The Summer Dragon

by Todd Lockwood

  A shadow enveloped us. The beast with blades for arms dropped down from above. I screamed—there would be no retreating from their horrible reach. But with all her strength, Keirr pushed toward the monster, inside their range. Folded her wings tight as the blades whipped past behind us on either side. Then she kicked hard against its throat, bouncing away before the blades could be raised again or the jaws could snap. With another push of her tired wings she gained height on the falling beast.

  With a snap of dried leather and a rush of air, the monster closed the gap.

  Jaws opened behind us, throat gaping like the flue of a hellish furnace. The rider pulled its crossbow taut.

  Keirr turned sharply again, over the top of the thing’s head where its bite would be least effective. The jaws snapped, brushing against her side. She yelped in pain, and I felt the snag in her flesh, a touch of cold in my side. But the tooth failed to find purchase, and we plummeted past the beast even as the rider fired his crossbow. I heard the bolt puncture a wing membrane.

  Keirr tucked her right wing in tight, shielding a painful wound in her body, using her left to keep us in a tight spiral as we fell. It only slowed us a little. It was lethal speed, and the mountain rose quickly. I pulled as close as I could to help her find a center of balance. At the last instant she opened both wings and flattened out toward a broken ridge.

  It rushed at us too quickly. Keirr dropped her hips and hit hard, all four legs compressing like springs. I didn’t adjust in time. As she bounded off again my legs were relaxed against the laces. The blood rushed out of my head and I blacked out a second time. I awoke dizzy, sound and sight muffled in fog, the taste of bile strong in my throat.

  Keirr screeched in fear. Darkness. No, shadow. The beast was upon us again, and Keirr spiraled desperately against my dead weight. I pulled close. A vision of Keirr and me crashing into the side of the mountain. My eyes opened wide to see that, no, we glided on a flat, downward incline at top speed, away from the mountain, the beast trying to match Keirr’s last sharp turn. But the image persisted, now ripping me from my harness and dashing me on the rocks, the same way that my mother died.

  I understood. Edimmu. I know you for what you are.

  Keirr splayed open on a tripod, like the youngling I’d seen in the cave so many months ago. I felt her pain in my sides and gasped for breath. The physical sensations were new—the thing was stronger.

  Where are you hiding?

  Tumbling down a cliff face, blood splashing with every impact. I felt my bones break, and I cried out.

  I’m whole, on my bondmate’s back. Keirr’s movements and reactions made me sure that she wasn’t subject to the evil. Or was she fighting it, just like me?

  A shadowed canyon rose up opposite us as we fell. I saw a dragon-like silhouette perched on a ledge, ragged wings flattened together above its back.

  I see you, Edimmu.

  The shadow backed into deeper shadow. In the same instant the Horror with the bladed arms fell upon us again. Image of blades scissoring across Keirr and me. I felt the frozen pain of sharp steel.

  But Keirr has turned again.

  Sensation of crushing cold as teeth closed around my body. I screamed in agony.

  But we are clear of it, in sunlight.

  The Horror thrust wingfuls of air behind, closing fast, but its attentions turned suddenly as a silhouette descended from my left. I twisted against my harness to see more clearly.

  Shuja!

  Father loosed arrows into the Horror’s maw. Shuja dropped down on the back of the interwoven nightmare and tore the rider off with a terrier-like whip of his head. Pieces of burnt Horror spun off to either side. The dragon Horror snapped at him, but Shuja grabbed its wing in his foreclaws, kicked with his rear legs and wings, and shattered the monster’s alar shoulder. He pushed off with a roar, and the beast tumbled away behind us, struggling as it fell, with one wing flapping and the other twisted like a broken kite. It cracked across a ridge of rock, then slumped unmoving into a narrow defile.

  I gasped in relief as more Dragonry teams streaked past above us to swarm the one remaining Horror. Soon it plunged with broken wings down a rough escarpment and into a deep canyon. My head hurt. The horizon insisted on tilting, but I patted Keirr on the bond mark, panting. We caught a draft up to inspect the ledge where the shadow thing had perched when it assaulted me. The ledge was empty, snaking back into a dark cleft. I listened for the Edimmu, tried to open my consciousness enough to hear.

  Nothing. Cold trickled on my upper lip. Jhem called my name, and I spotted her rising below me on Audax. Tauman was behind her on Rannu. Where were Darian and Aru? I didn’t see any of the Juza, either.

  Bellua and several dragon teams wafted down beside a dark shape, stark against the snow of a mountain crevasse. We circled closer. Not a Horror. One of our own. My eyes chased the sky until I found Cairek and his Taben and knew they were safe.

  I closed my eyes in anguish. One of us, our own, broken on the rocks. My stomach heaved. Oh, Gods. I pulled tight to Keirr’s neck. “Home, baby. Go home.”

  Keirr plummeted once, too exhausted to hold the frame of her wings against a sudden swirl of air. I lost awareness when she caught herself at the bottom of the fall. Awoke and pulled tight again. Strange disassociation between there and not there. The sky was up, yes, that was correct. Father had warned us that the whiplash of gravity in our heads could cause injury. I’d blacked out twice today. Three times.

  The aeries careened into view. “Home.” Not my voice—Keirr’s.

  Rush of wind as she caught our momentum in her wings. Rough landing, Keirr exhausted. She collapsed in the paddock, me draped on her neck. Footsteps. I released my harness straps and tumbled out of the saddle. Keirr tried to catch my fall, but I hit the ground hard. Looked up. Was I lying down or leaning against a wall? A ballista man grabbed my elbow to help me up, two other Dragonry soldiers behind him.

  “Ma’am? Are you hurt?”

  I shook his hand off my arm and stood beside my Keirr, images from our ordeal repeating in my head, stacked one atop another, dizzying. Vertigo, fear, the illusions of pain thrust at me by the Edimmu. I kept expecting the monster to violate my head again. Avar. Getig. Asha. What is happening to me? I could feel shakes coming on. Tears pooled in my eyes, but I refused to cry in front of these men.

  I urged Keirr to her feet. When she stretched her wings, the soldiers backed off and parted before us as we turned toward the bridge. Their commander, Staelan, shouted them back to their posts. “Keep your eyes on the skies!” Only then did I notice that the ballistae on the rooftops were all drawn and loaded with missiles the size of tentpoles, aimed to the north.

  We started across the bridge to the Manor Yard. I wanted only to put Keirr in her bed and see to her wound.

  Movement. Fren lowered his bow as he came toward us, his step quickening.

  The sight of him made me pause, and Keirr stopped beside me.

  For weeks I’d waited for some sort of insight from him. Or from Mabir, or Getig. Some answer to the questions that burned in my head, the prayers I sent against my fears. All I got were riddles. Or silence. Or monsters. Yet somehow, amidst all this chaos—or perhaps because of it—Keirr and I connected in a way more powerful than I could possibly have imagined. I put my arm around her neck and trembled at the memory, so emblazoned in my mind that I could see the mountain in the sinking afternoon light, smell the thin, crisp air, feel the shudder of her wings as the icy wind burned my ears. I still heard the echoes of her call. I would never stop hearing them.

  Today, a dragon-rider team lay broken on the mountain. Even if the rider survived, the team was sundered. Would Bellua blame me? What would that rooster Addai think? Cairek? A year ago, without Edimmu or Horrors or Avar touching down in our forest, my world had been a simple place. Today the heights of its spirals and the depths of its darkest chasms were immeasurab
ly far apart.

  Our mountain, a hollow thing full of nightmares—there was a riddle for you. Harodhi and crispies—and the Edimmu tunneling into my head like a snake in a wall.

  “Miss Maia, are you hurt?”

  He was out of focus. “Fren, you have to answer me. What are the Avar?” I heard the tremor in my own voice.

  He gaped like a fish and blinked. “Miss Maia. You’re injured.”

  “What is Asha?”

  He ignored me, staring into my eyes—which only made me angry. “What is Asha? What are the Avar?”

  “Miss Maia, we need to sit you down—”

  “Please don’t say ‘Miss Maia’ again.” I saw concern in his eyes, but I didn’t care. Fear and fury, and signs and monsters, and religious parrying all jumbled in my head, cut with images of eyes and blood and fire and falling.

  I grabbed his shirt for support. “There are Horrors in our mountain and some damned shadow thing in my head, and I need to know why. What is Asha?”

  He closed his eyes for a moment, then answered my question in the same infuriating manner as he’d answered every other: with a riddle. “Asha is neither ‘Who’ nor ‘What.’”

  I heard the thunder of wings behind me. I didn’t have much time. I twisted his vest in anger. “I’ve been patient while you and Mabir and Bellua play ‘keep-away’ with the truth. I’ve prayed for understanding, but what is prayer? Breath on the wind.”

  He made sure I’d met his gaze before he answered. “Prayer is work. Prayer is action—”

  “Damn it, Fren! No more riddles. What is happening to me?”

  He looked above and behind me, where sound grew full of shouts and whistles and leather snapping. He took my shoulders to fix me with his eyes. “Anything I can name is merely a facet of Asha. But Asha is all facets, and now already I’ve said too much, because I’ve given you an image in your head of something that cannot be seen.”

  I groaned in frustration. “I want to hit you, Fren . . .”

  “Prayer is also silence. Often, the things you seek come to you in a moment of silence.”

  I swung at him, and he grabbed my wrists, saying, “Shhh, now,” the same way I might have soothed a troubled qit. Sharp smell of cut cedar.

  I twisted free of his hands and shoved away from him. “The things I sought came to me through trial, and in moments of terror.”

  He hesitated before he reached for me, but when Keirr hissed he withdrew his hand. I grabbed her ear frill and turned her around. We faced the returning flights of dragons.

  Even as I turned away from Fren, Darian arrived with Mabir clinging to one elbow.

  “Father told me to get Mabir, but Aru couldn’t carry us both,” said Darian. “I’ve just gotten him off the hoist.” He eyed Fren curiously as he asked me, “Are there any wounded?”

  “Yes. Oh, gods, Mabir . . .”

  “Are you hurt?” Darian asked me.

  Stop asking me that. I shook my head no. Winced, nodded carefully. “I blacked out. Twice.” No, three times. But I didn’t say it.

  “Sit her down,” said Mabir.

  “Keirr is injured. I need to—” My vision swam, like looking out through water. Darian eased me to the ground, and Mabir knelt in front of me. He peered deeply into one of my eyes, then the other, as dragons and riders surrounded us. “You’ve injured your head, probably slammed it against Keirr’s neck when you were unconscious.” He wiped my upper lip with his sleeve. It came away with a red stain. “You need to rest, immediately. Let Darian look after Keirr.”

  “I met the Edimmu again. Oh, Mabir.” Now the tears flowed freely.

  His face sagged even as his eyes grew wide. “Sweet mercy,” he whispered.

  Cairek’s voice called Mabir urgently from the maelstrom, and the old dhalla stood. “Sweet girl, I’ll be back. Darian, don’t let her fall asleep.” Then he was gone.

  Somewhere in the confusion I heard Bellua shout, “Give him room! Back away!”

  Darian kneeled beside me, leaned in close and whispered, “What happened, Maia? What’d I miss?” He seemed almost desperate to know.

  Before I could begin to form an answer, Father rushed up to join us with Rov close behind.

  When Rov spotted me, he charged forward. “There is a dragon dead on the mountain, and his rider may not survive the night.”

  Father turned and stepped between us. Rov tried to push past. “We lost a man and a dragon today, a good team, while playing nursemaid to these pampered—”

  “That was my team, Captain.” Cairek joined us, pulling off his gloves. “An’ I’m here to tell you, she saved at least one life today. She’s not to blame.”

  Rov pushed Father away but stood fast, pointing first at Darian and then at me. “Don’t think I’m impressed by your celebrity. I’m not. I’m growing weary of it. While you play at games of chase, my teams and Cairek’s teams go hungry. Your dragons are afforded the luxury of food that no other here enjoys.”

  “Is that true?” I asked, horrified. “Then feed Keirr and me what everyone else gets. I didn’t ask for special treatment.”

  “I’ll feed my aeries as I see fit, Rov,” said Father. “You don’t know what I’ve done without.”

  “She risked her life an’ that of her dragonkin to draw them off,” said Cairek. “She killed one of them on her own, just with her knowledge of the terrain. Please, sir. Stand down.”

  Rov still glared at me, but his lips were no longer twisted with anger.

  Darian’s expression was guarded and dark.

  Another rush of wings and scuffle of feet accompanied the arrival of Addai and his Juza, at last. Keepers of the Flame. Voices and shouting traced his path through the gathered crowd. When he pushed through, he squared his shoulders toward me. “Bellua was right,” he said. “Something connects you and every intrusion of darkness into this world of light.”

  Cairek stepped in front of him, his freckled nose wrinkled. “She saved our lives today.”

  “But I wonder on the coincidence of her presence each time—”

  “Don’t bother. The coincidence was entirely that of a clear day, when the Horrors could most easily study the terrain they covet. Maia spotted them before we did. End of coincidence.” Cairek leaned toward Addai. “Or perhaps you meant the other coincidence, in which you weren’t there.”

  Addai’s chin rose another fraction of an inch and his nostrils flared.

  “She’s a distraction,” said Rov.

  “If she hadn’t warned us, we’d all be dead,” said Cairek.

  “Aye,” said one of his men, behind him, and the crowd began to murmur again.

  “There’s a point you’re all missing,” I said, as loud as I could without shouting. I stood up, one hand braced on Keirr’s neck. Grimaced against the pain in my head. When the crowd failed to go silent, Father whistled loudly then turned to me with a questioning cock of the head.

  I spoke again, as loud as I could without invoking mind-numbing pain. “What you haven’t considered is this: We already watch both entrances to the caves. Both entrances that we know of. So unless these Horrors flew all the way from Cuuloda, there must be another way out of the caverns.”

  Rov’s mouth snapped shut, and Addai’s tiny eyes narrowed, limned with tattoos of flames.

  I squeezed the hair at the back of my head, hoping to numb the pain beneath my scalp. “And how many more like it? How do we seal them all?”

  Cairek broke the silence first. “We need to do reconnaissance.”

  “We should seek every window into the mountain, at least. Agreed,” said Rov. “Hopefully they are few.”

  “We ought to go in, root them out before their numbers build.” Cairek met Rov’s eyes, but the Captain shook his head no.

  “We don’t have the manpower for that. We don’t know what their numbers are; we’d have to le
ave defenders here at all times. It would only divide our forces.”

  Cairek nodded with a grim set to his mouth.

  Then Rov turned to Darian and me. “You will stay out of the mountains from here forward. I won’t spare men any longer so you can chase each other’s tails. Stay east of the cliffs, in the city and farms. No farther.”

  I thought of the Edimmu again, lurking on a shelf in the shadows, piercing me with daggers made of my own fears. I’d felt it break my bones and slice me in two. “I might know where that opening is.” My head throbbed, and I felt another trickle on my upper lip. “I saw the Edimmu again.”

  Rov stared at me with confusion working behind his stern mask, until Cairek touched his shoulder to get his attention—Bellua and Mabir had entered the circle. The gathered soldiers fell silent.

  Bellua shook his head. “The wounds were too grievous, and moving him made them worse. He is gone.”

  I felt the paving strike my knees, and knew I had fallen. Darian’s arms under mine eased me to a sitting position. Keirr’s tongue on my face. Mabir starting toward me, his face wrung with concern.

  Rov looked up at the machinery on the aerie roofs, at the log palisades caging the perimeter of the paddock. “We have lost our first.” He took a deep breath and blew it out slowly. “Six of us”—he looked at me—“counting Maia, weren’t enough to take down three Horrors.” A cold acknowledgment, and as close as Rov would ever get to apologizing. “How many are we now? Two dozen Dragonry, myself included. Nine Juza. I can’t count you, Broodmaster, because Shuja is one of the broodsires, he can’t be risked in battle. Thirty-three of us in the air. Even with Staelan’s Barrage and all his foot soldiers, I fear we may have brought too little force, and too late.”

  FORTY

  I WOKE IN MY BED in the manor, crawling out of a long dream. Charnel things made of corpses and steel haunted me, a shadow spun lies to test me. Worse than lies—twisted truths.