58. Sieging dragons
58
SIEGING DRAGONS
Dayevedies still swept his head from side to side, bathing entire streets in swaths of white-hot fire.
Something happened. Gwydinion felt the heat of the attack, heard screams, but he’d only just reached the tunnel mouth when the dragon made a choking sound and the attack stopped. Gwydinion turned back.
“No.” Ris refused to release his arm. “The shelters. Now.”
Gwydinion decided to save his questions for later.
He’d seen shelters before. Why, he’d seen one just a few weeks before in Yagra’hai, when Modelakast had gone rampant. But long before they reached this one, he knew these weren’t the same.
The tunnels were wider than he was used to (although still too narrow for a dragon’s head). Rather than ending in a room, the passageway changed direction every hundred feet, each shift marked by a giant inscribed door.
At each door, a resident of Viridhaven waited. Their eyes widened in surprise when they saw how few people were behind Gwydinion and Ris.
Ris didn’t slow down. A few seconds after they passed each checkpoint, a loud boom echoed down the passage as the previous door was closed.
After three such doors, Ris pulled them into a narrow side passage so cleverly concealed that Gwydinion would’ve walked right past it.
Once in the new passage, Ris started running.
By the time they arrived at a large room, Gwydinion was so turned around that he had no idea where they were, except that it was “somewhere underground.”
The room wasn’t a shelter in the sense he knew it. A circular pool filled with rippling dark liquid dominated one end of the room, reminding him of Varriguhl’s scrying mirrors. A bright line of white light seared its way across the surface, followed by a curiously flat image of an explosion. All around the pool, people gathered to watch, only to call out orders to messengers.
Gwydinion paused. “This is a command center.” No one paid attention to him.
“What are we dealing with?” Ris asked as she crossed to the pool.
A white-haired man raised his head from concentrating on the dark waters. “What are you doing—?” He gestured angrily. “Where’s Peralon?”
“Busy. Report.”
He made a frustrated noise. “It’s not great, obviously. Mioghal, Incivulia, Jaezerinoth, Ilguavon, and Segrimakar. Dayevedies retreated: bleeding too badly from the severed limb. But he burned the whole damn net before he left, so that line of defense is gone. We won’t get that lucky again.”
“No Zentoazax?” Ris asked.
“Not so far. No sign of Notile, either.” The man inhaled. “Let’s hope it stays that way.”
“Where’s Neveranimas?” Gwydinion asked as he pushed forward. “Shouldn’t she be here, too?”
Both Ris and the man stopped and glanced at Gwydinion; the man with annoyance, Ris with chagrin.
“What he said,” Ris repeated. “Where’s Neveranimas?”
“Not here,” he told her. “We haven’t spotted her.”
The ground shook.
Gwydinion frowned. Why wouldn’t Neveranimas be here? The dragons couldn’t have followed the Rampant Stone—it wasn’t here. It had never been here. So, what had given them away?
The ground shook again. Gwydinion scanned the pool to see a tower in the center of the city crack and topple, a horrible slow collapse as giant blocks of stone fell away and connecting bridges unraveled.
“Eannis, I hope Claw’s okay,” Gwydinion whispered. He hated he couldn’t do anything but watch.
The ground shook a third time, this time so hard that people stumbled, and chips of stone fell from the ceiling.
Ris inhaled sharply. “None of the dragons you named should cause this. Jaezerinoth and Segrimakar both breathe poison gas for fuck’s sake. Finyan, I need a view up above the bowl!”
The woman she shouted as she spread her hands. “They’ve taken out all the watch stones. What am I supposed to do?”
“What are we looking for?” Gwydinion said.
“There has to be another dragon—”
Gwydinion tugged on Ris’s sleeve. “No, I mean, what does the dragon look like?”
Ris hesitated. “A pitch-black dragon or a white one with gold and brown accents.”
“Okay.” Gwydinion made no promises, because he didn’t know if this would work. It was proving a banner day for him to learn magical skills under pressure.
He wished Anahrod were here. This would’ve been so easy for her.