“Her name is Kreya, and those aren’t her offspring, not in the way that we think of them,” Miriam continues. “They’re extensions of her, duplicates that she can direct separately. There are mentions of hummerbills in some of the earliest annals of the Protectorate, but nothing recent, they certainly have never been entered into the Tournament of Gold. There was some question as to whether they were suitable for battle.” She shakes her head and gazes at the hummerbill with pure adoration in her eyes. “As if that should ever be the only reason for a Divh to bond with us.”
I blink and share a startled look with Fortiss. Miriam is a councilor of the Protectorate, one of eight learned souls who are charged with guiding the lord protector in all things related to the safety and stability of our border nation. What she’s just said amounts to sacrilege and treason wrapped up in one breathless observation.
Probably not a good time to point that out to her, though.
Incoming!Caleb’s shout reverberates through my mind as well as in my ears, and the hummerbill disappears with a squawk—all of her—as Wrath swoops into view, Ayne and Szonja directly behind. It’s a testament to the scale of the wide, rocky beach that it seems like there’s plenty of room for three enormous Divhs to congregate, especially when Gent howls from somewhere over a distant mountain. Within moments, though, Wrath has galloped, then trotted, then slowed to a walk, finally extending one leg for Nazar to gracefully slide down…with Caleb sprawling after him.
“This entire side of the lake looks like the entryway to the blighted path,” Caleb says, coming up onto his toes easily and swinging his right arm wide. “There’s nothing here. No Divhs that we could find, no grass, definitely no giant berries. There’s maybe a pocket in the mountains that could correlate with the geographic setting of the Eighth House, but…” he pauses to peer at Miriam more closely. “Are you okay?”
“Councilor Miriam has been banded,” Fortiss announces, and Caleb visibly jolts while Nazar turns sharply as well, taking in first Miriam, then Fortiss in his shocked gaze. “Not as a warrior—or at least, not intentionally—but she was failing in this plane. Talia guessed, and I agreed, that the problem was that she wasn’t banded to a Divh. This is their world, after all.”
“Their world…” Nazar draws the thought out, then grimaces. “That would explain why we can’t leave it as easily as we entered. Caleb and I tried multiple times to get Wrath to return us to our plane—anywhere except the First House. But our options were limited to our homes—the Twelfth, Tenth, Second, or First.” He grimaced. “Wrath told me he could return me to Hakkir, if I wished. He remembers the way. Otherwise, we’re stymied. As Wrath put it, Divhs are summoned to the Fated Plane; they are linked to where we are linked. They are bound to carry us home.”
“Home.” Tennet repeats. “That’s of no use at all. We would have been better served with fast horses—or traveling with the Divhs in dark of night, never mind the noise.”
Caleb snorts. “Or the villages trampled beneath their stampede.”
“At least they’d hear us coming,” Tennet shoots back.
“It’s a question of strategy, then, and strategy is in our favor here.” I draw in an unsteady breath, not at all sure that the logic that seems to flow together so seamlessly in my mind will hold up under scrutiny. “The First House has been councilor Miriam’s home for the past twenty years and more, but she wasn’t born there. She was born in the Eighth House. There’s at least a possibility that Kreya can take us there.”
Tennet scowls. “But Kreya has never been to the Eighth House—or anywhere in the Fated Plane. How would she know where she’s going? How will Miriam, after all this time?”
“I’m not so feeble as that, Lord Tennet,” Miriam informs him wryly. “I can remember my home.”
I hear the querulous murmur of Gent the second before Wrath spreads his wings, and the screams of far-off dragons echo off the mountains. The enormous mound of Divh that’s Marsh lurches upright, clamping his hands over his ears, staggering back and forth as his head swings around, his eyes widening as he locates Caleb.
“What’s this?” Fortiss demands, but we’re all getting the same images from our Divhs—images that have already been so deeply burned into our minds we’ll never forget them— a thick, writhing throng of snakes pouring toward us through the night sky, an avalanche so thick, it blots out the stars.
Caleb staggers back, staring upward, though nothing is visible yet. But there’s no denying the agitation and confusion of the Divhs. I know how they feel.
“I thought you said they weren’t of this plane!” Caleb demands. “How can they travel through it?”
“It’s full dark,” Tennet offers, also staring hard into the sky, as if by his sheer fury he can materialize the threat so we can handle it. “Maybe they can only see in the dark, and that’s why the fire confused them so easily.”
Caleb flaps his right arm dismissively. “Well that’sgreat, but we can’t just?—”
“Drop flat!” Fortiss shouts over them, and his next words both reverberate in my ears and within my mind.Cover your bodies with your cloaks. Talia, get the Divhs out of here. Only Szonja and Ayne should return on our call.
Without thinking, only responding to the urgency in Fortiss’s voice, I will Gent away, ordering him to vanish from this spot as efficiently as the hummerbill had. Marsh vanishes a moment later as Caleb crashes into me. The force of his push sends me sprawling toward Tennet as Fortiss dives for councilor Miriam. Nazar bounds up to us, and the five of us hit the hard unforgiving ground as one, scrabbling together, wrapping our cloaks tight.
Within moments, the unearthly chittering noise I’d hoped to never hear again fills the air. At first, it’s a bare murmur beneath the crashing waves of the lake, but it quickly becomes a screeching, hurtling tide. The crescendo builds and builds, and when I don’t think I can take it anymore, I hear Fortiss ground out his next order. As one he and Tennet howl, “Now!”
This time I can’t tell if the sky snaps tight, but the arrival of the dragon Divhs is obvious for another reason. Fire lights up the night, catching the trailing edge of the skrill aflame. Now that I can get a closer look, I realize this is a far smaller horde than we fought at the coliseum, never mind how loud they are.
But their lesser size only makes Fortiss’s battle strategy more effective, as Ayne and Szonja attack them again and again with gouts of fire. The poison coating the skrill’s skin acts as anaccelerant, and flames lick through the entire horde, blasting it apart and sending fried carcasses skittering through the sky to land against the rocks and into the water with angry hisses. Several of the dying skin rain down over us, and we hunch together tight until the blighted assault peters out. With twin screams of pure dragon satisfaction, Ayne and Szonja wink out again, and the five of us roll apart, shucking the last few roasted snake skins caught in our cloaks. The skies are empty, but the rocky beach and water are littered with skrill carcasses.
“Can any of them survive the water?” Caleb asks, turning to Tennet.
Tennet scowls back at him. “Do I look like an expert in skrill? I’ve never even seen the things before the other night.”
“There will be more,” Fortiss says. “That first group may not have been expecting us, but we won’t be so lucky the second time. To the Eighth House!”
Without another word, he thrusts his left fist into the sky. Szonja appears again, Wrath and Ayne right behind her. Gent howls from the rocky foothills and Marsh pounds up, his wild eyes searching once more for Caleb.
I turn to Miriam and shake her, realizing too late that she is once more covered in sweat, her eyes unfocused, her skin clammy. Now, finally, she’s going through the shock of being banded to a Divh.
“Summon Kreya,” I order her. “You’ve seen it done a thousand times, at tournament after tournament, you know what to do.Summonher.”
