I’m sorry, but—I started to think towards him, turning to see how he lumbered to a stop before nonchalantly turning to preen at his shoulder scales. There was now an ugly, glossier patch of mangled and half-melted scales that had cracked into new, strange shapes from where one of Inyene’s curse-bolts had hit him.
“Don’t say sorry,” Ymmen gruffed at me, batting my thoughts back towards me with an almost angry shove of hot dragon-mind against mine. It felt like being slapped, and it stung. “Just don’t do it. The Stone Crown is a curse, and although our hearts are tied as one now, Nari – that crown is not a thing that I would share my heart with, too…”
He was rebuking me of course, and I could feel the hot anger running underneath his thoughts just before he closed his mind to me, retreating behind his wall of psychic soot and smoke. I felt even worse right then, because our friendship hung in the balance.
What am I going to do? I thought in despair. We were still in the same position as before. How were we to go on, without supplies or soldiers or support? How could we defeat Inyene or outrun the Lady Red’s ultimatum?
“My sister wasn’t killed during the battle, and neither was that thing she rode,” Abioye said, unconsciously voicing my own very real fears as well. “Her forces may be diminished – but that does not mean that she is vanquished at all. At least half of her mechanical dragons were ordered to retreat at the end of her battle, and I have no idea if the numbers we faced where all that she had managed to construct or just a fraction…”
“She’s still intent on seizing the Three Kingdoms,” I said. And now that she has broken my warband – there was absolutely nothing holding her back from coming for the Stone Crown on my head as well, I knew.
“But how are we to ever win against her without an army? Without any allies?” I said. And without using the Stone Crown, too? I added silently. It seemed like an impossible task all of a sudden for only four small humans and one dragon – as mighty and as strong as Ymmen was.
“Maybe we do have one ally,” Abioye said, his voice low and hesitant as he looked down the Masaka Pass to the west.
“You mean Torvald?” I said warily.
“Aye, I do,” Abioye nodded.
The ancient citadel of the Dragon Riders had been Inyene’s original target – but would they even bother to help us or hear our stories? Torvald has never been an outright enemy of the Plains, I argued with myself, but that didn’t necessarily make them a friend of the Daza, either. Had they ever rushed to our aid when we needed it? Why hadn’t they sought to stop Inyene years ago, when she had conducted her kidnapping raids of my people – all under the name of ‘debt’!?
“Their king might not know or hear about what we did here today,” Abioye continued, and I could see his mind whirring and working behind his eyes as he talked low and intently. “But what we did was buy him and his kingdom some more time. A few days at the least, maybe months at the most while Inyene regathers and rebuilds her forces…”
I nodded. That made sense. Maybe, once we had explained ourselves to Torvald – then they would feel obliged to help us, and the Daza?
“And in Torvald, too, will be all of the answers that we could need for…” Montfre nodded towards me and my stone-laden forehead.
“Yes,” I said, feeling my jaw tighten as I, too, turned to look westwards along the Masaka Pass to that distant haze of dirt-smoke and air, where the future became impossible to read. Torvald was, as far as I knew, the most learned place in the known world. And it was the home of the Dragon Riders and the Dragon Mages and every bit of dragon-lore that I had ever heard. It had been the home of the old High Queen Delia herself, after all, wasn’t it?
I felt a sudden pulse of – something – from the Stone Crown itself, like a painful sensation of pressure against the back of my eyes, but also a sort of yearning from the previously stolid ornament.
I didn’t know what it meant, but for one insane moment, I kind of believed that the Stone Crown wanted to go to Torvald, like it was supposed to go back to the city of its creation…
And, to be honest, I had no idea if that thought filled me with relief or dread.
Chapter 11
The Dragon Riders of Torvald
Everyone but me knew the way to the city of the fabled Dragon Riders of Torvald, of course. Abioye had spent a large chunk of his teen life there, Tamin had visited often, learning from the clerks and justices of the Law Halls, and Montfre had grown up there. But it was on Ymmen whom I relied upon for directions and information as he flew all four of us westwards through the Masaka Pass.
“The sacred mountain is old. Older than humans know,” Ymmen informed as we sat, single file along his broad back. I was, of course at the front, with Tamin sitting behind me after Ymmen’s first spine-spike, and then Montfre after the next, and Abioye after that. Even though the last two were the most familiar with seeing the occasional dragon rider in the milder air of the Middle Kingdom, I also found it slightly ridiculous that they appeared the most nervous about actually riding one!
“Hmph…” A low, awkward huff against my mind from Ymmen. I could feel his slight reticence at carrying so many – even though there was ample enough room.
“Not weight of little human bodies…” Ymmen said a little huffily. “Weight of human minds…”
Oh, Ymmen, I thought. He had spent years – perhaps generations – living as a wild dragon, hadn’t he? I was mortified that I was asking too much of this proud beast…
“Never.” Ymmen read my thoughts easily. “There is work to be done!” He said the last with some bravado, and even though I could sense a tiny flicker of hesitation to his thoughts, that courage only made me love him the more.
“No harnesses…” Abioye had grumbled as he had scrambled into last place, hugging the bone spike in front of him for all of his life. It was probably because he was used to the secure wooden bench seats that were installed in the mechanical dragons, along with belts and harnesses attaching him to them.
That was why, after much muttering and protestation, Ymmen had relented and allowed us to create a simple system of straps that looped around the bone spikes that erupted from his spine behind each rider, and around their waist. I was quietly proud of the fact that Tamin had at first refused such an imposition, for he had even more experience as me with riding saddleless, but, after Abioye’s prolonged and detailed explanation of how the Dragon Riders used harness to perform the most incredible aerial feats and not lose their riders, we had – all five of us – agreed that these makeshift ‘belts’ should be used for all of us – even me!
“We don’t want to appear like we don’t know what we’re doing, right?” Abioye said as a halfhearted joke that showed his nervousness at returning to the city his sister had scrambled and clambered up through, leaving a string of suspiciously dead husbands behind her.
“I don’t know about you, but I am happy in my ignorance,” Tamin said, pulling at the strap which held him to the bone spike a little and frowning.
But, eventually, Ymmen had started at a gentle run, then a gallop, and finally had snapped his wings and flung himself upwards into the air with all of his might. I was used to this, and – even despite the dire circumstances of our journey – I felt that same wild joy when we took to the air. Every time, it was like feeling free and confident and strong all over again; that same character of feeling that I used to get when the Soussa winds of the Plains would catch me as a child, bring with them the sense of opportunity, and all of my tomorrows stretching out for eternity in front of me, just waiting to be tasted.