Flight of the Fallen

2 Crucible’s Farewell

Linsha had a scant moment to point her feet, straighten her body, and clamp her arms to her chest before she plunged into the sea. The cold water hit her like a physical blow. It closed over her head and pressed in on her body in a fierce assault on her senses. Pain raced through her head and limbs. She struggled upward through the surging water and broke the surface, coughing and gasping for air. Her heart raced in her chest; her lungs ached.

A wave lifted her up and carried her close to the towering stone wall of the cliff. She forced her sluggish arms and legs to move, to pull her out of the waves’ undertow and away from the stone barriers. There was no safety against those wet, slick walls, only bone-breaking death.

The cold bore into her skin with frozen needles that numbed her muscles. Her limbs became heavy and weak. Her saturated clothes and boots weighed her down until she could barely keep her face above the rolling, tossing water. With a desperate heave of her arms and shoulders, she threw herself upward above the surface just enough to scream, “Crucible!” before she fell back.

Salt water washed into her eyes and nose. A cold fog closed around her awareness until she saw nothing more than the gray water that surrounded her. Her eyes stung from the bitter cold and salt.

Now would be a very good time for him to appear. The thought ran through her mind in a desperate wish. She had trusted her life to him too many times, and he had never failed her. This would not be a good time for him to start.

A wave slapped her in the face, filling her nose and mouth with briny water. A huge, swallow washed down her throat. She gagged and choked and fought to free her face from the frigid wet. Her eyes cracked open and gave a blurred glimpse of the cliff overhead. She was too close. The tide was coming in. She should have remembered that. A few more waves and she would be battered to a pulp.

Something gray and sleek broke through a wave nearby. Its dorsal fin slid tauntingly close to her hand then slipped out of sight. Something else bumped by her leg. Linsha tried to cry out but she was too full of seawater, too numb with cold.

Then she realized another form moved under the water close by. It was visible only as a pale shape in a tossing swirl of grays and blacks and whites, but it was huge, and as it drew closer, Linsha saw glints of gold where slanting rays of the setting sun pierced the waves and caught the polished scales of the big creature.

Water surged up around her, and a draconic head, large and lethal-looking, broke to the surface and stared at her curiously with eyes like ancient pools of fire.

Just what in the name of any god do you think you’re doing? A powerful masculine voice spoke in her mind. It’s too cold for you to swim.

Sputtering, Linsha could only manage to point a weak finger toward the clifftop.

The dragon rose a little higher in the water and lifted his head to study the cliff just as another wave washed over them. The combination of wave and dragon surge was more than Linsha could manage. She felt herself pushed relentlessly toward the solid stone and knew this time there was nothing she could do to stop it. She closed her eyes and braced for the impact.

Instead of stone, something else scraped over her skin. She felt teeth close gently over her torso and lift her out of the sea. Her eyes flew open in surprise. Water cascaded from his jaws, leaving her flopping like a fish across his tongue. Her eyes grew enormous, but she was too busy coughing on sea water to argue this treatment. Several of his teeth closed too close to her chest and legs for comfort.

“Crucible, what—!” she gasped before his head swung up and jolted her against his back teeth. Her words were lost in the noise of claws scraping against granite. The dragon erupted from the sea, sending water in all directions. Linsha saw the cliff wall swing past.

The forty-foot cliff offered no difficulty to a dragon who tipped well over a hundred feet from nose to tail. He swarmed up the wall, water streaming from his bronze scales. At the top, he paused and peered over the edge.

From her vantage point in Crucible’s mouth, Linsha felt a bit silly. She supposed she looked like a bedraggled dragon snack dangling out both sides of the bronze’s mouth. But she had to admit, she had a wonderful view of the mercenaries.

A weak smile stole across her mouth.

The men hadn’t departed. They were clustered about, frozen in a tableau of group surprise. Every one stared at the dragon, each set of eyes aghast, every jaw opened in shock. Linsha felt Crucible’s hot breath blow across her back and heard a rumble begin in the depths of his throat like the movement of lava across cold stone.

Linsha’s sword fell from the nerveless fingers of the bearded man. The sudden loud clatter made them all jump and broke the stunned silence. Shouts of anger and fear filled the evening. A few brave men hurled their spears toward Crucible, but most took to their heels and fled toward the dubious shelter of the distant city.

Grumbling, Crucible ignored the spears that bounced off his scales, and in one flowing movement, he slithered over the edge of the cliff and placed Linsha carefully on the ground. She landed on her hip and shoulder, rolled once, and sprang into a defensive crouch. All the movement proved too much for her abused stomach, and she found herself on her knees retching seawater onto the dry ground.

The remaining mercenaries lost all traces of bravery. Flinging down their weapons, they bolted after their racing companions.

Linsha wiped her mouth and sighed as she watched them go. Bad decision, she thought. Bronze dragons were fairly good-natured, and with some flattery and groveling, the soldiers who had stood their ground might have talked their way into a prisoner pen at the Wadi. Now they were dead men. Few dragons could resist fleeing prey.

Crucible roared and spread his wings.

Linsha, still kneeling, covered her head against the storm of dust and gravel as the big bronze leaped skyward. In moments the wind of his passage moved away, the screams of the hunted soldiers faded, and the normal sounds of wind and surf mercifully returned.

Linsha sank back on her heels. Once again she found herself sitting on the clifftop, watching for Crucible, only now she was soaked, streaked with mud and dragon saliva, and cold to the bone. She shivered, as much from the chill of the wind on her wet clothes as her body’s reaction to the past few minutes. What had she been thinking? To jump over a forty-foot cliff into deep, icy water in the hope a dragon would notice her and bring her out safely! The fact that her plan worked quite well did not excuse the lunacy. She shivered again and did not stop.

Feeling weak and shaky, she shoved herself to her feet and began to trudge toward the range of low hills to the north. Better to warm herself with exercise than wait and die of a chill. She picked up her sword as she passed it and when her numb fingers could not manage the buckle, she slung the scabbarded blade across her back and continued walking, dripping as she went.

He would be leaving.

She saw it as clearly as she had seen the magnificent spread of his wing sails glowing like oiled vellum in the light of the westering sun. His wing had healed. He could fly again. There was no more reason for him to stay. Just when she was getting quite comfortable with his presence, he was going to leave her. Of course she could not lay any blame at his taloned feet. She and her difficulties could hardly compete with an entire city. But she would miss him.

She did not look up when the flap and rush of dragon wings announced his return. Carefully he touched down to the ground in front of her and tucked his wings against his body with an obvious air of satisfaction.

Linsha stopped by his stocky foreleg, looked up, and let her gaze travel up his entire height. Even years after her first glimpse of him, she never ceased to marvel at his power and handsome proportions. His body was long and well-muscled, tapering to a broad tail. A ridge of spines joined by webbing, characteristic of all bronzes, topped his neck and tail and helped drive him through the water he loved. His horned head was wedge-shaped and covered with a tough hide of dark bronze-colored scales. These scales began as a deep burnished gold on his head and back and lightened down his sides and belly to a pale bronze that gleamed like newly wrought metal.

Crucible tipped his head. “What are you doing out here?” he rumbled. “I thought you were out on patrol.”

“We returned early. Sir Fellion broke his arm in a fall. I thought I’d come out and meet you.”

“So you rode out alone?” He sounded angry.

She gave a light shrug. “You were out here.”

Even she heard how frivolous she sounded. Frivolous, overconfident, and senseless. She should know better than to rush out alone from the Wadi and sit like a practice target on the edge of the cliffs. She was lucky the mercenaries had been looking for prisoners and not bodies to loot.

“What if I hadn’t been here?” the dragon demanded.

“I wouldn’t have come,” Linsha said. But to her surprise, she felt a tightening in her throat and the prickle of sudden tears, tears that had sprung out of nowhere. She bit her lip and used the pain to damp down her feelings. She knew this day had been coming for some time. “So when were you going to tell me?”

He stared down at her with luminous eyes, standing so still she could see her reflection in the amber depths. “Today. Tomorrow. My wing is finally strong enough to bear a long flight. Now that you know, I will leave tonight.”

“So soon?”

“I have been gone too long. Sanction was still under siege when I left. We have had no word of its fate since. I must go back. There is no telling what those fool Solamnics have done.”

Linsha nodded, ignoring the comment about the Knights of Solamnia. She knew he was needed in Sanction. She knew, too, her friend, Lord Bight, was in constant danger and that Crucible was his guardian. The bronze had to go back. Yet all the forewarning, logic, and common sense in the world did not make this parting any easier.

“Will you be able to get past Sable?” she asked.

The black dragon Onysablet, commonly known as Sable, had drowned the land between the Plains of Dust and the southern Khalkist Mountains and built her swampy realm on the rotting corpse of the earth. For years Crucible in Sanction to the north and the brass dragon Iyesta in the south had maintained a tenuous truce with the unpredictable black by playing on her fears and greed to keep her off-balance. But Iyesta’s death that summer changed the balance of power. Without an ally in the Plains of Dust, the safety of Sanction and its secretive guardian was thrown into serious question. If Sable caught Crucible alone, trying to fly over her realm, she would not hesitate to tear him to pieces.

Crucible knew full well his danger. “I will travel at night and stay to the east of Shrentak. I will be gone from her realm before she knows I am there.”

Crouching down, he thrust out a foreleg. Still cold and wet, Linsha gratefully climbed up his leg and shoulder and seated herself on the dragon’s warm back in a spot in front of his wing joints and just where his neck ridge ended. He didn’t like to carry riders usually—complained it interfered with his wings—and refused any who dared ask. But he had made an exception for her once years ago in Sanction and since then he had grown quite comfortable with her on his back. A favor Linsha thoroughly enjoyed.

She vividly remembered riding the brass Iyesta once into the desert to pay a call on another dragonlord, Thunder. Iyesta, however, had been over three hundred feet long and wider than a masted ship. When Linsha tried to sit astride the great brass, her legs stuck out in both directions. All she could do was hang on to Iyesta’s back like a cowbird perched on an oxen. One shrug of Iyesta’s shoulders had been enough to send her into a free fall over the Plains of Dust. It was not an experience Linsha cared to repeat.

Crucible was different. Not only was he shorter and more streamlined, his shoulders were narrower and offered a place at the base of his neck where his back-ridge ended that suited Linsha well. They had fought together, bled together, and worked together for almost three months now and formed a bond as affectionate as many dragonriders and their life-long mounts.

Yet Linsha shut her mind to all of that. As close as Crucible was to her, his first loyalty was to Sanction and Lord Bight. She had to respect that or she would not be worthy of his friendship—or of her status as a Rose Knight in the Solamnic Orders. She knew all too well the necessities of responsibility and loyalty to one’s chosen cause.

“Ready?” he called.

Linsha held on with hands and knees as Crucible sprang into the wind and with a powerful thrust of his wings, he rose above the bleak land and angled north toward the eroded banks and sandbars of Barddeath Creek. To the west, the sun touched the purple horizon and began its descent into darkness.

They flew without speaking in the gathering dusk until Crucible tilted his long wings to brake his descent and touched neatly down. Linsha swung a leg around, grabbed his wing, and lowered herself to the ground.

They had landed at the mouth of the deep, winding canyon called Scorpion Wadi where the remnants of Iyesta’s proud militia and survivors of the Missing City had taken refuge after the Tarmaks invaded the city. Linsha knew there were sentries hidden in the rocks and along the high walls, and eyes watched her carefully. But the militia knew her and Crucible and would leave her alone.

The bronze dragon lowered his head and curved his neck around to enclose Linsha in the circle of his neck and body. Unable to trust her voice, she gazed up at him and gently touched her fingers to his long nose.

“Do you still wear the scales?” he asked.

She tugged a gold chain out from under her soggy tunic and showed him the two disks that hung around her neck. One was brass-colored and gleamed in the fading light—a gift from the dragonlord Iyesta. The second was slightly larger, edged with gold, and darker in color. It had been given to her by Crucible and had saved her life at least once.

“Keep them near,” he told her. “Magic is dying around us, but there is a little of our power inherent in our scales. It may protect you.”

Linsha knew it was why he had given her his scale three years ago in Sanction. She always wore them.

She tucked the scales back under her clothes. They were a pact of friendship and reassurance to them both, and a way to say good-bye.

“Give my regards to Lord Bight,” she said.

He straightened and lifted his head to scent the wind.

Linsha moved away. Sadly she watched him crouch and spring upward. His great wings caught the air and lifted him above the bonds of the earth.

The downdraft of his first beat nearly knocked her off her feet. Ducking down, she shielded her eyes against the dust and the grit until the draft passed, then she lifted her eyes to the north. Rising high on a wind from the sea, the bronze dragon caught the last rays of the setting sun. His scales flared with golden light, and he glowed like a comet against the darkening sky. Moments later he passed out of sight, and the fire winked out. The sun vanished. Night settled over the plains.