“Wait!” Paragon called to him. “Are you going to let the others talk to me now?”

He almost felt the man’s sigh. “Of course. Not much sense in refusing you that.”

Bitterness rose in Paragon. He had meant his promise to comfort the man, but he insisted on being grieved by it. Humans. They were never satisfied, no matter what you sacrificed for them. If Brashen was disappointed in him, it was his own fault. Why hadn’t he realized that the first ones to kill were the ones closest to you, the ones who knew you best? It was the only way to eliminate the threat to yourself. What was the sense of killing a stranger? Strangers had small interest in hurting you. That was always done best by your own family and friends.

THE RAIN HAD WINTER’S KISS IN IT. IT SPATTERED, ANNOYING BUT HARMLESS, against Tintaglia’s outstretched wings. They beat steadily as she flew upstream above the Rain Wild River. She would have to kill and eat again soon, but the rain had driven all the game into the cover of the trees. It was difficult to hunt in the swampy borderlands along the Rain Wild River. Even on a dry day, it was easy to get mired there. She would not chance it.

The cold gray day suited her mood. Her search of the sea had been worse than fruitless. Twice, she had glimpsed serpents. But when she had flown low, trumpeting a welcome to them, they had dove into the depths. Twice she had circled and hovered and circled, trumpeting and then roaring a demand that the serpent come back. All her efforts had been in vain. It was as if the serpents did not recognize her. It daunted her to the depths of her soul to know that her race survived in the world, but would not acknowledge her. A terrible sense of futility had built in her, combining with her nagging hunger to a smoldering anger. The hunting along the beaches had been poor; the migratory sea mammals that should have been thick along the coast were simply not there. Hardly surprising, seeing as how the coast she recalled was not there either.

Her reconnaissance had opened her eyes to how greatly the world had changed since her kind had last soared. The whole edge of this continent had sunk. The mountain range that had once towered over the long sand beaches of the coast was now the tops of a long stretch of islands. The richly fertile inland plain that had once teemed with herds of prey, both wild and domesticated, were now a wide swamp of rainforest. The steaming inland sea, once landlocked, now seeped to the ocean as a multitude of rivers threading through a vast grassland. Nothing was as it should be. She should not be surprised that her own kin did not know her.

Humans had multiplied like fleas on a dying rabbit. Their dirty, smoky settlements littered the world. She had glimpsed their tiny island settlements and their harbor towns as she had searched for serpents. She had flown high over Bingtown on a star-swept night and seen it as a dark blot freckled with light. Trehaug was no more than a series of squirrels’ nests connected by spiderwebs. She felt a grudging admiration for humanity’s ability to engineer a home for itself wherever it pleased even as she rather despised creatures so helpless they could not cope with the natural world without artificial structures. At least the Elderlings had built with splendor. When she thought of their graceful architecture, of those majestic, welcoming cities now tumbled into rubble or standing as echoing ruins, she was appalled that the Elderlings had perished, and humans inherited the earth.

She had left humanity’s hovels behind her. If she must live alone, she would live near Kelsingra. Game was plentiful there, and the land firm enough to land upon without sinking to her knees. Should she desire shelter from the elements, the ancient structures of the Elderlings would provide it. She had many years ahead of her. She might as well spend them where there was at least a memory of splendor.

As she flew through the steady downpour, she watched the banks of the river for game. She had small hope of finding anything alive. The river ran pale and acid since the last quake, deadly to anything not scaled.

Far upriver of Trehaug, she spotted the struggling serpent. At first, she thought it was a log being rolled downstream by the river’s current. She blinked and shook rain water from her eyes, and stared again. As the scent of serpent reached her, she dropped down from the heights to make sense of what she saw.

The river was shallow, a rushing flow of milky water over rough stone. This, too, was a divergence from her memory. Once this river had offered a fine deep channel that led far inland to cities such as Kelsingra and the farming communities and barter towns beyond it. Not only serpents but great ships had navigated it with ease. Now the battered blue serpent struggled feebly against the current in waters that did not even cover it.

She circled twice before she could find a stretch of river where she could land safely. Then she waded downriver, hastening to the pitiful spectacle of the stranded serpent. Up close, its condition was wrenching. It had been trapped here for some time. The sun had burnt its back, and its struggles against the stony bed of the river had left its hide in rags. Once its protective scaled skin was torn, the river water had eaten deep sores into its flesh. So beaten was it that she could not even tell its sex. It reminded her of a spawned-out salmon, exhausted and washed into the shallows to die.