Page 6

6

CHARLIE

I lay on a rug in the middle of my luxurious prison cell, staring up at the ceiling and deeply questioning my life choices. The first rush of self-congratulatory excitement had passed, leaving in its wake a feeling of doubt and foreboding. What had possessed me to impersonate Kitty? I should have made my way up the coast and tried to signal our spy planes when they flew overhead. Or tried to rescue the Wraith’s waterlogged radio and call home. Or made a raft to paddle my way back to URA. Anything would have been a safer course than this. I was a pilot, not a master spy. How long before they found me out and chopped off my head? Or fed me to a dragon? Or worse?

A knock came at the door. I sat up fast, but before I could stand the door was swinging open. In strode a figure out of a fairy tale. She was about four feet tall, with antlers like a deer’s and legs that bent backwards. Her face had the wrinkly jowls of a bulldog, and her hair was bound in a tight bun atop her head. Strange as she looked, there was a friendly twinkle of mischief in her brown eyes.

“You’re a—a?—”

“A sprite?” she finished, eyeing me with crossed arms. “The name is Rohree. I’ve been assigned to care for you while you’re with us. And you’re filthy. Come on. Off with those clothes.”

My eyebrows went up.

“Oh, a shy violet are you? Fine.” She turned her back to me. “There. Now into the bath.”

I hesitated only a moment before following her orders, crossing the room, undressing, and slipping into the bathtub. The water was still pleasantly hot, and I found a bar of fragrant soap sitting on the edge. After the brine from the sea and oil from the crash the dirt from climbing up the rocky cliffs were scrubbed off me, I found a towel nearby to dry myself with and got out and began drying myself.

The sprite still stood facing away from me tapping one small foot. “Do all you machine worshippers take so long to get prettied up?”

I grunted a laugh. “Are all sprites so combative?”

“As a rule, yes,” she said. “Clothes are on the bed.”

A light green tunic with a gold-embroidered tree on it and black breeches, along with underclothes and socks, sat neatly stacked. I started getting dressed then glanced over and caught the sprite girl peeping at me.

“Well, I guess you do have some good attributes,” she said.

I pulled my pants up quickly. “Do you mind?”

“Not at all,” she shot back with a wink.

I shook my head, unsure whether to laugh or shout at her.

“Here, do you prefer to pretend I’m not here?” she asked, and with a flicker, she disappeared. I stood staring at the place she’d been a moment before, blinking in confusion.

“What’s wrong, you’ve never seen peri turn invisible?” her disembodied voice demanded. “Hurry up and dress. Your escort will be here any second.”

“Could you please…? Uh…”

She flickered and became visible again.

“Thanks,” I said. “It’s just… I’ve never seen magick before.”

She grinned, that mischievous twinkle in her eye once more. “Well then. You’re in for quite an experience.”

Just then, there came a knock on the door. I pulled the tunic over my head just as two burly guards in full armor entered. I couldn’t help noticing the swords and daggers at their belts.

“Where exactly am I going?” I asked the sprite warily.

Rohree shrugged. “I’m just a servant. I can only speculate. But from what I’ve heard, you’re here to learn about Maethalia. Our, people, our customs, our culture…”

I nodded.

She glanced toward the window. Twilight was deepening, and in the distance, off to the northwest, an ominous orange glow quavered against the slopes of the mountains.

“If you’re here to witness the wonders of our kingdom,” Rohree said, “You can’t miss the funeral of a dragon.”

* * *

The sprite and the guards brought me down to a waiting carriage drawn by two dapple gray horses and we made our way out of the castle via a huge gate. I tried to look out and make note of my surroundings, but out the carriage’s windows I could see little except shopfronts and small homes. The carts of craftsmen and traders all seemed to be shuttered for the night. Wherever there was some space, people were gathered in hushed crowds, their gazes silently bent toward the mountains.

We passed beyond the city wall and the road immediately began sloping upward and narrowing. Soon, it had become a rocky path. Some time later, we stopped at a guard shack. Some words were exchanged, and we traded the carriage out for some mounts—a tall, brown horse for me and a mule for Rohree.

“Don’t suppose you fellas have a spare cigarette?” I asked one of the checkpoint guards.

They only stared back at me with cold, narrowed eyes. They were arrayed like the other guards I’d encountered so far, in armor and cloaks and steel helmets, with swords hanging at their sides and spears in their fists.

No guns. No electricity. No cigarettes. Not a motorcar or an airplane in sight, I thought. But there were dragons. And magick. All the stories about this place were true.

It was too bad I was here instead of Kitty—she’d have been able to write a hell of an article about Maethalia. But then, she probably wouldn’t be able to keep a running list of targets in her mind like I was.

The guards and the carriage driver stayed behind as the sprite and I mounted up and rode up the trail.

“Just the two of us, eh?” I said to the sprite.

She grunted in affirmation.

“No one is worried I’m going to try to run off, then?” I asked.

“Go ahead and try,” she chuckled. “You won’t go far unless you’ve got wings.”

I saw what she meant. Darkness was settling in, and the winding path we took often had a sheer drop-off on one side or the other. It made me envy Rohree for her steed, which seemed considerably more sure-footed than mine, and I held on tight to the saddle horn to avoid falling off. The sprite glanced back at me with mirth in her eyes.

“Never ridden a horse before, eh?”

“I have,” I protested. I’d ridden a pony in circles at the county fair when I was ten. And I’d ridden a horse just today, although it had been quite a bit easier with Princess Essaphine to hang onto.

Essaphine… my body tensed at the memory of being pressed against her. I wondered where she was, what she was doing. How she was coping with the fact that, as Ollie had told me, she’d soon be fighting her cousin to the death.

She’s just another enemy, I reminded myself. A magick worshipping savage. She was nothing like Kitty, with her career and her college education and her dance hall friends and her rich parents with the rowhouse on Ironberg’s North Park.

Still, for some reason, my thoughts kept returning to the princess. The way her sweet-smelling hair had kept blowing in my face infuriatingly as we rode together up the coast. The contempt in her bright, changeable eyes as she’d presented me to the queen. The ache that still lingered in my balls from when she’d kicked me…

My watch had stopped when my plane crashed, but if I had to guess, we’d probably been plodding uphill for an hour and a half when the trail abruptly opened up into a broad valley, gently sloping downward. The sun had disappeared behind the peaks to our left and darkness swept in. All around, small campfires burned, and the smell of cooking meat reminded me I hadn’t eaten in a long time.

We dismounted and Rohree staked the horses then led me into the encampment.

Men and women in the gray leather armor and blue cloaks of dragon riders sat around the fires, playing games or passing wine skins or simply talking in hushed, serious voices. Several of the riders noticed me and glared as we passed.

“Have you seen dragons before?” Rohree asked.

I’ve killed dozens, I wanted to say, but of course that was not the role I was playing.

“Only the dead one today,” I lied.

“Well then. Feast your eyes.”

I saw no dragons, not at first. Then, I followed the sprite’s gaze upward. Silhouetted against the twilit sky, at least a hundred dragons sat, perched on the peaks all around us like gargoyles. Even though they were far away, seeing so many of them together sent a shiver through me.

“Come,” Rohree said, ushering me forward faster. “The sun has set. It’ll be beginning.”

The valley we were in was shaped like a shallow bowl broken in half. At its lowest point, it dropped off into a chasm from which an orange glow emanated. The miasma that roiled out reminded me of smoke from an engine fire, black and thick. It diffused and hung over the whole valley, creating halos around each prick of firelight and giving everything a misty, otherworldly quality. Embers floated and drifted like orange fireflies.

At the edge of the precipice, the dark body of the dead dragon lay sprawled.

We walked downhill and were about halfway to the bottom when a sound came from one of the dragons above. It wasn’t a roar, and it wasn’t quite a howl, either. It was some combination of the two, mournful and terrifying. Soon the rest of the dragons joined in, the combined din of their voices echoing off the slopes to form a deafening sound that seemed to vibrate every bone in my body and made the hairs on my arms stand on end.

I started to redouble my pace but Rohree put out an arm, stopping me.

“We’ll watch from here,” she said. “This is a sacred rite. There are some who will be angry you’re here at all.”

Indeed, while most riders had their attention on the dragons, two or three were watching me, their expressions grim and threatening. One in particular, a tall rider with a shaved head, met my gaze, and though I stared back at him defiantly, he would not look away.

Above, a half dozen dragons swooped from the peaks to land near their fallen leader. Massive chains had been attached to the limbs and wings of the beast, and the dragons grabbed these chains in their talons and took flight again. With effort, they hoisted the massive beast into the air and winged their way out over the center of the crater, the dead dragon’s limp form hanging below them.

A chant rose from the riders around us, a series of percussive consonants and sung vowels. Though the words were in a language I didn’t understand, I felt their meaning wash over me, feelings of reverence and deep sorrow viewed through the glass of ten thousand years of history and sprinkled with a sheen of terrible, ancient magick. Tears stood out on the cheeks of the riders around me. From back in the city came the sound of bells, a low, dolorous clanging that felt somehow like a heartbeat.

Suddenly, the song of the riders and the howl of the dragons shot up in pitch and volume, forming a harmony, a finale, a scream of anguish. Out over the crater, the dark form of Horban hung in the mist, its form made wavy by the heat rising all around it. A glow seemed to emanate from the dragon’s scales and wings, and tiny sparks of light surrounded it like motes of orbiting dust. It was so beautiful I stopped breathing. All I could do is stare in wonder. Then, at the same moment the song reached its peak, the dragons let go of their chains, and Horban the Terrible fell.

The singing and howling and tolling of bells abruptly ceased. The only sounds were the wind and the faint flutter of wing membranes as the beast fell, then a low thud as it hit the magma below. In seconds, the monster’s huge body sank out of sight, sizzling as it went. The silence that followed was one of the most complete I’d ever heard. There was not a whisper. Not a sob. Not a shuffle of feet or a cough or the clearing of a throat. Even the wind seemed to have died.

A few seconds passed. The dragons that had served as bearers wheeled and flew back up towards the ring of peaks surrounding us. When they reached them, the rest of the dragons took flight, too, all of them winging eastward together like a flock of massive birds.

As soon as they were gone, the riders began moving as well, turning without a word and walking back up the slope—toward us. Having so many enemies striding toward me at once felt like something out of a nightmare, and I clenched my fists to keep myself calm.

“Let’s go,” Rohree whispered, tugging on my arm. I turned and followed her back the way we’d come, my mind reeling with what I’d just seen. I knew the power and majesty of dragons. Almost no one from URA was as intimately acquainted with their claws and teeth and fire as I was. And yet seeing them like this, not as combatants but as mourning, magical beasts… hearing their sorrowful song… seeing the tears in the eyes of the riders…

My mind was far away, contemplating ancient magick and traditions and wonders, when I became aware of an out-of-place sound. Footsteps were coming toward me, and not at the plodding pace of a funeral procession. They were running.

I felt a sudden burning in my scalp—a hand, grabbing my hair. At my neck, a jolt of pain and the cold bite of steel.

I shouted and turned just in time to see the face of the bald-headed rider leering at me, his blade pressing into my neck. Then a foot was stomping into the back of his knee. He fell into a kneeling position with a shout of pain and an elbow swung in, connecting with his temple with a sickening thud. The bald rider fell to the dirt, unconscious. And there, standing over him and looking me over with wild eyes, was Princess Essaphine.

“You’re bleeding,” she pointed, and my hand went to my throat. My fingertips came away crimson.

I looked down at the rider splayed out at my feet. Already, two riders were stooping over him, binding his wrists. I looked back to Essaphine.

Her friend Ollie was jogging up behind her. “You saved his life,” he said.

The princess looked at me again. “No,” she said quickly.

“No,” I echoed her. But my fingers went to my neck again. I was no anatomy expert, but I knew where my jugular was. If that knife had cut me a millimeter deeper, I’d have been on the ground next to my would-be assassin, bleeding out.

The princess had saved my life. I looked back at her. In this light, her eyes looked dark, the rich, luminous hazel of a polished agate. And they were rimmed with red. She’d been crying.

Ollie was glaring at Rohree. “You were supposed to keep him safe.”

“I’m a handmaid, not a bodyguard,” she shot back.

“And yet you bring him to an okooram full of riders?” Ollie pressed.

“At Hoatan’s command. He wanted him to learn about our culture,” Rohree said. “When else could he see the funeral of a great dragon?”

“Enough!” the princess said. “It seems none of you can keep our guest safe.” She eyed me. “And clearly he can’t protect himself…”

“I could’ve—” I started to protest, but she cut me off.

“So, I’ll escort him back to his room. Come on.” She grabbed me by the arm like a naughty child and began tugging me with her up the slope. Ollie and Rohree, grumbling together, fell in behind us.

“See that he’s arrested and brought before Hoatan,” Essaphine called over her shoulder to the other riders.

“Yes, your majesty,” the riders both replied, bowing.

We started walking again, but my would-be assassin was coming to. He blinked in momentary confusion, then, his eyes found me.

“You have escaped this time, necromancer!” he shouted after us. “But you will not leave this place alive. You’ll die. And all your kind will die with you!”