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“So you sought toprotectme from it? You raised me for this. You made it clear to me at every juncture I had to be prepared for it and not shirk it when it came.”
A razor-sharp smile. “When you become a father, you will understand. We are proud we have raised a son who dances with such skill on the edge of the cosmos. But you are, at the same time, the tadpole that I pushed in an aquarium-pram around South and could hold in two hands. Lemuel has some interesting theories on the nature of time. Perhaps something for Keon to ponder over tea.”
Keon, in response, went through the Gate.
Akoni pulled off his shendyt and dropped into dragon form. Without another word, he went through the Gate.
Thirty-Five
Homeworld’s weather didn’t seem to change much. Still a dry, biting cold. Still breezy. Still with the clouds, and still with the twilight.
The warriors stood in two lines of four, with the ninth guarding the Gate threshold. The soft blue-purple glow of their dragon-prod spears seemed eerie and haunting in the wasteland, like streetlights on an empty pea soup-fog night.
Akoni’s scales shimmered with a metallic rush, and Auryn’s glowed, the light forming condensation on the tips, while Keon clenched his wings to his side.
The faint tinge ofnopewas stronger today, and there was something ugly on the breeze.
Akoni stepped up to Auryn’s other shoulder. “I do not sense a contraption, but I do sense something oppressive. Keon?”
“Faintly,” Keon said.
I fought the urge to wriggle my scales against a feeling that felt like too-heavy blankets. It wasn’t oppressive, and I hadn’t noticed it before—probably because I’d been so juiced on adrenaline.
Auryn approached and studied my wings and scales. He glowed like a lantern on a misty night, and the lattice pattern on his wings, normally only visible when he was actively channeling energy through them, was visible as a deeper shade of gold. I twisted my neck/body around to get a look. My wings and lower tail/body were their usual misty, fluttering selves, but my black opal scales, which usually were very fine wafers with beautiful magenta tips, now had very tiny gossamer tendrils instead of well-defined tips.
On the other hand, Keon’s stone scales seemed dim and dingy, and his mossy finlets slightly brown. Akoni’s metallic scales seemed tarnished and dull.
“How do you feel?” Auryn asked me.
I wanted actual words for this. Quick flip to land form. “Like I’m wriggling in tangled sheets while I have a bad taste in my mouth. You?”
“Like something is leaning on me,” Akoni said. “It is not dissimilar to what I sensed in Atlantis, although different. I don’t have all my magic.”
“I have all of mine.” I tested my urge to wriggle. All magic present. “The cloud cover seems thicker, and it’s a different time of the day cycle.”
Akoni lowered his head and bowed his neck in a metallic arch. “We need to get started.”
“We should assume we’re being watched,” Keon commented. “Out of an abundance of caution. Don’tassumewe are actually alone here.”
“I wasn’t planning on doing anything inappropriate, stone drake. Were you?” Akoni swished his tail over the stones. Metallic scraping and sparks tore at the underlying moan on the wind. “Perhaps another point off the purity scale? Ishas sex on alien planetone of the items?”
Auryn slicked all his finlets down. “We should never have taken you topside. And Keon should never have told you about those purity tests that go around college campuses.”
“Keon was pointing out thathispurity score is lower thanmine.”
“And mine is lower than both of yours.” Auryn wriggled the finlets behind his cheeks.
I gave them all a swat with my wings. “I’m goingthatway. You guys can come or you can stand here and argue about how to further lower your purity scores.”
“There is anin spaceoption, as I recall,” Akoni said. “Does this count?”
“We aren’tin space,” Keon pointed out.
“Surelyplanets other than Earthcould be an acceptable substitute for that item.”
And now back to noodle form. I headed for the clouds. First order of business: get a peek at the situation above this low-level cloud cover.
The clouds were cold and a little metallic, and theystung. And they wereheavy.Heavy like Atlantis had been heavy. Like something pushed down with a terrible, but very soft, moan, and it wasn’t the windshear trying to smash me back onto the planet.
