I said, “Begging your pardon, Maester Napata, but is the headmaster a dragon?”
His gaze skipped off Bee and landed on me. “Amun’s Horns! You both must leave at once.”
A gust of wind thundered through the cypresses. The white branches of alder lashed. A heavy weight thumped. Whimpering, the hounds huddled behind Bee.
A claw with talons as long as my arm raked between two cypress trees. Smoky mist spun through branches, which crisped to brown as if scorched by heat. The thin carpet of snow in the circle melted so fast that one moment we were standing on white and the next in seeps of water. A very large creature gave a very large
Trees parted as a head thrust through. Its skin was scaled with obsidian flakes that both devoured and reflected light. Its eyes were as big as my head, so fulgent a green that they shone.
My enemy.
What instinctive force clawed up from my gut I did not know; I only knew that this was my enemy and I had to kill it or be killed.
Yet its gaze paralyzed me. In its eyes lay memories like shadows.
I saw a curly-haired man lift a little girl up to stand on the lower railing of a large, flat ferryboat. He braced himself to steady her. A crippled woman limped up next to them as they stared across a wide river. The little girl was babbling nonstop about her lovely new boots and whether there were any biscuits left to eat and if they would have to sleep in the coach once they got across the river and could she possibly hold on at the back of the next coach with the guard if she was very very good. Her parents smiled fondly at her and apologetically at the other passengers crowding on, some of whom winced away from the woman’s scarred face and empty sleeve. The ferry juddered as it cast off from the shore and began tacking across the powerful current. The woman pressed a hand protectively on her rounded belly. Wind whipped up the girl’s long black braid. The ferry bucked as if wrenched by an invisible hand, and some passengers cried out in fear. But with each tilt and dip of the boat, the girl shrieked with excited glee as she leaned trustingly into her father’s arms. She galloped her little carved horse through empty air, and with a bright smile at her mother, she said—
“Cat! Step back!”
Too late. The vast jaws of the predator opened as the ferry tipped, took on water, and sank as quickly as a stone, so fast that no one had a chance to scream. The railing scraped the girl’s hand as she clung to it, then lost hold. A rumble was all the voice the river had as it tore her father away from her. Her mother’s hand gripped hers with such desperate strength, but as her blood welled up from the scrape and dissolved into the water, she faded out of her mother’s grasp.
Delicately the beast closed its mouth over my body. Then I was drowning in a sea of smoke.
30
In the depths of the ice, wreathed in ice, sleeps the Wild Hunt. When it is woken, all tremble in fear.
In the depths of the black abyss, there drift in a watery stupor the Taninim, called also leviathans, and when they wake, their lashing tails smash ships into splinters and drive the sundered hulks under the waves.
In the depths of earth, wreathed in fire, lies coiled in slumber the Mother of All Dragons. Her smoky breath fills the ocean of dreams. She stirs, waking, and the world changes.
So we are told.
But of all the great powers in this world, one thing was certain.
No one could screech as loudly as Bee when she was truly outraged.
Thumps hammered its body, small fists pounding the leviathan’s massive flanks.
Then she kicked him.
I wasn’t sure how I knew she had done that, only that I was spat out amid a rain of pebbles. After a moment the hail ceased. A dog crept up to me, ears down, and apologetically licked my face.
“Pah!” I shoved the animal away when it looked as if it meant to lick me again. Grabbing my cane, I staggered to my feet and spun to face the monster.
Bee sat on a bench beside the headmaster as Kemal Napata hovered anxiously behind. The headmaster had his hands on his knees, looking winded. His seamed black face and tall, slender frame looked exactly as I remembered them from Adurnam: those of an elderly man of Kushite ancestry with a scholarly demeanor and a calm heart. Sparks of green lit his eyes before fading into brown. The hounds swarmed over to press close to his feet.
Bee was in full spate, like the spring flood.
“I don’t care if her sire is the Master of the Wild Hunt and if the spirit courts are the most ancient enemies of your kind. I never asked to walk the dreams of dragons! Someone else decided on my behalf! Furthermore, when you tricked me into crossing into the spirit world, I almost died to save those hatchlings! And after all that, I am meant to watch while my dearest cousin is
“Maestressa, you cannot speak to the noble prince in such a tone,” said Kemal, aghast, for Bee was leaning toward the headmaster as if her next move would be to punch him.
“What do you mean, I can’t speak to him in that tone? I
By the angry flush mottling his cheeks, Kemal appeared as if he might be reconsidering his infatuation. Trying to gather up enough breath to speak, I wheezed my way into a coughing fit.
Bee ran to me. She patted my face. “Dearest! Are you going to live?”
“Really, Bee,” I said in a hoarse voice, “I was quite impressed by that diatribe until you described yourself as gentle and mild.” I eyed the evidence of the broken branches.
The headmaster got to his feet. Bee and I jumped back. I raised my cane defensively.
“Maestressas, might we retire into the house for a cup of tea? The warm fire would be welcome to my old bones.”
Bee squeezed my hand. “Surely you can understand that we may be reluctant to enter a den within whose walls we may be devoured at your leisure.”
“I fear you have read too many lurid tales, Maestressa,” he said in so kindly a manner that I began to think he must have reached the little grove of trees just in time to banish the monster, for this harmless old man could surely not have been the monster himself. “You will be safe within the house. I do not eat human flesh.”
“I heard half of your manservants have died,” Bee said rudely. “Did you eat them?”
He sighed. “Yes.”
Bee opened her mouth and then, after all, could grapple no words onto her tongue.
I pushed her behind me and swashed with my cane. “Back away slowly and we’ll make a break for it,” I muttered.
“Yes, I ate them,” he repeated, “but they were not men.”
“What were they, then?” she asked. “Trolls? And why did you try to eat Cat?”
“I did not try to eat her. I hoped she might see a memory in the tides of the Great Smoke.”
I had always respected the headmaster because his easy demeanor and impressive erudition stood in such contrast to my Uncle Jonatan’s short temper and small-mindedness. I didn’t truly know what sort of older man my father Daniel would have become, had he lived, but I had liked to believe he would have been something like the man who had patiently satisfied all factions whose children attended Adurnam’s academy college, without giving way to any one.
Only evidently he was no man.
“How can we trust you?” I asked.
“A reasonable question, Maestressa. I apologize for our unfortunate way of meeting just now. You surprised
