Page 96 of Heart of the Shadow King

“I know more than you think.”

Your life, your reality, is too small to comprehend the pain of dragons.

“Pain is not measured by size or contained within the bounds of time. It simply is. My pain. Yours. It is one. It connects us, like air, like heat, like life and death.”

Death?

The dragon roars, her being swelling up, pressing against the barriers of her cell. Her great wings struggle, desperate to unfurl.

Death is not meant for my kind. We are dragons! We defy it!

She bellows the words, but her defiance is underscored by anguish. Her eyes, the size of small moons, roll in her great head, brimming with fire, with agony.

“I can help,” I say, my voice ringing from theurzul, echoing from every deep and hidden chamber of the Under Realm. “I can spare you this pain.”

One of your dust-kind tried that already. It did not work. It cannot.

“Did you not yourself say Nornala promised you relief? I am sent by the gods. I bear their gift. And I will help you now.”

Arraog roars, her meaning too immense even for my expanded self to fathom. But her pain hits me, resounding against every facet of my multiplied being—sharp and ringing like the toll of funeral bells. It is neither an acquiescence nor a refusal. It is merely pain unending. It will shatter this world if I do not stop it now.

I summon theurzul. All those voices, millions upon millions. All those vibrations singing through me. Even as my once-mortal frame stands in that forest of crystal, my true self, my new self, channels that power, sends it coursing to the center of the world. It strikes Arraog. She roars again, tail thrashing, claws slashing. The bolt goes deep, penetrating her thick hide straight to her heart, that huge burning furnace which threatens to obliterate me. But I am not so easily destroyed. I gather more power, more radiant song, and send it in another, greater wave.

It hardens. Becomes rock.

Arraog shakes her body, shakes the world. Fractures run through layer after layer of stone. But I am relentless. Theva-jorspell and I are one, and we are all theurzulof this realm. As swiftly as she destroys, we renew, until the hardened crust around her heart holds firm. Theva-jorspreads then, covering her gnarled form in shining crystal.

This can work. It must work. I can enstone Arraog.

Foolish dust-being.

Her voice growls deep and low, shattering crystals only for their fragments to take up the song anew.

Foolish, foolish.

You hasten the end you seek to prevent.

“Enough!” I cry and pull theva-jorover her mouth. “Go into the darkness, dragon, and become as stone.”

42

VOR

The moment she dies, Maylin’s spell over me breaks.

I feel the snap of her control and wrench an agonized breath into my lungs. My face is wet with tears: a child’s sorrow, a son’s loss. But other, stronger forces drive me now. Laying my mother’s broken body down, I pause just long enough to rest her bloody hands across her withered breast, to whisper a brief prayer of pleading to the gods.

Then I turn and, no longer restrained by magic, fling myself to the edge of the chasm.

Another stirring strikes just as I reach it, nearly tossing me over the brink. I drop to my knees, grasp a handful of rock, and manage to hold on until the tremor passes. As soon as I can safely move, I begin my descent, too hurried to be safe, too desperate to care. I have no idea what I will find, no idea what to either hope or fear. I only know I must find her. If I can still get her out before the end, I will. If not . . .

I drive my body faster, half-falling down that narrow stair into darkness. This is the perfect darkness one finds throughout the Under Realm, darkness which has never been touched by traces of light. Even my trolde eyes are useless here. I move entirely on instinct, trusting my feet to find their way.

Red light abruptly bursts across my vision. It is so harsh, I cry out, stagger, and fall back on the steps. Pain lances my head, a twisting, relentless blade. It is some time before I can find the will to move, more still before I dare crack my eyelids. The world is bathed in a raw glow, pulsing up from the depths. I cannot look at it. I’m obliged to shut my eyes again and simply feel my way down, down, down.

Faraine!my heart cries, driving me ever onward.Wait for me. Do not go where I cannot follow.How long ago was it since I extracted that promise from her lips? Since I held her living body, so newly restored, and knew I could not bear to be parted from her again? I was a different man then. A man who still hoped he could work miracles, could thwart destiny.

I am not that man anymore. Whatever arrogance burned in his breast is extinguished, leaving behind only one last, faint ember of need. Need for her. To save her. Even as I failed to save my world.

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