Page 54 of Of Blood and Fire
“Right,” I said, raising my voice to ensure I was heard by all eight drakkons and kin. “Kele, Hannity, Rayka, Jassy, and Beth, you’re with me and Kaia. We’re flying over the Sheer to see what the gilded riders are up to.”
“Sounds like fun,” Kele said dryly. “Are we expecting much opposition?”
“Depends on numbers and what type of force they’ve stationed there, but yes.”
“Excellent.”
Amusement twitched my lips. “That you or Yara speaking?”
She laughed. “I will admit that a little of her bloodthirstiness has leached through our connection. She remains unhappy about being driven from her own aerie, even though she is content enough in Esan’s.”
I hoped that wasn’t an indication of future trouble. Kaia was in the prime of her life and would remain the overall queen for years yet, but as Yara matured, would she feel it necessary to challenge for the position?
Not waycame Kaia’s thought.
Then what happens?
When I no longer breed or have young to care for, I leave.
Leave? You can’t do that.
Is way.
But where would you go?And what about me? I wanted to add, but resisted. This really wasn’t about me, even if our link now made it impossible for me to contemplate not having her in my life anymore.
Find warm cave, she said, seemingly unconcerned.Plenty in black mountains big enough for one.
Not sure I could live in a cave, Kaia.
No need. I still fly and meet.
You’d better,I grumbled, then continued the briefing. “Miri and Halka, you’re on duty here at Esan. Do not fly low enough for the Mareritt to attack you with their acid sprays and do not, under any circumstances, attack them unless it’s in self-defense.”
“Can I ask why not, Commander?” Miri asked. “What’s the point of being on a fire-breathing drakkon if we can’t burn the bastards?”
“Because Esan’s walls have not yet been fully strengthened against the acid, and we do not want to provoke them into a full attack.”
“The weather was looking pretty nasty up on the peaks,” Jassy said.
“You can thank our air mages for that,” I replied. “They’re covering our approach.”
“And when we get there?” Rayka and Beth asked as one.
I glanced at them. “That depends on what we find up there. Let’s go. Standard scouting formation.”
Kaia rolled forward, taking the lead, moving with speed toward the entrance. Once she’d reached the edge of the tongue, she spread her wings and bellowed. It was a greeting to the rising day and a war cry all in one, but as the sound echoed across the distant peaks, unease stirred through me. Darkness awaited us.
Darkness and death.
I shivered and thrust the thought away. As my parents had often said, fear and trepidation were natural when riding into a dangerous situation, and there was no doubt in my mind that today’s mission was more dangerous than usual. Flying into the unknown was one thing; flying into it knowing it was quite possibly a trap edged toward insanity.
But how else were we to know what was up there? Our only other option was to trek through the lava tubes, and while there’d once been openings near the Sheer’s flat peak, there was no guarantee they remained. Not with all the seismic activity in the ten years since I’d last been in that area. Besides, it would take days to traverse that system, and I seriously doubted we had that much time left. Every move the Mareritt and the gilded riders were currently making suggested they were building up to something big.
Kaia leapt off the tongue, throwing me violently forward. I had the packs in front of me as a cushion but nevertheless braced my hands against her spine to stop falling into it. A laugh escaped, and for a few brief seconds, worry and fear were drowned in the sheer joy of being astride a drakkon diving hard and fast down a mountainside, the wind snapping at my hair and chilling my cheeks. As the ground loomed toward us far too fast, she flicked her wings, and we soared upward again, this time throwing me back so sharply the rope holding me on snapped taut. Another laugh escaped, and it seemed to echo almost as loudly across the peaks as her bellow had.
Maybe it was nothing more than imagination, but in the distant darkness, evil stirred in response.
I shivered and glanced behind me. The remaining drakkons had followed us down, their red and bronze scales glimmering in the silvery drizzle surrounding us. We soared over the neighboring peak and formed a V as we swept down its broken slope and headed for the sea, angling away from the Beak andthe watch stations that lay beyond it. The rain eased the farther away we moved from the mountains, but the day remained bitterly cold, and the sea far below was dark, wild, and choppy. I tugged my scarf over my nose to keep the wind off my face as much as practical and pushed a tiny bit of heat to my fingertips. I might be wearing gloves, but they weren’t doing a whole lot to keep my extremities warm. Maybe I needed to ask the seamstresses to work on some woolen ones to wear under the leather. At least when wool got wet it remained warm, and while all of us had our own inner fires, it was better not to use them unnecessarily when we were flying into the unknown.
