Silver Dragon Codex (16 page)

That was when he saw the crying child escape his mother’s arms. A pale-haired little boy, blue eyes terrified and panicked, fled across the crowd and into the clearing. Without thinking, he stumbled too close to the crack as it shattered and broke apart.

In his mind’s eye, Ebano saw not only the fight before him, but also one that happened long years ago.

I see a green dragon swooping in the sky, carrying the warlord Salah-Khan. The tribe of Sayf had fought bravely in the warlord’s service, but scattered as his wrath turned upon them for their failure. The terrible greenish mist began to fall from the sky in a horrible smoking rain. Men fell, choking. Horses, the pride of his tribe, screamed in agony as their lungs filled with acid gas. My wife. My daughter—

Instead of counterattacking or escaping from the white robed wizard, Ebano spun. He whirled, twisting back toward the child. He reached out, hands grasping the child’s tunic. He dragged the child close, tucking the screaming boy against his chest as he turned away from the earth’s collapse. The spell finally collapsed, erupting from the deep earth with a whooshing hiss of foul, stinking acid. A fountain punched up through the crevice, exploding
with thick goo, horrible searing smoke, and hissing poison. Had it struck Ebano in the chest, the blast would have consumed him. As it was, the crevice was too narrow, too shallow to hold it all—and it escaped into the clearing with a massive, spewing explosion. Ebano felt the acid burn into his back, sear through his dark robes, and burn away flesh and velvet alike. A wash of it flowed over him, droplets spurting through the air all around. All he could do was hold the child close and pray.

Memories flooded him.

The dragon has her in its claws, and my fingers are sliding from her dress. Amani! If only I had remained loyal to Salah-Khan, he would not have avenged himself on us. If I had seen through his false smiles, kept our tribe away from his dark purposes, if I had listened to you when you whispered in the bedchamber that he was an evil man. But I did not, and we followed him to our doom
.

It was our love that destroyed us. I told Salah-Khan that you had spoken against him, that my own wife dreaded his cause and mistrusted his purpose. I remember how Salahh’s eyes flashed when I said it, how he did nothing that eve, but stayed silent as the grave. Only after he had sent my tribe out to conquer did he act. When we returned, my wife was dead, murdered by his guard’s hands, condemned as a dishonorable, faithless traitor to the Khan
.

That was the moment when I knew she had been right
.

The Sayf fought. We fought against the Khan, the Khur that had been our brothers, and against his dragon, the mighty Green named Chokingdeath. Many of my men, my comrades, my brothers, died with my name on their lips. Some choked in the gaseous breath of the monster, spending their last strength to render mercy to suffocating, unconquerable steeds before our warriors fell across their saddles on the desert sand
.

I, alone, survived
.

My daughter, my Amani, was lifted by the claws of the Khan’s massive green serpent. Ripped from my very hands, her dress sliding through my fingers as she was lifted into the heaven, Chokingdeath’s final retribution for our revolt. The dragon’s claws were wrapped about her. For my failure to protect Amani—to protect all of them—I am doomed to walk the earth until Keja finally grants me peace and lets me rest once more in my dead wife’s arms
.

He opened his eyes and saw the real world around him, shockingly hard and painful and real. The acid on his skin burned, scorching deep to the bone of Ebano’s back. The child in his arms writhed and screamed, slipping out between arms too weak to hold him as Ebano fell forward onto the dusty ground. Unharmed, he fled back to his mother and buried himself in her skirts.

Ebano lay still upon the ground, hearing nothing but the pulse of his heart. The smell of poison-charred flesh,
the same smell that had risen when the dragon breathed upon his men, filled his nostrils along with the heavy scent of dust and sweat. He had tried, tried to be a loyal general and prince, tried to save his daughter, tried to rescue Belen from the curse that had so clearly been laid upon her. The foreign wizard approached, stood over him, said something incomprehensible, and then turned away.

As the hem of the death wizard’s white mourning robe filled Ebano’s vision, he choked back an agonized laugh. The Westerner did not even have the courage to send Ebano fully to his death, denying him in the end both victory and salvation. I must die in battle, Ebano thought, or I will be kept from grace. He tried to push himself up to claw at the wizard’s robe, but it twitched away from his fingers before Ebano could muster even a single clawing scratch.

Keja help me, he thought, clenching his fingers in agony and falling back against the dust. And may the gods remember that I tried.

In the end, that was all any man could do.

My name is Ebano Bakr Sayf al-Din ibn Ceham, prince of Sayf, a tribe and a land now buried in dry sand, swallowed by the
deep deserts of Khur. The truth has been revealed to me, my family taken from me, and I have nothing left in this world except the fire of life and the water of forgiveness. Alak-al-saham-din-al-bhar, may the blessings of the gods be upon the world
.

he arcox snapped its crablike claws, slicing them through the air in an eager rhythm as it scuttled toward the friends. Jace dodged left. Cerisse leaped to the right, dividing its attention. One thing they’d learned in the short amount of time they’d been in a cage with the beast was that the arcox wasn’t very smart. This time, it followed Jace as he danced around the edge of the cage against the wagon’s internal bars. Cerisse jumped up, pulling herself almost flat against the bars of the ceiling. It wouldn’t protect her from the arcox’s reach, but it kept the monster’s attention on Jace while she rested for a moment. Soon, she would do the same for Jace.

They’d done this trick twice before, and this time, the beast was wary. It paused in its flight after the nimble boy, eyestalks turning back to look for the girl. “It’s on to us!” Jace yelled, waving his hands back and forth. The arcox wasn’t buying it. It turned on four pointed rear claws and
charged for Cerisse, clicking its lobster claws over its head to reach for her. Cerisse dropped instantly, but cried out as her ankle twisted in the hay. She collapsed, and Jace couldn’t see her anymore over the chitinous armored back of the arcox. “Cerisse!”

Belen was closer, although the bars of her cage kept her from reaching out or directly intervening. She stopped pounding on the wall of the wagon and turned quickly toward them. She hurled a hard lump of earth from the floor of the wagon and struck the arcox in one of its delicate eyestalks. The monster screeched and slowed, but did not change its course of attack. It had already learned that Belen was out of reach. Still, the pause gave Cerisse the opportunity to get to her feet. She stood unevenly, gingerly putting weight on the ankle, and shook her head dismally at Jace.

With two of her three darts—the only weapons they had in the wagon—in her hands, Cerisse faced the horse-sized arcox, dodging beneath the first sweep of its mighty claws. It was a waste of time to counterattack the crablike pincers, as they were thickly armored. The only place that the armor didn’t cover was the beast’s underside. It showed only when the arcox reared up to attack.

Like it was doing now.

Cerisse dived forward—exactly the opposite of what
the monster expected—and threw herself under the arcox. She slid between its six thin, pointed legs, kicking herself farther beneath them until they surrounded her like a sapling forest. Holding the darts tightly, she thrust upward, burying the long points into the arcox’s belly. The monster let out a thin shriek, first trying to pedal backward, then when it bumped into the bars of the cage, sprinting forward to escape the pain. It left Cerisse lying on her back and ran directly toward Jace.

Claws outstretched, blood dripping from shallow wounds on its stomach, the arcox snapped at him, forcing him to dance between its claws. One caught his shoulder, snipping through the cloth and skin in an instant. It wasn’t a direct hit or it might have removed Jace’s arm, but as it was, white bone showed where the claw withdrew. Jace let out a muffled yell of pain and quickly spun away.

“Jace!” Belen yelled. “Are you—”

“I’ll live! Can you pull it off me?”

“I can try.” Unable to walk swiftly, Cerisse bit down on the remaining dart, jumped up, and grasped the bars of the ceiling. Agile as ever, she swung forward, flipping from hand to hand toward him faster than many people could run. She threw herself onto the back of the arcox and wrapped her legs tightly around its wide, armored back.
“Hooo!” she yelled between gritted teeth, wrapping her hands around the arcox’s head.

The beast shrilled again, lifting its claws to snap them. Cerisse pressed herself flat against the armored back, causing the pincers to flail a few inches above her flapping auburn braid. “We need to do something about this!” she cried out. “We can’t keep it busy forever!”

“Yeah,” Jace gasped, ripping a sleeve from his shirt and tying it around his wound. “I noticed!”

“I have to do something!” Belen struggled with the thought, jerking helplessly at the thick iron bars that separated them. “I’m a dragon!”

“If you change form, we all get crushed against the bars. You’re too big. You’ll smash the wagon!” Jace shot her a comforting look. “We’ll handle it!”

Belen growled, tearing at the bars in a frenzy, her gray eyes burning with a bright anger. Jace knew he didn’t have much time before Belen sank into another one of her fugues, as she’d done at the tower. She might forget their situation entirely and attack, changing into the mighty dragon without understanding where she was or what she was doing, and if she did that, he and Cerisse would surely die.

“Can you get the point of the dart under its armor from back there?” he called, dashing around the wagon.
The arcox had noticed him again. Since it couldn’t reach Cerisse or Belen, he’d become the target of its rage.