Caradryel turned to Salendor, his smooth face going pale.
‘The dawi,’ he murmured.
Salendor nodded. ‘Indeed,’ he said, closing the window and making for the door.
‘Where are you going?’ asked Caradryel, hurrying after him.
Salendor halted at the doorway. The disdain had not left his face. ‘It was always bound to end like this. Caerwal has not succeeded, but someone else has. Do what you will — I have more important tasks now.’
As he spoke, the floor throbbed from the chorus of low drumming that now rolled at them from beyond the walls. Caradryel heard the tinny response of clarions, followed by the metallic clatter of soldiers beating to quarters in the streets outside.
Salendor strode out of the chamber, his cloak swirling imperiously around his ankles. His guards followed him.
Feliadh glanced enquiringly at Caradryel. ‘What now?’
Caradryel looked around him. Caerwal’s loremasters all waited, mute and fearful, knowing the penalty for what they had done. Outside, the drumbeats picked up in tempo and volume, matched by the strident tones of bronze war-horns.
Caradryel’s shoulders slumped. Everything he had worked for had just dissolved, and for reasons he did not yet even understand.
‘Chain them,’ he said miserably, drawing his knife again and looking distractedly at the dull edge. ‘Then report to me.’
Feliadh saluted smartly. ‘And where will you be, lord?’
Caradryel smiled coldly. ‘On the walls,’ he said, already moving. ‘Fighting.’
Chapter Seventeen
The pain was astonishing. It wasn’t physical, though her body had been battered badly on the way down. It was spiritual torture, as exquisite as any devised by the debased courts of Naggaroth. Liandra wanted to scream out loud, to rage against the fortune that had brought her such agony, but somehow managed to bite her tongue.
Tell me you can restore yourself, Liandra sang.
Vranesh could barely summon the strength to open her eye. It stared at Liandra from just a few feet away, immense and glossy like a golden pearl.
Do not be foolish, the dragon replied. My fire is gone.
Liandra caressed the dragon’s long neck. It felt like her heart was being torn out. She could feel Vranesh’s mortal pain, burning in her own body like an echo.
I would go there with you, Liandra sang.
You cannot.
I would be the first.
Vranesh attempted a laugh. A rolling pall of greyish smoke spilled from her open jawline, sinking into the dry earth and drifting away.
She was right — the fire had gone.
What it is like? asked Liandra, desperate to keep speaking, as if that alone could somehow postpone the moment.
We are there as we were before you entered the world, sang Vranesh. Before the shaan-tar came to tutor you, before strife came from the outer dark. The eldest of us remember. I will see them again, the names of legend.
Liandra inhaled deeply, breathing in the remnants of Vranesh’s scent. The ember-charred musk was weaker, tinged with the hot stink of blood. The dragon was covered in it, its scales sticky and matt with clogged dust.
The land they had crashed into was a desolate one: sun-hardened plains of baked earth and sparse-brush hills. The heat was oppressive, as if sunk into the air like dye in cloth.
Liandra had little idea where they were. For the long hours of pursuit all that had mattered was vengeance — running down the druchii witch. At least that had been achieved.
Vranesh’s voice entered her mind again then, reading her thoughts.
She is not dead.
I saw her hit the water.
The abomination, yes, sang Vranesh. Not the rider.
You are sure?
I can hear her still. Vranesh’s long mouth twisted at the corners in a reptilian grimace. She is fearful and alone, but alive.
Liandra almost stood up then. She almost walked straight out into the heat-shimmer plain, once more driven with that thirst for revenge that had dogged her since first taking the drake-saddle.
But she didn’t. She remained where she was, cradled in the massive claws of her mount like a child in the arms of her mother. Her cloak lay about her in singed tatters.
We will hunt her, then. When you are ready.
Vranesh did not smile that time. The dragon let out a long, long sigh, as sibilant as steel sliding across steel. You do not listen. You have never listened.
I do not-
Silence! Vranesh snapped. No time remains. The dragon tried to lift her head and failed. More blood bubbled in the corners of its mouth, popping like tar. Kill the witch if you must, but remember where the real battle lies. All that matters is the song sung between our peoples. If the kalamn-talaen falls then the bond will be broken.
Liandra did not want to hear the words. Imladrik, for so long an obsession with her, had become an unwelcome reminder of the past, something to be put away and forgotten.
He will not-
Listen! He is the last. Though maybe you can learn. Vranesh blinked — a slippery movement with a leathery inner eyelid — and fixed her obsidian pupil on Liandra. Do not waste yourself out here. You will be needed. Preserve yourself.
Liandra felt the words stab at her. I would follow you, she said again, tears of anger spiking in her eyes.
Perhaps you might. Perhaps you, out of all of them, might.
Then more grey smoke poured out of Vranesh’s blackened nostrils, flecked with black motes. The huge eye lost its glossiness, and a sigh like winter wind escaped from bloodstained jaws.
I loved you, fire-child, Vranesh sang.
Then she was gone. The mind-presence disappeared from Liandra’s thoughts, snuffed out in an instant. Although the pain went with it, the hollowness that came in its place was almost unbearable.
Liandra rocked to and fro, balling her fists. For a moment it felt as if she were going mad, or maybe sinking into the same death-trance as her mount.
The tears would not come. She had never been able to cry from grief, only from anger or frustration. Now, alone, stranded on the edge of the world, her companion sundered from her at last, she just rocked steadily, eyes staring, consumed by horror.
Only much later did the first howl come — a rending wail that burst raw from her throat. Then more cries, each shaking with loss, each sent up into the uncaring, empty skies above.
She lost track of herself, consumed by a grief so total if felt as if the world were swallowing her into its heart. It might have been hours before she returned to her senses.
When she finally did so the heat was still there with the harsh sunlight, and the yellow earth that was as dull and lifeless as the corpse of the dragon beside her.
Liandra rose unsteadily to her feet. She stared at Vranesh. The dragon’s crimson wings were ripped and limp; the mighty chest deflated.
There were rites for such occasions, ways of preparing the body for the afterlife, but they required time, strength and the use of a magestaff, none of which she still possessed. In their absence Vranesh’s mortal shell was ripe for carrion or plunder.