The Summer Dragon

  The din of battle filled the next few seconds—snarls and roars, shouts of fear and snapping crossbows. Thud, crack, and moan.

  “Stand aside,” Addai repeated. “Or I will come through you.”

  We like this one.

  “Edimmu,” I gasped, my heart pounding.

  Addai feinted at Bellua, knocked his sword aside, then stabbed him full in the ribs with his dagger. An instant later, an arrowhead burst out of Bellua’s back in a gout of blood, buried to the red fletching under his heart. He slid off Addai’s blade with a moan and crumpled to the paving. Addai’s Juza companion whipped another arrow into his bow. Fren’s arrow thunked square into his chest, dropping him. I released and struck Addai shallow in the ribs under his left arm. Fren and I reloaded. Addai came at me.

  Keirr jumped in his path, blocking our shots. She lowered her head and hissed with anger. Addai hesitated an instant. I took half a step to my right and let loose. With unnatural speed, Addai knocked my arrow aside with his sword. He spun, took a step toward Keirr with blade leveled shoulder high.

  From where he lay, Bellua lunged at Addai and stabbed him in the meat of his left hamstring. Addai cried out, stumbled, turned. Raised his dagger for a second strike at Bellua.

  His Torchbearer screamed with pain. He looked up to see his dragon stumbling backward, overborn by a monstrous Horror with its teeth locked on the dragon’s neck, shaking and tearing.

  Looming beyond was a smoky ruin, a shadowy semblance of a dragon’s rotting corpse. The Edimmu. It was here.

  I drew, aiming for Addai’s heart while he stood entranced, but the Edimmu’s assault cascaded into me like a dam bursting. Every death of the last hour played in my head in a torrent. All the terror and pain, fear and rage and regret. The cold sting of every blade, the rip and shear of tooth and talon. I fumbled my last arrow, dropped my bow. Fell to my knees with a shout of anger and pain. I heard Cairek call my name.

  Addai dropped to his knees, facing the Edimmu. His weapons slipped from fingers contorted with agony.

  Through the haze I saw Cairek and Taben charge the Edimmu, only to be intercepted by a dragon Horror of immense size, with a man, howling like a damned thing, grafted to its chest. Cairek leveled his spear. “Maia—take cover!” he cried through teeth clenched with pain.

  I couldn’t move. The Edimmu turned its head to me. If you see the Avar as that which you revere, why do you see us?

  The bizarre conversational tone of the question underlay images of disembowelment, decapitation, and other sick pleasures I scarcely understood. Visceral. Sexual. Sensations stripped from other minds, thrown at me out of context.

  Blinded by red. Runnel of blood on my lip. “I also saw the Summer Dragon,” I gasped, trying in vain to remember how that felt, to see that majesty clearly.

  It ignored me. We know you now. We know your scars. They run deep.

  The Edimmu released me. Turned its misty head to Addai. I collapsed onto my hands, breathless.

  Look at this one. Addai groaned and spasmed, as if the Edimmu shook him by his soul. He has seen many things. His scars are profound. But his knowledge runs deep. We use the first to acquire the second, you see. What a vessel full of hatred, distrust, and fear this one is. But so wise in the ways of death.

  Addai’s Torchbearer crumpled beneath the onslaught. The Prelate cried out in anguish, powerless to move.

  The Edimmu’s unrestrained joy at Addai’s torment washed through me like fire. Like needles. Like acid. Scouring my nerves.

  I saw Fren in the corner of my right eye, his face distorted with agony, but shooting, advancing. He fumbled an arrow, reached for another. Did the Edimmu attack him as well? Cheien wrestled with a monster, crashed into the shelving. Blocks of ice and packages of meat flew. Shouts and cries.

  A scream from Cairek turned my head. The Horror struck at him with its teeth. He stabbed it in the mouth with his spear. It recoiled, ripping the spear from his hands, spat it aside. Then it took him in its teeth, and with a snap of its head, ended his cry. Taben roared in fury as the monster ripped his bondmate from the saddle and leapt off the precipice. Taben howled in anguish and followed it into the night.

  I fell to my side, scream drawn out into a sob.

  There, you see? Another scar for you.

  I tried again to picture Getig, the Summer Dragon, in my head. Blood and death blunted his presence. Fiery cold and exhaustion blurred his image. But I reached for it. Needed it. The Edimmu showed me my need, mocking. Showed me Cairek’s death again. And again.

  I had to answer, somehow. I showed it the Dahak, in the last panel of the frieze in the hidden amphitheater, testament to the failure of its kind.

  The Edimmu countered with the collapse of the glacier, burying the frieze and with it my hopes against the Rasaal. This much is true: only change is constant. Anything can happen.

  It dragged images through me like barbed strands of cattle-wire. Mabir held in rictus, Bellua sliding from Addai’s rippled dagger. Cairek torn from his saddle again and again. All of them victims of the Edimmu.

  Yet the apparition never touched any of them. Not even me. Not physically. It only ever poured malignance directly into our heads. That’s all it did. All it was. The Avar of Fear. Despair. Desolation. Dark emotions. It wanted my fear, needed my fear. Fed and guided my fear.

  I would give it my anger instead. I found the rage beneath my tears and showed the Edimmu the statue in our ruins of the White Dragon defeating the Dahak. The Edimmu paused for the space of a blink.

  “Mabir was right,” I gasped, clinging to that moment of hesitation. “You always fail.”

  Do we?

  Cheien backed away from a ferocious onslaught, deeper into the shelving. A Horror had one of the Torchbearers cornered against the straw, wings in tatters, no longer able to produce its cough of flame. Tauman knelt with head clutched in hands as Athys and Zell traded swipes with a monster. The Edimmu showed me snippets of history it had gleaned from every mind it violated. A landscape of war, endless.

  You will see your age of dragons give way to an age of Horrors. The world will be changed forever.

  I sobbed but pushed up to my knees. “When you were nothing but ripples of shadow, Shuja and Cheien tore you apart. You’re little more than smoke now.”

  The creature drew its head back, cocked it at me. Two colorless lights glimmered out of the smoke, like the first representation of eyes.

  And yet we become stronger.

  I grabbed the arrow I’d dropped, panting, nocked it to my string. “Mabir said you were but a phantasm. A shadow.”

  Oh, but we are so much more.

  I shot the Edimmu in the neck. The arrow emerged out the back, one of many. The thing had a mane of arrows. It stepped toward me. But then the tenor of battle shifted abruptly.

  The Horrors that had advanced on us spun to face the slash and tear of new opponents behind them. Topbows sounded from outside. The creature devouring Addai’s Torchbearer went down suddenly, as a riderless dragon attacked it from behind. “Rannu!” wheezed Tauman. Alive still. Our broodsire ripped at the monster’s flanks with claws and teeth. Ajhe, Darid, and the remaining four of Cairek’s talon from the caverns burst into the lamplight with topbows cranking. Jhem and Darid had brought reinforcements.

  The Edimmu released me. Addai collapsed face-first to the floor. The Horrors all hesitated, dancing for an instant in confusion. Rov and Ajhe and all their teams sprang forward. I pushed to my feet, saw Fren on his hands and knees nearby. I took a fistful of arrows from his quiver. He shook his head and started to rise.

  Our dragons brought the last of the monsters down. Tauman staggered to his feet. Fren shot at the Edimmu from his knees, and the Edimmu retreated a step as our dragons advanced.

  I nocked an arrow. Turned to locate Addai’s Juza. One down already, with Fren’s barb in his chest. I spotted the other
even as he pulled an arrow. For me? I wouldn’t take the chance. I shot him in the ribcage. As he staggered and fought to raise his bow I let loose again. His arrow dropped to the paving and he fell.

  Then I turned to where Addai struggled to his knees. He picked up his sword and dagger. Turned his head and looked at me with nostrils flared. I shot him, point blank. He tried to stand. I shot him again. When he toppled I shot him a third time.

  Our dragons closed on the Edimmu, shaking their heads and growling but pressing forward. The apparition looked back at me with its new eyes.

  You are young and strong. Resilient. But you are tied to another, and another through that one. Images of Aru and Darian, their bond marks.

  I shot an arrow into the monster. Another. Where before it had seemed futile, now it jerked with each impact.

  You draw on them. But they are your weakness. And your deepest scar. We will find them and open that wound again. You’ll acquire more scars. We’ll rip at them until one day you won’t be able to resist us.

  As our dragons tore into the apparition with claws and teeth, forcing it to act in its own defense at last, I showed it the Summer Dragon, recalling the moment when Darian and I stood in wonder, our world rocked off its center by His very presence. It hurt to think of Darian, but we shared that moment at least. That amazing moment.

  “My scars give me strength,” I said.

  The roars and growls of our dragons grew in confidence. The nightmare retreated to the precipice, howled in our minds. It stumbled, then seemed to crumble and break apart before it fell from sight.

  FIFTY

  KEIRR LICKED MY FACE ONCE before I threw my arms around her. I sobbed into her neck for several minutes, shaking with exhaustion and spent fury.

  Other voices drew me back. Tauman hugged me briefly, then ran to Athys and Rannu. Fren knelt beside Bellua, propping his head up with a hand. I stumbled to his side too, and kneeled. Blood ran from his mouth and nose, stark red against the deathly blue-white of his flesh. He looked at me through slitted eyes. “Maia,” he whispered.

  “I’m here.”

  “I’m sorry,” he said, and stiffened against pain, grimaced as he labored to take a rattling breath. “Forgive me. Please forgive—”

  He would be dead soon. He knew it. There was nothing any of us could do. And now at his end, after all he’d done, he wanted forgiveness. I wouldn’t speak words to absolve him of the horrible mess he made. Two days ago, I’d have saved an arrow for him.

  He closed his eyes, as if he understood my hesitation. “Faith,” he rasped, “was a cage I could not see.” He shook, and blood bubbled from his lips. He collapsed, any other words coming only as the sigh of a final breath.

  My opportunity to give him solace had passed. I met Fren’s eyes. Hard. Sad. Weary beyond words. He dried my cheek with a thumb.

  “I have to check on Mabir,” I said, and he nodded.

  As I stood, I caught sight of Addai’s face, one cheek pressed into the floor, blood congealing under his lips. His small eyes stared with frozen terror into an abyss. I staggered, then ran to the back of the vaults, to the corner where Mabir lay. Darkness. Thin light approached—Tauman with a lantern. Someone followed in his shadow, and another beyond.

  The dhalla lay as we’d left him, beneath Tauman’s jacket, hands folded across his chest.

  “Mabir,” I said, reaching out to touch his cheek.

  His flesh was cold and dry, like the skin on cooling candlewax. Eyes stared calmly at nothing at all.

  “Is he gone?” asked Jhem.

  I turned in surprise, took in her face. Grabbed her in my arms and squeezed her tight. “Yes,” I whispered.

  She held me close and wept. Shortly, I felt Tauman’s hand on my shoulder and heard Tulo’s muffled sobs.

  We found Coluver’s body at the base of the pinnacle. Nearby, Taben stood guard over Cairek and would allow no one near. Jhem wanted only to tend to her beloved dam, but Taben chased her back. We knew a rider’s death could sometimes make it necessary to put the mount down before it became crazed and dangerous, but we scarcely had the manpower to put Taben down. Or the will. Eventually, Taben curled up beside his bondmate and succumbed to his own wounds. Only then were we able to retrieve Cairek’s body.

  Jhem cradled Coluver’s head in her lap and wept for hours.

  Zell stood vigil over Bellua, though she let us remove the arrow and lay him out straight. She keened sadly as we packed his body in ice and led her back to the winter stable. She allowed Tauman and me to tend her wounds once we had treated Rannu and Athys. Then she folded her head under her wing and keened through the night.

  Grus disappeared. We searched far and wide, but found no body. With Father and Shuja gone, her brood almost entirely demolished, and the aeries in ruin, perhaps she had snapped like a strained bowstring and fled. I hoped so, because it would mean she was alive and might return.

  Local craftsmen collected the bodies of the dragons. Their leather was not a resource to be wasted. The meat, organs, and bones all had value, too. We knew that, but we couldn’t watch when they came for Coluver and Taben.

  Jhem with Audax. Tauman with Athys and Rannu. Keirr and me. Rov and Cheien and one of his teams. Ajhe, Darid, and four others from Cairek’s talon. Fren. Seven of Staelan’s thirty-two men, but not Staelan himself. Not one of the Juza. That was it. We were the survivors.

  The village went largely unscathed, as did the manor house and the winter stable. We gathered the charred remains of the Horrors in an empty field and burned them. It was impossible to make a proper count, but there were at least thirty dragon skulls in the mix.

  The Edimmu left a corpse as well. The rotting skeleton of a very large dragon lay at the bottom of the pinnacle, crusted with dried sinew and tatters of leather. It might once have lain in the boneyard hidden in the mountain. After some debate, we burned it and buried the ashes in a deep hole, far from the farms and aeries, then capped the grave with a slab of stone and left it unmarked.

  Fren and Tauman started repairs to the broodhouse. In the meantime, we placed the remaining eggs in the winter stable nests. Out of twenty-nine eggs, sixteen survived.

  Rannu’s wounds kept him out of the brood nest. He fell ill and spent several days in a feverish state. We bound his wings to his side with netting and shackled his legs to the floor, for his own protection—and ours. We’d never done that before, but in his delirium he might well be dangerous.

  Tulo hadn’t yet begun to learn the graving arts, but Mabir had taught him well, and his knowledge of medicine was deep. He applied poultices to the strange cold-burns sustained from contact with the Horrors. Mouths had to heal before dragons could eat well again. He set up a large iron pot in the paddock and made gallons of herbal broths for all the wounded. He helped the riders dress their dragons’ wounds, even assisting as they closed gashes with needle and sinew. He was tireless.

  Rannu recovered after a week and lapped up Tulo’s broth eagerly until he was strong enough to stand again. Audax took Coluver’s death hard; Jhem had her hands full even as she grieved. Every time I saw her, there were tears in her eyes. She and Audax spent hours alone together in the air. She slept by his side.

  I watched the skies for Shuja’s familiar silhouette, angry at the same time that Father had left us to face monsters—Horrors and Juza alike—without him. And I worried about the Juza companion Addai had sent with him. Was Father still alive?

  Meanwhile, Keirr took to egg-sitting, happy to nestle the remaining eggs in Coluver’s nest.

  All around the paddock was activity—repair work especially—which meant tradesmen and wagons and noise. But in the winter stable Jhem’s time of “quiet expectation” returned. Even Zell responded. She started to eat again and observed the order of each day as if she saw it for the first time.

  Rov sent Darid to Avigal as courier with a report. “If the Ministry acts q
uickly—and they will—” he said, “we should expect reinforcements by Brood Day.”

  I hadn’t shed a tear since the end of the battle, not even when Mabir and Cairek were cremated. I began to wonder what was wrong with me.

  I felt burned out. Hollow. Like a Horror. The comparison made me shudder with fear. I might have slid into a darker place but for Keirr. She always greeted me with licks and happy purrs, shielded me with her wing when we walked together, allowed me to hug her constantly. She keened unhappily if I left her alone for more than a few minutes.

  The sky was our greatest solace. The caress of the wind, the rhythm of breath and muscle, the boundless, rushing silence. I would lay forward on her neck, close my eyes, and simply feel the moment. Wrap myself in it. Use it as armor against sudden memory.

  Rov gathered us all together for debriefing—Tauman, Jhem, and me. Fren, Tulo, and Ajhe. We sat in the courtyard of the manor and told him, in simple terms, the tale of our journey through the mountain. Afterward I expected a lecture or threat of arrest or something more horrible. But Rov only sat silently for minutes on end, elbows on the table, his chin on his clasped hands. “You realize that we only beat the Horrors because they paused to squabble over fresh kill,” he said. “They were unguided. If they’d been under proper command, they’d have slaughtered us.”

  “You can thank Maia for that,” said Jhem. “She killed the shaman who controlled them.”

  Rov leaned toward her, placing his hands on the table. “You can thank sixteen Dragonry teams and over two dozen of Staelan’s soldiers.” He looked at me. “And you can thank the Juza, too. They all died in your defense. All of them.”

  I felt my pulse quicken.

  He looked to Jhem and Tauman, then back to me. “You know I only acted to protect the aeries. I was prepared to take ownership, yes, but I think the point is moot now. We have only one breeding pair—Tauman’s—a handful of war animals and a nurse dragon. My candidates are all dead.” He folded his hands together.