Flight to Dragon Isle (2 page)

Root nodded and tried to look braver than he felt, then closed his visor and then his eyes. Ever since Quenelda learned that she was to accompany her father on an inspection of preparations for the coming battle, she had been teaching Root as much as she could about the history of the SDS and Dragon Isle. While endless blizzards raged, they had spent days in Dragonsdome’s ancient Circular Library looking through dusty books and chronicles while Quenelda helped her esquire with his reading and writing. And when they weren’t studying they had been flying.

In particular, she and Root had been practising diving and deploying dragonwings – ‘in case they had to bail out’, she explained kindly, while they both knew what she really meant was ‘in case Root falls out of his saddle’. They had to be prepared for anything, Quenelda argued, as she demonstrated for the third time how the wings worked. She wanted their first military flight to be perfect.

Root gulped and nervously checked his flying harness again. His first attempt at ‘spreading his wings’ had ended in disaster, with him hanging helplessly upside down from the branches of a huge pine tree, wrapped in his wings as tightly and cosily as any sleeping bat. The next day he had taken a cold unplanned dip in the loch, having narrowly missed the sails and rigging of a merchant galleon. And then …

‘Dive, dive, dive …’ At his signal, Stormcracker, the Earl’s massive Imperial Black, rolled ninety degrees to starboard and peeled away, plunging down through the fog below. Root had barely time to draw breath before the world tipped and they were dropping like a stone.

The wind sang in Quenelda’s ears as they plummeted down in perfect formation with the SDS. Her spirit soared. It seemed the most natural thing to do – to swoop down and dance with the dragons. This was what she was born to do, where she truly belonged.

Dragon Isle, Dragon Isle, Dragon Isle
… The name of the fabled fortress thumped through her veins like a heartbeat. She was going home to Dragon Isle!

Standing virtually upright in his stirrups behind her, eyes closed tight, knuckles white, Root hung onto the plunging dragon for dear life. As the force of their descent threatened to pluck him from his saddle, he wondered if Quenelda would even notice that he was gone. Despite his full-face visor and helmet, the wind shrieked shrilly in his ears and his eyes watered in the cold. The speed stole his breath away and left him gasping for air. He gritted his teeth, feeling his lips peel back against his gums. The flying harness that tethered him to the saddle dug painfully into his shoulder blades and waist; his stomach churned and his neck ached. In moments the flight was lost from view as if devoured by a giant dragon’s smoking mouth. Root couldn’t stand this much longer: his arms were burning with the effort of hanging onto the saddle horn. Then, with a crack, Two Gulps’ stubby wings spread and caught the wind, and they levelled out with a thumping jolt scant strides above the cold sea.

‘Seven furlongs and closing …’

Dragon Isle sprang into three-dimensional view over the Earl’s navigator’s right-eye lens, runes and marks rapidly scrolling down in a burst of information. He glanced at his forearm vambrace display to check his coordinates. Satisfied, he lifted his head. ‘Vector approach confirmed and holding.’

‘Acknowledged,’ the Earl replied.

Within heartbeats, a flicker of blue lit up the fog around Stormcracker, enveloping the Earl and his huge battledragon in a fine latticework of fire. The next second, creeping tendrils wrapped around Two Gulps like tree roots questing for water. Root felt the hairs on the back of his neck stand up – the iridescent light was crawling all over him as if searching for something. In front of him, Quenelda’s hair radiated about her helmet like a golden dandelion. Vivid sparks danced in front of the boy’s eyes, making him squeal.

Quenelda turned to him with an apologetic grin. ‘Sorry, I forgot to warn you. Papa told me. I think we’ve just passed through a nexus.’

Root looked blank.

‘A nexus,’ she explained, ‘is a defensive shield. They are cast around Dragon Isle like huge invisible nets.’

‘Sorcery …’ Root breathed. ‘So they know we’re here?’

Quenelda nodded. ‘They know. Look behind you.’

Root turned in the saddle. He looked to his right –
starboard
, he hastily reminded himself. Then he looked to port. He shrugged. ‘Where?’

Quenelda raised her eyes and pointed a finger. Root looked up. Three battlewings of Vampire dragons in close formation were silently escorting them in. Root hadn’t seen or heard a thing.

‘What?’ His mouth fell open. ‘When did they appear?’

Quenelda laughed. ‘Oh, about three leagues out, probably before we even passed through the outer nexus.’

Within moments, great jagged spikes of black rock reared up out of the sea all about the flight, bristling with crossbows and catapults set on narrow gantries.

‘There!’ Quenelda pointed as pinpricks of light glimmered like stars through the fog. As they drew closer, growing pools of yellow light burned through the mist, becoming brighter by the heartbeat.

‘Stormcracker, Stormcracker …’ The flight tower crackled into life. ‘This is Seadragon Tower. You are cleared to land in the east lower cavern, vector heading zero six one.’

‘Dragon Tower, Dragon Tower,’ the Earl Rufus responded. ‘ETA minus five and counting. Stormcracker out.’

The Earl’s flight, followed by Quenelda, realigned their angle of approach. The fog thinned. Quenelda forgot to breathe. Behind her Root gasped.

Soaring up in front of them, built into the combs and carved out of the coal-black cliffs, was the lair of the SDS, guardians of the Seven Sea Kingdoms. Countless blazing braziers and lanterns picked out its imposingly high towers. Vast cliff battlements, spiralling stairways, cliff dragonpads, buttresses and watch towers climbed the sides of the cliffs up and up towards the great castle hidden in the mists far above.

Dragon Isle!

‘Root! Root! Come
on
!’ Quenelda was becoming impatient. ‘
Come on!
’ She stamped her foot in frustration. ‘We’ll be late! You can’t possible walk up every stair. There are ten thousand steps to the top of the tower. You won’t arrive till next week.’

Root groaned. He knew what she said was true. He had already tried once before, counting one thousand, three hundred and two before his legs had given out on him, and as a result they had both missed a patrol briefing. Still … He glared, whether at Quenelda or at the porting disc he wasn’t quite sure, and then gave in gracelessly. ‘Oh, very well,’ he grumbled.

This was the last day of their visit before returning to Dragonsdome in time for the Yule festivities at the Royal Court. In three hectic days they had accompanied the SDS Commander as he toured the barracks, the forges, the armour pits and the roosts, talking to his men and watching them train for the approaching late winter campaign. The two of them had also been fleetingly shown around the cavernous flight hangars and dragonpads, and the harbour caverns crammed with battlegalleons. But these covered only a tiny fraction of this vast island fortress, and to Quenelda’s deep disappointment the Earl had no plans on this brief trip to visit the castle where the men of the SDS learned the art and strategy of warfare.

For as long as she could remember, Quenelda had wanted to enrol at the Battle Academy and become a Dragon Lord – those elite few Battle Mages who flew Imperial Blacks. Since the century of its founding, the seven peoples of the Sea Kingdoms had sent the best of their young to learn to fight their common foe, the hobgoblins, at this academy. But young ladies, tradition held, simply couldn’t fly dragons, let alone fiery-tempered, unpredictable battledragons. And they weren’t capable of Battle Magic.
They should pursue more … feminine pursuits
, Quenelda thought with a sneer.
Like … like sewing tapestries and dancing
. Well, she
was
a young lady
and
she could fly as if born to it. And one day soon, Quenelda swore, she too would be a Dragon Lord like her father, and this was her first chance to see what that would entail.

Unfortunately for Root, the denizens of the vast fortress moved about by using porting stones – discs carved with runes and imbued with sorcery that could whisk you from one point to another. Root hated the porting stones: they made him sick, just as flying used to, but Quenelda would never forgive him if they missed a tour of the Command in Control, the CIC – the operational heart of Dragon Isle. Training exercises were already underway: they had seen hundreds of dragons flying over the loch. Back on active duty, Tangnost too was out there somewhere, training rookie Bonecrackers and troll Marines from the Sea Reaver regiment. There had been neither sight nor sound of him since before the jousts, when he and his raw recruits were transferred to Dragon Isle for full-scale exercises with a hundred thousand veterans. Both Quenelda and Root missed him dearly and hoped to see him before they left.

‘CIC,’ Quenelda said clearly.

There was a sensation of tingling warmth. Root felt his knees buckle, and groaned. The rock about them blurred, then streaked, and the world turned bright white. Root’s stomach followed as an afterthought.

‘Ugghhhh …’ His protesting wail died away.

Suddenly they stopped, and Root’s knees gave way again. He felt sick, putting out a hand to steady himself as the world shuddered into focus about them – to reveal a large circular chamber shrouded in semi-darkness. Feeling wobbly, smothering a protesting belch from his stomach, Root followed Quenelda off the porting stone and into the operational centre of the SDS.

A quiet murmur rose up around them in the softly lit tower as they stood there, open-mouthed. Revolving spheres and three-dimensional displays hung and moved and spun about them while sorcerers at their centre stood or sat, touching or dragging or rotating the flowing, merging magical light … The massive stone walls of the tower were inset with ancient runes and Quenelda could feel the protective power of Battle Magic close about them. She and Root both jumped as the voices of pilots and navigators out on exercises filled the tower.

‘Red Leader, Red Leader, this is red two …’

‘On approach, vector three niner one …’

‘Come …’ The Earl beckoned the pair over to the centre of the room, where a group of armoured Dragon Lords were studying a three-dimensional display of the Sorcerers Glen. Above it, suspended in the air, were layered transparent grids overlaid with neon-blue runes.

‘Each battledragon has a unique signature.’ The Earl pointed towards the glyphs that moved across the huge tactical display above. The slightest movement of his hand revealed another beneath. ‘As does each Battle Mage.’ He beckoned a finger and the outline of a flying Imperial appeared between them, Bonecrackers storming up a wing from a battlegalleon. ‘Thus we know exactly where each and every dragon is within twenty leagues of the Sorcerers Glen, even when visibility is zero.’

‘Is Tempest Talonstrike ready for takeoff?’ The Earl turned to his second-in-command, the Strike Commander of Dragon Isle, a man he introduced as Jakart DeBessert. Quenelda looked at the tall blond officer with his warrior’s braid, wondering how he had taken the news that his only son, Guy, had lost a hand because of her brother Darcy’s bungled attempt to fly a battlegriff.

‘Fully prepped, Commander,’ DeBessert acknowledged. ‘Recruits are boarding now.’

The Earl looked at his daughter gravely. ‘Time, Goose, to return to Court and thereafter to your studies.’

Quenelda’s face fell. The Court! Her studies! She didn’t know which was worse. She sighed theatrically.

‘You know that the Queen has specifically requested that you attend this year’s Yule festivities,’ the Earl chided her gently. ‘You are to sit at the high table – a rare honour.’

Quenelda pouted to show what she thought of the honour. She had conveniently forgotten the Queen’s final command on the day of the joust; had put the ghastly idea out of her mind. She would have to wear a dress again. How she hated dresses! And the other young ladies would all mock her and laugh at her rough manners and poor etiquette, as they always had. She hated going to Court! Root saw the light go out of her eyes, the resigned droop of her shoulders. So did the Earl. Unexpectedly, he smiled.

‘An Imperial will be taking off for Dragonsdome in half a bell. I expect the pair of you to be on it.’

‘What?’ Quenelda’s protest faltered. ‘W-what about Two Gulps? Why?’

‘Two Gulps will return later with me. The Imperial will be taking recruits on their first High Sky operation. I thought you might like to go with them …?’

Quenelda frowned, still reluctant to leave her beloved battledragon. ‘But why …? What?’ Her father’s words caught up with her. ‘Papa!’ She couldn’t believe what she was hearing. ‘Truly?’

Root couldn’t understand her joy. ‘You’ve flown lots of times with your father on Stormcracker, haven’t you?’

Quenelda nodded. ‘Yes. But only flying at Two Gulps’ pace, which is
really
slow. Never in full flight; it’s not normally allowed in the Glen because it creates such a huge backwash from their wings – it blows over boats and breaks windows. And never on an operational fully armoured Imperial with battlecrew!’ She was grinning from ear to ear, before another flash of realization hit her. ‘But … you’re not coming with us, Papa?

‘No. But you won’t be returning alone. I leave you in the very best of hands.’

‘Tangnost?’ Quenelda’s eyes lit up. ‘He’s returning with us?’

Her words were barely out of her mouth when, across the floor, the porting stone rippled. The blossoming light faded to reveal a familiar broad-shouldered outline.

‘Tangnost!’ Root and Quenelda turned to greet the Earl’s dragonmaster.

‘Yes,’ her father said warmly. ‘Tangnost is going to accompany you. I’m afraid I must stay here but’ – he raised a finger to forestall her appeal – ‘I promise, Goose, I
promise
I shall be back at Court in time for the Yule festivities in five days.’