The leader was a tall man, with harsh, angular features. He had high cheekbones; a narrow, high-arched nose; and a thin, severe mouth. His hair, caught back with a heavy ring of island jade, was pale as sea-dragon ivory; his eyes were a frosted gray as cold as a high mountain winter. He wore no gold, but, on the first finger of his left hand, a single ring of black iron that glinted with twin rubies. Though all his followers were armed with swords or long-hafted jagged-bladed nikenne, this man carried no weapons. Nemienne could not imagine he would ever need a weapon, because she couldn’t imagine anyone having the nerve to defy him.
And yet, Mage Ankennes did defy him. The mage strode toward the stone dragon, lifting his staff and at the same time laying a bar of fire across the black pool behind him to block pursuit.
The black-clad men hesitated before that fire. But their leader flung out a hand and brought the chill darkness of the caverns falling down upon the fire to smother it. At once the men leaped forward. One of them threw his nikenne. It was not a weapon made for throwing, but it flew as smoothly as an arrow and skidded across the stone so close to Ankennes’s feet that for a moment Nemienne thought it had hit him. Sparks scattered behind the blade where it scraped across the stone.
Ankennes hesitated, but then lunged forward. For a moment, Nemienne thought he would manage to take the few remaining steps that separated him from the dragon and strike at it again. But Enkea stood up, no longer sleek: Every hair on her body had fluffed up and she seemed three times her ordinary size. The cat hissed, and Ankennes hesitated again, and then the cold-eyed leader of the newcomers set the weight of the mountains dragging at Ankennes’s heel, and at last his men closed on the mage, tearing the staff out of his hand and casting it away.
“Bring him to me,” the cold-eyed man commanded, and demanded of the mage when his followers had done so, “Where is my son?”
So this was the king, Nemienne realized, and was at once amazed she hadn’t known immediately, for he looked exactly as she would have imagined him. This was Geriodde Nerenne ken Seriantes—the Dragon of Lirionne, who was a “similar thing” to the stone dragon. Nemienne thought he definitely looked similar enough to the dragon.
Ankennes did not answer.
The king turned his head to regard Lord Chontas Taudde ser Omientes, where the Kalchesene sorcerer knelt panting on the stone, still imprisoned by the circle of light. The king’s gaze went for a moment to Leilis, then came back to the sorcerer. One ivory eyebrow rose, profoundly skeptical. He asked again, with stark patience, “Where is my son?”
To Nemienne’s astonishment, the sorcerer caught up the bone flute that had lain discarded near his hand and held it out toward the king. “Give me leave to play this!” he said in an urgent tone. “Give me leave, before the path is irretrievably lost!”
Mage Ankennes said, “No!”
The king did not even look at Ankennes, but gazed steadily at the sorcerer. “Play it,” he said—not so much granting permission as issuing a command.
The sorcerer lifted the bone flute to his mouth. The flute still had that strange off-tone quality; it still sounded like ash and rain. But the melody that spun out from it had a compelling beauty to it now that had previously been lacking. The melody, deceptively simple, drew back out of the dark the glimmering path down which the prince and then Karah had traveled.
Nemienne rose to her feet and peered as hard as she could down that pathway of music and light. She said helplessly, “I don’t see her—” But then she did. Far away, veiled by shadows and by a light that seemed itself a kind of shadow. But she thought her sister was going the wrong way, despite the new melody. She was becoming less clear, fading farther away before her eyes. Of Prince Tepres, Nemienne saw nothing at all. She bit her lip. They would both be lost… In a way the flute made it worse, because they could watch Karah fade from their reach…
Geriodde Nerenne ken Seriantes strode past her suddenly, straight into the pathway the bone flute had reopened. Like his son and like Karah, he was swept away at once down that shadowed path. But unlike the others, the king remained clearly—almost blindingly—visible. He trailed a greenish brilliance that unraveled behind him to leave a strong, clear trail overlaying the tenuous path the flute had created.
“No!” Mage Ankennes repeated and, in the absence of the crushing power of the king, summoned fire. The men holding him leaped back, cursing. One of them lifted a sword, but a blaze of fire and power sent him sliding across the stone. Ankennes brought both his hands together with a sound like a crack of thunder and lifted them—the fire did not expand, but it intensified—