“How large is your—friend?” Alec asked, wondering which dragon it was.
Tyrus chuckled. “Oh, he’s a big one.”
How large was large? The size of a horse, of a house? The ones in the murals and mosaics in Rhíminee were always portrayed as being as large as a city, but Alec doubted—
Suddenly the ridge moved and the ground shook so hard that all of them went sprawling. Dragons of all sizes took wing around them, like bats streaming out of a cave at sunset.
What Alec had mistaken for a smaller, nearby ridge rose against the sky, the shape unmistakable. The horned head alone was half the size of the Stag and Otter; the curved, spine-ridged neck might be as long as Silvermoon Street. That large ridge was its back.
Laughing, Tyrus pulled Alec to his feet. “This is my friend. Friend, this one comes to you with questions.”
The head descended, the one huge eye Alec could see glowing like molten gold. Then, in a voice like a softly spoken avalanche, it said, “Hello, little ’faie. You smell of far places.”
Hot, reeking breath rolled over him—bitter, with a metallic tang like cold iron against the tongue. It reminded Alec of the tinctures Yhakobin had forced down his throat. Sebrahn had gone completely still.
“See? I promised I’d show you dragons one day,” Seregil told him. “Go on, it’s waiting.”
“Uh—hello—Master Dragon.” Alec bowed. “Forgive me, I don’t know your name.”
“My name?” The dragon raised its head and made an ear-shattering, incomprehensible sound. Then, lowering its head even with Alec again, it said, “You appreciate the difficulty. You may call me ‘Friend.’”
“Thank you.” He didn’t know what else to say. He’d never addressed a living mountain before.
“Show me the little one,” the dragon said.
With shaking hands, Alec freed the rhekaro from his sling. “This is Sebrahn.”
“Drak-kon,” Sebrahn said again.
The dragon brought its head within a few yards of them, and Alec could feel its heat and see himself and the others reflected in that huge eye.
Awed as he was, Alec reacted too slowly when Sebrahn ran straight to the dragon and grasped one of its spear-like chin barbs with both hands.
Alec started after him, but Seregil caught him by the arm. “It’s all right.”
Sebrahn was so tiny against that enormous head—smaller, in fact, than the fang Alec could see under the dragon’s lip—but his voice was clear and loud as he began to sing a single drawn-out note so intense that it hurt the ears.
“By the Flame, what’s he doing?” Micum shouted over it.
Was Sebrahn trying to kill the dragon, perceiving it as a threat? “No, Sebrahn!” Alec yelled, trying to pull free from Seregil’s grip. “Let me go! I have to—”
But then the dragon sang back, a different, deeper note, its voice no louder than Sebrahn’s.
Everyone held their breath as they watched the strange pair continue their discordant duet. Sebrahn touched the dragon’s face, stroking the long spines and scales as calmly as if he were petting a horse. At last, he pressed his cheek to the dragon’s jaw and both fell silent.
“What was that about?” Micum whispered.
“A kinship song,” the dragon told him.
“But Tyrus claims he’s not a dragon,” Alec said.
“He is not, but we still share kinship through the blood of the First Dragon. That is where this little one’s power comes from, because it is made with your Hâzad blood.”
“You mean Hâzadriël and her people really did—do have dragon blood?”
“All ’faie do, little friend. But some have more than others. That is the Hâzadriëlfaie’s gift, and their burden.”
“Then I—?” Alec’s legs felt wobbly. It had been a terrific shock when Seregil had told him that he was part ’faie. But this?
“It does not make you a dragon, either,” the great dragon told him with something like a chuckle.
It was too much. Turning his attention to the familiar, Alec knelt and examined Sebrahn. There were deep cuts on his hands where he’d caught them on the dragon’s scales or spines. Alec pricked his finger with his knife and gave Sebrahn the blood he needed to heal.
“Ah, I see,” the dragon rumbled. “You heal him, as he heals you. It is as it once was.”
“You know about rhekaros?” asked Alec. It was disconcerting, talking to an eye, but the rest of the dragon was just too big to take in.
“I have heard of them by different names. But none that could kill.”
“But how—?” Who was he to question a dragon? “It’s because of my Tírfaie blood, isn’t it? The man who made Sebrahn said it was tainted.”
The dragon pulled back a little and sniffed them. The draft of its nostril sucked at their hair and clothing.
“You are not tainted, little friend. There is the smell of death on you, and your companions, but it comes from your actions, not your blood.”
“Then why can Sebrahn kill and raise the dead? Why isn’t he what the alchemist wanted?”
The dragon sniffed at them again. “You carry the memory of other Immortals in your Tírfaie blood, though you are of Hâzadriël’s line as well. And perhaps this alchemist’s own magic went awry. He did not understand fully what he was doing. Had he made such a creature before?”
“Only one that I know of, but he killed it. He needed me, since the Hâzad were gone.”
“Yes. I remember Hâzadriël well—a sad woman, but a brave one. I watched her people pass, going to the north. Their gift was different than any other’s.”
“To be used for making rhekaros?” asked Alec. “What sort of gift is that?”
“Their making does not have to be evil, Alec Two Lives. Surely you realize this little one’s worth, the worth of even a rhekaro that cannot raise the dead or kill, for they are not supposed to have that power.”
“What if we take Sebrahn to the Hâzad?” asked Alec.
The dragon considered this, then raised its enormous head and turned its face to the moon.
They waited in silence. The moon was brighter now, and Alec could make out the jut of the great dragon’s wing and spine-ridged back. Smaller dragons—though hardly small—crawled around up there, as if it were a mountainside rather than one of their own.
The great dragon lowered its head again. “The Lightbringer tells me that death lies in the north—your death. But you might not die if you return to the source of this creature. If you do go that way, then you must destroy the source, lest any more such creatures be made.”
Alec’s mouth went dry. “I—I am his source.”
“No, you were only the means, Alec Two Lives. Words are the source of alchemy. Destroy the words and no more such creatures can be made.”
“Words?” asked Micum.
“Books!” said Alec. “Yhakobin’s workshop was full of books. And there was one on his worktable—a big red one, with a picture of a rhekaro in it. I never saw Yhakobin use a wand or an incantation, just his symbols and metals—and me. But there were always books open on his worktables, and he’d refer to them while he worked. But to destroy it—”
“We’d have to go get it,” Seregil finished for him. “And if we don’t?”
“Then you cannot destroy it,” said the dragon.
Alec suspected it was unwise to be impatient with a dragon of any size. “But what will happen if we don’t?” he asked as politely as he could.
“The future is not written, Alec Two Lives. The Lightbringer reveals only what can be, not what will be. Destroy it, or don’t. The choice is yours.”
“But if we do find it, whatever it is, will it tell us what Sebrahn really is?” Alec asked, frustrated now.
“That you know, little friend. He is unlike anything that has been or will be. The question is, what will you do with him?”
“But we came to ask you!” Alec cried.
The dragon did not answer. Raising its great head, it snapped up one of the dragons that had been resting on its back and swallowed it whole. Then, without another word, it stretched out in the position they’d found it in and heaved a great sigh that shook the ground again.