54. Hello, goodbye
54
HELLO, GOODBYE
They had yet to locate Neveranimas, although they found signs of her presence: an enormous gaping hole in the jungle canopy. The sky was still too dark to see fine details, but the general outline of devastation was visible enough. They flew close enough to feel the chill and smell the unmistakable scent of ice.
“Somebody’s a cranky baby.” Claw snickered, awake again and, like Anahrod, straining to make out details.
“No,” Naeron said. When all three women looked back, he added: “An asshole.”
Anahrod smiled. Yes, Neveranimas was an asshole. She thought Claw’s description was appropriate, too, however: the destruction they’d witnessed was as much a tantrum as an attack.
As they flew closer to Gwydinion’s expected location, Anahrod felt increasingly nauseated. If anything had happened… she couldn’t stand it…
She pushed down her anxiety, her fears, and started reaching out to the jungle animals. Who was out there, who was awake. Perhaps she might find one to act as her eyes, letting her see Gwydinion.
The sun had just peeked over the horizon when she spotted Overbite.
Ris responded to Anahrod’s gasp so quickly there was no doubt she, too, had been harboring anxieties about all the ways matters might go wrong.
Anahrod shook her head. “It’s fine. I’m fine.” She hid her grin—it seemed rude to be too happy in front of Claw just then—and said, “It’s Overbite. Gwydinion’s riding Overbite. He’s fine.”
[You can talk to him?] Peralon sounded surprised indeed.
“No, I just… Overbite would smell if Gwydinion were injured or sick.” She inhaled deeply with relief. “I told her not to panic. She was about to scent you.”
“So now we just have to figure out how to reach Gwydinion without destroying acres of land and alerting every dragon in a thousand miles,” Claw said wryly. “Any ideas?”
“The bay,” Naeron said. “Tide’s out.”
“I wonder if Gwydinion knows it’s there,” Ris mused.
“He’s about to find out the hard way, isn’t he?” Claw said.
“It’s probably why he’s been heading west,” Anahrod told them. “I doubt he just wanted the sun at his back.” She prepared to grab control of Overbite if she had to. The titan drake wouldn’t run off a cliff under normal circumstances, but when a creature weighs twenty tons, momentum is a factor.
Peralon cleared the tree line, soaring out over the bay. With the tide out, it resembled a canyon more than any kind of ocean inlet. That canyon was several hundred feet deep, much of it still shadowed in darkness. What they could see of the bottom was a wet and muddy mass of browns and purples. The purple streaks were the poisonous tendrils of tidefishers, placidly drying out as they waited for the tide to slam back in and deliver the unwary or unlucky into their hungry arms. Interspersed among the mud and tendrils were white sticks of driftwood—or what one might be forgiven for mistaking as such. Anahrod knew better: they were the titular bones of the bay. A few columns of rock broke the “canyon” up—narrower at the base than at the top—which supported desperate, clinging trees and shrubs.
Large animal corpses remained from the last tidal push. They lent the charming smell of rotting meat to the bay’s salt, ozone, and petrichor odor. Flocks of noisy seabirds fought over choice bits of flesh the tidefishers hadn’t finished.
Somewhere along this line of cliffs, the waterfall they’d used to escape Sicaryon plummeted into the bay. Months removed from the event itself, she still shivered to think how matters might have gone if Naeron had been mistaken about the tides.
The Bay of Bones only saw calm four times a day—at the two high tides and the two low tides. At all other hours, it was an unholy monster grinding up anyone caught in its pull. When the tide returned, it did so with frightening speed, the water pushed up by the narrowing inlet into a giant wave.
“He should be visible in a minute,” Anahrod said to Peralon. Anahrod fought to keep Overbite from panicking, because she knew well what dragons meant. She forced Overbite to a halt twenty feet from the edge, as the titan drake broke the cover of trees.
“Hey, kid,” Claw shouted. “Do you need a ride?”
“Claw!” Gwydinion stopped struggling with Overbite’s harness. He unclipped himself before sliding down Overbite’s side. “Anahrod! Anahrod, you’re alive!”
Anahrod smiled. She was pleased with that outcome, too. “I am. Let’s hurry. We’ll throw a rope down for you.” She tried not to think about leaving Overbite behind again.
“No!” Gwydinion called back. “You come down! We need to talk! It’s important!”
Ris laughed, perhaps just a touch more sharp than normal. It had been a long, long couple of days and everyone’s tempers had thinned. “Gwydinion, we don’t have time—”
“I know how to fix Ivarion!” he shouted.
They dropped ropes from Peralon’s side and shimmied down to the cliff face. That done, the gold dragon positioned himself on the nearest rocky pillar like a guard hound. At least this angle made it much less likely a dragon would spot him unless they flew over the bay itself.
Anahrod hugged her brother, swung him around. Legless fussed, so she calmed him while she set her brother back down again, picking up his hands. “I am so glad to see you. Sicaryon didn’t find you? He said…”
“No,” Gwydinion assured her. “He found me. He’s the one who gave me Overbite.” He reached into his knapsack and pulled out a familiar rainbow feldspar ball. “And I have this.”
Anahrod scowled. “He let you go into the jungle all by yourself with the stone that Neveranimas is tracking? Oh, I’m going to hurt—”
“I wouldn’t say that he let me,” Gwydinion corrected. “He thought he was going to go out in a blaze of glory heroically defending his people. He gave me a very heartfelt speech about how much he loved you, too—”
Anahrod let out a long, suffering sigh. “Just tell me that fool is still alive.”
“He should be. He said he had the antidote.”
Anahrod’s head snapped back up. “Gwydinion!”
He wrinkled his nose at her, which she refused to acknowledge was cute as hell. He already knew. “I didn’t think it made any sense for him to keep the stone and have the dragons swarming all over Liokuhn—”
Anahrod let out a laugh. “Is that what he’s calling the seat of his kingdom?”
“Pretty sure, yes. I heard his soldiers talking.” He looked extremely curious, leaning forward. “Why? What does it mean?”
“‘The city,’” Anahrod answered, shaking her head. “And he thinks I can’t name things?”
Claw made a dismissive sound. Anahrod didn’t need to see her to know the woman was rolling her eyes.
“Anyway, it made more sense for me to take the stone and lead the dragons away than try to fight them when Sicaryon said they weren’t ready.”
“Wow,” Claw said, “so besides being shit at naming things, being suicidally heroic runs in the family, too? Good to know.”
Anahrod nearly made a comment about how they’d inherited it from their father, but that wasn’t the point.
“Anyway, I’m not done saying stuff.” Gwydinion stopped smiling and pulled his hands away from Anahrod’s. He turned to Claw and said, “Jaemeh’s dead. Sicaryon killed him.”
Claw looked down, ran a thumb along one of her scars absently. “Oh.” She raised her head. “Was it fast?”
“He stabbed him in the neck?”
Claw squinted. She seemed to be trying to imagine the scene in her head. Then she snorted. “Good enough.”
Gwydinion gave her a sharp nod, as if to say, Now that’s done. He then turned back to Anahrod and Ris, with Naeron likely included, mostly because of where he stood. “As for this.” He held up the feldspar Rampant Stone. “I’ve removed what Neveranimas was using to track it, so she can’t find us.”
Anahrod tilted her head. “I’m sorry? You did what?”
“It’s hard to explain,” he said. “I, uh… it was metaphysically mislabeled? And it still is, but now it’s metaphysically mislabeled as something different. I tried to send Neveranimas on a wild-bird chase—literally—but she’s probably figured out that night flyers haven’t somehow developed the ability to carry around ten-pound rocks.” He shrugged.
Anahrod huffed. She had a hard time believing that Varriguhl had changed his curriculum this much in seventeen years. “What I should’ve asked is, how did you learn how to do this?”
“Oh.” He hoisted the stone again. “It’s all in here. There really wasn’t anything to do while I was riding around on Overbite for hours and hours, so I figured, why not look through the dragonstone? Maybe I’d find something interesting.” He laughed. “I’d tell Neveranimas not to leave the instructions on how to remove magical tracking on the very thing she wants to magically track, but Mom always says you should never correct an enemy when they’re making a mistake.”
Ris’s eyes turned gold. “I suspect she couldn’t imagine someone else being able to use those instructions. Especially not a human.” Peralon-as-Ris raised a hand. “Would you mind returning to the part about curing Ivarion?”
“Gotta be honest, kid,” Claw said, shaking her head. “You’re doing an even better impersonation of a hyper vel puppy than normal.”
Gwydinion stuck out his tongue at her before turning to Peralon-as-Ris. “Sure. Neveranimas described how she sent Ivarion rampant, what he did in response, and how she twisted that into something a lot nastier. But there’s a loop hole.” He raised a finger. “We need Varriguhl.” He added, “You know, honestly, I think he could’ve cured Ivarion years ago, but he was trapped at the school, you know? He’s going to be so mad at himself when he realizes.”
“No, he won’t, kid,” Claw said flatly. “He’s dead.”
Gwydinion stared at Claw in shock.
Anahrod didn’t think Gwydinion had been fond of Varriguhl, but he hadn’t hated the teacher like she had. It didn’t really matter, though. Gwydinion had known the man, seen him recently, and wasn’t cynical enough about death to take it lightly.
“Neveranimas killed him,” Anahrod told him. “He died to make sure we could escape.”
Gwydinion swallowed thickly. “That was nice of him.” He seemed to pull himself up, quickly wiped his eyes. “If that’s the case, you’ll have to do it, then.”
She waited a beat for him to answer, and when he didn’t, gently asked, “Do what?”
He reddened, embarrassed that he’d left out the actual explanation. To be fair, he looked tired, which made sense if he’d forgone sleep in favor of perusing the stone. “Ivarion had this idea—a clever idea. That’s not just my opinion, by the way. Neveranimas thinks so too and oh, is she mad about it.” He cleared his throat. “Anyway, that’s why he took a nap in the Cauldron as soon as he started to go rampant.”
“Of course! A nap!” Claw hit her forehead with a palm. “Why did no dragon ever think of sleeping before?”
Peralon-in-Ris started coughing.
“Do you mind?” Gwydinion said peevishly. “I’m not done.”
Claw faux-bowed in his direction.
“Thank you.” Gwydinion straightened his rather worse-for-wear coat. “Ivarion used magic—he was already going rampant, so why not?—to link himself to the volcano. He would sleep and slowly feed all his corrupt rampancy to the mountain, while the mountain kept him alive. When he woke up, he’d be good as new. I think that’s pretty sunshine.”
“Go on,” Anahrod urged.
“So Neveranimas found him and changed the spell. Now, the mountain keeps him alive, sure, but he sends the volcano his corruption, and the volcano sends it all back—with interest. He can’t ever heal or wake.”
Peralon-as-Ris growled. “I see. And what did you think Varriguhl could do?”
“Break the cycle,” Gwydinion answered without hesitation. “Dragonriders can cure their dragon’s corruption, right? So Varriguhl—”
Peralon returned control back to Ris. “No,” she told him. “I’m sorry, but dragonriders can’t cure a dragon who’s already rampant. I try my hardest to keep Peralon’s levels from rising so high that he’ll ever become rampant, but that’s not the same.” She shrugged. “Most dragonriders don’t even do that well. Peralon and I have some theories about why that is, but they don’t apply to Anahrod, both because Ivarion’s not conscious and she’s not his rider.”
Gwydinion looked deeply disappointed for a moment—so did Peralon, but in a more dignified, draconic fashion—and pressed his lips tightly together. Then Gwydinion pointed a finger at Ris. “See, that’s where you’re wrong. Anahrod is his rider—kind of. She’s every dragon’s rider if you think about it.”
Anahrod raised her eyebrows and stared. That was… that was a very bold claim. And not at all—
She frowned.
Gwydinion waved his hands. “Whether Varriguhl could cure Ivarion’s corruption doesn’t matter. Anahrod calms animals; she does it all the time.”
“A dragon is not the same—”
“No, he has a point,” Anahrod said. “In theory, I can only trade bodies with animals, too, but I did it with Neveranimas, didn’t I? But there’s still a difference between calming a dragon and calming a rampant dragon.”
“That’s fine,” Gwydinion reassured her. “Because you don’t need to ‘fix’ Ivarion. He’s been trying to fix himself for a hundred years, but the spell won’t let him wake up until he’s below a certain level of corruption, and right now, that will never happen. Except if someone came around and eliminated that corruption—”
“I already told you—”
Her brother sighed. “Apologies, I misspoke. I meant to say, if someone came around and took all the corruption in Ivarion and shoved it into this stupid rock”—he held up the Rampant Stone—“he won’t be feeding corruption into the mountain anymore, so the mountain won’t send corruption back, and then he won’t technically be rampant, which will end the spell and He. Will. Wake. Up.”
No one spoke. All was silent save for the rustling of the wind through trees and Overbite whining, still unhappy about this “don’t run from the dragon” idea.
“That might work,” Ris finally said.
“Would be kind of funny if—” Claw’s face went through a complicated series of contortions.
“Claw?”
“They conquered land, and sea, and heavens high, invented gods and fates with fervent pride, yet in their boundless quest for endless light, they lauded deeds that birthed an endless night.” Claw laughed bitterly. “That’s what Kaibren would’ve said. And then I would’ve translated that as saying it would be ironic if we used the same thing that turned Ivarion rampant to cure him—” She blinked repeatedly, her eyes too wet.
“Excuse me.” Claw walked to the cliffside, hugging her arms with hunched shoulders.
No one said anything.
“Claw!” Ris started to walk over; Anahrod caught her arm.
“Give her space,” she told the dragonrider. “She just lost Kaibren.”
“She’s standing too close to the edge,” Ris said unhappily.
Anahrod pondered that. She turned her head over her shoulder and yelled out, “Claw, mind keeping an eye on the jungle line for me? I’ve got Overbite so hexed out to keep her from reacting to Peralon that anything could come out of the tree line and she wouldn’t say a word.”
For a second, Claw didn’t respond. Then she made a rude gesture and said, “Fuck off, Jungle. I don’t take orders from you.”
Claw stomped away from the cliff and took up a new position, leaning against a fallen tree trunk. If that let her watch the jungle’s edge, it was just coincidence.
Anahrod looked at Ris. “Better?”
The other woman took her hand and squeezed it, which Anahrod assumed meant “yes.”
“So, we’re doing this, right?” Gwydinion asked.
Ris straightened. “Yes, we are. Or I guess, Peralon and Anahrod are. The rest of us are going home to wait this out.”
Gwydinion looked dismayed. Anahrod didn’t have so strong a reaction, but she could admit to being confused.
“Do you really think going back to Seven Crests—”
Ris shook her head at Anahrod. “Not your home. My home. And I must be there because while Naeron and Claw both have citizenship, they don’t have the authority to bring in strangers. Your brother’s coming along because Overbite’s the only available transportation that can get us there in hours instead of days, and someone has to keep Overbite from eating the rest of us.” She gave Anahrod a tight smile. “I told you my home is protected. The dragons don’t know it exists. They won’t be able to find it. I say we leave those scaled cattle flying around with their claws up their asses, waiting for their leader to herd them into the next pen. I’ll make sure your brother gets his beauty sleep and when you come back with Ivarion, we’ll all go fly back to Yagra’hai together.”
“She’ll fight,” Anahrod said. “You know she won’t go down without a fight.”
Ris shrugged. “You say that like it’s not a point of merit. Anyway, as you are almost Ivarion’s dragonrider, I’m sure you’ll have no trouble at all healing him.”
Anahrod didn’t think Ris was going to let her brother’s comment go for a long, long time.
“Just to be clear here,” Anahrod said, “when you say home, what you mean is—”
“Viridhaven,” Ris answered, as though that should be the most obvious thing in the whole world.
“Right. Viridhaven,” Anahrod agreed. She stared off into the distance for a moment, shook herself, and then leaned over and kissed Ris’s cheek. It was a very chaste kiss, right up until Ris grabbed her and turned it into something much less so.
“Come back in one piece,” Ris ordered.
“It’s been my main ambition all my life,” Anahrod replied.
Peralon and Anahrod watched the others load themselves up onto Overbite. Her brother waved enthusiastically, Naeron raised a hand and gave her a solemn nod, Ris blew her a kiss, and Claw’s farewell used a single finger. Anahrod knew how fast Overbite moved, and it was still a shock to see how quickly they vanished out of sight.
She turned back to the dragon, who’d pushed some trees aside to accomplish something close enough to a landing for her to clamber up his side.
“I assume you know the way to the Cauldron?” Anahrod asked.
[I do, indeed.]