The Lost Lands

by Jessica Khoury

  “Fly, you boneheads!” Kaan Lennix yelled at the Silver dot shrinking in the distance. “That’s right, sheep boy! We’re coming for you—ahhhhhh!” His shout turned to a scream as beneath him, Zereth went into a dive. The Red couldn’t take it anymore. He was hungry, and there was a glimmering patch on the water below that signaled a school of fish. Talons outstretched, the dragon grabbed two bunches of fluttering, flopping fish and tossed them high, then spun to snap them up in his jaws.

  Clinging to his mount’s crest with all his strength, Kaan dug his spurs into the dragon’s sensitive skin. He was hanging completely upside down and losing his grip, with the dark ocean far below.

  “Stop that!” he screamed. “Turn over right now!”

  Zereth growled in response, righting himself in the air. Angry twin streams of smoke curled from his nostrils. Zereth was the newest member of the First Flight, having been promoted to fill the space left by the deserter coward Timoleon, and he’d thought it an honor to be given a Lennix son as a rider—until he’d actually flown with Kaan. The youngest Lennix had been free with his sharp spurs and his sharper insults, until Zereth had thought it would have been better to not be promoted at all than have to endure this human pustule on his back. Now he had half a mind to roll again just to see if he could shake the screaming brat right off. It was what Valkea would do, and Zereth was a great admirer of Valkea. She wouldn’t suffer Kaan’s indignities. In fact, she’d somehow managed to shake the boy altogether, and now she flew with Tamra Lennix, who was as crafty as she was cruel. Zereth wished he had a rider like that, or else no rider at all.

  But in the end, he submitted to Kaan’s orders and turned back toward land and the distant Fortress Lennix, regretfully leaving behind all those tasty, tasty fish. As satisfying as dumping Kaan into the ocean would be, it wouldn’t be worth the wrath he’d suffer at D’Mara Lennix’s hands. He remembered the words Valkea had whispered to him just last week, in the secrecy of her chamber in the Raptor Roost. It had been him and two other dragons, Valkea’s most trusted.

  We must bide our time, she had said. The Lennixes are weakening. The heir Declan has deserted them. Krane is getting older and slower. And they don’t have Bellacrux anymore to enforce their rules. All we have to do is wait, and soon enough, the other Raptors will be begging for new leadership. Then, my friends, we will be ready. Then, my fearsome ones, we will strike!

  He hoped they would strike soon. Something had to change. Hunting was poorer and poorer every day. The craving for food in Zereth’s belly was a sharp, constant pain, and he fended off a sudden urge to flip over and gobble up Kaan. The Raptors needed to find the Silver, needed to return to the Lost Lands, where, according to the rumors flying thicker than gnats, they would feast to their stomachs’ content. But so far, the Lennixes had done nothing but bungle every attempt to harness the Silver.

  Like Valkea—and a growing number of Raptors—Zereth was ready for a change in regime. Humans should serve dragons, as far as Zereth was concerned, not the other way around. Dragons were bigger, deadlier, longer-lived—the apex predators of every world they inhabited. The Lennixes had disrespected the food chain long enough.

  Clearly, it would take a dragon’s leadership to bring them to the Lost Lands.

  But until their numbers grew large enough to overwhelm those Raptors still loyal to the Lennixes, Valkea, Zereth, and the others who thought like them would have to bide their time.

  And … endure certain humiliations.

  Clenching his jaw, Zereth flew at a steady pace, the pain from Kaan’s jabbing spurs still lancing down his sides and into his wings.

  “Just wait till Ma hears this,” Kaan gloated in his ear, his voice cracking. It had been doing that a lot lately, jumping from high to low, splintering in mid-sentence. “It was me—not Tamra or Mirra or Pa or Decimus—but me, Kaan Lennix, who found them: that mudbrained sheep boy and his stuck-up Silver. Oh, I can’t wait to see the look on Ma’s face when I tell her!”

  For once, Zereth agreed with the youngest Lennix spawn. Lysander was the key to the Lost Lands, the most coveted dragon in the world, and the Raptors’ number one enemy. It had been Kaan who had ridden Lysander through a portal and returned to tell Zereth and the others about the Lost Lands—a world of glittering towers and green hills and so many fat sheep, enough to sate even the hungriest of Raptors. It was everything this world was not, and it could all belong to the Raptors, if they could just get their claws on that Silver.

  “And,” Kaan added, still gloating, “wherever Joss and Lysander are hiding, we’ll also find his sheep girl sister and that traitor Bellacrux! This is the best day of my life!” He dissolved into snorting laughter.

  Below him, Zereth bared his fangs in a gruesome version of a smile. He too was pleased and eager to share their delicious news. He was sure Valkea would reward him for it, before leading him and the rest of the Raptors to capture and crush Lysander, Bellacrux, and their human Locks.

  Allie sat, arms crossed over her chest, upon the great Green dragon who had once been known as the Lennix Grand. Bellacrux hovered on a warm thermal, high above the largest of the Blue islands, her calm mind battered by Allie’s tempestuous thoughts.

  I’m going to put a leash on Joss’s neck—if the Raptors haven’t already snapped it! I’m going to tie him to a tree and Lysander with him! I’m going to—

  Be still, little warrior, sighed Bellacrux for the hundredth time. They are impetuous, as all young ones are.

  I’m young, but I’m not impetuous!

  Indeed you are not, my Lock. But your circumstances have forced you to grow up quickly.

  Allie didn’t feel very grown-up. She couldn’t imagine any grown-up could feel as terrified as she felt just then. Her eyes scanned every inch of the horizon, and the sweat running down her neck wasn’t just from the hot sun.

  Joss had been gone for over an hour without a word as to where he was going or why, leaving Allie to hope against all hope that they hadn’t been seized by the Raptors. She’d dragged Bellacrux from her argument with Ash to search, but without knowing what direction Joss and Lysander had gone, they were stuck waiting over the islands, helpless.

  He took Sirin with him, Allie told her Lock.

  Allie wasn’t sure what to think of Sirin. Joss had befriended her instantly, but Allie was worried the girl might be too soft to survive in a world of dragons. She seemed nice enough, but nice didn’t do you much good against a horde of ravenous Raptors. Allie still had bruises and aches from their last encounter, and now she rubbed the singed ends of her hair where a blast of dragonfire had nearly roasted her just days ago. She watched every cloud that drifted overhead, worried Raptors might come pouring out of it, snarling and snapping.

  Any progress with Ash today? she asked, trying to distract herself.

  Bellacrux snapped her teeth, a puff of smoke curling from her lips. He is as unmoving as a mountain! He could help us turn the tide against our enemies, if he would only admit what he knows of the weapon.

  What did he tell you about it?

  Only that when he was a hatchling, the Blue elders whispered of a lost weapon, a great power, that they would use to end the Raptor threat. It was the very weapon once used to defeat the Raptors back in the Lost Lands, but it was left behind when my kind were exiled from that world, and the Blues could not hope to find it without a Silver to lead them back. When they died, they took all knowledge of the weapon to their graves. Only Ash is old enough to remember what it was, and the rock-brained fool refuses to tell me.

  Allie sighed. She had been thrilled when Bellacrux had first told her of her plan to find the mysterious weapon, the day after they’d escaped from the Lennixes—and scooped up Sirin in the Lost Lands. But her hope had begun to fizzle out with every passing day that Ash refused to talk. She knew what worried Ash and stilled his tongue. Any weapon that could help them could also help the Lennixes, if they got to it first. He thought it safer that it be lost forever. But to Allie, that seemed li
ke a risk worth taking.

  There! Bellacrux shifted in the air with a great flap of her wings, turning toward the east. In the distance, Allie saw what looked like a refraction of silver light off the ocean’s surface, until the glimmer pulled away and turned to a dark fleck in the sky. Only one dragon shone like that. Allie’s body unclenched with relief, then hardened again with fury.

  She nourished the flame of her anger through the fifteen minutes it took Lysander and Sammi to reach the islands, with Joss and Sirin on the Silver’s back.

  She started yelling even before all the dragons had landed on the beach.

  “Stupid!” she shouted. “Stupid, stupid, stupid! You knuckle-headed, mush-brained dingbat!”

  Joss gave her a weary look as he slid off Lysander. Sirin dropped down beside him, pale and not meeting Allie’s gaze. Bellacrux glared at Lysander until the Silver’s wings dropped and his head dipped in submission.

  “What is this about?” Allie demanded. “Do you miss being a Lennix, is that it? You want to go back to them?”

  “Wh-what?” spluttered Joss.

  “Missing their fancy clothes, your shiny watch? Missing getting to storm around giving people orders?”

  Joss scowled. “Lysander smelled something strange on the wind, Allie. We had to check it out before he lost the scent. There was no time to tell you.”

  Allie’s stomach clenched, and she reflexively looked to the sky. “So you just charged off on your own? Joss!”

  “He wasn’t on his own,” Sirin pointed out. “I was with him.”

  “No offense, Sirin,” Allie said, “but you don’t know anything about this place or us or the Lennixes. You both could have been killed.”

  “Hey!” Joss protested. “Enough! We don’t need your permission for everything. You’re not our mum, Allie.”

  “Yeah,” said Sirin in a hard voice. “You’re not my mum.”

  Maybe she wasn’t anyone’s mum, but Allie had one job and one job only: keeping Joss safe. It was what their ma and pa would have wanted her to do, and she wouldn’t let them down. Not again. She’d held her tongue before, when Joss had trusted the mysterious stranger who’d turned out to be D’Mara Lennix. But she couldn’t afford to make a mistake like that again.

  “Well, what did you find?” Allie asked.

  “One Raptor, a scout,” he said. “And before you ask, no, it didn’t see us.”

  But Allie’s skin went cold. “How do you know that? If you could see it, it could have seen you! Every Raptor in the Roost could be winging straight for us as we speak!”

  Joss was starting to look afraid. “Well … we’re a whole day’s flight from Fortress Lennix. Even if it did see us, that scout won’t be even halfway there by now.”

  This is bad, very bad, Bellacrux sent to Allie. She snuffed the air, nodding to the west, where black clouds had begun to swell. It will storm tonight. They cannot cross open water in that squall, and neither can we.

  Allie relayed Bellacrux’s words to the others, then added, “So we will leave the moment the storm passes. This is our last night on the Blue islands, and thanks to us, the whole clan could be in terrible danger.”

  Joss nodded, looking dazed and a little ashamed.

  “Never fly off like that again,” Allie said to her brother, in a low and terrible voice. She didn’t know it, but she sounded a bit like Bellacrux herself when the Grand was at her most dangerous. “Please, Joss. Promise me.”

  “I promise,” he said miserably. “I didn’t mean to put anyone in danger. But I’m sure it didn’t see us.”

  “Well, we have to act as if it did.” Allie knew she sounded harsh, but she had to make Joss understand how much danger they were in. Didn’t he remember that great battle they’d fought? Didn’t he see the dragon Herlenna fall from the sky, and the turncoat Raptor Timoleon catch fire? When Allie slept, she still dreamed of that awful night and woke feeling the heat of Raptor fire all over her body.

  “What do we do?” Joss asked, looking thoroughly cowed now, his head dropping just like a hatchling’s after an older dragon had scolded it.

  “I …” Allie didn’t know. Where else could they hide? Not even Bellacrux knew where the Red dragons hid away, deep in their mountain caverns. The Yellows were far, far away in their sandy deserts and unlikely to take them in when they had Raptors on their scent.

  “The Lost Lands?” Allie wondered aloud. “We have Lysander, after all. What’s stopping us from just going? We could hide there forever and unless they found another Silver, the Raptors could never follow. We could be safe.”

  They all looked at Sirin, who shrugged. “I mean, there are a lot of places on Earth where you could hide three dragons. It wouldn’t be easy, but it would be possible.”

  Joss and Lysander exchanged looks, then Joss said, “Well … yeah. But that would mean …”

  He didn’t have to finish the sentence for Allie to know what he meant.

  It would mean abandoning all the other good and true dragons in this world. Ash, the free clans, the hatchlings swimming in the bay, not to mention the humans who lived here … they would be left to the Raptors.

  “We could save ourselves,” whispered Allie. “We could go right now, this minute.”

  A silence followed, and she could see the others thinking it over. It was tempting, the idea of true safety. But she also saw how Joss winced, how Lysander sighed, how even Sirin, who still knew so little about all of it, looked uneasy.

  Bellacrux looked steadily at Allie, silent. Waiting for her to make up her mind.

  Allie stared back at her Lock. “Seems we have to make a choice. Run and save ourselves …”

  “Or stay and try to save everyone,” finished Joss. “The good dragons and the people of this world. They don’t deserve to burn in Raptor fire, Allie. Maybe we could run away and hide forever and survive. But I don’t think we could live with ourselves. Do you?”

  Lysander snorted in agreement, clearly on Joss’s side.

  Allie glanced at Bellacrux as her Lock sent, For once, the boy speaks with wisdom.

  “Sirin?” Joss asked. “What do you think?”

  Sirin blinked, as if surprised she got a vote. “I don’t want to leave any other hatchlings like Sammi to get hurt. I’m in.”

  “In what, exactly?” asked Allie, who was apparently the only one still undecided. It was really, really hard to say no to the idea of holing away in the Lost Lands, never having to fear the heat of Raptor fire again. “What’s our plan? What can we possibly do against the strength of the Raptors? I mean, let’s be practical. We could start leading the other dragons back to the Lost Lands and safety, but it would take months to find them all, and the Lennixes would definitely track us down before it was done. So how do we stop them first?”

  There is only one way, sounded Bellacrux in Allie’s thoughts. She looked at her Lock inquiringly and found the Grand gazing intently back at her. The reason we came to the Blue islands in the first place.

  Ash made it pretty clear he won’t talk, Allie reminded her Lock. Whatever he knows about his lost weapon, he isn’t going to tell us.

  That was before Lennix scouts were spotted an hour’s flight from his island. Whether they spotted Lysander or not, it means the Raptors are closing in on the Blues’ hideout.

  Allie again rubbed the singed ends of her hair. You think that will change his mind?

  I think it’s worth one last shot, Bellacrux said.

  Chewing her lip, Allie considered. And this weapon. You’re sure it exists? And that it can stop the Raptors?

  I know if it did not exist, Ash would not be so loath to speak of it. If it really had the power to protect the Lost Lands and banish the Raptors once, it can do it again, here.

  While Allie relayed her private conversation with Bellacrux to the others, the great Green gazed into the infinite blue of the sky above; on the eastern horizon, the clouds spread like a stain, dark and angry. The squall she had predicted was on its way.

  We
must all be in accordance, Bellacrux told Allie. A flight divided soon starves, but a flight united hunts with success.

  Allie laid her hand on her Lock’s shoulder. “So that’s it, then. We have to make our choice as a team. We either flee to the Lost Lands and never return, or we convince Ash to tell us how to find the weapon that will stop the Raptors for good, and that will save this world the way it once saved the Lost Lands.”

  She let them mull it over for a long moment.

  “Everyone in favor of going to the Lost Lands, raise a hand. Or, er, claw.”

  No one moved. A low wind rippled over the beach, raising swirls of white sand all around them. In the bay, the hatchlings splashed and chirped, oblivious to the storm brewing in the distance.

  Allie let out a long breath. “All right, then. Everyone in favor of finding this mysterious long-lost weapon and giving the Raptors a dose of their own dragonfire?”

  Joss raised a hand. Lysander snorted. Sammi and Sirin looked at each other, then Sirin popped a thumbs-up. Finally, Allie nodded.

  So be it, said Bellacrux. The time for hiding is no more. Now is the time to fight.

  The Blue clan’s home was a vast network of caves that ran beneath the islands and even under the sea itself. They were filled with many glimmering pools that cast shifting reflections on the rocky ceilings, and clusters of bioluminescent coral and algae clung to their edges, providing soft pink, blue, and yellow light.

  Allie walked through these tunnels by Bellacrux’s shoulder, apprehension knotting her stomach. Lysander, Joss, Sirin, and Sammi followed close behind. The sound of dripping, rippling, flowing water echoed all around them, punctuated by dragon snarls. The place was beautiful, but it also gave Allie goose bumps. She couldn’t help but feel she was back in Fortress Lennix, stumbling through narrow corridors while Raptors watched her hungrily and licked their teeth. The Blues didn’t attack humans, of course; that didn’t mean she felt totally at ease in their stone labyrinth. There were no humans here, and the Blues seemed as wary of the three kids as they were of the Blues.