‘No, Mother. The Imass are mine. Shed blood among my people-any of them-and you will stand alone the day Sukul and Sheltatha arrive, the day of Silchas Ruin who comes to claim the Finnest.’ He glanced across at her. Could white skin grow still paler? ‘Yes, all in a single day. I have been to the Twelve Gates-maintaining my vigil as you have asked.’
‘And?’ The query was almost breathless.
‘Kurald Galain is most perturbed.’
‘They draw close?’
‘You know that as well as I do-my father is with them, is he not? You steal his eyes when it suits you-’
‘Not as easy as you think.’ Her tone was genuine in its bitterness. ‘He… baffles me.’
Frightens you, you mean. ‘Silchas Ruin will demand the Finnest.’-
‘Yes, he will! And we both know what he will do with it-and that must not be permitted!’
Are you sure of that, Mother? Because, you see, I am not. Not any more. ‘Silchas Ruin may well demand. He may well make dire threats, Mother. You have said so often enough.’
‘And if we stand side by side, my son, he cannot hope to get past us.’
‘Yes.’
‘But who will be guarding your back?’
‘Enough, Mother. I warned them to silence and I do not think they will attempt anything. Call it faith-not in the measure of their fear. Instead, my faith rests in the measure of… wonder.’
She stared at him, clearly confused.
He felt no inclination to elaborate. She would see, in time. ‘I would go to welcome these new ones,’ he said, eyes returning to the approaching strangers. ‘Will you join me, Menandore?’
‘You must be mad.’ Words filled with affection-yes, she could never rail at him for very long. Something of his father’s ethereal ease, perhaps-an ease even Rud himself could remember from that single, short visit. An ease that would slip over the Letherii’s regular, unimpressive features, whenever the wave of pain, dismay-or indeed any harsh emotion-was past and gone, leaving not a ripple in its wake.
That ease, Rud now understood, was the true face of Udinaas. The face of his soul.
Father, I do so look forward to seeing you again.
His mother was gone-at least from his side. At a sudden gust of wind Rud Elalle glanced up and saw the white and gold mass of her dragon form, lurching skyward with every heave of the huge wings.
The strangers had all halted, still three hundred paces away, and were staring up, now, as Menandore lunged yet higher, slid across currents of air for a moment, until she faced them, and then swept down, straight for the small party. Oh, how she loved to intimidate lesser beings.
What happened then without doubt surprised Menandore more than even Rud-who gave an involuntary shout of surprise as two feline shapes launched into the air from the midst of the party. Dog-sized, forelegs lashing upward as Rud’s mother sailed overhead-and she snapped her hind legs up tight against her belly in instinctive alarm, even as a thundering beat of her wings lifted her out of harm’s way. At sight of her neck twisting round, eyes flashing in an outraged glare-indignant indeed-Rud Elalle laughed, and was satisfied to see that the sound reached his mother, enough to draw her glare and hold it, until the dragon’s momentum carried her well past the strangers and their defiant pets, out of the moment when she might have banked hard, jaws hingeing open to unleash deadly magic down on the obstreperous emlava and their masters.
The threat’s balance tilted away-as Rud had sought with that barking laugh-and on she flew, dismissing all in her wake, including her son.
And, were it in his nature, he would then have smiled. For he knew his mother was smiling, now. Delighted to have so amused her only son, her child who, like any Imass, saved his laughter for the wounds his body received in the ferocious games of living. And even her doubts, etched in by this conversation just past, would smooth themselves over for a time.
A little time. When they returned, Rud also knew, they would sting like fire. But by then, it would be too late. More or less.
He climbed down from the toppled column. It was time to meet the strangers.
‘That,’ Hedge announced, ‘is no Imass. Unless they breed ‘em big round here.’
‘Not kin,’ Onrack observed with narrowed eyes.
Hedge’s ghostly heart was still pounding hard in his ghostly chest in the wake of that damned dragon. If it hadn’t been for the emlava cubs and their brainless lack of fear, things might well have got messy. A cusser in Hedge’s left hand. Quick Ben with a dozen snarly warrens he might well have let loose all at once. Trull Sengar and his damned spears-aye, dragon steaks raining down from the sky.
Unless she got us first.
