Read Online A Star Shall Fall by Marie Brennan - Free Book Online Page B

chamber’s high ceiling, and its flesh was black char over molten flame. There were salamanders in the Onyx Hall, lizardlike spirits of elemental fire, but they were to the Dragon as a brook was to the mighty sea.
    The two facing the beast, a blocky gnome and an elf-knight, were wrestling with a strange weapon. It was nearly invisible, except where the light struck a gleam off one smooth facet or another; Irrith didn’t appreciate its full length until the knight swore and lost his grip, letting the enormous spear collapse to the dirt. He tucked his hands under his arms, shivering and ignoring the gnome’s harangue, and Irrith realized what the weapon must be.
    “Elemental ice,” Segraine said, startling her. Irrith hadn’t heard the lady approach. “From Jotunheim, or so the Swedes who sent it to us claim. Whether that’s true or not, it makes a terrible weapon—terrible for us , not our enemy.”
    Now Irrith understood the gathering. “You’re preparing to fight it.”
    Her friend shrugged. “What else can we do?”
    Something new, Irrith thought. She would never say it, though. Under the command of Sir Peregrin Thorne, Captain of the Onyx Guard, Segraine and her fellows had faced the Dragon once already, battling it amidst the flames of the Great Fire. Their willingness to do so a second time showed just how brave they were—or how foolhardy. Irrith herself, though brave on occasion, had no intention of going anywhere near the creature a second time. Love for the city aside, if the appointed day came and they had no better plan than facing down the Dragon in battle, she was going back to Berkshire. London could burn just as well without her as with.
    Segraine didn’t seem much more enthusiastic. The lady knight cut an impressive figure, even in a plain silk shirt and old slops; the severity of her tightly queued hair drew attention to her strong profile, and the breadth of her shoulders. She had been Lieutenant of the Onyx Guard, before she gave her place to Sir Cerenel. Irrith wondered if it was because her friend had looked ahead just as she had, and had seen the specter of defeat.
    Then Segraine noticed her scrutiny, and the mere touch of her gaze made Irrith feel ashamed of that thought. “Mind you,” the knight added, “this all assumes there’s a Dragon to fight .”
    Irrith blinked in confusion. “What? You think the Queen’s lying, that Feidelm made the vision up?”
    Her friend’s lip curled in something not quite a laugh. “We should be so lucky. No, we have an enemy; the question is whether it will have a body we can attack. Remember, what they imprisoned was its spirit. And that’s a hard thing to stab.”
    The shard lay on the floor, steaming a little in the cool air. The practice was breaking up, and the audience with it; a small group went with Sir Peregrin out the far door, the gnome and another collected the ice, and the rest drifted away, grumbling. “That’s it for today,” Segraine said, “but I doubt you came here to watch us wave a piece of ice around anyway.”
    It recalled Irrith to her purpose. “I saw an advertisement in Cheapside,” she said, pulling the torn paper from her pocket. “Do you think this man has a real satyr?”
    Segraine took the fragment and studied it. A few of the fae who hadn’t yet left came closer, reading over the lady knight’s shoulders. “I don’t know,” she murmured, peering at the small print near the bottom. “Though it’s happened before.”
    Hempry, a short and thick-limbed yarthkin, was reading not so much over Segraine’s shoulder as under her elbow. He said in his broad Yorkshire accent, “That centaur fellow, six years ago.”
    “Ktistes?” Irrith said, alarmed.
    “No, a friend of his.” That came from a second northerner, a duergar Irrith didn’t know. “Some fool come over from the continent. Got himself snatched at the docks, maybe, or off the ship he came on—never did get the story out of him.”
    “What