"The runaways. They're armed and look like trouble. Get back on the water."

"All of them?"

"Five. And ... and they're not right."

The golden hermits were asleep and refused to rouse, offering deep groans of discomfort when they were jostled. "We'll row," said Batey.

A venomous hiss sounded in the corridor behind them. "Was that one of ... them?" Kar-balter whispered.

The ale boy saw Batey cast a fearful glance to Raechyl. And now he, too, was afraid.

At the end of the tree-lined corridor, they passed beneath a red arch into a high-ceilinged space lit by patches of blue flowers. A thick pillar-perhaps a tree trunk-dressed in a coat of trailing white moss stretched up to press against the ceiling, which was studded with strange growths like large, folded flower buds. Beyond the pillar they heard a continuous thunder.

"A falls," said the boy.

"Will we go over?" Kar-balter yelped.

"No," said Batey. "We're going upstream."

"Then we may be trapped," said Nella Bye.

Daylight painted the far end of the cavern, which was terraced in great swells of stone draped in pink sheets of minerals. Through breaks in the clouds that stormed and steamed from the falls' concussion, they caught glimpses of a vast pool.

"There's our way out!" said Batey.

A crooked stair rose from the shoreline just to the right of the falls and ascended into a shaft in the earth.

"Batey!" Nella Bye grabbed his arm and dragged him down. A spear sailed over the Bel Amican.

What looked like Aronakt stood at the front of the first pursuing raft. He wavered awkwardly in his tattered cloak, like a Cent Regus merging of man and bat. His jaw hung open as if it was broken, and fresh scars raked his face. His eyelids were drawn back, and his eyes swiveled loosely.

Hunched low behind him on the raft, the others were also familiar, also distorted, their flesh in shreds, their gazes fixed on the travelers with something like hunger, something like rage.

"He looks like ..."

"I know," said Batey.

"What's that in the water around them?" Irimus squinted, then answered himself. "More of those crawlers the cavespiders caught."

Feelers, thought the ale boy. Feelers uprooted. There are so many.

"To shore!" Batey cried. "Into the tunnel, where we can block them with fire!"

The water was troubled, shaken into a roiling turbulence. Debris fell from the ceiling, splashing the river and battering the rafts. The field of hanging buds exploded, each one unfolding leathery wings. The bats cycloned around the cave's white pillar, then rushed downstream in a chattering storm.

The ale boy thought of the sign he had seen painted on the passage wall like a warning.

The rafts closed in around the pillar, and the passengers clung to each other. Some spread cloaks as if to shield themselves. Others brandished torches, readying for the attack. Some clutched at the pillar's white moss for a hold to keep the rafts from slipping away.

But then the pillar turned. Its outer crust split open, broke loose, and peeled away. At the top, two spheres brightened, crackling with energy. A low rumble spread out from the pillar, and it began to bend in half, its heights descending toward the pursuers.

The travelers shouted to each other, rowing their rafts away as the pillar broke apart.

From each side suddenly unfurled massive wings that, spanning the breadth of the cavern, exposed a slender body of glittering silver scales. The creature swelled with breath and a reverberating voice. The eyes, infused with light, illuminated a blunt, ferocious visage and vast jaws dripping with flame.

The creature raised a mighty tail and smashed the river, shocking waves into a rush. Thrusting its horns at the pursuers' raft, it caught the assailants in the white light of its eyes. Its snout, rather like a bat's but large enough for swarms of bats to nest in its nostrils, twitched as if it were reading the air.

Beneath its wings some travelers rowed their rafts to shore, while others leapt off and swam. They splashed from the shallows and huddled together. The wings blocked out the daylight and any access to the stair.

The ale boy tried to follow but stumbled. He was caught. He looked down and saw one of the strong leash cords looped around his foot. He fought to untangle it.

The man who had once been Petch hissed at the creature, shaking a sharpened oar as if to spear a seabull. The spidery crawlers clawed at the air.

The creature waited.

The five assailants unleashed a wave of curses in unfamiliar voices, raised what weapons they had left, and flung them. The creature's jaws opened, and it coughed a flicker of light. The spears were engulfed, incinerated.

One of the assailants uttered a command, and crawlers sprang in clusters toward the beast. Again those great jaws opened. This time flames poured out, paving the river in fire, immersing the crawlers and the assailants' rafts.

Not a scream escaped the blaze. When the gusting fire abated, scraps of smoking, blackened bodies floated downstream among the charred splinters of the crawlers.

Five ghostly figures remained, hovering in the haze, bell shaped and trailing barbed tentacles, like jellyfish.

The creature growled, snapping its jaws at the phantoms, which swayed but could not be caught.

Turning its head, it brought those glassy globes of white light in close to the shore so that the ale boy lay under its bristled chin, like a mouse hiding under a furnace. The scene before him on the shore wavered, illusory in the heat. Dumbstruck with fear, none of the travelers dared move.

"Please, have mercy," Raechyl whispered.

The creature sniffed the air. The Bel Amicans trembled, but the Abascar survivors spread to form a circle around them. Together they began to sing the Early Morning Verse.

The creature blinked its eyes. In the center of those bright globes, dark pupils solidified-it was examining them. Then it emanated something like a purr from a mountain-sized cat.

From the cloud of blue ghosts, another lash of dissonant screams cut through the song. The creature reared up, pawing the air with its black-clawed forelegs. The horns splaying from its head spread into a wide crown, and it crowed like a rooster. It folded in its wings, exposing the stairway.

The crowd walked with excruciating caution to the foot of the stairs. But Nella Bye stopped and looked back. "Rescue?"

The creature's eyes narrowed as if it were listening to some far-off command. The ale boy got to his feet, still tightly knotted in the tether.

The ghosts, shrieking over the water, caught a current of air and streamed toward the stairway.

The creature sniffed at the ale boy and then exclaimed a bell-like cry. It cocked its head as if in disbelief, and then it unfolded its wings again, sealing off the boy's view of his companions and blocking the ghosts from reaching the stairway.

"Please," he said. "I'll do whatever you wish. But may I go and see Auralia soon?" He tightened his grip around the strap of the water flask and closed his eyes.

A wave of water swept over him, lifting him off the ground. He felt a hard tug at his ankle, and he fell. His raft washed back into the river and pulled him from the shore. He felt the water close over his head. A mighty hand lifted him out, then set him down on the raft, and he saw the creature rushing downstream, bearing the raft before it, the blue ghosts streaming along behind, screaming.

23.

THRESHOLD.

yes like ovens sealed in glass. Dark eyelashes fanning a face encased in intricate, fireproof shields. Scales green as new clover and, growing like a lacework of beetle-black mortar between them, shiny new shields that would someday guard the creature's whole body.

Entranced by the Fearblind Dragon's strange, alien nature, her unfamiliar textures and jagged lines, Auralia wanted to sculpt a model or paint a picture. At times Reveler seemed more plant than animal or something halfway between-the way she sprouted barbs where no other animal was barbed and the way her head seemed a giant seedcone that had grown in segments. As Reveler stretched and groomed and crawled impatiently over the canyons, sniffing the rocky crevasses and sneezing smoke, her sinuous grasshopper legs started rock slides. She commanded attention from the shaken and even the wounded, as if she were a dancer on a stage.

Auralia had seen a great deal of the life the world had to offer. But she had never seen a dragon until Scharr ben Fray arrived, steering Reveler as if she were a vawn, to save this company from those viscorclaws and bow-wielding beastmen.

And yet, there was someone more fascinating than the dragon in Auralia's view. Krawg and Warney had helped Bel Amican soldiers carry the wounded into the smoky daylight where Say-ressa could examine them better, and King Cal-raven moved among them. He bowed over each patient as if it were his duty to heal every scratch. He would wear himself out with apologies and vows, unnecessary as they were. "Auralia, you greedy wretch," she muttered to herself. She felt foolish, for she coveted his attention, wanted him to truly see her and recall her real name. But he carried so many burdens now. How would he ever find time for curiosity?

She fitfully fingered the ring he had failed to see on her hand.

He spoke quietly not only with the Abascars but with the others who had helped them, ministering to the merchants and the Bel Amican guards. He also knelt before Sisterly Emeriene, putting his hands on the shoulders of her young children and speaking quiet words of comfort. Emeriene seemed like a woman suffocating, and Cal-raven's attention seemed to be the air she wanted to breathe. Her gaze followed him everywhere.

Say-ressa whispered to him over the fallen, and he knelt to question Jes-hawk about the journey and all they had endured. He even held the archer's right hand as Say-ressa's sharp instruments probed the bones in his left shoulder, stitching together torn edges. But nothing was harder to endure than the thudding of Tabor Jan's boots against the ground as he endured Say-ressa's needles while she teased out shards of the Strongbreed arrow. He had no voice to scream, but his whole body fought as if a predator were upon him.

Say-ressa would have no way to repair the captain's deepest wound. Word had spread quickly of the marriage tattoo.

Bodies heal faster than hearts.

She thought of Jordam the beastman and looked up a spill of boulders where the dragon had buried some struggling Strongbreed. Sitting on a high, flat stone, Jordam watched the king. Arm's length to his left sat a stranger draped and hooded by a heavy canvas. The two glanced at each other like dogs that take a dislike to each other.

Auralia climbed up on the rock, feeling like a thrush alighting between two wolves. The stranger had large, bruised, fidgeting hands, and his breathing was feeble and ragged.

Jordam picked at the wounds the viscorclaws had torn. When she had seen these hands before, they had been gloved in hair. Now but for their size and their brittle black nails, they seemed almost the hands of an ordinary man.

He glanced at her, anxious. "You ... hurt?"

"No," she said. But then she looked at her own hands and rubbed them together. "Yes, my hands. I don't ... I don't do that very often."

"rrMake stone change?" He shook his head and puffed air through his teeth. "rrStrange. Show me?"

Misunderstanding, she held out her open hand. "My wrists hurt mostly."

He gingerly took her wrist and stared intently at her fingers. "How?" he asked again.

"Oh. I see. Well, only some people can do it. Some say it means I'm descended from Tammos." She said the name again slowly-"Tammos"-as if it reminded her of something.

Jordam shrugged, surrendering his question, and released her hand. She began to etch faint figures on the stone. "I prefer to do this."

"rrShouldn't have come."

"Why did you come?"

"rrHurt." Jordam pressed his hand to his chest.

"You need healing? You should tell Say-ressa."

"rrNo. Must ... give words to the king. They hurt to keep inside."

On the stone before her, she drew the man she had once sculpted-a simple figure with arms spread wide. In the space above him, she outlined the figure that she saw on her ring.

"rrKing should ... punish me," Jordam grumbled. "Send me away."

"No. You saved us. The viscorclaws could have killed you."

"I am ... rrCent Regus. They are not made to hurt such as me."

These words aggravated the stranger; he twitched as if he too were feeling Say-ressa's needles.

"You were brave to fight them," she said.

"I bring more trouble than I stop," he answered.

She felt an impulse to tell him what to do. To comfort him. To urge him into a good decision. But she knew it was not what he needed right now. He needed to hurt, as she was hurting. "We're all trouble," she said. "Sometimes we do our best, and it only makes things worse."

In the awkward pause that followed, she mustered the courage to say, "Forgive me. Do I know you?"

The shrouded figure sat still and did not turn to meet her eyes.

"rrTravels with the king," said Jordam. "King's helper."

"Is he sick?"

"Yes," came the miserable sigh from the hood. "I'm sick." She could not see his eyes, but he seemed to be watching the crowd intently as if he feared them. "Did the viscorclaws hurt you?"

The stranger's hands wrestled as if molding an answer. "No," he sighed at last.

Jordam's stare told Auralia that she was inspiring his curiosity. Startled, she turned away. She watched the king, weighed the risks, and knew that the time was not yet right. "I came to help the king too," she said. "But he is very busy. So I'm waiting."

Jordam nodded. "rrHard. Waiting."

"Yes," she agreed, surprised at the force of her reply. I should leave, she thought.

I got his attention before, and look at all it's cost him. All that I made is lost. Scattered. Buried. Misunderstood.

The dragon's disgruntled groan from higher up the slope drew their attention. The mage had climbed onto Reveler's head and was now spurring her across the mountainside on some urgent mission.

"I should go." Auralia reached out and brushed Jordam's forearm with her hand. "It is good to see you. To see how you've grown."

At those words he turned to her sharply.

She pulled her hand back as if it burned, slipped from the boulder, and made her way down to the path.