City of Death (2 page)

Suddenly Kles's fur and feathers began to fluff out and Koko began to scratch more furiously than before. Scirye's own skin began to tingle as if a thousand ants were running up and down over her.

“I think that storm is moving even faster now,” Bayang said.

The roiling storm swallowed up the land as it chased after them like an angry gray tidal wave.

 

2

Leech

Wheeling around, Leech saw that the storm cloud had arched upward to intercept them, its sides churning and writhing like a giant panting worm.

Sitting at the wing's apex, Bayang dug her claws into the interwoven straw and tightened her grip on the straps that steered the wing. “That's no normal storm cloud. Everyone sit down and grab hold of the wing. And that especially means you, Leech.”

“But—,” Leech began to protest.

The tip of Bayang's tail whipped about the boy's wrist and held him firmly in place. “I don't want you going to check out the cloud. Now sit!”

As Leech obediently stepped off the discs and restored them to his armband, the inner voice in Leech's head complained,
Why do you let her boss you around?

Leech couldn't bring himself to call the Voice, Lee No Cha. Long ago, Lee No Cha had been a boy who had killed a dragon prince and then used the hide to make a belt as a gift for his father. For that horrific crime, Lee had been executed by his own family and had been hunted down in subsequent lives by the dragons.

That earlier self was dead. He was the real one, but Lee No Cha existed somewhere in his memories and had awakened when Leech had discovered the magic in his armbands—the very same devices that had killed the dragon prince.

Bayang was supposed to kill Leech before Lee No Cha could rouse, but when Leech had saved her life, the dragon had made her peace with him. But that was because she assumed he was different from that earlier self. If she knew that Lee No Cha had not disappeared, the dragon might decide he was a danger to her kind after all and go back to trying to assassinate him. But Leech was more afraid of losing Bayang's friendship than he was of losing his own life.

Raised in a San Francisco orphanage where he'd been bullied, Leech had not had any friends until he'd run away and met Koko, who disguised his badger form in a human shape. A man named Primo had befriended them, but he had died fighting Badik the dragon. Since then, his circle of friends had expanded to include Scirye and Kles, but he'd come to depend upon the tough, smart Bayang the most.

So the voice was a double-edged weapon: Leech needed its advice for flying and fighting, but it was also a threat.

She's gotten us this far,
Leech replied and, plopping down on the woven surface, grabbed some nearby straps that had been placed strategically about the wing. But would Bayang stay his friend if she knew Lee No Cha had awakened inside him?

Scirye sat down as well and took hold of another pair of straps. “Do you think this is Roland's work?”

Kles, her lap griffin, landed on her shoulder and slipped inside her coat. “He might have set patrols as a precaution. Or it could just be our bad luck. The mountains are very old and full of magic. And there are monsters here that go back to the creation of the world.”

“Monster or Roland's slave, nothing can catch Naue,” the wind bragged and he flew even faster and higher.

Thunk-a thunk-a-thunk.

“That sounds like a drum roll,” Leech said.

A bolt of lightning suddenly shot from the cloud to blast the mountain beneath it, the light temporarily highlighting the curling mist of the storm.

Boom!

More and more lightning bolts crackled from the cloud's belly so that it resembled a giant centipede climbing rapidly after them on fiery legs.

“Ho, so you want to play tag with Naue? Then so be it,” Naue boomed.

And the next moment Naue banked sharply until he was zooming toward the cloud.

“No, no, go away from it!” Bayang shouted.

But the wind ignored her, and as they rushed toward the face of the cloud, the inky strands writhed like charcoal snakes.

Naue roared with laughter as he plowed through the cloud, whipping it into smoky tendrils. Their straw wing bucked and rolled as Naue twisted and turned, tearing the storm to shreds.

And yet through Naue's merriment the drum roll deepened until it was a steady booming.

“Ha, that will show it,” Naue announced as he finally circled away.

“Who's that?” Leech asked.

It was as if a huge ball of dark cotton had been ripped apart to reveal an inner core, a rough gray oval about ten feet long like a huge bar of soap. And upon the disc a creature danced on two stubby legs. He looked like a squat man but his skin was blue and tusks rose from his lower jaw. From his shoulders hung a wide strap of drums and in his hands were the bones he used to beat them.

Bayang swore an oath in an old dragon tongue. “What's a lord of thunder doing here? He belongs in China.”

The strange lord brought both sticks down upon one drum, and the next instant there was a flash of light. The gold flecks in Bayang's green scales shone as a bolt streaked from the drum across the sky and through Naue.

Boom!

“Aiee,” Naue cried out in agony and shock, as if this was the first time the fleshless creature had felt pain. “Naue hurts!”

The sudden flash made spots dance before Leech's eyes, and the smell of ozone tickled his nose.

Boom! Boom! Boom!

Naue screamed as each beat of the drums shot lightning bolts through him. It was all they could do to hold on as the wind whirled about, trying to escape, but the lightning was relentless. Too late, Bayang realized that their wing marked where the invisible Naue was.

“Naue … can … not … keep … together,” the wind gasped.

Though the lightning could not destroy the air that made up the wind, the energy was making it hard for Naue to keep his currents together. It was like unraveling the threads that make up a piece of string.

Naue bellowed in torment, and suddenly the wing was spinning earthward as they fell out of the injured wind's grasp.

 

3

Bayang

With a ripping noise, a large scrap of the wing fluttered away and then more and more pieces whipped after it.

“The wing's falling apart,” Koko yelled in alarm.

“Tell me something I don't know,” Bayang said grimly.

The long trips and abuse had taken their toll upon the wing's woven straw. Through the numerous holes, Bayang could see the earth waiting for them three thousand feet below.

Bayang clenched her fangs in frustration. If only she could fly her friends to safety under her own power, but she had injured one of her wings fighting Badik. She tried to unfurl them anyway, but pain shot instantly through her back from the half-healed wound.

Their only hope was to land the straw wing before it disintegrated. Her eyes searched the mountains below for a soft landing spot, but it was one fanglike mountain after another. And then she saw the silvery oval that must be some frozen lake in a bowl formed by the mountains.

She yanked at the left strap, trying to angle the wing toward it, only to have the strap tear off in her paw. Sometimes all you can do is trust your instincts, her old flying instructor, Sergeant Pandai, had told her, so she threw away the useless strap. Then she dug the claws of her left forepaw deep into the woven material itself and began to pull.

If she had used all her strength, she probably would have torn a whole section from the weakened wing, but instead she used a steady tugging. Bit by bit, the wing began to point toward the oval.

All Bayang could do was hope there was enough snow on the lake to cushion their landing and that the ice was thick enough to take their weight.

Above them, Naue had stopped screaming. Bayang hoped the wind was still alive and had gotten away.

Unfortunately, the thunder lord could now direct his attention solely at them. A streak of dazzling light sizzled the air near them and her scales tingled with the electric charge.

Boom!

The lake rose toward them quickly. It looked about a mile long and about half that in width. Wisps of snow drifted across the top.

Even as she began to try to ease the nose up, something made her jink to the right. A lightning bolt shot past, just burning the port side.

Boom!

Her muzzle wriggled as smoke tickled her nostrils and she felt the warmth as the wing's edge caught fire.

Boom!

“I'll put out the fire.” Twisting her head, she saw Leech begin to free one gloved hand from the strap. The little fool was making it so hard to keep him alive.

“Keep hold of the wing,” Bayang snapped. “Leave this to me.”

And she used her tail to beat at the flames—gently, of course. Too much force and she'd break the wing up herself. As she put out the fire, she felt the flames char her scales.

Boom!

Boom!

Boom!

Lightning bolts shot all around them and somehow she managed to dodge them. But that distracted her from the landing itself.

Suddenly the lake was looming before them. With no choice, Bayang hauled at the wing, trying to nose it up. There was a terrible ripping sound and then she was tumbling through the air, her feet entangled in fragments of woven straw. And behind her, the hatchlings and Koko were shouting.

The next moment she was rolling tail over head over a layer of snow covering the lake. As she finally lay dizzily looking up at the sky, she thought,
Thank Heaven there was a cushion of snow.

Then she raised her head to look for her friends. Scirye was a few yards away on her right with Kles fluttering over her as he tried to pull her upright. Leech was rising on all fours as he shook his head groggily.

Leave it to Koko to land on a bare patch of ice. Every time the badger tried to get up, his paws slipped so that he went muzzle first back onto the lake.

Of the wing itself, there were only shreds floating about in the breeze. It had served them well.

Bayang shook the patches of woven straw from her paws and then rose on her hind legs.

“Lady, are you all right?” Kles asked as he hovered anxiously over Scirye.

Scirye sat up groggily. “I think so, as soon as things stop whirling around. Did you always have three heads?”

Her griffin clicked his beak. “That's a nasty bump you got from the crash. One of these days Bayang is going to surprise us with a soft landing.”

The dragon rose, shaking off patches of woven straw. “And if you were bigger than a canary, Kles, you wouldn't have to depend upon me.”

Kles's fur and feathers both ruffled so that he swelled half again his size. “I'll have you know that—.”

But Scirye had seized his tail and given it a tug. “We should be grateful Bayang got us down alive.”

Suddenly the air grew dark as a shadow covered them. Bayang looked up at the creature floating overhead, the bones in his hands poised over his drums.

“What did we ever do to you?” Leech demanded, already reaching for the decorative discs on an armband that would become his flying discs with a simple spell.

The lord of thunder ignored him as he looked about the fallen comrades. “You're just as strange a group as Lord Roland described you,” he said in Chinese. “It's hard to believe you're a threat to him. But he asked me to keep watch for you anyway just in case he really hadn't killed you.”

Koko had managed to crawl from the ice onto the snow. “Speak American, will you?”

The man frowned. “I don't know what you said, but I don't like your tone. Don't you realize you're addressing the great and famous lord of thunder?” Annoyed, he brought the bones down upon the center drum. Lightning shot from it toward Koko. The next instant, snow and ice geysered into the air with the cold lake water that had lain beneath them.

BOOM!

Ears ringing, Bayang hoped the hatchlings could hear her. “Head for cover!”

“Oh, you'll be dead long before that,” the thunder lord sneered and began a rapid tattoo upon his drums.

 

4

Leech

Leech had just worked the transformation spell for his flying discs even as the first lightning bolt shot down. He felt the lake's thick surface vibrate beneath him as the bolt smashed in front of him. Blinking his eyes to clear away the spots dancing before them, his groping fingers found the discs and he climbed on. Steam plumed from the crater in the ice, but the drops were quickly freezing. Though each of them had a magical charm to protect them from the cold, it must have been overwhelmed. Leech himself was shivering. “K-K-Koko, you okay?”

“Y-yeah,” his friend stuttered through chattering teeth as he sprawled on the ice. The frozen drops of spray had transformed his fur into a coat of diamonds. “But I'm going to turn into a K-K-Koko-cicle soon.”

Suddenly Leech heard an urgent shout in a language he didn't recognize. Twisting his head around, he saw a girl of about eighteen jumping up and down on the lakeshore and beckoning to them. She was dressed in a robe patched together from dozens of bits of cloth on top of which she had sewn silvery crescent moons and stars. As she bounced about, the moons and stars sparkled so that she looked like a rainbow about to explode.

Behind her was a wagon even gaudier than her robe, with swirling patterns painted in bright reds, yellows, blues, greens, oranges, and purples. Hundreds of tiny mirror chips glittered even in the gloom. In bright daylight, the wagon would dazzle the eyes.

“We have to get off the lake,” Scirye said as she struggled to her feet with Kles's help.

Leech managed to stand up, but Koko kept flopping on his muzzle.

Ice crunched as Bayang dug her claws into the frozen lake and shoved herself forward on her belly. “This is no time to clown around!” Picking up the badger, she flung him onto her back like a sack of flour.