His heart battering his ribs, Waru felt along the barrier for any give.


    There was none.


    Suzume’s light faded, leaving the three in a darkness broken only by the statue’s glow.


    Suzume took her Mirage Splitter stance—closing her eyes, crossing her arms—but no duplicate image of her appeared.


    “I can’t use qi!” she cried in dismay.


    Taking the Qi Beam stance, Yarran stood tall, breathed deep, and joined his index and forefinger, aiming at the unseen wall. But no beam of white energy left his fingers. His look of bewilderment melted into one of fear.


    We have to keep calm, Waru wanted to say, but something happened just then.


    The barrier glowed a soft, shifting blue. Its light strengthened. Stepping back, Waru saw the barrier made an enormous dome containing the statue.


    A humming filled Waru’s ears: at first soft, then deep, like a swarm of hornets. Suzume’s qi reader trembled and crackled; she threw it just before it burst into a hundred shards.


    The barrier glowed so bright Waru could no longer see beyond it.


    Then it vanished—and Waru, Yarran, and Suzume were back on the icy surface of Antarctica, the air blisteringly cold. The statue stood before them, its immensity astounding in the light of day.


    “Teleportation,” murmured Suzume. “So it’s possible after all.”


    The statue’s size gave Waru vertigo.


    A rumble of voices made him turn. The dome had teleported the Dragons half a mile from the dig-site. Dozens of crewmen were pouring from the site’s prefabs to point and gape at the statue. A snowtruck sputtered to life and slurred out of the site toward the Dragons, the passengers craning out of the windows.


    The statue quivered like water, bending the light so the land and sky seen through it seemed to twist at impossible angles.


    Then, in seconds, the statue dissolved, the blue crystal becoming blue smoke, which gathered into a great cloud. The cloud spread, roiling. It plunged Waru, Yarran, and Suzume into deep, cold shadow.


    Where the statue had been, a figure hovered. It descended until it stood on the ice. It looked like the statue made flesh, but perhaps twelve feet tall instead of hundreds. The head was the same: cruel-eyed and avian. The robe was the same, billowing, with that winged-eye-in-a-crystal symbol. The creature’s feathers were a deep blue, shot here and there with streaks of white. The eyes were white as cue balls, without pupils. They looked right down to the floor of Waru’s soul. Behind those eyes burned a power so vast, Waru felt like a rat staring at a tank.


    Yarran spoke. If he was afraid, his voice did not show it. “Friend, the Dragons greet you. I am Yarran Kingsfield, Head Dragon and Shadowed Protector of Humankind. This is Suzume Kingsfield, my wife, and Waru Kingsfield, my son. We bless you in the light of the qi that lives in all things, that binds the universe.”


    The avian was silent, its white eyes inscrutable. Its hands hung limp at its sides. It just stood on the ice, watching the Dragons.


    The snowtruck slewed to a halt beside the trio. Faisal leapt from the vehicle, along with three others, all clutching automatic weapons. Faisal’s eyes were huge; the sight struck him speechless.


    “Put away your weapons!” Suzume ordered.


    Faisal looked at her in disbelief.


    “Put them away,” Yarran hissed, and the men did so.


    At last the avian spoke. The voice—a male voice, Waru noticed—was deep, rasping, ancient. “In what age have I awoken? This land is not the land I know.”


    Yarran had been right to assume language was no barrier, Waru thought. With an awareness so powerful, how could it be?


    “By our calendar, the year is 2025,” said Yarran, “but that means nothing to you.” He glanced at Waru. “How long as it been since the asteroid that killed the dinosaurs?”


    “Sixty-six million years.”


    Yarran told the creature, “It has been sixty-six million years since the asteroid that wiped out the dinosaurs.”


    “You do not lie,” said the creature. “I sense that much. Nor does this land.” He stroked the bottom of his beak with his razor-sharp talon and gazed at the barren horizon. “Fifty-two million years I have waited for one who knows the Source to wake me. And so it has happened. Yet I sense so little of the Source in you—and in this world.” He inhaled, as if taking the measure of the Earth from the air itself. “So very little.”


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    Yarran balled his fist, but kept his tone calm. “Friend, I have given you my name. What is yours?”


    The creature answered without looking at Yarran, eyes still on the horizon. “My race gave me many names. But I discarded them all, as I discarded my race.”


    The humans gasped.


    The creature seemed not to notice. “I call myself Azreth. It is a word that means the light of an exploding star.” At last he faced Yarran. “You call yourself Head Dragon, yet your son has a greater hold on the Source than you. Far greater. Even so, you are all of you nothing. Tell me—for I have slept fifty-five thousand centuries to fight a worthy opponent—who is the strongest Source Wielder in this age? It cannot be your son. I refuse to believe it.”


    Suzume, pale as milk, whispered to Waru, “Run, my child.”


    The spirit went out of Waru at that. His mother would never tell him to run unless she thought death was certain. A Dragon never flees.


    A selfish part of him wanted to leap into the snowtruck and drive as fast as possible from the being who called himself Azreth. But he could never abandon his mother and father.


    “Please,” Suzume whispered, more urgently.


    “I can’t,” said Waru. “You know that.”


    With a controlled tone, Yarran told Azreth, “My son may have more qi than I do, but he’s still learning how to fight. I am the one you seek. I am the greatest qi warrior of the age.”


    Soundlessly, Azreth teleported closer to the Dragons. Up close, he was somehow more terrifying than the statue he''d slept in. A strange smell like ozone emanated from his flesh. His empty white eyes peered down at Yarran as if at an insect. “You lie to protect your boy-child.”


    Yarran shook his head. “If you can sense lies, you should know I’m telling the truth.”


    “He is,” said Suzume.


    Azreth’s eyes roved to Waru, blazing with contempt. His beak tightened into a scowl. “How can it be? How can it be that in such vast reaches of time, nature has produced a race capable of touching the Source, yet as weak as yourselves? What a revolting trick. You should never have awakened me. I would rather have waited for a more powerful race. Yet now I see what I must do.” He made an O with two fingers, as if to flick an ant, and brought it to Yarran’s forehead. “I will simply have to conquer the universe to find what I seek.” He flicked.


    Yarran was there; then he was not. In his place, for a long millisecond, stood a Yarran-shaped effigy of blood; over the next few milliseconds, the blood smeared across the ice in a hectic fan shape.


    Waru processed all this even as the shockwave flung him into the snowtruck. He sank halfway into the side of the vehicle as if it were foam.


    He gaped at the bloodstain that had been his father. He had to be imagining this. It wasn’t possible.


    Suzume was lying on the ground, blood dripping from her ears, nose, eyes. She blinked and crawled, trembling, to her feet.


    Faisal’s crew opened fire on Azreth. The bullets vanished where they struck—just vanished.


    Azreth cocked his head at the crewmen. “You have no command of the Source at all?” He plucked Faisal off the ground like a doll and held him thrashing. “What a mockery of life!”


    Azreth’s eyes flared. Faisal bubbled like liquid. His head traded places with an arm. His legs melted together and slid up to jut from his chest. He screamed and screamed as Azreth made more alterations, turning him into a shoggoth of human flesh. Then Azreth set Faisal gingerly on the ground and sent him rolling across the ice at breakneck speed, his screams fading into the distance.


    The crewmen threw aside their guns and raced toward the dig-site.


    Before they covered twenty feet, Azreth sent a beam from his pinky-talon and they burst into blue flame.


    At the same time, the helicopter at the dig-site was clattering into the air. Several crewmen were hanging desperately onto the landing gear.


    Azreth snapped his fingers. A tendril of lightning lashed out of the great blue cloud above him and struck the helicopter, sending it wobbling and spinning into the ice, the fuselage crumpling, the twisting rotors turning one of the hangers-on into a red spray.


    “Please….” croaked Suzume. “No….”


    With great effort, Waru pushed himself out of the hole he’d made in the snowtruck. He buckled, got back to his feet, then staggered and clutched his mother in both arms.


    Azreth snapped his fingers several times. More lightning struck the dig-site. Prefabs burst into blue flame. Burning crewmen ran back and forth across the ice, their screams faint from this distance.


    Against the terror in his heart, against the certainty of death, Waru found the strength his father had always hoped he would.


    His own bravery surprised him. He told the entity calmly, “There’s no sport in this, Azreth. Give me five years to train and I’ll be strong enough to fight you. Five years. I’ll become the worthy opponent you seek. Just let my mother live.”


    For the first time, Azreth smiled. The smile held vast mockery. “You would do that for me?”


    He snatched Waru in one hand and Suzume in the other, glancing between them like a child wondering which toy to play with. His palm was cold as ice.


    “Not my son!” cried Suzume. “Don’t hurt my son! Anything! I’ll do anything!”


    “I had forgotten how pleasant the sound of a screaming mother is,” said Azreth. “Perhaps the music will lose its savor in time, but for now….”


    A translucent blue crystal encased Suzume. She banged on the crystal and screamed. Azreth twitched a finger; the crystal hovered into place beside his ear. He shut his eyes.


    “Yes,” he whispered. “Such sweet music.”


    The lightning was still coming down, but there were no more screams at the dig-site.


    “As for you,” said Azreth, “mighty son of Yerrow, or whatever his name was—seeing as you are the most powerful Source Wielder of this age, I’ll let you choose your death. What will it be? Flame? A flick of the finger? Or perhaps you’d like your limbs refashioned? I have other choices, of course.”


    “Let me go,” said Waru. “Let me train. Let me fight you.”


    “You’ll never be strong enough. Not in a thousand years.”


    “Watch. Let me go!”


    “As you wish.”


    With that, Azreth reached back his arm and flung Waru into the sky.


    The last few moments of Waru’s life were a blend of anguish, sorrow, rage, and disbelief. Even with all his qi concentrated on protecting himself, Waru felt as if g-forces would turn him to jelly. He rocketed through the atmosphere, the cold wind slicing him like a thousand swords.


    Then, in no time at all, he was in the black vacuum of space, hurtling toward the infinite void. He was spinning so fast the Earth whipped across his vision like a slot-machine lemon. He shut his eyes against a surge of nausea. He spun and spun, the impossibly cold vacuum sucking every drop of air from his lungs.


    The last thing Waru Kingsfield thought, before his brain fired its last signals, was of a memory long-buried, of him picking out a Christmas tree with his mother and father, the smell of pine needles thick in his nostrils. It was a good memory. Then it was gone.