Lorelei flew Bothymus toward Ancris. Quintarch Lucran rode Andrilor to her right. Rylan flew Vedron on her left. They had to get to Ancris in time to stop Morraine. At the very least, they needed to warn the people to evacuate. If they were very lucky, they might also be able to stop Llorn from stealing Strages and the Heartstone shard.
Lorelei glanced over her shoulder toward the trailing dragons, and Rylan called to her, “We haven’t lost yet.”
“I know, it’s just . . .” She could hardly think. “Ancris is my home.”
“There’s still time to get everyone out of the city,” he said, “and Ash said the last bridge isn’t as strong as the others. Rhiannon succeeded in that much, at least.”
“Yes, but that won’t stop the geoflare.”
They’d left Glaeyand with forty-three dragons, a force cobbled together from the dragons Quintarch Lucran had flown to Glaeyand, some from Glaeyand’s eyrie, and some from the other quintarchs. More imperial mounts would be waiting in Ancris. Lucran had sent their fastest silver ahead to Ancris with orders for Damika to begin evacuating the city. Other dragons had been sent to neighboring cities and forts with orders to fly all available dragons to Ancris. They should have over a hundred radiants if they got there in time. Then they’d have to assemble and organize. And some of them would already be tired, especially the cohort they were flying back to Ancris. They’d left Ancris only the day before, fought, and were now flying back with almost no rest.
They’d lost four dragons since they left Glaeyand. Ruko had been wounded in the shoulder in the battle for the eyrie. He’d seemed well enough when they’d departed, but when he began to flag, Lucran had ordered Ash and Creed to return to Glaeyand. Three more dragons had to drop to the citadels to rest, and several more looked like they would soon do the same.
Llorn might have twice their number, maybe three times, ready to fight. And their dragons would likely be fresh. Nearly as important as evacuating the city was preventing Llorn—or the Church—from taking Strages. Lorelei wished they hadn’t been forced to leave Rhiannon in Glaeyand. She might have helped them with Morraine, but she was extremely weak after the attack, and Lucran reckoned it was better to keep her safe.
At last, Lorelei spotted Mount Blackthorn, then the palace, the imperial eyrie, and the barracks on its shoulders. When she was close enough to see Ancris, it was just as it was when she left. Rylan was right—they could still try to evacuate.
At the eyrie, most of the dragons were flying toward the training paddock and the meadow. Andrilor, Bothymus, and Vedron landed in front of the eyrie. Praefectus Damika and Skylar ran toward them. Damika was holding a sheet of vellum. She handed it to Lucran.
Lucran unfurled the vellum, wincing from the wound to his arm. “What of the evacuation?”
“It’s underway,” Damika said.
As Lucran asked about the numbers of evacuees, Lorelei stepped toward Skylar. “Where’s my mother?”
She pointed toward Highreach. “In a shelter below the palace.”
“Thank Alra. And thank you.” She pointed to the vellum. “What’s the scroll?”
“A confession from Azariah. He wrote it and took his own life, then Illustra Camadaea—”
“Wait, Azariah’s dead?”
“According to Camadaea,” Skylar said with a skeptical tone. “She and the other illustrae are all here in Ancris. Camadaea delivered the scroll to Damika personally, said she and the others came to clear the Church’s good name.”
“What of the shrine? We need access to it.”
“That will be difficult. Camadaea insists that the Church guard it.” Skylar glanced toward her father. “But now that you’re all back, perhaps that will change.”
A horn sounded—one low note followed by a high. The dracorae scanned the horizon. Several had already climbed back into their saddles. The eyrie master, Stromm, burst from the eyrie and ran toward them, waving his arms. “The Knives!” he bellowed. “The bloody Knives are here! Fly!”
Lorelei looked up. Dozens of dragons were headed toward the eyrie.
“Make for the shrine!” Lucran bellowed as he mounted Andrilor. “Secure the shrine!”
“Father, your arm!” Skylar called.
Lucran stared down at her. “Go back to the palace, now.” He snapped the reins, and Andrilor lumbered forward, spread his golden wings, and launched into the sky.
Lorelei waved to Skylar. “I’ll see you when it’s over.”
Skylar nodded and backed away. “Alra shine her light upon you.”
Lorelei felt something in her gut, a giddy sensation, a restlessness. She leaned over toward Rylan. “I feel . . . funny.”
He gaped at her. “Funny?”
“Not funny, but . . . look at Bothymus and Vedron.” Bothymus was whipping his head back and forth. Vedron was lying on her side.
“It’s the aura,” Rylan shouted. “The geoflare is starting. We have to hurry!”
They heard a loud rumble. Lorelei thought it was thunder at first. Then she saw a tumble of rocks rolling from the shoulder Mount Blackthorn. “Look!”
“Alra save us,” Skylar said. “Fly!”
“Lorelei, let’s go!”
“Take care of my mother,” she said to Skylar.
Skylar nodded and ran toward the palace.
Lorelei turned to Rylan. “To the shrine.”
“Agreed,” Rylan said, “but we need to skirt the battle.”
“Right! Let’s head south around Blackthorn, then cut back toward Evalarus.”
Rylan nodded and snapped Vedron’s reins.
They flew along the far side of the palace, and rounded Blackthorn’s southern slopes, dipping and rising with the landscape to avoid being seen by the Red Knives.
When they came around the mountain and could see Ancris again, the circle of earth inside the palisade was rising, breaking, splitting. Streets cracked. Whole neighborhoods rose into the air. Bridges across the Wend crumbled and fell, splashing into the water. The arch Skylar had helped build, and later dedicated for the victory in Syrdia, cracked in two. Half remained standing, the other half crumbled and scattered. The dome of the Curia Ancrata collapsed inward, sending a great plume of dust into the air. The hill where the Crag stood crumbled and came tumbling down. Up on Evalarus, the temple’s flying buttresses fell into pieces, and the temple facade toppled forward and shattered. Above the temple, a dozen radiant dragons circled—the illustrae and shepherds guarding the shrine against the Red Knives.
The bedrock of the city continued to rise and split, but everything else, everything not imbued with aura, tumbled away. Tables and chairs tipped from homes. Crates of goods spilled from warehouse doors. Barrels and tuns toppled and spun, end over end from the door of a warehouse. Some struck a floating chunk of cobbled street and burst, spilling red wine over the edge like a waterfall.
The people of Ancris who hadn’t escaped—too sick to move or refused to, too slow to get out—tumbled into crevices from broken sections of streets, fell from splintered homes, plummeted down in ones and twos, and sometimes great groups. Some landed on other pieces of the city and miraculously lived, only to fall again when that island, too, broke apart. Many plunged into the dark crater of newly exposed earth that had once been below the city.
As Bothymus and Vedron flew toward the edge of the geoflare, Lorelei spotted a man and a woman hanging from the threshold of a house leaning over the edge of a piece of floating island. Rylan edged Vedron closer and was just a few feet away when the door frame cracked and the woman slid off into open air. The man tried to grab her hand, but he fell too, spinning and screaming down into the crater.
“No!” Lorelei roared as she watched them plummet. Her heart was in her throat, and it was getting harder to breathe.
“Lorelei!” Rylan shouted, pointing toward crumbling Evalarus. “Look!”
The Church’s dragons, the ones that weren’t guarding the temple, were leaving, flying north, away from the battle. The mystery of it brought Lorelei back from the edge of panic. “Why?” she hollered.
“I don’t know,” he said, “but it leaves us an opening.”
Evalarus was a hundred big floating islands and thousands of smaller ones. Below it, broken pieces of the shrine were split on several smaller islands—parts of the quartzite floor on some, parts of its flame-designed quartzite walls on others. The causeway that had once led to Strages split over two pieces of earth. Lorelei swooped down for a closer look. Floating between two hunks of causeway, she saw Strages and his shimmering shard on a small slab of shrine floor.
Alra’s ever-shining grace.
She soared back up and looked toward the dragon battle, radiants and umbrals of all colors in a tangle teeth, fire, and claw. She couldn’t tell who was winning, but she could tell that Lucran and his dracorae were no closer to the shrine than the Red Knives or the Church’s dragons.
“We have to get Strages!” she shouted.
“I know”—Rylan pointed—“but look.”
Through a wide gap in the broken remnants of Evalarus, Lorelei spotted Fraoch and a large auburn flying hard toward the shrine. Fraoch had two riders: Llorn in dragonscale armor and Morraine behind him, gripping his waist. The Red Knife on the auburn was armored as well.
“Bothymus and I can distract them,” Lorelei said.
Rylan nodded. “Vedron and I will go for Strages. Hold them off as long as you can!” He swept down, wove around a hunk of earth with the shattered remains of a blacksmith’s forge still burning, and disappeared.
Lorelei grabbed her crossbow from behind her, cocked it, then took a bolt from the quiver, and lay it in the channel. Holding the crossbow in her right hand, she snapped the reins with her left and dug her heels into Bothymus’s neck. She felt foolish for not having put Bothymus’s fetter back into his bridle. She was just about to shout a command when the big indurium blared a single, high note and circled over the shrine.
“Thank you, Bothymus!” she bellowed.
Llorn and his dragonrider soared below her to the shrine and landed on the piece of quartzite floor where Strages and the shard lay. As Llorn and Morraine dismounted, the knife spotted Bothymus and pointed. Llorn took a longbow from the saddle and nocked an arrow. The auburn looked up at Bothymus, spread its frills, and roared.
Bothymus hurtled toward the shrine, snapped his wings out, and lit them up. It was like nothing Lorelei had ever seen. Raw energy blazed in expanding blue-and-white circles, teardrops, lemniscates. Fraoch stared up, utterly transfixed. Morraine looked up and her mouth fell open.
The auburn averted its gaze. The thick infusion of aura in the air seemed to have stolen its noxious breath away. Nevertheless, when its rider snapped its reins, it beat its wings and launched itself toward Bothymus, jaws snapping. Bothymus listed almost completely sideways, dodging the auburn’s bite. Lorelei slid in the saddle but hung on to the saddle horn with one hand, the crossbow with the other, as Bothymus came back around and clamped his teeth on the auburn’s neck, twisted his head and pulled the auburn’s head from its neck in a spray of red gore. Its rider spilled from the saddle, struck the edge of the floor, and tumbled down toward the crater below. The last Lorelei saw of him was him gaping up at her with ruby-red eyes.
Morraine was still slumped in Fraoch’s saddle, but the fight had left Lorelei dangerously close to Llorn, and she would have sworn she saw Strages move his head at Llorn’s feet. When she looked at Llorn again, he had his bowstring to his cheek, a knocked arrow aimed at her. Lorelei raised her crossbow and fired. The bolt grazed Llorn’s chin. Llorn grunted. Blood dripping down his neck, he pulled the string back again. As he aimed his arrow at Bothymus’s chest, Vedron swung around the bottom of the broken causeway above them, knocked Llorn down on the quartzite floor and landed on Strages. Rylan jumped from the saddle, rolled across the floor, and snatched up the shard. Then he leapt up and sprung onto Vedron again. Vedron beat her wings, and with Strages writhing in her claws, took to the air. All he had to do was reach the edge and he could drop down, out of sight.
Llorn was back on his feet, bowstring at his cheek, sighting Vedron. He let fly. The arrow streaked through the air and sunk into Vedron’s shoulder, just above the wing. Vedron shrieked and thudded down on the stone floor. Rylan tumbled from the saddle and slammed his head on the floor. The shard flew from his hand, clattering and tinging, skipped over the edge of the floor and was gone.
“No!” Llorn bellowed. He stared at the jagged edge of the floor, then he stomped toward Rylan.
Rylan lay still. Lorelei figured he was unconscious. She dropped the crossbow, leapt from Bothymus, drew her rapier, and sprinted at Llorn. She swung her rapier for his face. In one motion Llorn drew his sword, raised it and blocked the blow, their swords ringing like a warning bell. Llorn swung low, nicked her right leg, then up across her shoulder leaving a shallow cut. She slipped his guard and thrust at his neck, but he leaned away and her blade clacked off his dragonscale pauldron.
A dragon roared overhead. Llorn and Lorelei both glanced up at the sky. Five imperial radiants were diving toward them. Even if Llorn killed her, Lucran would get Llorn and Morraine, and Strages, too.
Morraine stared at the approaching dragons. Her eyes burned brightly, the color of wisps. She raised a skeletal hand toward Bothymus and screamed. A bolt of black lightning arced from her palm and pierced Bothymus in the chest. His silver scales smoked and burned. His skin turned black. Bothymus threw his head back and beat his wings backward, and his dazzling light show ceased.
“Strages!” Llorn bellowed. “Get Strages!”
Fraoch lumbered toward Strages. Lorelei tried to reach the squirming paragon first, but Llorn blocked her with his sword. She swung her rapier down at his neck, he blocked it, twisted his sword, and her rapier clattered to the floor.
Fraoch clamped her jaws around Strages, and Strages bared his teeth and groaned. As the cobalt dragon swept past Llorn, Llorn leapt, grabbed the saddle horn, and swung himself up in front of Morraine. Lorelei ran after them but dove to the floor as Fraoch whipped her tail and black barbs clacked against the white stones around her. As Lorelei pushed herself to a stand, Fraoch waddled to the edge of the shrine and dropped out of sight.
Lorelei ran limping to her crossbow, snatched it up, and darted to her quiver on Bothymus’s saddle, but Bothymus was lying on it, writhing in pain.
She prayed Lucran’s radiants would catch Llorn and Morraine, but her hopes were dashed when one of the Red Knives blew a horn and a host of umbral dragons flew to meet them. Even weakened by the aura, they were simply too many to overcome, and Lucran’s exhausted radiants were barely beating their wings to keep themselves in the air.
As she watched them, she heard Rylan stir. He raised his head and looked around.
“What happened?”
“We lost him. We lost Strages.”