“The count is dead! Retreat! The count is dead.”
He didn’t expect the army to believe his claim and break immediately, but one or two would glance at where they expected to see the count’s banner. Enough would see it soaking up the count’s blood to spread the word, and the rout would begin. Gill wondered how the remaining cousin, Chabris, would react. Would he fight, or seek terms to save his skin—put the blame for their treason on Aubin, and try to wriggle his way out of it?
Gill looked back at the steeple and saluted with his sword. The enemy soldiers started to break and run. It wasn’t the most conventional way to command a battle, but it had worked.
CHAPTER 27
Pharadon could smell that all was not right at the temple long before he could see it. There were too many unfamiliar scents, and more alarmingly, one that was familiar: that of the woman they had chased back to the city. Why had she come back? They had already stripped the place of its last treasure. Or had they?
He hadn’t been looking for it up until that moment, but now that he did, he noticed the absence. Of the goldscale he could detect no trace. He leaned into the wind and swooped down to the opening that led to the temple, allowing his momentum to carry him down the ramp into the main chamber. His first glimpse confirmed his fear. The goldscale was gone.
The red dragon stared at the empty spot for a time. Both dragon and coin were gone. He feared that whoever had taken the coin was not using it for the intended purpose. Without the coin, the magic he had shaped around her would fade and break. She would grow weaker and weaker, until she came out of her slumber; shortly after that, she would die. He opened his mind to the Fount. Strong though it was in the temple, he was enlightened, and his mastery of it was absolute, so its power held no threat. He could see the faint trace of the path the goldscale had taken up the ramp and out of the chamber.
From there she had ascended vertically, and Pharadon could only guess that the woman whose scent filled his nostrils was responsible for having the goldscale hauled out, and away. He clambered out of the antechamber, his claws tearing away more soil and rotted boards from the edges of the opening as he pulled his bulk back to the surface. The trail led straight back toward the city.
Pharadon frowned. He’d hoped never to have to return to that place. Aside from anything, it stank. That didn’t even take into account the danger he was risking, going there in human form, with most of his powers unavailable. Although the thought occurred to him, he couldn’t bear to consider the possibility that the goldscale might have been killed. He could tell by the scent that she had still lived when they took her from this place. That was hope enough.
Alive or not, though, it wouldn’t make any difference. The coin anchored her to the Fount, and ensured she drew the sustenance she needed in her slumber. Without that magical bond, she would die. He wondered what the humans had in mind for her. As he stared in the direction of the distant city, he was reminded of the fear of being the last of his kind.
It was something he found difficult to comprehend. Dragonkind were so long-lived. They had never been as numerous as humans, but with lives measured in centuries rather than decades, their population had been a healthy one. To think he might now be the last—a thought he had been able to avoid since waking due to the presence of the three young dragons. He couldn’t sense the goldscale now, only the fading trace of the scent she had left as she passed.
There was no choice but to go to the city. What could he hope to achieve, though? In human form, he was feeble. While he was in his natural dragon form, every weapon in the city would be turned against him, and powerful as he was, that was too much for him to hope to defeat. Another way was needed. It occurred to him that if war was on its way, that might make it easier to free the goldscale—confusion and battle would obscure his actions.
That the people bringing the war to the city owed him a favour made the plan all the more appealing. Efforts could be coordinated to maximise his chances for success. However, that did not change the main reason he had left the humans as quickly as he could. Pharadon had no desire to be used as a weapon of war.
The image of a fire-breathing dragon flying over a city, incinerating all below, was the last thing he wanted humans to have burned into their memories. If there were a thousand dragons in the world, it would have been less of a concern, but given his assumption that there were only two, he did not wish to increase the human desire to hunt and eradicate anything they saw as a threat.
If he was to rescue the goldscale, it had to be as a human. That meant he would need as much help as he could get. Getting it without having to fight in their war might prove a far more difficult proposition. First, he had to make sure the goldscale didn’t die before the rescue could be effected; where, he wondered, might he most easily find another gold coin?
No one really knew how to contain a dragon, least of all Ysabeau. Yet that was the task her father had set her. She’d managed a couple of hours’ sleep before there was a bang on her door and a new set of orders in her hand. No rest for the wicked, she supposed.
They had placed the dragon in the centre of the floor of one of the city’s many open-air fencing arenas, then drafted every smith and craftsman in the city to build a cage around it. The one saving grace was that the beast remained in a deep slumber, no different from an oversize babe in a crib. Other than the fact that at any moment this babe might wake and slaughter her and all the workmen. It had been difficult to convince them to go anywhere near it at first, but with promises of money, and threats of flogging, she got them to work.
There was a great deal of prefabricated material in the city already, so it didn’t take long for the preliminary skeleton of a domed cage to be welded together. Workmen were toiling hard to add bands of metal to the bare framework, to ultimately create something that would prevent the dragon from getting out and any overly inquisitive fool from getting in.
Ysabeau surveyed the ironworks with satisfaction. Her father intended this creature to be the great showpiece of his achievements. Her involvement in capturing the beast would go unannounced, but she had no difficulty with that, so long as the rewards still came. The old wooden benches built into the arena’s stone tiers were being removed, to later be replaced with a gallery that would afford a clear view of the dragon. For now, though, the priority was getting the cage completed.
Judging by the crowds who had gathered outside, asking for a glimpse or wanting to know when the spectacle would be open to the public, it seemed her father was using the creature the right way. Whether it would prove enough of a distraction for them from all the other things that were going on was another question.
She could not dispel a lurking fear that led to images of a rampaging dragon slaughtering, burning, and eating Mirabay’s citizens. Ysabeau looked over the strips of riveted and welded iron that in theory provided solid containment while allowing the citizens an unobstructed view. In purely physical terms, she was happy to take the word of the engineers who had designed it in record time, and the smiths who were busily welding and riveting the structure together, but there was more to it than that.
A dragon was not simply a strong beast. They were creatures of magic, and when that was added to the mix, there could be no certainties. She’d seen more than enough to know that magic could turn the most solid understanding of the world on its head. This was a creature of the old magic, not the diluted form she and the Spurriers played with. Her father might be capable of near-limitless feats now that he had drunk from the Cup she had brought back from the temple, but for the first time in that which she’d known him, he was displaying remarkable restraint in testing his gifts. Was old age teaching him patience, she wondered, or fear?