“Hgh? What is it?” Tamin woke up – an irritated Bull dragon was a hard thing to sleep through, even for Uncle.
“Ymmen, calm, please.” I reached out to my friend with both my hands and my heart. Even though it was gloomy here in the cave, there was still enough light to make out the wall of shining scales, rising and falling as he huffed his disgust towards the entrance.
His scales were warm to the touch – almost hot, and the instant that I touched them his outrage only swept through me all the stronger. Please, calm! I tried to counsel him. We can’t let them know that we’re here! I was sure that Ymmen, with all his terrifying strength and ferocity, would be able to beat one of those clacking, rickety dragons – but now was not the time. Bringing down one might mean bringing four more upon our heads.
Not that we had much choice, apparently – as I heard the unmistakable sound of a guard whistle, and it sounded nearby.
“What! They can’t have discovered us, could they?” I tensed, as behind me Tamin was already getting up.
Pheet! Pheeet! The whistles were getting closer. I froze. I didn’t know what to do – we couldn’t stay in here – but if we fought I wasn’t sure that we could win.
“I can beat anything!” Ymmen hissed. Suddenly, in my mind, I received a picture of what the black dragon sensed. No – a picture is the wrong word for it. It was a collection of senses – images, smells and memories and sounds all rolled into one – and even though I had never thought in this way before, somehow this collage made sense.
I am seeing with Ymmen’s senses, I thought in wonder. This was a totally new experience for me.
The clearest experience came together in Ymmen’s and my mind as: The cruel human, and at the same time the memory of a metal bar coming down on scale. Fankin!
And then another collection of scents and sounds of distant voices.
‘Are you sure you came this way?’ The words were heard by Ymmen’s sensitive ears, and I could hear them too. And recognize them. Overseer Maribet One-Eye.
With them, the dragon relayed, were a handful of others – all with the heavy tread, leathers, and whistles of the mine guards. They appeared to be searching the mountainside for us.
“I will burn them all!” Ymmen started to quiver in rage.
“Is there another way out of this cave?” I asked quickly.
“Why? We can fight!” Ymmen responded in my mind. Our connection was growing stronger – I didn’t know if it was Ymmen’s anger which made his thoughts so clear, or whether it was the fact that I had my hands touching his scales, but the thoughts flowed between us seamlessly.
And I knew that there was another route through the caves. I could sense it clearly in Ymmen’s mind, as I was doing to him what he could do to me – picking the thoughts and memories from them! The cave wound to a larger hollow of smoothed rock that Ymmen had made his home, but a tunnel led up and out, narrow at first so that Ymmen didn’t like squeezing through it, but it emerged on the western side of the slopes.
My way is better, I spoke into his rage, showing him in my mind my plan: Escape. Steal the scepter. Stop the mechanical dragons. And after that – scare the mine guards away and free my people. I threw that thought at him of swooping down, scattering the panicked guards left and right with his mighty wing beats.
“If we attacked now, then the mine guards will only compare you to the mechanical dragons,” I said, as sternly as I was able. “Don’t you want to be the only dragon in the sky? The largest, fiercest dragon that ever was?”
That seemed to mollify him a little, as the thought of even sharing the winds of the world with such awful creations was an insult to him.
“Everyone will see how fierce you are, the guards will run away in terror, and we will free my people,” I concluded.
“Everything is meant to be free,” Ymmen growled, but strangely it didn’t sound like an agreement. It sounded like he was trying to make a point. “Humans. The wind. The rocks. Songs. Dragons.”
But that was already what I was trying to do, wasn’t it? What do you mean? I thought at him – only to be met by scaly silence. I might have averted disaster, but I knew that time was running out. Ymmen might not hold his anger in check for long, and Inyene’s army of dragons would surely only increase. I let Ymmen lead the way as he turned with a sighing, rattling hiss of scales in the tunnel, his body rippling and flowing as it moved through the dark.
“Uncle, quickly!” I said, reaching out to grab his hand as we crept after Ymmen into the dark.
“Here.” Ymmen shared with me the scent of fresher air and the last warmth of the rocks that edged the exit to the tunnel. The sun had set, but it was still only a purpling dusk on the western side of the Masaka. But on the eastern side, under the shadow of the mountain, it would already be full night.
Ahead of us were dark shapes of the rest of the mountains, spearing into the gloaming sky, and the thin silver of the lake far below. I could still hear the whirring clatter of Inyene’s dragon, but it was distant and far, having moved southward through the mountains. I couldn’t hear the whistles of the mine guards at all.
“The staff!” I thought suddenly. There were more of those healing trees down by the lake that I had used to fix Ymmen’s wing. They had grown straight and tall, and for some reason it felt right to make the mage’s staff out of a tree that had brought life – to combat the scepter that brought death.
“Stand,” Ymmen said in my mind, and I knew that he was including both of us as I directed Tamin to stand at my side, arms up in case he didn’t want to get them clamped to his torso and unable to move. Ymmen ducked and, with each claw folding itself around us, held us to his chest as he jumped into the night airs.
“Oh!” Tamin made an astonished gasp as we swooped low over the hillside towards the lake. I looked over to my god-uncle to see that, although his eyes were wide with the shock of the experience, he was also grinning broadly and open-mouthed.
“It’s… amazing!” he shouted in awe.
“Now you understand!!” I called back as Ymmen alighted by turning his wings and pulling his back feet forward to grasp the rocks below him, right in front of a stand of the trees.
As soon as Ymmen had set us down, I was already racing to one of the smaller ones, setting a hand on its silvery-white bark for a moment before pulling my flint blade from my wrap of a belt. It was tough work, but Uncle and I chopped away at the trunk, before pruning the staff of its smaller branches. To finish, I left a disjointed Y-shape near the top. It was taller than I was, and although I had no idea how a mage went about using a staff, I wanted it to at least be a serviceable walking stick if nothing else!
“Good.” Tamin tested the staff first, leaning against it and pulling on it to feel its flexible strength. Thus pleased, he handed it back and I slid the staff through the wrap of cloth and old rope serving as my belt, and we held up our arms to return to the skies.
“Now, we get this to Montfre and stop Inyene’s madness!” I said.
Chapter 18
The Window
Montfre’s tower was burning with light when we approached it on the wings of night. But the place did not appear homey at all, mainly due to the mechanical dragon that sat stilled on its roof.