“Where are they?” Stef turned on her pistol, and the blue targeting beam shone across the tent. Lantern light caught her face, darkening the shadows around her eyes.
“I don’t know.” I tried to straighten my clothes as I stood. “I hear the sound. The ringing.”
Wing thunder clapped again, and we all followed the sylph outside. Snowy rocks stung my bare feet, and the surrounding woods were black with shadows, both real and sylph. The sound of their moaning rose higher.
Above, dark shapes flew across the midnight sky. They circled us, as though looking for a place to land.
How had they found us?
“I have an idea.” I dashed into the tent again and pulled my flute from its case. Sam grabbed me when I emerged again.
“What are you doing?”
“You are doing it.” I pushed my flute into his hands. “They’re afraid of you.”
“Are you sure it’s wise to threaten them like this?” he asked.
“They’re armed. Now we are, too.”
Trees snapped like twigs as dragons batted them aside. Rushing and cracking and chaos sounded. Birds squawked and flew away, calling out warnings. Animals in the forest skittered as trees fell and immense wings shadowed the earth.
I found one of the lanterns and turned the light as high as it would go.
<The one with the song is here.>
<They need us. They will not use the song against us.>
Sam, Stef, and Whit all screamed and clutched their heads against the ringing, but while it made my head throb, I kept on my feet. Maybe I was growing used to it.
Three dragons landed in front of us, wings tucked alongside them, blue eyes luminous. Immense talons dug gouges in the frozen earth. Snow dusted their scales. Their huge fangs shone in the lantern light.
I stepped forward, no coat and no boots, but sylph fanned around me like wings. “What do you want?”
<We have decided.>
They’d actually been considering helping? Huh. “And?” It took all my will, but I resisted the urge to look over my shoulder and check on my friends. Hearing the dragons speak for the first time was a painful experience.
<We have looked at your city. The tower shines even in daylight now. The evil inside grows stronger. Your people are enslaved to their own kind.>
I didn’t move. Hardly breathed.
<The earth cracks itself apart. The steam vents have blown open wide enough for a dragon to nest inside. Your lake is gone. Only death lingers there now.>
Acid Breath’s voice was huge, booming inside my head. Nodding made the world spin, but I managed to hold myself upright. “Yes.” My voice seemed thin and weak, though aside from the sylph’s soft moans, my friends’ groaning, and the crack and patter of fallen trees settling, my voice was the only sound. “Yes, those things are happening because of what lives inside the temple.”
<Many things live inside the temple, but the only one you want to destroy is the one you call Janan.>
“Yes.” What else lived inside the temple? There was nothing. Just endless mazes and horrors—and the skeleton chamber. But the skeletons didn’t count as living, did they? “Why do dragons attack the temple?”
<To destroy the one with the song.>
I spun to find Sam clutching my flute to his chest, his eyes round and shadowed in the lantern light. He’d heard. The others—they were both looking up—had heard, too.
“All those attacks,” Whit said, “to stop Sam?”
To stop Sam, who’d only just learned he had some kind of weapon, which he didn’t even know how to wield.
Fleetingly, I considered telling the dragons he never intended to use the song against them, but they were unlikely to believe me, and if I wanted to keep them a little afraid of us, I needed something besides the sylph.
I focused on the dragons. “If you help us destroy the tower, the cycle of reincarnation will end. You won’t have to fear the song anymore. Once Sam grows old and dies, it will be gone forever.”
<We do not fear the song.>
I lifted an eyebrow, but one didn’t just accuse a dragon of lying.
<If you know your cycle of reincarnation will end, and that the song will end with it, then we will help you destroy the tower.> Acid Breath glared at Sam, who was silent. Not moving. <If you will allow yourself to end, we will help you destroy the tower.>
And we wouldn’t have to rely on a weapon we didn’t know how to use. We’d just have to rely on dragons.
I glanced at Sam. This was his choice.
His voice came low and rough. “Destroy the tower.”
<Good.> Acid Breath drew back and up, casting a disinterested glance over our campsite. <Gather your belongings.>
“Why?” I put my fists on my hips and glared up at the dragon, like I wasn’t imagining how easily he could swallow me whole. As if the sylph knew my fears, they moved closer.
<Humans walk too slowly. We will take you where you need to go. Then we will return north and rally our army. Your tower will be nothing but rubble.>