By the third time she told the story of Bluebell’s defeat of the dragon, Ash was as drunk as her sister. The crowd in the inn at Stanstowe had grown thicker and the room hotter since they’d arrived in the late afternoon. Ash embraced company and mead in equal measure. Both made her forget her fears. Bluebell bragged for a while, then decided Ash instead should be the teller of her tale. It was a tale that hardly needed embellishing, reported to her by Bluebell on their ride to Stanstowe: the raft that broke on rocks; the shield in ashes; the fire and blood. She played down her own role, still superstitious about her truth and power. But the listeners weren’t interested in her in any case, not while Bluebell was among them in the firelit room. They gathered around to gape at Bluebell’s singed knuckles, to inspect the deep claw mark in her calf. Some of the old folk said they’d always suspected there was a dragon down there. Tales were told of decades of missing pigs, children who didn’t return from collecting chestnuts. Gartrude, the smith, was there, bathing in the reflected glory of her family’s contribution to the tale. Bluebell returned the spear to her to keep, so that she might tell the tale again and again. Gartrude was delighted by the idea of being so associated with heroic deeds, and began the cry that they should send a party out to the dragon cave to cut off its head and hang it over the village gate. Bluebell approved vigorously and said that she would accompany them in the morning, but by this stage she was so drunk she could barely slur out the sentence, and the chance that she would remember anything in the morning grew very remote.
One by one, the revelers left to stumble back to their houses. As the inn began to empty, a hunched man so old he creaked approached them. Bluebell smiled at him, eyes not quite focused. “Look at the winters upon your brow,” she said to him. “Yet I’d wager you’ve never heard such a tale as Bluebell the Fierce and the red dragon of Stanstowe.”
“That tale?” he said, and Ash noticed the cruel glimmer in his eye that spoke of his resentment of Bluebell. There were many who hated her, but many more who loved her. “I have heard many more tales, of a dragon that circles the western capes of Almissia, and in every story that dragon was not red, but white.”
Ash’s heart went cold. Bluebell leapt to her feet and bellowed, “Do you dare doubt me?”
The old man shrank back, but he smirked nonetheless, happy to have landed a blow, however small.
“Perhaps I was mistaken,” he said, and slipped off.
Bluebell watched him go with hard eyes.
“Bluebell,” Ash said, her skin prickling. “The white scales.”
“Its belly was white,” Bluebell said slowly and forcefully, as though talking to a child. “If it had been seen from below, perhaps it might look white. But you and I, we were close to it. We are daughters of kings.” She sat down again. “More mead!”
“It’s very late.”
“One more!”
Ash went to fetch her a drink. Her fears were all awake now, despite her drunkenness. The impulse to run was strong. But so, too, was the desire to believe Bluebell. Her older sister was always right. Usually right.
When she returned, her sister was nodding off into her chest.
Ash roused her. “Come, sister. Time to sleep.”
“I was asleep,” Bluebell protested blearily. Her hair was lank and hanging half over her face.
“In a bed.”
“Where’s the bed?”
“Gartrude has a spare room for us.” Ash rose and put her hand under Bluebell’s elbow, felt the sinew of her sister’s mighty arm.
Bluebell stood unsteadily. “I like her.”
Gartrude saw them and hurried over, beaming. “My lord, you will be so comfortable at my house.”
“Why are you talking so loud?” Bluebell said.
“This way, sister,” Ash said, and they followed Gartrude out into the cool night air. Her head spun.
“I will cook you a breakfast fit for a champion,” Gartrude was saying. “Eggs and salted pork and porridge. Will that make you happy, my lord?”
“My sister is coming home with me,” Bluebell said, grasping Ash around the waist and nearly knocking her over. “I couldn’t be happier.” She stumbled, fell.
“My, but she’s long,” Gartrude said, considering Bluebell flat out on the ground.
“Come on, up you get,” Ash said, but the thought of home was so overwhelming that she almost fell to her knees.
Between Ash’s coaxing and Gartrude’s thick muscles, they managed to get Bluebell back on her feet and across the village to the little house behind the smithy. Here, out of the cold, Gartrude showed them to a neat room with a soft mattress for them to share.
“Thank you,” Ash said, because Bluebell was already spread out on the mattress with her eyes closed.
“It’s an honor,” Gartrude said, and closed the door behind her.
“Come on, Bluebell,” Ash said. “You can’t sleep in your mail.”
“ ’Course I can.”
“At least take your boots off.” But Bluebell’s eyes were closed. Ash went to the end of the bed and pulled off her sister’s left boot, then the right. As she did so, a small ping sounded off the floor. Ash knew immediately it was the scale, freed from its sticking place in Bluebell’s boot. She crouched on the floor. The candlelight picked up its iridescent glow.
The scale was pink, not white. Nor was it the same shape or size as the white scales in the hem of her cloak. Even though she had suspected it, this new certainty made her moan with weary dread.
“C’mon, Ash,” Bluebell slurred. “Sleep time.”
Ash lay down next to her sister. Bluebell rolled onto her side and put her heavy arm over Ash, then dropped into sleep, snoring loudly.
Ash listened to her awhile, listened to the wind over the eaves. She would wait an hour, maybe two, until she was sure Bluebell wouldn’t wake and stop her. Then she would run, take herself back out into the empty world she never should have left. Mead and exhaustion swept her along. She slowly began to descend toward slumber, thoughts blurring against one another…
Fire. Fear. It’s coming for you.
Ash startled awake, every nerve in her body alive. The dream again. The dream that had driven her into exile, driven her on the quest to find and destroy the dragon. The dream that seemed to tell her that she would bring death and destruction to those she loved. In that dream, the dragon had been red, not white. But a dragon was a dragon.
And it seemed that her nightmare had not yet ended.
Ash woke, leaden in heart and limb, while the sky was still dark. Cursed herself for sleeping at all. Bluebell slumbered on, a lank strand of fair hair falling diagonally across her face. Ash studied her for a moment, memorizing every scar and line, in case it was the last time she saw her beloved sister.
She pulled on her shoes, but her cloak lay half beneath Bluebell’s hard shoulder. Ash tugged it gently. Bluebell stirred. Ash froze.
Then her sister rolled over—farther onto the cloak—and went back to sleep.
Instead, Ash picked up Bluebell’s cloak. It didn’t have protection charms in the hem, but perhaps she could gather more. She needed something against the winters when they came, however, and she wouldn’t be returning to any towns or villages ever again.
Her knees nearly buckled at the thought. The empty roads, the empty years. She opened the door quietly and slipped out.
Forty yards up the road out of town, a soft whinny and relaxed hoofbeats told her Wraith was nearby. She kept walking, head down, and at the head of the road the ghost horse joined her.
Ash grasped his bridle. “You do know what you are getting yourself into with me?” she asked him, climbing onto his back. Again, that strange buoyant feeling. “Dragons and so on. Though I suppose you don’t care if you’re already dead.” The thought made her smile. At last she had a companion who needn’t fear what happened.
Wraith whinnied, straining to be away.
“Toward the sea,” she said to him, patting his chill flank. “I will see that dragon’s corpse with my own eyes.” The last shred of hope. Perhaps the cave had been dark. Perhaps Bluebell had missed some white scales.
They moved off, away from the town. Away from anyone she could hurt.
Ash sat on a sun-drenched rock, vertical noon light on her shoulders. In her lap lay eight shining dragon scales. Each of them she had plucked herself from the dead dragon’s belly, in the cave that smelled of fish and blood. She had cut her index finger retrieving one of them, and it throbbed softly. All of them were pink.
The sea wind pulled at the hood of Bluebell’s cloak, which was too long for her by a mile and pooled around her feet. One by one she tossed the scales out over the rocks, toward the sea, then sat a little longer, contemplating the horizon, that blue arch of the world, and wondering how long it would take to find the other dragon. And if she had a hope at all of killing it.
And why her dreams had shown her a red dragon when the only one still alive was white.
She closed her eyes. The sunlight made her field of vision red. Unweder had plunged himself in a trance to see the location of the dragons, but perhaps Ash, with her strong attunement to elemental forces, could seek the last dragon with her mind.
A breath, and then a release. The unseen world teemed around her. She could feel their presences, like so many warm pockets of steam, layer on layer, retreating infinitely into time and sky, growth and earth, breath and sea.
“Dragon,” she murmured, sending her mind’s eye out among them.
A prickle ran from the base of her spine up to her skull, then collected on her scalp. A mad itch.
Too late, she clamped her mind closed. Her eyes snapped wide. Unweder. She had made herself too receptive and he had sensed her. She had to move, take herself into the woods where she was harder to find. She climbed to her feet and made her way back to Wraith.
The land to either side of the narrow, rutted path was rocky and choked with gorse and bracken. From a high point on the road, she could see a distant dark-green strip of woodland. Clouds moved in as she rode, casting a pattern of shapeless shadows on the ground. Her eye fixed on the woods, she urged Wraith forward. The horse didn’t resist, or tire, or need to be fed and watered. They kept going. The woods were a mile away. Half a mile now. Quarter.
A scudding cloud, a breath of hot wind. A fast-moving shadow.
Her blood knew before her brain did.
“Wraith, run!” she cried as the shadow on the ground resolved itself into the shape of two giant wings. She clung to the reins, dared not look behind her. Wraith streaked away across the uneven ground as the shadow grew, covering her, overtaking her. She chanced a look directly up. White. Dazzling white with the sun on its wings, and easily twice the size of the red dragon Bluebell had killed. It began to circle overhead.
But it didn’t try to kill her.
Ash pushed Wraith out over the bracken, cutting away from the path and straight toward the woods. The dragon realized what she was trying to do and glided toward the woods, circling and landing.
She yanked the reins. Wraith pulled up, whinnying. Ash’s heart jumped in her chest, her mind scrambling for a solution.
Then, from the woods, a familiar figure on a muscular white destrier emerged.
“Bluebell, no!” Ash called, but her voice was snatched away on the wind.
Bluebell charged at the dragon, the Widowsmith held aloft. Her battle cry rang out over the moor.
The dragon spread its wings and took to the sky, spun and blew a huge gout of fire at Bluebell. Ash kicked Wraith and they galloped.
Torr, spooked by the fire, reared and ran toward the trees. The dragon circled and took off, back toward Ash. She was closing on the cover of the woods now, and urged Wraith to put on an extra burst of speed. She was horribly exposed out here; she expected the river of flame any moment.
But it didn’t come. She made it to the hem of the wood, then farther in. Bluebell had Torr by the reins, trying to settle him. The wings passed overhead once, twice, slicing through the air with a whoosh. Ash braced herself for fire.
Nothing.
Bluebell grabbed Wraith’s reins. “Get off,” she commanded. “We’ll get farther under cover without the horses. And don’t run away from me this time. I’ve had enough of that.”
“Bluebell, I’m sorry I—”
But Bluebell grabbed her arm and they began to run, farther into the wood, where the trees were dense.
Ash heard the wings move off, but Bluebell ignored it, found them cover behind a large rock, and sat.
A minute passed, then another, with only the sound of their ragged breathing and small animals moving in the undergrowth.
Finally, Ash said, “It’s gone.”
Bluebell nodded, mute.
“It didn’t try to kill me, Bluebell. Do you know what that means?”
Bluebell rose lazily and started back to the horses. “That it wants revenge on me? I killed the other.”
Ash scrambled to her feet, following her. “No. It’s smarter than the other. It anticipated where I would go. It knew who you were. It wants me alive.”
Bluebell flipped open the pack over Torr’s rump and withdrew Ash’s cloak. “Here, you forgot this. Can I have mine back now?”
Ash snatched the cloak. “Bluebell, listen. I think it’s Unweder.”
“Unweder? How?”
“Very powerful magic. Magic that I…may have given him.” She thought about all the extra blood he had been taking from her. “I need to know, one way or another. If it’s not him, if it’s just the beast, then we will kill it and I will be free.”
“And if it’s Unweder?” Bluebell asked.
Ash shook her head. “If it’s Unweder, he’ll follow me forever.”
When Ash pointed out the little chapel in the distance, on the crest of a rocky outcrop over the sea, Bluebell’s blood heated up. Trimartyrs in her father’s kingdom? Whichever pious idiot had built this chapel, she was almost glad he had been burned to death by dragon fire before he could spread his message of hate and oppression across Almissia.
Hate and oppression of women, mostly. That had been her observation.
“We should approach cautiously,” Ash said, squinting into the afternoon sun. “In case Unweder is still in there.”
Bluebell dismounted and drew her sword. “I hope he is,” she said, and she didn’t say that she was thinking it was long past time when she should have filled his guts with steel. Ash hurried behind her as she stalked toward the chapel. She kicked open the door. A cold, rank smell hit her face. The chapel was empty but for a bloody blanket.
Bluebell picked it up.
“My blood,” Ash said. “It looks as though he hasn’t returned since last time we…met.”
Bluebell sheathed her sword, disappointed. “What did you hope to find?”
“Him,” Ash said. “Evidence that he hadn’t…become that thing.”
“Where else might he be?”
“Down along the coastline, in the caves.”
“Then that is where we will go.”
“Can you not return to Blickstow, whole and alive, sister?”
Bluebell fixed Ash in her gaze. “I intend to. With you by my side.”
“It would be easier if I just gave myself to him.”
“It would be easier if I never went into battle. But I keep going.” Bluebell yanked the door shut, and she took a gulp of brisk sea air to clear her nostrils. “Ash, this isn’t just about saving you from him, it’s about saving Thyrsland from him. If he can take dragon form, what do you think he intends to do with that power? Fly circles for fun?”
Ash blinked twice, as though it had never occurred to her. “He never gave any indication that he was interested in worldly power.”
Bluebell made a dismissive noise. “Everybody is. We need to find him and stop him, before he makes an alliance with King Renward or that smug bastard Tolan and they decide to march on Almissia.”
“I’m sure he doesn’t want—”
“You cannot be sure of anything.” Bluebell was already walking toward the cliff, her eyes scanning for a clear path down.
“This way,” Ash said, leading her to the north. A path, rocky and steep at first but then sloping more gently, led them down to the sea. The tide was full, revealing only a thin strip of rocky sand.
Bluebell’s boots sank into the damp sand. “Where now?” she asked.
“I found the white scale in a cave to the south, but Unweder was searching to the north.”
Bluebell nodded. “Let’s start with your cave.” She turned and jumped with alarm. The sea goblin who had fetched Ash for her had appeared beside her. Bluebell put a hand over her heart.
Ash smiled and knelt on a flat rock before it. “Hello. I thought I might not see you again,” she said, all gentle and warm with the ugly thing.
“Stand aside,” Bluebell said.
“Be kind,” Ash said. “This little fellow helped save your life.”
“I don’t like goblins,” Bluebell muttered.
The goblin climbed up onto the rock next to Ash. “You seek your companion? The man in black?” it asked in its jagged, guttural voice.
“You have seen him?” Ash asked.
“The whole sea saw him,” the creature said. “For he charmed a dragon away.”
Bluebell could tell from the droop of Ash’s shoulders that this was what she feared the most. “Where?” Ash asked. “Where is the living corpse of the dragon? If we hack off its head, Unweder will die.”
“He took it far out beneath the sea. Farther than you could dive.”
“Will it drown?” Bluebell asked.
“Dragons don’t drown.”
“Can you kill it for us? I could give you a knife.”
Ash shot her a harsh glance.
“The sea is large and we are small,” it said, spreading its little barnacled hands. “We are not much good with knives.”
Ash climbed to her feet and stepped off into the swirling water, wading out a few yards with her gaze on the horizon.
“Ash?” Bluebell asked.
“Let me think,” she called back, her small voice nearly engulfed by the sound of the waves.
Bluebell waited, aware of the goblin standing beside her. Eventually, it said to her in a quiet voice, “She is important, you know.”
“I know. She’s my sister.”
“No. Important. To Thyrsland.” The goblin paused a moment, then said, in a tone that was almost nasty, “More important than you.”
Bluebell narrowed her eyes. “I don’t take counsel from goblins.”
“Maybe you should.”
Ash turned and waded back toward them. “I can open up the sea,” she said. “I can find the dragon where he’s hidden it and open up the sea, and go down there and—”
“There’s an easier way,” Bluebell said. “You say Unweder wants you?”
“Yes.”
“Then we draw him out, using you as the bait, and we kill him.”
“Bluebell, that dragon is twice the size of the other, and he will be airborne.”
“I’m not saying I will do it alone,” Bluebell said. “We’ll go to Withing and find my hearthband. Nobody has a spear arm like Gytha, and Sighere would spill his last drop of blood by my side. And you, Ash, have your own power. Among us, we will take the creature down.”
Ash wavered.
“I will give you more charms,” the goblin said. “If you wait only an hour I will bless more charms for you to sew into your cloak.” It snapped its wet little fingers, growing excited, its voice rising in pitch. “They will be the strongest charms I have ever blessed: so strong it will mute your own magic while you wear the cloak, so he cannot find you.”
Ash swallowed hard, her eyes going to the sea again. Her skin was so pale and thin she looked almost blue. “Yes,” she said softly. “Very well. We will try it.”
Several days on the road, and Ash and Bluebell had neared Godwebb, a small town of wool growers and spinners a day’s ride from Withing. Ash could tell that Bluebell felt a strong sense of relief, knowing they were now so close to her hearthband. Ash’s apprehension, however, grew daily.
Ash reined in Wraith at the top of a rise, unwilling to go any closer. Bluebell cantered a little farther, then realized she was without her companion and turned Torr around.
“What is it?” she asked.
The village looked happy, welcoming. Wide rolling fields of green dotted with sheep, well-kept roads with high beech hedges, and a two-story alehouse of lime-washed wattle and daub, with large shutters to let the summer light in.
“We can’t go down there,” Ash said.
“But…mead.”
“What if Unweder comes?” Ash said, and realized she had said it in a hushed voice, as if he might be nearby and listening.
“You have that.” Bluebell indicated Ash’s cloak, which she had spent hours every night by firelight sewing charms onto. It now crackled with objects from the sea: shells of all different shapes and sizes, coral and dried seaweed and driftwood, seahorses and starfish hard as rocks. The briny smell had accompanied them inland.
“I don’t know how far I can trust it.”
Bluebell shrugged. “He hasn’t found us yet.”
Ash could not expect Bluebell to understand. Every step of the way, she felt Unweder searching for her. She perceived his interest like a faint rubbing sensation in the air around her. She had no doubt he had turned to the strongest undermagic to do so. He needed her. If she took off the cloak, which made her own magic feel as though it were under mud, she could probably tell exactly where he was. But then he would be able to locate her, too.
If the feeling grew stronger before they found help in the form of Bluebell’s hearthband, Ash knew she would have to run. Bluebell could not kill the white dragon alone, and Ash could not risk attracting Unweder to a small, happy village. “Please, Bluebell,” Ash said.
Bluebell tilted her head slightly, looking at her. Ash could almost see her brain ticking over.
“It’s fair weather,” Bluebell said eventually. “Let us sleep under the stars.”
If Bluebell was irritated about missing out on company and mead, she didn’t show it. She got on with tending to Torr while Ash made a fire and cut the bread they had brought with them. The last of the afternoon light was leaving the sky when they sat down to eat by the fire.
“Look cheerful, Ash,” Bluebell said through a mouthful of bread. “It will all be done with soon.”
“You don’t know that.”
“I know everything.”
Ash glanced up. Bluebell was smiling in amusement, but perhaps she still believed the claim.
“I cannot wait to have you home in Blickstow with some fat on your bones and your lovely hair grown long again, telling tales of your adventures to the cook’s children,” Bluebell said.
“Please. Do not speak of such things. They fill me with such yearning, and I am not at all certain that they will come to pass.”
Bluebell shrugged. “Nobody knows what will come to pass.”
Ash thought of her dream, the awful premonition. “It is not lost on me that, in trying to avoid my Becoming, I have brought it rushing toward me.”
Bluebell dusted her fingers, swallowed, and said, “You are not your fate. You are your deeds. Your Becoming is only the warp on the loom, the threads that are already in place that you cannot change. Your deeds are the weft. You choose the thread, the shuttle. You make the pattern.” She leaned toward the fire, the glow illuminating her scarred face from below. “What happens next is not to be known, but if we die, we die having chosen our deeds, and that is right and good.”
Ash’s heart stirred at her sister’s words. How she longed for them to be true. “I am not as brave as you, Bluebell,” she said. “I’m afraid. Not just for myself, but for anyone else who might be drawn into this.”
“Stop worrying,” Bluebell said, leaning back on her elbows. “Tomorrow we will have enough weapons and warriors to kill any dragon.”