I rose to my feet, feeling the rush of cold air under my warm belly and in two strokes, I was airborne, circling, rising high above the plateau and the spire and the golden dome. I saw Rue leaving the hut and swept down toward him, silent as the night. But it wasn’t night, it was dawn and he turned at my shadow as I snatched him from the path. He yelped and thrashed his stick arms and I flapped higher to get above the trees. It was awkward but slowly, he reached up, grabbing my legs and pulling himself up to my belly. My wingstrokes were sure and strong and soon, he was hanging on to my neck, trying to swing his leg around my shoulder and avoid the many spikes. He slipped, his weight swinging back down beneath me, his legs flailing like a dying bowbuck. He knocked the tops of the trees with his feet and I suddenly understood why Flight Dragons wore harnesses.
I rolled in the sky so that my belly was to the sun and Rue was on top. Slowly, very slowly, I rolled back, righting myself and slowly, very slowly, Rue climbed over me. Finally he was up, sliding his weight into the hump and hollow and wrapping his arms around my neck. It was a difficult balance but my shoulders were strong and heavily muscled from a life of pulling carts and I stayed just above the trees so he wouldn’t be afraid. Still, we were very high up and the mountain wind was strong.
Soon, we were over the peaks and ridges that were the Crescent Mountains. He was hugging my neck and while the wind was loud, his laugh was louder.
It was a very pleasant sound.
“Southwest,” he shouted over the rush of the wind. “We have to go to the Citadel and that’s southwest! Follow the spires! They’re the aviaries of the Flight Dragons!”
And he leaned his weight to one side and I felt myself instinctively bank. A little too deeply for once again, Rue hugged himself tightly to my neck. For a fleeting moment, I wondered if dragons could laugh and if so, what it might sound like.
But for now, I was committed. We were going to the Citadel. Cirrus had asked, Rue had a coin and I had a choice. I was a free dragon and needed nothing else. I set my face to the rising sun and flew.
Chapter 16
NET OF DRAGONS
I learned much about sticks in those next few days.
I learned that sticks don’t like the dark, so I abandoned my nocturnal routine to suit the boy I was carrying on my back. We flew during the day and slept for long stretches at night. I hunted at dusk and dawn and also learned that sticks don’t like their shaghorns raw. Rue tried to make a fire once before realizing that I made them much better. Breakfast and dinner went smoother after that.
I also learned that sticks are not sound sleepers. I would find wonderful ledges high up in the mountains but Rue was not as comfortable with the heights so he slept tucked under my wing like a fledgling. In fact, I think he would have been happiest if I had folded myself on top of him like a drakina. It never occurred to me then that he might have been cold. Dragons have thick hides. Sticks, apparently, do not.
We followed the spires southwest and the mountains grew higher, mightier. The evidence of dragons was greater too and I wondered why they had left the aeries until I woke up one morning covered in snow.
Now, before my time in the Crescent Mountains, I had never seen snow and it had taken much time to realize that it was not its own thing. It made a comfortable nest when I settled down into it but by morning, the heat of my body would have turned it to water and that, on a cold morning, was not pleasant. So I’d always blow a fiery breath across my ledge first, melting the snow and drying the water and avoiding that problem from the start. Rue was happy with this result as well, for I’d learned that wet sticks were not happy sticks. It was not the same with dragons.
So that morning, I shook the snow from my head and gazed around at the ledge and the nearby cliffs. They glistened with pink and purple under the dawning sun and I thought it rather pretty. Dragons are not given to sentimentality but beauty is objective as much as subjective, and we are good at such distinctions.
In those pink and purple skies, I saw a black arrow winging southward and my heart thudded in my chest. We were going to the Citadel, the place where both dragons and riders lived and trained together. Rue thought I could be a Flight Dragon. So did Cirrus. But did I?
Rue stirred and I lifted my wing as he pushed out from underneath. He was wearing the skin of a direcat that had tried to eat us one night. It had been a valiant attempt but still, I was a killer of dragons so the battle had ended before it had begun. For his part, Rue was happy for the new coat and for me, I had been happy to finally taste cat.
He yawned and stretched, running a hand along my scaly neck. It always felt good, his touch, and it brought me back to the days on the Udan Shores when he and I would spend night after night on the big waters. I watched him as he reached down to pick at the remains of a goswyrm I had caught before bedding down. It was frozen and he looked at me, baleful as a pathetic chick. My flames quickly set the flesh steaming once again. He sat down and leaned against my flank, plucking at the sizzling strips and popping them into his mouth. He said nothing, content to chew and gaze out at the pink and purple hues and think.
He was a thinker, he had said. Always thinking. Just like me.
I noticed his hands as he ate. In a few short days they had gone from bloody and raw to callused and strong, all from gripping my neck. His leggings too were tattered from gripping the iron of my hide. Dragon scales are like plates of metal, I’ve been told; our spines like daggers of steel. I assume sticks exaggerate almost as much as dragons but still, I was happy not to see blood.
The wind carried a scent and I looked to the south, finding yet another black arrow streaking through the sky. Rue lowered the wyrm as he watched, entranced. I knew what he was thinking. I was thinking the same.
“Well?” he said finally. “Shall we follow them, Stormfall? Is this what we want?”
I yawned, making a great effort to appear unimpressed. He knew me too well though and rose to his feet, tossing the last of the wyrm over the side of the mountain. He wiped his hands on the coat and grinned.
“Alright, you lazy nox,” he said. “Let’s show them what real flying is like.”
He laid a hand on one of my horns and swung his leg across my neck, settling into the hollow at my shoulder. It was perfect for sticks, this hump and hollow – few spines, smooth scales, shoulder bones mimicking the bend of a knee. As if dragons were meant to be ridden.
I pushed to my feet and stretched my wings wide, testing the air and the winds and my strength. It was a perfect morning for flying. Rue wrapped his arms around my neck as I leaned forward, enjoying the dizzying pull of the earth on my head, the wind cold against my eyes. I went with it now, springing from the cliff’s edge and falling straight down. Rue was silent, no scream, no shout, most likely holding his breath. I knew he hated this, the roaring fall and the sudden, sickening swoop upwards. For me, it was always the best part – that snap of wing leather, that lurch in the belly, the swift rise like the moons over the mountaintops. Flying was freedom. It was joy. It was life.
For a dragon, the best thing in all the world.
And so we flew, my wings beating against the air currents like oars in the water. Rue sat deep in the hollow, holding twin spikes near the base of my neck. His legs followed the angle of my shoulder, feet resting under the curve of my wings. I was young but large and our bodies fit perfectly. Again, as if dragons were made for riding.
We flew just above the Crescent Mountains and I was careful not to swoop or wheel. Without a harness, Rue’s seat was precarious – I had once banked too sharply and he had flung forward into one of my neck spines. His chin was still purple from the impact and he was lucky not to have lost an eye. We were also very high up in the mountains and it was winter – the air was so cold at this height that to fly any higher might cause him to freeze. The skin of the direcat kept his body warm but his face and hands were often blue by evening.
I often wondered about how they ruled as easily as they did. Anything could kill a stick
, it seemed, even weather. Perhaps they ruled because no one knew this.
So that day, we kept the Dragon Flight in sight as we flew, they (like we) keeping a low trajectory over the mountains. Soon however a second Flight appeared, at first merely a speck on the horizon and growing larger as our paths converged. The first Flight was growing larger as well. It was strange. We were following at a great distance and I had matched speed so we would neither gain on them, nor lose sight. It seemed they had noticed us and adjusted accordingly and the blood grew hot in my veins when I realized I had been seen.
As a night dragon, I was perfectly hidden by the stars. Here, in the morning light, I was a beacon and like one, they were drawn to me. I had abandoned my advantage by flying in the daylight and the thought filled me with sudden and inexplicable terror.
Now, fourteen dragons and fourteen riders filled the sky around us and it was all I could do to remain calm. I could feel Rue hands tighten on my neck, his knees grip my shoulders like a vice. This was no fair welcome to the Dragon Flights, ushering us into the camaraderie of the Citadel. No, the riders too focused, the dragons too tense. They were working as a team, drawing in a net that would quickly tighten around us, much like a mesh or a pen.
Or a band.
The coals sprang alive in my heart as terror gave way to fury. It was the only way I had survived the Pits.
And I would not be taken again.
Without warning, I tucked my wings and plummeted like a stone, slipping through their net of dragons. Rue yelped but held fast as the earth pulled me down. I let it – down, down, down to the valleys, willing those coals to add speed to my wings. They were at my tail, however – a great green and a brown and I spiralled in the descent, feeling Rue’s weight swing against my shoulders. As the mountains grew nearer, a red drake trumpeted from above but I veered away at the last moment, causing the three dragons to almost collide in mid-air.
A grey swept in front of me now and I could see the rider on his back gesturing at us. I dove again, dropping toward a white peak and arcing away at the last moment. A blue soared above me and released a blast of flame across our path. Fighting, I thought, always fighting and my throat grew tight as I reigned in my own fire. Not a Dragon Flight. I couldn’t burn a Dragon Flight but as the blood burned in my veins, I felt Stormfall growing thin and Warblood raging now with every beat of my wings
Up now, another sharp sweep and I began to climb, up up up like an arrow. The air was so cold but I narrowed my eyes, thinking of nothing now but escape. I would die before they took me. Warblood would kill. Higher and higher, throat biting with frost, the air so thin that my chest ached. The wind so sharp so that even my teeth ached inside my mouth.
And suddenly, Rue was gone.
It was like the coming of the winter rains in the Under Weathers, shocking and instantaneous and I snapped my wings to halt my climb. I arced in the air, whipping my tail and turning my face to the ground far below. I couldn’t see him beyond the circling Flights so I tucked my wings and dove.
It was like diving for Black Monitors, whose young lived deep in the waters. You could see their shapes from high up and a long dive was required to spear them. And so I dove, leaving my heart in the clouds as I sought for and found the dark shape plummeting toward the ground.
Faster, I urged my self, faster and I could see him now, gangly arms and legs and cat coat flapping as he tumbled through the sky. All other dragons were gone, all riders gone too. My world became the boy in the sky and my need to catch him. I was a fisher dragon, now fishing for Rue.
And with a snatch of my talons, I caught the coat with one foot. His body flailed and spun out of it but I caught an arm with the other. Awkwardly at first but I swept up and tossed him, catching him at the shoulders in a better hold. We soared around a cliff side, lower now and not as cold. I waited for him to crawl up my legs but he didn’t. In fact, he didn’t move and as I flew, still desperate to make my escape, my heart lurched in my chest. I spied a ridge and angled toward it, slowing as I approached and beating my wings to hover just above it. I dropped him into the snow and gracefully landed beside him, folding my wings across my back.
The Dragon Flights circled above us now. I ignored them. My world was laying facedown in the snow, arms splayed wide in a sunken pit of white. There was no blood so I reached down to nudge him. He didn’t move. I nudged him again, nipped at his cat coat delicately with my front teeth. Still nothing. I reached with a talon and turned him over, his arms sinking back into the snow as he rolled. Still, he did not move to get up.
Death had been intruding into my life since the beginning, since the fledgling in the waters or the unnoticed loss of one sister. Then after that, always, like an insect buzzing around my head in the night. Ruby had died horribly and so had Gavius. I had killed sea snakes and noxen and dragons and sticks. But Rue? Everything inside of me turned to ash at the thought.
The sky grew dark as the great green came down, beating its wings slowly as it lowered toward the ridge. I stepped one foot across my boy and bellowed, head dipped, wings wide. The grey next and then the blue until I was surrounded on this ridge by seven dragons with seven others circling above. I could see the glint of sunlight as the grey rider pulled his bow and all of them followed suit.
I bellowed again, furious and terrified and despairing when I felt a hand on my leg. My heart leapt as Rue pushed himself up and out of the snow. He looked ill, leaned against my chest to keep steady. I hissed at them all.
“That is the night dragon of the Crown,” shouted the grey rider. “He is sentenced to death for the attack on Primar Septus Aelianus.”
I hissed again but Rue shook his head, gripping my face with his arms. I let him. I was glad of his touch, if nothing else.
“Stand back and let us carry out our duty,” shouted the grey rider. “You will be taken to the Citadel for healing, then you will be free to go.”
“No,” said Rue. “We are both going to the Citadel.”
“The night dragon is a killer of citizens,” said the rider. “His head will be taken to the Citadel. Stand back.”
A bolt thudded at Rue’s feet, disappearing into the snow and leaving only a pit.
“No!” Rue leaned his back against me now, began to dig in his pocket. “We were invited!”
And he pulled his hand from his pocket, fingers clutching a tiny object. But they were stiff from the cold and the object dropped into the snow, disappearing like the arrow. He wailed and sank to his knees to look for it.
A second arrow, this time near my lashing tail, and a third into the snow between my feet.
My mouth and tongue and eyes grew hot as I summoned the fire, felt it billow up my throat. I would not die like a nox.
“NO!” shouted Rue and he pushed up from the snow to wrap his arms around my beak. “No, Stormfall! Hear me! No!”
I growled deep in my throat but he had locked me with his dark eyes. I could look nowhere else. My tail lashed from side to side however as the heat boiled my blood but stayed.
“See?” Rue shouted to the grey rider, turning his head while still gripping my face. “He’s not what you think. You don’t know his story! You don’t know him! Look!”
And he thrust his arm straight out, blue fingers clutching a tiny object. It flashed like sunlight against my shadow.
“The coin of the Citadel!” he said. “Given to us by Cassien Cirrus of the Eastern Quarter Dragoneers! To us!”
Seven dragons hovered around us. Seven dragons circled above. Fourteen dragons surrounded me, trapping me with their very bodies. My eyes were fixed now on the grey and his rider, smoke curling from my nostrils as I worked to keep the fire inside. Rue had a hold of my mouth. I couldn’t kill anyone without killing him and that was something I would never do.
“Cirrus is only one man,” said the rider. “He does not speak for the Primar.”
“But we were invited,” said Rue and slowly, he released me, turning to face the rider, keeping one hand on my ho
rn. “To be trained for the Dragon Flights. Yes, he is wild and I am poor, but we’ve come trusting your integrity and honour. If you kill him now, even on the orders of the Primar, you’ll betray that trust. Is that what wild dragons and poor boys can expect from the Citadel?”
My Rue, a boy of few words. He chose them like swords.
“You cannot deny us,” he said. “Not now and not yet.”
Fourteen dragons hovering, circling, wings beating a mad wind, lifting the snow and Rue’s hair and my smoke.
“We’ll let the Citadel decide,” said the grey rider. “Come with us and do not fight or our arrows will find their marks.”
He yanked the rein and the drake banked sharply, pulling back to join the rest of the Flight. They circled above us, waiting, casting shadows down on the ridge.
I noticed Rue’s hand trembling. His whole body was, in fact, but he released a breath, one he must have been holding for a long time. He turned to look at me.
“Don’t ever do that again,” he said.
It was like an arrow to the heart.
He laid a hand on my neck and swung his leg up into the hollow that used to be home.
Within two beats, we were airborne, the Dragon Flights positioned around us like a net. This time, I did not protest.
It was evening before we made the Citadel.
Chapter 17
THE CITADEL
We were made to wait on a large flat plateau that I later learned was called a landing stone. It was growing dark and Rue leaned into me, his body shivering with the cold. I let him, grateful for his company but my mind still wrestled with his words from earlier. I tried to chase them away with the sights, sounds and smells that were the Citadel.
It was not quite city, not quite aerie but a curious mixture of both. Stone towers were built into and out of the mountains, with pricks of lantern-light dotting their spires. Holes were carved into cliff faces – dragon nests, I assumed, and aviaries both wide and tall were staggered throughout the Crescent. Domes rose up from the peaks, their roofs gold and dusted with snow. Arched bridges and aqueducts spanned the valleys and I marvelled at the skill required to construct such things. (Again, perhaps one of the things that separated sticks from dragons. Dragons are not, by and large, builders.) All along the periphery, oil-filled troughs burned, clearly marking the boundary of the Citadel and I could see dragons and riders in silhouette, keeping guard both day and night.
Dragon of Ash & Stars: The Autobiography of a Night Dragon Page 15