Anger and desperation crested in a wave and crashed over me in a sudden impassioned torrent. I seized Kaheset’s wingtip. “Then come help us fight him! Kaheset, listen to me. I understand why you lied, but take this chance to make it right. Come with us.”
“Aliza . . .”
“Please, Kaheset. Don’t abandon the Daireds again.”
He breathed deeply and drew himself to his full height. For one bright hopeful moment he seemed to consider it. Then he shook his head. “I cannot. I have made my vows to the Vehryshi. Here I have sworn to stay, and here I will remain. My regret is my penance.”
My heart sank and I released him. It struck me then that I preferred an angry Drakaina to this cold and willful betrayal. I flinched as he rested his wingtip on my shoulder.
“Perhaps this has shown you the price of the life you’ve chosen as a Daired, Lady Aliza. I wish you the strength to bear it. Now return to the Council Chamber. The Vehryshi will be ready with their verdict, and you’d do well to be at Alastair’s side when they deliver it. Hysehkah, my lady. May the Four watch over you.”
I started for the door, dreading what lay ahead even as I wondered if it could be worse than what lay behind.
Ignaat led me back to the main chamber, apologizing again and again for bringing Alastair to the Hall of Records. “I thought if he wished to see thee, he must have some sense about him, and he looked in such distress—but wherefore did he leave so suddenly? And without thee? Has the cad proved ungentlemanly? Upon my stone, dear lady, if he has treated thee in an infamous manner, thou hast but to say the word and I will avenge thy honor.”
I let him talk. There was too much to think and too much to feel; my feet moved without any direction from my mind, and my gargoyle guide seemed satisfied with the occasional nod or shrug. I thought of Wydrick’s face. Any mental image of the man was shadowed now by seething, heaving darkness, but his eyes would be forever etched in my memory. Not like Alastair’s at all, and yet somehow familiar. Green instead of brown, but the shape was the same, as was the intensity. Fairer of hair and complexion too, but such were the forest-folk of Antward-on-Tyne. He must’ve looked very much like his mother.
The click of diamond nails stopped. I came to myself on the threshold of the Council Chamber. The central fire had burned low, stretching the shadows of the dragons near the Inner Hearth up the walls and onto the distant ceilings. The hum of conversation hung in the air. I didn’t see Neheema. “Thank you, Master Ignaat,” I said.
“’Twas a pleasure, my lady,” he said, and shrank out of sight just as one of the shadow-shapes looked in our direction. It broke off from the drove, resolving into the silver scales and timorous face of Sanar as she approached me.
“Lord Daired is there, my lady.” She pointed to the mouth of the cavern. “He went to fetch you but returned alone. It would be good for you to go to him, I think.”
The stars were fading in the eastern sky, but the moon was still high and bright, illuminating Alastair’s silhouette. He sat on an outcrop a little above the cavern mouth, hunched like a gargoyle and perfectly still. An-Edannathair fell away just inches from the edge of the outcrop; one false move, one strong gust, or one loose stone would send him tumbling into the emptiness. The foothills, or what could be seen of the foothills through the carpet of clouds, were many thousands of feet below. I shivered. “Come inside, Alastair.”
He shifted on his perch and said nothing.
“The Vehryshi are almost ready for us.”
“You go,” he said quietly. “I’ll be there in a minute.”
“Kaheset shouldn’t have told you that way,” I said. “Dearest . . .”
“Aliza, please. I need a minute.”
I wanted to stay; I knew I couldn’t. I left him to his musings. Sanar drew me aside as Neheema and the others emerged from the Inner Hearth. “All is well with the Lord Daired?” Sanar asked in a whisper.
“He’s fine,” I lied. “Sanar, what are they saying?”
“There is among them divisions. Some wish your claims to believe. Others do not.”
“What about Neheema?”
“I do not know.”
“And you?”
She raised one wing in a dragonish shrug. “There is in your faces truth, and Akarra is to me as a Nestsister, but such things you claim! The dead-that-are-not warn us of a war-to-be? I do not know what to think.”
“We saw what we saw, Sanar.”
“Yes, but hush, my lady,” she said as Neheema drew near the fire. Akarra followed her, her wings drooping, her head lowered. What little hope I’d dared to keep alive dried up inside me.
“Where is Lord Daired?” Neheema said.
“Here.” Alastair moved into the firelight at my side, his expression set and unreadable. “Have you decided, Vehrys Neheema? Will you help us?”
“We have given careful consideration to your claims, my lord, fantastic though they may be. You know we are your allies. We shall always be your allies, but until we know more about this threat, we cannot pledge our fire. Return to the lowlands and take counsel with the Drakaina. She will advise the best course of action in this matter.”
I wished her words surprised me. I wished I could feel anger or frustration or anything beyond weariness, but I could not. From the moment I saw Akarra I’d known their answer, and Kaheset’s revelation had worked like slow-creeping ice, numbing me to everything but exhaustion, bone-deep and inescapable. We had failed and failed and failed again, and now all I wanted was home. I wanted to go home.
Neheema’s voice came as if from a great distance, apologizing once more and ordering the dragonets to bring supplies for the journey back to Pendragon. Alastair’s farewell was perfect, formal, and bitter as wormwood. Akarra said nothing at all. Attendant dragonets brought our gear from our chambers and we resaddled Akarra without a word. The Vehryshi walked us to the mouth of the cavern and bid us goodbye.
Akarra spread her winds to catch the waking wind. We did not look back.
It was a quiet flight through Dragonsmoor. The mountains rushed by beneath us, dark at first, then dazzlingly bright as the sun rose, and it came as a relief to my aching eyes when we at last plunged beneath the layer of clouds that lapped the lower hills. Akarra stopped for the night at the village of Shepherd’s Vale, where the old innkeeper welcomed us warmly and showed us into the same room we’d stayed in on our way north. I sank onto the bed without undressing, too tired to care about anything beyond pillows and blankets and warm, unfeeling darkness.
Alastair did not join me. The last thing I saw before sleep enveloped me was his silhouette against the fire as he knelt on the hearthrug, flexing his maimed hand at his side. When he turned to loosen his scabbard, I saw, very faintly, the gleam of tear tracks on his cheeks.
We had been away from House Pendragon for almost a month. A lifetime would’ve felt less long. I wondered if the servants would see the new lines in my face, would be able to trace the marks of loss and fear and regret in the dark circles under my eyes or the hollowness in my cheeks. Perhaps they wouldn’t. Perhaps there was nothing to see; I hadn’t looked at myself in a mirror since leaving Castle Selwyn. If the truth reflected the image I held in my head, no part of the woman who’d left Pendragon all those weeks ago had survived the journey.