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Less so when Valgrind cocked his head, listening, and made an inquiring sound.
“I don’t know how Oliver talks to you,” Nali said. “We don’t have the” – he tapped his forehead, and gestured to Valgrind – “mental connection, you and me. How did you find your way through the veil? Did you commune with the dead? Or was it me you found first?”
Valgrind said, “Kirik!”
“Helpful,” Náli muttered.
He turned and walked to the edge of the pool, to the top step waiting there, a scant half-inch under the water, the next several fading ghostly beneath the white surface until they disappeared. Dread mounted in his gut as it always did, sharper now that he was more alert than he’d been before. The dead called, as the did, his skin aching like sunburn as he resisted their siren song.
Teeth gritted, he shed his robe, folded it, and set it on the edge of the pool beside his boots, which he stepped out of, so the cold granite bit the soles of his feet. A full body shiver gripped him–
And then Valgrind stood beside him, rubbing the silk-smooth scales of his face against Náli’s shoulder, scratching an itch or encouraging him, or both, it didn’t matter. He wasn’t a warm creature; lacked the heat of a horse’s shoulder. But he was even stronger, and even more comforting, somehow.
Náli rested a hand on Valgrind’s neck, and the howling of the dead softened a fraction. “Well, then. I suppose there’s no sense delaying.” He stepped down, water overlapping his toes, and Valgrind stepped with him.
For the first time in his life, Náli walked side-by-side with someone down into the milky waters of the Nágrindr, and that someone was a bloody dragon.
He glanced over, when he was neck-deep, and caught those glowing blue eyes. Valgrind looked like he was smiling, though that wasn’t possible. He trumpeted a sound that Náli read as encouragement. Then Náli shut his eyes, and went under, a large, cold body stirring the water beside him.
From the first, it was different. The diamond glowed against his neck, but its pull was faint, more of a suggestion than the relentless tug he was used to. It bounced against his chest, and pointed in the correct direction, but he had to swim the way it wanted him to go, rather than let himself be towed.
Undulating like a serpent alongside him, Valgrind kept pace easily, blowing bubbles through his nostrils, wings tucked tight to his sides. Náli kept one hand on his neck, gripping firmly at the blunted spines there, afraid, suddenly, of what might happen if they got separated with his diamond malfunctioning.
Valgrind seemed content to stay together, though, glancing over occasionally, checking on him. Náli caught himself smiling, and didn’t try to feign belligerence. It was only the two of them here now, with no witnesses to carry forth tales of his fondness for this puppy-like drake.
And there were no witnesses – not even of the dead variety. No leprous hands reached out for him. No frigid grip caught him around the ankles. There was…nothing. He swam, and swam, half-towed along by Valgrind as he plunged easily through the water, tail acting like a rudder, and he didn’t glimpse so much as a fingernail from beyond the veil.
Which seemed a good thing, until his lungs began to burn, and he realized he had no idea how to cross over without the shaman’s aid.
He blew a few precious air bubbles through his lips, and stopped kicking – but Valgrind drew him onward, faster, and faster, tail stirring the water at a breakneck, frothing pace. Náli pinched at his neck spines, trying to get his attention, trying to stop him. He didn’t think he could get to the surface alone. His whole midsection ached with the need to breathe.
Wait, he thought. Wait, wait…
And then he saw it. A vivid ball of light below them. The source, he thought with a lurch, of the opaque glow that suffused the entire pool.
They were much, much deeper than Náli had thought. Deeper than he’d ever been. And then Valgrind paused, gathered his haunches, angled his head down, and dove with a fast push of his wings and tail. Náli gripped his neck with both hands and ground his jaw, his vision darkening at the edges.
He didn’t have long. He needed…had to…
The orb rushed toward them, brighter, brighter, brighter–
Not an orb. A sun. A–
A wave of pressure overtook him. It forced all the air from his lungs in a single rush, like the time his horse had bucked him off when he was nine and he’d landed flat on his back. His chest caved in, and his vision went black, and he was dying, dying, dying…
Until he sat upright, gasping and choking. He sucked in a massive breath that hurt his throat and devolved into an ugly, hacking coughing fit.
But if he was coughing, he was alive. Though his eyes streamed, he managed to get a glimpse of his surroundings. He sat in hip-deep grass that was stirred by a gentle breeze. When he managed to suck in another breath, he could hear the twitter of birds and the distant low of cattle. A pale sky arced overhead, set with an even paler sun that glowed blurry and white high overhead.
He thought of the orb in the bottom of the pool. “Gods,” he muttered, wiping his mouth with the back of his hand. “It really is a sun. A dead sun.”
This was the other side of the veil, he could tell. Its scents and sounds, and his familiar, rough-spun set of clothes and patched boots that always materialized here.
But there was one key difference. Two, really.
One, he hadn’t had to feel a dead man’s cold lips against his to gain entry.
And two, Valgrind stood over him, his shadow long across the grass, his head lifted and cocked as he listened to the sounds floating from over the hillside.
