Chapter Nine

THEY SNUCK OUT EARLY THE NEXT MORNING, leaving behind a not-particularly-hopeful Mikkel and Theo—though the two boys were less worried about the success of the mission and more worried about their grilling at the hands of Valerius and Torsten, if anyone worked out that the other four were missing. Theo planned to try and speak to Hayn and let him know what they’d figured out, if he could find a time when the archives were quiet enough to slip into the little room where the mirror lay hidden.

For now, he and Mikkel were determined to do their best, and they waved the others farewell, then ran inside to set up the first of their diversions—a study session in Rayna and Ellukka’s room. If anyone came looking for the girls, they planned to say they’d only just gone to find a snack. After all, they must be around if their friends were in their room, right?

Anders kept his scarf pulled up around his face as Rayna soared between mountain peaks. She and Ellukka planned to travel east, flying low across the Sudrain River until they reached the Seacliff Mountains on the coast. From there they would make their way up to the Skylake. The journey would take longer than if they’d flown in a straight line, but there was also less chance they’d be seen from the ground.

The mists of the night before hadn’t yet cleared, and as Anders looked down over Rayna’s shoulder, he saw they were pooled at the base of the mountains like water, nestled in every gully. The Sudrain ran between tall fir trees like a gray-and-white thrashing beast, and eventually the trees thinned out as the Seacliff Mountains rose toward the sky. To his left he could see the Uplands, the broad, grassy plains that nestled between the two mountain ranges, but Rayna never went high enough for him to see the sea beyond them to the north.

It was a crisp, sunny day, with barely a cloud above them—the sky was a pale silvery-blue, the sun slowly rising from the direction they were flying. It grew colder and colder as the mountain peaks rose, and after a couple of long hours, when Anders had tucked himself down inside his layers—even for him this was getting seriously nippy—he felt Rayna start to descend.

He peeked out again and immediately spotted the Skylake.

It was enormous.

Just as Ellukka had said, sheer black cliffs fell straight to the sea below, and the lake itself somehow nudged all the way up to the edge of the cliff, the silvery-blue waters reflecting the sky, broken only by the occasional gust of wind.

The two dragons circled out to sea, and Anders leaned out far enough to spot the waves dashing themselves against the base of the cliffs in flurries of white foam, before Rayna’s rib cage shook with a rumble beneath him, and he took it as a sign to stop moving his weight around.

Side by side, wingtips almost touching, Rayna and Ellukka wheeled in from the sea to soar the length of the lake toward the hills at the other end. Anders tried to soak up every detail—the rocks along the shoreline, the green-gold grass that ran up to the edges—knowing the scepter might be hidden anywhere around the edge of this huge lake. Or worse, somewhere under the water.

The girls flared their wings and slowed to land, settling on a patch of springy grass at the western end of the lake, farthest from the sea. The rocks that ran all along the edges made this end the obvious place to land, and Rayna and Ellukka picked out spots side by side.

Anders and Lisabet climbed down stiffly, arching their backs to stretch and stumbling until their legs worked again. Lisabet looked a little green around the gills, as she had after the flights to and from Holbard. Anders set down the bag he was carrying so he could properly coax his limbs back to life.

Once they were far enough away, first Ellukka and then Rayna transformed, sinking down almost too fast for the eye to follow, shrinking and shifting until they were humans once more, holding the three-point crouch dragons always seemed to start and end their transformations in.

“It’s been nearly two weeks since we transformed,” Lisabet said, wistful. “We can’t do it at Drekhelm—it’s so hard for me, and if the dragons saw either of us . . . but I’m starting to feel like I need to. Like an itch, you know?”

And as soon as she said it, Anders felt it too. “Maybe we can today,” he said. “Just for a little.”

“But first,” said Lisabet wryly, “I think we’re having lunch.”

Rayna and Ellukka had already reached Anders’s bag, and were digging inside it for the supplies they’d packed at breakfast. “I’m starving,” Rayna said, pulling the wrapping off a sandwich and shoving half in her mouth.

“Dying,” Ellukka agreed. “Always happens after a long flight. Anders, Lisabet, we’ll be with you in a minute.”

Anders turned to study the lake as the two dragons ate, and Lisabet pulled off her boots and socks, rolled up her trousers to her knees, and waded out into the lake, letting the cold soak into her bones with a happy sigh.

“It has to be the right place,” Anders said. “There’s blue in the sky and in the lake, and you can see what a perfect mirror it makes.”

“Food first,” Rayna said from behind him. “Then quest.”

He laughed, walking back to sink down onto the grass beside his twin as she devoured the second half of her sandwich. He leaned back on his hands, studying the lake. Anders and Rayna had never really left Holbard before their transformations, and everything he’d seen when aloft with her these past few days—the mountains, the plains, Vallen’s jagged coastline—seemed impossibly beautiful.

And, a tiny part of him remembered, not just impossibly beautiful. Also, just plain impossible. The lake was huge, and there was no hint in the riddle about where they were supposed to look for the Sun Scepter. The whole Wolf Guard could search this lake without finding it. With that thought, his good mood vanished like the sun hiding behind the clouds.

He looked up at the silvery-blue sky and squinted against the sun as he mentally traced a path down to the lake itself. From here, you couldn’t even see the jagged rocks at the edge. It just looked as though the water ended in the sky, the two of them melding perfectly together.

Suddenly he sat bolt upright. Where blue meets blue. They did have the clue they needed after all! He didn’t need the whole of the Wolf Guard, he just needed to pay attention to the words of the riddle.

“It’s at the other end of the lake!” he said, scrambling to his feet. “Look, blue meets blue, right there!”

He threw himself into wolf form, running the moment his feet hit the ground, excitement coursing through him. It felt amazing to have the grass beneath his paws once again, his nose suddenly picking up the sharp scents of the trees all around them, the delicious salty tang of the sea far below, the hint of wood smoke from some nearby cottage.

He heard Lisabet howl behind him as the two tore along the shore of the lake, and he answered her, joyful. It felt right to be running with her, stretching his legs and leaping past rocks, swallowing up the distance in no time.

They reached the far end of the lake too soon, and he reluctantly pushed himself back into human form.

Lisabet hadn’t bothered putting her boots back on before she followed him, and now she hopped impatiently from one bare foot to the other as he pulled off his own boots and socks.

“Blue meets blue,” he said, rolling up his trousers and wading out into the water. “It has to be somewhere here along this edge, where the lake meets the sky. It’s obvious from the other end, and that’s the best place for a dragon to land. It’s where Drifa would have landed. The riddle says it’s wedged in tight. That has to mean these rocks.”

Rayna and Ellukka were still running along the edge of the lake in human form, and by the time they reached Anders and Lisabet, the two wolves were well out along the edge of the lake. It was shallow along the rocky shoreline, so it wasn’t hard to wade, but Anders’s spine was tingling with the knowledge that just a few feet to one side of him was an endlessly sheer drop down to the sea.

The two dragons splashed out to join them, both shrieking at the coldness of the water.

For a time, they hunted in different spots along the lake’s edge, and then suddenly Ellukka shouted, “Something’s here!”

Anders hurried to join her, the water surging around his legs with every step. She was bent over a craggy bit of rock that seemed to be part of the cliff face itself, tugging at something fastened beneath it.

“It’s in here,” she said, giving another pull. “But it won’t move.”

Lisabet leaned down to try and get a look at it, but it was underwater. “Maybe it needs to be Anders or Rayna?” she suggested. “You know, her blood?”

“Worth a try,” Ellukka said, panting as she abandoned the attempt.

Anders took her place, pushing his sleeve a little higher up his arm and reaching in to feel underneath the ledge of rock with his fingertips. It only took him a few moments to feel what Ellukka had—a kind of long tube wrapped in what felt like waxed canvas.

He gave it a tug, and with no effort at all, it came free from the place where it was fastened. When he pulled it from beneath the water, the cloth wrapped around it was green and slimy, tied up with string that had threads of silver woven through it, just like the map.

They didn’t even bother wading back to the shore—Rayna helped Anders unpick all the knots, and Ellukka and Lisabet leaned in to see the fabric come apart.

Carefully, Anders and Rayna worked together to peel the package open. The piece of worn wood inside was about as thick as Anders’s forearm, and about the same length. Thin strips of what looked like iron crisscrossed it, set into the wood, and at one end of it was fixed an iron orb, cradled by wooden claws and engraved with intricate runes.

They all stared down at it.

“It’s not very big,” said Ellukka eventually, sounding uncertain.

“I thought a scepter was long,” Rayna said. “Like a staff. This is more like the Sun Stick than the Sun Scepter.”

Anders was underwhelmed as well. He pushed away the feeling that something about this wasn’t right. He handed Rayna the cloth and string, then turned the scepter over in his hands, studying it from every angle. “Anyone have any idea how to use it?” he asked.

“Maybe touch it to the map?” Lisabet suggested, not sounding very hopeful. “There might be instructions? I mean, the map is for finding Drifa’s artifacts, not using them, but . . .”

They waded ashore and found their shoes (except for Lisabet), and walked up to the other end of the lake in silence. Anders knew he wasn’t the only one feeling uneasy about this. He dug the map out of his bag and set it down on the ground. Ellukka and Lisabet held down the corners with their fingertips to stop the breeze from carrying it away.

Anders crouched down with Rayna by his side and carefully touched the tip of the scepter to the map.

For a long moment, nothing happened. Then the knotwork around the edge began to writhe and change, just as it had before. Relief sang through him, the tension in his shoulders easing. The map did have instructions.

Lisabet leaned down, squinting, to carefully read out the words that now made up the border of the map.

“From deep within and light on the air,

You’ll find this hiding place straight through

The ice-cold veil of a mountain fair,

Where rót meets rock, as it was taught to do.”

“Pack and paws,” whispered Lisabet.

“Sparks and scales,” Ellukka replied, just as quiet. “This is why it was easy to solve the riddle.”

Rayna groaned. “It’s not the only piece of the scepter.”