We gained height and saw our sister, Kathanria, tearing at a skyboat. We flew to join her. I saw Bellek’s face lit as I’d not seen it before. I wondered if it was vomit that stained Urt’s furs. But no time for that: this was battle, and we’d win it. We sank our talons into the skin of the sky’s usurper and rent it asunder. Men fell out of the basket, and we quested after them in sisterly rivalry. We claimed more. And ours the Kho’rabi wizard: that taste sweeter for the impotent magic he flung against us as our jaws closed on him. Fool! To think his weakling magic should be of use against us, who own the skies!
We went on.
There were no more skyboats left, only burning wreckage, but we could still pluck tents and the little fleeing figures of men. Like tidbits after a feast, taken almost lazily. Not hunger anymore, but only the gratification of sated appetite: to be taken because they were there.
Then Bellek’s call. We rose to meet it, circling the blue sky over Trebizar.
Under us the lake was lit by the flames of the burning skyboats, red upon the blue. Like the darkening of the grass where men’s blood had fallen.
Trebizar? The Council? Allanyn?
His voice was lost under the thunder of the dragons’ wings, the triumphant howling of the bulls. I heard it only through Deburah’s sending. Just as I returned my answer: Aye! Best that we end it swift.
Rwyan’s agreement was immediate, the others’ slower and less certain. From Urt I heard a heartsick plea that we delay; at least avoid such slaughter as we’d wrought on the Kho’rabi, not butcher his Changed kind as we had the Sky Lords.
And from Tezdal … I could not be sure. Sorrow? Commitment? A disgust directed inward? I gave it not much thought: I was filled up with Deburah and knew only triumph and the satisfaction of the hunt. I lusted for more; and better: against harder quarry. Aloud, my inadequate voice carried on Deburah’s sending, I said, “Only Allanyn, and those who’d oppose us. Let none others be slain.”
That, Bellek returned me, shall be difficult. The bulls have the taste now, and shall be hard to control.
I gave him back, Only do your best. And to Urt, It should be better ended here and now, lest Allanyn flee. You need not take part.
What I felt then, from Urt, sent out by Kathanria, was a dreadful mixture of emotions, akin to what I’d felt from Tezdal. Inside my head I heard my old Changed friend say, No. Are we to do this, then I’ve a part I cannot ignore. Allanyn must be mine, lest my people say it was Truemen alone delivered this fury.
Brave Urt! That was courage indeed, and common sense; but still I ached for the pain I heard inside his words.
So be it. This from Bellek, and without further ado we swept across the lake, toward the Council building.
We left the Kho’rabi behind, decimated and confused, a milling mass of warriors unable, I suspected, to properly comprehend what had happened, the nature of the terrible airborne wrath brought against them. Certainly, they made no move to follow but only watched as we descended on the oval of the Council building. I saw some fall to their knees with hands upraised: I wondered if they believed this was some deliverance of Vachyn, some divine expression of disapproval.
Then I had no more time for wondering, but only action: we fell upon that strange white structure, and the harder part began.
The bulls landed first. They came down and set to tearing away the roof and walls. The rage that possessed them as they sensed hostile magic was formidable. As a dog bred solely for combat knows only the lust to destroy when it scents blood, so did the bull dragons react: the afternoon was not much longer aged before the Raethe’s building had no roof, nor many standing walls. As Deburah circled above, I looked down on a complex of halls and chambers and corridors all strewn with rubble, and the little fleeing figures of the Changed councilors.
Some tried to reach the lake shore: they failed.
We descended, Deburah and I, and I loosed my buckles and slid from the saddle, only dimly aware of the others landing and dismounting around me.
Take care.
That from Deburah, her wondrous head ducking down from the jagged ramparts of a wall to nudge me. I rubbed her cheek and drew the ancient sword Bellek had given me and told her, “Yes. I think I’ll not be very long.”
I recognized this hall, for all it was now roofless and littered. It was that chamber where Rwyan and I had first been brought to face Allanyn. I saw the corpse of Geran, ruptured by broken stone. There were other faces I remembered, felled by masonry or the bulls’ rage. Across the now-open area I saw Allanyn.
Her beautiful face was a dreadful sight. It was contorted with a horrid fury that absolutely overcame her inborn fear of dragons. Were the bulls incarnate power, then she was incarnate rage. She stood beneath the shelter of an arch, the way beyond blocked by rubble. She wore a gown of crimson, dusty now and speckled with the blood of the slain. Her lips were peeled back from her white teeth: I saw her gums and could not help but think of a mountain cat brought to bay.
She screamed, “What have you done? Do you think to live after this?”
And as she spoke, her hands formed sigils in the reeking air, shaping magic.
Uselessly, I raised my sword.
Urt shouted, “We’d bring peace to the world. Shall you listen?”
Allanyn’s answer was a bolt of power. I’d never seen such occult strength. Save perhaps when I’d witnessed the magic of the Sentinels, which I knew was a thing combined of many sorcerers, drawing on the power of a crystal. I thought to die then, at the beginning. But Rwyan raised her hands and met the blast with a countering gramarye that deflected Allanyn’s magic and sent it, like flood water held by a barrage, around us.
She gestured again, and Allanyn was flung back, a ragdoll thrown against the fallen stone behind her. Disheveled, faced with the inherent terror of our dragons, still the gifted Changed was defiant. She said, “So. This communion with dragons appears to make you strong; but I’ll contest you to the end.”
Urt raised a commanding hand. “We’d not fight you, Allanyn, save you force us to it. But you shall hear us out!” His voice was clear and loud; it held a plea and a promise.
Allanyn’s response was no less impressive.
She picked herself up from the rubble and smoothed her gown. She looked up, eyes casting slowly around the ravaged walls where our dragons perched. All fear seemed drained out of her now: she surveyed those terrifying faces with only contempt.
Greater still was the contempt she turned on Urt. “Tell me then, traitor.” Her voice was a challenge. “Tell me how you shall bring peace when all you offer is fear. Shall we bow our heads to you now? Swear fealty to your dragons?”
Urt ignored the disdain in her voice. “We’d end this dream of war that can only bring suffering to all our people. Must we use the dragons, then so be it, for we’ve no better answer. But better that fear a while than what you’d bring. We’d make a lasting peace-a new world, without Truemen masters or Changed servants, neither Sky Lords in lust of conquest or Dhar in fear of invasion. We’d build a new order, in which all have a place and a part. And when that’s wrought, the dragons shall return to Tartarus. So-shall you join us in that? Shall you seek not to shed your people’s blood but only aid them?”
Allanyn brushed red hair from her face. “So you find your true calling, Urt. A lapdog to these Truemen! Think you you can win? Shall you turn over so many lifetimes of suffering? Shall your dragons make the Changed forget the oppression of Truemen? Shall you persuade the Ahn to forget that the Dhar drove them from their Homeland?”
Urt said, “No. Those things are writ in blood; they were done-right or wrong-and cannot be forgotten. But what you intend is no different. Only a new oppression. What we’d build is a new world.”
Allanyn laughed at that.
Urt gestured at we who stood silent beside him. “I am Changed,” he said. “Rwyan is a sorcerer of Dharbek. You know Daviot for a Storyman. Tezdal is Kho’rabi. We-all of us-are joined in this purpose. Can you not take that as pledge of union and join us? It should be better so.”
Allanyn snarled and flung fresh magic at us. Rwyan dismissed it with a gesture that was almost casual.
She did not this time throw the Changed mage down, but rather seemed to bind her with occult chains that leached out Allanyn’s own power. Allanyn stood a moment shaken, an expression of disbelief on her lovely, ugly face. Then she drew a dagger from the folds of her gown and sprang, cat-quick, at Rwyan.
I leaped forward, but Tezdal was far swifter: his was the sword that struck the blow aside. Allanyn’s blade went spinning up, striking the broken stones of the wall, then tumbling bright in the sun down to the stained marble of the hall’s floor. It lay there like a defeated dream.
Tezdal held back the downstroke of his blade. He turned to Urt and said, “‘Lest my people say it was Truemen alone delivered this fury’?”
Urt closed his eyes and nodded. I knew he’d no taste for this: of all of us, I think he was the gentlest. But still he drew his sword-I’d not then noticed he’d left it sheathed-and brought it up high above his head.
He said, “I’d sooner it not be this way.”
Allanyn spat and returned him. “Traitor! Trueman’s lap-dog!”
He was not expert: he’d no training in swordwork. His blow did not take off Allanyn’s head as he’d intended, but only drove an awful cut between her slim shoulder and her slender neck.
Allanyn screamed and fell down. Blood rose in a ghastly fountain that sprayed us all. Urt cut again, and she was silent. I felt a dreadful calm and hoped I was not become inured to bloodshed. I looked to my friend and saw him stoop, mouth wide as he spewed.
It was Tezdal who held him then, and took the antique sword from his hands, and told him, “It was a thing needing to be done. You’d no other choice.”
I heard Urt groan, “No? Are you sure?”