For the first time on her journey, Silver reached for the knife at her belt. The metal made a scliiick sound as she pulled it from the leather holder. She touched the point. Was it sharp enough to cut into bone? Blood pounded in her ears. She licked her lips.
“Run past,” Brajon said. “I’ll fight.”
“Against that thing?” Silver whispered. “You don’t have a chance. We need to stay as far away as we can. Maybe it just had a full meal and doesn’t want to attack us.”
But as soon as Silver took a few steps forward, her hopeful words were immediately proven false. The creature opened its massive jaw and let loose a spine-tingling screech.
“Geeeeeeeeeeeyyyyyaaaaaaa!”
Then it started running for her.
“Hiyyan,” Silver yelled. She crouched and flung her blade in front of her.
Hiyyan met the creature’s screech with his own roar. He lashed his tail out just as the beast reached them. A red welt appeared in its bone-white skin and the cave monster stumbled, crashing jaw-first to the ground.
Hiyyan roared again. Silver had never heard anything like it from him. Deep, angry, and challenging. The Aquinder whipped a wing at the fallen creature, but the creature snapped its teeth and tore a small hole in the edge of the wing.
Hiyyan cried out and buckled. His pain shuddered through Silver. The beast snapped its jaws and began lumbering toward the young dragon.
“No,” Silver screamed. She rushed forward, jumped on a rock, and flung herself off it, into the air, knife raised high. She brought the weapon down on one of the creature’s arms. Instead of bouncing off, as she worried it would, the sharp metal dug into the monster’s flesh and ripped through it. A bioluminescent greenish slime oozed out.
The creature screeched again. It flicked one of its legs at Silver, which slammed against her chest and knocked her to the ground. The creature’s face loomed over her. It would only take one chomp to snap her in half.
“We did not get this far … to be eaten … by you!” Silver yelled, and raised her knife again.
With another roar, Hiyyan barreled into the side of the creature with his whole body, both of them crashing against the cave wall with a loud crunch.
Silver scrambled to her feet. Brajon stood there, staring at the fallen creature, his face almost as white as the monster’s. Hiyyan was slower to get to his feet, shaking his head as if to clear away the impact of hitting the wall.
“Brajon, go,” Silver yelled to him. “Get past! Find the burrow opening!”
Brajon lunged to get around the creature, but it got up, whip-fast, and shot out a spidery leg. Brajon tripped and landed on his chest in the mud. The creature rattled over to Silver’s fallen cousin, teeth bared.
“Leave him alone!” Silver hurtled toward the creature, knife raised.
The creature screeched and whipped its head toward her. From the corner of her eye, Silver saw Brajon scramble to his feet and run past them. She stabbed the knife at the creature’s face right as it opened its monstrous jaws. The metal lodged between two teeth. The beast reared its head in pain, ripping the knife from Silver’s hand. Her weapon was gone.
She could have darted past the creature, but she wouldn’t leave Hiyyan, who had finally shaken off his confusion, to fend for himself. Without waiting for the water dragon to crouch down, she jumped onto his back, grabbing big handfuls of his mane, and hauled herself up.
“Let’s do this together!” she cried.
Her shoulders burned. Sweat poured down the sides of her face. A kind of electricity zapped through her body and straight into Hiyyan. They were stronger together. Their renewed energy was something magical, something brought on by the power of their bond.
Silver clung tightly as Hiyyan reared on his hind legs and kicked his heavy feet against the creature’s side. The monster flew across the cave and landed against the wall. Silver and Hiyyan followed him. The white monster lashed out with its three remaining good arms. One of its claws scraped against Hiyyan, yanking off a scale, and Silver yelped in shared pain.
The water dragon was bleeding, but he hardly seemed to notice. He snapped his own sharp teeth onto one of the creature’s arms and ripped it off. He spit it onto the ground and lunged again.
When they were close enough, Silver reached for her knife, still wedged into the monster’s slobbering mouth. She pulled it free while it was distracted, the metal glinting in the light.
Wait … light?
Silver turned to see light streaming into the cave behind the monster. Brajon had found the burrow opening.
“Hiyyan,” Silver yelled, brandishing her knife high. “Finish this!”
Hiyyan reared high again and bore down on the spidery creature. Their combined roars and screeches echoed through the cave until Silver’s head was filled with nothing else.
“Arrrghhh!” she yelled along with them, one with her Aquinder. She leaned forward to jam her knife into the center of the creature’s head. The tip slid in smoothly, and the creature fell to the ground. It shuddered, letting out a final rattle.
Then, all was silent.
TWENTY-ONE
Hiyyan sat back on his haunches, breathing heavily. He was wounded. Silver was, too. But the white monster rattled no more. Silver slid off her water dragon’s back. She pressed her face to his, waiting for her heart to slow its beating.
“Soon. We’ll have rest very soon. I promise.”
She went to the beast’s head, waiting a moment to make completely sure it was dead. There were bits of fox fur between its teeth. Silver frowned. When the cave monster didn’t move, she pulled her knife out of its head. The blade came out as easily as it had gone in. But it was covered with slick green goo. And her hand, where it had brushed against the monster’s flesh, was striped with a substance that shimmered like white gold.
“Ew.” Silver wrinkled her nose. She wiped her hand on her tunic, and dragged the knife through the mud. A pathetic cleaning, but it would have to do for now. Then she remembered the light and looked up. Brajon was already through the burrow opening, but he called back to her.
“Silver! Tell me you’re alive!”
“I’m here,” she called back. “And I’m alive. We both are.”
Silver and Hiyyan limped slowly toward the light. The brightness hurt her head. She squinted and waited for her eyes to adjust. The opening was tight, too tight for Hiyyan to get through, but she felt the water dragon urging her to go on. Earth clung to her body, but after a few minutes of climbing, a hand reached down and hauled her the rest of the way up. She was struck by how close they had been to the surface all along.
Silver flung herself to the ground on her belly and breathed in the dry warmth of the outside world. Silent sobs racked her chest. Her cheek on the rocky, shrubby sand felt so good.
“Look,” Brajon said.
Silver raised her head. Like a mirage rising from the desert, a wonderland of stone and metal grew out of the landscape.
They’d reached Calidia.
“We made it,” Silver breathed. She squinted at the city, but Brajon was staring at her clothes.
“Is this…?” He touched a spot where Silver had wiped the cave monster’s … whatever it was …
His fingers came away … and vanished.
Silver gaped. “Wait, what happened to your hand?”
Brajon blew on his fingers, and they returned to normal. Then he rubbed the substance between his fingers.
“Camouin,” Brajon said. “I can’t believe it.”
When he squeezed slowly, the substance was soft and malleable, but when he kneaded more quickly, the substance solidified. When he’d built heat from the friction, his fingers disappeared, as though they were replaced by desert sand.
“What’s camouin?”
“I guess you wouldn’t have heard about it in your classes. Not much use for it in jewelry.” Brajon smeared the substance on his trousers. “It’s a metal used for camouflage, but it’s been illegal for hundreds of years. Any
one who possesses it would be hunted down. It was used extensively in the Land and Sea Wars. After that, it was considered too dangerous for humankind.”
“Like Aquinder.”
Brajon nodded. “All along, it was hiding under our desert. That creature must have known where to find it.”
“It was able to turn it off and on.” Silver shuddered.
“Heat activates the camouflage properties. That monster must have been able to adjust its body temperature at will. Amazing.”
“Terrifying,” Silver said, correcting him.
“Either way, we have to get it off us. If someone sees it, we’ll be arrested.”
Silver looked to Calidia. She pushed her hair out of her face and nibbled her bottom lip. “It would be really useful, though. Think of what we could do if we were covered in camouin. Get into the city, find Kirja, and get out. I could even race Hiyyan without anyone discovering he’s an Aquinder!”
Brajon threw his arms out to his sides. “Cousin! Were you even listening to me? The stuff’s banned. It’s a death warrant if we get caught!”
“But we won’t get caught if they can’t see us!”
“No way, Silver.” Brajon shook his head. “I’m going down to try to find our bags. Put camouin out of your mind.”
Brajon slid back into the burrow. Silver turned her face to the sun and soaked in the warmth, then sent those good feelings to Hiyyan, still in the cave. The Aquinder sent back surges of longing. Silver inspected the hole they’d come up through. It was barely big enough for her and Brajon. How would they get Hiyyan out?
“He’s just not going to fit,” Silver said to Brajon once he’d returned.
Down below, Hiyyan mewled.
“I know,” Silver called down. “I’m working on it.”
Silver paced in ever-widening circles. “Maybe there’s another opening. A bigger one.”
As she looked, the foxes began appearing, as if to help her search. At first, just one, poking its fuzzy black snout aboveground and sniffing the air before scampering out. Its fur closely matched the colors of the desert floor: sand and red clay and bits of white. Then another came out, then another. Pretty soon, Silver was surrounded by what must have been the entire colony.
When she sat down in frustration, all the foxes sat down, too.
Harrumph, one seemed to mutter.
“How do I get him out?” she asked them.
She didn’t think they could understand her, of course. But Brajon was still circling several feet away, and Hiyyan was stuck underground. Tiredness washed over Silver. It was hard to think straight.
The foxes faced one another. One began to chirp. Others replied. Soon, all of the foxes were talking over one another. Silver put her hands over her ears at their sharp noises.
But then, they were gone—darting down into the hole Silver and Brajon had come up through.
“Oh, fine, go back to your cozy homes!” Silver gave an exhausted sigh.
The thing was, Silver knew the safest place for Hiyyan was in the cave. If she and Brajon were to go into Calidia first to gather supplies, her Aquinder couldn’t go. But Silver also knew he was as desperate to see the sky as she had been. It would be heartless to leave him.
She pulled her knife out of its leather scabbard and rubbed it in the sand to clean off more of the gunk. Her father had always been adamant about properly cleaning tools in his workshop.
A patch of sand hit her square in the face.
“Hey!” she sputtered, and dropped the knife, wiping her eyes and mouth with her tunic sleeve. “What was that for?”
She looked for Brajon, assuming he’d thrown the sand, but he was on his hands and knees by the hole they’d emerged from.
More sand flew toward her, landing in her hair.
She stood and walked to where it was coming from. There was a new hole in the desert floor, growing larger and larger as Silver watched. More holes appeared all around them. Suddenly, she understood what was happening. The ground shook.
“Move back!” she yelled at Brajon, grabbing his shoulder and hauling him away. The ground shuddered again as a gaping chasm fell away. A chorus of chirps rang out into the desert sky, and the foxes swarmed out of the hole. Silver took a tentative step forward and peered down.
There was her Aquinder, grinning up at her. Four or five foxes sat on his head and back, grinning, too.
“You destroyed your own burrow?” Silver said. “To help us?”
She recalled the fur in the white monster’s teeth. Maybe she’d done them a favor, and this was how they were expressing their thanks.
“Thank you so much,” she said. “Come on, Hiyyan. Climb out.”
Hiyyan didn’t have to be told twice. He clawed at the walls, but his pace was slow and he slid back down. He let out a mewl.
“It’s not working. The walls are too slick for his claws,” Brajon said.
Silver tipped her head back and turned her face to the sun. Think.
When she opened her eyes, a desert hawk circled overhead. Her heart fluttered. She remembered Nebekker telling her about the hidden Aquinder eggs in the desert. Those babies didn’t have parents. But they’d learned to swim, to survive, to fly, somehow.
“Look, Hiyyan,” she said under her breath. “Do as the hawk does.”
Hiyyan gazed at the skies. He watched the hawk pick up air currents and rise, then turn and drop before flapping its wings again. The water dragon narrowed his eyes and spread his wings. First, he shook them out, then batted them up and down a few times, mimicking the hawk. He roared.
The foxes on his head chirped indignantly and rolled down to the ground.
Hiyyan flapped his wings harder.
The Aquinder rose majestically out of the river cave. Then he kept going, disappearing into the blue desert sky for the first time.
A strange, heavy feeling filled Silver and she bit her lip, keeping tears at bay. The next deep breath she took could have been made of helium, the way it made her body seem light enough to lift off the desert floor. Dots of light like festival fireworks burst at the edges of her vision.
“He’s flying,” she whispered.
Giggles bubbled up her throat, impossible to contain.
“He’s flying!” Silver clapped and laughed as she watched her Aquinder relish his freedom.
Hiyyan made only one swoop before he returned, landing in a heap, like a pile of sandstone bricks. He rolled over and stayed motionless for a moment. Then he raised his head and grinned, his mane flopping from side to side.
Silver ran to him and threw her arms around his neck.
“You did it. You flew! Terrible landing, but I think Kirja can help with that.”
Hiyyan’s laughter was a honk. For the first time, Silver noticed how big he’d gotten. As big as Kirja. The cave had hidden his height, since he’d often have to hunch over to get through the tunnels, but now his body spread out to its full size. He was a grand beast.
Together, they could do anything.
Silver looked toward Calidia as Hiyyan took to the skies again. Outside the city, orchards of palm and yucca created a green space. She could just see low sandstone buildings among the trees. They spread out quite a way before meeting with several rows of slightly taller and closer-together sandstone structures. Those structures then connected with what she assumed was the heart of Calidia: tall stone-and-metal buildings, glinting brown and silver and white in the sun. Somewhere in there was the great palace, but it was obscured by everything else. Unlike Jaspaton, which was a vertical city, and so it was easy to see everything, Calidia greedily ate a wide swath of the desert floor.
Silver squinted up at Hiyyan. You’ll have to come down before someone from the city sees you, she said silently.
He gave one last swoop. This time, his landing was a roll. He breathed heavily from his unfamiliar exertion. He sent Silver a host of new scents, including one that was particularly damp and salty. Hiyyan’s longing was strong.
“The sea.” It wa
s close by. Perhaps just on the other side of the city. Silver put her hand on Hiyyan’s side. “I know I keep saying ‘soon.’ I know I keep promising things. But I will keep all my promises. You’ll see the sea. Soon. Promise.”
She picked up her bag and put her arms through the straps. It was lighter than ever before. Empty of supplies. Her stomach screamed at her. She was desperate to get to the city, if just to get something to eat. Something hot, something rich with a sauce, something …
Her stomach protested again.
“We have to go into Calidia first. Which means you have to stay here and hide,” she said to Hiyyan.
Hiyyan peered over his shoulder to the wide hole in the ground. He knew what Silver was thinking.
Silver dropped to her knees and cradled Hiyyan’s head in her arms. “I’m so sorry,” she said. Her eyes welled with tears. “But it’s important that you stay hidden. Remember what Nebekker said? ‘Theft runs rampant before major races.’ I’m not losing you.”
Hiyyan’s mewl was as soft as a fox’s. He lay on the ground and let the back half of his body slide back into the hole. Then he looked up at Silver hopefully.
“Okay. Halfway in should be good enough. But if you hear or smell any other humans, you have to go all the way in, all right?”
Silver fought back her tears and prepared to go. But then, as though pulled to him by a rope, she ran to Hiyyan and pressed her cheek to her Aquinder’s face.
Finally, she stood and faced the orchards ringing Calidia.
“Let’s go,” she told Brajon, and she took her first step toward the great royal city.
TWENTY-TWO
The walk took longer than Silver had anticipated. A common trick of the desert, to make distances appear shorter than they really were. But she kept her gaze focused forward and spoke little to Brajon, to conserve energy. When they finally emerged from the open desert, they discovered a rough road outlining the orchards. Silver rubbed her hand across her face.
“Follow the road or cut through the trees?” she asked her cousin. “If we take the road, we might get there faster, but we also might be seen.”
Silver Batal and the Water Dragon Races Page 12