Part 42 (1/2)

”Are you going to try to interfere?”

”No. Not as such.”

Severn's hand slid from her shoulder immediately; the Arkon's took a little longer. But she was calmer now; she could wait. When nothing held her back, she walked slowly to where the word in all its visceral glory, hovered. She could touch it now. She could find s.p.a.ces through which her arms or hands might fit. Why, she wasn't sure-but it didn't matter. It had dwindled in size; Maggaron's protections had not.

She reached out and put her hands on Bellusdeo's forehead, the way she might have had the Dragon been a new mother in her first labor. She brushed matted hair out of the Dragon's widened eyes. She couldn't do more-there wasn't enough s.p.a.ce. But she didn't need to. Bellusdeo's eyes met hers; they were a honey-brown-the same color as the eyes of all the corpses in the Tower's morgue.

But they weren't dull or cloudy, and they moved; that was enough.

”You can do this,” Kaylin said. She wasn't even certain Bellusdeo would understand what she was saying, but that didn't matter, either; the only thing that did was tone. Hers. She kept her voice as even and soft as she had ever kept it, and she repeated the words over and over again. She didn't have to break for screaming or swearing the way she often did when tending to a woman in labor, and the cadence of her words, if not the meaning, made itself felt.

This close to the Dragon, Kaylin could see the wounds she bore. She wanted to heal them, but as she examined them-at a frustrating distance-she realized that it was the last thing she could try: the wounds themselves were bleeding, but they weren't simple wounds; the parts of the word that were now blood red were tenuously attached to the entry points.

Kaylin couldn't tell if the blood was flowing from the Dragon or to her; at this point, it didn't matter. Bellusdeo, cradled in Maggaron's arms, was struggling; there was no outward sign of that struggle. ”You can do this,” Kaylin said again, picking up the words and the thought, stroking her forehead as she did.

Bellusdeo's body stiffened suddenly. To Kaylin-not Maggaron-she said distinctly, ”I'm scared.”

This, too, Kaylin understood. ”I know. I know. It's all right to be afraid.”

For just a moment longer, the Dragon held herself stiff and taut-and then, of a sudden, she collapsed. It should have frightened Kaylin; it didn't. Before she could so much as check for a pulse, the body began to fade. Maggaron didn't say a word; he held the diminis.h.i.+ng weight as carefully and completely as he had held the sword. Kaylin touched his shoulder-or his arm, which is what she could reach-and squeezed. It was a universal gesture of encouragement. She hoped. She felt her arms begin to tingle.

”Watch,” she told him.

He was.

The whole of the word was dark and red and wet; it was also warm. The lines peeled away from where they held the Ascendant caged, as if creating a door or a tunnel through which he might escape. When he didn't move, the word did. It extended, at its closest, to an inch from Maggaron's chest. Kaylin could feel its warmth; it was body heat. ”Just...watch.”

Arms empty, he did.

The word was, as she had said, too complex to memorize, too difficult to speak. But Tiamaris had once told her to look at ancient words for harmony of form, and she knew, looking at this one, that it had achieved that. Everything was now where it should be: everything except Bellusdeo, who had vanished so entirely she might never have been here at all.

Maggaron's eyes were wet and wide; he was silent. His arms were crossed over his chest, as if he was still attempting to hold what was no longer there. But it wasn't over yet. Above their heads, the Dragons were attempting to shred each other's wings, and some of the fallout felt an awful lot like blood. No one, on the other hand, attempted to move. Or speak. It was as if the entire world-or at least the parts of it that were on the ground-was holding its collective breath and had none left with which to make noise.

The flattened golden remnants of the word she had identified as Maggaron's began to bend. They stretched horizontally, expanding above and beneath the ma.s.sive word until they were so thin they were almost transparent. Kaylin smiled up at the Ascendant as those fine, fine sheets of gold suddenly s.h.i.+fted, wrapping themselves around the word that had finally, fully emerged.

”I don't-I don't understand,” he whispered, allowing his arms to drop to his sides, where they trembled visibly.

But Kaylin did.

The gold thickened, tightened, squeezing what had been almost globular into something taller and slimmer; it compressed whatever remained beneath it as it did, refining its shape, its length, adding texture and elongating parts of its form, as if it was a potter working with wet clay. Golden clay.

”Do you recognize the color?” Kaylin asked in the same hushed voice Maggaron had used.

He didn't answer, not even to nod, but his mouth opened on an interrupted word, and stayed there.

It was true: hope could be unkind. You opened yourself up to the worst of wounds because you wanted to believe that something good could finally happen. But if you didn't? You missed this. This intense and perfect moment in which, while the world was almost literally going to h.e.l.ls all around you, hope and reality blended in a single, perfect note.

The form that emerged now was the large-significantly large-form of a great, golden Dragon, its new wings gleaming, its tail almost disappearing down the street. Its neck was longer and finer than any Dragon neck Kaylin had ever seen-but admittedly, she hadn't been doing a lot of objective observation on those occasions. Its head was higher off the ground than Maggaron's, and its jaws were, at best guess, longer than Kaylin was. Its neck was ridged, its scales were large and perfect, its ears were higher and finer than an angry Leontine's. For a moment it hung, suspended two feet above the mundane ground, and then its wings snapped open, shutting out sky.

It rose on its hind legs and it roared, and even though Kaylin's ears were ringing before the roar died, she was grateful; if it were the last sound she ever heard, she'd still consider herself almost blessed. The noise faded, and the roars that followed were vastly less welcome, if more familiar: three Dragons. Tiamaris, Sanabalis, and the Arkon.

The Outcaste's roar joined theirs, its tenor distinctly different.

But the golden Dragon now swiveled its long neck, turning its head toward Maggaron. Because Kaylin knew a lot of Leontines, she didn't automatically a.s.sume a display of fangs was an act of aggression; sometimes, it was a smile. This time, it was almost a purr.

”Maggaron.”

He was openmouthed and silent.

”Don't you recognize me?”

When he failed to answer, she pushed him. He fell over.

She snickered. It was a much more resonant version of a similar snicker Kaylin had once heard. ”Come, Maggaron. You have carried me in safety for years beyond your count; let me carry you. Come.”

He levered himself off the ground looking like a much smaller man than eight feet should have allowed.

”Come; we must meet the enemy.”

He looked very, very dubious as he attempted to find someplace to sit on her broad and unfortunately spiky back. Kaylin sympathized. She'd ridden on the back of a Dragon before. Maggaron looked as if he'd rather face Shadowstorms. He hesitated.

”Maggaron!”

”Bellusdeo?” he asked in a voice that was so full of fear and hope Kaylin wanted to plug her ears just to give him some privacy.

”Yes. Finally, yes.”

”It'd probably help him,” Kaylin told the Dragon, ”if you let your feet touch the ground before you made him climb up.”

She snorted, and flames the color of sunlight raced down streets that had already seen too much fire.

”You remember-you remember everything?” Maggaron finally managed to stutter.

She snorted again. ”I do. I remember what you remember. I remember all nine of my lives. I remember the enemy. Come, let us do what we could not do before the cities of the Norannir fell.”

He mounted then, finding either his courage or his strength. She bore him up, effortlessly, into the sky's height, her wings so wide they cast a shadow across the entire street in which Kaylin, Severn, and the Arkon were standing.

Kaylin hugged Severn tightly, and then turned to ask the Arkon a question. It would have been a relevant question, too-but the minute she saw his face, it evaporated. His eyes were wide, and they were a gold very similar to the color of Bellusdeo's Dragon form. Kaylin had seen that before-admittedly not very recently-but she had never seen what she saw now: tears. Wide-eyed, lips turned up at the corner in something too tremulous to be called a smile, he let those tears roll unheeded down his cheeks.

Bellusdeo seemed to gain speed as she gained height, at least from the vantage of the ground. Kaylin shaded her eyes just to watch; the golden Dragon was aiming directly for the black one. The fact that Tiamaris also happened to be in the way didn't slow her down at all.

This time, when the Outcaste wheeled in the air, something clipped one wing, and he wobbled in flight, righting himself as he approached ground.

”Severn-”

”Already on it,” was the grim reply. The chain began to spin, tracing an arc in the air directly above their heads.

The Arkon roared. Even in his human form, he was loud. The Outcaste saw him; Kaylin was certain of that. But he saw her, as well, and he roared, syllables cresting the sound. She didn't understand the words; it didn't matter. She saw the breadth of his chest expand as he inhaled, and she threw her arms up automatically as he exhaled.

He didn't exhale the fire that seemed to be more common to Dragon breath than air; he exhaled Shadow. The Arkon, however, went the traditional route in response, and his flames were so hot they were hardly red at all. They hit the Shadow-breath that rushed toward ground like smoke with weight, and the Shadow screamed. Huge gusts of black, roiling mist became black ash and smoke in an eye-blink.