The Passage to Mythrin 2-Book Bundle (19 page)

But Ammy was gone into the dark.
One second too late
, he thought.
Just one second!

“Ammy!”

With a billow of wind and a scatter of pebbles,
she was back. She looked exactly like a dragon as she crouched over him, clumsily folding her wings against her body. Exactly, except for the round, blue, human eyes.

“Ammy! It is you, isn't it?”

“I thought you were dead!” A raspy, hissy voice, but somehow it still sounded like her.

Simon wanted to hug her, which horrified him. What part of a dragon could you hug? He stuffed his hands in his pockets. “I thought I'd never find you! Come on, we've got to get back to the gate.”

“What, already? I'm just starting to get the hang of this! Simon, I can fly!” She spread her wings and wafted dust into his face.

“Your real body,” he said distinctly, “is back home. In Founders Tower. Ike's watching it. After half an hour, he'll go get an ambulance.”

“Half an hour. That's...”

“About five hours in this place. I figure we've been here four hours at least.”

“There'll be a big fuss.”

“At least. They'll want to find out what's wrong with you. They'll stick needles in you and take your blood.”

She groaned. It sounded like a rusty gate creaking at the other end of a hollow tube. “But I'll never have this chance again! To really fly! Simon, you don't know how wonderful it is! Besides” — she held out her
clawed front paws — “I can't go back like this!”

“Well... Hey!” He laughed. “You're a dragon, right? That means you can change your shape! Just change yourself back.”

“Change myself?” Her eyes brightened. “Of course! Um...” She set her long teeth and scowled, and for a moment she looked just like her old self. Simon held his breath. She strained, and strained, and then slumped. “I can't do it.”

“You could if you really wanted —”

“No! Don't you understand? I was like this when I came and I'm stuck this way! I can't go back!” She crouched with her clawed hands wrapped around her head.

“Okay, stay calm. When we go home, you'll go back into your real body.”

“But suppose I
can't
get back in my body? There'll be two of me. One of me in a coma, and the other one — They'll shoot me or put me in a zoo!”

Her head went up. A shadow swept over them and they both cowered.

§

A bubble of laughter broke into Amelia's mind. And a voice:
Why all the noise? The sky has not fallen yet!
The shadow settled, folded its wings, and became an
enormous crimson dragon. It shimmered in the sunset afterglow as if it was wearing a sequined coat.

Amelia's jaw dropped. It was her first really good sight of Mara. That glimpse back in Dunstone hardly counted. She'd forgotten, or never known, how big she was, how beautiful. “You're all right!”

“Are you winning?” Simon asked, from back against the cliff.

“At first the battle hung on a claw. But we are gaining. We will win.”

Simon edged forward. He seemed to think Mara might gobble him up. “How did you know we were here?” he asked.

“Half of Sissarion knows you're here!” Mara laughed. “Amelia was thinking as loud as a hatchling clinging to its mother's back!”

Heat crept up under Amelia's skin. “I didn't know I was doing it. And I was scared. Okay, I
am
scared. Why can't I change back to my own body?”

“To choose and change your shape, that is a thing you learn. It takes time. I can teach you.”

“She won't have time,” Simon cut in. “We're going home now.”

“Just a min—” Amelia began, but Simon spoke across her to Mara.

“What will happen to Ammy's body, at home, if she doesn't get back?”

“It will die.”

Die? No! I can't die!

Of course you can. Everyone dies. But if you stay here, you stay as one of us.

Oh...
Amelia gazed at Mara, then glanced at Simon. “What's going on?” he demanded. “Why are you staring at each other?”

“Mind talk,” Mara said aloud. “I will explain. Amelia has two choices. She can return to your demon world and put on her little, weak human body. Or she can stay here and share the life of the Urdar. As my more-than-sister, my friend, honoured by all.”

“But she can't!” Simon sputtered. “Ammy, you're human! You can't just turn into a dragon!”

“Well, it looks like I just did, doesn't it?” She shrugged her wings, then grimaced. Her stomach felt hot inside. “Mara, can I breathe fire?” She took a deep breath.

“With teaching.” Mara's long-taloned paw whipped out and clamped Amelia's jaws shut. “Without teaching, you will burn out your throat. Promise not to try it.” She let go, but her paw hovered near.

“I promise!” Amelia grinned at Simon, who had backed away again. “But as a dragon, I should be able to —”

“Young dragons take years to grow into their powers. Flaming, dreaming, changing shape, and all the rest
they learn as they grow. You have learned nothing. As you are now, you are dangerous to yourself.”

“That's not the point.” Simon was back again. “Ammy, you don't belong here!”

“That's for me to say, not you. And it's
Amelia
!”

“Amelia.” He flapped that away. “You'll be dead. Your parents will have to bury you.”

That hurt. She turned her head away.

“You haven't really thought about this at all, have you?” He waved his arms, taking in Mara, the dragons sweeping past, the fires spreading on the plain, the ruby pinnacles of Sissarion. “You really think this is all there is to being a dragon?”

“I've flown, you haven't.” She folded her arms across her scaly chest.

“Well, it's not all flying around and breathing fire. You think you could kill somebody?”

“Of course she could,” Mara said. “Amelia is strong. Stronger than she knows.”

“What's strong for a dragon,” Simon said, “is not strong for a human.”

“I honour a fighter.” Mara dipped her head at him. “Even if he is beaten.”

I can't decide.
Amelia looked from Mara, huge and glorious and shining, to Simon, small and ragged and dirty. “I can't make up my mind!”

“There is one other thing.” Mara picked up a
stone the size of Simon's head and rolled it around in her paw, sharpening her claws on it. “The gate will soon be gone.”

“What?” Simon's eyes opened wide. “How?”

“My people are destroying it. Not the gate itself, of course, that is beyond our reach. But we will ruin its housing and bury the passage between worlds. We want no more of us exiled ever again.”

“But how will Simon get home?”

“There is still time, if he goes now.” Mara smiled down at him. “I will take him there myself.”

This time he didn't back off. “I told you before. I won't go without Ammy.”

“Then stay here.” Her smile sharpened. “But I cannot protect you, and who of the Urdar will believe you are not a demon?”

“That's not right!” Amelia flared up. “Of course he'll go home.
I'll
take him to the gate.”

Mara looked at her. Her eyes shone in the semi-darkness like green lamps. “And then you will return?”

“I ... I don't know. I still can't decide.”

Two dragons swooped overhead, shrieking. Mara's head went up. Amelia heard it too. “They've got him,” she told Simon. “Her brother. They've captured him.”

“Then the war is over?”

Mara unfolded her wings. “The war will be over when he is dead.”

“Wait!” Amelia sat up on her hind legs. “You can't kill him!”

“It would be wise to kill him. I have learned that much.”

“But you can't! Your own brother?”

“You have strange ideas, Amelia.” Mara put her head on one side and narrowed her eyes. “Perhaps I will just bite his wings off and let him live on as a fearful example.”

Amelia shuddered. “Is that a joke?”

“No. Now I must go.”

“And I'll take Simon to the gate.”

“Yes, go. Go and return.” Mara spread her wings, leaped from the ledge, and was gone.

“Hurry!” Simon touched Amelia's forearm.

She had a horrible tight feeling in her chest. She stopped watching the sky where Mara had gone, crouched down, and stretched out her neck. “Climb on.”

Gingerly, worried he would hurt her, Simon stepped onto Ammy's forearm and climbed astride the base of her neck, just above the spot where the wings joined the body.

“You sure you can carry me?”

“Just hold on!”

He wrapped his arms around her neck. The scaly skin was surprisingly warm. Muscles moved beneath it, wings swept out, and Ammy stepped off the ledge.

Simon's heart squeezed into his throat. They were falling, they were both going to be killed!

The next moment his hair flattened to his head as they bottomed out and veered upward. He gazed down at the distant plain, black with a red mottling of fire.

Higher and higher they rose, soaring in widening circles, and then Ammy broke from the spiral and flapped towards the mountains. Simon's whole body
tingled, and he realized she was humming inside her dragon chest — a deep and wordless song of excitement and joy. And he was humming too.

We're both glad not to be dead, I guess.
But no, it was more than that.
I understand, now. It would be awful hard to let this go.

Awful hard,
came her thought in his head. Then,
You think too loud.

He pretended he hadn't heard. “How can we find the gate?” he yelled into the wind. “It's too dark! There's no moon!”

“... general direction ...” Her words came back in tatters. “... circle ...” Then she banked sharply to the right. Miles ahead, a plume of flame shot up from a fold in the mountains.

“Is that it?” Simon yelled.

She didn't answer, but her muscles strained. The wind of their speed tore Simon's ragged sweater half off his back. The closer they came, the higher the flames rose.

“There's the way in!” Ammy shrieked.

Simon could see it too, the rocks glowing red in the light of fires burning on the slope above the pillar-framed opening. All the side of the mountain was cracked, and flames shot up through the cracks, not just red and gold but green too, and blue, and a strange dusky purple.

As they watched from their circling height, the lines of fire ran together and the ridge above the gateway caved in. Fire exploded upward. The pillars cracked and fell. The whole mountain was burning.

That library
, Simon thought, or was it Ammy's thought in his head? It must have been huge, it must have been the whole inside of the mountain. And now they're destroying it, all of it. Tons of books and weird specimens and strange machines, strange words and thoughts.

He thought of those mice from the silver box. He hoped they'd already got out.

And then he thought:
The gate! It's under all that. I'll never get home now.

Wait.
Ammy's thought.
Something's happening!
Simon stared down at the mountainside.
What could be worse than this?

Not there. There!

Then he saw it too. Shapes were forming in the black sky above the ruined mountain. Drifts and swaths of gauzy blue smoke. They rose, steadied, grew solid, took shape. Doors. Tall rectangles, each with an arched top.

Not just one door. Dozens.

Hundreds
, came Ammy's thought.
Maybe thousands.
The colour of the doors deepened to sapphire.

Vines or root shapes twined across them. They hung there glowing, their bases just above the flames, their

tops just below where Simon and Ammy veered in tight circles. A forest of blue glass slabs stretching as far as they could see.

“What the heck?” Ammy hissed.

“Ours wasn't the only one,” Simon shouted against the wind and the roar of flames. “Mara said there were many doors, to many places. It was a kind of cosmic Union Station, I guess.”

“So which one's ours?”

For one instant the doors hung there, solid as if they were truly glass, blazing like the sun was behind them. And then, instead of deepening into a thousand beckoning passages, they began to fade.

No!
The thought came from them both.

“Which one?” Ammy screamed. “Over there!” Simon pointed. One of the gates was different, because a large, silver-grey dragon was circling around it. “It's the Assassin! And he's got a grudge!”

§

The Assassin. Amelia was pretty sure he was the one who'd tricked her into the book. Maybe her being stuck in dragon form was his idea, too. And maybe he'd find out it wasn't such a smart idea, not for him.

“So that's what he really looks like. Well, he'd better sharpen his claws. Hold tight!”

“Ammy, no! You can't fight him!”

“The gate's fading. No time!” She rose, veered, folded her wings, and dove. The door swooped at them, larger and larger, the broken rocks showing blue behind it.

The Assassin reared up in front of the gate, huge wings outspread.

“Ammy, we'll never get past —”

She had a spectacular view of jagged jaws opening impossibly wide right in front of her.

Let go!
A heave of her shoulder, and Simon went flying. Past the gaping jaws, straight through the blue door.

§

Red light, a roaring in his ears, heat on his back. All happening at once. A scream behind him, and a noise like shattering glass and a blinding burst of sapphire light.