Gabrial took off in an instant and was away before the crows could think to chase him. With a caark of annoyance, their leader changed course and called them onto Ren. Six of them, all squealing their threats.
Grystina, are you with me? Ren said.
She rose in his mind. You know I am.
Is it possible to phase as Gabrial says?
Yes. But you must be sure and swift. Do not look at the crows. Remember Grogan. Let his angry spirit fire you. Concentrate. Fill your mind with your quest.
Ren closed his eyes, remembering the quarry. “For Grogan!” he yelled.
Caarak! Caraark! the crows spat back.
Ren felt the air flowing off their wings. The first crow was almost upon him.
The smoke, said Grystina. Picture it. Now.
Claws slashed.
But all they hit was empty space.
Ren was gone like a blink of sunlight.
Into the depths of the forest.
One thing Ren had yet to master was the technique of holding himself together during phasing. As well as i:maging their endpoint, dragons were taught to visualize themselves in the correct position once their leap through time was accomplished. Mentors of young dragons would deliberately let their charges land upside down, often with their snouts half buried in dirt, to teach them the importance of self-awareness. Ren learned it himself that day when he materialized in the forest.
Landing on sloping ground on his shoulder, he was immediately catapulted head over heels into a downward roll. The forest floor was mossy and soft, but there were rocks a-plenty poking through the bracken, enough to register a bruise at every flip. Ohh! Urgh! Owww … The knocks came hard and fast. And, once again, his body was reminded that spiker branches, even dead brown ones, were quick to pierce exposed Hom flesh. An old tree stump eventually broke his tumble, bouncing him sideways into a slide. With a final groan, he reached out for something to anchor him. His hand grasped what felt like a moss-lined branch. But as his fingers explored it he realized it wasn’t a branch at all. He rolled his head to see a face staring back.
A grim, dead face.
It had no eyes.
“Agh!”
He broke away and scrabbled to his feet, kicking at the body as if, even in its lifeless state, it would rise and attack him. It was a treeman, one of the strange tribe of people who inhabited the forest. Like all his kind, the man was clothed only at the waist. What could be seen of his milky-white skin was covered in the foliage that grew unhindered in the forest erth. He looked particularly old. His feet were wrapped in a twining weed that had latched to his ankles and sent suckers up around his knees. Graycaps were sprouting from the pits of his arms. Shallow roots of crusted lichen shined where he’d rubbed their tops off his belly. Although he was slight of build, he had hair enough for three grown men, most of it gathered in a knotted red beard that had broken eggshells among its strands. Something white and disturbingly frothy was germinating in his knobbly ears. Three of his fingers had turned to wood.
But the eyes, or the lack of them, were so very wrong. Treemen rarely blinked, and this one was never going to blink again. The crows, Ren suspected, had killed the man and torn out the eyes, probably to eat or keep as trophies. A host of black nibblers was already laying claim to the sockets, writing their patterns in the sticky red blood on the treeman’s cheeks.
I see you, Ren Whitehair.
Suddenly, out of the mouth came a voice. Pine’s voice. How it had happened, Ren could not tell. But he jumped back again with a yelp of fear, snatching up a spear that had fallen from the dead man’s hand. Three or four times he stabbed the body, but the poking brought no more response from it.
Here, Whitehair. Here I am.
The voice came again, this time from behind. Ren whipped around, gripping the spear shaft underhand and double, like he would if he were facing a charging snorter. The forest trees stood like bare-legged giants, light fanning eerily between them. Many had been blackened by Gallen’s fire. The scent of charred wood doused by rain overwhelmed every other smell in the forest.
Here!
Ren jumped like a frightened hopper.
More trees.
More gaps.
A twist of shadows.
A crackle of bracken.
A breeze.
No Pine.
“I would see you now, Onetooth! Show yerself!”
High above, the treetops began to bristle.
From somewhere among them a crow called down.
Ren jabbed his spear upward.
It’s coming, Whitehair.
What? What was coming? The trees had begun to sway as if they’d been brushed by the wings of many dragons.
Look here.
Now the voice was at his left, farther down the slope. Ren crept toward it and briefly saw the shape of a straggle-haired girl. A vapor, flashing between the trees.
Is it her? he asked Grystina.
I cannot be sure.
What’s wrong with the crows?
He turned on the spot, looking upward again. It was impossible to see the birds, but their calls were beginning to multiply.
Why don’t they attack?
The goyle commands them. It must want you alive.
Ren gritted his teeth. Then we must see what it wants, he thought.
He pushed on again, to the bottom of the ridge where the light was full and strong. Through the trees he saw a clearing. The bracken was thinly layered with ash, still warm from Gallen’s fire, but all plant life was scarred or extinguished. At the center of the clearing, by a dead gray stump, stood Pine.
She was plucking petals off a blackened flower.
On the stump lay the dragon heart. It had shrunk to half its size but was glittering like a young dragon eye, shedding sparks of purple light.
“Have you come to kill me, Whitehair?”
Her voice drew Ren into the clearing. He glanced around him. They seemed to be alone. “Many times I have wished it so,” he muttered.
Where’s Wind? he asked Grystina.
“Not here,” Pine replied. A flower petal dropped. She shook back her hair. “I read you, Whitehair. Your auma is strong. The dragon inside you would growl if it could.”
She smiled, showing off her crooked teeth. She wiped a hand down her bloodstained robe. Ren saw the rip where Ty had cut her.
“Then you will know why I stand here, goyle.”
“Aye, I do.”
“Give up the heart.”
Pine shook her head. “Nay.”
“Then kill you I must.”
“Not yet,” she said calmly. “First, you must listen.”
Ren turned the spear in his sweating hand. Listen? To what? The thump of my heart? The gathering wind? The clouds were slowly coming together, stirred like a whirlpool in a river. The crows cleared off in a sudden clatter, flying in all directions.
“They are fleeing,” said Pine.
From the Wearle, Grystina? Does Grynt come?
No, she replied, they are fleeing from …
“Grogan,” said Pine.
The last petal dropped.
She has summoned the vapor, Grystina said.
Ren shook his head. His eyes darted skyward. “No. Grogan’s spirit haunts his death place. It cannot leave there.”
“It can, Whitehair. Shade has freed him. Her magicks have torn down the veil.” She cradled the heart. “It is Graven’s command.”
Ren, we must leave. Phase back, said Grystina.
“Your dragon fears him,” Pine said quietly. “But you are right to stay. Kneel before Graven, as I will kneel, and he will accept us both as his servants.”
Ren lifted the spear. “What have you done? How did you open the heart?”
“I have not.”
“Then why is it changed?” Every vein was glowing. And the purple sparks continued to fly.
“It has taken what it needs from the birds,” said Pine. “Two things more shall make it crack …”
&nbs
p; RAAAARRR!
A roar so loud it blew ash from the ground came funneling down from the sky.
The spirit of Grogan was descending on the clearing, a huge and terrifying apparition. Just to look upon those wraithlike jaws was reason enough for a boy to pass water. Ren stumbled backward, dropping the spear. Here was the vapor that would haunt him all his days or suck out his soul, whichever appealed to it more. The horrifying sight of it rendered him speechless. Not even a gasp could escape his mouth. But Pine was showing no fear at all, and had still to complete her statement. Two things more would make the heart crack, she had said. And Ren was about to learn what they were. “The spirit of the body whence the heart came … and the blood of a wearling—a drake,” she said.
Grogan’s spirit. Gariffred’s blood.
Bring them together and Graven would live.
Phase! Grystina urged Ren again.
And phase he did. But it was a short skip. A minor blink. He had not come here to flee from danger. Instead, he i:maged himself in front of Pine with his hand clasped firmly to the heart. He was thinking of his promise to Grogan and saw it as a means of appeasing the spirit, which was floating now, above the clearing, like a bag of malevolent air.
The move worked—but for one thing. Pine was quicker than Ren had expected. He found himself in front of her all right, but with his hand on her hand, which covered the heart.
Their gazes locked. Ren saw the goyle swirling pink in her eyes, but there was still an inkling of the girl he remembered, the one-toothed waif who would waft around the settlement, plucking flowers and knowing everyone’s business. Would she go back to that life if she could? How much of the orphan child still existed? Only by defeating the goyle would he know.
His hand trembled on hers.
“Kneel,” she said. The goyle speaking through her.
Ren did not reply. But that opening of her mouth had given him an idea.
He raised his free hand. With the smallest finger he scraped his own teeth, as if to indicate she had something stuck between hers.
Her eyes narrowed—in confusion or disgust, it didn’t matter. Ren’s act had created enough of a pause for the auma of the girl to momentarily surface. He pinched her wrist, yanked away her hand, and snatched up the heart.
The goyle immediately regained control. It forced a burst of spittle out of Pine. The venom hit Ren in the uncovered hollow at the front of his neck and began to eat away at his tender flesh. But spitting was the worst thing the goyle could have done. It had now exposed itself to Grogan. The spirit of the dragon turned on Pine with the same degree of virulence it had shown to the guard in the quarry. Ren watched in horror as Pine was stretched to the tips of her toes by the sucking force of the vapor’s breath. As Grogan drew the goyle out, Pine’s teeth, those falsely acquired, shattered like falling shards of ice. Only the center tooth remained. She shook like a blade of grass and fell to the ground in a feeble heap. As she did, the mist came free of her body and wriggled into Grogan. For several beguiling moments it fought to control the spirit. A strange, unnatural tussle took place, a clash of mist and claws and color. But this would be the undoing of both. Ren saw the mist shrink to a spot and implode. Black streaks flared all through the vapor, puncturing its form a thousand times. The main body of the dragon was first to disappear; last of all, the snarling head. Such a chilling sight that was: a transparent skaler head fading into nothing on a swag of eerie, wretched moans. One final snap of jaws and it was gone.
Ren was on his knees at that point, trying to counteract the torture in his neck. He could find no water to quench the burning and no thick leaves to cover the wound. Nothing. Just the dragon heart, shrinking in his hand. It was now no bigger than a spiker cone, but just as alive with light.
You must destroy it, Grystina said.
Ren brought it closer to his face. It was an extraordinary thing, horrific and beautiful in equal measure. It compelled the eye to gaze upon it. He could feel its pulse through his hand and arm, resonating closely with the beat in his chest. The pain in his throat began to lessen. It seeks to heal me, he said.
No, Ren, it seeks to control you in the way the goyles used Pine and Ty. Be rid of it. It is a thing of evil. You heard what Pine said. It has taken what it needs from the crows. Graven’s auma must be inside it.
It’s fading. Like the goyle. It grows smaller.
No. It grows stronger. It senses the blood of Gariffred in you.
Gariffred. Yes. The heart was in the hand the drake had bitten.
Ren came to his senses and realized the danger. Grogan might be gone, but what if the heart could still be opened by a body infused with a wearling’s auma?
He tried to throw it aside.
Too late.
It did not so much open as dissolve into fire. Ren cried out—in shock, not pain. But the flare was finished as soon as it had started. A trail of ash dispersed into the breeze. Ren turned his hand this way and that. Front and back were unburned, normal. But the bite wound glowed like the blink of a star. Ren touched his neck. The skin was fast regrowing, but now had a hint of roughness to it. The heart had healed him—with the kind of repair a dragon might make to itself.
What’s happened? he asked Grystina.
She did not reply.
Grystina, where are you?
“Ohhhh …”
Across the clearing, Pine’s fingers twitched.
Ren hurried over. He dropped to his knees and cradled her head. She was alive, just, but as weak as water.
Behind him, he heard a beat of wings and looked back to see Shade landing softly in the clearing. Until then, he had given no thought to the whinney and feared for an instant it might attack. If he remembered correctly, part of the auma of the goyle was inside it. But that recognition only seemed to strengthen his daring. He stood up calmly, Pine draped across his arms.
As fast as the light that moved between them, Ren commingled with the whinney’s mind. He recognized the innocent auma of Wind, still pining loyally for his father, and he saw the goyle that had given the whinney wings and a twisting horn capable of magicks. To his amazement, the goyle tried to shrink from the contact. But Ren was too strong and held it fixed. Out of his mouth came a voice that could have made the mountains shudder. “You are mine now. You will obey me. Come.”
The horse snorted. It lifted one foot as if it would rake the ground before charging. And then it bowed its head and did its best to kneel.
“Come,” Ren repeated.
The horse padded over.
Ren put Pine across its neck and climbed on behind her. “Fold in your wings. Draw back the horn. You are Wind again, until I speak otherwise.”
The horse did as Ren commanded. Where should I take you … Master?
“Nowhere,” Ren said. He raised his confident gaze to the sky. Two dragons crossed over in the space above the clearing. “The Wearle is coming to me.”
De:allus Garodor had done exactly what he’d said. After sending Gabrial to turn Gus and the other dragons back to Skytouch, he had scouted the forest looking for clues to Pine’s whereabouts. Though he yearned to avenge his son and was ready to launch a solo attack if necessary, he’d been wise enough to keep his distance from the crows. As it happened, the birds had settled and the forest had shown him nothing, though he had mapped the entire clearing. It was empty on both his flypasts, causing him to make the (incorrect) assumption that Pine had moved deeper into the forest. In frustration, he had then flown back to the mountains. At Prime Grynt’s eyrie he had arrived just in time to see Gus having his ears chewed for his incompetence and to hear Grynt blaring, “Since when did you take orders from a BLUE?”
“Where is Gabrial?” That had been Garodor’s immediate concern. The blue was nowhere to be seen.
Gus meekly replied, “I … I don’t know, De:allus. He was just behind us when we reached the mountains. He must have dropped away. To his cave? I don’t know.”
Grynt put his snout close to Gus’s head. Despite
the roamer’s bulky size, Gus shied away like a frightened wearling. “Get him,” Grynt hissed. “Bring him to me now. Do you think you can find his cave without bumbling?”
“Y … yes,” Gus said. He left quicker than the dust motes could dance.
In his absence, Garodor gave his report.
“Gallen, dead?” The Prime was visibly shaken.
Garodor opened his wings to express his condolences. “Gabrial tried to … drive the crows off, but the commander was clearly failing by then.”
“FAILING?”
“Forgive me. A poor choice of word, perhaps, but …”
“The Veng do not fail.” Grynt thumped the wall hard. The thinly plated rock sang a note of distress. He swung again at a hanging spike of ice, shattering it all over the cave. “Call the Wearle. These birds are going to feel my fire. And I will have the head of this girl who commands them.”
“That may not be easy. The trees offer them natural cover.”
“Then what do you suggest? That I sit here and brood while my colony of dragons is slowly picked off?”
“No. We should surround the forest and watch for developments. In the meantime, let me run through my i:mages and think about the best tactical approach.”
Grynt blew a draft of hot, reddened smoke. “I’m done with thinking. I want to burn something. I— Yes, what do you want?”
Gus had returned, slightly out of breath. “Prime, the blue, Gabrial, is not at his cave.”
“He’ll be with Grymric,” Garodor said. “I sent Ren to the healer along with the surviving prisoner. Gabrial will be—”
“No,” Gus cut him off. “I thought of that. I went to Grymric’s cave as well.” He paused for a moment, perhaps hoping the Prime would look upon him kindly for using his initiative. But the look in Grynt’s eyes suggested he’d be kicked off the cliff in a wingbeat if he didn’t continue his report. “Grymric says that Gabrial flew away with the boy on his back.”
“They must have gone back to the forest,” said Garodor. “I did not counsel this.” He turned again to Gus. “Fly to the peak. Call the Wearle together. Now.”
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