Wind Rider (9 page)

Is all chemical magic dark, like that practiced
by my uncle?

Woltan’s
aura darkened.
Your
uncle. It’s hard for me to remember that.

I’m not proud of it or anything.

Sorry. I guess there can be good magic of the
chemical variety. There are many great and wonderful
magics
practiced by the dwarves, and the earth elves. And your sword for example, is
an example of good chemical magic. But inside it is the strong force of the
natural, the pixie you know as Carolina.

The sky above us was now lit by a few stars and a
sliver of a moon.

We were walking at a quick pace. I still didn’t
feel at all sleepy, and pushed my mind out to scan the forest around us. I felt
nothing but trees and shrubs and small plants, in rich damp earth. But there
was something strange, up ahead.

Up ahead of us, the forest ends, and I see…
nothing.

We must be coming to the Stone Mountains. There
nothing grows, and we must be careful, as no one will mistake us for trees
there.

Is there any life at all there?

I have not left the lost city in all my life.
Talk to Kara, or perhaps Ulrike.

I reached out my mind to Kara, and found her, a
dozen feet ahead of us. I could see her aura in the night, then.
Kara, do
you know anything of these Stone Mountains?

Ahead of me, she stopped, and let the others pass.
She fell in beside me.
They are an ancient place. No one has lived there for
hundreds of years. Nothing lives there now. They say a great magic blasted the
place. Only on the far side of the stone mountains do I know the way, so we
must go over or through or around them, I guess.

Through them?

They say there are tunnels that go beneath
them. We
Kriek
have never needed tunnels… We travel
by foot and by teleportation.

And nothing lives there?

No plant or animal. Of other things, beneath
the earth, I know not.

We’ll be there soon.

Can you feel it?

I can feel the absence of plants. I can feel
the plants all around us, and behind us, but ahead of us, there is … nothing.

Kara reached her hand out and touched my shoulder.
It will do you well to be among our people again. If only this journey was
just for your pleasure and instruction. We have so much to show you.

VIII

The sun was slowly rising when we
walked out of the forest and to the base of the mountain. It was like nothing I
had ever seen before. The stone road we followed became mere stone upon stone,
and if we had not been following it for so long, we might not have even seen
it.

In the forest it had been covered with moss and
surrounded by trees — here it was nothing more than an etching in the stone
under our feet. There were runes every ten feet or so. We had gone from lush
forest to stone sterility. Everywhere that I looked in the early dawn, there
was nothing but dead rock.

Nothing lived here. There was no plant life,
anyhow. I reached out my mind in all directions and felt nothing. Ahead of us
loomed a sheer stone wall. When I looked up, I couldn’t see the end of the
mountain peak. Behind us, the forest was almost out of sight, and I almost
stopped believing in it; I could no longer feel its energy and life.

The etchings in the stone brought us to a sheer face.
There were stairs, broken and cracked, a few hundred feet away. But the faint
path seemed to run straight up to the wall, as if the mountain had been put
there afterwards.

Elias walked up to the wall and put his hands
against it. There were runes there, I could see, and Elias had started touching
them. But I paid him little heed. Something else was very wrong. I reached out
my mind in all directions, and sensed nothing, but something was wrong,
nonetheless.

The sun was now out fully and we were all squinting
in the harsh white light of sun against white stone.
Woltan
was also looking around, as if searching for something amiss. My sword buzzed
at my side, and I brought my hand down and grabbed the pommel. She came out
almost without me pulling her.
Above you, Anders, they are coming, sound the
alert!

“ABOVE US!”

My first thought was that it was some kind of
bird. Then, as they came closer, I knew they were too big to be birds. They
were far above, but falling rapidly. Then one was swooping down at me, and I
thrust out my sword as it snapped its jaws and raked me with a giant claw. I
ducked from the one and held out my shield to meet another. The dragon roared,
belched fire from its mouth, and met my shield. Then it was swooping back up in
the air again.

Dragons. Impossible. The stuff of tall tales and
legends. They didn’t exist – my tutor had proved to me mathematically that
nothing that big could fly.

I looked wildly around. Elias was crouched down at
the wall, touching runes. The others kept their backs against the mountain as
well. The dragons had flown back up and were preparing to swoop down again.
Reach
out your mind to them, Anders, it’s our only hope.

I backed up to the wall to meet the others,
opening my mind and sending it upward. And I met then… intelligence.

WHO DARES TO BREECH THE BOUNDARIES OF THE STONE
MOUNTAIN?

It is I, Anders
Tomason
,
three-blood prince, and people of the Tree Mother, of the Forgotten City, and
of the
Kriek
.

I KNOW OF NONE OF THOSE OF WHOM YOU SPEAK.

Then listen.

My blood began to sing.

I don’t know what I sang, but images flashed in my
mind, of peoples long lost, of kings so many generations back that only the
blood remembered. I held up the sword and Carolina and the blade acted as a
beacon, broadcasting up my song. My blood memory sang of the sea, and of
civilizations that had fallen, of knowledge and old magic lost and to be found
again.

Far above the dragons listened as they circled.

And then something changed.

The dragons as one opened their great maws. And
from them rushed forth not fire, not smoke, not cries of battle or rage but
song.

Dragon song.

The song reached out and hit my
bloodsong
and at the point where they touched a great blue
circle of energy formed. My sword began vibrating strongly and pulling at my
arm.

I gripped it with two hands and continued singing.

I didn’t recognize what I sang, couldn’t
understand the song of the dragons, but somehow my blood knew both. I felt
their song in my blood, and saw images of battles won and lost, of ancient
cities, the land of the
merpeople
before it fell
under the water, the glass castle, and many other images that left nothing but
wonder and confusion. I saw men of old, pixie kings and pixie warriors, demons,
imps, and men, always more men. Men on horseback, men on
dragonback
.
The tugging continued at my arms.

I looked down for a moment, and almost forgot to
continue singing.

The ground was hundreds of feet below me. My mouth
closed and the tugging stopped.

I started to fall and Carolina screamed at me:
Keep
singing Anders! OPEN YOUR MOUTH!

The song of the dragons above me suddenly seemed
alien and meaningless, repulsing me now instead of inviting.

The sword went limp above my head, as the ground
rushed up to smash me against a stone floor.

My body went limp as I fell.

I was going to die.

Sing, you idiot boy!

I opened my mouth.

The song poured forth, stronger than before. The
sword shot up above me, as I held on with all my strength. I was being pulled
up again, and my song coursed into the
dragonsong
—
bloodsong
and
dragonsong
united.

The ball above me expanded, and pulsed. It was
greater than I had imagined it.

The song pulled me higher. The dragons circled
faster above me.

Suddenly I was in the blue globe, and the dragons
were there with me, and the song stopped. My mouth closed. I prepared to fall
once again.

But I didn’t.

The dragons weren’t moving either. Their mouths
were silent but their great black eyes stared at me.

PRINCE.

RIDER.

BLOODSINGER.

YOU KEPT US WAITING SO LONG, WE STOPPED
BELIEVING IN YOU. WE FORGOT YOUR EXISTENCE AND DID NOT RECOGNIZE YOU UNTIL WE
HEARD YOUR SONG.

WE PLEDGE YOU FEALTY. WE DRAGONS HAVE A BLOOD
DEBT TO YOU BLOODSINGERS, AND WE MISS HUMANKIND. IT WILL DO US WELL TO SERVE
YOU. THERE WAS… A LACK.

THE SPELL IS WEARING OFF. YOU WOULD DO WELL TO
GET ON ONE OF OUR BACKS. CHOOSE WELL, YOUR CHOICE IS BINDING. LET YOUR BLOOD
LEAD YOU.

I looked down and gulped. It was a great drop
beneath me. A half dozen dragons hung in the air around me. They were golden,
blue, red, green and white. Their eyes were all black, though, and all their
eyes were on me.

I looked into their eyes and at their auras. They
were all beautiful, but there was one that called out to me. My blood hummed
when I looked at her. I could tell she was a female; somehow, my blood knew.

I did not think about what to do next. I bowed my
head to her, and she blinked her enormous eyes and let her head drop. I hoisted
myself onto her neck. Then we were all falling, and I held onto her neck as she
twisted and spun out of a dive into a glide across the clear sky.

The air rushed through my hair and I felt very
alive, very free, very happy for the first time I could remember. Like I was
born to do this.

You
are
a rider born, Anders
Tomason
. Let me present myself. My name is
Yesenia
… But now we must land, your friends are waiting. I
can feel their worry from up here. We dragons are very sensitive to human
feelings and thoughts. That means even though your mind is shielded, I can feel
your thoughts through your legs and arms wrapped around my neck.

Let us go down, then.

We glided down in great, slow circles to the
ground. As we were about to land, I saw my friends below, tensed up with arrows
drawn. I thought a message to them.
Relax, we come in peace.

IX

They let their weapons fall down to
their sides as the dragons landed. There were six dragons,
Yesenia
and five others.
My sisters and brothers are going to pick riders. Tell your
friends not to worry.

“Don’t worry,” I said. “The dragons are going to
pick riders, my dragon says not to worry.” Then I thought it again to the tree
folk, for good measure.

It was the strangest sight I had ever seen. The
five remaining dragons were sitting there on their short hind legs, propping
their huge heads against a small claw, and staring at the assembled group with
their huge black eyes.

They have chosen. Now they will call out to
their riders.

Elias was the first to walk forward. I wanted to
call out that he was just a boy, but I knew he was more than that. He was a
born wizard, and full of power and wisdom beyond his years. Still his whole
body seemed dwarfed by the head of the gargantuan white dragon to which he
walked.

Her name is
Esmerelda
.
She is one of our oldest and most powerful.
The dragon was larger and
seemed older than all the others. The dragon lowered its enormous head and
Elias, the smallest and youngest of my group, reached out and touched its
cheek. From the dragon’s eye there formed a tear, as big as my fist, that
crystallized and fell.

Our tears are very powerful. For what they serve,
however, I do not remember.

Elias reached down and picked it up, and then
mounted the dragon’s neck.

Then
Woltan
came
forward. An enormous dark blue female, almost as dark as her eyes, puffed smoke
at him.

Renata
has
picked him. He must be very powerful and wise.

He walked right up to her, and she lowered her
head. He touched her head and she closed her eyes and he did the same. They
were silent for a long moment then, and much later
Woltan
would tell me what transpired during their mental discussion. For now I could
see nothing of their thoughts; in a moment
Woltan
mounted her neck.

Then the twins were picked. I could still not tell
them apart, but either Lars or
Gustaf
was picked by
an enormous emerald green female, and the other by a small purple female.

Teodora
and
Beatrice are as different as could be. But I am proud to call them kin, the two
of them.

Ulrike, Kara,
Karsten
,
Cullen and
Arboris
were all left
dragonless
.

Now that they have all chosen, we will call our
cousins. They are a little wild, but there are some among them who would choose
a rider, as well.

I barely had a chance to wonder what
a little
wild
meant for a dragon, before a piercing whistle overwhelmed my senses.

There was a moment of silence, of silent wait.

Dark shapes came flying then through the air, from
high up on the mountain. I figured they must have their roosts high up on the
mountain peak, out of sight. Looking at their approaching forms, I could see
their auras from afar. They were all the colors of the rainbow, bright and
powerful, but somehow
a little wild
like
Yesenia
had said.

There was at least a dozen of them. The largest
was a bit bigger than the smallest of the six dragons around me. They were
longer and skinnier and more snake-like than the other six. Their bodies
shimmered in the light, and their eyes were a bit smaller. They were staring at
the six dragons.

I heard
Yesenia
speak
through my connection with her.
Cousins, we call you here to choose a human
rider, if you would have one. The one on my back is a
bloodsinger
,
a
bloodprince
, and he has sung to me of our past and
our future. I am pledged to him now. The wind blows to us the smoke of change.
All of you have sensed it. Soon we will be rid of a great evil or be plunged
into an even greater one. Join us, if you will help us, with rider or without.
Tonight we fly where these humans would take us.

One of the wild dragons, a deep shimmering purple
and the longest of all of them, tossed its head.
You give up nearly a
thousand years of freedom for these humans?

Yesenia
snorted.
Had
you heard him sing,
Yusef
, you would have battled me
to be the one to bear him. He is the one we dream of. Have a look at the others
before you scorn their offer. They may not look like much on the outside, but
there is power in all of them.

I watched them turn their scaled heads to stare at
Ulrike,
Karsten
, Kara,
Arboris
,
and the smith. There was a pause.
I think
Yusef
will choose Kara, but we will have to wait and let him act.

Suddenly the dragon roared, spat fire and leaped
into the air. It soared high up and then flew down, circling around.

Kara had walked out onto the rocky plateau, away
from the others.

He likes to be very flashy, that one.

Yusef
landed still
spinning around Kara, and then his body lay silent, encircling her. She waited
until his head was right in front of her face, then reached out her hand, and
touched his neck. The dragon roared, and then was silent, waiting. Kara mounted
its back.

Then
Arboris
was
stepping forward. If there was anyone in the group who was not dwarfed by the
dragons it was he. Standing a whole two feet taller than the rest of us, he
waited for the dragon who was calling him to act. He did not have long to wait.
A massive black dragon, almost as long as
Yusef
but
twice as wide leaped into the air. She spat fire in a circle around
Arboris
, who stood silently, watching and waiting. Then she
landed right in front of him, with a blast of wind that would of knocked me
right over.
Arboris
barely swayed.

The dark eyes of the dragon twinkled in front of
Arboris
, and he reached up a gigantic hand. He touched the
dragon once on her cheek, ran his hand down her thick muscular neck. Then he
mounted her, just where her neck met her shoulders. She spat fire into the air
and sang a high note, then was silent.

Andromeda is very strong. This man, if he is a
man, must be strong as well. He sure is big for a human.

I know little about him. He has just joined our
party. He has giant and tree blood in him.

And great strength from such a mixture, I would
guess.

Then it was
Karsten’s
turn. I could not imagine what he was thinking, now. To go from baking bread to
being chosen by a dragon, and a wild one at that. But I knew that
Karsten
had become a cook by choice, not by necessity; that
he had been almost as powerful a wizard as Elias when he was younger, and that
he had not lost his gifts, just left them idle. Now would be another story. A
long thin green dragon spun up into the sky and circled around and around
Karsten
, as it went higher and higher in the sky. Finally
it was just a little point in the sky, moving around in a great circle.

Then she was plummeting down, like a green arrow
coming straight down at us, and as the dragon fell closer, it looked like she
was falling right at
Karsten
, in his circle.

Don’t worry, Octavia likes her thrills. But she
won’t hurt him.

He did not flinch.

She landed on top of him.

Or so it seemed to all of us, for I was not the
only one to draw in my breath sharply.

Then
Karsten
was out
from under her, and climbing onto her back, and Octavia gave a great cry that
made the stone shake and hurt my ears.

She can’t breathe fire, but she can break rocks
with her voice.

Ulrike stepped forward then.

Even seated atop a dragon, with dragons all around
me, I still could not keep my eyes off her. Although my blood told me that part
of the enchantment had come from our shared passage through the Mother Tree,
there was something more to it than that, something tremendous that made me
want to go out there and battle any dragon who would want her.

I wanted her to be mine, to be mine alone. I
wanted to hold her, to feel her green warmth against my chest. She was
beautiful, but so was Kara. There was something more there, that I still could
not figure out.

You are letting your emotions get the better of
you, rider. You would do best to control them, lest they cause you and your
friends harm. You humans may find us dragons cold and calculating, but you have
a lot to learn from us.

I nodded, and tried to watch Ulrike without
feeling.

What I saw made me gasp. She had put her arms up
over her head, and her hair was out in all directions. Her feet were off the
ground. There was a call from far off on the mountain.

Adalbjorn
. I
did not think he would come. He is the biggest and most ancient of all of us.
He sleeps in the mountain, but perhaps we have awakened him.

The cry echoed out again against the stone floor
underneath us, against the stone mountain behind us. And the stone rumbled and
shook, and pieces of stone fell down among us. And from Ulrike’s upturned hands
came two beams of green light, which reached up into the heavens. And still she
rose up into the air.

He is not what I would call a happy dragon, but
I think everything will be all right.

I did not find that very reassuring. Far above us,
there was what looked like a long black string. The cry rang forth again, and
the rock shook. How could something so far away make a noise so loud and
powerful? I was almost afraid to find out. But that feeling filled me with
shame. Here I was mounted on top of a dragon, afraid of a dragon who was coming
for Ulrike?

You would do well do fear him; he is the
biggest of us all, and sworn to protect this world, and the stone mountain. His
mind is closed to me, and open only to the human, there, floating in the air.

Suddenly I asked myself what I had got us all
into. What if something happened to Ulrike, and it was all my fault?

There was another cry, and I pressed my hands to
my ears. The dragon up in the air looked like a great snake, incredibly long,
looping around and around as it flew. It must have had four sets of wings. It
twisted around in the air now, making great looping arcs, its great maw
spouting red fire, forming runes of magical flame in the air that burned red in
my third eye.

There was something familiar about these runes. I
could not place them… Then I looked around, and saw Elias staring up into the
sky atop his dragon’s back. That was it. They were the runes of the portal; the
runes that Elias had traced on the stone wall, just minutes ago.

I looked up again.

Ulrike was floating horizontally, so far up now
that she seemed just like a little line. And then it happened. The dragon
stopped its rune; the connection snapped, and Ulrike was falling through the
air.

Instinctively I squeezed my legs to my dragon, to
rise up and catch her.

Wait.

What do you mean, wait? She’s going to smash
into the rock!

But even as I thought this, I saw I was mistaken.
She was holding herself out now, as she fell, and behind her swooped the
dragon, his wings clipped in, sleek, his body straight like a fanged arrow shot
from a gigantic bow. And then he was beneath her, and she dropped onto his
back.

They were but fifty paces from the ground when his
wings opened.

There was a great burst of wind that knocked the
new riders against their dragons, and Cullen was blasted back against the
stone.

Adalbjorn
swung up and
into the air again, Ulrike high on his neck, and then he swooped down slowly
this time, in three magnificent circles, and landed some thirty paces away from
the others, with a thud that made the ground quake.

He has accepted her. The last time
Adalbjorn
bore a rider was before I was hatched; perhaps a
thousand of your years ago. He has been a very lonely dragon; this will be good
for him, I think.

All at once it had begun to snow. The flakes fell
large and wet, and I felt them on my face.

I could feel Ulrike looking at me. What was she
thinking? I would do anything to find out. I sent out my mind towards her, and
… hit a wall. A great tremendous wall, of foreign intelligence.

Adalbjorn
is
not letting any thoughts in, at the moment. After the ceremony is over, maybe
you can talk to her.

The smith was the only one left.

Cullen put down his portable forge and answered
the last call. A long red wild dragon moved forward to meet him. They met in
the center of the field.

He is a sword-maker, that one.

He
reforged
the sword
I carry at my side.

We dragons once wore armor. Perhaps he will be
able to help us. Most of the art of
dragonsmithery
has been lost.
Sednar
is a fire breather whose
grandsire was a
firebreather
and a
dragonsmith
. She wants to carry on the lost traditions.

I know nothing of
smithery
,
but without him and the song that sings in my blood, the sword I carry would
not have been
reforged
.

Sednar
roared then, and
the smith climbed on her back. She spat fire, and jumped into the air, circle
around once, and landed again. I could see the smith holding on for dear life.