Chaos Descending (21 page)

“That’s what they were after,” Reenah said, coming up beside Zollin.

Moss was with her, and all three stared at the strange stone.

“Do you know what it is?” Zollin asked.

“I don’t,” she said. “But I know someone who might. Come with us.”

Chapter 20

While Sorva hunted, Brianna sat by a small fire she had started. It was late in the afternoon, and she was trying decide whether they should push on or camp in the little valley for the night. She wasn’t in a hurry, and it felt so good to be away from the cottage in the Great Valley. She was looking forward to sleeping under the stars, even if the night got chilly, but she was also anxious for a reason she didn’t understand. Part of her mind felt as if she needed to be productive if she was going to be apart from Zollin. And, despite her need to get away and be on her own, she also felt a little stab of loneliness.

It wasn’t that she regretted her choice. Perhaps, she reasoned, it was the lack of urgency that had always been in the back of her mind before the Witch's War. She wasn’t sure exactly what was bothering her, but something was, and she wondered if pressing on through the night would somehow alleviate that foreboding.

She was sitting on the ground with one knee pulled up to her chest as a resting place for her chin when she felt the ground start to shake. She knew immediately that she was feeling hoof beats as a large group of horses galloped nearby. It was only a moment before she heard the thunder of the horses’ hooves. She hurried up the hilltop toward the sound and was shocked to see nearly a hundred horsemen, all in full armor with weapons at the ready.

“You there!” shouted one of the knights. “State your name and business in this area!”

“I’m Brianna,” she said, not sure how else to explain who she was.

Being a Fire Spirit wasn’t something she normally proclaimed about herself. Most people had never heard of a Fire Spirit, which is what the dwarves called her. She was flesh and blood, not a ghostly entity, but the dwarfish reference to spirit was really about her temperament. She was dragon kind, but that wasn’t really a ringing endorsement either, since many of the towns and villages in Northern Yelsia had been destroyed by Bartoom in the greedy dragon’s quest for gold. She had been Prince Willam’s fiancée, but the prince was dead and she was married to Zollin now. The one thing she wouldn’t use to describe herself was a wife, so she let her name speak for itself.

“Brianna? The dragon keeper?” the knight asked.

“Yes,” Brianna replied, trying to decide if she liked that title.

“We’ve found her,” the knight shouted to his men. “Take her.”

“What are you talking about?” Brianna asked, suddenly alarmed.

“We have orders to take you back to Felson. Can’t have dragons roaming loose through the countryside; it’ll cause a panic.”

“We aren’t running loose,” Brianna said. “We’re flying south. We’ll be out of Yelsia in a day or two.”

Several knights had come forward on their horses and then dismounted. They were slow in their heavy armor. It wasn’t intended to be worn by foot soldiers. The huge war horses didn’t seem bothered by the extra weight, but the soldiers on foot seemed to struggle as they moved forward.

“Please,” Brianna said. “You don’t need to do this.”

“Take her,” the lead knight said.

“No,” Brianna said. “I won’t go.”

The nearest knight reached for Brianna and she simply burst into flame. She thought it was humorous to see the looks of shock and fear on the faces of the knights. They had been arrogant because of their horses and armor and numbers, but they hadn’t counted on Brianna’s supernatural abilities. She was covered from head to toe in bright yellow flames.

“I’m not going anywhere,” Brianna said. “Tell your commander that you have my word we will not harm any person in Yelsia that does not threaten us.”

“She’s a demon!” shouted one of the knights who had climbed off of his horse to take Brianna into custody.

The horses were shifting nervously, and several of the knights were visibly tense. The knight who had shouted at her drew his sword.

“Wait!” screamed the commander, but the terrified knight slashed at Brianna’s head.

The strike wasn’t fast, and she ducked under the blade easily enough. She had to hold herself back to keep from burning the man to a crisp. Instead she spun around him and kicked him in the back of the knee, so that he suddenly collapsed under the weight of his armor.

But the knight’s attack had galvanized the others. Some horses wheeled around the small hilltop, others charged her outright. Brianna was forced to raise a wall of flames in front of her to scare the charging horses. The charging knights veered away, but not before someone shouted that they should use arrows. A shiver of fear ran down Brianna’s back. She could keep the soldiers at bay if she needed to, but she couldn’t stop a well-aimed arrow. Her body was thin, her bones light, and she controlled fire completely, but a sword blade would still kill her. An arrow might be burned up in mid air if she saw it coming, but a volley of arrows was more than she could deal with.

The commander was shouting at his men, but they weren’t listening. They were young warriors, eager for action. The garrison of light horse soldiers at Felson had been decimated by Bartoom. Brianna guessed that the soldiers around her now had heard stories about that attack. She and Zollin had dealt with stupid officers too taken with their own status to care about justice or even the difference between right and wrong. All they cared about were that men obeyed them, but Brianna didn’t want to kill the soldiers or even harm their horses. She wanted Sorva to swoop in so they could just fly away to safety. But even though Brianna had sent a mental call for the dragon, there had been no reply, which meant that Sorva was too far away to help her now.

The soldiers were sheathing their swords and sliding their lances into the hoops that hung from the saddles. Others were already pulling their small bows from their saddle bags. The cavalry bows were much shorter than hunting bows. Before changing into a Fire Spirit, she had been quite proficient with a bow herself. The small bows and short arrows were perfect for shooting from horseback. They weren’t made for range, and their small size allowed the shooter to move the weapon back and forth to either side of the horse. A larger weapon would have been unwieldy in the saddle, but the small bows were deadly, even from fifty or sixty feet away.

Brianna knew she couldn’t wait any longer, so she turned and sent a plume of fire straight down the hill. There were soldiers there too, but they moved quickly to avoid her flames. Then she ran. She was fast and ran right into the heart of the flames. The sun was setting now and the knights cast long shadows. If she could just survive until the sun set, she could hide from the knights until Sorva returned.

Behind her the knights were shouting to one another and kicking their horses into action. Brianna could outrun the big horses that were hindered with the weight of the heavily armored knights, but only for a short distance. Once the horses got up to a gallop, they would run her down easily, and there was no chance she could keep moving longer than a horse. She needed to do something drastic. She raced over the next hill, then turned and sent a huge wall of flame rushing down behind her. Brianna could control fire, make it do whatever she wanted, but she didn’t want to hurt the soldiers. She only wanted to escape, but it was becoming harder to achieve her goal without inflicting damage of the soldiers at the same time.

An arrow whistled past her. It wasn’t close enough to be a threat and obviously just a wild shot, but Brianna didn’t want to get caught up in a flurry of arrows. Even wild shots from the group of knights would eventually find their mark. She needed to do something fast, but as her mind tried to come up with a solution she saw a mental image of Sorva diving toward the knights and spewing fire. She immediately sent back another message.

The terrifying black dragon was racing toward the knights, its huge wings flapping hard, its long, whiplike tail rigid behind. Then just as the dragon came in range of the knights, it pulled up and roared. Brianna was still running, but she felt the roar shaking the ground. She turned and saw several knights fall from their horses as their mounts panicked. Some were turning to face the new threat, others running for their lives. The commander was shouting at his men, but it was a futile effort. Some of the knights were so caught up in the idea of battle that they actually charged at Sorva, but the dragon easily flew up out of their reach. Some shot arrows at the black beast, who would have killed the entire troop of soldiers if not for Brianna’s intervention. The arrows didn’t reach Sorva, who blew a plume of fire out over of the knights. The fire roiled through the sky; the bright orange flames stood out in stark contrast to the darkening sky above. Sorva’s flaming blast was too high to harm anyone on the ground, but the warning was clear enough.

Brianna was just breathing a sigh of relief when she heard a strange, piercing cry. It was similar to the sound of a falcon or eagle, but it was louder, the tone more menacing. For a moment everyone froze in place, even Sorva, as they searched the sky for the strange new sound. The sun had almost set, but there was still a blazing section of light in the west. Out of that blinding light flew the largest bird Brianna had ever seen. It was blood red, the feathers so slick to its body it almost appeared to be wet. The wings were huge, almost as large as a small dragon. Brianna guessed the wingspan to be twenty five or thirty feet. The bird had a relatively small body, but its legs were thick and the talons were large.

Brianna wasn’t even breathing as she watched the bird swoop up from where it had been racing along, close to the ground, maximizing the setting sun’s blinding light to hide its approach. It came in so fast that no one had time to move before it attacked. The huge raptor shot upward so quickly that Brianna could scarcely believe what she saw. Her dragons were fast, especially Tig, with astounding maneuverability, but the bird was even faster.

It shot upward, then flipped suddenly in midair, diving straight toward Sorva. The black dragon tried to avoid the bird but it had been hovering above the knights and had no momentum. Sorva seemed slow compared to the giant bird, which flipped right before reaching Sorva, extending its wretched talons. Brianna was running back toward the knights before she even realized what she was doing. There was no thought of her own safety, she just knew she had to get to Sorva and save the dragon.

The bird screeched as its talons ripped through Sorva’s leathery wing. The dragon roared in pain and fury. Brianna was fairly certain that she was screaming as well. In the back of her mind she saw the looks of fear and awe on the faces of the armored knights she ran past. Sorva spewed flames at the bird, but the fire wasn’t as fast as the strange creature. It dove down and then swooped upward, avoiding the blast of fire. The dragon was falling, one wing shredded, the other flapping hard to keep Sorva from crashing into the ground. Brianna could see that the dragon couldn’t stay in the air. The knights saw it too and began to scatter in all directions to avoid being close when the huge black dragon hit the ground.

The bird wasn’t finished. It few upside down as it made a huge loop in the air over Sorva. Brianna had never seen any creature flying upside down, but the bird did just that. Its head and back were pointing down toward the ground, its vulnerable belly facing up toward the sky, which was quickly dimming as the sun set. Brianna knew that if she didn’t do something soon she wouldn’t be able to see the bird and it was moving too fast to track it. She kept thinking she had to save Sorva, and more than ever she wished Zollin were with her. They were great when they worked together, and somehow she had forgotten that. He always seemed to know what needed to be done. He was creative in combat, something she sometimes failed to be, relying mostly on the raw power of her fiery abilities.

The bird’s second pass was worse that the first. It looped around and raced straight for Sorva, the talons outstretched, eager to do damage. Sorva was twirling down toward the ground, and didn’t even see the attack coming.

“Look out!” Brianna screamed, but there was no time to react.

The bird’s talons wrapped around Sorva’s good wing. The dragon’s wings were made of a tough, leathery hide that stretched between two long bones. The upper part of the wing was a thick bone, in some places it was almost as large as Brianna’s thigh. The lower wing was much more delicate. A dragon could fly with holes in its wings, or even with a broken lower wing bone. But the bird snatched at the thicker upper bone. It took hold of the wing, its powerful legs twisting. Brianna heard the bone snap like a thunder clap, and the rolling, crashing sound of the storm was Sorva’s roar of agony.

The bird did its dirty work in less than a second, then it was racing away again, but not before Sorva’s roar and flaming attack scorched the bird’s long tail feathers. Brianna saw some of the feathers vanish as Sorva’s fiery breath came near. A dark cloud of black smoke was all that marked the attack, but it told Brianna everything she needed to know. The bird was fast and deadly, but it was also vulnerable to fire.

Sorva fell to the ground, turning at the last minute so its back slammed into the turf as it slid to a sickening halt. Brianna expected Sorva to flip back over, but the dragon was too weak. The huge rear legs pawed at the air, like a child kicking toward a bully after being shoved to the ground. Brianna glanced up and saw the bird turning. It had slowed, and she guessed it was savoring the moment just before the kill. The thought sickened Brianna, but it gave her just enough time to do what she needed to do.

She was almost to Sorva when the bird dove again. Sorva was so weak it could barely raise its head on the long, sleek neck. Brianna jumped, flipping in the air and landing on the pad of Sorva’s foot, just between the large, curving claws on the dragon’s massive toes. Instinctively Sorva kicked out, launching Brianna high into the air. To the diving bird, Brianna was nothing but a smaller creature hurtling upward. The bird twitched to avoid Brianna, still intent on the kill and oblivious to any danger.