Soon I was running, jumping across jagged cracks in the stone, yet keeping my footsteps light. “Aidan. Are you all right?” Only when I dropped to my knees beside him and felt the beat of blood in his scarred wrist did I know he was alive. Though I wanted to scream at him, I forced my voice low. “Get up, fool. Do you want to die here? It shifts its head while it sleeps.” I gripped his arm and shook him until his head came up. His dark eyes that knew so much of horror and despair were pools of grief.
“Move your sorry bones away or the kai will fry you like bacon,” I said. Imaginary flames crawled up my back.
The singer shook his head and whispered, “He won’t.”
Damned stubborn, cursed man. “Just because you were lucky while it was awake doesn’t mean—”
“He’s dying. He won’t move anymore.”
“Of course it’s not dying. Not any time soon, at least. Narim told you. The kai go to ground after an injury to die or heal. We think—”
“He can’t heal. He’s broken inside, diseased beyond help. That’s what I felt from him the first time when Narim brought me through the tunnel. I wasn’t dying; he was. The only thing that’s kept him alive is yearning for his brothers and sisters to sing him on his way. If only I could do it.” MacAllister stood up slowly, rubbing his hands along his upper arms as if he were cold and gazing on the sleeping dragon like a drunkard gazes on his wine-skin. “I tried to comfort him.”
“Are you saying the kai told you this?” Without thought I moved away from him, and his eyes shifted from the dragon to me.
“You think I’m mad.”
“I heard no speech from the kai.”
MacAllister shook his head. “Hearing? No, I suppose not. I’ve never ...” He rubbed his brow with the back of one hand. “It was very ... subtle. I got only part of it. But I’m not mad. Or at least no more so than I’ve been since I was eleven.” He smiled then, a sweet, sad smile that wiped away the lines pain had written on his handsome face. “I’m just a bit more tired.”
The kai lay still, but the bursts of fire and smoke from its nostrils told me it was no nearer death than in any hour in the past three years.
“I’m leaving,” I said. “If you can bear to part from your charming friend, you can come, too. Then you can tell me what else it said.” And I would weigh it well, for it would either be lies or lunacy. But I would not look into Aidan MacAllister’s eyes while I judged him.
It had been early morning when we entered the lair, and I was sure that no more than two hours had passed, but the sky was dark when we stepped out of the cave. Though the rain was only a dismal drizzle, the clouds boiled purple and black, and from the direction of Cor Talaith orange lightning flickered unceasingly. Deafening thunder pealed through the mountains, caught by the jagged ridges and bounced from one to the other. The stench of burning set us both to coughing.
“We’d best find a cave of our own, or we’ll have to take shelter with Keldar,” said MacAllister. “The storm will be on us in moments.”
But as he hoisted the pack he’d dropped just inside the cavern, I watched the sky to the east. I listened to the thunder and the roar of the wind beyond the ridge, the wind that moved no tree limb within our sight. “It’s no storm,” I said, the truth hammering home with the power of a dragon’s tail. “It’s Desmond.” The clan had come.
Chapter 21
The sun hung between the lower edge of the clouds and the dark horizon, casting long, angular shadows as MacAllister and I walked down into the hellish ruin that had been the Elhim’s sanctuary for more than eight hundred years. Heavy rain had left the valley floor a sea of hot, black mud, and the air was clogged with choking steam from charred rocks quickly cooled. Nothing within our sight lived—no blade of grass, no tree, no bird or insect. Not the least sign remained that any creature had ever lived in Cor Talaith. The end of the vale, where the granaries, the smithy, and the woodshop had stood, was barren. We slogged through the ankle-deep mud, thinking only to get to the warrens to see if any Elhim yet lived.
During the assault we had sheltered in a rocky cleft half a league from the kai’s lair, not daring to stay too close to the lair, lest the attacking dragons discover their kin and draw the Riders to him. The Senai had spent the next four hours with his head buried in his arms. We could not escape the constant screaming of the kai wheeling overhead, and if a single dragon’s cry opened him to madness, then the sounds of a dragon legion in full assault must surely drive him there. But no sooner had the skies fallen silent than Aidan jumped to his feet, ready to search for survivors.
“Not yet,” I told him. “If there’s to be a third wave, it will begin in less than half an hour. And even if they’re done, we can’t go in until it cools down. The rock would melt our boots right now.”
“They don’t understand it,” he said, leaning his head against the split cliff wall that formed our haven. “All these years we’ve used them to kill our own kind, and they don’t understand why we don’t eat each other, too.”
“Did the kai tell you that today?” Sometimes he had me fooled into thinking him sane; then he would start talking about dragons.
“No. Roelan told me long ago. I just didn’t have the words to understand.” He pulled his cloak tight around himself. “The battle’s over; I can’t hear them anymore. The rain will have the ground passable by the time we get there.”
In truth I had no desire to wait.
The Riders had found the Elhim’s cavern. The cliffs around its mouth were black and scarred, monstrous boulders, burned and shattered by dragons’ tails, blocking three-quarters of the entrance. As MacAllister had surmised, by the time we hiked into the valley the rain had cooled the rocks enough to touch. We scrambled over the rubble, our boots slipping on rain-slick soot, until we could wriggle through the narrow opening and drop from the boulder pile into the cave.
We had no need for a torch. Fires still raged in several tunnels. Careful to avoid the smoldering ash piles, we covered our faces with our wet cloaks and picked our way across the charred hollow that had been the refectory and gathering hall. No use to look for anyone there. On the far side of the great room we saw the first blackened bones. At the same moment we both yelled out, “Hello! Is anyone here?” No answer.
We took separate routes through the warren, turning back only when heat or flames blocked our way. I found five or six more corpses, all burned in varying amounts. I had no great affection for most Elhim, but they had sheltered me and allowed Narim to care for me. They did not deserve this. Neither Narim nor Davyn were recognizable among the dead. I straightened the charred bodies, crossing their hands upon their breasts as was the Elhim custom and left them where they lay.
Returning from one blocked corridor, I heard voices and hurried down the passage that led to the lake of fire. The Senai was kneeling by two corpses ... no, only one was a corpse. The other gripped the singer’s cloak with a blackened hand, croaking out the last words of his hateful life.
“... told him ... told him ... best to leave it be. They’ll never remember. They’ll kill us all. But he won’t let it rest. He’s mad, and all of us are servants of his scheme. His plan is not what you think. He calls you Dragon Speaker”—Iskendar spewed his bile in death even as he had in life—“but he makes you Death Bringer. You trust him, but he will betray you again, as he betrayed us all. The girl knows his schemes ... his plans ... You will destroy us all.” The old man wheezed and struggled for breath. “Ask him why there is an Elhim named for every dragon. Ask him what he found in Nien’hak. Ask him how the Twelve knew ...”