BOOK ONE
Hatchling
BETTER SEVEN RAGING DRAGONS AS YOUR
ENEMY THAN A SINGLE PATIENT DRAGONELLE.
—Islebreadth
Chapter 1
The cloudscapes and air currents, so pleasant to drift across, darkened. Her glittering green scales turned dull and slag. A vast black mass rolled overhead.
Thunder hit her ears, pounding thunder, relentless, unnaturally regular, pursuing her like hoofbeats.
She tipped her wings, dropped, tried to flee the storm, but the darkness overtook her. The feathery dimpling of the clouds below disappeared, replaced by a wet mist of confusion . . . suffocation. The darkness shot down her nostrils and into her lungs.
Out, out of this weather!
She tried to straighten her neck, form her body into an arrow, to dive out of the storm and take shelter, but her limbs wouldn’t cooperate. She twitched, confused, fighting, unwilling to draw a breath of the storm’s thick air.
Crack!
Am I lightning-struck? she thought.
Then the air came and she breathed, a gasp that infused her with new life, her limbs with strength. The mists faded, except for the booming thunder; she realized the noise in her ears was her own hearts. No clouds, no storm, no choking mists, just cramp and wet and a maddening irritation like insects biting under her scales.
She twisted, stretched, as though each of her four limbs, neck, and tail were in a contest to get farthest away from the others, and then the world gave way—
—and she found herself on her side. Terror struck. My belly is exposed! and she fought to roll. Then her nostrils smelled it, a rich musky scent that set her at ease. Something sharper in the background, blood . . .
Blood! The smell of appetite and danger.
Dimpled, irregular surfaces all around, but hard and dark, quite the opposite of the clouds, an agonized squeaking near her . . .
Come out Wistala, or Auron will have your breakegg meal.
I am Wistala.
She rolled her eye, tried to raise her sii, her tail, but instead of coiling ropes of muscle that could fell young trees, she saw stubby deformities trapped in bits of viscous-sided egg clinging to her like a net. Next to her, another green face, pale-pink fringe rising from her skull-ridge and folded this way and that as it descended along the neck. Her sister had her own problems: a head hardly out of her egg.
Too hard, Momma. I-Jizara cannot get out. The thought-words confused Wistala. Had they come from her? No, from the other green hatchling still trapped in her egg.
Jizara, Wistala, you must come out of your eggs. This is your first test, and you’ll learn a valuable lesson. In any crisis, the first scale you must bite through is your own. Master your spirit, apply your mind, harness your body—then you will be able to break through difficulty.
Mother, big enough to be a world herself, rested against a curving wall of stone. She could not be taken in with a single glance. Wistala had to assemble her out of impressions: her endless tail, deep rushing heartbeat, mountainous haunches, softly whooshing breaths, folded wings, arching neck, elegantly fringed head with its shining golden-yellow eyes cut by deep black slits. A loving prrum started deep within Mother’s throat, a drum-roll encouraging her daughters.
Wistala quit trying to go in six directions at once. She employed all four limbs and her tail to get out of the confining egg.
Tch-crick-crack!
And she was away from it.
But down again.
Her rear legs couldn’t get purchase. A wet mass that wasn’t quite her and wasn’t quite egg, attached at her underside, entangled newly uncurled toes. She let out a frustrated squawk.
She dragged herself, wanting that blood-smell, using her cleared front legs, pulling foul anchor and bits of eggshell.