In the aftermath of Anshar’s failed ritual, Popilia and Nazagin made their way back to their temporary home. Neither talked to the other, though the sadness and disappointment of that morning spread between their minds as readily as any words could. Anshar himself remained at the amphitheatre, deep in discussion with Ushuene and the other dragons. Popilia hadn’t even realised Ushuene had been at the ritual until the end, when she approached Anshar with her white feathers stained ash-grey on one side.
As they reached the lip of Anshar’s home, Popilia looked out over the valley. Clouds gathered in the distance, indistinct in the haze, like a grey veil around the mountains.
She absent-mindedly ran her fingers over the whorls and knots in the sculpture by the entrance. How far did Critobulus’ magic reach? Popilia pictured him watching them even now, a giant face hidden by the haze in the sky above, and shuddered.
‘He is not a nice man,’ said Nazagin, picking up on her thoughts.
‘No, he’s not.’ Popilia didn’t even know him. Not really. But who could do what he had done and be called nice? He was fully aware of the dragons’ intelligence, and still he fought to bind them and keep them bound.
Nazagin paced along the edge of the lip, her tail twitching with irritation. Her need crept into Popilia’s mind: to be doing something, anything, to keep her mind off the ritual. Somewhere mixed in there was something like guilt, but the moment Popilia noticed it, it vanished with a flicker of anger. So she decided not to mention it.
‘Do you want to try fishing?’ Nazagin asked.
Popilia nodded. Let her bleed off her pent-up energy. She needed to exercise her growing limbs, anyway. And with the adults occupied in talk, they might as well catch their own dinner.
‘Let’s go while it’s quiet,’ she said, and they set off back down the slope together, trying to fix their minds on anything else but the day’s failure.
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When Popilia woke the next morning, it was to the familiar sound of Anshar rattling bowls and jars on his workbench. Except this time was different. As she stood to the side rubbing sleep from her eyes, Anshar picked out several of the smallest jars and placed them beneath the bench, on the floor. He had already painted himself with white and red markings. They didn’t flow, this time. In fact, they made Popilia think of meat, with white dashes and curves as the bones and red joining them as muscles and flesh.
‘Are you doing another ritual?’ she asked, since there wasn’t a chant or song to interrupt.
Anshar glanced up from his preparations. ‘I have done half of it. In a moment, I will do the rest.’ He sighed. ‘It has been to long since I have worked such magic.’
‘So you’re trying a different way to break the bond?’
The muscles of his face tightened a fraction, and he shook his head. ‘No, I was on the right track with yesterday’s ritual, but it seems it is a magic that must be worked closer to the source. Or at the very least, there is something new for me to investigate, and I will not be able to do so sitting here.’
Popilia screwed her face up. ‘The source? You’re going to the palace?’
‘I am, yes.’
‘And you think no one will notice?’ She cocked her head to one side, taking in the size of Anshar. Dragons didn’t just walk down the street in Chorus, and when they flew, they always had riders. She tried to picture Anshar strolling through the park or swimming across the lake. If the dragon guard didn’t try to kill him or drive him away, Critobulus would surely try to bind him. A lump caught in her throat. She couldn’t let that happen to Anshar, but who was she to stop him?
Pointing to the markings, Popilia asked, ‘Will those make you invisible?’
‘Something like that.’ He chuckled. ‘We used to use this magic more often, you know, to walk amongst your kind undetected.’
‘Why?’
‘Well.’ He picked up a large jug and poured its contents into a bowl of powder, then swirled the bowl before his face to mix it. One eye glittered at Popilia. ‘Back then, you weren’t quite so objectionable.’
A sweet, earthy smell wafted over from whatever concoction he had mixed. She drew in a deep breath, then wondered if just breathing the fumes would work any magic on her. Maybe they would both be invisible. She doubted invisibility – or whatever this did – would do them any favours. Anshar would just knock into everything in his path and make his presence obvious that way. Still, if it had worked in the past, surely it would work now.
Anshar brought the bowl to his nose and sniffed, then gave a satisfied nod. As he hummed a few bars from a tune, the contents of the bowl began to steam. In one motion, he tipped his head back and poured the mixture into his mouth with barely a pause in the tune. He kept his head pointed at the ceiling, his eyes shut, and swayed from side to side with his music. It reminded Popilia of some old lullaby, but she couldn’t place it.
Between blinks, Anshar changed. He shrank, slow at first, then so fast that he looked like a deflating bladder. His tail retracted and disappeared completely. His neck reduced itself to a small stump. Each claw slid into the toe that held it like those of a cat. Instead of feathers, his hide became like cloth and his long fronds joined to become the folds of a long robe. A moment later, it wasn’t Anshar that stood before the workbench anymore, but an old woman who barely came up to the level of the workbench. She had braided grey hair and wrinkled, nut brown skin, and when she turned to smile at Popilia, her gaze was clouded white.
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‘Passable?’ she asked, the only resemblance to Anshar’s voice in its bumbling melody.
Popilia realised her jaw had dropped open and shut it, nodding. Then she changed her mind and shook her head. ‘They don’t let just anyone walk into the palace, you know.’
‘Ah, but I am not just anyone, am I?’ She winked and tapped her nose. ‘I am the poor old herbalist who just happened to find the lost princess wandering around in the wilds.’
‘You’re taking me home?’ Popilia’s heart leapt, though it was a shadowed excitement. The knowledge of everything Critobulus had done, of everything her parents had allowed him to do, lurked in the back of her mind.
‘I am, yes.’ Anshar set about packing the small jars on the floor into a rucksack. ‘There is a large bounty on your head, you know. In bringing you back, I will gain access to the palace.’
Watching Anshar’s industrious packing, Popilia wanted to join in, but she didn’t have anything to pack. She had come here with a dragon and the clothes on her back, nothing more. A part of her rebelled at the idea of going home and needing to be dressed up and down so many times a day. Another part of her wondered if the palace guards would really let some old woman in because she happened to have found her. They would just pay her the bounty and take Popilia without letting Anshar past the gates. That’s if they didn’t get suspicious of how she ‘happened’ to have been found.
So Popilia followed Anshar, now wearing the backpack, out to the entrance. Nazagin trailed behind her shoulder, her breath warm on her neck.
‘What will you tell them?’ she asked.
Anshar stopped by the whorled sculpture. Behind her newly wrinkled form, Kimah-Kur was a hive of activity, busier than Popilia had ever seen it. A larger gathering of dragons that had been present for the ritual gathered where the amphitheatre lay, spilling out onto the ground around it with the steps full. Smaller gatherings kept breaking off and reconvening for discussion elsewhere. A few sharpened their claws and tail spikes on tall rocks.
‘I’ll tell them you were brave,’ she said. ‘That you waited for a moment when the thieves were distracted, then commanded Nazagin to break free and eat them. That you wandered in the wilderness for some time afterwards, lost and unable to fly to get your bearings. That you finally came across my house in the woods and asked for help.’
Eyeing up Nazagin with some trepidation, Popilia said, ‘I don’t think Nazagin is big enough to eat anyone now, let alone back then.’
Anshar made a strange laugh, half chuckle, half hum. ‘Then I shall say you needed help with a terrible case of indigestion when you showed up. Believable enough?’
‘Maybe. At least you don’t look like a thief.’
‘It is strange, how much stock your kind places in appearance to determine a person’s nature.’ She gazed out over the valley. ‘Something else has happened. They’re preparing for a fight. Come on, let us find out what’s going on before we leave.’
They walked down the slope together, each of them marvelling at the continued activity around them. Popilia wasn’t sure she had ever seen this many dragons in Kimah-Kur at once. Either more had flown in from elsewhere, or having them all stop their usual activities for whatever this was had simply revealed how many actually called this place home.
Halfway to the amphitheatre, a white shape detached from the crowd and Ushuene flew over to meet them. She tilted her head from side to side to examine Anshar – her new form clearly as much a novelty to her as it had been to Popilia.
‘We have received word from the thieves,’ Ushuene said. ‘It sounds like they are in the palace as we speak.’
‘Have they found the horn?’ Anshar asked, clutching her robes about her.
Ushuene whipped her tail once in frustration. ‘They did not say, so I imagine not. No, their message was a warning. They saw the empire’s "dragon guard" flying towards Kimah-Kur. They could be here any moment. I was surprised the drakling outflew them, but it seems they don’t know our exact location. Those I sent to scout the foothills spotted them combing the mountains to our south.’
A pained look creased Anshar’s new face. ‘My ritual must have drawn them to us. I should have conducted it elsewhere. If the horn—’
‘You are not to blame for this.’ Ushuene dropped her face to Anshar’s level, her eyes narrowed. ‘But I will hold you accountable if you don’t get out of here before they arrive. It matters not how many failures it takes for you to succeed. We need you to finish this. Now fly from here, before it is too late!’
At the arrival of the grey dragon Popilia had seen at the standing stones, Anshar nodded. ‘Good luck.’
Ushuene reared up again and raised her wings to leave. ‘The bond is broken when the rider is felled. With luck, we shall free more of our kin today.’
Then with a sharp gust of wind, she was away, leaving Anshar, Popilia and Nazagin to clamber onto the grey dragon’s back. Irritation prickled at Popilia’s mind as Nazagin chafed to fly under her own power, but her wings hadn’t developed enough yet. They still bore a good amount of hatchling fluff around the leading edges and where they met her back.
‘Where do you want me to take you?’ the grey dragon asked. Far in the distance, a trumpet sounded.
‘As close to Chorus as you can get,’ said Anshar. ‘With their patrols occupied here, that might be further than usual. See what you find.’
Nodding, they grey dragon pounced up into the air, flapped three times for height, then angled off towards one of the lower parts of the valley wall in the west. With the morning sun at their backs, their shadow spread across the mountain before them, getting smaller and darker until it slipped over the edge completely and they followed above.
Behind them, the trumpet sounded again, soon joined by another. Popilia whirled around in her seat. Just beyond the southern wall of the valley, a cloud of dragons approached. Sunlight flashed and gleamed in spots amongst them, and she could just make out a large banner flying beneath one of the larger dragons. It must have been half the entire dragon guard – Popilia had only seen so many of them once before, for a jubilee parade. She could well imagine the gold that was catching the sunlight. Back then she had been awed and proud. Now, though... Their presence here was an intrusion. She dug her fingers into the feathers she clung onto.
The dragons of Kimah-Kur rose up in one great swarm. Like a flock of starlings, their mass shifted and flowed, blocking the sun with their numbers. Then, as one, they turned to the south. Gleam the dragon guard might, but they had nowhere near the numbers of Kimah-Kur.
Popilia wasn’t sure the empire would win this one.