Just on the edge of sensation, he almost felt something, like a faint whiff of burning, or the distance-muffled sound of iron boots crashing through rotten wood.
Consumed by it, he missed Liandra’s approach, coming out of the sun-glare some hundred feet above him, riding the high airs with her habitual carefree abandon. He only sensed her at the last minute, just as she swung alongside him, her red steed trailing a long line of hot smoke behind her.
‘My lord!’ cried Liandra, saluting him. Her copper hair buffeted out behind her, her robes tugging at her body in the wind.
He saw her then just as he remembered her – a creature of fire, a spirit of the raw heavens, unbound and vivacious. It was as if the past had suddenly come alive before him, his memories crystallising out of empty skies.
‘My lady,’ he responded, immediately wincing as he remembered how he and Yethanial played at such exchanges. ‘I did not know you were aloft.’
Liandra laughed. She was close enough now for him to see her face light up in amusement – the narrowing of her eyes, the wrinkling of her freckled skin.
‘No,’ she replied. ‘I don’t suppose you did. You’ve been busy since you got here, lord. Too busy to speak to me, it seems, or to know very much of what I am doing – no doubt you’ve had weightier matters on your mind.’
The familiar insolence – he’d missed it.
‘I have been busy,’ he admitted, giving Draukhain his head and speeding further up the coastline. Vranesh struggled to match the pace and was soon spitting sparks of effort from her flame-red maw. ‘As you should have been too.’
‘Oh, my duties have been many. I have thousands of spears under my command, all waiting for orders to march. They have been waiting a long time.’
‘I know,’ said Imladrik. He was not blind to their frustration. ‘And if I have my way they will be waiting longer still.’
Do you really think you can halt it? Liandra sang, her voice appearing in his mind as suddenly and as clearly as Draukhain’s did.
That stung him. It was an intrusion, an unwelcome reminder of how they’d once conversed.
‘You always wanted to fight them, Liandra,’ he responded aloud, pushing Draukhain harder. The wind raced against him, making his crimson cloak ripple. ‘You wanted it even before Kor Vanaeth.’
‘No,’ she replied, shaking her head vigorously. ‘I did not. I came with you to the mountains and tried to understand them. Remember this – they started the killing.’
Imladrik let slip a weary laugh. ‘Oh, they started it. Then that makes everything clear.’
You make it sound as if our races are equals, she sang. You make it sound as if they could actually hurt us, if we had a mind to prevent it.
Draukhain swung round again, enjoying the speed and exchange. He seemed to be goading his younger counterpart a little, daring her to match his mastery of the air. Imladrik let him.
‘You are all the same,’ said Imladrik wearily. ‘You, Salendor, my brother: you think we are bound to destroy them. You are all wrong.’
Are we? Or is it you, my lord, who is afraid?
Imladrik spun around, hauling Draukhain back on himself in mid-air, rearing up in the sky like a charger on the battlefield.
‘Afraid?’ he asked, incredulous.
Liandra laughed again. ‘Of battle? You know I do not mean that.’ She was struggling to keep Vranesh on a counter-trajectory to match Draukhain’s dazzling change of angles. You are fearful of what would happen if you unleashed yourself, if you allowed yourself – for one moment – to let slip the shackles she has placed on you and became what you know you should be.
Only then did Draukhain’s flight dip from perfection. Imladrik’s mind flickered, momentarily, out of focus.
What do you mean? he sang, inflecting the harmony with warning.
That you are a dragon rider, lord. You always have been. You have fire in your blood but you will not light the kindling. As Liandra spoke her eyes glittered, as if she was both thrilled and appalled by what she was saying. You think you love her – you have persuaded yourself you do – but you are wrong. She has tamed you.
Imladrik rose in the saddle, angling his staff towards her, feeling a hot wash of anger building behind his eyes.
‘Foreswear those words!’ he cried, feeling Draukhain respond instantly. The dragon’s vast wings fanned the air into a whirl of ashes and flame-flickers. Raw aethyr-fire rippled along his staff-length, crackling angrily.
Liandra glared back at him, her face twisted in both delight and fear.
‘I take back nothing, lord!’ she shouted across the gap between steeds. ‘The truth needs to be told!’
Imladrik spurred Draukhain towards Vranesh, and for a moment, just a moment, he teetered on the edge of attack. He could already see the outcome – the tangled clash of talons, laced with the quick burn of actinic magic. He had a splintered image of himself, wreathed in anger and lightning-crowned majesty, cleaving the air apart and casting the Sun Dragon down and into the sea.
At the last moment he pulled away. Draukhain turned, pulling out of the encounter and swinging back out seawards, and he caught a glimpse of Liandra’s defiant, terrified face staring right at him.
The dragons spun apart, wings beating and tails writhing. Draukhain quickly took up the dominant position, his shadow falling over the smaller Vranesh and turning her vivid red scales into a dull, dried-blood colour.
Is this what you intended? Imladrik sang, controlling his mighty steed with some difficulty. To make me angry? You would risk that, knowing what it means?
Liandra’s resolve dissolved then – she was like a child who’d pulled at the tail of a cat and now had to contend with the claws.
‘Something
