She swiped hair out of her eyes and flipped it back, holding her head higher. Already her color had returned, and her eyes brightened. Each breath gave her more of her strength back, while his legs still tingled and he could not feel his toes. She was right. He did not dare attack again.
{I must not leave the nests unguarded.}
"Then we have a problem, love. I've counted on you as part of my attack. You'd said we have a common cause." She looked thoughtful, but he sensed that each step and word followed a plan she'd practiced.
Twisted and untrustworthy and very cunning. And strong. He'd have a better chance to eat her after she had spent herself, destroying the keep. After her hatchling breathed air. So they had to come up with a way . . .
{Can you witch the hatchlings to sleep until I return?}
She appeared to think. "Do you want that, precisely that? That they will sleep until you wake them?"
He grunted. He saw too many traps, too many forkings to the path. He could die attacking the tower, or she could kill him after as he intended to kill her. If he never returned to the nest mounds . . .
If they woke without him guarding, some would survive. The strongest, as the songs had always told.
{To sleep a night and a night.} In that time, the tower would fall and he would live and return, or die.
She ran a finger along her jaw, thinking again. Or appearing to think. "I believe I can do that, love. Remember, spells can be tricky things. They work differently on different species. Sometimes an Old One will be far stronger than the rest, barely affected by an attack that would leave others sleeping for a hundred years." She paused and smiled, as if remembering one particular savory meal.
"Even working with humans, one will wake up hours or days before another. One might not wake up at all, if the heart is weak or something else goes wrong. And I can't steal practice dragons from a lab supply warehouse. I'll have to get it right, first go. Are you prepared to risk that, or do I kill you now and change my plans?"
She was lying about something. He could smell it on her. But she wasn't lying about killing him. She'd try, if he didn't agree. He didn't dare find out whether she would succeed.
{Do you need to touch your prey?}
She laughed. "Prey, love? I don't eat lizards and snakes. I often don't eat meat at all. It's bad for working certain kinds of spells. But I'll need to be within a fathom or less, if I'm to judge my Power closely."
A small boat glided into view, empty, brown and vague against the water and the weeds, narrow and double-ended. She stepped into it, ripples spreading out across mirrored sky, picked up a leaf-shaped paddle, and settled to her knees.
"Lead on, my noble ally. And you'd best hope that none of your ravenous little terrors attack me. I'll not be held responsible for actions taken in haste."
He smelled a touch of fear in her voice. If she feared the hatchlings, she knew far too much about the ways of dragons. Perhaps Shen was not in that tower on the hill . . . .
But the keep still hid his enemies. He must complete the song of Sha'khe, which could end only with revenge.
"I asked you to lead, love. I'm not letting you behind my back. Stay a length away from me and stay on the surface. I've watched how you hunt."
And she would kill the hatchlings, Ghu and Po and the rest. The threat froze his rage. Sha'khe lived in them.
He remembered the wisdom and patience of Pan'gu. A wise dragon eats his enemies one at a time. The dark witch would be weaker after fighting the tower, after her belly lay empty and flat again. He must wait.
He led. He swam at full speed, hoping the waves of his wake would distract her, even swamp the boat she'd conjured out of the mists. He reached Liu's mound and stopped abruptly, digging his claws into the deep muck, hoping the dark witch would turn careless and overrun him in her speed. Neither trick worked. Although she paddled delicately, gracefully, the boat seemed to move independent of her actions. It matched his speed, never bobbing or swerving, and stopped a dragon's length away from him.
She tilted her head, eyes and smile questioning. "I didn't reach this age by being careless. I don't sit with my back to any doors, either, and I don't trust allies just because we have a common cause. Move on, and I'll follow after dealing with your problem child."
Liu, and Po, and Ghu, and the others, he led on. The marsh grew silent behind him, the mental voices stilled from their constant whisper of hunger and curiosity. That silence chilled his heart. Treacherous as this witch was, he had no proof she was not killing instead of spelling them to sleep. He did not know which would use less Power, and that was the real test.
She'd given him no choice.
And that was her character. She had him in her power, and she had planned each step of her attack with a cold heart and colder logic, from before their first meeting. If she wanted him dead, he would die. If she wanted the hatchlings to live, they would live. Her words meant nothing.
The red witch left him alone, the respect shown to an equal.
He'd tasted the arrows from Sha'khe's skull. Those weren't the dark witch lying to him. Those were tied to the keep, to the yellow-haired Old One and the human that had left. Those two
