He must strike now.
The roar that tore out from his throat was Trake’s own, a god’s call to war. The power within him becoming a thing of agony, Gruntle’s limbs coiled, lowering him into a crouch, and then he leapt.
The dragon’s neck arched, the head snapped down, jaws opening wide.
He slammed into the creature’s neck. Claws sinking deep, his fangs burying themselves in the dragon’s throat. Scales broke as Gruntle’s jaws tightened, closing on the windpipe.
The dragon reared in shock, and with the convulsive motion blood poured into Gruntle’s mouth. As he clung to the creature’s writhing neck, his weight began to pull the dragon down. Wings cracked on the stone floor. Talons gouged wounds in the rock and then scraped frantically. The impact when the dragon struck the ground almost tore Gruntle loose, but he managed to hold on, the muscles of his shoulders, neck and jaws bunching until they creaked. He could hear the desperate wheezing of breath, and tightened his death grip.
The dragon reared a second time, lifting Gruntle into the air.
And then Kilava struck him with all the force of a battering ram. The dragon’s throat was ripped wide open in a torrent of gore, but Gruntle was falling, Kilava’s own fangs scoring deep across his shoulder blades.
They pounded against the stone floor, burst apart, Gruntle scrabbling to find his footing, twisting to find Kilava – to kill her once and for all—
The dying dragon was not yet done. Its jaws slammed down on Gruntle. Fangs long as scimitars impaled him. He was lifted from the ground, and then flung through the air.
Bones exploded inside his mangled flesh when he struck the wall. Leaving a glittering crimson streak, he slid down the stone to slump gasping, too broken to move.
The dragon staggered, head swinging round, eyes blazing as they fixed on him. Jaws opened, and sorcery roiled out in a torrent.
Gruntle heard Trake’s death cry, and that howl itself seemed to catch fire in the conflagration of draconic magic. It raged around him, tore deep into his ruined body. And all at once his god left him, stumbling away, away from this realm. A trail, another cave, a place of darkness, a place to lie down and die.
Again. You damned fool. You never learn. And now … now it’s too late.
The dragon careened against the far wall, sank down, spilling out the last of itself.
But above it, in that tearing wound, another was clawing its way through.
The cavern simply disintegrated as Eleint sorcery annihilated the last barriers surrounding Starvald Demelain. Beyond, the deep snows erupted in clouds of scalding steam. The ground itself was torn away, leaving nothing but swirling chaos.
In clouds of spinning dust and pelting rubble, in the wild fires of chaotic magic, the dragons returned to the world.
In my dreams, a blackened cat, a thing lying bleeding, gasping, dying. Blackened. In my dreams, I saw not her, but myself.
Dear Kilava, you did warn me. And I did not listen.
And when I warned Trake, Tiger of Summer and god of war, he did not listen. You fool. You needed wisdom in the one you chose, Trake. Not just another damned version of you. With all the same, useless, deadly flaws.
All that time, stretching away behind me now. Solid as stone, every shape, every rise and every dip, worn away in these winds of dying. Stonny, see what I have done? Or failed to do. You were right to refuse me. I always thought bigger than I could deliver. I always wanted what I could not hold.
And I saw it in your eyes – the day I stood before you, when I promised that I would come back. I saw in your eyes you knew I wouldn’t. You knew you would never see me again. Ah, my love, so many truths, come too late.
And this love, it is the last thing I have left, the last thing to hold on to. All I ever wanted – feel it slip away, slip away.
Woman, you should never have let me go. I should have given you that power over me. If I had, you would’ve understood. You would have believed my love for you. And if you had believed, in that moment … I would have believed, too. How could I not?
This is my fault. I saw that then and I see it now. My fault.
Stonny, my love, I am sorry.
Time, that stretched behind him for ever, that closed in and became solid, that beckoned ahead with a darkness almost within reach, then ended.
By the time she staggered to his side, she saw that he was dead. Sembled into her Imass form, she sat down weakly beside his carcass, lifted her gaze to the empty, dust-wreathed sky.
The last of them, gone now. Out into the world. She had known that there would be hundreds of them, but still, the sight of that exodus had stunned her.
Blood pooled beneath her, mixing with that of Gruntle, this noble fool lying so still beside her. There was nothing more heartbreaking than to look upon a dead beast, a thing stripped of its terrible strength, its perfect majesty. And there was something still crueller when that beast was a hunter, a predator. A rival. Not killed for food. No. Killed for existing, killed for the presumption of competition. The predator fights to the last. It refuses to surrender. Hunt it down. Corner it. See those bared fangs. Listen to its fury and its fear and its noble defiance.
You understood all of this, Gruntle. You understood the inescapable, profound tragedy that is the beast that hunts, that dares to challenge our domination.
I did not mean to take your life.
She knew she was badly hurt. She knew she might not survive this. Even without the power of his god – whom she had kept away until the dragon’s arrival – he had been … extraordinary. Had he not turned upon the Eleint … yes, he would have killed me.
Gruntle, I will remember you. This I swear. Here, in the cracks in my heart. I will curse Trake until the end of my days, but you, brother of the hunt, I will remember.
Hearing a scrabble of stones, she lifted her head.
The pair of emlava had returned, and now edged towards her. She sensed their distress. Their grief. ‘He lives,’ she whispered. ‘My husband lives. For now. As for what comes …’ I wish I had an answer.
The realm was dying on all sides. Disintegrating into dust, as all dreams must do, when the last dreamer is gone.
When she leaned back, closed her eyes, she felt the world shifting beneath her. So … gentle now, sweet as the rocking of a ship. Husband. Was I wrong to do this? She looked over to see the two sabre-toothed cats lying down beside Gruntle’s carcass. As if to give him warmth.
As if to make him their own.
CHAPTER NINETEEN
‘Not even the dead know the end to war.’
‘WHAT ARE YOU DOING?’
Withal cinched tight the last straps, and reached for the black-scaled gauntlets. ‘I can’t just sit here any more,’ he said. ‘Since it seems we’re all going to die anyway.’ He glanced up at her, and shrugged.
Her lips were dry, chapped. Her eyes were ringed in red, hollowed with exhaustion. ‘What of me?’ she asked in a whisper. ‘You will leave me … alone?’
‘Sand, there are no chains on that throne—’
‘But there are!’
‘No. And there’s no law says you got to sit there until the end. Why give them the glory of dragging you down from it, their delight at seeing fresh Andiian blood splashing the dais steps? Piss on them! Come with me. Die with the ones giving their lives to defend you.’