Root swallowed down his apprehension as he studied the maps and his brass compass. His family had been slaughtered by a hobgoblin war band when he was six, and until he came to Dragon Isle he had never left the safety of the Sorcerers Glen. Eighteen leagues long from east to west, where it met the Inner Sea, it had been his whole world. The Brimstones looked very far away; it might take weeks if the weather was bad. He swallowed nervously.
Since his father had died, Root had had to overcome his fear of dragons and had befriended the gentle Chasing the Stars. Together they had fought a rogue dragon intent on murder, and then he had fled Dragonsdome for sanctuary on Dragon Isle, forced to leave her behind. But he had not had to confront his fears and nightmares out in the wide world beyond the Sorcerers Glen. He gritted his teeth. He wasn’t the same helpless boy he had once been, and Quenelda needed him, now more than ever. Ignoring his worries, the young gnome studied the map, re-checked his calculations and plotted their journey.
Although she had left the Sorcerers Glen many times, Quenelda had always flown with her father on Stormcracker. Twice, when she was ten summers old, she had accompanied him as far as the Isle of Midges, where the dwarfs had been building an eighth fortress, abandoned since the ambush that had killed her grandfather. But no further than that. How many times had she dreamed of such an adventure; dreamed of coming to the rescue of the SDS? This furtive departure was not what she had imagined.
Quenelda longed for the solace of Open Sky. It was where she belonged, and yet she still held back, dreading taking to the air without her beloved Two Gulps. He would have loved to fly north to battle. Root, increasingly anxious about the fate of Chasing the Stars, silently let her know that he understood her inner conflict only too well.
Quenelda raised her palm and flexed her hand, amazed at the gorse-yellow scale that armoured it. Although her battledragon was dead, she knew he was still part of her. His strength was now her strength; his dreams invaded hers. She looked at herself in the mirror. She had grown taller over the last six moons since the SDS fell in battle, but she was still painfully thin, the bones of her cheeks and slanting brow more visible. And the eyes that gazed back at her seemed those of a stranger.
But there were still some who would remember the Earl’s daughter in boy’s clothes. Lifting a knife, she took a hank of hair and sawed at it until it stuck out, short and ragged, about her head. Few people, even her brother, would recognize her now.
The battlegriff, I’ve Already Eaten, was being prepped for takeoff. He no longer looked as if he came from the SDS stable. Tangnost had chosen a dappled grey with subdued blue colouring, and gave orders that he should not be groomed for a week. Due to a poor diet, his wings and flanks had already lost their normal sheen; now he looked rather grubby and was unlikely to attract any unwanted attention. The tack, found in a dusty storeroom, was battered and much repaired. Old saddlebags and gear were tied down sloppily in a tangle of ropes.
Both Root and Quenelda wore patched breeches and jerkins beneath faded old hooded cloaks. Root reflected that this was just what he had worn all the time before he was made up to esquire. He had chosen a helm with cheek pieces and nose guard; Quenelda a half-visored bronze helmet padded with leather.
Root checked through their hammocks and bedrolls, all wrapped in a layer of waxed leather hide. Water flasks … Travelling stove … He glanced up to where the fodder bags and honey tablets were stowed out of reach of the battlegriff’s questing beak. The dragonwings strapped to the rear of each saddle were patched and faded. Military rations for a month, to which he had added gnome scones, crab apples and oatcakes. Finally they were ready.
‘Here, hide it well.’ Tangnost handed Quenelda a barkscroll for his nephew. As she hid it in the folds of her jacket, he gave them their last instructions. ‘This warns my nephew, Malachite, to be on his guard against the Lord Protector’s men. I have asked that he raise the clans to escort the next load overland. It will take far longer, but it will be harder for the Lord Protector to divert or seize it on a busy military road: too many witnesses, and he will not risk open war with the clans. Keep it hidden, and hand it to no one save Malachite himself.’ Tangnost pulled a ring of red gold from his finger; it was fashioned in the shape of a bear’s paw. ‘He will recognize this token of your true intent.’
Quenelda nodded. The ring was too big for any of her fingers so they strung it on a leather thong about her neck, and she tucked it in beneath her jerkin. At last they were ready to leave.
‘Take care,’ Tangnost warned them as he adjusted the battlegriff’s girth strap. ‘Don’t draw attention to yourself.’ He clasped them both a final time and gruffly bade them farewell.
As dawn tickled the far horizon, the travellers took to the air. They would be clear of the Sorcerers Glen by the time the sun rose.
The battlegriff was very like Chasing the Stars to fly. As they rose into the crisp air, Root longed to see his companion again. One of Tangnost’s homing eagles had arrived at Dragon Isle just before they left, bearing a message from Quester informing them that Root’s beloved dragon was well, but pining for him. Other news was not so good: Darcy’s behaviour grew ever more reckless. He was squandering a small fortune on balls and banquets, dragon fights and hippogriff-racing; and he was neglecting duties owed to the Crown as the Earl of Dragonsdome.
As they approached the expanse of the Inner Sea, Root looked back. Dragon Isle, with its hangar decks, its battlements and towers, was fast disappearing into a blue haze. Only the great spires and copper domes of the castle stood out, gleaming in the early morning sun.
With the raised cobbled military road to their left, they followed its straight lines for three days as it crossed open farmland. Despite the good weather, the military road was already clogged with refugees heading for the safety of the Sorcerers Glen before the passes were closed and true winter set in.
As the crescent moons grew fat in the night sky and the weather held fair, Quenelda decided to keep flying later and later into the night – anything to shut out the nightmares. The battlegriff wasn’t used to night flying, and they had collided with an owl and a flock of bats before Quenelda agreed to Root’s hesitant suggestion to put down for the night. Root noticed she hardly ate anything now, and he heard her restless tossing and turning each night, crying out to the voice in her head. No wonder she had a headache all the time.
She was exhausted, driven on by her inner voice.
Cold, so cold … How I long to see the stars again …
On the fifth day, the military road branched and they turned north, away from the coastline, following the Great Northern Way for a further three days. As they reached the lower slopes of the Brimstones, the great forest began to thin out. Soon the terrain was punctuated by steep ravines and gullies, and the heavy smell of sulphur permeated everything. The air grew steadily colder.
The next morning, they couldn’t see a thing. Tired, irritable from lack of sleep, Quenelda was not in the mood to allow any further delay just because there was no longer a road to follow.
‘You can still navigate can’t you?’ she snapped unfairly as Root tentatively asked if they were going to wait till the fog thinned. ‘You’ve got a map and compass, haven’t you?’
Reluctant to let her down, Root simply nodded miserably. He had been studying hard, but theory and practice were two different things. They took to the air; it was thick as pea soup. Root desperately wished he had one of the SDS navigator’s helmets, that he had the three years training it took to fly Imperials. Without it they were virtually flying blind!
Then a wind rose in the gullies and ravines, buffeting them from side to side, pushing them up and sucking them down. Root began to feel airsick again, but manfully gritted his teeth. He could take it! Quenelda needed him to be tough!
The haar thickened.
‘Aahh!’ Root couldn’t help crying out loud as a branch nearly knocked him from the saddle. Without realizing it, they had lost height and had almost collided with a ragged pine tree split by lightning. Quenelda herself was more than a little scared – not that she was going to admit that to Root.
Alone … so alone …
The battlegriff too was becoming increasingly grumpy. He hadn’t been cared for well for many moons, and was out of sorts before they even set off from Dragon Isle. Drenched from beak to hoof, he badly needed a groom and to hunt a tasty beaver or two to pick his spirits up.
‘I’m not sure if we’re still on course,’ Quenelda tried half a bell later in an offhand tone of voice, hoping that Root would suggest they put down before she had to admit her stupidity.
‘No, no,’ Root chimed up cheerily, waving the compass at her and nodding manically. ‘We’re still headed in the right direction!’
Quenelda cursed inwardly, and encouraged the reluctant battlegriff on.
The wind rose further.
‘Rather rough going,’ she finally ventured over the banshee shriek.
The battlegriff agreed wholeheartedly. He was flapping for he it was worth now; only an ignorant fledgling would be out flying on a day like this. He was exhausted, although he certainly would not be admitting that to Dancing with Dragons.
They might, Quenelda thought half a bell later, still be flying in the right direction, but before long she was no longer certain that they were making any headway. She had the sneaking suspicion they might even be being pushed backwards. The head wind was wicked.
Root had the sneaking suspicion that they were going backwards. He wasn’t certain, but Quenelda hadn’t said anything, so it must be his imagination.
Then the haar briefly thinned, revealing a lightning struck pine tree that looked all too familiar.
‘Err …’ Root began, pointing to starboard.
‘We’ve been here before,’ Quenelda finished for him as a unexpected gust gathered them up.
‘I’m putting down,’ she shouted over her shoulder. ‘This is getting too dangerous.’
She fought to control the battlegriff as they dropped height into a deep ravine, not even sure where the ground now lay. Root cried out and gripped his saddle pommel as a vicious cross wind caught them and spun them about like a sycamore seed.
‘Gently, boy, gently does it,’ Quenelda’s heart was in her mouth as she coaxed the stallion down, petrified he might break a limb or a wing. Why on the One Earth had she made such an unwise decision? Her stupidity might yet kill them all.
Boulders loomed darkly out of the mist and the wind howled like ghosts. Talons extended, the indignant battlegriff landed in a shallow depression beneath a stand of bent pines in a flurry of soggy feathers. Kicking his stirrups, Root slid down his flanks onto his knees where he retched miserably into the scrubby grass.
They slung their hammocks on the lower branches of a great pine tree with the battlegriff roosting below. During the night, the wind rose even more so that their hammocks swung and dipped. Root was petrified, flinching at every creak and groan of the trees, the uncanny yelp of foxes and the plaintive call of the curlew bringing back memories of the night he had spent alone in the forest after most of his family and the entire warren had been slaughtered. He fell into an uneasy sleep.
‘Hide …’ he was burbling. ‘I must hide …’ Sweat poured from him as he twisted and thrashed in his sleeping roll. The sound of the creaking branches turned into the cry of his mother as she had tried to protect his brothers and sisters. The shriek of the wind became the savage cries of the hobgoblin warriors as they sent their young into the burrows and hunted down everyone throughout the warren, flushing them out into the open where they were set upon. The bramble thickets caught on his clothes as he tried to burrow beneath their protective thorns. He was caught, he couldn’t move. Something was emerging out of the shadows, reaching out for him …
‘Root?’ Deep in shadow, Quenelda was perched on the branch above the gnome looking down on him. ‘Root?’
Root jerked awake to see a pale hand reached forward. He screamed, batting it away.
‘Root! Root! You’re safe! It’s just a nightmare! You’ve had a nightmare.’
The youth shivered.
‘Here.’ Quenelda reached for one of her blankets. ‘Listen, I’ll light the lamp.’
And as she watched her friend nurse a drink of mulled cider, Quenelda realized how selfish she had been, bringing him on this journey. She had never given a moment’s thought to his fears, he had seemed so confident.
‘I’ll keep watch,’ she promised, as Root’s head finally nodded. How would she feel out here if most of her family had been massacred by marauding hobgoblins? She wasn’t the only one with nightmares.
The dense cloud was, if anything, worse the following morning, but the wind had dropped. Cautiously they took off, Quenelda flying as low as she dared so that she could at least see the ground, even though that increased the risk of collision. The drenching moisture weighed down their flying cloaks and their spirits. But within two bells there were more problems.
‘Quenelda, I don’t know where we are any more.’ Root looked at his compass but the needle span as the first drop of rain fell.
‘It must be the brimstone …’ He pursed his lips. ‘Tangnost warned me the ore would make the needle go crazy, but I’d hoped by then we’d have landmarks to sight by.’
Huddled miserably together beneath the battlegriff’s outstretched wing, the rain drummed down and the moisture laden air soaked through their heavy cloaks and sleeping rolls. Root tried to start a fire with his flint and tinder, but couldn’t coax a spark. They shared cold food and mugs of rainwater. Huddled together against the flanks of the battlegriff they pulled their capes about them and tried to rest, but the desperate whispers Quenelda kept hearing were louder now and she could not sleep.
Who was it calling out to her? What did it mean?
Lonely … lonely …
So cold …
So dark …