61: THE SOUND OF BONE

(Kihrin’s story)

I’d debated removing the chain, but finally decided it was light enough to let me swim if necessary.

I desperately hoped it wouldn’t be necessary.

I’d also grabbed the harp, even though it was awkward. Call me sentimental, but I wasn’t willing to risk leaving it.

The skeletons slamming against the windows were larger now. Something cracked.

Everyone was running from their rooms, in various states of dress. Thurvishar and Dolgariatz had noticed the problem almost as soon as we had and so had gathered the others.

The skeletons continued to slam into the glass at an alarming rate. Not all the bones belonged to fish, but included crocodiles, snakes, and other associated lizards. For the moment, the glass held, but only because the glass was magically reinforced.

It couldn’t hold forever. Dolgariatz had the few staff evacuate and urged the rest of us to do the same. We didn’t need to be told.

“Where are my parents?” I said just before I spotted Therin all but dragging Khaeriel from her room.

Teraeth cursed, so I turned to see why.

He was staring wide-eyed out the window, at the large shape swimming in our direction. It vaguely resembled a crocodile, but it was too large—nearly fifty feet long. Moving fast.

“Run!” Janel screamed. That broke the spell as we stared out in shock.

Thurvishar would lag behind everyone, so I grabbed his arm. Behind us, glass shattered as something too massive to be blocked by the lake house’s delicate walls (enchanted or otherwise) crashed into the building. A wall of water rushed into the break behind us.

My hand jerked back as Thurvishar stopped in place and turned around.

“Thurvishar, no!”

The wizard entwined his fingers and pushed outward, as if one could force back the water through assertive gestures. Silvery disks of overlapping symbols, notations, and glyphs moved around as if floating on an invisible pond—pushed backward and filled the hallway just as the water arrived. The visible web of energy hovered there, bulging.

“That won’t hold it long,” Thurvishar said. He started running again.

I followed him.

Thurvishar wasn’t wrong. The giant dead crocodile hadn’t been destroyed when it had rammed the house, and now it circled to try again. Its shadow crossed the hallway while I ran up the stairs leading back up to the surface.

As I crested the top, I heard shouting, orders … screaming. I turned around and saw why, while also confirming my worst fears.

Rol’amar—the dead dragon we’d stumbled across in the Korthaen Blight—had found me.

As if to underscore the point, Rol’amar stared directly at me.

Dolgariatz’s solders were fighting it. Predictably, they weren’t doing well. Arrows, even poisoned arrows, were worse than useless against such a creature. Worse, any soldiers who fell to the dragon animated and joined the fight against Dolgariatz’s men. Our Manol vané host was now forced to defend his men against more of his own people.

I’m good with a sword, all right with magic, but not a single spell I knew could possibly do any good against a creature like that. I’d hurt Rol’amar once; I didn’t think he’d be foolish enough to let me that close again.

So I ran.

“Teraeth!” Janel yelled. “Get Valathea out of here!” Without waiting to see if Teraeth would obey, Janel started smashing down the dead around her, rendering the threats harmless by virtue of reducing them to bone fragments too small to be effective. Sadly, it wasn’t likely to work on Rol’amar himself.

Teraeth did obey, as it happened, and ran to the former Kirpis vané queen. Meanwhile, Doc stood by the house, concentrating, a look I knew well; he was using his Cornerstone, Chainbreaker, on the dragon.

Now, I don’t know the full extent of Chainbreaker’s powers, but I knew it largely involved illusions. Incredibly powerful illusions. And I’d seen Terindel use those illusions on a dragon.

But this time as Doc concentrated, that glowing blue-eyed draconic skull swiveled in his direction. The dragon lunged at him, seemingly immune to any attempt to distort his perceptions.

“Doc!” I shouted out my teacher’s nickname as I ran to him, desperately afraid I was too late.

A rock wall sprang up from the ground before Doc, and Rol’amar’s head slammed into it. At the same time, hurricane winds forced the dragon backward. A lightning bolt flashed down from the teal sky, striking the dragon’s skull and sending bone fragments flying. A deafening boom rolled out over the lakeside. Everyone covered their ears and was temporarily deafened.

Rol’amar healed immediately.

“I don’t think your necklace is working.” I reached Doc’s side of the wall.

“No kidding? I hadn’t noticed.” Doc scowled. “I’m not sure how the damn thing sees, but what I’m showing the dragon clearly isn’t fooling it.”

“It’s here looking for me.”

“Why would—” Doc stopped and took a second look at me. “Maybe so. Let’s see if we can use that. You run!” Doc shouted out. “Khae, Geri, stop the dragon when it turns!”

I started running.

The dragon did indeed follow, ignoring more obvious targets to go stomping after me, shuddering the ground with each step. Explosions bellowed behind me as wizards took advantage of the opportunity to freely attack the monster.

I heard another lightning strike and the dragon’s roar. I didn’t dare look back. I could practically feel the creature at my back. I heard a second draconic bellow as Rol’amar stopped chasing.

Then I heard another scream: my mother’s.

I turned back. She wasn’t in any immediate danger, still by the tree line even as she summoned up winds to move the creature. No, the reason for her scream was the person hanging limp from Rol’amar’s mouth, shaken, and then tossed to the ground.

My father Therin.

The whole world stopped.

Therin’s broken body didn’t move. There was no kidding myself about my father’s fate, no possible confusion about his status. A large chunk of his back was torn away, his spine hanging like white thread, his body cut almost in two. Not fixable. Instantaneous.

My father was dead.

Even now, I have a hard time explaining what happened next. The world darkened. Not figuratively. Literally. The sun turned black, eclipsed in an instant even though the Three Sisters were nowhere in the sky. Shadows covered the lake.

My awareness condensed, focused, homed in on the dragon Rol’amar. My nephew. The dragon who’d just killed my father. I lifted my arms. I didn’t notice the wind pick up and swirl dirt and torn leaves around me. I didn’t notice how my eyes shifted color. They didn’t turn black but empty: voids reflecting no light, darker than even a D’Lorus royal could desire.

I felt despair. I felt rage.

I pointed at the dragon; darkness spread over its body, a shadowy sickness sinking into bone and torn sinew, which flaked and blew away as ash.

Rol’amar reared back in panic, its broken, twisted wings flapping vainly in the air. He roared, as if that would stop his impending disintegration. The dragon didn’t attack me, though. Looking back, that seemed odd, when he knew I had caused his suffering. The dragon ran.

It didn’t make it.

As he floundered in the lake, the black miasma devouring his head, I felt … I felt the tenyé of the creature, the searing immensity of power dwarfing the strongest wizard, a soaring cacophony of godlike potential. That energy flowed back through me and vanished as Rol’amar said the first and only word I ever heard him utter.

“Yes.”

Then the dragon was gone, as if he had never been.

I didn’t want to stop. I could have kept burning, unmade it all, screamed out my pain until the cup of suffering had emptied out. Maybe that doesn’t make sense. After all, what did I care about Therin D’Mon? I’d hardly known the man, and for the majority of that time, he’d refused to acknowledge his paternity. He’d been so ashamed to admit the circumstances of my birth, he’d gone along with my brother Darzin’s hideous lies. But that talk we’d had. I’d just found my father. I’d just met him.

I couldn’t bear to lose him.

The animated dead were already collapsing, reduced back to still corpses as their controller died. Someone was shouting my name. I heard the sound as if from a great distance, dimmed, rounded in shadow.

Finally, I blinked, swaying in place, and returned to my senses. The world grew brighter, in a fashion.

I collapsed to my knees, too numb to move or feel or think about what had just happened. I could only sit on the shore while I listened to wailing grief. My mother, I realized. It wasn’t just anguished crying, no. She kept repeating a single sentence, over and over. Three little words. Three little words that stabbed into my heart because I knew exactly what they meant. What they really meant.

I am sorry. I am sorry. I am sorry. I am sorry. I am sorry. I am sorry. I am sorry.

No one else made any noise at all.