The city that was now gleaming on the horizon, against the backdrop of a gigantic mountain.
“Home.”
At the first sight of the citadel of Torvald, Ymmen said only that one word, but it was filled with such passion and pathos that I found tears springing to my eyes. The word reminded me of the Soussa winds, blowing high and strong over the Plains, and the smell of sweet grasses and nutty, warm earth.
But this home was nothing like my own, it was immediately clear to see. The citadel of Torvald appeared in just the same way that Ymmen had shared with me in his distant liberation-memory, only a lot, well, nicer.
“That was thanks to Queen Saffron, and her child,” Ymmen informed me, with a touch of pride in his voice.
The white-walled citadel had cleaner walls now, whose tops were edged with sturdy and square battlements. The wall-mounted trebuchets were still there, but the strange mechanical, revolving towers had gone. In their place were other towers, which had gigantic wood and stone platforms petalled from their heights, making them look like strange and fantastical trees. As I watched, there was movement upon one of the towers that sat at the third such inner wall of the terraced city, and the silhouette of a dragon – green I thought, from its slightly stubby build – lifted into the air as simply as if stepping out from the platform. Immediately, I saw the genius of their design – no running and leaping take-offs, no expense of energy that didn’t have to be spent. With my own hunter’s sense of frugality, I approved.
This citadel of today also had far more green places than in Ymmen’s memory of the city of the Dark King, I also saw. There were parks and growing places with small lines of crops, right there in the heart of each terraced district – although each park was ridiculously small, I had to admit.
This greening had continued out onto the lower banks of the mountain as well, I saw, where there were meadows and fields, and the tiny, ant-like movement of people traversing down the lines of their produce.
At the base of the mountain and the citadel both there was now a collection of warehouses and corrals, with small knots of houses—wood-built, this time – as well as even more movement from wagons, carts, horses, and carriages. I blinked at the enormity of it, as I suddenly understood what the scale would look like from a human viewpoint, not a dragon’s.
“It’s…vast!” I whispered. I had never seen that many houses and buildings in one place, nor that much stone, certainly – and never before had I seen that many people. I wondered if half the population of the Plains could fit into those walls.
Not that any of us would want to, I thought just as quickly. Although Torvald was obviously a marvel of the world – it was to the bare heights of the mountain that my heart led my eyes.
There was the final expanse of the palace, and there the saddle of rock between the mountain and its sister crater. Just under the high ridgeway saddle stood the mighty ochre and gray walls of the Dragon Academy – or Dragon Monastery, as Ymmen called it – with yet more landing platforms on its walls, and the rising slated roof peaks of the gigantic hall in its center. I felt a thrill run through me – but one that was like the thrill of the frost-winds of autumn, both fierce and challenging as well as exciting.
It almost felt, in some weird and strange way, that a part of me recognized it…
“Skreeach!” There was a distant call like a howl of pure, unadulterated joy from draconian throats, and I saw a distant red shape, barely larger than a honeybee, rise out of the lip of the crater, turning in slow circles over the entire mountain.
“Home.”
“Yes,” I agreed with Ymmen once more, before I suddenly jolted with the realization that voice hadn’t come from Ymmen at all. It didn’t sound like him – at all.
“Ymmen!? Did you, I mean…?” I gasped. It was the dream-dragon voice again, the one that I had heard just – what – last night? Was I imagining it? Was I just too tired and exhausted and pained by recent experiences? The sudden thought that perhaps I and Mother shared this trait together as well – that extreme heartache made us wild and strange – scared me.
“You are not going mad, Little Sister,” Ymmen said to me very seriously as the citadel grew larger and larger with every one of his wingbeats. “I hear an echo in your thoughts, of another voice – like mine…”
“You hear it, too?” I said with worry, not sure if that made me feel more or less reassured. I had never directly heard another dragon’s voice, apart from when I had used the Stone Crown to connect with the Lady Red and to dominate her brood. I knew that Ymmen could talk to his kin in this same, natural way that he did with my mind. I desperately hoped that this new ability was because of my prolonged contact and trust with Ymmen, not—
“The Crown has made a door in your mind,” Ymmen resolved the issue for me – only to make me feel terrified.
“But – but I don’t want it at all! I don’t want it!” I said in fear. What if the Stone Crown, like Inyene, was capable of deceiving me? Of filling me with its lust for power and control even without the associated headaches and obvious feel of its power?
“You are right,” Ymmen said darkly, confirming my worst fears. “There is a shadow laying against your mind. The shadow of the Crown. But that does not mean you have to submit to it, Little Sister.” I could sense the heartache from the great dragon through our shared connection. Ymmen’s mind was once again unnaturally worried, and not only because of the things he had told me about the Stone Crown (although, that was the larger part, I could feel). But Ymmen was also thinking about the nearing citadel and the other dragons in addition to the Stone Crown’s influence on me.
“Remember the voice, but do not reach to it. I will sniff it out,” Ymmen advised me, although I knew just how much it cost him to even come close to agreeing for me to use the powers of this evil artifact.
“Okay…” I thought, not sure even how to do this new thing. I thought about the dream-dragon voice in my mind just this distant morning. What had it said again?
‘Child of destiny…’ It had said something like that, hadn’t it? And it had asked me to go to it. ‘Come to me,’ I remembered.
And the voice had sounded big, and deep, and – old, I remembered, and surprised myself at the same time. I did not know that I could sense the gender of a dragon through its voice.
“Female,” I knew, somehow.
“Hmph.” I could sense the mind-Ymmen inside of my own heart and thoughts moving closer, like the light of the day creeping in to fill an untended tent out on the Plains. I could sense him, Ymmen that is, in intricate detail through this closer, shared, ‘place’ of a sort. In some strange way, I got the idea that Ymmen was sniffing at my thoughts, pawing at them and turning them over a little – but with infinite care, as he searched for traces of that strange dream-dragon voice.
“I can sense the abomination-crown in here, but it is not yet everywhere. This ‘voice’ is something else,” Ymmen said, which only helped to freak me out even more.