Return of the Exile

15 Last Flight for Home

After some diligent searching, Linsha and Callista found a few pieces of driftwood and some dried seaweed, enough fuel to start a small fire. Linsha used an old method her father showed her once that involved rubbing sticks together very quickly over a tiny heap of tinder to start a fire. It took a while to catch, but eventually they had a small fire burning in the shelter of the dunes. They roasted a fish Linsha had saved from the morning, ate some bread from their tiny store, and drank a mouthful of water. They took turns keeping a watch that night, mostly to prevent the fire from going out.

Morning came and the wind died. The clouds drifted to the east. The sun shone benevolently on the island, and the seas moderated. But Sirenfal did not wake up. “Is she all right?” Callista asked worriedly. “She’s alive,” Linsha reported. She checked the dragon’s breathing and heartbeat, and ran her hand gently over the livid wound on Sirenfal’s shoulder. “Is she all right? I don’t know. This wound really bothers me. It’s become much worse. We’ll let her sleep. All we can do is wait.”

They spent the rest of the day scrounging for more fuel for the fire and food to eat. Callista finally washed the soot and blood from her body, and Linsha cut strips from her pants to make coverings for her bare feet. Sunburn and thirst plagued them all day, and tiny sandfleas bit their skin unmercifully. The women slept fitfully in the dunes again that night, hoping fervently Sirenfal would soon wake. The water was almost gone.

When morning came and Sirenfal still slept unmoving, Linsha decided to try to reach the dragon with magic. Her mystic powers of the heart were not particularly strong and magic was still unpredictable, but if she could do something to help the dragon even for a moment, it would be worth the attempt. She knelt beside Sirenfal, took the two dragon scales in her hand, and leaned against the brass’s warm shoulder. While Callista watched, Linsha turned her concentration inward and focused within her own heart and mind. She felt the power surge through her blood and to her skin and muscles. The answering power of a much older force rose from the scales in her hand to join hers, and as one the magic flowed out of her hands and into the ailing dragon. Linsha’s thoughts went with it. She spread the power outward into the dragon’s body to heal and strengthen, but to her surprise she met resistance. A clump of darkness, an evil malignancy, lay close to Sirenfal’s heart. It clung tenaciously to her like a deadly tumor growing steadily toward her blood vessels and her pumping heart. Linsha recognized the taint of the evil. It was the same foulness she had felt in the bolt cut from the Abyssal Lance that she had pulled from Crucible’s back.

Oh, Sirenfal…

I cannot fight it, the brass spoke in Linsha’s thoughts. I have tried.

What can I do to help?

You have already helped me. You freed me. Now I will do what I can for you while I still have life within me.

Linsha felt the dragon stir under her hands. Sirenfal was coming out of her deep sleep. “No!” Linsha cried, deeply worried. “Stay asleep. Give yourself time to heal and recover.”

There will be no healing. I will not leave you and your friend alone on this island to die.

The spell broke, and Linsha’s link to the dragon faded away. She was left standing beside the brass, feeling helpless, inadequate, and close to tears. Sand sprayed around her, forcing her to step back, as the dragon rose from her nest and spread her wings.

“It’s time to go,” she told her companions.

“Sirenfal, you don’t have to do this,” Linsha insisted. “If you fly now, the damage will spread faster. The splinters are close to your heart. The physical effort of flying could move them to your heart that much quicker.”

“We’ll find another island. One with food and water. I won’t leave you here.” She curved her neck down and noticed several of her scales had fallen off into the sand nest. With surprising delicacy, she picked up a brass scale with her talons and dropped it at Linsha’s feet.

Linsha stared at the pale metallic scale for a long moment before she picked it up. “Iyesta would have been proud of you, you know,” she said, looking up at the young brass through a blur of tears.

“Um, Linsha, what is going on?” Callista asked. “Is she feeling better?”

Linsha decided not to go into detail and worry Callista that much more. Sirenfal was right. If they stayed on the island without water and adequate food, they were dead. They would just have to take the risk of flying and hope the dragon could reach more land before the lance splinters killed her.

“She wants to go now,” Linsha said. “Get the dagger and the waterskin.”

Together they buried the tiny fire, gathered their meager belongings, and climbed up the leg of the waiting dragon. As soon as the two women were settled on her back, the brass took a running leap into the wind and beat hard to gain height above the ocean waves. The island disappeared behind them and the sea lay wide and vast below, sparkling in the morning sunlight.

For a long while Sirenfal flew silently, concentrating on forcing her wings to beat. She did not fly high but stayed low near the waves. This way, if something happened to her she would not fall to the sea from a great height.

Unfortunately the lower altitude did not give Linsha and Callista the best view of the sea, and Linsha was terribly afraid they would miss something. Her best guess was that they were near the chain of islands that separated the Blood Sea of Istar from the Courrain Ocean and that the tiny island they had landed on had been a harbinger of those islands. But if that was the case, where were the larger islands? They had been flying for several hours, and Karthay, Mithas, Kothas, or even Saifhum should have been in sight by now. But she could see nothing. There was only water and a large, empty horizon.

All at once Sirenfal lurched lower. Her head began to weave as if she could not see where she was going. Her wing beats faltered. She gave a low, keening cry of pain.

“Oh, gods,” Linsha muttered. “Hang on!” she shouted to Callista.

The two women clung desperately as the dragon shuddered beneath them.

Although the dragon struggled to stay aloft, she could not fight her dying body. She dropped lower and lower toward the water until at last she stretched out her legs like a rudder, spread her wings as far as they would go, and coasted the last few lengths into the sea. Water washed up around the women in two large waves, drenching them both. When it subsided Linsha and Callista found themselves gasping and sitting on a motionless dragon half-submerged in the surging waves.

“Sirenfal!” Linsha cried. She dove off the brass’s shoulder and swam to the head that floated in the water. She prodded and patted the dragon’s nose and rubbed her forehead, but there was no response. The dragon’s light eyes were half-open; they appeared dim and cloudy. There were no bubbles coming from her nostrils.

I’m sorry, came the softest whisper in Linsha’s mind—followed only by silence and an emptiness that tore at Linsha’s heart. The world rocked.

“No! ” Linsha screamed. She beat at the dragon’s head with her fist, flailed at the water, and bellowed her rage at the absent gods. “No! Not again! I’ve had it! I can’t lose any more! Do you hear me? Stop it! Stop it! I can’t take any more of this!”

The grief she had kept inside for so many friends suddenly came boiling out in a raging, uncontrolled paroxysm of emotion she vented to the cruelty of the gods in a screaming fit that lasted until she was hoarse. Finally her screams dissolved into deep, wracking sobs. She cried for what seemed uncounted hours, purging the grief she had locked away for Sir Morrec, Sir Remmik, the Knights of the Citadel, the Legionnaires who had been her friends, Captain Mariana, General Dockett and the militia, the centaurs, the people of Scorpion Wadi, Afec, and especially Iyesta and Sirenfal. She thought she had handled the deaths so well, keeping them closed in a dark chest in her mind, staying cold and professional while she needed to be. But this loss of another friend, another dragon, was more than her will power could control. She held onto the dead dragon’s neck and poured her tears into the uncaring sea until she was drained and exhausted.

Callista sat on the dead dragon’s back and stared open-mouthed at her. After a while, when Linsha’s sobs had eased to exhausted, hiccupping spasms, the courtesan gritted her teeth and eased into the water. Holding on to the dragon’s neck ridges, she pulled herself along the neck until she reached Linsha’s side and gently took her arm. She pulled Linsha back to the dragon’s body and helped her climb up out of the water. Both women were chilled and soaked, and they huddled together to stay warm until the wind dried their clothes. Callista gave Linsha the last sips of water from the water bag.

Linsha felt drained and weaker than a kitten. With Callista’s help, she lay down on Sirenfal’s upper wing vane and fell fast into a deep slumber. She slept through the rest of the afternoon, the evening, and well into the night.

She was still deep in sleep when a familiar voice drew her out into a dream.

Linsha, my beautiful one. Come talk to me.

She twisted her head around and saw him standing on the water near the dragon’s wing. Starlight filled his form with pale light and glittered in his blue eyes. He saw her eyes open and gave her his roguish grin.

That’s good. Come out of your sleep. You have cried your tears for all of us, but now you must look to yourself.

“I didn’t cry for you,” she said. “Good gods, Ian! Why do you keep coming to pester me?”

He tried to look affronted but it didn’t work on his spectral face. Pester you? I believe I warned you the last time and helped save your life.

She snorted at him, not willing to admit he was right. “So how do you manage to visit me? I thought Takhisis had all the souls of the dead under her control or something like that.”

Something like that, he agreed.

“Does she know you come to visit a Solamnic Knight?”

Her mind is busy elsewhere.

Linsha slowly pushed herself upright and looked at Ian Durne’s ghost hovering close to Sirenfal’s shoulder. “What do you want this time? I know about Lanther now—and surely there are no draconians out here.”

Green Eyes, don’t you ever appreciate me? He grinned, charming and handsome even beyond the grave.

Her eyes suddenly narrowed as a thought occurred to her. “Tell me, sir knight, did you know Lord Bight was a dragon?”

He laughed. Not until he bit my head off. If I had known that, I would, not have gone after him with just a sword.

“Do you know where he is now?”

Do you mean is he dead? No. Do I know exactly where he is at this moment? No.

Linsha put her head back down and closed her eyes to hide the sudden surge of relief. “Fine. If you’re not going to be any help, you may leave.”

Something cold like mist trailed over her face, and she opened her eyes again to see Ian hovering very close to her. His features were clear and sharp as crystal in the starlight and the look on his face was sad.

I did love you in my own way, he told her softly. But there is another who is far more worthy of you. Stay alive for him. Watch out for the sharks.

Sharks? The word jabbed through Linsha on a shaft of fear. She bolted upright just as Ian’s spirit faded into the night breeze. “Ian, wait!” she called, too late.

Beside her, on Sirenfal’s other wing, Callista jerked awake. “Linsha? Who are you shouting at?”

Dazed, Linsha stared around her and realized that Ian was gone—if he had even been there. She was awake now, trembling in the chilly night, and wishing she were still asleep. Even talking to Ian in a dream was better than sitting on a sinking corpse in a vast sea while her body ached from hunger and her throat burned with thirst. She studied the sea around her hoping to see a dark mass of land, the white phosphorescence in breaking waves on a beach, or even the lights from a ship. All she saw was a tint of light on the eastern horizon foretelling the rising of the sun.

“Ian said to watch out for sharks,” she said.

“Who is Ian and how could he be talking to you now?” the courtesan asked.

Linsha shook her head to clear the cobwebs in her thoughts. “Ian is a better friend as a ghost than he was as a man. I don’t know. Maybe he’s just a phantom of my dreams. But he has a point. Sirenfal’s body will draw predators. We need to be higher.”

“She’s also sinking,” Callista said, a note of fear in her voice. “I don’t know how she stayed afloat this long, but I can see her body is deeper in the water.”

They crept off the wing vanes and sat together on the highest point of Sirenfal’s back, waiting for dawn. They were lucky in one thing—the sea was calm and the sky was clear.

When the sun rose, Linsha saw indeed that the dragon’s body was slowly sinking. Her head and neck were under water and the waves lapped up her sides almost to Linsha’s feet. Dismayed, Linsha racked her brains for a plan, for a course of action, for something that would help. What would she do with Callista when the dragon finally sank? The courtesan said she couldn’t swim, and Linsha knew she could not hold up the younger woman for long.

A shark fin sliced through the water near Sirenfal’s head and vanished underwater before Linsha could cry out.

She heard a sharp intake of breath and Callista’s hand grabbed her arm. “Did you see that?” the courtesan hissed.

They both felt a sharp tug on the corpse. A dark shape flashed by followed by a second and third. Something swirled the water near the dragon’s submerged tail, and Linsha turned to see two more triangular fins cut through the waves close behind.

“They’re all around us!” Callista cried, close to panic.

The corpse twitched and rocked a little as the sharks tugged on the scale-covered flesh. Blood swirled in the water.

And blood, Linsha knew, would attract more sharks. Anger roiled in her mind. She had to sit helplessly by while these beasts of the sea tore the dragon apart. In time they would probably kill her and Callista as well. This was not the way she wanted to die. She had survived wars and battles and duels, plagues and invasions, wounds and spells. Was she to die now in the teeth of some mindless creature that felt nothing but hunger? She would never know what, happened to Crucible or Varia, never see her parents again, never fulfill her vow to save the brass eggs. This was not right! There had to be something she could do to get herself and Callista out of this mess.

“Give me the dagger,” she said between clenched teeth.

Callista promptly handed it over. “What are you going to do?” she asked fearfully.

“I don’t know yet. Something.”

But there was nothing she could do. She had no boat, no tools, no real weapon against sharks, no help, and no escape. She sat and watched the sharks swarming around the body of her friend and tearing it to pieces underneath her.

One shark squirmed over the tatters of a wing and wriggled too close to Linsha’s feet. She looked down into its bleak, fathomless eye and stabbed it in the head. Bleeding heavily, it slipped back into the water and was immediately set upon by other sharks.

Callista began to cry behind Linsha’s back. “You can swim. Get off when you can and make a break for it.”

“For what?” Linsha said as calmly as she could. “I wouldn’t make it ten strokes.” She kicked at another shark that came too close and noticed the water was now halfway up Sirenfal’s sides. She pulled up her feet.

Sharks splashed and squirmed on both sides, tearing pieces off the dead dragon. In a few places Linsha could see the bones showing through the ragged flesh. Her anger grew sharper with fear.

All at once the body belched forth a huge bubble of trapped air and dropped deeper in the water. Callista screamed. Both women crawled to their knees and balanced precariously on the back of the sinking corpse. Linsha shouted furiously and fought off any shark that came close.

She was so preoccupied with the gray fins and the slashing teeth around her that she did not see the other gray fins that flashed by and disappeared in the swells. Nor did she pay attention to the faint voice that called in her mind.

Linsha.

Callista lost her balance and slipped into the water. Screaming, she grabbed for any hold on the polished scales. Linsha snatched her arm and managed to haul her back on the dragon’s spine. Both women clung to each other, panting and shaking as the sharks milled around in the water just an arm’s length away.

Linsha!

Linsha heard the call this time as clear and welcome as a morning bell. Her head snapped up. Her eyes lifted to the sky. “Varia?” she cried in disbelief. She turned her emotions inward and converted them to a mental cry for help, a cry she prayed her friend would hear. Varia! I am here! Hurry!

“What is it?” Callista demanded.

“Help,” was Linsha’s answer. “I hope.”

Then the sea was filled with more gray fins, but these fins were shorter, rounder, and curved. The animals that swam beneath them were fast and sleek and utterly fearless. They charged into the midst of the feeding sharks and slashed and rammed them time and again with their powerful noses. Linsha and Callista stared down in disbelief as dolphins killed several sharks and harried the determined survivors that refused to leave their meal.

The significance of the presence of dolphins dawned on Linsha like the hope of a new day. Rising unsteadily to her feet, she looked to sky and saw a small shape come diving down. It was too small to be a dragon, but it was the right size to be an owl with brown and cream feathers.

“Varia!” Linsha shouted in delight.

The owl looped around her, singing an aria of warbles and trills and screeches of pleasure. She soared up and dove again to come spiraling downward in a flight of joy.

Suddenly there was a great roar and a huge splash behind Linsha. Startled she turned around and saw all the sharks were gone. The only creatures left in the water were the dolphins and—she slowly lifted her eyes—one large bronze dragon. He floated in front of Sirenfal’s corpse, his wings half furled like sails and his bronze scales shining with water and sunlight. He lowered his head to look at her, and in that moment she stared into the depths of his amber eyes.

Her heart skipped a few beats; her head grew dizzy. Without thinking about sharks or Callista or Varia or Lord Bight, she jumped in the water and swam to his side. Without a word, he lifted a front leg so she could climb up his shoulder and wrap her arms around his neck. She pressed her face against his wet scales and felt her gratitude, hot and intoxicating, surge through her soul. He was alive and he had come for her.

“Crucible, I can hardly believe it,” Linsha said, stunned by the effort he had made. “How did you find us?”

“Varia said you had been taken to the Tarmak’s homeland,” he explained. “She told me where to go. Fortunately my dolphins found you first.”

“Thank Kiri-Jolith they did. We weren’t going to last much longer.”

“Who is this?” Crucible asked, nodding to Sirenfal’s corpse.

Linsha realized he was veering away from any discussion of their parting or of his human identity or anything that might mar the moment of their reunion. She did not care.

She was so happy to see him and be back in his company that she did not want to talk about any of that either. In time they would have to, but not now, not while the joy of the rescue was so strong in her heart.

“Her name was Sirenfal. Lanther had her trapped on Ithin’carthia. He killed her eggs and experimented on her.”

Crucible swam slowly around the remains of the brass while the dolphins frolicked and leaped around him. “Did she get you off the island? How did she die?”

“Ah,” a small voice called from the back of the floating corpse. “That’s a really long story. Do you think you could get me off before Linsha starts it?”

“Who are you?” the dragon asked.

Varia swooped low and hooted with pleasure. “Callista! You’re here!”

“And I would not be here without her,” Linsha said with a grin. “Please get her off. She can’t swim.”

“With pleasure,” replied Crucible. He swam close to the dead dragon and extended his powerful front leg for the courtesan to climb over. Callista tossed the leather bag holding the stolen text to Linsha and stepped gingerly onto Crucible’s leg. As soon as she was sitting safely on his shoulders behind Linsha, he veered away.

“Crucible, please do something for her,” said Linsha, indicating the dead brass. “She doesn’t deserve to be left to the sharks.”

He made a sharp squealing noise that made the dolphins back away then took a deep breath and closed his eyes to concentrate. A brilliant bolt of fiery white light exploded from his mouth and played over the dead dragon.

The light was so intense that it forced Linsha to shield her eyes. She did not see the eruption of steam and bubbles as the bronze’s breath hit the cool water and the corpse. She heard an odd noise as the body disintegrated in the beam of sizzling light. When she opened her eyes and looked at the place where Sirenfal had been, there was nothing but clouds of steam.

“Thank you,” she said. She and Callista exchanged glances of mingled relief and wearied sadness.

Then Linsha raised her arm in an invitation to her long-lost friend, and Varia came swooping down to accept. She landed on the Rose Knight’s wrist and sidestepped carefully up her arm to sit happily on her shoulder. Linsha buried her face in Varia’s warm feathers and inhaled the owl’s familiar scent.

“Thank you to you, too. I was not ignoring you.”

“I know,” the owl replied. “I can bide my time.” She gently nibbled Linsha’s ear. “It’s just so good to see you alive.”

“I think we all have stories to tell.”

“And lots of time to tell them,” said Varia dryly.

Followed by his pods of delighted dolphins, the bronze dragon turned in the water. Using his powerful tail, he began the long swim for the Plains and the Missing City.