“No,” I shook my head, still grinning. “It’s not the Dragon Riders of Torvald. Those wyrms up there—” I raised my head to the ceiling, and although there was no way that my human ears could hear the thunder and storm of their wings or see the sparkle of their scales in the sun—I could feel an echo of those things in my mind anyway, through the Stone Crown.
“Those are—” I hesitated to call them ‘wild’ as these creatures did not seem feral, or unthinking. “Natural dragons,” I settled for a little awkwardly.
“But…” Naroba looked so confused that it almost made me laugh. “But most of the dragons left. Everyone knows that. They haven’t been seen in the skies for generations!”
I shrugged and opened my mouth to say that I didn’t know—only to find that I did know, didn’t I? It was a knowledge born out of the Stone Crown, or given to me by it…
“A lot of the dragons did leave, you are right, Naroba,” I told her. “But many stayed, hiding away in the far-off, still-wild places where humans fear to tread.”
“What?” Naroba was looking at me suspiciously, and then her eyes slid up to the Stone Crown on my head.
Is she right? I wondered. How did I know that? Was this information coming from the Stone Crown itself?
I knew that the wild dragons were back. Although it was an inspiring thought—it was still one that was too momentous to merely be happy or sad. It means that the world has changed, I felt with an absolute certainty.
“The world has changed, and YOU helped change it, Little Sister,” Ymmen agreed in my mind.
“Come on.” I offered Abioye my arm to lean on, feeling a shiver of something in my stomach as he took my arm. It felt a little like fear. Or excitement. I coughed nervously—why was I nervous?—and offered Naroba my other arm, only for the Imanu of my people to cry out in pain and waver in place. This was no good. She needed more help, and so Abioye and I sandwiched her between us, linking arms behind her back, while she flung her arms across our shoulders to support her weight, and the three of us leant upon each other.
“The sand-slide has stopped—let’s get out of here. I’m sure you want to see the dragons for yourselves!”
Chapter 27
Aftermath
We climbed out of the Earth-Light Cavern on the back of a giant sand dune of Older Brother’s making—and it was like climbing into a new day.
The sun was high and bright, and there was a stiff breeze starting to scour across the Shifting Sands—and the winds were pushing at the columns of smoke and tattering them to pieces. It was almost as if the Empty Plains itself was trying to eradicate any evidence of the mechanical dragons.
The mechanical dragons which were now heaps of ruined metal! I thought victoriously as we reached the top of the collapsed dune to see the distant blackened and mangled piles of metal dotting the Plains.
The battle-site below us was still in a state of uproar and chaos, of course. The big and small shapes of the wilder dragons loped from one wreckage to another, pawing at the remains distrustfully or else curling into exhausted slumps against the sun-warmed sides of the dunes. The battle, although decisive, had been fierce and taxing for everyone.
And then there were the humans who had been involved in the Battle of the Plains, as I was coming to think of it in my mind. The ragtag groups of mixed hunters, mercenaries, and soldiers helped each other carry wounded away from the mayhem, or else similarly collapsed against the golden sands, weary and happy. Tamin? Montfre? I wondered, scanning the trudging forms as best I could—but I couldn’t see anyone who matched either my tall god-uncle or the white-haired young mage.
“We have won a great victory today,” Abioye said, but something in me couldn’t help but adding silently, but we have also lost many lives, too…And where under the stars were Tamin and Montfre?
My earlier sense of pride and savage joy was petering out, replaced with the deep bone-weariness of many days and weeks of travel and fighting. Looking down on the results of my actions, it was hard not to notice the price that we had paid. I watched as humans wrapped and gathered the fallen, to be taken away and burned as was the Daza custom out here on the Plains. Who had we lost? How many won’t be returning to their villages now?
There was a mighty cough of thunder, which I recognized as the voice of Older Brother from further away. At the sound, every one of the riderless dragons lifted their snouts to regard him silently, before awkwardly, tiredly, wobbling back to their feet to slowly pad their way past the humans and the wrecked machines to him.
“What is he doing?” I asked Ymmen, as myself, Abioye, and Naroba trudged and limped back to the others.
“We mourn.” Ymmen’s words were short and to the point, and I saw that it wasn’t just our small human army that had lost loved ones. The dragons proceeded to congregate around their own fallen, and we watched in a sort of mystified awe as they started to move and stamp the ground around the bodies, setting up clouds of dust and sand.
“Ymmen?” I reached out to him, to surprisingly find that his mind was strong and resistant to mine. I could feel how I could push through with the power of the Stone Crown—and that I could even read what thoughts and feelings that he was trying to hide from me, but I took a deep breath and restrained myself. The dragons were mourning, after all. And Ymmen was my friend and brother.
“This is not for humans,” he said gravely, as there were more coughs of smoke and fire, and this time the sight of the stamping, moving dragon bodies was obscured by smoke and heat haze as they tended their dead.
Humbled by even the smallest window into their experience, I withdrew my mind from Ymmen’s and nodded to the approaching people. I had to find Tamin and Montfre, I thought, turning to Abioye and Naroba. “It is time to recuperate, to find who we can, and repair,” I said.
“Nari!” I heard a shout as one of the figures ahead of us broke into a run across the Plains. I would have recognized his loping gait anywhere.
“Tamin!” I called to my god-uncle, grinning just as widely to see him as when I had told Abioye that the wild dragons were here amongst us.
But my god-uncle’s steps slowed as he got closer, and I saw him looking at me in surprise.
What was it? I thought, before I saw just what precisely he was looking at. The Crown.
“You found it,” he said seriously, gravely as he stepped up to my side, laying a momentary hand on my shoulder before slinging his arms under Naroba, earning a gasp of pain from the Imanu. Tamin assessed the damage quickly and corrected his stance. He looked relieved to see me—but there was also a wariness about him as his eyes moved from my face to the Stone Crown, often.
We made it to where someone had set up a camp-kitchen of sorts, having recovered the Red Hounds’ wagons and stretching the contained canvas to form shelter and respite for those that needed it. It was a bustle of activity in here, with many people’s injuries being tended, and still more handing out what little food and water we had.