Ku! Ku! Kuuuuuu! came the war cries from below. The sound traveled through rock and ice.
Dead lichen, ice, and loose rock gave way, dropping onto Auron, who was following below. Vague flashes came through—Blood—spears—Wheel of Fire Drakossozh—Yellhounds! Jizara!
Death cries and madness pursued her up the shaft. Up she climbed, up until there were no more sounds echoing from below, up until sii and saa both burned and quivered and the hatchlings had to cling to each other with tail and mouth, up until blood-taste coated their tongues with each breath and the hammering in their neck hearts made their ears ache. Wistala pushed through bone and dead dry pine needles in utter darkness, no longer climbing but not walking either. The darkness unnerved her. Not even dragon eyes could pick out detail, and at every moment she feared the terrible sound of blades being drawn.
She fetched up against something cold and wet—an ice flow blocked the tunnel. She could still feel air moving from a crack at the top, a crack that could hardly fit her snout. What little remained of her ebbing strength vanished.
“Auron, we’re trapped,” she said, hardly able to get the words out. A last hope flickered: perhaps the dwarves and that tall wing-helmed man had been defeated. “We have to go back down. Perhaps Mother and Jizara—”
“No,” Auron said. Dully, she observed that he was hardly panting, though he moved stiffly. Of course, he was lighter, being scaleless. Auron sniffed at the clean, cold air coming in over the ice flow. “Fresh air. We’re almost there.”
“That’s why you don’t want to go back. Your thin hide—”
Auron shoved her aside. Her brother simply went mad. There was no other word for it. He began to pound the ice with his tail. Pieces, tiny pieces of ice compared to the mass, flaked off and slid down to the bones at the bottom of the tunnel. She wondered if this was the raging fighting fury that Mother said took over young drakes. He bit and clawed at the ice whenever he shifted position.
When his tail began to spray blood at each swipe, he spat at the ice. The spittle hissed as it struck, and it ran into fractures, raising a sharp odor of bat urine.
“Wistala, spit!”
“I’ve no fire yet—”
Excrement and excuses. It is melting the ice, she realized. She tried to squeeze her fire bladder behind her breastbone. Nothing.
“Spit, Wistala!”
“Can’t!”
Then she could see. A faint pink light came through the ice flow. It must be the light of the Upper World, the sun.
Two cracks ran up the ice flow, parallel and in a shape oddly reminiscent of the man with the spear’s winged helm. She pictured the helm at the base of the cracks—Something spasmed behind her breastbone, and she found she could spit. Found she could—she had no choice. Her tongue pressed itself against the roof of her mouth, and her jaw opened wide—
Out it came, until she felt as though her vertebrae from shoulder-pivot to tail-tip might be running up her neck and out her mouth. An orangish light filled the cave along with the acid smell, stronger than ever.
She collapsed, spent in an entirely new way.
Auron gathered himself, curled tight, and exploded toward the orange glow like a projectile from one of the dwarves’ war machines.
He broke through in a shower of yellow-white shards—
And disappeared straight over a ledge.
Wistala struck out from her shoulders, extended her neck even as his tail-tip whipped for a hold. She sank her teeth into it, tasted her brother’s blood in her mouth. His momentum dragged her forward, toward the ledge. Impossible distances stretched off in every direction, out, to either side.
Especially down. Her head went over.
A drop, a thousand times greater than that of the egg shelf, lay beneath. The vast distance seemed to reach up and touch her between the eyes. Her head swam. . . .
Her teeth, however, gripped all the tighter as her short legs found purchase. She arched her thick back, claws dug into ice, rock, and hardened snow, setting every haunch against her brother’s weight.
Auron found a grip, and his weight vanished. She didn’t release his tail, though, until he rolled beside her on the ledge.
The two hatchlings shivered against each other, panting in the thin air of the Upper World.
Chapter 5
Don’t think about this big, empty, howling chaos that is the Upper World, Wistala told herself for the beyond-countingeth time. Or how much you miss Mother, even her endless lessons. Or dwarves. Or eager, straining hounds. Don’t think beyond the next meal. Just find food, and then rest. Find food, and then rest.
They made it down the mountain, thanks to Auron. His light weight allowed him to test holds for her, and they’d come off the horrid, cold mountaintop and into a slightly less horrid, slightly less cold tree line, where Auron promptly scared away some feeding goats by leaping at them at first whiff. She had no luck hunting after that, and it was only after they developed a system where he’d drive game to her, or she to him, as his skin naturally changed color to match whatever he rested against, that they were able to eat.>She climbed up onto the eggshelf. Jizara was matching herself against Mother’s tail-tip, standing up when it stood, rolling when it rolled, a prrum in her throat.