The Nothing: A Book of the Between (28 page)

If she dared.

They had barely survived the last encounter with a dying Dreamworld, and much of that had been luck. Chances of succeeding a second time were slim. As were chances of surviving on the ground below. Kalina was tiring. Strong as the girl was, there was only so much magic to be used before time to refill was necessary.

No safety anywhere. Only greater and lesser risks.

A fragment of dream came to her, memory from the long past when she had not understood what she dreamed. In the dream, there was a long, round tunnel, grayish white. At the end of it, a green door with a brass knob. She had been flying in the dream, with an odd sense of carrying weight that was not her own.

Faith. It was all she had left to her.

And so, calling on the Dreamshifter while still in dragon form, she focused on that green door, making it a reality. What lay behind it, she didn’t know, and there was no time to wonder. Without a human voice to speak, she formed the word with her will and sent it out ahead of her.

“Open!”

She opened her dragon mouth and uttered a wordless cry, feeling the Awareness within join in the command. The green door slammed open, just in time for her to stretch out her neck curve her wings, and glide through.

Water as far as the eye could see. A stiff wind smelling of salt and seaweed blew directly against her and she curved her wings and altered her course to move with it rather than fight it. At first, her dragon blood surged at the scent of the sea and the wide sky. A desire to fly free and wild flowed through her, to shed the burdensome weight on her back. Friends, she reminded herself. But the longer she maintained the dragon shape, the harder it was to retain the memory of her human emotions.

Tacking back and forth across the wind like a sailboat, using it to enhance her speed and aid her flight, she swooped down lower for a closer look. The water rolled in even swells, the deep blue of open ocean. Dark shapes moved below the surface, but even her dragon vision couldn’t get a clear lock on what they were. Too small for whales but big enough to be dangerous.

Her body was too heavy to allow her to ride the wind currents like an albatross, and her wings were tiring. She needed food to sustain the high-energy burn of carrying the additional weight on her back, a chance to recover from the magic she’d drained escaping from Sorcerer’s Island. If she crash-landed into the water, she could float for awhile, but she’d never be able to launch back into the air.

Zee’s voice called out to her, clear and beloved. “Are you able to open a door straight through into another Dreamworld?”

Maybe. Opening a door directly from one world into another would mean that they would have to be bumped right up against each other, side by side. There were likely parallel worlds in existence, but no guarantee that this was one of them. Any door she opened would most likely take them back into the Between, so dangerously unstable. But then, any Dreamworld, including this one, could be wiped out in an instant.

The thought of those worlds gone dark chilled even her dragon blood. She scanned the horizon for a blot of darkness eating away at water and sky. No sign of danger, but that meant nothing. Sinking ever lower as her tiring body lost altitude, she forced her thoughts away from the fear and toward a solution. If she could shape her will just right—that of dragon, Dreamshifter, and Sorcieri—maybe she could open a door directly into the Cave of Dreams.

She pictured the cave as it had been the first time she had seen it, with the living Guardian and the sound and color of the dreamspheres. She’d been so frightened then, by the vibration and the heat and the dragon. Now she would pay any price to restore the cave to what it had once been. Now the Guardian of the Cave was dead, murdered, the dreamspheres decaying back into raw dream matter and taking the Dreamworlds with them.

Aidan will pay for this.

Anger fueled her power and she used the surge to create a door. It formed unevenly at first, a wavering portal of light and dark completely unlike her usual green doors. Still, she flew toward it, all of her attention on shaping what needed to be, blotting out fear and the memory of her last experience with the raw dream matter.

“D
RAGON
DOWN
.”

The report came through loud and clear, amplified into a buzz as every dragon received the message and sent it on. The tone was angry and edged with both fear and bloodlust. They were all hungry and water was in short supply. Three dragons dead in the last two days, and the rest weakening. The first two had been young and lacking their full strength. They succumbed early to the lack of water and food, lying down to rest and unable to rise again. The third, a cripple with a damaged wing, had simply dropped from the sky like a stone, exhausted.

“Volcano’s soon to erupt,” Teheren sent, but for Aidan alone. The big red-gold dragon flew in formation just on her right flank, in the tradition-honored position of first lieutenant. At all hours, in flight, waking and sleeping, he was there. Watching, waiting, offering up observations that always just escaped crossing the line into criticism or advice.

Now, Aidan ignored him, circling back to where a dragon crouched on the ground, sides heaving, neck extended, wings spread a little but not enough to take flight. It was an old male this time, his scales thickened and dulled with age. He hissed at her approach, shooting out a thin jet of fire.

This infuriated her, stirring her wild blood. She wanted to swoop in from above and take his neck between her teeth. The crunch of scales and bone, the burst of hot blood, the taste of flesh. She, too, was hungry. With an effort of will, she restrained the desire and came to land in front of the fallen one, a safe distance from any more flames. Teheren touched down in perfect formation. No sense of fatigue from him, or anger, or hunger. No subtle undercurrents from him at all.

This was a concern, but not one she had time for, because she was picking up undercurrents in force from the rest of the flight. Discipline held for the moment, but barely. She felt them crowding the boundaries, all moving a little closer to the fallen dragon, who had already shifted in their minds to prey.

The old dragon lifted his head and stared them all down defiantly. “Have we fallen to this?”

Real speech, not just on the silent channels. She felt the echoes roll through the ravening throng behind her. They retreated, one infinitesimal step. Listening.

Teheren took this opportunity to cross the line from observation to advice. His voice came through on the private channel between them, loud and clear and without even the veneer of respect.
Great sky above. Pity you let him speak. Now there is trouble.

Aidan remembered, all at once, that the red-gold had not eaten from any of the kills. Not once. Not a mouthful, not a bone. He had stood, always, silently watching. Too silent. She should be able to read him, but when she tried, there was nothing but a smooth, blank surface.

“Will you tear me apart before my death, as you did the others?” the old dragon asked, in the long-unused speech of the Forever. Unused but not forgotten. All of the dragons understood the words and reacted to them. “Have we fallen to such savagery?” He coughed, shooting a thin stream of flame. Not pure, Aidan noticed, but tinged with green and weak.

Not one of the dragons moved. They might have been statues, so still were they. Still angry, though. Still hungry. One wrong word and that hunger could turn into ugly revolt. If she killed the old one then, it would reassert her dominance, but his words would linger and fester, making her appear uncivilized and barbarian.

She hesitated.

“Go ahead,” the old dragon said. “But know this before I die. My name is Olcifor and my mother was of the dragons of the Forever, so old am I. This land is not as she told it to me. All my life, I held out hope of meeting one of the true dragons, but it seems that they and the land are dead. Death is welcome, and I offer my flesh freely to all. I ask only for a clean death, worthy of a long life. Who will offer it to me?”

I will. Teheren sent the answer clear and triumphant , and then spoke it aloud, the words a little awkward from a voice long unused but all too comprehensible. “I will.”

Rage ignited Aidan’s blood, evaporating fear. How dare Teheren seize this opportunity, the one she needed to confirm herself as their just and decisive leader? Already, he stood in position. The dying dragon stretched out his neck, asking for the death blow. How did he know the ancient speech? Aidan herself did not know it. Her mother had been human and Dreamshifter; the dragon blood came from her father.

And so, she risked her one secret advantage and shifted into her human form. The softness of skin felt strange after the long stretch as dragon. Even stranger was the curve of her belly and the weight of the baby within. She should not be so far along with child and she was staggered by the reality. Her hips felt loose, her breasts heavy, the skin of her belly taut and ridged with red marks. She’d meant to make a decisive speech in the human tongue, but instead found herself staring down at the strangeness of her own body. The baby moved and kicked, a sensation so foreign, it nearly sent her into panic, as if the child were a parasite and not the much-desired warrior son.

In human form, she could not listen to the unspoken communications that surely ran through the channels. But every dragon in the flight had shifted its attention to her. Now it was her task to make sure they saw her as the leader and not as prey.

“The right and responsibility of the kill is mine,” she said, moving into position next to Teheren. “But I grant this sacred task to my second-in-command.” She bowed slightly to the old dragon. “May you find your place in the stars.”

An ancient formula, taught to her by her mother before she died. The old one’s response ought to be “Fly high; I go in peace.” Instead, he shot a jet of flame at her. He was weak, but it was close enough to redden her now-vulnerable skin. “You blaspheme,” he said. “A half-breed masquerading as dragon. I will not speak the last rites with you.”

Teheren dealt the killing blow just a moment too late. The words were said and rang out loud across the ranks of the assembled dragons. Silence grew thick and heavy. The nearest ranks of dragons moved in, almost imperceptibly, drawn to the blood and the promise of meat. Unconsciously, Aidan’s hands moved to cover the mound of baby.

“Hold ranks!” she commanded, pitching her voice to carry. “I am Aidan, daughter of Allel and the King of the Forever. I rule by right of blood and birth. Who among you dares to challenge my right—you who have been born in the shadows of the Between, who have no speech among you, no knowledge of anything other than blood and lust and flight?” She paused, watching them, gauging the response from visible cues and intuition.

So far, all held in position. There was tension, but the ranks held. Timing was everything and she didn’t dare push the limits. Only a few seconds’ pause, and then she turned to Teheren.

“Your kill, your right of command,” she said, formally, handing over the responsibility of sharing out the meat. It would look like respect to the ignorant horde, she hoped, while relieving her of the difficulty of managing them while in human form.

Unless she had misjudged him, of course. He was no ignorant Between-born, and he could destroy her with a single blow of a heavy head swung on a long neck, a spike from a talon, or tear apart her flesh and swallow her in a single bite. She had given him an opportunity to gain status, though, and she doubted he would turn on her in this moment.

Teheren moved forward to stand between the dead and the press of hungry dragons. The sun struck fire from his burnished scales, making him look as though he was more flame than dragon.

In that moment she began, for the first time, to be truly afraid. When Teheren spoke again, her frail human flesh quivered before the impact of his voice, even as her soul raged against the way he kept twisting her plans.

“Dragons, hear me. You were born of the Between, it is true, and yet all dragons come from the Forever, and here we all return. We are no longer the feral Between-born, acting like the mindless beasts with which we have been surrounded. We must act accordingly. This dragon, Ulcifor, is older than any. He has come home to the land of his childhood, the land that belongs to all of us, and he has earned his rest. The flesh of dragons serves to nourish the earth; our blood makes the rivers flow. Look around you—you wonder at the devastation of the land, you ask yourselves if the legends were wrong and if we have come here only to die. I say to you—some of us shall surely die, but we will nourish the earth in death. If we consume the flesh of this noble dragon into our own flesh, we contribute to the decay of the land. I know you are hungry, as am I. But this, too, I know. If we carry his body to the place where the river once ran and leave him there to his rest, it will be the beginning of healing the land.”

Aidan felt the tension ease little by little as Teheren spoke. He was insane. As hungry as the others were, they would surely break ranks and devour the fallen, allowing her to be again the bountiful leader providing for their needs. She would say something about how all were nourished by the one, that the health of dragons surely superseded any mumbo jumbo about the barren earth. Earth was earth. Life was life.