Khyber waited until he was gone and then turned to the others. “Stay close together. Don’t let the darkness confuse you. Put a hand on the shoulder of the person in front of you if necessary. But I don’t want lights of any kind, real or magic. We don’t know what that might draw, and I don’t want to find out the hard way. It takes about five minutes to go through. We can do it in the dark.”
“You stay in front of me, boy,” Crace Coram said quietly, leaning close to Redden. “I’ll watch your back.”
They went through the bright shimmer and into the darkness beyond in a long line. Redden felt the Dwarf Chieftain’s hand resting on his shoulder and kept his own on the back of the Troll who was walking just in front of him. It was impossible to see anything; the tunnel’s gloom was impenetrable. Navigating the blackness of the passageway seemed to take forever, but nothing happened to them as they moved through.
They reached the second shimmer, this one considerably darker and more resistant to their approach. It was as if it had a thicker substance; they could feel it pressing against them as they attempted to breach it.
“Keep going!” Khyber shouted back to them. “Push ahead!”
They did so, heads lowered against the membrane of gloom resisting them.
They emerged from the tunnel’s darkness through an opening in a huge mound of boulders, blinking against a heavy wash of gray light, and found themselves in country that replicated what they had just left behind. Redden glanced over his shoulder—past Crace Coram, Pleysia, Oriantha, and another Troll—but he found no sign of the peaks they had passed through. There were peaks, but they were far in the distance and huge, spread out across the horizon behind him in a massive wall. He looked up at a sky shrouded in mist and gloom and could find no trace of the sun. He tried to orient himself from what he remembered of the Westland wilderness they had flown over. But he knew so little of this part of the world that it proved impossible. His best guess was that what he was seeing were the mountains of the Breakline.
The rest of the company was looking around, as well. None of its members seemed able to orient. Redden was reminded that the Ard Rhys had brought no one with them who had any personal knowledge of the country. Both Farshaun and the Speakman had been left behind.
“We won’t want to go much farther than this without someone who knows what they are doing.”
Oriantha was standing right next to him, bending close, her voice too soft for anyone else to hear.
“That’s what I think, too,” he replied.
She nodded. “I know. I saw it in your face. Your instincts are as sharp as mine.” She glanced around. “I don’t think anyone else sees things like we do. Not even my mother.”
Then she was gone, drifting back to where Pleysia was engaged in a discussion with Carrick, the two of them arguing quietly, but vehemently. Redden wondered about her again. Not even my mother, she had said. Had he heard correctly? Had she just told him that Pleysia was her mother?
The Trolls had all clustered to one side, where Garroneck was speaking to them privately. Carrick and Pleysia were still arguing, with Oriantha looking on. Crace Coram had walked up to the Ard Rhys. Redden was standing alone now, studying his bleak surroundings, when the dark shimmer through which they had just passed—along with the cluster of huge boulders that framed the opening from which it hung suspended—disappeared.
For a second, Redden just kept staring at the space the shimmer and rocks had occupied, waiting for it to reappear, certain it would, convinced it must. When it didn’t, he felt a hot surge of panic sweep through him.
In the next instant, the dragon attacked.
It dropped out of the sky without a sound and no warning save for the enveloping black shadow of its descent. It was easily the biggest creature Redden had ever seen, and while he had never come face-to-face with a dragon he knew what it was. Studded with horns and ridged with spines, its body was covered in black scales encrusted with patches of moss and lichen. Redden smelled it before he saw it, its fecund scent instantly recalling damp earth and rotting dead-wood. Its wingspan was fully thirty feet, and its tail even longer than that. It was impossible that such a massive creature could manage to get airborne, let alone fly.
“Dragon!” he managed to scream before diving for safety.
Oriantha was already moving, hurtling into her mother, sweeping them both to one side and out of harm’s way.
But the rest had only enough time to glance up before it was on top of them.
The Trolls took the brunt of the attack, clustered together and thus easily the biggest target for the dragon. Garroneck and two others were killed instantly, the dragon’s massive claws crushing their bodies, its teeth tearing at their unprotected heads. One minute they were there and the next they were reduced to body parts scattered about the ground amid splashes of bright red blood. Redden heard Khyber Elessedil cry out as the dragon’s tail whipped about, catching her across the back and sending her flying.
Crace Coram, standing right next to the Ard Rhys, was quicker. Avoiding the tail as it swept past him, he rushed the dragon from behind and scaled its backside. Barely slowing as he reached the spikes that ran the length of its spine, the Dwarf clawed his way forward. The dragon reached back for him, jaws opening wide, but Carrick and Pleysia both attacked it from the front, Druid magic striking at the creature in fiery bursts that slammed into its head and neck and drew its attention away from the Dwarf.
Oriantha was down on the ground on all fours, becoming the beast Redden had seen earlier, all feral and wolfish as she crouched next to her mother. Redden scrambled up and started forward to help, but then stopped in his tracks.
What did he think he was doing?
Frozen with indecision, he hesitated.
Crace Coram was all the way up the dragon’s back and onto its neck by now. The dragon twisted its head in an effort to avoid the Druid Fire being thrown at it by Carrick and Pleysia while at the same time trying to shake loose the man clinging to its neck. The remaining Trolls had joined the battle, darting at the dragon, jabbing at it with swords and spears. One of them got too close, and the dragon snatched him up and ground him into the earth. Oriantha, turning ever more bestial, was circling the creature, looking for an opening.
Only Redden was hanging back, unable to do anything but watch.
Then, abruptly, the dragon took to the air, spreading its wings and lifting away. The Druids and the Trolls tried to stop it, but the dragon shrugged off their efforts, too big and burly to contain. Crace Coram had climbed all the way up to its head and was hammering at it with his iron mace. But even that didn’t slow it.
At the last minute Oriantha made a sudden rush, caught hold of a leg, and scrambled onto the dragon’s back. Pleysia screamed in rage and disbelief and tried to follow her daughter, but the dragon had already risen too high. Together, she and Carrick continued to strike at the beast as it rose, fought to bring it down again and failed.
The dragon soared into the sky, its two riders clinging to it, the Dwarf hammering it with his mace, the beast girl tearing at it with teeth and claws.
In seconds it was only a dot on the horizon.
Railing Ohmsford came awake with a start, eyes blinking rapidly, and wondered where he was.
“There, now,” someone said, pressing down gently but firmly on his shoulders. “Easy does it.”
He looked up into Farshaun Req’s face, remembering. “Where’s Redden?” he asked.
The old man explained everything, not wasting words, trying his best to reassure the boy. But Railing, though he understood the reasons for it, was distressed that Redden had gone on without him. He couldn’t help himself; he didn’t like being separated from his twin for any reason. The two were always together, and he especially didn’t like it when one of them might be in danger.