They curled around us, closer than our own shadows, and in the heat I saw flashes of snow-choked forest with deer trails but no deer, trees with bird nests but no birds, and hollows with small animal dens but no small animals. Dry riverbeds, drained ponds with fish rotting in the bottom, and watering holes with prints stamped into the cracked mud. Hot springs were gone. Mud pools had hardened. Geysers hissed steam and nothing more.
-Range is falling apart. There will be little to eat until we reach Heart.-
And then there’d be whatever was in warehouses, no doubt closely rationed by Deborl. Sarit hadn’t mentioned she was going hungry, so I hoped she was doing all right. Water, we could at least get in the form of melted snow.
“Thanks, Cris.” Sam dropped to our sleeping bags and massaged his temples. Lines of weariness crossed his face, and circles darkened under his eyes. He needed a shower and shave. I couldn’t imagine I looked much better. “I’m so glad the dragons are gone.”
I sat next to him and rested my hand on his knee. “Me too. Though I’m relieved they’re helping, even if it’s because they’re trying to get rid of you.”
He winced. “It’s hard to accept that for the last five thousand years, they’ve been coming to Heart to find out whether I’m still alive, and then kill me.”
“Not just kill you, but destroy the place where your reincarnation happens. How do they know that?”
“I wish I knew.”
“And furthermore, how do they identify you every lifetime? Acid Breath made it sound like he could see the song in you, but what does it look like? How does he know? And is he the only one?”
Sam opened his mouth, but I wasn’t finished.
“He said they don’t reincarnate, but do they live longer than humans? Why are they so afraid of the phoenix song? They’ve made your death a priority for thousands of years, and not only is that rude, it’s just so focused. I just don’t understand. And you know, if they didn’t spend so much time trying to kill you, we might never have figured out that you have the phoenix song.”
He gave a soft snort. “I can give you a few answers, but there’s a lot we don’t know about dragons, and probably never will.
“I hate not knowing the truth.”
“That’s one of the things I love most about you. Your endless quest for the truth.” Sam wrapped his arm around my waist and hugged me close. “Well, they do live longer than humans. It appears that they’re effectively immortal—until they’re killed. There are a few we think are as old as Heart. Maybe older.”
“Maybe that’s why they’re so afraid of the phoenix song.” I glanced toward my flute case. “It seems to me those who think they’ll never die are the most afraid of death.”
“In some cases.” He brushed a strand of hair off my face. “And sometimes we finally grow wise enough to understand life is a gift that can’t—shouldn’t—last forever.”
“And the phoenix song . . . ends life?”
Sam shrugged. “I don’t know. The translations from the book are all over the place. Builds and destroys. Life and death. Consumes. Or maybe it’s none of those things.”
Maybe it was all.
His mouth brushed my cheek, then he leaned forward to ladle bowls of soup for each of us. “You played your flute for the dragons twice. What did you play?”
“My songs.”
He shot me a look. “They’re not—”
“I know.” I gave him the most innocent smile I could muster.
He chuckled and shook his head. “And hold your flute up straight while you’re at it.”
I grinned and accepted a bowl. “First I played my minuet. Then I played the one from the demonstration on market day.”
“None of mine.” Mostly he looked curious, but there was a tinge of hurt in his voice. “Why?”
“I wanted to do it on my own. With my music.” It hadn’t been completely on my own. The sylph had been there, as well as Sam’s influence. “I just needed to do it myself, as much as I could.”
“I understand.” His mouth turned up in a half smile. “I was curious if they’d reacted to the music at all, if there was anything in it we could use to figure out the phoenix song.”
“Whatever it is, it’s not in my music. It’s not in any of the parts you helped me clean up.” I closed my eyes, remembering sitting at the piano with him, music resounding around the parlor until it overpowered all my senses and made my whole body vibrate with life. “I’ll do what I said I would before: listen to your music and read the scores. Make note of any trends.”
Stef and Whit came in while we were washing our faces. They both looked grim and exhausted.
“I’ve been intercepting a few messages from within Heart.” Stef held up her SED. “Three dragons were sighted just north of the city, landing in Templedark Memorial. No one has mentioned canisters, but if anyone goes out there . . .”
“Maybe Acid Breath will think to hide them.” My optimism sounded forced even to me.
“Maybe.” Stef checked her SED again as she sat in front of the soup. “Guards have been on alert since the dragons flew over yesterday. They’re worried about another attack. Usually it’s a small attack followed by a much larger one, but these have broken the pattern. The same three dragons have come by twice and not attacked either time, so as you can imagine, Deborl is telling people everything they’re afraid to hear.”
Whit nodded and filled bowls for both him and Stef. “Deborl is saying the dragons are coming because of Janan’s ascension—they want to stop him—but Janan will protect them.”
“By now, of course,” Stef went on, “everyone publicly opposed to Janan’s ascension has left or been thrown in prison. So everyone Deborl is talking to is happy to listen to him, or too afraid not to.”
How many people were opposed? Enough to be worth attempting to contact them? Or free them?
“Has there been any talk about what Deborl sent Merton to gather?” Sam asked.
Stef glanced at her SED and scowled. “Nothing about what it is, just that he’s obtained the item and is on his way back to Heart. We’ll be hearing more about whatever it is pretty soon, I assume.”
Great. So whatever Janan needed to help him ascend, he had coming. “I wonder what it is.”
“It sounds like he went a long way to get it—and lost five warriors while he was out—but that’s all I can tell you.”
“Well, there’s not much point in staying here. Menehem’s machine is broken. We’re not getting any more poison. Is anyone opposed to heading back to Heart tomorrow?”
When everyone agreed, I pulled off my boots and outer clothes and got into my sleeping bag, leaving room for Sam. But I couldn’t stay awake long enough to say good night. As soon as I settled on my pillow, I was asleep.
Over the next several days, we kept to the forest as much as possible, always looking up for air drones patrolling the roads in and out of Heart. The snow-covered trees were darkening, turning black where the ground beneath them grew hotter and cooked the roots. Everything was weirdly silent without birdsong and animals chattering and creeks bubbling just out of sight. The forest was dying around us.
Every night, we all went over the temple books, looking for anything about Janan, phoenixes, and dragons. Anything we didn’t already know. Sam and I went over music, but so far nothing stood out. As for when we reached Heart, Sarit said she had a plan.
At last, the immense city wall rose above the woods. We were almost home, with time to spare, thanks to the dragons.
“This way,” Stef said, and she led us toward Midrange Lake—or what was left of it.
Now the lake was a wide, sloping hole in the ground with decaying plants and animals at the bottom. The rotting stink rose up, almost unbearable when mixed with the sulfuric tinge that colored every breath in the center of Range. Everyone groaned and covered their faces with scarves, but that hardly seemed to help.
“The only good thing about the lake being drained,” Stef said, “is that since there is no way into Heart from the surface, we can get into Heart from below. The wall only extends so far beneath the ground, which is the only thing that enabled us to build a sewer system and aqueducts from the lake. If the lake were full, we wouldn’t be able to get into the city.”
First, we had to descend into the pit of the lake.
“Do we go now?” I asked. Clouds hung low in the sky, heavy with the threat of more snow and another cold night. I couldn’t see the position of the sun, but it felt late. We’d been walking for hours.
She nodded. “We might as well. We’ll be in shadow. It will be harder for anyone to see us, and I don’t want to go down there in the dark.”
The sylph went first, forming a line of blackness down the bank. Brown plants flared bright and burned away as the sylph searched for the opening to the aqueduct.
“I sincerely hope this is big enough for us to walk through.” I watched Whit and Stef start down after the sylph, then lowered myself until I found a foothold. Icy mud squished around my boot, and I wanted to be sick as I sank a little. The lake might have drained, but the earth was still damp and gross. The sylph’s passage had only made it worse, warming the mud.
Sam shot me an amused look as he climbed after me. “It’s pretty large. A million people consume a lot of water. Just be grateful she isn’t taking us through the sewer.”
I gagged and followed the others, my boots sucking and slurping as we descended into the bowl of the lake. Muddy walls rose all around.
Metal and shadow caught my eye ahead. A huge pipe protruded from the side of the lake, a thick grille and mesh over the front of it. Weeds dripped off the rusted hinges, then sizzled away as the sylph worked to burn off anything that might get in Stef’s way. She already had her tools out.
The pipe was big enough for me to walk inside, but anyone taller—everyone else—would have to duck their heads or hunch. Finally. A real benefit to my lack of height. Of course, I would need a boost getting inside, since the bottom was at my waist.
“This is the intake pipe,” Stef said, prying off the grille. Whit and Sam stepped in to help. “It pulls in water when the tank inside the industrial quarter is low. The water is strained for large particles here, but there’s still a lot of cleaning to be done before we can drink it.” She grunted, and the metal mesh followed the grille onto the bottom of the lake.
“Of course,” Whit said, “all this is new within the last few thousand years. At one point, we drank straight from the lake. Then we got smart enough to carry the water in and boil it.”
“Gross.” I hid my flute case inside my coat and tightened my backpack straps, then let Sam and Whit boost me into the dark hole of the pipe. When I turned on the lantern Sam handed me, I saw only damp metal, algae, and lots of darkness beyond.
This would be the opposite of fun, but it would be better than trying to walk into the city through one of the arches. Leaving through a normal route hadn’t gone very well, after all.
“Are you sure there’s a way out of this?” I asked. “A way that’s not one of the purification tanks, that is.”
Stef grinned. “There’s a hatch we use to put cleaning drones into the pipes. I swear I’ll get you through this safely.”
“Okay,” I muttered, tapping Sarit a quick SED message to let her know to meet us. Then I helped the others in as best I could, and stood aside so Stef and Whit could lead. Sam followed behind me.
The pipe wasn’t comfortable to walk inside. I’d never thought I minded small spaces before, but the walk underground took forever. We headed down, then up again, and I tried to recall all Stef’s assurances that this was safe: they’d been careful to direct the pipe only where the ground was thick enough to support it, and coat it with heat-resistant material so that if something shifted, the pipe would be unaffected.