.
Murtagh lay beneath a heavy blanket, on a large four-poster bed. He felt no desire to move. His whole body was relaxed to the point of immobility.
A frown formed as he continued to stare at the ceiling. He knew that ceiling. He had grown up looking at just such a ceiling, and seeing it again made him feel as if nothing of the past few years had really happened.
He almost believed it.
Ilirea. I’m in Ilirea. His stomach knotted at the thought of again facing…her. But how?
He started to rise and heard, “Ah, ah! Please take care, Kingkiller.”
His eyes widened, and he turned his head to see a young woman sitting next to the bed. Flaxen hair fixed in a neat braid, and a simple servant’s gown of green. Pale skin surrounding eyes the color of a summer sky. A ripening bruise and a pair of scabbed scratches marred her left cheek and temple, but otherwise she appeared fresh-faced and well fed, if somewhat worried.
“Alín,” he breathed.
Behind her, Thorn sat crouched by the sill of a great dormer window, large enough for the dragon to pass through. Even as Murtagh saw him, the dragon lifted himself off the floor and stalked over dwarven rugs to the end of the bed.