spoke again. “There’s no such thing as a pure Faitoren. Raclin might have some dragon in him. If so, it’s weak. Raclin can’t make fire when he’s flying—fortunately for us.” He added, after a moment’s thought: “Ilissa never said anything to you about Raclin’s father?”
“No. I never even thought to ask. Who was he?”
Aruendiel shook his head. “She’s always been coy about that. Probably with good reason.”
“But it would be impossible, a dragon and a human—”
“Ilissa’s not human.”
“I am, though,” Nora pointed out. “The baby I lost. Raclin’s baby. What would it—?”
“Children tend to resemble their parents. In your case, as I told you before, you would have been dead before you could notice the resemblance,” he said, standing up. “We’d best be moving along. I don’t want to have to fly this thing after dark.”
She got to her feet as a harsh chorus of bird calls began to sound in the forest bordering the meadow—the scornful, furious accents of blue jays and the hoarse alarms of crows. Then, just as suddenly, the birds fell silent. A long, winged shadow appeared over the treetops.
Nora thought: I knew we shouldn’t have stopped. She took a few steps toward the forest, as though that would do any good. Aruendiel stood unmoving, his lifted face pale—frozen with fear, Nora decided, her own hope draining away.
Raclin bulleted toward them, back and wings still slick with lake water. There was no more circling or swooping now, no idle threats, no wicked playfulness in his flight. Only as he closed in—thirty yards, now twenty yards away—did he unsheathe the reptilian grin, allowing himself a jaw-snap in Nora’s direction.
She dropped to the ground, shielding her head with her arms. Against the rush of jagged wings, Aruendiel’s lean figure looked as frail as a twig.
The magician gave a slight, decisive nod, as though, after long consideration, he had finally made up his mind on a difficult point.
The huge wings wilted. The yellow eyes closed. Raclin dropped to the ground.
For a long, stunned moment, Nora waited, still prone, her eyes on the creature’s slumped bulk. One of its wings was flat on the ground, while the other poked upward, askew, like a collapsing tent. A muscular forelimb was flung outward, the claws relaxed, looking almost like a human hand, if you ignored its inhuman size.
Aruendiel walked around the creature slowly. Taking care not to step on the outstretched wings, he tilted his head to view the monster critically from different angles, like a workman inspecting a finished job.
Shakily, she scrambled to her feet. Now she could see that the long, toothy jaw hung slightly open, letting a thread of saliva descend toward the ground. The eyelid facing upward was not entirely closed, either, but the eyeball underneath was as still as glass. Only the surface of Raclin’s torso moved up and down in a sluggish rhythm.
“He’s asleep!” Nora said. “He’s not dead.”
Aruendiel gave a short bark of laughter. “You sound disappointed. Anyone would think you didn’t love your husband.”
“I don’t love him, and he’s not my husband,” she snapped. “Why don’t you just kill him?”
The magician grinned darkly at her. “It’s not so easy to kill Raclin, as you may have noticed. Especially in this form.”
“But he could wake up at any time,” she said. “You said that iron could kill the Faitoren. If we only had a knife or something, couldn’t we simply stab him?”
By way of answer, Aruendiel went over to the leather satchel tied to the flying branch. Nora heard the scrape of metal against metal as, somehow, from a sack that seemed only large enough for a lunch and a change of clothes, he produced a sword as long as his arm. It was doubled-sided, with a plain grip of black-hued steel, and looked heavy, but Aruendiel handled it comfortably enough. He walked back to the sleeping monster and aimed a sharp blow at Raclin’s torso. The tip of the sword bit straight at the heart, but as it touched the lizard hide, it bounced off harmlessly, with a metallic groan.
“Let me try,” Nora surprised herself by saying. Aruendiel looked even more surprised, but after a moment, with an odd smile, he handed her the sword. Lifting it with two hands—it
Aruendiel smiled again, off-kilter. He picked up the sword and ran his finger along the blade to make sure that the steel was undamaged. Raclin stirred uneasily.
“He’s waking up,” Nora exclaimed.
Aruendiel shook his head. “Not with that spell. It’s the hundred years’ sleep—at least, it would be for a human. Raclin might sleep as little as a day. A week or two, more likely.
“The problem, of course, is that when he does wake up, he’ll be extremely well rested and eager to exact revenge. It would be prudent to ensure that he doesn’t wake up.”
“So you are going to kill him.”
“Not exactly. It would not be honorable, while he is sleeping.” Aruendiel was quiet for a moment, motionless. Only when Nora felt butterflies in her stomach, the momentary giddiness that she was beginning to associate with magic, did she realize that he was doing a spell. She looked more closely at Raclin. His grayish green skin had turned darker and had taken on a dull, matte texture. The wet gash of his mouth, the black, serrated rows of teeth, the shining crescents of his partly closed eyes—all were now the same leaden color. She counted to ten, twenty, thirty, but the muscled torso was no longer rising and falling.
She shot an inquiring glance at Aruendiel. He waved her forward impatiently. “Go ahead. He won’t hurt you.”
Nora put her hand on the creature’s unmoving shoulder. It seemed to her that at first there was a flurry of panicked, angry movement under her fingers, as though she had laid her hand on a door behind which a trapped animal was scuffling, and then she felt only the quiet roughness of the stone, barely warmed by the late-afternoon sun.
“How long will this spell last?” she asked, straightening. “A week? Five minutes?” She wished that Aruendiel were not quite so scrupulous about his honor.
“In theory, until the bones of the earth crumble, the seas go dry, and the power of the sun is no more, as the old wizards used to say,” Aruendiel said, sounding more cheerful than he had all day. “In reality, until Ilissa finds him and frees him. Long enough for us to finish our journey in peace, at any rate.”
Nora touched the rock again, reassuring herself that it was dead mineral matter. Turning away, she felt taut muscles in her shoulders and neck begin to relax, although—she reminded herself—there was still the rest of the flight to Semr to endure.
“Why didn’t you turn him to stone before? When he was chasing us?” she asked Aruendiel.
Aruendiel had already settled himself onto the branch, whose wings were beginning to beat in a slow cadence. “I was occupied with flying,” he said shortly. Nora climbed on behind him, twisting slightly as she tried to find a comfortable spot on the tree limb. After a second’s hesitation, she took hold of his shoulder again.
The sprawling form of Raclin-turned-statue dwindled beneath them, dark against the yellowing grass. It looked like a broken toy. Nora watched it steadily until the meadow disappeared behind them. Aruendiel did not look back once.
By the close of the day, they had reached the sea. Aruendiel guided their craft along a coast of craggy rocks and narrow beaches, until they came to the mouth of a broad river.
The far side of the river bristled with the masts of ships at anchor. More ships headed for port, their colored sails fat with the evening breeze. Beyond the docks Nora could see a crush of roofs and domes and a few slender towers. It was a city, a real city, although it was difficult, in the fading light, to estimate just how large. The wind brought the smell of smoke, dried fish, and sewage to her nostrils.
Aruendiel followed the coast past the river and the lights of the city, then veered sharply inland. They flew over dark ground, and then a lighter strip appeared below. Aruendiel jerked the branch downward, and they
