City of Death (3 page)

The ominous drumming grew louder as the lord of thunder dove toward them.

There was no time to think, only time to act if he was to buy some time for his friends.
All right.

As he rose into the air, the Voice complained,
How come you're listening to me now and not when I warned you about the dragon?

The smell of ozone stung his nose as he pulled off the other armband.
Because these are the only times you make sense,
Leech responded.

I'm only saying what you're feeling in your heart,
the Voice said.

Leech ignored the Voice as he spat on the armband and shouted, “Change!” Immediately it began to tingle as the ring expanded with a musical chime. About twenty inches, the metal ring was as light as a feather and hard enough to smash through walls.

On the cloud above him, the lord of thunder looked surprised. Perhaps when the dragon had not used her wings, he'd thought himself safe in the air. The last thing he'd expected was a human to attack him.

Leech soared higher and faster, the sheer joy of flying temporarily replacing his fear until a bolt sizzled past his ear. His hair literally stood on end in the electrically charged air. And his eyes were temporarily dazzled by the flash, so he could see nothing.

Loop! Loop!
the Voice said urgently.

Though Leech practiced every chance he got, he was still just learning how to fly. Instead of arching upward in a loop, he began to corkscrew through the air instead, just managing to miss the next bolt that whizzed by.

He tried to straighten his course but only wound up plunging toward the lake.

You're moving through the air, not standing on the ground,
the Voice shouted. His frustrated tone reminded Leech uncomfortably of Bayang when she coached him.
Make your center of balance lower.

Leech bent his knees but he still spun out of control toward the lake.

Lower!
the Voice screamed.

Beneath him, he saw the horrified faces of his friends. And when the lord of thunder was finished with him, they would be next.

Let me handle this,
the Voice said.

With dismay, he realized that Bayang had been right: he was still only a beginner at flying … but the Voice was not. The Voice had enough skill to take on the lord of thunder, but if they survived, what would happen afterward? In the Arctic, the Voice had taken over and its violent rage had made him as much a danger to Leech's friends as his enemies.

What if the Voice decided to attack Bayang after he dealt with the thunder lord?
How do I know you won't try to attack Bayang after we take care of the thunder lord?

You don't,
replied the Voice.
But if you don't let me fly right now your friends will die.

There was no choice.
You do it,
Leech said and then warned,
But I won't let you harm my friends.

As he surrendered to the Voice, he felt himself squatting so low that his knees almost touched his chest. Wrapping his arms around his body, the Voice straightened out his legs in a deliberate fashion. No longer out of control, he veered upward again.
See? Don't fight your motion,
the Voice coached.
Guide it instead.

Even though it was his ankles that crossed over each other, Leech felt like a spectator. He wondered if this was how the Voice felt sometimes.

His body twisted around in a violent pirouette, altering his direction just before another bolt zipped through the spot where his old trajectory would have sent him. Smoke tickled his nostrils and with a jolt he realized his clothes were smoldering.

But as he angled upward toward the lord of thunder, his cloud began to retreat, keeping them out of reach as the lord sent bolt after bolt streaking at them.

The Voice sent them swerving left and right, up and down to avoid the flashing missiles, until he finally opened Leech's mouth and yelled in frustration. “Stay still!”

“Why fight the battle you want to fight?” jeered the lord and sent another jagged bolt of lightning at them.

“Think you're safe?” the Voice said defiantly. Leech's arm whipped around violently and sent the disc spinning in a blur toward the lord.

“Ai!” the thunder lord protested indignantly as he ducked.

“Next time I won't miss,” the Voice boasted as he held out Leech's hand for the disc returning to them like a boomerang. That was something Leech had yet to learn how to do.

Electricity crackled from one wart to another on the thunder lord's bumpy skin until he glowed. His fists beat a quick tattoo on the drums as small bolts of lightning shot like a cloud of arrows.

The Voice sent Leech's body swerving to the right. Even as the lightning crackled by, it caught the disc, striking a tinging note. The disc shone as it sparked and fizzled with electricity until it buried itself halfway into the frozen lake.

What do I do?
the Voice wailed in despair.
The disc is so full of lightning we can't touch it right away.

Leech thought quickly.
Better let me take over. I work better with Bayang than you. We have to draw the thunder lord down near the lake where Bayang can reach it. Then we can leave the rest to her.

You can't trust her to do anything,
the Voice protested.
She'll let us die.

His own family had killed Lee No Cha, so perhaps Leech could understand why the Voice didn't have faith in anyone.

You may be a better flier and fighter, but I'm better at thinking,
Leech insisted.
It's your turn to trust me.

All right,
the Voice admitted reluctantly, and as soon as Leech had regained control of his body, he looked over his shoulder as he sped away. “Hey, Ugly. I bet you can't catch me,” he jeered.

Even if the thunder lord didn't understand English, the nearly fatal attack had angered him. He rocketed after Leech, flinging one bolt after another. Leech was nowhere the accomplished flier that the Voice was, so he executed the Voice's instructions clumsily, somehow always managing to zig and zag just in the nick of time and avoiding being burned to charcoal.

Back and forth they went through the sky with the pursuit taking them lower and lower to the ground. All the while, Leech kept up a running string of taunts that made the thunder lord fume and curse.

Finally they were flying only twenty feet from the ground. Leech had planned to take the thunder lord even closer to the earth, but even if Bayang could not fly, she could still leap.

With a roar of
Yashe!,
she sprang into the air, paws ripping through the cloud as they reached for the thunder lord.

And grasped only empty air as the startled thunder lord hopped upward.

By now the Voice had grown shrill with frustration and attack.
Turn!

Leech crossed his ankles and spun in an awkward pirouette that sent him darting back toward the thunder lord like a human rocket. If he could knock the thunder lord down to the lake, Bayang could take care of him.

The thunder lord was so surprised that his drumsticks paused in midair.

Kill him,
the Voice shrieked.

Adrenaline pumped through Leech's body as he aimed himself at the lord's chest, but in the last moment the creature leaned backward. Leech missed him, but his fists struck one of the drums.

Crack!

As he shot past, he had just enough time to glimpse hairline fissures spreading across the body of the drum.

Boom!

The drum exploded in a huge fireball that sent Leech plummeting through the air into a drift of snow.

Get up, get up!
the Voice screeched.

Rolling over, Leech shot back into the air.

The thunder lord was still alive but rising into the air. He'd dropped the bone sticks and was slapping at the flames that had spread to the rest of the drums around his body. There was a second explosion as another drum blew up. The next moment, the thunder lord rocketed out of the cloud of fire and smoke, trying to pull off the fiery drums.

He was still trying to do that as he disappeared above them.

 

5

Bayang

Bayang found it faster to wriggle on her belly across the ice and snow than to try to walk as she made her way over to where Leech was hovering on his discs, struggling to tug his weapon ring free from the lake. The electricity seemed to have discharged, and though it was no longer hot, it was stuck in the ice.

As she neared him, the dragon noticed that the tips of his hair had been burned by lightning bolts, but at least he had survived yet another of Roland's traps.

“Let me help you get that,” she said, relieved as she stretched out a paw. “You had me worried there. I can't figure out your flying. Sometimes you're as clumsy as an amateur and other times you're as polished as a dragon.”

Leech's head jerked up, startled, and the faces of Lee's young victims flashed through his mind. In each re-incarnation, Lee No Cha had looked different, and yet the fear in their eyes had always been the same.

Bayang's paw stopped halfway between them. She thought she had overcome his mistrust, but humans were such complicated creatures. What had she done wrong?

“Hey, buddy,” Koko called from her back. “Did you get your brains fried?”

“I just want the ring,” Leech mumbled and bent over again to pull at the disc embedded in the ice.

When Bayang heard the thunder, she looked up in alarm at the sky, but there was no sign of the lord of thunder. Then she felt the vibrations beneath her, followed by a volley of what sounded like rifle shots. She whipped her head this way and that trying to see the threat, but saw no one but her friends.

The girl in the gaudy robe began shouting frantically to them in the New Tongue, which had evolved over the centuries from the many different people and cultures in the empire. “Alarm! Alarm! Danger! Peril!”

A feline creature about twice the size of a cat shouted, “She means the ice is breaking! Get off it now!”

There was a loud crack behind Bayang. Twisting her head, she saw the snow fall into a crevice in the ice. The lightning bolt must have cracked the surface. The crevice snaked toward them almost as fast as one of the thunder lord's lightning bolts.

Bayang knew how important the weapon ring was to Leech. When he'd been abandoned at the orphanage, the weapon ring had been left along with the armband with the flying discs. “Get to shore,” she said to Leech. “I'll get the ring for you.”

But Leech went on tugging frantically as if he hadn't heard her—or didn't trust her. With an exasperated grunt, Bayang stretched her long serpentine body forward and grabbed the ring in one paw and Leech in the other.

The ice shattered as she yanked the ring free. The metal was already starting to freeze as she handed it to the hatchling. “What's gotten into you, Leech?”

Leech clutched the ring as if his life depended on it. “Nothing.”

The lake was no place to argue now. “Take Koko to the shore. I'll get Scirye.”

Bayang's sinuous body was already twisting around as Leech floated behind her. The next moment Leech sped through the air with Koko on his back. Bayang watched them as she wriggled toward the Kushan hatchling.

What
was
going on in Leech's mind?

 

6

Scirye

As the ice crevice raced toward her, Scirye tried to shuffle toward the shore. Cracks had appeared all around her so that the lake resembled a giant white plate breaking.

Kles flapped his wings frantically as he tugged at her hand.

But it was like trying to run in an earthquake. When Scirye lost her balance and fell, she began to crawl forward on her hands and knees.

Behind her came the loud hiss of scales on snow. Bayang was heading toward her like a scaly locomotive, piling up the snow before her chest as she plowed along. As a dragon she was used to the cold depths of the sea, so the ice-cold lake held no terrors for her.

“Hop on.” Bayang's claws, strong enough to puncture steel, closed delicately around her collar and hoisted her into the air. Kles fluttered next to her as the dragon deposited the girl upon her back. All around came groans and snaps as the ice fell apart.

At the lake's edge, the girl was still waving for them to come to her, but there was no sign of Leech and Koko. Scirye was wondering where they were when Bayang plucked her into the air again and reared up.

“What's the idea?” spluttered Kles.

As the ice gave way beneath them, Bayang plunged into the freezing water, but she held the girl safe above the lake.

Water rilled from Bayang's wet scales, which gleamed now like polished emeralds. Scirye decided that dragons were at their most beautiful when they were in their natural habitat of the water. “Do you understand now?” the dragon asked.

Kles attempted to recover his dignity as he fluttered by the dragon's head. “Ahem, yes. And thank you.”

Chunks of ice bobbed against Bayang as she swam the rest of the way across the lake and then deposited her burden carefully on the shore.

When the teenage girl took Scirye's arm, Scirye immediately felt safe. “You've reached our haven, far traveler.” She spoke English with a slight accent and then called over her shoulder. “Tute, bring blankets for our guests.”

“I already thought of that,” came a peeved voice from the gaudy wagon. A large feline creature padded down the steps at the rear of the wagon. The short hair on his head was as tawny as Kles's fur, but there were black spots along its back. His jaws stretched to breaking so he could carry several threadbare, folded blankets.

The girl turned to Bayang solicitously. “Oh, my, I don't think we have a blanket big enough for you though. Will you be all right?”