The Unmaking (The Last Days of Tian Di, #2)(47)

“It’s beautiful,” said Nell.

“You think so?” Ander looked around them and shuddered. “Looks a lonely, unfriendly sort of place, to me.”

He made sandwiches with the supplies Nell had brought but she could only manage a few bites before her head began to spin and her stomach recoil. They slept again and it was day when they woke. This time they were both hungry. Ander prepared some packaged soup over a little camping stove.

“Lah, did you know it would be that bad?” he asked, handing her a bowl once it was ready.

Nell nodded. “But I passed out last time. I spec it’s worse if you dinnay pass out.”

“You should’ve told me, aye” said Ander.

“Sorry,” said Nell. “It didnay seem like the most important thing at the time.”

Ander gave a short laugh that was more of a snort. “That thing is lucky to have a friend like you.”

“He’s nay a thing,” said Nell.

“Lah, what is he, then?”

Nell looked up at the sky. “It’s complicated,” she said.

“Lah, I’ve no doubt about that,” said Ander. “But you’ve got me here, so why dinnay you try doing a little bit of explaining.”

Camped on this deserted plain, with the Ravening Forest on one side and the ruined Temples on the other, Nell was more frightened and unsure than she had expected to be. To comfort herself as much as to fill him in, she told Ander the whole story of her forgotten journey with Charlie and Eliza. She felt better and better as she spoke. She sounded to herself like a hero in a storybook.

“So now what?” asked Ander when she was done. “I hate to say it, but I spec...look, Nell, your friend wasnay showing much sign of life when we put him in there. We cannay wait here for him to pop out again when he may nary do so.”

“He’ll be fine,” Nell insisted.

“Praps so,” said Ander doubtfully. “But then he can take care of himself, nay?”

“I spec so,” Nell agreed. “Lah, you’re right, we cannay just wait here. We’ve got to find Swarn.”

“That witch you were talking about?”

“Eliza might be with her already, aye, but if she’s nay there she’ll definitely need Swarn’s help. We should warn her.”

Ander shook his head. “I dinnay think flying a chopper around a strange world full of beasties who can do Magic is a good plan at all, Nell. We’ve done what you came here to do, aye. Now it’s time to go back.”

“We have nothing left to pay for the way back,” pointed out Nell. Ander stared at her in horror. Nell said nothing for a moment, rather enjoying the effect this had had. Then she said, “Swarn and other great beings can command the Boatman. So if we want to go back, aye, we’ll need her help.”

Ander gave her a look that was already becoming familiar.

“I couldnay tell you everything before we came,” she protested. “There wasnay time!”

“Fine.” Ander got to his feet and began to take the tent down. “Let’s go find this witch.”

~~~

As they passed over the Ravening Forest in the helicopter, Nell warned Ander that they might encounter dragons in the Dead Marsh. He gave her that look again and said, “What am I supposed to do if that happens?”

“Land,” suggested Nell. “They’ll probably just take us to Swarn. That’s what happened last time.”

This was very na?ve of her. Dragons had a kind of Knowing beyond that of most other creatures. When they had found Eliza in the marsh more than two years ago, they knew enough to be curious, enough to know Swarn should be curious too. But Ander and Nell would be no more than a snack. Had they ventured into a marsh full of dragons in a helicopter they would have quickly met a fiery end.

Instead, what they found in the marsh was a slaughter. It was strewn with the broken bodies of dragons. Hundreds of them lay sinking in the muck, heads severed, hearts torn out. In the distance, a green light was burning.

“By the Ancients!” whispered Ander.

“There,” said Nell, pointing at the green light. “Land over there.”

Something around her heart was crumpling and cracking like egg shells but she wouldn’t let herself think it yet, she wouldn’t wonder about Eliza. The helicopter hummed over the final battlefield of the cliff dragons and Ander set it down on a large protruding hump of moss, a safe distance from what they could now see was a heap of leaping green flames. Nell knew perfectly well what this must be. Eliza had told her about Swarn’s green fire that never went out. Her house was burning. Nell slid open the door of the helicopter and leaped out, sinking knee deep in the marsh.

“Hang on,” Ander called after her. “Stick close to me!”

But Nell was already scrambling straight towards the burning house with one of the blankets from the helicopter wrapped around her.

The green fire gave off no smoke but it devoured the oxygen. As she approached, Nell found herself gasping for breath. The fire did not crackle; it burned in eerie silence, leaping hungrily over the ruins of the house. The roof had collapsed and was just a burning mass of bone and mud and scales now. Over her thundering heartbeat she heard a sound like a long hiss and then a spurt of pale green flame struck her.

The blanket caught fire and she dropped it in the mud, wheeling about, looking for her attacker. It was half-buried by the house, its long neck and head pinned to the earth, its bright eyes flitting about fearfully. It was a very small dragon, no bigger than the helicopter, and it had inexplicably tried to crawl into Swarn’s house, perhaps deeming it a safe place from the slaughter of its elders. The heat of the green fire and the airlessness was more than Nell could bear for long but she quickly took in the main beams of the house, huge dragon bones that now pinned this smaller dragon.