The Dragonet Prophecy (16 page)

As he watched, dragons started filing into the seats below. Nearly all of them were SkyWings, but he spotted the pale yellow and white of SandWings here and there as well. There were even one or two MudWings. His heart jumped. His own kind! Did they know he was up here? Would they demand his release if they found out, even though he was supposedly in the Talons of Peace?

So MudWings and SkyWings were allies on one side of the war. Clay had never been able to remember that before, but he was pretty sure he would now.
If only Starflight had thought of chaining me to a tower above gladiator fights. I might have been an excellent history student then.

He didn’t know how long it took for the stands to fill, but the sun was blazing directly overhead when two of the guards let out a trumpeting roar. All the other dragons snapped to attention. Across the stadium, heads bent, wings tipped, talons were crossed, and silence fell as everyone waited.

Queen Scarlet stepped out onto the large balcony and spread her wings, catching the sunlight in the reflection of her orange scales. The fire-breathing hiss of all the gathered dragons greeted her. Clay knew this sound only as a warning that Kestrel was about to spout flames at him. It took him a moment to realize that the SkyWing dragons were hissing with respect.

He squinted at the dragons around the queen. Several large SkyWing guards took up positions along the balcony, and two of them moved to roll something forward into the sunlight. It looked like a tree with no leaves, a sinuous curving shape with four branches, carved from a single spear of pale gray marble. Looped over the branches, with her tail wound around the trunk, was a dragon the color of deep red rose petals. But as the sunlight hit her, new colors exploded through her scales — constellations of gold sparks, galaxies of swirling violet, shifting pale blue nebulas.

Clay inhaled sharply, and at the same moment he heard gasps and murmurs flutter through the crowd below.

It was Glory, and she was even more dazzling in the sunshine than he’d expected.

A delicate silver chain leashed her to the tree sculpture. It looked flimsy and easy to break, but Glory didn’t seem interested in escaping. She stretched her long neck up toward the sun, ignoring the audience, and then coiled herself over the branches again and closed her eyes.

The guards positioned Glory’s tree in one corner of the balcony, and the queen stepped forward.

“Well?” she said in a sly, smiling voice that carried across the arena and up to the prisoners. “What do you think of my new art?”

Art!
Clay thought furiously.
As if Glory’s nothing more than a tapestry to hang on the wall, not a dragon with feelings and ideas and a destiny and friends who care about her.

But why wasn’t Glory fighting it?

And where was Sunny?

Dragons in the lower seats began to applaud, and soon the whole stadium thundered with the beating of wings and talons. Queen Scarlet settled herself on a large flat boulder, looking pleased, and flicked her tail for silence.

“Bring in the combatants,” she called.

Peril swept in from the tunnel, waving to the crowd. Clay noticed that the applause was muted, as if most of the dragons weren’t really sure they wanted to cheer for her.

Meanwhile three of the SkyWing guards flew up to the prisoner on Clay’s right. One of them seized the SandWing’s venomous tail and held it out of the way. The SandWing fought, howling angry curses, as the other two unclipped his wires and hooked them to a ring in the center of the ledge.

Clay thought for a moment that the prisoner was going to hurl himself off the edge, despite the bands that were still on his wings. But the guards gripped him tightly and swooped him down to the sands below. They dropped him in a heap in the middle of the arena.

Peril turned to look at him, her eyes glinting.

Clay realized with a sickening lurch in his stomach that he was about to watch a dragon die.

Clay didn’t want to watch. But he knew that if he might have to fight Peril one day, he should study her technique. He glanced up at the distant figures of Tsunami and Starflight. It looked like they were watching intently, too, along with most of the prisoners above the arena.

One of the SkyWing guards stood in the center of the arena and clapped his wings thunderously until the audience was quiet. He bowed to the queen and announced, “After four wins, Horizon the SandWing — formerly, and unwisely, a soldier in Blaze’s army — has been challenged to a match with the Queen’s Champion, Peril. Claws up, fire ready! Fight!”

He sprang out of the arena, leaving Peril and the SandWing facing each other. Horizon shrank back against the far wall, hissing.

Peril stalked slowly toward him, tilting her copper wings to reflect the sunlight. Her long tail snaked across the sand. It still looked like smoke was rising from her scales.

Horizon crouched, then suddenly leaped over Peril’s head and fled to the other side of the arena. He didn’t try to claw her or strike her on the way past; he didn’t even lash out with his poisonous tail. He just ran away.

Why is he so afraid of her?
Clay wondered uneasily.

Peril turned in an unhurried way and smiled at Horizon. His black eyes darted left and right, searching for an escape. Suddenly he made a dash for the tunnel.

All at once Peril was in his way, lashing her claws across his chest. It didn’t look like more than a scratch from what Clay could see, but Horizon screamed in agony and fell back, scrabbling across the sand.

Peril followed, slashing another scratch along his side. Horizon screamed again. His banded wings flapped desperately, as if he were still trying to fly. Calmly, almost gently, Peril reached out and touched one of his wings, pinning it to his body.

Horizon’s screams intensified into one long ear-shattering wail.

Clay couldn’t understand it. She was only touching him — nothing more.

Then Peril let go, and as she stepped back, Clay saw the scorched talon print she left behind on Horizon’s scales. It looked as if she had branded him, burning his skin without ever breathing fire. Clay squinted and realized there was smoke rising from Horizon’s scratches. Did Peril have fire in her claws? How was that possible?

He looked across at Starflight’s slumped form, wishing that the NightWing was close enough to explain everything to him.

Suddenly Horizon attacked. He flung himself at Peril, slashing at her eyes and jabbing his tail at her heart.

Peril whirled, avoiding his claws, and knocked him to the sand. His barbed tail bounced off her scales with a spark like miniature lightning, and then burst into flames. Fire engulfed the poisoned tip, and Horizon howled in pain. Clay had never seen anything like it. He’d never heard of dragons setting other dragons on fire just by touching them.

Horizon beat his tail against the sand, trying to put the fire out, as Peril feinted around him. She darted in to give him another scratch, but before she could dart away again, Horizon turned and grabbed her forearms in his talons. He threw his wings around her and buried his face in her shoulder with a high-pitched keening sound.

Peril froze. Smoke billowed off the two dragons and black marks crawled along Horizon’s wings until they started disintegrating into ash. He crumpled slowly to the ground, and Peril crouched with him, holding him up with her wings.

A violent shudder went through the SandWing’s whole body. He let go of Peril and flopped slowly onto his side on the sand. Disfiguring burns had melted his facial features, and his wings were charred into black strands between large holes. His talons had scorch marks in the center of their palms.

Clay had a sudden, quick flash of memory. Kestrel had the same scorch marks on her talons. Had she fought with Peril, back when Kestrel lived in the SkyWing kingdom? How had she survived?

Peril stood up, looking down at the dead SandWing. A disappointed murmur was starting to spread around the stadium. Her copper wings wavered, and she turned to glance up at Queen Scarlet.

The queen sighed and stood up. “Well, that was boring,” she said. She raised her voice to address all the prisoners. “I hope some of you up there are braver than this pathetic creature.”

Clay had never felt less brave. Peril was clearly a whole new category of monster. If Horizon couldn’t beat her, perhaps forcing a quick death — even a horrible one — was still a better choice than being killed slowly for the queen’s entertainment.

“Don’t worry,” the queen said to the crowd, shaking out her wings. “We have a special treat tomorrow. Something we’ve never seen before! Hopefully this time someone will at least
try
to amuse me, unlike
some
dragons.” Queen Scarlet gave Horizon’s body a stern glare, turning her frown on Peril as well. Peril bowed her head and stared at the sand.

“Dismissed,” said the queen with a wave of one talon. She turned and swept away. Clay leaned out as far as he dared, watching Glory sleep while the soldiers rolled her back into the tunnels.

Maybe she was drugged. Maybe the queen had threatened her somehow. Maybe she was sick, or there was something else terribly wrong.

He didn’t know who to worry about more — Glory, Sunny who was still missing, or Starflight, who might be thrown into battle tomorrow. Was that what the queen meant by “something we’ve never seen before”?

Starflight was good at maps and dates and facts and tests, but his claw-to-claw combat skills were tragic.

Clay wasn’t at all sure that Starflight could survive the arena.

As the sun began to sink below the mountains, Clay dozed off, still worrying about his friends.

He woke up to the smell of burnt prey and the growling of his stomach. Two of the moons were high overhead, while the third was a dim ivory blur glowing behind a distant peak. His eyes were finally starting to adjust to the bigness of everything. This view was just about the opposite of what he’d grown up with under the mountain.

Clay twisted his head toward the smell of prey behind him and nearly toppled off the ledge in surprise.

Peril was perched on the far side of his stone platform with her tail tucked around her legs and her wings folded in, as if she were trying to make herself as small as possible. Even so, there was only about the length of a dragon tail between them, and Clay could clearly feel the burning heat coming off her scales. It wasn’t a warm, basking heat like Sunny and Dune had. It felt like standing too close to an erupting volcano.

“Oh, good, finally,” she said. She nodded at a lump of meat on the rock between them. “I brought you something different. Well, I made the guard let me bring it. I hope you don’t mind that it’s a little crispy.” She spread her front talons in an oddly hopeless gesture.

Clay peered at the prey, which smelled like smoky duck. He wanted it, but he was afraid of getting any closer to Peril. What if she burned him, even by accident?

“I’ll be careful,” she said, guessing his thoughts. “I’ll stay really still, I promise.” She glanced around at the slumbering prisoners. “I just thought it might be less obvious if I sat here instead of flying around you.”

She didn’t sound like a monster. Clay couldn’t put this quiet dragon together with the brutal killer he’d seen earlier that day.

He scraped the duck toward him, then devoured it in two bites. It tasted like ash and crunched strangely between his teeth.

“Oh dear,” Peril said. “That was fast. Do you want another one?”

“I’m all right,” Clay said.

She scraped one claw across the rocks. “Do you want me to go away?”

“No,” he said, and she looked up, surprised. “Stay and talk to me,” he offered.

“Aren’t you afraid of me? Now that you’ve seen what I can do?”

“Of course I am,” he said honestly. “But you’re still better company than the pigeons. All they want to talk about is nest design and who to poop on.”

Peril barked a laugh. She seemed much more subdued than she had been when they first met. He studied her face in the moonlight. “Are — are
you
all right?” he asked.

Peril blinked several times fast. Instead of answering, she said, “That was weird today, wasn’t it?”