“Hycoraz!”
“Zudal!!”
As suddenly as they had threatened us, the Dragon Riders had abandoned their guard duties to run to their dragons, with the Riders of the Stocky Green that held Haval down drawing their long swords and pointing them at their own commander.
“Ymmen?” I croaked, as Abioye was the first to reach me, kneeling in the grass at my side and reaching to grasp my hand as his brow frowned in worry.
“I’m fine, I’m fine – I think…” I groaned, as I felt in my heart and saw with my eyes my own great black dragon approach, lowering his snout that still bore the faint scars of some ancient and lost battle across it.
“You did good, Little Sister.” Ymmen snuffed his hot breath over me, with that comforting and familiar scent of soot, mixed with something like frankincense.
“What are they doing?” I whispered, as the mind-voices of the other Torvald dragons had faded now and were lost to me. I could only distantly feel them somewhere out there on the borders of my mind, like candlelight seen through the finer-woven gauzes of my people.
“The other dragons understand now.” Ymmen snuffed once again over me, and his hot breath was like a blessing. “Or at least – these ones do! They felt the power of the Stone Crown, and they saw how it sought to control you – and how you managed to fight it.”
“But what if I cannot hold it off for long?” I thought, leaning up to place one hand against Ymmen’s warm snout. As soon as the flesh of my hand made contact, our bond grew stronger, like it was suddenly surrounding me and holding me close – unmistakable, undeserved by me, and yet given all the same.
I felt a strange buzzing sensation in the shared mind of me and Ymmen, and I realized that the other dragons – the ones that had previously been so stand-offish and whom Ymmen had thought of as arrogant were talking to him.
“These dragons have seen your strength, and they believe, as I do, that you have the spirit to hold off the Stone Crown. They know it’s evil, and they see how your fire remains pure still – even underneath all the might that the Stone Crown has,” Ymmen explained.
“Uh… friends?” I heard a human cough, and blinked away the tears of pain to see that one of the Dragon Riders had stepped forward towards our group. My god-Uncle Tamin flinched, as Montfre gave a low murmur of uncertainty, while Abioye growled defensively.
“Friends,” the man said again, in a stronger tone, “We are sorry for how we treated you.” It was the same Dragon Rider who had been holding his short bow hard against Abioye’s chest. “Our dragons have shared with us their hearts, and we can see for ourselves the truth of what they know. They trust you,” the man said, his eyes glimmering with tears of shame and regret. “And so do we.” The man stepped forward towards Abioye, took off one fine brown glove (he had dropped his bow in his haste to scramble for his Sinuous Blue dragon) and offered his hand. Abioye looked at the hand, looked at the man, and then did the same, taking off his tattered glove and clasping the man’s hand in a firm shake.
“Mistakes have been made,” Abioye said formally, “but they are speedily forgotten.” And that was that. Two grins spread across the two men’s face as they shook their hands again, more warmly this time, before breaking apart.
“My partner and I will take the commander back to the Palace on our Blue – but the rest of our company would be honored to fly with you to seek the undoing of the Stone Crown,” the man said with a nod. “Our commander has become sadly misguided,” the guard added. “He believes that the only way to secure the Middle Kingdom is with the Stone Crown, and he has never had the wisdom of a companion dragon to show him the errors of his ways.”
Abioye nodded once, firmly. He would make a great leader, a part of me thought, as he spoke. “It would be an honor to fly with you also, but I fear that we are all tired – perhaps it would be best to camp and eat, and prepare as best we can for what we might face tomorrow…”
“No!” I had struggled myself into a crouch, before leaning against Ymmen’s snout as I now stood up. “We have to keep on pushing, if we can,” I said, feeling the flutter of worry in my chest. I had managed to control the Crown this time – but it had been very, very close indeed.
“We need to end this,” I said, pointing at the Stone Crown on my head. “This Crown is dividing everything that we are trying to unite – the rest of the wild and Torvald dragons do not trust me or our cause so long as the Crown exists. And the Middle Kingdom will tear itself apart trying to keep the Crown.”
“And if Inyene ever gets her hands on it…” Montfre added darkly, sending a shiver of unease through our fragile group. I looked at the young mage to find his eyes full of foreboding, and I nodded, as one by one, all the other humans of our new party did too.
It was decided. While Haval was flown back to the Palace dungeons, we would fly for the Circle of Grom, tonight.
Chapter 18
The Circle of Grom, & the First Brood
We flew through the cold jaws of the night, not stopping as the stars wheeled overhead, and the ground beneath us was black. I did not know how far we flew, or how long it would be until morning, but it seemed as though the air had grown colder and colder, and that Ymmen was slowly leading us higher and higher into the freezing air that ran above the world.
“This is what it has to be, Little Sister,” Ymmen consoled, as I clutched onto his warm neck, huddled in the borrowed cloak of one of the Dragon Riders as behind me, Tamin, Abioye and Montfre did the same. Just when I thought that I couldn’t bear to open my eyes, it was so cold – a pulse of heat surged from the dragon beneath me, and the image of that great, ancient and strong bonfire of his dragon heart roared in my mind. I heard a sigh of relief from Tamin, so close to my back, as Ymmen shared some of the warmth of his very life-force with us.
And then, ahead of us, the dark shadowy shapes of the Dragon Spine Mountains started to lighten, as the gray lights of predawn caught up with us from the eastern horizon at our backs. Instantly, I saw the reason for such freezing cold – we were surrounded by the Dragon Spine Mountains, and our flight was only sure to take us even deeper between passes and around cliffs that were so great that they appeared larger than the tallest clouds that I had ever seen over the Plains.
Everything was picked out in the lightening shades of snow, and, as the first rays of the dawn broke free from the distant eastern Masaka Mountains (and the Plains, behind even them) this fierce world around us came to light with sparkling and cruel beauty.
There were snow fields between the arms of the mountains that appeared untouched and untrammeled by any living thing – until – Look! The tiny shape of some small and dark mountain animal – perhaps a hare or a hardy goat, I could not tell from this high.
We flew past entire waterfalls that could have filled the entire confines of the Dragon Academy, their columns of frozen-water still fantastically beautiful and sculpted into globular, organic rippling shapes by the wind. We were deep inside the Dragon Spine Mountains, and, as the rays of dawn grew brighter still, I saw that this was not such a monochrome place. There were the ephemeral hues of blue, pink, purple, and even greens to the ice that clutched every rocky surface. There were even the lightest flushes of deep brown and a sort of hardy, muddy green from outposts of heather.