I sat up. “Can we do that?”
“Get dressed. Bring all our things while I go get the horses ready.”
By the time I made it to the stable, arms full, the unfamiliar bow slung on my back and sword banging at my hip, she was leading the horses into the little staging area in front of the door. She took the lead. The moon provided enough light for us to see, but the haze of fog spread the light into a soft glow that removed details. On the empty road, we rode beside each other.
“Middle of the night?” I asked.
“Which means we can get to the road to Old Mercia from the port, and to the cave before daylight. Most sane people wouldn’t dare attempt those steps without sunlight.”
Although it was dark, I turned to see if she was joking. She was not. “Kendra, why would a powerful mage transport himself in the middle of the night unless he has some way to see?”
We rode in silence until she said, “Do you always have to be right? It is so irritating. Elizabeth and I have often discussed that about you, and you really must do something about it. Being right isn’t the problem, it’s the way to express yourself.”
“Has the mage taken over your mind and turned it to mush?”
“We’ll discuss my mind later. Right now, we need to ride.”
“Is he moving or staying up there?”
“Of course, he’s up there. No, he is not moving, or if so, he's doing it very slowly.” She clucked her tongue at her horse to hurry, either to reach the mage quicker or to distance herself from my questions.
Very slowly. Those were her words. As if he was descending uneven stone stairs in the middle of the night. I’d move slowly, too, if I climbed down those stairs in the dark. However, Kendra putting distance between us was not going to work in keeping me quiet. Alexis easily kept up, even so, my next question needed to be shouted because of the remaining distance. “Have you considered he may be up there drawing you to him? If you can sense the mage in your mind, can he do the same with you?”
She rode on without answering or turning to look at me. Realizing the futility of asking more, I fell behind and allowed her to ride alone with her thoughts. She would come around, but not until she figured things out for herself. My task was to point her in the right direction—or to ask endless questions without annoying her, which seemed impossible.
Those are the keys to figuring out the answers to anything with her, or with Elizabeth. I use one question after another until a pattern emerges. The appearance of a mage where there had not been one before posed several questions. The timing more so. To me, it was as if the mage was drawing Kendra near to it, by appearing in the middle of the night atop a mountain where the dragon had been caged and where she had been at the beginning of the day.
She abruptly slowed and turned to me. “You’re right. He wants me to come to him. Not the other way around.”
Only a man who was more of a fool than I would admit he had been thinking the same thing. Instead, we faced each other, our future in doubt. The fog chilled me, but not as much as the things swirling around in my mind like twigs and branches trapped in the waters at the base of a waterfall. Eventually, they would break free of the current, to travel downriver again. The question for them was simply, when. For us, we had not only that to ask ourselves, but why.
The mage had appeared in the one location sure to draw Kendra’s interest. He would expect her to sweep in ready for battle, sword raised. However, the mage, or perhaps others who had dispatched this one, knew that. They wanted her to do precisely what she was doing.
They had killed one of their own hours earlier and then revealed the presence of a single mage where they had kept the dragon prisoner. Now that her mind had taken over her emotions, she became dangerous. She dismounted and walked her horse to the side of the road. “I want to think about this before we ride much farther. Get the blankets, please.”
Short, terse sentences and a flat tone assured me she was already lost in thought and I should do us both a favor and be quiet. I hobbled the horses and unrolled a pair of blankets. She sat, unseeing, on a large boulder. She draped the blanket over her head for a hood against the light rain and hung the rest down over her inactive and slumped shoulders.
My place was to remain sitting beside her, quietly waiting. Her eyes were closed, but she was not asleep. She was deep in thought and remained so until the few stars in the eastern sky started to fade with the coming of daylight.
Kendra slowly stood and turned to face Andover expectantly. Her expression grew intent as her eyes opened. As the sky brightened, a vague form appeared from the mists and approached. It was the last dragon.
The beast flew lower to the road as it came nearer, passed directly over us with a hiss of recognition, and it flew steadily with a regular beat of leather wings. To me, the beast was checking on my sister before flying onward. It rose higher until it disappeared above the fog, following the road to the Port of Mercia. I couldn’t comprehend the feeling of freedom it must feel after four hundred years of confinement.
Following the road, it would have to make a turn to its right soon and cross the barren landscape across the river to near the destroyed city. If it did that, it would again reach the collapsed cave where it had been held prisoner—and where a mage now waited.
Kendra was controlling it! She was directing the dragon to go where we didn’t dare.
The dragon would cover the distance in a fraction of the time we could. Not only did it travel faster, but the distance it traveled was less because it flew a direct route. My mind tracked its progress on a mental map, as an estimate, of course, but probably accurate enough. Kendra’s shoulders stiffened, and that told me the dragon had neared the Waystone, and she sensed both the dragon and mage drawing together.
“He’s gone,” she said as she backed a few steps as if the mage might appear in front of her. Her face twisted into one of hate.
“The mage?” I asked.
“Who else?”
I ignored the bite in her response. The sun chose that moment to lift above the horizon. We stood as immobile as the boulders under us. There seemed nowhere to go and nothing to say.
Kendra finally turned to me. “It’s hard to explain, but in my mind, there was a bright dot that was the mage. Unlike others, like those in the port we killed, or the ones who sailed away, this one was brighter, if that makes sense, more powerful. Worse, it morphed from that spot of brightness into the outline of Stata, the spirit that tried to kill us. It was the same mage, coming for us again.”
“Luring you into a trap,” I said.
I saw the dragon approach the mountaintop, and she screamed when she saw him. She knew him—and hates him as much as we do. She folded her wings to her sides as she attacked. The mage saw her and winked out of existence.”
“That mage must really want to get even with you for turning his dragon loose.”
“Us, damn it all. He wants more than just me. He wants you, too.”
“Why? You are the Dragon Queen. I’m only a poor man's mage with a few small magic powers.”
She smiled for the first time since last night. “No, the Dragon Tamer is less pretentious, and from now on I’ll use that name. I am not a queen in any sense, and don’t wish to be known that way or stir up the royalty in Crestfallen. It’ll be like a trigger for them. We need to think about it and do our research before blindly charging into a fight with our good king. Changing a silly title is little enough to do.”
“There are a few things I’d like to say while you’re willing to have a civil conversation this morning. While you can sense mages at a distance, have you considered that perhaps they cannot sense you in the same way? If they could, those we killed in Andover would have recognized you and fled when we arrived, or they would have been prepared and set a trap. They didn’t even know you were near when you were twenty steps from them the first time we were in Andover.”