62. Friendly neighbors
62
FRIENDLY NEIGHBORS
Brauge was not having a terrible day.
Gwydinion was trying as hard as possible, but he needed to control an entire flock, not one bird at a time. He was a mild annoyance, not anything so worrisome as to make Zentoazax call off the attack or shift targets. He just wasn’t skilled enough, good enough. He was trying so hard.
Ris was counting on him, and he was failing her.
He was still trying when he saw something slam into Zentoazax. Gwydinion wasn’t sure what it was, just that it had been traveling fast, it was loud, and it left a trail of smoke behind it. He followed the trail back to a group of purple-skinned humans loading large metal balls into equally large metal tubes.
Whatever those things were, they were knocking Zentoazax around like nobody’s business. Suddenly he didn’t know where Brauge was, but Zentoazax roared, because someone had hurt his rider or hurt him. Either way, the earthquakes stopped.
“Sicaryon’s here!” Gwydinion screamed. “He brought his army!”
The white-haired man gave him a deeply concerned look. “Sicaryon the conqueror?”
“He’s on our side,” Gwydinion said.
The man all but called him a liar with that glare.
“He’s attacking the dragons,” Gwydinion pointed out.
“Glad somebody is,” the man muttered as he walked away.
Despite that one, brief window of happiness, Sicaryon’s people were trying not to engage any of the dragons directly. Instead, they were setting up, firing those—whatever they were, thunder lances?—then running before setting up again somewhere else. He saw a few of Sicaryon’s sorcerers, too, but it was obvious that they were avoiding a straight-up fight.
Probably because they’d lose.
Gwydinion felt helpless, and he hated it with all his being. Time had no meaning. He stood there for what might have been seconds or what might have been hours, watching that black dragon melt what had been without doubt the most beautiful city that Gwydinion had ever seen.
Then the door opened. Claw walked inside. She was coughing like she’d breathed in something unpleasant, but otherwise seemed unharmed.
“Naeron—?” he asked.
“Made it to a shelter with his family,” Claw told him decisively.
Part of him knew she had no way to be certain, but he believed her, anyway.
“Ris went to stop Notile,” he told Claw.
Claw’s face went blank. One of the nearby captains noticed, must have understood what it meant. He moved to stop her.
“No, let me go!” she screamed at the man.
“Claw, don’t!” Gwydinion pleaded. “Ris wouldn’t want you to go running after her.”
“Ris isn’t my fucking mother,” Claw screamed.
“No, but she’s still family.” Gwydinion understood. He really did. And it didn’t change how utterly helpless he felt.
Claw stared at him like he’d just pulled one of her daggers out and stabbed her with it. “You’re a proper son of a bitch, you know that?”
“Ah,” he said sagely. “So, you have met my mom.”
Claw started laughing. Or possibly crying. Or both. It was really kind of difficult to tell.
“There she is!” someone yelled out.
Gwydinion craned his neck to see where everyone was pointing. He didn’t want to watch, but…
But he had to see.
He only spotted Ris when Notile reared back in pain, because Ris had sent her sword directly into one of the black dragon’s eyes. Gwydinion put a hand to his mouth though, at what happened next.
Notile noticed Ris.
The dragon swung her neck around and breathed in the new direction. A gasp went out around the room. It seemed like every person watching was holding their breath, because it was clearly obvious that the dragon fire was parting to each side of Ris without touching her, diverted by the shields that Ris was so good at creating. But the ground to either side of Ris was glowing red-hot, and Gwydinion didn’t know if she could protect herself from the ground literally melting under her feet.
“How long can she keep that up?” someone asked.
A good question.
Then the ground shook again.
Gwydinion frowned. “That wasn’t Zentoazax—”
This had felt different from the previous trembling. Softer, or… no. Finer. Almost a vibration, rather than a shudder or shake.
“Zavad—” someone near the pool cried out.
“What now?” the white-haired man said.
“No,” a woman said, her voice triumphant. “Peralon’s back!”
Gwydinion’s happiness was short-lived.
Claw raised her head and said, “By himself? There’s too many out there…”
Gwydinion’s throat clenched. She was right. It’s not like Peralon was even a large dragon, and while he was undeniably skilled…
Peralon flew into view, hovering behind Notile. Gwydinion had no idea if he said something to the other dragon. He suspected not, because she didn’t turn, didn’t shift her attention the way Gwydinion would’ve expected her to if she’d had any idea that someone who wasn’t an ally had just arrived. No, she’d likely heard the wingbeats and assumed that meant an ally. Another dragon come to help her kill a heretic.
Peralon opened his mouth.
Gwydinion didn’t see the gold dragon’s breath weapon. He saw nothing at all. Peralon might as well have been serenading Notile as attacking her. At least that was his first impression.
Peralon was the source of those silky fine vibrations.
Before Notile could turn around, a wave of… something… passed through her. Gwydinion would have thought it was sound, but he couldn’t hear anything. Maybe it was like a lot of dragon sounds, and outside the range of human hearing.
But whatever it was, as it touched Notile, she shuddered, vibrated…
Shattered.
Disintegrated.
Notile turned to dust, all in a matter of seconds.
The energy slanted harmlessly across Ris’s ward and faded, leaving the dragonrider unharmed.
A few seconds later, the walls vibrated again as the force of Peralon’s breath reached them.
Gwydinion could only stare with his mouth dropped open. Dragon fights were usually long, protracted affairs unless there was a major discrepancy in power levels, or someone got in a really lucky shot. Yeah, he had attacked her from behind, but to just disintegrate her?
Most people in the room looked just as surprised as he did. So surprised that Gwydinion knew none of them had realized what Peralon could do.
A dark red dragon with ugly puce slashes along its flanks plowed into Peralon. Peralon tumbled into a section of melted stone and screamed—less from the heat, Gwydinion thought, than because of the other dragon’s talons.
“Are none of the defense towers working?” Claw demanded.
“If they were, don’t you think we’d be using them?” someone snapped.
The red dragon breathed something dark and liquid at Peralon, but it never reached him. The liquid hovered in midair, a giant floating red blob of—
Gwydinion leaned forward. “Is that blood?”
“Yes,” someone answered. “Incivulia spits boiling blood.” They added: “Poisonous, of course.”
Claw giggled, more than a little hysterically. “Blood? Nobody told me it was Naeron’s birthday.”
Gwydinion suspected she was right, but if he was, Naeron wasn’t foolish enough to reveal himself.
A sword flew at the blood dragon’s mouth, slashing at the soft tissues. Incivulia reared back, shrieking. The sword in question swung back around as Ris ran off the roof of a building and jumped, landing on Peralon’s back.
Peralon breathed again, the time disintegrating the remains of a fallen block of stone smashed during the fighting. It seemed too intentional a miss to have been anything but a warning shot. The gold dragon stared intently at the larger red one.
Peralon was trying to parlay.
“What’s he saying?” Gwydinion asked one of the scrying-pool people. They gave him a faintly incredulous look and Gwydinion sighed.
Yes, fine. That was a stupid question.
Gwydinion wished he could hear dragons, but that didn’t seem to be a talent he was in danger of spontaneously developing.
Matters weren’t looking good for Peralon, though. Whatever the two dragons were saying to each other, more elder dragons were showing up on the scene, taking up positions around the lip of the bowl. They all looked hurt, some seriously.
None of them looked like they wanted to talk.