by Amie Kaufman
Anders exchanged a three-way glance with Lisabet and Theo. He saw the doubt in their eyes, but Lisabet nodded a fraction, and after a moment, so did Theo. He turned back to Hayn. “I’ll try my best,” he said. “Where should we meet you?”
“In the port square,” Hayn said. “In the southeast corner, by the water.” The port square was where the wolves held their monthly Trial of the Staff. It was where Anders and Rayna had first transformed, and it was where Anders had watched helplessly as the wolves battled a deadly white-and-gold dragonsfire that took hold of the buildings all along the waterfront.
The port was also busy and bustling all day long, full of Vallenite buyers and sellers, hawkers and passersby, not to mention the visitors from faraway places, the crews of mercher vessels docked from all over the world.
It was a good place to meet because there was always a crowd to blend into. But the square gave Anders nightmares—memories of smoke and screaming, from that hazy place where all his earliest memories lived. He sometimes thought they might be memories of the last great battle. He had only been two years old when it happened, and he and Rayna had come out of it orphans, their parents unknown and forgotten.
“In the port square,” he agreed. “If we get away after breakfast, and if Rayna can fly that far, we can probably be there by mid-morning.”
“Be careful,” said Hayn. “You might be recognized.”
Anders could hardly imagine anyone in Holbard would ever recognize him, beyond a few of his Ulfar classmates, but he nodded. “We will,” he promised. “If we can get away, we’ll be there.” Getting away would require a lot to go right—the others would have to agree to the meeting, Rayna would have to be able to cover the distance, Leif would have to agree to let them out of class again. But he’d do his best.
“We should go,” said Lisabet. “Nobody knows we’re here.”
Hayn nodded. “I’ll see you tomorrow,” he said, his gaze on Anders’s face. “Be careful.”
Getting out of the archives proved to be easier than expected—some ways up the hallway a kerfuffle was still underway, and several adult dragons, including the guards, were lecturing Rayna, Mikkel, and Ellukka about the perils of barrel racing, the irresponsibility of doing it in a hallway where anybody might be walking along, and the expectation that students of the Finskól would know better than to undertake such shenanigans.
Anders, Lisabet, and Theo snuck out of the storage caverns and took off in the opposite direction, hurrying back to Anders and Lisabet’s room to wait for the barrel racers to return. Eventually, they did, their eyes dancing with mirth.
“We should try that again sometime,” Ellukka said, gleeful, as she thumped down onto Lisabet’s bed.
“You would say that, you won,” Mikkel complained. “I was nearly sick.” Even he looked pleased, though.
“Of course you were,” Ellukka replied airily. “You rattled around in your barrel like dice in a cup. I was wedged firmly into mine, so I didn’t move around. Much easier. You shouldn’t be so skinny.”
Mikkel made a grumbling noise, but he climbed onto the bed next to her anyway.
“Well?” said Rayna. “Did you find it?”
“Did we ever,” said Anders.
They told the others everything that had happened, and their eyes grew wider and wider with each new detail.
“So you want to go to Holbard?” Ellukka said, in the end. “Do you know how much trouble we’d be in if the Dragonmeet found out? Or how much danger we’d be in if the wolves did?”
“I know,” Anders agreed. “But if he really does have a way to stop the Snowstone bringing down the temperature, we have to try and find out. Otherwise it’s just a matter of time until the wolves attack.”
“Perhaps we should tell the Dragonmeet,” Mikkel said, though he didn’t sound very convinced.
“And what?” Rayna said, rolling her eyes. “Sit around while they debate it for the next month? This Hayn person said it’s urgent. He said it needs to be tomorrow. We can’t afford to wait. I vote we should go. I’ll fly there, Anders, and take you.”
“I think I should go too,” Lisabet said. “I know more about the wolves’ history than any of us. I’ll know if Hayn’s telling the truth.” Anders glanced across at her, wondering if that was her real reason, or whether she simply wanted to be close to Ulfar, to see her home again, even if she couldn’t return to it. He hadn’t forgotten that they’d just seen her mother in the mirror too.
“If Rayna’s going, I’m going,” said Ellukka promptly. “But Mikkel, Theo, you’ll have to stay here. Somebody has to cover for us. I have a plan that’ll get us out of Drekhelm all right, but if we’re not back by dark, you’ll have to come up with some kind of excuse, or better yet, make sure nobody knows.”
Mikkel and Theo nodded. Neither of them looked as sure about the plan, but Anders could see that neither of them had any other ideas either.
And so it was decided. For better or worse, they’d be going to Holbard in the morning. They’d just have to hope Hayn was true to his word—and that they were flying toward an ally, rather than a trap.
Chapter Six
ANDERS DIDN’T GET TO FIND OUT WHAT ELLUKKA’S plan was that night—there was a knocking on the door before the conversation could continue, and her father, Valerius, was outside, looking supremely unimpressed.
“Ellukka, it’s well past time you were in bed,” he said, peering into the room, his burly frame filling up most of the doorway. “And the rest of you. Come on, get moving.”
Nobody wanted to argue with a member of the Dragonmeet, though Ellukka scowled as she climbed off Lisabet’s bed and trooped out into the hallway with the others. She’d said before that she couldn’t afford to give her father a reason to stop her rooming with Rayna now, and insist she live with him in family quarters as she had when she was small, not when the Finskól students had so much to do.
As the dragons all headed off down the hallway, Anders could hear Valerius’s voice drifting back. “I’ve just heard a story about barrel racing, and I’m not—”
Lisabet shut the door firmly behind them, turning her back on it and leaning against it, as if she could keep all the Dragonmeet—and all their troubles—on the outside. “Remember when our biggest worry was surviving Professor Ennar’s combat class?” she said, rueful.
The two wolves got ready for bed in silence, both lost in their own thoughts. The same question kept nagging at Anders, but he didn’t dare voice it aloud to his friend: How far is Sigrid prepared to go?
Hayn had looked deadly serious. Would Sigrid push the temperature down so far she killed the dragons? Killed his sister? Would the dragons talk and debate, hearing every voice and considering every view, until they were frozen solid? Would the wolves of Ulfar stand by and watch, as their Fyrstulf killed the enemy one by one?
He was afraid he knew the answer. He knew the stories the wolves told about the dragons. What they believed. Even his friends believed the worst of the dragons, and now of him too, he had no doubt.
But for all the questions whirling around in his head, there was nothing to do but drift into a troubled sleep and wait for morning.
The next day, Ellukka tackled Leif at breakfast. The Drekleid was eating alone, reading from a small book, blinking sleepily as he spooned up his porridge. Definitely not a morning person, but that only made him more susceptible to Ellukka’s tactics.
“I want to take Anders and Lisabet on a cultural excursion,” she told him, taking a seat at his table. “Rayna’s going to help me. She needs to learn more dragon stories too.”
“A what?” he said, blinking. “Where will this excursion go, exactly? You know you’re not supposed to leave Drekhelm.”
“We won’t go far,” she promised. “But I need to practice my storytelling. I thought we could visit some landmarks—just here in the Icespire Mountains nearby—and I’d tell them the stories that go with them. Lene’s Pass, maybe.”
Leif didn’t look so sure, a
nd Anders leaned down beside Ellukka. “We’re also working on a design project,” he said. “We want to design a special harness for dragons to wear when wolves or people are riding them. Something we could connect ourselves to, so we don’t fall off.” Remembering what Rayna had said the first time they’d discussed the idea, he added, “There are people here at Drekhelm who don’t transform or are too young. It would be useful for them too.”
Ellukka made a spluttering noise of protest, but Leif was nodding. “I do like to encourage innovation,” he conceded. “And as you say, many dragons have human family members who might benefit from such an invention. You’ll need to be home well before dark.”
“We will,” they chorused.
“And don’t go far,” he continued. “Make sure nobody from any of the villages sees you. Don’t go too near Little Dalven, or High Rikkel. And don’t forget there are farmers who live outside both of them.”
“We’ll be careful,” Ellukka said, rising to her feet. Anders recognized this as an old tactic of Rayna’s. As soon as they start to say yes, run away before it turns into a no.
“Well, then,” Leif said, and Anders and Ellukka fled.
Mikkel and Theo saw them off, both looking worried, though Mikkel was trying to cover it up with his usual smirk.
“Be careful,” Theo said, pushing his hair out of his eyes as he always did, shifting his weight from foot to foot. “And if you’re late, we’ll try to cover it up for as long as we can.”
“And when that doesn’t work,” added Mikkel, “we’ll go through your things and take all the good stuff.”
Rayna poked her tongue out at him, and then walked over to the middle of the Great Hall, where Ellukka had already transformed. Ellukka’s scales were the color of a sunrise, orange and peach, her wings a deep gold, shot through with hints of a reddish pink.
Rayna dropped to a three-point crouch, both feet and the fingertips of one hand resting on the floor, and bowed her head. An instant later she was swelling faster than Anders’s eyes could follow, her brown skin glimmering, her shape morphing. Within two heartbeats she was her dragon self, her scales a dark red, streaks of gold and copper winding through them, gleaming in the early morning light.
All his life, Anders had been taught to fear dragons—to run for his life if he saw one—and he still couldn’t tamp down the faint nervousness he felt when he was so close to a dragon, even if she was his sister. But he could also see how beautiful the colors in her scales were, how delicate the stretches of her wings.
He and Lisabet were putting on layers upon layers of clothing. They couldn’t afford to wear their Ulfar cloaks to Holbard, in case someone wondered why students were entering the city from the outside, or walking about the city in a pair, instead of the compulsory foursome. So they’d found coats and cloaks in the cupboards full of clothes set aside for visitors to Holbard. Anders wore a pair of thick blue trousers tucked into brown boots, and a bright-blue tunic over the top, a green shirt beneath it. He had on a padded brown jacket, a cloak pulled over it for extra warmth, gloves, a scarf wrapped around his neck, and a leather hat lined with wool pulled down over his ears. It was one thing to enjoy the cold mountain air in a wolfish kind of way. It was quite another to freeze solid, flying at altitude.
Once Rayna was ready, he approached her. It was only the second time he’d seen her as a dragon, though he’d now been at Drekhelm for over a week. And what a difference a week had made. Last time he’d stood beside his sister as a dragon, he’d been terrified, Mikkel and Ellukka looking on suspiciously. Now Mikkel was standing beside him, weaving his hands together to boost Anders up his sister’s side, which was much easier than climbing her leg. Her scales radiated a fierce heat, and they weren’t as hard as they looked from the outside. There was a little give to them when he pressed his hand against one.
“Good luck,” said Mikkel quietly, as Anders wedged himself into place between two of the ridges that ran the length of her back. “No pressure or anything, but the fate of all dragonkind’s probably resting on you. Find out what he knows, and how we can stop them freezing us all, and whatever you do, don’t let the wolves catch you.”
“Easy,” said Anders, with a weak smile. Then Mikkel was stepping back, Anders was curling his arms around the ridge in front of him—they seriously needed to talk about harnesses, this was a terrible idea—and before he knew it, Rayna was taking a dozen quick steps and spreading her wings. They were aloft!
They cleared the huge dragon doors of the great cavern with room to spare, and Rayna tipped down her left wing to wheel around and follow the curve of the mountainside, then snapped her wings wide open to soar. She trumpeted her pleasure at being in the air, and Anders heard a reply from right behind them—Ellukka and Lisabet must be close.
They flew for a couple of hours, their course taking them through the Icespire Mountains and over the Great Forest of Mists. The countryside below them seemed just like one of the maps Anders studied in class. In the crisp cool of the morning, mists were gathered not just around the forest, but in every gully and valley, as though they were white water that had drained down to the lowest points in the land. The fierce black rock of the mountains, cut through with pure white snow, slowly gave way first to the rich, dark-green treetops of the Great Forest, and after that to the familiar green-gold of the plains.
Anders knew the rivers below him were rushing, tumbling, fierce beasts, ready to grab at the unwary and drag them away, but from here they looked like blue and silver string, winding their way in endless curves through the countryside.
The sun caught the dew-wet plains, and they glinted at him like fields of diamonds, dotted here and there with outcroppings of jet-black rock, with the small shadows that meant a hill or someone’s home. With so many of the village houses sporting grassed-over roofs, it was often difficult to tell the difference.
The view was mesmerizing, and up here it felt almost possible to forget all his worries and his fears. Up here, everything felt small and distant, like pieces on a game board to be moved—when he was down on the ground, he felt like he was in a dangerous game, where one wrong move could bring down an avalanche on him and his friends.
He felt a pang of disappointment as Rayna finally started to angle downward, coming to rest in a gully near the banks of the Sudrain River, following Ellukka into their landing spot. Their goal was to land some way outside Holbard and approach the city on foot, coming in through the west gate, which was often the busiest.
When he tried to climb down he found he’d stiffened into place, quick pain shooting along his limbs as he hauled his left leg over Rayna’s back to slide down her side.
Lisabet was stumbling to the ground nearby, and without a word she half-ran, half-staggered toward the river’s edge. Ellukka was transforming the moment Lisabet was clear of her, and she hurried after the other girl. Anders tried to make his tired arms and legs follow, and by the time he caught up, Lisabet was kneeling by the edge of the river, scooping up cold water and splashing it on her face. Ellukka was holding on to Lisabet’s cloak with both hands to make sure she didn’t fall in.
“What happened?” he asked. “Did she get sick?”
Ellukka simply shrugged and held on. “We don’t exactly talk while we’re up there,” she pointed out. “Search me.”
Rayna appeared beside Anders, her own transformation to human complete, and the three of them waited until Lisabet could lift her head. “Sorry,” she said, her pale skin even paler than usual, her cheeks bright pink from the cold of the river. “It was the heat. I was all right for most of it, but I started to feel horrible toward the end. The dragons are so hot when they’re, well, dragons.”
Anders, with his strange new immunity to the heat, hadn’t even noticed.
Ellukka, who might ordinarily have a wisecrack for Lisabet, instead produced a couple of cookies from her pockets. “Eat something,” she said. “Usually helps me, if I’ve gotten cold.”
“How did you get cookie
s to transform with you?” Rayna asked, indignant. “I had a sandwich with me last week, and it just vanished. Leif says nobody knows where things like that go, which I’d think would be quite an important mystery to solve, but apparently not.”
“Size,” Ellukka said. “If what you pack is small enough, and you can tuck it in your pockets, then I suppose your charm thinks it’s part of your clothing.” She fished out a necklace from beneath her tunic, which sported an amulet that looked a lot like the ones wolves wore to keep their clothes in place when they transformed.
“Just like ours,” Lisabet said, echoing Anders’s thoughts. “More evidence that wolves and dragons used to work together.”
“We’re evidence that wolves and dragons used to get along,” Ellukka pointed out. “If we can now, they could then.” Her lips quirked, and she pointed at Anders and Rayna. “And we know at least one dragon and one wolf liked each other, or they wouldn’t be here.”
“I wish we knew who they were,” Anders said, and Rayna murmured agreement by his side. But that wasn’t what they were here to think about, and after Lisabet splashed a little more cold water on her face, the four of them set off, walking down to the road that led into town. It stretched between a ford across the Sudrain River and the walls of Holbard itself, and was the way almost all of the farmers from the southern farmlands made their way into Holbard with their produce for market.
It was easy enough to wait for a gap in the people and wagons to dart down to the road, and once they were there, the four of them simply slowed their pace and let themselves be swallowed up in a slow-moving crowd of farmers and traders. It wasn’t quick, but it was safe.
Anders could hear the farmers talking quietly, and he kept his head down, his cloak wrapped tight around him.
“We’re halfway through spring,” a man was saying, tugging his scarf more tightly around his neck. “Everything should be in bloom, putting out green shoots and coming to life, and instead it’s still half-frozen in the ground.”