Silver shook her head, a fire racing into her cheeks. “No. You’re not! You didn’t raise the tsunami.”
“I just know. Somehow I chose right, but I also chose wrong. I have wondered my whole life what I was supposed to choose. You seem to have done better than I, and I am grateful for that.”
“But, Nebekker, it can’t—” Silver shook her head, her voice filled with fire. “I won’t believe it. And to blame yourself all these years?”
Nebekker waved off the protest. “That was the first thing I promised to tell you. The second is that there is nothing in my history, my knowledge, or my heart that can help you fix your heartstone. I simply do not know what is wrong with it. But then, as I’ve just shown you, I don’t understand dragon heartstones much at all.”
Silver glanced down and brought the heartstone closer to her face. It looked like any old bit of polished rock cradled in her palm. And maybe that’s all it was.
Maybe she’d hallucinated in the burrow, picked up a rock, and somehow convinced herself it was the thing she was searching for. Silver let out a bitter laugh and drew back her good arm, prepared to throw the stone into the fire. Nebekker held her breath. Silver’s hand paused above her head.
Pop! The fire rained sparks again, as though challenging her. Silver took a slow breath and set the heartstone on the food tray instead.
“It’s not quite done with you yet,” Nebekker huffed. “I’ve also done a poor job of understanding this poison. I have looked for days for a way to counter it. The answer simply might not be here.”
No antivenom and a broken heartstone—what then? Silver shook her head, refusing to put words to that terrible thought.
Right then, Lers and Mele appeared with another dinner tray. When Lers lifted the lid from the pot, the incredible aroma brought tears to Silver’s eyes.
“Clay-roasted lamb with rice,” Mele said. “It smells as good as … I mean almost as good as what we’d tasted in the palace of Calidia.”
“But you han’t finished the broth.” Lers frowned as he picked up the old tray and swept away.
“Try to eat,” Nebekker chided. “Who knows when you’ll get food like this again?”
Silver shook her head. “I’m not hungry.”
She stretched her limbs, noting that she’d once again lost all feeling in her left arm, and nestled her cheek into a fur blanket. “Mele, did you find anything in the library that could help me understand why I failed?”
Mele scrunched her face, thinking hard. “Nothing I can think of.” Then, she reached out and patted Silver’s foot comfortingly. “But I’ll never stop searching, Silver. I’ve read … so much! I will say that Gulad Nakim was some kind of kid. Brajon would have loved him. They taught his story all wrong at school. Wars and water dragons this and that. Boring.”
Mele helped herself to Silver’s lamb, stuffing bite after noisy bite into her mouth so that Silver had to listen hard to hear Mele’s words around the racket.
“When he was a kid, he used to bet the other kids that he could predict what would happen. Gulad won so much that he amassed a small fortune. Well, enough to buy all the sweets he wanted, but that’s wealth to me!”
Silver’s eyebrows rose. “Like what kind of predictions?”
“He could guess specific things that would happen each day.”
“Kind of like how he predicted the killing of the Aquinder and buried all those … eggs…” Slowly, Silver rose to a seated position, her eyes widening, her voice becoming thick with wonder and awe. “In the desert. He knew.” Quick as a whipping desert wind, Silver gasped. “Nebekker! Can you talk to Kirja?”
Nebekker responded calmly, as used to Silver’s outbursts as she was. “We communicate, yes. We can sense things, understand emotions on a certain level. We’ve known each other long enough to—”
“Yes, yes.” Silver waved her hand impatiently. “But can you talk? Full sentences, full water dragon songs, all translated perfectly? Complex ideas and also … can you talk with other water dragons?”
“No.” Nebekker shook her head, confusion pushing through the calm. “No human can.”
“And when you found Kirja, you nursed her back to health, didn’t you?”
“Yes.”
“Because you were good at healing all along. And Gulad was good at predicting the future or maybe reading people and guessing events to come … something like that. Yes, that’s it! I’ve figured out the secret to the dragon heartstones. Mine’s not broken.” Silver laughed. “It’s just made for me, enhancing the thing I’m already good at—communication—the way it did with your talent of healing.”
“Oh!” Mele exclaimed.
“And that means even though I can’t heal, I can go back out there and talk to the water dragons who inhabit the mountains. Snuckers and Snowfluff dragons … whoever I can find. One of them will surely know about a Screw-Claw antidote, having lived among them so long!”
Silver was leaning over to hug Nebekker and Mele when a shout followed by a sound like metal clanging against stone on the other side of the Dragon Den door made them all pause.
“Lers?” Mele said.
Silver jumped as Lers shouted: “Come back here!”
Mele flung the door open. Even from her nest, Silver could see a figure dressed in fitted all-black dart across the snow.
“No!” Silver recognized that dark, flowing hair. “Mele! Nebekker! She’s here. Sagittaria Wonder!”
Quickly, Silver reached for her dragon heartstone.
But the tray she’d set it on was gone. Cleared by Lers.
SIXTEEN
“She has my heartstone!”
Silver threw off her blankets, got to her feet, and limped outside. Mele grabbed her before she could topple sideways into the snow as darkness descended over Silver’s vision.
“I’m sorry, Silver. I didn’t realize yer stone was on the tray.” Lers, too, helped Silver into the great hall of the Keep.
“You just let Sagittaria in? Without warning us? As if…” Silver gasped. “How could … you? You know she and I … that she wants…”
“We are Watchers,” Gavi said, coming over once he noticed the commotion. “Neutral. We care not for your little tiff.”
Tiff! As though her history with Sagittaria Wonder were no more important than arguing with Brajon over who got Aunt Yidla’s last nut pastry.
Silver sputtered. “Don’t you understand what this means for Aquinder?”
Gavi glared at Silver before the cranky old Watcher slowly made his way up the stairs. “We cannot deny her entry to the Keep.”
Silver’s eyes blazed with fury. It hardly mattered what a cranky old ghoul thought. Silver knew that if he could deny anyone entry, it would have been her.
She forced herself to calm down and focus on Hiyyan back in the Dragon Den. The heartstone is gone. Sagittaria Wonder stole it.
Hiyyan came to life, dashing away his building pain. Silver immediately understood his plan—he would try to intercept Sagittaria Wonder before she made it to her Dwakka. He rose, sniffing so that the scent of the two-headed water dragon reached Silver, too.
Silver moved toward the stairs, Mele on her heels. “Hurry! She’s already too far ahead.”
“There’s a shortcut to the river.” Silver heard a voice call out.
Silver turned to see Dasia, the Watcher whose cooking could nearly rival that of Aunt Yidla, observing her from the top of the staircase. She nodded at one wall, where a tapestry of a child queen wearing an old-fashioned headdress moved, as though a draft was blowing through the room.
“They each lead to a different part of the river. Will Sagittaria Wonder have gone south to Herd Valley, north to discover the far side of these mountains, or east to the sea?”
“Thank you, Dasia.” Silver paused as a rushing clatter came from the hallway behind the door next to one fireplace.
Hiyyan skidded to a stop in the great room and announced himself with a furious roar. “gggrrrUUUUNNNNGGGHHH!”
>
“Hiyyan!” Silver ran to the Aquinder. “Did you see her?”
Not. See.
Silver drew her eyebrows together. Hiyyan’s communication had slipped into the simple words they had used before the dragon heartstone. She closed her eyes and tried to speak with the more melodic dragon tongue that had come so naturally to her. But all she could manage was a note or two of a song of frustration.
“Ugh!” Silver pointed to the tapestry of the child queen. “Dasia says this is a shortcut. I’m going in.”
Hiyyan stepped forward importantly, breathing in deeply at the entrance. Silver received wisps of scents: grasses and herd-animal manure from one, sharp metals and pine from another, and, finally, the saltiness of green and brown seaweed, plus something else: water dragon.
“Get a candle,” Silver said to Mele.
“We’re not going down there?” Mele squeaked.
“I have to!” Silver took the candle from Mele and stepped forward to peer down a dark set of stone steps, followed closely by Hiyyan. It would be a tight squeeze, but the tunnel was just wide enough for the Aquinder. Silver was glad of it. She wanted Hiyyan by her side.
Silver had a good sense of where the steps led. Hiyyan’s heightened senses relayed the thick smell of dampness.
“Not another underground river,” Silver moaned. “This explains how Sagittaria got in and out of the Keep, most likely on her Dwakka’s back.” Again, Hiyyan’s heightened senses picked up useful scents: the oily leather smell of Sagittaria’s close-fitted clothing, a pack filled with crackers and dried meats.
“You two aren’t going alone.” Mele’s voice shook.
“Mele, you and Luap should stay here.” Luap’s small frame and tiny appendages weren’t built for battle, and Mele wasn’t exactly the fighting kind, either. Silver wasn’t sure she could protect Mele and chase after Sagittaria. She thought of Ferdi’s letter and wished that the reinforcements he promised would walk through the Keep door!
“But Silver…,” Mele began, but fell silent as Nebekker carefully hobbled toward them. She leaned on her walking stick, and Silver’s old friend seemed, in that moment, as ancient as the stones of the Keep.
“Stay,” Silver said again, then added, “Take care of Nebekker.” The two shared a solemn look, and Mele nodded. Silver knew the former cleaning girl would be a capable and kind tender to Nebekker. Not like all the trouble Silver caused.
Watchers gathered in the hall, nervous and tittering. Silver had one more request of Mele: “And Mele … take care of Hiyyan.”
No. I go.
“There isn’t time to discuss this. You’re sick.”
But Hiyyan was more stubborn than a herd animal. He blocked Silver’s way to the stairs.
“Stop joking around!” Silver shoved at a water dragon who wouldn’t budge. “I need to hurry!”
Hiyyan turned his side to Silver so that his newly golden scale was flashing. Together. Always. Bonded.
“Yes, I know! But not right now…” Silver’s frustration burned in her cheeks. Didn’t Hiyyan understand? He wasn’t well and the traveling would make him worse. She didn’t have time to argue that point with him. Sagittaria was getting away, and Silver’s most important duty was to protect him. If he insisted on blocking her path, she had no choice but to fight dirty. “I don’t want you to come. You’ll hold me back. Right now, our bond doesn’t matter to me!”
Hiyyan inhaled sharply and drew back. Was it his heart breaking that Silver felt or her own?
“Hiyyan, I…” Silver wanted to say a hundred things to Hiyyan to wipe that crushed expression from his face, but Nebekker cut in:
“You can’t chase Sagittaria alone. Kirja will go. She waits for you outside.”
Fly. The single, resolute word came to her. And Silver was glad of it. She would travel faster in the air, rather than underground like Sagittaria.
“Take this.” Lers presented Silver with salted meat, crackers, cheese, and cookies in a cloth napkin that she stuffed into her bag. “Goin’ east, there’s a section about a hundred miles along that comes aboveground ’afore dipping back under. I’d head there if I was chasing someone.”
Silver nodded.
Hiyyan tipped his head back. “HWUUUWWRRNNN!”
The Keep wall trembled. He was angry to be left behind. He was angry at Silver. She was sorry about that, but somehow his fierceness met Silver’s own, and she raised her chin.
Silver held Hiyyan’s face in her good hand, both of their mouths drawn in tight, determined lines. “I will be back for you soon. Heartstone in hand, healing in sight.”
She was Desert Fox; she was Silver Batal. She had earned a dragon heartstone. She was bonded to an Aquinder, and it was her responsibility to protect him, even if it made him angry.
Silver knew that, in time, Hiyyan would understand. There was no one who could drive a stake between her and Hiyyan, and no challenge they would leave untested in their pursuit of the things that were theirs.
This time, the roar that shook the foundations of the Keep came from Kirja. Silver clenched her jaw, threw open the front door of the Keep, and stepped out into the icy, dark world beyond.
SEVENTEEN
Silver’s heart fluttered as Kirja’s wings flapped. They took to the air, and even though icicles formed on her lips, Silver gasped with delight at being in the sky once more. It had been too long! Kirja’s body was longer and slimmer than Hiyyan’s, and her flying style was smoother and more practiced than her young son’s. There was no thick mane to hold, so Silver leaned forward and wrapped her arm around Kirja’s slick neck. Joy and determination blended uneasily, like oil and vinegar from one of Aunt Yidla’s salad dressings. Even with Silver well cloaked, with only her face peeking out, her eyes stung as they watched the landscape below for any sign of Sagittaria and her Dwakka. The sky ahead offered the very first of the day’s light in sharp silver, with a violet streak across the bottom of the horizon.
They skimmed just beneath the low clouds and circled until even the horizon behind them began to greet a new day, then they landed on a craggy cliff to rest and assess their surroundings. How far had they flown? Pain and exhaustion left a groggy heaviness behind Silver’s eyes, but she shook it off, peeling back layers of fur until the bitterness of cold cleared her head completely. Silver stood on the edge of the cliff, facing the way they’d come, and her thoughts went to Hiyyan. Could she communicate with him from this far away?
We are well, she tried. No sign of Sagittaria yet.
No sign here.
Silver jerked so hard with shock that she almost lost her balance and went tumbling over the cliff. Hiyyan! Where are you?
No know. Dark.
His essence flowed closer than expected … somewhere in the mountains … in the river caves.
You came anyway! she shouted in her mind. Her fear for Hiyyan’s safety made her angry. Why had Mele and Nebekker let him go? You’re injured!
You. Too. Careful. Dwakka smell in tunnel. Far ahead.
Silver narrowed her eyes and scanned the landscape again, as though expecting Sagittaria Wonder and her Dwakka to pop out from underground at any moment.
“Did you raise him to be so stubborn?” Silver looked at Kirja, who shrugged.
Can’t stop him. Loves you. Needs to help.
“Injured, he’ll be as useless as a jelly pickax.”
Still, Silver replaced the furs over her face. Anger, fear … and relief, she had to admit to herself. She was glad Hiyyan was close. If there had been time, she would have flushed him out of the cave and sent him back to the Keep, but Sagittaria had too much of a head start.
We’re moving on, Silver thought, emphasizing her disapproval. Looking for the river opening Lers told us about. See you there. Please be careful.
Far on the eastern horizon, the light was turning a moody gold. They flew toward it, noticing that the air was becoming thicker and slightly warmer as they left the central mountain range behind and approached the sea. Not warm enoug
h to throw off the furs, but enough that Silver could expose her face without her lips freezing to her teeth. A tiny hope that Sagittaria was stuck in the caves because of a frozen river was erased with the relative warmth. The river flowed unceasingly right into the sea.
“Look.” Silver pointed to the blue line suddenly running through a light-softened valley. “I don’t see Sagittaria or her Dwakka. Are they behind or ahead of us?”
“Kkkrrreerrlll,” Kirja growled her discontent. No swimming Dwakka was faster than her.
Silver patted Kirja’s neck and watched the river snake its way toward the ocean. Kirja opened her wingspan, and they rode the airways in a wide circle, searching the ground below. The valley was low elevation enough to be green with grasses and shrubbery. It reminded Silver of Herd Valley.
“Looks like home,” she said softly.
A gentle purr rumbled through Kirja’s belly, and Silver was glad to have her on this journey. Silver was happy Hiyyan had his mother, but she ached for her own. Her sadness was dashed away at a flicker of movement below.
“Look!” A drum pounded in Silver’s chest. There, just emerging from the shadow of a cliff wall, was an outline of a large water dragon in the river. “Dive, Kirja!”
Kirja pulled her lips back in a snarl and dipped her head toward the earth. She tucked her wings close to her body, and at the same time, Silver clenched her leg muscles and pressed flat against Kirja’s back in preparation for the drop.
They cut through the air smoothly, slicing across the blue as a blur. As they flew closer, only a Jaspatonian dunes–breadth away, one of the Dwakka’s heads looked up and sounded an alarm. Sagittaria Wonder didn’t bother to check over her shoulder, instead imitating Silver, pressing closer to her water dragon and yelling for it to turn back the way it came.
Silver realized with panic that Sagittaria and the Dwakka were headed right toward her Aquinder.
Hiyyan, watch out!
“Land near the cliff. Cut off the opening,” Silver urged Kirja. “Protect Hiyyan!”
They landed in the river smoothly, grazing the top of the cold water before Kirja pulled her wings close to her body. Where Sagittaria and her Dwakka had been, there was now only a scattering of bubbles. They swam to the spot, the cave opening dousing them with shadows. Instinctively, Silver lifted her feet, recalling the last time Sagittaria Wonder had reached up and pulled her off a water dragon, back into the waters beneath Calidia.
Race for the Dragon Heartstone Page 14