“All right,” Marcus said. “Not following.”
The dragon’s smile was pitying. “I will show you. If the words in the question fall in threes, I will answer no. Otherwise, yes. Do you understand?”
“Not particularly.”
“You will. Bring one of the others. Not the corrupted one.”
“You want me to…”
“Any of them will do.”
“Wait here, then.”
“There is nowhere I can go.”
Marcus turned and walked back up the gentle slope. The players came forward to meet him. What’s it saying? Mikel asked at the same time Cary asked, Are you all right? The gabble of voices erupted. Only Kit stayed silent.
“Sandr,” Marcus said. “Walk with me.”
“Did I do something wrong? I’m sorry.”
“No, just… come.”
As they returned to the side of the creek, the dragon was staring at the sun, turning its claws in the light and watching the scales shine. It angled its head toward them, and Sandr froze.
“It’s all right,” Marcus said. “If our friend here wanted us dead, we’d be dead.”
“It’s true,” the dragon said.
“Good to know,” Sandr said in a small voice.
“I know something of you,” the dragon said, its voice rich and deep. “I will answer you yes or else no, and nothing else.”
“What’s this about?” Sandr squeaked, his gaze cutting to Marcus.
“Just do it,” Marcus said.
“Ah. All right. Um…” Sandr squared his shoulders. “Is this about me?”
The dragon turned to Marcus and counted its claws. One, then two, then three. The fourth it wiggled in the air at Marcus. If the words in the question fall in threes, then no. Otherwise… “Yes.”
“Me in particular?”
One, then two, then three. “No.”
“Something about the sort of person I am?”
Three and then three. And one left. “Yes.”
“Actors?”
“Yes.”
“Is it a prophecy?”
“Yes.”
“Does it end with us dying?”
Three and then three. Nothing left over.
“No.”
Marcus watched the dragon and the actor trade questions as the morning sun warmed them. Slowly, Sandr followed the arbitrary answers one after the other to a story about a band of actors that were going to defeat the forces of darkness by seducing an enemy queen on the evening before a great battle and then fathering a new dynastic line. Sandr’s eyes grew wider over time, and Marcus could almost see him trying to imagine which queen it was and judge his own chances of cuckolding some great king.
The dragon held up its claws and turned his attention back to Marcus, ignoring Sandr as if he were not there. “Imagine now that it cannot be disbelieved.”
“What can’t be disbelieved?” Sandr said.
“None of that was true,” Marcus said.
“The prophecy?”
“No prophecy,” Marcus said.
“Oh,” Sandr said with a shrug. “Well, that’s a bit disappointing.”
The dragon reared up, its nostrils flaring, its wings spreading wide. It pointed a claw at Sandr’s chest. Sandr fell back with a shriek and Marcus moved to stand between them.
“And that is what they cannot do,” the dragon said, its voice rising to a roar like a forest fire. “They cannot accept when they are wrong. Once told they cannot doubt. And that is what my brother did, and that is why we were weakened when he struck. That is why we died.”
“Marcus?”
“He’s not mad at you, Sandr.”
“He seems mad at me.”
“He’s not mad at you,” Marcus said. And then to the dragon: “So these wars we’re seeing. These priests spreading through the world again. They really think there’s a spider goddess.”
“Truth and belief are indistinguishable to them,” the dragon said. “They believe what they believe because they believe. There is no escape from it. And who listens to their voices becomes like them. They drifted into madness before I slept, and they are mad still.”
“Except Kit. He’s not like that.”
“All the corrupt are part of Morade’s plan. Give your friend his own followers, and they would kill the ones who disagreed with them like ants in a bottle. I made soldiers to fight them that the corruption would not infect. I forged the culling blades. I made the one you carry now. We fought to clean the stock of slaves, but the corruption outran us. And my brother killed everyone that opposed him. I planned my last, desperate trick. I would let him believe he had won, and then strike. It meant destroying the perches we held sacred. The one thing he did not think I would sacrifice…”
The dragon’s attention turned inward. It looked stunned.
“Better I had died,” it said.
“Don’t let’s get too far ahead with that,” Marcus said. “Wait here. I’m just going to take him back.”
The dragon’s head sank down until it was staring at itself in the rippled surface of the pool. It shifted its wings with a sound like a ship’s sails creaking. Marcus took its silence as permission and led Sandr back up the hill. The others had come a bit closer now. Sandr sat on the ground and folded his arms around his knees, trembling. Marcus noticed that he was shaking too, then pushed the fact aside. He’d ignored battle panic before too, and this wasn’t likely to be so different. Kit put his hand on Sandr’s shoulder and said something Marcus couldn’t hear. Sandr nodded, and Kit ruffled the young man’s hair before he came closer to Marcus. The old actor’s face was grim.
“What have you found?” he asked.
“Everything we thought was wrong.”
“I’m afraid I may be growing used to that.”
“Is a habit for us, isn’t it? If I’m following our new friend’s thread, the priests aren’t here to take the world over so much as reduce it to chaos and unending violence.”
“To what end?”
“To win a war that’s thousands of years dead.”
“Ah,” Kit said sourly. “Does he know how they can be defeated?”
“From what I can tell, he was asleep before your however-many-greats-grandfather took to the ass end of the world. He knows more than we do, though. I think he’s our best hope of ending this, and I expect that your old friends would have put a tree through his neck if they’d found him. That hairwash he was spouting last night about remaking the dragons and promoting me to the next Stormcrow hasn’t come up. He may not remember he said it.”
“Do you think it meant anything? Or was he so deeply in his cups it’s meaningless?”
“Can’t say. Not yet, anyway. The more immediate problem is I think our chances of passing unobtrusively through Antea have gotten markedly worse.”
Kit turned and Marcus followed his gaze. The low, rolling hills of eastern Antea seemed peaceful, but the illusion would only last so long.
“How long,” Kit said, “would you expect them to stay away?”
Marcus shrugged. “If it was my inn, I’d be on the way back already. See if it was safe, and if there was anything to salvage.”
Kit passed his hand across his forehead. Marcus could see the confusion and fear in the gesture. Or else in himself. If that thing had decided to kill me just now, I’d be dead, he thought. And instead of addressing that, I’m going to talk as if this were all perfectly normal. Just another problem that needs fixing.
“Surely they can’t harm it. Him. I can’t imagine a dragon could be threatened by a few farmers and townsfolk?”
“Used to be a lot of dragons,” Marcus said. “Only one left. The one thing we can be sure of is they can die. Truth, though, I’m less worried about the locals rallying than the news reaching Camnipol. I’m not greatly tempted by the prospect of answering the sorts of questions that Palliako’s private guard would be prone to ask. Especially as one of your old companions would likely be in the room.”