When they had first left the ground behind, Marcus had imagined that they would streak across Antea, rise over the mountains that divided the Free Cities from Birancour and Northcoast, and arrive in Porte Oliva in a matter of hours. The power of Inys’s wings seemed unlimited. In practice, they had gone faster than the swiftest courier, but it was still the better part of a week before the snow-topped mountains appeared on the horizon, growing slowly and inexorably larger.
The endurance of the passengers had proved to be the limiting factor.
When Inys landed, claws sinking into the deep snow, Mikel was the first to free himself from the sling. He staggered forward two steps in the thigh-deep powder and collapsed. “It’s all right,” he called weakly. “Just leave me here. I’ll be fine.”
The snowfield was near the crest of one of the highest of the peaks. The glacier spread out around them, white as the moon and blue as the sky. A great cliff stood to the north, its stone face barely visible under the layers of permanent frost. Marcus released himself and then Cary and Kit. The cold bit at him, and he couldn’t catch his breath. The air felt too thin to breathe. At the dragon’s side, Hornet was retching loudly. Marcus made a loose snowball and went back to the sick man. Hornet took the ball with a nod and sucked on it miserably until he’d regained himself a bit.
Freed of his burden, Inys paced through the snow, his head shifting back and forth, fire gouting between his teeth. Kit stumbled forward. There had been ice forming in his hair even before they’d landed. His face was pale where it wasn’t windburned and he was as breathless as Marcus.
“Captain. I’m concerned that our friend here may have…” Kit paused, bending over with his elbows resting on his knees. After half a dozen panting breaths, he went on. “… may have overestimated our reserves.”
Marcus nodded. At the cliff wall, Inys had risen up on his hind legs and was clawing at the frost, knocking down sheets of it thicker than the length of Marcus’s outstretched arm. A cloud of ice crystals rose halfway up the cliff glittering silver and white in the too-bright sun.
“I’ll mention that,” Marcus said, took a long moment, and started the trudge over to the dragon’s side. His head ached badly, and for all the water trapped in the snow and ice, the air was so dry he could feel his eyes going gritty and his mouth thick and cottoned. He scooped up a bit of snow and stuffed it in his mouth. The melt tasted oddly metallic and also wonderful.
“Excuse me,” he said when he reached Inys’s feet. “Might need a word. With you. This landing? Don’t think it’ll sustain life.”
The dragon looked down. Its shrugs were unlike anything human, but still instantly recognizable.
“Your blood takes too long to thicken. If I let you stay lower, you would not grow accustomed to the heights.”
“As it may,” Marcus said, “we’re a bit thin of food. Or shelter. And I’d prefer not to die of cold.”
Inys stepped away to the east, its claws moving along the newly exposed stone face of the cliff. Behind them, Sandr was crying openly. It was an exhausted sound, empty of all emotion but fatigue. “You are weak. Untrained. Slaves such as you should be able to live a day and a night together and stand ready to do battle at the journey’s end.”
“Fallen world that way,” Marcus said, the roughness of anger warming his voice. “But since we’re what you’ve got to work with, you might at least consider taking better care of your fucking tools.”
Inys’s head flickered toward him. The eyes were filled with gold and darkness. Marcus’s fast-beating heart picked up its pace and he felt a sudden lightheadedness. The dragon’s chuckle seemed as violent as a landslide.
“You are ill, feral, and untrained, Marcus Wester. But you are a strong line. In better days, you would have led a thousand slaves of your own.”
“Not sure whether that’s flattering,” Marcus said, but Inys ignored the words, his attention already turned back to the cliff wall.
“So long as my tools serve me, I shall keep them clean and sharp,” the dragon said. Its claws caught on some near-invisible flaw or seam in the stone, and the dragon let out a hiss that sounded like pleasure. “Here. If time has not broken the mechanisms…”
A creaking sound rose from the mountain below them, like the hinges of the world badly in need of grease. The stone cliff face slid gracefully back, one layer and then another and then another, each perfectly symmetrical. And then with a sound like a wall falling, they moved aside, and a vast hallway glowed gold and green before them. Inys shook his wings, snow and ice falling from them onto Marcus’s head and shoulders, and stepped forward. Marcus followed, gaping like a dirt-farm child dropped into a king’s temple.
The hall rose in seven great tiers with pillars of dragon’s jade marbled with gold holding them. Light that seemed to have no source filled the space, and the smell of plum blossoms sweetened the thin air. Huge stone statues, twice the size of any living person, showed each of the thirteen races bowed down before what seemed at first a great stone log: Firstblood, Jasuru, Cinnae, Kurtadam. Even the rare races of Haunadam and Raushadam. And the Drowned. Inys’s hind claws locked around it, and the dragon hauled itself up. A perch. No one in thousands of years had seen a dragon upon its perch until now, and Marcus had to fight the urge—deep as instinct—to kneel. There were no fires and no smoke, but the bitter cold seemed to stop at the hall’s entrance as if it knew it was not welcome. The flakes of snow and chips of frost and ice that fell into the place or that were tracked in by the actors’ boots and cloaks melted at once and were wicked away by a web of nearly invisible grooves that laced the floor. The dragon tilted its head.
“Will this be enough of a tent for you?” it asked in a low, purring voice that rattled Marcus’s spine a little.
“Ah.… Sure.”
“I am pleased for you, little slave,” Inys said. “I would have been sorry to disappoint.”
“What is this place?” Smit asked, his voice soft with awe.
“When the press of the court was too great, I would come here,” Inys said. “I would… sulk. The slaves I put here would sing to me, and I would pose questions to them to pass the days. I was the only one who came here. Except for Erex.”
The dragon’s gaze softened and turned inward. As Marcus watched, grief twisted the great snout and it closed its eyes, shying to the side as if steeling itself for a blow. Marcus felt a sudden sympathy for the beast. It was disorienting to see the pain he recognized so clearly translated onto such an unlikely flesh. Inys’s head drooped.
“We’ll rest here tonight, then,” Marcus said. “Leave again in the morning. It won’t take us many more days to reach Porte Oliva.”
“And what will we do there that can matter?” Inys asked, but it was clear no answer was expected. The dragon unfurled its wings, and the tips touched the walls. With a shriek, Inys leaped from the perch, launching the great body into the sky. Marcus walked to the edge of the hall, looking out over the glacier to the white-and-grey peaks of the mountains. The cold radiated, chilling his skin without biting it. Whatever dragon’s craft had held the weather at bay these last few thousand years still held it. The dragon flapped its wings, growing smaller. Unburdened, it flew faster. In less than a hundred breaths, Inys was no more than a spot of darkness in the vast landscape. And then distance took the dragon and left Marcus alone with the players.
The others walked through the hall and the chambers beyond it speaking in hushed voices. Charlit Soon cried out in delight, and Sandr rushed across the space to see what she’d found. Marcus stayed where he was. Before long Cary and Kit joined him. The sun hovered over the peaks to the west. No birds flew so high as they were now. No trees grew.