Page 44 of Court of Embers (Dragonesse #2)
Chapter
Twenty-Four
T he journey took longer than it would have with just me and Rhylan, but there was no choice.
At one point, with the moon a bright sliver overhead and the stars gleaming so close I could almost reach out and touch them, I curled up on the deck and dozed.
It was a bad sleep, punctuated with terrible dreams of Rhylan waking up, opening his eyes…
and revealing that there was nothing left inside him, his body a hollow shell.
The third time I woke up from such a dream, I gave up. The Horde draga left Kirana and me to our own devices, and we remained at the bow, watching as the forests of Sylvaene passed beneath us.
But the forests grew less wild. Less primeval, more tended. Manicured. We had entered Undying Light’s territory, Everael’s pretty little forests, where there were no ancient mountains made of cairns and bones.
The mountains in the distance were a pretty white granite, veined with gold. The eyrie itself, a white marble tower, stood out like a beacon in the glimmering dawn light, emerging from the embrace of the mountain.
Ivoire shouted overhead, and the dragons began to descend. We were still, by my estimation, five miles out.
Once that might’ve alarmed me. Now it seemed like a grand idea to run five miles through the forest, a refreshing walk in the park.
Ivoire dismounted, clambering over Roark’s saddle, and slid down the chain with expert finesse. She landed lightly on the deck, striding to us.
“We leave you here,” she said. “We’ll move in from the north and see what we might see. If any patrols come your way, the guardians will distract them.”
“And the rendezvous point?” I asked.
She pointed down. Right here. I looked over the edge, memorizing the distance, and the direction of Everael. Another five mile run…and, I could only pray, with an unwounded draga in tow.
“One of our bonded pairs will be splitting up,” she said. “The draga remains here to watch for you. When you arrive, she’ll alert her mate, and the dragonship will return. Try to be quick.”
I nodded briskly, clasped her hand, and kissed Kirana’s cheek.
“Good luck,” my better sister murmured.
Two of the Horde draga unspooled a massive coil of rope, tossing it over the side of the ship without fanfare. I eyed the knot connected to a single, stubby sort of mast, and gripped the rope, swinging my legs over.
The drop didn’t seem that terrible, strangely. My back itched as I descended, as though I could let go and simply glide down, but common sense and self-preservation kept my hands firmly clasped around my lifeline.
Hand over hand, the rope coiled between my legs to take my weight, I slipped downwards, landing in a pile of leafy loam.
I tugged it hard three times and released the rope, stepping out of the coils. Almost immediately, it jerked and began to rise, pulled aboard once more.
I ignored it, turning my attention to the forest around me.
Whatever had been ancient about these lands, Undying Light had erased, turning primordial forests into pleasant hunting grounds, the kind of woods you might take a stroll in before afternoon tea.
Breathing deeply, I picked up the scent of oak and alder, flowering dogwood, the wet, vital scent of living creatures… but no dragons.
My senses, heightened with dragon’s blood, told me that I was alone but for the animals of the forest.
Moving at a steady jog, I headed west into the trees.
They provided shelter from the sun and from prying eyes, hiding my progress as I ran.
The paths were practically cut for me, open and empty, no stark rises or steep ravines to bar my way.
There weren’t even fallen logs or limbs; I found myself vaguely unnerved by the toy-like perfection of this forest, the urge to force oneself onto nature and make it more palatable to the soft and untested.
But despite the quiet, no sounds but birdsong reaching my ears, I paused every ten minutes to listen and scent the wind, half-expecting a trap to be laid for an unsuspecting Naga.
There was nothing. And that was even more unnerving than the meticulous arboreal grooming.
Doubts assailed me as I set into a run once more. It was entirely possible Yura had lied. Undying Light might find themselves faced with a Horde, and no idea of what had caused it.
Mykah could be dying right now .
I swept the thought away with a clawed hand, quite literally, swiping at the air as though I could banish the thought. My feet sank into a carpet of dogwood blossoms, the petals crushed under my claws.
I had covered the five miles in less than an hour, moving at a moderate pace. I could’ve gone faster—I felt the energy of Erebos’s blood coursing through my veins—but if Yura was here, if I needed to fight, I needed every last bit of that blood to sustain me.
The woods gave way to a stretch of flat land before the eyrie, a massive garden of paved walkways and trimmed shrubberies.
I eyed the shrubs, carefully shaped into strange formations like spirals and circles, and gave them a wide berth.
There was something untrustworthy about those unnatural shapes.
The Horde had reached the eyrie well before me, the dragonship hovering in the air a mile out.
No dragons had emerged from Everael, neither to question their presence, nor to attack.
I crouched by an oak, staring at the base of Everael’s tower.
The front doors were grand, large enough for a dragon to walk through, pale ash inlaid with white marble mosaics. They would be locked and barred to outsiders; they were not my way in.
The eyrie possessed few windows. Many of them were high above the ground, nearly two hundred feet up the side of the tower.
That left the servant’s door, the one the Bloodless would use. It was small, wooden, battered, and hidden to the south, only partially disguised behind another strangely box-like bush.
That was my entry. I flexed my hands, feeling the strength in my claws and my legs, and knew I could take down a wooden door.
But there was no one out here. There was a silence all around the eyrie; even the birdsong had faded into nothing.
Disquiet slinked through me, fluttering like a fish deep in my stomach.
No Bloodless. No dragons. No wyverns.
I held my breath, counting a full minute. At the end of the minute, if I saw no one, I would rise and slip around to the door.
I had reached forty-three, my legs tensing to rise and run, when something plunged past the white walls of the tower, landing with a spatter on the paved stones before the grand doors.
I blinked at it, trying to make out what on earth that formless, limp shape was, when the wind carried its scent to me.
Rot. Death. Decay.
I stood up slowly, focusing my slit-pupiled eyes, and saw the twisted remnants of the Bloodless body, the flesh already slipping from muscle as it rotted, the muscle peeling from bones.
Then I looked up, all the way to the peak of the tower, and my heart jumped into my throat.
They perched there, the dragons of Undying Light.
Their ivory scales dull and yellowed, their feathers shredded and torn.
Tashan snapped his beak-like muzzle, stained brown with old gore.
He clutched something, gnawing at it, and pieces fell away, joining the dead man at the bottom of the tower with awful, wet sounds.
I understood now why the Horde hadn’t begun harrying. There were no sane patrols to harass and distract.
More dragons appeared on the peak of the tower, climbing out through the dragon door, some silent, some screaming. The sounds echoed across the forest, the wails of the damned.
Yura had been here.
And Mykah was inside that tower with them.
Tashan screeched, launching himself from the tower at the dragonship, and the others followed, some still eating. Decaying feathers drifted down, released from their rotting bodies.
The dragonship began firing the ballistae. A flaming bolt rammed into a dragon’s chest, blowing a hole right through him, and as he plunged to the ground, it exploded. Gobbets of flesh, reeking of decay, rained down.
The Horde dragons came in, no longer intending to distract. They were going to destroy, already breathing flames at the dead.
I ran to the tower, cutting straight through the gardens and leaping hedges. Something hit the ground behind me and I didn’t look back, though I smelled it.
I skidded on smooth granite tiles and rammed into the door. It creaked, cracking under my assault, and I rammed it again, my mind full of only one thing.
Mykah was in there. The Bloodless were already dead.
There was still the tiniest sliver of a chance.
The door cracked, and I tore into it, ripping planks and slivers away, my shoulder numb. I gouged mindlessly, listening to the sharp snapping thrum of the ballistae, the shrieks of fighting dragons, knowing they were providing the only cover I’d get.
I ripped an entire plank aside and stopped, panting for breath.
Through the gap I could see the other side of the door…and it was all stone and wood. A solid wall of shattered furniture and broken stones, piled gods only knew how far down the passage.
They had known this tunnel was an escape. Had they done this with forethought? Did Tashan come down here and wreck the hall, cutting off the escape of his prey?
Just how well did Yura’s victims think for themselves after she’d corrupted them?
I drew back, tasting blood, my heart pounding so hard my ribcage felt like it was thrumming.
This door was blocked. The grand doors at the front of the tower would not only be locked, barred, and potentially collapsed as well, but they were eight inches of solid wood and metal. They were not an entry.
My only other option was the dragon door on the peak of the eyrie…or one of the windows.
I looked up, shading my eyes. The nearest window was well over a hundred feet above me. It was tall, thin, but just wide enough for an enterprising draga to slip through.