S
HARD PRESSED HIS EAR
against the crystal and closed his eyes, listening for the faintest scratch or rumble. Hikaru, sitting behind him, peered through the ceiling of their chamber. Already his senses grew sharper than Shard’s own, and Shard relied on his hearing.
“I think they’re asleep,” Hikaru murmured, his tail sweeping slowly across the ground. He lowered himself to a crouch on all fours, pressing his paws against the earth. “Does the ground feel warm to you, Shard?”
“It’s from you, I think,” Shard said quietly, pulling back from the wall. Hikaru shed warmth like a fire, and the ground had warmed steadily under their feet for the last few days. The other possibility, that the volcano was waking, wouldn’t matter once they fled the mountain.
“I don’t think so,” Hikaru said. “I think it’s something else. You said that volcanoes sometimes make earthquakes.”
The short feathers between Shard’s wings stood on end like wolf hackles, as if skyfire crackled near.
Nerves,
he thought.
“It won’t matter in a few moments.” Shard crept to their tunnel and began drawing out the dirt as quietly as he could. “We’ll be out of here soon.”
“You’re sure we shouldn’t leave at night, while they’re gone hunting?”
“No. The moment they realize we’re gone, they’ll hunt us all night. In the day, they won’t follow. We’ll have a head start.”
Shard slipped his talons down through the loose dirt, and dug it back out. They’d tunneled through to the other side of the crystal wall and refilled the dirt each day so the dragons wouldn’t suspect their plan. The last of their fish was gone. With Hikaru shedding heat, the air dried up and they needed water. Even if Shard had wanted to wait another day, they couldn’t risk losing more strength to hunger and thirst.
“Only in the stillness the wind,” Hikaru was murmuring, eyes closed, “only from ice the flame.”
“Are you ready?” Shard asked as he pulled dirt from the tunnel. “We’ll have to be swift.”
Quietly Hikaru answered, “I’m ready.” Hikaru’s claws clicked together. A new habit, a nervous habit of threading his digits together and wringing his paws. “Shard?”
Shard paused at the note of fear in his voice, and wriggled back out of the tunnel to meet his gaze.
“What is it?” He shook dirt from his head. “Don’t worry, we have a plan.”
Hikaru’s gaze drifted up. “What if…what if I can’t fly? What if I’m not strong enough?”
Shard flicked his ears, moved by the earnest, nervous expression on the young dragon’s face. He trotted forward and butted his head against the scaled chest. When Hikaru sat up on his haunches, as he was then, he already stood a good half-length taller than a gryfon.
“Never fear, Amaratsu’s son.” He drew back, opening his wings to draw Hikaru’s gaze back to him. “We are born to fly.”
“Born to fly,” Hikaru echoed. He nodded, his gaze locked on Shard’s face. “Born to it.” His breath seemed short as he opened his wings.
The ground trembled under them and Shard looked down, perking his ears.
“That’s not wyrms,” Hikaru murmured, a serpentine hiss creeping into his voice. At once, Shard realized his hind paws and forefeet did feel hot, as if the subterranean floor had baked for a day under summer sun.
The ground shuddered. Then a larger tremor made Shard stumble, and Hikaru’s eggshell rolled across the ground. The scent of hot rock and sulfur suffused Shard’s next breath.
“Bright Tyr,” he breathed. “It’s—”
“Earthfire!” Hikaru’s tail whipped and he perked his ears at the ground. “Shard—”
“Out, now!”
Shard dove into the tunnel, talons flailing to throw dirt out of his way. He broke through to the other side and shoved his head out, shaking it free of dirt. He forced his breaths to stay shallow and silent. The wyrms slumbered on, at least a dozen of them, great hulking shapes ringing Amaratsu’s body. Shard had hoped for fresh air, but their thick, reptilian scent drenched him and the cavern felt hot and thick. Something nudged his rump and Shard wriggled forward to give Hikaru room.
“Ready?” Shard whispered, and lifted his beak to point out their escape. Hikaru slithered out beside him, shook off dirt, and peered around. High at the top, far away, gleamed a narrow beacon of sunlight. A dull-gray, male wyrm shifted, loosing a giant huff of air. The ground shivered and, within the crystal chamber, Shard thought he heard cracking stone.
“Shard, I think it’s going to erupt. The air smells bad.” Hikaru looked around at the hulking beasts. “If they don’t wake, they’ll die.”
A low thrumming and a great wash of heat made Shard lift his talons. “We have to fly, Hikaru. We have to fly, now. They’ll wake at the commotion and they can leave through the tunnel.”
“The heat,” Hikaru mumbled, his gaze darting around the sleeping wyrms. “I think the heat lulls them.”
“Hikaru!” Shard snapped. All around, the great wyrms shifted, but, like the sick, drugged by herb or weariness, they did not wake.
True reptiles,
Shard thought,
lulled by heat or cold.
“Follow me.”
Shard lifted to his hind legs and leaped nimbly into the air, wings nearly as silent as an owl’s. A sense of freedom and joy shimmered from his heart to his wingtips to leave the ground, to push down the air and feel the stretch of feather and sinew. For a little time, he’d almost forgotten what it was to fly.
Hikaru bared his teeth in excitement and watched Shard rise, then crouched, opening his wings to fly for the first time.
Then the earth exploded.
A blast of air and noxious gas knocked Hikaru against the crystal wall.
“Don’t breathe!” Shard ordered, diving to land hard next to the dragon. Hikaru clamped his jaws shut, eyes huge. “Are you—”
“Not hurt,” Hikaru grunted, and flexed his wings.
Panicked, Shard looked past Hikaru into the crystal chamber. An second explosion of gas rocked Amaratsu’s form. Earthfire bubbled up from a widening crack in the ground inside the chamber. A rush of sulfur, air, and fire shot straight up and smashed against the crystal dragon.
The heat shattered Amaratsu’s body.
Twinkling scales and ice-sharp fragments shot in every direction and sent Shard and Hikaru rolling away. Shard grabbed at Hikaru’s legs, curving his wings to shield the dragon.
“Jump jump
jump
!” Shard lunged into the air, wings beating hard. Hikaru followed, liquid fire lashing at his heels. Lulled by heat, the wyrms slumbering on the ground shifted and growled but didn’t stir. Poisoned air rolled toward them. Where the crystal form had rested, now glowed a long crack of roiling lava. Shard gulped for the cleaner air above the wyrms. His wings, at first stretching and working with joy and relief, threatened to cramp. Hikaru bobbed beside him, staring at the mess below.
The crack in the earth engorged with fire and sulfur.
“Follow me!” Shard commanded. “Don’t panic.” He circled Hikaru once as the young dragon struggled first against the dead air of the cave, then the strange currents of heat created by the fire below. “Work your wings smoothly, pretend it’s a spring day—” Shard gagged against the noxious fumes of the earthfire. The hole of sunlight in the mountain seemed leagues and leagues away. With a glance over he saw that Hikaru was managing to figure out his wings and a good rhythm to undulate his long body, and looked as if he could swim through the air. “Don’t look down. Only the sky…”
“The sky,” Hikaru gasped, but he did look down, his gaze raking over the Winderost wyrms. Shard banked, turning a long arc to look down also, and a knot twisted his chest. Hikaru beat his wings hard, looking up to meet Shard’s gaze, and Shard knew they had the same thought. The wyrms couldn’t die like this. No creature deserved that.
“We’ll warn them,” he called to Hikaru, his voice pitched in attempt only to carry to the young dragon. “But let’s get a little higher—”
“Yes,” Hikaru agreed, and flapped up to follow Shard.
They were halfway to the top and escape and Shard glanced back again to see smoke pluming and fire splitting from the earth.
“Hikaru, now!” Shard loosed an eagle cry that echoed around the cavern and Hikaru dipped below Shard, and his deepening voice boomed.
“Cousins! Wake up! Wake up or die!”
A wyrm stirred, blinking up at them in confusion. Then a splattering of earthfire splashed his wings. His roar shook the cavern. He looked up again, saw Shard and Hikaru, and screamed his rage. The others woke in a daze, panicked by the liquid fire around them, and lumbered to their feet. Enormous, leathery wings flared and flapped and the wyrms rose in a furious swarm.
“There,” Shard panted to Hikaru. “They’re awake. They’ve got a chance.
Fly. Now.
”
“Yes,” Hikaru gasped, and they turned together. The hole gleamed closer, a circle of sunlight.
Below, the writhing mass of wyrms split toward the tunnel halfway up the cave wall, and others, toward Shard, Hikaru, and the sunlight at the top of the cavern.
“Faster!” Shard shouted, as the wyrms with their powerful wings lunged higher, closing the deep gap.
Hikaru shrieked with the terror and thrill of it and shot up and ahead, wings pumping fast and deep like a swan.
Shard gave his wings a mighty stroke—but claws snapped shut around his tail and yanked him down. Long days and nights of fighting practice made him relax his body rather than struggle. He let himself fall with a battle scream onto the face of the dragon who’d grabbed him.
Hikaru wheeled in a circle. “Shard!”
“Fly!” Shard commanded, raking talons against the leathery paw that gripped him. A heavy, sour scent washed him. Then, odd familiarity. Shard’s gaze locked on the wyrm’s, then flicked down the length of her. Dark brown hide. A dead, baleful stare.
Stigr, cut down by a lashing spade tail.
“You,” Shard hissed. His feathers stood on end in fury and he sank every talon and hind claw and the razor edge of his beak into the stone-hard hide.
Her angry roar sang in Shard’s bones.
A wild, higher, musical shriek followed it. In a daze, overcome by the stench of death in the dragon’s jaws and the fumes from the earthfire below, Shard saw Hikaru diving.
“Release him!” Hikaru slammed into the wyrm’s shoulder, slashing his talons through the leather hide. Dark blood welled and dripped down toward the earthfire explosions below. Her grip loosened and Shard broke free, soaring up to gain height for a dive. The wyrm swung her freed claws around to lash at Hikaru. He yelped and flapped straight up, shooting quick as a salmon through water. Claws caught his hind leg, sending a few black scales sprinkling down like rain, but he jerked free.
Shard dove to attack, but the wyrm tore away with a sudden, surprised bark of pain.
Shard flared to a hard stop in confusion, to hover between the wyrm and Hikaru. Blood dripped from the young dragon’s hind leg, blood that steamed even in the hot air. Shard saw with shock that blood had splashed in a crescent under one of the wyrm’s eyes, and every spot it touched now gleamed a rich, iridescent red.
“Bright with dragon’s blood,” Shard couldn’t help but choke out the words he’d heard before.
She dropped and wheeled away, clutching her eye as if it burned, and melded into the tumult of wyrms that blustered toward a tunnel on the far wall of the cavern.
Shard grasped a tendril of clean air and caught himself, flapping hard. Hikaru winged in beside him.
“Shard—”
“I’m fine,” Shard panted. “Are you? You’re bleeding…” But it looked as if Hikaru’s wound had already closed and begun to scar.
“I think I’m fine too.”
Shard looked toward the fleeing wyrms at the far wall, and those wheeling in confusion around and below them. A fiber of him longed to chase down the cold she-wyrm and avenge his uncle or die trying.
Likely the latter,
he knew grimly, and Stigr would not want that.
He turned and soared high, Hikaru close behind. “Up, up, now! The mountain!”
Earthfire swelled and shot up in great geysers, and the air grew thick with poison. The Winderost wyrms flocked madly around the cavern, some crowding toward the top entrance with Shard and Hikaru, others for the tunnel through which they and Shard had first come.
Hikaru’s flight was awkward but they were still smaller and swifter than the wyrms. They raced up, and up. The wyrms’ breath heated the air behind them and the poisonous earthfire swelled.
Their escape beckoned, a gleaming crack of sky.
For half a breath Shard feared it wouldn’t be large enough.…
Then they burst through into cool, open air with a feather’s breadth to spare, breaking rocks loose, and the glowworms that clung to the roof of the mountain.
The frosty air shocked Shard’s body and sunlight dazzled pain over his eyes.
Beside him, Hikaru shrieked, blinded, thrashing, assaulted by cold and light as if he were hatching all over again.
Shard fumbled for and grabbed the dragon’s foreleg. “Close your eyes.”
Hikaru whimpered agreement. They wheeled together, blind, flying higher and higher in the already high, thin air. The sudden rush of clean, cold wind knocked the blackness and stench of the cavern away from them. Shard tugged Hikaru to follow the scent of trees, gliding back down. They had to fly in lower air or risk falling unconscious, for they had emerged at the very peak of the Horn of Midragur.
They soared down along the mountain face, high enough to be safe, low enough to take great gulps of cool, clean wind. Shard’s eyes streamed but he kept them shut against the daze of sunlight on white snow.
“I want to see it,” Hikaru panted.
“Soon,” Shard promised, and released his grip. “Follow my voice. This way!”
The mountain thundered behind them. They heard the wyrms of the Winderost break through the top of the mountain and scream in their own pain at the sunlight. Shard didn’t dare look back, didn’t dare open his eyes yet. The sun would stop the wyrms. Or the mountain would.
“Don’t stop,” he called to Hikaru. “This way!”
They turned from the dazzling sun, banking in a long turn until Shard felt sun at their backs, and soared nightward, leaving the erupting mountain and the raging wyrms behind. Shard waited to hear roars again, but they remained in the distance. He kept their flight nightward. Windward, he knew, lay the Dawn Spire and more problems than he had answers for. They wouldn’t go there. Not yet. Shard had no plan beyond fleeing the mountain and getting Hikaru to safety.