Just as the trembling in my arms reached the point where I could no longer hold on, my right foot hit solid ground. I collapsed like a rag doll onto a rough, porous rock floor and breathed in and out, in and out, savoring the feeling of not dying.
Then, as if it were being dragged from some poor creature’s throat by force, I heard my name.
“Creeeeeel?”
I flipped over onto my stomach and squinted through the smoke. I was at one side of a huge underground cavern, the rough, black walls lit by a river of orange fire that flowed through the center of the chamber. It was from this that the column of smoke rose up into the rift.
On the opposite side of the river, lying on a raised dais of wood padded with leaves and branches, lay Velika.
The Queen on Her Throne
I scrambled to my feet and ran toward her, an embarrassing rush of tears flooding down my cheeks. I had to stop at the edge of the river of molten rock, teetering and feeling the heat wash over me.
“Velika,” I said when I had composed myself, “are you all right?” My gaze went to her belly and I could almost count the eggs, they were so prominent.
“I . . . cannot . . . ” Her words were drawn out, almost painfully so. “Drugged,” she said finally.
“Drugged?” I strained to look through the smoke that separated us, searching for something, some food, water, whatever it was they were giving her, but there was nothing there. Only smoke and rock and the bed she was lying on. My hands were shaking again, now from terror and not exhaustion. How long did they intend to keep her drugged? Would it hurt the eggs? How was I supposed to get her out of here if she was too weak to fly?
“Are the eggs all right?”
“Yeesss. ” Her eyes kept closing, but I could tell that she was trying to listen to me as I paced along the edge of the river and dithered.
“How soon will you . . . lay . . . them?”
“Soon. ”
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This made me pace harder. How soon was soon? Tonight? Tomorrow night? Next week? We had to get her out of here. I’d have to climb back out immediately and find Shardas.
“Can you try not to take the potion or what-have-you? Can you pretend to swallow, then spit it out?”
“No, she can’t,” said Darrym.
I whirled around. He was coming out of a narrow tunnel in the far wall, one that I hadn’t even noticed through the haze. Without further warning he lunged forward and snatched me in his claws. Arrowing up and out of the rift above us, he didn’t even circle once, just dove back down again into another hole in the ground, dropped me on the rock floor, and left.
“That is the second time a dragon has done that to me,” I gasped, trying to get my wind back. “And I don’t like it!”
“Creel?”
It was muffled, but the voice was unmistakable.
“Hagen?”
“Creel!” His voice was louder, and the frantic scraping sound that accompanied it made my teeth hurt.
A chunk of rock low down on the wall broke free and skittered across the floor. Through the hole it left I could see a human hand, dusty and scraped. It withdrew, and was replaced by Hagen’s face, also dusty and scraped, peering up at me.
I crouched down and touched his face. “What are you doing here?”
“We were looking for you, of course,” he said, looking not the least bit nonplussed by our situation. “What happened to you? Shardas and Luka are frantic; they said you just disappeared. ”
“I got captured by some ‘hoarded humans,’ ” I told him, rushing to get my words out. We needed to work on an escape plan. “They took me to their village, and then their dragon made me his personal servant. But Darrym came to visit and recognized me. So I ran off and found this place, and saw Velika. Then Darrym caught me and dropped me down here. ” I paused for breath. “You said ‘we. ’ Who’s with you?”
“Leontes. ” Hagen’s head disappeared, and then I saw one of Leontes’s green eyes peering at me.
“Hello, young Creel,” he rumbled.
“Hello, Leontes,” I said. “Can you fly out of your cave?”
“No, there’s an iron grill over the opening. We are trying to dig through to your chamber, instead. I don’t know if you saw, but there is a whole row of caves here, apparently for this very purpose, but the wall seems thinnest between our two chambers. ”
“Can I do anything?”
“Just stand clear. Now that we’ve broken through, it shouldn’t take long. ”
And with that he curled a long foreclaw around the edge of the hole and began to tug. More pieces of rock broke off, and I could hear the horrible scraping again as he used his other claws to weaken the wall around it.
In a few minutes he had made a hole large enough for Hagen to climb through, and my brother gave me a rib-cracking hug. Then he handed me a jagged chunk of rock and showed me where to chip away at the wall. Side by side we went at it, while in the other cave Leontes did his part with rather more success.
Every so often, a shadow would pass across the cave entrances far above us. Hagen would leap back to Leontes and we would all feign sleep until the sentry went away again. We were lucky in that they hardly glanced at us, so certain were they that we would not be able to get out.
Until Darrym came.
This time Hagen had crouched in the ever-widening hole between our caves when a dragon’s shadow passed over us. At my low signal, he went all the way back to Leontes, who let out a disgruntled huff at being interrupted yet again. Darrym crouched at the mouth of the cave and peered down at me.
“We needed the queen,” he said, but there was no hint of apology in his tone.
“Why couldn’t you just tell her about your people?” I had to shout to be heard; it was like being at the bottom of a well. “She and Shardas would have come to visit you! Why did you need to steal her?”
“We are the true people,” he said, haughty. “We require the queen’s presence. Those other dragons, with whom you have made friends”—he said the word as though it disgusted him to contemplate—“are blasphemers and fools. She should not be in such company. ”
“So she should be kept imprisoned?”
“Until she sees the true way,” Darrym said easily.
“And if she doesn’t?”
“Her eggs will be laid soon. ”
I could only gape at this. Did he honestly think Velika—and Shardas!—would let them keep even one of the eggs? They would die first! But perhaps that was the plan . . . if Velika did not see “the true way. ” And what did that mean? Keeping people as servants? Living in squalor?
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“She belongs here with us, but a human could never understand,” Darrym said, his voice dismissive.
“Try to explain it,” I said with gritted teeth.
At the same time, though, I wanted him to go away so that we could keep digging a Leontes- sized hole in the wall. We had to get out of here, to escape and save Velika, but Darrym’s horrifyingly matter-of-fact tone mesmerized me. What was the reasoning behind this madness?
Darrym settled himself firmly on the edge of the pit and drew a deep breath, preparatory to explaining. Beside me, in the hole, I heard Hagen give a little moan of impatience, but out of the corner of my eye I could see Leontes straining to listen to Darrym, an expression of deep interest in his eyes.
“We are the chosen ones, those who followed the true queen many generations ago,” Darrym said. “It grieves us to come to this, stealing away one who descended from the false queen, but a female of lesser royal blood is better than none at all. ”
“What under the Triunity are you talking about?”
Glaring down at me, and not needing my outburst to continue, Darrym went on.
“The granddaughter of the first queen had two daughters of her own, born of the same egg,” he said. “Mystics divined that it was
Aurania who was to be queen, but some of us believed that this was not so. Her sister, Verania, was wiser, and so our ancestors followed her into exile here, on the far side of the world. But now Verania’s daughter’s daughter’s daughter’s daughter has died, and we have no one to bless us. We decided to bring the false queen here to help us, because her blood is still royal, even if it derives from the lesser sister. ”
“I see,” was all I could say.
Darrym snorted as though he didn’t believe that a human ever could see what he was talking about. But I did understand: twins, hatched from the same egg, had created a rift between two factions of dragons. And these were the remainders of the losing side, I supposed. Their numbers diminished, and their queen was dead. So they went after what they considered the next best thing.
Velika.
“Now, why are you here?” Darrym’s muddy brown eyes stared into mine.
“To rescue my friend Velika,” I said boldly. “From you. ”
“Impudence!”
“Oh, really? Let me remind you that when we first met, Master Darrym, you were lying on the Citatian shore with a collar around your neck pretending to be wounded so that you wouldn’t have to fight! Shardas himself uncollared you, I helped you to find a home with Shardas and Velika, and this is how you repay us? If I am impudent, what are you?”
Another snort, and a flap of wings as Darrym flew away without answering my questions.
“He’s gone,” I told Leontes when the sound of Darrym’s wings had faded.
“This is too much to digest immediately,” the alchemist replied. “I must ponder his story as I scrape at the rock. ”
“I agree. ”
In silence we tore away the rest of the wall, and in silence we waited for night to fall. Once it was dark, Hagen and I mounted Leontes’s broad shoulder and soared into the night sky, circled the column of smoke once to prevent detection, and went to tell Shardas what we had found.
Spears of Black Glass
Never do that again!”
If I’d thought that Hagen’s earlier hugging was bone-breaking, it was nothing compared to what I got from Luka when we reached our camp. He practically dragged me off Leontes’s neck, but I didn’t mind. I was already leaping to meet him as the dragon touched the sand. We both squeezed each other and kissed and swore never to be parted again (and in Luka’s case, occasionally just swore).
“I didn’t mean to be captured,” I told him, when I could breathe.
“But it does seem to happen to you with some frequency,” Shardas put in. He came forward and whuffed at my clothes to reassure himself that I was all right.
“Twice is not ‘some frequency,’ ” I said, my cheeks blazing. “And I’ve gotten myself free both times, thank you very much. ”
“With a dragon’s help,” Luka pointed out, and I gave him a quelling look, so he squeezed my waist again.
“And now the dragons need our help,” I said, leaning against Luka’s side. “We have to get Velika out of there. They’re keeping her sedated, and if she doesn’t come to accept living here and being their queen, they’re going to keep the hatchlings and train them to do what they want. ”
Shardas barely managed to turn his head away before he let loose a burst of blue flame. It turned a long streak of sand to our right into a smooth glass plate.
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Letting go of Luka, I went to stand beside the king of the dragons. I regretted blurting out what I had learned in that way, but Shardas needed to know. I put one hand on his fore-claw, drawing his angry blue gaze down to myself.
“We will rescue her and the eggs. We will. ”
“She’s right,” Leontes said. “I’ve seen where they’re keeping Velika, and I have gotten a good count of the dragons that frequent that area. We can do this, Shardas. ”
“How? When?”
I had never seen Shardas so frustrated, so helpless.
“We’ll go tomorrow night, after Hagen has helped me to prepare some mixtures,” Leontes declared. “And in the meantime, I need you and my dear mate to make us some long spears of glass. ”
“Glass?” I wasn’t the only one who said it with a look of disbelief.
“This sand will make very hard, very sharp glass, as we’ve just witnessed,” Leontes said, pointing to the smooth slab Shardas had just unintentionally made. “It will come in handy for what I have in mind. ”
Shardas gave him a suspicious look. “Are you certain that you aren’t just trying to occupy me with useless chores?”
“Quite. ” Leontes paused. “Some of the others might help as well. ”
Smoke still coming from his nostrils, Shardas finally turned and designated some glassmakers, taking them over to a large patch of particularly rough sand. Meanwhile, Luka, Hagen, and I followed Leontes up the ridge of rock to where he had set up his working space.
“Is it just a meaningless task?” I asked.
“Oh, no. We really will use them. But it has the added benefit of keeping Shardas busy,” Leontes admitted cheerfully. “They will no doubt make far more glass than we could ever possibly use. ”
“Is this the first time that dragons will carry weapons into battle?” Luka picked up a strange brass instrument and studied it.
“Yes,” Leontes said, taking the thing away from him and setting it carefully into the leather-bound chest with his other tools. “And it will also be the first time that dragons have gone into battle against one another without coercion. Which is why I must make medicine now. ”
This effectively silenced us, and we spent the next few hours fetching and carrying. We brought driftwood for Leontes to burn in a little fire pit with the smoke screened through a blanket. We brought him the scraggly moss that grew in the crevices of the rocky islet, and shells that had washed up on shore. At Niva’s urging, we also brought him some freshly caught and grilled fish to eat, though he grumbled at the interruption. Things were ground, boiled, mixed, pounded, strained, and steeped until well after dark.
The next day I spent most of my time down on the beach with Shardas and the other glassmakers. Luka wouldn’t let me out of his sight, something that I appreciated, but at the same time it prevented me from working on my wedding gown. I kept it by my side, though, in its basket, almost as a good-luck charm more than anything else.
As far as I could tell, there were already more glass spears than anyone would know how to deal with, and yet Shardas and the others continued to make them. Stack after stack of the rough, lumpy things lay on the beach, and there were now great pits where the sand had been hardened and dug up.
It was fascinating to watch, though.
Laying their muzzles parallel to the sand, the dragons would each send out a long, narrow lick of flame. The sand would melt and then harden into a lightning bolt of black glass. A dragon would scoop it up, run its claws over it to snap off any stray obtrusions and brush off the extra sand, and lay it carefully on the pile.
The stack of glass spears bothered me, though I tried not to show it. Instead I admired the look of the melting sand, and the fine fire control of the dragons. I didn’t want to think about my friends using weapons against their own kind, even if the other dragons had kidnapped Velika.
Luka came up beside me, and I took his hand. “I want another look at that map that you and Leontes drew,” he said. He, too, was staring at the pile of spears with a faintly alarmed expression.
“All right. ” I stretched up and gave him a kiss.
“Aren’t you coming with me?”
I smiled at him, hoping that it wasn’t as goofy-looking an expression as I felt. It was just so strange and wonderful for him to be so . . . worried about me.
“Luka, I’m with Shardas, and Niva, and half a dozen other dragons I’ve known for years. I’ll be just fine. ” I felt my smile turn more mischievous. “Besides, I can’t stop fidgeting, and I absolutely have to work on my w
edding gown. ”
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“All right. ” Another kiss and he reluctantly left.
I turned around to find Shardas watching us, and blushed.
“He loves you very much,” the king of the dragons said.
“I know. And I love him. ”
“You will be very happy together,” Shardas told me. “And I will see to it, personally, that you do not encounter such difficulties as Velika and I have faced. ” His eyes clouded, and he turned and shot a jet of flame that made a longer, thicker spear than the others. He picked it up with a quick swipe, hefted it, and set it near his tail, where it could be easily reached.
“I think that’s enough spears,” I said, awkward.
“There will never be enough,” Shardas said. “Never enough to ensure that Velika is brought safely home. ”
A River of Molten Rock
Leontes and Shardas had discussed using an illusion to disguise the rescue party as local dragons. But it was off-putting to look over at your friends and see them small and brown even if the trees far above were being pushed aside by their real height. And looking down at oneself and seeing claws that were unfamiliar would make for clumsy movements and awkward throws. No, for a mission of this delicacy, it was better to get the job done without alchemy, so the force that set out in the darkness was certainly impressive: jewel-toned scales, muted by moonlight, flashing on dragons the size of houses carrying long, black spears in their foreclaws.
I rode on Shardas, Luka on Niva, and Hagen was on Leontes. Feniul brought up the rear. We had all our gear with us, strapped down as tightly as it could be, and anything that wasn’t essential had been dumped. Once we got Velika free we would signal to Amacarin, who was in command of the rest of our force. They would spread out over the forest to guard us against any pursuit until we were safely on our way back over the ocean.
Crouched low on Shardas’s neck, I gazed down at the moonlit forest and tried not to let my worry overwhelm me. If we got Velika free, how would we carry her out of there? The crevice that led to her underground chamber was hardly wide enough to fit a large dragon, let alone one supporting another, and she would be lethargic from the drug they were giving her.
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