(Summertime, Eleven Years Later)

Dustin

Rain beat down on Dustin’s naked skin as his captors led him through the mountain pass, back toward the Spyre. Dustin didn’t begrudge them the clothes—after the third time they had caught on fire, his captors had realized the futility of the gesture, mumbled their apologies, and left him nude. As it was, steam rose around him in great columns, mingling with the shroud of rain, spooking the horses.

Dustin did, however, begrudge them the bewitched metal rings encircling his wrists. They rubbed and burned and itched with every motion of his hands. Further, the infuriating bands kept him chained to the back of a supply wagon when he would much rather have been gambling in the vast dicing halls of Kegger’s Port.

In all fairness, they’d tried to give him a horse, but he’d burned through the saddle, and when they’d tried to put him in the back of the wagon, it had caught on fire.

“How luch longer?” one of the younger guards asked Tyroan, the Unmade captain-in-arms. The boy’s tusks poked out from the base of his jaw, pressing against his lips, making it hard for him to form ‘m’s’ and ‘p’s’ and ‘b’s.’

Before Tyroan—who himself hated to speak due to the ungainly length of his wolf’s snout—could respond, Dustin said, “About seventeen days, if we don’t get hit with a blizzard in the pass.”

The youngster, Seph, glanced at Dustin with sky-blue eyes that seemed out of place under a boarlike brow. The odd look was common—the younger Auldhunds weren’t sure what to make of Dustin. The elders, the infuriating bastards who had brought Dustin back to the Spyre time and again, treated him like a peer, aside from the spare-donkey-tied-to-the-cart-routine. They even played chits with him around the fire each night, cursing when he beat them time and again.

It boggled the youngsters’ poor minds, considering that Dustin stumbled behind a cart naked and in irons, and Dustin couldn’t help but laugh at the boy’s baffled look.

“I’ve been down this trail fourteen times before,” he said.

“Fifteen,” Tyroan slurred.

Dustin frowned at the back of the Auldhund’s head, then began counting on his fingers. “Aw, hell,” he muttered. “So it was. I forgot the time you had me in the box.”

Tyroan grunted.

“I still haven’t forgiven you for that, you know. I had nightmares for weeks.”

“Shouldn’t have eaten my horse,” Tyroan muttered, still scanning the path ahead.

Dustin glanced at the way the heavy workhorse’s back was straining under the enormous weight of the Dyrian Auldhund and he snorted. “I put the creature out of its misery. How much do you weigh, anyway? Four hundred?”

Tyroan did not deign to reply.

The youngster’s eyes widened at the news, his piggish nostrils flaring. “He ate your horse?” When Tyroan didn’t reply, the younger turned to Dustin and whispered, “You ate his horse?”

“He pissed me off,” Dustin said. “Would have eaten him, too, had he been on it, but the lucky bastard had been off in the woods taking a dump.” Then, at the youngster’s sudden fear, he laughed and held up the wristlets that pinned him to the cart. “Not to worry, little one. They’re getting better at what they do.”

“Actually, you run off one more time and I don’t think the Spyre will pursue,” Tyroan said. “Tired of wasting resources on your miserable hide.”

“That makes sense,” Dustin asked. “I haven’t killed anyone in decades.”

“Tried to kill me,” Tyroan said.

“Yes, but you’re a pain in my ass. Others have the good sense to stay away.”

Auldhund Tyroan grunted again.

“Sir?” Seph asked his captain, glancing at Dustin. “No offense, but why doesn’t the Spyre just execute him?” He looked at Dustin. “No offense, drake.”

“None taken.” Dustin said. “I’ve oft wondered that myself, when I’m trudging through the mud, naked, tied to a cart.”

This time, Tyroan turned in his saddle to look back at them. Above a black, wolflike snout, the old Auldhund’s yellow left eye was swollen shut from where Dustin had burned it out, many decades ago on his first escape. The Auldhund’s snout and head, too, bore the puckers and scars of fire. It was a horrendous look, and Dustin felt a slight pride he had been the one to inflict such fearsome damage to a creature as indestructible as an Unmade. He also felt guilty that the old Auldhund hadn’t been able to recover.

Tyroan’s yellow eye locked on the youngster. “What did you say?”

Seph cringed. “I said, if he causes the Spyre so many problems, why doesn’t the Spyre execute him?”

“Fool.” Tyroan returned his attention to the road ahead.

Seeing the boy’s confusion, Dustin took pity on him. “I’m the last of my kind, kid.”

The boy blinked. “So?”

“So,” Tyroan snapped, “Back before the Spyre had been built, the Aulds found a scroll in the ruins of Ariod that predicted the Spyre would fall after the last fire drake died. And, since it was written by the same gal who foresaw the razing of Ariod, it makes the Spyre a little leery of chopping off his fool head.”

“Lucky me,” Dustin said.

Tyroan made a disgusted sound and turned back to the road.

All companionship aside, they both knew Tyroan would just love to choke the life out of Dustin in his sleep. In fact, Dustin was pretty sure one of the Aulds had put the old coot under a geas not to kill him, otherwise Tyroan’s orders that Dustin not be harmed probably would have slipped his mind decades ago.

Then Dustin frowned, realizing that the Auldhunds could not be spelled. He grew a little nervous, at that, and hoped Tyroan didn’t sense it. The last thing he needed was the stuffy old coot thinking he was afraid of him.

“What about the ice drakes?” Seph asked. “There’s still plenty of those.”

Though Dustin couldn’t see his face, he knew by Tyroan’s huffing groan that he rolled his eyes. “Yes, and this one does everything in his power to pick fights with them, even when he knows he’s under the Spyre’s protection.”

Dustin shrugged. “I don’t care if the Spyre falls. It throws me in a dungeon every chance it gets. Treats me like dirt.”

Tyroan swiveled again. “Dirt? You get velvet breeches and fireproof cushions for your hairy ass!”

Dustin glanced at the youngster. “They treat me like dirt.” Then he smiled. “Besides, I’m not picking fights. I’m mating.”

Tyroan sputtered, his scarred face going slack. “What?”

“Figure if there’s more than one fire drake out there, you’ll have to stop harassing me.”

Tyroan continued to stare at him as the horses moved the party forward in silence. “You sonofabitch.”

Dustin grinned.

“Can a fire drake and an ice drake have young?” another Auldhund asked, kicking her horse into a trot to walk on the other side of Dustin from Seph. She was a winged one, with long black feathers draping down either side of her horse’s flanks, wet and unusable in the rain. Her name was Hali—Dustin remembered it from the last time they’d dragged him back to the Spyre.

Tyroan had not torn his gaze off of Dustin. “Can they?”

Dustin shrugged. “We’ll see in about two or three years. It’s been about thirty-eight and a half years since I found Cria.” When they stared at him, he added, “Long gestation period.”

Tyroan’s face was blank, obviously trying to imagine a fire drake mating with an ice drake.

“Very carefully,” Dustin said, anticipating his question.

Slowly, Tyroan shook his grizzled, furry black head. “You goat. Nobody could figure out why you kept coming back out to the mountains. But you had a plan all along, didn’t you? How many of them have you impregnated?”

Dustin grinned back at him. “It’s raining pretty hard. Light’s all but left us. Where are we to camp?”

Seph piped up. “I heard the ruins of Nefyti are in these mountains.”

“They are,” Tyroan said, “But the last thing we want is to take the drake to those cursed stones. It’d undo the magics binding him.”

“Like last time,” Dustin said cheerfully, steam pluming up around him as the rain continued to evaporate from his skin.

Tyroan glared at him and kicked his horse forward, undoubtedly to find them a place to camp.

“Drake,” Seph asked, once their captain had disappeared, “How do you keep getting out of the Spyre, when there’s so many stronger creatures they keep in those walls who never escape?”

“They don’t crave freedom like I do,” Dustin said.

“Surely there must be a trick to it—” Seph started.

Dustin laughed. “There is. But you’ll be the last ones I tell.” When it looked like Seph would try another route, Dustin lifted a shackled hand to cut him off. “Never forget, boy, regardless of how chummy we get along the road, if I had to choose between my freedom and your life, I’d choose my freedom.”

Seph quieted, then, and turned his tusked face to look at the ground.

“Greenling,” Hali laughed, brushing past them.

Up ahead, the horse pulling the cart snorted and stopped suddenly. The Auldhund in the driver’s carriage clucked and snapped the reins, but the horse refused to move. At the same time, Hali’s face contorted in a frown. “What the hell is that?”

“What?” Dustin asked, struggling to see. On foot, he didn’t have the vantage of the others, and the cart and the rain cut down on his visibility. “Why’d we stop?”

Hali kicked her horse forward and disappeared around the cart. Dustin struggled to see beyond the piles of supplies in front of him. “What is it?” he asked Seph, who had remained at his side.

Seph’s big nostrils were flaring, his plated fingers clutching his reins. “Looks like a body.”

“It’s Captain Tyroan!” Hali shouted suddenly. “He’s missing a hand! Someone come help me get him up!”

Dustin’s flesh went cold. “Seth, get Hali back here.”

Seph glanced at him, looking confused. “But she just told us to—”

“Now!” Dustin snapped.

But it was too late. Hali let out a blood-curdling scream as a huge black shape slammed into her and the horses broke in a panic. Dustin jerked and fell as the cart suddenly lurched forward, moving at speeds his human feet could not match. He fell to his knees and cried out as his lower body was dragged upon the sharp mountain rocks. Everywhere, horses and men screamed in death. Dustin felt something rake his back with claws of acid before the horse dragged his cart over the edge of the ravine. Cart, horse, and drake became one kicking, breaking ball of flesh and wood.

Blessedly, Dustin passed out well before he tumbled to the bottom.

“Drake.” It was Seph’s voice.

Something prodded him in the shoulder and Dustin groaned. When he opened his eyes, he saw that the rain had stopped. Above him, the sun’s dying light hit the wet wall of the ravine, casting the red-orange rock into a dozen different colors.

The Auldhund squatted beside him, his split-hooved feet digging into the pebbly ground beside Dustin’s nose. Dustin groaned and tried to sit up.

He was pinned under the shattered wagon, his wrists still secured to the axle. He collapsed back to the ground with a moan.

“Drake!” Seph said, shaking him again, obviously in a panic. “Get up! I think it followed us.”

That got his attention. Dustin tried to sit up again and this time Seph helped pull him out from under the mess, dragging the axle. Dustin settled his back against a rock, panting. The whole front of his body was dripping liquid fire from where the stones had wounded him, leaving molten puddles of orange that singed the stones underneath him.

“Where is it?” Dustin managed. He tugged the cuffs on his wrists, found them still securely attached to the stubborn hunk of wood.

“It chased me down the ravine, but it wouldn’t walk on the stone. Drake, I think it’s a—”

“Yes I know,” Dustin snapped, trying not to let his irritation show. “And it’ll be here just as soon as it can find a way down the canyon. Where’s the key to these?” He held up the enchanted cuffs that were padlocked to the ring set into the man-sized wooden log.

Seph gave it a blank look.

“Boy,” Dustin said softly, “If that thing eats me—”

“I know,” Seph whimpered. He glanced at the wagon’s axle, looking like the terrified youngster he was. “I don’t have the key.”

Dustin pushed himself up and glanced up the wall of the canyon. He wasn’t sure, but he thought he saw a shadow move along the goat path leading down. “Get me to solid stone,” he said. “No cracks, no dirt. A patch of stone.”

Seph straightened and looked up at the canyon. “I saw something that might work when I came down after you.”

“Then take us there,” Dustin cried, looking up to see the shadows of the path moving closer.

Seph bent, picked up the wagon axle in one big hand, and hefted it over his shoulder. With the other, he tugged Dustin to his feet. Before Dustin could object, the Auldhund had lifted him off his feet, one arm wrapped under his belly. Then, in a lumbering gait, the boy trotted up the canyon path. Toward their pursuer.

On the slopes ahead of them, Dustin saw the shadows flicker again. “Hurry, boy,” he said.

Seph veered off the main path. Then, with agility and grace that seemed unnatural coming from such an ungainly creature, he danced out onto a ledge of stone overlooking a fifty-foot drop. It was only three feet wide, cut off from the path ahead by a ten foot crack in the canyon wall.

“Not big enough,” Dustin said, panicking. “Go back.”

“I know,” Seph said. “Hold on.” Then, to Dustin’s horror, he felt the boy’s massive hind legs bunch beneath them.

Dustin felt his guts tumble into his throat as the Auldhund launched them across the chasm. Somehow, he held down a scream.

Seph landed them with an oomph, his big legs compacting beneath them on the stone ledge. For a moment, Dustin thought they were going to lurch backwards, over the edge. Then Seph ducked and dropped to his knees, lowering Dustin and the axle to the flat stone precipice that cut outwards at an angle, spreading to over ten feet wide in an overhang that jutted out above the canyon.

Seeing it, Dustin started crawling towards the widest point. On the dirt path only fifteen feet above their heads, they heard the scattering of pebbles and hoofbeats. For long, breathless moments, they sat there in silence.

Then they heard Tyroan’s soft, questing voice. “Is anyone alive down there?”

Seph’s blue eyes went wide and he leaned back to look up.

Dustin caught his big arm grimly. “That’s not Tyroan.”

“Seph? Hali? I’m injured. I need help.” When Seph didn’t reply, the hoofbeats continued down the path, stumbling. Seph lunged up, looking as if he would follow.

“It’s looking for a way down,” Dustin said. “Be still.”

“But if it’s Tyroan—”

“It’s not, boy,” Dustin said sharply. “Now sit down. You leave me here and we’re both going to die.”

Reluctantly, Seph lowered himself back to the platform of stone beside him.

Sure enough, the hoofbeats returned, steadier, now. They watched the ridge above them, waiting.

After a moment, Tyroan peered over the edge. But it was not Tyroan. Its eyes were too big and swirled with blackness, and its jaws were filled with needle-sharp teeth whereas Tyroan had had the canines of a dog.

The perfect tones of Tyroan’s voice that trickled down to them from the thing left Dustin cold to the core. “Come up here, Seph. I killed it.”

Seph started to stand, but Dustin yanked him back down. “Look at its eyes, you fool!”

The boy did, and he audibly gasped.

When it saw that the boy was not going to obey, the creature peeled Tyroan’s lips back from a gaping maw of glistening white, needle-like teeth. “You can’t stay there forever, drake.”

Dustin laughed. “You can’t stay there forever, fade. Sooner or later the sun’s going to come out.”

“That’s why I need you,” the creature purred. “Come up here. Join me.” The call was seductive, seeping into his skin, caressing his mind. Beside Dustin, the boy shuddered.

“I don’t think so,” Dustin said, shaking himself. “I’ve grown somewhat attached to my hands.”

Its too-big eyes swirled with void. It lifted a taloned finger and licked the fiery orange residue there, smiling down at him. “Now I have your scent, you won’t be able to hide.”

“Until I take my natural form, you mean,” Dustin said. “Unless, of course, you can track ashes and flame.”

“Of course,” the creature said, smiling. “I almost forgot.” It reached under its clothing and held up a small green key—the same color green as Dustin’s shackles. “Were you looking for this, drake?”

Dustin tensed before he could hide it.

Almost thoughtfully, the thing reached out and grasped the bewitched key with a clawed thumb and forefinger. Dustin saw him squeeze. A moment passed, then Dustin heard the brittle shatter of metal. The creature released its hold on the key and shook its hand out, delivering the contents to the ground.

Ice climbed up Dustin’s spine as the tiny glittering pieces cascaded down the rocks around him. Suddenly, the manacles felt like coals on his skin. It took all of his will to stay calm as he said, “Eat rocks.”

The creature laughed and moved away. This time, they did not hear its footsteps.

Two hours later, they heard a scream in the canyon below.

Seph flinched. “My horse.”

Dustin listened to the continued screams of the animal with grim foreboding. He knew the tszieni was drawing out the death, making sure they heard it from their perch. What bothered him most, however—what still held his heart in an iron grip—was that the tszieni had been sentient enough to talk. To talk...and to deceive.

It meant the monster was old. Very old.

And that it had killed many, many times before.