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‘Each dragon is working alone now,’ he reported. ‘It’s almost impossible to keep a safe formation position anyway. We have agreed to try to meet at the edge of the range some way south of here. We don’t have a particular meeting place in mind. No one knows the geography around here very well, so we don’t have a suitable landmark. It might take a while to find everyone again in the dark, but at least we all know roughly where the others are going.’

  ‘So we’re on our own,’ Kira breathed thoughtfully, more to herself than to Fang. ‘Good. At least we don’t have to worry about looking out for the others.’

  No sooner had the words passed her lips than she began to feel guilty. Was it right to run away and leave the others at the mercy of the night dragons?

  She leaned forwards again, streamlining herself against Fang’s back. The lower she got, the more the wind seemed to lose its icy bite. The easiest option was to run, but was the easy way the best way? Being a dusk dragon, Fang could use his chameleonlike ability to blend into any background. His camouflage made him impossible to see in the falling snow. The night dragons would never catch him. The same could not be said for the others, though. Firestorm’s blue scales, Shadow’s black scales and particularly Aurora’s bright golden scales would make each of them visible from some distance.

  Kira sighed as she realised her conscience would not allow her to think only of herself. She had not wanted to become a part of the dragonrider community, but she was now involved in an important quest that required the four dragons and their riders to work together towards a common goal. Like it or not, they were a team.

  There was an alternative to running. She could turn the situation into a hunt – swap roles from hunted to hunter. It was what she did best. If she and Fang began hunting down the night dragons, her friends would have more of a chance to escape.

  ‘What do you think, Fang?’ she asked, aware of his presence in her mind. She could feel him listening to her thoughts as she played through the mental debate. ‘Should we make a run for it, or stick around and cause some trouble?’

  ‘That depends on what you want to achieve,’ he replied. ‘I can see value in trying to confuse the night dragons, but I’m not strong enough to fight them. The night dragons are all far larger than the biggest dusk dragon. Any one of them would be more than a match for me in a straight fight.’

  ‘I try never to get into a fight with my prey,’ Kira assured him. ‘Confusing the night dragons would be great. It will give our friends a chance to escape unseen. We should be able to slip past the night dragons at any time in these conditions.’

  ‘True, providing I don’t lose track of my bearings,’ he pointed out. ‘I don’t want to find myself inadvertently flying back the way we just came. We might deceive this party only to run into Segun and his men by accident.’

  ‘No. That wouldn’t be good,’ Kira agreed.

  ‘Also, this party knows there is a dusk dragon in our group, so they will be alert to my abilities. It will not be easy to fool them. Are you sure you want to do this? It could be a lot more dangerous than you think.’

  ‘No, I’m not sure,’ Kira admitted. ‘But I can’t just let the others be hunted down. We have to do something.’

  ‘Very well. Hold on tight. I have an idea that might work.’

  Kira wanted to discuss his idea, but she was given no chance. She felt Fang reach out with his mind. A moment later he turned to the left and drew in a deep breath. The bellow took her completely by surprise. She had never heard Fang roar like that before. Even his challenging roar during the attack by the dragonhunters had sounded nothing like this. On and on it went, seeming all the longer because she knew it had the full attention of any night dragon for miles around. What did he think he was doing? If she had known what he was about to do, she would have thought twice about playing the heroine.

  The tone of Fang’s bellow carried a challenge that said, ‘Come and get me if you think you’re strong enough’. No self-respecting night dragon would be able to turn down such a taunt. Kira huddled down tight to Fang’s back. Her eyes scanned the sky around them for signs of the night dragons she knew would be homing in.

  It did not take long for the first dragon shape to loom out of the murky snow. It came from ahead. Fang camouflaged instantly, disappearing from under Kira. His unnerving ability to blend into his surroundings did not normally worry her, but this time Fang simultaneously folded his wings and dropped abruptly to dip under the incoming night dragon. Her stomach lurched towards her throat. It was a particularly horrible sensation, because it felt as if Fang had really vanished into thin air and left her to fall. The feeling was short-lived. Fang snapped his wings out, soaring underneath the night dragon and climbing back to his level.

  No sooner had Fang reached the night dragon’s level than he reappeared and roared again. His reward was a screech of frustration from the dragon he had just avoided and then a second one that sounded more surprised. Then there was silence. Both screeches appeared to have come from the same direction and distance.

  ‘They nearly collided,’ Fang said, sounding smug. His voice echoed strangely inside her head, but Kira was quick to recognise the phenomenon. He had narrowed their mental link to prevent other dragons from tapping into their thoughts. ‘It has shaken them up. I can feel their relief. They know they were lucky. Hold on tight. It’s time to lead them on a bit of a dance.’

  Kira did not reply. She concentrated on holding on as tightly as she could to the pommel of the saddle. When she had suggested causing trouble, she had imagined directing Fang in a stealthy hunt and distracting the night dragons with hit-and-run attacks. This open taunting was not her style and she felt very uncomfortable with her dragon’s tactics. The cold did not help. Her mind felt slow and fogged, and she was fast losing sensation in her extremities. Although she would have been perfectly at home playing hide-and-seek with any of the deadly animals in the warm savannah of Racafi, this three-dimensional game in the freezing, snow-filled air of the mountains of northern Isaa made her feel terribly small and lost.

  ‘Turning left,’ Fang warned. He roared again, disappearing from under her a second time and suddenly dipping his left wing into a hard turn. Once again the great night dragons converged on the spot from which he had issued his challenge. Despite his warning, Kira was surprised by the abruptness of the turn. Clinging on with all her strength, she held fast to the saddle, but by the time they rolled back to wings level, her arms were shaking with the effort.

  Fang reappeared under her. He roared again. This time three night dragon voices responded with screeches filled with anger and frustration.

  ‘You’ve certainly got their attention, Fang,’ Kira observed, trying to stay calm. ‘Are they all after us now?’

  ‘Yes. All three are nearby. They have all answered my challenge.’

  ‘Great!’ she said, feeling about as far from great as possible. ‘Now what do we do?’

  ‘We fly rings around them, of course,’ Fang replied, sounding surprised by the question. ‘Keep them busy long enough for the others to get away and then sneak off ourselves.’

  He turned back towards the night dragons, powering upwards this time and disappearing again. Kira could feel him searching the area ahead and below them with his eyes and his mind. She shivered. What if they anticipated his move? Suddenly three dark dragon-shaped outlines appeared in close formation ahead and slightly below them. They loomed unnaturally large against the backdrop of falling white flecks. Fang materialised again and dived at the huge shapes. With the advantage of height and surprise, Fang’s appearance caused them to scatter as he swooped down at them like a striking falcon only to disappear again at the last second. On silent wings he soared back up into the relative safety of the murky cloud.

  Again and again Fang taunted the night dragons, each time manoeuvring to confuse or disorient them. With every flashing encounter his three adversaries became wiser to his tactics. Gradually they started to coordinate their efforts against him. Kira
could do nothing other than hang on. It was not a pleasant sensation to have to place all her trust in Fang even though he was her partner for life. She was very much used to controlling her own destiny, but there was nothing she could do to help. Flying tactics were Fang’s domain. He was old and wily. She knew better than to interfere, but as the night dragons became more organised, so the game they were playing became progressively more dangerous.

  ‘I think that’s enough, Fang,’ she said eventually. ‘We’ve pushed our luck to the limit. Let’s get out of here.’

  ‘I agree,’ he replied. ‘I was not expecting the pincer response they pulled on the last run. They’re no fools. I can’t feel any of our friends nearby, so we’ve achieved our aim.’

  Fang stayed camouflaged as he dipped his right wing and entered a descending spiral. He kept the turn tight, but not horribly so. Kira looked down in an effort to see the ground. When Fang levelled his wings and began to beat them again in the familiar rhythm he used for distance flying, Kira was surprised to realise that she had been looking without seeing for some time. She had become so used to the milky whiteness inside the murky snowstorm that she had not detected the subtly different white of the carpet covering the valley floor below.

  A burning sensation rushed up from her stomach to the back of her throat and a sour taste settled on her tongue. She did not know if Fang had seen the ground approaching, or if he had an inbuilt sense of how high he was. Either way, the shock of comprehension when she registered how low they had come made her appreciate her dragon’s abilities all the more. Fang could have crashed into the ground and she would never have seen it coming. It was a scary thought.

  They flew along the valley basin in total silence. The snow continued to fall around them, but the visibility was sufficient for Fang to navigate safely.

  ‘Do you think the night dragons are following us?’ she asked, as they turned left into a narrower valley.

  ‘It’s hard to say,’ Fang replied. ‘They were still adapting tactics to try to catch me in the act of taunting them when we left. They will think our disappearance is another ruse to begin with, but I doubt they will take long to realise the truth.’

  The light was fading fast. The dark clouds overhead made it feel more like dusk than late afternoon. Kira quickly lost all sense of which way they were heading. All the valleys looked similar. Some were wider than others, but all were buried in snow. Through her mental link with Fang she felt his confidence that they were heading in the right direction, but she had no way of helping or checking.

  When the valley walls finally disappeared, Kira heaved a sigh of relief. Snow was still falling, but the sky was definitely lighter. Without the menace of huge peaks looming to either side of them, Kira instinctively began to relax, and the cold suddenly began to feel more intense than ever.

  Fang turned to the right, seeking to parallel the mountain range southwards. Assuming they had safely navigated clear of the peaks, her companions would be doing the same. Kira could feel herself succumbing to the cold. Having felt its insidious bite before, she was now aware of the danger. The signs were unmistakeable.

  ‘I’m sorry, Fang, but if we don’t land soon I’m going to freeze,’ she warned.

  ‘I know,’ he replied. ‘I’ve been looking for somewhere safe to set down for a while now, but I’ve not sensed anywhere useable. I’m not sure what to do.’

  ‘I think we’re just going to have to land and make the best of what’s around,’ she said, her body trembling violently. ‘Can you see any woodland? I know it’s dangerous, but I’m going to need a fire to warm me up.’

  Kira held her breath as she sensed Fang straining to see through snow and mist.

  ‘Yes,’ he said. ‘There is woodland not far to our left, but . . .’

  ‘But what?’ she gasped aloud. ‘What’s wrong?’

  ‘It’s probably nothing,’ he said slowly, but he sounded troubled. ‘For a moment I felt a flicker of something – a presence.’

  ‘Another dragon?’ she asked.

  Fang did not answer straight away. She could feel him straining as he swept the area ahead with his mind. Kira could just make out the trees of a pine forest. The treetops were laden with snow, but the conical shapes and the freckles of dark green amongst the shroud of white were unmistakeable.

  ‘I don’t think so,’ he replied. ‘It was such a fleeting impression that it’s impossible to be certain. Whatever it was, it’s not there now. The snow must be confusing my senses. We’ll land.’

  Chapter Four

  Into the Night

  Pell was stunned. The after-image of the moment of mass death was etched in his mind. He stood transfixed as he stared at the rows of lifeless bodies in the snow. What had just happened? The dark orb throbbed relentlessly in his hands. He felt sick. It had used him. It was still using him. He could feel its power coursing through his body. Tears formed in his eyes. He had no control. All he could do was stand and look at the aftermath of the orb’s destructive power.

  Suddenly the pressure was gone. He staggered backwards, reeling in a dizzy circle. Pain spiked through his head as if a huge needle had been driven through his forehead and deep into his skull. Released from the compulsion to hold it, he pushed the black globe away from his body. It flew through the air and landed in soft snow a few feet away, unharmed.

  One hand went instinctively to his forehead to massage the spot from where the pain seemed to originate. For the briefest instant, Pell felt an overwhelming desire to rush over and smash the orb into a million tiny pieces – an eye for an eye, a life for a life. Was the orb alive? he wondered. It certainly seemed to have an awareness of its surroundings. How else could it have controlled him and selectively ignored both him and Shadow with its tendrils? He was not sure he wanted an answer to that question.

  ‘Pell?’ Shadow’s voice sounded lost and uncertain in his mind, but he sensed that she shared his pain.

  He ignored her, stumbling forwards a few paces before finding his balance. Control restored, he placed his feet with care, stepping between the dead animals until he reached the dragonrider. The man was lying face down in the snow about two paces from his unmoving dragon. Pell’s throat felt tight as he crouched by the body and tentatively reached under the man’s torso to roll him over. He was heavy, but Pell was determined.

  The man’s expression was exactly as it had been in the instant of his death. His features were slack and his eyes wide open and unseeing, just as they had been during his final few moments. Pell’s stomach churned as he closed the man’s eyelids with trembling fingers.

  ‘Pell?’

  ‘I killed him,’ he croaked, tears forming in his eyes. ‘I killed them all.’

  ‘It wasn’t you, Pell,’ Shadow soothed, her voice stroking his mind with a velvet touch. ‘It was the orb. You did not call them here. You cannot blame yourself for this.’

  ‘Can’t I?’ he spat, turning to face her. His eyes were burning with a fierce fanaticism. ‘Can’t I? My hands held the orb, Shadow. My hands! This man, this dragon, all these animals – gone, because I wasn’t strong enough to control my hands.’

  Shadow was silent for a moment. She had never seen her rider so distraught. Nothing in all her many years of travelling the world had prepared her for this.

  ‘Fang told me the first orb gave off an aura of blood,’ she said thoughtfully. ‘He said the orb’s aura drew predators from miles around and drove them into a frenzy of bloodlust. It seems this orb also has an aura. This orb also attracts, but it then feeds on the life force of those it draws. It doesn’t seem to do it constantly like the day orb, or we would have had visitors before now. The orbs are powerful, Pell. I doubt any human could resist the will of an orb.’

  Shadow lifted her head high and looked around. The light was fading fast.

  ‘Sundown!’ she said suddenly.

  ‘What?’

  ‘Sundown. The orb killed exactly at sundown,’ she explained.

  ‘How do you know
that?’ Pell asked, looking first around at the darkening sky and then back at his dragon.

  ‘Just as a dawn dragon has an affinity with dawn, so we night dragons can tell when night is about to begin. Let me know if you start to feel the urge to take out the orb again, but I have a feeling it will not happen until the same time tomorrow. That gives us a day to work out how to prevent it from killing more innocents. We need to find the others. Maybe one of them will be able to help. One thing is certain – the sooner we can get the orb to the Oracle, the better.’

  ‘I won’t argue with that,’ Pell said, a shudder rippling down his spine. ‘But are you sure we should look for the others? What if it kills them as well? I had no control, Shadow. It was horrible. I don’t know if I can cope with carrying it any more.’

  ‘You have to, Pell. This is our duty. We have to get the orb to the Oracle in Orupee. The others share this responsibility. Don’t worry. We’ll warn them – make sure they’re ready to run if it starts happening again. Try to be careful. Don’t touch it directly. Wrap it in your spare clothing and pack it at the bottom of the saddlebag. Make it as difficult to reach as possible. That might give us the extra moments we need.’

  Pell did not like to point out that wrapping it deep in his saddlebag was exactly what he had done the first time. He did not want to go anywhere near the gruesome globe, but he knew he had no choice. Shadow was right. The quest was all that remained. They had both suffered a great deal to win the orb. He had come too far to give up now.

  Picking his way back through the rows of bodies, Pell returned to the base of the rock where his open saddlebag sat in the snow. Shadow moved out of his way, uncoiling from the great boulder and shaking the snow from her back and wings. Pell reached inside the bag and drew out his spare cloak. He turned and looked down at the black ball in the snow. It appeared inert and harmless, like a mammoth black pearl deliberately set into a hollow of purest white.

  If it had not been for the horrors of the last few minutes, Pell would have scorned anyone else for being reluctant to pick it up. Every muscle in his body was taut as he spread his cloak over the orb. Even with it covered, he could feel his heart hammering against his ribs. He reached down to collect it and paused. With a flash of insight he realised that this was how Nolita felt every time she approached her dragon.