Chapter 139: Wings

The first thing through the crack in the sky was my father.

He came down as lightning. One bolt, white-gold, straight down out of the long white split in Kessavel's dome, and it hit the end of the north pier exactly where Pim stands, where he'd knelt with the hammer, where the Lockwarden's key lay on the bollard. The whole harbor went white. The stones jumped under my feet. The air smelled of rain and iron.

And when I could see again, he was standing there.

In his shirt. Barefoot. His hair standing straight up and smoking a little. On the end of the north pier, with a heap of netted Hushed on one side of him and a line of unnetted ones coming along the pier toward him on the other, and the fire on the water behind him, and the dragons coming in over his head.

He didn't look at any of it.

He looked along the harbor wall. Up the steps. To where Carol and I were standing with our hands still held up at the sky.

And he smiled.

* * *

Then he turned around and looked at the Hushed.

* * *

There were perhaps sixty of them still standing. Coming along the north pier in a gray line over the tangled heap of their brothers, with their chained fists held out. Toward him.

My father held out his right hand. Open.

The snow came out of nothing, and the hammer came down into it, pale and smoking. He closed his fingers on the haft.

He didn't swing it. He set the head of it down on the stone of the pier, gently, the way you'd set down a heavy bag at the end of a long walk. And leaned on it.

And the frost went out.

* * *

Not the way it had on Thursday, roaring out a mile across the sea and up the face of a wave. Small. Careful. A white ripple running along the stones of the north pier, no faster than a man walks. It went under the first Hushed's feet. And up. Over its boots, its legs, its gray coat, its chained hands, its white mask. In a heartbeat it was standing there in a skin of frost, perfectly white, perfectly still, one foot lifted, like a statue somebody had carved in sugar.

Then the next. And the next. All down the line.

Sixty Hushed. Sixty statues of frost on the north pier at Westmere, in a gray morning full of smoke, with their chained fists held out and their feet lifted in the middle of a step.

Not dead. I could feel them, through the winter Carol had given back to me. Alive, inside the frost. Not cold; they don't feel cold. Just still. Held. Exactly where they were. Not going anywhere until somebody decided they should.

My father lifted the hammer off the stone. It went back into the air in a whirl of snow.

He looked at the sixty frozen Hushed for a long moment.

"There," he said. To them. Very quietly. "Now you can stop walking for a bit."

* * *

And over his head, the dragons came in.

* * *

I'd never seen more than one at a time. Aurethar, on the Concordia palace roof, or on the north tower at Greykeep, or once, very high, crossing the moon. Or the green dragon of the river chapel in Havenreach, wrapped around her bell tower like a cat around a chimney pot. I didn't know there were more than that. Not really. Dragons don't come into the stories much, in our part of the world. They're old, and they're slow, and they keep to the high places, and they mostly want to be left alone.

There were fourteen of them.

They came through the long white crack in Kessavel's dome one after another, out of the clear morning sky over the hills behind the town, so huge and so many that their shadows went over Westmere like the shadows of clouds. Gold and green and copper and a gray one like slate and a black one with a white belly like a magpie. Wings like the sails of the tall ships. The wind of them came down into the harbor and blew the smoke flat across the water and lifted every loose sail in the boat lines and made the sixty frozen Hushed creak on the pier.

And at the front of them, the biggest, gold as an old coin, with one torn wing that had healed crooked a very long time ago: Aurethar.

* * *

He came down over the harbor, low, so low the wind of his wings put out half the fires on the boat lines. He turned. He went along the harbor wall, over the heads of three thousand Kethran sailors who threw themselves flat. And he came down, all at once, enormous, on the cobbles at the top of the harbor steps. Right in front of Carol and me.

The whole harbor wall shook. A chimney fell off the harbor office.

He folded his wings. He put his head down on the cobbles, so that his eye, gold and slit and as big as a cartwheel, was level with mine.

"Prince," said Aurethar. His voice came up out of him like a bell rung underground. "Princess." He looked at Carol. Then at me. Then at the oak sword in my hand, with the crack down it. "You broke his lock. From inside. With your hands."

"With Father's help," said Carol.

"With your hands," said Aurethar. As if Carol hadn't spoken. He blew out a long breath, warm, smelling of hot stone and burned sheep, so that our hair blew back. "The Castellan says it can see you again. It's very pleased. It told me so. It has never told me anything before." He turned his head a little, toward the sea. Toward the red ships, out past the harbor mouth, still burning on their roads of fire, with forty-four pieces of Cindrel still chained to their bows and screaming. "And those."

"Forty-four," I said. "Cindrel. In pieces. One on every bow. I took two. I couldn't do any more."

"I know," said Aurethar. "I can hear them. All of us can. We've been hearing them since you got here." His great eye narrowed. "We don't like it. A fire god in chains. It's like hearing a cousin screaming in a cellar."

* * *

He lifted his head.

And then he did a thing he had done exactly once before in his whole long life.

He lowered his shoulder. The left one. The one under the crooked wing. All the way down to the cobbles, so that the great gold curve of it made a slope, like a ramp, from the ground up to the hollow at the base of his neck where the scales were smaller and smoother and worn bright.

"Get on," said Aurethar.

* * *

Carol and I stared at him.

Aurethar doesn't carry riders. Everyone knows that. Roderic asked when he was nine and was stared at until he went away. Caitlin asked when she was six and was stared at until she cried. He's carried supplies, and roof slates for the chapel, and the wounded, twice, in the war, and nobody ever talks about that. And once, in the autumn, he carried me. Out over the sea to look at the black ships, the first time they came. With a saddle that Perrin and a harness maker from the lower market sat up all night to make, and four rules: no talking, no leaning, hold the saddle not the neck, be sick to the left. He'd asked for me because I could fold us both out of trouble. And when we landed he'd looked at me with one gold eye and said, That was once.

"You don't carry riders," said Carol.

"I don't," agreed Aurethar.

"You carried Garrick."

"Once," said Aurethar. "With a saddle. And rules. And I told him it was once."

"Then why—"

"When I carried him out to the black ships," said Aurethar, "they sang. And the singing asked me what I wanted. What do you want? Right there in the air, over the sea, with your brother on my back. And I said: a sheep. Burned on the outside. And to go home." His eye moved from Carol to me. "You felt it, Prince. I missed a wingbeat. I have not missed a wingbeat in four thousand years." He blew out another warm breath. "And when we came home, Helena had a sheep roasting. Nobody had told her. She just knew. That's home. That's the house where somebody knows you want a sheep before you've said so. And somebody has locked a lid on it and set it on fire." The great gold shoulder stayed down, the slope of it waiting. "So. Twice. Both of you. No saddle. Get on before I change my mind. I'm very old and I'm told without a saddle it's undignified."

* * *

So we got on.

Carol first, because she climbs everything, up the slope of his shoulder in two steps and into the hollow at the base of his neck, where she sat down and took hold of the edge of a scale the size of a dinner plate as if she'd been doing it all her life. Then me, slower, with the oak sword under my arm, blade back, hilt forward, so I'd have both hands. I knew where to sit. Just behind the place where the saddle had been, in the autumn. The scales there were still a little brighter than the rest, where the straps had rubbed.

He was warm. That's the thing nobody tells you about dragons. Warm all the way through, like a hearthstone at the end of the evening, and humming under you, very deep, like the Hold hums.

"The rules," I said. "No talking, no leaning, hold the saddle not the neck, be sick to the left."

"There's no saddle," said Aurethar. "So there are no rules. Hold on. Or don't. If you fall off I'll catch you. Probably."

And he spread his wings.

* * *

I'd done it once before. I thought I knew what it would be like. I didn't. In the autumn there'd been a saddle, and straps, and rules, and the cold careful silence of a dragon doing something he'd decided to do once and never again. This was nothing like that. No saddle. No straps. Just the warm humming hollow of his neck, and Carol's hands in my coat, and the first beat of his wings under us, when the whole world dropped away at once and my stomach stayed behind on the cobbles and the harbor went small and the sky went big and the wind came up into my face so hard I couldn't breathe.

Carol screamed. Not frightened. Delighted. The way she screamed on the roof when she was five and saw the lightning rods for the first time.

Aurethar went up over the harbor in one long climbing curve, and turned, and leveled out, and there it all was below us.

* * *

Westmere. The town and the Hold on its rock and the harbor and the long arm of the north pier with its heap of netted Hushed and its line of sixty frost statues. My father at the end of it, small, barefoot, with his face turned up toward us. The south mole, with Selvane and Benjamin on the old stone. The three thousand Kethran sailors along the harbor wall, getting up off their faces and staring. Tamar at the top of the Hold street, still standing, still with his arms half out, as if he'd forgotten how to put them down.

And out past the harbor mouth, the sea. The burning fleet. The melting wave, its green ice going black and sliding in great sheets into the steaming water. And the red ships. Forty-four of them. Each on its own road of fire. Each with a piece of Cindrel chained to the bow, screaming.

And all around us, in the air, the other dragons. Thirteen of them. Wheeling. Waiting.

* * *

"Now what?" said Aurethar, over his shoulder. "You're the ones who ask things. I'm just the wings."

I looked down at the nearest red ship. At the piece of Cindrel on its bow, screaming, with the fire being wrung out of it by the chains.

"I asked the first one if it wanted to stop," I said. "It said yes. I borrowed its fire and it went out. But I had to put the fire somewhere. I put it in Father's winter, and it nearly knocked me flat. I can't do forty-four. Neither can Carol. Nobody can. There's nowhere to put that much fire."

Aurethar was quiet for a moment, flying.

Then he laughed. It came up through his whole body under us like an earthquake, and three of the other dragons heard it and turned their heads.

"Nowhere to put fire," said Aurethar. "Prince. Look around you."

* * *

I looked around.

Fourteen dragons. Gold and green and copper and slate and black.

And every one of them, I suddenly understood, had a furnace inside it. A fire that had been burning since before Greykeep was built, since before the first Kethran king, since before the Accord or the war or the stream. A fire that ate stone. A fire that didn't need anything to burn, and didn't want to run anywhere, and had been lying quietly in the bellies of the oldest creatures in the world for ten thousand years like a cat in front of a hearth.

"Oh," I said.

"Oh," agreed Aurethar.

* * *

"You ask them," said Aurethar. "The pieces. You ask if they want to stop. That's the bit that matters. That's the bit nobody's ever done for them." He tilted his wings and began to drop toward the nearest red ship. "And when they say yes, you tell them: give it to the dragon. We'll take it. We've got room."

* * *

So that's what we did.

* * *

Aurethar came down over the first red ship so low that his belly scales nearly touched the mast, and hung there, wings beating slow and huge, with the wind of them flattening the fire on the water. And I leaned out over his shoulder, as far as I could, with Carol holding the back of my coat, and looked down at the piece of Cindrel chained to the bow.

"Do you want to stop?" I said.

It turned its head toward me against the chains. The way the first one had.

Yes.

"Then give it to him," I said. "The dragon. He's got room. He'll keep it warm. Nobody will ever wring it out of you again."

There was a pause. As if the piece were looking up at Aurethar. At the great gold belly, and the huge slow wings, and the warm stone-and-sheep smell of him.

Take, it said. Not to me. To him.

And Aurethar opened his mouth.

* * *

The fire came up off the bow of the red ship like water going down a drain. All of it. The whole road of flame on the water in front of the ship, and the sheet of it pouring off the bow, and the fire wrapped around the piece of Cindrel itself. It came up in a long bright twisting rope into Aurethar's open jaws, and he swallowed it, the way you'd swallow a cup of something warm on a cold morning.

He made a small noise. Like a contented cat.

On the bow, the shape in the fire went out. A thin pale man with no hair, chained to the stem-post, breathing. He looked up at Aurethar with his burned-black eyebrows raised.

Thank you, he said.

"Hm," said Aurethar. "Spicy." He looked over his shoulder at me. "Next."

* * *

After that it was like the nets.

The thirteen other dragons had been watching. They understood at once; dragons understand fire the way sailors understand nets. They came down out of the sky over the red ships, one to each, and hung there with their wings beating, and waited.

And Carol and I went from ship to ship on Aurethar's back, and asked.

Do you want to stop?

Every piece said yes. Every single one.

Then give it to the dragon.

And every single one did.

* * *

The green dragon from the river chapel took four. She came down over each red ship like a falling leaf, and swallowed the fire, and made a face like someone who's been handed a turnip when they asked for an apple.

"It isn't a pear," she said to Carol, the third time, in a voice like a bell in fog. "I was told there might be pears."

"After," said Carol. "I promise. All the pears you want. Havenreach has an orchard."

"Hm," said the green dragon, and swallowed the fourth, and looked very slightly happier.

The slate-gray one took six and didn't say anything at all. The magpie one took three and then lay on her back in the air for a moment, wings out, belly up, like a dog in the sun. Aurethar took eleven, and by the eleventh he was flying slower, and very warm, so warm that Carol and I had to take our coats off and sit on them.

"Are you all right?" said Carol.

"I am very full," said Aurethar, with great dignity. "And I am going to want a sheep."

* * *

It took an hour.

And at the end of it, out past the harbor mouth, there were forty-four red ships sitting dead in the water, their sails hanging, the roads of fire gone out, the sea around them black and steaming and still. And on the bow of every ship, a thin pale man with no hair and burned-black eyebrows, chained to the stem-post, breathing. Forty-four of them. Plus the two I'd done. Forty-six.

All the same face.

* * *

"He's still in pieces," said Carol quietly.

We were hanging over the last of the red ships, on Aurethar's back, in the wind of his wings. Looking down. At the forty-sixth pale man, on the forty-sixth bow, with his head on his chest.

"He's not screaming," I said. "That's something."

"It's not enough," said Carol. "Garrick, he's one god. Cut into forty-six pieces and chained to forty-six ships. Every piece of him thinks it's alone." Her voice cracked. "He'll be like that forever. Unless somebody puts him back together."

I didn't know what to say.

I didn't know anyone who could do that. You can't borrow a god back into one piece. You can't fold him. You can't open him. He's not a lock. He's not a door.

"Fire," said Aurethar, under us.

We both looked at the back of his great gold head.

"He's fire," said Aurethar. "All of him. Every piece. And what does fire do, when it's been scattered? When it's gone to ash? When there's nothing left of it but little pieces, everywhere, cold?" He turned his head and looked at me with one huge gold eye. "You've met them. You've been to the cave above Greymere. You've seen them bow."

I stared at him.

"Phoenixes," said Carol.

"Phoenixes," said Aurethar. "Fire that comes back from ash. Whole. Every time. That's all they are." He looked across the harbor at the south mole. At the small woman on the old stone with the lamp in her hand. "And they owe that one a very great deal. She carried five of their eggs across the sea in that lamp, three hundred years ago, ahead of a wall of water. They've never forgotten it. Phoenixes don't forget." He blew out a warm breath. "Ask her to ask them."

* * *

My father was at the end of the north pier when we came down.

Aurethar landed beside him, very carefully, so as not to knock any of the frost statues into the harbor. He lowered his shoulder. Carol slid down it like a child on a banister. I climbed down after her, with my legs shaking, and the oak sword under my arm.

My father looked at us. At Aurethar. At the forty-four dead red ships out past the harbor mouth, with the thirteen dragons settling on the water around them like enormous ducks.

"He carried you," said my father. To us. Not quite believing it. "Both of you."

"No saddle," said Carol.

My father looked up at Aurethar's great gold head, very high above him.

"You told me after the black ships," he said, "that it was once."

"I did," agreed Aurethar. "I was wrong. It was twice."

My father looked at him for a long moment. Then he bowed. All the way. The way I've never seen him bow to anyone, not to Lexander, not to Aurelia, not to the whole Council of the Accord.

"Thank you," said my father. "For my children."

"Hm," said Aurethar. And then, after a moment, in a much smaller voice, for a dragon: "Is there a sheep?"

* * *

There was.

Of course there was. Helena had one roasting before the dome broke. She sent it through the Westmere gate at nine o'clock, on a spit, carried by four of the Greykeep kitchen boys and Roderic, burned on the outside exactly the way Aurethar likes it, with a note pinned to the spit in her hand.

For the gold one. Tell the green one there are pears coming. Tell the rest I don't know what they eat but I'll find out.

Aurethar ate the whole sheep in three bites, on the end of the north pier, and then lay down on the stones with his chin on the bollard, beside the Lockwarden's key, and went to sleep.

* * *

At ten o'clock, my father went up the Hold street to Tamar.

Tamar was sitting on the cobbles at the top of the harbor steps, with his back against the wall of the harbor office and his broken ankle stuck out in front of him. Somebody had put a coat over his shoulders. The red-bearded sailor sat beside him with his arm in a sling and his collarbone strapped, and his boy on his other side. Goss sat on Tamar's other side, with the ledger.

My father crouched down in front of Tamar. The way he crouches in front of Mirelle when she's fallen off something.

"You held," said my father.

"I counted boats," said Tamar. His voice was very hoarse. "That's all I did. I'm not—I didn't—" He stopped. His square jaw was trembling. "I stood in the street. That's all."

"I know," said my father. "I saw. From up there." He pointed at the sky, at the long white crack in it, where the dome had been. "I spent two hours pressed against the outside of that thing, watching a man in a nightshirt stand in a street with his arms out." He put his hand on Tamar's shoulder. "I've stood in front of things all my life, Tamar. I'm very hard to get past. I'm a god. I've got a hammer." He paused. "You had a spyglass and a broken ankle. And they didn't get past you either."

Tamar looked at him.

Then he put his face in his hands and cried. Very quietly. For a long time.

My father didn't move. He just stayed there, crouched on the cobbles, with his hand on Tamar's shoulder, until he stopped.

* * *

At eleven, Carol and I went out along the south mole to the old stone at the end.

Selvane was sitting on it with her feet in the water and her lamp in her lap. Benjamin was beside her. She looked very tired. She'd held the harbor for two hours against Cindrel's fire, and her hands were shaking, and her lamp was burning very low.

She looked up at us as we came.

"I heard the dragon," she said. "I hear everything on this water." She looked out past the harbor mouth, at the forty-four red ships, at the forty-six pale men chained to forty-six bows. "You want me to ask them."

"Only if you want to," said Carol. "You can say no."

Selvane looked at her lamp.

"I carried five eggs in this," she said. "Across the sea. Ahead of Draum's wall. I ran all night. I didn't look back once." She turned the lamp in her hands. "The mothers put their eggs in the flame. They trusted me with the only thing they had left." She looked up at us. "I've never asked them for anything. In three hundred years. Not once."

"Then maybe it's time," said Benjamin gently. "Nobody minds being asked, love. Not by someone who's earned it."

Selvane was quiet for a long time.

Then she lifted the lamp. Very high. Over her head. The way she'd held it on Thursday, against the wave.

And she began to sing.

* * *

It wasn't a song I knew. It wasn't in any language I knew. It was very old and very high and very thin, like wind across the mouth of a bottle, and it went out from the end of the south mole across the harbor and the burning sea and the forty-four dead red ships, and up. Past the long white crack in the sky. East. Over the hills. Toward Greymere. Toward a cave above the lake, where five phoenixes have nested every spring for three hundred years, and every phoenix in the world comes to bow.

We waited.

Nothing happened.

Selvane sang on. Her voice shook. Her lamp shook.

And then, very far away, over the eastern hills, so faint I thought at first it was the sun catching a cloud, there was a light.

Gold. And red. And moving.

Coming.

* * *

Mary's book. Tuesday. Written on the north pier at Westmere at noon, by Melody, because Mary had come through the Westmere gate at a quarter past nine with Helena's second sheep and a basket of pears for the green dragon, and her hands were still full of pears.

Tuesday. 7:16. The dome broke. Uriah came through as lightning. Then fourteen dragons. Aurethar first.

Uriah froze sixty Hushed on the north pier. Not dead. Still. He told them they could stop walking for a bit.

Aurethar carried Carol and Garrick. On his back. No saddle. He has carried a rider once before in his life: Garrick, in the autumn, to look at the black ships. He said then it was once. He says now he was wrong. He says it's undignified. He says he'd do it again.

Carol and Garrick asked every piece of Cindrel if it wanted to stop. Every piece said yes. The dragons took the fire. Aurethar took eleven. The green one took four and wanted pears.

Uriah bowed to Aurethar. All the way down.

Tamar cried. Uriah stayed.

11 o'clock: Selvane sang. Something is coming over the eastern hills.

And under that, in a hand nobody in the house had ever seen, because it wasn't a hand at all: a single deep scorch mark, burned right through four pages, in the exact shape of a dragon's claw-tip, set down very carefully, very precisely, as if whoever made it had been told this was where you signed your name and had taken the instruction seriously.

Beside it, in Melody's writing:

Aurethar. He asked me to write: Acceptable.