“No drake saw this,” he said. “This is a human memory.”
“Quite right. How perceptive you’ve become.”
She turned, moving to the edge of the broad summit on which they stood. “The Cragmines of western Arradsia,” she said, spreading her arms wide. “As captured by my very own eyes quite some time ago, when I was still spry enough to climb all the way up here. Fascinating geography, don’t you think? No one’s really all that sure how they formed. There is evidence of glaciation but that’s only a partial explanation.”
“I got a new friend who might be able to help with that,” he muttered, fighting a sudden lurch in his chest as he watched her take in the view. She seemed so real, so alive it inevitably summoned memories of her death, a death he hadn’t been able to prevent. A ghost, he reminded himself. Living in Lutharon’s mind like Silverpin lived in mine.
“The White . . .” he began but she waved him to silence.
“I do seem to recall your doing your damnedest to ensure I didn’t follow you,” she said.
“If you hadn’t maybe you’d be talking to my ghost just now.”
“Ghost?” She pursed her lips. “A name that fits, I suppose. Though I would hate to think Lutharon feels he’s being haunted.”
“It was you. You kept him by me after the White rose.”
“Not entirely. I merely encouraged an impulse that was already there. He does seem to like you, you know. Thank you for making him leave, by the way. He would certainly have perished on the ice.”
“Least I could do.” He looked around at the mountains once more. “Was it the heart-blood? Is that what kept you here?”
“Lutharon and I shared minds for many years. I suppose I am the echo of that connection.” She beckoned to him and started to descend the steep, rocky slope below the summit. “Come on. I would like you to see something.”
Clay followed her, traversing a series of narrow ledges and granite boulders protruding from the mountain side. Ethelynne appeared almost childlike as she hopped from ledge to boulder with all the sure-footed skill of someone who had followed this course many times. Clay was markedly more careful, forcing her to loiter with amused impatience as he navigated the often-damp rock.
“You never did like heights, as I recall,” she observed. “It does rather make one wonder, though. I mean, would it make any difference if you fell? We are both just a collection of memories. It’s not like we have any bones to break.”
“Feel free to try it,” Clay replied, inching his way along a ledge. “I ain’t too keen on finding out.”
“No, me either.” She leapt nimbly onto a granite outcrop and paused to peer down. “But it’s strange that it hasn’t occurred to me before. All the time spent in this place and I’ve never been tempted to just jump and see if I go splat.”
“Maybe Lutharon won’t let you. It’s his head. Guess he makes the rules.”
A ten-minute descent brought them to a narrow crevice where the flank of the mountain levelled out. An infant Black crouched at the edge of the fissure, small wings and tail twitching as it peered into the depths, a series of soft plaintive grunts issuing from its snout.
“This is where I found him,” Ethelynne said, moving to crouch a short distance from the keening infant. “All those years ago.”
The infant whirled at her approach, a warning hiss emerging from its mouth. It seemed to have no awareness of Clay, its gaze fixed on Ethelynne, jaws snapping as she extended a hand holding a morsel of meat. Clay moved to the edge of the crevice, looking down to see the large, crumpled form of an adult Black far below.
“He was barely two days old when the Contractors killed her,” Ethelynne said. “I couldn’t just leave him to perish. But there was only one way to save him. And it scared me.”
“Heart-blood,” Clay said, eyes lingering on the drake corpse. “I had my own taste not long ago. Ain’t got any plans to repeat it anytime soon.”
“You drank heart-blood?” Ethelynne straightened, a mix of sympathy and fascination on her face. “What species?”
“Blue. A great and fearsome Blue of terrible reputation . . . He died.”
“I’m sorry.”
Clay nodded, casting a final glance at the dead drake and moving away. “We got things to talk about,” he said. “Plans to make.”
“Plans?”
“Yeah. War plans. The White’s got itself an army now, and they’re killing a lotta people. Those they don’t kill they turn into Spoiled. We’re fighting it, but things ain’t going so well.”
“And you want Lutharon to join your war?”
“Not just him. The Blacks. All of them. They fought it before, we know that. We need them to fight it again, and finish it this time.”
Ethelynne folded her arms, her head tilting and lips pursing in an expression he knew indicated her fearsome mind was hard at work. “Just how did you get in here, Claydon?” she asked. “You still haven’t told me.”
He looked down, exerting his own will in a brief experiment as he wasn’t sure he possessed any power here. The rock beneath his feet obligingly turned to moon-dust, a portion of which he raised and moulded into the Black crystal.
“What is that?” Ethelynne asked, moving closer to extend a finger to one of the glowing spikes. Clay assumed it had been quite some time since she had seen something so completely unfamiliar.
“Be easier to show you,” he said, expanding his will further. The surrounding mountains transformed into the forest that greeted him when he first stepped into the strange world beneath the ice. “Welcome to the last enclave of the Philos Caste . . .”
“Incredible.” Ethelynne let out a small laugh as the enclave faded around them, shifting back into the Cragmines. He had shown her all of it, every scrap of memory he could summon regarding the enclave, every morsel of information he had acquired.
“All those years in the Interior,” Ethelynne went on, shaking her head. “I had no idea, no clue whatsoever. I thought the temple builders must have been the first people to walk this continent. But all the wonders they crafted were just an echo of something greater.” She paused, summoning the vision of the Black crystal he had shared. Ethelynne’s gaze darkened as she stared at the glowing spikes revolving around the void. “Or perhaps,” she said, “it was something worse. Something best consigned to the past.”
“We need it,” Clay insisted. “We need it to ally with the Blacks . . .”
“Ally? Or enslave? The ancients did remarkable things, but committed the most vile acts in the process. There are memories in here, deep and very old. So nightmarish and confused it’s hard to make sense of them, and they’re so painful I only tried once. Were I to delve deeper would I find your friend there, scalpel in hand?”
Clay saw little point in denial. “Yeah,” he said. “She’d be there. But she ain’t what she used to be. None of us are. And it don’t change the fact that we got a war to fight. When the White’s done with us you know it’ll come for them. It remembers and it don’t forgive. Lutharon and all his kin will have to fight it anyways. With us they got a better chance.”
The rock beneath their feet began to shudder and the sky darkened from misty grey to red-tinged black. A cacophony of fracturing rock assailed Clay’s ears as the mountains began to twist and grow. Cliff-faces became wings and boulders claws. What had been a jagged ridge slowly revealed itself as the spiny neck of a huge drake. They rose all around, wings spreading, tails and necks uncoiling. The crescendo of shattered stone subsided into a low murmur, reminding Clay of distant thunder as the host of giant drakes lowered their heads to regard him, eyes shining with a bright red glow.