“Hey, are you all right?” He cupped my face in his hands and gave me a worried look. “You’re white as a sheet, Auri.”
“It’s just…that’s where my father was patrolling before he, you know, killed himself,” I said softly. “And he claimed he’d been bitten by a Madling.” I shook my head. “I didn’t want to believe it was true. Because if it is, then it’s my fault he died.”
Ryse shook his head, frowning.
“I don’t understand. How could it be your fault your father killed himself?”
“Because he only did it to keep from infecting Auren and me!” I exclaimed. “Don’t you see? He might still be alive if he hadn’t been so worried about passing the infection on to us.”
“Listen to yourself,” he said gently. “Think of what you saw. Once someone is bitten, there is no cure. Your father couldn’t live if he was really bitten. He wasn’t just worried about infecting you or your brother—he probably wanted to spare himself the kind of death Larson had.”
I thought again of Chud’s swollen face and the way he’d vomited up his own guts. The image wouldn’t leave my mind. Whenever I closed my eyes, I saw it. Or when I managed to push it away for a second, I saw my father’s body instead, broken at the bottom of the ravine along with the body of his dragon. The two of them twisted in death together.
“Hey, little one. Don’t cry,” Ryse murmured.
“I…I’m not crying,” I whispered but the words came out sounding more like sobs and I realized that I was crying after all.
“I’m so sorry that you had to see what you saw.” Ryse pulled me against him, and I went willingly, pressing my hot face to his bare chest.
“He…he kept saying ‘they’re coming,’” I choked out. “Right before he died, that was what Chud said. What if…what if he’s right?” I looked up at Ryse, my eyes still blurred with tears. “What if the Madlings are coming?”
His face was very grave.
“I think that’s a question we all have to ask ourselves,” he said at last. “I finally finished translating the prophesy, you know. And what it says…” He shook his head. “Well, it’s not good.”
I swiped at my eyes.
“What is it? What does it say?”
“It’s a warning, just like I thought,” Ryse told me. “A warning from the Ancients that we shouldn’t discount the Madlings. There seems to be a cycle—a pattern that we can’t ignore.”
“Read it to me,” I said, sniffing. I didn’t have time to be upset anymore—not if what I thought was happening was really happening.
“I will but you won’t like it,” Ryse warned. “Here, let me get my paper.”
He disengaged from our hug and went to the desk where he’d been working earlier. Clearing his throat, he began to read to me.
“Beware the Shadow that comes in seasons beyond the reckoning of men.
It sleeps beneath stone.
It waits beyond memory.
It hungers in silence.
When men say, "The darkness has passed,"
know that they have merely forgotten its face.
When the Golden Voice falls silent…
When the Wings dwindle…
The enemy multiplies.
Then shall the Dark Hoard come forth once more
And the mountains drink the blood of the Riders
