First Flight Read online

  Ashana shook her head, rubbing her wounded wrists. Hubric handed her a roll of white fabric and handed me a waterskin.

  “Go easy on it. It’s all I have,” he said. It was all I could do not to gulp it down. How long had it been since I’d eaten or drunk anything? I was all turned around. I didn’t know how long I’d passed out this time or last time. I had no idea what time it was or what day it was.

  “Something strange has been happening,” Ashana said.

  “Time,” I said, passing the waterskin back to Hubric. “When Savette and Starie clash, sometimes it triggers those big pulses and somehow Starie’s mirror magic is sending us a few minutes backward in time.”

  Ashana paled. “So I really did ...”

  “Die?” I asked.

  She nodded.

  “I think so. I also know we can’t rely on those. What if next time it works against us rather than in our favor?”

  She shivered. “Nothing we achieve is certain.”

  My mouth firmed into a grim line. We had a job to do and a nation to save. We didn’t have time to get upset about having to fight the same battle twice. We would do what it took to win, no matter what that was. The sun was setting in the distance, making the shadows around us grow long.

  “We need a plan,” Ashana said. “Can you blow that whistle again to get the dragons’ attention?”

  Hubric and I exchanged a guilty look.

  “I shouldn’t be blowing it at all,” I said. “The dragon Elders said they would forfeit our treaty with them if we forced the dragons to act with this Pipe, or if we didn’t replace the Dominar.”

  Ashana looked around at the battle in the distance and her firm expression grew firmer. “If we don’t gather the dragons, they’ll die one by one out there. Blow the Pipe. If we live through this, we can worry about the consequences later.”

  “And the Dominar?”

  Ashana sighed. “I’m good with dragons, not with succession. Why don’t you leave the dragons to me and I’ll leave the coup attempt to you?”

  “It’s not a coup attempt,” I said.

  She rolled her eyes. “Isn’t it? In war, we all do things we aren’t proud of, girl. Now, blow that whistle.”

  There was no point in arguing with her.

  I lifted the Pipe and blew the three notes.

  Chapter Seven

  That’s not good.

  What now? Every time I turned around, things got more complicated!

  Really not good!

  I searched the battlefield nearby but saw nothing. I looked to the sky where dragons were rising up and headed toward us. Still, nothing. How far away was he looking?

  We need to get higher in the air to see for sure.

  I hobbled around to where he could help me mount and let him push me up his back. We needed a new saddle. Soon.

  When all this is over you can have whatever saddle you want.

  Behind me, Ashana, Hubric, and Leng were already rushing to mount up, too. The nice thing about purples was that you never had to tell them anything. They always already knew.

  We leapt into the sky and rose under the city. It felt strange to fly so close to a sky city without a single Black dragon rushing to challenge you. They were all occupied with the battle below.

  Something about the battle looked strange. I watched, looking for the pattern.

  Yes. It’s there. See it?

  The last Ifrit straggled in to join Iskaris, forming up in his phalanx of Ifrits like a cloud of dust moving back in time to return to the point of origin. The prophecy sprang to my mind unbidden:

  In dust and deception, I am made,

  Bound by water and blood.

  Who may retrain the dust storm or calm the call of water?

  Who may feed the maw of the earth?

  Is it not you, dark one?

  Is it not your dusk descending upon us?

  Raolcan finished the quote:

  “Is it not your armies drawn up against us,

  Your dark the counter to our light,

  Your rebirth the horror of our deaths?”

  That part had always mystified me.

  Look closer.

  I squinted my eyes, looking but seeing nothing.

  Closer.

  I scanned the muddy field at the bodies laying across the battlefield. Our nation would be mourning for the rest of our lives for the fallen here. As I watched, one of the figures seemed to crumble like dust – and then I startled as a burst of dust puffed up from him, growing, growing, growing to the size of an Ifrit.

  That’s what I’m worried about. They are raising our dead into Ifrits.

  No!

  Nothing is too horrible for the Dusk Covenant. They only want one thing.

  Power.

  To hold back their own fated demise. The tighter you grasp at what is yours, the faster you lose it. The only way to keep love, to nurture life, is to give it up for the loved one. But that’s not the way of the Dusk Covenant. Oh no, they’ll strangle themselves with their desperate grip.

  A second Ifrit rose from the battlefield.

  A third.

  But this wasn’t over and that wasn’t the only prophecy. Another came to mind.

  “But one shall rise,

  To stand in the place of the other,

  to bear the debt of nations,

  to give up the breath of life to dispel the dust of death.

  To give up her future for the future of the nations,

  Her love for the loves of their hearts.

  Her last strength their boon,

  Her last gasp, their hope.

  Her last flight, their salvation.”

  I didn’t want to believe that was about me. I wasn’t ready to die today.

  We each only have one life to spend. If my time is up, I’m glad I spent part of it with you and I’m glad I spent it this way.

  I was glad to have known Raolcan, too. But that didn’t make me ready to die.

  He sounded grim as he said, Would you give up everything to save your people?

  I think I’ve proved that I would.

  Then let’s take a last flight.

  Just below us, dragons began to gather, arriving in ones or twos, some with riders, some without. I watched a Gold swivel suddenly and rip the throat out of a Black. Wait ... I lifted the Pipe.

  Stop. Not all of them are allies, even if all are dragons. Let dragons deal with dragons.

  If he was sure ...

  I am.

  I swallowed down fear as a group of ten Reds arrived, worn and ragged. Their riders were bloodstained and muddy, weapons held in their hands. Those ones had better be on our side.

  Stop worrying about the dragons. Ashana will deal with them. She’s better at that than you are anyway.

  I turned back to where the Ifrits rose out of the mud and dirt. Only Savette could stop that. None of the rest of us could do anything to fight Starie – not with her level of power. Someone had to do something soon, though. An army raised from the dead could only grow.

  Baojang was already feeling the blow of the new Ifrits as they plunged into their ranks. Sentries tumbled through the air, their riders spread-eagled as they fell from the saddles. One of the War Leaders raised a staff and then the army charged toward the coming dust demons. Their courage would never cease to amaze me, but there wouldn’t be enough of them, couldn’t be enough of them.

  Strange, that Jalla hadn’t been forced to come here and join me. She was still at the head of her army, fighting like Death’s handmaiden. Ahummal was a dragon, and I had blown the Pipe – shouldn’t she be forced to join us, too

  I told him he was exempt.

  He could do that?

  After he began to fly this direction.

  Jalla must have loved that – someone else determining what she could and couldn’t do.

  Her spirit is only matched by yours.

  But they were being beaten back. One corner of the Baojang wedge folded and then dust demons were tearing into
their ranks so far behind the front line that nothing and no one would be able to stop them. The line was in disarray. I looked frantically to the clusters of dragons preparing to counter-attack. They weren’t ready yet. I looked back at Baojang, shuddering as men and animals were trampled by stampeding Ifrits.

  There was a cry from behind us – from the sky city – and we spun in the air to look. I couldn’t see where it was coming from until I looked up.

  Chapter Eight

  Ropes fell from the sky – a hundred, no – a thousand ropes of every thickness from arm-thick cables to ropes no wider than my finger. Raolcan dodged to the side to avoid a massive cable, and then he kicked forward, speeding away from the city.

  Wha-?

  Trust me.

  Once we’d cleared the lip of the sky city, he slowed enough for me to look back.

  I saw them. First, a pair of Magikas fell from the open windows, their fireballs flying in every direction splashed uselessly against the ground or faded out in the sky.

  And then the people who pushed them out appeared.

  Citizens of Dominion City descended on the ropes. People in armor, people in everyday street clothes, people with swords and knives and hammers, with axes and makes-shift polearms, people on hanging crates being freighted down by pulley systems, people in harnesses descending on their own, people in uniform and out, in every color and clothing imaginable.

  My jaw dropped. And my eyes teared up. We’d thought this was only our battle. We’d begun to think we were the ones about to save the citizens of Dominion City. And now here they were coming to save us. These were fathers and mothers, bakers and grocers and cobblers, city guards and criminals, all descending together to stem the tide of war.

  We couldn’t let them sacrifice themselves in vain. We couldn’t let them die easily. In fact, we couldn’t afford to lose them at all. We needed to end this war – now! – before we lost the life of our nation, the courageous people who had built it day after day with the sweat of their brows and with tears and effort.

  Ahlskibi climbed up through the jungle of ropes, squirming to join us where we hovered.

  “Amel!” Leng called. “Ashana is taking over the fight below, but she’s asking you to wait before you go charging off. She’s sending the Reds to help you!”

  How did she know I was about to go charging off?

  You don’t become First Rider of the Purple by being an idiot.

  Apparently not.

  Leng and Ahlskibi closed in the rest of the way. Long enough for me to recognize the tension in Leng’s face. He was ready for battle.

  “If what Rakturan says is true, then we have to take out Iskaris, the false Dominar,” I said to him. “That’s our only priority. If we don’t do that, then Savette can’t possibly win.”

  He nodded briskly. The Reds were drawing near, their progress slowed by the need to avoid hurting citizens descending from the city.

  “Don’t worry about anything else,” Leng said. “Ashana and Hubric will have it covered.”

  “Just Ashana!”

  I startled at the words as Hubric and Kyrowat joined us.

  “You didn’t think I’d stay back here and let you get all the legends sung about you without me, hmmm?” he asked, but there was a tension in the way he sat in Kyrowat’s saddle. We all knew what we were doing. We were going to die for the Dominion.

  And if we were going to die, then it didn’t feel right not to call on every resource. It didn’t feel right to let the citizens of Dominion City come to our aid without asking for every advantage we could have.

  Fighting back fear and reluctance I reached out, trying, hoping. Would the Troglodytes hear me?

  Help! I called.

  CALLER. YOU CALL US AGAIN.

  Please! I asked. Please, will you help us?

  DESTROY THE PRETENDER. RETURN THE PIPE.

  Yes, that’s what I was trying to do! I just needed all the help I could get.

  OUR CHAMPION FIGHTS.

  I looked toward where Rakturan was fighting, his sword flashing with bursts of light from the blade as he slashed and hacked at Ifrits to defend his bride’s back.

  OUR CALLER MUST DO AS PROMISED.

  So, they wouldn’t help? They could, but they wouldn’t?

  DO AS PROMISED.

  Great. Just great. Below us, Ifrits pounded into Baojang. The citizen reinforcements ran to help, but even I could see they would be of little use to the battle. Inspiring as their desperate charge was, it was only that – desperate.

  Ashana and her dragons scrambled to pull together enough dragons to help them.

  I gritted my teeth as the Reds finally joined us. I signed “follow me” but a blast sent us spinning backward. Everything was suddenly white.

  Not this again. I thought I could hear a curse from nearby.

  Maybe it will work to your advantage again.

  Or maybe it wouldn’t. I felt nervous, licking my lips as my eyes slowly blinked back to reality. Raolcan righted his spin and we were flying between ropes, dodging descending citizens. They cheered us as we passed.

  “The Dragons of the Dominion!”

  “Dragons!”

  “Dominion City and the Sky People!”

  This time I wouldn’t beg a Troglodyte for help. This time we’d just go. I started waving to Leng and Hubric before they could even join me. Raolcan was slicing through the sky. If all we had was time, then we couldn’t afford to waste it.

  Onward!

  We plunged forward over the fields of battle, Ahlskibi and Kyrowat hot on our heels. The Reds would just have to catch up. We had a goal. We had a mission. We were going to show Iskaris what it was like to be brought down.

  Take that, Troglodytes! You withhold your help at our darkest hour? All for some maneuvering you don’t even have to do? Well, you can negotiate with Ifrits then, after we’re all dead.

  Those are dark thoughts –

  WE COME.

  Wait. What?

  Chapter Nine

  The snow began while I was still struggling to process what was happening. The first flake fell like a butterfly curious about the chaos below. It drifted back and forth – so gently, so randomly, that it almost seemed to have a mind of its own.

  It drifted down past us as we streaked across the sky toward Iskaris. It tumbled over the heads of the citizenry of Dominion City, ignoring their terrified but grim expressions and brandished weapons, as it drifted past to where the line of Baojang was growing thinner, where Jalla battled from dragon-back to try to get to her stranded troops, past where Ifrits screamed and hissed, smoke and dust billowing around them, to settle – forlorn – in the mud. A moment later, it was trampled.

  But it was only a scout before a greater army. Its brothers fell, an enraged army, on the people below. It dumped from the heavens in a heavy blanket as flake after flake fell relentlessly over the broad swath of mud in the middle of the field and even dared to drift up to the magical battle where Savette and Starie still fought. Both women - though dressed lightly and dripping in sweat – ignored the flakes.

  I would have ignored them, too. But the field the snowflakes were landing on – that broad stretch of mud in the center of the battlefield – opened up at that moment, as if it thought it were a sky full of snow, too.

  A split began at the center of the field, widening slowly. As we swooped over it, a thunderous crack sounded across the valley. My heart stuttered at the sound of it ripping through the air. Raolcan slowed for a moment, almost hovering over the crack. Kyrowat and Ahlskibi pulled up on either side. The dragons looked at each other and then we were speeding over the fields again, the ground blurring under us, the snow blinding us, a lace curtain of white filling our vision more and more the faster we went. My face and hands were wet. Melting snow clung to my hair and leathers. I shivered.

  A gust of wind blew the snow veil away and through the descending darkness, I saw Iskaris maneuvering his Ifrits to the platform the Grandis and Starie had held me capt
ive on. The towers were gone, and the platform blackened.

  Before my eyes, a line of Ifrits tore them up and threw them away, revealing a circular base of stones interlocked together. At the edges, crumbling bases of what used to be arches told me one thing: this was once an ancient healing arch. It was once a place of great power.

  Iskaris climbed up the crumbling remains of stairs, standing at the edge of the ancient platform, his single arm outstretched. The Ifrits lined up before him like ranks of soldiers. At a second signal, they stood at what must be attention for an Ifrit. They seemed to almost hold the same shape for a moment.

  I had the surreal feeling that what I was seeing couldn’t be real. Or maybe I wasn’t real. Because this hope and love in my heart and this army of evil couldn’t both survive in the same world. I hoped that Ibrenicus had been right about this, as he had been about so many other things. I hoped that our sacrifice would be enough to stop them.

  Iskaris pointed forward and the Ifrits swirled toward the battle at his command.

  Despite the descending darkness as the sun faded to red on the horizon, the light of Savette, Rakturan, and Starie’s magic lit the field.

  In that light, I saw the Silver dragons and riders swarm around Iskaris.

  They saw us coming, and while we might be a ragged, scattered team, we were still a threat to them. I felt a surge of pride at the thought. We wouldn’t die as cowards. We could make even Dominion Dragoons sweat with our ferocity.

  Ferocity! Raolcan echoed.

  The Reds had finally caught up, surging past us, their greater wingspan overtaking the Purples. Their leader waved to me and I waved back as they passed. Here we go.

  Run, silver fishes. This is our reef!

  Did that intimidate anyone?

  It should! They’ve never felt the wrath of the Raolcan!

  I laughed. I shouldn’t be laughing. I should be hyperventilating or sweating through my clothes or something. Instead, I was laughing like a fool, head thrown back and face lifted into the breeze.