Longfang (3 page)

‘I’m sorry, Shadow, but it’s no good. We’re going to have to land,’
Pell told her, his mind made up.
‘My hands are numb. I can’t hold on much
longer. Try to find the deepest snowdrift you can. Set us down and I’ll do my best to camouflage you with snow. If it keeps falling at this rate for even a short while longer, then the
weather will complete what I can’t.’

There was a pause as Shadow considered his suggestion. Pell did not know if she could see through his lie, but he was confident she would know he had her best interests at heart.

‘Very well,’
she replied reluctantly.
‘I’ll see what I can do.’

The wind flow was generally westerly, so Shadow eased across to the eastern side of the valley, where the snow was drifting deepest. Picking her spot, she landed, limping to an awkward stop as
the tricky wind conditions made it impossible to touch down gently. Pell looked down and saw that the snow was barely deeper than her talons. It was certainly nowhere near deep enough to bury
her.

‘This won’t do,’
he told her.
‘The snow looked deeper from the air.’

‘On the lee side of some of the bigger rocks there are drifts up to a couple of spans deep,’
she replied.
‘Look over here.’
The dragon stepped gingerly
across to the grey face of a huge boulder, folding her wings tight against her sides as she went. The closer she got, the deeper the snow became.
‘You had better get down and take your
saddlebags. They might be difficult to get at in a minute.’

A screech sounded high overhead. It made Pell jump. He looked up, but he could see nothing. Moving as quickly as his cold fingers would allow, he did as he was told. It was hard to unbuckle the
saddlebags, but he managed it. The first, he threw down. It landed with a
whumpf
in the soft snow. The second, which contained the orb, he held in his arms as he slid down Shadow’s
side. He landed heavily, sinking almost knee deep into the white powder. It was deep, but not heavy. The flakes falling now were large and quite wet, but the main depth already on the ground was
formed of fine particles of snow that parted easily, almost fizzing around his legs as he started to wade through it.

No sooner had he moved clear of her side than Shadow stepped forwards, pushing into the much deeper snow behind the gigantic rock and easing the bulk of her body behind it in a great
semi-circle. She curled her tail tight in to the front rock face and wrapped her head and long neck around to meet her tail. Although her purple-black colouring was not a great match with the dark
grey rock, as the sun set and the snow continued to cover her up, her body shape would become progressively harder to pick out from the air.

‘Are you comfortable there, Shadow?’
Pell asked.

‘Surprisingly comfortable,’
she replied.
‘The snow on my wound is most soothing.’

‘That’s great. Now stay still,’
he told her.
‘I’m just going to break up your outline a bit and then we’ll wait for dark. Once the sun’s gone
down, we’ll search for the others. It’ll be far safer to move under cover of darkness.’

‘If we were anywhere else in the world, I would agree with you,’
she said, her voice carrying more than a hint of doubt.
‘But the short period of darkness here will
not bring the safety it might elsewhere. My black scales will stand out against the white of the snow by day or night. Even the slightest starlight will be enough to make me conspicuous from above.
When we move, we’ll have to climb quickly if we’re to avoid Segun’s men spotting us.’

She was right, but there was no time to worry about that now. The snow was coming down so hard, it was already beginning to mottle her back, which was great, but not good enough to hide her.
Pell had to work fast to camouflage her effectively.

Placing the saddlebags by the dark rock face, he waded around to the base of Shadow’s back where he began to scoop up armload after armload of snow and throw it over her body. His
intention was to break up her shape, so that anyone looking from the air would not see the obvious outline of a dragon. Creating an uneven path of white across her back did not take long and the
vigorous exercise warmed him. As soon as he was content that he had effectively severed Shadow’s tail with a broad path of white, he moved in front of the enormous rock and repeated the
exercise at her neck.

‘What will you do when you’ve finished, Pell?’
she asked him as he threw more and more snow over her.
‘Where will you rest? There’s not much cover
here.’

‘Don’t worry about me,’
he replied.
‘I’ll dig a hole into the side of the big drift behind you and wait out the storm there. I’ve holed up in a snow
bank before. It’s actually quite comfortable once you’re in it.’

A few more minutes of frantic shovelling with his arms and Pell knew he had done all he could realistically do to camouflage his dragon. The cold would not harm her, so he began working on
digging himself a shelter. The wind was howling now and the temperature was dropping fast as the big flakes and snow pellets gave way to the much finer crystalline flakes that formed the body of
the snow around him. Driven by the wind, the fine flakes pricked his skin constantly like a million tiny needles and soon he could no longer tell the difference between hot and cold.

It took a few minutes of digging before he realised his plan held a serious flaw. The powdery snow was great for throwing over Shadow’s back, but it was so fine and loose that burrowing a
safe hole into the side of the drift was impossible. Every time he began to get any way into the bank, the roof of his hole collapsed. Within a few minutes he saw it was hopeless. Even if he did
manage to dig a hole of suitable size and depth, it was likely to cave in on him. The thought of suffocating under the snow was not a pleasant one.

‘Looks like I’m going to need a new plan,’ he muttered aloud as he abandoned his efforts at digging. He paused for a moment to think, and then he turned to address his dragon.
‘Can you ease your head away from the rock a little, Shadow? I’m going to squeeze into the gap to keep out of the wind. Sunset can’t be much more than an hour away now.
We’ll move again then.’

Shadow was happy to oblige. She shifted her head and Pell squeezed into the hollow, pulling his saddlebags in behind him. He sighed with relief as he crouched down. It felt fantastic to be out
of the wind and for a moment he just squatted there, listening to its cruel howling voice. In the comparative stillness of his shelter, he began to feel a gentle burning sensation in his ears,
cheeks and fingers, as blood began to work its way back into his extremities. Although the renewed circulation brought pain, it was nothing like the deep burning of Firestorm’s blazing breath
earlier. This heat in his flesh felt wholesome and almost pleasurable.

Fumbling through his saddlebags, Pell pulled out his spare cloak and wrapped it over his head and around his shoulders like a shawl. The material was soft and thick, bringing a further sense of
comfort and protection. Tucked up against Shadow’s cheek, he felt safe both from the elements and from the pursuing dragons. He listened long and hard, but he heard nothing apart from the
wind. If the night dragons were still above them, they were no longer calling to one another.

How long it was before he began to feel the pull of the orb, Pell did not know. The urge to get it out was subtle at first, beginning with daydreams – flashbacks of how he had attained the
orb and then images of how it felt in his hands. The images were twisted. As he daydreamed, he felt a shock of pleasure every time he pictured himself holding the orb, yet in the back of his mind
the truth haunted him like a nightmare. The aura of the orb had been colder than any snowstorm. He had not been able to dump the thing into his saddlebag fast enough. He had certainly not held it
with bare hands, as the images in his mind portrayed.

Slowly, but surely, the desire to draw out the orb grew. Teasing. Tantalising. Taunting. His natural instinct was to resist, though he had no idea why. Eventually, however, the pull became less
subtle and too strong for him to ignore. A sour taste formed in Pell’s mouth as he looked down at the saddlebag containing the orb. It was open in front of him, but he had no conscious memory
of having undone the straps. Tiny wisps of mist curled from the open top. His sight dimmed as he tried to remember the last few minutes and his heart rate accelerated as he sensed a dark cloud in
his mind. A palpable aura pulsed inside the bag as if the orb were alive.

‘Shadow!’
he gasped, straining to prevent his hands moving towards the bag of their own volition.

‘I see them,’
she replied.
‘Don’t panic. There are a lot of them, but most of the animals are completely harmless. What do you think brought them here? They are
acting very strangely. I’ve never known animals deliberately come anywhere near me before.’

‘Animals? What are you talking about?’
he asked.
‘It’s the orb, Shadow! It’s doing something to me. I
. . .
can’t
. . .
stop . .
.’

‘I feel it now. Sorry, Pell. The pain in my shoulder distracted me. What
. . .
’
Shadow’s voice was full of concern, but a sudden whooshing noise drew her
attention away.

Out of the murky snow-filled sky emerged the unmistakeable shape of a night dragon. Shadow tensed, her muscles bunching as she prepared to get up and fight. To her surprise, rather than
launching an attack, the dragon landed in silence behind the strangely organised rows of animals. Incredibly, not a single creature so much as flinched at the huge new arrival. Rather than
challenging her, the dragon meekly joined the back row of animals and waited, seemingly in a sort of trance. The dragon’s rider slid down to stand alongside her, similarly in thrall.

Muscles still tense, Shadow waited. A wary few moments passed, but still the night dragon made no move to attack. Confused, Shadow lifted her head on her long neck and turned to her rider. She
was just in time to see Pell’s hands plunge into the open saddlebag and emerge again clutching the dark orb. Shadow recoiled. The globe was pulsating with dark, repulsive energy, and there
was a strange mistiness about it that had not been apparent when it had first formed on the plinth. She could see a fine forest of thin, wraithlike tendrils forming across the surface of the orb,
spurting from its surface and writhing with a life of their own.

The look on Pell’s face matched the horror Shadow felt in his mind. She turned her head again to look at the lines of animals standing around her in a perfect semi-circle. Hares, foxes,
birds of many kinds, a solitary bear, the dragon and her rider – all stood, or sat, as silently as they had approached. In all her long years, Shadow had never seen anything like it before.
It was eerie. They looked as if they had been enchanted. They were standing absolutely still. Mesmerised. Waiting for something to happen.

‘NOOOOOOOOOO!’

Pell cried the single word aloud and in his mind with equal intensity. He felt the orb do it. And, through the link, Shadow felt it too. The misty tendrils suddenly shot out like darts from the
surface of the orb and a pulse of energy simultaneously surged through Pell’s body. Each tendril raced through the air like an arrow to attach itself to one of the waiting creatures, dragon
and rider included. To Shadow’s surprise, not one of them so much as flinched. Only she and Pell did not have tendrils attached to their chests.

For a moment Shadow felt Pell’s horrified awareness with total clarity. He was like the anchor point of a giant spider’s web, but she instinctively knew that what he was holding was
far worse. There was a second surge of energy and the tendrils abruptly sucked back as one into the orb. At that same moment, each creature the tendrils had touched – the dragon, the rider,
and every last animal arrayed before them – dropped soundlessly into the snow: dead.

Chapter Three

Kira sat up straight, craning her neck to scan the swirling white curtain of snow falling behind them. She could see no sign of the night dragon she knew was there. Suddenly
another piercing scream ripped through the air. This time it came from ahead of them. Fang stopped beating his wings and started to glide, deliberately slowing his forward speed as he considered
their options.

‘Have we flown into a trap?’
Kira asked, her heart racing.

‘The night dragons know we’re here, but I don’t think they can see us,’
Fang replied.
‘We haven’t exactly been sneaking along. I imagine they
anticipated our flying this way and were lying in wait. They will have sensed us coming, much as we sensed their approach at our last encounter, but the weather has foiled their ambush. It appears
they’re trying to spook us into doing something foolish.’

‘Just flying in this weather is foolish! What do they expect us to do that’s more idiotic than this?’