Without hesitation, instead of running away, Kendra darted forward and attacked with her knife, as I charged five steps to reach it before the head at the end of the sinewy neck could reach out and snap at her. Kendra’s action carried her nearly under the wyvern where the mouth couldn’t strike at her. Not yet, as it fought to regain its balance after landing. Despite all my training, always teaching me to slice, never stab, I stabbed deeply into the animal, just above where the long tail met the body because that was the only target I could reach from behind. A slice of a cut might not slow it enough, so I drove the blade in deep.
The sword penetrated to half its length, and I used my legs for leverage to force it the rest of the way, up to the hilt. The wyvern threw its head back, as it swung its whip-like tail at me. The tail struck me hip-high and threw me tumbling across the flat area, dangerously close to the edge where there was no stopping my fall. My sword was still stuck into her as she turned to attack.
I glanced over the side of the mountain and found nothing but air until reaching the bottom a thousand steps below. My eyes returned to the enraged animal. It squatted slightly, in preparation to leap. However, as it turned to attack me, it presented the hilt of my sword to my sister. Kendra leaped, pulled my sword free and slashed at the thigh of the Wyvern. She managed a second and a third cut before leaping back out of its reach when it spun on her.
The wyvern now concentrated on advancing to her. Kendra ducked behind a boulder taller than her head, and darted from the other side, my sword swinging again, this time cutting across the soft meat on the dragon’s breast. Kendra kept running as she made that cut, reaching another pile of boulders before diving under one for temporary safety.
The wounded wyvern had enough as it turned away and started to fly off. It spread its wings and pumped them violently as it looked up into the sky and found the true dragon descending so fast it may have been falling. The much larger dragon landed on top of the Wyvern, twisted and grasped the smaller one in its teeth and threw it to one side, as it looked up and around to find the others it wanted to kill.
They were flying away as fast as possible, only two of them remained. One looked over its shoulder and screamed, but the sound was not a war-cry this time. It was fear.
Heavy, thick wyvern blood from our fight coated everything around us. Walking was slippery. Kendra slumped against the warm stone. The shadows of the morning sun shown on the carved icons bringing the carvings into deep relief with dark shadows. With sudden recognition, I knew where I’d seen them before.
Kendra followed my gaze. She said, “The Waystone.”
She was right. Castle Crestfallen was built on the side of a mountain at the other end of the kingdom, days away, where the foothills grew in height to become the base of the Jawtooths, the impassable mountain range with no mountain pass to cross them. On the very road we’d traveled with Tater, and Princess Elizabeth was a stone monument along the way that we called the Waystone.
It was far taller than the tub in front of us but made of similar granite and looked to me like a giant had baked a loaf of bread as large as a house and stuck it in the ground. It had then turned to stone. Two-thirds of the loaf was left exposed. The stone was smooth, the same color as the one in front of us, not the normal sandy-tan color of the other rocks near Crestfallen.
More than that, there were carvings. I’d examined them more than once, trying to determine what they meant, who made them, or how long ago. There were five cartouches, the same number as here. Intricate but different designs, each surrounded by a frame. All five frames were alike, giving the impression the contents of each cartouche meant something in itself. Three of the five had small figures besides the slashes and hash marks that I thought of as houses. Or, they were an unknown form of writing. Others had decided they were directions, probably because of the name, Waystone.
With the sun shining at a slanting angle on the carvings in front of me, I saw in one frame the same three simplified icons that might represent houses. While I didn’t know anything else, I instantly knew the granite rock was the same color, and so were the carvings. Well, that was not totally true because I couldn’t remember what else was carved on the Waystone at home, but what I did know, was that they were related.
“Are you hurt?” Kendra asked.
“No, I’m fine. Just a few bruises. Remember when we explored the Waystone with Elizabeth? We copied the five drawings and tried to find anyone able to read them?”
She turned from me and to the well and saw it instantly, even though she had been the first to notice the similarities. Now she saw it was more than similarities. They held the same five carvings on the sides as she circled the tub. “I do. They’re the same.”
The dragon still watched the wyvern disappear into the distance and chose that time to move. It lumbered closer and briefly sniffed me, then moved on to Kendra, probably smelling the wyvern blood covering us and not liking it at all. Kendra tossed me my sword, pommel first, and my hand snatched it from the air. The blade was still coated with blood. As I wiped it with a mage’s robe, the material snagged. That shouldn’t have happened with a perfect cutting edge. I turned the blade to examine the edge.
A nick the size of a fingernail trimming was on it. Tears welled. It had been a gift from our king and was more valuable than words can express. Malawian steel, he’d said, as he presented it to me. The only sword like it in the Kingdom of Dire. Malawi hadn’t existed for a hundred years, and the process for making the fine steel was a lost secret. Only a few were skilled enough to make the required repair, none in our kingdom.
Kendra hadn’t seen the damage to my sword, and I didn’t know if she or I had done it during the battle. She said in a solemn manner of discovery, “They were sent here to kill the egg, not us or the dragon.”
“The Wyverns?”
She nodded, “Us, and the dragon were not important. The egg was. They were controlled from afar. I felt in my head as the mental orders told them to fight us first. The attack was not the Wyvern’s fault.”
“Like the mage that controlled the husk of Stata. He tried to kill us along with the men from Kondor at the summit of the pass,” I added. “But not blaming Wyverns will be hard for me. Every time one comes near, from now on, my sword will be drawn.”
Kendra shrugged as if to tell me she agreed and expected no less. She said, “What exactly is a Waystone, I wonder?”
“Big rocks with carvings. That’s all I know.”
“There are two of them. One at home. One here. Made by the same people. Mages can use magic created by the dragon from this place while they are days away from here. It’s all connected, and to right here.”
“Are there any more Waystones?” I asked. Anywhere else in Dire?”
She snapped her fingers and smiled as if my words had impressed her. “You are the smartest man I know.”
The compliment would have been more inspiring if she had not slightly stressed the word, man. She had not answered my question, either. She sat down on a large outcrop and closed her eyes in concentration.
The dragon blinked several times in succession and settled down to sit with its belly on the ground as it watched her. Again, it struck me how awkward and ungainly dragons are when on the ground.
“Waystone,” she muttered loud enough for me to hear over the soft wind. “Way. Which way? Going a long way? Directions carved in stone?”