“It’s not a concept,” she said, “intuitively grasped.” Her hand on his elbow was a concept he did understand and was grateful for: somehow she was sharing the warmth of the bulky, furry coat with him, as though she had opened it up and invited him in. Even his nose was beginning to thaw. “The octos seem to see with their skin; they camouflage themselves in the ocean as easily as we breathe. That’s what we’re studying here in the camo-dragons as well.”
“The War Department.”
“Of course. Methods of camouflage. It’s a no-brainer, really. Instant invisibility for human combatants. Except, of course, for the weapons they carry. Others are working on that.”
He glanced at her amazed, his eyes squinting against the merciless wind. She looked a few scant years older than he, and at the same time centuries older, unconflicted by the thought of inventing new and different ways to kill. Her lean face was nicely boned, her dark hair whitened only by snow, her smile easy, fearless, and somehow expecting the ridiculous. He wondered, uneasily, exactly how powerful she might be.
“You don’t want to know,” she said, breaking every rule he had been painstakingly taught about trespassing into someone else’s thoughts. She smiled, again with that faint quirk of mockery. “As far as manners go, consider who I work for.”
Somewhere ahead in the swirling snowflakes, an elephant trumpeted.
“War elephants,” the mage said, and left him floundering again in the idea that even after twenty-two centuries, generals still looked to nature to inspire the nature of war.
“Do you have a name?” he asked. They had nearly reached the grove; a low, gentle fire that had come out of nowhere brushed the massive trunks with warmth.
The mage flashed her amused smile. “Take it.”
“It’s aggressive and patronizing to go into someone’s mind without asking. That’s what we’re taught. Not to mention dangerous.”
“Sydney.”
“What?”
“That’s my name. Sydney Culver. Graduate of the Hannibal Military Academy’s Magical Arts of War division. And you? Since we’re asking?”
“Will Fletcher. On my final year at Hallowgrove University, majoring in magical arts.”
“Ah. What’s that year called? Winnowing?”
“Hell-Harrow.” He sighed. “I might actually pass if I survive this.”
The other mage, ringed by dragons, was still humming sweetly to the sleeping beasts. Will’s own eyes grew heavy as he gazed at her fire-lit profile. He would have bet that everything within range of that lullaby, including generals, war-elephants, and earthworms, would be sleeping by now.
“This is Gauda,” the mage Sydney said, and went on to say a few incomprehensible things with her voice and her hands. Gauda smiled at him briefly, and with interest, before her attention went back to the dragons. Barely a teenager, Will thought, amazed, with all that calm and that power. She glanced again at him curiously; he smiled and she said something in her unfathomable language to Sydney.
“She thinks your taste in clothes is really weird.”
“She did not say weird. Weird wasn’t even invented back then. Now. Whenever we are.” He paused, blinking up at a pinecone among the needles with a fiery eyeball wavering in and out of it, churning with color and fixed upon him. “All right,” he conceded. “But khakis in a snowstorm don’t come anywhere close to the weirdness that must have gone on to make a baby camo-dragon.”
She tilted her head, considering the matter. “It helps to know something about the anatomy of octos and dragons.”
He started to do some considering himself, and then decided not to. “I don’t think—”
“Sea-dragons used to be common in most of the oceans. We have evidence that they could mate with fire-dragons, most successfully, according to lore, during thunderstorms. Then the oceanic temperatures began to change, and the sea-dragons died out, except in the warmest waters. Octos, however, thrive in any temperature and can grow up to twenty feet. If a sea-dragon with fire-kindling abilities and a large enough octo meet at the perfect time, there’s nothing to stop the octo from passing its sperm to anything it wants, including sea-dragons, fire-dragons, and even, if some local artwork and tales are any more than prurient—”
“No. Really? Humans?”
She shrugged. “It’s being looked into. Can the octo’s camouflage ability be passed to humans? What’s impossible, these days?”
“Cell phone service in the past?”
Her mouth slid upward into a wry slant. “That’s being looked into, too.”
Gauda said something, gesturing at the trees. The last open eye had vanished; the camos were dreaming, their outlines flowing and rippling peacefully, melting in and out of the branches. The wind shifted; Will got a face full of smoke and the smell of hot, charred meat. He made a sound. Gauda, adept at interpreting odd noises and gestures, murmured something at the trees, then vanished.
“Where did she go?”
“To fetch us some supper.” Sydney took off her cloak then, and draped it over Will’s shoulders. He smelled the musty fur, felt the little claws on his bare arms, cool and prickly. He hoped the small, faceless beasts would remember that this was not his fault. His fingers, warming finally, felt the stone locked in his grip; he dropped it into a furry pocket inside the cloak. “Don’t worry,” Sydney added, “I won’t be gone long.”
“You’re leaving me alone with the dragons?” he said, appalled.
“What are you worried about? You’re almost a mage. Do some almost magic if they scare you.”
“But—where are you going?”
“To find us a drink. I know where the commanders keep their wine.”
She vanished. Will, surrounded by dreaming dragons, wondered if he would ever see the future again.
The attacking army came out of the gorge just as Sydney passed the elephants.
She heard the clamor and roar in the snow-streaked dusk beyond one of the distant, enormous fires. The attackers must have made paths up the steep gorge, she guessed, the one thought to be too deep and dangerous for thousands on foot, along with horses, elephants, and supply wagons. A strange army invading that part of the mountains without permission, treaties, or gifts, and leaving ravaged forests and charred bones behind, must have annoyed the locals, who, it sounded like, were out for blood.
The war-elephants woke to the familiar sound and blared back at it. Their keepers, who ate and slept in the elephant pavilion, came running to free the beasts and arm themselves. Various musical instruments sounded alarms, sang orders, beat the rhythms of battle. Suddenly there were armed men everywhere, drawing swords, fitting arrows to bows, mounting horses and shouting commands, shields and armor flaring, vanishing constantly as the warriors moved in and out of the strange twilight of fire and snowfall and fading light.
Sydney, remembering the young man innocently taking his final exam, wondered what exactly his professor was using for a brain.
When the trumpeting elephants charged out of the pavilion and into the huge, twin waves of armed men, one wave marginally paler and hairier than the other, that crashed together where Sydney had been standing, she was already back in the grove of camo-trees.