Page 17 of Dragon Avenger (Age of Fire 2)

“That’s why you don’t want to go back. Your thin hide—”

Auron shoved her aside. Her brother simply went mad. There was no other word for it. He began to pound the ice with his tail. Pieces, tiny pieces of ice compared to the mass, flaked off and slid down to the bones at the bottom of the tunnel. She wondered if this was the raging fighting fury that Mother said took over young drakes. He bit and clawed at the ice whenever he shifted position.

When his tail began to spray blood at each swipe, he spat at the ice. The spittle hissed as it struck, and it ran into fractures, raising a sharp odor of bat urine.

“Wistala, spit!”

“I’ve no fire yet—”

Excrement and excuses. It is melting the ice, she realized. She tried to squeeze her fire bladder behind her breastbone. Nothing.

“Spit, Wistala!”

“Can’t!”

Then she could see. A faint pink light came through the ice flow. It must be the light of the Upper World, the sun.

Two cracks ran up the ice flow, parallel and in a shape oddly reminiscent of the man with the spear’s winged helm. She pictured the helm at the base of the cracks—Something spasmed behind her breastbone, and she found she could spit. Found she could—she had no choice. Her tongue pressed itself against the roof of her mouth, and her jaw opened wide—

Out it came, until she felt as though her vertebrae from shoulder-pivot to tail-tip might be running up her neck and out her mouth. An orangish light filled the cave along with the acid smell, stronger than ever.

She collapsed, spent in an entirely new way.

Auron gathered himself, curled tight, and exploded toward the orange glow like a projectile from one of the dwarves’ war machines.

He broke through in a shower of yellow-white shards—

And disappeared straight over a ledge.

Wistala struck out from her shoulders, extended her neck even as his tail-tip whipped for a hold. She sank her teeth into it, tasted her brother’s blood in her mouth. His momentum dragged her forward, toward the ledge. Impossible distances stretched off in every direction, out, to either side.

Especially down. Her head went over.

A drop, a thousand times greater than that of the egg shelf, lay beneath. The vast distance seemed to reach up and touch her between the eyes. Her head swam. . . .

Her teeth, however, gripped all the tighter as her short legs found purchase. She arched her thick back, claws dug into ice, rock, and hardened snow, setting every haunch against her brother’s weight.

Auron found a grip, and his weight vanished. She didn’t release his tail, though, until he rolled beside her on the ledge.

The two hatchlings shivered against each other, panting in the thin air of the Upper World.

Chapter 5

Don’t think about this big, empty, howling chaos that is the Upper World, Wistala told herself for the beyond-countingeth time. Or how much you miss Mother, even her endless lessons. Or dwarves. Or eager, straining hounds. Don’t think beyond the next meal. Just find food, and then rest. Find food, and then rest.

They made it down the mountain, thanks to Auron. His light weight allowed him to test holds for her, and they’d come off the horrid, cold mountaintop and into a slightly less horrid, slightly less cold tree line, where Auron promptly scared away some feeding goats by leaping at them at first whiff. She had no luck hunting after that, and it was only after they developed a system where he’d drive game to her, or she to him, as his skin naturally changed color to match whatever he rested against, that they were able to eat.

Auron had a plan to find Father. She went along with it. Having a goal, “a star to fix on,” put hope in his hearts and stopped him from crying in his sleep at night. She listened, learned to find Susiron, the unchanging star, by following the nose-tip of the Bowing Dragon.

Wistala suspected that, small as they were, it was just a matter of time until something got them. The only question was what—and where and when. At one point she thought Auron had died in the night, taken by the frigid wind on his scaleless skin, for when she woke, he was white and cold, until he stirred and she realized he’d just been mimicking the snow.

She hoped that as they traveled west around the shoulder of the mountain toward the main entrance to the cave—Auron had some idea of the topography, thanks to mind-pictures from Father—they’d find a quiet mountain lake where they could spend the coming spring and summer, feeding on frogs and fat bottom-sucking fish. Perhaps they could find a hollow log and enough muck to hide their smell. When one didn’t have a cave, one had to improvise. Without a safe refuge, it was only a matter of time before something got them.

“Quit saying that,” Auron said. “We’re doing all right. We’ve adapted to the Upper World, at least what we’ve seen of it.”

Auron trotted fearlessly through the Upper World, turning from brown to green to white as the surface he paused over changed. Wistala felt that every step she took was through an endless arena under thousands of eyes peeping at her from treetop and slidepile. Voices relayed what the eyes saw, berry-brained birds tittered about the hatchlings passing beneath, not caring a dead twig whose ears might hear of their movements.

Having every field mouse know of their passing bothered her.

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