I woke up with my head tucked against Miles’ chest. He wasn’t moving, and his eyes were closed. Red panic surged in my throat until I realized he was human and asleep. I poked him. “Halloo? Up time.”
He jumped like I’d electrocuted him. “Whoa!” I said, giggling. “That was surprising.”
He yawned. “S-s-sorry. I haven’t slept in centuries.”
I sat up and tried to untangle a vicious knot in my hair. There was some blood matted in there. “Dare I ask why?”
“Arcanes don’t sleep. I have to shift form to an animal in order to do so. Usually I just don’t bother.” He tugged at my bloody hair. “This needs a wash.”
The blood flaked under my fingers, and I brushed it into the Iss-Noor. “Why start now?”
“What- washing?”
“No. Sleeping.”
“I dunno. You were sleeping. It looked nice. I guess I just wanted to sleep with--” He narrowed his eyes. “You know what? I’m not finishing that. You get the point.”
I swallowed down some helpless giggles and tried to be productive. “Right. Quiet Hill today.”
“Yep.”
“Wow. It’s really ending.”
“Nervous?”
I sighed into my knees. “I think I’m gonna puke.”
He rubbed a cool hand between my shoulder blades. “I’ll hold your hair back.”
“You’re the best.”
“I think I am going to puke.” Keely surfaced and pulled a face. “Can we just focus on getting there, please? You can gush while I am not here.”
I made a face back, but I realized I was starting to like her. Almost. Tolerate would be a better word. “Thanks for keeping me alive, Keely.”
Her already pale face whitened. “Oh, gross. Human mushiness-- ew, ew, ew!” With a disgusted wail, she splashed back into the water.
Miles considered me, his head propped pensively on his palm. “You’re really starting to get along, aren’t you.”
“Right? Look at me, taming water lurks.”
He nodded, turning to look off at the lake. The great body of black water got bigger every minute. “Next, dragons.”
Keely surprised me a few hours later by climbing into the boat amidst a spray of dark foam.
“Um,” I said, staring at the black water dripping from her hair and pooling on the wood. “Hello?”
The lurk settled herself gingerly against the middle bench. “I do not like this,” she grumbled.
I raised my eyebrows. “Then why are you here?”
She peeked over the edge of the boat. “There are beasts down there I do not want to cross. We may have trouble on the lake.”
My eyes twitched. There were watery things in that lake that scared even our poisonous fish? I did not have high hopes for the morning. Hopefully it wouldn’t be the last one I’d ever see.
Metal sang as Miles unsheathed his sword. He said nothing as the Iss-Noor’s mouth approached, but I could see the tension in his body. Something dark gleamed in his black eyes.
Keely sighed and stretched her slender arms along the bench. “This is going to be a long day.”
The lake was enormous. Its far shores lay shrouded in darkness and mist, giving the impression that it simply stretched on forever. The black water barely rippled as we cut through it. Silence pressed down on my ears like a dead thing.
The Quiet Hill loomed out of the fog, a twisting structure of mangled rock. The black crag scraped against the dark, heavy sky, almost as if the broken stone was all that held the dark vault aloft. Even from this distance I could see the pitch black rend in the stone: the massive entrance to the Hill’s hollow stomach.
I shifted in my seat. Something swirled in my stomach; some sixth sense at odds with the calm of my surroundings. Miles glanced at me. “You feel it, too.”
“What is it?”
“I’m not sure. And I’d rather not find out.”
Keely shivered, gazing into the black water. “There is something down there.” Her white hair slithered over her shoulders as she leaned back. “We must be quiet.”
I pressed my lips together and willed the slight current to bear us faster. The Quiet Hill seemed kilometers away. Something brushed my fingers, and I looked down to see Miles’ hand wrap around mine. I squeezed back and tried to be brave.
Sudden terror burned through me, and my body acted of its own accord, tossing itself into the dark lake as something massive slammed into our boat. I felt my eyes grow wide as the little rowboat leapt into the air in a plume of water, and the lakewater was replaced with black scales. Keely stood out pale against the dark, arching gracefully through the air to dive into the lake. Miles floated down beside me, his boots barely brushing the raging surface. He wrapped an arm under my shoulders and pulled me into the air. “Stay out of the water!” he shouted, depositing me back in the boat. “Just-- hold on, okay?”
I lurched after him, ready to tell him not to do anything stupid, but my words crawled back down my throat to hide when I saw what lay before me. A monstrous serpent reared out of the frothing lake, its massive dark head trailing whiskers and waterweed. Great black coils of sinuous scales slithered beneath the water, knocking into my boat and nearly tossing me out again into the drink. Miles looked so small compared to the serpent, his sword about the size of one of its incisors.
Something white flickered in the corner of my vision. I whipped around, my hand wrapping around my knife. Keely glared. “It is just me,” she grumbled. “Calm down.”
I looked at the serpent, then at her. “Calm down?” I asked, my voice cracking slightly. “Oh, sure, I’ll just do that--”
“I will pull you to the Quiet Hill,” she interrupted. “The arcane will distract the serpent.”
I glanced at the water snake again. It was enormous and very, very scary. “Right.”
Keely disappeared below the black water, the boat’s rope slithering after her, and a moment later the rowboat began moving toward the Quiet Hill at a surprising speed. I watched the serpent over my shoulder as we raced away. Its head had turned to us as the boat jumped into motion, but Miles pulled its attention away by stabbing its nose. The serpent shook its head, spraying weeds and lakewater.
I wiped waterweed out of my eyes and watched on, my gut twisting, as the serpent’s jaws snapped shut only a breath away from Miles’ stomach. Keely must’ve noticed my tension, because she surfaced and said, “He can only be killed by fire. Surely you know that.”
“I still don’t want him to lose his lower half!” I snapped, but I managed to relax slightly.
We plowed on through the water, the Quiet Hill growing steadily larger as we approached. Behind us the water snake hissed and snapped, Miles darting around it like a dark moth. Suddenly its head snapped towards the boat, grey, pupiless eyes narrowing. The serpent lurched forward, its fanged mouth open in a silent scream. I saw the glint of Miles’ sword slash at its neck, but the snake didn’t slow.
The boat juddered to a halt. I whipped around to find us still ten meters from the shore, the Quiet Hill looming above us. Keely surfaced, shaking her head.
“This is a really bad time to stop!” I shouted. “What are you doing?”
She hunched down behind the boat, watching the approaching serpent with fear scrawled across her face. “I cannot go any further. You’ll have to swim.”
“What?”
She glared at me. “The Fae cannot walk on that island. I already told you that.”
“Oh--” I paused, the memory surfacing. “Oh, yeah.”
The lurk smacked the boat. “What are you waiting for?! Do you want to be eaten?”
I risked a glance behind me, saw the serpent bearing down on me, and leapt overboard. Black water closed over my head, chilling my bones. I struck forward in a direction I hoped was the right way and prayed I hadn’t come this far only to be snake-snacks.
The water around me suddenly surged, tossing me forward. I tumbled through the darkness, smacked into the lake bed, and pushed to the surface. When I broke, gasping air, I found myself in the shallows around the island. Behind me the serpent coiled around our boat, wood fracturing between its jaws. I couldn’t spot Keely, and I felt a surge of worry for the faerie. Miles landed in the water next to me and tugged on my arm. “Let’s go!”
“Keely--”
“No time! She can swim-- we have to get inside before the serpent sees us!”
Miles and I splashed to shore, water raining off our clothes. The sound alerted the snake, who lifted its head and lunged forward, maw agape. Miles yanked me to the side, and the serpent struck the ground next to us, tossing gravel and sand. “Come on, come on, come on, get up--” Miles pulled me to my feet and we sprinted to the cavern’s mouth. I heard the rush of air as the serpent lunged again, an odd hissing rattling through its gullet. Miles’s arms locked around my waist and we leaped through the air, soaring into the Quiet Hill and leaving the thrashing snake behind us.
The instant my feet touched the ground, I raced deeper into the cavern, putting as much distance between myself as the serpent as I could. Finally, convinced the water snake could not follow us, I slumped to the ground while Miles leaned on the cave wall beside me. From out beyond the cave entrance, the serpent screamed a long, grieving wail.
The cavern was dark, cold, and very, very big. I could see only a small portion of its vastness through the gloom: a maze of stalagmites and rippled stone. The air smelled like old rock, lake funk, and something else-- something hot and dry. As I tried to place the scent, a gentle sound rippled through the darkness.
A breath.
Miles’s arm slid around my waist. “Stay close,” he whispered, tightening his grip on his sword. I unsheathed my knife, which had miraculously escaped an eternal bed on the bottom of the lake, and nodded.
We crept forward into the yawning dark. I relied on Miles’s keen eyesight and pressed close, trying to soak up any heat in this cold place. My drenched clothes weighed me down like sheets of ice.
Miles drew to a sudden halt, his head tipped up to stare at something before him. I squinted into the shadows until my vision adjusted. As soon as I could make out what curled around the cave, my heart pressed against my lungs in shock.
It had to be at least twice as big as the serpent in the lake. Its shoulder towered above my head: a small mountain. Its tail lay pressed against the curve of the cave. Folded, batlike wings covered most of its body. When extended, its wingspan must’ve been as vast as the cavern: fifty meters wide. Those wings could cover my house, garden, and most of my family’s fields in shadow.
My hand tightened around my knife until the hilt bit into my palm. Its magic could cover the world in shadow.
“There’s its head,” Miles whispered, gesturing to our right. The dragon had tucked its snout under its wing, but I could still see its closed eyes, each eyelid as wide as my arm. Two great antlers curved gracefully through the mane of dark hair around its head.
We drew closer. The dragon’s scales, which at first I’d thought black, were a deep, deep indigo. Tumbling down its forehead was a splash of speckled silver, like stars. Miles raised his arm and pointed at the top of its skull. “Ready?”
I nodded. “What about you? You’re doing all the work.”
He grinned. “I’m just trying not to run away screaming.”
I tried to smile, but summoning humor at the moment turned out to be beyond me. My eyes traced the starry constellations between the dragon’s eyes. “It seems almost… sad to kill it. It’s just lying there.”
“I know,” Miles muttered. “I keep getting the sense that we’re going about this the wrong way. But--” he sucked in a breath “--this is the only way to end the Shadow.” He strode towards the sleeping dragon, his posture determined. He reached its jaw and tensed as though to lift off, but stopped before his feet left the ground, gaze fixed on the dragon’s wing.
“What is it?” I hissed.
His head slowly turned. Even in the dark, I could see that his black eyes were wide with shock. “Maddie,” he whispered, “there’s a dragonet. Under her wing. She’s a mother.”
He jumped like I’d electrocuted him. “Whoa!” I said, giggling. “That was surprising.”
He yawned. “S-s-sorry. I haven’t slept in centuries.”
I sat up and tried to untangle a vicious knot in my hair. There was some blood matted in there. “Dare I ask why?”
“Arcanes don’t sleep. I have to shift form to an animal in order to do so. Usually I just don’t bother.” He tugged at my bloody hair. “This needs a wash.”
The blood flaked under my fingers, and I brushed it into the Iss-Noor. “Why start now?”
“What- washing?”
“No. Sleeping.”
“I dunno. You were sleeping. It looked nice. I guess I just wanted to sleep with--” He narrowed his eyes. “You know what? I’m not finishing that. You get the point.”
I swallowed down some helpless giggles and tried to be productive. “Right. Quiet Hill today.”
“Yep.”
“Wow. It’s really ending.”
“Nervous?”
I sighed into my knees. “I think I’m gonna puke.”
He rubbed a cool hand between my shoulder blades. “I’ll hold your hair back.”
“You’re the best.”
“I think I am going to puke.” Keely surfaced and pulled a face. “Can we just focus on getting there, please? You can gush while I am not here.”
I made a face back, but I realized I was starting to like her. Almost. Tolerate would be a better word. “Thanks for keeping me alive, Keely.”
Her already pale face whitened. “Oh, gross. Human mushiness-- ew, ew, ew!” With a disgusted wail, she splashed back into the water.
Miles considered me, his head propped pensively on his palm. “You’re really starting to get along, aren’t you.”
“Right? Look at me, taming water lurks.”
He nodded, turning to look off at the lake. The great body of black water got bigger every minute. “Next, dragons.”
Keely surprised me a few hours later by climbing into the boat amidst a spray of dark foam.
“Um,” I said, staring at the black water dripping from her hair and pooling on the wood. “Hello?”
The lurk settled herself gingerly against the middle bench. “I do not like this,” she grumbled.
I raised my eyebrows. “Then why are you here?”
She peeked over the edge of the boat. “There are beasts down there I do not want to cross. We may have trouble on the lake.”
My eyes twitched. There were watery things in that lake that scared even our poisonous fish? I did not have high hopes for the morning. Hopefully it wouldn’t be the last one I’d ever see.
Metal sang as Miles unsheathed his sword. He said nothing as the Iss-Noor’s mouth approached, but I could see the tension in his body. Something dark gleamed in his black eyes.
Keely sighed and stretched her slender arms along the bench. “This is going to be a long day.”
The lake was enormous. Its far shores lay shrouded in darkness and mist, giving the impression that it simply stretched on forever. The black water barely rippled as we cut through it. Silence pressed down on my ears like a dead thing.
The Quiet Hill loomed out of the fog, a twisting structure of mangled rock. The black crag scraped against the dark, heavy sky, almost as if the broken stone was all that held the dark vault aloft. Even from this distance I could see the pitch black rend in the stone: the massive entrance to the Hill’s hollow stomach.
I shifted in my seat. Something swirled in my stomach; some sixth sense at odds with the calm of my surroundings. Miles glanced at me. “You feel it, too.”
“What is it?”
“I’m not sure. And I’d rather not find out.”
Keely shivered, gazing into the black water. “There is something down there.” Her white hair slithered over her shoulders as she leaned back. “We must be quiet.”
I pressed my lips together and willed the slight current to bear us faster. The Quiet Hill seemed kilometers away. Something brushed my fingers, and I looked down to see Miles’ hand wrap around mine. I squeezed back and tried to be brave.
Sudden terror burned through me, and my body acted of its own accord, tossing itself into the dark lake as something massive slammed into our boat. I felt my eyes grow wide as the little rowboat leapt into the air in a plume of water, and the lakewater was replaced with black scales. Keely stood out pale against the dark, arching gracefully through the air to dive into the lake. Miles floated down beside me, his boots barely brushing the raging surface. He wrapped an arm under my shoulders and pulled me into the air. “Stay out of the water!” he shouted, depositing me back in the boat. “Just-- hold on, okay?”
I lurched after him, ready to tell him not to do anything stupid, but my words crawled back down my throat to hide when I saw what lay before me. A monstrous serpent reared out of the frothing lake, its massive dark head trailing whiskers and waterweed. Great black coils of sinuous scales slithered beneath the water, knocking into my boat and nearly tossing me out again into the drink. Miles looked so small compared to the serpent, his sword about the size of one of its incisors.
Something white flickered in the corner of my vision. I whipped around, my hand wrapping around my knife. Keely glared. “It is just me,” she grumbled. “Calm down.”
I looked at the serpent, then at her. “Calm down?” I asked, my voice cracking slightly. “Oh, sure, I’ll just do that--”
“I will pull you to the Quiet Hill,” she interrupted. “The arcane will distract the serpent.”
I glanced at the water snake again. It was enormous and very, very scary. “Right.”
Keely disappeared below the black water, the boat’s rope slithering after her, and a moment later the rowboat began moving toward the Quiet Hill at a surprising speed. I watched the serpent over my shoulder as we raced away. Its head had turned to us as the boat jumped into motion, but Miles pulled its attention away by stabbing its nose. The serpent shook its head, spraying weeds and lakewater.
I wiped waterweed out of my eyes and watched on, my gut twisting, as the serpent’s jaws snapped shut only a breath away from Miles’ stomach. Keely must’ve noticed my tension, because she surfaced and said, “He can only be killed by fire. Surely you know that.”
“I still don’t want him to lose his lower half!” I snapped, but I managed to relax slightly.
We plowed on through the water, the Quiet Hill growing steadily larger as we approached. Behind us the water snake hissed and snapped, Miles darting around it like a dark moth. Suddenly its head snapped towards the boat, grey, pupiless eyes narrowing. The serpent lurched forward, its fanged mouth open in a silent scream. I saw the glint of Miles’ sword slash at its neck, but the snake didn’t slow.
The boat juddered to a halt. I whipped around to find us still ten meters from the shore, the Quiet Hill looming above us. Keely surfaced, shaking her head.
“This is a really bad time to stop!” I shouted. “What are you doing?”
She hunched down behind the boat, watching the approaching serpent with fear scrawled across her face. “I cannot go any further. You’ll have to swim.”
“What?”
She glared at me. “The Fae cannot walk on that island. I already told you that.”
“Oh--” I paused, the memory surfacing. “Oh, yeah.”
The lurk smacked the boat. “What are you waiting for?! Do you want to be eaten?”
I risked a glance behind me, saw the serpent bearing down on me, and leapt overboard. Black water closed over my head, chilling my bones. I struck forward in a direction I hoped was the right way and prayed I hadn’t come this far only to be snake-snacks.
The water around me suddenly surged, tossing me forward. I tumbled through the darkness, smacked into the lake bed, and pushed to the surface. When I broke, gasping air, I found myself in the shallows around the island. Behind me the serpent coiled around our boat, wood fracturing between its jaws. I couldn’t spot Keely, and I felt a surge of worry for the faerie. Miles landed in the water next to me and tugged on my arm. “Let’s go!”
“Keely--”
“No time! She can swim-- we have to get inside before the serpent sees us!”
Miles and I splashed to shore, water raining off our clothes. The sound alerted the snake, who lifted its head and lunged forward, maw agape. Miles yanked me to the side, and the serpent struck the ground next to us, tossing gravel and sand. “Come on, come on, come on, get up--” Miles pulled me to my feet and we sprinted to the cavern’s mouth. I heard the rush of air as the serpent lunged again, an odd hissing rattling through its gullet. Miles’s arms locked around my waist and we leaped through the air, soaring into the Quiet Hill and leaving the thrashing snake behind us.
The instant my feet touched the ground, I raced deeper into the cavern, putting as much distance between myself as the serpent as I could. Finally, convinced the water snake could not follow us, I slumped to the ground while Miles leaned on the cave wall beside me. From out beyond the cave entrance, the serpent screamed a long, grieving wail.
The cavern was dark, cold, and very, very big. I could see only a small portion of its vastness through the gloom: a maze of stalagmites and rippled stone. The air smelled like old rock, lake funk, and something else-- something hot and dry. As I tried to place the scent, a gentle sound rippled through the darkness.
A breath.
Miles’s arm slid around my waist. “Stay close,” he whispered, tightening his grip on his sword. I unsheathed my knife, which had miraculously escaped an eternal bed on the bottom of the lake, and nodded.
We crept forward into the yawning dark. I relied on Miles’s keen eyesight and pressed close, trying to soak up any heat in this cold place. My drenched clothes weighed me down like sheets of ice.
Miles drew to a sudden halt, his head tipped up to stare at something before him. I squinted into the shadows until my vision adjusted. As soon as I could make out what curled around the cave, my heart pressed against my lungs in shock.
It had to be at least twice as big as the serpent in the lake. Its shoulder towered above my head: a small mountain. Its tail lay pressed against the curve of the cave. Folded, batlike wings covered most of its body. When extended, its wingspan must’ve been as vast as the cavern: fifty meters wide. Those wings could cover my house, garden, and most of my family’s fields in shadow.
My hand tightened around my knife until the hilt bit into my palm. Its magic could cover the world in shadow.
“There’s its head,” Miles whispered, gesturing to our right. The dragon had tucked its snout under its wing, but I could still see its closed eyes, each eyelid as wide as my arm. Two great antlers curved gracefully through the mane of dark hair around its head.
We drew closer. The dragon’s scales, which at first I’d thought black, were a deep, deep indigo. Tumbling down its forehead was a splash of speckled silver, like stars. Miles raised his arm and pointed at the top of its skull. “Ready?”
I nodded. “What about you? You’re doing all the work.”
He grinned. “I’m just trying not to run away screaming.”
I tried to smile, but summoning humor at the moment turned out to be beyond me. My eyes traced the starry constellations between the dragon’s eyes. “It seems almost… sad to kill it. It’s just lying there.”
“I know,” Miles muttered. “I keep getting the sense that we’re going about this the wrong way. But--” he sucked in a breath “--this is the only way to end the Shadow.” He strode towards the sleeping dragon, his posture determined. He reached its jaw and tensed as though to lift off, but stopped before his feet left the ground, gaze fixed on the dragon’s wing.
“What is it?” I hissed.
His head slowly turned. Even in the dark, I could see that his black eyes were wide with shock. “Maddie,” he whispered, “there’s a dragonet. Under her wing. She’s a mother.”
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