The boy stayed silent, watching Mirai return across the precipice. When she reached them, she knelt down and embraced him and kissed him on the cheek. “Let’s be friends again, Railing. Let’s not argue about things that don’t matter.”
He couldn’t help himself. He nodded and smiled gratefully. “I want that, too. I’m sorry about before.”
She leaned in again and this time kissed him on the mouth. “It’s forgotten. You told me how you felt. I understand. I worry about you, too.”
He wasn’t sure she did understand, but he didn’t want to say so. It was enough that they were talking again and not angry at each other. He knew he was being foolish; all this nonsense about Austrum would pass. Once they were out of this place and on their way home, things would go back to the way they had been.
Seersha had turned and was heading toward them when she abruptly stopped and looked back. A soft white glow was emanating from somewhere below the precipice. Seersha moved back over to the edge and then quickly beckoned to the others. Railing, in spite of his exhaustion and the damage to his leg, levered himself to his feet with Mirai’s help and hobbled over to where the Druid knelt. When he peered over he saw a bright splash of light spilling out of a cleft in the rocks.
“Shades!” Mirai Leah hissed.
A moment later Crace Coram passed through the light and stood looking up at them.
12
With the new day brightening in a haze of gray mist and dull light and the remnants of the Druid expedition gathered about him, Crace Coram told his story. He had climbed up to the ledge to join the little company, the light through which he had passed having disappeared the moment he emerged from it. Now they were arrayed in a tight circle—Railing, Mirai, Seersha, Skint, and Farshaun Req—listening intently to the Dwarf Chieftain.
Oriantha was still inside the place in which they had all been trapped, he began, but he would get to that in a minute.
When the dragon lifted off in the midst of its battle with the members of the expedition, the Dwarf Chieftain, still riding its back and trying to bring it down, was caught by surprise. He tried to jump clear, but his clothing was tangled in the dragon’s spikes, and by the time he had torn himself free the dragon was already too high up. All he could do at that point was to hang on and try not to fall off.
It helped that he was immensely strong, but even so it took everything he had to keep his balance as the dragon’s wings rose and fell and its long body undulated like a snake’s. The wind whipped at the Dwarf, threatening to tear him loose, and he flattened himself against the scaly body to reduce its force.
At some point during his flight, he became aware of someone else clinging to the dragon, a flash of movement or color drawing his attention. When he glanced back down the dragon’s body, he found a creature he didn’t recognize plastered against its hindquarters, a thing that looked half human, half wolf. Its face lifted to find his, and for just an instant he saw the girl Oriantha looking back at him. Then the green eyes narrowed and the creature’s jaws drew back in a snarl, and what he might have thought was human disappeared.
But the creature did not try to advance on him, and so the Dwarf let it be and used his energy to fight back against the wearing demands of keeping his seat. He did his best to try to get a fix on his position during his flight, sighting various landmarks that he thought he might be able to use to find his way back once he got down off the dragon—something he never doubted would happen eventually. There were distinctive mountain peaks and a huge lake and a large stretch of rugged wilderness, and he could determine where he needed to go by noting where these lay.
But heavy clouds stretched from horizon to horizon, hiding the sun and making it impossible to determine the direction in which he was moving. When the dragon underwent an unexpected shift in its flight pattern, his landmarks disappeared into a range of mountains that eventually obscured everything he had memorized and left him totally turned about and unable to determine how he had gotten to where he was.
The dragon flew on until finally it reached a forested lake and made an abrupt downward plunge. Crace Coram barely had time to register what was happening before the dragon was diving into the lake waters and he was forced to fling himself clear. He landed with an enormous splash, struggled back to the surface gasping for air, and immediately began swimming toward a spit of land several hundred yards away. Burdened by his mace, which was shoved into his belt, and by his heavy clothing, he nevertheless completed the journey in record time, looking back only once when he heard the dragon surface with a thrashing that sounded like a thousand waterbirds taking flight.
But the creature began moving in another direction, and once the Dwarf Chieftain was certain it was not coming back, he continued his swim until his feet were again on solid ground. He collapsed momentarily but quickly hauled himself upright and off the exposed shoreline until he was hidden in the trees. Out on the lake, the dragon had reached a small island and was disappearing into a rocky stretch at its center—a place in which the Dwarf assumed it might have its nest.
He lay back, his heart pounding, exhausted by what had happened, safe for the moment but wondering how he was going to find his way back to the others.
Then a shadow fell over him, and he jerked upright to find Oriantha standing next to him, her young face bruised and her clothing ripped almost to shreds. She looked pale and disoriented, and without saying anything she dropped down next to him and looked back out across the waters of the lake to the island where the dragon had gone.
“Why did you do it?” he asked her after a minute.
She looked at him with her strange eyes. “What?”
“Grab hold of the dragon and let it carry you off as it did me. That was foolish.”
“I didn’t think about it. I just did it.”
“So that was you I saw back there hanging on to its hindquarters, wasn’t it?”
She nodded. “My other self. I had to stay that way in order to keep my grip. I am much stronger that way.” She paused. “You know what I am, don’t you?”
“A shape-shifter. I’ve seen one or two. But you’re no full-blood. You’re a Halfling.”
“Human mother, shape-shifter father. Hard to tell the difference between them, though, sometimes.”
“But Pleysia must have known the truth when she brought you along. Why did she keep it secret from the rest of us? Why did you?”
Oriantha hesitated. “I don’t suppose it will hurt to tell you at this point, since the Ard Rhys already knows. Pleysia is my mother—a full-blown witch who mated with a creature of magic and produced me. All this before she came to live with the Druids. But she never told anyone. She wanted me to follow in her footsteps. She wanted to bring me to Paranor when I was older and offer my skills to the order in exchange for being admitted as a member. Then she found out she was dying. She suffers from a rare disorder that is eating her body from the inside. There is no cure. So she brought me along on this expedition, thinking that if I distinguished myself I might gain admittance after she was gone. That the Ard Rhys would have to take me in.”
The Dwarf nodded. “She didn’t think she was coming back from this, did she?”
“She was certain she wasn’t. But she made me promise to say nothing until we were far enough out that the Ard Rhys couldn’t make me return. I think a few of the others saw what I was during the attacks in the Fangs, though. Those boys saw me, I know.”
Coram nodded. “The Ohmsfords, Redden and Railing. Those two don’t miss much, even if they’re still a bit on the new side of knowing. But they didn’t say anything to the Ard Rhys?”
She shook her head. “I don’t think so.”