Chapter 323: Why Did You Call Me?

Then her gaze slid past the silver dragon, to the one lying beside her.

It was the largest of the three. Its scales were not the dull gold of old coins. They were the deep, molten gold of a sunset caught in metal, and even in the torchlight they seemed to glow from within. Its head rested on its claws. Its eye was half open, enormous and ancient and warm.

She knew that eye.

"I...." she said. "I know you."

The golden dragon did not move.

"You were chained," she whispered. "In the tower. There was a window, high up, and the moon came through it. I came in through the servants’ passage. I wasn’t supposed to be there. And you....." Her throat tightened. "You lifted your head."

"I did," said Auryn.

His voice was deep and slow, and it was the voice from the dream, the one that was like the bottom of a well.

"You touched me," he said. "On the nose. Here." One enormous claw lifted, and settled again. "I have thought about it every day since."

"He talked of nothing else for a week," said Pyros, from the crimson shape on the right. "It was unbearable."

"I did not."

"You purred in your sleep."

"*Pyros.*"

"I’m only saying."

"You came back, child," said Aeris, softly, before the other two could start. "We wondered if you would. And then the dark one came and dragged you out, and we thought, no, she’ll never be allowed." Her great head tilted. "We growled at him, I’m afraid. We were not at our best."

Morgana stared at her.

"That was the tower," she said slowly. "That was.....this isn’t the tower."

"No," said Auryn.

"Then where....."

"After the fire, the tower chamber was ruined. Half the roof came down." He glanced, briefly, at Aeris’s ragged wing. "We were moved here. To the lower hall. It is older than the tower. Older than the palace, in truth. We have been here since."

She looked down.

She had not noticed it before. The black stone floor was smooth and clean around the three great shapes, but in a wide ring around each of them lay heaps of twisted iron. Links as thick as her arm. Rings as wide as a cart wheel. They were snapped, and melted, and tossed aside like broken toys, and the stone beneath them was scorched white.

The chains.

She remembered them, bolted into the walls of the tower, thick and black and cruel. She remembered the crimson one thrashing against them, and the silver one pacing until her claws scraped the stone.

They were free.

"You broke them," she said.

"We did," said Pyros, with grim satisfaction.

"And you’re still here."

"Where would we go?" said Aeris, with a faint, dry smile. "We are very old, child. And very tired. Freedom is a fine thing. It is only that nobody tells you what to do with it after."

Morgana swallowed.

She felt very small and very cold. Her bare feet were numb on the stone. She wrapped her arms around herself, over the thin white nightgown, and tried to understand.

"Why did you call me?" she asked.

It was the first thing she had said that was her own. It came out small and cracked, and the three great heads turned toward her as one.

"Because we could," said Aeris.

She blinked.

"For eighteen years you were hidden. Hidden from the kings, hidden from us, hidden from everything that looked." The silver dragon’s golden eye was very bright. "We tried. Oh, we tried. We reached out for you a thousand times. And we found nothing but a wall. A great grey wall, smooth as glass."

"Except once," said Auryn quietly.

"Except once. In the tower." Aeris looked at her. "You came through the door, and the wall was thin, just for a moment, like a veil in a draft. And I thought, *there. There she is.* And then it closed again."

"But it’s failing now," said Pyros.

"It is cracking," said Auryn. "And through the cracks, at last, we heard you."

"Heard me?"

"Your heartbeat." Aeris smiled, if a dragon could be said to smile. A slow curve of her great jaw. "It has been the loudest sound in the world for days."

Morgana’s mouth was dry.

"I think," she said carefully, "that I’d like to wake up now."

"You are awake," said Auryn gently.

"I’m not. I’m dreaming. I was in my bed. I...." She looked down at her feet. At her bare toes, grey with cold. At the faint damp print she had left on the black stone. "I walked here."

"You did."

"In my sleep."

"We are sorry for that," said Aeris. "It was the only road we had."

"You called me."

"Yes."

"You can’t just call people." Her voice shook. "You can’t just reach into somebody’s head and....and make them walk. That isn’t.....that’s not....."

"No," said Auryn. "It is not."

She stared at him.

"We should not have done it that way," said the old gold dragon. "You are right. It was a wrong thing, and I ask your forgiveness. But there was so little time, and your kings have not let us near you." His eyes were very gentle. "We thought, perhaps, if we could only look at you once more."

"Look at me?"

"Yes."

"Why?"

Auryn did not answer at once.

Aeris stirred.

She moved her great head, slowly, along the line of Morgana’s body, from her bare feet to her loose hair, and she stopped a hand’s breadth from her face. Her breath was warm, and smelled of cold metal and old smoke. Her golden eye held Morgana’s.

"Oh," she whispered.

"What?"

"Oh, you poor thing."

"What?" Morgana’s voice cracked. "What is it?"

Aeris lifted one enormous claw.

She did it with enormous care. It came up out of the dark like a curved black scythe, and it paused, trembling slightly, in the air a little way from Morgana’s cheek. It did not touch her. It only hung there, as though the dragon were stroking something invisible.

"I can still smell him," said Aeris.