Page 96 of Dragons of the Great Wyves: Fire and Song
Georgiana’s slim throat worked, then she sang, “Gone to London,” her pure soprano placing the words in flawless harmony with her endless, silent performance of Fènnù’s song. A rush of power slammed mydraca senses. Brilliant sapphire lines hammered the shroud, making it shudder, but the darkness sealed itself, oily and vast, leaving only sable streaks.
“Why is Mary in London?” Darcy pressed.
Georgiana whispered, “To find the flute.”
“The flute is destroyed,” I said.
Her drawn breath was a gasp, then she slumped sideways off the bench. Darcy caught her and laid her on a sofa by the fire, the red of her silk gown as dark as pooled blood in the candlelight, her brunette hair a tangled mess on the pillow.
Her silent song had faltered as well. The shroud around Pemberley surged inward until she resumed, now shaping the silent syllables on trembling lips. The shroud ground to a hungry halt just outside the manse’s walls. When it was still again, she began fitting spoken words around her inaudible song. “I am frightened for Mary. She sang to Fènnù…”
“Marysang?” I said.
A smile eased Georgiana’s lips. “What I am to melody, she is to form. I heard her, even here. But she is stalked by malevolence. Blight.” She grimaced. “Lizzy, fly to London. Evil pursues her, and you must save her. I thought I could master Fènnù and protect her, but Fènnù is taking me…”
“I am with you now,” I said. “You and I will drive Fènnù away, then we will find Mary together. Fènnù will not hurt her.”
She arched and cried out, “It is not Fènnù who hunts her!” then fell back, limp.
I settled my mind, seeking my own strength. So near the black dragon, thousands of memories arrayed themselves from an army of past wyves. I hunted through their experiences while seeking a way to push back Fènnù’s shroud, but my attempts were like pressing my fingers into smoke. Instead, I tried supporting Georgiana’s song, to be a foundation for her shining melody, but the music slipped past me, ephemeral and glorious but beyond my understanding.
Darcy was watching with his hands locked behind his neck, arm muscles straining against nothing, face ragged. When he saw my frustration, he said, “The dagger was created to control the black dragon. Can you use it?”
I remembered it burning my fingers when I forced it into its sheath. “The dagger was created to call the black dragon. It strips my protections and merges my mind with hers. I might command her once, convince her to free Georgiana, but she would win control in the end, as she did at Helmsdale.” I almost offeredto do it, unfair as that choice would be to Darcy, but some ruthless past self refused; uniting the black dragon and the wyfe of war would unleash annihilation. I searched for another way. “We must strengthen Georgiana. The black dragon can steal her strength, but they are not intended to pair. She can resist Fènnù better than I. My skill is command, but command is a human thing, a weapon. Georgiana is song, the essence of draca themselves. She needsthat.” I turned to Mrs. Reynolds and Lucy. “Do either of you play?”
“Thepianoforte?” Lucy exclaimed, aghast.
“I do,” Mrs. Reynolds answered.
“Play something she knows.” That was meaningless; the wyfe of song remembered every note she heard. “Something she knows from childhood.”
Mrs. Reynolds took a seat at the keyboard, straightening her cuffs, her posture as proper as ever. “Her mother played this to her when she had bad dreams.” She began, not a child’s lullaby but an introspective, melodious baroque aria.
I sent a silent summons for draca. It reached the two firedrakes before being quashed by the shroud. “I summoned the drakes, but we need more draca.”
“I will bring them,” Darcy said. He ran out the doors even as the firedrakes arrived, winging cautiously in the building’s interior. They settled by Georgiana, one on the floor, one perched on the back of the sofa. I shared a mental image of Georgiana singing but tiring, and they began to croon, not Fènnù’s melody, but other tones… they had joined the music Mrs. Reynolds was playing. Georgiana heard; subtly she adapted her inner song so the rhythms and harmonies interleaved. Outside, a deeper tone added an inhuman basso, Yuánchi’s own slow thrum.
Faintly, through the towering, double-paned windows, I heard a horse whinny. Hooves pounded away, galloping despite the dark.
“Where is he going?” Lucy asked.
I did not know, but I smiled for her sake. “Where he will find aid. He knows Pemberley better than anyone.”
I took a seat by Georgiana and held her hand, lending reassurance if not strength, and her fingers tightened on mine. My draca senses shivered from the unseen battle, Fènnù pressing in and Georgiana resisting with song, although that was a shallow name for what surrounded her—it was the endless music of seasons, of intermeshed stars and planets. I remembered the nights she spent with her telescope, observing the motion of the heavens. “Help is coming,” I whispered. “Hold on so we may go to Mary.”
The drakes crooned over Yuánchi’s deep pedal tones. Mrs. Reynolds reached the end of her piece and began again. Lucy, learning the melody, began to hum along.
The hooves returned and came nearer than the stables, somewhere in back of the main house. A door banged and hurried steps approached; Darcy had ridden to the conservatory entrance, a few rooms away. He burst into the music room with Aggy, one of the wyves from the Briton village. She held her roseworm, forest-brown and rich-red.
“More wyves are following,” Darcy said. “Escalus outran them, but they will be here soon. What should we do?”
“Just… gather,” I said to Aggy, who fell to her knees beside me, staring in dismay at Georgiana’s drawn face. “Encourage him to sing,” but her roseworm had already joined with a pure, bird-like tone that danced above the crooning drakes.
Two more bound wyves arrived, and the draca chorus grew. I closed my eyes and, unbidden, their vision replaced mine, the darkened music room lit in brilliant violet, our living bodies glowing with the warmth of life, Georgiana and I shining with the gold aura of great wyves. Georgiana’s song flowed, buttressed by the draca, but Fènnù’s shroud pressed down harder, as if mountains were being stacked on top. The sable cracks, remnants of Georgiana’s resistance, began to seal, each thud like a closing tomb.
“I do not understand this fight,” I whispered to Darcy. “It is too foreign. I do not know what to do.”
He rested his hand atop mine and Georgiana’s. “I called someone who will.” Voices approached in the hall, and he shouted, “Edward! In here!”
