He chewed the corpse thoughtfully. The blood was hot and salty, the bones delicate and crisp. It was terrible that the three brothers and clutch-mates had turned the beauty and elegance of design against one another. To think what they might have accomplished if only Inys had not been so young. If his pranks had not struck so near his brother’s heart. Or if Morade, in his rage and brilliance, had not seen how deeply the others had come to rely on the slave races they had created. When Morade’s vengeance came, the blow fell where none expected it. Not in the wide, smoking air of battle, not at first. But in the lowest. With his blood spiders, he maddened the slaves until all order fell away. Only then did the full scale of his vengeance come clear.
And so perhaps there was something of his brother in the corrupted, just as there was something of his grandfather’s sister in the Jasuru. Madness and the beauty of scales in sunlight. There was a poem in that somewhere, if there were any people left to speak poems to.
Inys yawned and stretched. The small meal had revived what little strength he had. He opened his wings, beating at the frigid air, testing himself. Better. Not well, but better. The shock had begun to fade, and hope was not yet dead. Not quite. There was still the island to discover. Sleep and food made the world easier to bear, if only for the moment.
Inys launched himself out over the reddened sea of sunset, skimming close to the surface until he realized that his only reason for doing so was to see his shadow on the face of the water and so feel less alone. After that, he rose. He knew the way to the island. The path to it was in his blood, as it had been in the blood of all dragons. The seat of the empire and the center of the world. The first eggs, so it was said, had risen from the womb of the earth there. The first dragons had sung their songs. It had become more than the seat of the empire; it had become the sign and symbol of all that the dragons were. The greatest workshops in the world had been there. Inys still recalled the first night he had been allowed to attend the gathering, perched beside his father’s massive, fire-hot side in the vast cavern where a thousand other dragons on a thousand other perches had listened to old Sirrick declaim on the virtues of physical love. She had been ancient even then, and the beauty of her face and her form and her voice had taken Inys’s breath away. She had spoken of mating—not of taking a mate or choosing a mate or living long with a mate, but the act of coupling in love—with a seriousness and maturity that would forever define for him what it meant to be wise. If he conjured up the memory, he could still feel the rush of desire and awe. Some part of his mind knew that the memory had been drawn out in part by the suspicion that he would never know the touch of his own kind again, but that thought was still small enough to ignore.
If he had won, that theater would be drowned as a sacrifice to save the world from his brother. That anyone would destroy that place was beyond even Morade’s madness, and so it was the only place that a trap could be set. Inys the Ruthless, they had called him when he proposed it. True enough, but also Inys the Frightened. Inys the Ashamed.
Inys the Desperate.
He made his long way across the water as the brief winter sun doused its flame in the sea. The stars were light enough, and the moon soon rose to add its brilliance. Though he knew what he might expect, the featureless water still uneased him. The first towers should have been here. Then the Chancel of the Orbs. The oracle’s spire. He could not help but wonder whether they still stood and he, in his weakness and confusion, had missed his way. It had been his scheme and intention, and still the absence of the island seemed unreal. Its destruction was a crime too vast to contemplate, even were the crime his own.
Twice he circled the wide water, his senses stretched out beyond him. The only sights were waves upon water and stars in the greater ocean above. The only scents were of fish and salt and the promise of storm weather still days away. This should have been the place, he thought, and could not be sure. Not without looking.
He took in a great breath, rose up in the air, and dove. Just before his vast flesh struck the water, he recalled Erex and the joy she had taken in night diving. He pushed the thought away. That she, whom he loved more than he did himself—she, whom he had felt and touched not more than a day before—might be dust, and ancient dust at that, could not be borne.
The cold and the pressure took him in, and Inys flew through the black water. The great, raging furnace of his flesh answered with heat and strength. For a moment, he was sure of himself as if he were young again. As if his childish folly had not ended everything.
And there in the depths, the ruins welled up, larger than dragons. The spires like mountains, encrusted with barnacles and ice coral, until it might almost have been natural. But he knew the workings of the sea too well, and the stone had slept through the long ages with him. Here was a mossy spire that had once been Keeper’s Watch. There, a sunken disk of jade lay on its edge, which had once held the emperor’s perch. He let the water fill his nostrils, straining for any sign of dragon scent, but there was nothing. Nowhere. The slave’s words had been true. Inys closed his eyes, and the powerful, rage-filled urge to throw himself into the pits of the sea, to sink so far that he could never again rise, took him.
It took him, and then it passed. His lungs aching with protest, he turned for the surface and the stars. His tail lashed the water, punishing it, and he scented the fear of fish and eels for miles around him. When he broke the surface, his breath burst from him in a vast ball of crimson fire that turned back upon itself as it rose, unseen and meaningless, above the dark water.
The grief-fire of the last dragon lit the empty world.
On the north coast of Hallskar, Marcus Wester huddled beside the fire. To his right, the winter sea churned white ice and black water in constant and unforgiving waves. To his left, a vast wound had been gouged into the earth. Great slabs of black stone stood cracked and splintered in the frozen ground. It sank deep as a cathedral, wider than a warehouse. A dozen men with axes and shovels couldn’t have dug the pit in a month. Bursting from its confinement, the dragon had made it between one breath and the next. Marcus leaned forward and threw another length of driftwood onto the fire. Green-and-blue flames danced in the stone circle of the firepit.
His daughter, Merian, would have thought the fire was beautiful, but she was long years dead now. She didn’t think anything was beautiful anymore. He’d never had the chance to show her driftwood fires. Alys, his wife, would have been with the actors, sifting through the new ruins of the dragon’s cave. That was unfair. She’d have been here, trying to talk him out of his gloom. Likely, she’d have managed, but she was dead too. He couldn’t say that was good, but it did save him from the look of pity in her eyes. There was nothing, Marcus thought, as bleak as a success that brings no comfort.
Master Kit’s footsteps on the stony beach were as familiar as his own breath. Marcus lifted a hand in greeting without bothering to look up. Kit sat beside him. With the cold, they had all taken to wearing as many of the theatrical troupe’s costumes as they could, one over another. Kit was presently dressed as Orcus the Demon King, only with a thick fur hat and a frilly scarf.