Upon the Flight of the Queen

by Howard Andrew Jones

  That left Elenai only a little less confused than before. She wasn’t sure how to respond.

  “Are you wanting me to leave Lyria?” Kyrkenall asked. “Out in the middle of nowhere?”

  “Your horse is safer here.” Rialla turned to Cerai, speaking to her with little warmth. “Watch carefully.” She looked to the sky and stared. Elenai followed her glance and saw Lelanc circling.

  Elenai watched from the inner world as Rialla worked her magics. The strange woman shone with diamond brilliance, glowing more brightly even than the hearthstones when they were active. With a complex cast of threads, Rialla shifted the winds ahead of them until they whipped furiously. Beneath their feet the ground lurched but she gave no sign of noticing.

  Heliotrope energies spiraled before them and opened into a shimmering white tunnel through which sunlight poured, as well as the sound of screaming.

  “Go,” Rialla cried, her voice rising with the wind. “Go now!”

  Kyrkenall flashed Elenai a resigned and faintly amused look and then walked through. His one step stretched impossibly long and then he stood at the far end of the tunnel, a tiny figure.

  Behind her she heard the unmistakable call of a ko’aye and looked over her shoulder to see Lelanc gliding low, eyes bright red points, claws forward. She was trying for Cerai. As the would-be goddess threw herself flat, Rialla’s mouth turned down in annoyance. She gestured and the portal stretched to catch the ko’aye’s wing tip. It then swallowed the creature whole and Rialla turned her gaze upon Elenai. The phantom alten was silent but her meaning was clear—get moving!

  And so Elenai started forward, and saw blurred land and skyscape rushing past on either hand even as that distant point rushed at her like an arrow.

  She stepped through into the Arena Altenera, its center field set up as if for an awards ceremony, for the competition tools and ramps were vanished and a stage rose in their place. Lelanc was picking herself up from the floorboards near the edge. Her barbed tail rose menacingly behind her.

  A quick glance showed her the hole in reality vanish in a wink, as though it had never been.

  Elenai turned to take in the rest of the environment, discovering a heart-dropping scene of carnage. Much of the east end of the stadium had fallen in upon itself. The back arches had toppled onto the stands, pulverizing the benches beneath, as well as people that had been sitting there. The structure smelled of blood, dust, and fear. Trailing streams of people raced for the exits, leaving sprawled figures behind them, the dead and the dying and those who wouldn’t leave them.

  Stranger still,what she first took for the immense white carving of a winged lizard rested in the rubble of the western seating area, complete with lifelike statues seated upon its back. But its rear legs and tail moved feebly, and looking through the inner world she understood that the beast and its riders had been haphazardly struck with life-suspending magics similar to those employed by Belahn and Cerai. This, then, was one of the Naor dragons, in Darassus itself, and it must have been the source of this terrible damage. Cerai had been right, and the Naor were already moving on the city. But who here had the power to petrify such an immense creature?

  She set aside unanswerable questions and walked toward Kyrkenall and the bearded man in the khalat talking with him, whom she now recognized as Rylin.

  On stage edge, a handful of exalts and men and women in flowery white shirts were working themselves to magical exhaustion to keep other fragile stadium walls from collapsing inward. Elenai activated her hearthstone, sent tendrils of energy to revitalize them, then bolstered their efforts with an ease that would once have surprised her, conjuring lines of force from the artifact to lend support to the fractured stone.

  One of the exalts, a lean, hawk-nosed man, used her magics to imitate and surpass her work. Perhaps because he was more practiced with hearthstones, he stabilized the failing stone swiftly and sent his energies around the stadium to address other strained areas.

  Seeing that he and his followers had command of the situation, Elenai left her hearthstone active for use and turned to join Kyrkenall. She was almost struck in the face by Lelanc’s wing as the ko’aye bounded up to chatter excitedly at Rylin, who beamed at sight of her.

  Kyrkenall summarized the situation without pause for pleasantries. “The queen opened a rift and vanished through it with the hearthstones right before we turned up in the same place.”

  Elenai ignored a host of questions that information inspired and offered a hypothesis. “Maybe Rialla keyed in on that opening.”

  “Maybe. It doesn’t matter right now. The Naor are here in force. This dragon must have been sent to scout ahead and spotted a target too good to pass. It’s not alone, because there are six more, and a small army on monstrous ground-walking beasts. Our scouts reported that they’re something like eshlack, but about ten times larger, and there are men riding on them. They’re less than a half hour southeast and on a direct course for the city.”

  “Of course they are.” Elenai was a bit surprised at her equanimity and supposed there were too many shocks to fully register.

  “So. Rylin’s going to try and get Lelanc into the air—”

  “If you’re willing.” Rylin bowed to the ko-aye, who screeched fiercely in return.

  “And I think you ought to see if you can wake that dragon and ride it,” Kyrkenall finished.

  “You want me to ride a dragon?” Elenai asked. “I don’t have the slightest—”

  Kyrkenall spoke over her as if he wasn’t aware of any particular difficulty. “The moment it attacked the hearthstones, the hearthstones trapped it, kind of like what happened with N’lahr. So maybe you can figure that out.”

  “You don’t ask much.”

  “You told me not to treat you like a squire,” he reminded her. “It only takes one dragon to take down a wall. And they’ve got six. I don’t think Rylin and one ko’aye can handle six dragons, do you?”

  “The dragons are kind of like puppets,” Rylin offered. She eyed him for a moment, trying to accustom herself to his look with the scruffy beard. “At least that’s what I gathered. The pilot magically controls them.”

  Lelanc cawed. “Come, Rylin! It is time to kill the nest rippers!”

  Rylin nodded, then halted in mid-turn. “I’m going to fly to the captain of the south gate and consult, then take the fight to the Naor. I hope I’ll see you up there. And that dragon can hold five—get some of the exalts to go with you. We’ll need all the help we can get.”

  “You trust them?” Kyrkenall’s voice dripped with scorn.

  “Yes.” The broad-shouldered exalt who’d been leading the repair efforts had already started toward them and Rylin waved him forward. “This is Thelar. He stood with me. And the others stayed to help Darassus.”

  “The archway will hold now,” Thelar reported, then turned to Elenai before pointing up to the dragon. “If you mean to take this thing into battle, I mean to assist.” His manner was a little challenging, as if he expected opposition.

  Elenai wasn’t at all certain she could get the creature moving, much less released from its hearthstone encasement, but she cut Kyrkenall off before he could object once more. “I’ll be glad for whatever help you can give,” she said.

  Soon he and two more exalts were hurrying with her to the dragon. Kyrkenall came with them, grumbling under his breath.

  Elenai reached the side of the beast and pressed her hand to its scaled maw. “Assuming I wake it, there are live Naor up there,” Elenai called to Kyrkenall.

  But she discovered he was already clambering along its back. “I’ll be ready,” he said.

  She supposed he would.

  Thelar eyed the dragon dubiously. “I’m not sure how we can get this casing off.”

  “Let me try.” Elenai stretched out with her magical perceptions, threads of intent brushing the surface of the trapped beast. She’d learned a lot since she’d looked upon the hearthstone accident that had trapped N’lahr. This circumstance mig
ht be similar, but the execution was different. This time she had edges to work with, and this time, she had experience.

  She sank her threads into the hearthstone, called upon its magics, and touched the surface of the restraint.

  Elenai hadn’t felt the pull of probability for long days, but it was there now, guiding her forward toward points of attachment upon the crystal. This had never before occurred when she or her companions weren’t under direct threat. Whether pursuing other possibilities led to disaster or merely delay she couldn’t know, but she worried this was not her own doing.

  Rialla had shepherded them here, none so gently in Lelanc’s case, almost as though they were game pieces that had to be arranged just so on the board if she were to win the match. She had steered Elenai through dreams. And once Elenai had begun working a hearthstone, Rialla’s hearthstone, she had become aware, in moments of crisis, of paths that led to jeopardy. Elenai wished to be no one’s instrument, even for a good cause, but now was not the time for hesitation. Later she would learn the truth. For now, she followed that line of probability toward success. And for once she did not smile in the wash of the hearthstone’s power, nor exult as the crystal encasement fell away from the dragon.

  She suddenly found herself in the presence of an immense, slitted green eye, and the head shifted to snap at her with teeth as long as her leg. She leapt back, falling into Thelar, who steadied her, then swatted it with a blast of pain. It moaned and moved its head away.

  “Shall we?” she asked, and pointed to the rope ladder built into the saddle structure along its neck. She climbed up behind the trio of Exalted Ones as the dragon shook its head and struggled to rise off the loose and likely uncomfortable rubble.

  Kyrkenall had already dealt with the Naor by the time she arrived. Five bodies lolled on the chairs stretching back past the pilot, an arrow through each. The driver himself had been stabbed through the neck. Kyrkenall was readying to take the same bloody blade to the straps holding the pilot in place.

  “Just untie them,” Elenai said quickly. “Don’t you think we’ll need to belt in?”

  Kyrkenall grunted. “Right.”

  Thelar directed the others to the chairs at the rear. There were two banks of two chairs, and two individual seats along the neck, where the creature’s spines were shorter.

  Elenai quickly took in their surroundings, noticing then that the arena was close to empty, apart from a few still visible in the tunnel exits, and those attending the casualties. One of the exalts moved among the wounded now, joining a dozen others, some of whom appeared to be healers. Rylin had vanished upon Lelanc.

  Thelar and the other exalts finished dumping the dead Naor overside and were inspecting the weapon caches built into their backless seat areas. One was a red-haired woman with a mole above her lip, the other a pale, balding man with expressive and intelligent eyes.

  “If this works,” she called out, “save your attacks until we’re closer.They should see us as a friendly until then.”

  Kyrkenall turned and addressed them. “This dragon has spare warriors. So will the others. And that means that they’ll be firing on us. Do you have defensive magics?”

  The other two nodded. Thelar answered in the affirmative.

  “Focus on that. Elenai’s probably going to have her hands full driving this thing. And I’m going to be shooting the Naor mages controlling the other dragons.”

  “Understood, Alten,” Thelar said, then looked back to his companions. “You heard him. Ready with wind gusts. M’vai, you guard our left, Folahn the right, and I’ll fill in the gaps and look to above and front.”

  Rylin’s friend seemed to have a decent tactical approach, Elenai decided. Now it was time to find out if all this clever planning would amount to anything. She reached into the dragon’s mind with tendrils of energy. She’d never touched the thoughts of a creature like this—it seemed to lack a will or purpose of its own, though it exhibited some primitive urges and reactive reflexes. It was experiencing pain as a sharp stone stuck into a tender underpart, and that accounted for the restless shifting of its hind limbs. All she had to do was link threads of intent to the beast, and … There, she had it lift its weight from the offending projection and it stilled. This was a little simpler than she imagined. There were no branching futures to follow, no battle for control. She experimentally raised its left wing and brought up a cloud of dust. But how to get it to fly?

  “Looks like you have it!” Kyrkenall said practically in her ear.

  “Oh yes,” she replied archly.

  “Do you really have it?” Kyrkenall asked, sounding more concerned.

  She glanced over her shoulder to find him gripping her seat, which was strapped into the leather band that encircled the beast’s great neck.

  “I can get it to move,” she said. “Can I get it moving in a coordinated fashion? Can I get it airborne?”

  “Looks like you’d better.” He glanced behind him, then leaned forward so she could hear him better. “They’re all strapping in.”

  “Shouldn’t you?”

  “I’m fine for now. But you ought to, right?”

  She tied herself in with the cross braces and sought through the commands she guessed might set the monster in motion.

  She sent impulses through the dragon’s legs and got it to stand fully. Unfortunately, the rubble shifted under its weight and it took a moment or two to find a solid balance. It was more challenging still to get the legs to climb over the torn building, but after a little bit of wobbly experimentation she learned that rather than trying to control each individual leg she could simply command the thing to head in the direction she wanted, and it did the rest. She guided it through the destruction its crash had generated, arriving at the practice field just outside the arena. At the sight of the dragon, those still fleeing into the city cried out in alarm. She should have foreseen that. She certainly hadn’t planned to panic anyone.

  How to get it into the sky, though? She tried flapping the wings and that didn’t do much except raise dust.

  “Maybe you can have it climb back to the top of a stadium wall and drop off,” Kyrkenall suggested.

  “Not one of your better ideas,” she told him over her shoulder. “And you really ought to belt in before I try to get it into the air.”

  “All right.” He retreated, walking with ease along the animal’s spiny back. She waited until she was sure he was buckled in, then set the creature’s wings beating, and started it away from the people into an ungainly lope. Earlier she’d told it to move. Now she simply urged it to fly. Swinging its wings more and more strenuously, it ponderously rose into the air and over the field, just missing the roof of a house. It struck a chimney with a massive back leg and sent bricks flying. She felt that impact register as mild discomfort. They climbed until they were level with the top of the arena behind them. The wind streamed coolly into her face, bannering her hair behind her. Only then did she wish she had grabbed a helmet. She’d left it in her travel gear.

  Kyrkenall startled her with a strange noise, and she glanced back to see him whooping with joy, one fist pumping the air. Behind, the other passengers were settled in. Thelar was serious and quiet. Beside him, the one Thelar had called M’vai seemed keyed up and avidly gazed to left and right, and Folahn, in the rear, looked as though he’d swallowed a bite of bad fish.

  She set the creature climbing higher, exhilarated by the speed and the growing distance between them and the ground. Her magical endurance had more than doubled since she’d taken up hearthstone use, but she realized that every command she gave sapped her energies. She’d have to be careful, because she didn’t want to have to draw on a hearthstone in the midst of battle. That Naor blood sorcerer, Chargan, might notice. She called to Kyrkenall. “You see the Naor yet?”

  “There. On your left.”

  A great dust cloud climbed heavenward, about two leagues out. She banked the dragon over Darassus, stunned by a beautiful view of the great domes and the spark
ling Idris in her channel. Soldiers raced down from the watchtowers on the high bluffs east of the capital, and squires guided the frightened masses through the gates into the inner city housing the palace and the Altenerai buildings. Those walls, at least, made a complete defensive circuit.

  How long might the outer wall hold? How long did it have to hold? She didn’t see many soldiers posted on its heights. Probably the defense forces had been deployed to Alantris or Vedessus. How had the Naor gotten so far, so fast, without word reaching Darassus? Fine questions, but right now she had only one task. She set the dragon climbing higher. The view was frightening and thrilling all at once, and she wished she had opportunity to truly enjoy it.

  They spotted distant winged shapes in the sky beyond, not six, but seven of them, circling, and lumbering, fast-moving monstrosities on the ground at the van of the great dust cloud. Gods. There were so many.

  She caught a movement to their right and turned her head to see Lelanc lifting up from the tower beside the south gate. She carried a single figure in a blue khalat. Rylin, who raised a hand in greeting.

  Elenai responded in kind and took the dragon west, gaining altitude in a wind current above the bluffs.

  “What are you doing?” Kyrkenall shouted up to her.

  “Putting the sun at our backs!”

  He let out a bark of approving laughter and then fell silent as she began the long swing back east, the bright sun behind her.

  She wondered what the Naor would think of the return of this dragon. They’d have been too far away to see its landing in the stadium, so it was unlikely they’d expect their enemies to control it. They’d be surprised to see it flying from the west, of course, but maybe they’d hold their fire.

  Or maybe they’d be incredibly suspicious. She shouted for everyone to be alert and ready.