The Dragonet Prophecy (20 page)

“That’s Sunny,” Clay said, exhaling with relief. “What do you want me to do?”

“She told me I wasn’t allowed to watch!” Peril burst out. “I’m the only dragon in the whole Sky Kingdom who’s supposed to stay away from the arena tomorrow. It’s not fair!”

“Why?” Clay asked, his stomach sinking. What new horrible battle did Queen Scarlet have planned? “What’s happening?”

“I don’t even know!” Peril flared. “It’s some kind of trial! Doesn’t that sound boring? Why would she keep me away from that? I wouldn’t have cared until she told me not to go. Listening to dragons talk about laws is about as exciting as picking sheep fluff out of your teeth. Plus it always ends the same way anyhow. Queen Scarlet just likes the drama of trials and formal executions. Nobody’s ever innocent.”

“Kestrel,” Clay said. “It must be Kestrel’s trial. Queen Scarlet said something about that.”

“Well, whoever she is, I want to watch,” Peril said stubbornly. “So I thought maybe if I hid up here, behind you . . .”

Clay glanced around. The IceWing to his left was asleep. The platform to his right was still empty. If he stood at the edge of his prison and spread his wings, and Peril crouched down, he might be able to shield her from the eyes of the queen.

He tried opening his wings again and winced. The clamp bent the outside of his wing in, as if it were rolled under and pinned up. But he still should have been able to open most of his wing, even if he couldn’t fly with it.

“I’m too sore,” he said to Peril. “I mean, I’ll try. But I can’t really open my wings right now, so I don’t know if I can hide you.”

Peril frowned. “Let me see,” she said, pointing to his back imperiously.

He hunched around until his back was toward her. She drew in a sharp breath.

“That sounds bad,” he said, trying to twist his neck around to see. “It can’t be that bad. Kestrel believes that pain teaches you stuff, so trust me, I’ve been clawed before.”

“Not by an IceWing, I bet,” she said. “They have ridged claws so they can grip the ice as they walk. It’s like getting clawed four times with each claw instead of once. Can you picture that?”

“Um, sort of,” Clay said. “It feels better with you near it.”

“It does?”

“Like, the heat, I mean,” he said, embarrassed, although he wasn’t sure why. “It’s better than the wind.”

“I don’t know how to fix it,” she said, sounding frustrated and helpless. He felt her heat draw a little closer. “I guess I could stand here, if that helps.”

Clay remembered the poison cave under the mountain and the stinging pain under his scales. He wondered if the same treatment would work here. “There is one thing,” he said hesitantly. “If it’s not asking too much — I think putting mud on the scratches might help.”

“Oh my gosh, of course,” she cried. “That’s it! I can get you mud! Wait here.” She sprang off the tower and flew away.

“Wait here,” Clay echoed to empty space. “Because I was going to go where? For a walk?”

He pulled his wings in and tried to huddle against the wind, but it howled at him from every direction, and the tower was even colder now that Peril was gone. The pain felt worse and worse as the moments ticked by and the moons rose higher in the sky. He was shivering badly by the time he saw her spiraling up toward him.

Between her front talons, she was carrying a large rock cauldron, filled with thick brown mud. Clay twisted around to watch her as she landed behind him.

“Where’d you get that?” he asked.

Peril nodded at one of the distant walls of the queen’s palace. Clay squinted and saw the reflected glint of moonlight off a cascading waterfall.

“The Diamond Spray River starts at the bottom of that wall,” Peril said. “It leads all the way to the sea. At least, that’s what I hear. I’ve never left the Sky Kingdom.” She stuck one of her claws into the cauldron. Clay watched curiously as the mud began bubbling and boiling.

“Why not?” he asked. “You must be one of the most powerful dragons here. Why don’t you just come and go as you please?”

Peril looked a little shocked. “I would never disobey Her Majesty! That’s how my mother got killed.” A theory suddenly popped into Clay’s head, but before he could explore it, Peril kept talking. “Besides, I have to eat the black rocks every day, or I’ll die. The queen makes sure there are always enough for me.”

“Black rocks?” Clay asked, puzzled.

“It’s part of the curse of having too much fire,” Peril said with a shrug. “I’m lucky the queen takes so much care to keep me alive.”

“Have you ever tried not eating them?” Clay asked.

“Once, when I was a lot younger,” Peril said, shifting her talons awkwardly. “I got mad at Her Majesty because she wouldn’t tell me anything about my mother. I wanted to run away. So I stopped eating the rocks to see what would happen, and I got really sick. Like, almost dying sick.”

“Oh,” Clay said. Her story had a feel of wrongness to it, like scales that didn’t overlap properly. It seemed pretty convenient that the queen just happened to have a way to control the most dangerous dragon in her kingdom. But he was hardly an expert on SkyWings with weird, deadly conditions.

“Is that also why you don’t challenge her for the throne?” Clay asked. “Because I’m betting you could beat her in a fight.”

Peril gave an outraged squawk and nearly hit him with her tail. “I don’t want to be queen! What an awful thought! Stop saying treasonous things and turn around.”

Clay presented his back to her, opening his wings as wide as he could. Some part of him expected her to plaster the hot mud on with her talons. But he realized she couldn’t do that without burning him just before Peril flung the entire contents of the cauldron over his scales.

“Yaa —” Clay clamped his teeth down hard, forcing himself not to yell. The mud was as hot as Kestrel’s fire-breath, and at first he felt like all his scales were being burned off.

Then the shock passed, and a moment later the heat became bearable. Clay felt the mud soaking into his injuries, instantly soothing the pain. If only he’d had something like this after all his training sessions with Kestrel!

“Much better,” Peril said with satisfaction.

Clay rolled his shoulders. His muscles already felt looser and stronger. “Wow. Does that work for all MudWings?”

“Of course,” she said. “How could you not know that?”

“What about other dragons?” Clay asked, turning around to face her. He wondered if this was a trick he could use to heal his friends, if they were ever together and free again.

“I don’t think so,” she said. “I’m not sure anyone’s tried. Because that would be weird. Like, what kind of SkyWing would let you put mud on her scales? Yuck.”

“It’s the greatest feeling in the world,” Clay said. “Well, maybe after flying. And eating. Gosh, I’m hungry.”

“I’ll just fetch and carry for you all night, shall I?” Peril said.

“Oh, no, you don’t have to —” But she was already gone.

Clay sat down and tucked his tail around his talons, thinking.

He had a pretty good idea why Peril wasn’t supposed to watch the trial tomorrow. Queen Scarlet had said something about Kestrel disobeying her. Plus there were those burn scars on Kestrel’s talons.

And it wasn’t too hard to imagine Kestrel trying to kill her own dragonet. Especially once she figured out there was something wrong with her.

Peril thought her mother was dead. How would she react when she found out it was Kestrel — and she was still alive?

Peril brought him three rabbits and two more cauldrons of mud during the night. She stayed at the edge of the rock platform, but the heat from her scales helped keep the mud warm on Clay’s back.

It also kept the nightmares away. While he was talking to her, the weight of Clay’s guilt felt lighter. Which was strange, he knew: Peril was responsible for a lot more death than he was. But it didn’t bother her. He wished he could be so untroubled. If he had to fight in the arena again, perhaps he could take monster lessons from her.

“Won’t someone be looking for you?” he asked as the sun started rising over the distant sea.

She shook her head. “I’m supposed to be down in the caves looking for black rocks all day,” she said. “As long as I stay up here, behind you, hopefully no one will notice me.”

“Not even the guards?”

“They won’t feed the prisoners until midday,” she said. “The trial is set for dawn. Look, see?” She edged a bit closer to him, peeking around his wing.

Clay looked down and saw dragons filing into the arena seats. They seemed quieter, more subdued than they were for the fights. SkyWing soldiers dragged two large boulders out onto the sand. One of them twisted three large iron rings into the ground in a triangle, then attached thick chains to them.

“Quick, spread your wings,” Peril hissed. “Here she comes.”

Clay flapped his wings open as Queen Scarlet slithered onto her balcony. He noticed she had traded her gold chain mail for a vest with small black chain links instead, studded with diamonds. She didn’t even glance up at the prisoners, although Peril stayed carefully huddled behind Clay’s back. Glory was not brought in — no art required at a trial, Clay guessed.

Finally Kestrel was hauled into the ring, hissing and spitting at the guards around her. A chain looped around her snout kept her from breathing fire at them. More heavy chains weighed down her talons and tail so she couldn’t lash out.

“It’s weird,” Clay whispered to Peril. “I’ve always hated Kestrel, but it still makes me mad to see her like that.”

“How do you know her?” Peril asked.

“She’s one of the three dragons who raised us, under the mountain,” Clay explained. “They didn’t like us much, but they were supposed to keep us alive until the Talons of Peace came back to get us for the prophecy.” He stopped, swallowing, as he thought of Dune. And Webs — had he survived the underground river?

“At least you had someone. I guess even terrible parents are better than no parents,” Peril said. Clay glanced down at Queen Scarlet and wondered if that was true. She’d been the closest thing to a mother that Peril ever had. But what kind of mother made her daughter kill dragons in horrible ways every day?

Maybe Peril would have been better off with no one. Dune and Webs weren’t all bad, but Clay wasn’t sure he’d have chosen a life with Kestrel over growing up alone.

Then again, if he was right, Kestrel was Peril’s real mother. Would Kestrel have been better for her than Queen Scarlet? Not if she was prepared to throw her off the mountain. At least the queen had kept Peril alive.

He hoped that watching this trial wouldn’t upset Peril. He wondered if he should warn her about Kestrel being her mother. But what if he was wrong?

“I have real parents, though,” he said instead. “Somewhere in the Mud Kingdom, there’s a pair of dragons who can’t wait to get me back. I’m going to find them one day.”

He couldn’t see Peril’s face, but her silence said a lot. She didn’t think he was going to survive this place. Or maybe she thought that if he did, it would be at the expense of her own life.

Something he didn’t want to think about.

The SkyWing who did all the arena introductions climbed onto one of the two boulders and spread his blood-red wings.

“That’s Vermilion,” Peril whispered. “Her Majesty’s oldest son. He always argues for the prosecution.”

“Why does Scarlet bother with a trial at all?” Clay asked.

“Only SkyWings get trials,” Peril said. “Her Majesty likes watching the performance of it — and she thinks it makes her seem like a just and fair ruler.”

Clay withheld his snort of disbelief.

The crowd’s murmuring died down as another SkyWing climbed onto the other boulder. His scales were a more washed-out red, as if they’d been scrubbed with sandstone for a long time. He moved slowly, dragging his tail behind him like a carcass.

“And that’s Osprey,” Peril pointed out. “He argues for the defense. Not very well, or he’d lose his head. He’s really old and almost blind. He’s nice to me, though, because I’ll listen to his stories of the old days. He told me he used to have tons of treasure, but a scavenger came to steal it and managed to paralyze his tail before Osprey ate him. So now he can’t fly, and he gave all his treasure to Her Majesty so she’d let him live here.”

“Tough bargain,” Clay said. He felt a wave of heat as Peril rustled indignantly.

“Back in the way-old days before the Scorching,” she lectured, “before we had queens and armies, he would have just
died
. Scavengers killed a
lot
more dragons back then. But now, because of our queens, we rule the whole world, and dragons have help when they need it.”

“You sound like Starflight,” Clay said. “Will there be a test at the end of this lecture?”

“He wouldn’t talk to me, by the way,” she said. “Not even when I asked him to tell me the history of the Scorching, like you suggested. He just buried his nose under his wings and ignored me.”

“Wow,” Clay said, looking across at the slumped black dragon. “He must be really depressed.”

Peril was quiet again. Clay wished he could call across to Starflight and tell him they’d find a way out of this. If he really yelled, Tsunami might be close enough to hear him, but he didn’t think Starflight would. And besides, hollering escape plans across the arena probably wasn’t the best idea.