“I need to know what has happened to the king’s son, Marcus. I do not dare try to contact him, for Anora and the others are searching for him and, if they find him, they will kill him. This is what he looks like.”

An image of a human came to Lysira’s mind—youthful, comely, with fair hair and hazel eyes. He did not, she was forced to admit, look like a monster.

“And what do I do when I find this human?” Lysira asked.

“Warn him,” said Draconas. “Warn him that he and his people are in danger.”

“And he will use his cannons to try to slay us,” said Lysira sadly She shook her head. “I do not think—”

“Lysira,” said Draconas gently, persuasively, “Grald does not mean to make these humans slaves. He means to slaughter them.” Lysira kept her colors to herself.

“Please, Lysira. You said yourself. Our people have gone mad with fear. We have a chance to stop the madness.” Dragons are always loath to take action. “I will think about it, Draconas,” Lysira said.

8

NIGHT STRETCHED DARK ACROSS THE RIVER. THE WATER SLIPPED out from underneath him. The river flowed ever onward, uncaring about the vagaries of time. Marcus steered the boat nearer the sunken cavern, and his fears grew, compounded by the fact that he had no idea how far he was from the cavern.

The first and last time Marcus had traveled the river had been during the night. He had not been paying attention to his surroundings during that first journey. His attention had been divided between keeping an eye on the boats of the monks ahead and watching for snags and other dangers in the river. He had very little reckoning of the passage of time—how long it had taken him and Bellona to travel from the sunken cavern to the site of Dragonkeep. Had it been minutes or hours? He looked back on that night and he couldn’t be certain.

His rowing slowed. He thought he detected a change in the air, a different smell; one that was not of green and growing things, but the smell that he remembered from the cave, a smell of wet rock and slime. He felt a change in the temperature, as well—a chill, musty breath flowing from a gaping mouth.

Evelina felt it, too, for she began to rummage about for one of the blankets she’d scrounged. Wrapping it around her shoulders, she huddled into it.

“What a horrible stench,” she complained. “It smells of death.”

Marcus shifted direction, rowed toward the shoreline.

“Catch hold of that branch,” he told Evelina.

“Are we stopping?” she asked eagerly, unwinding herself from the blanket long enough to do as he said. She grabbed hold of the branch, and the boat swiveled around to nose gently in among a shadowy tangle of reeds and rushes and willow trees.