Hex was almost at the level of the tree tops and only a few hundred yards behind the long-wyrm. He beat his wing to accelerate. The sound caught the ears of one of the humans-the young man sitting two saddles back from Bitterwood. The man turned, revealing a face covered with wispy facial hair. His eyes bulged somewhat comically as they fixed on Hex's approaching form.
It was much less comical when the man leapt up to stand on his saddle and produced a sky-wall bow, placing an arrow against the string with lightning reflexes. Hex was too close to climb out of the bow's range, but not close enough to charge the man and reach him before he fired. At this distance, the man would have to be a horrible marksman not to place an arrow somewhere within Hex's forty foot wingspan. He braced himself for the impact.
Before the man could release his arrow, however, Zeeky jumped up in her own saddle and shouted, "Stop! He's a friend!"
The long-wyrm undulated to a graceful halt. The bowman leapt from his saddle to the ground, arrow still against the string, wary as Hex swung his legs forward to land. Hex hit the gravel of the riverbank with a lopsided stance. He flapped his wings to keep his torso from smashing into the rocks. His huge wings snapped the branches of the bushes lining the banks as he skidded to a halt. It wasn't graceful, but in his present condition anything that brought him to the ground in one piece was a good landing.
"Thank you, Zeeky," said Hex. His tongue felt swollen and stiff. "I'm happy you consider me a friend."
Bitterwood carefully dismounted, cradling Jeremiah in his arms. The boy's pale face glistened with sweat. Hex instantly recognized the scent of yellow-mouth.
Bitterwood said, "This boy is dying. We need Jandra's genie now. Go to the Free City and bring it to us."
"I… how did you know it was at the Free City?"
"You sun-dragons never really accept that people are as smart as you. You practically told me where it was buried, thinking I wouldn't be clever enough to figure it out."
Hex pressed his damaged tongue against the roof of his mouth, sucking to soothe the pain as he thought about how much he should reveal to Bitterwood. "You're right," he said. "I buried the genie in the Free City. It was a foolish choice of hiding places. Have you seen what's happening there?"
The one-legged man who was still seated on the long-wyrm spoke up. "Let me guess. A couple of hundred women are running around in white robes." The man was about Bitterwood's age. His skin was darker than Bitterwood's, and his gray-streaked black hair was pulled into a braid decorated with bright red sun-dragon feather-scales. His face had the balance of a sculpture-a square jaw, and a sharp, angular nose-though the symmetry was broken by three parallel scars that graced his right cheek. "Apparently, they've gathered there to worship some sort of healer. We had one of their disciples visit Dragon Forge."
"There are more than a few hundred," said Hex. "I saw thousands. And not only women. Men, as well, plus earth-dragons and sky-dragons. They're working together to expand the Free City. I'll dig up the genie if it's undisturbed, but if a mob tries to stop me, I'm not certain what I can do. My encounter with the goddess has left me weakened."
"The goddess?" Bitterwood said.
"My suspicion that she survived inside Jandra has proven accurate," said Hex. "Her mind controls Jandra's body. It's lucky I've found you; we think our one hope of capturing Jazz will be if she tries to kidnap Zeeky again, or take revenge on you."
"We?" asked Bitterwood.
"Shay also survived the encounter with the goddess. He's gone to Dragon Forge to find you, in fact."
The dark-haired man frowned. "The goddess will go to Dragon Forge once she learns about the guns. Once she's done there, she'll no doubt come looking for me. She's had a thousand year agenda to keep the world free of guns. I doubt she'll give up now."
Hex furrowed his brow. This human was curiously well-informed about the goddess. "Who are you?"
The man crossed his arms. "You can call me Burke," he said. "I think it's time we found a good hiding place and stopped to compare notes. I'm pretty sure Jandra's genie has already been found. Jandra said it gave her healing powers. Not that long ago, our friend Vance"-he nodded toward the young man with the sky-wall bow-"was blind."
"He's been healed?"
"He ate a seed left behind by a woman who said she was a disciple of a healer in the Free City."
Vance lowered his bow, apparently content that Hex wasn't a threat. He said, "It wasn't only my eyes that got better. All my scars healed up. I used to have a doozy on my left foot from a bad swing chopping wood. It's gone now."
"We don't have hours to sit around and talk," said Bitterwood. "Jeremiah is growing weaker by the minute."
Hex nodded. "We'll talk as we travel. If the denizens of the Free City are offering healing, it looks as if several of you can make use of them."
Burke raised his hand to his cheek and traced the scars there as Bitterwood and Vance climbed back onto the long-wyrm.
The last man on the copper serpent nodded toward Hex. He was older than Burke or Bitterwood; snaggle-toothed, with a wild mane of gray hair and hands knotted with arthritis. "If no one else is going to bother to introduce me, I'll do it myself. Thor Nightingale. Most folks call me Thorny."
"Hexilizan. My friends call me Hex."
Thorny grinned. "What do your enemies call you?"
"I call him Hex, too," said Bitterwood.
"It's probably best if I approach on foot. They'll quickly spot me if I'm airborne." In truth, Hex wasn't certain he had the energy to get airborne. Flying was demanding work. Sun-dragons normally ate voraciously to fuel the muscles that allowed them to lift their massive bodies into the sky. With his damaged tongue thwarting his appetite, he was quickly exhausting the last of his strength. It was probably best that Bitterwood not suspect this.
Hex noticed as Bitterwood settled onto his saddle that the living bow strung with the goddess's hair was intact once more, and Bitterwood's quiver was full. Hex wasn't certain he could successfully fend off an attack if Bitterwood's bloodlust returned. Yet, the hatred that normally burned in Bitterwood's eyes was missing. Instead, all that remained was worry. The aging dragon-hunter wiped the sweat from Jeremiah's brow with the edge of his cloak. The boy murmured softly in his feverish slumber.
"It's going to be all right," Bitterwood whispered.
Shay floated down to a landing in the middle of the main street, near the foundry that housed Burke's loft. His landing stirred up the sooty dust that covered the road. The bacon and egg smoke that had hung thick in the atmosphere was gone, replaced with the stench of raw sewage. He'd noticed while in the sky that the dragons had built a dam on the canal that emptied the city's sewers.
The town was eerily silent, absent the sounds of hammers and foremen shouting. The handful of people left on the streets wore handkerchiefs over their mouths. It was as if most of the town had left and only a few bandits remained behind.
Shay folded his wings and wondered what it would take to turn off the invisibility that had allowed him safe passage into the town without attracting the attention of the sky-wall. Glancing toward the nearest wall, he saw only three bowmen. When he'd left, the walls had been thick with guards. As he pondered the control of his invisibly, he noticed a slight shift in the light. He once more had a shadow.
He bowed his head as he headed into the building that housed Burke's loft. Perhaps no one would recognize him; he'd certainly not been in town long enough to leave much of an impression.
Within the foundry, it was cold and dim, with only the occasional lantern piercing the gloom. The building wasn't completely uninhabited. A handful of workers were gathered at various stations along the work flow, tinkering with machinery. Had the production line encountered some mechanical failure?