“Ymmen? Why did you disappear from me?” I asked hurriedly, keeping my hand on the black dragon’s snout for fear of losing him once again.
“I didn’t disappear from you, Little Sister – I couldn’t reach you. You told us to shut up and to stop talking to you, and we had to obey,” Ymmen said, but I wasn’t understanding what he was saying. Our bond had never been like this – so why was it different now?
“I never—” I started to say, just before I realized what he was talking about. The Stone Crown. The old legends were that the long-dead High Queen Delia of the Three Kingdoms had fashioned and used this very crown in order to connect with every dragon in existence.
But not just to connect, was it? I thought in horror. To control.
“Yes. You are right, Little Sister. Now, at last, you understand what it is we fear,” Ymmen said seriously, breathing his hot and scented breath all around me. “I will be your companion until the day that one or both of us take our final journey – but I would rather not be commanded to be your friend, and neither would any of the others,” Ymmen said, which was perhaps the most eloquent and developed line of thinking that I had heard from him, as usually he trusted in his mixture of sensations and dragon-impressions to convey precisely what it was that he felt.
But he kept on saying we, and us, I suddenly thought. As if he wasn’t just talking for himself, or just me and him – but as if there were others that he was speaking for—
“There are. And they are coming here, now.” Ymmen lifted his snout from my touch, to snuff deep at the air and turn to look back towards the ridge where Tiana was still on watch. “And they are very, very angry indeed.”
Chapter 5
Dragon Raiders
We could all hear them long before they showed themselves over the horizon, arcing towards us like angry comets in the slowly gathering twilight.
Dragons. Real, fire-breathing and wild dragons.
I had never seen so many at once – there were more even than had come to our aid in the battle against the mechanical dragons. Although they might not be the dreadful mechanical dragons, the sight of them didn’t fill me with the confidence and joy that seeing Ymmen did, every time that I could.
That buzzing noise again, I recognized. It was growing louder again in my ears, and it seemed to be coming from the dragons. Maybe I was hearing the angry emotions of their thoughts?
“What do they want?” I asked Ymmen, who was quivering with agitation, and smoke was starting to spill from his nostrils.
“They are angry at the Stone Crown,” Ymmen said, his voice tight. I could feel that he was torn with indecision what to do – to fight his kin, or to seize me in his talons and fly away.
“We cannot leave the others here!” I said desperately, as the dragons started to screech and shout their anger as they flew towards us. They were clearer now, against the lowering light of the sun. I could see that there were long and winding blue dragons – longer than many of the others with thinner forms. And then there were shorter, and bulkier green dragons – still smaller than Ymmen was, but their strength was written plainly in their stocky limbs. And yet, still more – much smaller orange dragons that appeared like falcons against their larger brethren – and a wiry red dragon – almost as large as Ymmen himself was, who appeared to fly at the center of the flight.
“They’re not from Torvald,” Montfre breathed behind me, as he raised the staff that I had fashioned for him myself, and to which he had added strange runes and geometric designs. I felt the teeth-aching wash of his magic as the end of the staff started to emit a faint white light.
“Don’t attack them!” I said urgently, fearing the worst.
“I wasn’t hoping to, but…” Montfre confided in me, as I saw him lower his chin and raise his staff a little higher, as the illumination grew brighter. “I can’t stand by if they—”
“Skrargh!” A mighty roar erupted from the central wiry red, as I watched it force itself ahead of the others just a little, and then fly upwards, before flaring out its wings in a wide snap as it stretched. For the briefest of seconds, its actions made it look as though she hovered – somehow I knew instinctively that the red dragon was a she – and as if she was displaying her neck and the softer, lighter cream of her under scales to us.
“Rargh!” Ymmen growled and shivered, and I could sense the intense anger flowing through him.
“What is it? What does she want?” I asked once again, wishing that I had bothered to find out more about the ways of dragons from my bond partner.
“A challenge. An insult. That is what we do when we show that we are unafraid, and strong,” Ymmen said, and I could sense the galvanic forces inside of him suddenly give way. “There is only one way to meet such a challenge,” the black said, just as he bunched his legs and leapt into the air, his bellows deafening and his scales making a sighing sound as he charged upwards to meet the red.
“Ymmen—” I gasped, wishing that I was up there with him, and at the same time managing to stop myself in the last moment before I shouted out ‘no!’. If I did that – would that come as a plea from me – or a command from the Stone Crown?
I felt almost helpless as I watched the confrontation. Ymmen had told me in plain terms how he felt about my unthinking commands – and I couldn’t dare let myself do that to him again…
My mighty dragon-friend flew upwards in front of where the red and her cohort were flying and performed the same display that the red had. But this time, when the black snapped his wings, the sound was like thunder across the Plains.
And then, with a roar, the smaller orange drakes were swooping out around and to either side of Ymmen, screeching all the time, but none of them daring to get close enough to actually engage with the black’s claws or tails.
“Hold!” I shouted to the others, as I gritted my teeth and tried to predict how this confrontation would go. It’s like wolf packs when they meet out in the deep Plains, I told myself. I hoped.
But there were at least some similarities: as Ymmen and the competing dragons flared and swirled around each other, I could see that no dragon was actually daring to strike – but they were flying as fast as they dared in order to try and upset, rattle, or provoke the gigantic Ymmen.
Not that he was so easily scared, I thought. Ymmen flew and turned through their number just as they were turning around him. He sent their forms scattering as he flew towards one group of winding blue dragons or a gang of the heavy-set green dragons… It’s a test of bravery? I tried to fathom – fearing that on Ymmen’s part it might become a test of his pride, or his patience.
“Ymmen won’t back down,” I said in fear, as beside me I heard a grunt of exasperation from Montfre. He was muttering under his breath, and I could feel the ache in my bones sharply increase as he whispered arcane words. I didn’t know what he was about to do, and was opening my mouth to at least beg him to stop in case it angered the other dragons – but then the mage’s spell was complete.
The light of Montfre’s staff suddenly brightened, growing brighter and brighter until the light suddenly winked out. “Montfre? What did you do?” I asked, to see the shadowed, evening face of the mage nod upwards towards the dragons above us.