Once Rayna was ready, he approached her. It was only the second time he’d seen her as a dragon, though he’d now been at Drekhelm for over a week. And what a difference a week had made. Last time he’d stood beside his sister as a dragon, he’d been terrified, Mikkel and Ellukka looking on suspiciously. Now Mikkel was standing beside him, weaving his hands together to boost Anders up his sister’s side, which was much easier than climbing her leg. Her scales radiated a fierce heat, and they weren’t as hard as they looked from the outside. There was a little give to them when he pressed his hand against one.
“Good luck,” said Mikkel quietly, as Anders wedged himself into place between two of the ridges that ran the length of her back. “No pressure or anything, but the fate of all dragonkind’s probably resting on you. Find out what he knows, and how we can stop them freezing us all, and whatever you do, don’t let the wolves catch you.”
“Easy,” said Anders, with a weak smile. Then Mikkel was stepping back, Anders was curling his arms around the ridge in front of him—they seriously needed to talk about harnesses, this was aterribleidea—and before he knew it, Rayna was taking a dozen quick steps and spreading her wings. They were aloft!
They cleared the huge dragon doors of the great cavern with room to spare, and Rayna tipped down her left wing to wheel around and follow the curve of the mountainside, then snapped her wings wide open to soar. She trumpeted her pleasure at being in the air, and Anders heard a reply from right behind them—Ellukka and Lisabet must be close.
They flew for a couple of hours, their course taking them through the Icespire Mountains and over the Great Forest of Mists. The countryside below them seemed just like one of the maps Anders studied in class. In the crisp cool of the morning, mists were gathered not just around the forest, but in every gully and valley, as though they were white water that had drained down to the lowest points in the land. The fierce black rock of the mountains, cut through with pure white snow, slowly gave way first to the rich, dark-green treetops of the Great Forest, and after that to the familiar green-gold of the plains.
Anders knew the rivers below him were rushing, tumbling, fierce beasts, ready to grab at the unwary and drag them away, but from here they looked like blue and silver string, winding their way in endless curves through the countryside.
The sun caught the dew-wet plains, and they glinted at him like fields of diamonds, dotted here and there with outcroppings of jet-black rock, with the small shadows that meant a hill or someone’s home. With so many of the village houses sporting grassed-over roofs, it was often difficult to tell the difference.
The view was mesmerizing, and up here it felt almost possible to forget all his worries and his fears. Up here, everything felt small and distant, like pieces on a game board to be moved—when he was down on the ground, he felt like he was in a dangerous game, where one wrong move could bring down an avalanche on him and his friends.
He felt a pang of disappointment as Rayna finally started to angle downward, coming to rest in a gully near the banks of the Sudrain River, following Ellukka into their landing spot. Their goal was to land some way outside Holbard and approach the city on foot, coming in through the west gate, which was often the busiest.
When he tried to climb down he found he’d stiffened into place, quick pain shooting along his limbs as he hauled his left leg over Rayna’s back to slide down her side.
Lisabet was stumbling to the ground nearby, and without a word she half-ran, half-staggered toward the river’s edge. Ellukka was transforming the moment Lisabet was clear of her, and she hurried after the other girl. Anders tried to make his tired arms and legs follow, and by the time he caught up, Lisabet was kneeling by the edge of the river, scooping up cold water and splashing it on her face. Ellukka was holding on to Lisabet’s cloak with both hands to make sure she didn’t fall in.
“What happened?” he asked. “Did she get sick?”
Ellukka simply shrugged and held on. “We don’t exactly talk while we’re up there,” she pointed out. “Search me.”
Rayna appeared beside Anders, her own transformation to human complete, and the three of them waited until Lisabet could lift her head. “Sorry,” she said, her pale skin even paler than usual, her cheeks bright pink from the cold of the river. “It was the heat. I was all right for most of it, but I started to feel horrible toward the end. The dragons are sohotwhen they’re, well, dragons.”
Anders, with his strange new immunity to the heat, hadn’t even noticed.
Ellukka, who might ordinarily have a wisecrack for Lisabet, instead produced a couple of cookies from her pockets. “Eat something,” she said. “Usually helps me, if I’ve gotten cold.”
“How did you get cookies to transform with you?” Rayna asked, indignant. “I had a sandwich with me last week, and it just vanished. Leif says nobody knows where things like that go, which I’d think would be quite an important mystery to solve, but apparently not.”
“Size,” Ellukka said. “If what you pack is small enough, and you can tuck it in your pockets, then I suppose your charm thinks it’s part of your clothing.” She fished out a necklace from beneath her tunic, which sported an amulet that looked a lot like the ones wolves wore to keep their clothes in place when they transformed.
“Just like ours,” Lisabet said, echoing Anders’s thoughts. “More evidence that wolves and dragons used to work together.”
“We’reevidence that wolves and dragons used to get along,” Ellukka pointed out. “If we can now, they could then.” Her lips quirked, and she pointed at Anders and Rayna. “And we know at least one dragon and one wolf liked each other, or they wouldn’t be here.”
“I wish we knew who they were,” Anders said, and Rayna murmured agreement by his side. But that wasn’t what they were here to think about, and after Lisabet splashed a little more cold water on her face, the four of them set off, walking down to the road that led into town. It stretched between a ford across the Sudrain River and the walls of Holbard itself, and was the way almost all of the farmers from the southern farmlands made their way into Holbard with their produce for market.
It was easy enough to wait for a gap in the people and wagons to dart down to the road, and once they were there, the four of them simply slowed their pace and let themselves be swallowed up in a slow-moving crowd of farmers and traders. It wasn’t quick, but it was safe.
Anders could hear the farmers talking quietly, and he kept his head down, his cloak wrapped tight around him.
“We’re halfway through spring,” a man was saying, tugging his scarf more tightly around his neck. “Everything should be in bloom, putting out green shoots and coming to life, and instead it’s still half-frozen in the ground.”
“It’s like the winter never ended,” a second man agreed.
“Still,” said the woman beside them. “If it’s hard for us, it’s worse for those dragons. I heard half the port burned down, the last fire they lit.”
The first man clucked his tongue in worry. “I heard we’ll have a battle before the year’s out. I only hope we’re not there when it happens, makes you want to stay out on the farm where it’s safe, even if nothing’s growing.”
“The wolves are strong,” the second man said. “Surely they’ll defend us again.”
“They’d better,” the woman replied, with a snort that sounded a lot like Rayna’s when she got indignant. “Wolf Guard on every corner, constantly stopping you and asking your business. And they take plenty of money from the city’s coffers. The Fyrstulf offers protection, and that’s valuable, but you bet your boots she knows how valuable it is.”
“Don’t say things like that,” the man said, lowering his voice. “People might think the wrong thing.”
