man. He looked at the Scanran shaman-mage. ‘What do you say, Inar Hadensra?’
The man grinned. Crimson sparks flashed in his ruby eye. ‘My masters sent me to see that Tortall is stretched thin,’ he said in a cracked voice. ‘Where our forces go is no matter, so long as this bountiful realm is weak as a kitten in the spring.’
‘Wise,’ Ozorne remarked with a shrug of contempt.
Fire blazed out of the ruby, searing Ozorne’s eyes. He covered his face with his wings, sweat pouring from his living flesh, but the agony went on, and on. A harsh voice whispered, ‘Remember that you are no longer emperor of Carthak. Take care how you address me.’ The pain twisted and went icy, chilling Ozorne from top to toe. Each place where his flesh mixed with steel burned white-hot with cold. ‘The power for which I plucked one eye out of my own head is enough to defeat the magic of a Stormwing, even one so tricky as you.’
When Ozorne’s vision cleared, he was alone with the dark pool on the ground, and the shadow next to him. ‘I’ll gut you for that, Inar,’ he whispered, looking at the box. ‘But not before I settle my score with Veralidaine and the one-time Arram Draper.’ Grabbing his iron box in one claw, he took off, flapping clumsily into the night sky.
Two days later, the girl and the man who had drawn Ozorne’s attention hovered over a cot in a guard tower at Port Legann. Their eyes were locked on the small blue-white form curled up in a tight ball at the cot’s centre. The dragon’s immature wings were clenched tight on either side of her backbone. The tall grey basilisk Tkaa was there as well, gazing through a window at the courtyard below.
‘I don’t like her colour,’ Daine said. ‘She’s never been that shade before. Pale blue, yes, but – going white along with the blue? It’s as if she’s turning into a ghost.’
‘She is weary,’ replied the basilisk, turning away from his view. ‘For a dragon as young as Skysong, the effort of will required to send a wyvern about his business is tiring. She will be fine when she awakes.’
‘What if the wyverns return before then?’ Numair Salmalín showed the effects of the spring’s fighting more than Daine or Tkaa. Too many nights with little or no sleep had etched creases around his full, sensitive mouth and at the corners of his dark eyes. For all that he was only thirty, there were one or two white hairs in his crisp black mane of hair. ‘The king was – unpleased – when I attempted to fight them last time.’
Daine smiled. Unpleased described Jonathan’s reaction to Numair’s use of his magical Gift on wyverns as well as breeze described a hurricane. ‘You were ordered to keep your strength in reserve,’ she reminded him. ‘Archers can do for wyverns as well as you, and there might come something archers can’t fight. Then he’ll need you.’
‘The wyverns should not return for at least a day,’ the basilisk added. ‘They too used up their strength, to defy a dragon’s command for as long as they did.’
‘I can’t believe they ran.’ Daine pushed her tumble of smoky brown curls away from her face. ‘She’s not even three years old.’ She and Kitten had risen at sunrise to handle the attacking wyverns; there had been no time to pin up her hair, or even to comb it well. With a sigh, she picked up her brush and began to drag it through her curls.
Numair watched her from his position next to the sleeping dragon. He could see weariness in Daine’s blue-grey eyes. The two of them had been in motion since the spring thaws, when Tortall’s foreign enemies – an alliance of Copper Islanders, Carthaki rebels, Scanran raiders, and untold immortals – had struck the northern border, western coast, and a hundred points within the realm. With the wild magic that enabled Daine to ask the animals and birds of Tortall to fight the invaders, Kitten’s dragon power, Tkaa’s ability to turn any who vexed him to stone, and Numair’s own great magical Gift, they had managed time after time in the last twelve weeks to stave off disaster.
Port Legann was their most recent stop; the four had ridden all night to reach the king. Remembering that ride, just two days ago, Numair wondered how much more of this pace they would be able to stand.
The rest of the country was in little better shape. ‘Our true allies are pressed to the wall,’ King Jonathan had told them over supper on the night of their arrival. ‘Maren, Galla, Tyra – immortals hit them at the same time they hit us. Emperor Kaddar does his best to guard our southern coast, but he’s got a rebellion on his hands. The emperor of the Yamani Islands has promised to send a fleet, but even when it comes, it will be needed to relieve the siege on Port Caynn and on Corus.’
Kitten stirred in her sleep, interrupting Numair’s thoughts. ‘Shh,’ he murmured, stroking her. The dragon twisted so that her belly was half exposed, and quietened again.
A boy stuck his head in the open door. ‘’Scuze me, m’lord Numair, Lady, um – um – sir.’ His confusion over the proper title for a basilisk was brief. ‘His Majesty needs you now, up on the coast wall, the northwest drum tower. If you’ll follow me?’
Now what? was in the looks Daine and Numair exchanged, before the girl remembered the dragon.
‘Kitten—’
‘I will remain with Skysong,’ Tkaa assured her.
Daine stood on tiptoe to pat the immortal’s cheek. ‘You’re fair wonderful, Tkaa.’ She and Numair followed the runner at a brisk walk.
A man, a commoner by his sweat-soaked clothes, knelt at the king’s feet, drinking greedily from a tankard. Beside him was a tray with a pitcher and a plate of sliced bread, meat, and cheese. The king, in tunic and breeches of his favourite blue and a plain white shirt, leaned against the tower wall, reading a grimy sheet of parchment. In direct sunlight, Daine could see that Jonathan had also acquired some white threads in his black hair since the arrival of spring.
‘This is Ulmer of Greenhall, a village southeast of here,’ the king said when he saw them. ‘He has ridden hard to reach us, and his news is – unsettling.’
Watching the man eat, Daine realized he didn’t kneel just from reverence to his monarch – grey with exhaustion, he was too weak to stand. It seemed that all he could manage was to chew his food.
‘“Unsettling”? I don’t like the sound of that,’ Numair remarked.
‘The village headman writes that five things came out of the Coastal Hills near Greenhall the day before yesterday. They kill what they touch—’
‘Skin ’em, with magic,’ Ulmer interrupted. ‘Can’t shoot ’em.’ He refilled his tankard with trembling hands. ‘I mean, y’ can, but it does them no hurt. Swords, axes—’ He shook his head. Realizing that he’d interrupted the king, he ducked his head. ‘Beggin’ your pardon, sire.’
‘It’s all right, Ulmer.’ To Numair and Daine, Jonathan added, ‘Sir Hallec of Fief Nenan went to fight them at sunset yesterday. They killed him.’ He grimly rolled up the parchment. ‘Fortunately, the Skinners don’t move after dark, and are slow to start in the morning – they seem to need to warm up. The people of Greenhall have fled, but … there are rich fields in this part of the realm, as you know. We will need those crops this winter.’ He looked at Numair, then at Daine. ‘I’m sorry. I know you’re exhausted, but—’
‘You need your other mages to deal with the enemy fleet, and the siege,’ Numair said. ‘This is why you’ve kept me in reserve, Your Majesty.’
‘The wyverns—’ the runner who had brought them said. He blushed when the others looked at him.
Daine understood his worry. The giant, winged, legless dragons breathed a yellow fog that gave humans a dry, long-lasting cough and made the eyes burn and blur. The crew of one of the great catapults, breathless and half blind, had dumped a boulder among their own soldiers. Legann’s only insurance against another wyvern attack was Kitten. Wyverns might resist, but they had to obey an order from one of their dragon cousins.
‘Kit stays,’