“You would not have. I do not know if any still exist. We will hope not. Two aspects of the Great War affected the search for Dragonhome. First, certain events in the war convinced Sun that Dragonhome could best be accessed from Dis.”
“Why Dis?”
“Dis is unique in some ways. It touches on more realms than any other. You do not know enough for more explaining to be useful. Another outcome of the War was the closing of Earth. Not that ‘closing’ is the correct term, but it will have to do. This closing was necessary, for Earth was the most unprotected of the approachable realms, but it meant—”
“What does that mean—approachable?”
“You interrupt,” she said sternly. “I mean the realms in ready contact with each other. The sidhe realms had their Queens to protect them. The singular realms other than Earth had various types of protection against her and the other two Old Ones who retained their godhoods. Earth did not.”
His eyebrows flew up. “Other two? Who were, or are, they?”
“You may discount them. They were never worshipped by humans.”
“While Lily and I were on our honeymoon, Earth was visited by a god who hadn’t been worshipped by humans in the past but wanted to change that. He wanted to crack open our realm in a way that would have allowed her to enter before it fell apart entirely.”
“Dyffaya.” She sighed, shrugged. “He was a special case, but I will explain more. Sun believes one of the Old Ones who still holds a godhead is active in one of the singular realms and has agents in two or more of the sidhe realms. He is not ours to deal with; the Queens will do so. The other Old One I refer to fell into sleep at the end of the Great War. The patterns strongly suggest It sleeps still. You are very distractible.”
“You are seldom this willing to offer information.”
“I will cease to do so if you continue to annoy me. As I was saying, one of the results of the Great War was that Earth would be mostly closed to the other realms. The nature of this closing meant our realm would grow depleted in magic as time passed. Some of the dragons left Earth then. Some stayed. Some who stayed hoped to find a way to access the home realm from Earth. If they did not, when the magic grew too thin, they would cross to Dis. There they could test Sun’s belief that it offered better access. In the meantime, there was much to be learned.”
“No doubt.” Rule shifted. His wolf was growing restive, impatient with the man’s questions and the woman’s convoluted stories. What did any of it have to do with getting to Lily? With taking his son back from their enemies? With returning to that audience chamber in Dis to rescue his people? “So the dragons hung around on Earth, but they didn’t find access to their home world.”
“They did not find a safe way to access Dragonhome from Earth,” she corrected him.
“They found an unsafe way?”
“The time discontinuity is too great and the strata too brittle. I will explain later, if you wish. As you say, the dragons ‘hung around.’ When the time came, they left for Dis. After some exploring and a great deal of fighting, they claimed a large region for themselves. It did not have any shared nodes with Dragonhome, but it bordered a region that did.”
“Xitil’s territory.”
“Yes. At the very heart of her territory, as you know. Near the twin nodes.”
“Difficult to use that access when it’s part of Xitil’s palace, and yet . . .” He paused, considering. “And yet they are dragons. And they lived in Dis for a couple centuries without finding a way to Dragonhome? Perhaps dragons are distractible, also.”
That elicited a sharp crack of laughter from Grandmother. “You want me to come to the point, wolf? Very well. I told you one secret so you would understand why we can trust Reno to act against our enemy. I will skip the details and tell you the other secret so you will understand why we cannot trust him to act against the dragon spawn who rule here. One dragon did find a way into Dragonhome and, eventually, a way back. You know him as Reno. These spawn are his children.”
SEVENTEEN
“I was right,” Li Lei announced. “Those are not oxen.”
It was a warm, sunny day. The river was swift and muddy, the brown water casting friendly glints back at a sky drenched with color. Seagulls swooped and called, proving that their species did, indeed, end up everywhere. Men and women bustled about, loading or unloading the sampans docked at all four of Bolilu’s piers. Those piers were anchored by pylons made from the trunks of huge trees that had been spelled to resist rot. The river was not always friendly.
“Are you ever not right?” Gan asked curiously.
She cast the little one a glance. Gan was visible today. She wore servant’s clothing. It had been difficult to find garments in her size. “It is rare, but it does happen. The next time it occurs, I will be sure to mention it to you, if you are still alive.”
Gan’s eyes widened in alarm. “You think I’m going to die?”
“It’s a joke,” Rule said. “She means that she’s wrong so rarely that you’re likely to die of old age before it happens.”
“But she’s really old now, and I won’t start getting old for—oh!” Gan’s eyes lit up. “That’s why it’s a joke, right? Because she’ll die before I do.” She burst into laughter.
Li Lei’s lips did not twitch, but inside she laughed, too. If you could not laugh about death, you were missing life’s biggest joke.
She and Gan stood at the land edge of the long pier. Rule did not stand; he sat on one of the pylons, recruiting his strength so he could continue to pretend he was not in pain. At least he had crutches now. Not the primitive stick things that people here used, either. Rule needed better. So did everyone else, and so she had spoken with a woodworker yesterday, who had made a pair to her specification with a proper handgrip. Perhaps the design would spread.
She and Gan had packs containing all their worldly belongings—this world, that is. Rule did not. He had not liked letting two females do the carrying but had been forced to admit she was right. No warrior here would encumber himself with packs when there were others to carry them.
Abruptly Rule pushed to his feet—or rather, to his foot and crutches. “Let’s go.”
They headed down the longest pier. Their goal was at its far end. Chún-chún could not come close to shore due to their deeper drafts—they had keels—and also their means of propulsion, which frolicked in the water nearby.
In size and shape, chún lay midway between a dolphin and an orca. In coloring, they varied from olive green to greenish gray. They were clearly domesticated, as they wore harnesses. They were just as clearly mammals. As Li Lei watched, one farther out in the river blew water from its air hole. The chún’s head did somewhat resemble that of a hairless ox. The eyes were set opposite each other like those of a fish, but the beast had visible ears and its snout had the look of an ox’s muzzle. This resemblance was heightened by a pair of horns that evolution had surely not provided.
“I wonder who made them?” Li Lei asked thoughtfully.