It was Elder Vara who had shaken a semblance of life back into her. When she had grown weak with hunger, he had coaxed her into the sunshine. He had shown her flowers she had never seen. The next day, he had prepared a meal for her, and she had not wanted to disappoint him by leaving it untouched.
Now the other scholars called her the Ghost of Vane Hall. She could eat and work and read like the rest of them, but her gaze was always in a world where Susa still lived.
Tané stepped off the walkway and made for the repository. Only the elders were usually permitted to enter it. As she approached its steps, Feather Island rumbled. She dropped to the ground and covered her head. As the earthshake rattled the hermitage, she hissed through her teeth in sudden pain.
The knot in her side was a knifepoint. Cold pain—the bite of ice against bare skin, freezeburn in her innards. Tears jolted into her eyes as waves of agony pitched through her.
She must have dipped out of consciousness. A gentle voice called her back. “Tané.” Paper-dry hands took her arms. “Scholar Tané, can you speak?”
Yes, she tried to say, but nothing came out.
The earthshake had stopped. The pain had not. Elder Vara scooped her into his bony arms. It chagrined her to be lifted like a child, but the pain was more than she could stand.
He took her into the courtyard behind the repository and set her on a stone bench beside the fishpond. A kettle waited at its edge.
“I was going to take you for a walk on the cliffs today,” he said, “but I see now that you need to rest. Another time.” He poured tea for them both. “Are you in pain?”
Her rib cage felt packed with ice. “An old injury. It is nothing, Elder Vara.” Her voice was husky. “These earthshakes come so often now.”
“Yes. It is as if the world wants to change its shape, like the dragons of old.”
She thought of her conversations with the great Nayimathun. As she tried to steady her breathing, Elder Vara took a seat beside her.
“I am afraid of earthshakes,” he confessed. “When I still lived in Seiiki, my mother and I would huddle in our little house in Basai when the ground trembled, and we would tell each other stories to keep our minds off it.”
Tané tried to smile. “I do not remember if my mother did the same.”
As she spoke, the ground shook again.
“Well,” Elder Vara said, “perhaps I could tell you one instead. In keeping with tradition.”
“Of course.”
He handed her a steaming cup. Tané accepted it in silence.
“In the time before the Great Sorrow, a fire-breather flew to the Empire of the Twelve Lakes and ripped the pearl from the throat of the Spring Dragon, she who brings flowers and soft rains. The winged demons like nothing more than to greedily amass treasure, and no treasure is worth more than a dragon pearl. Though she was badly wounded, the Spring Dragon forbade anyone from pursuing the thief for fear they might also be hurt—but a girl decided she would go. She was twelve years old, small and quick, and so light on her feet that her brothers called her Little Shadow-girl.
“As the Spring Dragon mourned for her pearl, a most unnatural winter fell over the land. Though the cold burned her skin and she had no shoes, the Little Shadow-girl walked to the mountain where the fire-breather had buried its hoard. While the beast was away hunting, she stole into its cave and took back the pearl of the Spring Dragon.”
It would have been a heavy treasure to bear. The smallest dragon pearl was as big as a human skull.
“The fire-breather returned just as she had laid hands upon the pearl. Enraged, it snapped its jaws at the thief who had dared enter its lair and tore a piece of flesh from her thigh. The girl dived into the river, and the current whisked her away from the cave. She escaped with the pearl—but when she pulled herself out of the water, she could find nobody who would stitch her wound, for the blood made people fear that she had the red sickness.”
Tané watched Elder Vara through tendrils of steam. “What happened to her?”
“She died at the feet of the Spring Dragon. And as the flowers bloomed once more, and the sun thawed the snow, the Spring Dragon declared that the river the Little Shadow-girl had swum in would be named in her honor, for the child had reunited her with the pearl that was her heart. It is said that her ghost wanders its banks, protecting travelers.”
Never had Tané heard a tale of such bravery from an ordinary person.
“There are some who find the story sad. Others who find it to be a beautiful example of self-sacrifice,” Elder Vara said.
Another shock went through the ground, and inside Tané something called out in answer. She tried to keep the pain from her face, but Elder Vara was too sharp of eye.
“Tané,” he said, “may I see this old injury?”
Tané lifted her tunic just enough for him to see the scar. In the daylight, it looked more prominent than usual.
“May I?” Elder Vara asked. When she nodded, he touched it with one finger and frowned. “There is a swelling underneath.”
It was hard as a pebble. “My teacher said it happened when I was a child,” Tané said. “Before I came to the Houses of Learning.”
“You never saw a doctor, then, to see if something could be done?”
She shook her head and covered the scar.
“I think we should open your side, Tané,” Elder Vara said decisively. “Let me send for the Seiikinese doctor who attends us. Most growths of this sort are harmless, but occasionally they can eat away at the body from within. We would not want you to die needlessly, child, like the Little Shadow-girl.”
“She did not die needlessly,” Tané said, her gaze blank. “With her dying breath, she restored the joy of a dragon and, in doing so, restored the world. Is there a more honorable thing to do with a life?”
39
South
A caravan of forty souls was weaving through the desert. In the faint light of sundown, the sand glittered.
Bestriding a camel, Eadaz uq-Nāra watched the sky deepen to red. Her skin had tanned to a deep brown, and her hair, cut to the shoulders, was covered by a white pargh.
The caravan she had joined at the Place of Doves was now in the northern reaches of the Burlah—the stretch of desert that rolled toward Rumelabar. The Burlah was the domain of the Nuram tribes. The caravan had already crossed paths with some of their merchants, who had shared their supplies and warned that wyrms had been venturing beyond the mountains, doubtless emboldened by rumors that another High Western had been sighted in the East.
Ead had stopped at the Buried City on her way to Rauca. The Dreadmount, birthplace of wyrmkind, had been as terrible as she remembered it, jutting like a broken sword into the sky. Once or twice, as she walked between crumbled pillars, she had glimpsed the distant flicker of wings at its summit. Wyverns flocking to their cradle of life.
In the shadow of the mountain were the remains of the once-great city of Gulthaga. What little was left on the surface belied the structure beneath. Somewhere inside, Jannart utt Zeedeur had met his end in the pursuit of knowledge.
Ead had considered following him, to see if she could find out more about this Long-Haired Star, the comet that balanced the world. She had scoured the ruins for the route he had used to burrow under the petrified ash. After hours of searching, she had been close to giving up when she saw a tunnel, barely wide enough to crawl in. It was choked by a rockfall.
There would be little point in exploring. After all, she knew no Gulthaganian—but Truyde’s prophecy was a worm in her ear.
She had thought her return to the South would breathe life back into her. Indeed, her first step into the Desert of the Unquiet Dream had felt like a rebirth. Having left Valour safe in the Harmur Pass, she trekked alone through the sands to Rauca. Seeing the city again restored her strength, but it was soon lashed away by the winds that blazed off the Burlah.
Her skin had forgotten the touch of the desert. All she was now was another dusty traveler, and her memory was a mirage. Some days she almost believed that she had never worn fine silks and jewels in the court of the Western queen. That she had never been Ead Duryan.
A scorpion made a dash past her camel. The other travelers were singing to pass the time. Ead listened in silence. It had been a lifetime since she had heard anyone sing in Ersyri.
A songbird perched in a cypress tree,
And, lonesome, called out for a mate to wed.
“Dance, dance,” it sang, “on the dunes tonight.
“Come, come, my love, and we’ll both take flight.”
Rumelabar was still so far away. It would take weeks for the caravan to conquer the Burlah in winter, when the bitter nights could kill as swiftly as the sun. She wondered whether Chassar had received word of her departure from Inys, which would have diplomatic ramifications for the Ersyr.
“We will make for the Nuram camp,” the caravan-master called. “A storm is coming.”
The message was passed down the line. Ead held the reins tighter in frustration. She had no time to waste while a storm blew out of the Burlah.
“Eadaz.”