CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

THE PREVAILING SYMPHONY

I grappled with the darkness, dirt in my mouth, blood on my tongue.

Laughter. My father’s.

I don’t remember if it was a dream or a memory that next flared in my mind. I was throwing sticks for the dogs into the river while Yeshin stood nearby, arms crossed. He didn’t like the dogs licking him, didn’t even seem to like them in general, but he tolerated them for my sake. Occasionally, he even found them amusing.

“Your brothers loved dogs,” he commented as I threw yet another stick and the dogs plunged into the grey water, racing to be the first to reach it.

I turned to him, unsure of what he was trying to say.

His face was blank, unnaturally so. He took one step before cringing. His joints had become more painful as of late, and some days he found it hard to get out of bed. That he had decided to take me to the riverbank at all had struck me as strange, although I never questioned it. I never questioned anything Yeshin did in those days. “Get your dogs and come take a walk with me” had been enough to send me running from my room and down to the kennels, where I nearly tripped over the door in my haste. For all that his anger could frighten the wits out of me, time spent with my father was still a rare, precious thing.

“The dragon that killed them,” I found myself saying. “Was it really impossible to tame? Everyone says it was mad.”

His lips twitched. “Mad. Tainted. An unholy thing.”

“If we could find dragons that aren’t tainted…” I began.

“That talk is what ruined Rysaran,” Yeshin said. “He grew obsessed with what could have been instead of trying to fix what is. Our land has more problems than our lack of dragons. Economy. The balance of power. The zealous religions of every province, all of which say completely different things.”

“The dragons once united us.”

He grabbed my jaw, craning my head up towards him. He didn’t hurt me, but he kept a firm hold. “Never speak of this again, Tali.”

“Father—”

“It killed your brothers, do you understand? It killed your brothers. My sons…”

Yeshin dropped my chin and turned away. I watched him hobble off, shaking, before whistling to the dogs so we would follow him. I came up to hold his arm and help him walk. He looked down. Except for his completely white hair and beard, sometimes he didn’t look all that old. It was his eyes. You could still see the wildness of his youth in them, the ambition, the strength of the dreams that were denied him. But they aren’t mine, Father.

I started coughing. I opened my eyes to a clear sky and realized, as pain struck me, that I was still alive.

I struggled to stand and saw that the dragon was pinned to the ground, roaring as it tried to give out a few short bursts of dragon-fire. Eikaro stood a few paces away, eyes closed. I didn’t know what he was trying to do, but there was blue light around his hands.

I called to him. “Stay back, Queen Talyien,” he said in a low voice.

“You idiot,” I hissed. “It’s breaking loose!”

“Then perhaps it’s best if you—”

The spear broke. The dragon pounced on Eikaro, knocking him flat to the ground. Whatever he had tried to do in the short amount of time I was unconscious, it had made the dragon very angry.

Another spear whistled through the air.

It was thrown so swiftly that I almost didn’t see it. It struck clean into the dragon’s nose. The dragon roared and slid back against the boulders, knocking a few more loose. I rushed to Eikaro’s side before turning around.

Cho appeared, looking all smug.

“Another fucking idiot,” I said. “I’m surrounded by them.”

“You really should stop hanging around people like me,” he replied, almost brightly. “And why the long face, Queen? It was a great throw.”

“You were supposed to get help!”

“Who says I didn’t? Lord Huan sends his regards.”

The dragon roared. “I don’t think we’re going to have time to talk,” Cho said, drawing his sword. “I’ve been itching to use this.”

“Akaterru help us all,” I groaned. “I suppose we have no choice but to kill it now.”

“Hold its attention,” Eikaro told us.

“What are you going to do?”

“The more I try to explain to you, the less time I’ll have to actually do it.”

“Dragon!” Cho thundered, waving his arms at the beast. It turned in a circle, snarling as blood dripped from its nose.

“Watch its tail!” I called out.

Almost as if it heard me, the dragon whipped its tail from under its legs. Cho leaped back, avoiding it, before striking the dragon on the mouth. The dragon roared, spitting out another spurt of fire that fizzled out as soon as it hit the air.

“What’s wrong with it?” Cho asked.

I held my sword out, approaching it from the other end. “I think it needs enough air for a good flame. But it’s stuck down here with us, so…”

The dragon snapped its head towards me. I struck back with my sword with such force that it knocked the spear out of its nose. It clattered to the ground, and I quickly sheathed my sword to grab it. The dragon reached out for me just as fast, teeth bared.

I spun on my heel, managing to lunge at the dragon with one end. It dropped back warily.

“It’s scared,” I heard Cho call out.

“No thanks to you,” I grinned.

“That a compliment, Queen?”

“The best you’ll ever get from me,” I said before steeling myself for the next attack. I threw myself off to the side as it barrelled forward. Behind, I heard Cho’s sword clatter uselessly on the dragon’s hind leg.

“Fucking bastard, why aren’t you flying off?” Cho asked. “Get the hell out of here! Shoo!”

The beast drew itself up.

“Get back, Cho!”

I had forgotten about the change. The beast had shown no hint of it during its attack on the tower nor the entire time we had spent on the scree. Now its body contorted, growing straighter, taller, more human. Its hands reached out to grab Cho and it opened its mouth, as if to swallow him whole.

I wasn’t going to let that happen. I screamed at it, and as it turned, I grabbed it by the horn and stabbed it in the gums with the spear. It rolled its tongue and lifted its head. My boots dug into its scales as it dropped Cho and tried to swipe me off.

It started to flap its wings.

“Jump, Tali! Jump now!” Cho cried.

I squinted. The creature had grown so big that I couldn’t see below me now, and I didn’t want to break my body between boulders. I realized, too late, that we were airborne. I swung up to a more stable position above its neck and saw Eikaro clinging for dear life on its other wing. The dragon-beast shot straight up into the clouds, trying to shake us off.

My head spun, and I felt like my brain was being squeezed through my eye sockets. Somehow, I managed to make my way across the creature’s back and grab Eikaro by the arm, pulling him to me. Before I could draw another breath, the creature dove. I imagined losing our grip and plunging into the mountains below.

In the split second that this happened, I found myself oddly at peace. Impending death was a curious thing. I didn’t stop to think about whether it was going to hurt or what was going to happen to me once it was all over. Instead, I watched the scenery unfolding around me like an observer drifting from empty space, my fears stretching so far behind me that they became unrecognizable. The blood pounding through my body and the breath that tore out of me felt weightless. I felt as if I was the sunlight, the sky, the clouds, the fields stretching out like a sea of green below.

“Hold tight, Queen Talyien,” I heard Eikaro say, pulling me back from my thoughts. His hands were still glowing.

I looked at him, blinking.

“If this works, tell my brother—”

His eyes turned black.

The dragon-beast stopped in mid-air, its wings holding us aloft. I realized that it was shrinking, returning to its true dragon form. The light around Eikaro’s hands faded as whatever was causing the dragon to change in the first place disappeared.

My first thought was to congratulate him. He had managed some sort of spell, unskilled as he claimed to be, and now if we could only figure out how to make the dragon land without killing us in the process, we might actually be able to survive this.

My second thought was that his eyes were still black.

The thought died quickly. Eikaro’s jaw unhinged, revealing a mouth full of the same sharp teeth as the beasts we had encountered in the village weeks ago. I managed to throw my arm out as he lunged, sharp fangs ripping into my skin.

I kept my hand on the dragon’s scales—I wasn’t sure why I hadn’t fallen yet, but the dragon seemed to be gliding steadily, smoothly, across the sky. I tried not to worry too much about that as I turned to more pressing concerns. My free hand grabbed Eikaro’s throat. I was loath to squeeze tight, but he was starting to gnaw at me, trying to eat me alive. I sank my foot into his groin and tore my arm away from him, knocking him back with a closed fist.

He hissed, mouth open and tongue curling out. I recognized the motion of a dragon trying to flame.

“Lord Eikaro!” I cried. “Get ahold of yourself!”

The dragon flapped its wings, as if to warn me, and began another climb. I managed to hold on to its shoulder, my boots digging into its scales.

“Lord Eikaro!” I repeated. I could barely hear my own voice against the wind.

Eikaro began to crawl forward.

My insides knotted. His head jerked left and right while blood pulsed freely from his torn leg. His face had changed completely—dark hollows under his eyes, his ears flattened back, his tongue drooping down to his hands. There was fur around his elongated mouth.

He attacked again. I braced myself.

Beneath us, the dragon finally turned, its wings pulling its body into a graceful loop through the wind. I tried to wrap my fingers tighter around its scales, but the hold wasn’t strong enough to take my whole weight and I felt myself falling.

The sensation lasted no more than a moment. I bounced back behind the dragon’s shoulders, landing on my hip. I heard a guttural snarl and saw Eikaro clinging to the dragon’s tail, face contorted in rage. I reached back down to grab him.

“Leave it!” I heard someone call. The timbre of it was familiar.

I opened my mouth in confusion. “Eikaro?”

“It is broken! Let it fall!”

The dragon roared and whipped its tail, sending Eikaro’s body flying into the air. I watched it howl like a beast before it went crashing to the ground below.

A sob tore itself out of me.

“Are you crying? Why are you crying? For me? I am honoured, but…that body wouldn’t have made it back home, my queen.”

I turned to the dragon in shock.

“Eikaro?” I repeated.

The dragon roared.

The dragon took me all the way past the clouds and up to the mountains, where we landed on the shore of a bright-blue lake, surrounded on all sides by stone slopes, ringed with step-like ledges. Large boulders lay scattered everywhere. Although the weather wasn’t terribly cold, a thick sheet of ice floated at the end of the lake, where it seemed to have poured down from the snowcapped mountains above. Blue veins marked the ice where water still pulsed beneath it. I could also hear the sound of a roaring waterfall from somewhere, though I couldn’t see it.

Sandy-brown logs, streaked with black and red pebbles, drifted in piles along the shore. I jumped on them as the dragon dropped to his knees, allowing me to clamber down. I tore a piece of my sleeve to wrap around the throbbing wound on my arm before I allowed myself to face him.

The madness in the dragon’s eyes was gone. The yellow light was replaced by a deep, warm brown that seemed almost human. He craned his head back as I continued to stare at him, his lips curling into a half grin.

“I wasn’t dreaming when I heard you talk,” I said.

“No, my queen.”

“I did bash my head back there. You could be an illusion created by my addled brain. It’s done it before.”

“This is real.”

I finished tying the bandage. “You’re Eikaro, then. Not that thing back there.”

He gave the slightest indication of a nod.

“You’re going to have to explain it a bit better than that.”

“You said my brother told you about how we planned to tame the dragons.”

“He did. He said the dragons were mad because of another soul, one the Kaggawas called corrupted. He also said that when you tried to separate the souls in the past, the corrupted soul attempted to kill its host.”

“Yes.”

“So what happened?”

“I offered a trade. My body for this one.”

“And it agreed?”

A full grin, now. “I told it I was a lord with a pregnant wife, and a brother who looked exactly like me. It couldn’t resist. But when I offered the bridge, I pulled the dragon’s soul along with it and locked both of them into that body. You would never be able to live with a corrupted soul, my queen. They take over. Your life will never be yours again.”

“What about Dai? Huan said he has two souls inside of him. He seems fine.”

“You will have to ask him about that, Beloved Queen. But it is why we have never trusted him.”

A cold breeze fluttered over us. I found my eyes drawn to the lake. I carefully limped to the edge of the water and dipped my injured arm into it. The shock from the cold passed quickly, and I felt the flesh become pleasantly numbed. I stared at the brilliant blue. The sunlight reflected so strongly on the surface that I couldn’t see if anything lurked beneath. But despite my inclination to be suspicious these days, I allowed myself to let my guard down. The scenery was too peaceful, and after everything that had happened, I felt like the fates owed me a moment to breathe.

I heard the dragon lumbering behind me.

“What now?” I asked.

“What do you mean?”

“Your body is gone. They will think you’re dead. I mean—you are…in a way. Are you?” I looked at him dubiously.

“I meant what I said. I would have never made it back home in one piece. That body had lost too much blood and would have attracted every slithering beast along the way. You would’ve died, too.”

“Will you always be able to talk like this? Or will you succumb to the nature of the beast?”

“I don’t know, my queen. This was…unexpected.” He spread his wings to look at them. “I can take you back to the ridge, as close to the tower as possible.”

“You will not come back with me?”

His throat rumbled. “My own people will kill me at first sight.”

“You can speak with them.”

“My queen, I cannot.”

“But you’re doing it to me right now.”

He showed me a tooth, another attempt at a smile. “You were with me when the trade happened. I believe a part of your essence skipped towards me, allowing me to show you my thoughts. You are blind to the agan —I don’t think you can see the connection or do much else with it. But it’s there.”

“But this is what your people have been trying to do, isn’t it? Trying to drive the other soul back, leaving only one inside the beast.”

“I’m not sure this was what we had in mind. We were counting on the dragons to remain dragons, and nothing more.”

“If I tell them this happened…”

“They will think you’re mad.”

I pulled my arm from the water and turned to him. “I may already be, anyway,” I murmured. “Let’s go.”

He allowed me to climb on him again. It occurred to me, as we returned to the air, that I was the first Dragonlord to have ever ridden a dragon—at least, one that wasn’t trying to kill its rider—in centuries. The irony of that was not lost on me.

Eikaro didn’t take me back to the ridge immediately. Child-like, he took me through the clouds, relishing in the feel of the wind with every beat of his wings as we soared through the air. Without the fear of trying to keep myself alive, the experience was exhilarating. It was twilight when we finally returned to the end of the road leading from the dragon-tower. I felt a pang of regret as he tucked his wings under him, allowing me to climb down one last time.

“I can get Huan out here,” I whispered, cupping his muzzle with my hands so I could look into his eyes. “He’ll believe me. He loves you. He’ll have to.”

He snorted a blast of hot breath. “Please do not tell him. Until I am sure of what this means, of what will happen to me in this body, I would rather not give them hope.”

“Your family will mourn you.”

He was silent for a moment. I pressed my forehead on his blood-caked nose, wrapping myself up in the feel of his presence. Funny how quickly I had switched to thinking that this was Lord Eikaro all along, and not the shattered body lying somewhere in the fields. I felt him nuzzle my cheek.

“They’ll live through it,” he murmured. He stepped away from me and took flight.

I limped down the road. Cho was waiting for me within sight of the dragon-tower gates. He broke into a grin, but I didn’t return it.

“The lordling…” he said, reading the look on my face.

I didn’t reply. We strode back into the city to revelry and cheers, and proclaimed to the hopeful faces that Lord Eikaro was dead.

Lord Huan, who had survived the dragon attacks with Captain Seo and one other man, heir to Yu-yan and Warlord Ojika’s legacy, broke down like a little boy. After everything that had happened, it felt odd to look at his face, the replica of his brother’s. I had barely gotten my head around this when I heard a guard proclaim Warlord Ojika’s arrival. I stepped back, feeling nauseous all of a sudden.

To the best of my knowledge, Warlord Ojika was a morose, reclusive man who had refused to ride out east over the last few years. In the few times I had demanded the warlords’ presence in my court, he had sent either a proxy or his sons. He had missed even Warlord Yeshin’s funeral, citing a bad leg from a horse injury and ordering a cousin to attend in his stead.

I supposed that there were worse circumstances to meet someone for the first time other than the morning after his son’s supposed death, but none came to mind immediately. Ojika’s expression bordered on revulsion. The wrinkles under his eyes were swollen, the after-effect of a sleepless night. He was a shorter man than both of his sons, with a balding head, small eyes, and a brow that seemed permanently furrowed.

“You,” he said.

“I’m getting very tired of being greeted that way,” I replied. “Warlord Ojika, I am sorry for your loss, but I did the best I could.” I would have been less irritable if Eikaro had died, but considering the circumstances, I found it hard to feel sympathy for his father.

“As I told you, Father,” Huan said from behind him, voice cracked. “She did more than most would—”

“Be silent!” Ojika roared, flinging his arm out. Huan dropped his head quickly. A true son, showing proper respect to his elder—a Jinsein, through and through. Ojika ought to be proud.

“Your son Eikaro died a hero,” I said, the lie whistling easily through my teeth. It was the truth, as far as I was concerned. I had no other words for what he did. “I would not be here if not for his sacrifice.”

“For what did my son give his life?” Ojika hissed. “You’re not even queen anymore.”

“What do you mean?”

He waved a letter in his hand. “This came from an official courier hours ago. Perhaps you could explain to us what it means.”

I picked it up and felt the blood drain from my face. The wax was black, imbedded with the official Ikessar seal. I didn’t even have to see the falcon on it—I’d know the feel of the damn thing in my sleep.

“Please read it out loud for us all,” Ojika said through gritted teeth.

I frowned as I indulged him. “I, Rayyel aren dar Ikessar, heir to the Dragonthrone, hereby declare my wife, Talyien aren dar Orenar, a traitor to the throne. She has transgressed and planted a false heir, the boy Thanh.” I paused, swallowing back the rage. “Until she is proven innocent and Prince Thanh is determined to be my own trueborn son, her title as queen of Jin-Sayeng will not be recognized. She is to be detained and sent back to Shirrokaru by order of the council.” The letter was signed at the bottom.

My first thought was that Yuebek must have forged it, as he had done before. But then why? Why remove the one thing that would bring him closer to what he wanted? He wanted to be king of Jin-Sayeng; if I didn’t hold the title of queen, he couldn’t get it through our union. Was he trying to get Thanh killed? It seemed too indirect for Yuebek. The letter came from a messenger that Warlord Ojika believed was official, so was he lying to me? Did it really come from the council, penned by my husband’s actual hand? Only Rai would’ve known the channels through which he could send such things directly to the people that mattered. But…

Ojika spat. “The explanation,” he said. The man wasn’t going to give me time to think things through.

“Rayyel is a bloody idiot,” I said, gritting my teeth. It was all I had.

“You really have made a mess of things.”

“Father—” Huan said.

Ojika shook his head. “I lose my son and this nation is in shambles,” he hissed. “A fine day, indeed.” He glanced up to see a guard walk in, another letter in hand. “What now?” he barked.

“Dai Kaggawa,” the guard murmured.

“What about that bastard?”

“He blames us for his daughter and demands that we return the queen to him.”

Ojika glanced at me. “Some ally you’ve got there.”

“He has my people,” I said. “He wouldn’t dare speak that way otherwise. Are you a wise man, Warlord Ojika? Or has the gout eaten away what’s left of your brain?”

Ojika’s eyebrows shot up. “Spit it out, bitch.”

“Do you want my cooperation?”

“You are disgraced,” Ojika hissed. “Your cooperation means nothing. You read the note—you have to be sent to Shirrokaru, in chains if I need to. I don’t want the Ikessars on my back.”

“Father—” Huan repeated.

He turned to his son. “What?”

“A reminder of our loyalties,” Huan said in a low voice.

Ojika laughed. “Eikaro is dead. What can they do to us that they haven’t already done?” But a moment later, he frowned and turned back to me. “Kaggawa has your men. What else are you keeping from me? Why were you even with him in the first place?”

“He promised to save my son.”

“Because you knew this scandal was coming?”

“Because a Zarojo prince is on his way,” I said, “and the man intends to sit his rump on the Dragonthrone, consequences be damned.”

His eyes widened. I had expected him to ask me to explain myself, but instead he called for Captain Seo.

“When I return to court, I intend to contest my husband’s misgivings,” I continued. “There is no truth to the claim. The boy is Rayyel’s.”

Ojika stared back with a measure of scrutiny. “Prince Rayyel seems pretty convinced. To have roused the council within the span of a few days…”

“The council comprises mostly Ikessars. They hold no love for me.”

“And so the mystery of the missing Dragonlords has been solved at last,” Ojika murmured. He was silent for a moment before turning to Captain Seo as he arrived. “Rally our soldiers. If Kaggawa thinks he can make such demands, then he needs to be kicked down a notch. We attack at dawn.”