by Amie Kaufman
Anders could tell Rayna was weary—she hadn’t slowed, but there was a different quality to her wingstrokes, as if she were pulling herself along like a tired swimmer—when they finally reached the far side of the peaks. Whether lookouts at Drekhelm had seen them or not, he didn’t know.
Now they were approaching the permanent clouds that surrounded Cloudhaven, and the winds were falling away to a breathless quiet. Anders strained every sense as Rayna flew through the clouds, occasionally calling out in a fraction of her usual roar, and receiving replies from Mikkel, Theo, and Ellukka, though the others were all invisible in the perfect white, except for the occasional flicker of a nearby wingtip or tail.
The four dragons were flying as slowly as they could, the still air strangely dead around them—Anders realized he’d become used to the updrafts and downdrafts, the crosswinds and playful tugs of the weather. Flying was usually like swimming through moving water, but suddenly everything around them was thick and heavy. Everyone was being careful not to fly into one another, or worse, into the rock of Cloudhaven’s spires, which must be somewhere inside the mist.
Just as Anders was beginning to wonder if they’d flown past the spires—if they were about to come out the other side of the clouds having missed Cloudhaven altogether—something dark loomed up in front of them. It wasn’t quite a mountaintop—it was an impossibly high pillar instead, at least as big in circumference as Drekhelm’s Great Hall, or Ulfar’s dining hall—the sides jagged enough to look natural, but far too steep to ever climb.
He thought for an instant he saw something like a staircase carved into one section, and then it was gone again, and he was holding on tight as Rayna angled up, up, up, heading for the top.
And then he saw the buildings.
Crammed on top of the huge natural pillar of rock, clinging to one another like they might fall off if they didn’t hold on, were dozens of small buildings, each built from stone slabs, each topped by a domed roof. They looked like a crop of mushrooms all growing close together, except they were far too dignified for such a comparison. A couple were much larger, and the rest all clustered around them, each supporting the next, their windows just little black slits in the smooth stonework.
Rayna wheeled away to their right and followed the edge of what had to be Cloudhaven until the buildings gave way to a landing pad clearly designed for dragons. It was a large, smooth stone courtyard, though there was no wall around the edges to stop the careless from simply tumbling into nothing.
One by one the four dragons landed there, the fog swallowing up the sound of their claws hitting the stonework. Mikkel and Theo shifted back to human form immediately and came over to help with Rayna’s and Ellukka’s harnesses.
“This place is incredible,” Lisabet whispered, dragging the leather straps along Ellukka’s side and over her head. “Do the stories say anything about it being . . . like this?”
“The stories just say it’s forbidden to come here,” Mikkel replied, keeping his voice to a whisper as well. “It’s so powerful here, though. The air is cold, but I can feel . . . something, deep under the rock.”
Theo nodded beside him. “The Icespire lava is down there somewhere.”
“But the air is so cold, and the mist is so strong, I still feel good too,” Lisabet said. “This place is unique.”
They stepped back, and Rayna and Ellukka both transformed, shrinking in a couple of heartbeats down to a pair of girls crouching, then pushing up to stand.
“We should keep moving,” said Ellukka, as soon as she could speak. “If they saw us from Drekhelm, they could be on their way to get us right now. Mikkel, you and I are strongest, so we should fly patrol. If we keep moving, and listen carefully, perhaps we’ll get some warning if anyone’s coming.”
The others agreed, keeping their voices low. The place was affecting all of them—Anders wasn’t sure if it was the still, strange atmosphere or the fact that they were walking where every dragon story forbade them to go, but he felt it just as they did.
Ellukka and Mikkel walked over to the edge of the courtyard, preparing to transform and launch, and he watched them go.
Anders, Rayna, Lisabet, and Theo walked over to the huge door that led into the domed building straight off the courtyard. It was a dark, ancient wood, fitted perfectly with black metal hinges into an arch of gray stonework, pale moss clinging here and there to the surface of it.
Squinting up through the swirling mist, Anders could make out a single word carved into the archway above the door, the letters deep and clear:
C L O U D H A V E N
It took Anders and Rayna working together on one side and Theo and Lisabet on the other to pull open the huge metal bolts, but the doors swung open without a sound, as if they had been oiled only yesterday.
The chamber was dark, and as Anders took his first step inside, a faint glow appeared beneath his feet—he was standing on a metal plate, carved in runes. He drew breath to warn the others—of what he did not know—and suddenly the light snaked away from the place where he stood, running as fast as a blink out toward the far walls, tracing metal paths inlaid on the stone floor, each coming to life and glowing brightly.
The lines of light ran straight up the walls and all around the enormous hall, lamps came to life, bathing the place in a warm, golden, welcoming glow. The room was obviously designed to accommodate large numbers of people—there were tables and chairs, and a clear area where several dragons could fit without a squeeze. The place felt abandoned, perfectly empty, but despite being forbidden, not unfriendly.
There was only one door through which they could continue, and that was on the far side of the hall. None of the four spoke as they made their way across, motes of dust dancing in the light of the lamps, the room so large it swallowed up their footsteps rather than echoing them back.
The door was of the same dark wood as the last had been, but this one had no handle anywhere, and no visible means by which to open it. Instead, it had metal letters fixed to it, glinting in the lamplight.
COME NO FARTHER WITHOUT . . .
~ A TOKEN ~
~ TRUE BLOOD ~
~ TRUE PURPOSE ~
“What does any of that mean?” Theo whispered as they all gazed up at it.
“She must have thought we’d know,” Rayna said quietly. “We probably would have, if she’d raised us.”
Everyone was silent for a long moment, and then Kess mewed from her sling in Anders’s chest, breaking the tableau.
“She’s right,” Rayna said. “We’d better just get on with it. Any ideas?”
“Let’s look at it closely, see if there are any more clues,” Lisabet suggested. “And think about what the words could mean.”
“I wonder what kind of token you use to open the door,” Anders said, stepping forward. “I don’t see a keyhole anywhere.”
“It might not be a key,” Theo said, leaning in to study the letters. “With artifacts, there are all kinds of ways to bring them to life. Usually you need something else that’s an artifact, though, or a part of the larger creation. Or it’s linked to a person, but that’s probably the ‘blood’ bit, not the ‘token’ bit.”
“So something forged?” Anders asked, looking down at himself as if something might appear.
“Usually,” said Theo. “I mean, I’m only a few weeks into researching how dragons classify artifacts. Right now, I’m lucky if I can even work out what shelf they’re on. Ideally we’d have ended up on this quest five or six years from now, but I do know that much. It would probably have at least one rune on it as well, the token.”
“I can’t . . . ,” Lisabet started. Anders had never heard her sound so despairing. “I can’t think of anything like that. Maybe we were supposed to gather up something from the house on the island. Or you were just meant to own it, because she would have given it to you, if she’d had time. But your mother never gave you anything.”
Anders and Rayna both stiffened, their gazes snapping around to
find one another.
“She did!” Anders said, as Rayna fumbled in her hair, gave up with a growl of frustration, and doubled over as if she were bowing, presenting Anders with the top of her head.
“What?” said both Lisabet and Theo at once, staring at this peculiar display.
“Rayna’s hairpins!” Anders said, guiltily ignoring his sister’s yelps as he pulled first one and then the other out of her hair, being as careful as he could. “We never knew where they came from, but she’s always had them. They’ve got runes on them.”
“And they transformed with me that first time,” Rayna said, holding her hand out for one. “When I lost all my clothes by ripping out of them, because I didn’t have an amulet yet, I kept the pins.”
“I thought they were artifacts,” Theo said excitedly. “I told you so in the archives, the day we found the mirror.”
“Perhaps there’s somewhere they fit into the door,” Lisabet said, bending down to start searching from the bottom. “It wouldn’t have to be big.”
“Here,” said Theo, pointing to a spot underneath the word token on the door. “Look, there’s these two small slots, like an equals sign. They’d take hairpins.”
Anders and Rayna both lifted their hairpins, holding them up to the slots, his on top and hers underneath. They looked like they would fit. “Runes facing in,” he suggested.
As one, they pressed them into the shallow trenches in the door.
His fingertips tingled as they always did when an artifact filled with essence activated, and with a click somewhere deep inside it, the door swung soundlessly open, revealing a long hallway. One by one, dusty lamps along its length were coming to life, revealing door after door, and hundreds of strips of metal lining the stone floor and walls, as if turning the whole place into one enormous artifact.
They were in.
“True blood,” said Lisabet, interrupting Anders’s internal celebration.
“Huh?” He blinked at her. “Oh, the next thing on the list.”
“Do you think it means, like, a pure dragon bloodline?” Rayna asked. “This place was built a long time ago, maybe that was possible back then.”
“I don’t know if any of us has that,” Anders said with a frown. “Maybe Ellukka would come closest, she doesn’t have any family in Holbard, or even outside the dragons, as far as I know.”
“Maybe,” said Lisabet, “it wants a descendant of the creator of this place, whoever that was.”
“Or someone who worked here?” Theo suggested. “I mean, Drifa got in here to hide the piece of the scepter, and she left you two a way in, so that makes me think you’d have the right blood to get inside.”
In the end, they decided the only option they had was to experiment. Theo and Lisabet each took one of Anders’s hands, ready to pull him back to safety, and heart thumping, Anders prepared to take a step backward onto the first flagstone inside the tunnel. He had to hope they’d have time if things went wrong.
He took a look at each of the others, then stepped back, holding tight to their hands.
Nothing happened.
Everyone breathed out.
“Right,” said Lisabet. “Let’s see if Theo or I can make it in, just in case. We’d be helpful in the search.” She politely wasn’t saying that both she and Theo knew more about artifacts than either Anders or Rayna, she from her years of study, and Theo from his recent work as a researcher. But Anders had to agree.
Anders hovered behind Lisabet as Rayna and Theo took her hands. After a soft, nervous sound, she stepped back.
Instantly the flagstone beneath her foot crumbled to dust, and in less than a heartbeat she was standing on nothing at all. She screamed as Rayna and Theo yanked her back to safety, and Anders struggled to help without stepping into the emptiness, and in two heartbeats the whole thing was over. Anders blinked as the flagstone she’d been standing on started to re-form itself, the dust settling back into place and becoming rock, the metal strips laid into the stone all around it glowing softly.
“So just us two, then,” said Rayna, into the silence that followed. They were equally cautious as she stepped in, but after a moment it was clear that the floor would permit her to stand behind Anders.
“Step three is true purpose,” said Theo. “Maybe tell it what you want?”
Anders adjusted the satchel he was wearing over one shoulder—it held the map and the three pieces of the Sun Scepter—and raised his voice. “We’re seeking the last piece of the Sun Scepter,” he said, in what he hoped sounded like a confident tone.
At first, he thought nothing was going to happen. But then the strips of metal in the floor and the runes and lamps along the walls all dimmed, leaving the hall in almost complete darkness, lit only by the glow of the lamps in the entrance hall where Lisabet and Theo stood. Before Anders could voice his disappointment, the glow started to return. This time it was just one long strip of what had looked like iron, laid into the flagstone floor and carved with some of the most intricate runes he’d ever seen.
It had turned a pale blue and was leading away into the distance.
“I guess it’s that way,” said Rayna, with a nervous laugh.
“I hate to say it,” Lisabet said, “but you should hurry. Just because Mikkel and Ellukka haven’t sounded the alarm doesn’t mean the Dragonmeet isn’t on its way.”
She was right. Anders carefully adjusted Kess inside her sling—she wanted to climb out, but he wasn’t sure whether cats needed the right blood too, so they compromised on letting her stick her head out to see where they were going—and the twins set off following the blue strip of metal.
They walked past a long hallway of closed doors, and Anders couldn’t help wondering what was behind them. But this wasn’t the day for finding out, and they plunged on into the middle of Cloudhaven, following the path the place had laid out for them.
Eventually it took them up a flight of stairs, and then another, and when they emerged at the top it was to find a room lit by natural light from the outside. The swirling fog was visible beyond the thick glass windowpanes—the glass was less even than Anders was used to, much older, and he thought perhaps it would be harder to see through. It was impossible to tell, though, with the ever-present clouds outside.
“This looks like someone’s study,” Rayna said, drawing him back to the room itself. There were piles of books everywhere, sketches and open notebooks, diagrams and pieces of half-finished artifacts hanging from hooks on the walls and from the high, domed ceiling. The glowing strip of metal that had led them here simply ended at the threshold. This is the room, it seemed to say. It’s up to you to figure out the rest.
“Do you think she came here?” Anders asked quietly. “I mean, she must have once, if she was hiding the piece of the scepter, but . . .”
“But maybe this was her study,” Rayna finished, when he trailed off. “Some of her things were at the cottage, but maybe she worked in lots of different places.”
“We could learn so much about her,” Anders said, the yearning tugging at his heart. “But let’s find the scepter piece first.”
They each took one side of the room, beginning a methodical search through the stacks of books, lifting sheaves of paper to peer underneath them, scanning each pile of artifact parts in the hope of seeing the familiar cylindrical shape, perhaps wrapped in the usual waxed canvas and string. Anders was trying to move as quickly as he could, imagining angry dragons flying through the clouds toward them right now to find their friends waiting outside, but he dared not hurry too much, in case he missed what he was looking for among the clutter.
“Anders,” Rayna said after a little while, a shake in her voice.
“Did you find it?” He looked up.
“Anders,” she said again, still staring down at a spot on a desk.
He hurried over. The object of her attention wasn’t the piece of the scepter. It was a charcoal sketch, executed by someone on a page torn from a notebook. At first, he thought the man in th
e picture was Hayn—he was big and broad-shouldered, with dark-brown skin indicated by a smudge of charcoal, and a neat black beard along a square jaw. But he was missing the designer’s square-rimmed glasses, and there was something a little different about his face. The dimples were the same, though.
He was standing with an arm around a woman who looked a lot like an older version of Rayna. She wore her hair out, the tight ring of curls almost as tall as it was wide and long. She shared Rayna’s cheeky, unrepentant grin, which the artist had captured perfectly. She had lighter brown skin than the man, and though she was a full head shorter than him, even with the hair, she looked fit and strong, as if she could do anything. The pair of them wore matching necklaces—discs of metal hanging around their necks on leather straps. Each of the discs was engraved with a tight spiral of runes.
“It’s them,” Rayna whispered, her voice so wobbly that Kess mewed her concern, wriggling a paw free of her sling. Anders carefully lifted her out, his hands shaking, and let her settle on Rayna’s shoulders, where she could keep a closer eye on her girl.
“It’s them,” he agreed, resting one fingertip on the sketch. “Felix and Drifa.”
“They look really happy,” Rayna murmured. Then she sniffed and visibly tried to pull herself together. “Put it in your bag,” she said. “We’ll take it with us, we can look at it later. For now, we have to figure out where she put the scepter.”
They both went back to work, and it was only a minute later when Rayna called his name again, this time in delight. “Anders, I’ve got it!”
She was brandishing the last of the four pieces, scrambling to pull off the string and canvas. He ran over to her.
“Put it together,” she said, passing it to him, her other hand lifted to make sure Kess stayed on her shoulders. The cat didn’t know why they were so pleased, but she was celebrating by attacking one of Rayna’s curls.
