“Dark vapor,” Gallen said.
“Vapor?” Gabrial heard the second part. He stepped beyond Gariffred to better hear the rest … Dead, in a cave, he managed to pick up. Hom …
Without hesitation, Grynt barked the general command to fly. The colony rose as a flock, their shadows flickering over the ice.
“Gabrial, what’s happening?” Grendel called anxiously.
He was still stepping away from her, creeping nearer to Grynt. He heard the Prime say, “Take whatever Veng you have and ten good roamers. Circle the area. Send a message back to me as soon as you know more.”
With that, Gallen was in the air.
“I should go with them,” De:allus Garodor said.
Grynt nodded. “I want to know how long it’s been dead and by what means.”
The De:allus spread his wings with a powerful whup. And he departed too.
“Fly to my eyrie,” Grynt said to Gossana. “I will join you there shortly.”
Gossana took off without hesitation, leaving a mystified Gabrial to ask, “What’s happening? I heard Gallen say something about a vapor.”
“Forget vapors,” said Grynt. “Do your duty. Protect your young.”
“If something is threatening us, I want to go with Gallen. I want to fight.”
“Your orders are to go to your eyrie,” snapped Grynt. “No, better still, gather the wearlings and follow me to mine.”
“Why?”
The Prime dragon leaned closer. “So I know you won’t disobey me.”
With a sigh of frustration, Gabrial backed away. He explained the situation briefly to Grendel. Together they picked up Gayl and Gariffred and carried the wearlings on the short flight up to Grynt’s eyrie.
Gossana voiced her objection the moment they landed. “What are they doing here?”
“I ordered it,” said Grynt, touching down so smoothly he was barely out of breath.
Gossana gave a disgruntled huff. “I do not want to be tripping over wearlings if the goyles come again.”
“Goyles?” Gabrial looked at Grendel and saw her shudder. “Gallen said vapor, not goyle. I don’t understand.”
“Neither do I,” said Grynt. “So settle the wearlings and wait, like the rest of us.”
“What about the Hom?”
Grynt sighed. “What about them?”
“Gallen said there were Hom involved.”
“Not anymore.”
“You mean some were killed?”
“If it were me, I’d burn them all,” Gossana sniffed.
“Is that right? Hom were killed?” Gabrial pressed.
“I told you to settle your young,” said Grynt, poking his isoscele in Gayl’s direction. The young wearmyss was wailing in confusion. Gossana jumped back in disgust as the youngster nearly defecated on her foot.
“Bring Ren back,” Gabrial said boldly. “If there’s trouble with the Hom, let him talk to his tribe.”
“Talk?” Grynt’s fangs began to run with saliva. “There is a Veng lying dead in a cave beyond the scorch line—a dragon three roamers would struggle to subdue. Its eye has been pierced by a Hom weapon. What conclusion would you like me to draw from this, Gabrial? It’s clear their aggression has not been tamed and their threat is growing. If this is the beginning of a Hom uprising, then Elder Gossana is right: We will respond—with ultimate force.”
“And Ren? What happens to him?”
Grynt came closer, until they were almost snout to snout. “For the last time, protect your young. Do not speak to me about this again.”
“Then let me speak about Gariffred instead. Is he accepted into the Wearle or not?”
Grynt glanced at the drake. The male wearling had settled in a bend of the cave. “The disruption will be seen as a sign that Godith did not bless his Naming.”
“What? You can’t believe that!”
Grynt closed on him again, fire licking around his nostrils. “You dare to stand here and tell me you know better than our Creator?”
“Gabrial.” Grendel called to him softly. She’d been overhearing the conversation and was anxious to pull him back.
“The Naming will be reviewed,” said Grynt. “That’s all I can tell you. Now, rejoin your family, where you belong.”
Gabrial snorted and turned away. “Come, Gabrial,” Grendel said gently, using her tail to draw him past her. “Gariffred is anxious to show you his i:mages.”
Gabrial settled in a sullen heap, allowing Gayl to snuggle into the space between his forelegs. “I feel so useless,” he hissed. “Ren captured. More Hom dead. The Veng bringing back reports of vapors. Gariffred …” He didn’t even want to go there. “What am I supposed to do, Grendel?”
“Nothing,” she said, her eyes glowing kindly in the darkness. “Thankfully, the Wearle isn’t yours to command.” She licked Gariffred’s head. “All we can do is wait as Grynt says. See what happens. Difficult, I know. Consider it a challenge.” She yawned deeply. “I need to sleep. The wearlings are yours for now. Let them, not vapors, occupy your thoughts.”
He watched her curl up and close her eyes. At rest, she was particularly beautiful, her face a flowing river of gold. By now, Gayl’s head had also dropped, and small ripples of air were popping out of her nostrils with every slight rise and fall of her breast.
Gariffred, however, was wide awake and grizzling to himself.
Hrrr? Gabrial grunted. It was early days yet for any real communication with the wearlings. A simple hrrr conveyed many useful meanings.
As could a “graark,” which the drake replied with. His soft blue eye ridges came together in a gentle frown. Suddenly, a whole cluster of i:mages filled the air in front of him, lasting barely moments before they popped. They were fuzzy and half formed, with very little depth. The only shape Gabrial recognized was a tree, a tall one that Ren’s kind called a spiker. Like the moon i:mage earlier in the day, this was also remarkably advanced for a dragon of Gariffred’s age.
“Slower,” said Gabrial, flicking a claw to set the tempo.
Raargh, went the drake, shaking his head as though it was important that the i:mages came at speed.
Out they came again.
This time, Gabrial set his optical triggers to record everything the drake was producing. A small organ at the back of a dragon’s eye could store a set of i:mages far better than memory, and the sequence could then be replayed at will. To Gabrial’s surprise, what he found in the i:mages was not one but a whole straggle of spiker trees, the sort of blur of greenery that a dragon might glimpse as it flew over woodland. But when had Gariffred ever done that? Of greater interest were two small bodies of water that showed up like glistening footsteps among a curving slew of hills. And finally an object Gabrial recognized, an unmistakable outcrop of rocks that resembled the spread of a dragon’s claws. It was just the sort of feature a dragon might use as a reference point if it was trying to map a location—or, more likely, remember a route …
Gabrial’s second heart skipped a beat as a strange notion stirred in his head. He thought back to what De:allus Garodor had said about the Hom acquiring dragon powers. Dragons could communicate in thought if they needed to. Some, like Grystina, Gariffred’s true mother, were also gifted in the art of transference. What if the bond between Ren and Gariffred was now so great that Ren was able to project pictures of his capture into the wearling’s mind? What if that quarter moon i:mage, for instance, was not a moon at all, but a dragon’s head partly blocking the entrance to a cave—or a pit?
“Can’t you keep that thing quiet?”
Gabrial lifted his head to see Gossana glaring from across the cave. “He’s hungry. I … need to go out and catch something for him—if the Prime has no objection?”
“Very well. Be swift,” Grynt grunted.
Gabrial’s heart thumped again. Being careful not to wake Grendel, he moved Gayl into her mother’s warmth and rose to leave. Gariffred immediately protested, not wanting to be abandoned. Gabrial touched his snout to the drake a
nd whispered, “Shush. Sleep. I’m going to look for Ren.” This much Gariffred did understand. He settled back, glancing warily at Grynt and Gossana.
And Gabrial was out of the cave and flying, not down into the lush green valleys where the rabbits and the goats were caught, but east of Mount Vargos, where lakes formed between the barren hills, and centuries of rain and ice and movement had combined to carve memorable shapes in the rocks. If the i:mages pouring out of Gariffred were true, this was where they had taken Ren, and this was where Gabrial was certain he would find him, in the place that had been the cause of so much tragedy: the abandoned fhosforent mines.
It was madness, of course; Gabrial realized that. A highly dangerous folly that could not only threaten his place within the Wearle but also the entire future of Grendel and the wearlings. The only excuse he could find to justify his actions was the grim reminder that if there were to be reprisals against the Hom, Ren would be the obvious target. Grynt was teetering on the brink of a difficult dilemma. The death of a Veng at the hands of the Kaal would give the Prime dragon all the reason he needed to wipe the boy out, along with others of his tribe. If Ren was not found and rescued, he was as good as dead.
But with the backbone of the mines still a distance away, time was very much a limiting factor. Be swift, Grynt had said. Any competent dragon could sweep the fields and bring back a small kill fit for a wearling before the heat had gotten into his wings. How long before Grynt grew suspicious and sent roamers out looking for his wayward blue? Gabrial might say he’d been distracted by the general rumpus and that he couldn’t resist flying to one of the peaks to see if there was anything he might observe, but that would leave time for only one pass across the mines before he would be forced to turn and head back; a detailed search was out of the question.
And so he reeled in his initial impulse and set himself a more realistic ambition. He had visited the fhosforent mines before and knew the rough area Gariffred had i:maged. If he restricted himself to a controlled flyby, he could record better i:mages of the terrain and compare them to the patterns flowing out of the drake’s head. Then, when a suitable opportunity arose or a critical commitment to rescue was called for, he would have a better idea of where to look for Ren.
But it didn’t come to that.
As he approached the valley where the fhosforent had been mined, he saw a Veng positioned among the rocks just inside the quarry where Grogan had died. A guard. Of course. They had a guard on the spot. Gabrial didn’t know whether to snort in triumph or grind his teeth in frustration. The sighting confirmed Ren was in this area, but if Gabrial flew too close and the guard reported his presence to Gallen, word would soon get back to the Prime. Then there would be difficult questions to answer.
So Gabrial recorded the guard’s location and glided through an arc that would take him silently away from the quarry. At his present height, even if the Veng did see him, it would not be able to identify him. And as long as he kept a respectable distance, the Veng was not going to take off and challenge him.
He set a course for the smoking tip of Mount Vargos. In forty wingbeats, he could be making the approach to Prime Grynt’s eyrie (he reminded himself to catch a rabbit on the way). But something kept drawing his eye back to that Veng. From the moment he’d spotted it, it hadn’t moved. Not even a grumpy twitch. No doubt it was a thankless task to have to sit alone watching the entrance to a hole (Gabrial thought he’d seen a dark depression at a relatively undisturbed section of the quarry), so it was reasonable to expect the Veng to be hunched. Yet something about its body shape was wrong. It appeared to be listing slightly. One wing was half spread over the rocks. It couldn’t be warming itself because the sun was low in the sky and weak. And there appeared to be waste matter all around its tail. Was it sitting in a trail of its own dung? Even for a Veng that was lazy practice.
With a hurr of frustration, Gabrial switched his weight and circled the site once more. Every delay made his circumstances worse, but he had to know what was happening here. He dropped to a lower orbit, all the while sharpening his optical triggers. The Veng’s green, studded eyelids were partially closed, and one of them appeared to be oozing fluid. The tail, normally so strong and ready, lay flaccid between two stones. Shards of broken claws were scattered all around. The nose-numbing stench confirmed it was dung pooling out among the stones. But this wasn’t normal waste. This was the kind of slop wearlings ejected when they were terrified. Gabrial’s primary heart began to quicken. Veng-class dragons had little need of rest; therefore, the guard was unlikely to be sleeping. To make sure, Gabrial let out a cry—no specific call or message, just a simple greeting from one dragon to another.
No response.
He landed two wingspans away, screeching at the Veng to “wake.”
Nothing.
A nudge had no effect on it either. Was it dead or frozen? Gabrial simply couldn’t tell. There were no visible signs of a fight. And no external wounds on an otherwise warm body.
Mystified, he scrambled toward the hole. “Ren?” he called quietly. “Ren, it’s Gabrial. Are you down there?”
No reply.
“Ren?” Gabrial poked his head into the opening. A smell of damp rock and stale air filled his nostrils, but no scent of Hom.
Gabrial sat back, bewildered. It didn’t seem possible that Ren’s powers had developed to such an extent that he could climb out of a hole this deep and overcome the fiercest class of dragon in existence. That just couldn’t happen.
Could it?
He had to report this. It was going to expose him and cause a lot of trouble, but the Elders had to know. He opened his wings. At the same time he heard a cry from the air and saw three, four … six dragons approaching, led by Gallen.
“Stay where you are!” the Veng commander roared.
Gabrial sighed. Perfect timing. He might as well confess his quest here and now.
He folded his wings and minimally disobeyed Gallen’s order, moving slightly away from the body.
Gallen landed with a sturdy thump that made Gabrial’s isoscele lift a fraction. The commander barked once at the stricken Veng, screwed his nostrils sideways at the smell, and squinted at the hole.
“You’re too late,” said Gabrial. “He’s already gone.” The other dragons landed; no more Veng, five good-size roamers. Not good odds if things turned nasty. “It was like this when I got here. I don’t know what’s happened.”
Gallen ordered a roamer to investigate the hole. It dipped its head in and confirmed there was no prisoner.
“Where is he?” Gallen growled, his battle stigs zinging.
“I don’t know,” Gabrial repeated tetchily. “Something odd has happened here, Gallen. There’s no point wasting time arguing about it. I need to speak to Grynt.”
Gallen stepped across him before he could move. “Arrest him,” he barked.
Arrest? Gabrial reeled back. “On what charge?”
“Killing a guard and aiding the prisoner to escape.”
“No.” Gabrial shook his head. A flush of red ran down his neck. His battle stigs began to rise. “I told you, everything was like this when I arrived. What are you even doing here, anyway? I thought you’d gone looking for a vap—?”
“We’ve taken a Hom prisoner,” Gallen hissed, stealthily closing the gap between them. “We’re here because the Prime wants to interrogate it. He planned to use the boy—but you’ve gone and set him free.”
“No,” said Gabrial. “I didn’t. I— Agh!”
A sudden swipe of Gallen’s tail ended Gabrial’s protests. The blow went clean through a bone at the shoulder of the wing. A classic strike, intended to clip the wing and partially disable it. Flight would still be possible, but not escape.
“You’ll come with us,” said Gallen, “or die in flames here.”
“I’m innocent,” said Gabrial, wincing as he tried to pull the wing together.
“That’s for the Elders to decide,” snarled Gallen. “Take him!”
&n
bsp; The fhosforent mines, a short while earlier
From an early age, all Kaal children were taught to climb. For them, going upward against the sun was as natural a habit as feeling their bare feet walking the erth.
Like all the boys of his tribe, Ren’s training had begun on simple gradients, where the holds were easy and grass grew thickly among the rocks to cushion the expected spills and falls. But it wasn’t long before the son of Ned Whitehair was introduced to far greater challenges.
As early as his ninth winter, he was taken to the coarse gray rise at the foot of the sleeping mountain, below the meandering network of caves where many Kaal had lived before the skalers came to drive them out. There, one sunlit frosty morning, the men had pointed to a suitable ledge and sent him up.
Climbs like these could slice deep into a misplaced palm or graze any shin that disrespected the age-old stone. Ned himself had bluntly described it as the kind of drop that would knock some sense into a boy’s dull head if his finger placements were weak or faulty. After two hard falls, one of which had all but snapped his ankle, Ren had managed it.
The men had rightly praised him—then sent him up again, this time with a clutch of dead hoppers on his back to remind him of the weight he would have to carry when his hunting days began.
And even when that was done, they dragged him away from his sleep one night and sent him out in the blustering rain to climb a slope ripped by wind and water. One foot was bound in cloth to mimic the burden of injury. Oleg Widefoot had loosed a few arrows wide of him, just to sharpen his resolve.
Harsh tests. Painful. Tough.
But Ren had managed them all.
Memories of this were going through his mind as he lay in the Veng prison close to the fhosforent mines. Even flat on his back with his head throbbing, he could spot the holds in the craggy walls above him. An easy climb for a boy of his talents, once his aching body had recovered.
But he hadn’t reckoned on a guard being present. The first time he had tried to scale the pit, the Veng heard the movement and poked its savage head into the hole, shutting out a third of the light. The inner layers of its slanted eye expanded. It made a clicking sound in the back of its throat. Its jaws knifed open and out came fire. Not a blast intended to maim or kill—just a short lick hot enough to heat the rock and force Ren to release his grip. He jumped down, landing in a folded heap. A painful lesson, one his left knee begged him not to try again.
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