‘Well, we get a few hours more sleep. Then I go to the Mount and we work out how to turn the Garonin away once more and where to run in the time that gives us. As for you, my love, I mean what I say. Take the boys. Take anyone else who believes enough to go with you. Head west. Find Tessaya. He knows you. The Wesmen will guard you until I get to you again.’
Diera nodded and sighed. ‘All right. But you know Jonas is already talking about Beshara. He’s not stupid. If we have to run, why not to a place where dragons will guard us?’
Sol blinked. Beshara. Realm of the dragons and inextricably linked to Balaia by the mental connections between Kaan brood dragons and selected human mages. And Jonas was a Dragonene. The Dragonene of Sha-Kaan, leader of his brood.
‘How can I have been so stupid?’
Chapter 16
Sha-Kaan soared back into the clear blue heavens above Beshara and looked down at the devastation below. A line of seven vydospheres travelled the plains of Dormar, driving towards the steaming forests of Teras. His forests. Home of the Kaan.
The vydospheres spanned a huge swathe of the once-beautiful plains. Flush with Flamegrass, dense with life and the dwellings of the Vestare, human servants of the Kaan and all of Beshara’s multiple broods of dragon. The war-torn world had known peace for many cycles and now this threatened to destroy all that had been built.
Behind the vydospheres, Dormar was a wasteland, worse than the ancient blasted lands of the Keol. The Garonin had already visited destruction upon the homelands of the Naik, the Skoor and even the ocean-going Veret. Now, closing on the lands of the largest brood, they were meeting significant resistance. Sha-Kaan could still see the wilderness expanding, the fires burning, spreading and consuming on a wider and wider arc.
Away to the south, the smoking ruins of an eighth vydosphere littered the ground, sparking fire here and there as it slowly disappeared. From the funnels of the others belched smoke and ash while above them the ground was occasionally obscured by the clouds formed as mana was burned for collection.
Sha-Kaan roared his flight to him. Thirty dragons, climbing hard into the sky, beyond the range of the tracers of white fire and the looping, smoking explosive projectiles. The Garonin had flooded the plain with men and weapons. They crushed Flamegrass underfoot, powdered the homes of the Vestare in their path and rendered all that was living to pale dust.
Yet they were still vulnerable. Six flights of dragons were in the air above them, awaiting the order to strike. Others from allied broods were on the way. The sky was filling with the massive shapes of dragons and the deafening noise of their calls and barks.
Sha-Kaan twisted his long, slender neck to check the damage to his one-hundred-and-twenty-foot-long body. Russet gold scales, some warped with age, others blistered by the heat of enemy weapons. Those blackened by the lick of dragon fire were trophies earned in forgotten conflicts.
He snapped his wings to their fullest width and executed a long, graceful turn, bringing him round behind the centre of the Garonin advance.
‘Hold your shape. Breathe only on my command. Do not break, do not falter. Escape at best speed and angle.’ Sha-Kaan’s pulsed orders were greeted with thoughts of acknowledgment, determination and assurances of victory. ‘Kaan. Dive.’
Sha-Kaan’s bark was a shattering cry that echoed over the clanking, thundering noise of the Garonin invaders and their machines. In their harnesses, the dim-witted hanfeer tossed their heads and shuddered. The dragons dived. Wings tucked in tight, necks stretched out, the wind whistling over the mounds of their bodies. Their tails stabilised their lightning descent.
Sha-Kaan led them screaming towards the ruined plains. He snapped his wings out to brake and turn barely a hundred yards from the ground. He swept up to the horizontal, dipped even closer to the dust, and forged in. Garonin weapons were trained. They fired. A hundred teardrop streams of white light rattled out.
Heat blossomed on Sha-Kaan’s body. Scales were burned and ripped from his belly, from his back and flanks. To his left, a Kaan was struck square in the muzzle. The dragon roared agony. The head, engulfed in fire, was torn apart and the body dropped to the ground to impact the dust and roll over and over. Sha-Kaan ignored the pain in his body and the tears in his wings as fire drops clipped them. He urged his dragons to hold and they did. Up and to the right another was caught in a crossfire of six weapons. The vast body exploded under the pressure of the impacts. Flesh filled the sky, knocked dragons aside. A wing spiralled down, folding in on itself and colliding with another Kaan below it. The dragon lost his bearings and, temporarily blinded, ploughed into the plains.
Sha-Kaan opened his mouth and felt the flame ducts swell. He swept through the line of Garonin soldiers. His jaws beheaded one, his claws dropped and tore up four more, breaking them and casting them aside. Around him his Kaan exulted. Sha-Kaan tasted blood in his mouth and sniffed more revenge.
He focused on the rear of the vydosphere. Huge before him, a billowing metal shell, vibrating as it built to another combustion. He let the fuel from his flame ducts enter his mouth. Through his nostrils, he inhaled the air of his land.
‘Breathe.’
Twenty mouths disgorged super-heated flame. The dragon flight split around the body of the vydosphere, pouring flame across its surface. Funnels collapsed. Antennae shrivelled and melted. The skin darkened, blistered and bubbled. Sha-Kaan breathed again, coming over the spine of the machine. His flame ate into the vydosphere. Rivets popped and plates buckled. The whole skin heaved.
Sha-Kaan crested the apex of the vydosphere. In their harnesses, the hanfeer were burning, screaming impotent rage. One had fallen sideways. The other still tried to move forward.
‘Clear, my Kaan. We are done.’
The vydosphere gouted smoke and steam through torn plating. Huge areas of the skin were sucked inwards. Sha-Kaan did not look round to see the explosion. He used the wave of force to drive him over the ground at even greater speed and into the forward lines of Garonin already engaged in fighting the dragons clouding the air above them.
Sha-Kaan dropped until his claws were brushing the ground. He opened them and scooped enemies into each before angling his wings and beating away high into the sky. Safe in the heavens once more, he snaked his head down to his claw and brought one of the writhing, struggling figures to his eye. He set his wings to a lazy glide.
‘All will go the same way,’ he said. ‘Take your machines and leave our lands.’
‘We will take what we must,’ said the Garonin. ‘You will not stop us.’
‘Wrong,’ growled Sha-Kaan. ‘Beshara will not fall to you.’
‘Even you are vulnerable and we know how to hurt you.’
‘You will not find them.’
The Garonin laughed. ‘You are mistaken, Great Kaan. We already have.’
Sha-Kaan closed his left claws and let the blood flow over them. His other claws he opened, letting his victim drop.
‘Puny foe.’
But there was anxiety in his mind. He needed to know they were lying. He flew to the upper skies and sought the mind of his Dragonene while the battle raged on below him.
Jonas was awake when Sol looked in to see him that morning. Or rather he was vaguely conscious. Sol hurried to his bedside and knelt by him, smoothing the hair from his face and putting a hand on his sweating brow. Jonas’s eyes were moving rapidly below fluttering eyelashes. The rest of his body was utterly still.
‘Diera!’ he called. ‘Jonas is speaking with Sha-Kaan. He’ll need you. Hirad, go and get dressed and washed. Wait in our bedroom.’