For what felt like weeks, Anshar, Ushuene and several other dragons discussed their next course of action. Maybe it was weeks – Popilia kept forgetting to keep track of the days, and their edges blurred when she tried to count them in her memory. However long it took them, Nazagin had grown to the size of a horse by the time Anshar finally returned.
The two of them were sitting at the lunch spot, Popilia kicking her legs against the side of her rock, Nazagin sunning her wings in the early summer heat. Popilia had her eyes closed, but she could get a feel for her surroundings through Nazagin’s train of thought. Or some of them, anyway – Nazagin’s full attention lay on the dragons wheeling through the air above them. Impatience radiated off her. That soon turned to excitement when she realised one of the figures was Anshar, flying their way.
Popilia opened her eyes in time to see him land. A strong, musty scent washed across her in his wake – he hadn’t bathed in a while, she gathered. It showed in the unkempt pattern of his feathers, too, and dust clung to the bottom of his fronds.
‘It has been decided,’ he said. Weariness hung on every word, but he held his head high. ‘We break the bonds as much as we are able today.’
‘Today?’ Popilia slid from her rock. Excitement bounced between her and Nazagin, but some of that earlier impatience remained. ‘What took so long to decide?’
Anshar turned his head towards the distant white figure of Ushuene, who reclined in the spot where she had first spoken to them. ‘We have much to be wary of, still. And a few items to consider. Namely, whether we should wait for the thieves to retrieve the carven horn or not. I argued that we should, as it would strengthen my magic while depriving Critobulus of any advantage. It would be ill for me to work this change only for him to redo it all the stronger.’
‘So why aren’t we waiting?’ No one told Popilia much, though she didn’t know if anyone knew how the thieves were getting on. Who knew how long it would take them to return?
‘Ushuene-amaak does not have enough faith that the thieves will be successful. Ilarion has been sending us favourable reports by drakling, but... well, even I must acknowledge that the man is an unfailing optimist. They will still play their part – we will likely need the horn to fully break the bonds, and in any case it belongs to us – but we will not wait for them.’
Popilia couldn’t help but feel a little offended on the thieves’ behalf. They had stolen her, after all. That was more impressive than some old horn, surely? She knew the palace, though. It wouldn’t be easy. It wasn’t even like some of the more fun castles her parents had taken her to with secret ways in and out that she could have told them about. Not unless Critobulus had made his own.
Thinking of Critobulus, she froze, then asked Anshar, ‘What if you start doing your magic and Critobulus decides to use the horn against you?’
Anshar huffed. ‘That was my argument. We must only hope my magic is stronger, or his takes longer to work.’
‘That’s not what I meant. If he goes to use the horn at the same time as the thieves are trying to steal it...’
‘Ah, I see.’ Scuffing the ground with one foot, he said, ‘We did discuss that possibility, briefly. Ushuene deemed it worth the risk.’
‘Oh.’ Popilia’s shoulders slumped and a weight settled in her chest. She hadn’t known the thieves long and they had, after all, kidnapped her... but she had seen what her family did to people who wronged them. She hadn’t seen what Critobulus did in the same situation, but it was certainly worse.
‘They will be fine,’ said Nazagin, her bright eyes sparkling. Reassurance nudged at Popilia’s mind. ‘They’re good thieves.’
Sure Nazagin was only reacting to her discomfort, Popilia sighed, then shook her head. ‘I hope you’re right.’ After all, if they didn’t succeed now, when would she ever get to go home? And what state would she find home in?
In the rest of the valley, dragons flew with purpose and those who didn’t fly conducted their activities with more haste than usual. It had become a hive of activity as they talked. Following their movements, Popilia traced it all back to one of the far hillsides. She couldn’t see it properly from here, but she remembered climbing all over it the other week – there the cliffside formed a natural amphitheatre, and the dirt beneath had been packed tight into a bowl by the passage of many dragons. Musical wind tubes had been carved into each step of the amphitheatre so that a continuous tune played there, a fraction different wherever you stood.
Anshar followed her gaze. ‘Yes, it seems I’m to have an audience for this ritual.’
‘Couldn’t you ask them all to go away?’
He laughed, though it sounded more like a cough from his throat. ‘I could, and they would like as not respect that. But it is after all a thing that affects us all, and perhaps a moment of history. I am not so fresh from the shell to let shyness overcome me, so don’t you worry.’ Then he turned and crouched down, holding his wings away from his body. ‘Climb on now and I’ll take you there.’
Popilia let Nazagin go first, scrambling onto Anshar’s back like a lizard up a wall, with less grace. Then she followed and settled herself behind her. It would be far more reassuring if dragons all wore saddles, but she trusted Anshar to remember her and not turn upside-down during flight.
As he bunched his muscles to jump, Popilia asked, ‘Do you need us for this ritual as well?’
Leaping into the air, the rush of wind prevented Anshar from replying for a few moments. At last, with the lake speeding past beside them, he said, ‘Yes, but as a focus only. You will be in no danger, and your bond will be at no risk of reemerging.’
That wasn’t Popilia’s fear. For several weeks, she had been privy to the pointed gazes of any dragon who noticed her. To have all of those semi-hostile eyes upon her at once... She wanted to curl up on Anshar’s back and hide. Nothing in her imperial life had induced such anxiety as this. Everyone back home had at least always been ambivalent about seeing her.
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‘You don’t need to sit apart, this time,’ Anshar said. His casual flight had already brought them to the amphitheatre, its hum climbing over the noise of his wingbeats. He touched down at the edge of the bowl on his hind legs before dropping to all fours. ‘Climb off here and sit together at the edge of the circle. I’ll be standing in the middle.’
With a nod, Popilia shimmied down one foreleg and landed on the floor. Her knees ached at the impact. Anshar’s bulk blocked out much of the amphitheatre seating except the very top and sides– perhaps all the attention wouldn’t be on her after all.
Murmurs that would have been ordinary conversation for humans travelled around the amphitheatre in the dragons’ fluting language. Combined with the constant tune from the carved instruments, it felt much like standing at the bottom of a waterfall.
Anshar began his ritual with neither preamble nor explanation. Critobulus would have made a public ceremony like this a show, but Anshar clearly considered his companions more witness than audience. He already had his bowls and jars arranged beneath a stone table at the centre of the circle. Then he dipped into several at once with claws on both of his forelegs and headed to the edge of the circle.
In great sweeps and swirling arcs of black ash, he began to paint a pattern on the floor. He stepped lightly and held his tail above the ground, careful not to disturb any of the lines he had already painted, leaving the centre clear for him to move.
Watching from the sidelines, Popilia recognised the general shape of the pattern. It matched the paint on his ceiling – not fully, but in spirit and form.
The dragons in the audience bobbed and bent their heads to follow Anshar’s work, but their murmurs had fallen silent. Nothing remained to interrupt Anshar but the wind, and even that had ebbed.
When Anshar reached Popilia and Nazagin, he drew a perfect circle on the ground around them. At its edges, he connected the surrounding patterns. How the ash kept flowing, Popilia had no idea. He rarely dipped into the central pots, but the ash kept coming, thick and dark. Even when he stepped up onto the table and connected all the outer patterns to a new web radiating from the centre, his lines never broke nor faltered. The lines themselves weren’t always stark edges. Some faded into gradients on one or both edges. Some had no end and became lost to the noise of scattered ash around them. They lent a shape to the pattern, monochrome peaks and troughs forming a landscape too easy for Popilia’s eyes to get lost in.
A deep hum built in Anshar’s throat, breaking his silence. Popilia waited for his familiar song or chanting, but it never came. Instead he modulated the pitch of his hum to harmonise with the wind’s tune. All the while, he sat on the table and continued the patterns on his own hide. Only when he had finished did he chant one drawn-out line. It cut off suddenly, like a door had slammed on his voice. All the lines he had drawn glowed green. Particles of ash rose from the pattern and hovered in the air.
Popilia held her breath, one hand on Nazagin’s shoulder, expecting the light to die away like it had the other times. But it stayed, and after a few more seconds, Anshar began to sing.
He began low and quiet, not much different to a chant. Moment by moment, he altered the notes and raised the pitch. The wind responded to his voice. The ash in the air made its passage clear, and it twisted like a living thing, changing as it did the tune of its music. In the audience, the dragons began to harmonise as well. Some hummed. Some chanted. Some joined with Anshar’s song with no delay or hesitation.
How did they know the words? Popilia eyed Nazagin. Was it some inherent dragon thing?
Don’t look at me, Nazagin thought at her. I don’t know it either. But listen. Something is wrong.
Popilia strained her ears. There was so much going on, she couldn’t tell if anything was out of place. I don’t hear anything.
Then hear through me.
The boundaries between their minds blurred, creating that strange world of impossibly wide angles that they had experienced in the last ritual. Popilia rocked back, struck by a sense of something else being there with them, as if the ritual circle was the base of a tree and invisible branches loomed above them all.
That isn’t it, Nazagin said. That’s just Anshar’s magic. Her thoughts grasped for understanding, but slipped off in frustration. I can’t explain it. It just is.
So Popilia searched for something else. Nazagin had said to listen, so she shut her eyes to concentrate better and Nazagin did the same. Something felt... off. It took three whole lines of Anshar’s song for her to put her finger on it, and in that time his words grew harsher.
Some other voice chanted alongside all the others. No, not alongside, but against, and in some broken key that clashed with everything it touched. When she opened her eyes, she figured she could see the shape of it in the currents of the wind-borne ash. Anshar must have noticed – he stood tense, straight legged, straining with effort.
Through the invisible branches came another sensation, brief and fleeting. Popilia tried to grab hold of it. It was like the touch of Nazagin’s mind, but at great distance and unfamiliar. By the upwards glances of the dragons in the audience, she was sure they felt the same.
The feeling passed. The discordant voice grew strong, almost to the point of forming distinguishable words. Familiarity tickled Popilia’s brain. She had heard that voice before...
Wind surged around the edge of the amphitheatre, picking up dust and ash from the edge of the bowl and flinging it into the air so that it made a hazy barrier from the outside world. It rattled through the wind tubes, gritty and chaotic. The tune faltered on a new foundation of static. Anshar’s voice rang out louder than ever, but there was a desperation in it now. His gaze flicked back and forth in the storm, searching for something.
In the next moment with a flash of green like sheet lightning above them, that sensation came back. The touch of many minds flooded into the circle and by their presence, joined the audience to it.
Popilia reeled at the sudden mental energy of all those dragons opposite her, and more. Their shapes swirled ethereal in the ash trails of the circle, their flight harsh and anguished. Emotions radiated off them like furnace heat: desperate fear, deep-seated anger, and above all a gut-wrenching yearning to be free.
The bonded dragons. Popilia balled her hands into fists, excitement barely breaking through the second-hand fear. If they were here, was Anshar about to free them?
The lines glowed brighter. Anshar’s tail weaved through the air around the table, stirring the ash currents like a ladle, but chaos still rippled through them.
On the back of another howl of wind, the other voice returned, louder than ever, its words harsh and undeniably human. Undeniably Critobulus. For a second his voice overlapped with Anshar’s, battling for control, and the suggestion of some great mind loomed in the spaces between his words. Then with an almighty whump a fist of air punched down from the top of the amphitheatre. It struck the floor, scattering the pattern. Ash and feathers and pottery fragments flew outwards in a wall of debris.
Popilia screwed her eyes shut and shielded her face with her arms. Grit sandblasted her skin. Something hard bounced off her funny bone and she yelped in pain. The tip of a feather or a stick scratched the back of her hand.
Then all fell silent.
After a couple of seconds to catch her breath, Popilia opened her eyes. The light had gone. The ash had been wiped out, leaving only a grey smear on the ground and over Anshar’s feathers. The ritual had failed.
Anshar stood still in the centre of the circle, his foreclaws gripping the edge of the table, his throat pulsing as he panted for air. He shook his head, then pointed his gaze to the northwest, where Chorus lay. He ignored the increasing murmurs amongst the dragons in the audience.
‘There is something else at play here,’ he said. ‘Something beyond the power of the horn.’
Popilia recalled the sense of another mind behind Critobulus’ words and shuddered. Critobulus had a powerful ally. If Anshar and all these dragons couldn’t stop them, just who were they? She hoped the thieves, stuck in the palace with no idea of any of this, wouldn’t have to find out the hard way.