Flight to Dragon Isle

by Lucinda Hare

  Contents

  Cover

  About the Book

  Title Page

  Dedication

  Chapter One: Dive, Dive, Dive …

  Chapter Two: Dragon Isle

  Chapter Three: May You Ride the Stars For Ever

  Chapter Four: The Razorback Brood

  Chapter Five: Becoming Better Acquainted with Dragons

  Chapter Six: Oh, Madam!

  Chapter Seven: Hobgoblin Burial Cairn

  Chapter Eight: Dragonsdome

  Chapter Nine: The Nursery Roosts

  Chapter Ten: Spring Forward

  Chapter Eleven: Confession

  Chapter Twelve: Duchess-in-Waiting

  Chapter Thirteen: The SDS Have Been Scrambled

  Chapter Fourteen: The Dragonsdome Ring

  Chapter Fifteen: The Battle of the Westering Isles

  Chapter Sixteen: Treason!

  Chapter Seventeen: Nightmare

  Chapter Eighteen: The Maelstrom is Rising

  Chapter Nineteen: The Thaw

  Chapter Twenty: The SDS Have Fallen

  Chapter Twenty-One: Holding the Line

  Chapter Twenty-Two: The Black Cortège

  Chapter Twenty-Three: Whip and Spur

  Chapter Twenty-Four: Thunder Rolling Over the Mountains

  Chapter Twenty-Five: I Go to Dance with the Dragons

  Chapter Twenty-Six: Dance of Dragons

  Chapter Twenty-Seven: Hibernation

  Chapter Twenty-Eight: The Queen’s Apothecary

  Chapter Twenty-Nine: Flight to Dragon Isle

  Chapter Thirty: The Heartrock

  Chapter Thirty-One: Coming Home

  Chapter Thirty-Two: Under a Dark Cloud

  Chapter Thirty-Three: Broken and Burned

  Chapter Thirty-Four: Nightmare

  Chapter Thirty-Five: Two Gulps Too Many

  Chapter Thirty-Six: The Call of the North

  Chapter Thirty-Seven: Beyond the Sorcerers Glen

  Chapter Thirty-Eight: Bubble, Bubble, Toil and Trouble

  Chapter Thirty-Nine: Lonely, So Lonely …

  Chapter Forty: Rising from the Ashes

  Chapter Forty-One: Dragoncombs

  Chapter Forty-Two: Dragon Down

  Chapter Forty-Three: When the Wind Blows the Cradle Will Rock

  Chapter Forty-Four: An Unexpected Visitor

  Chapter Forty-Five: Dragon Lord Down

  Chapter Forty-Six: Dragon Quest

  Chapter Forty-Seven: Broken Hearts

  Chapter Forty-Eight: Rising from the Ashes

  About the Author

  Also by Lucinda Hare

  Praise for The Dragon Whisperer

  Copyright

  About the Book

  The war against the united hobgoblin tribes rages, and Quenelda longs to follow her her Dragon Lord father into the fray.

  But when the Stealth Dragon Service is betrayed and destroyed, the Seven Sea Kingdoms are thrown into turmoil.

  Treacherous plots swirl – with even Quenelda’s own beloved dragon in mortal danger – but Quenelda finds a secret solace at the heart of the fabled fortress, Dragon Isle. Can she harness her new powers to stop the onset of evil and strike back against the hobgoblins.

  Dedicated to the SAS

  and the British Armed Forces

  CHAPTER ONE

  Dive, Dive, Dive …

  ‘T minus two and counting …’

  ‘Ground crew, clear the pads … clear the pads …’

  Red landing lights turned green as the flight of Imperials and Vipers retracted their claws and spread their wings in readiness.

  ‘Stormcracker, Stormcracker, you are cleared for immediate takeoff.’

  ‘Acknowledged, Dragonsdome. Lift off … lift off …’

  ‘Strapped in?’ Quenelda turned to Root who was fiddling with his flying harness. ‘It’ll be fun!’

  Root mumbled unconvincingly as Two Gulps and You’re Gone launched into the air, but by then it was too late.

  It was a day of yellow haar, the suffocating fog that crept in from the sea. Its smoky coils lay thickly over the loch so that only the jagged snow-capped teeth of the mountains to the north and south of the Sorcerers Glen were visible from the air. In the freezing brilliance of the sapphire sky, a military flight of twenty Imperial Black battledragons of the III First Born, accompanied by three wings of smaller, swifter Vipers, took off from Dragonsdome.

  At their apex flew the Earl Rufus DeWinter, Commander of the Stealth Dragon Services, the SDS, on Stormcracker Thundercloud III, his magnificent battledragon. At his starboard wing-tip flew a much smaller flame-coloured Sabretooth with stubby wings and a crooked tail, ridden by a young girl and a gnome boy. The Earl’s daughter, Quenelda, and her companion, Root, were on their way to Dragon Isle; an unusual achievement since only the SDS and those of royal blood were normally allowed to set foot on that fortress island. But while every other young lady in the Seven Sea Kingdoms dreamed of going to court, ever since she could remember, Quenelda had wanted to follow in her famous father’s footsteps and enrol at the SDS Battle Academy on Dragon Isle. It was not only this very peculiar ambition, nor even the fact that Quenelda wore boy’s clothes and had flown battledragons with her father since the age of three, that made her a very special young lady. There was another reason – a secret that only her friend, Root, her father, the Earl Rufus, and his dragonmaster, Tangnost Bearhugger, shared. They all believed that Quenelda was a Dragon Whisperer, which meant that she alone could talk to dragons.

  It was because of this secret magical heritage that Quenelda, flying her battledragon, Two Gulps and You’re Gone, and her esquire, Root, on gentle Chasing the Stars, had recently defeated a rogue dragon belonging to the Grand Master of the Sorcerers Guild. The crazed dragon had tried to kill the Earl Rufus at the winter Royal Joust.

  Everyone save Quenelda thought that the injured dragon had simply been driven to madness by its wounds. But she knew differently. Hearing its inner thoughts, she had revealed to her father and the Queen’s Constable, Sir Gharad Mowbray, that the dragon had been trained to kill, was a predator at heart despite its harmless appearance. The question, if she was correct, was how and why. The answer was chilling: the Earl and Sir Gharad had agreed that the only explanation was Maelstrom Magic, an ancient and dangerous dark power long forbidden by the Sorcerers Guild. But why the Grand Master would breed such a dangerous and treacherous creature was not so certain.

  Quenelda believed that the dragon’s hidden purpose was to kill her father, but the Earl would not accept that the Grand Master, Lord Hugo Mandrake – his mentor and friend from childhood – had knowingly dabbled in Dark Magic, let alone wished to kill him. He believed that the Lord Hugo had simply strayed in his pursuit of knowledge, had allowed his passion for breeding dragons to cloud his judgement. Maelstrom Magic was notoriously unstable and difficult to control, and that alone could explain the rogue dragon’s dark thoughts and behaviour … True or false, it could not be proved until the Grand Master returned from his estates in the north; until the Earl was able to determine his friend’s true purpose without revealing his daughter’s unique abilities.

  In the meantime, Root and Quenelda had been sworn to silence. If it became known that the most powerful man at the heart of the ruling Sorcerers Guild was a Warlock, panic would ensue, and law and order break down. The Third Hobgoblin War was going badly, very badly indeed, and now more than ever the Earl needed to maintain the sense of calm and security among the people.

  Recently, the SDS Commander believed, there were signs that the thirteen hobgoblin tribes had united, posing the greatest threat to the Seven Sea Kingdoms since the Mage Wars two thousand years before. An attack on the Howling Glen for
tress led by the first hobgoblin War Lord Galtekerion, had confirmed his belief; and it had only just been thwarted by Bark Oakley, the Earl’s chief scout and Root’s father, who had lost his life raising the alarm. As a hard year’s campaigning drew to a close and winter blizzards set in early, the Earl had decided to launch a daring pre-emptive strike against the hobgoblins at their breeding grounds on the Westering Isles, hoping to catch the creatures just as they were emerging from hibernation in late spring, weak and disoriented. Strike – before they could breed and swarm. Strike – using the ice shelf which had crept so far south that the long-range Imperials and battlegalleons of the SDS could now reach the remote Westering Isles.

  Ignoring his physician’s protestations that his wounds suffered during the Battle of the Howling Glen and at the Royal Joust needed time to heal before he got back in the saddle, the Earl was travelling to Dragon Isle to inspect preparations for the coming spring campaign. And, by special permission of the Queen as a reward for their great bravery, he was taking his daughter, Quenelda, and her esquire, Root, with him. Root had had to leave his own dragon, Chasing the Stars, stabled at Dragonsdome. The fortress at Dragon Isle was no place for the placid herbivore. An unruly battledragon might fancy such a succulent morsel!

  ‘Wind three knots and rising. Vector heading north-northwest by twenty …’ The Earl Rufus DeWinter’s voice crackled over Quenelda’s helmet. ‘Five leagues and closing. ETA ten bells.’

  ‘Dragon Isle!’ Quenelda whispered, her breath frosting the inside of her visor.

  Dragon Isle … Two Gulps and You’re Gone echoed, the battledragon’s rising excitement matching her own. He had not returned to his home roost on Dragon Isle since he had been badly injured in the war.

  Normally such severely injured battledragons were put down, but Quenelda, using her extraordinary skill of dragon whispering, had helped the Earl’s dragonmaster, the dwarf Tangnost Bearhugger, nurse Two Gulps back to health – an unheard-of achievement. Quenelda had explained to the wounded Sabretooth how Tangnost was going to mend his broken bones and stop infection from making his tail drop off. If she hadn’t been able to calm the unpredictable and bad-tempered battledragon as the dwarf set the fractured bones, they and Tangnost’s apprentice, Root Oakley, would have all been reduced to three pyramids of ash on the floor. Their success had led the Earl to give Quenelda Two Gulps as her own.

  We are close … I can hear my brothers and sisters …

  Quenelda too could faintly hear the whisper of dragons on patrol above and around them as they flew in and out of range. ‘We’re nearly there,’ she said, turning to Root.

  The gnome grinned back at her, not even asking how she knew when, in the freezing fog, they could barely see beyond the tail of the dragon in front. He had long since known that Quenelda had a far keener sense of smell, sight and hearing than any other person in the Kingdoms.

  Then came the call that Root had been dreading.

  ‘On my mark,’ the Earl’s deep voice commanded.

  ‘Ready?’ Turning in her saddle, Quenelda touched her esquire’s arm reassuringly. ‘You’ll manage. You’ve done really well. Honestly, there’s nothing to worry about. We’re only at three thousand strides. You won’t have to bail out.’

  Root nodded and tried to look braver than he felt, then closed his visor and then his eyes. Ever since Quenelda learned that she was to accompany her father on an inspection of preparations for the coming battle, she had been teaching Root as much as she could about the history of the SDS and Dragon Isle. While endless blizzards raged, they had spent days in Dragonsdome’s ancient Circular Library looking through dusty books and chronicles while Quenelda helped her esquire with his reading and writing. And when they weren’t studying they had been flying.

  In particular, she and Root had been practising diving and deploying dragonwings – ‘in case they had to bail out’, she explained kindly, while they both knew what she really meant was ‘in case Root falls out of his saddle’. They had to be prepared for anything, Quenelda argued, as she demonstrated for the third time how the wings worked. She wanted their first military flight to be perfect.

  Root gulped and nervously checked his flying harness again. His first attempt at ‘spreading his wings’ had ended in disaster, with him hanging helplessly upside down from the branches of a huge pine tree, wrapped in his wings as tightly and cosily as any sleeping bat. The next day he had taken a cold unplanned dip in the loch, having narrowly missed the sails and rigging of a merchant galleon. And then …

  ‘Dive, dive, dive …’ At his signal, Stormcracker, the Earl’s massive Imperial Black, rolled ninety degrees to starboard and peeled away, plunging down through the fog below. Root had barely time to draw breath before the world tipped and they were dropping like a stone.

  The wind sang in Quenelda’s ears as they plummeted down in perfect formation with the SDS. Her spirit soared. It seemed the most natural thing to do – to swoop down and dance with the dragons. This was what she was born to do, where she truly belonged.

  Dragon Isle, Dragon Isle, Dragon Isle … The name of the fabled fortress thumped through her veins like a heartbeat. She was going home to Dragon Isle!

  Standing virtually upright in his stirrups behind her, eyes closed tight, knuckles white, Root hung onto the plunging dragon for dear life. As the force of their descent threatened to pluck him from his saddle, he wondered if Quenelda would even notice that he was gone. Despite his full-face visor and helmet, the wind shrieked shrilly in his ears and his eyes watered in the cold. The speed stole his breath away and left him gasping for air. He gritted his teeth, feeling his lips peel back against his gums. The flying harness that tethered him to the saddle dug painfully into his shoulder blades and waist; his stomach churned and his neck ached. In moments the flight was lost from view as if devoured by a giant dragon’s smoking mouth. Root couldn’t stand this much longer: his arms were burning with the effort of hanging onto the saddle horn. Then, with a crack, Two Gulps’ stubby wings spread and caught the wind, and they levelled out with a thumping jolt scant strides above the cold sea.

  ‘Seven furlongs and closing …’

  Dragon Isle sprang into three-dimensional view over the Earl’s navigator’s right-eye lens, runes and marks rapidly scrolling down in a burst of information. He glanced at his forearm vambrace display to check his coordinates. Satisfied, he lifted his head. ‘Vector approach confirmed and holding.’

  ‘Acknowledged,’ the Earl replied.

  Within heartbeats, a flicker of blue lit up the fog around Stormcracker, enveloping the Earl and his huge battledragon in a fine latticework of fire. The next second, creeping tendrils wrapped around Two Gulps like tree roots questing for water. Root felt the hairs on the back of his neck stand up – the iridescent light was crawling all over him as if searching for something. In front of him, Quenelda’s hair radiated about her helmet like a golden dandelion. Vivid sparks danced in front of the boy’s eyes, making him squeal.

  Quenelda turned to him with an apologetic grin. ‘Sorry, I forgot to warn you. Papa told me. I think we’ve just passed through a nexus.’

  Root looked blank.

  ‘A nexus,’ she explained, ‘is a defensive shield. They are cast around Dragon Isle like huge invisible nets.’

  ‘Sorcery …’ Root breathed. ‘So they know we’re here?’

  Quenelda nodded. ‘They know. Look behind you.’

  Root turned in the saddle. He looked to his right – starboard, he hastily reminded himself. Then he looked to port. He shrugged. ‘Where?’

  Quenelda raised her eyes and pointed a finger. Root looked up. Three battlewings of Vampire dragons in close formation were silently escorting them in. Root hadn’t seen or heard a thing.

  ‘What?’ His mouth fell open. ‘When did they appear?’

  Quenelda laughed. ‘Oh, about three leagues out, probably before we even passed through the outer nexus.’

  Within moments, great jagged spikes of black rock reare
d up out of the sea all about the flight, bristling with crossbows and catapults set on narrow gantries.

  ‘There!’ Quenelda pointed as pinpricks of light glimmered like stars through the fog. As they drew closer, growing pools of yellow light burned through the mist, becoming brighter by the heartbeat.

  ‘Stormcracker, Stormcracker …’ The flight tower crackled into life. ‘This is Seadragon Tower. You are cleared to land in the east lower cavern, vector heading zero six one.’

  ‘Dragon Tower, Dragon Tower,’ the Earl Rufus responded. ‘ETA minus five and counting. Stormcracker out.’

  The Earl’s flight, followed by Quenelda, realigned their angle of approach. The fog thinned. Quenelda forgot to breathe. Behind her Root gasped.

  Soaring up in front of them, built into the combs and carved out of the coal-black cliffs, was the lair of the SDS, guardians of the Seven Sea Kingdoms. Countless blazing braziers and lanterns picked out its imposingly high towers. Vast cliff battlements, spiralling stairways, cliff dragonpads, buttresses and watch towers climbed the sides of the cliffs up and up towards the great castle hidden in the mists far above.

  Dragon Isle!

  CHAPTER TWO

  Dragon Isle

  ‘Root! Root! Come on!’ Quenelda was becoming impatient. ‘Come on!’ She stamped her foot in frustration. ‘We’ll be late! You can’t possible walk up every stair. There are ten thousand steps to the top of the tower. You won’t arrive till next week.’