The Burning Stone (Crown of Stars #3)

“How can I help you?” asks Hanna. “This is only a dream.”

“How can I find a dragon’s scale? All the dragons are gone. They vanished when the Lost Ones fled, so the old stories tell us.”

Hanna laughs. Maybe in dreams the truth is easier to find because it isn’t obscured by waking blindness. She drops to her knees and gathers up a handful of sand, lets the odd golden grains pour down through her fingers. The heat of them soaks her skin in dreamy warmth, like the kiss of magic. “Couldn’t these be dragon’s scales?”

The Kerayit princess laughs out loud, a whoop of joy. For all that her expression and demeanor are exotic and somber, still, she is barely a woman, no older than Hanna herself. She is no different than any other child, gleeful as she turns the trick back on a wily old teacher. In her excitement, she grasps Hanna by the shoulders, not unlike the monstrous griffin, and kisses her on either cheek, then slaps her under the chin with the back of her hand, an odd endearment. Her breath smells of sour milk. Her lips are dark, as if stained with berry juice.

“Hai ai!” she cries. “Stay with me, luck, and we will hunt down the others together. Seventeen items she said I must bring her, and I have five now. So I will prove myself worthy of becoming her apprentice.”

A bass rumble vibrates along the earth, felt through the soles of her feet more than heard. The princess suddenly grasps Hanna’s arm, and together they sway, only it isn’t them, it is the earth that is shaken and they only move with it. The land shudders and jerks as if dragons buried beneath a millennium of shed scales have woken and are trying to dig free.

The tremor drags at her, and she feels the ground slide away under her feet, spun not by sorcery or some monstrous flying creature but by a sudden disturbance cutting through the earth itself. She is torn away, but she is still dreaming. She hasn’t left the land of dreams, she has only been displaced.

The earth slides under her and the heavens are black. Neither star glints nor moon shines, but the breath of dawn licks at her face; she can see it in the graying scene unfolding before her, and she knows she has traveled a long way, thrown off course by the trembling earth. She is somewhere she has never been before. She feels another mind and another soul tangling with hers as she dreams, and he has brought her here, unawares, perhaps. No malice oppresses her, but the heart that beats inside her is unlike anything she has ever known, unlike her own simple and apprehensible heart, more cruel than merciful, more just than kind, yet in its contradictions unfathomable.

She walks among them and she falls inside.

Spring came early, as foretold by the merfolk who can taste the weather in the salt of the sea. No pounding storms troubled the fjords over the winter. Now he stands in the stern of his ship and the sea slides underneath as smoothly as melted grease coats a hot pan. The pull of the land is almost enough to draw them in. Scarcely does any oar touch the water.

Victory can be had in many ways, and this victory will be taken at dawn on a foe who lies sleeping.

Nokvi is, no doubt, shrewd and strong, and the magic of his allies can undo many an enemy. But that magic cannot harm the host of Stronghand, and Nokvi’s strength will not avail him in the confusion brought on him by a dawn raid.

The ships beach silently on the far side of the land’s finger, where a steep ridge thrusts out into the sound. His warriors disembark as mute as stones; for this raid, they have left their dogs behind. They begin the hike that will take them over the ridge and down into Moerin’s vale, where Nokvi rules. As they climb, pine and birch grow increasingly thick about them, and the host speeds silently between the trees until, cresting the ridge, they see the watch fires marking Nokvi’s long hall burning crisp and clean below them. All lies quiet.

As they move down the slope, their noise increases, and he feels a stab of misgiving, but it is already too late. His warriors are beginning to howl, full of their cleverness, ready to slaughter, and as they break from the woods and course over the fields he knows that even with this brief notice Nokvi’s people will be easy prey, bewildered by the early hour and the unexpected attack.

Still no movement comes from the hall.

Distantly he hears a shriek, like a raven, suddenly cut off.

They reach the hall in a thundering roar, and it isn’t until the first of them strikes down the door and heaves it aside that he understands the worst. Outside, the watch fires bum. Inside, the hearth fire burns but warms no one, because no one stands or sits or leaps up in astonished and enraged surprise. The hall is empty.

“Blow the retreat,” he cries to his standard bearer even as he knows it is already too late.