“Silence!” One of the older asha thundered at us, though it was no use. People began to murmur among themselves. The other dancers onstage, trained not to react when mistakes were made, waited patiently for one of their own that never came.
Instead, a loud keening shrillness ripped through the air, and a daeva of gigantic proportions burst through the ground before us, inches away from the stage.
The asha paused. Above us, bones of dead monsters creaked in the wind.
“I learned one important thing at the darashi oyun. I learned that there was more to me than they first thought, that there was more to me than even I thought.”
She drank from two more vials and raised two more daeva. From the bones, she called forth the long-tongued nanghait and the many-eyed zarich. The first was an abstract form given life, with a torso composed primarily of humps and legs. Its head was made of two faces, one forever looking forward and the other forever looking back, and it had a horned back, webbed feet, and bloodshot eyes. The second was a reptilian satyr that stood on its hind legs. Five horns sprung up from its forehead, but its face was elongated and furred, with a snout like those they call a “crocodile” that slither up and down the swamps of Yadosha but certainly horrifying to see in the cloven beast before me.
As before, the girl took their hearts, and I watched them disappear into the depths of her heartsglass.
They all flocked eagerly to her, like trained dogs.
“What do you intend to do with them?” I mustered enough courage to ask, though I feared the answer.
She cast her gaze toward the east. “Daanoris would be a good place to start,” she said thoughtfully, selecting a kingdom like it was a dress to wear on the morrow.
24
I didn’t remember much. I heard the sounds of people screaming, felt my world turn upside down as a mad dash commenced, upending my seat in the process. Fox was on me in an instant, rolling me out of the way from the stampede before anyone could trample over us. Lady Hami would have been critical of my reflexes; only then did my training take over, and I pushed away enough of my shock to scramble to my feet.
It was complete chaos. The bulk of the audience had fled, but the asha remained. I could see the sparks of magic knifing through the air at the creature that had clawed its way out from the floor, leaving a hole on the stage the size of an asha-ka. It was a hideous serpentlike thing with three heads, each with a long snout and teeth that were the stuff of nightmares: there were two on each mouth, curved cruelly upward along the sides of their jaws, like a boar’s. Their long necks ended in a scaled body the size of a large farm, with wings the span of two horses and a large tail that ended in a spike. Its unblinking, yellow eyes blazed at me from underneath hooded, scaled ridges of brow.
My heartsglass quickened. It was a black dragon.
It screamed again, and I saw fire leap into the air and fall in an arc toward the creature, bathing its stomach in flames. Smoke curled up from Althy’s clenched fist, arm still raised toward the beast. It had little effect; the beast reared its head up, and its tail whipped forward, destroying the stage in one blow. Many of the apprentices had fled; some remained rooted to the spot, staring up in horror.
“Tea!” I heard Polaire roar over the din. “Take as many of the novices as you can and get them out!”
I hesitated. I was a Dark asha—a Dark asha-in-training—and it was a daeva, but there must be some way I could help—
“Now, Tea!”
Fox made the decision for me, grabbing my hand and steering me away. With his other arm, he grabbed a frightened apprentice around her waist, lifted her up, and ran. I stumbled after him, following other asha guiding the rest to safety, away from the Willow district and toward the Ankyon market. “Make for the castle!” I heard someone scream behind me. “Their walls are the strongest in the city!”
I didn’t think those walls, strongest or otherwise, would stand up to a three-headed monster of that size, but we all turned obediently toward it, knowing nowhere else to go. Groups of people were already running past the palace gates, soldiers stationed in places to herd them inside like frightened sheep to make room for others still pouring in.
“I have to go back,” I told Fox, stopping just short of the gates.
“Don’t be stupid, Tea!”
“Fox, I have to go back! Lady Mykaela won’t be able to face that thing alone!” I was desperate, as frightened as I had ever been. But I also knew that I would never forgive myself if I ran while Lady Mykaela stayed behind.
“Keep behind me.” An advantage of our bond was his knowing any more attempts to convince me otherwise wouldn’t work. We deposited the rest of the novices with the asha who had taken charge of the refugees, then pushed against the tide of people fighting to enter, back toward the training hall.
The battle had not been without its casualties. I saw a few bodies huddled up in crumpled heaps at the corner of my eye but refused to look. I forged ahead, matching Fox’s pace.
“I told you to get to safety!” Polaire’s hua was torn in several places, and she had a small cut across her cheek. I was too wound up to speak and could only shake my head. I saw a row of asha with their hands extended out to the dragon, Shield runes glittering above their raised palms. Every time the beast lashed toward us with its tail or whenever one of the heads tried to snap at the nearest asha with its teeth, it encountered that wall of air, preventing it from drawing too close. Another group of asha formed behind the first, and here, different Runes gleamed—Burn, Storm, Lightning. There were two dozen Deathseekers, all clad in black, also slashing runes in the air.
But none of the magic seemed able to hurt it. The dragon only shook off the worst of their attacks, and the asha flinched when it rammed into their wall.
“It’s an azi,” Lady Seta, one of the asha reinforcing the Shield, muttered. “The books say it is the daeva most impervious to Rune forms. We can’t keep this up for much longer.”
I looked around frantically for Lady Mykaela, just in time to see her step through the line of asha and walk toward the beast. I leaped forward, but arms wrapped around my waist and held me back.
“Don’t even think about it!” Fox’s voice was loud against my ear. “Do you want to get yourself killed?”
“I can help!” I struggled, but he was too strong for me.
“Don’t think you can do what she does after raising only dead mice and old duchesses and brothers, Tea! She knows what she’s doing!”
Grimly, Lady Mykaela raised her hands up. The dragon’s three heads focused themselves on her. I watched her draw the Dark, looked on as I felt the magic lift up and around the azi, the Dark trails winding around it like rope.
The huge creature struggled, and I felt a wild glimmer of hope.
“Stop,” Lady Mykaela commanded.
It ignored her and continued to struggle.
“Stop,” the Dark asha repeated, her voice louder.