Race for the Dragon Heartstone

by K. D. Halbrook

  “No!”

  Hiyyan reared back and then lashed out. His paws were the size of the cat’s entire head, with claws bigger than the cat’s teeth, but the cat was stealthy and seemed to have excellent night vision. The cat dashed around Hiyyan’s first swipe and ducked under the second. It snapped its teeth close enough to Hiyyan’s injured wing to make Silver cry out in fear.

  “Hiyyan!”

  But Hiyyan could dodge an attack, too. He slid to the left, letting the slick riverbank snow carry his bulk, then he dug his claws into the ground to stop and leaned back just as the mountain lion leaped for his throat. Missing its mark wide, the cat soared into a drift.

  The Snuckers snuffled and danced. Silver pulled her knife from her belt and closed her eyes.

  “You want something injured?” she said. She opened her eyes and raised her right arm. The branch slowly slipped out of her weak left hand. She had one shot. After that, she would fall.

  Silver narrowed her gaze to the mountain cat, waiting until it was out of the drift, head shaken free of snow, hunched down, waiting to spring again. Then Silver flicked her wrist.

  The knife sliced through the thin winter air and found its target. The mountain cat yowled, and the Snuckers silenced, raising their snouts in the air at the scent of fresh blood.

  “Go,” Silver whispered as she dangled for one last second. But it was long enough for the Snuckers to leap away to the cat.

  As Silver landed on the ground in a heap, the mountain creatures commenced a new battle. Silver and Hiyyan didn’t stay long enough to see the outcome. They rushed into the dark winter night beyond the trees and away from the riverbank. And, after countless minutes of running, Silver paused to look around and figure out where they were: far away from their friends.

  EIGHT

  Keep walking. Keep walking.

  Silver repeated the mantra in her head as much for her own sake as for Hiyyan’s, the beat of the words matching each heavy and tired step she took. They couldn’t stop to rest. The Snuckers might be following them. More mountain cats could be stalking them from perches in the river canyon. And their blood would slow, thicken, and freeze if they didn’t keep moving.

  Silver’s body shuddered against another gust of frigid wind.

  “I only wanted water!” she shouted into the desolate white world.

  A wild bubble of laughter rose in her throat. This was not the first time she’d been caught in an unfriendly landscape, woefully unprepared. Mele was right: She was always walking into danger. Would she ever learn?

  Hiyyan laughed as a sign of solidarity and then sighed. His poisoned wing dragged in the snow at an unnatural angle, leaving a trail of greenish ooze behind him. It felt as if knitting needles were playing over the right side of her body, her fingers turning a dangerous shade of blue. Without their own dragon heartstone, Hiyyan’s blood was filling with death.

  And so was hers.

  “Nebekker said we’d reach the Keep sometime in the afternoon,” Silver said aloud. She was so cold she kept clenching her jaw, and her cheeks were a hot kiln of pain. Talking helped relax her muscles. “B-b-but that was with a few hours of rest overnight. We might reach the Keep by midday if we avoid any more obstacles. I only h-h-hope the rest of them keep moving upriver and don’t go looking for us. Kirja should be able to t-t-track us well enough.”

  Hiyyan grunted his agreement.

  “But that m-m-means others will be able t-t-to as well.”

  Hiyyan shook his head and sent her an image of a warm room, fireplace roaring with heat and thick blankets draped over them. Silver responded by sending him an image of his wing healed.

  “I’m r-r-ready for all that,” she said.

  The drifts of snow began to get shallower, and then they disappeared. Silver’s boots crunched and Hiyyan’s claws clattered on the new surface. It took a few steps for Silver to notice the changed scenery.

  Over her shoulder, she could just make out the reflection of the slender moon on the frozen landscape. They’d long ago left the protection and guidance of the river, but the way was still obvious: As long as they kept increasing elevation, they should reach the Watchers’ Keep somewhere high up the mountain. The trouble was, climbing was getting harder with every step. Instead of the fluffy snowdrifts near the river, what stretched out before them now was a barren sheet of silvery-blue ice, glinting under a stark sky of stars. The wind ate away at the surface, revealing cracks and crevasses, and licked the back of Silver’s and Hiyyan’s necks painfully.

  They were on a glacier field once more.

  “Here’s h-h-hoping this one doesn’t h-h-harbor its own Screw-Claw.”

  Silver took another step and threw out her arms to catch her balance as she slid backward and landed on her rear.

  The laugh Hiyyan gave her was so tired that Silver’s heart broke.

  “Easy enough f-f-for you, with your claws to d-d-dig in,” she said.

  Silver pressed her lips together and eyed the ice field ahead of them.

  “We n-n-need to climb it.”

  Hiyyan sent Silver an image of walking sticks, then he turned and melted into the darkness they’d emerged from. Silver crouched as she waited, pulling her body into as small a ball as she could to conserve warmth. She rubbed her cheek on the inside of her cloak to make sure she could still feel the soft and silky fur lining.

  A few minutes later, Hiyyan returned, a long branch caught between his teeth. He dumped it at Silver’s feet. She held the stick between her knees and began stripping it. Her fingers struggled to rip the smaller twigs, but she gave a frustrated snarl and forced them to move. When her hands gave out she used her teeth. Once finished, she had a somewhat crooked but strong stick to help her up the glacier—and a small pile of flexible branches.

  Silver dug out a thin blanket partially woven with Kirja’s shed belly fur and draped it over Hiyyan’s shoulders. At his throat, she threaded the thinnest of the branches through two corners of the blanket. The makeshift cloak didn’t even reach Hiyyan’s rear haunches, but it was the best she could do. Hiyyan pressed his nose against her neck in thanks.

  Silver shivered, her laugh cut off sharply. How was it possible for his nose to be even colder than the rest of her body?

  “L-l-let’s go.”

  The chill cut through Silver’s layers of clothing, freezing her to her core. She shivered uncontrollably as she walked, and even Hiyyan’s jaw rattled with the cold. Silver had her hair shorn off in Calidia, but now she wished she still looked like her mother, like the beautiful and well-kept yarnsladies in Jaspaton, with their thick hair covering their ears and necks, spilling down their backs to their waists. Anything for a touch more warmth.

  More than that, she wished she could be with her mother.

  Tears froze before they could make it past Silver’s eyelids. She hastily wiped her face and licked her lips. The wind dried the moisture before it had a chance to settle, cracking her lips painfully. A low rumbling from above made Silver pause. She threw her arm out to stop Hiyyan.

  “What was that?”

  Hiyyan’s ears twitched, his nose sniffed, his eyes narrowed. Then he heaved his entire body into Silver’s side and sent her flying.

  “Hiyyan!”

  Silver landed on her back but didn’t have time to take a breath before Hiyyan covered her. The rumbling grew louder. Silver curled up as objects pummeled Hiyyan’s sides. He grunted and whimpered, but he held steady. Pebbles and tiny bits of frozen ice skittered beneath Hiyyan’s belly to sting Silver’s head, but Hiyyan protected her from the larger pieces of the landslide.

  When the world quieted again, Hiyyan gingerly moved aside and sat back, breathing heavily.

  “Oh, Hiyyan,” Silver whispered. Her Aquinder shook; all along his right side, his skin darkened as bruises formed. Silver ran her palm over his scales, checking for broken skin, but Hiyyan had been spared that, at least.

  Silver blinked back tears. “Nebekker always said you should have bonded to some
one more capable.”

  No, Hiyyan said.

  Silver frowned and looked away. “What do you know about it, anyway?” He had never been safe and comfortable. All because of her.

  In response, Hiyyan used water dragon language, singing the notes that had come to mean more to Silver than anything. It was the water dragon song of love.

  Silver closed her eyes and sniffed. Was any force as compelling as love? She stood, and together they walked, Hiyyan waiting for Silver as she struggled beside him with her walking stick. Soon their feet burned with cold.

  Silver pulled her furs closer. Ice. Snow.

  Ice. Snow, Hiyyan thought back to her.

  Stick. Silver waved her branch in the air. Slip, she thought as she fumbled backward.

  Stick. Slip. Claw. Water dragon. Silver. Bond. Mountain.

  Silver’s breath came as a cloud, and she nodded. What had begun as a game to pass the time in the mountain cave had become a habit. She was teaching Hiyyan her language and, in return, he was teaching her his. As they climbed, trading the dark night skies for the hint of citrine morning reflected on the ice field, Silver switched tactics and began singing under her breath.

  The song of cold came to her first, but she shook her head and instead repeated what Hiyyan had only moments before sung to her. She formed the notes of the song of love. Despite the terrain, warmth filled her belly, and hope filled her heart.

  With renewed determination, Silver plunged her stick into the glacier. A flash of sunlight stung her eyes, and the crack of ice splintering found her ears. Silver put her arm out as a dark line zigzagged down the ice field toward her. Fear froze her in place, but just when she thought the glacier would open up and swallow her into its depths, the crack stopped. Right at the toe of her boot.

  Silver breathed out hard. Looked up the mountain. It was too dark to see anything. How much farther? Could they possibly hope to make it all the way to the Keep?

  Fly.

  Silver frowned. Hiyyan wasn’t making a suggestion; he was reminding her of what he could do if his wing functioned properly. He felt guilty that he couldn’t get them out of danger.

  “It’s my fault that your wing’s hurt. I’ll get us out of here.” Silver set her jaw, but a wave of dizziness hit her. “We have to keep moving.”

  Hiyyan lifted a trembling leg, prepared to trudge forward, but then his body paused, tipped to the left, then back to the right. “Hhhrrggg,” he growled.

  “Or maybe we’ll sit for a moment. Just until there’s a little bit of light.”

  Hiyyan let his chin rest on the ground, and Silver curled into his neck. Her arms prickled with the sense that they weren’t alone, but soon numbness seeped in and cloaked them in drowsiness. They nodded off, and when they woke, the world dripped at them, a sharp, reflective sun blasting across the mountain above them.

  Silver was surprised she’d managed to wake at all and wasn’t entirely glad of it. Her lips were crackled, dry, and burnt when she opened her mouth. Her brain throbbed with sounds. But one voice rose above them all to reach her.

  “It is them! Land here!”

  Silver’s heart leaped. Mele! That was who had been out there.

  “Me—urmph.” Silver tried to get up but succeeded in only tipping herself over to her side. Hiyyan whimpered once, then raised his head and let loose a grand roar.

  “Huuuuurrrooowwww!”

  The ground trembled, but neither of them cared. Mele was here, Kirja was here, and they were going to get off the glacier!

  Mele jumped from Kirja’s back and lifted Silver in a tight hug. “Oof! How can you be so little and so heavy at the same time?”

  “Probably all the good food I’ve been eating.”

  “Hurmp, hurmp.” Hiyyan laughed.

  As Mele supported her, Silver gritted her teeth and forced her fingers and toes to curl and uncurl. She looked down at the dull tin-gray color in her fingers and frowned. “Where’s Luap?”

  Mele nodded across the edge of the glacier. “Waiting with Nebekker at the river. Do you realize you’re only a few steps away from it?”

  “I had no idea where we were.”

  “Kirja sensed you, didn’t you, you good ol’ lady?” Mele patted Kirja’s flank. Kirja’s teeth flashed in the blinding morning light as she grinned. “As soon as we woke and realized you were still gone, we came. I’m sorry it wasn’t sooner.”

  “It’s s-s-so good to see you, my c-old friend,” Silver said. “Snow face is m-m-more welcome than yours.”

  Mele grimaced. “Are you making up puns? Silver, I think you’re delirious.”

  “Oh, let’s n-n-not drag-on our conversation. Ice-ee we all want to g-g-get to the Keep and be warm. I must cre-vass-k: How l-l-long until we get there?”

  “Silver, I swear I’ll leave you here—” But Mele’s words cut off as Hiyyan whipped his head over his shoulder with a growl.

  He stiffened and sniffed the air. Danger.

  Silver nodded. “H-h-hide!”

  There was a shuffle, then a crunch of glacial ice, before the big voice boomed out over the ice field.

  “Hide? What good will that do? All that hollering makes you impossible to miss.”

  Three figures emerged from a dip in the ice field, their bodies swathed in puffy, down-filled coats and their faces wrapped snugly so that only slits remained for their eyes. Their packs were full, and mountain tools hung from their belts. Silver spotted the sharp ice picks and swallowed hard.

  Kirja drew herself up to her tallest height and loomed over Hiyyan protectively. It didn’t matter now if the mercenaries heard her; she let loose a tree-trembling roar, but the trackers weren’t fazed.

  “Oh, we’ve heard about you,” one of the mercenaries said, her voice muffled but still able to ring out across the glacier.

  “That’s why we grabbed her first,” said another mercenary, dragging a human beside him.

  “Nebekker!” Silver cried out.

  The man held a knife near Nebekker’s temple. Her cheeks radiated bright red, and her eyes flicked side to side, wide and wild. “We heard there’s an easy way to get that big dragon to do what we want.”

  Unable to bear the threat to her human, Kirja sat back on her haunches, waiting and watching.

  “We also heard you were a squirrelly, difficult thing to catch,” the woman said, nodding at Silver. “But tracking you couldn’t have been easier, could it, Jasser?”

  A third mercenary, Jasser, was a man taller than the others by two heads and nearly double as wide. He dragged a large litter across the snow with ease, but when his opinion was solicited by the woman, he said nothing, preferring to simply glare at them all.

  “Grab Silver Batal. I’ll get the other girl,” the woman directed, and the trackers moved quickly.

  “Silver?” Nebekker’s voice had never sounded so weak and confused.

  Silver turned to run, but at the sound of her name, she froze. She couldn’t leave Nebekker to the trackers.

  “Easier and easier,” the woman said. It was the last thing Silver heard before Jasser’s big arm clobbered her upside her head, dropping her to the ground.

  NINE

  Silver rolled in and out of consciousness, every jolt of the litter pulling her awake before she tipped off again into darkness. In the brief waking moments, she gathered as much information as she could: They were traveling down the glacier, switchbacking to keep from plummeting down the ice. She was tied next to Nebekker on a sled. Sometimes, it was snowing. Kirja and Hiyyan were harnessed together on a raft-sized contraption made up of dozens of planks of wood and pulled by a rope tied around the waist of the huge man, Jasser.

  I’m going to die. I’m going to die. I’m going to die.

  No.

  Hiyyan?

  No die.

  “Mele?” Silver said weakly. Where was her friend? Surely not suffering … surely on her way home, back to where she once was safe, far away from Silver, who had done nothing but make her life miserable.
/>   The woman heard. “The other girl and dragon? We’re not getting paid for them. Left them where we found them.”

  Mele and Luap. Left on the mountain. To die.

  “No! No, you can’t leave them there!” Silver’s breath came quickly. Her friend … alone.

  “Not one more word.” The woman loomed over Silver, her arm raised, a small wooden club held high.

  Before the woman could swing, Silver clamped her mouth shut. After a few minutes of a racing heart, anticipating a blow that never came, Silver watched the woman turn away, then swiveled her stiff neck slowly to see Nebekker staring back, snow powdering her eyebrows.

  Silver shivered against the cold seeping into her clothes. “Snow’s getting wetter.”

  “Good.”

  “Terrible!” Silver argued.

  “Don’t be ridiculous, girl. Weather change means unstable snowpack,” Nebekker said, frowning. “And now that we’re getting closer to the snowbank … ah. Here.” She raised her voice. “Ooohh, I don’t feel weeeeelllll. Please stooooop.”

  Silver glanced at the trackers. The woman’s shoulders stiffened, but they didn’t stop walking. Whatever Nebekker was doing, it wasn’t working.

  Hiyyan, are you awake? Silver bond-said.

  Awake. Not. Fun.

  Silver pressed her lips into a tight line and probed his injuries. The poison was spreading slowly, as though it, too, struggled with their thick, cold blood. A small victory.

  Silver rolled her eyes up to catch a glimpse of the tracks they’d made down the mountain. The mercenaries marched across the ice field steadily, switchbacking the whole way down, Silver assumed, to keep the sleds from racing to the bottom of the glacier. The woman and the man whose names Silver didn’t know kept up a steady stream of low conversation, while Jasser said nothing.

  She switched her gaze to the sky. Low granite-gray clouds had settled in heavily, blocking the minuscule warmth and light that had rolled off the sun. Sleet stung her cheeks.