Page 95 of Dragons of the Great Wyves: Fire and Song
What is that? I asked Yuánchi.
His answer was slow.Fènnù’s strength grows.
Wings spread wide, he descended in a hunter’s glide until we were level with the highest hilltops. The wind lessened to a mere rush. I unfolded to sit upright in the saddle, hips and back groaning. The firedrake fell away from the saddle then winged ahead as the two guides took their accustomed positions. A muddle of emotions engulfed me—guilt, regret, resolve. I reached a gloved hand behind my back, and Darcy squeezed it.
The blackness approached, a strangely featureless wall across the sky—my mind perceived it as a storm and expected thunder and rain, but it was still.I do not need your sight to find Pemberley, Yuánchi thought, and we crossed into the dark.
Light vanished, a lurch into blackness. I felt no change in the air, there was no scent, but the skin around my goggles tingled. As my eyes adjusted, vague features emerged. The inky sky was not uniform; it had cracks of lighter sable. When a hill passed on our right, the trees flickered like columns of sulking soot. Then the sound of wind over Yuánchi’s scales brightened, echoing from some flat surface below, and I heard falling water ahead. Yuánchi flared his wings andsettled in what I barely made out as Pemberley’s north garden, overlooking the lake.
Darcy and I slipped down Yuánchi’s heaving chest to the ground. The garden was weirdly silent, no birdsong of day, no insects of night, no hint of the endless industry that occupies a busy estate.
“Where is everyone?” I whispered.
“Where is Fènnù?” Darcy whispered back.
I closed my eyes, seeking with draca senses. Georgiana’s song blossomed within me, but when I reached farther, I struck a barrier—a cold shroud like what had isolated me at Helmsdale Castle.
“Fènnù is here, but not close. She has screened Pemberley. I cannot push through to find her.” It was strange to be near the black dragon but not feel her crushing my mind. There was a reason: her focus was elsewhere. “Georgiana is at home.” I pointed to the shadowy mansion, the direction of the song.
Darcy ran, sure-footed on the familiar paths, and I followed. Pemberley’s front entrance stood open, the impressive door unattended. In the vestibule, a single candle flickered in a glass lamp. The warmth of natural light was a relief.
I called out, “Mary?” If Georgiana was here, she must be as well.
Darcy cocked his head in the silence, then he took the candle and stepped into the entry hall. He shouted, “Georgiana!” Her name rang from the walls, but there was no answer, nor any sound of music. I could sense her song, though, and led him through the house. After a few turns, it was clear we sought the music room, and he ran ahead.
The heavy, carved doors were closed and did not budge when he shook the handles. A girl’s voice sounded inside. “Who is there?”
“Lucy,” I answered, “it is Mr. Darcy and I.”
There was a rattle and scrape of heavy furniture. The doors split to reveal Lucy’s worried face. Darcy raced past her into the room, but Lucy caught me in an unexpected embrace. She was as tall as me now, but she clung like a child, burying her face in my shoulder. “Thank goodness you are back.”
Georgiana was seated at one of her tremendous grand pianofortes, her fingers resting on the keys but still. She wore her red-and-gold silk dress, a Chinese garment with illustrations of their dragon lore. Her hair hung wild, fallen from its morning dressing. Her face was tilted back as if studying the sky, but her eyes were closed.
Mrs. Reynolds stood at her shoulder, a candle in one hand, an iron fire poker clenched in the other like a sword.
“What happened to her?” Darcy asked.
“Miss Darcy ordered us away,” Mrs. Reynolds said. Her old voice sounded steady, but the poker, forgotten, slipped through her fingers and clattered to the floor. “She assembled the household and told us to proceed into the hills.” Mrs. Reynolds pulled a cloth from her pocket and dabbed at Georgiana’s neck; she was slick with perspiration. “Lucy and I… chose to stay. We hid in the hall. Then, Miss Darcy began singing. You know how she sings to draca. It was glorious for a long time. Then her voice weakened, and the windows darkened. She did not answer, so we forced the lock. It was as dark as night by then, and she was like this, and the air felt like…”
“Like death,” Lucy whispered.
Darcy’s hand found the pianoforte’s side, his knuckles white.
“She is not silent,” I said. “Not to draca. In her mind, she is singing Fènnù’s song over and over.” I felt it, a peculiar melody that had been infused with the nature and life I associated with Georgiana’s power, but it was streaming away like fog in a gale, sucked into the shroud around Pemberley.
Gently, I lifted her right hand from the keyboard. It came unresisting, her long fingers slim, wide-spaced, and strong from endless practicing. I wrapped it between mine, remembering how she had evoked her power to help Emma, and reached my awareness toward the glowing song I sensed within her, the way I would cast myself into a draca’s mind.
Her lips parted. She whispered, “Lizzy. You should have come sooner. I could have gone to her.”
I did not understand that, but I said, “I am here. Georgiana, you must stop the song. It is being taken from you. Fènnù is… consuming it.” The people watching us were motionless, but a shoe rasped nervously on the floorboards.
Georgiana’s eyes roamed under closed lids. “I thought the song could order her mind, help her reason, but melody cannot command. It is like singing to a glacier while it slips under my feet, fed by endless snows, carrying me away…”
“Whydid you call the black dragon?”
Her answer was suddenly, savagely strong. “To save Mary!”
I looked around the music room, realizing how strange my sister’s absence was. “Where is she?”
