dream caught in the morning light.
And in a moment, she was gone.
The light went with her, and suddenly Thorn was falling again, falling into the welcoming dark…
“Thorn?”
There was blue sky above when she opened her eyes, and the golden ring of Siberys glittered in the sunlight. For a moment Thorn wondered just how much she’d dreamed; then she saw the shattered walls around her, the chunks of rubble from the dragon’s wrath.
“Thorn? Can you hear me?” Drix was kneeling next to her.
“Yes,” she said. Her throat was rough and dry, and there was a terrible pain in her chest. “What happened?”
“The dragon was about to crush me. I couldn’t see all that you did, but there was a flash of light and then… the dragon vanished. Everything else… it changed. You’ll see when you look over the edge. The things in the courtyard-they’re gone.”
“You mean… I did this?”
“It’s difficult to analyze energies of such magnitude,” Drix said. “But I don’t think you were responsible. For a time we were on two separate planes of existence simultaneously. Your defeat of Sarmondelaryx coincided with a disruption of that planar juncture. The fey we were fighting, the forces that were assembling, even the bulk of the buildings have likely shifted back to Dal Quor. All that’s left is a shell.”
“That sounds like something Steel would say,” she said. It hurt to breathe too deeply.
“It is,” Drix said, holding up the dagger. “I found him on the floor. He’s told me all sorts of interesting things.”
“Really?” Thorn said. “Well… it’s good to have friends.”
She forced herself up on one arm, feeling a sharp pain as she did. She looked down and saw the sun gleaming off the silver brooch that lay between her breasts. Despite the pain, her skin was smooth around the crescent moon. The stone gleamed with an inner light, and she thought she heard a whispering voice, too faint for even her keen ears to catch the words. Then light and voice faded.
“Lovely,” she murmured, brushing one finger across the cold stone. “I’m sure that’s just what I needed.”
“We can go now,” Drix said. “I’ve packed everything, and I made all the preparations while you were sleeping. It should work just fine. Probably. Well, maybe.”
“Leave how?” She sat up and saw a circle traced in chalk among the rubble with tiny dragonshards scattered around the edges.
“It’s a temporary teleportation circle,” Drix said. “It should get us back to Ascalin. I was able to send a message to Lady Tira. By now there should be people there waiting to take us back to the Silver Tree.”
“You sent a message to Tira?” Thorn said. “And you’re just going to connect to the Orien network with… chalk?”
Drix smiled. “I know, it sounds crazy. It helps when you’ve got some stolen dragonshards from a gate anchor point to work with. And it’s even better to have a half dozen fey artifacts to play around with.” He pulled down his collar, and Thorn could see Lord Joridal’s emerald amulet hanging around his neck. “If I had a little more time to experiment with them, I think I could do all sorts of interesting things.”
“At least you’ve managed to keep from getting them stuck in your skin,” Thorn said.
“Yes, it’s strange, how that happened for you. Steel thought it might have had something to do with us still being merged with dreams at the time.”
“It’s nothing I haven’t dealt with before,” Thorn said. She sighed, feeling the pain grow as she took a deep breath. She rose to her feet. “Let’s go. Somehow I’m thinking the Silver Tree is the quickest path to a strong drink.”
Drix grinned. “I should warn you: this may be a little bumpier than your usual Orien ride.”
A few moments later, the tower was empty. A light wind blew plaster dust down toward the barren courtyard below.
CHAPTER TWENTY — SEVEN
The Mournland R haan 3, 999 YK
Not quite what I’d hoped for,” Thorn said. She was standing at the gate of the Silver Tree, looking out over the pale landscape. At a glance, nothing had changed from the moment they had first arrived.
Drix grinned. “I thought you were the one who didn’t believe the story.”
“I didn’t. I still don’t. Still, after everything we saw… I was beginning to hope that prying that stone out of your heart might just change everything.”
“And it did,” Drix said. He let his fingers drift across his chest, passing over the place where the crystal shard had been. “It’s going to take more time.”
That was what Tira had told them after the ceremony was completed and Drix was able to stand. Initially the tinker had been heartbroken when the green fields of Cyre weren’t restored. Then Tira told them that the results were all that she’d hoped for. That she knew that the decay of the Silver Tree had stopped; it might take time for it to return to full health, but it was on the right path. And as for the Mournland, she was confident that all would be well in just a century or two. With Tira casually dismissing a century, Thorn could see why Shan Doresh had thought a few years a paltry amount of time to devote to his scheme.
“So it’s going to be a hundred years before we know if there’s any truth to the story,” Thorn said. “I guess it’s something to look forward to.”
“There’s lots of things to look forward to,” Drix said. “Why are you leaving so soon? And why like this?”
Thorn looked out over the Mournland, and her thoughts drifted back to her last conversation with Lady Tira, deep in the roots of the Silver Tree.
“So everything she said was true.” Thorn had been standing at the gates of the Silver Tree, staring out across the pale landscape.
“True enough.” The Stone of Life had glowed on Tira’s golden crown, but her face was still hidden beneath the long veil. “You are the soul of Nyrielle Tam, bound to the body of Sarmondelaryx. An old spell, and a powerful one. Certainly the work of dragons.”
“The Chamber-”
“I can only tell the truth of you, so I cannot tell you who among your Citadel might have been involved. But I have heard of this Chamber. For tens of thousands of your years-even before Shan Doresh challenged the giants of Xen’drik-the dragons have remained in isolation on Argonnessen. There they study a matrix of truths, a map of possibilities that can foretell the future-or create it. For generation after generation, they were content simply watch it unfold. Now there are those who seek to use it. To choose the paths the future takes. The dragons of this Chamber walk among your kind, hidden in human form. And they are not the only ones.”
“No?”
“You have met demons before. I can feel it. The most ancient among them have long sought to control the Draconic Prophecy. More of your history than you can imagine-your Last War, Galifar, even the birth of the Khoravar race-has been shaped by this struggle between the Argonnessen and these Lords of Dust. You are a pawn in that war. There are certain things the Chamber wants the Angel of Flame to do. Your battle with Drulkalatar Atesh was surely in their schemes. They knew they couldn’t control Sarmondelaryx, and so they bound your soul and your memories to her. To create an Angel of Flame they could more easily control.”
Thorn nodded. Drego’s words beneath Sharn made all too much sense. As a Lantern, she’d done her best to serve Breland, but what other powers had she truly been serving?
“I can tell you this,” Tira said. “You have changed the balance of things by bonding with the Stone of Dreams. It may give you the power to contain Sarmondelaryx indefinitely. But I fear this gift comes with a heavy price.”
“Oh?”
“Shan Doresh could not be so easily defeated,” Tira told her. “He-”
“You weren’t there,” Thorn said. “There was nothing easy about it.”
