Snow Dragon, page 9
“The younger ones serve in the hall until they’re old enough to fly out on their own.” Luc must have noticed the direction of Lilly’s gaze as she watched the youngest set play behind the luncheon tables. “Even then,” he continued, “we pair them for a few years before letting them do solo patrols.”
“Is it common for a child to be chosen so young?”
“Not common, but it does happen. I found Shilayla when I was fifteen. Most often, the dragons choose teens, but Veil-born dragons sometimes choose really young children. Miki, for example,” Luc jerked his chin toward the little girl playing with her baby dragon, “was born with a considerable magic talent. Linus, her dragon partner, chose her as soon as he could toddle over to her. She was only just starting to talk herself, but she was already manifesting magic more suited to much older mages. She’s something special. As is her dragon partner.”
“Fascinating.” Lilly had to drag her eyes away from the little girl and the miniature snowy white beast. The love between the two was so obvious and so strong it almost hurt to watch.
They finished lunch and went back to preparations for the trip shortly thereafter. Lilly was given spare clothing and furs in addition to those she’d brought with her. She tried to object, but Luc was firm on the matter. Shilayla would be carrying the packs, and she was well able to handle both of them plus their baggage with strength to spare, Luc assured her.
When they arrived back at Luc’s family home, Detlif pulled Lilly aside for a private word. She was almost afraid of the stormy look in his eyes, but she was a warrior in her own right. She’d faced down scarier enemies than this bruiser of a fey. Not often and not easily, but she had always prevailed in the end. She kept that thought firmly in mind as she stepped into the garden with Detlif.
“I want to thank you for your efforts with my son this morning.”
His face looked like a thundercloud, but Lilly thought she understood. He had to be upset with the healers’ findings about Petr.
“You’re most welcome. I’m glad your healers have a way to help him now. They do, don’t they? That’s the impression they left me with before Luc and I left.”
“Yes,” Det assured her though his expression didn’t change. “They know what to do now. Petr’s already looking better, and he is much stronger. The healers have done a good job. And now, thanks to your skill, the mages will be keeping a careful watch on him.”
“Mages?” Lilly was surprised but realized quickly that it would take strong magic to keep the channel between the siblings closed. Especially if their mother, the sorceress, was working to keep it open. She nodded as understanding dawned. “Oh, I see.”
“He’ll have new duties assigned tomorrow afternoon at the mage hall.”
“Does he know why? Does he understand what’s going on?”
“Not yet, and I hope to keep it that way. The less he knows of his mother, the better.”
“Are you sure that’s wise? My father always said, ‘Forewarned is forearmed.’”
Detlif shot her a quelling look, as if surprised she would question his decision. Having been Captain of the Guard for who knows how many years, she’d bet his judgment wasn’t often questioned, but she stood her ground. He wasn’t her captain, after all.
“I’m sure there will come a time when he’ll need to know all about my mistakes and his heritage, but not now. Hopefully, that time won’t come for many years yet.” Detlif sighed heavily and seemed more vulnerable somehow as his shoulders sagged under the weight of his troubles. “As it stands, Petr’s particular talents—if he has any{MISSING SYMBOL}haven’t been identified yet. I think now it’s because his power was being drained all his life. But, in cases where a child’s true path isn’t easily seen, we often have them spend time at each of the halls, exposing them to the day-to-day tasks involved in each path. Eventually, their way becomes known. I plan to tell Petr that his new chores are just his turn at the mage hall.”
Lilly considered the alternatives. “I suppose that’s a wise course. He’s a good boy. Bright, enthusiastic and kind. I think now, he’ll have a good chance of growing into the strong man he’s destined to become.”
“Thanks to you, Lilly Deverilsdoter. I will never forget what you have done for him. I owe you a personal debt.” Detlif’s eyes grew solemn as he took one of her hands in his and raised it to his lips in a gentle salute. “If ever you need me, you have but to send word.”
Lilly was stunned by his words as much as his actions. For such a hardened warrior, Detlif had just shown he could be gentle and even charming when the need arose. And for a man of such stature to put himself in her debt—a human woman’s debt—was a stunning development, indeed. It was a matter of honor she would not argue with. She understood the warrior’s code.
“My thanks, Captain. Lady willing, I will never have to call upon that promise, but I thank you for making it.” She smiled up at him, seeing a new respect and interest in his eyes for the first time.
Luc found them like that—Lilly’s hand in his brother’s, both of them staring into each other’s eyes. Rage swelled inside him, accompanied by the purest jealousy he had ever felt.
“Lilly, Lady Vi is here to speak with us. Are you coming?” He couldn’t help the sharp bite of his words and felt some satisfaction when she jumped, tugging her hand from Det’s.
As he’d half expected, Lady Vi tasked Luc with teaching Lilly control exercises all youngsters are taught as they made their way toward the human King’s city. There was little time to train her under the Veil, but the healer promised to do some preliminary work with her before they left. Luc looked forward to working with Lilly. The exercises required physical touch in many instances and were easily accomplished with children who were used to being handled, but when the recipient of the lessons was an adult, the touching of skin on skin took on a more intimate appeal. Luc looked forward to being close to Lilly—all in the course of his duty—very much, indeed.
He’d already learned the slightest contact sparked desire between them. He wasn’t foolish enough to believe the feelings were all on his side. He’d been with enough women to know the flush of her cheeks and the rapid speed of her breath meant Lilly was as interested as he was, but for some reason, she fought it. She fought him.
She used the silly excuse that he thought her an oddity because she was human, but it was a weak argument at best. True, she was a delectable morsel of humanity, but he’d been around lots of village wenches in his duties as a scout. Few tempted him. Even fewer made him succumb to his desire to chase and capture. Lilly, though, stirred all his hunter’s instincts. She practically begged him to stalk, to pounce, to pleasure.
And he would. All in good time.
He’d give her a little room, for now, but she would be his. Of that, he had no doubt.
* * *
The enemy in King Alric’s court could not know for certain, but he thought perhaps something had changed. His ally among the Alchemists had devised a way to block the seers of the fair folk enclave a long time ago, but reports from the wasteland between Valdis and the Snowlands where the fair folk lived, reported increased dragon activity in numbers that had not been seen in decades, if not centuries. The alchemical block had definitely worked, but he recalled the warning from his Alchemist ally that it might not work forever.
The Alchemist had claimed that even if the block was broken, it would affect the range of seers in different ways. The block would break down for the strongest among the seers, and also, the most untrained of them, first. So, the elders and the apprentices would be able to foresee once more, while the masters—by far the largest number—remained in the dark for some time to come. It could drive them mad, and instill disorder among their ranks.
As more reports came in, it looked very much like the alchemy had, indeed, failed.
No matter. He still had time to try to stop the emissary from returning home. He had schemed to stop Lilly—the King’s accursed pet—at every turn. Somehow, she was still alive and on her mission, which was a grave disappointment.
He had asked his Alchemist ally to do something about that, though he did not know for certain what the Alchemist had planned. The traitor had other cards to play in this game, however. He had more agents on the ground who would try to intercept Lilly, and any foreigners who might be with her. Even if the traitor failed to stop her, the time was quickly drawing near when it wouldn’t much matter. He would finally be ready to unleash his clandestine army on the Blind King, and seize the throne for himself.
* * *
After all that had come before, their leave taking was a simple affair. Luc showed Lilly how to mount and position herself on Shilayla’s back, and after that initial leap into the air, she settled in nicely against him. He laughed at her surprise as Shilayla jolted upward, sending Lilly crashing back against Luc’s chest until she grabbed at the ropes they had tied like a harness around Shilayla’s broad chest.
As Lilly got used to the rhythm of the dragon’s wingbeats, she gradually began to relax. Oddly enough, she was what they called a natural rider—one who adapted easily to riding a-dragonback. Not all fey were so blessed, and it was one of Luc’s duties to help teach the younger scouts how to make both their and their dragon’s lives easier by learning how to properly ride.
But Lilly required no real instruction. She quickly adapted to Shi’s stride in the air, moving her body to match the dragon’s movements, as Luc did riding behind her. It was a close fit, but Luc liked the feel of her warm body against him. His chest touched her back, and when jostled, the aching part of him nestled into the soft flesh of her buttocks, his thighs molding to the backs of her lithely muscled legs.
It wasn’t easy to talk with the cold wind flashing their faces. As they flew south, the temperature would rise, but it was always cold at altitude, and they would remain wrapped up against the wind. Luc could have wished for less fabric and more skin touching, but he wouldn’t trade these moments in the air for anything. Being near Lilly was fast becoming an addiction, one that he’d hate to give up at the end of this trip.
After about two hours of sustained flight, Shilayla began to descend. They’d passed far above several border towns, keeping as well out of sight as they could by flying high against the early morning sky. But even a snow dragon had to pace herself on a long trip like this. They’d decided to take more frequent breaks—both for Shilayla to rest so that she’d be fresh in case of trouble, and for her riders to stretch their legs and warm up as best they could. The Snowlands weren’t exactly welcoming for those who required warmth to thrive.
Of course, Shilayla generated a great deal of warmth all by herself. She was better than a furnace, Luc had always thought. He noted the way Lilly stood near the dragon as Shilayla drank from a puddle of snow she had melted with a little puff of flame. Dragons were very handy creatures to have around. They could warm you just by standing near, they could melt snow into water and heat food with the merest puff of flame, and their scales were nearly impenetrable in a fight.
There were ways to bring them down, though. Luc had been taught that only diamond blades could slice through dragon scale, though he had never seen one himself. Such things were rare and costly, and the diamond mines were said to be in the far south, in lands that were scorched by the sun year-round. They were exotic, and as dangerous as they were said to be against dragons, Luc was glad they were not more readily available. He would be utterly devastated if anything were to happen to Shilayla.
As Shilayla drank and rested her weary wings, Luc shared a snack with Lilly. They sat on an outcropping of rock that Shilayla had thoughtfully cleared of snow for them. She had also warmed the rock with her fiery breath, making it a pleasant place to sit. As they ate, he began to teach her the control exercises that Lady Vi had demanded he show Lilly. He had to take her hands at one point, and the warmth of her skin against his left him feeling oddly disturbed.
She was beautiful for a human. Exotic in his experience with her dark hair and eyes. Luc had already entertained the idea of bedding her, but what he felt when he touched her and looked deep into those mysterious eyes of hers was something different. Something pure and…frightening.
He let go and looked away. “We’d better get back in the air. As we fly farther south, there are going to be more people around, I think. We have to be vigilant.”
Lilly rose and looked around the barren spot they’d chosen to land. “If you keep picking places like this to land, we should be all right.”
“Places like this will give way to farmland soon enough,” Luc cautioned. “We can land in a field, but there is likely to be a farmhouse nearby with curious folks in it.”
Lilly nodded. “Understood. Thank you for showing me the exercise. Will it be a problem if I practice while we’re flying?”
“Not at all,” Luc told her. “Just hold on tight and let Shilayla do the rest.”
Which was what she did for the next three stops. It was mid-afternoon by the time they started to see fields cleared for Spring planting. Snow was slowly giving way to earth, and even the air aloft began to feel a tiny bit warmer and smell more of growing things than ice and snow. They were getting closer to civilization.
Lilly was impressed by how fast the journey was going from the air. What had taken her more than a month to do on the ground—with serious delays—was taking mere days with Shilayla’s help. Dragons really were the most amazing creatures. Lilly loved flying, and she enjoyed seeing things from a new point of view.
Mountains were nothing to Shilayla. Rivers, likewise, posed no impediment to her motion. It was incredible seeing these things from above and, when the sky was clear, being able to see so far in every direction. Everything looked different from up here. Houses were little dots below. Towns and villages were a group of little dots from this altitude.
Lilly was marveling at the sights below her when she got her first premonition of danger. Something wasn’t right, and the feel of the air around her made her skin crawl.
“Luc!” she shouted to be heard above the sudden roar of the wind, which had increased tremendously.
“I know,” he yelled back. “Hold on, we’re going to try to evade whatever this is.”
What followed was the most harrowing moments of Lilly’s life. She clung to the ropes and to Luc, grabbing onto his clothing as Shilayla made fast turns and swooping dives, straining for the sky one moment and banking hard the next. She’d never experienced anything like it and found it hard to breathe as the wind rushed past her face and incredible speeds.
No matter what Shilayla and Luc tried, though, the spinning center of the vortex seemed to anticipate where they would be until, finally, Shilayla was out of sky and one wing traced too close to the maelstrom. It sucked them in, faster than thought. One minute, they were flying free, the next, they were whirling toward the center of a gigantic hole in the sky.
Lilly didn’t know up from down. She felt like a boulder being rolled down a hill, except that there was no firm ground beneath her. She tumbled with the others in mid-air, not knowing where they might come out of it—or even if they would come out of it. Her senses whirled, and her stomach insisted that up was down and down was up. Repeatedly. She fought against the nausea and finally won, but by that time, the whirlwind was slowing, and Shilayla’s wings seemed to be steadying with airflow under them.
Was she learning how to ride the tempest? Or was the vortex letting them go? Spitting them out somewhere very different from where they had been. For, Lilly quickly realized, the landscape over which they had been flying was changed. Now, instead of spotty snow, it was waving green grass, and little copses of trees and bushes dotted on the countryside below them with no hint of snow in the area.
It wasn’t the farmland of her home country. No fences marred the landscape. No herds. No neat rows of plantings. Just wild waving grasses and occasional wild trees and bushes. Very odd.
Shilayla swooped low, still gathering control, then started to rise as she beat her wings, straining for altitude. Lilly suspected the dragon wouldn’t land—if at all possible—until she knew it was safe.
“Where are we?” Lilly looked all around for some familiar landmark. She only saw green slopes of those wild grasses leading down to a river that grew bigger as Shilayla glided closer.
“This doesn’t smell like home,” Shilayla said into their minds. “We are a great distance from anyplace I have ever been before.” Her voice sounded both plaintive and resigned.
Before Luc could say anything, Shilayla angled lower. “Two dragons come,” she said. “I can just see them in the distance, over the river. And they can see me. They were flying parallel to the river, but now, they are headed in this direction.”
“Snow dragons?” Luc asked quickly, shouting to be heard over the rushing wind.
“No,” Shi replied. “They are shades of green. One is sort of blue-greenish, and the other a pure green.”
“Could we somehow be in Draconia?” Lilly asked, bewildered by the idea, though it seemed to make a strange sort of sense. “I’ve seen maps in King Alric’s hall. The northern border of Draconia is formed by a river.”
“It’s possible, I guess,” Luc allowed as they glided ever closer to the two specks in the distance that were also moving rapidly closer. “Let’s see what these dragons have to say, if they will speak with us.”
“I just hope they’re friendly,” Lilly muttered.
They didn’t have to wait long.
Out of the cloudless sky, two dragons appeared to the two-legged riders, steadily growing larger. As they neared at high speed, the flapping of wings could be seen, and then, the little humps of riders on the dragons’ backs.
