Reawakening

by Amy Rae Durreson

  He was too weak to move far, but he could reach Esen, and he managed to pull her long headscarf off and toss it over both their heads, trapping as much clean air as he could. The sand kept coming down, covering his feet warmly, and he braced himself against Esen, making his shoulders a roof to keep the sand away as the world went warm and dry and dark around them.

  When Esen stirred, the first thing she said was “Tarn?”

  Her voice was different, so much more life to it that he wondered how they had ever been fooled by the mask the Shadow had forced on her.

  “Ssh,” he breathed. “Do you need a light?”

  “No!” she snapped, and then added, her voice very soft and careful. “Fire burns air. We’re buried, aren’t we?”

  “Not far down,” Tarn said, though the sand covered him completely now. He thought of the great storm he had seen from the tower in the mountains and shuddered. How much of the desert had Gard just dropped on Tiallat?

  The movement shook the edges of the cloth and more sand trickled underneath. Esen said, low and urgent, “Stay still. They can dig us out, but we must save air. Don’t talk.”

  He obeyed, bracing himself as the sand began to weigh heavily. Strange to think that this child knew better how to survive a desert storm than he did, who loved the storm so fiercely. The silence was hot and uncomfortable, their mingled breaths beginning to turn it stale.

  It was Esen who broke the quiet, though. “Tarn, I’m sorry.”

  “Ssh,” he breathed.

  “I wanted to warn you all. I wanted to so much.”

  “You couldn’t have,” he told her. He’d never known a mortal who didn’t blame themselves for being a victim of this curse, and he ached every time he felt their guilt. He was tired now, though, and the usual words of comfort stuck in his throat. He wanted to sleep, wanted it like he hadn’t since Astalor, after the battle had ended.

  He couldn’t sleep yet, though, not while Esen needed his shelter.

  For a while, they were quiet again. His chest was starting to ache, and her breaths were getting shallower. He was dizzy again, and he wondered if becoming the flame had been enough to sear the poison from this body, and whether the distant whispers of his new hoard would be enough to keep him strong until they were rescued.

  “I’m Alagard’s priestess,” Esen said then. “I belong to him.”

  “Yes,” Tarn murmured, not caring.

  “But you can protect me too,” she whispered. “If you would like.”

  And one more thread twined into place, one more human heart for his hoard, and this one was close enough that it gave him strength both to brace himself against the sand and reflect a little life back into her.

  He never knew how long they lay under the sand, Esen’s breath soft against his jaw. The first clue he had that they had been found was a sudden shift in the sand above them, and a hand clamping on his leg.

  It was a scramble then, many hands joining to drag them out, and Tarn shook the sand out of his hair and looked for Gard.

  Instead, he found Raif, looking exhausted and triumphant by the light of a murky dawn.

  “Where’s Gard?” Tarn demanded, still holding on to Esen, who was clinging to his arm, looking around with nervous eyes.

  Raif shrugged. “Not here now, though I see he was.” He gestured idly at the sand that filled the court high enough that it was still trickling out of the newly shattered windows with a soft rustle. He looked at Esen then, his brows sweeping into a grim frown. “She’s not…?”

  “She is Esen again,” Tarn said and looked up. The sky was still brown with sand, but it was beginning to clear enough to see shimmers of blue through the dust, and he could feel no hint of the Shadow.

  There was no sign of Gard either, and Tarn ached for him. But he had set Gard free, and this was all he could expect.

  “Aline?” he said instead. “And Cayl?”

  “Found,” Raif said. “And she is being treated.” He pointed across the room to where a familiar-looking chirurgeon was kneeling by Aline. “Clever of you to leave me in the care of an ally.”

  “Aye,” Tarn agreed cautiously, recognizing the Savattin doctor from earlier that night. “What allies would those be?”

  “The resistance,” Raif said, and Tarn narrowed his eyes and looked at the men and women scattered across the court again. There were a lot of them, all wearing rough clothes and mismatched weapons, and there was a grim, disbelieving joy in the way they moved.

  “The resistance,” he repeated.

  “I am sorry it took us so long to reach you,” Raif said gravely. “It was a while before I woke, and then we had to assemble.”

  Tarn wasn’t sure what to say to that. The room seemed busy, and there was nothing for him to do. “Did you find Cayl?”

  “Yes,” Raif said and shivered. “What happened?”

  “A curse, I think.” Tarn’s legs felt weak, but the top of a pile of rubble just showed above the sand close by, so he sat down. Esen slid in next to him. She seemed a little shy of Raif, which Tarn could understand, seeing as the last time they were together the Shadow had used her to attack the boy. “I need to take him home to Sethan.”

  “I understand,” Raif said and strode off.

  Tarn watched him go, and said to Esen, “Battles always end like this. Half the survivors don’t know what to do, and the other half do anything they can, even if they don’t know what they’re doing.”

  She smiled at that, but then murmured, “I want to go home too. To the Court of Shells.”

  “Soon,” Tarn promised vaguely, and they leaned against one another. He was too tired to do more than watch the resistance bustle around him, and it struck him, not for the first time in his life, how little men changed. The faces of these men fell into the same lines as those of his last army—lean, ascetic mountain men mingling with flat-boned sturdy boys who must be descended straight from the riders who had dwelled here when this was the steppes on the shores of the Gulf of Gardalor. Raif was talking to a man who could have been both the model for the doors into this hall and an unknown brother of those elemental horse lords who had led their horde up to Eyr—a pair of raucous twins, one as fair as sand and the other as dark as leather. Raif’s friend was between the two in color, and his expression was too sober for those wild children, but the line of his jaw was the same, and the curve of his neck.

  “Pretty,” Esen commented.

  “Not as pretty as Gard,” Tarn said wistfully.

  “Who is?” she asked and pursed her lips. “Better when they don’t know it, though.”

  It was such a strange conversation to be having in the ruins of a lost god’s palace with sand in his hair and everyone too busy discussing the ramifications of victory to remember Tarn was the one who had fought the battle. He threw his head back and laughed, a little more wildly and loudly than perhaps he should have done.

  Esen patted his arm soothingly, and Raif and his friend came striding back, in and out of the shadows of the broken roof, so every step transformed their faces from bright to dark.

  “Aline says you should fly Cayl and the girl back to the Court of Shells,” Raif said.

  The stranger nodded. “Me, I think you should take her too, but she’s in the mood to argue.”

  “A wise thought,” Tarn said, suddenly longing for the feel of wind under his wings. “Is there space?”

  “I’d go up first, if I were you,” the stranger said, eying the hole in the roof with an assessing eye. “No point in bringing the rest of that down as you try to squeeze out.”

  “So,” Tarn said, and stood up.

  The stranger bowed a little to him and then turned back to the rest of the room, letting out a long holler for attention, so like the war cry of the steppes’ lords that it half woke Tarn from his daze. “Stand back. The dragon rises!”

  And so Tarn did, throwing himself up like a shooting star, flaring so high that the city and the valleys faded to brown wrinkles below him. Then he changed, an
d fell back down almost to the earth before he could catch a warm wind and drift back to the palace. There was no building strong enough to hold his weight, so he wedged his feet into the surrounding streets, pressed his belly across the low rooftops, and snaked his head through the broken roof into the court.

  “Aline,” he said. “Esen. Time to go home.”

  “The horses and camels…,” Aline protested. She didn’t look as old as he had first feared, but she was no hill girl now. There was gray in her hair, and more weight at her waist, but she wasn’t bowing under her age yet.

  “I will bring them back to you,” Raif said. “You are best gone before anyone realizes the dragon has destroyed the Shadow.”

  “Because Tarnamell here is so hard to miss,” the stranger murmured, and the dragon looked at him again, caught by the familiarity in his voice. Through a dragon’s eyes, his true nature shone clearly, and the dragon wondered if Raif knew who stood beside him, the faces of those elemental twins layered over each other, dark god merged with bright lord.

  But that was Raif’s problem, and Tiallat’s, and he wanted to go home. He had interfered enough, and no one had thanked him for it. Let the Dual God solve his own problems, for a while at least.

  And then, of course, someone had to design a harness that would hold both Aline and Esen on his neck, and he had to test his hold to be sure he would not crush or drop the cold stone that had been Cayl, and then there was the problem of launching himself into the wind in the middle of a city, and it was another hour before he was in the air, spearing in a straight line toward the mountains and the desert beyond.

  BY THE time he alighted on the roof of the Court of Shells, the weariness had settled in his bones, as cold as winter. He was going to sleep again, he knew, and all he could do was fight it off as long as possible. He still wasn’t sure how badly the Shadow had been injured and how long it would stay vanquished, and a world full of newly woken powers was full of disasters that needed checking, so he could not sleep another thousand years away.

  Sethan was waiting on the roof, with Ia at his elbow, and, to the dragon’s relieved surprise, Gard, leaning on a rock not far away.

  The dragon slumped over the rocks, letting Esen and Aline slide down. Esen went straight to Gard, who hugged her hard and tight, but Aline was more hesitant. She stopped in front of Ia and lifted her head, bracing her shoulders.

  “Myrtilis?” she asked quietly.

  “Alive,” Ia said, her voice very gentle, “but older, very much older. She’s waiting for you.”

  Aline went in without another word, and Ia turned to look up at the dragon. Miserably, he stretched out his front leg and set Cayl’s statue down in front of Sethan.

  “I’m very sorry,” he said.

  “You thought to bring him back to us,” Ia said sharply. “I thought you didn’t know—”

  “He doesn’t,” Gard said. He sounded as different from his past self as Esen did—every word crackled with the fullness of his power again. The dragon turned his head to look at him and thought, as he had once before, that no mere elemental spirit could have controlled that storm. He had been courting a god, albeit one who could not be troubled to reach beyond his desert to convert strangers. “He just doesn’t like to leave people behind.”

  “Why did he do it?” Sethan asked, reaching out to cup his hand around Cayl’s stone cheek.

  “Aline was down,” Gard said. “He put himself between her and a volley of poisoned arrows, not to mention the wall of flame that stopped most of them.”

  “Always have to play the hero, lover,” Sethan murmured, a little irritably. Then he leaned up and pressed his mouth to Cayl’s stone lips.

  It should have been a goodbye, and sad, but Ia’s fists were clenched by her sides, and Sethan caught his breath as he stepped back, his eyes fixed on Cayl’s face.

  The dragon didn’t understand, until something stirred in the hard bridge which linked Cayl to him, and the statue’s cheeks began to turn pink. Slowly, color crept back across his skin and down his chest, rushing faster and faster until Cayl took a sudden, rasping breath, and fell forward into Sethan’s waiting arms, their mouths meeting in a real kiss this time.

  The dragon closed his eyes and sunk into bewilderment.

  It only seemed a moment until he opened them again, but the sky had darkened and Ia was standing by him, her hand on his side and her face worried. “Tarn?”

  “Where’s Cayl?” he asked. “Where’s Gard?”

  “Right here,” Gard said from his other side. “Cayl and Sethan went inside a while ago. A nice man wouldn’t speculate on just how enthusiastically they’re currently fucking.”

  “What happened?” the dragon asked.

  “Oh, a nixie’s curse, I gather,” Gard said airily. “Seems it gave Cayl the gift of turning himself into a rock, and only Sethan can break the spell again, and only with his mouth, which shows more imagination than any nixie I ever met.”

  “Where’s the curse in that?” the dragon asked.

  “It will only work a certain number of times,” Ia said, exchanging a look with Gard. “And the nixie refused to reveal how many. Tarn, can you be human again? It would be better if you were inside.”

  “Yes,” the dragon sighed, letting the last sound hiss out of him. Then, because she was his and she had asked, he exerted himself enough to turn human. This time, he would sleep as a human, small enough to be close to his hoard. He had not had to suffer the slaughter of hundreds he held dear this time. He could manage to be human and weak, because he still had this new hoard of his to watch over his sleep. As soon as his bare feet touched the ground, it was too much, and Tarn toppled forward, barely hearing Gard’s shout of panic as a wave of sleep crashed over him, dragging him down into dreams.

  Chapter 32: Loving

  HE DREAMED of snow, falling quietly on the mountains. It seemed so light and lazy in the air, like the sand in the sky above Tiallat, but like the sand it built up around him, cold and high and heavy. His dreams fractured then into lost things: a child’s warm hand against his scales as he slept; Killan smiling at him over a chessboard, saying, “When we are old men, we shall have nothing better to do than this”; the slow echo of the last of Drake Clan to leave the mountain, her elderly frail voice murmuring, “Forgive me, old lord. I cannot be lonely for another year.”

  Sleep dragged at him and he fought against it desperately. Not again. Never again.

  Rust on old weapons and moss on bones. Tapestries fading into dust and garnets growing dull on the dirt-dimmed gold of fine buckles. The mice crept in, and the foxes and shrews and badgers, and a lean pack of wolves who howled at the night from the towers where trumpets had once heralded the arrival of dragons.

  Let me wake, Tarn begged, as the long winter nights closed over him.

  It was Gard’s voice that roused him, in the end, angry and scornful. It drew him out of the cold until he could feel the heat of the desert falling on his bare cheek and hear Gard demand, “But why won’t he wake up? Make him wake up!”

  “I can’t,” Aline said, and he could hear how her voice had changed, older and softer. “Last time he slept for a thousand years.”

  “Why?” Gard snarled. “He can’t! I won’t let him.”

  “You are the only one with a hope of waking him,” Aline pointed out and then sighed heavily as Gard reached out and shook Tarn’s shoulder hard.

  Tarn felt it, but he couldn’t move, just rolled with the push, curling onto his side. He wanted to open his eyes, but his eyelids were too heavy, and he couldn’t do it.

  “For someone so very old, Gard,” Ia remarked acidly, “you are extremely stupid.”

  “Any change?” Aline asked, her voice catching in her throat.

  Tarn heard Ia cross the room and pull out a chair, her next words closer to the bed. “He’s asleep again. He looks stronger.”

  “He looks like I could break him just by breathing too hard,” Aline contradicted. Then her hand landed on top of Ga
rd’s, pulling him away. “Stop that. Churning his brains won’t help. He’s wounded, not lazy.”

  “Your healers said the poison was gone.”

  Ia snorted, and Tarn imagined her exchanging looks with Aline, as she was the one who spoke next. “Poison will only slow him down, idiot.”

  “You hurt him,” Aline snapped. “The Shadow went after us, and tore the heart out of him, and then you brought the storm down while he was still vulnerable.”

  “Are you saying this is my fault?” Gard protested. His hand was back on Tarn’s shoulder, fingers curling in tight enough to hurt, and it helped, gave Tarn an anchor to hold him to the world even as sleep tried to pull him away from this conversation.

  “No, of course not,” Aline said soothingly.

  “Will it get you to help him sooner?” Ia asked. “If so, damn right it is. Fix it.”

  “Ia!” Aline protested.

  Gard sounded panicky now. “I don’t know what you want me to do! How am I supposed to know how to mend a broken dragon?”

  “Love him,” Aline said, and her voice was bleak and weary. “While you can, love him. Get into that bed. Put your arms around him. Show him that you love him.”

  There was a long moment of silence, and Tarn could hear all the quiet noises of the citadel: footsteps in the halls, distant laughter, wind murmuring around the rounded crags.

  Then Gard burst out indignantly, “While he’s unconscious?”

  There was another silence, one that he could almost feel crackling with Aline’s disbelief. Then she said, very slowly, as if to a stupid child, “Gard, what has Tarn been begging of you for the last month?”

  “He wants to own me,” Gard said shortly, pulling his hand away. “I won’t surrender, Aline, not even to him.”

  “That’s not what he wants.”

  “I should know,” Gard snapped. “He’s been demanding it ever since he first landed in my desert, all those months ago.”

  There was another pause, and then Aline asked, her voice puzzled, “What exactly did he say?”