Sunmaster, page 2
She broke off, because 'summon a dragon' had obviously not been anybody's plan. The dragon inhaled again, and this time, for a heartbeat, Rasim saw fire coming to life at the back of its throat. They were trapped in the watchtower cavern, and would all die under the beast's breath. Flame rolled forward, brilliant orange and white, and Rasim screamed.
Witchery burst out of him, a wall of power he couldn't even name. Maybe it was skymastery, building a barrier of hard air between himself and the dragon's terrible breath. Maybe it was sun witchery, holding the rolling fire back. Rasim didn't know. He knew his throat hurt, and that his whole body trembled with strain, and that they weren't dead. He knew the dragon hung in the air just beyond the cave mouth, its great wings beating a slow pattern and a look of astonishment on its toothy face.
He knew Desimi, with a deliberately critical note, said, "Well, you could have let a little of it through, so we'd have the watch fire started!" and that he really wanted to punch the bigger journeyman in the face for being obnoxious. The next sound Desimi made was a shrill laugh, though, one of barely-contained fear, and Rasim's impulse to punch him faded somewhat.
"You need to get out of here." Rasim hardly knew his own voice, it was so tight and small. "Is there any way out of here besides the entrance, Bayar?"
"I'm afraid not." Unlike the rest of them, the Shenryalan boy sounded calm and controlled, although Rasim thought that might be because he had to think of words in Ilyaran, and the time to think helped him contain his own panic. Sesin was on her butt, staring wide-eyed at the dragon, cords standing out in her neck. She exhaled, a small sharp sound, and Rasim braced himself again as another fiery blast from the dragon scorched the cavern.
He couldn't tell. He couldn't tell what kind of witchery he was using. It felt—he thought—like skymastery, hardening the air against the dragon's breath. The air certainly heated up enough to make that seem likely. But he'd never used sunmastery, or at least, not on purpose, not knowing he'd done it, and maybe that was what stopping a wall of flame felt like. Maybe fire was hardly more than hot air, in the moment of shaping.
That seemed unlikely. The dragon gaped at him again, then rose higher into the sky, its shadow spilling across the mouth of the cave for a moment. Rasim whispered, "Run," and Sesin barked disbelief.
"So it can set us alight when we leave the cave? We have to stay behind you!"
Rasim cursed and edged forward. The sickness in his belly was gone, although he didn't know how he could tell the difference between the nausea of undetermined dread and the gut-clenching certainty of terror. But he felt better, like the dragon was what had been making him ill, and now that it was here, the worst of it had passed. His heart hammered hard enough to break free of his chest as he tried to peek out of the watchtower's hollow without getting eaten.
Huge teeth snapped closed shockingly close to his hair and he screamed, falling backward into the cave again. The dragon was above them, perched on the flat mountaintop not so very far overhead, and had bent to bite at him. If it had been a hand's breadth longer of neck, it would have taken his head off. Furious with fear, Rasim snatched at sky witchery and smashed air upward like a tremendous fist.
It caught the dragon in the nose, hard enough to send the beast rearing backward and bellowing with anger as it swiped at its own face, trying to catch what had hit it. Rasim hissed, "Go, go, go, run, hurry!" but Bayar balked as the others ran to Rasim's side.
"The watchfire has to be lit. We must tell my people we're here, or your reception will be unpleasant." He knelt, focusing on the fire pit again as Kisia howled and grabbed his arm.
"Our reception is going to be a lot more unpleasant if we get roasted by a dragon, Bayar! We can come back and set a fire later!"
The dragon snarled and swept its head back down, spitting dangerous heat again. Rasim threw his arms upward, calling witchery, and the spattering flame sank around him in an arc that ignited bits of dried grass amidst the new growth. He was sure—almost sure—he was using skymastery to hold the fire back. It seemed like it would be much more efficient if he could use sun witchery and actually shape the flames, maybe even use them to attack the dragon in turn, rather than just avoid getting burned.
Although overall, avoiding getting burned was certainly better than the alternative. "Desimi! Get some of the—"
The bigger boy was already doing it, gathering dried clumps of smoldering grass and blowing on them to get a real flame going as he rushed them back to the fire pit. Bayar, relieved that they were heeding his request even in the midst of chaos, rose as Kisia tugged at him again, while Sesin grabbed more of the sparking grass to try to light the signal fire. Above Rasim, the dragon cocked its head, staring down at him in clearly growing confusion.
Rasim couldn't help a nervous giggle. Dragons probably expected things they breathed fire on to scream and die. Well, they'd been screaming a lot, but nobody had died yet and the dragon obviously didn't know how to deal with that. It roared another fiery breath at them, and this time Rasim thought of the wind funnels he'd used in the Moranese war arena. He tried to grab a bit of the oncoming flame and spin it toward the fire pit, but it went out under the strength of air witchery.
The next blast of flame was so hot and fast that he fell to his knees, barely able to keep it from scorching him. "We have to go now!" He could hardly breathe the too-hot air, and tears scalded his face from fear and heat. But Bayar let out a shout of triumph, and the fire pit suddenly came alive with ordinary flame, warm and comforting compared to the blinding strength of the dragon's fire. The other four rushed to his side, but hesitated, unsure of where to go next.
For a heartbeat, Rasim didn't know either, but a terrible idea settled into his bones. A bad enough idea he couldn't even quite let himself think it, because if he thought it, he wouldn't do it. "I'm going to distract it," he said in a small voice. "You four go—wherever is safest. Back into the cave, if I can draw it away."
"Don't be stupid, Rasi." Kisia's own voice was small with fear.
He smiled weakly at her. "I don't think I have any choice. Run when I do the stupid thing."
He stepped out of the hollow's limited safety, which was stupid enough, and spun another blow of sky witchery upward to slam into the dragon. It inhaled and spat fire so fast that luck and instinct, not wisdom or quick thinking, was all that saved him. Skymastery formed a blade of air in front of him, splicing the dragonfire so it spilled around him at hair-sizzling temperatures. Rasim couldn't breathe. He couldn't even see. But he didn't burn, either, not quite, as the fire split in front of him and gouted in columns on either side of him. The mountainside around him went soft in places, heat pounding it until it melted, and when the flame finally subsided, the dragon fell to all fours again with an air of satisfaction as it tilted his head to examine the place where Rasim's dead body should be.
Rasim smiled feebly and waved, because he couldn't think of anything else to do. The dragon lifted a forepaw and pulled back half a step as if confused beyond comprehension, then sat on its back legs and tilted its head the other way, like it was checking to make sure it had seen him correctly. Rasim turned cold with fear despite the heat.
It was bigger than he could even understand. On its haunches it seemed as tall as the Seamasters' hall, and its wings spread so wide Rasim thought they might cover the whole flat top of the mountain. Its jaws looked big enough to swallow him whole, assuming he didn't get melted to a greasy spot on the mountainside by its fire, first. He, Rasim al Ilialio, who had slain a sea serpent and fought a stone snake and defeated an airy glasswing, was not going to kill that thing, not on his own. Not at all.
But, and this was the terrible idea, the one that he hardly dared put into words: but it couldn't kill him, either.
Not if he got on its back.
It would have worked so much more easily if the dragon had been in the hollow and he, Rasim, had been up on the mountain's flat top. He thought he could lure it down, but he was less certain he could distract it from roasting his friends, so he had to go up. The dragon crashed back down to all fours, now watching him more like he was a baffling bit of prey than an enemy. Cats watched bugs and mice like that, and Rasim was about that size, to a dragon.
He wished desperately that his grasp of stone witchery was stronger. If he could at least raise a protective wall between himself and the dragon as he scrambled up the mountainside, he would feel better. Instead he had to watch and listen and hope that Tilarea had a little kindness to spare for a sea witch who had fumbled his way into skymastery.
Behind him, he heard Sesin wail, "Is this the stupid thing?" as he ran, and over the scrabble of stone and earth underfoot, he heard Desimi said, "If you have to ask, it's not it."
The dragon lowered itself further, getting on its belly and watching him with glinting eyes as he crested the mountain's flat top and raced toward its nearest paw. Just before he reached it, the beast smacked him aside like he was a mouse. For a few seconds Rasim didn't know which way was up, only that every part of him hurt as it hit the ground in horrible fast thumps. He staggered to his feet, ridiculously outraged, and brought his hands together like he was directing wind with the force of his clap. Air slammed forward, crashing into the dragon, and it sat up with a snarl, biting and clawing at an invisible enemy. Rasim rushed it again, and this time reached a hind foot.
Its overlapping scales gave him something to dig his fingers around, and he scrambled upward like the giant monster was the rigging on a ship. The dragon bent its head down, watching with glassy, bewildered eyes. Rasim thought he must weigh so little the dragon probably didn't even feel him, and hoped it wouldn't understand what he was doing until he reached its shoulder.
It kicked, and Rasim went flying, hitting the earth with more painful bounces. On his third try, it swatted at him and fire shot through the air. He was not going to successfully climb the dragon. Hopefully his friends were at least getting away, although since their only escape route was probably over the top of the mountain, he wasn't sure he was even doing them any good. He had to draw it away somehow, and his feet decided on a tactic without consulting his mind.
He ran for the farthest edge of the mountaintop, and launched himself off.
CHAPTER 3
This was much, much stupider than riding the dragon.
Rasim's feet hadn't fully left the ground before he wondered what in the sea goddess's name he thought he was doing, but it was far too late by then. Maybe he thought the sky goddess would grant him the gift of flight, which no fully-trained Skymaster had ever achieved except in legend. Maybe he had such confidence in his quick thinking that he'd decided he would find a solution on his way to hitting the ground.
Maybe he just hadn't been thinking at all.
A shadow passed over him just before he smashed into the earth, and the dragon's massive claws curled around his fragile body, hauling him upward. Rasim screamed, then screamed again for good measure. As the dragon turned on a wingtip, he glimpsed his friends running frantically for the mountaintop.
Well, he'd told them to run when he did the stupid thing. In all his life, he couldn't think of anything more stupid than what he'd just done.
It had gotten the dragon's attention, though.
The ground was getting very far away, very fast. Watching it recede made him realize he'd guessed he would probably hit an outcropping or a flat bit of mountainside before he'd fallen very far. After all, they'd been able to climb up one side of the mountain, and back down again to the now-glowing watch-cavern. Expecting there to be other places he could land hadn't been totally out of the question.
Except from above, flying away, it looked like he'd found a sheer cliff to throw himself off. There'd been nothing between himself and probable death except empty air and a dragon that thought its lunch was getting away.
If he concentrated very hard on how he wasn't dead, he could almost keep himself from being terrified out of his mind. Almost. The dragon's massive wings had taken them an impossibly far distance from the mountains already, striking out toward the sunset. Rasim had been too hot before, but the wind cut through him now, numbing his fingers. If he didn't get out of this soon, he would be too slow and thick to figure it out at all.
He glanced down through the gaps between the dragon's claws, down at a world a thousand feet below him, and wondered what made him think he could get out of it at all. At least when he'd fought the sea serpent, he could swim back to the surface. He was fairly certain he couldn't glide safely to the earth, far below.
But he was hooked in the dragon's front paws sort of like a fish wrapped in an eagle's claws. The dragon's feet were held closer together than an eagle's, and it hadn't dug its claws into him like a raptor would with a struggling fish, which was good, or he'd be dead. If he could get up to the front of the dragon's leg, he might be able to climb up to its shoulders. That seemed like it would be slightly better than his current situation. Eagles often dropped their prey before they landed. Rasim didn't want the dragon to drop him.
He moved a little, and the huge beast wrapped its feet around him more firmly. It felt much more secure and less frightening, like there was now no chance he might slip through its claws and fall. Just staying there seemed like it might be the very best idea, except for the part where Rasim assumed it would take him to a nest and eat him. A shiver rushed over him, and he couldn't tell if it was fear or cold.
The dragon had also drawn its legs closer to its chest when it tucked its feet around him more snugly. Through wind-wet eyes, Rasim could see that the tops of its feet made a nearly flat area above his head. It would be almost easy to climb up its leg from there, compared to how he'd been dangling low a moment earlier. He'd scaled much more difficult riggings in nearly as much wind, many times.
There hadn't been so far to fall, though. Not nearly so far to fall.
He scrambled forward before his wiser self froze him in place. The dragon's paws tightened again, but without the claws actually digging into him, its feet didn't close tightly enough to hold him in place. Rasim stood on the side of its foot, clinging to its ankle, and swung his leg up so he was on top of the foot instead of inside it. The wind pushed him against the beast's leg, which helped considerably. He dug his cold fingers around the sharp edges of scales and pulled himself up and up and up, until he'd crawled over the dragon's shoulder and flattened himself along its spine.
It was hot, like the beast itself was warmed by the flame it spewed. Rasim released a small shrill laugh and almost melted with relief as feeling came back into his body. The dragon, finally realizing something was wrong, twisted its head toward him, snapping half-heartedly. It couldn't reach him between its shoulders, though. At least, not in flight. As if realizing that, it folded its wings and dove toward the earth. Rasim hung on for dear life, but as the dragon's dive picked up speed, a huge smile split across his face. Tears ran back from his eyes because of the wind, and even his teeth were cold, but he was riding a dragon. A shriek of joyous delight ripped from his lungs, disappearing instantly into the dimming sky.
The dragon banked as if startled, twisting to see where the noise had come from. It rolled in the air and Rasim's feet flew upward before he slammed back down against its spine, screaming in pure thrilled terror now. He was probably going to die, but it would be a really exciting minute or two before he did. The dragon spun in the air again, then roared with frustration and resumed its dive, careening toward the earth at an impossible speed. Its ears, and the flexible spikes around the back of its head, flattened back as it dove.
Rasim heard himself say, "Sure, why not," under the sound of whipping wind, and felt himself surge forward, climbing the dragon's neck to seize a couple of those spikes. Only after the fact did it occur to him that they might be sharp like the edges of its scales, but it was too late then. They were less rigid than he'd feared, more like cartilage than claw, but he had less than a heartbeat, less than a breath, to be relieved before he hauled back on the spikes he'd grabbed.
The dragon screamed with fury, but its head rose and climbed out of its dive, shaking with rage. Rasim clamped his legs around its neck as tightly as he could, trying to stay flat on his belly while he steered the dragon. He couldn't imagine how far they'd flown. Much farther than the Waifia could ever sail in such a short time, for certain. All he could think was that getting safely to the ground before the sun fully set was his best chance at survival for the night, even if it meant being alone in a strange land with unknown predators.
Nothing could be more unknown or unexpected than a dragon. He'd stopped pulling on the beast's spiky mane and it had leveled out, still bellowing its frustration. It began to turn back toward the mountains, which was either very good or very bad. It would bring Rasim closer to his friends, but it might also bring him to the dragon's nest, and maybe its friends.
No one had ever mentioned dragons in Shenryal. Not that he knew much about the steppelands at all, but surely someone would have mentioned them, if they were common. Surely Kif, the ancient Northerner who had been part of the Shenryalan tribes for a while, would have said something about dragons if he'd seen them. Maybe this one was solitary. Which wasn't as reassuring as Rasim might have hoped, because if it was solitary, there had to be a reason he had happened on it. That reason might just be bad luck, but it seemed like extraordinarily bad luck, if that was the case.
Rasim, flattened against a dragon's neck, flying hundreds of feet above an unfamiliar dusk-tinged grasslands, thought about the past year of his life and wondered what about it made him imagine his luck might suddenly turn out to be something other than extremely bad.
There was movement on the ground below, something running. A large number of somethings, rushing in the same direction, and until the dragon dove at them, Rasim didn't realize they were horses, spooked by the dragon's presence. It gouted flame and he hauled on its mane-spikes again, trying to pull it upward, but it screamed in fury and folded its wings, increasing the speed of its dive. Rasim yelled back and sat up so he could pull harder on the spikes, and the dragon leveled out again, bellowing its anger across the steppes. The herd below them scattered into several smaller groups and the dragon settled into a glide momentarily, its attention twitching from one herd to another like it was trying to make a decision.
