Jennifer Scales and the Messenger of Light (8 page)

Jennifer recalled the first time she had seen the breed on the hunt at her grandfather’s farm—thunderstorms in skin, she had thought them. There were ten times as many now, and they were more than ten times as loud. She marveled at how fast they moved: While they were the stoutest dragon breed, with wings that barely worked, their gallop was a spectacular sight, and they plunged deep into the meadow and scattered the herd into terrified pairs and trios.

Now it was time for the dashers. A flood of electric blue silhouettes entered the field from the southwest treetops. As the herd got closer to Jennifer’s position, she sensed unexpected movement to her right, about where her grandfather was. It was the young creeper. He was out of camouflage, and edging back! He looked a bit frightened by how close some of the oreams were, and how fast they were still going.

She couldn’t completely blame the young weredragon, though he must have been at least two years older than Jennifer. Oreams, after all, were not sheep.

The first few were in plain sight now, but even the sound of their hooves revealed their size as closer to that of wildebeests than mountain goats. Their gray fur and yellow irises shone in the moonlight, but it was their horns that gleamed most brightly. Three smooth and sturdy spikes stood on each head—not pulled back like on a goat or ram, but pointed up and forward, like a triceratops. The unified front of these horns broke apart, sending sharp points with heavy bulk moving in unpredictable directions at great speed.

The horns were probably what had the young guy nervous, Jennifer mused. But moving around was still inexcusable. The oreams were too smart to keep driving into a field that held an obvious and jumpy predator.

Indeed they were. Upon seeing the movement, all of the nearby knots—about a fourth of the larger herd—veered away from her grandfather’s position and swept back up the gentle slope of Wings Mountain. Multiple other bands saw their herd’s new chosen path and followed.

That fool’s blunder was reintegrating the herd!

Several dashers tried to rescatter them, but this did not go well. This herd had plenty of experienced adults with the time and instinct to set themselves protectively at the front and sides of the running formation.

Meanwhile, the tramplers were trying to make a second run. But because the predators were now scattered all over the field, their attack came from multiple sides rather than one. The herd reacted according to a different instinct. Dispersing as before made no sense, so instead the formation stubbornly tightened.

Up the mountainside it galloped, ignoring the halfhearted roars behind them and heedless to the difficult terrain ahead. Several stumbled upon broken rock and were trampled by their brethren. Many dragons backed off in uncertainty, and creepers were letting their camouflage break. The hunt seemed ruined.

But it was worse than that, Jennifer realized as she watched the herd’s progress. The leading edge of the herd had in fact turned back down the mountain—not as frightened prey, but as determined defenders. Only fifty yards ahead of them, the quartet of newolves that had started this affair were scurrying away, no match for the collective anger of this sea of horns.

And just in front of them, galloping hard but limping with an obvious injury, was a lone trampler.

It was Catherine.

CHAPTER 5
A Blaze of Dragons

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“Catherine!” Jennifer broke shape and texture and bolted into the clearing, heedless of the oncoming threat.

Even from a distance under moonlight, it was easy enough to make out Catherine’s terrified expression. Clearly, she had been angling for a closer look at the newolves, had strayed out into the upper slopes of the clearing, and was caught by the sudden change in the herd’s direction. Now making for the western woods, her scaled face was desperate with the knowledge that she could not outrun the stampede.

Skimming the grass with her wings at top speed, Jennifer judged the distance to her wounded friend (about fifty yards) and then on to the herd (another forty). Somehow, she needed to scare them off, all by herself. No one else was doing anything. She elevated, sucked in a gust of air, and breathed out a massive column of fire. The flames surged over Catherine’s armored back, scattered the newolves behind her, and flooded into the front ranks of the oreams.

The herd did not stop.

This was about the time Jennifer realized two things. First, the pounding of the hooves was very loud and did not sound like the kind of noise that you stopped with a bit of heat. Second, about three hundred oreams times three horns equaled an awful lot of fast and pointy stabbing.

She needed something else to stop this herd. And that something was not available—at least not to a dragon.

Before she landed smoothly, Jennifer was back in human form. Whipping out both knives, she held them up to her lips, kissed them, and reached deep within for her loudest voice. And vitalized by the air of this ancient world, the blades responded beautifully.

The deafening sound shook the clearing, and the blinding rays pierced a world that until that day had only known twilight. The mountain shrunk next to her—as if a newfound sun had suddenly decided to rise to the top of the sky and wash out all the deep, dark colors this landscape thrived on.

Under her own shout, she heard the sound of hundreds of collapsing bodies. The sea of horns and muscle in front of her came to a rolling stop as the assault of light and sound stunned the exotic creatures.

A good ten seconds later, after she was sure the herd had fallen, she closed her mouth and sheathed her blades. That’s when she finally took in the scene across the meadow.

The oreams were not the only victims of her battle shout. Virtually every dragon in the hunt lay huddled on the ground, mewling and covering ears with wings. Some were writhing in pain. A stalwart few—farther away than most—had taken up a cry.

“Beaststalker! To arms! Beaststalker! To arms!”

“To wha—?” Jennifer began, but at that moment a large, slender shape closed in behind her like a missile and swatted her on the back of her head with a sizzling shower of sparks. She tumbled to the ground, and her mind went blank.

When she woke up, Jennifer was lying on a stone surface, staring up at the bright crescent moon. Its lower tip was scooping up a handful of dim stars.

She turned to the right and saw the shadow of an unfamiliar mountain. Shifting to the left, she saw what must have been every dragon in Crescent Valley—a few hundred of them—sitting in row upon row in semicircles, staring at her. Some had expressions of mere interest, some anger. Most were clearly afraid.

There were bonfires lit here and there. At first Jennifer thought perhaps some oreams had been caught after all, and that it was dinnertime. But this didn’t seem like the festive aftermath of a typical hunt.

“Owww,” she hissed, sitting up and feeling the dried blood covering the lump on the back of her head. “That stung! Who was the dasher that shocked my skull? You could kill someone doing that!”

Her grandfather’s voice came quietly and sadly. “I believe that may have been the intent.”

She looked up. Grandpa Crawford was sitting, along with about one hundred other very old dragons, on large stone slabs behind her, facing the larger mass of weredragons gathered this night. His expression was not encouraging—Jennifer was reminded of Cheryl Alder at Jack’s wake.

Another elder stood up on his hind legs. He was a dasher, with blue scales so dark that he seemed sheathed in black, with a sickly gray underbelly. A rich pattern of gold and silver graced the underside of his delicate wings, and his enormous triple-pronged tail twitched with energy that belied his age. He pointed at her with a trembling claw while snarling in a raspy voice, through spittle-stained teeth, “The Scales girl is a beaststalker! The Ancient Furnace is corrupt! Crawford, you will answer for this!”

There were whispers among the ancients. Jennifer made out a few of the words—“outrage!” and “corrupt!” among them. But the majority in the amphitheater remained silent and anxious.

“Wait a second!” Jennifer called out. “Okay, um, I’m guessing that nobody knew my mother’s a beaststalker…”

The dark dasher looked triumphant as the crowd murmured. “She admits it!”

“All right, all right,” she tried to reassure them, standing up with palms out. “This must be freaking some of you out. But you’ve got to see that I’m not dangerous to any of you. I mean, I just did that battle shout to save Catherine, not to hurt anyone!” She desperately looked for Catherine in the crowd, but could not find her.

Crawford’s voice was just loud enough for Jennifer to hear. “Niffer, sit down, please. Let me handle this.”

Given the dubious looks of the surrounding crowd, she had to agree with his suggestion.

“My friend Xavier Longtail is right,” Crawford began. “This matter is my responsibility. I’ll answer for it. My granddaughter is here under my protection. And my son and I did conceal the other half of her heritage from you all, until we could find a way to introduce the truth to the Blaze of Elders.”

Blaze of Elders? Jennifer cocked her head at the expression. Was that like a crash of rhinos, or was it more like Congress?

He turned to face her with a frown. “Unfortunately, we would have done well to remind the Ancient Furnace herself of our people’s misgivings toward beaststalkers.”

Jennifer’s face fell. While she knew he would protect her, she also knew how badly he and her mother got along. Having a beaststalker shape here in front of all these dragons must be an insult to them, even him! She decided to shift back into dragon form, but before she could he turned to the others and raised his voice.

“But what I would have told her after warning her, and what I must tell all of you here at this Blaze now, is no less true for my forgetfulness. Our kind needs to come to terms with our old enemies. It is time we made peace!”

There was a great deal more noise at this than before—exclamations of surprise, with several shouts of “No!” and a few of “Yes!” spotted throughout. It was hard for Jennifer to sort out who felt which way, but one thing was clear: Xavier Longtail did not care for this opinion at all.

“Talk of peace sounds lovely,” the dasher spat. “So understanding, so moral. But it ignores one fact—you cannot make peace with a people who are devoted to your destruction. The descendants of Barbara the Self-Righteous worked horrors at Pinegrove, and they are not yet finished. These beaststalkers are all the same—every one of them lives for the chance to do our kind in, like their patron saint.”

“That’s not true!” Jennifer piped up. Once again, she felt the heat of everyone staring at her. She gulped and continued. “My mother would never kill a weredragon! She married one!”

“You will remain quiet,” Xavier commanded with disdain. “You are an abomination, and have no voice here.”

Jennifer felt the blood rush to her cheeks. “Oh really? You want to hear my voice again, buster?”

The ancient dasher roared, raised his triple-ended tail, and smashed it against the ground. It was like no tail shock Jennifer had ever seen. Three explosions shook the ground and burning rock flew in all directions. She flinched as bits of granite sailed by her ear.

With his roar still echoing throughout the amphitheater, Xavier pounced from his stone seat and landed right in front of her. Spittle flicked off of his sharp, yellowing teeth, and his golden eyes gleamed. “If you think that you are fast enough to raise those pretty knives of yours and try that shout again, go ahead, little girl! But I daresay the breath of this Blaze will roast you before you get the chance. And my fire will be the first to its target, you lying—”

A wild bellow from above interrupted the elder. Everyone looked up in time to see a shadow drop from the sky and crash right between Jennifer and Xavier. The amphitheater shook. Smoke fumed and billowed over her. In the firelight, scales pulsed an angry rainbow of dark colors. With another wild roar, the newcomer raised its head and blasted the gloomy sky with a column of fire. Jennifer had never seen a dragon so furious and reckless before.

Then her jaw dropped as she recognized the creature. It was her father. His right wing lashed out, and the claw gripped shut the dasher’s crocodilian mouth.

“Xavier Longtail! Keep that mouth closed and your claws away from my daughter!”

Xavier shook off the other’s grip and curled his lip, but did not answer.

Jonathan took in the whole Blaze as his skin settled back into a stable shade of indigo. Vapor still leaked from his snout. “This is not a trial,” he called out. “My daughter hasn’t done anything wrong!”

“She has broken two serious laws,” the dasher said coldly. “She has shown our sacred refuge to an uninvited guest, and she has become one herself! Before this night is through, there will be a trial and a sentence—and not just for the beaststalker, but for her father and grandfather as well!”

The reaction to this statement surprised Jennifer. Instead of support, or even anxiety, disapproval rippled through the crowd. There were cries of “No!” and “Let them speak!” Apparently, she guessed, her father and grandfather—and maybe even the Ancient Furnace herself—still commanded some measure of respect here.

“Peace is not just a dream,” Crawford pressed. He had come down from his seat to stand by his family. “I have learned this over the years. Like many of you, I used to hate and distrust every beaststalker out there. And when my son met and fell in love with one, I nearly disowned him.”

The crowd stayed quiet. Crawford glanced at Jonathan before he continued. “But over the past fifteen years, I have come to know Elizabeth Georges-Scales. And I have watched her daughter grow up for fifteen of those years. These two are not like those beaststalkers that attacked Pinegrove. Their hearts are true. They may be ambassadors for peace. And there may be others like them.”

No one spoke for a while. Jennifer watched thousands of dragon heads across the amphitheater turn this way and that, trying to make sense of all this.