Page 3 of Of Empires and Dust
Eventually, the crowds thinned and Calen and the others made their way through the city and across the bridge that separated Aravell from Alura.
Calen stopped at the archway that led into Alura while the others carried on, not noticing he’d lagged behind.
In his moment of solitude, Calen looked up at the words carved into the rock. He swallowed, his hand resting on the coin pommel of the sword at his hip.
“Draleid n’aldryr, Rakina nai dauva. Ikin vir vänta. Ikin vir alura. Marai viel alanín til ata ilynír abur er kerta.” Calen whispered the words, as he had done the first time he’d read them. Now, though, with all he had seen, they held new meaning.
Dragonbound by fire, Broken by death. Here we wait. Here we rest. Until we are called to make whole what is half.
The first time he’d read those words, he’d seen them as a resignation: ‘This is where we rest until we can finally die.’
But when Ithrax and the other dragons had sacrificed themselves to save Calen and Valerys, they had shown him how wrong he’d been. It wasn’t a resignation. It was a proclamation: ‘We will fight until our dying breath. We will not be bowed. We will not yield.’
They were guardians until their last.
A deep sorrow flooded into Calen’s mind from Valerys’s, so powerful it brought tears to his eyes. There were so few dragons left in the world. And, somehow, finding that Valerys wasn’t alone, only to lose so many more, cut far deeper than if they had never known at all.
“Calen?” Dann walked back through the archway, concern in his voice. “What’s wrong?”
“Nothing.”
Dann followed Calen’s gaze to the words etched into the stone, his expression softening. “Therin told me what that means.”
Calen pulled his stare from the words and looked at Dann. Tear drops still rolled over his chin as his lips curled into a brittle smile.
“I’ve got some of those jugs of whatever the elves think passes for mead stashed away in my room,” Dann said, the smile on his lips brittle. “How about tonight we sit in the Eyrie with Valerys and get piss drunk? I’ll have a bit too much, and you’ll have to stop me from wandering off the edge.”
“That sounds… perfect.” Once again, there Dann was when Calen needed him. Despite his own loss, despite his own grief, Dann was always there. “Dann, I…”
Calen searched for the words, but Dann shook his head.
“No.” Dann swallowed hard, his lips contorting, the half-smile fading. The pain in his eyes twisted Calen’s heart. “Not now. Later. I’m not drunk enough for the sappy shit.”
A strange senseof relief swept over Calen as he stepped from the archway and onto the platform that overlooked Alura, taking in the structures of white stone blending into the rock face that swept outwards in a circle and sloped towards the enormous courtyard at the bottom.
Bodies moved to and fro across the many bridges and along the grass paths that wound their way around the spark-carved basin within which Alura was built. Even from that distance, in the courtyard a hundred or so feet below, Calen recognised Thacia’s blood-red hair and bluish skin. The Jotnar sat with her legs crossed by the trees on the central platform, a clutch of others around her, the hulking frame of Asius at her side.
Across the way, eight spark-wrought homes of pure white were set into a massive alcove at the back of the enormous plateau the elven Craftsmages had created when Calen and the others had first reached Aravell. Each home rose several storeys and flowed naturally into the rock face as though part of the mountain itself. In one of those homes, Ella lay still, Faenir watching over her, as he had done since the day she’d collapsed.
The elves of Aravell had bowed to Calen and paid him respect as though he and he alone had saved them from death. But it was Ella who had sacrificed herself to save them. Ella who had paid the price. It was she who deserved their thanks, not him.
Calen had never really given her the credit, but when Haem had not returned from Ölm Forest, his sister had watched over him like a mother hen. She had been the anchor that had stopped him floating adrift, the guiding hand that had kept himon course. She had done so with the combination of mockery and love only a sister could give, but still, she had been there.
As Calen and the others made their way along one of the paths towards the plateau, they passed the Healer, Kiko Sander, leaning against the white wall of one of the homes, her palms pressed against her knees. The mage lifted her gaze, her eyes tired as she smiled at Calen and the others, sweat slicking her needle-straight hair to her head. Before she could say anything, another of the northern rebels, Loura, burst from the doorway in a fluster.
Calen didn’t catch any of the words that passed between them, but the smile vanished from Kiko’s lips and the pair darted back inside without a word.
“I should go help.” Vaeril looked from Calen to the doorway. “We’re losing more injured every day. The infirmaries are full. My people’s Healers can’t keep up. Kiko hasn’t slept.”
“Go,” Calen said, nodding towards the house. “And Vaeril.”
The elf raised a curious eyebrow.
“Don’t overextend yourself.” Calen hesitated. “You can’t save everyone.”
The words were as much for himself as they were for Vaeril.
Vaeril’s mouth stretched into a grim line, but he gave Calen a nod before setting off into the house.
