Page 92 of A Dragon of Black Glass (Moonfall #3)

92

F ROM THE WHEELHOUSE of the Fyredragon, Graylin watched the final destruction of the black mountain. It still filled the world ahead of him. Huge sections cleaved off its flanks, cracked away both by the ongoing quakes and by the immense forces at the core of the Dragon.

Glass shattered with great booms.

Their group had barely escaped before it had all started coming apart.

The Fyredragon retreated across the black sea, fleeing from the violence and blasting glass. The ship’s forges flamed hotter, driving the huge vessel straight back as it struggled for more air. But with half their gasbag gone, Darant wisely chose distance versus height to keep them out of harm’s way.

The captain called to his crew from the maesterwheel. “Keep all forges at full blaze! I want off this burning sea and over sand.”

Like Graylin, Darant had witnessed the fiery demolition of the turubya site in the Frozen Wastes and sought to get them to a safe harbor. It seemed the ancients wanted to close off any access to a turubya once it was seated deep into the crust. Even the series of massive doors along the shaft must not have been deemed enough protection.

They did not want to be caught in the wake of the coming destruction.

Fenn shouted from his station, “Look low! At the base of the Dragon.”

Graylin stepped closer to the window, dropping his gaze from the crumbling crown to the foot of the mountain. There, a frosting of glass crystals hung in the air, creating a scintillating fog.

Through the shrouding, water could be seen boiling forth. Steam flowed up the mountain’s flanks.

“Get us farther back!” Darant bellowed.

Soon a trembling pressure built in the air. The ship shook with it. Moments later, waves of shimmering energy radiated out from the foot of the Dragon, sweeping across the glass before finally dissipating—at first in slow washes, then faster and faster.

The growing squeeze crushed them all to silence. Graylin held his breath, not sure if he could even expand his lungs under this pressure.

Then it gave way, popping with such force that the Fyredragon reared its bow high. The stern struck the hard sea and scraped across it. Ahead, the glass around the mountain shattered upward in great broken plates. Water and steam blasted high, several times the height of the Dragon.

It gushed across the sky, a cascading fountain of raw power. Then it all crashed down. Water flooded outward in a tremendous tide. It rushed at the ship, reached it, then flowed under the keel. The Fyredragon had righted itself and sailed backward, as if riding the surf.

Slowly the tide died away, then began receding the other direction.

The door into the wheelhouse crashed open. Daal hurried in with Nyx. The two looked panicked after the jarring and rolling, the thunderous explosion.

“What happened?” Daal asked.

Graylin waved an arm. “Come see.”

The pair had stopped on their way up to make sure Jace was settled, watched over by Vikas, while Krysh ministered to their injuries. Luckily, Jace had already begun to stir by the time they had reboarded the ship. Nyx and Daal had also wanted to check on the raash’ke and on Bashaliia.

From the clearing of Nyx’s eyes, she must have borrowed a trickle of strength from her bonded to clear the clouds from her gaze. She certainly seemed stronger, buoyed with renewed strength—or maybe that came not from bridle-song, but from relief at Jace’s survival.

As the pair joined Graylin, they all stared across the flooded sea, dotted with jagged islands of broken plates of glass. Ahead, the black mountain reappeared through the steam. It had dropped to half its height, but not from being shattered low.

“It’s sinking,” Nyx noted.

As they watched, the Dragon slowly lowered into the sea. By the time the last glassy points of the crown vanished beneath the steaming water, the Fyredragon had cleared the glass and now skimmed over rolling sand.

“We made it,” Darant sighed out.

And not a moment too soon.

A low rumbling rose around the ship. With each breath, it grew louder. Then with a roar that trembled the ship, the entire glass sea shoved high. The dunes under them did, too. A ridge struck the keel and jolted the Fyredragon. Then the land crashed down with a thunderous blast.

In front of them, the entire breadth of the Shil’nurr Plains—the great glass sea—shattered into pieces, forming a broken black mirror.

The rolling dunes had fared better, even now looking little changed. Sand drifted and settled, returning to the desert, stubbornly eternal.

Fenn wandered over to them. “Was that an aftermath of the Dragon’s destruction? A final stamp upon the turubya ’s resting place?”

“No…” Nyx moaned.

A glance over showed her gaze was not on the shattered sea, but on the sky, where the moon shone on high. Through the haze of steam and fog of crystals, its glow had turned an angry red.

“Like in my dreams,” Nyx mumbled, and stared down at her bandaged hand, at her missing finger, her face a mask of worry.

Daal stirred next to her and pointed back at the sky. “Look. It’s already changing.”

As the steam thinned and the crystalline fog lowered, the moon’s shine cleared to silver, with only a lingering nimbus of crimson at its edge.

Daal took her hand. “We still have time to make a difference.”

She nodded, drawing her shoulders straighter. Her confidence and the joy slowly returned.

The wheelhouse door opened again, drawing all eyes. Rhaif hurried in with Shiya, though she moved more slowly, clearly still weak, turning her bronze form sluggish.

“You have to hear this,” Rhaif called to them as he rushed the last of the distance.

From his ebullient manner, he came with something rare.

Glad tidings.

Rhaif pointed to Shiya. “She received a message. From the Southern Klashe.”

“From Tykhan?” Graylin stepped closer.

Rhaif’s brightness dimmed at this question. “No, via a new method of reaching us. Something Tykhan built.”

“What do you mean? How?”

Rhaif sighed. “There is a longer story to tell, but it came with an encouraging epilogue.” His eyes sparkled. “The others discovered the key to the turubya. ”

Nyx drew sharply closer. “They have it… they have the key.”

Rhaif winced. “No. Sorry. Poor wording. They discovered the location of the key.”

The disappointment in Nyx’s face matched Graylin’s own, but he also shared her shining hope at this revelation.

“Where is it?” Graylin asked.

“Where we started this long journey,” Rhaif said. “The key is buried somewhere in the volcanic mountain of The Fist.”

Graylin stiffened with shock. “In the swamps of Myr.”

Rhaif nodded.

Graylin turned to Nyx. “Then it looks like we’re heading home.”

She rubbed her arms, her face gone ashen. She clearly struggled with how to absorb the import of this message.

She mumbled a single word, spoken like a lament.

“Home…”