At first I hoped it might be a trick of the light—a play of shadows from clouds, maybe. But the smudge kept getting bigger and bigger and darker and darker…whatever it was, it was coming fast.
You know what it is, whispered a dark little voice in my head. And you know what it means.
Death.
That was what the Madlings meant, always. No one knew where they had first come from or why they chose to hunt humans, but their bite was invariably fatal. Only dragon fire could cleanse their evil from the sky.
“They’re here,” L’eesha said, and I knew she’d seen the smudge too. Her whole body trembled with eagerness—with the instinct to fly and wipe that wrongness from the air.
I put a hand on her neck.
“Easy, dearheart. You know we’re not allowed.”
“I know…I know…” She shifted from foot to foot. “But maybe I should have them put my saddle on, just in case.”
I looked down at the Flight Terraces on the level below us. The Terrace workers were just standing there, waiting. Every dragon who was flying had already been harnessed and saddled. Now there was nothing for them to do but wait.
“All right, let’s go down,” I said to her. “Come on, it should be safe for me to ride you long enough to go down a level.”
But just as I was about to climb up her offered foreleg, the Madlings came into view.
I had never seen one up close—no one had and lived to tell about it. I had seen the pictures in the ancient texts, of course, but it wasn’t the same. In the books and old drawings, they just looked like oversized bats.
But what I saw when they came close enough was so much worse than bats.
They were much bigger than bats for one thing—most of the ones I saw were the size of a person—a large man, in fact. Even worse, their faces looked almost human—human but distorted, as though some dark God had made a corrupted creation and given it wide, leathery black wings and huge, grasping claws for hands and feet.
Their mouths were wide slashes in their faces, filled with tiny, needle-sharp teeth and their burning, sightless eyes stared blindly as they turned their misshapen heads from side-to-side as though they were seeking something.
As they came, I could feel their hunger—a single-minded purpose to devour. These creatures weren’t newly hatched, I suddenly understood. They had been sleeping for years—for over a century. And now they were starving and we were their prey.
The South Third Year Wing wheeled together, coming to meet the evil creatures. But even before the dragons could start to flame, their formation started to fall apart.
“what is happening to them?” L’eesha exclaimed. “why aren’t they flaming?”
I was wondering the same thing…and then I felt it.
An overwhelming sense of terror rolled through the air and hit me like a slap. Suddenly, I was filled with dread. It sapped my courage and made me want to run away, to hide, to make myself small and pray that the nightmares coming for me would pass me by.
I had to grip my dragon’s hide tightly to keep myself from running—had to remind myself that I was safe and tell myself I wasn’t going to run, no matter what.
“Fear,” whispered a voice in my ear. “They hunt by fear.”
I frowned and looked at L’eesha—had she spoken to me?
But my dragon was busy watching the battle above and besides, the voice didn’t sound like her.
Then I remembered where I had heard it before—in my dream last night!
“Fear,” I said aloud. “They can send emotions! And they pick up on emotions, too—they can feel them all.”
“that must be why the wings are scattering,” L’eesha said. “look—they’re flying away instead of flaming!”
She was right. The Wings that had been at the front of the formation were falling apart, riders and dragons veering away from the Madlings who darkened the sky.
The Madlings were feeding the riders’ fear and the dragons were echoing and enhancing it. The terror became a loop—Madlings to rider to dragon to rider and then back again to the Madlings, who could feel the terror they inspired to hunt their prey.
How did I suddenly know all this, I wondered. It seemed that the knowledge was just there—in my brain. Maybe it had to do with the dream I’d had or the familiar voice whispering in my ear.
