She said, “Oh my God, he’s a Dragon….”
Tiamaris whispered something that Kaylin couldn’t understand, and Sanablis lifted a hand to stem the words.
But the dead man—Dragon—had heard them anyway. Because he could.
“Yes,” he said, his voice dry as dust, but somehow heavy and deep and resonant at the same time. “And I died as you see me.”
Tiamaris closed his eyes and looked away. Sanabalis, older, did not, but he bowed his head, and Kaylin thought it was merely to avert his gaze for a moment. Nor was she wrong.
“We did not know,” he said when he again lifted his head. “Forgive us. We did not know.”
Kaylin looked at the three of them, the two who were undeniably living, the one who was not. “It’s bad to die…as a man?” she whispered at last.
“It is why so many chose the long sleep,” Sanabalis replied, “who might otherwise have chosen to serve. This is the death we fear,” he added. “Trapped, in every way, in our frailty and vulnerability, denied our hoard and the roar of the wind.”
Dead is dead, she started to say. Thought better of it, for once, before the words left her mouth. After all, dead men didn’t speak, and this one was. He was speaking. And glowing.
“I earned my death,” the dead Dragon said, speaking, she knew, in Dragon, although she could understand him. “I failed.”
“But you—you’re here now.”
“Yes. I am trapped here, now.”
“And you want to be free?”
He laughed. It was a roar; her body shook with the sound, as if she were crystal and his cry the resonant note that would shatter her. She lifted her hands to her ears without thinking. It made no difference.
“That would be a yes,” Tiamaris said in quiet Elantran.
“Kaylin, I do not mean to alarm you,” Sanabalis added in slightly strangled Barrani, “but your arms are glowing.”
She took them from her ears and saw that he was partly right: the symbols were glowing, pale blue and misted orange, a blend that should have hurt to look at, but didn’t. It wasn’t, in the end, much different than the colors that marked the dead Dragon. “That part where there’s supposed to be no magic in this room—I just broke that rule, didn’t I?”
He nodded. “I was foolish,” he added in a soft voice.
The roar had died into a heavy silence.
“What is freedom to the dead?” Her voice. She was surprised to hear it because everything about it sounded wrong. She was not as surprised, however, as Tiamaris; Sanabalis was impassive.
“You come late,” he told her quietly. “I waited, and you did not come, and my watch failed.”
The fact that she wasn’t alive at the time seemed irrelevant. “I could not hear you,” she said at last. “I could not hear your call.”
“Not bound as you were, no. I will not ask you how you came to be so bound. I have freed you from the binding with what little strength I could gather.”
Again, the fact that she could easily—if not completely legally—free herself, seemed to belong to a different story. She bowed instead, as if in thanks.
“But my failure was not complete if my kin still live,” he said slowly. “And perhaps it was for this moment that I waited. Come, Chosen. Take the burden I can no longer bear, as is your right and duty.” His head lifted, his tarnished helm glinting oddly, his eyes—for she could see them clearly now—unlidded luminescence.
“Kaylin—” Lord Sanabalis said, making of her name a warning.
But Sanabalis for a moment was no more part of this story than the words Kaylin had managed not to utter. She shrugged herself free of his restraining hand. “Trust me,” she told him, looking only at the ghost.
“To do what?”
“Oh fine, ask the hard question.”
But the Dragon, dead, was not deaf. “Child,” he said to Sanabalis, “do not seek to interfere. My hoard is scattered, my wings are broken. Will you face me?”
“Not all of your hoard is scattered,” Kaylin told him, stepping forward slowly, her arms tingling, her spine aching. Words all over her body were coming to life; she could feel them as they were written, and written again, over and over.
His smile was sharp. “Duty became my hoard, Chosen. And it is not a hoard that the dragons understand. I failed—”
“No. You did not fail.” For she could see, now, that the pendant was the same color as the runes on her inner arms, and she understood what it meant. For just a moment, she understood. “Look. You still bear it, burden and hope. And we have need of it now.”
“I cannot invoke it.”
“No,” she said, her voice softer. “But I can. I will take it,” she added, “and your story, in this place, will finally come to a close—and the Dragons will remember, forever, that what you guarded with your life, you guarded, as well, with your death.”
“And you will tell me the end of my story, Chosen?”
“I will write it,” she whispered, and her throat was raw by the time she had finished speaking. Dragon was not, apparently, a language meant for mortal vocal cords.
He seemed to shrink in on himself, the light fading from his bones until only those bones were erect, illuminated by the glow of eyes and the glow of pendant. “Then tell me, Chosen. I am too weak to continue.”
“No,” she said again, but more quickly. She reached out and caught his dusty, bony fingers, and held them fast. Light raced down her arms like a flash of lightning from a thunderous sky.
“Take it,” he said, as the light enveloped him. “Take it now.”
“I cannot take it. It can only be given.” This wasn’t even a guess; she felt it, and knew that she had probably never spoken truer words in her life.
“And will you guard it with your life? Will you care for it, as I have done? Will you bind yourself to its purpose and seek no other treasure to replace it?”
But she shook her head, understanding what he asked as if, for a moment, she were a Dragon. “I have taken my hoard,” she said. “And it is as you see it. And I will not cheapen your efforts by lying. But I promise you this—I will find someone who will guard it with the whole of his life, seeking no gain and no power. He will not touch it, he will not wear it, and he will use it for no lesser purpose than you yourself sought.”
For she could read what lay at the heart of the crystal she had thought was simply a sapphire.
“My hands, Chosen,” he told her, and she realized that she was still gripping them tightly. She released them, slowly, and saw that light still bound them together, when nothing else did. Understood that words were his power, here—and that she was the parchment upon which they had been written.
A thought came to her, unbidden. What did these words do to the word that gave life to the immortals?
But she did not ask it. Instead, she waited, while he lifted what could not in theory be lifted: hands stripped of all muscle, all tendons, all flesh. “I hear it,” he told her softly. “It is waking, now, and it is dangerous. Use this, if you can. Prevent what I could not.”
She couldn’t hear a thing that wasn’t his voice, but wisely said nothing. She felt, not pity, but something like awe and sorrow, as he lifted the chain.
Dread would come later.
He took it from his neck, but it caught on the edge of his helm. Kaylin did not hesitate; she reached out and pulled the helm from his skull. It was heavy and cold and dead in her hands, and she would have tossed it aside in disgust had Tiamaris not removed it.
With nothing to impede its progress, the chain traveled over the Dragon’s head, and his eyes flashed a pure, pale gold. Still, she waited, and as the chain approached her own head, she bent forward slightly to receive it.
Everything else would come later, she knew. All cost, all anger, all regret. But for now, she began to speak, and if the speaking was painful and wrong in every way, it was also right.
“Teyaragon, eldest of his line, gave over the gathering and the hunt, and retreated fr
om the skies and their freedom when he was but eight hundred years old in the reckoning of his kind.” Her legs and her arms were burning, and she could hear the words on her skin, because they were so like the ones she was speaking for a moment, they might have been the same thing.
“A duty was placed upon his kind and he chose to bear it alone, and he faced the heart of Water, bearing only its name, and when the Water was awake, he fought its coming, and he perished in the fight.
“But he fought for long enough, and with all of his power—which was great, even reckoned among his kin—that his people had time to take to the skies, where they could without deserting their hoard. And the Water, in the end, found nothing to sustain it, and it died, upon the land, as Teyaragon himself had died.
“But he kept his oath and he fulfilled his duty, even in death, trapped and lessened by the form he had been forced to take to bear this sigil. And in time, when his ancient enemy began to stir, he came from the edge of death to greet the Chosen, come at last at his call.”
The light in his eyes was fading, but it was still pure gold. Kaylin wanted to look away. She couldn’t bear to see empty sockets there. She felt the weight of the pendant as he dropped it, at last, around her neck.
But she hadn’t finished yet.
“And without his burden, having fulfilled all duty beyond even the expectation of those who placed the geas upon him, he was free at last to return to his rightful form.” And she gestured, and her hands flew up, palms out, and the words surged through her. She heard the snap of thin wood as her hair streamed free, and strands of it stood on end, as if she were a lightning rod.
“The winds which had waited for millennia gathered, even in the darkness of his tomb, and they whispered his name, and he heard it.”
Light flared around him; light that was bright, but pale now, not blue and not orange but not quite blinding white. Where the light he had somehow summoned in death had been amber and man shaped, the light that took him now was larger in every possible way. It spread through the darkness like fire, consuming it. Wings of light passed through the walls and tongues of white flame left his jaw as his face elongated.
And there was a wind in the closed chambers; heavy, brittle pieces of parchment fluttered by, swirling up toward the ceiling and the far walls.
“And the winds carried him aloft, to the open skies.”
The light began to climb; the wings were flapping. She could feel the gale, and stood in the center of it, unharmed. Unmoved.
He roared in triumph and in joy, and the whole palace must have shaken with the sound of it; had it been no more than a whisper, she thought they must feel it anyway, because of what it contained.
“Go,” she whispered. “I give you back your name, and your death, and your freedom.”
And rising from her—from within her—was a single bright sigil too complicated to memorize, too significant to ever forget.
But she knew there was one less mark on her body.
Darkness descended.
Even the pendant, which had glowed so brightly when she had first laid eyes on it, was now a part of the dark, dusty room. Well, the dark room, at any rate; the dust had kind of scattered like a routed army. With the light went all of her energy, all sense of certainty, all power.
She dropped to her knees, and by some kindness of fate managed to put her hands in front of her face before her face hit the ground.
CHAPTER 12
When she woke, she rolled out of bed.
She hadn’t intended to—but in her flat, the wall would have stopped her. Which meant, she thought, as she lifted herself off the floor, she wasn’t at home. She couldn’t be; the floor was softer than her bed, and it was a deep, rich blue. Carpet. She pushed herself off the ground.
“I was beginning to wonder if you would ever wake,” a familiar voice said.
“I wish I hadn’t.” But she teetered to her feet, and sat heavily on the side of the bed she’d accidentally deserted.
Tiamaris was standing some distance away, his hands behind his back. The room came into focus around him, but then again, he had always had a habit of filling a room. Even when it was crowded and full of other people. He had changed his clothing. It matched the carpet, which was a bit hard on the eyes.
“I’m still at the palace.”
“Observant as always.”
She made a face.
“I took the liberty of sending word to Sergeant Kassan. Or rather, of having word sent.”
“What? What word?”
“You have been sleeping for almost a day,” he replied. “And while being late is something the Hawks expect, I believe he knew where you were going.”
“What did he say?”
“Something about your pay.”
She groaned.
“Lord Sanabalis apologizes for his absence,” he added, “and I was given permission to attend you. A physician was brought—an Imperial Physician—to examine you. We told him you were drunk,” he added.
“And he didn’t ask about the lack of anything alcoholic?”
“He’s not paid to ask questions, Kaylin. Merely to answer them.”
“What did you ask him?”
“If you were going to survive. He said yes.”
It was hard to tell, with Dragons, whether or not they were joking.
“The room—”
“Stay still. Lord Sanabalis took the responsibility for explaining the disturbance to the Arkon. I believe they are still conversing. And before you ask, yes, there is some difficulty. The Arkon would probably prefer that you take the place of the skeleton which no longer exists.”
“No longer—”
“I believe a very fine layer of bone ash is mixed with the settling dust.”
“What—what happened?”
The Dragon raised a dark brow. “You don’t remember?”
“I remember what I saw. But I want to know what you saw.”
“A fair question. Let us just say that we saw the skeleton rise to its feet. We heard it speak, and we know what it said. What you said was…harder for us to understand.”
“I did speak.”
“You spoke,” he said, “with the voice of history.”
She wished, as a stabbing pain made her clutch her temples, that he could be straightforward. What the hell was the voice of history, anyway?
“And we saw you remove his helm, Kaylin. I took it. He lifted his hands and removed something from his neck, and this, he placed around yours. But you accepted his burden,” he added. “You accepted the responsibility of his burden.”
“I had to.”
“No.”
“I did.” It had all seemed so clear at the time, too. It had made so much sense. Which should have made her either more suspicious, more cautious, or both. “I didn’t promise him I would guard it,” she added. “I told him I would find someone who would.”
“Guard what?”
“The pendant.”
“Is that what you saw?”
“I’m wearing it—” She reached up and put a hand to her throat. “Oh.” There was, of course, nothing there. “You never saw it?”
“No.” He lifted a hand before she could speak again. “We believe that he gave you something. We believe that you could see it. Neither of us, however, could. What did you take from him?”
“A word,” she said softly.
He nodded as if this made sense.
“I had to take it,” she said in a lower voice. Talking loudly made her head throb—maybe being hungover wasn’t so very different. “If I didn’t take it, he couldn’t leave. He was bound to it,” she added.
“Yes, that much we understood. And you freed him, and for that, Kaylin, you have the Emperor’s gratitude.”
“You heard him, then?”
“Every Dragon in the city must have. It did cause some minor difficulty,” he added with a slight grimace. “Because the voice we heard could not be uttered by a Dragon who was not in his true form. Th
e Emperor is aware of us, of course, and aware to a lesser extent of those Dragons who exist at the outreaches of the Empire. He was satisfied that none of us broke his edict. This took some time, but you were not necessary to the discussion and Lord Sanabalis felt you would appreciate being absent from it.”
Nodding made her head hurt, but it was automatic.
“I, however, requested a leave of absence. I am to return you to the Hawks, where the Hawklord is waiting for your personal report of events.”
She winced.
“And for the duration of the next two weeks, I am once again seconded to the Hawks.” He nodded slightly, and removed a small crystal from his pocket. It was smoky quartz with a heart of sky. “Information that may prove necessary,” he told her softly, “has been extracted from the Imperial Archives and will be added to the Records of the Halls of Law.”
“What information?”
“You asked about Donalan Idis, if you recall.”
She didn’t, but took his word for it; he was hardly likely to make it up. “And that?”
“What we have of his studies and his duties here. It is not as much as we would like. But, Kaylin—you did not explain why you asked the question, or where you came by the name. And like most of the Dragons, I don’t believe in coincidence.”
“It’s…It’s complicated.”
“With you, it could hardly be anything else.”
“And it’s not technically official,” she added, wretched now because she could clearly see the look on Ybelline’s face. “And it might have nothing to do with the—the current investigation.”
“Which investigation would that be?”
“Um, the one where we all die in two weeks?”
“Ah, that one,” he said drily. “We have one missing artifact, and according to Sanabalis, one missing child whose absence has not been reported to the Halls of Law.”
“Two,” she said, giving up.
“Two?”
“Two missing children. Donalan Idis may or may not be connected with the second missing child.” She hesitated.
“And the second missing child has likewise been unreported.”