The Dragons of Noor (12 page)

Kanoae had warned them about Whirl Storms.

To avoid the storm ahead, the male dragons quickly veered to the right, where stray purple clouds still drifted slowly west. The female followed, driving hard against the wind. The giant funnel tilted, changed directions,
and raced closer. The sky filled with a deafening roar. Trembling, Thriss burrowed her snout under Hanna’s arm. The dragons turned again, pumping wildly in the opposite direction. Hanna gripped the talons and pressed her face between her fists, a new terror seizing her as she saw the storm’s enormous power. It would swallow every cloud in the sky, suck the dragons in, too, and swallow them all.

“Hurry,” she screamed. But the storm had already corralled them into the red clouds, where the fierce winds whirled them around and around. It felt as if the gale would rip off Hanna’s skin, strip the flesh from her bones. Only the dragon’s chest, held out like a great golden shield, kept her and Taunier from being torn apart.

The male dragons just ahead were still trying to fly against the Whirl Storm, but the bone-breaking, skin-ripping wind was nearly tearing them apart, too. Strong as they were, the roaring wind was stronger. At last the males gave up and folded their wings against their sides.

The Whirl Storm spun them all across the sea toward a green, mountainous land. The sun showed but half her face at the far eastern horizon, as if she were hiding
behind the blue-green ocean, waiting for the trouble to pass before she dared bring on the day.

Gripping the female’s broken talon, Hanna screamed into the wind. Far below, giant trees were sucked up, roots and all, as the storm attacked the coast. The dragons swirled with the trees and bushes, the storm stealing them, roots and all, from the face of the land. A parade of strange wildlife flew past: a spinning mountain lion, a deer and two fauns, a badger. More trees. Bushes. A tent. A man.

eOwey! A man. The man sped away and was gone.

In the screams of the storm, Hanna thought she heard her own death-song. She sang a raw-throated song against it:

Hanna sang the words as she never had before, for herself, for Taunier, for Thriss, for the spinning man,
and, stranger still, for the taberrells. The swirling clouds changed from red to purple-white. The sun rose far across the sea. Hanna glimpsed the yellow orb through the clouds as the storm sucked them toward the ground.

A shredded tent slapped up against the dragon’s side, slid down her legs, and wrapped about her claws. Hanna couldn’t see ahead. She grabbed the fluttering edges and tore it away bit by bit until the wind took it again.

A hawk tumbled helplessly through the air, followed by a canoe.

“Taunier!” she screamed. “Look!”

He couldn’t hear her above the howling wind, but he must have seen it, too.

The storm was blowing them straight into the mountainside.

A
s the mountain loomed closer, the screaming wind sucked the dragons down and smashed them into the sea. Hanna held Thriss tight in the swirling salt water. A moment later a wave pitched the drenched dragons onto shore. They flew into a cave at the base of the cliff before the storm wheeled back, sucking driftwood trunks off the beach and up into the sky.

“You all right?” Taunier called, coughing up seawater. Hanna checked Thriss and saw with great relief that her pip had made it through. “We’re okay,” she shouted back.

Lifting higher in the half dark, the she-dragon landed on a flat stone far above the cavern floor and opened her
right claw. Hanna fell exhausted onto the cold stone and heaved a ragged breath. Thriss wriggled out of her hand, hissed, and nipped her fingertip.

“Ouch.” Hanna sucked her sore finger. “Plunging into the sea wasn’t my idea.”

On her knees, she glanced down, and the ravine below made her reel dizzily. She crawled back and looked over her shoulder at Taunier. Why was he still talon-bound? The female dragon shook out her wet wings. The males on either side did the same. The shaking caused a small rainstorm that ceased only when they folded their wings again. Hanna braced herself and came to a stand.

Light leaked in from the entrance far below. The dark pool at the base of the chasm gleamed. As Hanna’s eyes adjusted to the gloom, she saw with dread that they were not alone. On the far side of the deep crevasse a crowd of twenty or more dragons were gathered on a second stone terrace. They began to make angry, rumbling sounds.

The largest male, with a gash on his flank, spoke up. “Do they send children now to come against us on Jarrosh?”

Jarrosh. She’d made it to the east at last. In a dragon’s claw, but she’d made it. The passage to eastern Oth would
be here somewhere, and Tymm was on the other side. She closed her eyes a moment, thinking of him, hoping that he was all right, that she could reach him in time. The thought made her body ache. How could she cross over and find him when she and Taunier were captives?

“Do you think I would bring these two here without reason, Kaleet?” The she-dragon’s voice was rough and clattering with threat. “I am your queen, your Damusaun. I say the Kanameer, the one who serves the Old Magic, is here. She comes to dream for us, and she has brought the Fire Herd.”

Hanna trembled. Kanameer—one who serves the Old Magic? They’d chanted the word again and again before they stole her from the ship. Enoch had mentioned that name when he gave her the glass vial full of tears. “The Kanameer will know what to do with them,” he’d said. But the dragons had mistaken her for someone else.

The scarred male dragon, Kaleet, raised his head. The bright red patch on his neck puffed out. “Damusaun, Dragon Queen,” he said, bowing his head to the she-dragon, “we cannot help but see these two you have brought us are manlings.” He voiced “manling” as if it were a curse. The dragons to his left and right hissed.

The Damusaun flicked Hanna’s back with her talon. Hanna flinched.

“Manlings are deceitful,” the Dragon Queen agreed. “But the Mishtar was human like these two. Time is running out. We will not ignore our prophecies.”

Hanna wondered what she meant by “time running out,” and, even more startling, “our prophecies.” She tried to catch Taunier’s eye, but he was staring fixedly at the huge taberrells across the crevasse.

A smaller golden terrow stepped forward. “She’s weak-bodied as a grass blade.”

Dry laughter followed. Hanna squared her shoulders. She might be small for fifteen, but she was strong. Hadn’t she worked on her da’s land? Helped at all hours of the night in lambing season? Cleaned the animal stalls? Hauled well water? But that would be nothing to these dragons. Sweat poured down her neck.
Thriss. Courage
.

“This cannot be the Kanameer,” a male hatchling added. “It is just a female.”

The she-dragon’s chest swelled. “A female?” she growled. “Where does it say the Kanameer must be a male, hatchling?” Across the gulf, the hatchling cowered back against the cave wall.

“Damusaun,” said the one-eyed dragon on Taunier’s right, “show them how the other manling wields fire.”

Voices chorused from across the rift, singing a third verse to their dragon song.

Hanna trembled as the queen released Taunier and nudged him forward with the jagged end of her broken claw.

“Show them,” she said.

“And what if I refuse?” It was the smallest of whispers, meant only for Hanna, but dragons have sharp ears.

The Damusaun answered with a roar, ringing them in fire. Screaming, Hanna grabbed Taunier. Thriss raced up her leg and hid under her cloak as the flames closed in. The fire pushed them closer to the edge. It was jump or burn.

Taunier stood rigid as a pillar until Hanna pleaded, “Do it!”

“Then let go of me!” he shouted.

Without realizing it, Hanna had pinned his arms to his sides. She stepped back a pace as the terrible encroaching heat enveloped her. She tried to breathe but only managed to suck in more heat. Taunier lifted his hand and swung it down, slicing the fire like a blade. His body shook with concentration as he moved his right arm, sweeping the flames closest to Hanna off the cliff. Hanna felt instant relief. He put out his left arm, herding the rest of the fire off the cliff, the flames sputtering out as they fell.

The dragons across the gap let out a communal sigh. The challenging male huffed out smoke, yet he bowed his head in deference to the she-dragon. “Still, oh Damusaun, how can we be sure this other one is the Kanameer?”

The Damusaun’s talons extended like cat’s claws. “I am your queen. I say she is the one. Test her and see.”

Across the crevasse, a few dragons thwacked their long tails. The drumming grew louder as the rest joined in, slapping their tails against the floor and wall, chanting, “Test her. Test her. Test her. Test her.”

T
here was no place to hide. Hanna stood on the very edge of the precipice with Taunier. The rock walls echoed with the sound of the dragons’ throaty voices. A fire had been lit across the divide, and she could see the gathered dragons clearly now. Blue-green and golden scales all winked in the firelight as they flicked their tails in unison, chanting, “Test her. Test her. Test her.”

Her throat went dry. She remembered the barn cat’s tail twitching like that as he considered the fun he was about to have with a mouse. Across the rift, a large male addressed the Damusaun in a raspy voice. “Throw her down the mouth. It is said the Kanameer can fly.”

Hanna peered into the deep crevasse and saw a dark
pool very far below. Terror tightened her gut. She knew well enough what he meant by throw her down the mouth.

“Where does the prophecy say the Kanameer can fly?” insisted the Damusaun.

“Noor Winds bring to us the Dreamer,” he sang.

The rest joined in:

The Damusaun was right. The lines didn’t have to mean the Kanameer could fly. But how could she convince them?

Dragon voices swept around her. She felt dizzy, but she also felt carried along by them as if she were swirling high above the land again. They were giving her a way to live within their words, if she was brave enough to grasp on.

“I came through the Whirl Storms,” she said. “They are the greatest of the Noor Winds.” Her knees shook, but she couldn’t let them see her fear. Standing up to them, she’d claim her own life and Taunier’s. They’d
escape with Thriss. Find Tymm. Taunier stepped a little closer until they stood shoulder to shoulder.

She continued. “I am also sqyth-eyed. My green eye and my blue show I have kith in the earth and sky who will bring magic if I call.” She thought of her sky kith Wild Esper when she said this, though the wind woman was far away in the west.

Hanna’s answer barely carried through the enormous cave. A flimsy human voice, a bird twittering before a roaring waterfall, but her speech was heard.

A terrow pip flitted across the crevasse and hovered close to Hanna’s face, inspecting her eyes. Darting back across, he squeaked excitedly, “She is sqyth-eyed.”

The dragons talked in low voices, wings wavering at their sides.

“How can one so small dreamwalk for us?” she heard one asking. And this from a youngling, himself no larger than a newborn colt!

Tails curled. There was a low hiss.

Taunier gave her a “now what?” look. She clenched her teeth to keep her chin from quivering. She would die if she was thrown down the chasm, and if she died, he’d be next. All hope of finding Tymm, of helping the Waytrees
here, would die with them. She couldn’t let that happen, but she couldn’t think of what to say or do next.

The hissing subsided as the dragons talked among themselves. Thriss crawled out from under Hanna’s cloak, nudged her cheek, and purred in her ear. Surrounded by her kin, the pip was too young to understand that she should be afraid, but her purring encouraged Hanna. Her skin still ran with dewy sweat, but her mind sharpened. She might not be the Kanameer they’d waited for, but she
had
come on the wind. She
was
sqyth-eyed. And all her life (until the empty nights on the
Leena)
she’d dreamwalked.

Could she dreamwalk still? She didn’t know, but she had to speak from strength, not from fear. Before the dragons added another challenge, she raised her chin and told the dragons about the unicorn dream she’d had long ago. There was magic in that dreamwalk, and dark portent. She’d foreseen two monsters slaying a sacred unicorn in the meadowlands of Oth where the great stone oak stood, the tree called Brodureth, the Oak King.

The dreamwalk had haunted her three times before it came to pass, before Hanna came face-to-face with the angry Sylth Queen, who’d loved the unicorn that was slain.

Taunier gave her a wide-eyed look as she spoke about Oth. She read surprise on his face and disappointment. She’d never told him about her journey to the Otherworld last year. He was hearing things about her now for the first time, in the company of dragons. She wished she could explain it all to him and change his hurt expression, but that would have to wait.

There was silence in the great red cave as she spoke and whispering among the dragons when she was done.