The changes to her had come so fast, so unexpectedly, we hadn’t had time to think about them, let alone talk about them intelligently. We were both feeling our way. I said more intensely, “Kendra?”
She turned to me, obviously distracted.
“What’s happening?”
She shook her head in dismissal and her eyes glazed over again. She stumbled and fell to her knees.
“What is it?” I demanded. The dragon fell heavily to its side, mimicking my sister’s distress.
She sobbed, “Mocking. Voices are laughing and sneering, full of contempt.”
“What are they saying?”
“Not words. Feelings.” She closed her eyes and her face twisted as if in pain. She managed to raise herself to her feet with my arm for support. Her fingers curled into fists. She shouted, “No!”
The dragon also stumbled to its feet, threw its head back and roared as if in extreme pain and in support of my sister.
Kendra backed away from me, ignoring the rubble underfoot as she went closer to the dragon that stood, wild-eyed and panting as if it had just climbed all the stairs to our location. Kendra walked right up under its chin and reached her arm high. The dragon lowered her head until her chin touched Kendra’s hand, then the dragon whimpered like a lost puppy as tears flowed down Kendra’s cheeks.
It was clear they had shared a mental experience that didn’t include me, so I stepped aside and waited. The dragon backed away, careful not to step on Kendra, then it moved to the edge of the ledge and gracefully spread her wings. Instead of powering off as she had earlier, she simply stepped forward and allowed the air to fill her wings as she fell into the air. When she took her first powerful stroke, it was almost lazy in appearance, but already she looked smaller as she rapidly pulled away.
I peered all around the sky for any Wyverns to battle and found none. “What are the two of you so upset about?”
“The egg.” She seemed to have shrunk, as did her brief response. Her head hung low, her eyes so angry they almost glowed. “It’s gone.”
My puzzlement must have shown in my confused expression. She jabbed a finger at the stone tub, or incubator, but stood her ground as if afraid to look inside. My listless feet carried me there. Inside was nothing but bare rock, rounded in shape at the bottom to fit the shape of the egg that had once occupied it. Bewildered, I asked, “How?”
Kendra said, “They took it while we fought the Wyverns. More than one of the mages worked together to accomplish it, but all involved were mages, and they distracted us. They knew we killed three of them in the last two days, and the one in Andover we left and allowed to return to his home refuses to respond to them. He’s keeping his word to us in that, and still in the city, but they are angry with him, and us.”
“How can you know all that?
“The dragon shared it.”
There had to be more to her answer, but what she’d said confused me. “They took the egg? While we were here fighting? And we didn’t see anything?”
She started mumbling again, with me only catching a word here and there. Finally, she said as she contradicted herself, “Dragons don’t talk.”
I interrupted her morose and rambling talk with what concerned me more. “What do you mean, the mages took it? They appeared here on this mountaintop and carried it off in their arms?” One question seemed to lead to another. She hadn’t had time to answer any of them.
She said, “We were right about Waystones. They are not signposts, but routes and ways to travel from one Waystone to another. The mages came here and took the egg and to upset the dragon. They told it they will hatch it when they have a new stronghold built we cannot breach. It was taken via the Waystones to a secret place to hide it from us. Then, they will chain it and raise the new hatchling and use its essence to return here and defeat the king of Dire. One of them thanked us because this dragon is old, and her essence has weakened. Now they have a new start.”
“They’re taunting us. Trying to anger us so we’ll make mistakes.” A new thought rushed to mind. “Can people who are not mages travel on, or in Waystones? Not just pass conversations over distances?”
She finally shook off the mental cobwebs and said, “I suppose so. I don’t know how, or anybody that knows the method to do it. It is old magic, I think. We’ve lost so much knowledge over the generations. With the egg gone and as I think more about it, there is the story that confirms at least one mage has traveled that way recently. What else can we conclude?”
“What story? I don’t know of it.”
“It is a rumor. Was a rumor, years ago. A mage knew of a battle and the outcome long before ships from across the sea brought word of it.”
Her answers gave me some relief. I’d actually heard a similar story but considered it a child’s tale. Climbing into the tub near my feet and traveling anywhere didn’t appeal in the least, even if that was the correct method to use. Perhaps standing close was good enough. I backed off a few steps just in case. “What now?”
“We’ve found out more than we hoped at this place, although there is much we don’t understand, and there are new puzzles. We should go feed and water our horses and ride to meet Princess Elizabeth and tell her all we’ve found. Then, we will decide our future.”
We started our descent on the stairs, and almost immediately, I tripped and nearly fell face first. The uneven steps again made walking without examining each step impossible. A single mistake and we’d tumble headlong down the stone steps and kill ourselves. There was no railing. In fear, I turned backward and crabbed down, using my hands as well as my feet. While thinking of how silly I looked, Kendra stumbled and fell into me. If she had been there without me, or descending below me on the stairs, she would still be tumbling. Without a word, she turned and copied my awkward descent.
We watched the stairs below us through our legs as we crawled down, pausing only at the landings. We hardly talked, and if we did, there is no memory of the conversations. That does not mean my mind was idle. No, the things we’d discovered, like a heavy meal, required time to digest.
Our hands became raw from the stone steps. At the bottom, our horses waited. Kendra had said we were going back to the inn where the redheaded girl waited for me, but we were almost within sight of Andover, and the road that would take us home. Only a missing bridge over a raging river prevented us from traveling a much longer route. On that road somewhere, we could expect to find Princess Elizabeth traveling to meet us, and with her would be an army ready to defeat those we’d already killed or caused to flee the kingdom. There was nobody left to fight in Dire.
Kendra pointed out the obvious, “The bridge is out, so we can’t cross the river here.”
Her dragon had knocked the bridge down, and I wanted to remind her of that as any brother might with his sister but held my tongue. For various reasons, the destruction of the bridge caused me no end of anger. Now, we would have to ride all the way back to the City Gate of the Port of Mercia and retrace our progress on the other side of the river until we reached the road we could now almost see in the distance.
On impulse, I said, “I don’t like Andover, you know.”
“Nothing good has ever happened to us there,” she agreed. “However, the mage we ordered to wait there for ten full days is still waiting. He is a solid blip in my mind. There is a question we need to ask him.”
“Which is?”
“Why is everyone going to Kondor?”
“Did you see a blip in your mind when a mage came to steal the egg?”
“No, but I was distracted by fighting the Wyverns, as the mage probably intended. It may have been there for a short time, but I didn’t notice in the heat of battle.”