Incarnate: Infinite Part 19

Cris rippled, like a shrug. -Our powers seem limitless at first. We can absorb tremendous amounts of energy. But yes, like Menehem's poison hurt the others, the acid hurt. The pain fades and we recover, but too much at once might do irreparable damage.- I lowered my eyes. "I'll try not to rush into danger from now on."

He trilled, a laugh. -Sure.- "I mean it."

-We are your army. We'll protect you, no matter the pain or cost. That is all you need to concern yourself with.- He meant it, too. They would do anything for me. I wasn't sure I liked the burden of their commitment and confidence. They believed I could help redeem them, but what if I couldn't? The thought of disappointing them was unbearable.

When Sam returned with Stef and Whit, they each gave me a long, appraising look and didn't comment when Sam sat near me. Not next to me. Not touching, as he had been. But near. It was enough for now.

"I'm glad you're back, Ana." Whit flashed a smile. "And unhurt."

"Me too." Stef glanced at Sam, then back to me. "I hear you have quite the story to tell."

Their attention was unnerving. We'd hardly spoken for weeks, even about Armande's death, and now everyone was watching me. Waiting. I wanted to look away while I told them about my trip to the prison wall, but I made sure to hold their gazes as I spoke of the climb, playing my minuet to lure the dragons, and the way the sylph had fought for me. I refused to look weak, or like I doubted my actions.

I'd spoken with dragons.

Maybe I could do anything.

Still, the story sounded crazy when I tried explaining the buzzing in my head, the way the sylph had been able to protect me from the volleys of acid, and the urge to jump onto the dragon's leg while it flew across the valley. "You saw the rest." I stopped there, not wanting to talk about how I must have looked, yelling and threatening the dragons. "Sam said they haven't been back at all. Not even to hunt?"

Stef shook her head. "A couple of sylph have been watching the valley just to be sure, but it looks like the dragons aren't coming back."

So the dragons had made a decision: no, they wouldn't help.

I eyed the tent flap, still open and letting in afternoon light. I could just see the edges of our lanterns and solar battery chargers, soaking in the light while it was available. Though we were only a few weeks from the spring equinoxa"Soul Nighta"winter kept a tight grip on the land. "I guess it's not like we expected dragons to agree to anything, anyway." The admission crushed my pride a little.

"They agreed not to attack us after you threatened them." Stef gave me a pointed look. "That's pretty impressive."

Whit looked up from writing down the last of my story. "Tell us more about the ringing. You said it grew so loud it knocked you out. I thought I heard something like that too."

I rubbed my ears and nodded. "I wasn't sure what it was at first, but it must have come from the dragons. They think at one another to communicate, and I was unlucky enough to start picking up on it. It got easier to understand them, like I just needed to practice, but . . ."

Sam leaned toward me and curled his hand over my knee. "They understood our language, it sounds like."

I hmmed. He was right. Centaurs hadn't understood us, and their upper halves were human. So why dragons? "Perhaps because their language is thought? Perhaps if I'd focused my thoughts as though I were about to speak, or speaking in my mind and not out loud, they would have understood it the same way, and what I say out loud is inconsequential."

Whit nodded and wrote more into his notebook. "That seems reasonable. When we speak aloud, we're organizing our thoughts and sharing them. Dragons may simply pick up on something we're doing unconsciously."

That made sense. "I think there's another level of their language, like we pick up on body movements and facial expressions as a sort of shorthand for what someone truly means." Having been raised with only Li as an example of this, I wasn't very good at picking up the subtler signals people gave, but at least I knew now what I was missing and could try to keep up. "But theirs also stands in for words they drop. I think."

"That's very interesting." Whit logged all of that as well. "I think we've learned more about dragons in the last twenty minutes than we did in the last twenty quindecs. All we needed was Ana to decide she can talk to anything."

"Apparently, I'm willing to try." I twisted my mouth into something like a smile.

"What made you decide to lure them with music?" Sam kept his voice low, like the question was only for the two of us, but the others looked interested, too.

"I'm not sure." I bit my lip. "It was the loudest sound I could make, but also, everything loves music. Humans, sylph, even the centaurs when I played Phoenix Symphony that night. One of the boys touched my SED and lookeda"I don't knowa"happy. Like he understood it." Sometimes I felt like everything understood music, or wanted to.

A smile twitched at the corner of Sam's mouth. "I miss playing music."

"You can borrow my flute."

"Ana," Stef said, "you told Sam you know why the dragons attack him?"

The one with the song.

"I think I know."

Sam paled, and I couldn't imagine what was going through his head.

"When they asked me to play for them again, they had another conversation among themselves. One was worried I had *the song.' Another said he couldn't see it in me." I shook my head, trying to recall exactly how the dragons had worded it, but my headache had been so powerful. The way my ears rang had made it hard to focus. "They were testing me. And then when they noticed you all on the cliff, one said, *The one with the song,' and they all got worried. They could see it in you. They tried to lie to me then, saying they were getting rid of my distraction so I would play for them more, buta""

"But they came to kill me." Sam's voice was low and terribly even. "I'm the one with the song."

I nodded.

"I thought they liked music." Whit studied him. "Why kill Sam if they like music?"

"Because of what song he has. The song is the weapon. I mistranslated the symbols from the books. I thought it was a weapon they possessed, but it's not. It's a weapon they're terribly afraid of."

Whit snorted. "And that's Sam."

We all looked at Sam, who sat hugging his knees and biting his lip. Stubble darkened his chin, and black hair breezed above his eyes. "I don't feel like a weapon," he said after a minute.

"You don't look like one either," Whit replied.

I rubbed my temples, trying to piece together all their clues. "The weapon is the phoenix song. They were afraid Sam would use it against them."

"What's the phoenix song?" Whit looked at Sam, who shook his head and seemed lost.

"The only music I have involving phoenixes is Phoenix Symphony, but I wrote that long after dragons started making my death their priority." Sam shoved his fingers through his hair. "Unless dragons can see possibilities of the future like phoenixes, I don't think that's the phoenix song they're worried about."

"They're convinced the phoenix song can destroy them," I said. "One at a time. All at once. I don't know. It seems to me they should be more concerned about actual phoenixes coming around and singing at them." But real phoenixes didn't kill, so maybe they weren't a danger after all. "Phoenixes don't exactly travel far from their jungles, though, do they?"

One of the sylph shook its head. Cris. -The last time phoenixes emerged from their jungle was to curse the sylph.- "Five thousand years ago," Stef muttered. "So it's not Phoenix Symphony, and they're not worried about actual phoenixes. Because actual phoenixes aren't a danger. But anyone else who knows the song is in trouble."

"And that's me," Sam said.

I touched his hand. "That doesn't seem fair." Not that the dragons appeared to care much about fair anyway.

Something else the dragons had said, though, about my asking them not to destroy Sam, but also asking them to do it . . .

The thought flew away.

"I wish I could say it makes me feel better to know I have the power to destroy dragons." Sam grabbed his water bottle and turned it in his hands. "I'd feel better if I had any idea what this phoenix song actually is and how to use it."

"Would you use it?" I asked. It was strange, imagining Sam going out and singing at dragons until they were no more. The Sam I knew wasn't that callous. He'd applauded my compa.s.sion when I couldn't kill Deborla"though I had no doubt he would have shot Deborl if he'd been given the chance. Not after seeing him the night of the earthquake, when Mat had attacked us in the washroom. Sam had killed him and others. There was a darker side to Sam than the one I knew. There were thousands of years to Sam. I'd never know all of him. But he wasn't a murderer.

"I don't know," he said at last.

"Well, I hate to be the one to bring it up." Stef's expression was hard. "But in spite of Ana's success in speaking to the dragons, I don't think they're going to help us."

"Me neither," I said.

"What's our next step?"

No one looked at me.

I looked at my hands.

Very slowly, Sam said, "What if we did know the phoenix song?"

The tent went quiet.

"Rather, what if"a"Sam set his water bottle on the ground in front of hima""we let the dragons believe we know it in order to persuade them to help us with Ana's original plan: use the poison, get the dragons to destroy the temple, and hopefully keep Janan from ever having a chance to ascend."

I didn't like that hopefully in there. It still sounded so unlikely, though it wasn't as if anyone else had other suggestions. And now Sam was thinking up ways to make my idea happen again.

I wasn't sure how I felt about that. Relieved, because he believed in me? Horrified, because he'd risk his life pretending he knew something he didn't? What if Acid Breath called his bluff?

"No," I whispered.

Everyone looked at me.

"For one, we'd have to go after the dragons. They haven't returned here. They can make the trip much more quickly than we can. We won't have time to get back to Menehem's lab and the poison if we have to go searching for dragons, too. Already, we'll have to hike extra hours to get there in time.

"The second thing is, even if we do go after them, who's to say the wrong dragons won't find us and kill us on sight? The sylph can protect us, but not forever. We'll have to keep moving and keep looking for Acid Breath and his friends.

"And the third thing is that Sam is not consciously aware of the phoenix song, so it's useless. I don't want to make threats with a weapon we don't know how to use. They believed me when I threatened them the other day, and they left. That will have to be enough. I won't risk it again." I dropped my voice. "I won't risk you all again."

The tent was silent for a minute, and Sam just looked at me, something indecipherable in his expression. "Then what do we do?"

"We came here looking for both help and a weapon. We're not getting help. The dragons have made that very clear. But we did learn that the weapon we've been seeking has been with us all along. Sam might not know it right now, but maybe we can find a way to use it against Janan."

"Which was what you originally wanted to do," Sam said. "Use the weapon to fight Janan."

I nodded. "We go back to Menehem's lab, gather the poison, and return to Heart. Sarit can help us get inside." If she was still alive. "We destroy the cage Deborl is building, and anything else that looks important to Janan's ascension. We do whatever we must to wreck things. On the way, we learn as much about the phoenix song as possible and hope we can actually use it."

Sam folded his hands. "All right. Then we head back tomorrow. Unless there are any other ideas?"

Stef and Whit glanced at each other but shook their heads.

In the morning, we packed our things and began the long journey back to Range.

21.

NIGHTS.

WE WEREN'T GOING to make it back to Heart in time.

A snowstorm smothered the world with white powder and wind, and though we trudged through it whenever possible, we had only twelve days before Soul Night. We'd have to hike extra, but even that wouldn't be enough.

Twelve days.

It was well after dark when we stopped to set up camp. "I wish I'd been able to test the temple key on the prison." I grabbed my food sack as sylph darted into the woods to hunt.

Whit looked suspicious as he and Stef put the tent together by lantern light. "Why?"

Stef let out a breathy chuckle. "Scientific curiosity. She gets it from Menehem."

"I like to think I get it from being me." I put no bite into my words, but I met her eyes. She needed to know I was serious. "Curiosity is just part of who I am. Like music."

"All right." She flashed a smile, but it was awkward and vanished quickly. Our relations.h.i.+p hadn't recovered, not wholly. They talked to me now, and every night Sam moved his sleeping bag closer to mine, but even the most minor disagreement strained conversations.

"I just wonder about things. The other towers have all fallen into ruin without anyone living inside them. Janan is the only thing keeping the one in Heart intact. But it seems like if phoenixes made the towers, they should last forever, right?"

Stef shrugged. "Perhaps they would have stayed forever, had the sylph not been released." She bent and tied the last of the walls to the tent. "Better go pick up our dinner. I'll be ready to cook soon."

At her dismissal, I hunched my shoulders and followed Cris into the forest, the beam of my flashlight illuminating the snowy world. By now, the other sylph had probably caught plenty of food, so I put in my SED earpieces and flipped to Phoenix Symphony.

I'd listened to the entire symphony a dozen times over the last week, and discussed it with Sam, but so far we'd heard nothing unusual in the music. The four of us even retranslated the pa.s.sage I'd found about the weapon, but while that was interesting, it was not particularly descriptive of the weapon's nature or purpose.

Our latest translation was Dragons fear the instrument of life and death. Or the song of the phoenix.

I grabbed a burned rabbit and dropped it in my bag, humming the flutes' melody of the symphony's fourth movement. It was a faster-paced, majestic-sounding movement, one of my favorite parts, which always made my heart swell up with fierce joy.

A hand closed over my shoulder. I jumped and spun to find Sam watching me with an amused smile. A lantern swung by his side. "Are you honestly not tired of that yet?"

I shrugged and pulled out my earpieces. "I don't antic.i.p.ate ever being tired of it, but if that happens, I'll let you know."

"I do have other pieces. Some better than that one."

"This is the first piece of your music I ever heard. It will always be my favorite." I paused by a fallen tree, whose death had given way to new life. Smaller plants huddled in the ground, waiting for springtime. "Besides, if there's a clue about the phoenix song, surely it's in the song you named after them."

"Songs have words," he said for the thousandth time as he placed his lantern on the ground. Shadows jumped up around his face as he looked at me askance, a weird little smile tugging at his mouth. "You say that just because it bugs me, don't you?"

I grinned and admitted nothing. "Then what about birdsong? Or songbirds? Are they singing words?"

"Who knows? Maybe birds have a language, too, like centaurs." He said it teasingly, but when I straightened and our eyes met, challenge snapped between us.

"Could it be something small?" I rested the sack on the ground and tried to shape my thoughts into words. "We were thinking it might be a whole song. The whole symphony. A whole sonata. But what if it's something small, something so tiny you don't even realize it's there?"