“Probably.”
“Or maybe it’s more dangerous than they are, and our best plan would be to back quietly out the way we came in and never come back here.”
“That’s also possible,” Kit said. “But whatever we do, it would be best to do it before the tide comes in. I think the water will block our way out.”
“I’d rather that didn’t happen,” Marcus agreed. “All right, then. So the choice is we try to wake that thing up or we leave now and never come back.’
“Yes.”
“And do you see us walking away from this?”
Kit was silent for a moment, and when he spoke, his voice was thick with regret and dread.
“Honestly? No. I don’t.”
“Me neither,” Marcus said, and rose to his feet. The dragon shifted in its sleep, a slight rocking back and forth that made the whole chamber tremble a little bit. “Stay here, Kit. This is about to get interesting.”
Slowly, Marcus approached the dragon. Drawing closer made the scale of the thing clear. It was as tall as three men standing on each other’s shoulders, and when it uncurled, it might be as long at ten laid end to end. Marcus doubted it would be able to open its wings in the chamber. And now that he thought of it, he wasn’t entirely sure how the great bastard had gotten in here in the first place. Or how it would get out.
The light of his torch glowed back at him from the dusty scales as he walked to where the massive head was tucked under its wing. Once, the books said, the dragons had been the masters of the world, and all of humanity had been their slaves. And he was about to try to wake one up.
“I hope this is a good idea,” he muttered, then cleared his throat. “Um. Excuse me.”
The dragon didn’t stir. Marcus went closer, put his hand on the thing’s head. Its skull was the size of a horse, and there was a strange beauty to it that Marcus felt himself drawn to by instinct. When he touched the scales, they flexed under his fingers.
“Excuse me. You need to wake up now.”
He looked over his shoulder at Kit. The old actor held up his hands. It was fair enough. Kit hadn’t woken dragons before either. Marcus sighed, then took a deep breath and shouted.
“Hey! Nap time’s over! Wake the hell up!” He turned back toward Kit. “I don’t think this is going to be that simple. Do you think maybe there’s some sort of ritual or … I don’t know. A magic drum or something?”
Kit’s eyes went wide and he took an involuntary step back. Marcus felt his own blood turn cold. Slowly, he turned back to the dragon. It hadn’t moved, but the one vast eye was open. Marcus saw himself reflected in the vast amber depths of it. He wanted nothing more than to run. There was no sense of threat from the vast eye. No malice. Only a danger as deep and profound as religion.
The worst it can do is kill me, Marcus told himself, and there was more comfort in the thought than he’d expected.
“It’s time to wake up,” he said again.
The dragon’s expression shifted from annoyance to confusion with a powerful eloquence. It was as if Marcus had known dragons all his life and become intimate with the small cues of their emotions. The intimacy of it was unearned, and it disturbed Marcus to his bones.
“You need to wake up now.”
The noise was low, like the rumbling of distant thunder. The dragon’s vast body began to shift, and Marcus danced back, his hand reaching reflexively for his sword.
The dragon drew its head from under its vast wing and turned the near-physical weight of its attention on them both. When it spoke, its voice was perfectly clear and deeper than mountains. It was like hearing a great king’s orchestra strike a single complex chord, only the sound had a meaning besides its terrible beauty.
“Drakkis?” it said.
Entr’acte
Inys, Brother and Clutch-Mate to the Dragon Emperor
Before his eyes, Aastapal fell. The great perch-spires burned, and the library of stones shrieked in its pain. Morade’s soldiers held the sky to the south, ten thousand strong. Asteril’s cunning slave-run craft dove through the high air, daring to stand against the force of dragons. As he watched, one of the great mechanisms dove, its blades shining in the red light of the falling sun. It caught the wing of a soldier caste, and dragon and craft fell together, joined like lovers in their violence. Somewhere among the attackers, he could smell Morade.
“We must go,” Erex said, nuzzling his wing in an offer of comfort. Inys had met his lover on the feeding grounds there below them where the blood-corrupted slaves were slaughtering one another even now. “Inys, I smell him too. Your brother is coming. We can’t be here when he arrives.”
Inys raised his crest in acknowledgment, but couldn’t bring himself to speak. The empire was crumbling. Already Morade and Asteril had shattered the fifth orb. Old Sirrick was dead, her body fallen into the sea. She had been the wisest of them all, and the violence had bested her. What could they hope for now besides a short death?
“Inys,” Erex said again.
“I know,” Inys said. His heart thick with grief, he turned and launched himself toward the northern sky, leaving behind the burning city.
It had started as no more than the usual rivalry. Three clutch-mates vying for the emperor’s favor. Each of them had made their great works for presentation at the fire court. Asteril had spent decades laboring on his birds of living copper. Morade built his deep-water city and the holes in the ocean through which even the widest-winged could soar to reach it. Inys had composed a poem that linked the five levels of thought to the five fallen elements. It should have been only that. Inys had only thought what he’d done a prank. Mean-spirited, perhaps, but not outside the realm of etiquette. But as soon as the waters fell in on Morade’s great work, as soon as he saw the grief and rage in his clutch-mate’s eyes, he knew he had gone too far. And now Morade had as well, and innocent Asteril was gone, his scales dulled forever by the poisons he poured into the culling blades for the uncorrupt. Inys mourned his brother, but then he mourned everything now.
Morade’s forces outnumbered his own by a third again, and the slaves on which Inys had relied were taken from him, driven to self-slaughter and chaos by Morade’s cold-eyed lust for vengeance. That the world died made no difference to his brother, so long as Great Morade was the one who killed it.
Inys rose on the wide air, speeding with Erex to the secret hold and his meeting with Drakkis Stormcrow, the last of his slave-generals. They had attempted battle and they had failed. But Inys’s low cunning had begun this war. And perhaps his low cunning could end it.
The shadowed city lay buried on the barren coast, its perches and sunning grounds dug in low enough to be invisible to any but those flying directly above. Of all the strongholds the younger clutch-mates had kept, this one alone Morade and his spies had not discovered. The safety was fragile. It could not last. Inys sloped down through the cold air, blowing flame in the arranged pattern to announce his coming. Hidden deep within the flesh of the city, the great thorn-spears would be tracking him all the same. Erex followed close, riding his wake with the joy of long intimacy.
The entrance opened before them. Inys folded his wide wings and fell until the darkness of the shadows took him in. The effort of braking his descent strained the muscles of his wings and chest. The pain of it was almost pleasant. He sloped down to the lowest perch in the great hall, and Erex landed beside him. On the floor, the legions of the uncorrupt stood ready. The formation was the classical triangular units, twenty-eight slaves in a unit and twenty-eight units in a form. The strange, elongated scales that Asteril had designed, halfway between true scales and beast hide, made them seem half animal. On every back, there was a culling blade.