Ember and the Ice Dragons

by Heather Fawcett

  She dozed fitfully, dreaming of the captive fire dragons, only she wasn’t observing them from a distance—she was one of them, chained to the floor in that awful ship. She pulled and pulled, and cried out, but no one heard, and no one came—

  Something started her awake. It wasn’t a noise—it was a feeling. A faint throbbing in her thumb, and a twitch in her left wing. Nisha was shivering in her sleep beside her, and the wind moaned over the ice like a lonely ghost.

  She turned her head and found Lord Norfell crouched in the shadows not three feet away.

  “Hello, Miss St. George,” he said in his elegant voice. “I’m glad to see you’re awake. It would be unsportsmanlike to do this any other way.”

  Ember felt as if the night’s chill had settled in her stomach. They were nearly alone—the hunters had retired to their tents. The fire, burning low, was being tended by two of the prince’s servants, whose backs were turned.

  She opened her mouth to shout, but Lord Norfell said, “They won’t come. I’ve given them reason not to.” He laughed, a short, sharp sound like a branch breaking. “Quite a few reasons, actually. Shiny golden reasons. As for the others . . . they can’t hear you.”

  He was right. Snow fell steadily, muffling the camp, and the wind was rising. If she shouted, she wouldn’t be heard from the tents.

  “Wassat?” Nisha stirred beside Ember, lifting her head and blinking away the snow in her lashes. She cried out when she saw Lord Norfell. “What do you want?”

  “This doesn’t concern you,” Lord Norfell said. “Close your eyes and sleep like a good girl.”

  “Don’t tell her what to do,” Moss snapped. He must have awakened when Nisha did. There was sleep in his voice, but the glare he leveled at Lord Norfell was steady.

  “What do you want?” Ember said.

  “I want the truth.” Lord Norfell’s gaze slid over her. “That is, of course, why I encouraged the prince to let you join the hunt. So that I would have more time to study you, to see if my hunch was correct. I won’t deny I found the mystery entertaining.”

  Ember watched him as a hen watches a fox, her muscles braced for flight. But she was bound, and couldn’t flee.

  “As it turns out,” he went on, “it was.” He lifted a dagger from the snow beside him. To Ember’s horror, there was a small bloodstain on the tip.

  “Yours, I’m afraid,” Lord Norfell said. Ember followed his gaze to her right hand—a drop of blood beaded from a nick on the thumb. That was what had woken her! The night’s chill had only partly numbed the pain.

  Lord Norfell murmured something to the dagger in stormspeech, which sounded twisted and wrong in his voice. The remaining blood evanesced into a curl of smoke, and then it vanished.

  “I doubt I need to explain that human blood wouldn’t do that,” he said with a smile.

  “Leave me alone.” Her voice was barely above a whisper. “If you try anything, my father—”

  “Ah, your famous father.” Lord Norfell looked as pleased as a child placing the last piece in a puzzle. “Brilliant man. And like most brilliant men, he likely thinks himself high above the rest of us . . . so high that the spell he placed on you couldn’t possibly be detected by anyone else.”

  “What are you talking about?” Nisha’s voice was louder. “Are you mad?”

  Lord Norfell tutted. “Keeping secrets from your friends? I can’t say I’m surprised . . . if they knew, they’d be doing everything they could to get away from you.”

  He calmly examined the cutting edge of the dagger. All of Ember’s focus swung to the blade—everything else disappeared.

  “I happen to know a lot about this sort of magic.” Lord Norfell continued in the same tone. “More than most Stormancers, perhaps. My experiments got me into a bit of trouble with the Stormancy Alliance, but they did teach me a few valuable lessons. Now, I doubt I’d be able to shatter your father’s spell. But interestingly, there is another way. If you take the life of someone who is under a spell, that spell no longer has anything to hold on to, and it dissolves. I won’t go into details on how I know this—those aren’t stories for innocent ears, I’m afraid.” He clucked his tongue. “I tried once, of course.”

  Ember blinked. Her brain wasn’t working properly; her thoughts were a tangle. But then she realized.

  “You,” she breathed. “You sabotaged my sled! You’re the one who hurt those dogs.” Her thoughts flashed back to her near escape, the sensation of falling, the prince hauling her to safety.

  He shrugged slightly. “Yes, that was my doing. It was partly to test you . . . your ability to slither out of danger. I don’t see much room for slithering now.”

  “Put that away!” Nisha cried. “How dare you threaten us, you vile, dreadful—”

  “It’s only fair for you to come clean with your friends.” Lord Norfell went on as if Nisha wasn’t shouting insults at him. “I’m doing them a kindness. They deserve to know what sort of creature they’ve befriended, don’t you think? And I—well, I deserve to reap the reward for discovering your secret. You’re mine by right.”

  And then, without warning, he drove the dagger toward her.

  Nisha and Moss screamed. Nisha clawed at the ropes like a wildcat. Ember shut her eyes. An image of the fallen ice dragon rose before her.

  I’m sorry.

  But instead of pain, there was an odd sort of zap, followed by a gust of wind.

  Ember’s eyes flew open. Lord Norfell groaned—he lay in the snow a few yards away. Some force had knocked him backward and through the air. Several small shapes clustered about him, cocking their heads curiously at his prone form.

  Penguins.

  The penguin that had stolen the flagstone stood between her and Lord Norfell. It let out a honk, flapping its wings indignantly. Another penguin stomped up to Lord Norfell and began slapping his knee. Little daggers of lightning shot up his leg, and he shrieked.

  Lord Norfell raised himself on his hands. Rage—a horrible, blank sort of rage—spread across his face as his eyes fixed on Ember. “You wretched little—”

  The penguin gave him another slap, unleashing a bolt of lightning that sent Lord Norfell skittering over the snow. He staggered to his feet, and as one, the penguins trooped toward him. He fled, stumbling, over the snow, the penguins waddling behind.

  “What in the Sciences—” Nisha began.

  She was interrupted by a strange echoing cry. Another followed it—a sound like an enormous hawk, but of a higher pitch, sharp as ice shards. Ember wished she could cover her ears. Then there came the beat of enormous wings, which lifted the snow and dashed it across their faces in a painful mist. Ember looked up, squinting, and saw a dozen glittering shapes wheeling over the camp.

  The dragons had returned.

  Fourteen

  The Stolen Heartscale

  Part of the attraction of fireglass is its hardiness. Neither bullet nor dagger can penetrate it, but only the horn or bone of another dragon. A dragon’s scales are like armor made of diamonds.

  —TAKAGI’S COMPENDIUM OF EXOTIC CREATURES

  Shouts filled the air. The hunters had heard the dragons’ cries and were spilling out of their tents. The Marquis de Montvert was among the first to appear with his bow in hand. He fired an arrow, which missed.

  Nisha screamed. “The dragons! They’ve come back! They’re going to tear us to pieces!”

  Ember thought this a likely conclusion, though part of her wished Nisha wouldn’t put it so bluntly. She scrabbled at the snow with her feet—Lord Norfell’s dagger lay barely a foot away. One of the dragons unleashed a blast of ice fog that engulfed one of the seconds. The man fell to the ground, twitching.

  Ember hooked her heel around the dagger. Gripping it between her feet, she sawed apart the bonds at her wrists, then cut the rest of the ropes.

  “Let’s get as far from camp as possible,” she said. Nisha and Moss nodded, but before they could move, Lady Valle stampeded past them, clutching her bow. She took aim at one of
the dragons.

  Not knowing what else to do, Ember flapped her wings furiously—they were stiff from cold and being tied up, but she managed to stir a gust of wind. Lady Valle’s shot went wide, and she let out a curse.

  “What was that?” Nisha yelped, brushing the hair from her eyes.

  “Come on.” Ember grabbed her hand and Moss’s. Together they raced past the fire, past the tents—where Prince Gideon had just emerged, his expression a mixture of excitement and fear.

  “To me, Brooks! O’Malley, get my sled ready! Good grief, what are all these penguins doing here?”

  To Ember’s horror, the prince was still wearing the dead dragon’s heartscale around his neck—it flashed in the firelight. Was he mad? The dragons would see it!

  “Gideon—” Ember began.

  The prince whirled on her. “You! I thought I ordered—”

  “Get down!” Moss shouted.

  Ember didn’t think. While the prince continued to yell at her, Ember leaped at him, using her wings for extra propulsion, and knocked him to the ground.

  “What in the—” Prince Gideon began, but at that moment, a dragon swooped over them, passing so low its belly scraped the peak of the nearest tent and its icy breath rolled over them like fog.

  Ember didn’t pause. “Give me that scale!” she yelled, scrabbling at the prince.

  “I will not! Get off me!”

  They wrestled in the snow, tumbling over and over. The prince let out a sharp breath when he felt Ember’s wings. His expression hardening, he grabbed one and twisted it, so hard that Ember cried out, her grip on him loosening.

  The prince sprang to his feet. “How dare you lay hands on me! I will not—”

  “They’re going to kill you if they see that scale!” Ember snapped. “You stupid, arrogant . . .”

  The words died on her lips. With a terrible silent grace, an ice dragon settled onto the snow behind Gideon.

  The dragon was bigger than the one that had died on the beach. In the darkness, its scales shone like will-o’-the-wisps, while its eyes were fallen stars, cold and entirely white. There was nothing in its face that Ember could read—she could have been staring at the side of a frozen mountain. The dragon let out a long breath—not a killing blast of ice, but a frigid sigh that stirred the prince’s hair and covered Ember’s skin in gooseflesh.

  Everything seemed to slow. Gideon, sensing the dragon at his back, reached for his sword—it wasn’t there. He hadn’t had time to don it. Ember opened her mouth to scream a warning. The dragon’s front foot darted out, its talons like icicles digging into the shoulder of Prince Gideon’s coat.

  The dragon sprang into the air, its powerful wings pumping so hard that Ember was momentarily blinded by snow. The last thing she saw was Gideon’s face, his eyes wide with helpless terror. Then he and the dragon were gone.

  Fifteen

  South

  Without its heartscale, the fire dragon would die. As if conscious of the vital importance of this organ, the dragon was exceedingly cautious in protecting it, preferring when in combat to fight with flame and talons only, keeping both head and neck out of reach of its opponent.

  —TAKAGI’S COMPENDIUM OF EXOTIC CREATURES

  “Follow them!”

  “Did we hit any? I could have sworn—”

  “Dammit, Black, get out of my way so I can take a shot!”

  “Which way did they go?”

  The camp was in complete disarray. Hunters ran this way and that—some wanted to follow the dragons, while others were for searching the vicinity to see if any of the beasts had been taken down by their arrows. The night was black—fat snowflakes swirled from heavy clouds; the fire had been reduced to embers by the dragons’ wings. Penguins honked and slapped at anything that came within slapping range. They did little harm, but contributed to the general confusion. Mr. Heep, yelling something about the supplies, slammed into the Marquis de Montvert, who was running in the opposite direction. They were almost blind.

  But Ember was not.

  She was on her feet and racing back to her tent before the dragons’ wingbeats faded. She emerged moments later, having shoved all her belongings into her pack. She darted toward the sleds.

  She found Prince Gideon’s easily enough. His dogs were clustered around it, whining and shaking. Someone had already half harnessed them—one of the prince’s servants, no doubt. That servant was nowhere to be seen, having been swept up in the chaos of the camp. Ember wondered if any of them had even realized yet that the prince had been taken. Her hands trembling, she secured the dogs to the sled.

  “What are you doing?”

  Ember whirled. Moss stood behind her, holding a piece of firewood like a torch, which threw his sharp features into stark relief. His eyes widened when he saw the pack she carried.

  “I’m going after him,” Ember said.

  She expected Moss to argue—to call her mad, to say that she couldn’t think of risking her life like that. Instead he said, “Why?”

  His voice held only curiosity. Ember met Moss’s gaze and saw a coldness there that she had glimpsed before. He truly would leave Prince Gideon to die and not feel a shred of guilt about it.

  “He held us captive,” Moss said. “He threatened you. He refused to listen when you warned him about the scale. He deserves whatever happens to him.”

  Ember tried not to shiver at the cold logic of it. Moss was right. The prince was arrogant and cruel. He had killed one dragon, and given the chance, he would kill more. But she also remembered the tiny glimmers of kindness she had seen in him. Was that enough to make his life worth saving? Or did kindness factor into it at all?

  “You’re right,” she said. “He deserves to be carried off by dragons—or worse. But I’m still going. I think . . . I think I’m the only one who can save him.”

  Moss said nothing. His blue eyes were the exact shade of ice in the afternoon, when shadows stretched long over the snow.

  “Why do you always do that?” an angry voice demanded. Nisha stepped into the torchlight. “You have to do everything by yourself, don’t you? Don’t you trust us at all? After all we’ve been through! And you’re just going to leave us behind?”

  “I—” Ember fumbled for words. “Well—yes. Do you know how dangerous this is?”

  “Do you?” Nisha retorted. “We helped you get this far. Admit it—you’re glad we came along.”

  “Of course I am,” Ember said, and then she stopped, surprised by how true it was. Without Nisha’s strategizing and Moss’s quiet encouragement, she could never have saved as many dragons as she had.

  “I don’t care about Prince Gideon,” Moss said. “But I care about the dragons. If he dies, so does any hope of saving them.”

  The sickening truth of Moss’s words hit Ember like a stone. Queen Victoria had been willing to listen to Aunt Myra, and to place limits on the Winterglass Hunt. But if the ice dragons killed her grandson . . .

  Ember swallowed. Hunters would pour into Antarctica to wipe out Gideon’s killers—with the queen’s blessing.

  Still, that didn’t change the fact that it was far too dangerous for Nisha and Moss to come with her. It had felt like a game before. It wasn’t a game now.

  “I have to do this myself,” she said.

  Nisha folded her arms. “No.”

  Ember stared at her. “What are you—”

  “Moss, the sled,” Nisha said. Before Ember knew what was happening, Nisha had leaped onto the sled, while Moss hopped up on the back, yelling at the dogs to move. They did, grudgingly, still unnerved by the dragons’ attack.

  Ember was so astonished that, for a moment, she could only stare at the retreating sled.

  “Hey!” she yelled, and dashed after them.

  “We’re going after the prince,” Nisha yelled back at her, her ribbons flapping around her face. “Goodbye! We’ll be back in a few days!”

  Ember narrowed her eyes, beating her wings to quicken her pace. She caught up with the sled
in seconds. Moss started as she grabbed the handle.

  “Whoa!” Ember called to the dogs. They slowed, then stopped. Moss watched her uncertainly. Nisha had her arms folded again.

  “All right!” Ember snapped.

  Nisha seemed to smother a smile. “All right, what?”

  “All right, you can come with me,” Ember said.

  Nisha accepted this with a dignified nod. She shuffled over, leaving space for Ember to sit beside her on the sled. Ember plunked down, anger warring with the laughter rising in her throat. She looked at Nisha, whose glower melted into a giggle. Ember couldn’t suppress her smile.

  “What about your parents?” she said.

  Nisha’s face darkened. “They want to keep me locked up. I don’t want to be locked up anymore.” Her gaze grew distant, and she set her jaw. “This is what Aditi would do.”

  “Er,” Moss said. “Where are we going, anyway?”

  “South,” Ember said. That was the direction the dragons had flown. “Hopefully we can catch up to them. I don’t—I don’t know what we’ll do when we find them. I don’t have a plan.”

  “We know,” Moss said.

  Nisha nodded. “That’s why we’re coming with you, of course,” she said in an exasperated voice. “Because you need help.”

  Ember swallowed against the lump in her throat. Nisha and Moss had already risked their lives to help her. And now this? She felt she should say something—thank them, perhaps, or warn them again. She couldn’t find the words. But neither Nisha nor Moss seemed to mind.

  “All right, let’s go save those dragons.” Nisha narrowed her eyes at the southern horizon. “And that useless prince too, I guess!”

  Sixteen

  Land of Night

  In the prehistoric era, dragons were often hunted by humans for meat. They were smaller than their modern descendants, and Charles Darwin has speculated that human contact led to the evolution of the dragons’ impenetrable scales, as well as their size and ferocity. . . .