My eyes opened as the last of the visions faded, and I managed a single deep breath before my stomach rebelled and emptied itself with rare violence. I stumbled to a pool of relatively clear water and rinsed my mouth and face, which was about the time that I saw Crow watching me. His hands were at his sides, shaking enough that I was surprised he hadn’t managed to cut himself with the knife he was holding. He raised it to shoulder height as I walked towards him.
‘What are you doing?’ I asked, stopping a few feet out of his reach. I doubted that the bowstrings masquerading as muscles would allow him to drive the knife deep enough to hurt me, but didn’t want to tempt him into trying anything stupid.
He swung the knife to the left, then back at me. ‘What is this?’
I darted a glimpse to the left and spotted the necromancer’s empty head. His eyes had popped out at some point, giving the sunken face an almost comical look of astonishment.
‘I ate his brain,’ I said, too tired to bother fabricating platitudes for another ungrateful human. ‘And no, I neither wanted to nor enjoyed it.’ I stepped closer. ‘Now put that knife away before I sheathe it somewhere you would not appreciate.’
‘You going to eat mine?’
I grimaced at the thought. ‘Stars, no.’
He chewed his lip for a moment, then lowered the blade.
‘It’s how I see his memories,’ I said, answering the question I was sure was on its way to his lips. ‘Did you not wonder why I took his head?’
‘I just thought it was, you know, some sort of ritual or something.’
‘Hardly.’ I grimaced at the thought of doing something like that often enough that it became a ritual event. It was a strange and savage world where decapitating another of your own kind caused such scant outrage, or where such a deed was so common that it had become a cultural norm. A world where humans held dominion would be a dark and terrible thing to behold.
‘I just meant…’ He stared up at me. ‘Hel, I don’t know what I meant. You ate his brains!’
‘Brain. Singular.’ I kicked the empty head into a rancid smelling pool. ‘If I meant you harm I would not have rescued you.’
‘You didn’t though, did you?’ I could hear his old heart galloping inside his chest and the creak of his joints as he sat down. ‘You brought me out of there, but you didn’t come to rescue me, did you?’
‘No.’
‘So why then?’
‘That is a question I have been asking myself a lot of late.’ I looked up at the stars and exhaled slowly until the annoyance simmering within me subsided. ‘And yet I still haven’t found an answer that rings true.’
‘You say a lot but say nothing. Why did you save me?’
‘You were kind to me when there was no reason to be.’ I smiled at the memory of him giving me a clean, new tunic. My first gift. His heart was still racing as he watched me, and if I hadn’t known better I would have thought he was going to flee or attack me.
‘Who are you?’ He licked his lips, his tongue a flash of pink amongst the white bristles. ‘What are you?’
‘You don’t want to know.’
‘Tell me. I’m too old for mysteries. Is Stratus even your name?’
That made me smile, for I could only agree with the sentiment; I too was growing too old and tired for mysteries and lies.
‘My name is Stratus Firesky, and it has been so since before this world’s first dawn.’ I felt my spine straighten and my chest swell as I announced myself, and I feel no shame in admitting that I let a touch of sorcery colour my words, carrying the memory of the awe and fear I had once been met with. ‘I am the Dead Wind, the Destroyer, and the Doom of Krandin.’
His brows lifted. ‘You’re what?’
‘The Dead Wind.’
‘That’s what I thought you said.’ His eyebrows settled back to their usual position. ‘Are you some kind of royalty?’
‘In a manner of speaking, I suppose that I am.’ King Stratus did have a pleasant sound to it.
‘I don’t get it.’
‘I am Fireborn, the last true son of the stars.’
‘What?’
I shook my head at the absurdity of having to explain myself to this tiny, shrivelled man. ‘I am a dragon.’ The last dragon, my mind whispered, ever willing to remind me of my sorrow.
‘How do you mean?’
I thought he might have been jesting, but there was no laughter in his voice. ‘I am a dragon in human form.’
‘A dragon? The fire-breathing sort, like from the old stories?’
‘Yes.’
He stared at me, then burst out laughing. ‘More stories and lies. I said—’
His protest stuttered as I set my hand on top of his head.
‘What—’
I tilted his head up until his eyes met mine and summoned the same memory of the hunt that I had shown Tatyana.
‘See me now,’ I said, and gently pulsed the memory into his mind, holding onto his arms as his knees buckled.
He cried out like a child and tried to bolt, but I had anticipated that and held him to me. For a moment I thought his heart would surely burst, but it held and I lowered him to the rock, where he lay gulping air as if I had just saved him from drowning.
‘I’ll be damned,’ he said once the initial panic lost its grip on him. ‘Gods above and saints below, you’re serious.’
‘Very.’
‘It’s not possible, it’s just not.’ Unexpectedly, he rose and took a step forward until his chest was pressed against my lower ribs, his gaze roving across my face.
‘How? You look normal. I mean, you’re a big lump and all but still, you know, normal.’
‘There is an enchantment binding me to this form,’ I said. ‘Although I fear its hold upon me is weakening.’ I lifted my hand and showed him my nails.
‘Long nails are proof of nothing, surely.’
I sighed and smiled at him with a mouth full of my real teeth and the red of my eyes woken. He cried out to his gods once more and shrunk back and then, quite bizarrely, began crying.
‘Do not be afraid,’ I offered once I had retracted my teeth.
‘I’m not,’ he said. He took a shuffling step then lunged forward to embrace me.
At first I stood quietly, waiting for him to let go, but eventually patted him on the back as gently as I could when he showed no signs of releasing me, unsure what else to do. ‘There, there.’
Eventually he released me and wiped the wet from his face. ‘Sorry.’
‘Apology accepted.’
‘This is amazing.’ He bared his remaining teeth in a smile I’d prefer not to see again.
‘I’m sure it is, but dinner would be even more so.’
The thought of a hot, meaty meal was apparently enough to return to him to his senses and we made our way back to our impromptu camp with haste, where he instructed me how best to stack the wood for a long fire, rather than a hot one, before remembering who he was speaking to. After that he didn’t say much, not until he had eaten his fill and I was idly cracking the longer bones for the marrow.
‘You still haven’t told me where you’re from.’
‘Why does it matter so much to you?’ I said around a mouthful of fatty meat.
‘Just curious is all. You never did answer me back there.’ He gestured vaguely towards the east.
I considered the stars, then pointed to one that shone like a wolf’s eye. ‘My home was far to the north and east of here, under the light of the Wolf. Or at least I think it was. Is.’
‘You can’t remember?’
‘It has been a long time, and my last memories of it were not fond ones.’
‘How long?’
‘Seven hundred years, give or take a few decades.’
His whistle stirred the longer whiskers on his lip as he leaned forward to stare at me, the glow of the coals smudging the lines that creased his face. Did human skulls shrink as they aged? His face must have been much larger at some point for him to have all that skin stretched out across it.
‘And?’ he asked.
‘And what?’
‘I said why are we still walking through this bloody bog rather than flying wherever it is we’re going?’
‘I didn’t know that you could fly,’ I said.
‘Ha!’ He clapped his hands and sat back, and for a moment I dared to hope that his questions had come to an end.
‘But why? Come on, answer me. That can’t be more of a secret than what you’ve already told me.’ He scratched at his beard. ‘Is it the glamour?’
‘I always liked that word. Glamour. It sounds so much grander than enchantment, or spell binding. But yes, that is why. I am bound to this form, including my wings, and while I have my sorcery, I cannot yet unbind myself.’
‘Why?’
‘I will tell you in the morning.’
‘Why not now?’
‘Because,’ I said, a growl slipping into my voice, ‘I am tired, and hurt, and still hungry. I need to sleep, and you need to let me.’
‘Easy, son, I was just asking a question. I don’t often get to yammer to a bloody dragon.’
‘Yammer in the morning.’ I watched through lidded eyes as he laid back, idly picking his beard, and I had no need to read his mind to know that his questions would not wait until morning. I teased out a strand of sorcery and whispered his name as I pulsed it towards him, catching his gaze just long enough to weaken any resistance he might have offered. He was old and tired, and the compulsion took hold faster than I had hoped. Within three long breaths he was fast asleep.