Race for the Dragon Heartstone

by K. D. Halbrook

  “It’s the most difficult way to track,” Nebekker said. “But they’ll also know it’s the most likely way for us to travel.”

  “Since it’s the most direct route,” Mele said, gripping onto Luap as the Shorsa half leaped, half swam against the cruel current. “Though not the fastest.”

  Silver probed Hiyyan’s senses again, but this time the sharpness of cold air was all she picked up. “What do we do once we’ve reached the Keep? Any hope that we’ll be the only ones there is gone.”

  “Let’s figure that out once we’ve arrived. I can’t think. My brain is frozen,” Mele said.

  A litany of jokes about Mele’s frozen brain sat on the tip of Silver’s tongue, but she was too exhausted to banter. Instead, she faced forward again and searched the rising mountain for any sign of buildings or paths.

  As the sun fell, the light in the river canyon took on a sapphire-and-amethyst splendor.

  “Look,” Silver said, pointing above their heads.

  Icicles sparkled like gemstones, and the canyon walls twinkled with tiny, embedded crystals. The world felt like a fabled nighttime mystery.

  “It’s beautiful.” Mele nodded appreciatively. “Like nothing I’ve ever seen before.”

  “I’ve never seen those before,” Silver added.

  She gazed upon a group of creatures at the riverbank stopping for a sip of water. They were furred, like the Screw-Claw, but spotted white and blue and about the size of the Abruq water dragons Silver saw in Calidia. Small enough to carry in her arms, but big enough to be a nuisance. Instead of trumpeting horn snouts like the Abruq, these creatures—water dragons, Silver was certain, judging by their webbed feet and long tails—had snub noses and tall ears that turned to and fro to take in all the sounds in the river canyon. Now, they listened as Silver and her friends paddled past.

  “Cute!” Mele said.

  “They’re Snuckers,” Nebekker said from her perch. She rubbed her hands together for warmth as she eyed the dragons. “I’ve seen a herd of them take down healthy adult moose with ease. Let’s move faster.”

  On cue, each of the dozen or so Snuckers on the riverbank grinned at Silver, baring a row of v-shaped teeth, their eyes flashing orange in the dying light. Silver shuddered, especially when they turned their gazes to Hiyyan, who continued to bring up the rear of the group. One Snucker licked its maw.

  “Don’t even think about it,” Silver yelled. She clenched all her muscles, trying to send Hiyyan some strength. She wasn’t sure if it worked, or if it was those Snuckers pawing the ground restlessly, but Hiyyan put the last reserves of his energy into his swimming, catching up to and bypassing Mele’s Shorsa.

  “Hey!” Mele frowned and glanced over her shoulder.

  Silver pulled out her dagger, her senses on alert. “You stay in the middle, Hiyyan. Nebekker and I will bring up the rear.”

  Nebekker grunted her displeasure but nodded. “Pick up the speed, everyone. If we’re still in the canyon when night falls, the Snuckers and the mercenaries will be the least of our worries.”

  Just then, some high-mountain creature sent a howl into the thin evening air. All the hairs on Silver’s body stood on end. Her eyes scanned the cliff tops, but every tree loomed, hiding secrets under its branches, and every shadow creeped in the dying light. Anything could be up there.

  “When will we get to the Keep?” Silver asked.

  “By tomorrow afternoon, if all goes well.”

  “We should move through the night,” Mele said. “If it’s so terrible here, why stop?”

  “Did you bring skate bones to tie to your boots and a sled for Luap? The river freezes at night. See?” Nebekker pointed at the ice that was spreading from the riverbank into the center of the river. “We have little time left to travel tonight.”

  Mele made a low sound in her throat. “And Shorsas aren’t made for walking on land.”

  “And Hiyyan needs rest,” Silver added.

  Mele hitched her bag higher on her shoulder and sighed. “Why do I have the feeling I’m never going to get to the Keep?”

  SEVEN

  Silver remembered the distinct feeling of being stalked from a couple of months ago. Then, it had been a rattling white cave monster following Brajon and her through the river caves, wanting to make them its next meal. Now, though, she didn’t know if it was the Snuckers keeping a close eye on Silver and her friends, the trackers hot on their trail, or that thing that howled in the night and made her nose wrinkle with metallic smells laced with danger.

  “This way,” Nebekker said, holding her lantern higher and waving everyone forward. The light created deep shadows on her face and glinted off her pupils, dilated with determination.

  When it had gotten too dark and icy to continue swimming upriver, the party had tiptoed over the growing edges of crackling frozen water, testing each plane before putting their weight fully into their feet. Once on the riverbank, they searched for a place to rest until the river again melted enough for them to continue their journey.

  The snow was deep, and Silver pressed her hand against Hiyyan’s flank as he faltered into a drift. “Steady-yyy!”

  With the next step, Silver plunged into the very next drift. For the first time that day, Hiyyan let loose a belly-deep, snorting laugh at her face full of snow.

  “Thanks, you big lizard,” Silver grumbled, but she would perform an entire comedy of trips and falls if it meant he’d forget about his pain for a little while.

  Hiyyan took Silver’s thick cloak in his teeth and helped haul her out. Silver paused on her knees to wrap her arms around Hiyyan’s neck and steal a flicker of time for just the two of them to listen to each other’s hearts beat hard and fast. Their warm breaths clouded the frosty air.

  “I’ll be so glad when you’re all healed,” Silver whispered.

  Hiyyan agreed by pressing his muzzle against her cheek.

  Nebekker’s shadow cut across them. “We have to keep moving,” the old woman said as she walked, dragging her long furs across the surface of the snow.

  Mele’s Shorsa had even more trouble moving through the winter wonderland, her tiny feet struggling to propel her forward. Mele helped her along the path Kirja and Nebekker plowed through the snow.

  “How much farther?” Mele called, shaking a lump of snow off her boot.

  Nebekker looked up and around, clutching her walking stick with blue-white knuckles. After peering in the direction of the river, which had dropped lower as the terrain began changing into cliffs on their side of the water, she nodded.

  “Here,” Nebekker said. She moved under the measly shelter of a round of evergreen trees, then proceeded to lay out her furs. “Gather in close. We’ll need to share body warmth.”

  Silver didn’t think she’d ever fall asleep in the bone-deep cold, but as she settled in next to Mele, her body thawed slightly. To her right, Hiyyan pressed his back against her and curled up with Kirja and Luap. Their combined heat caused a thin layer of steam to rise into the night. Silver looked around warily. She hated how the glow of the lantern hid anything outside its small radius. Even though she slapped her palm against her skin, the prickles on the back of her neck wouldn’t go away.

  Still, she forced herself to relax against Hiyyan’s mane of fur and breathe out a gossamer cloud of mist.

  Tomorrow, we reach the Watchers’ Keep. Then once you’re healed, we go to King A-Malusni. I know we haven’t heard from Ferdi yet, but he just has to help us with the treaty. With everything.

  Not sure, Hiyyan bond-said.

  But I saved Ferdi’s Glithern from being kidnapped! We’re friends now, and that has to mean something.

  Means not king friend.

  Silver shook her head. Remember how King A-Malusni stood up for me in the palace when Queen Imea wanted to take you away? When she wanted to …

  Silver couldn’t say the words. Instead, she sent an image to Hiyyan: her coffin, floating out to sea. Hiyyan shuddered.

  Something’s held Ferdi up,
Silver said. He wouldn’t just leave us out here to freeze to death. If his message won’t come to us, we’ll go to him.

  No more choices, Hiyyan said. A snatch of a sad water dragon song floated through Silver’s mind. It was the sun setting on the ocean horizon.

  “No,” Silver said aloud. “There’s no other choice.”

  Especially since her lifelong water dragon racing hero, Sagittaria Wonder, had turned out to be more confusing than splendid. After trying to help Silver escape arrest, Sagittaria had turned around and battled Silver for possession of Kirja, whom she’d kidnapped for the queen. Silver couldn’t figure Sagittaria out: friend or foe?

  As for Nebekker’s old friend Arkilah, she was definitely a foe. Silver glanced at Nebekker, whose back rose and fell in a steady rhythm even as her hands fussed with the hood of her cloak, pulling it closer around her face.

  Sometimes, Silver couldn’t help but wonder if Nebekker had known the person Arkilah had become—and had sent Silver looking for her anyway. Arkilah might have been a good companion to Nebekker when they were young, but she had shown Silver that she would do anything to increase her knowledge of the world’s mystic secrets, including imprison Silver. And given that she earned a place as the right-hand woman of the queen, she was even more dangerous than when Nebekker had known her in their youth.

  When it came to allies, that left only the people Silver was with now and her family back home in Jaspaton. Brajon and her mother at least. Silver closed her eyes. She wasn’t sure how her father felt about her. She and Rami Batal, great jeweler of the desert, had not been on good terms the last time they were together.

  Still, Silver longed to be with her family again, to sit on cushions around their table and enjoy the delicacies of Jaspaton, to see the jeweled lanterns of the cliffside city slowly come to life as the sun settled beneath the far desert horizon with a sigh. To laugh, to tease, to dream, to rest.

  Would she ever be able to go home again?

  Beneath her mittens, Silver worried her fingers. Hiyyan pulled his head around and nudged her.

  “I’m all right,” she told him.

  Mele and her Shorsa snored gently, and even Nebekker seemed to have fallen asleep, her body crumpled in on itself like a gnarled desert tree. But every time Silver tried to follow suit, a painful throbbing began in her shoulders and neck.

  Soon, soon.

  Hiyyan released a low sound of hope along with his breath.

  Mele stirred and peered up at Silver. “How close do you think they are now, the mercenaries?” she whispered.

  “They’d have to fly on the backs of hawks to catch up with us. Or on Aquinder.”

  “Let’s be grateful we’re with the only two in known existence, then.”

  Silver’s toes began to seize up with cold. She wiggled her feet to encourage blood flow, but the restless feeling spread up her legs. She stood and grabbed her pack.

  “Just to the river for a drink,” she told Hiyyan when he gave her a questioning look. The Aquinder raised his body slowly, intending to follow. “Stay here. You need to rest.”

  Hiyyan narrowed his eyes and stood fully, shaking his mane free of snow.

  “Where are you going now?” Mele pulled a blanket closer around her body in the absence of Silver’s warmth.

  “We’ll be gone just a moment,” Silver told her. “Getting water.”

  “From a frozen river?”

  “I’ll hack into it.”

  “Humph. When you die,” Mele mumbled as she rolled over, “I’m going to have them carve ‘She was always walking off into danger’ on your tombstone.”

  Silver rolled her eyes. “It’s a few steps to the river, then right back here.”

  Silver and Hiyyan followed the narrow, plowed path back to the river. Neither of them was thirsty, really, but they broke off small pieces of ice and let them melt against their tongues. Silver squinted upriver, hoping to see a light from the Watchers’ Keep; the cliffs loomed on either side of the water, creating an ominous channel to the summit of the mountain. But all was dark.

  Still. “We’re close,” she told Hiyyan. “I can feel it. When you’re healed, no one will be able to catch you, not the mercenaries, not the queen, not even those Snuckers. And once we petition the Island Nations, we’ll be free.”

  Silver knelt to break off another piece of ice, but she paused, ears pricked. Hiyyan’s ears flicked left and right. It was the sounds he heard that were coming to Silver. A shuffling in the snow, a series of low growls.

  “Snuckers,” Silver whispered. She pulled her dagger out, looking left to right, echoing Hiyyan’s movements. “Surely you’re too big for them to bother?”

  She recalled the twilight flashing against their razor teeth and second-guessed herself. A few could hardly do much to Hiyyan, but how big did their herds get? Twenty or more would be a challenge, especially in a landscape that was treacherous for her and Hiyyan but home to the Snuckers.

  Mountain moose. Hiyyan sent an image of the furry, antlered beasts to soothe Silver, and she nodded, remembering what Nebekker had said. Hiyyan was larger than a mountain moose.

  A new smell reached Silver through Hiyyan’s senses, and she wrinkled her nose. It came from across the river. Mountain moose needed a bath. When she squinted, she could just make out a shadow darker than the surrounding night. The creature made a sound low in its throat.

  Did moose growl?

  “That’s no moose.” Silver backed away from the ice. Behind her, Hiyyan let loose his own growl. A warning to stay back.

  Silver put her hand on Hiyyan’s flank. His muscles were just as taut as hers, despite the ability to control his left wing having faded into almost nothing. Silver shifted her dagger to her right hand. She, too, was losing strength in her left arm.

  “The ice is too thin. Unless that creature likes swimming, we’ll be safe over here.”

  Her thoughts went to Mele and the rest of her travel companions, sleeping in the copse of evergreens. If the creature did try to come closer, she and Hiyyan were the only things between it and her unsuspecting friends.

  A brisk wind blew through the river canyon, bringing swirls of snow and dropping the temperature.

  With a defiant crackle, the river finished freezing over in one fell swoop. Clouds split, letting a sliver of moonlight bathe the mountain. Silver could finally make out the distinct shape of a mountain lion. A flash of triumph lit up the creature’s eyes.

  “I was wrong,” Silver said. She licked her lips, the moisture freezing painfully against her thin skin.

  The mountain lion remained on its side of the river, but she didn’t know how long that would last. Hiyyan backed to the plowed path, with Silver pressing against him. Still, the creature waited, snorting into the chill.

  The rustling sound came to Silver again, and she stopped moving. The creature was still as well. Something else was out there.

  “But I was right about the Snuckers.” When Silver looked over her shoulder, she glimpsed four of the menacing water dragons hovering among a stand of trees. Half were watching her and Hiyyan, while the others looked across the river. The mountain lion stepped onto the frosted ice.

  “You should go after that for dinner,” Silver said to the Snuckers, pointing across the ice with her chin. Her voice held steady, even though her heart raced. She threw her shoulders back and narrowed her eyes. Stand tall, look fierce, make the Snuckers think you’re too much effort to be worth a meager dinner.

  Kriiiick-WOMP. A tree branch cracked under the weight of snow, then fell from the sky with a mighty crash. It was impossible to see anything in the white cloud of snow that the branch threw up, but Silver heard the clack of the creature running across the river and the shuffle of the Snuckers behind them. Her pulse pounded in her ears.

  Now she and Hiyyan were trapped in the middle.

  “Run!” Silver cried. She darted downriver along the bank, Hiyyan on her heels. She would not lead any of those night creatures back to the group, and she
knew she wouldn’t get lost if she followed the river.

  But instead of attacking each other, the growling mountain lion and the Snuckers both pivoted to follow her and Hiyyan. They sensed injury and weakness.

  The Aquinder, even injured, was faster on his four legs than Silver was on two. Despite his hurt wing, Hiyyan scooped Silver up with his tail and deposited her on his back. Silver looked down, and her temples broke out in a sweat. A Snucker’s jaws snapped at the air right where she had been running. She’d almost been dinner.

  As they passed another stand of trees, Silver reached for branches, shaking heavy, wet lumps of snow onto the ground behind them. Her breathing came fast and her arms ached, but she kept at it, each snow plunk slowing their pursuers.

  “Aim for that tree,” Silver said, sheathing her dagger. Ahead, a branch dangled from its trunk, ready to snap off. It would make a decent weapon with a long reach. When Hiyyan approached the spot, Silver reached up, wrapped her fists around the branch, and pulled.

  But instead of the branch coming off the tree, Silver came off Hiyyan. “Oof!”

  “Mrawr?” Hiyyan skidded to a stop.

  “Keep running!” Silver shouted at him, dangling from the branch that stubbornly held on to its tree.

  Hiyyan growled and crouched in a defensive stance. Running wouldn’t stop the Snuckers and the mountain lion. The carnivorous cat bypassed the dangling girl in favor of Hiyyan, but the Snuckers paused below Silver, leaping and snapping with their little razor teeth. When they realized she was too high for them to reach, they sat on their haunches, waiting patiently for their meal to fall.

  Silver narrowed her eyes at them. “I’m not letting go. Try me.”

  As the branch snapped and creaked, the Snuckers grinned, their red eyes flashing with delight.

  The sweat on Silver’s temples moved to her palms. As her grip became clammy, Silver realized how the Snuckers got their name: They began making an excited snuffle-snort through their noses.

  “You’re not getting me,” Silver said, but her voice was a little weaker this time.

  Another fierce wind blew through the stand of trees, and the branches swayed. Frozen rain stung Silver’s cheeks, and her fingers lost feeling. In that moment, the mountain cat jumped at Hiyyan.