The sundered seal

Chapter Thirteen: A Truce

The shadow did not belong to a cloud.

It lay across the foothills like a great black sail, and as Kaelen and Lyra hung motionless in the air above it, the sky itself seemed to ripple, the way the air shivers over a baker's oven. Then the shimmer thinned, and a shape condensed out of it, slow and enormous and terribly quiet.

Vorthak, First of the Ashen Brood, had been flying above them the whole time.

He was even larger than Kaelen remembered. His wings, spread wide, covered half the foothills, and the molten veins beneath his iron-black scales pulsed in slow rhythm, like a banked forge. But something was different. The great horned head was lowered, and the burning eyes were half lidded, and the voice that had thundered over Dawnhollow like a landslide now came soft and deliberate, as though each word cost him effort.

"You may lower your hands, daughter of the wind," said the dragon. "If I wished you dead, you would have been ash before you saw my shadow."

Lyra did not lower them. The air around her fingers still hummed. "You promised to burn our home by sunset."

"I did." Vorthak's eyes closed, briefly. "And I did not. Have you wondered why?"

"We assumed you were called away."

"I was not called away. I was fighting." A low sound rolled in the dragon's chest, half laugh and half groan. "It is not a simple thing to explain. May I land? I am old, and hovering tires me more than I would like to admit."

The twins exchanged a glance. After a long moment, Kaelen nodded.

The dragon settled on a bare ridge below them, and the ground shook as his claws sank into the stone. He folded his wings with a rustle like a hundred sails being furled and lowered his massive head until it rested on the rock, so that his eye lay level with theirs. It was gold and red and impossibly deep, and in its depths Kaelen saw something he had not expected.

Exhaustion. A vast, bone-deep weariness, older than the settlement, older than the walls of Valdris, older than the ancestors who first learned to build.

"Sit," said Vorthak. "Please. I will not harm you."

They landed on the ridge a respectful distance away, and neither of them sat.

"You are afraid," observed the dragon, without reproach. "That is wise. Fear keeps small creatures alive. But I tell you plainly that I have no wish to hurt you, and have not for some days." He drew a long, rattling breath, and the heat of it stirred their cloaks. "The sickness comes in tides. It rises and it ebbs. When it rises, I am not myself. I see only my hunger, and my hatred, and the endless dark where the voices are. When it ebbs, as it is ebbing now, I remember who I was."

"And who were you?" asked Kaelen quietly.

"A guardian." The great eye moved to him. "My brood kept the deep fires of the abyss, long before your people knew how to strike a spark. We tended the roots of the earth. We did not hate you. We did not think of you at all. You were simply small and loud and far above, and we were content to let you be."

"Then why attack?"

"Because I could not stop myself." The voice dropped. "Do you understand? When the seal broke and the sickness poured down into the dark, it did not ask my leave. It crawled into my kin one by one, and they began to scream, and I could do nothing. I am the eldest of the Ashen Brood, and I could not protect them. I could only watch as they became the things that darkened your skies."

A silence fell. Far down the slope, a lone crow cawed once and fell quiet.

"The wyvern," said Lyra slowly. "The one that spoke to me above the square. It said it was not choosing."

"Ashkar." Vorthak's eyes closed again. "My youngest sister's child. She was a gentle thing. She loved to fly in storms, and wrote songs, if you can believe it, in the old tongue. Now she answers to a voice that is not her own." He opened his eyes. "You pressed your light against her, boy. I felt it from three leagues away. I felt the chain strain. It was the first time in all these long days that I felt anything like hope."

Kaelen's throat tightened. He touched the bandages on his arm without meaning to.

"I could not break it," he said. "I tried, but it was too strong. And you broke the moment."

"I know. I am sorry for that. I did not mean to interrupt. I was drawn by the light, as a moth is drawn, and in the drawing I frightened you off." A pause. "I have thought of little else since."

"What do you want from us?" said Lyra.

Vorthak was silent for a long breath. Then he lifted his head and looked at the two of them, and the gold of his eyes seemed, for a moment, almost human.

"A truce," he said.

The word hung in the cold air like smoke.

"You cannot be serious," said Lyra.

"I have never been more serious." The dragon's voice steadied. "Hear me. This is what I can offer. I command the Ashen Brood, or what remains of them. There are forty-three of us still living, scattered across the north. When the sickness ebbs, we remember. When it rises, we are lost. But I have found, in these last days, that I can sometimes hold the tide at bay if I focus on a single thing. A word. A promise. A purpose."

"And your purpose is us."

"My purpose," said Vorthak, "is not to become what the voice wishes me to be. To keep one place in this world unburnt. One valley, one town, one people whom I have chosen to spare. If I can anchor myself to that, then perhaps I can hold on a little longer." The great head dipped. "I would choose Dawnhollow. I ask your leave."

Lyra stared at him. "You want us to be your anchor."

"I want to stand between you and my own kin, when they come. And they will come, little wind. The sickness drives us towards the places where humans gather. It is a hunger beyond hunger. But if I stand with you, if I fight at your walls, I think it will give me something to cling to."

"That is an extraordinary thing to ask."

"It is." He did not look away. "In return, I offer what I have. My fire is not what it once was, but it is not small. I can scour the northern pasture in a single pass. And I can tell you things, the secrets of the abyss, the history of the seal, the nature of the voice. Things that no human has known for ten thousand years."

Kaelen exchanged a long look with his sister. She had not lowered her guard, but the stiffness had gone from her shoulders.

"What would you require of us?" he asked.

"Three things." The dragon seemed to relax a little, as though the asking were the hardest part. "First, that your people cease to hunt my kin in the open. Those who are lost will fall to your blades, I know that. I cannot ask you to spare them when they come at your throats. But I ask that you do not seek them out. Do not lay traps for the young. Do not hang their bodies from your walls."

"Valdris does that," said Lyra grimly.

"Valdris does many things." The dragon's lip curled. "I ask this only of Dawnhollow."

"And the second?"

"That you listen. The sickness is not a plague. It is not natural. It was made, and I know by whom, and I would tell you the whole of it if you will sit and hear me. But the tide is rising, and I cannot hold it long. I will tell you at the next ebb, if you agree."

"And the third?" said Kaelen. He already suspected the answer.

The dragon's gaze lowered. For the first time, the great creature seemed to hesitate.

"That when the time comes," said Vorthak, very quietly, "you try. Not for me, necessarily. For my brood. I will not ask you to risk yourself. I know what it costs. I can smell the sickness on you, boy, I can smell it clear across this ridge, and I know that you have been taking it into yourself to spare others." The gold eyes burned. "I ask only that you consider it. I ask that when you can, you reach for Ashkar again, and for the others. And I will do all that I can to make it possible."

The wind sighed across the ridge. Far below, the shadow of the dragon's wing lay across the grass like a fallen night.

It was Lyra who spoke first, quietly, almost to herself.

"My father would say yes."

"Your father is a wise man," said Vorthak. "I told him so, at the gate."

"He also told me never to make a promise I could not keep." She stepped forward, and the wind around her hands finally died. "I cannot give you Dawnhollow's word. I can give you mine. If you hold to your side, if you do not turn on us in the dark, then I will hold to ours. And I will carry this to the council as a recommendation."

"That is more than I hoped."

"And if the sickness rises?"

"Then you will do what you must." The dragon's voice did not waver. "I would not ask you to spare me. I only ask that you remember, afterwards, that I tried."

Kaelen looked at the vast black shape on the ridge, at the pulsing red veins beneath the scales, and felt something loosen in his chest. It was not trust. Trust was too large a word. But it was the first thread of it, thin and fragile as spider silk.

"I accept," he said.

"Kaelen," Lyra began.

"I accept, for myself. And I will argue for it before the council." He drew off his right glove, slowly, and held out his bare, blackened hand. "You have my word, Vorthak. I will try for your brood when I can."

The dragon regarded the hand for a long, silent moment. Then, with enormous care, he lowered one great talon until it hovered an inch from Kaelen's palm.

"I have not touched a human in ten thousand years," he murmured. "I find that I am afraid."

"So am I," said Kaelen.

The talon touched his palm, light as a leaf. The heat of it was gentle, almost kind. And in that instant, the black threads on Kaelen's wrist flickered, and shrank, and then darkened again, as though startled.

Vorthak drew back sharply. His eyes had widened.

"Gods below," he rumbled. "What was that?"

"I do not know." Kaelen stared at his hand. "Did you feel it?"

"I felt the sickness in you... and the sickness in me... recognise each other." The dragon's voice had changed, shaken and low. "They knew one another, boy. Like old friends. Like kin."

Neither twin could answer. A cold wind rose from the south, and the dragon's head snapped up, nostrils flaring.

"The tide," he said hoarsely. "It is coming. I must go. Come to the Hollow Stones, three nights hence, at the ebb. I will tell you everything."

He launched into the sky in a thunder of wings, rising and rising until he was a black speck against the pale clouds. And as he went, a low, anguished roar rolled back across the foothills, half dragon and half something else, something raw and terrible and hungry.

The twins stood a long time on the empty ridge, listening to it fade.

"Kaelen," said Lyra at last. "What did he mean? Kin?"

Kaelen did not answer. He was staring at the black threads on his hand, and he was thinking about the cold voice in the dark that had whispered, so patiently, so gently, that he was only what he was afraid to be.

Far below, at the foot of the ridge, the distant towers of Valdris cast long shadows across the plain. The sun was sinking. At the east postern, a pale young woman in a grey cloak was waiting, and counting the hours, and praying that the Ascendant would come.