I grabbed Vai’s arm, for Bee’s comment had jogged my memory at last. “There’s a rowboat at the river’s edge. Bring everything. Rory, hurry!”
We dashed past the ruined gate and the closed doors of the gatehouse, heading toward the house. With a shrill scream the black launched itself against the smaller iron dragon. When their bodies collided, the ground actually shook.
Ash and burning needles spun down over us as we ran down the drive. Vai was cursing; he was a man unaccustomed to being rendered impotent in such a devastatingly comprehensive way. When I looked around, Bee wasn’t with us.
“I have to go back and look for her!” I shouted.
“Rory, find the boat, make sure there are oars.” Vai shoved the bag he was carrying to Rory. His apron of carpentry tools wrapped him like armor. “Catherine, I won’t leave you, so don’t ask it of me.”
Heavily laden, Rory staggered toward the river. Vai and I hunkered in the cover of the trees as the two dragons came rolling past in a frenzy of talons, teeth, and lashing tails. They broke apart. The dragon who had been Kemal beat its wings, the draft driving us to the ground. A thread of blood trailed past my hand with a stench like the forge. The black dragon rose onto its hind legs; its body blocked out half the sky.
A small person ran into the gap between them.
“Bee!” I screamed.
Vai threw me onto the ground, and himself on top. I squirmed and poked but his weight and that of the laden apron trapped me. “Hate me if you wish, but you can’t save her this time. She can only save herself.”
As she spoke she retreated until she stood beneath the iron-gray dragon. It could have crushed her with its talons or snapped her up in one gulp, but fearlessly she pressed a hand on its belly.
“Please, Kemal. You don’t need to challenge him. Turn back into a man, and I’ll give you a kiss.”
“That will work,” said Vai, his mouth against my ear.
It took me a moment to realize he wasn’t being sarcastic.
The black dragon inhaled so deeply that the sparks and smoke swirling around us were sucked into its nostrils in a prelude to a fresh attack. Hail peppered down. Vai took the brunt of the impact but uttered not a sound.
The hail ceased, leaving the ground covered with iron pebbles. Vai rolled off me, rubbing his head and cursing under his breath.
The gleam of the black dragon’s scales cast a hazy light over the two figures on the gravel drive. Kemal had become a man again. He knelt, head bowed, his left arm and leg streaked with blood.
“Come with me,” Bee said coaxingly. She helped him to his feet and toward us along the drive. Their shuffling progress spun in the mirrors of the dragon’s eyes as it watched them go.
I would have run forward but Vai held me back. “Catherine, there are times when you must stop and think and not just leap. If you rush out there, your movement or whatever scent you have of the spirit world may startle it into attacking.”
“Thank Tanit!” Bee staggered up. She listed heavily to one side with Kemal leaning on her. “Help me. He’s injured, and stunned.”
Vai got an arm around him, and Bee let go.
“I was so frightened!” I hugged Bee so hard she grunted.
“Ouch! Cat! Let me go. Where’s Rory?”
“We sent him ahead to secure the rowboat.”
The dragon bellowed so loudly we all cringed. A horn cry answered, followed by a second and a third. Drums pulsed from the heart of the city. Was the Treverni prince raising his militia?
“Will the mages be foolish enough to attack?” I asked. “Can weapons hurt a dragon?”
“Best not to find out,” said Kemal. “My people are few in number. He has now ingested the seed of five males. We must coax him to the river. Once in the water, he will crown. Once he becomes a female, he will dive for the Great Smoke.”
“Very well.” Bee boldly walked onto the drive. “Your Excellency, a part of you must surely still be the headmaster. I need that part of you to listen attentively. Soldiers are coming. You must depart. Otherwise the soldiers will attack the academy with the hatchlings in it. You are a rational and educated man. You can’t want all those young ones killed. So let us move.”
“She’s magnificent!” Kemal breathed.
“Or insane,” muttered Vai under his breath. “Are you sure she’s safe from him?”
Kemal grimaced. “We do not eat people. They smell bad and are not at all nourishing. Among the lore of my kind, it is said humans are poisonous. Cold mages most of all.”
“How have you cut the threads of my magic?” Vai asked.
“I know nothing of such secrets. Why would I?” Bitterness shaded his expression but then, remembering what he had just done, he smiled.
After a hesitation, Vai spoke. “My apologies for any discourtesy I showed you the first time we met, Maester Napata. I’m not just saying that because you saved our lives.”
Kemal staggered along between us, looking unaccountably cheerful for a man who had taken several gashes to the flesh. “My thanks, Magister. Be assured I am accustomed to such treatment from cold mages. Although to be honest, your arrogance had a particularly memorable flair that made it all the more striking.”
I glanced past Kemal to Vai, not sure how he would react to this gentle sarcasm.
“My thanks,” he said with a slight flutter of his eyelashes. I wasn’t sure if he was suppressing a sneer or a laugh. Then he smiled. “I often practiced for many hours in front of a mirror to be sure of bringing it off to its full effect.”
Both Kemal and I laughed.
We hobbled around the kitchen wing. In front of the pier, guarding the rowboat, we discovered Maestra Lian holding a burning lamp in one hand and in the other a poker with which she was threatening Rory. He had an oar in each hand as he tried to dodge past her.
“Maester Kemal!” she cried. “This person steals the boat!”
He let go of us and limped to her. “Maestra Lian, let him pass. His Excellency is about to depart.” He took the poker from her to use as a cane. “Some ruse must be devised to confuse the soldiers and send them away. I fear for the hatchlings.”
“Tell them I wove the illusion of a dragon with cold magic as we were escaping,” said Vai. “Their belief in my exceptional abilities will trouble them for months.”
“If not years,” Rory said, lowering the oars. “Can I get in the boat now, or is that dragon-stinking man going to poke me with the iron stick?”
I poked him. “Rory, don’t be impolite! Maester Napata, my apologies. What will you do now?”
Kemal gestured toward the building. “I inherit the position as headmaster. That was always His Excellency’s intention.”
A shape like the void of night thumped down to the shore. I felt as with the skin of the grass that crushing weight, the ancient fire of its soul, and the spark of a new being about to shed the husk of its old form.
Bee’s flow of words was the leash on which she led the beast to water. “I do not mean to sound inconsiderate or ungrateful, but I do think it most unfair that I should risk so much and yet be told so little. I realize human people are of little interest to your kind except insofar as we hinder your lives or aid you. But, for example, I would wish to know who that very old man was who kissed me and then died! Was he one of your kind, for I am sure he must have been. Why did he say he was waiting for me? He called me his death!”
Because of the cloudy light chasing along its black scales, she was able to see us standing by the pier. She waved cheerfully, looking not one bit frightened.
The dragon slid into the river. The touch of the water peeled away the skin of the beast. As his old skin sloughed off, a slender creature with pearlescent scales unfolded sleek wings. Its crest fluttered in a rainbow of shining color. It looked very like the leviathan that had carried us across the Great Smoke, only much smaller. The water boiled white as she swam in a wide arc out into the current and back to the shore.
Stars peeked through rents in the cloud cover. The head breached. Water poured off the long neck as she
