"You're quite certain you don't know?" the man said.
"I am entirely certain."
"Then you have a point, even if you may regret inadvertently making it." The bandit leader threw Moria aside. "The people will not be satisfied with your whore's corpse. You are stuck with her for the duration of the journey." He motioned for the others to take them to the wagon. "And there's no need to tell me where your mother is." Toman grinned over his shoulder. "I already know."
NINE
He's mad. That was Ashyn's first thought when Edwyn told her she had the power to wake dragons. There was no such thing as dragons . . .
Nor shadow stalkers. Nor death worms. Nor thunder hawks. Truly, Ashyn, you are correct, as you have always been. Such things exist only in your imagination. Like that dragon skull you see before you.
She imagined her sister's voice. Not mocking--simply light and teasing as she rolled her eyes and sauntered away. And for one moment, picturing Moria, Ashyn wanted to lunge after her, to grab her cloak and pull her back.
I'm as mad as he is.
No, simply lonely. So very lonely and unsettled and incomplete without her sister.
Are you well, Moria? Are you safe? Did Gavril look after you? Has Tyrus found you? Are you reunited with him and with Daigo?
"Ashyn?" Edwyn said.
She looked at him, and she didn't see madness in his eyes. She saw calm resolve and strength of purpose. She glanced at the dragon skull. Proof that he was not mad, at least not in believing there had been dragons once.
She looked up at the skull. "How would I wake . . . ?"
His laugh startled her. He reached to squeeze her shoulder. "Sorry, child. I'm not laughing at you, but at myself. I truly ought to have explained more before I blurted that, but this is such a moment for me, the culmination of both a life's work and sixteen summers of grief and longing. It is fate, of course. A gift from the goddess, whatever she might be. I spent my life with these empty relics." He waved at the skull. "Preserving them and the memory of them for our people. And then my own daughter bears children who could waken the dragons? If that is not the work of a beneficent goddess, I do not know what is. Reunited with my granddaughter, who is also the young woman who can make my greatest dream a reality, at a time when the empire needs it most?"
He shook his head. "But that is not straightening out this matter at all, is it? You'll have to excuse me. I'm overexcited and overwhelmed, and my thoughts can be a jumble even at the best of times."
She knew what that was like. Moria's thoughts seemed to run in a linear path, clear and decisive and leading straight to action. Ashyn's were more like a spiderweb, with infinite possibilities, and she could get lost in them.
"Let me start with the simplest answer to your question," he said. "When we reach our destination, you will not be asked to transform bones to flesh. We have a sleeping dragon. A mother and two young offspring."
"Sleeping dragons?"
"Asleep for almost an age now. That was the custom. A dragon is not an easy creature to control. When our people had no further use for them, those with your power would put them to sleep, and then wake them when needed. But there had not been Northern twins with your ability born in so many generations that people forgot it was even possible, forgot the dragons altogether. Fortunately, some of us did not, and we cared for them. Then you were born and we knew they could be wakened, but they ought not to be. Not yet. Just as I knew I could have my daughter's children back, but I ought not to interfere. Not until the dragons needed to rise. Until the empire needed them."
"Which is now. Because of Alvar."
He smiled. "Because of Alvar. So, Ashyn, are you ready to wake dragons?"
To Edwyn's confusion and dismay, Ashyn did not rush to say yes, of course, and when can we leave? It was thrilling, to be sure. To wake dragons? To see a living one? Beyond her dreams. But at the moment Ashyn had more prosaic concerns.
"I need my sister," she said. "I don't know what you've heard of her plight . . ."
"I have caught rumors," he said carefully.
"They are lies. All of them. Moria is not Gavril Kitsune's lover. There was never anything of the sort between them. She despises Gavril as a traitor. As for Tyrus, she cares deeply for him as a friend, and he for her. We were all in battle together when Tyrus was betrayed by a warlord and Moria was taken. We presume she is being held captive by Alvar Kitsune. She would sooner kill Gavril than willingly share the same room with him."
That, Ashyn would admit, overstated the matter. Her sister's feelings for Gavril were complex. Rage and hate and hurt and betrayal. She did care for him, though it was not in the same way she cared for Tyrus. But to present such a convoluted picture to Edwyn wouldn't help her sister's case.
"I understand you are close--" he began.
"No," Ashyn said, with some snap in her voice. "If you need to comment on that then you don't understand at all. Until a moon ago, I'd never spent more than a day away from her."
"I do not mean to be indelicate, Ashyn, but you are both in the time of life when the body and mind can be at odds with each other. If she was alone with Gavril Kitsune in the Wastes, as I understand, for many days--and nights--it is possible that something occurred between them and she is too ashamed to tell you."
Ashyn's laugh rang through the cave. "Another girl, perhaps. But not my sister. If anything happened between them, I'd have had a full and enthusiastic accounting of it. For Moria, there is no war between mind and body. They both want . . ." She felt her cheeks heat then, realizing what she was saying in her haste to defend her sister. "The same thing."