White Road

“This is Sebrahn.”
    “Drak-kon,” Sebrahn said again.
    The dragon brought its head within a few yards of them, and Alec could feel its heat and see himself and the others reflected in that huge eye.
    Awed as he was, Alec reacted too slowly when Sebrahn ran straight to the dragon and grasped one of its spear-like chin barbs with both hands.
    Alec started after him, but Seregil caught him by the arm. “It’s all right.”
    Sebrahn was so tiny against that enormous head—smaller, in fact, than the fang Alec could see under the dragon’s lip—but his voice was clear and loud as he began to sing a single drawn-out note so intense that it hurt the ears.
    “By the Flame, what’s he doing?” Micum shouted over it.
    Was Sebrahn trying to kill the dragon, perceiving it as a threat? “No, Sebrahn!” Alec yelled, trying to pull free from Seregil’s grip. “Let me go! I have to—”
    But then the dragon sang back, a different, deeper note, its voice no louder than Sebrahn’s.
    Everyone held their breath as they watched the strange pair continue their discordant duet. Sebrahn touched the dragon’s face, stroking the long spines and scales as calmly as if he were petting a horse. At last, he pressed his cheek to the dragon’s jaw and both fell silent.
    “What was that about?” Micum whispered.
    “A kinship song,” the dragon told him.
    “But Tyrus claims he’s not a dragon,” Alec said.
    “He is not, but we still share kinship through the blood of the First Dragon. That is where this little one’s power comes from, because it is made with your Hâzad blood.”
    “You mean Hâzadriël and her people really did—do have dragon blood?”
    “All ’faie do, little friend. But some have more than others. That is the Hâzadriëlfaie’s gift, and their burden.”
    “Then I—?” Alec’s legs felt wobbly. It had been a terrific shock when Seregil had told him that he was part ’faie. But this?
    “It does not make you a dragon, either,” the great dragon told him with something like a chuckle.
    It was too much. Turning his attention to the familiar, Alec knelt and examined Sebrahn. There were deep cuts on his hands where he’d caught them on the dragon’s scales or spines. Alec pricked his finger with his knife and gave Sebrahn the blood he needed to heal.
    “Ah, I see,” the dragon rumbled. “You heal him, as he heals you. It is as it once was.”
    “You know about rhekaros?” asked Alec. It was disconcerting, talking to an eye, but the rest of the dragon was just too big to take in.
    “I have heard of them by different names. But none that could kill.”
    “But how—?” Who was he to question a dragon? “It’s because of my Tírfaie blood, isn’t it? The man who made Sebrahn said it was tainted.”
    The dragon pulled back a little and sniffed them. The draft of its nostril sucked at their hair and clothing.
    “You are not tainted, little friend. There is the smell of death on you, and your companions, but it comes from your actions, not your blood.”
    “Then why can Sebrahn kill and raise the dead? Why isn’t he what the alchemist wanted?”
    The dragon sniffed at them again. “You carry the memory of other Immortals in your Tírfaie blood, though you are of Hâzadriël’s line as well. And perhaps this alchemist’s own magic went awry. He did not understand fully what he was doing. Had he made such a creature before?”
    “Only one that I know of, but he killed it. He needed me, since the Hâzad were gone.”
    “Yes. I remember Hâzadriël well—a sad woman, but a brave one. I watched her people pass, going to the north. Their gift was different than any other’s.”
    “To be used for making rhekaros?” asked Alec. “What sort of gift is that?”
    “Their making does not have to be evil, Alec Two Lives. Surely you realize this little one’s worth, the worth of even a rhekaro that cannot raise the dead or kill, for they are not supposed to have that power.”
    “What if we take Sebrahn to the Hâzad?” asked Alec.
    The dragon considered this, then raised its enormous head and turned its face to the moon.
    They waited in silence. The moon was brighter now, and Alec could make out the jut of the great dragon’s wing and spine-ridged back. Smaller dragons—though hardly small—crawled around up there, as if it were a mountainside rather than one of their own.
    The great dragon lowered its head again. “The Lightbringer tells me that death lies in the north—your