Silver saw Nebekker test the ropes that bound her, then wriggle left to right under layers of furs and tunics.
“Ooohhhh, the pain … the fever…” Nebekker moaned a little louder. Still, the mercenaries ignored her.
Silver’s breath quickened as the old woman’s thrashing pulled her dragon heartstone out of her tunic. It slid down one side of Nebekker’s neck as she continued writhing. As Nebekker twisted in the opposite direction, the pendant caught between two slats and, with one sharp movement, the chain snapped.
“Gah!” Silver yelled.
Hiyyan growled.
The sleds halted.
“What is going on back there?” the woman said, finally coming around to check on them.
Silver thought quickly. “I have to … relieve myself.”
“Hold it.”
“I really can’t.”
The woman jammed her gloved hands into her waist. “Even the queen can’t pay me enough to clean up the mess you’d make.”
“The dragons also need to go,” Silver added. “Their mess would be even—”
“No,” the man said firmly. “The dragons are not to be released. You two can go, but you must go one at a time.”
“… turmeric cauliflower,” Nebekker muttered, shaking her head side to side. “Ooh, OOOOOOHHH!!”
Silver wondered if Nebekker realized the dragon heartstone had fallen on the snow behind them. Surely she’d felt the chain break?
“MISSssseerrryyyYYyy,” Nebekker moaned.
“She needs food,” Silver said. “And water. She’s … feverish.” At least, something’s wrong with her head.
The man crouched next to Nebekker and prodded her with a finger. “She’s teetering on the edge.”
“Aaaaahhhh heeelpp meeeeee…” Nebekker theatrically rolled her eyes into the back of her head. On the dragon sled, Kirja mewled, echoing Nebekker’s despair.
“Tell your dragon to knock that off.” The man unknotted several lengths of rope around Silver. Without the pressure against her lungs, Silver took as deep a breath as she could, the air swirling around the liquidy areas brought on by the poison. She coughed and sat up. Her legs wobbled as she stood, but she forced them to be strong.
Silver shot a glance at Nebekker, but the old woman continued mumbling to herself. Kirja kept whimpering. And Hiyyan watched the three of them with shining eyes.
What’s happening?
Silver blinked at Hiyyan. I’m not really sure myself. But at least we’re stopped for the moment.
Aloud, Silver said, “I can’t make her dragon do anything. Besides, I really have to go.”
“So go,” the woman shot back.
“Giiiirrrlllll,” Nebekker moaned. When Silver looked at Nebekker, the woman’s face went stern and her pupils darted over and over again to the perimeter of the glacier, where snow gathered thickly among the trees. Confused, Silver began walking in that direction. “The pain STOOOOMPS at my heaaart.”
Silver knew that was for her, but when and where was she supposed to stomp? Her boots lifted and smashed down in the direction of the trees, the jarring sending threads of pain through her shoulder.
“Where do you think you’re going?” the male mercenary said, seizing Silver’s arm. She gasped.
“There’s shelter over there.”
The man laughed. “You fleas don’t need privacy. Omelda,” he said to the woman, “take the girl. I’ll dump the extra weight.”
By the time Silver’s ice-addled brain worked out what the man meant by extra weight, Omelda had already begun dragging Silver away from the group. As the man’s intentions dawned on Silver, she dug her heels in and shouted over her shoulder.
“Nebekker! Don’t you … You better leave her on the sled!”
“Keep walking.” Omelda forced Silver along, but her irises darkened with something resembling sympathy.
“Please,” Silver pleaded, catching sight of the dragon heartstone in her path. “She’ll die out here alone. She’s old … She’s sick. And we have to go back for my friend Mele. She’ll…”
Omelda looked away, the lines around her eyes hardening. “Our orders are for one girl and one water dragon. The rest are outside our jurisdiction.”
“Then why take the others at all?”
“Certainly not out of the kindness of our hearts. Kindness doesn’t pay the bills. But that dragon will. Every bill for the rest of my life.”
“You can’t!”
“Walk.”
Forgetting Nebekker’s order to stomp, Silver sank every ounce of her weight into her ankles and dropped to the ground.
“Ungh.” Caught off guard, Omelda lost her footing on the glacier and fell to her knees. Silver scrambled away, the nubby ice cutting into her palms. The dragon heartstone gleamed only a few feet away. Silver reached for the stone.
“Aaaggghhh!”
A heavy boot crunched her hand. Jasser glared down at Silver.
“WwwwHHHAAAAAAAAAaawwahhhaaaaAAA!” Nebekker’s wail, surely, could have been heard all the way to the Island Nations. Silver glanced at her friend and got a stink eye back for her efforts before the old woman continued crying out. “By the … shifting duuuuuunes.”
Silver furrowed her brow. Shifting dunes? It was obviously a clue, but for what? Before she could work it out, Jasser lifted his boot from her hand.
“What’s this?” Omelda ignored Nebekker’s yells and flicked Silver’s wrist out of the way, picking up the dragon heartstone.
“A token from my father. Please. It’s the only thing I have from my family.”
Another flicker of sympathy crossed Omelda’s face. She shrugged and gave the heartstone back to Silver. “If I see it again, it becomes mine.”
Silver nodded, palming the stone. Jasser curled his big hand around hers as the smaller male mercenary added to the conversation:
“Not so fast. If we’re selling the other dragon, we’re selling this jewelry, too.”
By all the sands, Nebekker, did you have to lose your heartstone?
“If you take it, you become a thief,” Silver cried. “There’s terrible punishment for thieves!”
As one, the three trackers threw back their heads with laughter.
Omelda looked at Silver, but her next words were lost on the wind as a much louder voice sounded in Silver’s head: There’s those dragons!
“Snuf-fle,” Silver said. Her eyes widened, and she clapped a hand over her mouth. In her other hand, Nebekker’s dragon heartstone grew warm. She quickly slipped it into her pocket.
Omelda glared. “What did you say?”
We can get them fast.
“Noth—ffle.”
“Get up, you pest. You think this is all a joke? We don’t have time for rest, for food, for anything. Do you know what else is out here?”
Which one first?
Wounded one easiest.
Wounded one smells bad.
“No! I—” Silver pressed her lips together but couldn’t keep back the next snuffle. “Snuf-fle!”
Omelda gripped Silver under her chin, her face furious. “Knock that off.”
The two separated from the herd.
Yes, those. Wait. The tall one’s going to kill the little one.
Easy carrion.
Silver’s breath rattled up her nose. Instead of pushing away at the voices in her head, she focused on them, picking out individual strains from the din. Her brain seemed to reconstruct itself, her senses zeroing in on new planes of space and sound as if she were being lifted from her own skin to become part of the air around her. She could hear song convert to words, she could smell the creature behind the voice, she could see the basic curves and angles of their faces and bodies.
Her head thrummed with the effort, overwhelmed by the intensity of the world around her. Blood dripped from her left nostril and froze on her upper lip. So many voices rose in excitement that Silver could no longer focus on just one.
Yes.
Yes.
Hee.
Soon.
Food.
“You … can’t … have me,” Silver gasped.
Omelda laughed. “I take what I want, girl.”
Silver’s throat constricted. She couldn’t tell the mercenary that she wasn’t talking to her.
You are my kind. Help us.
Hiyyan’s song rolled across the glacier. To Omelda and all the other humans in their party, it sounded like he was cooing. But Silver knew the Aquinder was in conversation with the same dragon voices that filled her mind. She searched the edges of the glacier, squinting against the glare of light against the ice, until she could make out the dozen or more little figures waiting where the glacier faded into rock and dirt.
Snuckers.
He wants us to help.
He doesn’t know he’s a nice meal.
He’s the stinky one. Don’t eat him.
The rest smell tasty.
Hurry. Crust shifting.
Yes. Danger.
Crust shifting? Silver’s ears pricked as Hiyyan sent her audio: cracking, groaning, slithering slush.
Stomp. Shifting dunes.
The snow was shifting. Nebekker wanted Silver to help it along. She wanted them to cause an avalanche.
Was the old woman daft as a dung beetle? An avalanche would kill them all! Except … for those who could rise above it. Silver’s gaze swept to Kirja to find the Aquinder’s eyes on her, too. They locked with understanding. Silver had seen Kirja burst through an ice cave ceiling and fling a Screw-Claw nearly twice her size into a rock prison. She’d seen Kirja lift Hiyyan up from a waterfall. Moving her and Hiyyan and Nebekker out of the way of an avalanche?
Yes, Kirja stiffened her muscles and sent Silver warmth.
The problem now, though, was the band of Snuckers waiting for Silver at the edge of the glacier. She couldn’t go over there alone and stomp an avalanche into existence. She’d be eaten first.
Silver cut through the voices to find the Snucker who kept warning the others about the smell. Sick. Poison. Death. She pushed the words at that Snucker as a warning: Eat us and you’ll die, too.
Help us and … But Silver couldn’t finish that thought. It was terrible enough leaving the wild mountain cat to the devices of the Snuckers, but to offer up fellow humans to them? It was a dark possibility that sat heavily in Silver’s belly, even as it offered their best chance of escape now.
Omelda dragged Silver back to the group. Hiyyan watched her approach, his breathing light and slow.
What do we do? Silver asked him.
There weren’t many moments when Silver felt she and Hiyyan were any different. Sure, their bodies were different, but their hearts, as far as Silver was concerned, were the same. Now, though, Hiyyan’s pause as he mulled over Silver’s question was a reminder that they were, indeed, different species with sometimes different ways of looking at the world.
To Hiyyan’s way of thinking, humans were simply another kind of animal. Why the hesitation in leaving them to the Snuckers?
Her hesitation gave Omelda time to shove Silver back into the sled and begin knotting the ropes around her. Nebekker groaned, as though it was important to keep up the ruse of illness, but her acting had diminished since Silver had ruined her avalanche plan. Now she seemed mostly to be groaning with disappointment that Silver hadn’t done anything clever enough to get them away from the mercenaries. Silver looked away from the old woman in shame. Kirja protectively covered Hiyyan with her wing. And somewhere on the mountain, Mele and Luap were alone to face the wilds.
The clouds sank lower until fog obscured the edges of the glacier, where the Snuckers waited. A bitter wind dropped the temperature. The sleet that had plagued them transformed into thick flakes of snow.
“Brajon, how long before we’re off this ice field?” Omelda said.
Silver drew her eyebrows together. Was her cousin here?
But it was the third mercenary, the normal-sized one, who answered. Silver almost laughed. Brajon was a common enough name.
“This looks like the beginning of a bigger storm. It’s going to slow us down.”
“Before nightfall, though?”
“If not,” the other, more horrible Brajon said, “we’re dead.”
Jasser grunted his displeasure at the sky.
“But we won’t survive going any faster,” Silver said.
Horrible Brajon curled his lip. “You weren’t invited into our conversation.”
The Snucker voices became more frenzied. The little water dragons knew that they were running out of time to catch their meal. Silver closed her eyes and concentrated again.
I can provide you with a meal. A good one. Bigger and better than any of us, she thought.
How?
The dragon with the wings … the healthy one? If you flush a deer out, she can snap it right up. No chasing required on your part. Easy. Find two? She’ll get both.
As the Snuckers argued among themselves, Silver refocused her attention on the people around her.
“The queen’s after live water dragons, not dead,” she said to Omelda. “Please. He needs help. I know we’re near the Watchers’ Keep—”
“Quiet, girl!” Omelda snapped. She scratched her head, looking thoughtfully at Horrible Brajon. “But she has a point. We’re closer to the Keep, even if it is up rather than down. It’s neutral territory. A place to wait out the storm and heal the sick dragon. Two dragons could fly us all off this mountain.”
“And give them a hundred chances to escape? Not happening.” Brajon gnashed his teeth. “Get them all secure, and let’s move!”
“Put the girl with the wounded dragon and leave the others here,” Omelda said. “If we’re not going north, we’re decreasing our load to outrun the storm.”
“No!” Brajon shouted. “Not north, and not leaving the bounty!”
Omelda raised an eyebrow.
Brajon stuttered. “Th-they’re worth too much!”
“Are they worth our lives? There’s something funny about you. You were the one who insisted we bring the others.” She licked her lips and surveyed Brajon. “Whom have you already promised them to and for what price?”
“Someone who will pay higher than the queen?” Silver asked.
Horrible Brajon tugged his jacket sleeve. “Why does she keep assuming that’s who wants her? Does Queen Imea have it out for you? If so, that’s certainly someone who’ll pay.”
Silver’s toes curled. The mercenaries weren’t there on order of Queen Imea? Who, then? As she pondered, something tickled her nose. She crossed her eyes, peering at what she thought was a snowflake. But the little puff of white didn’t melt on her skin. It unfurled, slid down the slope of her nose, and flung itself off to the ice, where Silver lost sight of it.
The softest Wheeee! reached Silver’s mind before fading into the distance.
Was that a tiny water or … ice?… dragon among the real snowflakes?
Snowfluff, a miniscule voice corrected her thoughts before that one, too, faded into the landscape.
“Queen Imea…” Omelda mused.
“We can’t involve the queen,” Brajon said quickly. “We … have reason enough to avoid her.”
“I don’t,” Omelda said. She took a step toward Brajon. “And I’d love more coin. You don’t know anything about more coin, do you?”
“I, uh … uh…” For all his bravado, Brajon weakened under Omelda’s questioning. And then, when he bumped into Jasser, whose folded arms and well-planted feet made him akin to a wall, he broke. Yanked a pouch from his tunic and tossed it into the snow, where it landed with a jingle. “There was more! Payment for the others—”
“Liar! Cheat! Swindler!”
While the trackers fought among themselves, Silver made a quick choice: She would call the Snuckers over. The pack of little water dragons still hadn’t agreed to Kirja’s finding them a meal, but even so, the ensuing chaos of their arrival was the only way they’d have a chance to escape and get to the snow. And stomping
Aquinder would do an even better job of getting an avalanche going than Silver alone.
Silver closed her eyes and reached out to Hiyyan. It won’t be easy, but be ready to run. The Snuckers might chew the ropes for us.
Might?
And if they don’t, they’ll eat us. Either way, we’re getting away from these mercenaries.
Hiyyan stared at her as though she’d gone mad.
I never thought I’d get off this mountain in the belly of a Snucker, Hiyyan finally bond-said.
Well, they probably won’t eat you, all oozing and slimy.
In that case, bring on the chaos.
“How long did you think you could keep this secret?!” Omelda yelled. Jasser lifted Brajon right off the ground and shook him.
Determination flowed into Silver’s body. She stretched to make herself as long and imposing as she could. They would survive, she and her friends. The Snuckers sensed the change come over her. Their voices amplified in her mind. The sky opened suddenly, dumping so much snow Silver couldn’t see Hiyyan in the distance. Horrible Brajon yelled something unintelligible to Omelda, and she shouted back. A series of snuffles and yips drowned out all other sound.
They’re here, Hiyyan bond-said.
TEN
Through the increasing blizzard, red eyes flashed. Silver’s pulse raced as she tried to keep track of the small, darting Snuckers. Jasser howled—why? What was happening to him? Kirja roared. Was that in pain or in triumph? Too much was happening for Silver to track individual voices. Along with the increasing crackling of the mountain, it all blended into a deafening flurry of sound.
Silver furiously blew on the snow that landed near her mouth, but it was piling up on her forehead and cheeks. Even blinking it away didn’t clear a line of vision to what was going on just feet away from her. Her belly flip-flopped. Would the Snuckers help? Or make a meal of her?
Cut our ropes.
They heard. Two or three sets of red eyes bounded through the snow to Silver and Nebekker’s sled. Silver held her breath as one Snucker opened its maw wide, revealing those razor-sharp teeth. She squeezed her eyes shut as it brought its mouth down.
Chomp.
The ropes loosened.
“Get up, Nebekker!”
Her quickest movements were painfully slow, but Silver’s old mentor pushed to her feet and brushed snow from her clothes. Just in time to see Hiyyan and Kirja’s sled zoom past them down the glacier.
Race for the Dragon Heartstone Page 7
