Dragon Space

by Jeffrey A. Carver

  In a happier time, lumenis groves and draconic gardens had speckled this broad valley. All were destroyed now, ravaged by the servants of Tar-skel, or by his sorcery. Passing over these dark lands that had once borne such fruit, Windrush felt an ancient anger rising from deep within, raging against the one who had done this to the land. He nurtured the anger; it would make him fight all the more fiercely. He sensed that the others, flanking him, felt the same rage as they flew over the Enemy's desolation.

  The night was wearing long as their flight brought them over the foothills of the Borderland Mountains. Windrush spoke softly to the others, sending word back through the company that the north and south flanks were to split away now. "Quietly," he urged them. "Quietly!"

  Glancing back, he saw the flanks separating, the glowing coals of myriad dragon eyes vanishing to the north and to the south. Behind him, the center group continued strong. Windrush faced into the west wind and picked up the pace of his wingbeats. It was time to start gaining altitude, to climb for the crossing over the most difficult mountain range in the realm.

  * * *

  The air felt strange this high. It had a different character, a different quality of presence, a different undersmell. Perhaps it was the mountains more than the altitude; perhaps it was the nearness of Tar-skel magic. Windrush knew that it was possible to fly higher—he had done so himself during the lumenis vision—but few dragons ever did, and even at this height, he had a sense of flying near the very edge of the realm. Exactly what might happen if he flew beyond the limits of the realm, he didn't know; but he thought it would not be good to try. Even now he felt a sense of separation between mind and body that reminded him of movement through the underrealm.

  Ahead and below, the summits of the Borderland Mountains were dim, icy pyramids, rising up from the predawn mists as though to provide otherworldly perches for the dragons as they passed. Even to dragon eyes they were dark shapes, though the faint skyglow from a cloud-covered moon cast enough light to make their outlines visible. The dragons intended to stay as high above the peaks as their strength and skills could take them, not only to avoid the perilous downdrafts that could dash them onto the rocks, but also to remain inconspicuous to sentries.

  Windrush felt excitement coursing through his body as he pumped the air, flanked by his fellows. It was not yet the energy of battle-fever; that would come soon. This was the rush of night-air-over-mountain, and it was one of the most powerful sensations that Windrush knew. Battle-fever was shallow compared to this. He trusted that the power would stay with him throughout the morning to come, giving him strength for the battle.

  The sharp summits passed slowly beneath them. The sky was already growing lighter with a cold, eerie predawn light. It was a deceptive light, and it made the massive summits seem so perilously close that Windrush almost felt that he could reach down with a talon and touch the ice on their caps as they passed below. But he knew from the stillness of the air that they were much higher above the peaks than appearances suggested. He tried to use his undersense to seek out any enemy sentries, but he was flying too hard; it was impossible to focus deeply in the underweb while exerting himself so strenuously, and he dared not pause. He would just have to use his eyes, ears, and nose to detect the enemy. Soon they would be upon the foe and secrecy would no longer matter.

  The mountains fell away into the darkness. They were over the ridge, well into the Enemy's territory. Attack or counterattack could come from any direction. Windrush whispered a command to his flanking leaders: begin descending under the cover of darkness.

  The final leg of the flight passed with dizzying swiftness. Mist curled up from the ground as they dropped toward the valley of the enemy warriors. It grew difficult to distinguish mountain from vapor. Shadows among wisps of vapor looked like drahls, and more than once, the dragons quickened their wingbeats to catch an enemy who was not there. Excitement burned through the dragons like the fire of lumenis; Windrush could sense talons twitching and fires rising in the backs of dragons' throats. To his left, he could see SearSky's eyes glowing red with eagerness. To his right, the dusty-white Winterfall nodded in readiness. The minutes fled, like the mist beneath them.

  Real dawn was breaking as they swept down into the hollow where the enemy encampment lay. A rosily glowing, cottony vapor half concealed the land. There was an eerie beauty in the dawn; how ironic that in moments this place would be a cauldron of battle. How many of them would not live to return? Windrush shook aside the thought. His scales rippled as he prepared to attack. He imagined that he was not alone, that the spirit of Highwing flew invisibly with him—and he thought, If you can see this, Highwing, we will fight to make you proud.

  Emerging from the mist was the form of an amphitheater and the dark shadows of entrances to warrens. "Spread out to attack," Windrush rumbled. Any instant now, drahls and Tar-skel dragons would come boiling up to meet them. Windrush glanced each way. "NOW!" he thundered.

  "NOW!" echoed the others.

  Flanked by forty dragons, he dove with a roar into the encampment. Flame billowed from his throat, chasing away the mist. He scanned left, right, ahead, looking for the enemy warriors who would be rising to meet them. Flame danced hot in the back of his throat. "COME FACE US!" he bellowed, his voice one in a chorus of dragon challenges.

  The answer came in a great uproar and billowing up of shadows from the ground—below and behind the dragons. "Drahls!" came the cry, repeated many times at once. The dragons wheeled and turned upon the enemy shadows, fire flashing from dragon after dragon. "Die, drahls!" SearSky boomed, stretching out his black claws to rake any drahls that evaded the flames.

  Moments later, the shouting died away, replaced by silence—then rumbles of puzzlement. The shadow-drahls were evaporating like the mist, even before the dragon fire touched them. The dragons who dove after them were closing their claws upon thin air. A deafening peal of laughter reverberated in the valley like the sound of a thunderstorm. It was not a dragon laugh, but something unearthly, demonic.

  The dragons rose again, peering about in confusion as they tried to pinpoint the source of the laughter. It seemed to come from everywhere at once. "Press the attack!" Windrush cried, lifting his voice above the din. "It is sorcery! Do not be deceived by the Enemy's sorcery!"

  Roaring in agreement, the dragons wheeled around to renew their assault. They raked the ground with fire, challenging the enemy warriors to appear.

  Their own cries echoed back to them as they overflew the central amphitheater, belching fire. There was no answering cry, and the empty shadows of the warrens remained empty. No one emerged to meet the challenge, no one rose into the air to flee. The amphitheater, clearly visible now in the scattering mist, was deserted.

  "SearSky and center dragons, make another pass!" Windrush shouted, trying desperately to keep his vanishing hope from infecting his voice. "Winterfall and flanks, search the heights! Longtouch and scouts, climb and search the skies! Call out what you find! All others silent!" As his words echoed back through the air, a haunting quiet came over the valley. The beating of wings, and the occasional crackle of fire, were all that broke the stillness. As the dragons split up according to his directions, Windrush climbed for a better view. Had the camp been deserted all along? No—here and there, firepits used by the enemy warriors were still smoking.

  As SearSky's wing of dragons flew slower and lower over the encampment, sending flames into the warrens, they were met again by shadows boiling up from the ground. The dragons attacked, and again found their targets vanishing before them into the air. New cries of demonic laughter pealed through the valley. The sound seemed to Windrush to echo from the hills and the warrens, to reverberate out of the underrealm itself. It was Tar-skel, laughing through his sorcery at the bewilderment of the dragons.

  From the greater height, Windrush could see more clearly that these shadows were as empty as those which had fooled him back in Hodakai's cavern. His fellow dragons were being deceived by the same tr
ickery of the Enemy. Furious, he scanned the slopes on either side of the valley, looking for further signs of a trap. It was clear that the Enemy had known they were coming. Were drahls waiting to fall upon them as soon as their company disintegrated into chaos? He dared not risk that. "Keep your formations tight!" he called down. "Beware of treachery!"

  He had a feeling, though—a twisting of humiliation and rage deep in his gut—that the Enemy had already won this battle, had made fools of them by inviting them to attack an empty valley. Where were the Enemy's servants now? No doubt far out of reach, waiting for the dragons to abandon their effort. Windrush leveled off high above the ground, trying to use his undersenses. But there was too much commotion; he could not focus.

  Reports were starting to echo back on the wind. "No enemy here!" "None on the north slopes!" "None on the south slopes!" "None in the warrens!"

  Windrush cursed silently—cursed the air, and the Enemy and his tricks, and the spy who must have warned him that they were coming. What should he do now? Attempt to occupy the camp, to establish a foothold in the Enemy's territory? Some of the dragons might call for that; but it would be impossible to hold this place for long, so far from home. How many dragons would it cost them to try?

  Windrush felt a stinging uncertainty. They had come to punish the enemy warriors, and had met only frustration and treachery. He had been a fool for pressing the attack after learning of the traitor in their midst.

  "Who betrayed us?" someone shouted from below, his words echoing Windrush's thoughts. "What spy told them we were coming?"

  The words were met with angry mutterings. For a moment, Windrush felt tempted to shout down that one of their number was a spy—and the sooner they found him the better. But he knew that an angry brawl among the dragons here would serve the Enemy's cause far better than their own. It would take careful and determined effort to locate the traitor, the real traitor.

  "Silence in the valley!" he shouted at last. His command reverberated across the empty camp, stilling the grumbling. He called out for small parties to search the warrens, and for the rest to form a defensive circle about the camp. "If the Enemy returns, let him be met with our fury! Scouts, keep a watch on the sky. Search for any sign and search for our arriving flanks."

  They had not long to wait for the latter. Before the scouts had even climbed back above the bordering slopes, Windrush felt the approach of new dragons. An instant later a cry from a scout signaled the arrival of Farsight's flank, from the north. Soon Stronghold's flank flew in from the south. The leaders gathered around Windrush, circling in midair.

  Brusquely, the dragon asked for reports. Farsight's flank had noticed nothing unusual in their northern passage through the mountains. Stronghold's, however, had been interrupted at one point by a call from ToweringTree, at the rear, that he had seen something moving in the Valley Between—just a glimpse of one or more shadows in the air, shortly before they had reached the southern pass. But after a brief search had turned up nothing, Stronghold had ordered them to hurry on, so that they would arrive in time for the battle.

  At Windrush's call, ToweringTree rose from the circling company and joined the leaders. "The shadows you saw, back in the Valley Between—which way were they moving?"

  ToweringTree's eyes flickered worriedly. "To the east. That was why I asked Stronghold to wait. Windrush, if the drahls aren't here—"

  "Then they might be attacking our land," Windrush said, voicing aloud the fear that they must all have been harboring. The enemy could have moved as stealthily as the dragons—perhaps more stealthily. The dragons had not left their land unprotected; but even so, a large part of their fighting strength was right here, circling uselessly in the air. A cacophony of laughter rang across the valley, jarring him from his thoughts. Was the Enemy listening to their words and thoughts even now? He felt a bone-chilling cold rising out of the underrealm. As the eyes of the dragon leaders flashed around him, he knew that they were all realizing the magnitude of their mistake. "We must return!" "Quickly!" "The defense cannot hold—" The murmurs rose around him.

  "Wait!" Windrush commanded. "We must return, yes! But not thoughtlessly. Gather your flanks and prepare to fly, but give me a few moments of silence, to see what I can learn." Without waiting for any argument, he veered toward the south slope and landed on the nearest outcropping. He raised his head to smell the air—and let his thoughts sink into the underrealm.

  What he found, once he had passed beneath the surface layers of the underweb, was a tangle of deception, overlaid with vapors of confusion and the smells of enemy sorceries. It made him dizzy to try to follow the threads of the Enemy's treacheries, and he knew that he had neither the time nor the skill to sort it all out. But the one thing he could search for was some hint of where the enemy warriors had gone, what their goal was. They might have left some imprint of their paths in the underrealm. But there was such a confusing welter of signs . . .

  And yet, there in the middle of it all, almost as though it had been left for him to find, was a thread leading away from this place, leading in a direction that was not exactly east or west, or north or south. But it bore a clear direction of intent; it was almost as though the groves gleamed at the end of the thread, shining all the way back to where Windrush peered in horror.

  If only he could send a blast of flame through the underrealm to destroy the enemy before they did their terrible work!

  Emerging from the underrealm, Windrush leaped from the outcropping, wings thumping the air. "Away!" he thundered. "Abandon this place! Return to the north and south groves! The lumenis is in danger!"

  Chapter 17

  The Vale of Tar-Skel

  FOR THE captured WingTouch, the flight westward into the territory of the Enemy was a nightmare of pain and exhaustion. The drahl said little, but kept its claws in the base of the dragon's neck as they flew. The pain was no longer constant, but it returned instantly if he flagged in his speed or strayed from his course. In the company of the drahls that had joined them in the Scarred Ridge, they had flown westward until long after night had given way to the morning. WingTouch had seen the last familiar territory disappear behind him in the cold light of the early morning, and then they had begun the long climb over the Borderland Mountains. From that point on, they were flying ever deeper into the Enemy's territory.

  WingTouch's hopes that he might at least observe the Enemy's activities were cut short when, after the crossing of the mountains, the drahls wove a tight net of darkness about his head, blinding him to his surroundings. He navigated by the whispered instructions of his captor, and by sharp jabs of pain when he got an instruction wrong.

  He had plenty of time to think, at least. He was sure that by now his dragon brothers must have concluded that he was dead. He wished he could let them know that he was not. Windrush, in his place, might have been able to call out, to communicate somehow through the underrealm. But lacking such skills, WingTouch was wholly isolated. Despair teased at the edges of his mind, but he was not one to give in easily to despair. He didn't think much about why; he just knew that there was nothing to be gained by it, and one discipline he did have was the ability to shut out unhelpful thoughts. Still, there was little enough in his situation to support hope.

  He could not guess how long he had been pumping his wings, without even a gliding break. He knew that he was deep in the land of Tar-skel. The drahls laughed from time to time, apparently joking among themselves. Their voices turned into rasping croaks as they veered close to taunt him. Was that the natural timbre of their voices, when they dropped the sorcerous intonations of beauty?

  On and on they flew, until WingTouch thought his wings would fail.

  After an eternity, he heard a hoarse whisper: "Land now, dragon—if you have the skill!"

  WingTouch felt a flush of anger. He was supposed to land blind, then? So be it. He let himself lose altitude, straining to judge by the feel of the air when he was approaching the ground. He ignored the laughter of the drahl
s and focused on new sounds, a murmur that sounded as though it might be rising from the ground. There was a curious moment when he felt a sudden change in the texture of the air, a strange kind of thickness, and the sounds of the voices suddenly became more distant. He was passing through a layer of sorcery, he was sure.

  He felt a backwash from his wings. As he flared to settle to the ground, the drahl tightened its claws in the back of his neck. A lance of pain shot through his wingblades—just enough to cause him to spill air from one wing, then the other. He hit the ground with a sideways skid, and tumbled over. As the drahl tumbled with him, it clenched its claws in his neck, and a blinding pain obliterated all other sensation.

  There was a sound of raucous laughter. He struggled to rise. The drahl let go and dismounted, but he could feel the throbbing wound it had left between his wingblades. The drahls' laughter subsided, and one of them hissed: "Prepare, dragon, to meet the true source of power in the realm. Prepare to beg for your life. The Nail of Strength does not look kindly upon those who oppose his will."

  Nail of Strength. WingTouch subdued a rumble of defiance in the back of his throat, as he fought to push himself upright. He could guess how warmly he would be received by the one to whom he had once foolishly given his allegiance. He shivered, turning his head blindly.

  He felt a chill on the back of his neck—the breath of a drahl. The next breath could easily kill. "If you are fortunate," murmured the drahl in a sonorously beautiful voice, "you will see the insignificance of your power, compared to the least of the Nail's servants. Then perhaps you will understand . . ."