Dragon Bonds (Return of the Darkening Series Book 3) (13 page)

* * *

T
he next day
proved even harder than the last but for different reasons. Seb rode in front of me in his navigator’s saddle, high on the crest of Kalax’s shoulder and neck, and I sat further back in the protector’s saddle. The two wild dragons flew on either side of us.

Scratch and Hiss,
I thought with a wry smile. I was coming to think of those as their names, even though Seb said they had proper dragon names that our human mouths couldn’t form and pronounce. That made me wonder if Kalax had a dragon name of clicks and growls and croaks that she only shared with other dragons.

All names powerful.

Kalax’s thought blossomed in my mind as sudden as a sea fog and just as elusive as I struggled after it. She didn’t answer my question about if she had another name, but I laughed, feeling happy for the first time in a long time. Flying always made me feel that way—as if my troubles were far below, back on the ground that flew past us in pretty greens and blues and golds.

“On your left!” Beris yelled. He and Syl on their stocky blue Gaxtal swooped past us.

Kalax gave a rumble of annoyance and lifted her head. She wanted to show them just how fast she could fly.

I know. You can outrace any of them!

Gaxtal flashed over the forest, Beris and Syl on his back, heading for the horizon before pulling up and circling lazily. Gaxtal enjoyed showing off just as much as his riders did.

Behind us, Merik was navigating on Feradima with Varla in her protector’s saddle the same as me. Beris and Syl were keeping a watch for any enemies while Merik was looking for this shrine to the First Rider that Varla had mentioned. As much as I wanted to tell Seb to let Kalax have some fun and swoop and soar like she wanted to, I knew we had to focus on the task. The longer it took to get help to the king, the greater the chance there might not be a king for us to serve.

At our side, the wild dragons tumbled through the air, playing a game of rolling over other so they looked like a knot of whirling black storm clouds. Every now and then, one would snap at the other, or one would bite the air one tooth away from the other’s throat. I had thought that they only did that when faced with us riders, but Seb was right in that they seemed to delight in trying to fight everyone around them.

Barbarians.

Kalax’s scorn for the black dragons carried to me with a sharp sting. I wondered if the hatred between our dragons and the blacks was a very long-running one, or if it had only started when we humans started riding dragons.

Too much like younglings. Sniping at anything that moves. Biting what shouldn’t be bit.

She blew a hot breath through her nose, and I suddenly understood that she hated the wild dragons. She just thought they were too dangerous.

Exactly.

“Hold!” Seb raised a hand into the air.

One of the wild dragons twisted and with a caw it suddenly tumbled downward and righted to skip the tree tops below.

No discipline.
Kalax huffed again before angling her wings slightly and gliding downward.

This time, I felt Seb push with his mind when he held up an open palm in midair.
Dragons—here!

The wild dragons jerked up their heads, stopping their play fighting to stare at Seb. Without taking their gazes from him, they rose back up, undulating like snakes with wings through the sky, flying just a few feet away from each other.

“You did it!” I punched the air. The blacks had reacted to Seb’s command and had come back into formation. Seb glanced back at me and gave me a crooked grin, but I could see the beads of sweat on his face. All this effort to control these dragons and talk to them was costing him a lot of energy. How was he going to get them to listen to him in the heat of battle?

Seb turned to face forward again and held out his hand, pointing straight ahead. I could feel the air around me tingle with his Dragon Affinity.

To my amazement, the blacks didn’t start fighting again, but came up and started flying straight. Kalax and Feradima flew in tandem with the two blacks, until a crow darted up from the trees below with a raucous cawing.

The wild dragons reacted at once, roaring at the interloper.

No! Don’t!
Seb shouted at the dragons, but their attention had already fastened on the crow as it dove down again, vanishing into the trees.

The black dragons drove down, hitting the trees like arrows.

Branches cracked and the trees shook and then the two black dragons burst out of the trees, once again tumbling and rolling, snapping and hissing at each other. They flew back into the sky, and I decided they were going to need a lot more work before we could ever take them into battle.

* * *

“
T
here
!” Varla shouted down to us from Feradima’s back. It was still bright day, but the temperature had been dropping all afternoon. I wished now that I’d brought a thicker cloak or had some woolen scarves to wrap around me. We had been flying for a few hours, but now Varla pointed at a pinnacle of rock poking out from the forest canopy below.

That was the shrine of the First Rider? From here, it looked like a pile of gray stone and nothing more.

Seb waved at her and gave a thumbs up. Kalax circled once and chose her own approach to the outcropping. She crowed once and beat her powerful wings until she was level with Gaxtal, then swooped down, faster than a strike of lightning.

The thrill of a dragon at full clip was like nothing else. It always drove every thought from my head—I loved the cold air slapping at my face, the whistling of the wind and the feel of Kalax’s muscles underneath me. It was both exhilarating and more than a little scary as the ground rushed up at us.

The shriek of wild dragons split the air. I tensed, reaching for one of my holstered javelins, but the two blacks fell past us, playing as they cawed and acting like kids. And they had passed us!

Kalax thundered with annoyance at being bested, but Seb gave a wild whoop. “We always knew the wild dragons were fast, but faster than Kalax is more than fast.”

They cheat.

Kalax settled in the lower branches of a huge, ancient tree whose thick trunk could hold her. She hopped from there to the grass of a clearing just below the rocks. She rumbled at the wild dragons, still circling the outcrop. Seb was trying to wave them in, but they were too caught up in whatever game they had started. Seb gave a shrug, leaving the blacks in flight.

“What do you mean, they cheat?” I asked, talking to Kalax.

It was Seb who answered with a question as we dismounted. “Do you see what they can do? Even though they’re fighting each other all the time, they are flying with us. Well, sort of.” He pulled his helmet. “They used their momentum and Kalax’s slipstream to fly even faster with lesser effort. It’s the same reason geese fly in a formation—each goose is using the slipstream of the one in front to fly with less effort. The wild dragons do the same, but just a lot faster.”

“Apart from the poor goose up front,” I muttered.

“Well, that’s why we could change over who leads.” Seb turned to Kalax. “Although I know you could always lead with no trouble, my girl.” He cooed at her.

Kalax chirruped back, pleased by the attention.

Feradima and Gaxtal landed, and the others dismounted. Walking over, Beris asked, “Where is this shrine to the First Rider then?”

Frowning and looking around, Varla pointed to the back of the small outcrop where one standing stone—tall and narrow—stood at the very front of the large, gray boulders. “That looks likely.”

I walked over to the standing stone. It didn’t look like any kind of fine construction I had ever seen, so either it was older than anything I knew about or it was more an accident of nature that it looked like this.

“Uh, are you sure this is the right place?” I asked Varla.

She nodded, but she reached into a leather pouch and pulled out the scroll again, checking it over. She nodded at the standing stone. “Do you see…markings?”

Merik stepped forward, pushing up his goggles and putting on his optics. He had several pair now that he could use to see better.

“What is it?” Seb asked, peering over Merik’s shoulder at what looked like very faint scratches.

Merik said, “A man? A man with horns maybe? And that looks like a dragon standing up.”

I was getting a bad feeling about this. Dropping a hand to the hilt of my sword, I said, “I’ve looked at a lot of old ruins so far, and none of them really looked like this. The Draconis Order built towers and temples.”

“But it’s on the map.” Varla waved with the scroll. “And who else would build a shrine to the First Rider?”

I shrugged. “It just doesn’t look much of a shine to me. More like a pagan site—something maybe the Wildmen would put up.” I pointed to the standing stone with its odd scratches. “When did the Draconis Order ever leave any marks like that? It makes me think of rites and rituals held before flickering flames by strange and terrible people.”

Varla was checking the inscriptions on the stones with those on the scroll. I was willing to bet none of it matched. She let out a long breath. “Maybe you’re right.”

I looked at Seb. He shook his head just once. That meant he wasn’t feeling anything either—and we should have felt something. I’d always gotten a funny feeling when I was close to a Dragon Stone. It had taken me a long time to figure out what that feeling meant, but after almost missing it with the Armor Stone, I wasn’t going to mistake it again.

Wouldn’t the King’s Dragon Stone—the thing that was supposed to be more powerful than all of them—feel even stronger?

I don’t know why I could sense the stones. Maybe it was because I had been healed by one of them—maybe that left me able to feel the magic. Or maybe it had something to do with Seb’s Dragon Affinity. I didn’t really know and didn’t want to know. It was one of those things that left me worried about magic. It had changed me, and that was unsettling.

I remembered too well the sensation like falling down and down and down into endless darkness…

Someone comes.

Kalax’s warning knocked me out of my dark thoughts.

I looked up to see Seb and the others looking to the east. A moment later, the wild dragons stopped chasing each other around the rock outcropping and hovered in the air.

“Dragon!” Beris shouted. He and Syl ran for Gaxtal, buckling on their helmets. Feradima launched herself then swooped down to pick up Merik and Varla—she obviously wasn’t going to ever lose another rider.

No harm.

Kalax’s thought came to me with a warm breath as she sniffed the air. But she stayed close to Seb and me, standing just behind and over us.

Seb pointed toward the distinctive dragon shape heading our way. “She’s flying high. And she’s not that big.”

He was right. This wasn’t a wild black. This was a smaller dragon that stretched her wings and neck out so we could see a pale underbelly. It was a posture all Dragon Riders knew.
This is my exposed belly; these are my vulnerable wings— I am no threat.

Kalax whistled at the other dragons. Both Gaxtal and Feradima settled down again, but the black dragons disappeared into the woods to hide.

The shape grew larger, and Merik said, “It’s a Messenger Dragon.”

Messenger Dragons were easy to spot—they were much smaller than dragons we flew and they could change their color from sky blue to green to hide themselves.

Seb seemed to sense the trouble brewing before anyone else. He flung out a hand. In the next instant, the wild dragons had launched into the air, heading for the smaller, Messenger Dragon.

“No!” Seb yelled.

One black dragon snapped at the Messenger Dragon. It squawked, twisted and spun, changing color from white to blue to white again.

Seb threw his affinity at the black dragons away. They bucked and turned, and the Messenger Dragon changed to green and dove for the forest. Varla gave a yell, and Kalax roared her displeasure.

The two wild dragons flew in the air over us, screaming and roaring. I feared they would attack us.

“Seb?” Reaching out, I touched his shoulder. Under his jerkin, he was shaking, but he stared up at the black dragons. They hovered for a moment, and then headed to the top of the rock outcropping and perched there.

Beris strode over to where the Messenger Dragon had disappeared into the woods. He came back holding what looked to be a leather bag. “I don’t know where the Messenger went, but it left this.” He held up the leather pouch, the Flamma crest of flame and wings emblazoned on its side. “Seems to be for you.”

Walking over, I snatched the leather pouch and glanced inside. One scroll lay at the bottom.

Hands held up, Beris backed away from me.

I rolled my shoulders, trying to relax them. “Sorry, I’m just…” I let the words trail off because I didn’t know what I was. This couldn’t be good news—why would anyone in my family send a Messenger Dragon after me? Taking out the scroll, I opened it. My hands were shaking. When I read it, I felt dizzy and my mouth dried. I had to read it twice before I could make myself take a breath.