of a keen draconic kind. Murder, revenge and hatred of what that girl represented, consumed me. I fell in with bad wing-mates, Dragons led by the Brown, Yulgaz, who is as eloquent the whelp of a snake as has ever cracked the shell. As soon as I could, I turned against my parents, shunning everything that they taught me, and everything they stood for. Soon, I graduated from burning a few scattered houses to fomenting widespread mayhem. But my final test to be fully accepted into their unholy alliance, was to murder a Human child.”
Lia bit her fist rather than cry out.
Suddenly, Grandion’s body stiffened. “That’s odd,” he said. “Would you look at those rajals down there? On the southern peninsula of Gi’ishior … rajals don’t usually hunt in groups, do they?”
“Small family groups, aye. How many do you see?”
“Seventeen.” Tucking in his wings while simultaneously quadrupling the tempo of his wingbeat, the Dragon accelerated.
Hualiama yelled over the whistling wind, “Where are you going? Grandion, speak to me!”
“They’re hunting a green dragonet,” he threw over his shoulder. “I think somebody’s tied his wings together and tossed him to the rajals.”
Chapter 20: Ambush
GRANDION TOSSED HIS tail upward. The bottom dropped out of Lia’s world. Her stomach crammed into her throat so hard and fast, she could not summon the breath to scream. Grandion’s furled wings buzzed with the awesome force of his descent. An insect pinged off Lia’s cheek so hard it felt as though she had been shot by an arrow. At the instant the Dragon levelled out, her stomach plummeted in the opposite direction.
Thundering his challenge, the Tourmaline Dragon swept down upon the rajals and struck out with his talons, killing two felines instantly and tossing a third over a hundred feet through the air. Each coal-black adult stood over five feet tall and weighed as much as four men. But Grandion was a young, enraged Dragon. His wings flared, causing them to brake so sharply that Lia cracked her head on the spine spike ahead of her. Roaring rajals! She slewed sideways out of her seat as the Dragon spun on his wingtip. The rajals loped after Flicker, acting as if they had not even noticed the Dragon’s assault.
Rajals did not behave like this. Hualiama dizzily tried to right herself as Grandion charged the massed cats, spraying fire to all quarters, but her head was bouncing against his shoulder and the vine rope chafed fit to saw her in half.
Flicker scrambled desperately over rocks, running for his life, his wings twisted together behind him with wire and his left hind paw hanging limp. A cleansing rage swept over Hualiama like a storm from the Cloudlands. She growled exactly like a Dragon. Calmly, she sliced the vine fastening her back to the Dragon’s spine spike; she found a stance upon Grandion’s shoulder as the Dragon crashed into the midst of the rajal pack and as the Isles proverb went, set the dog-pack upon them.
As Grandion slewed, body-slamming two rajals with his tail, Hualiama employed the force of his turn to slingshot herself clear. Seven of the forms had taught her how to fall, but she flipped over in the air to crash feet-first into a rajal with bone-crushing force. Her blades sang, biting deep.
Flicker! Lia raced to the stricken dragonet. Beware! A rajal, closing in from her right. The Nuyallith blades lashed out, slicing the paws that cuffed at her. She took a heavy blow on her right wristlet, but rolled smoothly beneath the animal to disembowel it on the way past, even as its claws slashed all around her tumbling body.
Flicker! Flicker, come to me, darling!
The dragonet was terrified out of his wits. He snapped at her.
Lia danced deftly around the dragonet to spear an eager rajal with the blade in her left hand. The rajals’ snarls deafened her. What was that stench on Flicker’s body? Dust kicked up in the air, bushes over her head; Lia cried out at a sudden sharp pain in her shoulder from an unseen blow. She saw Grandion run over the pack with the power of a living avalanche, beating them back with his wing-edges. As Lia ducked beneath the sweep of the Dragon’s wing, her blades slashed in tandem at a tumbling rajal.
She howled, “Flicker!” They had tortured him!
Up now, stepping lightly upon the Tourmaline Dragon’s tail, Lia stretched her body into a dive, clashing with a proud male rajal who drove her back, rising on his hind paws to deliver