Hands clutched at my armor, and I slashed at them with my dagger while I struggled to get out the last verse. I had never listened to the words before. “Take this youngling, child of fire and wind. Lift its wings with your breath and your power. Be its third wing until it masters the upper airs. This fledgling is yours and not yours. It lives by your grace and dies by your command, and its service shall ever be your pleasure. In the sun shall you fly as one; in the cold moonlight shall you together devour the night. Inseparable. Unchanging. Eternal.”
The Riders dragged me across the rocks and up the slope, away from the raging kai. My dagger was snatched from my hand, and my whip snagged in the rocks. Five whips slashed around me and at least two bloodstones flickered, fighting to keep the maddened beast at bay. But as the screeching kai stretched its neck high above us and belched forth a trailer of pure white flame, I pulled loose my left hand and raised it high. Abruptly I was dropped onto the hard, hot ground, while my captors pointed and yelled in dismay at a dark figure scrambling down the steep rocks on our right. I began kicking and screaming, laying my hand on the spare knife hidden in my boot and embedding it in at least one leather-clad leg so they had no chance to give chase until it was too late. For, of course, the kai had seen him, too.
He stopped no more than twenty paces from the mad dragon and raised his arms in supplication. So tiny, so fragile a being beside the monster. I could not hear if he said anything before he began screaming, for the dragon knocked him instantly to his knees with a bone-shattering bellow and bathed Aidan MacAllister in eye-searing white fire. “Aidan, beloved!” I sobbed. His hair and clothes were burning when I closed my eyes, and covered my head, and sank to the hot, stony earth. I could not weep. All my tears had burned away with my heart.
Chapter 29
Chaos. The red claw shatters wholeness. Rends.
Grinding discord rules.
The hglar—our masters whose stink is unlife,
whose claw is red that scrapes, wrenches, tears—
the hglar torments me ever.
Fly ... fly to seek wholeness,
but the biting red claw will not loose me.
I who once ... what was I? Lost am I.
These noises ... the hglar makes words of remembering:
of flight, of youngling wings so tender, of the upper airs.
Ahhhh ... to remember! To fly!
Yet not. Crushing horror,
Bound to this hard, unyielding plane.
Heaviness. Vileness.
The taste ever in my mouth—
red, warm, stinking human blood and human flesh.
Despised taste.
Bitter taste of wretchedness, yet become an unstoppable
craving.
Take the human blood and flesh the hglar offers,
It numbs pain, silences remembering, and there is
nothing else.
Nothing.
I am become chaos. Chaos ever.
Again come the words of remembering.
I would sear the younglings to bear them up.
Not yet, for the red claw tears and binds.
Captive ever. No joining. No sisters. No brothers. Chaos.
Remember! Ever again come the words.
Burn them, gently burn them
to guide and nurture to eternal wholeness.
Come, my youngling . . . fly!
I will lift thee to the upper airs, to the cold lights,
to the glorious burning of the greatest fire.
Fly with me and thy wings will not falter.
No.
No younglings. Only pain that crushes.
Chaos ever.
But here, what creature comes to join with me?
Hglar? No. This one is clawless. Scaleless.
Is it human flesh ... blood ... sent to ease my vile
cravings?
No. It comes willing.
Is it beast flesh sent to fill my belly?
No. Not beast.
Nor a flying one ... the blank, empty flying ones,
younglings yet unborn, not bound to the cruel hard nest.
They sweeten the passing winds of binding horror with
their singing.
But this not-hglar, not-beast, not-flying one ... a
youngling?
It cannot be.
The creature’s air is storm-driven. Discord.
Human flesh. Human blood.
Smash it. Devour it. Soothe this unwhole craving.
Yet ... hold ... a word it speaks of wholeness.
“Roelan, remember!”
What voice is this?
Wholeness? No.
Another bound with sorrow ... bound to pain.
Younglings know not of pain and horror,
nor do the bleating beasts who sate my hunger.
This one is other.
Release this creature from its cruel nest.
Loose its flight into the airs we know not.
Burn it with unlife to free it from its pain.
Yet again, hear. A voice names this not-youngling, not-beast, not-hglar.
“Aidan, beloved!”
Aidan ... Aidan, beloved ...? Remember ...
Who calls me to remember?
Can it be my own, my lost one?
Burn, my youngling! Transform me.
Soothe my uttermost sorrows.
Burn with all of my life and make me remember!
AIDAN
Chapter 30
What is the shape of time? Humans speak as if time takes the form of those things that occupy it: pleasurable things gone too quickly or dull things that linger long past their welcome. Yet in my years of silence, when life was emptiness, the hours did not collapse upon themselves like empty grain sacks. Every moment had depth, breadth, and length; every hour had its immutable volume and built one upon the other until time’s edifice was tall enough that I could be free. Yet from the moment I gave myself to Roelan in Aberthain Lair, the shape of time was altered, so that I could not say what was a moment or an hour or a day.
Half a minute, Lara had told me. Half a minute from the time she would raise her left hand until the dragon would let loose its fire that could melt stone. And I would need half of that to ensure I stood directly in its path. Mad fool. How did I ever expect to deliver the message I had worked on so painstakingly in the past weeks, the words so carefully chosen from my memories of joy?