“The headmaster is gone. That he spoke to you earlier today is astonishing enough. It was the last time he appeared in human form. Any adult male who challenges for the crown does so in our ancestral form, what you would call a dragon. Those males who refuse to compete remain in the form of a man so they pose no threat. The flesh of each rival who is consumed strengthens and grows the winner. The last survivor earns the right to crown.”
Vai’s gaze flashed up. “Is that a polite euphemism for mating?”
I was pretty sure Kemal’s skin darkened with a flush. “We are not like you. The strongest male proves he has the strength and therefore the right to crown. To crown means to become female. Thus will he enter the river and become she, and thus she will cross by water into the ocean of dreams, what you call the Great Smoke. The mothers live there. Now I have told you more than I ought,” he finished, with a glance at Bee. “You must leave at once.”
Bee had not given up. “Is there some other refuge? A boat? Horses? A hidden path?”
“No.” He hustled us back up the drive. The noise of feeding mercifully faded behind us.
Lamplight winked as the gatekeeper peeped out. “I can’t open up. Trapped inside and like to be crushed and spat out is what you get for demanding the right to go where you ought not. Fools!”
“Let them out,” said Kemal.
“You’re not even worm enough to make me,” said the gatekeeper, with a laugh.
Perhaps the night’s fraught events had worn Kemal’s mild temperament threadbare, but I thought it more likely that he responded as a young man might who feels he has been insulted in front of a woman he wants to impress. Kemal punched him up under the ribs with a strong undercut from his right, followed by a swift uppercut to the jaw from his left. The man went down.
“That was bruising!” said Rory, shaking out of his anxious slouch. “Have you studied the science of boxing?”
A horn shrilled from the road. Behind, the leviathan trumpeted in answer to its challenge. Heat grew at our back. The dragon was dragging itself closer.
“Hurry!” Kemal pushed us through the open door of the gatehouse. Even in such dire straits, I could not help but notice that the hearth fire burned unstintingly as Vai passed. We tumbled out on the other side of the gate as the gatekeeper skittered back into the safety of the gatehouse and slammed and locked the doors. The bellows breath of the dragon sucked in and out like the rhythm of the forge. It was definitely larger than it had been before it had eaten the last claimant.
Worst, the soldiers were closer than we had realized.
“There is the Diarisso mage!” In the aura of the gate lamp, soldiers clattered out of the night even as the cold fire guiding them vanished as though blown out.
The mage House troops spread into a semicircle that pinned us in front of the gate. We were caught between the claw and the teeth, as in the old tale of the slaves fleeing ancient Kemet who were trapped between the pharaoh’s army and an uncrossable sea.
“How could you abandon us like this!” Bee cried accusingly at Kemal.
Rory muttered, “Eaten or shot, which ought I prefer?”
Vai swore out of bitter frustration as his magic failed him.
I could barely lift my cane.
“I can’t reach my magic!” cried the mage riding with the troop. “What power traps it?”
“Kill all but the Diarisso,” shouted the captain.
Soldiers dismounted and swarmed forward with swords raised. Anger kindled in Kemal’s face, like buried light cutting through a concealing veil. He feared for Bee, certainly, but the knowledge that he had unwittingly walked her to her death surely scoured his pride as well. Or maybe it was only years of frustration at being told he must not desire what was so completely out of his reach and which was now to be torn from him forever.
He forgot himself.
And became what he really was.
First a pale man flashed as if he had become mirrors all catching tomorrow’s sunlight. The iron of the gates crumbled and, in a rush as of wind, poured into an eddy that he began absorbing. The substance filled and changed him. A creature formed as of polished iron swelled out of the vanishing figure of the man. It grew so monstrously fast that as I took in a breath I still saw the man, and as I exhaled a dragon filled the open gateway. Its mouth could have swallowed a pony. Whiskers like ropes lashed in a wind I could not feel. A crest rippled along its ridged spine in a delicate lacework of steel. Its tail whipped around and toppled several of the cypress trees. Its roar crackled like the fury of a blazing fire sweeping over us.
The soldiers fell over each other in their haste to retreat. The horses scattered as one rider sounded the alarm on a horn: Ta-ran-ta-ta! A distant horn answered, echoed by a third.
Close at hand a trumpet cry shook the air. Huddled against the door of the locked gatehouse, we turned to see the black dragon rise to confront this new challenger.
31
Once I had feared the fury of a magister powerful enough to rule as the head of a mage House more than I had feared the frightful tales of the great powers that lie invisible to us.
What a naïve girl I had been.