Azariah heard a dragon gurgling.
He coughed, and pain flared in his chest. He lay on his back on the hard tile floor of his office. His acid-ruined eyes still closed, he saw open sky above him. That seemed odd. He sat up and yanked the knife from his chest, screamed in pain, and used the umbra and aura still inside him to seal the wound and stop the bleeding. It still hurt but such is life; he could take the healing no further. Then he looked around. The entire wall behind his desk and most of the ceiling and roof were missing. Some broken beams were hanging down and chips of ceramic roof tile were scattered on the desk and the floor. Beyond that, hundreds of small chunks of land, many with buildings, or at least parts of buildings, on them, were floating in the air. Grunting from the pain, he pushed himself up, walked to the edge of the floor, and looked down. A crater of earth and rock, dark and gray in his second sight, spread far below him.
He heard the gurgling again, closer, and recognized it as Vattuo’s. The dragon was flying under the temple somewhere.
He sensed the maze, but not Faedryn. A weight on his mind and his soul for so long, the god was simply gone. And Azariah himself felt different. He felt unencumbered, like he remembered himself again. But he also remembered what’d he’d done. He’d manipulated, he’d maimed, he’d murdered, and he found no solace in knowing the trickster god had forced his hand.
He also remembered what the Hissing Man had done—had made him do—to his son. He remembered it all now—straddling his son and driving his knife into his chest. Just when he thought he would go mad from it, there came a memory of another sort. He saw the Hissing Man standing alone on a floating hunk of rock. He was digging the earth with a shovel, then kneeling and placing a grave marker. Azariah recognized that place as Tortoise Peak. He knew the very islet the Hissing Man stood upon.
Vattuo groaned and popped his spear-shaped head up from below. Hang on, Vattuo. Azariah walked back across the floor to where he’d fallen. In his second sight, Vattuo’s crop glittered on the carpet like an ember in ashes. He picked it up and clutched it tight. He sensed Vattuo’s fear of being attacked again, his desire to leave this place, as he hobbled to the edge of the floor.
Azariah felt the dragon’s hot breath on him. Gripping the edge of the floor with his wings talons, Vattuo stretched his head and neck over the floor. Azariah got down on his knees, climbed onto Vattuo’s neck, and slipped backward, gingerly moving into the dragon’s saddle. He grabbed the reins, snapped them, and Vattuo dropped, spread his wings, and caught the evening air. Azariah groaned at the pain the sudden movements brought on, and when the old iron finally leveled out, he slumped forward.
They flew through the floating, fragmented remains of Ancris, flat-topped chunks of dirt floating silently in the sky, some as small as houses, others as big as the shrine and its plaza, some with ruined buildings on them, others with lawns and decorative trees, many with roots hanging down like tentacles. A horn blew—a warning that a dragon had been spotted—but he didn’t see anyone chasing them, and they soared onward.
Hours later, under Nox’s purple sky, he spotted the Tortoise Peak geoflare. It was quite a bit less impressive than the one in Ancris. Azariah urged Vattuo toward a particular floating isle and bid Vattuo land on it. Vattuo grumbled but eventually set down on a flat stretch of rock near its edge. As Azariah dismounted, his chest wound stretched, and he groaned and tumbled off the side of the saddle onto the rock. He pushed himself to his feet and staggered to a spade-shaped rock standing straight up from the ground.
He knelt before it. Though Nox’s light was dim, his second sight allowed him to read the words etched into the rock’s surface:
Here lies Cassian, beloved of Azariah
The Hissing Man had etched the grave marker after bringing Cassian’s body to the isle and burying him. Staring at it, he remembered chasing Cassian through an apple orchard in the temple district. Eating crunchy green apples while he told Cassian about his mother. He remember Cassian standing as—
Footsteps approached—thump scrape, thump scrape.
“We’re free,” the Hissing Man rasped.
“I know. But why?”
The Hissing Man chuckled, then wheezed and coughed. “The question isn’t why, but what to do about it.”
Azariah’s first instinct was to fly west as far as he could go and never come back. But he’d been a man of Alra once. A holy man. As had his son. He touched the grave marker. Felt the rough, cold stone. Trailed his fingers over his son’s name, and a new purpose was born inside him.
“We’ll find a place to hide,” he said.
“We’ll find a place to heal,” the Hissing Man added.
“Then we’ll go to the Holt and bring Faedryn’s plans tumbling down around his ears.”
The Hissing Man was silent for a time, then he laughed and laughed and laughed.