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 assume 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.
Some of it escaped the Arkon’s fire and continued its downward rush. None of it touched Kaylin; it skittered off the moving, linked wall that rotated above her head. But it landed in the streets, and where it landed, it took root.
Kaylin drew daggers, watching as the Shadows began to coalesce.
But they were coalescing beside a Dragon. If Shadows had any brains, they’d clearly left them in the Dragon’s maw. The Arkon didn’t have a sword; he didn’t need one. Nor, apparently, did he need to be in his Dragon form to use his claws; he certainly didn’t need the form to breathe fire. Just incentive. She had no idea what form might have emerged from the Shadows that had managed to survive, because he didn’t give them that chance.
Shadow, however, didn’t need a cohesive form to speak.
He will kill you for this.
They were talking to Kaylin.
She looked up to where the Outcaste was now fighting on two fronts: a red dragon he had injured and would clearly love to kill, and a golden one. The latter, he evaded, but not easily, and if he had some compunction about harming Bellusdeo, she clearly didn’t reciprocate. She did speak—Dragon words—and he responded; his was the louder, clearer voice.
Kaylin had never, ever wanted to learn a language so badly in her life. She turned to the Arkon. “What did she say?”
“She made her displeasure with his existence clear.”
“That’s it?”
“She made some claims about how she was going to alleviate her displeasure.”
“What did he say?”
The Arkon was silent, in part because the Outcaste hadn’t finished speaking. Bellusdeo didn’t seem intent on giving him the chance, on the other hand; she could move so damn fast she was almost more snake than great-winged creature. Kaylin noted that Tiamaris made no attempt to speak at all; whatever he had to say, he’d already said it.
“Arkon?”
The Arkon’s expression slowly lost the radiance of joy and awe that had briefly transformed it; what was left in its wake was an expression meant for graveyards.
He said in very quiet Barrani, “Old friend,” and she knew she would never get a translation of what had been said from him.
“Wait, where’s Sanabalis?”
“I believe he has landed on the Imperial side of the Ablayne, and is repairing in haste to the Palace.”
The Outcaste retreated—and it was a retreat, not a rout. He was strong, that much Kaylin had always understood. Strong enough to withstand two Dragons, and Kaylin privately thought he would have had less difficulty if he’d been intent on injuring both of them.
She was afraid that Bellusdeo would follow him beyond the fief’s borders, and it was clearly a fear the Arkon shared—but in the end, she wheeled back to where Tiamaris hovered. Tiamaris himself knew the borders of the fief—even in the air—better than anyone but Tara, and he didn’t attempt to leave his own territory.
But he waited until Bellusdeo returned, and followed where she led. She led, of course, straight back to the scorched and scored streets in which she’d left Kaylin. She didn’t even have trouble landing, although her expression—all yards of it—implied that the air was most where she wanted to be. Her eyes were red, but the red faded to a dull orange by the time she folded her wings across her back, dislodging her passenger.
She eyed him as he wobbled himself to his feet. “You almost strangled me,” she told him, snorting smoke.
“I’m—I’m sorry, Lady—but I—”
She snickered. In a Dragon her size, it sounded all wrong. Maggaron actually reddened, which caused her snicker to deepen. Then she looked down at her very large paws—claws?—and shook her head. Kaylin, who had watched a Dragon transform in close quarters, had enough time to look away before Bellusdeo once again occupied a human-size portion of the street. Without any of the normal, human-size clothing.
This caused the poor Ascendant to redden further and stammer enough that whatever it was he was trying to say couldn’t be deciphered. Bellusdeo laughed. Turning to Kaylin, she said, “You see? This is what he’s like. He’s been like this for centuries now—and it never gets old.”
“Lady,” he said, looking pained.
“Oh, hush,” she replied just before she threw her arms around him. Her eyes were a brilliant, liquid gold. “You did it,” she told him as he obligingly bent and lifted her, settling the bulk of her weight on his left shoulder. “You brought me—brought us—home.” She glanced up at a sky still occupied by a large, red Dragon. “It seems a bit on the primitive side; it’ll take some work.”
The Arkon winced, but—to Kaylin’s amazement—failed to correct her. This seemed a tad unfair. “Bellusdeo.”
She glanced at him from the vantage of the Ascendant’s height, and her flawless skin grew momentarily wrinkled around the bridge of her nose. Then her eyes widened, although they remained gold. “Blood of the Ancients— Lannagaros, is that you?” She spoke in slightly accented High Barrani.
Kaylin looked at the Arkon.
The Arkon looked, momentarily, at the ground.
“Lannagaros?” Kaylin asked him.
The Arkon winced. “That is not what I am now called,” he told Bellusdeo.
“Oh? What are you now called?”
“The Arkon.”
She nearly fell off her seat; her seat caught her. “
You’re
the Arkon?”
“That is my title, yes.”
“But what happened to—”
“Bellusdeo, I feel this discussion is inappropriate for the venue.”
“Oh. How surprising.” There was more sarcasm in that voice than Kaylin had ever heard directed
at
the Arkon. She glanced up at the sky again. “Who is that young man, anyway?”
“He is Tiamaris of the Arandel Flight.”
Bellusdeo shook her head. “Clearly things have changed since we ran into the Shadowfold. But we’re back now. I’m sure it can all be explained.” She hesitated and then twisted around on Maggaron’s shoulders. “But…all these buildings. Do you keep a lot of humans now?”
Kaylin didn’t even bristle.
The Arkon, however, had had enough of this particular conversation, and retreated by bellowing Tiamaris down from his own stretch of sky. It was, of course, in Dragon, and whatever he said was enough to get Tiamaris to land; Tiamaris wasn’t notably more flexible than Bellusdeo had been. On the other hand, when he transformed, he made himself some armor.
Bellusdeo, having had enough of mocking her poor Ascendant, now did likewise, and Maggaron put her down.
“You are in the lands of Tiamaris,” Tiamaris told her, “and you are both a welcome and honored guest.” There might have been a little too much emphasis on the last word; it was hard to tell. “If you would be amenable, we might repair to the Tower.”
“The Tower?”
“Yes. It is where your other eight bodies are currently being stored.”
She raised a brow, and the teasing smile fell away from her face. “Yes,” she told him quietly. “I would be amenable. Perhaps you can tell me what’s happened since I last saw this world. Dragons didn’t spend all that much time in human cities, here, that I recall.”
“This is not entirely a human city,” the fieflord replied.
“Oh?”
“It houses many races. The Aerians. The Leontines. The Tha’alani.”
“I don’t think I know the last one.”
“Ah. You will.” He offered her an arm and she stared at it. Kaylin had done pretty much the same thing on her visit to the High Halls, and had to stop herself from smiling.
The Arkon, however, did not. He lifted a hand to his brow and massaged it. “Bellusdeo,” he said quietly, “much has changed in your absence. There has been war, peace, and war, but those are perhaps not the most significant. While this city is largely populated by mortals, it also houses a number of Barrani Lords.”
Her golden brows rose into her hairline.
“The mortals and the Court intermingle from time to time, and certain…forms…are observed. One of them would be the one which is causing you such consternation. For the moment, however, it is not significant.”
“Ah. And what is?”
“Your presence here. It will be of significance for all of Dragonkind, whether they wake or sleep.” His eyes narrowed. “And I believe, from your current behavior, that you already suspect this.”
Her smile was impish, young, and very, very un-Dragon-like. “Maybe,” she said. “Maggaron, come.”
He was standing a ways back from Bellusdeo and the two Dragons, his head hanging a little low.
“Honestly, what is it this time?”
“I don’t—”
She walked over to him, caught his arm, and almost dragged him off his feet, demonstrating that size and strength in this case didn’t match. “I don’t have time for your sense of propriety. You’re the only person who remembers, and without your intervention, I would never have escaped the enemy. If anyone has a right to be by my side, it’s you.” She smacked the side of his head, but gently.
He made no further argument, but he did eye both of the Dragons with an expression of pained humility.
Tiamaris led her away, Maggaron in tow, trying at eight feet, or as close as made no difference, to somehow be
smaller
than the two Dragons behind whom he walked. Kaylin turned to Severn, who was quietly tending the burns on one arm. In almost the same tone as Bellusdeo had used, she said, “What are you doing?”
Severn, however, was not Maggaron. He held out his arm, and she took it between both of her palms. In silence, she whispered the marks on her own arms to life, and they glowed gently—and visibly—while she healed the injuries he’d taken. She then looked up to where the Arkon was surprisingly still waiting.
“Arkon?”
“Touch me and I will have your hands removed,” he replied.
“It’s not that I have anything against your suffering,” she replied, although she stayed clear of his injuries. “But these days, when you’re suffering,
I’m
generally suffering, as well. Can I ask a question?”
“Can I prevent it?”
He was in a remarkably good mood, considering the presence of the Outcaste. Good enough that Kaylin took a chance.
“There aren’t many other Dragon females around, are there?”
He lifted one brow. “It is not much discussed,” he said after a long enough pause she’d almost given up on an answer. “But as it no doubt
will
be, I will tell you. There weren’t any, as you have already deduced. There is now one.”
Kaylin stared down the street; the lone female Dragon in question was just disappearing around a corner. “And the Outcaste wanted her?”