Dragon Rigger (2 page)

So it had gone for half the night, since WingTouch's patrol had responded to a cry for help from the guardians of this grove. WingTouch had watched strong and faithful dragons being driven back from the flashing storm clouds, back from these
un
dragon
drahls
of the Enemy that filled the sky with their trills of laughter. Dragon in shape, but not in substance, the drahls were the Enemy's most hated warriors, the leaders of his army of destruction, delusion, and fear.

But the drahls were not the only sorcery in the skies tonight. The Enemy had turned the very elements of nature against them. Amidst the lightning, it was hard even to see his fellow dragons. There were many in the sky, but fewer than at the start of battle. How many had died? How many had fled? WingTouch had felt death all around him, and dragons passing to the Final Dream Mountain, but mostly he had felt terror reigning in the sky. The valley below, with its precious
lumenis
groves, was being pummeled by lightning; and the dragons themselves by withering attacks of freezing fire from the drahls. So far, the dragons had held the defense in the air, and the guardian spells had held below. But for how much longer?

As if in answer to his thought, an explosion of lightning and thunder rocked the air. WingTouch shuddered, and felt something change in the air below. He glimpsed a pair of drahls flickering like shadows low across the basin. How had they gotten so low? Had the guardian spells failed? He thought he heard a roar of anger from the spell-wielding dragons on the ground.

Bucking the winds, Windrush dove to give chase. He passed harmlessly through the layer where he should have encountered a challenging spell-barrier. He felt nothing; the spells of protection
had
failed. He bellowed his rage; he gathered fire in his throat. But before he could catch the drahls he saw cold flames ripple across the ground ahead of him, pouring from the speeding creatures. His heart cried out—and
he
cried out to his fellow dragons for help, but his cry was lost on the wind. The others were occupied in battle high overhead. From the ground, he heard the wail of dying guardian dragons.

Speeding low over the valley, too far behind the drahls to stop them, WingTouch saw their freezing bursts of fire exploding in a long line, where the lumenis and the garden of power were being blasted into ruin. Within moments, one more living garden was gone, one more source of strength against the darkness. WingTouch beat his wings with impotent fury as he climbed back toward the others. There was nothing left to fight for here.

"DRAGONS, GATHER!" he thundered. His voice was nearly lost in the crashing of the storm. But some of the dragons heard, and they repeated his words in trumpeting cries. Three dragons fell in beside him. The rest gathered slowly, giving up the battle. When he was satisfied that all who still lived had joined him, WingTouch bellowed, "DRAGONS, AWAY!" and they banked away from the wind and fled eastward into the night.

As they crossed the Scarred Mount Ridge, WingTouch wondered what he could say to Windrush and to the others back at the camp. With another lumenis grove lost to the Enemy, the outlook for the realm was bleaker than ever.

No, it would not make for a joyful report to his brother, the leader of the dragons. He could only hope that Windrush had fared better tonight than had his own patrol.

The wind sighed through the mountain pass like a restless spirit. The tall, silver dragon Windrush felt like such a spirit himself, just now. He smelled the wind and squinted into the fading sun. It was cold on the outcropping where he was perched, but it wasn't the cold that troubled the dragon. It was what he smelled, and didn't smell.

Windrush was probing not just the outer air, but also the air of the underrealm—the insubstantial world that lay beneath the one that his eyes beheld. He was searching for clues to an invisible path, a path lost now for many seasons. He was searching for the Dream Mountain, where the female dragons lived. He grunted throatily to himself. There was no sign, no hint at all. The Dream Mountain, once a day's flight away, was now simply gone as though it had never existed. The air blew cold and empty in his nostrils, except for the faint but ubiquitous smell of the Enemy, Tar-skel. It was the same all through the realm—here in the south borderlands, as well as in the north where the male dragons lived.

Windrush would not admit discouragement. He could not explain
how
the Dream Mountain could have vanished, or where it might have gone. It all seemed so impossible. But he had already flown far in search of it, and he would fly as far as he had to, to find the place where the draconae lived.
The draconae.
How he wished he had valued them properly when they'd still graced the realm with their singing and teaching! But who could have guessed that they would vanish without a trace?

The sparks from Windrush's breath glowed briefly in the air. Gazing out over the tumbled landscape, he felt a deep sorrow. This was a changed place, even from a season ago. The land here was called the Forest Mountains; but the forests, once green and dark and vibrant, were now brittle and lifeless. The trees were stunted, the wild lumenis virtually nonexistent. He sensed no small animals. It was a part of the desolation that afflicted the whole realm. Even near the dragon strongholds, the long-woven spells of protection were weakening, as if the land itself were being bled of life. Bled by the sorcery of Tar-skel.

It had not always been so. While Tar-skel's influence had been growing in the realm far longer than any of them liked to believe, Windrush remembered well the victory of just a few seasons ago, when the Enemy had been dealt the most serious defeat in the history of this generation of dragons. It had been a magical moment: Jael, the outsider from another world, with her friends, riding on Windrush's back to the aid of his father Highwing. Sentenced to death in the Black Peak, Highwing had been the one dragon to actively resist the rising tide of evil in the land. The one dragon with courage, the one dragon to keep faith with the Words of Prophecy by befriending an outsider. The one dragon . . . until, at Jael's urging, Windrush himself had flown against all hope to challenge the darkness, to free his father.

They had saved Highwing—Jael had, really—in an astonishing rescue, bringing him back from the brink of a fiery death in an alien realm. They had not been able to save him from death itself, but they had allowed him to die with a dragon's honor and peace. And with that act, they had broken the power of the Black Peak and freed many of their fellow dragons from the ensnarement of the Enemy. For a time afterward, the realm had enjoyed a renewal of life, a renewal of hope.

But it had not brought back the Dream Mountain. And now, in the face of new losses, that victory seemed long removed.

Windrush blinked, bringing his thoughts back to the present. Southward, toward the Sawtoothed Ridge, which ran east and west dividing the Forest Mountains from the harsher Stone Peaks of the far south, he caught sight of an odd-looking, puckered cloud formation that was moving in a peculiar corkscrew fashion. It was probably nothing; but still . . . if Enemy sorceries were at work there, he probably ought to investigate. He hesitated, because there were many old places of magic in the far south, and he had little knowledge of what he might find. It would be wiser to travel in company. But the nearest companions were far to the north.

Finally he launched himself into the south wind, wondering at his own decision. It had been almost as if he had heard a voice whispering in the back of his mind, urging him on. But if so, whose voice? The spirit of Highwing, whose leadership he had assumed? He didn't think so. Perhaps it was one of those enigmatic ifflings who appeared at the oddest times, bearing news or counsel. He shook his head, scanning the land below.

Windrush?

Startled, he glanced to his left and glimpsed a shimmer of light in the air. A reflection off a distant peak, a trick of sunlight? Now it was gone. But he
had
heard a voice. A moment later he caught another sparkle of light in the corner of his eye, and he looked again.

Flying alongside him was an airy being of light. It seemed to have no substance; it expanded and contracted as it flew, like a slow-moving flame. "Iffling!" Windrush murmured.

The iffling made no response. Windrush was accustomed to this behavior from ifflings, though he sometimes found it irritating. He flew on, letting the iffling follow in formation.

When it finally spoke, he almost missed its whisper.
Where
you are bound, dragon, you might well find one who can help.

Windrush rolled slightly toward the iffling, peering at its intangible form. "Did you speak?" he rumbled.

With a chime of laughter, the iffling transformed itself into a dragon-shaped flame.
Am
I
so
difficult to hear? You must listen to me, dragon-leader!

Windrush flicked his gaze ahead to his course. "I am listening."

Very
well
.
Do you fly
in search of the Dream Mountain?

"Of course! What do you imagine?"

Then perhaps I can help.

"Indeed!" Windrush whispered, with more frustration than relief. "How often have I called out to you, asking the way? But your kind would not come to tell me."

The iffling flickered as it glided alongside him. It answered, sadly it seemed,
It
is
not
that we
would
not
,
dragon, but that we
could
not
.
Do
we know the way?
Not
any way that we could tell you.

Windrush let his anger erupt in spite of himself. "You always
act
as if you know such things!"

Dragon! Do
we travel on the winds? Do
you
travel as the ifflings do? What good to spin images of airs and currents that you could never know—that we
cannot even travel ourselves?

Windrush flew in silence, absorbing the iffling's words. "Perhaps," he muttered. "But couldn't you have just said so? Why must you always speak in riddles?" He already regretted his outburst. He had no quarrel with the iffling. "Still," he sighed, beating his wings, "I suppose I would rather hear your riddles than nothing at all."

If the iffling had taken offense, it gave no sign.
You must search
for a cavern,
it murmured.

"A cavern?"

In the ridge ahead, in a place of forgotten magic.

Windrush cleared his great throat.

There you may find one like a demon, a changeling spirit.

The dragon coughed a small flame into the wind. A demon? A changeling spirit? That sounded more like a drahl than a friend. Still, his friend Jael had once been likened to a demon, and he would have given almost anything to see her again. But his friend Jael was a human.

The iffling seemed to recognize his thought.
I doubt that it
is anyone you know—or who will welcome you. Nevertheless, if you speak to it with care, you may gain useful knowledge.

"Knowledge?" Windrush asked. "What sort of knowledge?"

The iffling did not answer. Windrush beat his wings, scanning the peaks ahead. That odd storm cloud had risen and dissipated. Perhaps, he thought, it had merely been a coincidence of nature; or perhaps a perfectly ordinary cloud had passed close to a place of power. When he glanced sideways again, his companion seemed to have disappeared. "Iffling?"

Then he saw its twinkle in the air, a little behind him. It was dropping away, and its words sounded tired, as though it were having trouble maintaining its presence here.
You must
pass into the range. Look for a cavern
within
.
Use all your senses to locate the entrance. But beware of treachery!
And with that, the iffling vanished.

Windrush clenched and unclenched his talons, exhaling slowly as he soared onward. Beware of treachery? It seemed to him that advice from an iffling always carried some warning of danger. But their advice also generally turned out to be perceptive and true, and he had never regretted following it. And given his present need, what choice did he have?

* * *

He flew high over the range. The sharp summits of the mountains passed beneath him, icy grey claws reaching toward the sky. The wind currents felt hostile and unpredictable, lifting and buffeting him. He felt a brooding presence in the air. Beneath him were rock formations cracked and broken from some age-old convulsion of the land. He searched, riding the treacherous air currents, feeling the fires of impatience in the back of his throat. What had the iffling said?
You
must
pass into the range.
"Into," not "over." Was there some passage hidden in the spine of the mountains?

He banked back toward the north side of the ridge and skimmed low over the slopes. Soon he felt a faint tingle in his undersense. Dropping close to the withered scrub, he spotted a thin line of shadow, a vertical crevice in the face of the slope. He flared to a landing and peered into the opening. It was too small for him to enter; but his undersense continued to tingle, and he thought he sensed a magic woven into the stone. Possibly the crevice was open to anyone, of any size, who wished to enter. Possibly it was also a trap.

Sniffing, he looked around. The wind sighed, filling his nostrils with a tang of dust and barren stone. Nothing else moved. Muttering to himself, Windrush drew back and breathed a short tongue of flame along one side of the crevice. The flame didn't touch the stone, but passed straight into it, undeflected. With a rumble of satisfaction, he thrust his head in and stepped through the stone wall.

Blinking his eyes as the entry spell quivered over him, he half expected to find himself standing in a cavern. Instead he stood in a long passageway that looked exactly like the same crevice, but vastly enlarged. It looked deep, but wide and high enough for him to fly in.