In the Ruins (Crown of Stars 6)

“Twice blessed! Twice cursed!” sang out White Feather, shoving the first infant into the waiting hands of Skull Earrings so she could catch the impatient second, now crowning.

Feather Cloak pushed as the world was born again, as the White Road flared into existence, a ribbon so bright that it shone, as Earth exploded beyond the borders of the Ashioi land. Firestorms raged and gales seared the land. Yet all this transpired at such a remote distance from the heart of the maelstrom that her awareness of the cosmos, too, faded, and she was after all weary. So weary.

“Two girls!” said Skull Earrings, cradling the first tenderly in his arms. “The gods have favored us!”

She slid down the long road of exhaustion and fell into sleep.

North of the land lies devastation so complete that the land steams. Has their return created such a wasteland that smoke and ruin are all she sees?

No. Beyond the scar lies land touched by fire, by wind, by raging seas, by great shifts in the earth itself, by tumult, but it is not dead.

She sees now what caused the land just beyond the White Road to be engulfed by molten rock. The Bright One walks in the wasteland. She created it with the power that resides within her, the curse she received from her mother’s kin. She is naked and carries nothing except a bow layered with the magical essence of griffin bone. So bright it shines….

She moaned and came awake, squinting against a light she did not recognize.

“Ah!” She shielded her eyes. “What is it?”

“He-Who-Burns!” cried Green Skirt. “That is the sun. See how his light shines!” She pointed at the roof of the cavern, where a yellow glare illuminated the spray of plant roots dangling from crumbling ridges of soil.

Skull Earrings stepped forward with White Feather beside him. “Here are your daughters,” he said, displaying the dark babies.

White Feather nodded. “So small. So perfect!”

Weeping, she kissed them. “They will never know exile. We have come home.”

PART ONE

THE TIDES OF DESTRUCTION

I

A VISION OF THE END

1

WHEN the earth began to shake, his jailers abandoned him within the ruins of the old monastery, beside the roofless church and its stone tower. From his prison, in his cage in the back of the cart, he watched in a confused stupor as both horses and oxen bolted, spooked by the unnatural weather.

Along the shoreline of Osna Sound, the water receded far out past the line of the ebb tide, exposing seabed and a line of sharp rocks below the curve of the Dragonback Ridge. Above, the sky was a sheet of lightning that veiled the stars, but that light in the heavens was an uncanny thing because no thunder answered it. A stillness, more like an indrawn breath, settled over the country, and it hung there, waiting.

Soon.

The silence was broken with a roar as the ground jolted. The cart pitched over. The post to which Alain was chained snapped as it struck the ground. With a groan, the stone tower collapsed into a cloud of dust and grit that choked him as he sprawled, like the fish flopping in the exposed seabed, gasping for breath. Scattered by a rising wind, the storm of dirt quickly dissipated, but the ground had not finished shifting.

The Dragonback Ridge splintered with a deafening crack. Sheets of rock cascaded into the sound. Beneath the booming clatter of rock, the earth moved as the dragon woke. Its tail, lashing as it was freed from the soil, snapped trees. As its flank heaved up where once lay the high ridge, dirt avalanched seaward, obliterating the old shoreline. The creature lifted a claw and set it down, and the ground trembled beneath that tread. It raised its huge head to examine the heavens, then slewed around. Chained and caught, Alain could only stare as the head lowered down and down and paused at length before the cage to stare at him.

With one bite it could devour cart and man both. He struggled to his knees to face it, although it took all his strength to rise.

Its scales shone like gold. Its eyes had the luster of pearls. It was not untarnished from its waking: there was a cut in its belly, and from this a tear of bright, hot blood hissed, splashing over him. Its touch burned him to the heart, not with heat but with truth.

My heart is the Rose. Any heart is the Rose of Healing that knows compassion and lets it bloom.

It blinked, huffed a cloud of steam, reared its head up, and opened its vast wings. Their span shadowed the monastery grounds. It bunched its haunches, waited a breath, ten breaths, a hundred breaths, as if listening, as if it, too, were waiting.

A wind howled up out of the southwest, shattering trees as it came, and when it hit, the dragon launched itself. Alain fell, never sure if the gale or the weight of its draft had battered him down. Its shadow passed away. Beyond, the sea raged against the rocks. Above, the stars had gone out. All he could see of the sky was a swirling haze mixed of dust and ash and wind and bits of foliage, and the trailing sparks of a vast spell.

He heard still a roar of sound, building in volume, and before he understood what it was, a wave out of the sea swept over him. His chains held him under the water as he tumbled in its surf, fighting for the surface. And as he drowned, he saw in a vision the land unfolding before him. He saw as the spell tangled and collapsed in on itself. He saw the land of the Ashioi materialize out of the aether, back to the place it had come from long ago.

o;Two girls!” said Skull Earrings, cradling the first tenderly in his arms. “The gods have favored us!”