The Dragons of Noor

by Janet Lee Carey

  His thoughts were soon overpowered as the rhythmic chant encircled him, and he felt himself falling under the dragons’ spell.

  The voices were rich and wild, deep and hollow, and there were broken sounds within them, too: a syncopated drumming, a snapping of sharp teeth. He’d heard them speak, but now he felt their music resonating in his chest. If a storm sang, this would be its song, or if a mountain had a voice, it would summon wind and cloud this way.

  “Kanameer. Kanameer.”

  Miles began to sway. The water bucket tumbled from his hand as his blood danced to the song. His mind fought against it, but he went on swaying, just as the dragons swayed, just as the meers behind him swayed. Only Hanna stood still, her hand resting on her terrow’s back.

  The floating isles of fire fell to a low, red burning. The chant grew louder until the Morrow Sea seemed to sing. Waves lapping up against the ship drummed the chanters’ time. Kanameer. Swish. Swish. Kanameer …

  The she-dragon swam in closer. In a flash she reached out her scaly forearms, catching Hanna and Thriss in her right talons and Taunier in her left. Hanna’s sudden screams were drowned out by the dragon’s loud victory cry as she flew skyward.

  Miles shook himself from the song-spell. “Wait!” he screamed. The wind swirled with the beating of the taberrell’s giant wings as Meers Kanoae and Eason woke from the enspelling chant and shouted, “Stop! Bring them back!”

  The male dragons stroked the sea with their powerful wings, and heavy waves raced toward the ship. A wall of freezing water swept Miles off his feet, lifted him high into the air, and smashed him into the rigging.

  THIRTEEN

  SHAPE-SHIFTER

  You will know both flight and falling.

  —THE OTHIC ART OF MEDITATION

  Chaos on deck, as everyone scrambled to get a foothold, and Meer Kanoae shouted orders. Another wave crashed overhead. Miles caught the base of the mast and clung to it to keep from being washed overboard. The ship tipped wildly before righting itself.

  Coughing and sputtering, he pulled himself to a stand. A warm wind stirred by the dragons’ fire blew against his wet clothes. The female circled in the twilight sky above with Hanna and Taunier in each claw. Her forearms were tucked against her belly, sheltering her prey. The male dragons stirred the ocean again and lifted skyward. Miles gritted his teeth and braced himself as seawater swirled around his legs and sloshed overboard again.

  “My harpoon!” Kanoae shouted.

  Meer Eason grabbed her arm and tried to pull her back. “No meer has ever turned against a dragon!”

  “We have to do something!” she demanded.

  Above the arguing, Miles’s acute hearing picked up Hanna’s distant screams. Breal was leaping into the air, barking wildly.

  Already the she-dragon flew high above the sea, dipping in and out of clouds. Hanna’s screams tore through his head, ripped down his neck, and knifed his heart. He had to go after her. The idea of shape-shifting again filled him with terror, but every moment of indecision put Hanna and Taunier in greater danger. Hanna’s cries ripped away his doubts layer by layer, as a strong wind will steal a scarecrow’s clothing.

  He couldn’t think, couldn’t wait to think. Even now, the dragons were winging east. Miles freed himself from the mast and splashed through the knee-deep brine. He needed room. There were no spells to call on, only the heat found at his core, pouring outward from heart and lung to spine, to head, to hands. A giant falcon. He focused on the image. Lifting his arms, he stretched them farther and farther. He shut his eyes, pictured the great bird stretched out and out and … nothing! Why hadn’t he changed?

  The Leena tilted. A freezing wave receded around his ankles and swept over the deck. Hanna’s screams were getting farther away. Hurry. Try again. Focus.

  “Miles!” shouted Kanoae from behind. “Grab a bucket and bail! What are you doing?”

  He spread out his fingers, stretched until he felt a sharp pain between his shoulder blades. He leaned into his instincts, felt his ferocious desire, let the energy scream up his spine and race through his body. His arms grew broader, flatter, the stinging pinions feathering outward. His chest rounded. His face narrowed. There was a stabbing pain along his nose and jaw as they sharpened to a beak. Fly!

  Miles flapped his enormous falcon’s wings. As he took off he heard cries and shouting from below, but he didn’t bother looking down. He needed speed to catch the dragons. He was smaller than his opponents, but large enough to free Hanna and carry her on his back down to the Leena. How he’d rescue his sister and Taunier both from the dragons he didn’t know. But he was a winged beast now. He was like them.

  His fear had been stripped away along with his human flesh. He’d left the boy behind on deck. Now he’d fight to the death with pleasure.

  Pump. Pump. More speed. Clouds covered the new moon. Lightning flashed ahead, and he saw the dragons outlined in the sudden brightness. He pumped harder still, working against the brisk sea wind. As the clouds rolled across the twilight sky, strength poured through him as if he’d eaten lightning, drunk the thunder.

  The fennel smell from the dragons’ scales wafted through the air. The males flew ahead, the female behind. His only chance was to strike and strike quickly. Miles darted for the she-dragon’s underbelly, where Hanna and Taunier were caged in her black talons.

  Landing on the dragon’s forearm just above Hanna, he pecked and tore the fleshy part above the claw. Wound the dragon there, and she’d have to loosen her grip. The female roared in alarm and tried to shake him off.

  “Miles?” He caught sight of Hanna’s frightened face. She’d seen him shift before, knew his power. Her cry of recognition was caught by the wind.

  Miles speared the flesh above the she-dragon’s claw again, using his beak the way a woodpecker stabs a rotten tree. He jabbed until the dragon’s hold on Hanna began to weaken. One of her talons was broken, and the tip was missing. Hanna used the gap to free her arm. Miles flew beside her. She would have to push her way out and ride on his back. His bird-form was large enough to take her weight, though he’d have to fly back a second time to rescue Taunier. Hanna pushed harder to squeeze the rest of the way through, but the opening was still too narrow. Next she tried to push her pip through to Miles, but the hatchling refused to leave her and scrambled to safety under her cloak.

  From the right claw, Taunier was shouting, not understanding what was happening.

  Miles flew higher, just above the claw, and tried to pry the talons farther apart. He was circling again to get a better purchase when One-eye fell back and flew below the female. There was a sudden blast of heat. Shocking pain seared Miles’s flesh as the dragon’s fire lit his left wing. He beat his wings frantically, tried to press his burning feathers against the she-dragon’s scales and smother the fire, but he soon lost his grip.

  Wing still burning, he tumbled helplessly down and down until he broke the surface of the churning water below.

  PART TWO:

  DRAGONLANDS

  When NoorOth was young,

  Two worlds were one.

  Kwen-Arnun, the great World Tree,

  Reached green arms east,

  Reached green arms west,

  And dragons all flew free.

  Oh, elderling, remember,

  And brave youngling, believe:

  eOwey sung NoorOth as one,

  Embraced by the great World Tree.

  —DRAGONS’ SONG

  FOURTEEN

  WHIRL STORM

  The winds warred with one another, and the people could not run from them.

  —A MEER’S HISTORY OF NOOR

  The she-dragon held her prisoners close to her belly as she flew east behind the males, her great golden chest breaking the wind’s flow. Hanna braced herself and peered through the stiff talons. The warm night air wafting down from the dragon’s scales chafed her cheeks and dried her tears as soon as they left her eyes.

  How badly was Miles hurt? Was he even alive
? He shouldn’t have taken such a risk, shouldn’t have shape-shifted. Still, she knew why he’d done it. She would have done the same for him if she’d had that kind of power. But if he were dead now …

  She wept again. Her eyes burned.

  Taunier shouted something, but the wind washed away his words. He put his arm out to her through the talons. She pressed her arm through the gap left open by the she-dragon’s severed talon. The dragon’s claws were too far apart, and their hands did not meet. Still, they left them outstretched a long while, the slick air blowing between them.

  Hiding under her shirt, Thriss wriggled closer to her side. The pip could have escaped if she’d obeyed her and flown to Miles. But then she, too, would have fallen burning into the sea.

  Riding the swift air currents east, the taberrells flew tirelessly a full twelve hours, through night to the edge of morning. Red clouds rolled across the water stained by the sun’s first light.

  Taunier called out, pointing ahead to a place where the crimson clouds were spinning round and round. There was a great hole in the sky, and clouds whirled around it as if they were swirling down an enormous drain.

  Kanoae had warned them about Whirl Storms.

  To avoid the storm ahead, the male dragons quickly veered to the right, where stray purple clouds still drifted slowly west. The female followed, driving hard against the wind. The giant funnel tilted, changed directions, and raced closer. The sky filled with a deafening roar. Trembling, Thriss burrowed her snout under Hanna’s arm. The dragons turned again, pumping wildly in the opposite direction. Hanna gripped the talons and pressed her face between her fists, a new terror seizing her as she saw the storm’s enormous power. It would swallow every cloud in the sky, suck the dragons in, too, and swallow them all.

  “Hurry,” she screamed. But the storm had already corralled them into the red clouds, where the fierce winds whirled them around and around. It felt as if the gale would rip off Hanna’s skin, strip the flesh from her bones. Only the dragon’s chest, held out like a great golden shield, kept her and Taunier from being torn apart.

  The male dragons just ahead were still trying to fly against the Whirl Storm, but the bone-breaking, skin-ripping wind was nearly tearing them apart, too. Strong as they were, the roaring wind was stronger. At last the males gave up and folded their wings against their sides.

  The Whirl Storm spun them all across the sea toward a green, mountainous land. The sun showed but half her face at the far eastern horizon, as if she were hiding behind the blue-green ocean, waiting for the trouble to pass before she dared bring on the day.

  Gripping the female’s broken talon, Hanna screamed into the wind. Far below, giant trees were sucked up, roots and all, as the storm attacked the coast. The dragons swirled with the trees and bushes, the storm stealing them, roots and all, from the face of the land. A parade of strange wildlife flew past: a spinning mountain lion, a deer and two fauns, a badger. More trees. Bushes. A tent. A man.

  eOwey! A man. The man sped away and was gone.

  In the screams of the storm, Hanna thought she heard her own death-song. She sang a raw-throated song against it:

  “eOwey before me,

  eOwey behind,

  eOwey below me in the earth and sea,

  eOwey above me at nightfall and by day,

  Surround me and protect me, eOwey.”

  Hanna sang the words as she never had before, for herself, for Taunier, for Thriss, for the spinning man, and, stranger still, for the taberrells. The swirling clouds changed from red to purple-white. The sun rose far across the sea. Hanna glimpsed the yellow orb through the clouds as the storm sucked them toward the ground.

  A shredded tent slapped up against the dragon’s side, slid down her legs, and wrapped about her claws. Hanna couldn’t see ahead. She grabbed the fluttering edges and tore it away bit by bit until the wind took it again.

  A hawk tumbled helplessly through the air, followed by a canoe.

  “Taunier!” she screamed. “Look!”

  He couldn’t hear her above the howling wind, but he must have seen it, too.

  The storm was blowing them straight into the mountainside.

  FIFTEEN

  DRAGON’S CAVE

  Friend of the wind, you cannot know where it will blow.

  —THE OTHIC ART OF MEDITATION

  As the mountain loomed closer, the screaming wind sucked the dragons down and smashed them into the sea. Hanna held Thriss tight in the swirling salt water. A moment later a wave pitched the drenched dragons onto shore. They flew into a cave at the base of the cliff before the storm wheeled back, sucking driftwood trunks off the beach and up into the sky.

  “You all right?” Taunier called, coughing up seawater. Hanna checked Thriss and saw with great relief that her pip had made it through. “We’re okay,” she shouted back.

  Lifting higher in the half dark, the she-dragon landed on a flat stone far above the cavern floor and opened her right claw. Hanna fell exhausted onto the cold stone and heaved a ragged breath. Thriss wriggled out of her hand, hissed, and nipped her fingertip.

  “Ouch.” Hanna sucked her sore finger. “Plunging into the sea wasn’t my idea.”

  On her knees, she glanced down, and the ravine below made her reel dizzily. She crawled back and looked over her shoulder at Taunier. Why was he still talon-bound? The female dragon shook out her wet wings. The males on either side did the same. The shaking caused a small rainstorm that ceased only when they folded their wings again. Hanna braced herself and came to a stand.

  Light leaked in from the entrance far below. The dark pool at the base of the chasm gleamed. As Hanna’s eyes adjusted to the gloom, she saw with dread that they were not alone. On the far side of the deep crevasse a crowd of twenty or more dragons were gathered on a second stone terrace. They began to make angry, rumbling sounds.

  The largest male, with a gash on his flank, spoke up. “Do they send children now to come against us on Jarrosh?”

  Jarrosh. She’d made it to the east at last. In a dragon’s claw, but she’d made it. The passage to eastern Oth would be here somewhere, and Tymm was on the other side. She closed her eyes a moment, thinking of him, hoping that he was all right, that she could reach him in time. The thought made her body ache. How could she cross over and find him when she and Taunier were captives?

  “Do you think I would bring these two here without reason, Kaleet?” The she-dragon’s voice was rough and clattering with threat. “I am your queen, your Damusaun. I say the Kanameer, the one who serves the Old Magic, is here. She comes to dream for us, and she has brought the Fire Herd.”

  Hanna trembled. Kanameer—one who serves the Old Magic? They’d chanted the word again and again before they stole her from the ship. Enoch had mentioned that name when he gave her the glass vial full of tears. “The Kanameer will know what to do with them,” he’d said. But the dragons had mistaken her for someone else.

  The scarred male dragon, Kaleet, raised his head. The bright red patch on his neck puffed out. “Damusaun, Dragon Queen,” he said, bowing his head to the she-dragon, “we cannot help but see these two you have brought us are manlings.” He voiced “manling” as if it were a curse. The dragons to his left and right hissed.

  The Damusaun flicked Hanna’s back with her talon. Hanna flinched.

  “Manlings are deceitful,” the Dragon Queen agreed. “But the Mishtar was human like these two. Time is running out. We will not ignore our prophecies.”

  Hanna wondered what she meant by “time running out,” and, even more startling, “our prophecies.” She tried to catch Taunier’s eye, but he was staring fixedly at the huge taberrells across the crevasse.

  A smaller golden terrow stepped forward. “She’s weak-bodied as a grass blade.”

  Dry laughter followed. Hanna squared her shoulders. She might be small for fifteen, but she was strong. Hadn’t she worked on her da’s land? Helped at all hours of the night in lambing season? Cleaned the animal stalls? Hauled well
water? But that would be nothing to these dragons. Sweat poured down her neck. Thriss. Courage.

  “This cannot be the Kanameer,” a male hatchling added. “It is just a female.”

  The she-dragon’s chest swelled. “A female?” she growled. “Where does it say the Kanameer must be a male, hatchling?” Across the gulf, the hatchling cowered back against the cave wall.

  “Damusaun,” said the one-eyed dragon on Taunier’s right, “show them how the other manling wields fire.”

  Voices chorused from across the rift, singing a third verse to their dragon song.

  “Bring to us our heart’s desire,

  One with mastery over fire.

  From across the eastern sea,

  Come to us, O Pilgrim.”

  Hanna trembled as the queen released Taunier and nudged him forward with the jagged end of her broken claw.

  “Show them,” she said.

  “And what if I refuse?” It was the smallest of whispers, meant only for Hanna, but dragons have sharp ears.

  The Damusaun answered with a roar, ringing them in fire. Screaming, Hanna grabbed Taunier. Thriss raced up her leg and hid under her cloak as the flames closed in. The fire pushed them closer to the edge. It was jump or burn.

  Taunier stood rigid as a pillar until Hanna pleaded, “Do it!”

  “Then let go of me!” he shouted.

  Without realizing it, Hanna had pinned his arms to his sides. She stepped back a pace as the terrible encroaching heat enveloped her. She tried to breathe but only managed to suck in more heat. Taunier lifted his hand and swung it down, slicing the fire like a blade. His body shook with concentration as he moved his right arm, sweeping the flames closest to Hanna off the cliff. Hanna felt instant relief. He put out his left arm, herding the rest of the fire off the cliff, the flames sputtering out as they fell.