“Shasta?” Romeo’s voice was as quiet as a dragon could manage. “Were you injured?”
She lifted her head off her knees and rubbed her dry eyes. “No. I wasn’t hurt.” She gazed at the place Matilda had been. “Did any of you feel magic?”
“No,” Randolph answered. “But we can’t sense small magics. We are dragons, creatures of magic. It takes rather a lot of power to get our attention.”
“Did you feel anything?” Byron cocked his head to the side.
Shasta shook her head. “My parents say I’m half elf and half witch, but I’m not very good with magic.”
“You saved yourself and Byron from the rock.” Romeo paused, and his voice took on a dramatic flair. “You are magnificence.”
She forced the corners of her lips to turn up. “Maybe, but today I wasn’t good enough. Victor would’ve done better. He’s half elf, half witch too, but his power is more magical than elven. I’m sorry. I’m not very good at detecting magic or crafting powerful spells on my own.” She left off the part about being sure she got the worst traits from both species.
“You’re still the best half elf, half witch I’ve ever met.” Romeo’s mouth gaped in a dragon smile.
“Thank you.” This time her smile was genuine, though it faded quickly. Her eyes drifted across the area that she was sure Matilda had occupied. Dragons were big. They were heavy, and no matter how careful they were, they left tracks and dug deep furrows into the earth with their talons. In short, they were a tracker’s dream. So where were Matilda’s tracks?
Shasta got up on her knees, her entire right side protesting the movement, and shaded her eyes. She hadn’t been far from Matilda when the dragon had disappeared, maybe fifteen feet. The ground was completely undisturbed. She wiggled out of her backpack and clambered to her feet, her right ankle and knee aching and her hip dully throbbing. If she’d been a human or a normal witch, she’d have broken something in that fall. Luckily, she’d gotten the hearty elven constitution.
She took one step, pain flaring from everywhere that felt like it had been wronged in the past ten minutes, but she was able to stay upright. Shasta limped forward, her eyes scanning the ground. She crossed twelve feet of scraggly ground without seeing anything. She slowed, carefully going a little to the right and then a little to the left, ensuring she covered the entire area Matilda could have occupied. The bare spots of earth were separated by large swaths of scrubby grass and clumps of brush that aspired to be bushes.
What wasn’t there was remarkably telling. There were no large prints, the ones a dragon would leave behind simply by standing on soft ground. And Matilda should’ve left prints because Shasta could see her own footprints left behind in the dirt. Even if Matilda managed to never put so much as a single tip of a talon on the bare ground, there should’ve been chunks of grass completely flattened. All the grass here looked as if it had never been touched. What was especially damning was the lack of grooves. Dragon talons curved downward and dug into earth wherever they stood.
She turned in a slow circle. From where she stood, she could see flattened grass and torn chunks of earth spanning from where the dragons currently were back to where they landed. They hadn’t been trying to damage anything; they were simply large. It was hard to be dainty when you were the size of a heavy-duty pickup truck.
They hadn’t felt any magic in this area, and any spells that had been cast could’ve been done from a distance, making it that much more difficult to detect them. It was entirely possible they’d seen nothing more than an illusion of Matilda. It fact, it was increasingly likely that Matilda had never been in this spot at all.
Shasta limped back over to the dragons and lowered herself to the ground next her pack with a sigh. She needed to do something about her ankle, but it would have to wait. She looked up into three sets of beseeching eyes. “I think what we saw was an illusion. I don’t know where Matilda is, but there’s nothing of her here.”
There was a moment of stunned silence. Shasta braced herself for the questions that were coming next, for which there were no good answers.
Romeo shook off his surprise first. “Then where is she?”
“How do we find her?” Randolph surveyed the sky above them.
Byron sighed gustily. “What do we do now?”
Shasta focused on Romeo first. “Not here. That’s all I know for sure.” Inside her, an emptiness opened up. She had failed all these dragons today. If she failed them again, the cost could be far greater than a missing dragon. She swallowed hard, trying to force her fears away, and addressed Randolph and Byron. “We don’t. I’m going to eat, then try to contact Cord, and then we’re going back to town. I’ll find her, but I have to make sure all three of you are safe first.”
“Do you promise?” Randolph asked softly.
She met his gaze. “I promise.” The words seemed to hang in the air as if the entire world had been holding its breath. Then in an instant, everything returned to normal. A trickle of energy seeped into her from the earth. Whatever had happened, it approved.
If the dragons noticed anything, they didn’t say. Shasta shook off the odd moment, pulled her backpack over, and dug out her canteen and a granola bar. While she chewed, the dragons lay down. Randolph was already tired from this morning, and she knew Byron and Romeo had been pushed to their limits by the excitement. As much as she wanted to offer them refreshments, she didn’t have anything that would satisfy a dragon.
Already the events were taking on a rather surreal quality. Sitting there with the sun shining and the breeze drifting through the grass, it was hard to remember that not long ago they’d been fearing for their lives. If Matilda were still there, it would’ve been far too easy to dismiss it as another bad turn of events. But after two days of the worst luck she’d had in the months of teaching dragons, she no longer believed it was just bad fortune. Someone was behind this.
Shasta swallowed the last bite of the granola bar, drank deeply from the canteen, and returned everything to the pack. She was still short on magic, but elven abilities were a little more forgiving. They needed help, and she had only one way to summon it. She closed her eyes and pressed her hand to the ground. Carry this message to Cord: Help us. West of town. She felt the earth press against her hand, and then the message shot off into the distance. It would’ve been nice to send something more complicated, but the earth wasn’t good at expressing complex things. Simple was the way to go.
“All right, we’re going back to town.”
“I don’t think I can fly anymore,” Byron cut in.
“And I was gonna have us walk.”
Byron heaved a sigh. The other two looked rather— Well, they were dragons and it was hard to tell.
Shasta hurried to explain her reasoning before she was bombarded with questions. “We haven’t had any problems on the ground, but yesterday and today we had problems in the air. I’m not willing to have you guys go up there again, especially considering how many near misses we’ve had. Walking long distances is hard on you, but it’s our best choice. Once you’re safe, I’ll come back for Matilda. For now we’ll head back to the last spot we landed. There was water there for you. Can we agree on the plan?”
Byron simply nodded.
“Anything for you, Your Radiance.” The delivery was a little flat, but it was all Romeo.
Randolph shot Romeo a withering look before focusing on Shasta. “I don’t like it, but I don’t have a better alternative.”
Shasta got to her feet and pulled on her pack, buckling it snugly. She turned toward town. “Let’s go.” She set off at the fastest walk she could manage, which was a rather exaggerated hobble, and was not nearly as fast as she would’ve liked to be moving.
“It might be faster if you rode one of us.” Randolph pointed to the saddle still on Byron’s back with one talon.
Shasta halted as her ankle throbbed yet again. Her eyes darted between the three dragons. “You’re not pack beasts, and I don’t like to assume.”
“In this case, I am volunteering.” Byron bowed his head. “I couldn’t fly with you right now, but you’ll be no great burden walking.”
“Thank you. Thank you.” She hobbled over to his side and slowly climbed into the saddle, ignoring the pain her hip gave her when she swung her leg over his back. She settled in, straps lightly tied around her legs. Her pain ratcheted down into a dull ache. “This is better.”
“As it should be.” Byron tossed his head into the air and then headed out at a rolling walk that she could sit all day long.
Romeo moved over until his head was even with her. “Charming one, are we going to try to contact anyone else?”
“I already had the earth send a message to Cord to come help us. I could send a more general call for help, but I don’t want to attract the attention of whoever attacked us, and I’m so tired that even the earth was slow to respond.” If she’d had more energy, she would’ve blushed admitting that last bit. Elves were things of the earth, trees, and sky, and it irritated her to admit that it was possible for an elf to be too tired to utilize those connections.
“That’s all well and good, but we’re hardly camouflaged.” Randolph tipped his head toward the wide-open plain they were traversing.
Shasta shrugged. “It’s the best I can do. You have suggestions, make them.”
The scales around his nostrils darkened, and he picked up the pace a bit.
Romeo exchanged a look with Byron, but neither of them commented. Shasta just sat there. There was nothing she could do to take back the sting of that last comment. Keeping these dragons safe was more important than going off on her own to try to find one dragon. It hurt to admit that even to herself, but it was the truth. According to all her training and every story her parents ever told, she was making the right decision. But just because something was right didn’t make it easy. Nothing would ever make this easy.
Thankfully, no one felt like talking. Instead, the dragons trudged east, occasionally lifting their heads and sniffing the air. She’d had the luxury of a snack, but the dragons had worked hard and needed water even if they didn’t need food. Plus there was the added problem of distance. When she’d told them to head in this direction, she’d carefully avoided mentioning a point that had to be on all their minds. Dragons were fast in the air. What had been a bit more than two hours of flight would be days of walking, even at a dragon’s pace.
This was the Dragon Lands, and two hours’ flight from town wasn’t much by dragon standards. There weren’t any dragons visible to her eyes, but then she didn’t have a dragon’s eyesight.
“Can any of you see other dragons?”
The three of them stopped moving and swung their heads to look behind them as well as in front. Randolph turned her. “No one right now, but someone should come along eventually.”
“How do we attract their attention?” Shasta shaded her eyes and looked up at the sky. At typical cruising altitude, even a dragon on the ground wouldn’t look large. “They won’t be searching for us.”
Romeo kept his mouth in a grin. “They will notice us.”
Shasta raised an eyebrow.
“We are young, but we’re still dragons,” Byron added.
“All right, I trust you.” She meant it, but even if she hadn’t, there wasn’t much choice in the matter.
“We are dragons,” Randolph repeated and resumed walking.
Byron and Romeo took up the steady trudge too.
Shasta tried to relax into Byron’s swaying walk but couldn’t. Every moment spent slowly plodding toward town magnified her worry. Someone had felt brave enough and powerful enough to attack the group of dragons twice and had somehow managed to capture one of them. There were two particularly vexing questions: Where was Matilda? How was she going to find her? The statistics for humanoid abductions weren’t so good, but it was pretty rare for a dragon of Matilda’s age to be taken. Hopefully, whoever had taken her wasn’t prepared for a mostly grown dragon, but that wasn’t something Shasta was willing to bet on.
“Ms. Shasta?” Randolph came up beside her. “Do you know who attacked us or why?”
Byron turned his head a bit, no doubt watching them from his peripheral vision. Romeo settled in on her other side.
Shasta suppressed a sigh. “No. This wasn’t part of training or something I ever would’ve done to any of you.” She quickly debated the merit of what she was going to say next but finally decided it was better for them to know the truth. “I think someone abducted Matilda.”
Randolph nodded. “I thought you’d say as much.”
“But who would dare do that in the Dragon Lands?” Byron asked.
Shasta shrugged. “There are people crazy enough to try almost anything.”
That bitter pill of truth took whatever bravery the dragons had mustered and squished it. Tails drooped, heads lowered, and they silently returned to trudging toward the stream and eventually town. Shasta wished she could take back those words and undo today. Maybe then they could have a few more years before they learned about the dark side of people.
With a grimace, she rubbed at her hip and thigh. She needed to be at full strength if she was going to track down Matilda. Being stiff and bruised wasn’t going to cut it. Her fingers hit a particularly tender spot, and she swore but kept at it. When her hip was starting to feel normal, she untied her leg from the saddle and wiggled around until she could rest it across the pommel. Her knee protested but relaxed as she worked on it and the rest of her leg.
After that, time crawled forward, but it was probably only two hours later when they found a tiny tributary of the stream. Shasta dismounted and removed the saddle from Byron. While the dragons slurped up water, Shasta stretched, trying to finish loosening up and easing the pain of all her sore and bruised parts. It took about ten minutes, but finally she was as pain-free as she was going to get, which meant she hurt everywhere and would stiffen up if she didn’t keep moving, but she could move.
While the dragons rested, she had a snack and tried to stay in contact with the earth. It wasn’t doing anything to help her right now, but it also wouldn’t hurt. She’d really been hoping the earth would lend her energy, but it hadn’t, so she had to regenerate it on her own. For now she was without magic and most of her more elven abilities, and it would take about a day for her to be back at full strength. Before she had too much time to brood, the dragons were on their feet, ready to go.
Romeo volunteered to give her a ride. Shasta thanked him, saddled him up and climbed aboard, and they were off. Since the stream seemed to be going toward town, they followed it, which would allow the dragons to get a drink whenever they needed to. Freshwater was one relief, but it didn’t address their food needs. Dragons ate a lot. They could hunt but only if they could fly safely. Shasta wasn’t desperate enough yet to send them up into the air, but they weren’t going to surprise any game here on the ground, and after today’s exertion, they would need food.
“Radiant educator of mine, what heavy thoughts are you thinking?” Romeo turned his head to look back at her with one eye.
“That apparent?”
“You sighed three times in less than a minute.” He lifted his eye ridge.
Shasta snorted. “Well, that was subtle of me. I was thinking about feeding the three of you. You’re bound to get hungry soon and aren’t going to be catching dinner unless you fly, and—”
“We can’t do that without risking another attack,” Romeo finished for her. “While I’d very much enjoy eating tonight, I’ll be fine for several days and, with a steady supply of water, longer than that.”
“I’d believe that if we were sitting in a cave and not expending any energy.” She shook her head. “But we’re moving, and that takes energy.”
“But we are dragons!” Byron called out. “If things are truly dire, we can go weeks without food. Some of the elders can go months. Though most of us enjoy eating too much to do that.”
“I-I thought that was a myth.” S
hasta took in Romeo’s headshake, Byron’s grin, and Randolph’s chuckling. “Weeks? Truly?”
“You may be around three cranky dragons, but we will make it back to town,” Randolph assured her.
“Well, that’s good news.” She simply needed to stretch her own supplies with foraging so that she could match them. “Anything else I should know?”
Byron opened his mouth to answer, but Randolph turned his nose up to the sky and flames billowed out of his throat, shooting thirty feet into the air. She felt Romeo’s chest expand under her legs as he turned his own nose to the sky and huffed out a plume. Moments later, Byron did the same.
Shasta pulled down her shields, opening herself to the energy currents, and covered her eyes, scanning the sky above. Nothing. She couldn’t see or feel where the attack was coming from.
Randolph and Byron breathed two long spouts of flame into the air. They looked up intently, but nothing in their posture indicated that they were alarmed. In fact, they were standing completely still, not even making any move to defend themselves.
Chapter Six
Randolph lifted his wings like he would if greeting a friend, his head tilted up to the sky. Shasta shaded her eyes again. There were two pinpricks high above and in the distance. Even her half-elven eyes couldn’t tell who they were. Romeo reared up, fanning his wings, and she had to grab for a strap to keep her balance. As he settled back to the ground, she rubbed at the straps going across her legs. They’d kept her on his back but had dug into her old bruises in the process. The two little pinpricks got larger until Shasta could tell one of them was a large buff-toned dragon and the other was a smaller gold one. As they got closer, Shasta recognized Glimmer and Branstan.
She took a deep breath, fully filling her lungs for the first time in far too long. It wasn’t an attack; it was a rescue. Hopefully, Cord was riding one of those dragons and they would get all the help they needed. The seconds ticked by. Finally the two dragons swooped down, landing far enough away that the wind of their wings didn’t so much as ruffle her hair. Romeo took off, bounding toward them.
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