The coals in the grate warmed her knuckles and the ticking of the rain seemed calming now that she was in a dry, comfortable room and not riding through it. They would find the army within the week, she hoped, and from there, she would have to improvise with her family, her country, her lover, and her life all at stake. She would find a way to save Jorey and the throne both. Or if not both, at least one of them. There was a fair chance that this would be one of the last pleasant evenings she had for a very long time.
Clara drank her wine alone, and listened to the rain.
Marcus
The birds announced the dawn before the light came, trilling and calling to one another as if unaware that one of the fallen masters of the world had returned from legend to sleep in the ruined inn’s yard. Or if not unaware, unimpressed. Marcus had stayed up the full night, waiting. Prompted by Kit and his unpleasant power to convince, the innkeep and his people had fled toward the nearby hamlets and towns. Likely it had been the wiser choice.
“When should we wake it up?” Sandr asked.
The dragon lay on its side, wings folded in against its vast bulk. Its eyes—each as wide as a man’s body—were closed. Its breath was the deep, regular tide of sleep. Every now and then throughout his watch, its scaled brows had furrowed and its mouth curved in distress at whatever nightmares plagued it.
“Be my guest,” Marcus said.
“Maybe another hour,” Sandr said.
Marcus was amazed at how easily he could read emotion in the vast, inhuman face, the angle of its wings, and the shape of its balled claws. It reminded him of stories he’d heard about shepherds whose dogs understood them so well that an untrained man would have thought they shared a mind. Really, it was only that over generations the dogs that followed a man’s expressions had been let breed while the others were killed or gelded. Only in this translation, Marcus was playing the part of the dog.
And perhaps that was apt, because he knew—they all knew—that the beast was about to wake just before the great eyes opened. The dragon’s gaze swam for a moment, fixed on Marcus, lost him, and came back.
“Morning,” Marcus said.
The dragon said something like ummbru, shifted its feet under it, and half crawled down the sward to the little river. Marcus ran along beside it. At a pool, the dragon sank its head into the water, its throat working as it drank. Marcus waited. What seemed an impossibly long time later, it pulled its head back to land. Back at the inn, Kit and the other players stood in a line, watching. They were the audience for once.
“So,” Marcus said. “Feeling any better?”
“I want to die.”
“Well, give it time.”
“For what?”
“Either you’ll stop wanting it, or you’ll die. One or the other.”
The dragon managed a wan smile.
“The world is emptied,” it said. With its head resting on the green earth, every word vibrated. “I have killed the world.”
“Well, about that. I was hoping you knew what the spiders are. We’d been under the impression they were sent by a goddess as a sign of her favor, but that didn’t work out. And since they seemed to be searching for you… I’m sorry, this is a very strange morning for me.”
“They are my fault. They are my brother’s vengeance.”
“Your brother.”
“Morade.”
“Ah.”
“He destroyed everything because of me.”
“No goddess, then.”
The dragon shifted its head to watch him with both of its eyes. “I angered him. It was cruel and it was small, and… Erex. My love is dead. She is dead. All are dead.”
“Spiders aren’t dead.”
“They are nothing.”
“We aren’t dead.”
“You are nothing.”
“You aren’t dead.”
The dragon took a great breath and let it out slowly. Marcus more than half expected it to be scalding hot, but it was no warmer than any large animal’s though it smelled of something like oil and distilled wine. The dragon rose to its haunches, spread its wings, and yawned massively. It raised its nose as if searching for some scent, then sneezed. Marcus waited.
“I should have died with them,” it said. “Instead I am trapped in this graveyard world. Feral slaves like maggots in the corpse of the earth. Why did you wake me?”
“Mostly, it seemed the thing to do at the time. The spider priests were looking for you, and we thought anything they wanted, it’d be best to keep from them.”
“You keep company with the tainted.”
“Just the one,” Marcus said. “And he’s very well behaved. Killing the spider goddess was his idea.”
“There is none such.”
“Picked up on that. So I don’t mean to pry or intrude on your mourning, but… ah…”
“What?”
“A fair part of the world I live in is in the process of grinding itself into blood and bone, and these priests look to be at the heart of it. No offense meant, but if this really is your fault, the least you can do is explain yourself.”
“I do not answer to slaves.”
“Make an exception. Just this once.”
The vast claw moved more quickly than Marcus could react. He tried to reach back for the poisoned sword, but his arm was already pinned to his side by the tree-limb-thick claws. The dragon lifted him in the air until he was higher than the inn had been, back when it had had a roof. His ribs creaked, and he fought to draw breath. One of the players screamed. The dragon tilted its head. Anger flared in its eyes, and then died. It sagged and dropped Marcus on the riverbank. He lay back, his eyes on the blue dome of the sky, hissing between his teeth. The pain in his back subsided slowly. Probably nothing broken, but damn.
“We were great,” the dragon said, as if it had made no violent move. “We were masters of time and space. The mysteries of all creation were bare before us. Before him. Morade, my brother. We were set to make marvels. To prove ourselves, and I was… jealous? Angry? I don’t know what I was. It is too long ago. I destroyed his work as a joke. I, in my folly, expected him to be… annoyed. Displeased. He was enraged. He swore vengeance.
“We were complacent. I see that now. We relied on the slave races we had made,” the dragon said, waving its claw at Marcus. “Your kind. We created you, we set you to your tasks, and we forgot. And why remember? Does a body keep track of every drop of blood? Does a gardener count his worms? We had our eyes on greater things. To see the despised, the small, the insignificant, and to find a weakness there… ah, that was his genius. He forged a secret tool, and in doing so, he poisoned his own mind. They were his madness made flesh.”
“The spiders?”
“A corruption to drive our slaves to slaughter one another. To disrupt all the patterns that we had come to rely upon. It made their minds brittle and caught them in a dream that fractured them. We didn’t see. I didn’t see. The corruption spread unnoticed, and then it shattered. They killed each other over nothing. Over the colors of their shirts or their eyes, whether they drank before they ate or ate before they drank. Whether they ate beef or fowl. Anything became a pretext for murder.”
“Wait,” Marcus said. “We haven’t seen that. The ones we’ve been fighting can smell out lies and convince people of things, but this other thing you’re talking about—”
“There is no other thing. Your kind has small, fragile thoughts and you live in dreams by your nature. You make beliefs the way a dog sheds in spring.”