Darkness of Dragons

  “Everyone inside!” Thorn shouted. “Stay low and run! Get into the Great Hall! Close all the doors and windows!”

  SandWings stampeded over the top of the stadium, clinging to the benches and walls with their talons and keeping their wings tucked in close. Blaze screamed louder than anyone and bolted, climbing over other dragons until she was one of the first ones racing through the gardens to the doors of the Great Hall.

  “No!” Onyx cried. “I want to fight! I’ve been waiting for this my whole life!” She clawed forward another step, and then the wind picked her up and slammed her back into the far wall.

  “Onyx, come on!” Smolder shouted, climbing into the arena. He ran over to his daughter, but the wind was building to another shrieking roar, so Qibli couldn’t hear what they were yelling at each other.

  “Can you stop it?” Winter asked, grabbing one of Qibli’s wrists.

  “I’m trying!” Qibli said. He sliced his arms downward as he’d seen Anemone do. “Stop this,” he commanded them. “Enough. Stop the storm. Take it away. Bring back the sunshine! Stupid things, listen to me!”

  “So we’re running, then,” Winter said.

  Qibli glanced around and saw Thorn herding a group of palace dragonets to safety. Loyal Outclaw guards were gathered thick around her, keeping her safe in case Vulture or Onyx tried to assassinate her in the chaos. Qibli spotted the Eye of Onyx around her neck again.

  At least she’s still alive. Whatever happens next, I kept her alive that much longer. A sandstorm can’t be worse than my queen lying dead in a ball of blue fire.

  “Yup,” he said to Winter. “Running.”

  They fled with everyone else, chased by the wind and sand. Wings jostled them and talons stepped on their claws as all the dragons in the palace ran for safety.

  At the threshold of the Great Hall, Qibli risked a look back and saw the storm he had raised.

  A thundering cloud of sand rose from the dunes up to the sky, spreading across the entire horizon and bearing down on the palace. It was a tidal wave of fury three times as high as the tallest palace tower.

  And then Winter pushed him inside and doors began slamming shut all around them, as the SandWings locked themselves in and waited to be buried alive.

  The storm raged for hours, which was a long time to be packed into a room with over a hundred other dragons, even a room as big as the Great Hall. Blaze used one of the large curtains to make herself a hammock, hung from the tall ceiling, and proceeded to sleep through most of the storm. After a while, Thorn organized an expedition to the kitchens that brought back dried fruit, water, and bread for everyone, though all of it tasted a little gritty with sand.

  Qibli spent most of the time worrying about the fact that Vulture, Smolder, and Onyx weren’t in the Hall with everyone else. Where had they gone instead? Were they still alive?

  He kept himself busy making more earrings in a sheltered corner where not too many dragons could see him and ask awkward questions. Ostrich and her father, Six-Claws, found him there halfway through the storm and volunteered to distribute earrings to all the dragons in the hall.

  Qibli felt a little resentful about the fact that some of those dragons were Talons of Power, driven into hiding with the palace SandWings after attacking them. But even they needed magical protection — brainwashed Talons of Power would not be any improvement over the current version.

  He also checked Turtle’s slate every few minutes, and then again, and then again, more and more frequently.

  Where was Turtle? Why had he disappeared for so long?

  Had something terrible happened to him?

  He didn’t know how long it had been when he looked up to find Thorn standing over him, frowning slightly.

  “Oh, hey,” he said. Winter jabbed him with a pointy elbow and Qibli jumped. “I mean, hello, Your Majesty.”

  “I have the strangest feeling,” said Thorn, “that you know something about this.” She waved one of her wings at the rafters that were shaking in the wind.

  “Um …” Qibli set his jaw and squared his shoulders. “Yes. That was me. I called the storm to save your life. I … didn’t quite have a handle on how big it would turn out to be.”

  “More animus magic?” Thorn said, still frowning.

  He held out his wrists to display the bracelets. “They’re supposed to control the weather.”

  She tapped one claw against the copper. “I’m not sure control is the right word here.”

  “I’m sorry,” said Qibli. “About the palace, I mean, and I hope everyone’s all right. But I’m not sorry that you’re safe. I was trying to protect you from the Eye.”

  Thorn’s wings flicked up and down and she stared at him with raised eyebrows. “Protect me from the Eye? Didn’t you trust it to choose me? Like it did before?”

  “But Onyx is royalty,” Qibli said. “And Darkstalker is on her side and I was afraid he’d done something to it … and plus she’s royalty. I thought that’s what the Eye would want.”

  She shook her head and lifted the Eye of Onyx necklace over her head to hold it in her talons. Qibli took an instinctive step back. It so clearly radiated power — and danger. Even if he hadn’t seen it kill Blister, he’d be terrified of it. But since he had, it was hard not to remember the sinister dragon’s silent, agonized thrashing, or the charred smell that was left after she exploded into black dust.

  “I know it’s scary,” said Queen Thorn. “But I’ve been wearing it around my neck for months now, and I’ve come to trust it.” She traced the wings gently with one claw. “It feels — right to me. Like it was crafted by an animus with wisdom and goodness in her heart. And all my research into it has confirmed that. The Eye doesn’t choose the most royal or most dangerous dragon to be queen. It chooses the best queen available for the job.”

  She smiled down at it. “In fact, Smolder and I discovered a secret. The Eye has chosen commoners over royalty before. The current royal bloodline goes back to a dragon who grew up in a town a lot like the Scorpion Den — a dragon who got the throne basically by accident, because the Eye chose her to save the kingdom from a cruel and vicious princess.” Thorn met Qibli’s eyes. “The truth is, Oasis and her descendants — including Onyx — aren’t any more royal than you or me. Except insofar as having power for hundreds of years makes you royal. But that’s not what the Eye cares about.”

  “Really?” Qibli’s mind was spinning. This was exactly what he thought animus magic should be used for — not personal power, but improving the world in ways that made entire tribes safer. Imagine if every tribe had an Eye of Onyx — something that ensured only wise and good queens were chosen. Wouldn’t that mean Pyrrhia would always be at peace? So all dragons would be happier and well cared for?

  “My theory is that Jerboa was playing a trick on her queen,” said Thorn. “If she was ordered to make the Eye, perhaps the queen wanted something to keep herself in power. But instead Jerboa made this clever spell to pick good queens.”

  “I’m sorry,” Qibli said. “I didn’t realize. Of course it’ll choose you, if that’s the real spell.”

  “I think I am a good queen,” Thorn said thoughtfully. “And I guess if I’m ever not, it should be comforting that there’s a way for me to find out.” She laughed. “It would be nice if I could bargain with it, though. Like, hey, Eye of Onyx, instead of blowing me up, could you just send me a note that’s like, Time to stop being queen, crazyclaws, and then I could happily retire? If I had an animus of my own, I’d probably get them working on that.”

  Maybe I can get Turtle to do that for her, Qibli thought. After we deal with Darkstalker. When we’ve averted the prophecy and everything is calm again.

  Thorn looked up toward the ceiling. “I think it’s finally stopped,” she said, and Qibli realized she was right — the wind had fallen silent at last.

  “Let’s go see what a mess you’ve made,” Thorn said to Qibli. “I don’t suppose you brought an animus object that cleans up after you.”
>
  “Sorry,” Qibli said ruefully.

  The main doors of the hall were impossible to push open. They had to fly to one of the upper windows and open the shutters to discover that the palace was buried in a layer of sand three dragons deep, entirely blocking the doors and covering all the gardens. The sun sparkled cheerfully in the bright blue sky overhead.

  “Qibli,” Thorn grumbled. She scanned the palace — the towers and rooftops poking out of the ridiculous new dunes. Qibli realized that she must be worried about Smolder, although she was hiding it under her exasperation with him.

  “I’ll start looking for anyone who needs to be dug out,” he offered and darted back inside to assemble a team.

  They found dragons safely squirreled away all over the palace. It had been built to have a lot of places to safely hole up during a sandstorm, with reinforced shutters and strong doors. Some of them required digging to get to, but by the early hours of the morning, all the dragons in the palace seemed to be accounted for except for Smolder and Onyx … and there was no sign anywhere of Vulture.

  Qibli took Winter, Ostrich, Six-Claws, and Tawny back to the giant sand pile that used to be the arena, the last place he’d seen Smolder.

  Please let him be all right, Qibli prayed as they dug. Smolder might not be good enough for Queen Thorn, in his opinion, but if she liked him, that was all that mattered.

  Please let him be all right. Please let us find him soon.

  His shoulders ached. He wished Moon were there, digging beside him, with her never-giving-up face on.

  “Any luck?” Thorn asked, landing on one of the perches that stuck out of the sand.

  “Not yet, Your Majesty,” Six-Claws answered.

  Thorn wriggled her wings as though they itched. Qibli had noticed that she often did this when her closest friends called her “Your Majesty.”

  “You should try the Obsidian Mirror,” he suggested.

  “I know I should,” she said, rubbing her snout. “It’s buried in a very safe chest in a very safe hidden compartment in my bedroom, under a couple of tons of sand.” She glanced back at a contingent of wings flurrying around the central palace building. “We’re working on it.”

  Qibli sat up and studied the arena, shaking sand off his wings. What would he have done, if the storm had hit before he could get to the Great Hall? If he’d been standing right here, like Smolder and Onyx?

  Smolder knows this palace better than anyone. He’s lived here his whole life, all throughout the war while his sisters were away fighting one another. He survived Oasis and Burn. He must know every possible hiding hole, every safe place.

  His eyes scanned the walls as his brain spun rapidly through possibilities.

  I’d want to get underground, if I could. Somewhere fortified and secure …

  Qibli looked down at his talons, then up at his queen. “Thorn!” he called. “Aren’t the dungeons right below us?”

  “Part of them,” Thorn answered, wrinkling her nose. “This palace has a LOT of dungeons.” She tipped her head. “What are you thinking?”

  “Maybe the dungeon is connected to the arena somehow,” Qibli said, pacing in a large circle. “So prisoners could be brought here to fight for the queen. Like in Scarlet’s palace. It’s possible, isn’t it, that this arena was used that way a long time ago?”

  “Horribly possible,” Thorn agreed. “Good idea. You four, look for a way in from here. Qibli, come with me.”

  He followed her back to the upper windows of the Great Hall, then swooped down to the lower levels and out through the covered passageways that led to the kitchens, the throne room, and other parts of the palace. Drifts of sand lay across the floor in places where the windows hadn’t been completely shuttered.

  “Where’s your guard?” Qibli asked, watching Thorn’s tail whisk through one of these drifts, leaving a spray of sunlit sand motes in the air behind her.

  “Digging out the palace, like everyone else,” said Thorn. “I put all of Vulture’s dragons who were still here to work as well, in exchange for amnesty and resettlement packages. Outclaws are watching them, but I think they’ll turn out to be fine after we chat with them a little bit and get their heads on straight.” She glanced back at Qibli. “It’s hard to readjust after someone you trust has been lying to you for years. But hey, you turned out mostly normal, so I think there’s hope for them.”

  “Mostly normal?” Qibli protested. “Three moons, I’m not sure which is worse, mostly or normal.”

  Thorn laughed. “Maybe normal is the wrong word. Generally acceptable? Reasonably fit for society? Solidly on the side of the not-so-murderous?”

  “Stop, stop, this much flattery can’t be good for me,” Qibli said wryly.

  She turned down a poorly lit, narrow passage that twisted and angled downward. Qibli stayed close, hopping down the occasional steps and keeping his wings away from the rough-scraped walls. Lanterns flickered from niches all the way down, casting jumpy little shadows around his claws. The air had an odd smell, like a trove of decayed lizards buried under a floorboard and forgotten about for years.

  Thorn unlocked a series of gates on the way down, relocking them behind her. They passed a few guards, posted in pairs, who saluted to the queen and stayed in position, holding their weapons.

  Finally a flight of stone stairs deposited them in an antechamber with four tunnels branching out from it. Thorn took a lantern from a low shelf by the stairs and breathed a small burst of flame to light it.

  “I don’t like coming down here,” she admitted to Qibli. “Poor Smolder refuses to come with me — it’s the one thing I can’t get him to do. I suspect his mother used to punish him by locking him down here overnight whenever he displeased her.” She lifted her lantern to look down one of the tunnels. “If he had to take refuge down here because of the storm … I can’t imagine how sick he must be feeling.”

  “We’ll find him,” Qibli promised. He pictured the palace in his head, mapping it over the turns they’d taken on the way down. “This one leads under the arena, I think — right?” He pointed to the darkest tunnel just as a strange gibbering wail erupted from it.

  The sound sliced under Qibli’s scales like freezing needles, terrifying him down to his bones. He leaped back from the passage and resisted the urge to run screaming up the steps back to the sunlight.

  “What —” he said, picturing ghosts and furious spirits. “What —”

  “That’s the mad prisoner,” Thorn said grimly. “She’s been down here since the time of Queen Oasis.” She brushed past him and set off down the passage.

  Qibli scrambled to keep up so he could stay close to the light — and to Thorn’s reassuring no-nonsense voice. “Mad?” he echoed.

  “I wanted to release her, or at least talk to her,” said Thorn, “but she attacks anyone who enters her cell or goes near her chains. She managed to stab two of my guards with her tail before we gave up. I think there were times during the war when she was forgotten for days and nearly starved. Burn was not the most careful dragon with her prisoners. I’m sure she didn’t even care what this one did to end up in here — there’s no record of her crime anyway.”

  She waved one wing at the deserted cells they were passing. “The whole dungeon is almost empty now — I freed most of the dragons Burn had imprisoned, since their crimes all involved disloyalty to her. There’s a jail in the courtyard barracks that’s a lot more humane, for prisoners who we can try quickly.”

  Thorn sighed. “I was keeping those two NightWings here for Queen Glory, but somehow they escaped. Which is another argument for shutting this whole dungeon down and never using it again, if you ask me.”

  They turned a corner and Qibli saw the glow of firelight up ahead. In unspoken agreement, they both began to run, until they were close enough to see two dragons huddled by the wall at the end of the tunnel, outside the cells.

  “Smolder!” Thorn called joyfully.

  He lifted his head and grinned weakly at the sight of h
er. “About time, your royal sluggishness,” he said.

  “You didn’t have to sit here and wait for me, you broiled snail,” she pointed out, sliding her lantern into a niche across from the one that was lit. “You do have feet. You could have just come on upstairs instead of making us all worry about you. I mean, not that I was worried.”

  “Well, I was,” Smolder said. He opened his wings and Thorn hugged him, pulling back quickly as though she didn’t want to get too emotional in front of witnesses. On top of Smolder’s head something like a little tuft of fur sat up and shook itself. It leaned into the light and Qibli realized it was Flower, yawning and stretching.

  “But we couldn’t leave,” Smolder continued. “Onyx is hurt.” He moved aside to reveal his daughter, curled into a sullen ball and breathing shallowly. One of her back feet looked as though it had been crushed by something heavy; it was an awful bloody mess, and she clearly couldn’t walk — in fact, Qibli wasn’t sure she’d ever walk on it again.

  Thorn inhaled sharply. “We need to get you to a doctor,” she said to Onyx.

  “I know,” Onyx spat. “I told him to go get one —”

  “But I didn’t want to leave her alone,” Smolder interjected.

  “Right.” Onyx snorted. “More like he’s a coward who’s afraid of ghosts.” She tried to shift her weight to sit up and froze, shuddering in pain.

  Smolder lifted his wings. “Well, I haven’t stayed alive this long by running toward the shrieking things in the dark.” He made an “I am who I am” face.

  The “thing in the dark” screamed again from somewhere very nearby, sending Qibli’s heart pounding.

  “That’s just the mad prisoner,” Thorn said to Smolder. “I told you about her. You couldn’t remember what she was arrested for either.”

  “For LIES!” the dragon shrieked. “For my FACE NOT MY FACE I’M GOING TO KILL HER!”

  Thorn sighed and took the lantern again, stepping back to one of the cells they’d run past. Inside, a tortured-looking SandWing paced, clawing at the scales around her neck. Rusty chains stretched from her ankles to loops bolted into the floor. As the light illuminated her prison, she whirled around and threw herself at the bars, screaming.