Wings of Fire Book Three: The Hidden Kingdom (4 page)

Unless it was one of them who screamed
. But it couldn’t have been. The scream had come from somewhere up ahead.

Glory checked her scales again to make sure she was well hidden and then sped up, hurrying through the trees toward the scream.

The fog was so dense, she nearly missed the two dark lumps that looked like fallen logs. But her claws came down on something that was decidedly a dragon tail, and she leaped back.

Two brown dragons were sprawled in the mud, surrounded by pools of blood that were already being washed away by the rain. Their throats had been ripped out so viciously that their heads were nearly severed from their bodies.

Glory stared into the rolling gray fog, but nothing moved out there except the rain.

The MudWing soldiers were dead, and there was no sign of what had killed them.

“Remind me why we’re walking
toward
the place with the monster and the screaming and the something that kills dragons?” Clay asked.

“We could go somewhere else,” Starflight said. “Maybe to the IceWings?”

“IceWings! Yes!” Clay said. “That sounds like a great plan. Let’s do that. No mysterious dragon-killing things in the Ice Kingdom. Right? What are those animals they have up there? Penguins? I bet I could beat a penguin or two in battle. Couldn’t I? How big are they? Maybe just one penguin.”

“So we can freeze to death instead,” Glory said. A rumor and a couple of dead soldiers were not going to scare her away from her home when she was finally this close. “Fantastic plan, Starflight. Not to mention the Ice Kingdom is half a continent away while the rainforest is right here.”

“Besides, Webs will never make it all the way to the Ice Kingdom,” Sunny chimed in. She glanced nervously up at the trees, which seemed to be getting taller and taller as they walked.

It was also warmer the farther they went, and up in the vines overhead Glory could see flashes of color. The bright summer yellows and purples and blues might have been birds or flowers, but they were definitely not typical of the brown, brown, brown Mud Kingdom. Glory wasn’t sure, but she guessed the dragonets were in the rainforest for real now.

The gnarled claw shapes of the marsh trees were half a day behind them and so were the MudWing bodies. Tsunami had wanted to stop and search the area for clues, but she’d been outvoted by the other dragonets when Starflight pointed out that now they’d
really
be in trouble if they were caught right next to a double murder . . . not to mention whatever had killed the soldiers couldn’t have gone far. That was enough to get everyone, even Webs, to fly through the night, and they’d circled down to walk again only once the sun was up and they were looking for food.

“See?” Glory said to Clay and Starflight. “Even Sunny is acting braver than you scaredy-scavengers.”

“
Even
Sunny?” the SandWing flared. “What’s that supposed to mean? I’m brave! I’m brave all the time!” She lashed her tail and ducked away when Clay reached to pat her on the head.

Warm bursts of sunlight nudged through the leafy canopy, making all their scales glow. Glory let her scales turn whatever color they wanted. A shimmery beetle green spread all over her, touched here and there with curls of amber. She liked the feeling of matching the trees and sunbeams.

We’ll be there soon
, she thought with a shiver of anticipation.
But I mustn’t get my hopes up. Maybe it won’t be what I imagined. It just has to be better than life under the mountain, trapped in a cave by guardians who hate me. I’m not setting the bar too high here, I think.

Something crackled off to their left, but when Glory whipped around, all she saw was a shaggy gray sloth, hanging from a tree and blinking sleepily at her.

“Have I mentioned this place makes me nervous?” Clay asked.

“Only about a thousand times,” Glory said.

“I wish we knew what the MudWings were talking about,” Sunny said. “How can they live right next to the rainforest and not know why it’s dangerous?”

“How can the RainWings live
in
the rainforest if it’s all that dangerous?” Glory countered.

Webs sniffed faintly, the first sound he’d made in a while. He muttered, “Because they’re RainWings. They probably haven’t even noticed.”

Glory glared at him. “Maybe you’d like a matching venomous wound on your other side,” she snarled.

Tsunami whirled and grabbed Webs’s snout. The bigger SeaWing snorted with surprise and tried to jerk back, but she held him firmly so she could glare into his face.

“All right, enough. What do you know about this?” she demanded. “You’re the only one who’s been to the rainforest. Does it have some kind of monster?” She shook his snout, none too gently. “Stop drooping like a wet fern and tell us what you know.”

“Nuffing,” Webs mumbled through Tsunami’s grip.

“Stamp on his tail,” Glory suggested. “Or poke that scratch. That’ll get him talking.”

“Don’t be horrible,” Sunny said. She nudged their guardian’s shoulder with her snout. “Webs, please warn us if you know something. It’s not safe for you either.”

Webs sighed, and Tsunami let go of him.

“I swear I don’t know anything about a monster,” he said. “I didn’t see anything dangerous when I snuck in to steal Glory’s egg. Honestly it was really easy. It was the night before the brightest night, so you could tell which eggs were about to hatch, and I just took one and flew back to the mountains. I didn’t even run into any RainWings, let alone a monster.”

“My parents weren’t guarding their nest?” Glory asked.

Webs looked down at his talons and shook his head.

That doesn’t mean anything
, Glory thought, but she remembered the MudWing village and Clay’s mother, who had sold one of her eggs to the Talons of Peace for a couple of cows. She hadn’t missed Clay at all, and she certainly didn’t want him back. Glory hoped her parents wouldn’t be like that.

Both Clay and Tsunami had been disappointed. Maybe parent dragons were always disappointing . . . especially when you’d spent years dreaming about what they might be like.

Well, Glory didn’t particularly care whether her parents were the most amazing dragons in the world. She just wanted to meet other RainWings and show her friends that they weren’t all lazy fruit-eaters, like the other tribes thought. With their camouflage scales and secret venom, surely they had to be tougher and stronger than anyone suspected.

“Maybe it’s a new monster,” Clay suggested. “Something that’s come to the rainforest since you were here six years ago.”

“Maybe,” Webs said. “The Talons never sent anyone down this way.”

“I can’t tell you much about this place either,” Starflight said, worrying at one of his claws. “There were almost no scrolls about the rainforest or the dragons who live here.”

Glory knew that. She’d memorized every reference she could find anywhere to the RainWings, and all put together they told her essentially nothing. There’d been one scroll called
Dangers of the Rainforest
, so she knew a fair amount about quicksand, poisonous snakes, and deadly bugs. But even that one barely mentioned the RainWings themselves, and certainly nothing about creatures big enough to massacre the MudWing soldiers.

Something chattered loudly in the branches overhead and they all jumped.

“It was just a monkey,” Glory said fiercely, clamping down on her nerves so her scales wouldn’t change color. “Or a . . . a toucan or something.”

“Can we eat toucans?” Clay asked hopefully.

“Only if we can catch them,” Tsunami said. She flexed her wings and glanced up at the branches and vines overhead.

Glory wasn’t hungry anymore, now that the sun had finally come out. Each touch of sunlight felt as if it filled her up better than any cow. With a twinge of guilt, she remembered the SkyWing palace and the sculptured tree Queen Scarlet had set up to display Glory on, like a piece of trea sure.

There had been
so much sun
there — nothing like she’d ever had in her whole life under the mountain. Queen Scarlet would roll Glory into the sunlight and let her change colors however she wanted all day long. She didn’t try to talk to her. She never touched her or yelled at her or insulted her or compared her to anyone. Scarlet’s only wish had been for Glory to sleep and be beautiful.

But I didn’t love it
, Glory told herself fiercely.
It was just new and different. A new, different way to be a prisoner and have my life chosen for me. I’m more than a lump of trea sure.

I guess Scarlet found that out the hard way.

“CAW! CAW!”

Tsunami leaped into battle pose, her teeth bared, with Clay a step behind her. The others stopped as she glared around, looking for the source of the noise.

“I’m telling you,” Glory said. “It’s only toucans. There’s nothing to be scared of. You’re just jumpy.”

“Now why would we be jumpy?” Tsunami said. “Oh, right.
The dead bodies.
”

“At least I told you about them,” Glory said, her ruff flaring. “You saw a dead body — of someone we
knew
— on day one in the Kingdom of the Sea and decided not to tell us.”

“Guys —” Starflight said.

“That was different! That was Kestrel!” Tsunami cried. “I had to find a way to tell you properly.”

“Super job you did there,” Glory said.

“GUYS!” Starflight yelled. They stopped and looked back at him. He was turning in frantic circles, staring out at the trees. It took Glory a moment, but she realized what he was looking for right before he said, “Where’s Sunny?”

They all fell silent.

Sunny had vanished into thin air.

“SUNNY!” Clay bellowed at the top of his lungs.

“She was mad,” Starflight fretted. “Maybe she ran off because she was mad at us.”

“She was?” Clay asked. “Why was she mad?” Glory couldn’t remember either.

“Run off into a strange rainforest on her own?” Tsunami said. “That’s not like her.”

Glory closed her eyes and ransacked her brain.
Poisono
us snak
es. Deadly swarms of ants. What were the other “dangers of the rainforest”? Quicksand?
She opened her eyes and peered at the ground around them, but it was all plain dirt, tree debris, and tangled roots. Nothing looked like quicksand.

“SUNNY! SUNNY!” Clay yelled again.

Tsunami growled. “We made it through the Sky Kingdom and the Kingdom of the Sea without losing anyone, and now we’re two minutes into the rainforest and one of us is gone?”

“She’s not gone,” Starflight said, his voice vibrating with panic. “She can’t be! She has to be here somewhere. I was looking at her only a few moments ago!”

Glory turned her gaze up to the trees. Another gray sloth hung from a nearby branch, yawning. It looked like perhaps the least threatening creature she’d ever seen. She frowned at it.

“Webs, what do you think happened?” Tsunami demanded, following Glory’s gaze.

There was no response. They all turned around.

Webs was gone, too.

“No way,” Clay said, flaring his wings. “He was
just
here. I saw his face when we realized Sunny was gone. Maybe ten seconds ago. He couldn’t have disappeared in
ten seconds
.”

“But he did,” Starflight cried. “He did, and Sunny did, into thin air.”

“Ouch!” Tsunami said, clapping a talon to her neck. “Something just stung me.”

Clay jumped and clawed at his neck as well. Starflight’s eyes went wide, and then he threw himself to the ground and rolled under the nearest low-hanging bush with his wings over his head.

“What in the world are you —” Glory started, ducking to look at him. She heard a soft buzz as something whizzed by her ear, followed by a tiny
thunk
as it hit the tree behind her.

She spun around and saw Clay literally disappear right in front of her. It was as if the forest reached out leafy arms, quietly wrapped him up, and bundled him away. One moment he was there, blinking dizzily, and then he was gone. A heartbeat later, so was Tsunami.

Aha
, Glory thought.

She planted herself next to Starflight’s hiding spot and flared her ruff. She could sense the waves of pale orange and dark red rippling across her scales, but she didn’t try to hide them. She didn’t care if her audience knew she was angry.

“That’s enough!” she called. “Come out here right now.”

There was a pause, and then the air seemed to shimmer for a moment, and suddenly a dragon the color of raspberries stood in front of her, grinning.

Glory had never seen anyone else use camouflage scales like hers. It was startling and unsettling and kind of the coolest thing she’d ever seen.
Holy moons
, she thought.
That is awesome.
We
do that. RainWings, like me.

Another dragon, dark blue dappled with gold, appeared beside the first. She was grinning, too.

Rustling overhead made Glory look up.

Suddenly the trees were full of dragons.

RainWings curled around the trunks or hung from the branches by their tails. Several of them were colors she’d never even imagined. She saw deep shades of violet, iridescent peach, pale jade, and a yellow so bright it was like being stabbed in the eyes with the sun.

We
are
beautiful
.

“Aw, look!” said the raspberry dragon. “She’s happy to see us!” He beamed at her, and Glory realized that small bubbles of rose pink were rising up from her talons to her wings.

“Poor little dragonet,” murmured the dark blue RainWing. “Why are her scales so dull?”

Glory blinked.
Is she talking about me?

“Shhh, don’t be rude,” said the first RainWing. “Hello, tiny one. I’m Jambu, and this is Liana. What’s your name, and why don’t we know you already?”

“Glory, and the easily terrified black one is Starflight,” she said. She glanced behind her and saw Starflight peering out from under the bush. “Where are my friends?”

The dark blue dragon — Liana — tilted one of her wings up at the trees. Amid the dragons clustered overhead were four hanging nets woven of vines. Sunny, Webs, Clay, and Tsunami were inside; they all had their eyes closed and hung limply like sacks of fish.

“Are they OK?” Starflight cried.

“Sleeping darts,” said the raspberry dragon, producing a tiny blowgun from a pouch around his neck. “Let’s just say we have some tree frogs around here you wouldn’t want to lick. Your friends will wake up fine in a few hours.”

“It’s easier to meet new dragons this way,” said Liana. “We’ve had a couple of grumpy brown ones stumble in here, and for some reason they start biting us before we can even say hello. This way we get to chat first, while they’re still a bit groggy.”

“Plus it’s more fun,” said Jambu. “Practicing dart-shooting on ourselves isn’t the same.”

“They probably won’t think it’s so fun,” Glory said. “Especially the blue one. She can be a little cranky. Just to warn you.”

“So . . . are we your prisoners now?” Starflight asked glumly.

The dark blue dragon burst into gales of laughter, and amused noises swept through all the dragons in the trees.

“RainWings don’t take prisoners, funny little black dragon,” Liana said when she could speak again. “Whatever would we do with them?”

“Interrogate them for information,” Glory suggested. “Trade them for hostages or weaponry. Contain them to minimize any threats.”

The RainWings blinked at her as if she’d suddenly started speaking toucan.

“Just a few ideas,” she said with a shrug.

“If we’re not prisoners,” Starflight said, “then what are you going to do with us?”

“Well,” said the raspberry dragon, glancing up at the position of the sun over the canopy. “Is anyone hungry?”

And then the trees began to scream.