What about when we all graduated? Got older? When we were supposed to have kids and age? What were we going to do then?
Stop thinking about it, I said. That’s not for years. We’ll win the war, and then you’ll find a way out of this mess.
I really hoped it was true.
“How about everyone else? Anybody else’s parents have any issues we need to address?”
Everyone shrugged or shook their heads.
“Okay, good,” said Sarah. She finally allowed herself to begin eating her meal.
“Hey, so I’ve got a question,” said Blade. “Since we can finally talk without some dragon hearing it.”
Sarah glanced up. “Go ahead.”
“What are our odds of actually getting the dragons’ help?”
Sarah sucked the rest of her spaghetti up with a slurp. “We can do it. I know we can. We won’t leave until they agree to help.”
“Sarah, they might not just refuse to help, they might eat us,” said Raven.
“What? No,” said Calvin, shaking his head like she was an idiot. “Come on. We’re the Realm Keepers. They can’t touch us.”
“Some of them wanted to hurt us anyway,” I said. “That Bloodtooth guy, for one.”
“Yeah, and the majority of the ones in the great hall didn’t look happy about us being there, either,” said Raven. “If it comes to a vote, I don’t give us good odds for winning.”
“It’s not a general vote,” said Sarah. “It’s a Council. They’ll do what the Council says. Look at it this way: we don’t have to convince five hundred dragons, we only have to convince five.”
Raven rolled her eyes.
“If anyone can do it, you can,” said Tess quietly, looking at Sarah from behind her hair. “I know you can.”
Sarah gave an awkward smile. “Um…thanks, Tess. I appreciate that.”
“Well, I hope so too,” said Blade. “But I’m just thinking we should have a backup plan in case things go south. If they do, we’ll need to get out of there very quickly.”
“And do what?” I said. “Fly away? Only one of us can do that.”
“And this is exactly why we need dragon mounts!” said Calvin, slamming his fist on the table. “I’m telling you guys, I think I can convince Nightclaw to—”
“No, Calvin,” said Sarah.
Calvin subsided, pouting.
“Something to stick in the brainpan,” said Blade. He stood up, leaving his tray. “See you all on the other side.” Tess got up and followed him.
“Probably grabbing a smoke before he goes back to class,” I said, shaking my head in disapproval. I wasn’t stupid enough to do that to my body at our age.
“Ooh, that reminds me,” said Raven, leaping up like she’d been stung. She left in such a hurry that she forgot her tray, too.
“Exact opposite of what I meant,” I called after her retreating back.
“You know,” said Calvin, as though he hadn’t noticed either of them leave, “I’ll bet you could learn how to do Iceman-style flying. Like, shooting ice into a platform and sort of skating along it.”
“Oh, really?” I said, raising an eyebrow.
“Totally, dude!” said Calvin eagerly. “We could read some old comics together or watch the old nineties cartoon show so you can pick up some pointers. What do you say?”
“I say I need to take a walk,” I said, pushing away from the table. I grabbed Blade’s and Raven’s trays and stacked them on top of my own. “Talk to you all later.”
“We’ve got to go back to Medicorp tonight,” said Sarah.
I sighed. “I just want one night in my own bed.”
“I know, Miles, but we can’t. Terrence could arrive at Wyrmspire any day. We could need to stay overnight at a moment’s notice.”
I shrugged. “Let Briggs come and carry me out of my room. I don’t mind.”
She gave me a long look. “If you think that’s best. I think it would be easier on our folks if we were just at the hospital in the first place.”
“What, like out of sight, out of mind?” I said, frowning.
“That’s not what I meant.”
I shook my head. “Whatever. I’ll think about it.” I turned and walked to the trash can, chucking the trash in and stacking the trays on top.
The sunlight outside felt nice, even though the air was getting chilly. Every day brought us closer to real winter, and I knew I’d need to start wearing snow gear soon. Rhode Island could be rough in the winter.
As I’d thought, I saw Blade and Raven on the other side of the field where they thought no one could see, smoking. Tess was nearby, but upwind.
“Hey.”
I jerked at the familiar voice and turned. There was Clarissa, her red hair gleaming in the sunlight. She smiled a little—my nerves must have shown on my face.
“Sorry. Didn’t mean to scare you.”
“It’s all good,” I said. I turned away to look back over the football field. “What’s up?”
I really didn’t want to deal with this right now. I knew Clarissa was still upset about our breakup. I didn’t know why, really, since she broke up with me. But it was probably for the best in the long run, and I really didn’t want to revisit the issue.
“I get the feeling you’re seeing a girl.”
An image flashed in my head of Melaine’s face, and I felt my shoulders grow tense. That was dumb. Melaine was my bodyguard, not my girlfriend.
“I’m not,” I said.
“Really? You weren’t hanging out with her yesterday?”
I laughed. I’d intended it to be rude, but it came out sounding relieved. “What? Of course not. I was at a hospital.”
She stepped around me to come back into my field of vision. “Really? For the sleep disorder?”
“Yeah. There’s some sort of clinical study happening in town. Me and the others…we get taken there every time we go to sleep now.”
“Oh,” she said. A deep blush crept into her pale cheeks. “Well, I feel like an idiot now.”
“Not an idiot, maybe, but…did you really think I ditched school to be with a girl?” I said, chuckling. “I never even did that with you.”
She smirked and looked away. “Yeah, I guess not.”
Silence settled. The sun came out from behind a cloud, blasting my face. I took a few steps to lean against the outside of the cafeteria, hiding beneath its awning. Clarissa followed and stood beside me.
“I thought you were going to get all on me about Sarah again,” I said after a moment.
Clarissa shook her head quickly. “No, I found out I was wrong about that a while ago. When she had that whole thing with Kurt.”
I cocked my head. “What thing?”
She shook her head. “It’s not important. It just happened when I…right after we…”
“Yeah,” I said, preventing her from having to finish with, right after I broke up with you.
“I’m glad you’re getting help for the sleep thing,” she said. She looked up at me, and out of force of habit I met her eyes for the first time. Part of me still really, really missed those eyes.
“Thanks. I’m glad, too. It makes things easier.” With my other life as a Realm Keeper.
“How about everything else? How’s school? Schumacher still giving you a hard time?”
I smirked. “No, I think he’s afraid to look at me these days. He must have gotten a lot of flak after last time.”
“So your grades are getting better?”
I thought about it. Actually, my grades weren’t getting better. If anything, they were declining from all the school time I was missing. But I realized suddenly that I hardly cared about it any more. I was trying so hard to hold on to my old life on Earth, but I hadn’t realized how much less I cared about it. How much it was slipping away from me.
“About the same,” I lied. “You know me. I just keep trucking on.”
“Like a race,” she said.
“Like a race.”
Brrring
“Guess we’d better get back to class,” I said.
“Yeah, okay.” She pushed herself off of the wall. “Thanks for talking to me. And not, like…walking away when you saw me or something. I was kind of afraid you would.”
“Nah, I wouldn’t. I’m not…I’m not angry with you.” I had almost said, I’m not the one who walked away from you.
“Well, see you later.”
“See you.”
She disappeared into the school. I walked around the outside—it was a faster route to my next class anyway.
I let out a long sigh and felt it leech tension from my body. I missed Clarissa, even though I knew now that we couldn’t have had anything long-term. But I was glad to find out that if we couldn’t be what we used to be, at least we could still be friends.
I drifted into awareness on the stony floor of Nightclaw’s home on Wyrmspire. A dream flitted in my vision as I came to. Melaine’s face.
A dream? We didn’t have dreams. Was I about to start having visions, like Tess had?
“Lord Miles, wake up. There’s trouble.”
A thunderous roar echoed from outside.
Not a dream, then. Reality.
I pushed myself up. All I could see through the doorway were three dragons standing right outside with their backs to me.
“What’s going on?” I said.
“We don’t know,” said Melaine. “We can’t understand their words. But the dragons are arguing. I think it would be foolish to assume they are arguing about something other than us.”
“Good guess,” I said. I got to my feet.
Cara saw me rise and approached. “Lord Miles,” she said with a quick nod. “I think we need to make plans to escape. Immediately.”
“Escape?” I said. I looked around at the others. “How? They’re still out.”
“We will wait for them to arrive, if we can,” she said. “But if we cannot, you will need to make use of your magic. We cannot carry them and escape quickly enough at the same time. We will need your help.”
“My help?” I said. “What do you expect me to do? Make ice sleds to slide down the vertical cliffs with, just so we can all plummet to our deaths at the bottom? We’re on a mountain peak, Cara, not an ocean.”
Cara’s mouth set in a firm line, and her gaze flickered to Calvin and Sarah lying nearby. “We need to think of something. There’s no telling when the argument outside will turn violent.”
I rubbed the last of the sleep from my eyes. “Do we even know if someone’s trying to hurt us? You can’t understand them.”
“They do not sound…happy.”
“All right, let me go check it out,” I sighed. “I’ll be right back if I think we’re in trouble.”
“You can’t go alone!” said Melaine.
“Then come with me,” I said, shrugging. “But do not draw your sword. If they’re not angry now, they will be if you try and attack their ankles.”
Melaine scowled, but she fell in line on my right side, a step ahead so she could leap in front of me if an attack came. Not that she’d be able to do anything about a dragon attack.
I went to the doorway. I recognized Nightclaw standing in the center of the opening, but to either side of her were dragons I’d never seen before. Blackscale was nowhere to be found.
Facing off against Nightclaw and her friends were many, many more dragons. Over a dozen.
I recognized one of them. Bloodtooth, Blackscale’s eternally-angry young brother.
“Crud,” I said. “Yeah, they’re probably not here to welcome us.”
My words drew sharp glances from every dragon present. My eyes were drawn to one standing just ahead of Bloodtooth. It was huge. As big as Blackscale. The darker scales on its face formed a sort of a checkered pattern. I noticed that one of the horns on the top of its head had been snapped off and formed a jagged spike rather than a flowing curve.
“You see, Elder Redwing?” said Bloodtooth. “What I have said proves true. There is one of them who slept within the home of one of our own.”
The dragon with the broken horn raised its head up and spread its wings as it took a step forward.
“An abomination,” it rumbled, its voice shaking the ground beneath my feet. “A cancerous stain upon the sacred stone of Wyrmspire. A noisome stink that poisons our air. How dare you set foot upon this holy place?”
I knew it was dumb, but I couldn’t help myself. “Well, Elder Redwing, Elder Blackscale kind of invited us here.”
Redwing’s lips drew back in a snarl. “I have heard of the enchantment of the Realm Keepers, your forked tongues that can speak any language. But speak Draconic to me again at your own peril. I do not suffer the witless and weak to live.”
Nightclaw twisted her neck around, pushing herself back toward me. In a voice even quieter than a human whisper, she said, “Do not anger her. Redclaw is one of the Elders. I cannot stand against her with violence if she presses this matter.”
“What am I supposed to do?” I whispered back. “Curl up and let her eat me?”
“Your permission is irrelevant,” snarled Redwing. “I could crush you in an instant, your bones powder in my gullet, your meat slithering down the long, long road to my gut. And I will—you and all the Realm Keepers who defile this place with your presence.”
“Elder Blackscale’s protection cloaks them,” said Nightclaw. “His swift vengeance is promised if they are harmed.”
“Vengeance? That fool speaks of vengeance?” said Redwing. I saw Nightclaw stiffen at the word “fool.”
This was not going to go well. Nightclaw and Redwing clearly hated each other. Nightclaw wouldn’t be able to negotiate her way out of this.
A thought struck me. Something that had happened the first time we’d met Blackscale and the others. Something I could use.
I put a hand out to push Melaine’s fist away from her sword. Then I dug into the leather pouch at my belt, digging around for the runestone. I wrapped my fingers around it and stepped out, into the open air in front of Nightclaw.
“Lord Miles!” cried Melaine. She leapt out beside me, hand firmly wrapped around her hilt.
“This is a runestone of the Six!” I called out, holding it as high as I could. The moonlight glinted on the blue facets of the solid gem.
There was a moment’s silence. Then, behind me, I heard claws scraping on stone and what sounded like the creak of leather as Nightclaw and her friends stooped to place their noses to the stone. I whispered a silent prayer of thanks as I saw most of the dragons with Redwing do the same.
But Redwing herself remained standing, as did Bloodtooth.
“The runestones have protected the Realm Keepers for millennia,” I said, keeping my voice strong despite the baleful glare in Redwing’s eye. “They both mark and protect us. No one but a Realm Keeper can hold them, unless you wish to die. And their enchantment of protection is powerful. If you mean to hurt us, I hope you’re prepared to die for it! To tamper with us is to tamper with destiny itself!”
Bloodtooth took a cautionary step back and shot Redwing a look. The other dragons with them all had their noses pressed to the stone now.
It was all a complete lie, of course. I’d never heard anything about an enchantment of protection, or any of that other stuff. But I was hoping that, since they hadn’t seen humans in millennia, the dragons would be a little bit shaky on the exact terms of our arrangement.
If not, we were probably all dead.
Redwing still hadn’t bowed. And as I stood there, trying my best to stare her down, I heard the one sound I didn’t want to hear: her laugh.
It started low in her chest, a deep, grating noise like we’d heard from the old dragon Longtooth. Then it built and built and built, bursting from her throat like a thunderstorm. I flinched at the sound of it, my ears ringing in between each guffaw.
“Parlor tricks and threats you bring, expecting me to cower like some egglet?” she said. “Like the weak-minded fools that surround me?”<
br />
I took a step forward, pushing the runestone closer to her. I wouldn’t have had the guts to do it if she wasn’t still about thirty feet away. “The enchantment will find even you, Elder Redwing! You can’t hurt us!”
“The baubles of humans mean less than nothing to me,” she growled. “Here. Let me show you the depth of my disdain.”
She lifted a foot and made as if to take a step forward, but suddenly the sky was filled with the thunderous roar of approaching wings. With a THOOM, Blackscale landed on the stone between us.
“What meaning may I find in this, Elder Redwing?” he said, perfectly calm, his face less than a yard away from hers.
“Elder Blackscale,” said Redwing, her voice dropping to a more simpering, subdued rumble. “Back so soon.”
“A messenger came to me swiftly, warning me that foul deeds and thoughts reigned on the Wyrmspire this night,” said Blackscale. “I would be shocked to find him truthful, were I to find any but you at the center of this madness.”
“Your new pets desecrate our home,” said Redwing. “They must be exterminated.”
“Eldest Longtooth has said they are not to be harmed,” replied Blackscale. “Will you cast his orders aside?”
Redwing gave a loud snort. “Longtooth the Old. He knows not what he says half the time. And he is senile indeed if he allows humans to stand upon the rocks of Wyrmspire.”
Blackscale finally snarled at that, his teeth gleaming in the moonlight. “If you would dishonor yourself by insulting the Eldest, then hear me,” he growled. “My pledge is given. If you would harm the Realm Keepers, you must raise your claws against me. And no matter which laws you would cast aside, you cannot ignore the law against Elder striking Elder. For if you ignore that, then what would keep you safe from harm?”
Dead silence settled on the air. Blackscale and Redwing stared at each other, neither willing to blink or back down. My heart was thundering in my chest.
Then Redwing relaxed. She took a slow step back, then another. “Very well. Keep your mouslings until the Council convenes. But know that their deaths are assured. If not by the Council, then by me.”
She turned and flew into the air with two great flaps of her wings. Bloodtooth stared daggers at his older brother before flying off after her. One by one, the other dragons dispersed, and soon we were alone upon the mountain.
Wyrmspire (Realm Keepers Book 2) Page 53
