Aurora (25 page)

‘ELIAN!’

Aurora’s shout echoed in his mind, even as Kira’s echoed physically in the cave. Blaze lunged forwards at him, her enormous mouth gaping. Elian launched into a rolling dive to the
right as the dragon’s great jaws drove through the space he had occupied a heartbeat before. In an instant, Elian was on his feet and sprinting again, ducking under the dragon’s long
neck in a zigzagging run that took him away from the dragonets. Those of the newborns that were still awake hissed in sympathy with the anger of their mother.

Blaze swept her head around in a long, low arc after Elian, seeking to crush him against the wall of the chamber.

‘BEHIND YOU!’

Kira’s warning was timely, but did not change Elian’s tactic.

He was aware of Blaze’s move and made another dive, this time flat and to the left. His belly, thighs and elbows grazed against the rock floor of the chamber as he skidded clear. The dawn
dragon’s head whipped past so close that he felt the swoosh of displaced air. Blaze’s cheek hit the chamber wall with a hefty thud, and she let out a roar of pain and frustration.

Scrambling to his feet, Elian took off again, this time in a darting run straight towards the angry Blaze. He could hear Aurora’s mental shouts as he ran. She was trying to convince Blaze
to stop her attacks, but the mother dragon was paying no attention. Elian’s focus was totally fixed on his goal – the egg. He had to reach it. Blaze drew her head back to strike again,
but even as she began her downward lunge towards him, Elian covered the final few paces to his goal and wrapped his body around the great orb of mottled shell. Bracing himself for the crushing
strike of the dragon, Elian closed his eyes and gritted his teeth.

The expected strike did not come, but he could feel the warm, damp breath of the dragon against his back. He had gambled on her not wishing to harm her egg even though she knew the hatchling
inside was dead. It appeared his reasoning had been sound.

Elian cracked open the eyelid on his left eye and tipped his head to one side. He was rewarded with a terrifying view into the dragon’s open throat. Blaze’s jaws were spread so wide
that her great cage of teeth surrounded him. Even as he began to take in the precarious nature of his position, the dragon’s huge forked tongue began to snake under his legs in an effort to
dislodge him.

‘Oh no you don’t!’ he muttered, clinging to the egg even harder.

‘Don’t move, Elian! Stay exactly where you are.’ It was Tarl. He had come to help. ‘Blaze! Listen to me. Elian doesn’t mean any harm. Look at the plinth, Blaze.
Your last egg has a great destiny. It is going to restore the Oracle. Isn’t that wonderful?’

The tongue withdrew and slowly, the great jaws rose away from Elian. He heaved a sigh of relief and, for a moment, he thought he might pass out. His head spun and a wave of nausea swept through
his gut and up into his throat. Tarl had done it. Blaze was listening at last. As the dragon’s mouth closed and her long neck lifted her great head higher, Elian began to relax.

Uncoiling his body from around the egg, Elian climbed back to his feet.

‘Not yet, Elian! It’s too—’

Tarl did not get to finish his warning. Blaze struck, her head arrowing down so fast that Elian did not have time to fully evade the strike. All he could do was twist and duck. The
dragon’s lower jaw hit him harder than a charging bull, smashing into his right arm and chest and hurling him back across the chamber towards the plinth. Winded, he scrambled behind the
minimal cover offered by the small pillar of metal.

To Elian’s horror, he saw that Blaze had also swept her own rider aside. Tarl was also picking himself up some distance to the right. But Blaze was not finished. Her eyes were still intent
on Elian and she was coming for him again.

With a sweeping motion, Blaze whipped her head down towards him once more, but Elian was hurting too much to do more than cower behind the plinth. The side of Blaze’s jaw connected hard
with the metal. There was a horrible cracking sound and the dragon’s head stopped dead. For a moment Elian had a second terrifyingly close view of the side of her jaw and her left eye before
she reared backwards and let out another roar of pain. As she pulled away, one of the large outer teeth from the left side of her mouth fell loose and a drool of dark blood dribbled to the floor.
The plinth had not shifted so much as a finger’s width.

The dragon lunged a second time and then a third. Each time Elian dodged, keeping the plinth between him and Blaze’s anger. Her body was glowing brighter as her anger and frustration
built. Elian knew from Aurora’s ability that if Blaze threw all her energy into intensifying that inner light, then he would neither be able to look at her, nor see her attacks coming.
Fortunately, she was too agitated to use her abilities to the full.

Everyone was shouting – everyone except Elian, who was too busy trying to stay alive. Tarl was bellowing at his dragon. Neema and Kira were yelling warnings to Elian. The roars of Aurora
and Fang were also getting nearer as the two dragons approached through the tunnels. What got through to Blaze, Elian did not know, but as abruptly as she had attacked, so she stopped.

Blaze backed off slowly and curled protectively between Elian and her hatchlings, some of which had woken with all the noise and were screeching their high-pitched protests. Her inner light
dimmed back to a subtle glow. She eyed Elian suspiciously as she licked around her bleeding mouth with her long forked tongue.

‘Tarl? Can I get the egg now?’ Elian called, without taking his eyes from Blaze.

‘I’m not completely sure,’ he replied. ‘But I think I got through to her. She’s confused right now. My bond is not as open as it is normally. Don’t move.
I’ll come and join you. If we do it together, I think she’ll be all right.’

Elian waited while Tarl moved slowly across the cavern to where Elian was crouching. Together they then crossed the short distance to the remaining egg. Blaze watched their every move intently,
gently crooning the whole while. Whether the noise was an expression of her physical pain from the blow to her mouth, or from sorrow at the egg that would not hatch, Elian could not tell.

Elian’s ribs and right arm hurt from the impact of the dragon’s strike, and the egg was both enormous and heavy. Even with Tarl lending his strength, they struggled to lift it. But
no sooner had the egg made contact with the top of the plinth than it seemed to freeze in place. Elian and Tarl stepped back quickly and the same transparent resin-like substance that had formed
the outer surface of the Dark Orb and the Orb of Vision oozed from the top of the metal stand. It spread rapidly around the egg until it formed a complete layer.

As with previous orb formations, the clear substance began to contract. It squeezed the egg, crushing inwards to make its contents smaller and smaller until all that remained was a glowing ball
of gold that looked precisely the same size as the previous orbs.

Only when he was sure that the plinth had completed the transformation did Elian reach out to touch it. What would he feel? What qualities would it possess? His hand hovered over the orb for a
moment, his arm trembling with anticipation. Taking a deep breath, he grasped it and a shock ran through his body that took his breath away.

‘Oh, my word!’ he breathed. ‘Oh . . . my . . . word!’

Chapter Twenty-Three

‘Is that who I suspect it is?’
Elian asked as the familiar throbbing buzz of a flying machine approached through the pre-dawn murk. They had deliberately
landed in a quiet area a long way from the lines of fighting. There was no need to risk getting entangled in the fighting again. If it was not for the enormous time saving that moving through this
world offered in travelling vast distances across Areth, Elian would not have let Aurora bring them back at all.

‘Yes, Elian,’
Aurora confirmed.
‘It’s Jack.’

‘But what’s he doing here?’
Elian asked.
‘We did what he asked and he led us to the final orb. I thought that was the end of our association with him. How does
he even know we’re here this time?’

‘That is puzzling,’
Aurora said, her voice thoughtful.
‘It appears Jack has developed a curious sensitivity to our presence. He is concentrating very hard. He knows
we’re close and that we dragons can read his surface thoughts. From what I sense of his intentions, he plans to come with us to Areth.’

‘But why? I don’t understand.’

‘It appears Jack feels he can help us get past Segun,’
Aurora said thoughtfully
. ‘He has seen the gateways before. He’s determined to fly into this one when I
form it.’

‘Will his aircraft pass through all right?’

‘I don’t see any reason why it shouldn’t,’
she said, with the mental equivalent of a shrug.
‘I can’t see how he can hope to help us against the
night dragons with his one flimsy machine, but he seems very convinced of his worth.’

‘Do you think we should stop him?’
Elian asked.
‘If he crosses to Areth, there’s no guarantee that he will ever be able to return to his world. Without wanting
to sound pessimistic, it’s not going to be easy to run that blockade. If we don’t make it, there’ll be no way for him to get back.’

‘He seems to be aware of the risks, Elian,’
she said.
‘The Oracle made this man a part of our quest. I think we would be foolish to turn his offer of help aside, even
if we cannot see an obvious role for him right now.’

‘Kira won’t be happy,’
Elian noted.
‘She doesn’t trust him. Not since the incident with the Red Baron.’

‘It’s not Kira’s decision. It’s ours. I say we let him come. I’ve got a strange feeling this is meant to happen.’

‘After what happened at the enclave, I’m not about to go against your instincts,’
Elian declared.
‘I can feel the dawn approaching. We’d better get
airborne.’

‘You are quite right, Elian. At this rate you’ll be developing a dragonsense of your own, soon,’
Aurora noted.

‘I’m assuming that’s a joke,’
he replied. Although her voice had sounded serious, he knew her to have a dry sense of humour. She did not reply, leaving him to
wonder. Instead, she turned to face across the open field in preparation for take off.

Elian glanced across to where Kira was ready on Fang. She was signalling frantically and pointing towards Jack’s approaching flying machine. As he had anticipated, she did not look happy.
Giving her a wave and a thumbs-up signal, he gave Aurora the word to launch. Kira would be livid if she found out that his apparent misunderstanding of her signals was deliberate, but he knew that
if he played innocent, she would fall for it. She still considered him more naïve than he was, and he had learned there were times when he could use this to his advantage.

Aurora leaped forward, accelerating rapidly until she gained enough speed to take off. The field was not large and the high hedge at the far end was approaching fast when she drove her body from
the ground. Elian took a sharp intake of breath as his dragon skimmed the top of the greenery and powered upwards. When he looked back, Fang was safely airborne and following close behind.

Jack’s flying machine had entered a gentle turn above them. Elian could just make out his face looking down over the side of the cockpit. The pilot was watching both the dragons and the
sky immediately ahead of them.

‘Clever,’ Elian muttered. ‘He’s making sure he’s in position to make a dive for the vortex in case we try to go through without him.’

‘It would not work,’
Aurora said.
‘I could block him if I wanted, but his determination is admirable. Dawn is upon us. Let’s go to the meeting place. Hopefully
the others will be there already.’

Elian felt power building inside his dragon as the moment of dawn approached. As she drew it in, he felt a giddying rush of energy surge through the bond that made him feel as if he were
swelling inside to the point where he might explode. The outpouring as Aurora formed the gateway was similarly intense. Elian did not need to look ahead to know where the vortex was forming. He
could feel it in every fibre of his body.

Fang overtook them, powering ahead to dive into the swirling round disk of grey cloud. As she disappeared, Jack’s machine whistled over Elian’s head, diving in front of Aurora to
follow close on Fang’s tail. The wind was screaming through the wires as he pushed his aircraft to its limits to make sure of his goal. Elian caught a brief whiff of hot exhaust fumes in the
moment before he and Aurora entered, and then the familiar wrenching twist and the feeling of floating in an eternity of nothingness carried him between worlds.

They emerged to a warm late summer afternoon above the planned rendezvous point. Jack’s aircraft wobbled in front of them as he struggled to recover and regain his focus on controlling his
machine.

‘Is Jack all right, Ra?’