Suddenly the dragon banked left, sending blood rushing into Leaf’s ears, and whooshed through a tunnel, then right through an enormous doorway that led outside.
After five days in a box, Leaf would have thought going outside would be a huge relief. But it was hard to appreciate the fresh air when there were approximately eight hundred zillion dragons out there waiting to eat him.
He was on a plateau surrounded by sheer cliffs going up on one side and even more sheer cliffs going down on the other. The plateau was full of dragons milling around, looking exactly as awkward as all the villagers did during Dragonmancer Appreciation Day celebrations.
Globes of fire hung over the party, lighting up the scales below: red and orange, but also many pale yellowish dragons with differently shaped snouts. Rowan was right. There was another kind of dragon here. Where had they all come from? Why were they all here now?
And then the dragon dumped him unceremoniously in the middle of the party and flew away again.
Almost immediately, a massive dragon talon slammed down beside Leaf. He rolled quickly to his feet and darted away, dodging through a sea of tails and claws and other prey. He nearly ran straight into the bobcat, who had its back against a statue and was hissing with all its fur standing on end.
As Leaf stumbled back, he saw that the statue was a smooth white marble dragon wearing a crown and raising one claw as though she was making a speech. Just a few steps away was a black statue of another dragon — or the same dragon? it looked like a similar crown — with rubies glittering in the eyeholes and wings spread behind its glare.
There was treasure everywhere. At least half the dragons wore jewels and gold; more jewels were embedded in the decorations. This dragon queen clearly wanted everyone to know how wealthy she was.
Leaf guessed that thieves could get away with a few jewels without the dragons even noticing. Perhaps the dragonmancers really had been successful dragon-treasure smugglers once upon a time.
The strangest decoration, though, was a contraption like a birdcage that hung suspended on wires over the party. Inside it was a small dragon who was yet another different color from the ones on the ground — more golden yellow than sand pale — but who had a similar snout to the pale yellow ones. He’d thought for a moment that she was another statue, but then a dragon on the ground threw something at the cage and she flinched away from the bars.
A prisoner of war? Leaf wondered. Do dragons take prisoners? She looked too small to be a threat to any of these dragons, and as sad as the humans in the kitchen pit.
There you go again, Wren observed, seeing human feelings in the droop of a dragon’s wing.
At the foot of the tall cliff that backed the plateau, a ginormous golden throne towered over the entire party. Atop it sat the orange queen who had chased Mushroom into the ravine. Leaf wondered whether she’d caught him.
Thyme is here somewhere, he remembered. Maybe we can figure out a way to kill one of these dragons together.
Another set of huge talons smashed down beside him, scaly and hot and rippling with muscles, and he took off running again.
I have a suggestion, Wren offered. Maybe focus on staying alive first.
Leaf darted between the animals and talons, searching the crowd for Thyme. The tunnel that led back into the palace was blocked by a tall barrier of rock and a pair of grouchy-looking guards.
As he crouched behind yet another statue — this one made of gold with a diamond-studded crown — he saw the guards both look up sharply, then turn their heads in the same direction.
Did they hear something?
A few of the dragons standing near them paused their growling conversation and turned to listen as well. Their expressions caught the attention of a few others, and the listening silence began to spread quickly through the party.
Finally it was quiet enough for Leaf to hear what they heard as well.
It sounded like … music?
It was coming from somewhere in the mountains nearby, probably another part of the palace. The moonlight cast silver shadows on the peaks around them as all the dragons lifted their faces to the sky.
It was music. It was the sound of many voices singing together, but it couldn’t be, because the “voices” sang in the dragon language, rumbling well above and below human registers.
How can dragons SING? Leaf thought, shaken. How can they have music? Isn’t music a human thing? Don’t you need a — a soul to make music?
Especially music that was weirdly beautiful. Leaf wasn’t sure why, but it made him think of Wren, and how she would always fight for things she cared about. He rubbed his arms, trying to scrape the goose bumps away.
Over by the cliff, the dragon queen let out a hiss and leaped off her throne. She stalked through the party, flicking her tail at the large sand dragon who’d been sitting beside her. The dragon stood with a displeased expression and followed her into the palace, as did several of the red and orange armored guards.
In the stillness she’d left behind, Leaf finally spotted Thyme lying near the edge of the cliff, peering over at the rocks below. Leaf waited until the distant music cut off and the dragons started moving and talking again. Then he sprinted over to Thyme’s side.
“Don’t lie down like that,” he whispered. “You’ll be easy to grab and you won’t even have a chance to run.”
Thyme sat back on his heels and put his hand on Leaf’s shoulder. “Oh, Leaf. I’m so sorry you’re here, too.”
“Maybe we can both get out of this,” Leaf said. “Maybe now, while the queen is gone.” He glanced over his shoulder at the cliff that rose behind the party, then leaned over to peer down the one in front of him. Not far away, he could see the glitter of moonlight reflecting off a waterfall. “I think climbing up will be easier than going down. It looks shorter.”
“They both look impossible,” Thyme said. “There’s no way I can climb either one.”
Leaf had to admit to himself that Thyme was probably right. Leaf’s skill could maybe get him through the sheer spots and over that ledge near the top … but Thyme had never trained quite as intensely as any of the rest of them.
Thyme sighed and gave him a rueful smile. “You should go, though,” he said. “If you stay to keep me company and get eaten, Rowan will never forgive me.”
“I wonder what happens to the animals that aren’t eaten during the feast,” Leaf said. “Maybe all you have to do is hide until it’s over, and they’ll put you back in the pit with the others.”
“Yay?” Thyme said.
It was the only hope Leaf could think of. He glanced around the plateau again, looking for a hiding spot. “I know — under the tables,” he said. There were several tables laden with food and, more important, covered with long gold brocade tablecloths. “You can hide under there until the feast is over.”
“Hmmm,” Thyme said. “That’s a little closer to the hors d’oeuvres than I was planning to get, but it’s not a bad idea.”
Leaf studied the cliff behind the throne, which probably led to the top of the palace. Maybe there was a way to get from up there down into the central hall and then back to the kitchens. He wasn’t about to leave the palace without Rowan and Cranberry, even if he could.
“Are you really going up?” Thyme asked. “Won’t the dragons notice you?”
“Hopefully not,” Leaf said. “They seem preoccupied. And I think it’s the best way back to the others.”
Thyme grasped his arm for a moment, then nodded. “Good luck.”
“You too.”
Leaf wasn’t sure how long he had before the queen returned. He ducked behind one of the tables and ran along it all the way to the cliff, then rolled behind the throne. The cliff loomed above him, looking a fearsome amount taller than it had even from the other side of the party.
I can do this. It can’t be any harder than killing a dragon. And it might be the only way to rescue Rowan and everybody else.
He took a deep breath, reached for the first
cracks he could fit his hands into, and started to climb.
The first half of the night went pretty well, he thought. Leaf climbed and climbed, resting whenever he found a secure spot, freezing whenever he heard dragons lifting off from the party below. He climbed as fast as he could at first, to get himself above the fire globes. Once he reached the darker part of the cliff, he felt a lot safer. This also made climbing slower and harder, though, as it was difficult to see exactly what he was reaching for.
Race you to the top of the cliff! Wren said cheerfully. Just kidding, I would clearly win. Hey, which of these dragons do you think ate me? I hope it was the queen. Watch out, that part of the cliff looks a bit crumbly. Come on, Leaf, you can do it. Just imagine me at the top, laughing at how slow you are. And then cheering when you FIIIIINALLY get there. And then throwing you a sword and waving my own in the air and charging off to fight the dragons! We’d have been a good team, wouldn’t we? I could have helped you protect the village. First I would have tied up all the dragonmancers and stuffed them in a cellar full of rotten potatoes.
Leaf tried again to imagine the dragonmancers when they were younger, sneaking around this palace and stealing treasure and hightailing it back into the mountains. Maybe it had been easier back then — maybe there had been a different, less ferocious queen, or something like that. He certainly couldn’t imagine haughty, sinister Master Trout climbing a cliff like this.
Inside his head, Wren giggled.
Somewhere around the middle of the night, Leaf’s arms began to shake with exhaustion. He heard the feast breaking up and felt the rush of wind as guests flew away. When he glanced down, he saw dragons cleaning up the mess that was left behind. A few of them gathered the last surviving animals and flew back into the palace with them, but Leaf couldn’t see whether Thyme was among them.
The air was cold against the back of his neck, and his fingertips were going numb. He kept reaching for new handholds and missing.
I have to stop and rest, Leaf realized.
He glanced up and saw that he’d almost reached a narrow shelf of rock that jutted out from the cliff. He’d seen it from below and thought it would be hard to climb over … but if he could get onto it, maybe he could lie down and sleep for a moment.
Leaf gritted his teeth and forced himself onward. That tiny handhold over there … toes barely clinging to the cracks in the rock … another inch higher … fingertips aching, hand muscles cramping … one more shove upward on his left leg … he reached and caught the edge of the shelf, then hauled himself onto it with the last fragment of his strength.
The shelf was barely wide enough for two people to lie down side by side, parallel to the cliff. A scraggly little bush jutted out from a crack in the rock, glaring at Leaf in a very Wren-like, “this is MY safe spot, go get your own!” kind of way.
Leaf collapsed flat on the stone. His whole body was in pain, especially his shoulders. No, his fingers hurt more. Maybe his knees, which kept scraping against the jagged surface of the cliff.
Sleep will fix it all, he thought as his eyes closed.
Leaf’s sleep was deep and dreamless, but it was cut short abruptly by the sound of hundreds of dragons screaming in terror.
He shot up and nearly knocked himself off the ledge. For a moment he crouched against the cliff, clutching the thorny bush branches, his heart pounding.
The sky was full of screaming dragons. Shrieking dragons, roaring dragons, dragons shoving one another aside in a mad panic to fly as high and far as they could.
What is going on? What scared them?
He craned his neck toward the arena-prison, where dragons were fountaining into the sky like an erupting volcano of scales and smoke.
Did the sand dragons attack the mountain dragons? Or was it all a trap for the sand dragons? Did one of them betray the others?
Do dragons do traps and betrayal?
He had no idea what could have set them off, but suddenly there were dragons everywhere, and it was mid-morning, and he had to get to Rowan before any of these dragons did.
He turned to the cliff and started climbing again.
“I can do this, Wren,” he whispered. “I can get to the top of this cliff, and I can find my way into the palace, and I can find Rowan and the others and get them out of that pit, and this is a totally rational plan that is going to happen, no problem.”
Several minutes later, he had gotten almost nowhere, his shoulders were screaming with pain, and he was realizing that climbing in the daytime, exhausted, was a whole lot more terrifying than climbing at night. There were so many dragons everywhere, and even though most of them were flapping around panicking, it still seemed highly likely that one would eventually go: “AAAAAACK UNSPECIFIED CATASTROPHE EVERYTHING IS TERR — ooh, I do need a snack right now,” and pop him right into its mouth.
He’d barely had that thought when a dragon whooshed past, so close that he felt a wave of fiery warmth from its copper-colored scales. A moment later, there was another rush of wingbeats, and Leaf flattened himself against the cliff. The second dragon flashed past, and he blinked, then blinked again as both dragons disappeared over the top of the cliff.
The second dragon was blue.
Blue! Did you see that? he thought to imaginary Wren. A sea dragon, maybe? Did the sea dragons attack? Is that why they’re all freaking out?
Would a sea dragon be any easier to stab?
A gust of wind made him close his eyes as another dragon whisked by.
Keep going, Wren whispered. Only four thousand more tiny toeholds to go.
He reached for the next bump in the rocks, and as he did, he saw the last dragon do a slow, lazy turn in the air and come speeding back toward Leaf.
It was looking right at him.
It was reaching for him.
Its talons closed around him, and Leaf was lifted off the cliff, in the claws of a dragon once again.
“Yeah, I remember this.” Stone turned the sapphire over in his hands. It was so big, Ivy almost couldn’t believe it was real.
Violet and Daffodil sat on the bench behind her, wrapped in rough gray blankets, still shivering from the long walk back to Valor in the rain. Azalea had not wanted to let them take the sapphire, but Foxglove and Pine both thought they should show it to Stone, make sure it was part of the dragon’s treasure, and then decide what to do with it.
Foxglove stood by the door, her arms crossed, shifting uncomfortably from foot to foot.
“Heath never liked this gem,” Stone said. He passed it to Ivy, who was startled by the weight of it in her hands. “He said that holding it sometimes gave him strange waking nightmares of the dragons who torched our village. He said sometimes they would look at him as though they could see him. If it’s the one thing that makes him feel anything about the dragon attack, that’s probably why he left it behind.”
There was something odd about the sapphire, but it didn’t feel menacing to Ivy. It had a kind of quiet vibration to it, as if it was reaching for something on another level of the universe. She cupped it between her hands and stared into its facets.
“So if he moved the treasure, where else can we look?” Violet asked.
Stone shrugged. “I have no idea. Sorry.”
“Well,” Foxglove said as Violet and Daffodil got to their feet, “if you think of anything, let us know.” Violet rolled up the blankets and turned to hand them to Stone.
With a brisk knock, the Dragonslayer strolled through the front door.
Violet threw the blankets at Ivy so fast that Ivy almost didn’t catch them. They tumbled around her hands and she scrambled to bury the sapphire inside the folds of wool. Her heart was pounding. I hope he didn’t see it.
“What’s this?” her father said with a pleasant smile. “A Wingwatcher party? At my brother’s house? Why wasn’t I invited?”
“Hi, Dad,” she said, clutching the blankets to her chest. “We were just stopping by to say hi to Uncle Stone.”
Heath’s gaze traveled
over Violet’s innocent face, Daffodil’s wide eyes, Foxglove’s blank expression. “Oh?” he said. “Why are you all … wet?”
“It’s raining,” Violet answered.
“We were surprised by a storm while we were out skygazing,” Foxglove reported. “We came in the closest entrance. Ivy suggested that her uncle lived nearby and we could dry off here.”
Heath raised his eyebrows at her. “You haven’t dried off much,” he observed.
“I was more concerned for the young recruits,” Foxglove said. “I’ve been caught in the rain before. I’ll be fine.”
“Holly, right?” he said, pointing at her.
“Foxglove, sir,” she said, as politely as always.
“Hmmm,” he said. “Ivy, use one of those blankets on your hair. You are dripping all over your uncle’s cave. And then get on home — I need to speak with my brother.”
Ivy took a nervous step toward the door. Stone was standing with his hands in his pockets, looking resigned to a conversation with Heath. He looked too morose to say anything helpful.
“We’ll wash these and bring them back to you, mister Ivy’s uncle sir,” Daffodil said, patting the pile of blankets in Ivy’s arms. “Thanks very much!”
“Yes, thanks, Uncle Stone,” Ivy said, relieved. She hurried to the door.
“Foxglove,” the Dragonslayer said, and a chill went through Ivy. She could hear the thread of anger under his pleasant tone, even though it was well buried. “Perhaps it would be wise to confine the younger recruits — and yourself — to the tunnels for the foreseeable future. If you can’t recognize when a storm is on its way while you’re literally staring at the sky, it seems you might all need a little more training.” He stepped up behind Ivy and lifted a strand of her wet hair. “We can’t have the daughter of the Dragonslayer getting sick, after all.”
“Yes, sir,” Foxglove said. She held the door as the three girls went through, nodded to the Dragonslayer, and followed them out.
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