The sundered seal

Chapter Five: Dragons and Wyverns Return from Myth

The first wyvern reached Dawnhollow before the bells had finished ringing.

It came out of the red sky like a thrown spear, long and narrow and the colour of wet slate, with leathery wings that cracked like sails in a gale and a barbed tail that trailed behind it like a whip. It was perhaps thirty feet from snout to tail-tip, no larger than a great horse with wings, and yet the sight of it sent a groan of pure terror through the defenders on the wall. Nobody there had ever seen such a thing. Nobody had ever believed it possible.

"Archers!" shouted Brenna Voss, her voice cracking. "Hold your aim! Wait for it to close!"

The wyvern did not close. It swept overhead in a single wide arc, so low that the torches along the palisade guttered in the wind of its passing, and Kaelen caught a glimpse of its eyes as it went by. They were a deep, burning amber, and they were not the eyes of a mindless beast. They were measuring. Counting. Deciding.

Then it wheeled, folded its wings, and dived straight at the Hall of Rank.

"It is going for the children!" Lyra cried.

She did not wait for an answer. She launched herself from the walkway in a spiral of howling wind, cloak streaming, and rose to meet the creature in the open air above the square. Below her, the people of Dawnhollow looked up and saw one slender figure in green rising against the crimson heavens, and a monster descending upon her with its jaws agape.

The collision shook the whole valley.

Lyra struck first. She flung out both arms and a crescent of compressed wind burst from her hands, screaming through the air and catching the wyvern full across the snout. It was a blow that would have split an ox in two. The wyvern shrieked, flipped sideways, and slammed into the roof of a granary, scattering slate and splintered beams across the street. But it was up again almost at once, shaking its head, a long gash weeping dark blood along its jaw, and when it looked at Lyra again there was no longer any measuring in its gaze. There was only rage.

"Human," it hissed.

Every watchman on the wall froze. Even Lyra, hovering in mid-air with her hands still outstretched, faltered.

The voice was dry and sibilant, like wind scraping through a canyon. But the word had been unmistakable. It had been spoken in plain speech, in the common tongue of the valley, with careful and bitter contempt.

"You can talk," Lyra said, before she could stop herself.

"Of course I can talk." The wyvern rose into the air, wings beating slowly, until it hung level with her. Its amber eyes narrowed. "We have always been able to talk. Your kind simply stopped listening a very long time ago."

"Why are you attacking us?"

The creature laughed. It was a horrible sound, dry and rattling, and there was something in it that made the hair on Lyra's arms stand on end. It was not cruelty. It was something closer to grief.

"Why?" it whispered. "Ask the ones who shattered the seal. Ask the ones who poisoned the dark. For ten thousand years my people slept below, content to leave you to your small lives, and now our blood runs black and our minds burn and we cannot stop remembering what you did to us."

"We did nothing!" Lyra shouted. "We did not break the seal. We did not know you existed!"

"That," said the wyvern softly, "is precisely the problem."

It struck.

The fight above the square was brief and brutal. The wyvern was faster than Lyra had expected, and far stronger, and every time she cut it with wind it simply snarled and came on again, tearing at her cloak, raking the air inches from her face. Twice she was driven backwards. Once its tail caught her across the ribs and she cried out and tumbled a dozen feet before regaining her balance. Below her, the townsfolk screamed and ran for cover. Slates rained from the rooftops. The great bell in the Hall of Rank clanged wildly, struck by flying debris.

Kaelen saw it all from the northern wall, and he understood in an instant that his sister was losing.

"Father," he said, "I am going to her."

"You can barely stand."

"I can stand long enough."

Dorran looked at him, then at the writhing shapes above the square, and then, for a single moment, at the small dark mark on his own forearm. He said nothing. He only nodded.

Kaelen rose from the walkway and flew.

It was the first time he had flown in battle, and it felt nothing like the gentle drifting of the courtyard. The air bit at his face. His borrowed strength trembled under him, and every muscle in his body ached with exhaustion. But the light was still there, warm and stubborn at the centre of his chest, and as he climbed towards the clash he gathered it in both hands.

"Lyra!" he called. "Down!"

She dropped without hesitation, and Kaelen unleashed everything he had.

The light was not a weapon. It never had been. But it struck the wyvern like a wave, golden and gentle and utterly unavoidable, and the creature froze in mid-air, wings jerking, its body arching in what looked like agony.

Kaelen felt it. That was the strangest thing of all. He felt the darkness inside the creature, a black coil of something foul wrapped tight around its mind, thrumming with fury that was not entirely its own. It was the same sickness he had felt in the shepherd, and in Dorran's wound, and in the veins of the dead on the field. It lay across the wyvern's spirit like a chain, and when the light touched it, the chain strained.

"Stop," the wyvern gasped. Its amber eyes had gone wide and wild. "Stop, stop, what are you doing, what is that, it burns, it burns..."

"I am not trying to hurt you," said Kaelen. He could barely form the words. Sweat poured down his face. "I am trying to help."

"There is no helping." The wyvern's voice dissolved into a ragged, desperate whisper. "There is no helping us. Do you not understand? It is in all of us now. It crawls through the dark below and it whispers and whispers and we cannot make it stop. We are not choosing this."

The light flickered. For a single instant Kaelen thought the coil might break.

Then something struck him from behind.

It was not a blow of flesh. It was a blow of sound, a thunderous roar that rolled across the sky like a landslide and shattered every window in the lower town. Kaelen was flung sideways, his concentration torn away, the light gone out of his hands like a snuffed candle. Lyra seized his arm and dragged him down towards the rooftops as a vast shadow swept over them both.

Kaelen looked up and forgot how to breathe.

A dragon was descending upon Dawnhollow.

It was vast beyond reckoning. It was longer than the Hall of Rank, longer than the mill and the market square together, and its wings spanned the whole width of the northern sky. Its scales were the deep, dull black of cooling iron, edged with veins of molten red that pulsed faintly beneath the surface, and its horned head was lowered towards the settlement like a mountain stooping. Smoke curled from its nostrils. The air around it rippled with heat.

When it spoke, the voice came from everywhere at once.

"HUMANS."

The word rolled across the valley like thunder, and a hundred people fell to their knees.

"I AM VORTHAK, FIRST OF THE ASHEN BROOD, WARDEN OF THE DEEP FIRES. I WAS OLD WHEN YOUR FIRST FATHERS CRAWLED OUT OF THE MUD. I HAVE COME TO GIVE YOU A CHOICE."

On the northern wall, Dorran had risen to his full height. He gripped his sword in his good hand, and the dark mark on his wrist throbbed beneath his sleeve, but his voice, when it came, was clear and carrying.

"Speak, then!" he called. "I am Dorran of Dawnhollow, and I will hear you!"

The dragon's burning eyes swivelled towards him, vast and unreadable.

"HEAR THIS, DORRAN OF DAWNHOLLOW. THE SEAL IS BROKEN. THE DARK IS LOOSED. MY KIND WILL NOT SLEEP AGAIN, AND THE SICKNESS IN OUR BLOOD DRIVES US TO DESTROY ALL THAT LIVES ABOVE. WE CANNOT HELP IT. WE HAVE TRIED."

A strange, heavy silence fell. Even the wyvern, hovering limply above the rooftops, had lowered its head.

"I OFFER YOU THIS," said Vorthak. "BEFORE THE SUN SETS, LEAVE THIS PLACE. TAKE YOUR CHILDREN AND YOUR OLD AND GO SOUTH. DO NOT LOOK BACK. IF YOU REMAIN, I WILL BURN THIS VALLEY TO ASH, AND I WILL TAKE NO PLEASURE IN IT."

Dorran stood quite still. Then, to the astonishment of everyone watching, he lowered his sword.

"You do not wish to do this," he said.

"IT DOES NOT MATTER WHAT I WISH."

"It matters to me." Dorran's voice shook, just slightly. "Great one, I have seen what the sickness does. I have seen it in the creatures that came before you. They are not creatures of darkness. They were people. And I think, though I cannot be certain, that something is being done to you that you did not ask for."

For a very long moment, the dragon said nothing. The red fire beneath its scales pulsed like a slow heartbeat.

"YOU ARE WISER THAN YOU LOOK, LITTLE KING," said Vorthak at last, and there was something almost like sorrow beneath the thunder. "BUT WISDOM WILL NOT SAVE YOU. I GIVE YOU UNTIL SUNSET."

The great wings beat once, and the shockwave knocked half the watchmen off their feet. When the dust cleared, the dragon was already a distant shape against the crimson sky, with the wyvern limping after it, and the whole of Dawnhollow lay silent and shaking beneath them.

Kaelen sat on a broken rooftop, his arm around Lyra's shoulders, and watched them go.

"It was afraid," he said slowly.

"What?"

"The wyvern. And the dragon, too, in its way." He stared at his trembling hands. "They are not monsters, Lyra. They are prisoners. Something is inside them, and it is making them do this."

Lyra was quiet for a long time. When at last she spoke, her voice was very small.

"Then who is doing it?"

Kaelen had no answer. But on the far northern horizon, beneath the burning sky, a thin grey figure was walking slowly down a mountain road with his hands clasped behind his back, and he was smiling.