The Dragonbards

Chapter 3

Ratnisbon has fallen, on our northern border, and half a dozen islands north of Vuchen Vek. In so many lands, young girls are chained within the palaces for the use of the unliving, and men and boys are tortured. No king or army seems any longer able to drive the dark out. My dear husband is the most vigilant of kings, but I fear even for him, and for our green, lovely land.

*

“Young dragons,” Nightraider cried, circling above the bards. “Young dragons—to the north. . . .”

“No,” said Seastrider, banking away. “One dragon to the south, near that far line of mountains. Can’t you sense her there? She is held immobile, filled with pain, dizzy. . . .”

‘To the north!” screamed Nightraider, snapping his wings against the red sky. “Four young dragons to the north.”

“To the north,” echoed Starpounder. “Dragonlings in the north.”

Teb stared up at the wheeling dragons, amazed. They seldom argued. But he, too, sensed dragons both to the north and the south. Though from the south, he thought, came the terrible shock of distress.

‘To the south,” roared Seastrider, huffing flame. She dropped out of the sky, flaring her wings to land beside him. “South!” she bellowed.

“We’ll separate,” Teb said. “Seastrider and I, Windcaller and Kiri and Marshy will go south.”

“It could be a trick of the dark, to separate us,” Camery said.

“It could be. We will take care.” They might not be able to touch one another’s thoughts so far apart, with the dark so strong.

Camery and Colewolf mounted up, and the black dragons headed north. They traveled in silence, searching the ice cliffs.

The white dragons moved fast to the south, Teb leaning down between Seastrider’s wings to watch the frozen land. Marshy rode in front of Kiri, his legs tucked into Windcaller’s harness. The dragons skirted just above the crashing waves, watching the white cliff for caves, for claw marks in the ice, or any sign that a dragon had passed this way. They were gripped by the bleakness of the frozen land, by the absence of life. Teb looked across at Kiri.

I could have sent you with your father. But . . . I like having you with me.

She looked surprised; then her eyes softened with pleasure.

“Cave ahead!” Marshy shouted. “Cave!” The child leaned so far out into the wind that Kiri grabbed his shoulders. A thin opening yawned in the cliff. The dragons circled, to hover beside it.

“Go in,” Teb said. “Can you get in?”

Seastrider studied the black hole, sensed the cave’s emptiness, and slid into the dark slit folding her wings close as Teb lay along her neck. Windcaller followed, Kiri and Marshy crouching low. The roof brushed their backs.

Inside, the cave opened out into a large, echoing chamber that was almost warm. The riders slid down. Teb took a candle from his pack and struck flint. Flame chased the dragons’ shadows up the frozen walls.

“There!” Kiri said, pointing to where claw marks scored the ice. Each set of claws was as wide as Marshy’s head—this was a young dragon, not yet full grown. The two dragons sniffed at the marks. Marshy stood on tiptoe and pressed his fingers into the deep scratches. His small hand trembled. His cheeks burned and his gray eyes glowed with a bright, urgent knowledge. Ahead of them somewhere in this frozen land was a very special dragon—the dragon with whom he must be paired. And ahead of them somewhere, his dragon was sick, perhaps dying. He knew this with a deep, instinctive insight.

Deeper in the cave was a tumbled pile of sheep bones and the backbone of a deer. Marshy found where the young dragon had slept, a circle where the ice had melted and refrozen.

“A female,” Marshy said, kneeling beside the slick circle to pick up a white dragon scale. All white dragons were female. Each pearly scale was as big as the little boy’s palm. The look on Marshy’s face was the same as Camery’s when she and Nightraider had found each other. It was the same look that had lit Colewolf s eyes when he met Starpounder, after believing for so long that there were no more dragons on Tirror.

Teb watched Kiri and touched her thoughts. She was glad for Marshy; her mind filled with a prayer to the Graven Light that they would find Marshy’s young dragon in time. But she was torn, too, with a desolate yearning for that moment when she would join with her own dragonmate. Unsteady questions seared her, and the thought that she might never know her own dragon.

Kiri traveled with Windcaller, but both she and Windcaller searched for another. There was no deciding who would belong to a certain dragon. Such a thing was without choice, established by powers far greater than even bards and dragons could control.

“Please,” Marshy said, “we must hurry. She is sick, maybe dying.” The two dragons were poised at the mouth of the cave. The bards mounted and headed south again, watching for any movement across the ice plain that was fast dimming toward night. But it was not until the sky was nearly dark, the plain turned to heavy gray, that the two dragons sensed something.

There, Kiri thought, a gully—that line . . .

The dragons strained into the wind toward the thin scar that cut across the ice. As they neared it, it widened to a deep ravine. They circled and dropped, hovering, looking down into the cleft, at the shadowed procession that moved along the bottom.

A procession of small men marched there, leading a train of sleds lashed together and pulled by wolves. Bound to the sled, her head lolling, her tail dragging through the snow, was the limp body of a young white dragon.

She can’t be dead! Marshy cried. But the little boy’s terror filled them.