Page 58 of A Matter of Destiny

“Please,” I add. “Show me the human army.”

Wendolyn shakes her head, and her scales hiss against one another.

“Fine,” she huffs, as though I’ve just asked her for the keys to the Iron Mountains.

Then she leaps into the air, spins once above the sparkling little pond, glides over the pine trees, and flaps her wings until she’s soaring into the open air. I sigh, pull myself up to my four legs, and pump the air with my aching wings.

There is indeed a human army camped beneath the cliffs. Wendolyn takes me on another circle above them as the horizon turns from deep indigo to a brilliant turquoise, although she cautions me not to drop too low.

“No need to provoke the little assholes,” she rumbles as we drift overhead.

I count the pennants as we fly over the camps. I can see four patterns flying over the camps, and none of them are from Valgros. This must be the army of Cassonia, then, camped for some reason at the base of a cliff they’d never be able to scale in any number.

It feels wrong. The camps are far too small, for one thing. The encampment Rensivar showed me looked like a city; these are just a handful of tents. And this smattering of tents wouldn’t hold a quarter of the forces I saw massed in the foothills.

Besides, the smell is off. There’s manure, and smoke, but I don’t catch the sting of metal or the rank scent of men who’ve gone quite a while between baths. I open and close my mouth, letting the scents of the Cassonia camp roll over my tongue. The breeze drifting across these camps doesn’t taste right. It doesn’t taste anything like the wind that came over the ridge.

“The ridge,” I say, twisting my neck to look at Wendolyn. She’s watching me with a lazy sort of smile. “Can we fly over it?”

“Suit yourself,” she says, as she banks toward the mountains.

We climb for several minutes, my muscles burning and my breath coming in harsh little gasps. When we crest the top of the ridge, the smell of the army hits me like a sucker-punch. I growl, almost gagging.

But below me, there’s nothing. Just a slope of craggy rocks, sliding into a steep ravine that’s thick with pine trees. I spin once, then twice, craning my neck as I follow the ridge line. Nothing. Nothing. Nothing. Am I losing my mind? Where in the nine hells is that scent coming from?

“The smell,” I say.

Wendolyn rolls her eyes. She somehow manages to make the gesture look elegant.

“I know,” she agrees. “Humans. They’re revolting. I don’t know how Doshir managed to live among them for so long.”

Doshir makes a coughing sound from behind us.

“I smell it too,” he says. “It’s stronger on this side of the mountain. Like they’re just below us.”

Doshir’s wings beat the air, and he surges forward, pulling beside Wendolyn.

“Why is that?” he asks. “Wind currents?”

Wendolyn yawns. Her tongue flickers out between her teeth.

“How should I know?” she replies. “You were always the expert in everything, Doshir.”

Something catches my eye, a flicker of movement. I pull back, my wings beating against the night, but it’s gone. Doshir and Wendolyn fly ahead of me, their voices rolling across the granite boulders.

Light flashes in the pines at the bottom of the ravine. It happens so quickly I might have imagined it, a gleam in the darkness, there and then gone.

Cold seeps through my scales. I know that light, the sudden flash quickly covered. I even know the lamp that made it, with its black sides and its one little window that slides open on silent hinges to wink a signal.

One flash. Danger.

Someone is in that ravine, then. Some human is hidden in the trees, holding a lamp made in Valgros, sending a signal the Valgros army would understand. But to whom? I glance down at the landscape beneath my claws. It’s nothing but rock, the same tumble of lichen-dusted boulders and scree that coats the ridge surrounding the Tarn of the Maiden. Stone and—

A rock falls. I hear it, the sliding rasp of stone against stone, just like what happened when I crashed into the mountainside. It sounds so close, almost right below me, but I don’t see a thing.

I whip my head around, staring through the fading darkness. Nothing moves. Nothing breathes. Ahead of me, Doshir and Wendolyn descend toward the tarn, moving in lazy, concentric circles.

“Shit,” a voice growls from directly beneath me.

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