Henry Neff - The Maelstrom

But Mina’s magechain was not her most interesting accessory. That honor belonged to a thick golden rope that was coiled around the girl’s arm from her shoulder to her wrist. As they proceeded through Rowan’s orchard, Max occasionally gazed up at it.

And it gazed back at him.

The golden rope was a dragon.

After the battle, Mina had found him amid the carnage on the beach, resembling a muddy eel, half choked with sand and seaweed. According to David’s account, the girl had identified it as a dragon right away, but he had been skeptical. No true dragons had existed for a thousand years, and even those comparatively meager specimens were more like spiny serpents and scaly bats than the godlike creatures of antiquity. The ancient dragons had been of the Old Magic, wild spirits of terrible power.

But when Mina washed the creature in the bloody shallows, David spied a glint of gold and tiny claws folded flat against its snakelike body. When the creature arched back and revealed whiskerlike spines along its chin, all doubts evaporated. It was indeed a dragon. Only time would reveal its kind or purpose. Mina had not seemed to care. Once it coiled about her arm, she named him Ember and announced that he was her charge.

As intriguing as Mina’s dragon might be, most eyes were on the girl herself. Thousands of people lined the paths through Old College and many were straining to get even a glimpse of the wondrous child who had appeared before Prusias, broken his seven crowns, and sent him fleeing over the sea.

In truth, the assembly’s numbers and proximity made Max more than a little nervous. He disliked crowds ever since the Atropos had targeted him, but it was not his own safety that concerned him: it was Mina’s. A cultlike fervor was starting to gather around the girl. Some had taken to calling her St. Mina and people of various faiths were starting to project their own beliefs and prophecies upon her. Max had experienced some of this himself, but it had never reached such a groundswell of intensity or zeal. Once the Promethean Scholars had declared Mina the first Ascendant since Elias Bram, even some of Rowan’s senior faculty seemed to regard the girl as a holy object.

Max could not regard her in this light. For all her astounding and mysterious power, she would always be his little Mina—a girl who liked to play marbles and cook inedible stews and explore tidal pools after a rain. When she grinned down at him, he returned it and dearly hoped that some part of her would remain free from the incredible hopes and expectations settling on her shoulders.

A king’s crown is heavy. An Ascendant’s robes are heavier still .

Bram never wore those robes and, indeed, never even answered to the title on those rare occasions when an awestruck scholar had the opportunity to address him. David said his grandfather had given up both long ago and had advised Mina to do the same when he’d heard of the pronouncement. But in this, as in many things, Mina was stubborn and took her own counsel.

Max had looked for Bram, but he never saw the Archmage during their slow procession through Old College. He had not even seen him since Prusias’s attack. When pressed, David would only say that his grandfather was “gathering himself” and that Max might not see him again for a very long time.

The Archmage might have been absent, but Ms. Richter and just about every other member of Rowan’s leadership were gathered at the cliffs nearest the spot where Gràvenmuir had once stood. As they rounded the Manse’s pluming fountain and proceeded toward the Director, Max recognized some familiar faces.

Nigel Bristow waved and cheered with his wife and daughter. So did the Tellers and even Thomas Polk and others who had returned to Rowan from the inland settlements. The goose Hannah had to chase down Honk after the willful gosling went tottering after them. Madam Petra was gazing down from a prime perch atop Old Tom’s steps, as were many of Max’s former classmates. But the greatest joy Max felt was when he saw Bob standing near the front with Sarah, Cynthia, and Lucia. His helmet and cudgel had been put away. Bob wore a cook’s apron once again and his favorite blue-striped shirt. When Max passed by, the ogre bowed his head.

The Promethean Scholars stood behind the Director, as did the senior faculty and several leaders from the refugees. The Red Branch flanked the Director and Max’s focus quickly zeroed in on Scathach. She returned his smile and quietly urged him to pay attention as YaYa came to a halt before Ms. Richter.

At Tweedy’s coughing cue, Max leaned the gae bolga against YaYa’s saddle and lifted Mina off the ki-rin’s back. Setting her carefully on the ground, he took up the spear once again and led YaYa to stand beside Scathach and face the thousands before them.

Just David and Mina stood before the Director now. Each was holding something. Mina’s object was clutched and hidden by both hands, but David was leaning upon a very powerful and familiar item.

It was Prusias’s cane—the very prop that contained a page from the Book of Thoth. Whenever the demon was in his serpent form, the artifact was embedded in one of the crowns that had shattered. Once Mina discovered her charge, David had gone looking for the cane and found it wedged among the briny rocks along the shore.

When Ms. Richter addressed the crowd, her voice also issued from hovering glowspheres stationed about the Old College and all of Greater Rowan. She spoke of honor and sacrifice, the appalling losses, and the great victory that had been achieved. Max listened dutifully, his gaze straying occasionally to Scathach or the gargantuan war galleons anchored in and about Rowan Harbor. There were twenty of them, twenty crimson galleons that were far larger and more formidable than any ships Rowan possessed. Once Prusias’s army had been destroyed, Rowan had captured and claimed the vessels as they tried to escape with mere skeleton crews.

“But that victory is not complete,” continued Ms. Richter, reclaiming Max’s attention. “We have turned back Prusias, but he is not yet defeated. He sailed to these shores with but a fraction of his forces and he will not underestimate us again. And thus, Rowan must ask more of you. I must ask more of you as we pursue this enemy to his own gates and stamp out this threat once and for all. If we do not, if we succumb to debate and delay, then his armies will surely return with greater wrath and numbers. This is not the end of the war; it is the beginning.”

Ms. Richter smiled ruefully and acknowledged the crowd’s stunned silence.

“My message today is bittersweet,” she confessed. “I know that many of you had hoped to put the sorrows and toil of war behind you. Many of you had looked forward to a quiet life in which you could enjoy our hard-earned freedom and independence. Nobody wants that more for you than I. But we are not there yet. In the coming weeks and months, Rowan may call upon you once again. And I know that you will answer.

“But Rowan will not call upon you alone. We have not merely turned back an enemy; we have gained credibility. Those who could not aid us or feared to do so may now feel otherwise. We will seek their help. We will ask others to strengthen our cause and share our sacrifice. But let me be clear: Rowan is no longer desperate for aid or charity. We are no longer a quaking country hoping to escape the notice of its neighbors. The founders of this school were refugees themselves. They, too, fled an enemy to these shores and sought to rebuild and regain their former strength and dignity. For over four centuries, Rowan has engaged proudly in this struggle. But Rowan has also always dwelled in the shadow of her predecessors; she has been a mere echo of a grander, more storied past. Those days are over.