Page 81 of A Monsoon Rising

She didn’t know whether it was instinct or madness this time, the thing that made her do what she did next. Perhaps itwas fear—fear of what the creature would wreak if it was let loose over the land. Alaric was trying to re-form the shield, but she leapt from the edge of the yacht and onto Bakun’s neck, using the ledges of the thick scaled hide to pull herself up. She scaled the dragon the way she scaled the ladders and bridges of the vertical mudbrick city where she’d once lived. Higher and higher, air and sky—

A rope of shadow magic wrapped around one of the great spikes running along the leviathan’s spine, and suddenly Alaric was beside her. Beneath the waves of black hair blowing across his newly scarred face, the vein in his temple looked fit to burst. “I swear to thegods, Talasyn!”

“You didn’thaveto come along,” she pointed out.

Together they climbed. They climbed the seesawing length of scaled ledges rolling unsteadily until they reached the top of Bakun’s head, where they were in less danger of being thrown off. Clinging to the base of one horn while Alaric claimed the other, Talasyn looked behind and below to see white wings unfold from the crater and through the air. Bakun roared as it shot up into the sky, into the half-lit heavens, leaving behind the Enchanters’ coracles, the smaller dragons, the barren ridge of Aktamasok. The wind currents almost blew Talasyn clear off, and she held fast to Bakun’s horn, flattening herself against the curve of it.

With the creature’s veins thrumming beneath her feet, with her arms around its horn, Talasyn could feel its desire for carnage—she could almost taste the Voidfell on her tongue. Bakun hadn’t left its caverns since it went into its first long sleep. It had been content to wake every thousand years and push out its breath in a ceaseless exhale while still remaining underground.

Until tonight. Until it felt something push back.

Now it stretched its wings, unimpeded by rock and dirt,its body burning like a gigantic furnace. It felt invincible, triumphant. It wanted to swallow the world, it wanted to seeheragain, it wanted tobreathe out—

“No.” Talasyn dug her heels into Bakun’s hide. It huffed, then sailed higher. Higher than airships went. Higher than eagles could go.

It was like riding a mountain, or standing on top of it and feeling it grow, bringing one closer and closer to where the great ships of the ancestors sailed. The chill of the increasing altitudes slammed into Talasyn, quickly followed by … rain?

No—mist.

She spat out a mouthful of cloud. She had a feeling that Alaric would have laughed at her if he weren’t similarly drenched. At first she could see him only in brief flashes of starlight, and then more clearly, the shape of him solidifying in the glow of the moons slowly returning to the sky. Their eyes met as they soared above the world, through pale crescents and silver mist, on ancient wings.

But there was scant opportunity to bask in the marvel of it all—Bakun tossed back its head, giving Talasyn a harrowing jolt that lifted her feet into the air before she tightened her grip on the horn, her teeth clenching from the effort. The dragon screamed again, unleashing a fresh wave of void magic that arced straight up. The clouds fell apart in pulsating streams of violet so bright that their flashes remained etched in her vision long after they had subsided.

Another scream. Another wave. Again and again, eternal. The Voidfell roaring through dragon lungs like chasms, spilling out of a throat that could wrap around the moons. The sky blazed with amethyst fire for miles around.

The World-Eater screamed until it was hoarse, then it kept on screaming, its neck lashing wildly with each new surge of void magic.

And even though the amplifiers were long gone, fragments of ancestral memory remained in Talasyn’s soul. Amidst the cold and the stars they stirred, called forth by Bakun’s cries.

By its lament.

Talasyn moved her scarred right arm as though in a trance. She stroked a shaking hand over the ridge of the creature’s brow. Tears were streaming down her face. Were they hers—or Iyaram’s? Perhaps it didn’t matter. Back then, during the war, she’d never cried. Nenavar had changed that about her as well. And perhaps that, too, was all right.

“It’s not time yet,” she repeated softly. “I’m sorry.” The dragon stilled, hearing her crystal-clear through the beating of its wings, through the howl of wind and the echoes of Voidfell. “Everything ends,” she continued, “even the long night, even grief.” She glanced at Alaric through blurry eyes, and he looked as though he could understand her—if not the words in the Dominion tongue then the tone in which she spoke them. Some things went beyond language. Some things, like loss and hope, were the same all over the world.

“One day all lands will sink beneath the Eversea,” she told Bakun, in a near-whisper now, “and we will meet again. Go back to sleep, World-Eater.Wait for me.”

The dragon turned around, with a roiling of great scales. It tucked its wings slightly against its sides and plunged into a steep descent.

Talasyn’s arms ached and she was bitterly cold, but she held on because she had no choice. They dived back to earth, breaking through the cloud cover. The sevenfold eclipse was almost over, and the moonlit panorama of ocean and islands rose up to meet them, vague shapes coalescing into their true forms with each second that rushed by. Specks became dragons and moth coracles, shadowy fields became rainforests, and thesea of darker black in their midst became the yawning volcanic crater.

And they were heading straight for it. Straight into it.

As Bakun began sinking into the abyss headfirst, Alaric conjured a grappling hook of shadow magic and flung its barbed ends at the crater’s rim. He swung over to Talasyn’s location, scooped her up by the waist, and then ran up the slope of curving, fast-falling ivory. He jumped off the tip of the dragon’s horn, and then they were dangling from the high rope of his magic, her arms around his neck, the two of them rocked every which way in the mighty gusts of the World-Eater’s passing.

Bakun descended and descended. The white dragon’s return to the crater went on for an age. But eventually the last of it vanished into the darkness, the rumbling faded away, and all seven of Lir’s satellites wreathed the sky above in their shining fullness.

Moonlit silence and moonlit stillness prevailed, broken only by the hum of approaching coracles, by dragons peering over the crater and then gliding away once they saw that Talasyn was in one piece.

“Never do that again,” Alaric snapped.

“What?” Talasyn mumbled against his chest. “Ride a millennia-old dragon who tries to destroy the world every thousand years because it’s still carrying a torch for my ancestor?”

He sighed. “This country is infuriating.” His hand around her waist raked a claw down her hip, a clumsy caress. “Almost as infuriating as you.”

She fought back a smile. They were still hanging precariously from the crater’s rim, with nothing but miles of darkness below their feet, and yet somehow she wasn’t worried. Alaric would never let her fall.

CHAPTERTHIRTY

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