“If Rayna’s going, I’m going,” said Ellukka promptly. “But Mikkel, Theo, you’ll have to stay here. Somebody has to cover for us. I have a plan that’ll get us out of Drekhelm all right, but if we’re not back by dark, you’ll have to come up with some kind of excuse, or better yet, make sure nobody knows.”
Mikkel and Theo nodded. Neither of them looked as sure about the plan, but Anders could see that neither of them had any other ideas either.
And so it was decided. For better or worse, they’d be going to Holbard in the morning. They’d just have to hope Hayn was true to his word—and that they were flying toward an ally, rather than a trap.
Chapter Six
ANDERS DIDN’T GET TO FIND OUT WHATELLUKKA’Splan was that night—there was a knocking on the door before the conversation could continue, and her father, Valerius, was outside, looking supremely unimpressed.
“Ellukka, it’s well past time you were in bed,” he said, peering into the room, his burly frame filling up most of the doorway. “And the rest of you. Come on, get moving.”
Nobody wanted to argue with a member of the Dragonmeet, though Ellukka scowled as she climbed off Lisabet’s bed and trooped out into the hallway with the others. She’d said before that she couldn’t afford to give her father a reason to stop her rooming with Rayna now, and insist she live with him in family quarters as she had when she was small, not when the Finskól students had so much to do.
As the dragons all headed off down the hallway, Anders could hear Valerius’s voice drifting back. “I’ve just heard a story about barrel racing, and I’m not—”
Lisabet shut the door firmly behind them, turning her back on it and leaning against it, as if she could keep all the Dragonmeet—and all their troubles—on the outside. “Remember when our biggest worry was surviving Professor Ennar’s combat class?” she said, rueful.
The two wolves got ready for bed in silence, both lost in their own thoughts. The same question kept nagging at Anders, but he didn’t dare voice it aloud to his friend:How far is Sigrid prepared to go?
Hayn had looked deadly serious. Would Sigrid push the temperature down so far she killed the dragons? Killed his sister? Would the dragons talk and debate, hearing every voice and considering every view, until they were frozen solid? Would the wolves of Ulfar stand by and watch, as their Fyrstulf killed the enemy one by one?
He was afraid he knew the answer. He knew the stories the wolves told about the dragons. What they believed. Even his friends believed the worst of the dragons, and now of him too, he had no doubt.
But for all the questions whirling around in his head, there was nothing to do but drift into a troubled sleep and wait for morning.
The next day, Ellukka tackled Leif at breakfast. The Drekleid was eating alone, reading from a small book, blinking sleepily as he spooned up his porridge. Definitely not a morning person, but that only made him more susceptible to Ellukka’s tactics.
“I want to take Anders and Lisabet on a cultural excursion,” she told him, taking a seat at his table. “Rayna’s going to help me. She needs to learn more dragon stories too.”
“A what?” he said, blinking. “Where will this excursion go, exactly? You know you’re not supposed to leave Drekhelm.”
“We won’t go far,” she promised. “But I need to practice my storytelling. I thought we could visit some landmarks—just here in the Icespire Mountains nearby—and I’d tell them the stories that go with them. Lene’s Pass, maybe.”
Leif didn’t look so sure, and Anders leaned down beside Ellukka. “We’re also working on a design project,” he said. “We want to design a special harness for dragons to wear when wolves or people are riding them. Something we could connect ourselves to, so we don’t fall off.” Remembering what Rayna had said the first time they’d discussed the idea, he added, “There are people here at Drekhelm who don’t transform or are too young. It would be useful for them too.”
Ellukka made a spluttering noise of protest, but Leif was nodding. “I do like to encourage innovation,” he conceded. “And as you say, many dragons have human family members who might benefit from such an invention. You’ll need to be home well before dark.”
“We will,” they chorused.
“And don’t go far,” he continued. “Make sure nobody from any of the villages sees you. Don’t go too near Little Dalven, or High Rikkel. And don’t forget there are farmers who live outside both of them.”
“We’ll be careful,” Ellukka said, rising to her feet. Anders recognized this as an old tactic of Rayna’s.As soon as they start to say yes, run away before it turns into a no.
“Well, then,” Leif said, and Anders and Ellukka fled.
Mikkel and Theo saw them off, both looking worried, though Mikkel was trying to cover it up with his usual smirk.
“Be careful,” Theo said, pushing his hair out of his eyes as he always did, shifting his weight from foot to foot. “And if you’re late, we’ll try to cover it up for as long as we can.”
“And when that doesn’t work,” added Mikkel, “we’ll go through your things and take all the good stuff.”
Rayna poked her tongue out at him, and then walked over to the middle of the Great Hall, where Ellukka had already transformed. Ellukka’s scales were the color of a sunrise, orange and peach, her wings a deep gold, shot through with hints of a reddish pink.
Rayna dropped to a three-point crouch, both feet and the fingertips of one hand resting on the floor, and bowed her head. An instant later she was swelling faster than Anders’s eyes could follow, her brown skin glimmering, her shape morphing. Within two heartbeats she was her dragon self, her scales a dark red, streaks of gold and copper winding through them, gleaming in the early morning light.
All his life, Anders had been taught to fear dragons—to run for his life if he saw one—and he still couldn’t tamp down the faint nervousness he felt when he was so close to a dragon, even if she was his sister. But he could also see how beautiful the colors in her scales were, how delicate the stretches of her wings.
He and Lisabet were putting on layers upon layers of clothing. They couldn’t afford to wear their Ulfar cloaks to Holbard, in case someone wondered why students were entering the city from the outside, or walking about the city in a pair, instead of the compulsory foursome. So they’d found coats and cloaks in the cupboards full of clothes set aside for visitors to Holbard. Anders wore a pair of thick blue trousers tucked into brown boots, and a bright-blue tunic over the top, a green shirt beneath it. He had on a padded brown jacket, a cloak pulled over it for extra warmth, gloves, a scarf wrapped around his neck, and a leather hat lined with wool pulled down over his ears. It was one thing to enjoy the cold mountain air in a wolfish kind of way. It was quite another to freeze solid, flying at altitude.
