Dragonoak (68 page)

Part of
me had gone in search of the flicker of light I'd seen against the
horizon, but with the sun making the tops of clouds glow, it was
lost to me. Only knowing that it was in the distance, I had Oak
push on, until I was convinced it must've been a trick of the
light. The first time I'd seen it, I'd been close to the mountains,
but they'd vanished hours ago, and I was no closer to my
destination.

“We
should turn back,” I told Oak.

Glancing
back at me, he huffed, beating his wings harder.

“Or we
could go faster. That works too.”

Within
minutes, I had no words for how deeply I regretted so much as
thinking of turning back.

A city
that could've swallowed Isin and Chandaran whole opened up before
us. It had to be the heart of Myros. The capital's name escaped me,
but I knew beyond knowing that it was where I was supposed to be,
where I belonged.

A golden
light emanated from the very centre of the city, and without a word
from me, Oak began his descent, landing on the outskirts. There was
no wall around the city, but there were gates, dozens of them, a
hundred feet high with statues framing each corner.

I tilted
my head back, staring at the armoured woman with her legs and an
arm wrapped around one post, holding out a broken spear to the pane
who rested a hand easily atop the other side of the gate. They
clung to the gatepost with one foot, claws acting as a vice around
what had once been steel. Luckily for me and Oak, the gate had been
left open.

I
promised myself I'd circle the city, taking in the other statues at
the other gates, but let curiosity and awe draw me inwards. The
streets were more than wide enough for Oak to comfortably trundle
through, and I saw, from the grooves between slabs, that the
streets had once been paved in mosaics shaped like the sun and
stars. I knelt down, tracing my fingers along the edges, barely
able to stop and stare at any one thing for more than a
second.

I was
already beginning to notice patterns, curved, repeating shapes
running around doorways, across awnings, and though the twisting
towers and wide, roofless shrines of Myros were unlike any of the
others I'd ever seen, no two buildings looked the same to me.
Businesses had come and gone, homes along with them, and when it
was alive, Myros had never looked the same one year to the next;
the buildings weaved together as flowers and shrubs grew around
trees, vibrant even in their colourless quiet.

I walked
with my eyes closed, allowing myself to believe, for a moment, that
Oak and I weren't the only ones to step into the city in over
fifteen hundred years.

Oak
nudged my side and I blinked my eyes back open, returning to him.
Words were carved into a sign running the length of the street
overhead, and he slowed to a stop, staring up at it and taking a
seat, tail knocking against a pile of crates.

“I
should've brought Kondo-Kana along,” I said, hands on my hips.
“What do you think it is? The street's name? Something to mark a
festival?”

Oak
scraped his claws across the yielding ground, setting off
again.

“You're
right. It's probably pointing towards market,” I said, letting him
take the lead.

The
light in the heart of the city wasn't blinding, nor was it drawing
us towards it. It was beautiful in the understated way that any
colour against the endless white would be, and Oak and I moved at
our own pace, stopping to take in signs we couldn't read and peer
through windows on the way. We lost sight of the light throughout
the tangle of streets once or twice, towers keeping it away without
casting a shadow.

It never
took us more than a minute to catch a glimpse of it
again.

“Come
on,” I said, hand on the side of his neck. “Let's see what's really
been burning all this time.”

With a
gruff, determined sound from the back of his throat, Oak strode
on.

A set of
steps rose up in the centre of the city, so wide and shallow that
they almost passed for a ramp. With one hand on the railing,
intricate patterns repeating over and over beneath my palms, I
rushed up, almost running into Isjin as the top of the steps opened
up into a courtyard.

“Gods!”
I said to the statue. “That's the second time you've scared me like
that.”

The only
difference between her and the statue in Kondo-Kana's temple was
the size. Nothing else had been forgotten, from the feathers lining
her arms to the knotted wood of her legs, and six of these statues
stood at each entrance to the courtyard we'd reached, each one
claiming a different pose.

But it
wasn't the depictions of Isjin that had caught my attention, or
Oak's.

Behind
Isjin, colour had returned to the ground.

The
flagstones were earthy reds and greyish blues, as vibrant as the
day they'd been laid, with a web of painted gold running between
them like veins. The columns were painted purple, darker at the
plinth and lightening at the top, supporting friezes that trapped
records of humans, pane, dragons and phoenixes in the form of
carvings.

The
columns were too close together for Oak to get any nearer, and I
went on alone, staring at the clear sky above, having never seen
anything so open and inviting in my life.

In the
centre of the courtyard, watched over by six Isjins, was a great,
perfectly carved cube of stone, so dark that I was convinced the
black of it ought to have been enough to obliterate the Bloodless
Lands. Flames roared from deep within it, fire so thick it was like
watching melted gold drip into the sky.

Above, a
statue of a phoenix perched on the arched centre of a frieze,
carved talons cracking the stone, wings spread out wide.

CHAPTER XXV

Kouris had come
into the possession of a dented pan to hang over her fire, when
meat alone had begun to bore her, but other than a few bowls of
vegetable stew, she'd done little to make herself at home. She
wasn't the only one. I'd torn down the pieces of parchments I'd
nailed to noticeboards around the city, and sat running my thumbs
over the creases, eyes scanning the words as though they meant
anything to me.

One by
one, I scrunched them up in my fist, throwing them into the
fire.

“Easy,
now,” Kouris said, yawning widely. “Reckon you would've got a bite,
if you'd kept at it.”

“No
point,” I said, watching the last ball of parchment lose itself to
the flames. “We've got a week! I don't want to start teaching
someone and then disappear.”

“A whole
week,” Kouris mused, waterskin glugging as she tipped it back. She
squeezed it tight, finishing off entire pints of ale in a few
mouthfuls. “Reckon we might see an end to all of this.”

Through
it all, I hadn't kept an end in sight. Back in Canth, I'd convinced
myself there was no way to fight, and now that we'd returned in
Asar, it was too easy to trick myself into thinking that we'd
barely pushed forward, barely taken that first step at all. I
closed my eyes, reminding myself of all we'd lost and gained, how
far I'd come, distance counting least of all.

“It's strange, talking about all this being over. It's like
it's not even something out of the ordinary that's going on. It's
just my life! So much has happened that I can't imagine there
being
an
end,
just one. I probably won't even notice when it comes along,” I
said, rocking towards her. “What're you going to do? Once
everything's over and Felheim and the territories are
safe?”

Kouris
hummed, tapping a claw against her chin. She offered me her
waterskin and I held up a hand, shaking my head.

“Now,
that all depends,” she said. “What're you going to be getting up
to, yrval?”

My thoughts darted to the first place I could run to. In
truth, I couldn't imagine a world where
I
was safe, even if we did succeed
in restoring four territories and rebuilding a corrupt Kingdom.
There was nowhere for me but Canth, and no matter how I'd loved
Mahon, that didn't sit well with me.

I
shrugged.

“Honestly? I kind of miss fishing.”

Kouris
chuckled, ruffling my hair.

“That's
what I was hoping to hear,” she said. “There'll be plenty of room
in Reis' hut, even with Claire there.”

“You're
going to drag Claire to Canth?” I asked, brow raised.

“Like
you're about to go anywhere without her.”

Kouris
poked me in the side and I squirmed, knocking her ribs with my
elbow. I didn't need to tell her she was right. Mahon had opened
itself up as a home to me, but there'd always been something
missing.

“I don't
think we're ready to talk about running away to Canth and becoming
pirates,” I said, rolling my eyes. “What about you, then? Are you
really going to get the pane their land back and then
disappear?”

“I'm not going anywhere until everything's sorted, and I
mean
everything,
”
Kouris said. “Reckon I can twist Sen's ear on the matter. She's not
one to be underestimated.”

“Don't
let Claire know what you're planning. She'll never let Sen within
ten miles of you.”

Kouris
laughed, but took my warning seriously enough. She raked her nails
through my hair as we both stared towards Kyrindval, setting sun
framed by the dragon-bone gate. Work would be coming to an end, for
most of the pane. They'd be making their way to the fire pit, eager
to appreciate whatever entertainment was offered up to them, food
and drink generously shared all around. Kouris could reclaim the
stretches of lands around the mountains that had once belonged to
the pane, but she'd never get to be part of the tribe
again.

“What
about Kidira? Is she talking to you again?” I asked. “I've seen her
out here a few times.”

She
exhaled heavily, leaning back on her hands, not knowing how to
answer.

“Aye,
she comes out here. Sits over there, by that rock, and tells me not
to say anything,” Kouris said. “She was lost to me decades ago,
yrval. Reckon she just needs me to be sitting here while she works
some of that anger out of her system.”

“At
least she has Akela,” I offered.

“Can't
be asking for much more than that,” Kouris agreed, sighing. Placing
a hand on the small of my back, she eased me to my feet, saying,
“Go on. You don't have much time left in the tribe. Don't want to
be wasting it listening to me feel sorry for myself. Go convince
Ightham pirating's always been her true calling.”

I was
willing to stay with Kouris until sleep came for me, but I knew
when she wanted to be alone. I rapped a fist against one of her
horns, promised that I'd be back in the morning, and left her to
her thoughts. Some part of her was hoping that Kidira would find
her way to the edge of Kyrindval once more, and I had no intention
of being caught up in the middle of that.

On the
way to the centre of Kyrindval, one or two pane spent a second
longer looking at me than they usually did. I smiled and they
looked away, ashamed to have been caught staring, and only one
dared to step forward.

“Excuse
me. I heard about the dead fhord—the not dead fhord,” he said, ears
perking up. He wasn't the first to approach me. Word had got
around, discussed with the same urgency that everything in
Kyrindval was. “Is there anything we can do to help
him?”

“He's
fine. I think he likes being with the younger dragons,” I said,
“But thank you anyway. Really.”

“I'm
just glad one of the dragons is free of the Felheimish,” the pane
said, bowing his head and scurrying back.

The rest
of the pane weren't quite as quick to anger as Kouris, and she had
fretted over what the humans would think of Oak, not the pane. The
matter had been mulled over, and when Oak was seen to be doing what
it was young dragons did – gnawing at rocks and scuffing in the
dirt – of his own accord, no one so much as considered drawing any
parallels between the present and the past.

I made
it to the fire pit without being dragged aside by anyone else.
There'd been whisperings the past few days of a performance the
pane were particularly excited for, and there were at least two
hundred of them already gathered, forming a circle around the fire
pit, standing to the side and helping themselves to ale from
barrels Draeis had brought. Michael raised a hand, waving to me
from the other side of the fire pit, surrounded by a group of
friends he'd made over the past two years.

I waved
back, and made my way to the front of the crowd. The pane were
happy to let me through; I was too short for them to ever worry
about their view being blocked, and they assured me this wasn't a
performance I wanted to miss.

Claire
wasn't hard to find. She sat in front of the fire, flames dull and
fleeting in comparison to what I was half-convinced I hadn't really
seen, cane placed across her lap. Two steins of juice were placed
at her side, and though I hadn't planned to meet her there, she
held one up to me, smiling.