The creaking and rumbling stopped, but the column of rock still wavered slightly. I looked towards Kella, who nodded we could continue.
“We need to widen this seam here,” she said, “and if that doesn’t work, find another way in.” I saw where the slabs of rock met further down the rock fall, and where they collapsed into a jumble of smaller fragments.
We went to work, using the wooden mallets to pound the scout’s iron bars between boulders. With every thump of the mallet the rockslide shivered below my feet, and my heart froze in my chest. I couldn’t let anyone else die like Ryland had when he launched himself at the king, right in front of me, not if I could help it. Another creak, and Kella hissed at my side.
“Hold!”
I froze, feeling the weight of the boulders press against the lever of the iron bars we held. Kella twisted hers, easing one section of the rocks away, and instantly the pressure on my side eased. Suddenly, there was a sharp cracking sound like a splintering branch, and before my feet there extended a crawlspace into the temporary cave beyond. My arms and back were exhausted, but I didn’t wait--I dove in towards the people.
It was dark, and my nose was clogged with the heavy pulverized stone dust all around. It was hard to see where I was going, but a sliver of light shot through the crack we had opened above and down to the two trapped scouts below, and I could follow the sound of the one who was groaning.
“Thank you,” the uninjured scout muttered as he squirmed and squeezed past me, headed out to where Mother Gorlas waited to tend him. “And good luck.”
I crawled on elbows and knees toward the injured scout, scraping every part of my exposed skin with painful grazes. At the end of the small passage was the injured young man, his face ghost white, his eyes dark.
“Jarla?” I whispered. “Jarla? It’s Saffron, I’ve come to help.”
“Th-thank you, Saffron, but I don’t rightly see how you could,” the young man winced. “Look,” he pointed at where his foot had been crushed by a boulder. He was panting with the pain, yet managed to say, “It’s okay. I know I’m done for. Just get out now, save yourself!”
As if in answer to his demand, the walls of our prison rumbled, the crack of the rocks far above vibrating through the stone.
“Saffron!” Kella whispered urgently from above. “It’s too unsafe! Get out of there!”
But I couldn’t and there was no way I’d be able to move fast enough to escape if the stones collapsed further. “No! I’m staying!” I said.
Den-sister! I felt Jaydra surge forward as the ground’s rumbling groans grew louder and louder.
“No!” I heard a distant, muffled voice shout from above—Bower.
I blocked everything out and reminded myself I’d done this before. When the Iron Guard had almost captured us, I had summoned the rocks from the earth to attack them. Somehow, I had felt the monolithic stones and boulders waiting under the soil, just needing a nudge and some encouragement to burst from their earthy beds.
I am a Maddox. My name is Saffron Maddox. I can do this. I can summon my magic, I thought wildly, reaching out with my mind as the ground around us rumbled and shook. There was a scream, and I threw myself onto my back, staring straight up through the gloom of the cave and through the crack of air to where the chimney of cliff was falling towards us all.
I thrust my hand at it, terrified and defiant. My journey would not end like this.
I am a Maddox! No mere rock will beat me! I growled at the cliff, fear turning into rage, and filling me with a power which sparked as it coursed through my body, eyes, mouth, and hand. As if unbidden, my fingers drew strange symbols across the air, and a tingle burned through them, shooting my magic out in a plume of power which burst out of the tunnel crawlspace, to hit the falling chimney above. Or at least, that is what I had intended.
If I had thought the slight pop of splitting rock seams was loud, then the sound of twenty tons of rock shattering was deafening. I heard gasps and screams, but I didn’t care. The wave of power filled me once more as I turned to look at Jarla, his face now riven with fear at what I was about to do. I had never seen myself when I was using the eldritch Maddox magic. I had seen Enric casting spells of course, and he had always appeared calm, confident, youthful.
I knew all of that was a lie though, really, he was weak and ancient-looking, sucked dry by the magic that stole every last drop of his vitality. There wasn’t time to wonder if it would do the same to me.
“Break,” I intoned in a voice which was not my own, and the boulder that had been trapping Jarla’s leg snapped as clean as a chopped apple, revealing a circle of quartz inside.
SAFFRON! It was Jaydra, my den-sister against my mind, snuffing and searching for me as if she couldn’t find me. With a palpable shock wave which shook its way through my body, the magic left me, and I was left gasping and exhausted, and every part of me hurt.
Jaydra? I reached out to her. I am okay, I am okay—alive, I think…
You were gone. You disappeared as you did in the battle, as you did when the mad sorcerer trapped your mind. Jaydra growled with uncertainty, and through our connection I could feel her twitching and quivering, itching to find me in person and not just through our minds.
Beside me, as I blinked away the dust, I realized Jarla, the injured scout, had already made his own escape, not pausing or paying little heed to the way his foot dragged oddly over the stones as he must have crawled to the edge of the tunnel, to be hoisted by the others, and carried to safety.
“Saffron?” Bower knelt before the tunnel and shouted inside. “Saffron! Are you okay in there? Are you hurt? Can you move?”
“Yeah, yes, of course,” I said, feeling light-headed. I started to crawl, but found my limbs were as heavy as sacks of lead, and I could barely shift them painfully over the boulders and the stones towards freedom.
“Saffron, here, take my hand, please.” Bower was half inside the almost collapsed tunnel itself, despite the urgent gasps and the arguments of the other warriors around him.
I imagined what silly old Vere must be thinking—their king, the one who was supposed to be looking after all of them, had suddenly decided to crawl into a dangerous rock fall!
Bower, I’m okay, I wanted to say, but no intelligible sound would come from my mouth, instead I was mumbling and muttering, my eyelids heavy as I struggled to crawl forward.
“Is she hurt? She’s hurt!” someone, the woman scout perhaps, shouted.
All I could see were hazy groups of shapes and faces around me as Bower’s hands closed on my wrists, and pulled me through the last section of the tunnel. He carried me away from the rock fall, and someone else was saying I needed space, and air, but a larger snarling shadow eclipsed all of them, a shape I could recognize even in my dreams.
Saffron! Wake UP! Jaydra roared, and the last thing I remembered was her body curling tenderly around mine and the comforting smell of reptile in my nose.
“Is she okay? When is she going to wake up?” Bower said to someone, as my eyelids fluttered painfully against the late afternoon sun. It was bright, yet the breeze was cool and most of my warmth came from the rise and fall of Jaydra’s belly behind me.
“I’m waking up now,” I grumbled, blinking and struggling to push myself up on my elbows, but a wave of dizziness overcame me. Jaydra rumbled a concerned purr and slapped her tail in warning—to whom I wasn’t sure, until Mother Gorlas spoke.
“Easy there, easy, drink this,” Mother Gorlas knelt at my side, and tipped a clay cup of something acrid smelling and sharp tasting into my mouth. To avoid drowning, I gulped at the mixture, my thirst instantly quenched by the fact it tasted like a kick in the stomach.
“Ugh!” I spat, my mouth blazing with whatever spices were in that concoction, before the burn dissipated, leaving a soothing warmth. “What is that? What under the skies did you give me?” I said, my tongue feeling thick and heavy in my mouth.
“Something to wake you up,” Mother Gorlas smiled, eminently
pleased with herself.
“Well, it worked.” My mouth still tingled but all of the dizziness had completely left, and the aches in my limbs were subsiding to a pleasing buzz. “Wow,” looking at the cup and the dregs of some dark liquid inside. “It really did work.”
“Of course it did. That’ll keep you on your feet, and be enough of a tonic to strengthen your body, but it won’t last forever, and neither does it give a true strength,” Mother Gorlas sighed, turning to Bower, who stood looking awkward and nervous off to one side. “She’s all yours, Lord Bower,” the woman said and a look passed between them which told me there was something going on.
“What’s wrong?” I said, feeling tired, but much better. “What’s happened?”
Bower opened and closed his mouth, winced, and then nodded over my shoulder at something. “That is what happened,” he said.
I turned to follow his gaze.
Where the narrow path had passed between the cliffs, where the rock slide had narrowed the path even farther, there was now a wide, blasted hole. Fragments of rock as large as my hand were scattered all about, in a wide circle which stretched for a long way, and everything, especially me, was dusted in a chalky silt that left a white smear on my skin when I touched it.
“Where… What… Was that me?” My voice croaked.
“At least there’s enough space for the wagons now,” Bower said, pointing to where the slow-moving and ponderous Three-Rivers clan assembled with their teams of ponies, carts, wagons, tents, goats, and sheep, awaited the order to pass through. “But, uh, I’m afraid there were injuries as well.”
“Injuries?” I looked over at him in astonishment. “Because of what I did?”
“The scout who was on top of the rock fall, Kella.” Bower said gravely. “She would have died if the rock had fallen on her, without a doubt. You all would have. But she was beneath the rocks when they…shattered.”
“She’s not…?” I felt my heart turn to ice at the thought.
“What, dead?” Mother Gorlas snapped from where she was standing. “No, thankfully. Just blinded, and with a lot of cuts and scrapes and bruises from having lumps of stone pulverized directly above her.”
“Oh no!” I felt terrible, clutching my chest and throat as if I could warm up my heart and get it to beat with anything other than shame. I didn’t know Kella at all, but I admired her bravery and courage. Now she might never scout again. But I had saved lives, I reminded myself. If I could somehow learn to control my magic—train myself to use it better—then maybe I could fix Kella’s sight, or at least not have anyone get hurt because of my magic again.
“Lucky for you,” Mother Gorlas interrupted me, “everyone is mostly shaken up by what they can see over there, than what the strange girl from the western isles might have done.” Mother Gorlas nodded to the far side of the pass where we could now clearly see a series of triangles piercing a line inked onto the rock in black.
“What’s that?” I asked.
“The mark of the Stone Tooth clan,” Mother Gorlas replied warily.
“The rock fall was a trap, designed to keep us out of their territory,” Bower said through gritted teeth, and looked up at the sides of the mountain with anguish.
6
Bower & the Stone Tooth Clan
“Bower?” Saffron’s voice came from the flap of my small tent.
“Saffron.” I looked up from the maps I’d been studying, pleased she was on her feet and peering back at me. I tried to smile warmly, despite the fact I was worried how she was recovering. She appeared much better than she had earlier in the day and there was an air of nervous excitement about her, making me wonder just what it was Mother Gorlas had given her in that drink of hers.
“Are you sure, you know, about this?” I nodded up to the steep mountains above. “You know, after the last…”
“Yes,” Saffron answered, with a flash of her old annoyance. “I would rather be doing something anyway, than just ‘resting.’”
From the heavy way she said last word, I knew what she meant. For Saffron, resting might mean another dream battle, and, despite the hovering presence of Mother Gorlas waiting to swoop down to dose her with potions and herbs, Saffron didn’t want to entertain the possibility of that ever happening again.
“Okay…” I said, surprising her.
“Isn’t this where you’re supposed to tell me you don’t think it’s a good idea?” Saffron asked.
I felt as if the weight of the world were on my shoulders. “I’m not sure we have anything left but bad ideas,” I said heavily, and earned a dark, rebuking glare from Saffron. Damn it. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean—”
“No, I get it. You’re worried about whether we can pull this off,” Saffron said.
“Yes, I am, but whether I can pull this off, rather.” And your magic, I didn’t add. The truth was I was a little scared of Saffron’s magic, and of her connection to King Enric. What if she lost control of it and hurt more Three-Rivers clans people? How long before they turned on her, and I would have to choose between them?
Saffron gave me a sad smile, and it was enough to almost break my heart. I didn’t like this space and distance which seemed to be growing between us, ever since that last battle. What under the skies was wrong with me?
Bower feels lost, a voice broke into my mind. It was Jaydra, speaking through our fragile connection. She was right. I did feel lost. I was scared of losing Saffron, of losing our friendship, or of her being in danger and me being unable to do a thing about it. It made me feel like I had no control over anything at all, even how to protect my friends.
As soon as I admitted how I felt to myself, however, a weight lifted from my shoulders. Ever since the battle, ever since I had watched Saffron use her magic against Enric, and seen Ryland fall, I had been secretly worried Saffron wouldn’t be able to beat the king, and knew that I couldn’t help her. What sort of king did that make me? What sort of friend? What sort of leader can I become, if I am so worried all the time? I thought with a deep frown.
“It’s okay, Bower, I understand,” Saffron said.
I wondered if Jaydra had managed to talk solely to her mind as well, easing the tensions between us. “I have made a few decisions as well, since the rock fall.”
“Oh?”
“I need to learn how to control my magic, and I need a teacher--before someone dies. And if we are to have a hope of defeating Enric.” She nodded towards the map on the table in front of me. It was the same one which had come from the Hermit’s watchtower on Home Island, which showed the red ink marks labeling the location of the Salamanders’ hideouts—the underground group of subversives who had sought to keep the flame of resistance alive through the long generations of the Maddox reign in Torvald. “I’ve been thinking maybe the Salamanders know the old ways, or about magic. Or maybe there’s something—a book?—at one of their sanctuaries which could help.”
She was clutching at straws, I could tell, but what else could she do? I nodded. “Okay. Well, we might be in luck.”
“At last.” Saffron shot me a wry grin.
“Yeah.” I grinned. For a moment, it was like having the old, carefree Saffron back again. Almost. “Look.” I tapped on the painstakingly painted old vellum, marked with the mountains and roads of the Middle Kingdom. Dotting the section of the map that we were currently in—the ‘northern wilds’—were a few of the Salamanders’ wing-and-flame symbols.
“This symbol is where the Three-Rivers clan was.” We had followed the first of such symbols to find the Three-Rivers clan, and indeed, the tribe still had at least a passing connection to dragons. “Well, Mother Gorlas told me something while you were training, and after that came the rock fall, so I didn’t really have a chance to tell you—”
“What did she tell you?” Saffron interrupted impatiently, a flicker of that old excitement once again in her eyes.
“That the Stone Tooth clan also used to have a hermit who traveled to them. One of the Salamanders!” T
here, marked plainly, was the ridgeline we’d been pressing towards all day, the ridgeline Mother Gorlas had said was home to the Stone Tooth clan. And above it was the mark of the Salamanders.
Saffron’s eyes met mine. “What are we waiting for, then? Let’s go!”
Jaydra had been only too happy to fly us away from the cold mountainside below, all of us enjoying the fact it was just us three flying together once more, and not surrounded by other Dragon Riders we had to train.
If only life could still be so simple, I thought, closing my eyes as we swooped and dove over the wilds. The air was brisk and harsh against my cheeks despite the scarf I’d wrapped over my face to stop the biting cold.
The ground below turned greyer and paler the farther we traveled, as if bleached of all color by the high sun, and in just a short while, we started to see glistening white fields and drifts atop the mountain heads and shoulders, and spilling from their peaks like frozen solid waves. The snows I had heard so much about but never could have imagined in my wildest dreams.
I silently thanked Mother Gorlas for the thick layers of hides and padded coats she had told us we would need as I surveyed the world below us. Everything was rock grey and snow white, and as clean and pristine as if no one had ever stepped foot on these peaks.
Only this was not the case, of course. Someone had stepped foot out here; someone had stepped what looked like several hundred feet out here.
“What is that?” I pointed, to where the snow was marred by a blackened circle.
“I don’t know. We’ll fly lower to take a look!” Saffron called to Jaydra, and within seconds we were zooming lower over the snow wastes, heading towards what appeared to be a smoking ruin.
“Is that… a village?” I asked, appalled.
“It was.” Saffron pointed out the posts which marked the corners of buildings, and the piles of blackened wood could once have been roofs. There was a bitter smell of charred wood and soot in the air, and, as Jaydra sped over the remains of what must have been a small collection of huts, I was certain I saw one bleached white bone glinting in the sun.
Dragons of Dark (Upon Dragons Breath Trilogy Book 3) Page 4