The Crown and the Dragon (27 page)

Elenn reached down and pulled out the two halves of the Falarica. She held them out to the nymphs. One, still singing, took them from her and fitted the broken pieces together. She smiled at Elenn and then carefully handed both pieces back.

Puzzled, Elenn accepted the damaged horn. The nymph had done nothing. The Falarica was still broken—although with her hand covering the break, it looked almost whole. Nothing had changed. So why had the nymph given it back to her? Why were they all smiling and singing?

Elenn remembered what her Aunt Ethelind had told her about conjuring. Half of magic, she said, was causing things to be seen as you wished them to be.

Elenn looked down again at the Falarica. It looked whole. She smiled, closed her eyes, and thought of it whole. Then she opened her mouth and joined the song of the nymphs. As she did, the whole sea became suffused with light, and Elenn’s soul was filled with fire.

***

Chapter Thirty-Seven

Aedin stared down from the cliffs. The stars offered little light, choked out by gathering storm clouds, and by smoke from fires in the forest behind him. So he heard, but couldn’t see, the tumultuous waves nearly thirty yards below.

Indeed, he could hear little else but the crash of the waves and the howl of fierce winds. No matter how he strained his ears, he hadn’t heard Elenn’s voice since she plunged into the frothing sea. Would it be possible to hear her surfacing, or even calling for help?

It felt like three or four minutes since she had jumped, but it could have been much longer. Or only seconds. Was she still under the waves? Or was she floating down there, perhaps face-down and unconscious, desperately in need of rescue? He peered down, searching desperately for any sign of Elenn, but in the darkness there was no way to find her.

The dragon, on the other hand, was easy to locate. It flew in circles above the water, loosing blasts of its fiery breath. Aedin stood and watched it, holding Strabus’s Baiowarian ring-sword awkwardly in his left hand, his right arm dangling broken and useless.

So far, the dragon had completely ignored him, for which he was grateful. He had no idea what he would do if the thing decided to finish him off. Running to the woods would be his only option, and even that would probably not save him.

Thunder crashed as lightning struck the water, nearly hitting the dragon. Aedin winced, thinking of Elenn. He still saw nothing of her, but a strange light appeared in the water, right where the lightning had hit. The dragon roared and spat a lance of fire at the spot. The flames dispersed and the glow was even brighter.

Bubbles frothed up from the spot—slowly at first, but soon it seemed as if the entire surface of the sea were one seething cauldron. The wind blew harder, whipping the sea so furiously that, even on the cliff, Aedin’s eyes stung from the salty spray.

The dragon screamed, struggling to stay in the air, but its powerful bellow was drowned out by a shrill and discordant howl that emanated from below the water. In pain, Aedin covered his left ear with his good hand and tried to protect his right ear with his shoulder.

Just as he thought he could take no more, the hideous shriek somehow resolved into one final burst of triumphant harmony. Something shot up out of the water like a cork, sending streams of water flying in all directions.

This submarine missile flew up into the sky and then fell back to the water below. Illuminated by the glow from beneath the water, a human figure bobbed on the waves. It held something aloft that radiated a light of its own, which in an instant beamed until it shone like the sun. It was the Falarica—the lance of light, the spear of the Gods.

“Elenn!” cried Aedin, overjoyed.

The sea continued to roil and churn around Elenn. The water swelled up and he lost her for a moment in the billowing surf. But then she rose up in an enormous shining bubble to stand atop a towering fountain of water nearly twenty feet high.

The dragon bayed an angry challenge and unleashed an infernal gout of fire. In spite of the bubble’s delicate, evanescent appearance, the flames washed harmlessly around it, leaving Elenn apparently unscathed.

Aedin whooped and cheered, waving his ring-sword triumphantly in the air.

Elenn lifted the Falarica, shining brilliantly, and shouted something he could not hear over the howl of the wind and the sound of the waves crashing into the face of the cliff below.

A shaft of light shot out of the unicorn horn. It struck the dragon in its open mouth, and the beast cried out in pain. Pouncing on the bubble, the dragon wrapped itself around it like a snake.

“No!” cried Aedin. Summoning all his strength, he hurled the ring-sword. He had thrown hammers at clan gatherings at Skaelliffe, and none had ever flown truer or farther than this. The sword whirled out and struck the dragon’s wing.

The monster screeched and lifted its head to look up at him on the cliff, sending a jolt of fear through him from head to toe. But before this could even register, the surging waves rose and buried both the dragon and the bubble beneath the foam.

For a long moment, Aedin held his breath. He prayed that Elenn would somehow find a way to fight back. With a violent eruption, the dragon was expelled from the water, followed by a thick tendril of water that writhed like a giant eel.

Aedin had worked at the docks long enough to hear tales of great sea serpents and had always wondered how much they could be believed. But here he stood, watching a dragon wrestle with its monstrous marine counterpart. He resolved to buy some of his sailing friends a round the next time he was in Heortigsport.

Baying with fear, the dragon tried to escape the bizarre creature, seemingly made up of elemental ocean water itself. It flew away to the west, struggling to crawl up through the rain and the storm.

But the sea-monster pursued it, leaping across the waves like a skipping stone, as lightning shot from the clouds and wrapped it in a crackling wreath of energy. Below and behind this amazing scene Elenn stood calmly on the surface of the turbulent sea. She held up the Falarica, from which beamed a ray of light out towards the water-beast, like the string connecting a puppet to its master.

The dragon fled, but in front of it the clouds grew thicker and darker, with an unnatural greenish cast to them. Lightning struck all around, such that the thunder was an almost-constant rumble.

In the center of this storm, Aedin saw the night open up like the mouth of a hungry god. The storm clouds swirled around and disappeared into that inky blackness like they were being pulled down through a funnel.

“Gods alive,” he said to himself. “Something is drinking the sky.”

The dragon balked, and turned around, preferring to deal with the sea-serpent rather than whatever lay beyond that nightmarish maw. Aedin glanced at Elenn and saw her dispel her watery behemoth with a quick flick of her wrist.

She pointed the Falarica directly at the dragon, and beams of pure light reached out from its tip to lash at the dragon. The monster screeched in agony and was driven backward as Elenn unleashed ray after ray of blinding white light, like an archer loosing deadly shafts from a bow.

As the dragon was pushed back, great tongues of green flame lapped out from the middle of the hole in the sky. They wrapped around the dragon, encircling it in fire and pulling it inexorably into the gullet.

With a pitiable squeal, the dragon was swallowed up by the infernal maelstrom. Lightning stabbed out and thunder rattled the ground. With one last blaze of light from the Falarica, the terrible maw shuddered and closed.

The winds lessened in ferocity, and the seas became more calm. The clouds lost their greenish hue, but rain still fell—which would probably help douse the remaining forest fires. Lightning struck here and there, but the whole of nature seemed to be breathing out a deep sigh of relief.

Cradling his broken arm, Aedin turned to observe the uncanny light fading from the Falarica and from the sea beneath Elenn. She, too, looked to be fading. Her whole body sagged with exhaustion, and, as he watched, her arms dropped to her sides and she fell through the surface of the water, which no longer held her up.

“Elenn!” he cried. He peered down, but the light was gone and he couldn’t see her.

Cursing, Aedin looked about for a way down the cliff, but in the dark he could see nothing. To the west, he knew that the cliffs sloped into gentler bluffs and then finally to Drumney beach. But it would take him a half an hour at least to make his way to the bottom. Anything could happen in that time.

He looked out from the cliff to the sea thirty yards below. He glanced down at his broken arm. He took a deep breath and let it out slowly.

“Time for a magic trick.”

He unbuckled his heavy leather plait-jack and shrugged it off. With another deep breath, he backed up and took a running leap off the cliff.

Aedin screamed with anguish as his impact with the water sent pain shooting through his broken arm. Closing his mouth to keep out the sea, he kicked furiously and struggled to the surface.

Gasping for air, he swam toward the point where he had last seen Elenn. With only one good arm, he knew his progress was slow, but he gritted his teeth and tried not to think about the odds.

As he drew near, Aedin felt something like seaweed brush his feet. No. Not seaweed. Hair. He dove down and grasped, but found nothing. Surfacing, he took a deep breath and dove again, this time pushing himself farther.

His lungs burned for air, and Aedin knew he must surface. But in the dark, he was suddenly confused about which way was up. Turning about frantically, he once again brushed seaweed.

Reaching out, Aedin encountered fingers. Pushing himself in that direction, he broke through the water and up into the air. In his confusion, he had been only a short distance below the surface.

In front of him, in the dim starlight, Aedin saw a female form, face-down in the water. Frantic, he turned her over and was relieved to hear her splutter and take a breath.

“I found you,” he said. “Thank the merciful Gods, I found you.”

Feeling like she had just emerged from a long dream, Elenn found herself floating in the water, in total darkness, with rain falling on her face. Disoriented, she tried to turn around but found someone had an arm around her.

“Glad you’re awake,” Aedin said. “Among other reasons, it’s not so bloody easy to keep your head above water when you’ve got a broken arm. Much harder to keep you afloat, too.”

Elenn was relieved to find that the Falarica was tucked into her belt. She supposed that she must have done this herself, although she had no memory of doing so. Her memories of everything that had happened after she jumped into the sea were quite hazy.

As they stroked for the shore, Aedin told her that the dragon had been defeated—destroyed, or perhaps banished. If Aedin’s telling of it could be believed, she had performed the most incredible conjuring since the days of Kaiteryn the Magnificent, a legendary sorceress in her mother’s line.

After long minutes of awkward swimming, the two of them helped each other out of the water at the edge of Drumney beach. The rain was ceasing now, although distant rumbles of thunder spoke of the storm’s passing north.

They collapsed together on the shore. Elenn rested her head on Aedin’s chest, the grit of salt and sand on his shirt rubbing roughly against her cheek. She was exhausted, and her whole body ached, but with Aedin’s arm wrapped protectively around her, she felt she could have swum another ten leagues—although lying here on the beach until morning would also be lovely.

“Thank you for rescuing me,” she said.

“Any time, my Lady of Adair.” He sounded happy.

“So,” she said, “how many hours do you think we have before the sun comes up?”

“Maybe… eight,” he said, looking up at the night sky.

“Eight hours to the coronation, then,” she said.

“And thirty leagues to Mount Iliak,” Aedin added. He grimaced. “Shame the horses ran off. Take us three or four days on foot.”

“Maybe we’ll find them again,” she said.

“Well, it does seem like a night for miracles,” he said.

Elenn sat up. “Let’s see that arm of yours.”

“It’s a pretty bad break,” he said.

“Are you sure?” She reached down and tore another long strip of cloth off the bottom of what had been a beautiful white and gold silk gown not so many hours ago. Aedin had torn off a wide strip during the fire, and it was now almost scandalously short—showing quite a bit of her calf.

“I’m pretty flaming sure,” he said, still lying on the sand. “It is my own arm. And I’ve broken bones before.”

“Maybe it just hurts right now because of your fall,” she said, “and all the swimming. By morning, you might find it’s not so bad at all. Just you wait and see.” With one hand on the Falarica, she fixed in her mind the idea that Aedin’s arm was whole.

He raised an eyebrow skeptically. “Well,” he said, “it does feel a bit better—now that I’m out of the water and can support it properly.”

She leaned over and used the strip of her gown to fashion him a crude sling. Then she bent down and planted a kiss on his arm where the dragon had broken it.

In the dim starlight, she could see him looking at her, the dark outline of his form barely visible as he sat up. She heard the gentle crash of the surf as waves lapped at the sand. She could smell the salt of the sea, mixed with his own scent, and she felt the warmth of his breath. He leaned toward her. Her lips parted. Another inch, maybe two…

Aedin cleared his throat and found his feet. “That sling helps,” he said. He took a few steps. “I… I think maybe I should come see you next time I break a bone.”

“Any time,” Elenn said, smiling sadly up at him. She reached up for her mother’s ring, hanging from a chain around her neck—the ring she had been heartbroken to give to Aedin as collateral, the ring she had been somehow disappointed to get back.

Aedin laughed and offered her his left hand to help her upright. His hand was warm and strong, and she had difficulty letting go of it. But he didn’t pull it away. Instead, he laughed again, a little nervously. Then he drew her close.