​Welcome to Meldin

It’s what I write when I sign books. Welcome to a world that’s been my second home for over thirty years. Let me offer you spiced lizard and mountain drink while you listen to a bard who can sing the soul from your body and another who can shift into a dragon in the blink of an eye. Let me show you fairy-tale castles with laser cannons, sewers with fine-grain mosaics and lifts made of Light and air and the bones of the dead. Let me share a world that is half fantasy, half sci-fi and half fallen heaven. And yes, I’m aware those figures don’t add up, but on Meldin nothing is ever as simple as 1 plus 1.

As they say on this world ‘It’s complicated.’

Where do I start? With the facts? That’s what google did when I asked it about earth. Gave me scientific data I didn’t care about and that wouldn’t help me walk the streets of London or understand what someone meant when they told me they’d see me at Macca’s. Besides, Meldin cosmology is one of the world’s best kept secrets and I wouldn’t want to spoil the surprise. It would be giving you the end of the tale before we’ve begun. 
Instead, I’ve put together a collection of stories:  the people and places, the facts and sayings that create a world. Some of them are told from a writer’s perspective, some of them are bits of Uriel’s history that never made it into print and some of them are interviews with the people of Meldin. And this time I don’t have an editor worrying about word limit so I’ve time to tell you the reason everyone is wearing purple at Quislayn and why Baron Zepail will have your head if you call her a Baroness.

So, open the door, cross the void, crawl through a tunnel of shadows or click on a post. However, you make the journey: 

​Welcome to Meldin.

Baron Zepail is the woman who rules Zepail. And she doesn’t do so because she married a Baron. That would make her Baroness Zepail (or consort Zepail) and if you call her that she’ll have the legal right to kill you.

And she will. 

When the first Shadowalker book was being prepared for print my editor corrected Baron Zepail to Baroness Zepail in the draft. I read it and my heart rate spiked and the hairs on the back of my neck rose in an instinctive terror. I know she doesn’t really exist but for a second there I was worried she’d jump off the page and I’d be looking for a new editor because my current one was missing a head.

But getting back to the Baron (because real reactions to imaginary people is a whole new blog post). Nayndarin society is gender neutral. There is no distinction made in the pronouns used for males and females except when referring to the biological acts of sex and procreation. Because apart from having babies (reluctantly), there is no difference to social roles and psychological make-up of the two genders. Nayndarin women are as aggressive, as unperceptive, as focussed and as disagreeable as the men. 

That’s cool, right? A truly equal society. 

Maybe it is. But who looks after the babies? Because babies need carers (and after being off a battlefield for the 15 months necessary to produce a child that’s not going to be a Nayndarin mother) and aggressive focussed people need partners who aren’t going to attack them right back. So very few Nayndarin marry or have Nayndarin partners. They’ll usually have a consort (or bed partner) who will be referred to, regardless of gender, as Lady or Baroness. 

So, when you call Baron Zepail a Baroness you’re saying she’s an unranked consort or sex-slave. And if you do that you’d better be prepared to run. 

And run fast.

Physically she’s a classic Nayndarin: around 2.16 sl tall (6 ft 6 inches), thin as an anorexic model, with the tintanium musculature and steel-wire tendons that give Nayndarin a strength far in excess of their weight and a speed that no other race on Meldin can match. It’s as if she’s been built for combat.

Like most Nayndarin her skin is black with purple and blue highlights (not brown), her hair is a metallic silver and her eyes are amethyst. She has the long Zepail face and the lines bracketing her mouth declare a lifetime of anger and cruelty. Her hair is crewcut short and as a Baron she is always armed. The laser-edged two-swords hang at her side, attached to a belt with a magnetic clip that undoes as soon as her hands touch the hilts. That action also activates the swords turning a thin diamond shaped line of metal into a weapon that can cut through concrete as easily as it cuts through flesh. 

Not a woman to annoy if you want to see tomorrow. 

As Uriel says

I’m standing in a turreted castle, where skeletons lie frozen in the lifts, their bones bleached by Light.

 ‘I’m not going back to Zepail,’ I say, when I recognize the castle; beautiful as a fairy-tale, in white and silver, standing in a field of flowers, with a perfume like happily ever after. It’s a palace with floors of translucent stone and doors that move to your thoughts and silver tapestries that warp space and time and can hold you trapped for days. 

It’s the Barony of Zepail, where I saw regular hangings and daily floggings and once, when a servant had displeased her, a flash of Baron Zepail’s sword and a man’s head rolling, shocked and empty, on the crystal floor.

Don’t call her a Baroness.

Silver Dragons are native to Meldin, their history stretching back further than the Drazim races they shape-change into. There is a theory that Drazim descended from Silver Dragons, created when Silvers chose to mate and give birth to their mammalian babies as Drazim not dragons. I think the theory is wrong but it’s existence proves how long Silver Dragons have lived on the world.

Black dragons are alien, brought to Meldin by the Darazine and abandoned when the invaders were defeated, absorbed, or driven off (depending on which theory you ascribe to). For at least 10,000 years they have lived in the Navali desert, coming together to mate and watch over their eggs, spending the rest of their time as solitary hunters.

 Silver-blacks are a half-breed and though Myrann was born as a dragon his daughter Elouise (whose mother is drazim) came into the world in her human form, indistinguishable from a drazim infant. The point is she was born. Just as Silvers, Blacks and Reds are born. Silvers as living babies, blacks as eggs and reds as a swarm of living lizards, instantly abandoned to cannibalize each other.

Gold Dragon’s aren’t born. They don’t mate or reproduce. In a biological sense they don’t exist. Like gryphons and chimera’s and your imaginary friend (who is clearly a dragon because, hey, dragons are awesome) gold dragons are only real in the world of myth.

​Yeah, right. Tell that to the last person who was scorched by a Taleri turning into a gold. Tell that to the Yaramite tavern owner who’s watching his inn go up in flames when a Taleri pub brawl escalated as half the combatants turned into dragons. Or tell that to my cousin, Danielle, who can shape-change into a creature the size of ballroom with metallic feathered wings that spread out like a football field, a fire-resistant fur the colour of newly minted coins and the ability to breathe aethe out of a broad-based skull with retractable ridges that can fan out like a peacock’s tail.

Not that Dani would burn you because she’s a peace-loving girl, unlike her mother, Cassowye Taleri: The Gold Dragon of the Apocalypse.

Given that gold dragons are mythical creatures it’s hardly surprising that they appear in the legends and myths of Meldin. On the world I was born on we had the four horsemen of the apocalypse, sent out to reign destruction across the earth. On Meldin dragons carry the apocalyptic riders (including my father). Four dragons for the forces of chaos and one dragon to stand against them.

It’s disconcerting when you have family on both sides of the apocalypse.
 
The skyline is filled with dragons. Some of them are physically present, a flock of blacks under Dad’s control, dive-bombing Nick’s troops and dodging the attacks of three Gold Dragons and the streams of pure force that come out the Battlemaster’s sword.

Some of them only exist in my reality: the wraithlike silver, half-starved with his rider’s shoulder-bones straining through empty flesh; the troop of three reds, bites carved out of them, wounds already rotting under a pale-faced Nedrezim’s hand; a small silver-black, shaped like Myrann but shooting ice and fire and the burning black of damnation out of his mouth while his rider surveys the battleground. And Dad, in a split reality, fighting on the ground, but also riding the final dragon: face leeched of colour, blue eyes empty and his hair, like the animal beneath him, the soft black colour of the walls of death.

‘Get out of my way.’ Dad’s voice echoes into time and the battle stills. ‘We are here to finish this.’

‘Not in this lifetime.’  It’s a single Gold Dragon, back-winging to face the four riders. ‘And not on my watch.’ She was one of the Golds fighting, and I see Dad’s shock as she transcends realities.

‘Who are you?’

‘I am the Gold Dragon.’ She spreads her wings and light strikes the hovering dragons. ‘And I am here to stop you.’

‘You’ll die if you fight us.’ Dad’s voice holds the certainty of death and I wait for the gold to retreat.

‘You think I don’t know that?’ Her contempt strikes like fire. ‘You think I don’t know I will die at Zepail?’

‘Then why not leave?’

‘Because, Dameral,’ his name flicks through him and is lost. ‘I’m Cassowye Taleri and, unlike you, I’m not a coward.’

‘Then die.’

The riders move forward and the air ripples with colour. I see rotting green and empty white, the flash of silver on red and over it all the hint of roses and lavender that is the smell of death.

‘Oh, nechx off, Dameral.’ The words are profane and edged with courage. The dragon sits back on her tail, wings outstretched in attack and her head swings round like a striking snake. ‘Nechx off all of you.’
 
She didn’t die. That time. She drove the dragons off and the Blood Wars ended. They wrote about it in the history books—though they cleaned up the language—and my aunt was granted the heraldic device of Dragon, gold, apocalyptic.

It was sixty years ago, now, and the story should be over.

Unless Dad restarts the war.
 
I’m a fugitive with a curse on my head and being a large, powerful dragon instead of a puny, defenseless human would be a good career move. But I don’t think it’s going to happen. Dad is a Death Lord not a dragon, I don’t know how to shape-change and given that my friends now call me death-girl I don’t have the correct spiritual alignment to be a gold.

Always be a dragon, unless you can’t be a dragon.

Guess I’m stuck being myself.
 
NOTE: If you are wondering why I haven’t mentioned Red dragons that’s because no-one in the family has ever been a red. Except once when my Great Uncle Rannaryn shape-changed into a red dragon by accident and it was two months before he changed back. I’m told it was scary but not as bad as the time he was a mushroom.

That was terrifying.
 
NEXT POST: Red dragons, reality storms and why Taleris are scared of mushrooms. 

‘You’re awake.’  The dragon tilts her head and considers me out of one black eye. She has a face shaped like a gemstone coated in silver, with delicate nostrils and laid-back ears. ‘I should tell Dad. He wanted to know when you woke up.’

Continuing the story of the dragons of Meldin is the silver-black, the spawn of two entirely dissimilar species ...

There was a dragon watching me ...

Indoors.

Eating an ice-cream.

She’s a beautiful creature—all silver-black scales and deadly menace—and she’s scooping out mouthfuls of berry-red cream with an elongated tongue that is slowly turning pink.

I must be going crazy.‘You’re awake.’  The dragon tilts her head and considers me out of one black eye. She has a face shaped like a gemstone coated in silver, with delicate nostrils and laid-back ears. ‘I should tell Dad. He wanted to know when you woke up.’

‘Wait a minute,’ there’s a scratch to my voice that I don’t like but at least I can talk.  ‘Where am I?’

‘Yarum.’

That means I’m still in the city. What is a dragon doing here?

‘Middle Yarum to be precise,’ she continues, in a tone that goes through my ears like wolf-song.  ‘In the fences’ district, where all the best stolen property comes to be valued.  It’s a very respectable part of the city.’

‘Stolen property is respectable?’

‘Only the best stolen property,’ she corrects me. ‘Like jewels or silk or Nayndarin artefacts. But not chickens. I’m not allowed to snarf chickens,’ her tongue shoots out to scoop up more ice-cream. ‘Unfortunately.’

‘That’s a pity.’ I think I’m going crazy.

‘But otherwise it’s okay.’

‘That’s nice,’ I manage, before a logical explanation occurs to me. ‘Am I hallucinating?’ I ask the air.

‘You could be,’ replies the dragon. She gestures to the orange smoke that’s following my breath. ‘Dad’s got you hooked up to some heavy drugs. For the pain, you know.’

That would be the headache I can feel lurking under my brain and the sense that I’m not here. ‘What drugs?’ I ask. 
She lifts delicate black shoulders in a shrug. Despite wings and arms moving simultaneously it’s a curiously human gesture.

‘Dunno,’ she says, ‘but it would be interesting if you were hallucinating. What do you see?’

‘You,’ I answer without thinking. ‘I see a small silver-black dragon, just over two sl or sword-lengths long, not counting your tail, with ridges running up your spine and neck and an eagle’s wingspan coiled beneath your shoulders. Sitting, poised like a hunting-cat on a reyset-blue couch and eating roseberry ice-cream out of a cup made from lizard’s-eye.’

I watch her scoop out the last mouthful of ice-cream and though it’s crazy I don’t think the obvious explanation is the right one. ‘I’m not hallucinating,’ I ask the dragon, ‘am I?’

‘Not unless we both are.’ She examines her reflection in a silver mirror, her diamond-shaped face reflecting light off the polished glass as she licks a piece of roseberry off her nose. ‘I should get Dad if you’re properly awake.’

‘Wait,’ my voice breaks like shells underfoot. ‘Tell me who you are. We haven’t met before, have we?’

‘Not while you were conscious.’  She places the cup on a table and presents a five-fingered paw. ‘I’m Elouise Taleri. Dad says we’re cousins.’

She has a child’s hand, apart from the claws, about half the size of mine and soft to the touch. There’s a smear of roseberry ice-cream across her thumb. ‘I still think I’m hallucinating.’

She shakes her head. ‘I’m real.’ My eye is caught; black gaze on green, and when I blink, the dragon is gone. A young girl; dark-brown hair, copper-bright skin and the dragon’s obsidian eyes, is standing by the door. ‘I need to get Dad,’ she says, in her wolf-song voice. ‘You don’t look good.’
 
I didn’t feel good. My brain had been fried like a computer chip and I’d been dumped in another place I didn’t know. With Elouise, my chicken-loving cousin, and her father Myrann Taleri, the only two silver-blacks on Meldin.

Silver-blacks are small. Elouise is my height and Myrann’s barely larger than a carthorse. They have the wide wingspan of a black dragon, though, and the same long tail. Despite their size they are fearsome fighters, capable of burning and freezing their prey, with a predator’s teeth and retractable claws. And even a dragon as young as Elouise is still three times the weight of a drazim like me.

When they move their scales shift from black to silver and back again in flashes of blinding light and shadows. It matches the spiritual gifts they seem to possess. Elouise sees fate, shifting around a person’s head like the colours in a kaleidoscope and her father is a scryer. My uncle Myrann is, in fact, the best scryer in Yarum. This is useful when I need to interpret the four scrying cards I drew in death. It is less useful when he goes into a trance and starts predicting the next apocalypse.

He’s wrapped around the cards, the Autumn Death held in clawed fingers, knotted ridges of black and silver talons surrounding the dying figure. His eyes, black as a starless night, move between me and the adolescent Heir to the World.

‘Death.’ His voice is edged like a broken blade. ‘Death and War and the end of a frozen world. But the dragon delayed us and now we wait.’ His head swings round and I press myself back into the pillows. ‘We wait for Death and War and the choice that brings stars to a starless sky.’
 
This is NOT what you want to hear, when you’re already a fugitive. But that’s silver-blacks for you: clever as a drazim, greedy as a silver and all round creepy.

I’m the Death Lord’s daughter, I don’t need more creepy. Maybe I should try being a gold. Very popular on Taleri, despite their mythical biology. There are over a thousand gold dragons on Taleri and I’ve got six in my immediate family. The most famous is Cassowye Taleri.

​My aunt Cassye: The Dragon of the Apocalypse.
 
(next post) Gold Dragons: When myth becomes fact.

UNCLE FARAMOR

He’s a silver, born in the Northern mountains to Mishitae (a silver dragon) and my grandfather (who can shape-change into anything). Silvers are a sentient species, forming communities in the north and occasionally trading (though usually stealing) from the drazim races to supplement their treasure piles. Silvers love treasure.

Faramor’s the size of a house with silver scales covering his whole body, including his wings where they form delicate feathers. His wings are barely larger than his body and considering his size and weight there is no way he should be able to fly. He’s clearly using magic.

Like Myrann and Elouise, silver dragons all have a human form and shift from one to the other effortlessly. Famamor’s a nayndarin when he’s ‘human’ though he only adopts the physical not psychological form. The nayndarin concept of honour, bravery and honesty is foreign to my uncle, who has the ethics of a lower Yaramite thief.

If I wanted to be able to defend myself a silver would be a good choice. Their breath will freeze anything, they have a flexible tail that can grasp prey like a monkey, and sharp claws and teeth and if they didn’t run away at the first sight of danger they would be formidable fighters. But they do, and I’ve got enough trouble with running away without adding a racial imperative.

So maybe a dragon with a bit more aggression.
 
MY GRANDFATHER, DAELEN TALERI (as a black)

Black Dragons are crazy. Not just insanely aggressive but actually insane. Most people don’t know why but I’ve got some ideas, because Dad can control black dragons, dominating their minds and forcing them to fight for him. Maybe I could do it too, if I could make myself damage another creature like that. The mind inside the elongated skull, with its spikes and double layer of teeth is brilliant, delicate, and holds an ability over time and space that can cross dimensions.  And my theory is that’s how the Darazine came to Meldin. They used black dragons, draining them like Dad does, and driving them insane.

Black dragons are alien, (another thing that isn’t common knowledge) and as a fellow stranger to Meldin I’ve always had sympathy for them. They’re smaller than silvers, about ten to 15 sl (yards) long, about half of which is tail, with a wingspan three times the size of their body. Though they use magic to ‘blink’ (teleport) through space blacks have no need of magic to fly.

They only have scales on their head, backbone and tail and are otherwise covered in skin, soft as chamois and easily damaged. Though with a spiked tail, a fire-breathing mouth and finger length claws it’s not easy to get that close. They are ferocious fighters and will attack anything that comes into their territory. That’s probably why my grandfather likes being one.

Though I am at loss to explain how he managed to persuade a silver dragon to share a mating fight with a black.
Producing the next dragon in the family.

NEXT POST: UNCLE MYRANN and ELOUISE
“the dragon watching me when I wake up”

​Costume

1. Anything goes! Don’t worry about fabrics. If earth can produce it, then Meldin certainly can.
2. Think like a movie. Let's say "Star Trek" crossed with "Lord of the Rings". With some historical drama thrown in. Princess dresses, slave outfits, compression suits, elaborate hairstyles, flowing robes. This is a world where ‘costume’ is normal.
3. Pull out the body paint. The most notable thing about Meldin characters is their skin tone. Nayndarin have black skin with blue and purple shading. Luitzim are usually a brown/gold or a darkened bronze like an old statue. Daerin are often a metallic gold and Nedrizim can have freckles and dapples in any colour. The most uncommon skin is marble white.
4. And the wigs/hair paint. Nayndarin have silver hair (not white, a metallic silver). Faylorn hair is stripped in brown and gold like tiger’s eye. And note: if you have red hair you are probably a fire mage.
5. But leave the ears at home. Meldin drazim are a lot like elves but they do not have pointy ears.
6. And no goggles. Meldinite technology is a mix of space-age and natural magic so unfortunately steam-punk is the one look it doesn’t have. However, they do have magic scrolls (Quislayn) and laser swords (Vaelen) so let your Star Wars/ Harry Potter imaginations run wild.

 
Some of the main characters.

THE DRAGON
Elouise Taleri: Elouise is the child of a silver/black dragon and a Yaramite fence. She is alternatively ‘dressed’ as a dragon and a girl.
As a dragon: A small silver-black dragon, with a face shaped like a gemstone coated in silver, with delicate nostrils and laid-back ears. She’s under two yards long, not counting her tail with ridges running up her spine and neck and an eagle’s wingspan coiled beneath her shoulders. Sitting, poised like a hunting-cat and eating rose-berry ice-cream.
And a girl:  dark-brown hair, copper-bright skin and the dragon’s obsidian eyes, dressed in an embroidered petticoat and a rich red tunic with rose-berry ice-cream smeared around her mouth.
 
THE HEROINE
Uriel Taleri: (dying). This time my hair is silver, and my skin is marble white, two changes
that happened after my first trip through death. And my body is skeletal. Not just the tall and
model-thin elegance of the Nayndarin I resemble, but a skin stretching distortion of bones
emerging through flesh.
(Living). My grey-green eyes scan the room and beneath a silver over-gown in silk and soft-blue cotton I feel myself relax.
 
THE HEIR TO THE WORLD
Zanar Vaelen: (bringing Uriel back from the dead). A prism of colours falls on his face, blue black skin streaked with sweat, and matted silver hair, a glass jaw frozen into stubbornness and eyes the colour of the midnight sky in the world I no longer remember. Gadon blue, the heralds call it, the deepest colour on the Taleri-blue spectrum.
(trying not to hang a man): He’s dressed in loose breeches and boots and a tunic it’s going to be easy to wash the blood out of.
(nearly starting a war): Tharalan’s eyes bore into the formal arrangement of Zanar’s head; into the silver hair plaited into a baronial ribbon, coiled around the headpiece of Heir to Vaelen.
 
THE FOSTERLINGS
The fosterlings only add to the colour. The boys are clothed in jewelled doublets and embroidered stockings with puffed breeches that mix gold and green and purple in a way that makes my eyes hurt. The girls’ wear silken dresses in a prism of colours, from indigo to crimson, falling like water from jewelled shoulders or curving in and out in elaborate corsetry that only a mix of magic and fashion could achieve.

Leonora of Quislayn: a dark-haired girl is filling out a pale rose dress in a way that’s almost indecent.

Princess Caraid Quislayn: It’s like staring at a statue; with gold-leaf skin and hair, and the perfect proportions of an artwork. If I was a poet I’d have likened her eyes to emeralds but as I’m not they look more like a hunting cat about to rip a tulig apart, especially as I can see claws polymorphing through her gloves.  She’s wearing an emerald silk dress that shows off a figure as spectacular as Leonora’s.

Taneriel Delcarte of Quislayn:  Brown hair and green eyes and a face that would be ordinary if it weren’t for her charm. She’s wearing tunic and trousers with an over-robe in gold.

Dearnan Quislayn: Brown skin, blond and brown hair and an attractive grin (and left uppercut) when he’s not behaving like a loser. He’s dressed like the unfashionable boy at the party in plain brown breeches and cream socks and a long-sleeved doublet in green with the Quislayn heraldry (hawk clutching a scroll) embroidered on the lapel.

Narin Rohanan: Dark skin with blue shading, blond hair and a tendency to stab people. Usually wears stockings and a long doublet. (no breeches) and though he’s not allowed to go armed in the palace he likes rapiers and daggers but if pressed has been known to stick a sharpened quill in someone’s hand (often Tharalan’s).

Baronet Tharalan Rhrothar: A silver and purple codpiece over green, gold and orange breeches. He’s got a cocky grin in a face shaded like a bronze statue, with green eyes and a mess of blond and brown curls. He’s wearing the heir’s hawk on his doublet and he has a sword that no one can legally take from him.

​‘Obviously not.’ I follow her into the tunnel as the door closes behind us. It’s as clean as it looks and lit with the glowing plants I’d seen in Quislayn cellars interspersed with Vaelen lightstones. ‘Who maintains it?’

‘Fences guild.’ She nods her head towards an adjoining corridor where a group of well-dressed women are carrying what look like shopping bags. ‘It’s much safer than the streets.’

One of the women has pulled a flashing line of starstones out of a netted bag and I can hear mutters of ‘had to clean out the upper rooms’, ‘terrible times we live in’ and ‘you’ll never move that with the Vaelen’s at council’ as Elouise takes me across the junction towards Lower Yarum.

‘We go down here.’ She scampers head-first down a ladder, gold and silver gilt shining in the artificial light, and along a collection of tiled corridors. The sand and cinnamon cobblestones are replaced by ancient tiles, curving around us in what must be an old waterway. Or an ancient transport system, for I saw circles like that under Vaelen, in the tunnels Dad and I crept through when we snuck into the castle.

No shopping ladies now as the sewer moves closer to the Council buildings. We’re under the herald’s quarters and even a fence from Middle Yaramite won’t risk a herald’s Truth Read.

I’m not so keen on it myself.

‘Where are we going? I’m running to keep up with Elouise and I n early bowl her over as she blinks and turns back into a girl.

 ‘Clypotin exit’s closest to Quislayn,’ she starts to say, when her wolf-song voice is drowned in sound. 

'What’s that?’ Both of us speak together, heads twisting towards a shift in the air, loud and heavy. And when I reach out to a wall I expect to find it shaking.

‘It’s not physical.’ Like me Elouise is stumbling on tiles that aren’t moving. ‘It’s ...

‘Dangerous.’ She’s dressed as a girl now and I grab her hand. ‘We need to get out before we’re trapped.’

‘It’s not collapsing.’ But she lets me pull her towards the stairs, a painted mosaic of leaves, with roses picked out in pink and yellow stones. ‘How do you-’

‘Know we have to get out?’ I’ve reached the bottom of the stairwell, my hand resting on a copper and gold rail. ‘It stinks of death.’ I start up the stairs, using the rail as my guide while the cinnamon and night-flower incense is smothered with the lavender smoke. Lavender and roses: the scent of death. ‘What do you see?’

‘I don’t know.’ There’s a blink and it’s a dragon beside me. ‘Purple and black and something I’ve never seen before. Sort of orange and silver.’ She’s running with me as we reach ground level, a widened corridor of rust and sand cobblestones with ladders leading up to the street. ‘I thought you liked the smell of death.’

‘So did I.’ It’s hard to see through the smoke. ‘Do you know which way to go?’

Elouise’s head twists around and her eyes are orange. ‘No,’ she says. ‘It’s too big.’

‘I’ll take a look.’ I pull in a breath and turn sword-side to where the smoke is thickest. It’s pouring down the ladder making me cough like the old man I met in death as I climb towards the street. ‘Can you hear anything?’

‘No.’
I’m lifting the man-hole cover when it occurs to us both. A black dragon can hear a grain of sand move in the desert and a silver-black’s hearing is better.

‘Nothing?’ I’m lowering the cover.

‘Nothing.’ She’s half way down the ladder and I slide down after her. ‘No street noises at all. It’s like they’re…’

‘Dead.’ Smoke scented with lavender and roses that only I can see. ‘How big?’ I say. ‘How wide are the colours?

‘Three circles,’ she says. ‘Maybe four.’ There’s a gold ring around her eyes. ‘It’s hard to tell. But they can’t all be dead. Can they?’

My shoulders are too stiff to shrug and I shake my head. ‘I don’t know, Elouise.’ The air shifts again and I grab the ladder for support. ‘It’s starting again.’

This time it’s Elouise who grabs me. Jaws circling my wrist as she pulls. Her wolf-song mind-speak sharp with panic. ‘We have to get away.’

‘Where?’ I’m running beside her, because it’s that or lose my hand. ‘Elouise, we need to know where.’

‘Away.’ She’s pulling me back to the stairs. ‘We can hide down here.’

‘No.’ I reach round to the delicate scales behind her ears. ‘Listen to me, Elouise. The sewers are going to collapse.’

‘Collapse?’ Her jaw drops open and I extract my bleeding wrist. ‘They never collapse. They survived the great flood and Thorin’s invasion and the…’

‘They won’t survive this.’

​More to come in Shadowalker.

Keep checking this website for more excerpts and details about Shadowalker ​and Meldin. Or you can purchase the book at Stone Table Books!