Page 104 of Dragons of the Great Wyves: Fire and Song
I tried the doorknob, and the door opened. Harriet took a big breath and strode forward. I closed the door behind us.
It was a lady’s bedroom, with a pleasant bed nicely finished with a yellow lace cover. A dark-lacquered armoire stood beside a matched dressing table with a looking glass, brushes, and other feminine items. There was a wooden chair and a cedar wardrobe chest.
Harriet considered. “She kept a box for valuables for each of us, and she retrieved them from her room, so they are here somewhere. But I hate to search.”
I did not think a lady would keep boarders’ belongings in her wardrobe or armoire. “What about there?” One corner had a narrow, almost invisible door, the sort used for servant passages. We tugged it open and found a storage room lined with shelves.
“This is it,” Harriet said immediately. She ran her fingers along a row of identical birchwood boxes, each large enough for a pair of shoes. They had handwritten labels in brass holders. She found one markedHarriet Smithand offered it to me.
“It is yours,” I said.
“Take the lid off, at least,” she said nervously, so I did.
The light was dim, but the amulet’s gold chain caught a faint gleam. In the center, an oval of scarlet seemed to glow.
“Is it the right one?” Harriet asked.
The color was unmistakable, exactly Yuánchi’s glorious fire. But this artifact was made for the wyfe of healing. Mary had thought I would sense it or feel affinity to it. I felt nothing. I saw nothing, not the immaterial streaks that revealed bindings, not the diseased fantasy of the miasma.
I removed my gloves and lifted it by the chain. It spun, the jade whorls on the setting exactly like the drawing the French officer showed me. “It is what the French sought at Hartfield.” I stopped the spin with a finger on the jade, then touched my thumb to the scarlet—
I sawthree great wyves crowned in shining auras of gold. They wore ceremonial, thick-soled sandals. Their wraps of silk were radiant with silver thread and pearls. They waited on a lakeshore of white pebbles fouled with streaks of black wrack where the poisoned waves washed.
The first wyfe’s outstretched arm held a gleaming black dagger. The second’s raised hand held an amulet that shimmered scarlet. The third stood simply, her empty hands spread and welcoming.
From the wyfe with the amulet, the wyfe of healing, Yuánchi’s scarlet binding stretched.
From the empty-handed wyfe, the wyfe of song, a dazzling sapphire glow spread.
The wyfe with the dagger, the wyfe of war, was unbound.
The wyfe of war raised the dagger and slashed her bared forearm. The bloodied blade smoked, and a summons formed, an immense black ribbon seeking the sky. The wyves sang music, ancient and inhuman, and the summons rose like a ship’s unfurrowing sail.
The summons snapped taut. Rhythmic thunder hastened the surf, then blackness shrouded the sun. The singers’ voices cracked and strained, and I felt the wyfe of healing exert her power. She reached up along that ribbon, drawing forth from the black dragon a black binding…
The ribbon of summoning shivered, tore, and blackness drowned them all.
Seasons revolved.
Centuries spun.
My vision flew from the past to mere days ago.
Again, I stood in the cellar of Donwell Abbey, which glowed a pretty blue.Again, I saw the flicker of blue under the plants on Berry Hill. Not just blue: the saturated sapphire purity that had surrounded the wyfe of song.
But in all directions, as near as a mile, as far as hundreds, blight spawned, a spreading rot, a fruiting pestilence ripe for release…
“Is it the right one?”Harriet repeated. She peered into my eyes. “Emma?”
“It is. We have it.” My mind was overfilled with images; my eyes brimmed with tears. I blinked both away. “At Pemberley, we saw a vision of ancient wyves attempting to heal the song. I just saw it again, but I understand more. A great wyfe mustbindFènnù. That is the purpose of the great items, how they can heal her mind and heal the song. That is why, when the great wyves attempted the ritual, they were not all bound. It was not an error or a weakness. It was necessary.”
The wyfe of war had been unbound. But the wyfe of song… I had thought her bound before, but the sapphire glow did not reach outward, it only surrounded her…
Harriet was excited. “Is that whyyoudid not bind?”
The idea of binding Fènnù, that insane colossus of destruction, made my skin prickle. “I hope not. I know only that Fènnù must be bound, and soon. The blight is seeded across England like a plague, and every rotting cancer is tied to the corruption of the song.”
“Georgiana has been saying that for ages,” Harriet noted matter-of-factly. “We should go. The way out is on the middle floor.”
