unicorn yelped. “Stop singing that,” he said, narrowing his eyes.
“Ouch—sorry, Raet,” Brecan said quickly. “What song would you rather I sing?”
“I’d rather you sing none at all.”
They flew on in silence.
* * *
At night, the wolves came out and prowled the world. The Kingdom of Zylekkha had no shortage of wolves. They wandered the wastelands, scuffing the ice and the sand as they lurched over the rises and through the valleys. They roamed the forests and the cliffs and the plains land. Zylekkha was full of wolves, and the night belonged to them. The moon was full up by the time Brecan reached the mountains, and on his back Raettonus could hear the wolves howling.
Even in daylight, the Dragon’s Teeth were a dreary, unwelcoming place full of sandy soil and sheer rock faces. The paths were uneven and narrow, and in places they crumbled away to nothing. The bridges, where they existed at all, were made of wood and rope; they were rotting, treacherous things that might break beneath one’s weight with little warning. The only trees that grew in the Dragon’s Teeth Mountains were thin, sparse things, and even those were not very common. There were a few nice places—scenic ponds and slow moving stretches of river that sat in some of the valleys where the grass grew green around them and some hardier trees managed to eke out a fair survival—but they were few and far between.
That was in the daytime, but at night, everything about the Dragon’s Teeth was worse. When it was dark, goblins hunted. They knew the crumbling paths better than any traveler could ever hope to, and they could navigate even when there was no moon or stars to see by. When it was dark, faeries hunted. The light hurt their eyes, so they only crept out from the bowels of the rock at night, to seek flesh to sustain themselves for a while longer. The faeries were always hungry, and in what surface-dwellers perceived as complete darkness, they could see perfectly well. When it was dark, will-o-wisps hunted. They climbed from fissures and came from the world between worlds and led travelers off cliffs so they could gorge themselves on their broken remains. The lucky ones died when they fell. The unlucky ones were devoured alive as the fall left them broken and helpless when the will-o-wisp moved in.
Tonight the moon was out—a large, red-orange half circle rising slowly through a purple sky, surrounded by hundreds of thousands of millions of stars. Beneath them, Raettonus could make out a few cliffs and crags and a broader stretch of road curving around the mountain by the moonlight. Beyond the mountaintops, the sea was just visible—a calm, dark mass which could be smelled and heard even from this height and this distance. He leaned against Brecan’s neck and yawned. “Can you go any faster?” he asked the unicorn. “They’re all like to be asleep at this rate. If we would’ve left on time…”
“I’m sorry, Raet,” said Brecan. “But you get so angry when I wake you up, so I didn’t wake you up even though you told me we needed to leave earlier. And I would have woken you up, but I thought you’d be mad if I did.”
He flew a little lower, so that they were no longer so far above the mountains. Instead, they were of a level with some of the higher peaks. Here and there Raettonus spotted the unnatural lines of buildings—temples and fortresses only. No one built houses in the Dragon’s Teeth. No one but goblins, and they lived in dragon- and wolf-skin huts. He spotted a temple atop a mountain, its lines stark in the moonlight, and knew it was the Hell’s Gate temple of Cykkus. It was said to sit atop the only bridge between the realm of Zylx and Hell itself. Raettonus watched it for a second, and then they were past it and it was rapidly fading into all the other shadows of the night.
Fires burned inside some of the fortresses, but these were not the ones he was looking for. The Kaebha Citadel sat beside the sea. Brecan knew the way; he was an idiot, but he was an expert at navigating, whether he had ever been to the destination or not. Raettonus closed his eyes and turned his face toward the unicorn’s bristly mane. He wasn’t tired enough to sleep. Instead, he lost himself in his thoughts and toyed with the hilt of his