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One of the swollen nodes moved, pulsing as though it were taking breaths. AuRon bent his head close. Its skin was stretched tight, reminding him of his own back before his wings broke through.
A face looked back at him.
The face of the Red Queen.
He recoiled in shock.
He had his flame. Would it be enough? He scored the trunk of the tree, and the pulpy wood gave way in sheets more in the manner of flesh than bark.
A hand punched out of the egg-node. Red webbing hung about it like a long veil.
The flame came out of fright. He spread it, concentrating on the tree. The bark hissed rather than burned as the flame lashed across it, like dragonflame vomited upon seawater.
He paid special attention to the nodes. They steamed, swelled, and exploded.
The air boiled with smoke, but he had to complete the destruction. He lashed out right and left, breaking and smashing the nodes. Not fast enough. He rolled, burning himself, smearing freshly grown blood all over himself.
Out out out! Out of air, out of hide, out of time.
He fled up the stairs, dragging flame behind, and out into the clean mountain air.
Horror awaited him in the citadel. Naf’s men hung from the walls, already being pecked by crows, with bloated vultures waiting beneath, evidently experienced enough in the ways of the Ghioz citadel to know that the bodies would fall eventually.
There was fighting outside the sloping tower at the center of the citadel. Those within the tower exchanged arrows with rocks fired by war-machines outside.
A green dragon, long and light-framed, circled above the tower, and above the green dragon two roc-riders circled higher.
Had he been thinking rationally, given time to plan, he would have glided high above the roc-riders, then dove on them from straight up. He could strike at one and drop flame on the other without much loss of speed, and fall on the dragon jarring the tower with strikes of her tail.
But like a fool, all he could think of was Naf, and possibly his men, on the inside of that tower as its walls were battered and opened by the war-machines.
He dropped fire on them. The rocs dove, talons out, rending and tearing out chunks of wing. He crashed to the ground, rolling and scattering soldiers and their horses and oxen.
He dragon-dashed for the ruins of the door. Arrows struck him along the sides but did not slow him. He snapped off feathers as he squeezed through the door.
It was a vast, square room with four fat columns running from floor to ceiling, stairs running up each side and what seemed to be old horse stalls filled with crates and chests and bundles.
Naf’s men, dressed in a mixture of their own armory and Ghioz breastplates and chain, were lighting flaming arrows to fire at the war-machines as other bowmen covered them.
At the center of the four columns was an old throne. A simple thing, wooden with brass feet and arm caps, almost unadorned.
Naf lay sprawled upon it, an arrow in his shoulder and stomach. Hieba held him in her arms. She’d aged greatly since he’d last seen her. Two long ropes of gray contrasted with the black in her hair.
“Well, AuRon,” Hieba said, “you’ve made it in time for the last act of our heroic tragedy.”
“Your daughter?” AuRon asked.
“The Queen sent her off to the southern provinces,” Hieba said.
Naf chuckled, a stream of saliva and blood trickling out of his mouth. “I am glad, though I wish Desthenae could see my final repose. Would you believe, today I sit on the ancient throne of Dairuss? The first kings of Ghioz dragged it all the way here and forgot about it in this old tower. Do me a courtesy. Once I’ve breathed my last, burn me in it.”
Chapter 25
Wistala, heading south with the muster of the north to the aid of Thallia and Hypat, was met on the road by Dsossa and a twin column of riders escorting what looked like a group of thanes and their families.
The thanes went far off the road to avoid Wistala, but Dsossa trotted ahead.
“Hypatia’s surrendered,” Dsossa said.
