The Priory of the Orange Tree (The Roots of Chaos)

On the Reconciliation, Loth stood guard beside his queen in the shadow beneath the quarterdeck, surrounded by twelve of the Knights of the Body.

One of the topsails was afire. Bodies strewed the decks. Cannons hawked barshot and chainshot, cut with cries of Fire from the boatswain, while siege engines from Perchling hurled grappling hooks that tangled around legs and wings.

It was all the gunners could do to avoid the Eastern dragons. Though some of them were in flight, strangling the fiery breeds the way snakes crushed their quarry, others had adopted a different way to kill. They would dive beneath the waves, then swim up with all their might and breach. One clap of their jaws, and they would drag their prey back to the deep.

Water streamed from their scales as they soared over the Reconciliation. Fires sputtered out beneath them.

Sabran kept one hand on the Sword of Virtudom. They watched the pale wyrm transform into a woman and land on the Defiance.

Kalyba.

The Witch of Inysca.

“Ead will go to her,” Sabran shouted to him over the clangor. “Someone must distract the witch so she can strike.”

The Draconic Navy was drawing closer by the moment. A square-rigger with red sails bore down on the Reconciliation.

“Hard to port,” the captain bawled. “Gun crew, belay last order. Fire on that ship!”

A terrible shriek of wood and metal. The ship rammed straight into the nearby Merrow Queen.

“All right,” Loth called to Sabran. “To the Defiance.”

The Knights of the Body were already moving. Keeping Sabran between them, they struck out across the deck. As they ran, they shed their heaviest armor. Breastplates, greaves, and pauldrons clattered in their wake. Cannons ripped into the enemy ship.

“Swords!” The captain drew his cutlass. “Get Her Majesty to the boat!”

“There’s no time,” Loth shouted.

The captain gritted his teeth. His hair clung to his face. “Take her, then, Lord Arteloth, and don’t look back,” he replied. “Hurry!”

Sabran climbed over the side of the ship. Loth joined her, and she took his hand.

The waves swallowed them all.

Tané hurled fire at Kalyba across the Defiance. Flames danced along the deck, catching in pools of Draconic blood. When the witch countered the attack with lurid red fire of her own, so hot it roasted the moisture from the air, Tané gripped the rising jewel. Seawater crashed onto the ship, which pitched beneath them, and the fires were smothered.

Every soldier and archer had fled from the duel. The ship was their battleground.

Kalyba moved lithely from bird to woman, quick as lightning. Tané screamed in frustration as a beak ripped her cheek open and a talon almost took out her eye. Each time the witch changed, Ascalon changed with her. When she was in her human guise, she swung with the sword, and when Tané parried, and their blades locked, the rising jewel sang in answer.

“I hear it,” Kalyba breathed. “Give it to me.”

Tané slammed her forehead into hers and struck with a concealed knife, catching the witch across the cheek. Kalyba reeled, eyes flared wide, red lacing her face. Then antlers erupted from her skull, and she was a bleeding white stag, ghastly and massive, and the sword was gone again.

Tané used the jewel to throw back a cockatrice. The siden sharpened her senses, made her limbs move quicker than she would have thought possible as the stag thundered across the deck. She saw that one of the antlers was tipped with silver, and as it lowered its head to skewer her, she brought her sword up, severing it.

Kalyba collided with the deck in human form. Blood jeweled from her shoulder, where a chunk of flesh had been hacked away, and Ascalon lay beside her, glazed with ruby. Tané lunged for it, but the witch already had fire in her hands.

Tané threw herself behind the mainmast. Red fire blazed off her thigh, so hot—like molten iron on her flesh—that it made her cry out. Eyes full of brine, she crushed the pain and struck out across the deck. She was almost at the stern when she stopped in her tracks.

Queen Sabran was on the Defiance. Loth stood beside her, broadsword drawn, and twelve bodyguards fanned out around them. All of them were dripping wet.

“Sabran,” Kalyba breathed.

The queen gazed at her forebear. Their faces were identical.

“Your Majesty,” one of the guards stammered. All of them were looking between their queen and her double. “This is sorcery.”

“Stand back,” Sabran said to her guards.

“Yes, do, gallant knight. Do as my offspring decrees.” Kalyba curled her fingers around the flame in her palm. “Do you not see that I am your Damsel, foremother of Inys?”

The knights did not move. Neither did the queen. Her left hand strangled the hilt of her sword.

“You are an imitation of me,” Kalyba said to her, venomous. “Just as your sword is a cheap imitation of this one.”

She held up Ascalon. Sabran flinched.

“I did not want to believe Ead,” she replied, “but I see that my affinity with you cannot be denied.” She stepped toward Kalyba. “You took my child from me, Witch of Inysca. Tell me, after you went to so much trouble to found the House of Berethnet, why would you destroy it?”

Kalyba closed her first, and the flame was snuffed.

“One shortcoming of immortality,” she said, “is that everything you build seems too small, too transient. A painting, a song, a book—all of them rot away. But a masterwork, made over many years, many centuries . . . I cannot tell you the fulfilment it brings. To see your actions, in your lifetime, made into a legacy.” She lifted up Ascalon. “Galian lusted after Cleolind Onjenyu the moment he laid eyes on her. Though I had nursed him at my breast, though I gave him the sword that was the sum of all my achievements, and though I was beautiful, he wanted her above all things. Above me.”

“So it was unrequited love,” Sabran said. “Or was it jealousy?”

“A little of both, I suppose. I was younger then. Caged by a tender heart.”

Tané saw a flicker in the shadows.

Sabran moved a little to the left. Kalyba circled with her. Here, on this stretch of the ship, it was as if they were in the eye of the storm. No wyrms breathed fire near the witch.

“I watched Inys grow into a great nation. At first, that was enough,” Kalyba confessed. “To see my daughters thrive.”

“You still could,” Sabran told her softly. “I have no mother now, Kalyba. I would welcome another.”

Kalyba paused. Just for a moment, her face looked as naked as the rest of her.

“No, my lykyn,” she said, just as softly. “I mean to be a queen, as I once was. I will sit on the throne you can no longer hold.” She walked toward Sabran. The Knights of the Body pointed their swords at her. “I watched my daughters rule a country for a thousand years. I watched you preach against the Nameless One. What you failed to see is that the only way forward is to join with him.

“When I am queen, Inys will never burn again. It will be a Draconic place, protected. The people will never know you are gone. Instead they will rejoice to know that Sabran the Ninth, after reconciling her differences with the Nameless One, was blessed with his immortality. That she will reign forever.”

Sabran tightened her grip on her sword.

She was waiting for something, Tané realized. Her gaze flicked past her forebear, toward the bow of the ship.

“I misbelieve your grand talk,” the queen said, her tone pitying. “I think that this is simply the last act in your revenge. Your desire to destroy all trace of Galian Berethnet.” Her smile was pitying. “You are as beholden to your heart as you ever were.”

Suddenly Kalyba was right in front of her. The Knights of the Body started toward her, but she was already too close, close enough to kill their queen if they moved against her now. Sabran held very still as the witch pushed a wet strand of hair from her brow.

“It will hurt me,” Kalyba whispered, “to hurt you. You are mine . . . but the Nameless One will bring great things to this world. Greater things than even you could bring.” She kissed her forehead. “When I give you to him, he will know, at last, that I cherish him above all things.”

Sabran suddenly wrapped her arms around the witch. Tané stiffened, taken aback.

“Forgive me,” the queen said.

Kalyba wrenched away, eyes flared. Quick as a scorpion, she turned, fire igniting in her hand again.

A narrow blade ran her through. The sterren blade.

A sliver of the comet.

Kalyba drew in a sharp breath. As she stared at the shard of metal in her breast, her hooded killer revealed her face.

“I do this for you.” Ead twisted the blade deeper. There was no malice in her expression. “I will take you to the hawthorn tree, Kalyba. May it bring you the peace you did not find here.”

Dark lifeblood flowed from the witch, down her breast and past her navel. Even immortals bled.

“Eadaz uq-Nāra.” The name left her like a curse. “You are so very like Cleolind, you know.” Blood speckled her lips. “After all this time, I see her spirit. Somehow . . . she outlived me.”

As she sank over her mortal wound, the Witch of Inysca let out a scream. It echoed across the water, far into the Abyss. Ascalon fell from her hand, and Sabran seized it. At the last, Kalyba grabbed her by the throat.

“Your house,” she whispered to the queen, “is built on barren ground.” Sabran strained to break her grip, but her hand was a vise. “I see chaos, Sabran the Ninth. Beware the sweet water.”

Ead pulled her blade free, and more blood pulsed from Kalyba, like wine from a gourd. By the time she had fallen to the deck, her eyes were cold and dead as emeralds.

Sabran gazed in silence at the naked body of her forebear, one hand at her throat, where finger marks had already blossomed. Ead removed her cloak and covered the witch, while Tané picked up another sword.

A bell rang from the Inysh fleet. The sails of the Defiance stirred. Tané watched as the same wind set the Seiikinese flag aflutter. Even the cannon fire seemed to grow softer as a preternatural hush descended.

“This is it,” Ead said, her voice calm. “He is coming.”

In the sky, the fire-breathers moved the way starlings did, whirling in great clouds of wing. A dance of welcome.

In the distance, the sea exploded upward.

The waters of the Abyss convulsed. Shouts of panic spiked the night as waves crested the ships. Tané hit the gunwale as the Defiance lurched, unable to wrest her gaze from the horizon.

The eruption of water rose high enough to obliterate the stars. Amidst the chaos, a shape took form.

She had heard stories of the beast. Every child had grown up hearing about the nightmare that had crawled out of the mountain to ravage all the world. She had seen images of him, richly painted in gold-leaf and red lacquer, with blots of soot-ink where eyes ought to be.

No artist had captured the magnitude of the enemy, or the way the fire inside him made him smoulder. They had never seen it for themselves. His wingspan was the length of two Lacustrine treasure ships. His teeth were as black as his eyes. The waves crashed and the thunder rolled.

Prayers in every language. Dragons rising from the sea to meet their enemy, letting out haunting calls. Soldiers on the Defiance brandished their weapons, and on the Lord of Thunder, archers exchanged their arrows for longer ones, fletched with purple feathers. Poison arrows might fell a wyvern or a cockatrice, but nothing would get under those scales. Only one sword had a chance.

Ead retrieved Ascalon.

“Tané,” she shouted over the din, “take it.”

Tané took its weight in her clammy hands. She had expected it to be heavy, but it felt as if it could be hollow.

The sword that could slay the true enemy of the East. The sword that could earn back her honor.

“Go.” Ead gave her a push. “Go!”

Tané scraped up all her fear and crushed it into a dark place inside her. She made sure her borrowed sword was secure at her side. Then, keeping Ascalon in hand, she made for the closest sail. She scaled the battens, fighting through wind and rain, until she reached the top.

“Tané!”

She turned. A Seiikinese dragon with silver scales was rising from the waves.

“Tané.” The rider beckoned her. “Jump!”

Tané had no time to think. She threw herself from the beam, into nothing.

A hand sheathed in a gauntlet took hold of her arm and hauled her into the saddle. Ascalon almost slipped from her embrace, but she pinned it with her elbow.

“It’s been a while,” Onren called.

The saddle was just big enough for two, but there was nothing to hold a second rider in place. “Onren,” Tané started, “if the honored Sea General finds out you let me ride with—”

“You are a rider, Tané.” Her voice was muffled by the mask. “And this is no place for rules.”

Tané pushed Ascalon into a sheath on the saddle and secured it. Her fingers were wet and icy, clumsy on the hilt. The sheath had not been made for such a long blade, but it would hold the sword better than she could. Seeing her struggle, Onren reached into one of the pouches and passed Tané a pair of gauntlets. She slipped them over her hands.

“I assume you found a way to kill the Nameless One on your travels,” Onren said.

“A scale of his chest armor is loose.” Tané had to shout to be heard over the clash of weapons and the roars of wyrms and fire. “We have to tear it off and pierce the flesh beneath with this sword.”

“I think we can manage that.” Onren gripped the horn of the saddle. “Don’t you, Norumo?”

Her dragon hissed his agreement. Cloud frothed from his nostrils. Tané held on to Onren, her hair flying about her face.

The Seiikinese dragons were coming together. Most of their riders held longbows or pistols. At the same time, the fire-breathers flocked to protect their master, forming an appalling swarm in front of him. Tané felt Onren freeze. After all they had learned, all they had sacrificed, none of their schooling had prepared them for this. This was war.

They were close to the front of the formation, behind the elders. The great Tukupa the Silver led the charge, with the Sea General buckled into the saddle on her back. The Imperial Dragon flew beside her, leading the Lacustrine dragons. Tané shielded her eyes against the rain, straining to see. The Unceasing Emperor was a small figure astride his fellow ruler.

Bracing herself, Tané locked her arms around Onren. With a growl, the great Norumo lowered his head.

When they hit the flock, the collision almost threw Tané from the saddle. She clung to Onren, who hacked with her sword at wings and tails while Norumo rammed his horns into anything in his path. All was uproar and thunder, screaming and death, rain and ruin. She had the short-lived sensation that this was a terrible dream.

Lightning flashed through her eyelids. When she looked up, she met the eyes of the Nameless One. He stared into her soul. And when he opened his mouth, she saw doom.

Fire and smoke blasted from his jaws.

It was as if a volcano had erupted into the night. The dragon elders parted around the Nameless One and snapped at his sides, but Norumo, like his rider, had a taste for breaking rules.

He dived beneath the inferno and rolled. Tané tightened her arms around Onren as the world turned on its head. Another dragon tried to avoid that cavernous mouth, but the Nameless One bit her in two. Scales glittered as his teeth scattered them, like a fistful of coins tossed into the air. Tané watched, sickened, as the two halves of the dragon sank toward the sea.

Smoke was in her chest and eyes. Blood surged to her head. They passed beneath the Nameless One, close enough for the heat from his belly to parch her skin and steal what was left of her breath. As Norumo spiraled, Onren thrust out her sword. It sparked over red scales, but made no mark. Norumo swerved between the spikes of an endless tail—and then they were flying even higher, above the beast, back toward the flock.

I see you, rider.

Tané stared at the Nameless One. His eye was upon her.

You carry a blade I know well. The voice rang in every crevice of her mind. It was last in the possession of the White Wyrm. Did you slay her for it, as you now hope to slay me?

Her hand flinched to her temple. She could feel his rage in her very bones, in the hollows of her skull.

“We need to get closer,” Onren said, panting.

Norumo was moving back into formation, but his breathing was just as labored as hers. The heat had baked the moisture from his scales.

I smell the fire inside you, daughter of the East. Soon your ashes will scatter the sea. I suppose that befits one who swims with the slugs of the water.

Tears streamed down her face. Her head was going to burst open.

“Tané, what is it?”

“Onren,” she gasped, “do you hear his voice?”

“Whose voice?”

She cannot hear me. Only those who have tasted of the trees of knowledge can, the Nameless One said. Tané sobbed in agony. I was born out of the hidden fire, forged in the vital furnace that gave you but one spark. For as long as you live, I will live inside you, in your every thought and memory.

One of the Seiikinese dragons that had separated from the rest of the formation slammed into his neck. The vise on her mind sprang open. She fell against Onren, shuddering.

“Tané!”

The flock tore at Norumo. The Imperial Dragon, who was almost as large as the monster, forced a path through the swarm, let out a mighty roar, and scourged the Nameless One with her claws. Gold sparks flew and, for the first time, gouges appeared in that age-old armor. The Nameless One twisted his head, teeth bared, but the Imperial Dragon was already out of reach.

Onren punched the air. “For Seiiki!” she cried out. Other riders echoed her.

Tané shouted it until her throat was raw.

The Sea General blew through his war conch, summoning the dragons for a second foray. This time, the flock they faced was even larger, a wall of wings. Fire-breathers everywhere were abandoning their clashes with the ships and flying to defend their master. Their ranks closed around the Nameless One, who was moving ever closer to the fleet.

“We can’t get through that.” Onren grasped the saddle. “Norumo, take us to the front.”

He growled low and drew up alongside the elders. Tané tensed as the Sea General turned his face toward them. Onren snapped open a fan and signaled for him to cease the charge.

The Sea General signed with a fan in return. He wanted them to approach from above. Other riders passed the message along.

Upward they flew, toward the moon. When they dived, in perfect unison, Tané narrowed her eyes. The wind tore back her hair. She reached for Ascalon and drew it from the sheath.

This time, she would strike him.

One moment, the fire-breathers rose to meet them. The next, all Tané could see was darkness.

Norumo let out a roar. A blue glow vented between his scales before lightning splintered from his mouth. Every hair on Tané stood on end. As Norumo skewered an amphiptere on his horns, another bolt flashed out of the turmoil. It whipped past Onren, glanced off her armor, and caught Tané across the bare skin of her arm.

She felt her heart stop.

The lightning hit a wyvern, but not before it set her clothes on fire. Onren screamed her name just before Tané was thrust from dragonback, into the chaos of the sky.

The wind smothered her shirt, but not the white-hot flame beneath her skin. For a moment, she felt weightless. She could hear nothing, see nothing.

When she became aware again, the fire-breathers were high above her, the black sea rushing up below. Ascalon was wrenched from her hand. One flash of silver, and it vanished.

She had failed. The sword was gone. Nothing but death awaited them at the end of this day.

Hope was lost, but her body refused to give up the fight. Some long-buried instinct made her heed her training. All students of the Houses of Learning had been taught how to raise their chances of survival if they should ever fall from dragonback. She faced the Abyss and opened her arms, as if to embrace it.

Then a banner of misty green rushed beneath her. She was caught in the coil of a tail.

“I have you, little sister.” Nayimathun lifted Tané on to her back. “Hold on.”

Her fingers splayed over wet scales.

“Nayimathun,” Tané gasped.

Livid red branches had spread from her shoulder, down her right arm, and across her neckline.

“Nayimathun,” she said, panting, “I lost Ascalon.”

“No,” Nayimathun said. “This is not over. It fell to the deck of the Dancing Pearl.”

Tané looked down at the ships. It seemed impossible that the sword had avoided the endless black water.

Another ship fractured into pieces as its black powder combusted. Bleeding, his wing injured, Fýredel threw back his head and let out a long sound that stemmed from deep within. Even Tané knew what it was. A rallying cry.

The herd above their heads was thrown into disarray. As she watched, half of the fire-breathers dropped away from the Nameless One, to Fýredel.

“Now,” Tané shouted. “Now, Nayimathun!”

Her dragon did not hesitate. She flew toward the enemy.

“Aim for his chest.” Tané unsheathed the sword at her side. Rain lashed her face. “We have to break through his scales.”

Nayimathun bared her teeth. She rammed through what remained of the vanguard. The other dragons were calling to her, but she paid them no heed. As fire roared to meet them, she swept over the Nameless One and wrapped herself around his body, so her head was beneath his, out of the reach of his teeth and flame. Tané heard her scales begin to sizzle.

“Go, Tané,” she forced out.

Forgetting her fear, Tané leaped from dragonback and grabbed on to a scale. The heat burned through her gauntlets, but she kept climbing up the Nameless One, stretching up to each plate of his armor, using their razor-sharp edges as handholds, counting down from the top of his throat. When she reached the twentieth scale, she saw the imperfection, the place where it had never fitted smoothly back over the scar beneath. Holding on with one hand, she jammed the blade of her sword beneath the scale, planted her boots on the one below, and pulled on the haft with all her might.

The Nameless One opened his jaws and let out an inferno, but though the fire soaked her in sweat and made it hard to breathe, Tané kept craning. Screaming with the effort, she threw all her weight behind the pull.

The blade of her sword snapped. She dropped ten feet before she flung out a hand and caught herself on another scale.

Her arms were trembling. She was going to slip.

Then, with a war cry that rang in her bones, Nayimathun reared. The haft of the sword caught between two of her teeth. With one jerk of her head, she ripped the scale free.

Steam vented from the flesh of the Nameless One. Tané threw out an arm to stop it scalding her—and fell from his armor.

Her fingers caught in a riverweed mane. She hauled herself back onto Nayimathun. At once, her dragon uncoiled herself, scales burnt dry, and plunged toward the ocean. Tané choked on the stench of hot metal. The Nameless One came after them, jaws gaping to show the spark in his throat. Nayimathun keened as razor teeth closed on her tail.

The sound screamed through Tané. She flicked her knife into her hand, twisted at the waist, and hurled it into the depths of a black eye. His jaws unlocked, but not before flesh and scale tore asunder. Nayimathun tumbled away from him, toward the Abyss, blood spraying from her.

“Nayimathun—” Tané choked on her name. “Nayimathun!”

The rain turned silver.

“Find the sword,” was all her dragon said. Her voice was fading. “This must end here. It must be now.”

The soldier stabbed for Ead with his partizan, almost catching her cheek. His face was clammy, he had pissed himself, and he was shaking so hard his jaw rattled. “Stop fighting, you witless fool,” Ead shouted at him. “Drop your weapon, or you give me no choice.”

He wore a mail coat and a scaled helmet. His eyes were bloodshot with exhaustion, but he was in the grip of something beyond reason. When he swung for Ead again, the blow pendulous, she ducked beneath his arm and drew her sword upward, opening him from belly to shoulder.

The man had come from the Draconic Navy. Its soldiers fought as if possessed, and perhaps they were. Possessed by fear of what would happen to their families in Cárscaro if they lost this fight.

The Nameless One circled high above the ships. Ead watched as he thrashed, and a ribbon of pale green fell away from him. The sound of the Draconic tongue echoed across the waves.

“The sword,” Fýredel bellowed. “Find the sword!”

Half the Yscali soldiers scrambled to obey, while others took to the sea. Blood was spreading through the water, along with the wax that had protected the ships.

A wyvern winged overhead and set fire to a trail of debris. Howls rose as soldiers and seafarers were broiled alive.

Ead cupped a bloody hand over the waning jewel. There was a hum inside it. A tiny heartbeat.

Find the sword.

The jewel was calling to itself. Seeking out the stars.

She stepped over another body, toward the prow. The hum faded. When she backtracked to the stern, it grew stronger. The Dancing Pearl was the nearest ship, straight ahead of her, still afloat.

She dived. Her body sliced deep into the water. A flare of light lit her way as more gunpowder ignited.

Daughter of Zāla.

She knew the voice was in her head. It was too clear, too soft, as if the speaker was close enough for her to feel his breath—but under the water, it seemed as if it stemmed from the Abyss itself.

The voice of the Nameless One.

I know your name, Eadaz uq-Nāra. My servants have whispered it in voices filled with dread. They speak of a root of the orange tree, a root that can stretch far into the world and still burn golden as the sun.

I am the handmaiden of Cleolind, serpent. Somehow she knew how to speak to him. This night I will complete her work.

Without me, you will have nothing to unite you. You will fall to wars of wealth and religion. You will make enemies of each other. As you always have. And you will end yourselves.

Ead swam. The white jewel rang against her skin.

You need not give your life. Her head broke the surface, and she kept swimming. Another fire burns in your heart. Become my handmaiden instead, and I will spare Sabran Berethnet. If you do not do this, the voice said, I will break her.

You will have to break me first. And I have proven difficult to break.

She climbed onto the ship and rose.

So be it.

And so the Nameless One, the blight upon the nations, plunged toward the ship.

Every fire in the Abyss went out. All Ead could hear were cries of fear as death came as a shadow from above. Only starlight pierced the darkness, but in that light, Ascalon shone.

She ran across the Dancing Pearl. Her world darkened until there was only the beat of her heart and the blade. She willed the Mother to give her the strength that had filled her on that day in Lasia.

Unearthly metal, alive to her touch. The Nameless One opened his jaws, and a white sun rose inside his mouth. Ead saw the place where his armor had been torn away. She lifted the sword that Kalyba had made, that Cleolind had wielded, that had lived in song for a thousand years.

She buried it to the hilt in flesh.

Ascalon glowed until it blinded her. She had a moment to see the skin of her hands simmering with heat—a moment, an age, something between—before the sword was wrenched from them. She was thrown high across the deck, over the gunwale, into the sea. Scale crashed through the Dancing Pearl, carving it fesswise.

The strength left her as quickly as it had come.

She had driven the blade into his heart, as the Mother had not, but it was not enough. He must be chained to the Abyss to die. And she carried a key.

The jewel drifted in front of her. The star inside it lit the dark. How she longed to sleep for eternity.

Another light flickered in the shadows. Lightning, glowing in a vast pair of eyes.

Tané and her dragon. A hand reached through the water and Ead grasped it.

They rose from the ocean, toward the stars. Tané held the blue jewel in one hand. The Nameless One thrashed in the Abyss, head thrown back, fire spraying from his mouth like lava from the mantle of the earth, with Ascalon still buried in his breast.

Tané locked her right hand over Ead’s and pushed her fingers between her knuckles, so they both held the waning jewel. It pressed against the dying beat of her heart.

“Together,” Tané whispered. “For Neporo. For Cleolind.”

Slowly, Ead reached up with her other hand, and their fingers interlocked around the rising jewel.

Her thoughts waxed faint with every breath, but her blood knew what to do. It was instinct, deep-rooted and ancient as the tree.

The ocean rose to their command. They played this final game by turns, never breaking their hold on each other.

They spun him a cocoon, two seamsters weaving with the waves. Steam filled the air as they knitted the Nameless One into the sea, and the darkness quenched the hot coal of his heart.

He looked up at Ead one last time, and she looked into him. A flash of light blinded her where Ascalon had torn him open. The Beast of the Mountain let out a scream before he disappeared.

Ead knew that she would hear that sound for as long as she drew breath. It would echo through her unquiet dreams, like a song across the desert. The dragons of the East dived after him, to see him to his grave. The sea closed over all their heads.

And the Abyss was still.