Dragon School: Pipe of Wings

by Sarah K. L. Wilson

  They muzzled us, too. They know what they are doing.

  At least he was alive and well. There was silence.

  He was well, wasn’t he? I felt a stab of panic. Are you hurt?

  Still silence. He was hurt. He didn’t want me to worry. But now anxiety filled me like a belly of worms, writhing and eating me from the inside out.

  See, that’s why I didn’t eat those disgusting worms in Baojang. I never would have got the feel of them out of my belly. Imagine one of them wriggling back up your throat...

  Ha! He still had his sense of humor – whatever else they had taken from him. He sounded almost as if he was rambling as his next thoughts spilled out. I recognized them. I’d read them only yesterday in Talsan’s book.

  He loses half the sun to save the world.

  His crown he lays aside to choose one star, from a sky of stars.

  One part, one place, one role: to be a mountain and an anchor in the storm.

  Hope for the hopebringer, light for the lightbringer, wings for the lame.

  It would be ridiculous to think that was about us ... wouldn’t it? Who were we in the grand scheme of things? Just one dragon prince and a crippled rider.

  Don’t stop hoping, hopebringer.

  If only I didn’t feel so cold. I summoned all my energy and rolled onto the side of my bad leg. I could see a little better now. The heaps of cloth that I saw in the gaps between the legs were strewn across the stone. There were too many of them. I swallowed at the dark pools surrounding them. How many prisoners had they killed like they killed poor Tomas?

  By the placement of the sun, it was late afternoon. I’d been out for most of the day.

  Try two days. I was worried about you.

  Two days?! No wonder I was so shaky. My mouth was parched, thirst burning in my throat. There had been blood. Wouldn’t a normal person die lying in their own blood for two days?

  I think the arrow stopped up the wound. Sort of.

  Where were Ephretti and Lenora? I strained my eyes, searching for them. There! They were in a line of captives, tied to a rope and shuffling slowly forward, spurred on by lightning-tipped whips. I scanned the line of people, watching as the Magikas loosened the cords holding the man in the front of the line and shoved him forward. His hood fell back and white hair – some loose and some in braids – spilled out. I gasped as I saw his face. Grandis Dantriet. After all this time he was beginning to feel like memory’s ghost to me.

  He was shoved roughly to a place in front of two Magikas. One of them held a blue sphere of light between his hands and the other a wicked knife.

  “Blood to dust and dust to life,” the Magika with the knife said. I gasped as he moved, fast as an adder and the Grandis slumped to the ground.

  Fast as thought, I counted down the line of captives to where Ephretti and Lenora shuffled with tears in their eyes. One. Two. Three. Four. Five. Six. Seven. Eight. Nine. Ten. Eleven.

  What could I do in eleven minutes?

  Chapter Seventeen

  If only I had power like Savette or Rakturan for a moment like this! I called, mentally to the Troglodytes, like I had in the basket with Rakturan, pouring hope into my thoughts as the seconds blurred into minutes. My eyes were screwed up shut. What had I done last time? How had I drawn their attention?

  Perhaps they are not close enough this time.

  When another scream was cut off too quickly, I opened my eyes again. Well, if no one was coming to save us, I needed a practical solution. Maybe I could find a way to loose Raolcan. Where was he? I twisted and turned, looking for him.

  Behind you.

  It was hard to twist that way without feeling the pain in my leg. I pulled my arms under me and crawled in a tight circle, dragging my legs behind me. I could see the area better now. I had been left at the edge of the action, since I was clearly no threat to anyone. The legs I had been looking between belonged to Magikas, distracted by their task calling up Ifrits. They were too busy to notice one of their victims slowly turning in a circle.

  Eventually, I turned enough to see the dragons. My breath caught in my throat, my heart speeding up so quickly that my vision flashed black for a moment. Bellrued was slumped against Tyalmae, his head sideways on the ground and eyes shut. Tyalmae was hunched inward over a broken wing. Both dragons were coated in soot and blood. They were Ephretti’s pair, still together at least. I couldn’t see Lypukrm – Lenora’s dragon. I continued the turn, my neck craning to look for Raolcan. I knew what kind of dragon he was. If Ephretti’s dragons had been in the fight, he would have fought longer and harder.

  When he finally came into view, I faltered, slumping to the ground for a moment, too horrified to acknowledge what I was seeing. Raolcan was just as covered in soot and blood. A black, sticky substance clung to him. He was bound tightly to the ground by whatever magic held him, at an awkward angle, his head tilted so I could only see the right side of his face – the side with a dark, gaping hole where he once had an eye.

  Sobs wracked me, leaving me coughing and choking on them and taking the last of my strength with them.

  I know. It’s quite the blow.

  Please tell me it’s only one!

  Just the right eye. I’m going to be devastating when I see the lady dragons again. Do you know how rakish a dragon looks with an eye-patch?

  What were we going to do? What did we have left? The Pipe! I hadn’t been able to grab it from the saddlebag before I’d been hit. It would still be in Raolcan’s baggage. But he wasn’t saddled now and I couldn’t see the bags.

  Behind me on the steps. They tossed the equipment there. By the way, if anyone mentions going to ‘Healing Arches’ again, it’s going to be a firm ‘no’ from this dragon. Have you noticed that they seem to always do the opposite of healing?

  I inched forward, bit by bit, inch by inch. I felt a burst of warmth as my movements sent a fresh spurt of blood from my thigh. My elbows ached at the feeling of the rock digging into them, and my head was so heavy, too heavy, my legs a useless weight as I pulled myself across the ground. My good leg felt like it was in a furnace.

  It’s probably infection. You were left there a long time. Our enemies aren’t too worried about you running away.

  With good reason. Even crawling was taking everything out of me. When I reached Raolcan’s head, I paused for a moment to stroke his cheek before moving on. I couldn’t see or feel his bonds, but hopefully, he could feel my love through our connection. My heart broke at seeing him restrained to the ground, hurting, broken, and still trying to keep up good spirits. This must have been what he meant when he quoted the prophecy, “He loses half the sun to save the world.”

  You’re a cheerful one this evening.

  My mind was racing. If that prophecy had really been about Raolcan – and who was to say it wasn’t? – wouldn’t that mean that we could survive this? That there was still a way to save our friends and save our world from being broken apart from Ifrits. Maybe these Magikas could be convinced that what they were doing was destroying the world they lived in.

  They’re murdering people in cold blood and you want to reason with them?

  Maybe if they realized there wouldn’t be anything left for them to enjoy when all of this is done they would stop.

  You should have heard Grandis Dantriet trying to convince them last night. His words will stay with me forever. They were as beautiful as they were powerful. But that’s the thing about evil. People who do it think they’re doing something good. They excuse killing because we’re the wrong sort of people and killing us doesn’t matter. They think that the demons they unleash on this world can be controlled. To them, there is no risk in what they do. They can’t even conceive of a world where their immediate desires are not the controlling factor.

  How could he be so philosophical when he had his eye taken from him?

  I’ve always known my life had a purpose. I’d always thought I knew what it was going to be. Right now, in this moment, I’m certain. And nothin
g our enemies ever do can take that from me.

  I wished I felt so certain. I was at his tail now, watching the end of it twitch back and forth as I slowly slipped along the ground, a trail of thick red blood in my wake. I was bleeding too much, the wound reopened from all my movement. Another cry from behind me reminded me that it wouldn’t matter soon. Either I found that pipe and managed to make it do something or we would all die here, prophecies or no prophecies.

  Lean into hope. Lean into the light. Our story isn’t over yet.

  The stairs were the most difficult part. I eased my upper body down to the next level but pulling my lower body over it led to a painful tumble.

  The arrow shaft snapped in half and I bit my tongue to hold off a scream. I didn’t dare let anyone know I was here. I couldn’t afford to be stopped. I was slick with sweat, trembling as I held back waves of pain. No surrender, Amel. No surrender.

  My trembling hand felt for our saddle bags, slipping open the edge of the nearest one and reaching inside. The waterskin! This was the right one. I pulled out a mostly-empty skin of water, leaning against the saddlebags as I caught my breath. I took a long drink, my searing throat easing and a burst of renewed energy filling me. I used it to reach in again. There!

  My hand gripped around the pipe, pulling it free. It caught the last ray of light as the sun sank beneath the horizon and night fell.

  Chapter Eighteen

  Did I need to see what I was doing? Maybe.

  I pulled myself back over the lip of the step, clenching my teeth as the nub of the arrow knocked on the edge. I bit back a moan of pain and twisted to look through the bodies in front of me.

  The Magikas all had their arms raised, dark light pulsing from their hands and combining in the air to feed the glowing ball in the hands of the Magika at the front. Between their bodies, I saw the line of captives. There was only one person still in line before Ephretti. They loosened her bonds and tugged her forward.

  I put the pipe to my lips, trying to play it, but from this angle I couldn’t get a full breath. I rolled onto my back, gasping at the agony in my leg. Inhaled slowly – was there something wrong with my ribs, too? – and raised the pipe to my lips, blowing a single note through the reed. I couldn’t tell if anything happened, but I kept blowing, adjusting the lever as I blew.

  There was a scuffling sound and then a face loomed over me.

  “What’s she doing?” a voice called.

  “Playing a flute.” The man above me frowned, adjusting his robes. He was Shonan’s age, but with a wicked twist to his mouth and a gauntness to his long pale face that made me want to shrink into the ground.

  “Ha! Tell her to play something that sounds good or she’s next. I could use a distraction. My arms are getting tired.”

  The gaunt man grabbed one of my arms and dragged me roughly to the dried patch of blood where I had been before. The moon, spilling through the arches as it rose, lit everything in stark relief so that the blood stood out like a living thing.

  “Stay put this time. We’ll get to you eventually,” he said, his face uncannily bright in the light of the moon. “And if you plan on blowing that thing again, at least play a tune.”

  I sucked in a deep breath, trying to push back the pain and fear. If men like that were the future of this world, death was a better option. But I wasn’t willing to give in yet. Too bad I didn’t know how to play a flute. I only had one more shot at this before they took away the Pipe.

  We’d done so many things already, destroyed obstacle after obstacle. Couldn’t we find a way out of this one, too?

  An irritating buzzing filled my ears and I swatted at a sting on my face and then another.

  Black Flies. They’re everywhere. Clearly, your pipe still works, but I’m not sure that irritating pests will be enough to stop them.

  “Which one of you called up these flies?”

  I felt a shiver of terror as I twisted my head to see the Magika with the knife walking down the line of captives. Lenora shook at his gaze, flinching as he stepped beside her.

  “Was it you?”

  “No,” she gasped.

  “How about your master?”

  “If I had the power to call on nature for help, do you really think I’d choose black flies?” Ephretti’s voice dripped with disdain. Couldn’t she hold back her attitude even for a moment?

  “I think you’d do anything you could in your last attempts to save your pathetic life,” the Magika scowled as his gaze ran up and down the line of captives. “Bring one of her dragons here.”

  Two Magikas broke off from the group, angling towards Tyalmae. They pulled magic whips from their belts, cracking them as they released the bonds and whipped the wounded dragon forward. I flinched as I watched him shuffling along, favoring one foot. Was Raolcan in danger? I glanced back at him, pinned to the ground, unable to see what was happening.

  But I hear everything. I don’t know what I’ve done, but I can’t shut it off.

  Shut what off?

  Their voices. I hear them all.

  I shivered.

  “If a human life is enough sacrifice to produce a dust demon, I wonder what a dragon life would give us,” the lead Magika asked aloud. “They say that knowledge leads to power. Let’s see if we can add to our accumulating strength.”

  His hand shot out and Tyalmae reared back with a horrifying cry. I clenched my eyes tight, gripping the Pipe with all my strength. This wasn’t happening. This couldn’t be happening. I could see Raolcan on the backs of my eyelids as clearly as if I was looking at him. If they could kill Tyalmae they could kill him. Would kill him.

  Ephretti was screaming in the background. Interlaced through her screams were the high-pitched shrieks of Bellrued. His cries bit down into my brain, shaking thoughts from it and leaving me breathless, only fear still remaining.

  Trembling, I gently adjusted the arm of the pipe, hoping beyond hope that it would change the outcome. Black flies would not be enough to stop this horror. Please, please, please be enough!

  “The other one!” Bellrued’s cried continued, piercing the air as they whipped him across the stone floor.

  I put the reed in my mouth and blew, letting all my desperation fill the tiny instrument. This silly artifact was such a small thing to put all your hopes in. It was too small to hold our futures ... but there was nothing else and I was out of time.

  The Troglodyte visions told me my friends were far away, engaged in their own battles. Even Jalla and her army were still days away from here. We were outnumbered, overpowered and the Troglodytes were ignoring me. If Raolcan’s prophecy was really about him – if it really had a chance to come true – I needed it to come through for me right now. I needed Truth. That magic Savette used that brought everything in line with what really was. If this little Pipe could only help with that ... if it could make this reality line up with what this world, this story, was meant to be ...

  I blew as hard as I could, not caring about the tune. I moved my fingers on the tiny holes, trying every one. I adjusted the wing-like arm back and forth, hoping beyond hope for something greater than flies and butterflies, something greater than anything I could imagine, because that was what it was going to take this time.

  Chapter Nineteen

  I heard Lenora’s crying as she was dragged forward, but I couldn’t look. Why her and not Ephretti? Were they still trying to get some information out of her master?

  I’d seen things I’d never wanted to see over the last months – things I wished I could forget. I wasn’t going to watch this one. I wasn’t going to burn it into my brain with the other horrors. I didn’t dare look.

  I lay on my back, staring up at the full moon in the velvet blue-black sky. I was very cold now, and movement was hard, as if my life was slowly seeping out of my wounded leg and with it every drop of warmth and energy. Tears fell – icy cold – from my eyes, running down the sides of my face and filling my ears.

  At first, I thought it was the tears that m
ade such a strange sound. It sounded as if I was surrounded by wrens, their wings beating so hard and fast that they filled my mind. And then the sound grew louder. And louder.

  Desperate for hope, I grabbed the Pipe again and blew and blew and blew. I couldn’t hear the sound of the Pipe, but I could feel vibrations in my hands as the wings beat so strong and so loud that they filled my mind.

  Help, I cried in my mind. Help us! But who would come and how could they help? Even birds could only do so much. We were just a few small people in a huge war full of desperate fighters and hopeless mothers crying for help. Who would save us all and would it even be fair for them to save us when so many people needed their help? Who were we to even ask?

  A dragon flew across the moon and I gasped. Someone was here! And then another and another and another until I realized that I couldn’t hear anything else because the flapping of their wings was so loud.

  I gathered the strength to roll onto my belly and look. Lenora tumbled backward through the air as if she had been tossed to the side– alive and whole – falling into Ephretti. In front of her, a huge Red dragon grabbed the Magika leader in his powerful jaws. I couldn’t even hear the snap as he bit down and then tossed the broken man aside.

  My breath whooshed out of me at the sight.

  Magikas scattered, throwing fireballs and weapons at the surge of dragons. Someone kicked me in the face as he ran and I reeled back, moaning in pain and spitting blood. I blinked hard trying to push the pain back far enough to process the chaos around me.

  Ephretti grabbed a whip from the ground, adjusting it somehow and waving it toward Raolcan who roared to life like a river when a beaver dam is removed. He surged up, tearing at the fleeing soldiers around him and blasting flame into their ranks. Beyond the great Red and out over the moonlit vista, dragons in massive school-like clouds shredded Ifrits to pieces, bursting them into dust.

  It was as if the Pipe had called every dragon in a hundred miles just like it had called up those butterflies.