“What are you doing here?” Anders whispered.
“They know,” said Mikkel, without a trace of his usual smirk. “We ran out of excuses. They know you’re up to something, and they know that we know what it is. It was either run for it and hope we could find you and help you, or let ourselves be locked up somewhere.”
They all fell silent until they reached the bend in the road where it was time to peel away from the crowd and strike out across the countryside. Those who saw them go no doubt thought they were heading for some little farm or village. Soon they were far enough away to speak.
“They wanted to lock you up?” asked Ellukka, who looked sick at the thought.
“Torsten did,” Theo said. “And some of the others were starting to agree. Don’t worry, your father wasn’t one of them. He wasn’t happy, though.”
“Do they have any idea what we’re up to?” Lisabet asked.
“Not yet,” Theo said. “Except that you two wolves are involved, and you wouldn’t be keeping it a secret if it was good news for the dragons.”
The silence was grim. Rayna was the one who broke it. “How did you get away, if they suspected you?”
“Some of the Finskólars helped us get out,” Mikkel said. “Bryn and Ferdie. And maybe Isabina, though to be honest we weren’t sure if she was trying to help us or was just so distracted by her mechanics that she got in everyone’s way.”
“It’s good to have you with us,” Ellukka said.
“Good to be here,” Mikkel agreed. “Sparks and scales, Holbard’shuge, I had no idea. We figured you’d have gone in the western gate, coming from Drekhelm, so we just waited outside it. Nobody knows our faces, after all. What are we doing next?”
Eventually they reached the spot where they’d hidden the harnesses and the rest of their supplies, and they all sat down to breakfast, catching Mikkel and Theo up on what they’d missed. Anders looked around at the group as he ate, feeling a strange mix of amazement that he’d found such friends and allies, and worry about the wolves and dragons at Ulfar and Drekhelm who were all now looking for them.
They seemed such a small group, to keep so many people safe.
They rolled out the map and leaned in to study it carefully. It wasn’t very clear, but it seemed as though the smallest island was up in the very north of the chain.
“Farthest to fly, of course,” said Rayna. “Assuming they’re all marked on it, anyway.”
“We’ll be able to tell from the air,” said Mikkel.
“It says to search along the shortest length,” Lisabet mused. “So we find the smallest one and then... ?”
“Walk the length of it?” Anders suggested. “There are six of us. If we all stay in a row, we should find the piece of the scepter—assuming it’s hidden there—even if we have to go back and forth more than once.”
“And then we hope like anything that the final riddle is one we can understand without going to Drekhelm,” Rayna said. “Or anywhere, really.”
“Um,” said Theo. “Is that a cat?”
They introduced Kess to Mikkel and Theo, finished their breakfast, and then packed up their things. Anders took Kess from Rayna before she transformed, and he wrapped a scarf around his body in a sling, tucking the cat inside. She seemed to like it there.
They all knew there was a chance that they’d be seen from Holbard if they took off—it might be early morning, but the sun was most definitely up. Still, the dragons all insisted they couldn’t wait the whole day feeling this cold, and they were all worried that either the wolves or the dragons might find them if they didn’t keep moving. They’d just have to take off as low as they could, fly as fast as they could, and hope.
They took to the air and followed the same route that Anders and Lisabet had with their class a few weeks before, on their way to the fateful campsite where they’d stolen Fylkir’s chalice and made their run for Drekhelm. Anders saw the Trondain River pass underneath them, and after a few hours the green gold of the rippling plains gave way to the steep, sharp, black slopes of the Seacliff Mountains, snow blanketing their upper slopes. They plunged straight down into the sea on the dragons’ right, and the air currents around them were perilous, one moment pushing them up, the next buffeting them sideways.
Ellukka was the strongest of all the dragons and was out in front carrying Lisabet. It was when they reached the familiar shores of the Skylake that she angled down, gently descending until she could land at the water’s edge, flaring her wings to help her stop, and then folding them back as Lisabet jumped down and began removing her harness.
“Time for a rest,” Lisabet called back, as Anders and Rayna landed and began to do the same. “And lunch!”
Anders looked back over his shoulder as Mikkel and Theo landed, then shifted quickly to boys crouching on the grass. Theo looked tired, but his spirits lifted when he saw the Skylake, and they all gathered together on its edge to eat a quick lunch. Mikkel even lit a small fire, heating up water to mix with cocoa powder and passing mugs around. Kess raced across the meadow in pursuit of a butterfly, not seeming to mind in the slightest that she’d been flying only a few minutes before.
They couldn’t afford to break for long, though—they needed to reach the Chelle Islands by early afternoon, so they’d have time to seek out somewhere sheltered to sleep before dark.
“And,” Mikkel said with a grimace as they packed up their things, put out the fire, and retrieved Kess, “by now the Dragonmeet is doing everything they can think of to look for us. So we’d better keep moving whenever we can. They could have some kind of locator artifact we don’t know about.”
Soon they were aloft once more. Anders saw the coastal town of Port Tylerd pass beneath them, with its tall, white lighthouse sitting atop a thick stone base, painted so brightly it seemed almost to shine in the afternoon sun without the lamp even being lit. Anders didn’t have much chance to admire it, though—by now they were over the northern coast of Vallen, and the winds were fierce.
He tucked himself down against Rayna’s back, arching his body over where Kess was nestled inside her sling. As the young dragons followed Ellukka out across the sea, freezing-cold winds buffeted them, tearing at their wings, at Anders and Lisabet, roaring around them. Anders tried to lift his head a few times to check on how the others were doing, but he couldn’t manage it for long. He could only look straight ahead, to where Ellukka was scrambling through the wind like she was swimming.
