The witch pulled languidly at a cord, opening the carriage curtains. In the clearing ahead stood a local man, eyes wide. His armful of collected wood tumbled piecemeal to the ground.
“Which way now?” asked the witch, and Glenda told her.
Glenda feared the carriage might have difficulty passing through the press of trees, but it reacted to the thinning space like an animal, tucking its enormous leafy wings andhunkering on its wheels. In clearer sections, it picked up speed, rolling at a unicorn’s gallop; this required Glenda to pay constant attention, shouting directions before key turns could be missed. Finally, feeling more exhausted than if she’d walked the distance on her own two legs, they arrived at the prophesized location.
It looked a mess. The Order had dutifully retrieved their slain knights, but the spoiling bodies of the transmogrified steeds remained, filling her nose with sweet decay. Strangely coloured flowers grew where the dragon’s breath had passed, and great gashes yawned in the earth amid the swaying greenery. At the feet of the eroded statue, the basilisk lay rotting.
It had been a lovely bay before the transformation, with a yellow horn that curled like carved butter. Now, the creature hung draped across the statue’s legs, foul and deflated, strips of its pebbled hide flapping loose in the wind.
This was the sickness that the mad sorcerer brought to the world.
Stepping carefully from the carriage, Glenda picked her way through the grass. The walk felt terribly long. The aroma of the dead monster intensified as she drew nearer, all liquifying offal and the vinegar stench of its venom, so that by the time she reached the statue’s shadow, her stomach threatened to spill. Holding her breath, she pulled the sword free from the sucking socket of its eye, then scrambled backward across the meadow.
She entered the carriage breathing hard, the sword still coated in flaking blood. “This is it,” she said. “Cameron’s sword. And now we find him?”
The mongrel witch smiled, receiving the blade with thick fingers. “And now we find him.”
CHAPTER 35
In Which I Am Growing More and More Familiar with the Roads and Plazas of an Underwater City from a Pre-Apocalyptic Era, and Would by Now Be Feeling Quite at Home if Not for One Small Issue.
It felt unmasculine to admit, but the mounds of corpses creeped me out.
I could easily distinguish which heaps the dragon siblings had piled, and which had existed, untouched, for centuries. What a grim task it must have been for those last survivors, to keep their tomb-to-be in order. The corpses piled by the ancients filled deep pits in the ground, which Hydna explained had once held water for swimming. One of them, before dying, had carved words into the tiles along the pool’s edge. After some consideration, I decided not to ask the dragons for a translation.
Their bodies, mummified in the arid cold of the dome when life systems failed, were a dark leather. The stretch of their skin forced their faces into snarls, cushioned by the gentle puff of their hair. Supposedly, they’d rot now that functionality was restored to the whirring mechanisms thatissued heat and air. For now, though, the bodies kept me company.
The stacks made by Hydna and Merulo failed to match the ancient heaps in quality. Transporting the desiccated bodies had clearly caused crumbling, resulting in dusty piles of shattered forms. But I couldn’t judge the siblings for their trashing of the remains, nor even for the vaguely artistic stack of heads I found in an otherwise empty plaza. Their early life didn’t exactly sound idyllic; some hardening must have been required.
My main source of anguish was that the people of the pre-Descent seemed to have no use for swords.
I’d done a rudimentary search for a blade, gotten lost, panicked a bit, stumbled on some gruesome sights (apologies to its creator, but I truly did not appreciate the head stack), then given up.
During one of our group lunches, I finally asked the dragons for advice. Hydna grinned at the opportunity to show off. She summoned a sword in a puff of smoke, a gleaming Knight of Order blade with balancing scales on the hilt.
“That’s mine,” I said, taken aback. “See the notch on the hilt—my father bought me this. He said he could have spent the same amount on a dairy herd, and that if I ever lost it, he’d have me whipped. And I did lose it, after bashing in poor Glenda’s head . . . or not so poor, actually, she’s been rather horrible lately. How is it possible that you have my sword?”
“Don’t be so impressed,” said the sorcerer, scribbling away in his notes. Smoked salmon, bread, and apples sourced from a seaside town lay spread on a towel atop the pavement. We sat in the plaza that held Merulo’s relocated library—he neverventured far from it these days, and just as rarely spared attention for anything beyond his work. “Objects that bear personal significance are far easier to locate. She took the easy route.”
Diplomatically, I ignored Merulo. “Thank you, Hydna. This means a lot to me.”
She acknowledged my words with a brisk nod, before ripping off another chunk of fish with her teeth. More than half of this feast would be disappearing down her gullet, as per usual. One day, I would ask her how she paid for our food, but for now I had a greater pull on my attention.
Unable to help myself, I rose and—moving a safe distance away from the picnic—gave my recovered blade a few test swings. It came as a relief when my body slipped easily into drilled stances and movements. The last time I’d held a sword, it had been pressed hard into Gareth’s back. That memory brought my heart to an anxious flutter, and I thrust and bobbed with extra zest, fencing a phantom.
“It’d be better practice if you had an opponent,” Hydna called, having disappeared the fish in a marvelous show of gluttony. She rolled her shoulders, loudly cracking the joints.
“No, see,” the sorcerer cut in, still scrawling, “Cameron will lose purposefully, and then you’ll have to deal with his perversions.”
Before I could protest, she said, “Okay. Maybe I’m into that.”
I felt very happy.
“Sir Cameron,” said Merulo. “This is a formal order: you are not permitted to sleep with my sister.”
“Who said anything about sex?” said Hydna, rising to her considerable height. “I just want to beat the shit out of him.”
I felt very unhappy.
