City of Ice (26 page)

It was all Bayang could do to stay with the wing, let alone steer it in the turbulent air. Despite Pele's charm, the wind-driven snow stabbed against her eyelids like needles. She could only imagine the pain that the hatchlings were going through.

“Hold on,” she shouted. But there was no answer from any of her passengers. “Scirye? Koko? Kles?”

Through the screaming wind, Bayang thought she heard a muffled cry, but even her eyes, which could see just as well in the sea darkness as in daylight on the land, could find nothing in the swirling snow. She could not even tell if she was right side up or upside down. This must have been the whiteout that Roxanna had warned them about.

Roland had set a trap with a spell that would activate after a set period, creating an obstacle for his pursuers, and allow him to escape. The winds would suck up the snow covering the frozen ocean, creating a confusing white tempest. Stay in one place and you risked being buried and yet keep moving and you risked wandering in circles until you froze.

And the hatchling had been right at the center of the spell.

What was this terrible sense of loss, this agony? She and the hatchlings were of two different species, and as dragons measure time they had only been together for the blink of an eye. And yet she felt such pain. Such emptiness.

“Leech?” she wailed. “Scirye!”

Was it her imagination or did she see a flicker of green light in answer?

A sudden gust plucked her from the wing like an invisible hand and flung her away, the helpless plaything of the storm.

Unable to tell up from down, Leech was hugging his knees tight against his chest to form himself into a protective ball as the winds tossed him about. It was all he could do to breathe, for every intake of air clogged his nose and mouth with snowflakes. It was like being buried alive.

He had never seen snow before this trip and he'd be happy if he never encountered it again. He had seen, felt, and eaten more than his fill of it.

His eyes, starved for anything beside snowflakes, noticed the faint glow coming from his wrist. Suddenly he was desperate for company and he pulled his glove back to expose the Dancer's ribbon. It slipped onto his palm, where it pulsed like green flame. Snowflakes sizzled against its sides, but it did not go out or even shrink.

In the short time they'd been together, he'd come to think of the ribbon as a friend or—maybe Koko had been right—as a kind of pet. “Can you help me?” he asked desperately. “My friends and I are trapped in the storm.”

The ribbon pulsed in response, but Leech wasn't sure what it meant. Leech pleaded with it for several minutes, growing as frustrated as Scirye had when she'd been asking Nanaia to aid Upach.

Then, even with the wind screaming in his ears, he thought he heard Bayang.

As hope surged through him, the voice urged,
Keep quiet. This is the perfect time to kill you and no one would ever know.

He thought of what Kles had said. Sure, Bayang could be an awful grump, but she had never raised a paw against him personally. Instead, she had sacrificed and suffered for his sake.

No,
he told the voice,
she's my friend.
And then he began to shout out loud, “Bayang? Help, Bayang!”

Suddenly he felt something tickle his wrist. It was the ribbon wriggling away and forming a compact sphere the size of a marble that suddenly flew upward, whipped about by the winds.

“Wait, come back,” he called, feeling even more alone than before. Even the Dancer's ribbon had deserted him.

His back hit the frozen ocean surface so abruptly that it knocked the wind from him. Instantly, snow began to pile up around him and he fought to rise into the air again. Better to die in the sky than be buried on the land.

He wheeled through the air, as helpless as a leaf in a hurricane. All of a sudden there was a green glow to his right and he heard a sizzling sound like a giant frying pan cooking bacon. The noise increased so that the roaring wind seemed to fade into the background, and he could see stars peeking through a gap in the clouds.

He realized then that he'd been turned sideways and righted himself so the sky was now above him again and the sea below.

The hole continued to widen, green fire eating along its rim. Leech felt the elation rise inside him as he saw the Dancers flooding downward toward him. They formed a seething tunnel in the shape of a corkscrew that the pounding winds could bend but not break. As they grew closer, he heard sizzling sounds whenever the whirling snowflakes came into contact with them.

And then he was standing at the bottom of a glowing tube that stretched through the storm to the stars above.

The wispy glowing body of a Dancer spiraled around him like a twirling veil, and Leech wondered if the ribbon had rejoined it. He felt a bit of regret that it had merged with its fellows.

“Thank you for rescuing me,” Leech said, “but how did you know I was in trouble?”

The Dancer pulsed in response as it circled him.

Leech would never really know. Had the Dancer understood him once the ribbon returned to its host? Or had the Dancer actually seen his predicament by means of the ribbon? Either way, he was grateful.

The Dancer wound part of itself around his wrist and tried to tug him toward the stars, but Leech twisted away, heading in the direction of Bayang's voice. “I have to find my friends.”

His hands tingled as he tried to shove through the glowing wall, but as fragile as the delicate Dancers appeared, their bodies were as tough and elastic as rubber bands. They bent under the pressure but did not give way. If the winds were not strong enough to push them aside, Leech knew he could not.

The Dancers began to flash up and down the tunnel until Leech felt like he was inside a neon lightbulb.

The flashing stopped abruptly and the tunnel began to unravel, each Dancer slanting toward the frozen ocean, burning the snow as it went. Other Dancers joined with his savior to form a sheltering sphere around him.

“Bayang?” he called again.

“Here.” He heard her faint cry. “Are you all right?”

Now's your chance,
the voice said.
You can get away while you leave her to freeze to death.

Leech ignored the voice again as he felt the relief wash over him. As he flew at a slant toward her, the sphere rolled through the air, keeping him in its shelter while other Dancers shot ahead to clear the way. “I'm coming. I'm okay,” he called. “What about you?”

“I'm fine too,” she said. “Keep talking.”

“The Dancers are helping us,” he said.

“Where did the Dancers come from?” she wondered.

“The ribbon brought them,” Leech said. He was hovering a yard above the surface now.

“Have you seen the others?” Bayang asked anxiously. “The wind snatched us right off the wing and I couldn't catch them.”

“No,” Leech confessed, moving forward.

“Can you ask the Dancers?” the dragon inquired desperately.

“I'll try,” Leech said, “but first let's get together.”

He almost bumped into her. One moment there was a wall of swirling snow, and the next the dragon was there, head lowered against the savage winds and snow, a paw raised to plod along.

He was glad that he had not given in to that savage inner voice.

Dancers flitted around her, forming a dome large enough to hold them both. Though the dome constantly changed shape under the pounding winds, the sides held firm.

As Bayang lifted her head, surprised and grateful for the respite, Leech flung his arms around her neck.

“Am I glad to see you,” he said.

To Leech's surprise, he felt her head nuzzling against him. “Not more than I am to see you. Thank Heaven. I thought I'd lost you.”

After the first delightful thrill, Leech didn't know what to say and Bayang seemed to feel just as awkward. Now that they had finally acknowledged the bond that had grown between them, neither of them had a clue about what to do next. There was nothing in his abused childhood to use as a measuring stick. And he suspected that the dragon had a similar problem.

“You were right when you said words can't erase our past,” Leech said.

Bayang pulled her neck up, looking uncomfortable. “Yes, unfortunately.”

Desperately Leech tried to put his thoughts into words. “But I figure you and me are in the same boat. We both did bad things that we'd like to forget but can't. What's really important is that we're both trying to change.”

“Yes,” Bayang said slowly as if savoring the notion. “Yes, I guess we are. But I imagine there are always going to be some bumps in our way.”

“But if we keep reminding ourselves that we're friends, we can get over them,” Leech said hopefully.

Bayang smiled. “Words of wisdom from a mere hatchling.”

Leech tried to cover up his embarrassment by saying lamely, “Well, we shouldn't be resting like this while they're in trouble. We've got to find the others.”

He looked around the globe of Dancers, wondering how to find the savior Dancer among all the others. He noticed that more Dancers were arriving, tunneling through the snow in this area so that it quickly resembled pale Swiss cheese.

“What's that?” Bayang pointed to a bright green hemisphere flashing to their right.

Dancers were already clearing a path for them. “Let me go first,” Bayang said. Her legs floundered through the layer of loose, newly fallen snow, but her paws trampled it so that Leech had no trouble.

They found Scirye huddled with her face against the snow, arms wrapped around Kles inside her coat. She was just looking up in amazement at the shielding Dancers.

“Am I happy to see you.” She grinned. The Dancers slipped away as she stood up.

“Are you all right?” Bayang asked.

“Yes, but I'm as sick of snow as Upach.” Opening her coat, she nudged the griffin with a finger. “Kles?”

He poked his head out, clacking his beak together in a yawn. “I was having such a good dream.”

“Well, this could have been a deadly nightmare for all of us,” Bayang said. She explained about how Roland had trapped them.

“We should go looking for Koko,” Leech said.

At that moment, though, a Dancer snaked through the storm to them.

“I think they found him,” the dragon said. She took the lead again while the children followed until they came to the delta-shaped wing.

“Thank you,” Leech said to the Dancers, “but can you help us find our other friend?”

Together, he, Scirye, and Kles tried to ask about the badger. When words failed, the griffin resorted to pantomime, doing a credible job that would have had Leech laughing if he had not been so worried.

Even when Dancers started to serpentine away in all directions, the companions couldn't be certain their rescuers had understood. To distract themselves, the children helped Bayang fold up the wing. If she was right and the storm was localized, they could carry the wing to the border and try to launch it somehow.

The storm itself seemed to be lessening, as if the Dancers were winning the wrestling match with the winds.

Finally, a Dancer came to them. Leech could not be sure if it was his earlier savior. “Did you find him?”

The Dancer flared with a light so glaring that Leech had to squint. Then the Dancer repeated it at a rapid, staccato rate that was irritating to the nerves as well as the eyes.

“Whatever they found, it seems to be annoying them,” Bayang observed.

“Well,” Leech conceded, well aware of his friend's shortcomings, “that certainly sounds like Koko.”

They found the badger rolling around in the snow with a Dancer wrapped around him like a glowing mummy.

Leech hurriedly high-stepped through the drifts and helped free his friend. Immediately, the Dancer zipped skyward, flashing and wriggling indignantly as it flew.

“Koko, what happened?” Leech asked as he helped the badger sit up.

“I was just trying to hitch a ride.” Koko patted one side of his head as if trying to clear snow out of his ear. “And we sort of got tangled up. Where were you guys?”

“Maybe we ought to leave him here until he learns some manners,” Kles said.

“He'll starve first.” Leech laughed in relief and helped the badger stand up.

Shielded by the Dancers, the friends slogged through snow covering the frozen ocean. It was as if the raging winds and whirling snowflakes were held in a giant glass cylinder, because beyond that was calm and still.

Bayang was trampling down a path for the others. Despite the growing numbness in her limbs, she was determined to save the hatchlings. Though she had known that they had become close to her, she was still surprised at the pain she had felt when she believed that she had lost them.

And she was not the only one who had changed. Leech had matured in the short time she had known him. But, she admitted ruefully, meeting your would-be killer might make anyone grow older. It certainly was altering her, the would-be killer.

She was so lost in thought that she barely heard Kles call out, “Shouldn't we have reached the storm's edge by now?”

She looked ahead of them to see tracks already half-filled by the snow. “You're right. I think we've been circling back into the storm and not away from it.”

“Yeah, it doesn't feel right,” Leech agreed.

But when Bayang tried to turn, the Dancers would not yield. She and Leech tried arguing with their guardians both in speech and in pantomime, but it was useless.

“We're safe as long as we're with the Dancers, so let's go where they want,” Kles reasoned. “Eventually, either we'll get out or they'll listen to us.”

“But we're wasting time,” Scirye said.

“It can't be helped if they won't let us,” the griffin said.

The others reluctantly had to admit there was no easy solution.

During the course of their trek, one or another of them would become convinced the Dancers were taking them in the wrong direction. However, the creatures of light either didn't understand or were too stubborn to give in. So the group, growing increasingly frustrated, was forced to continue on.

After an hour, Bayang stopped so suddenly that Leech bumped into her. “I can see clear air ahead,” she said.

The children and badger squeezed past her to stare. There, at the mouth of the Dancers' living tunnel, was the lumpy plain, and not a single snowflake spinning about.

Leech scratched his head. “I was so sure that this wasn't the way.”

“Roland must have added a confusion spell to the storm to make sure we never got out,” Bayang said. “Somehow it didn't affect the Dancers.” She had been feeling weary and paw sore just a moment ago, but her anger washed the fatigue away.

Scirye started to tramp forward. “He's got a lot to answer for.”