absorbed the blow, but the powerful kick booted her ten feet out of the formation. At their leader’s command, the soldiers closed ranks again.
Distinctly, she heard Ra’aba command, “Red! Kill that monk. The little one.”
Rounding the retreating soldiers, who still maintained their grip on Inniora, the Red Dragon charged.
Blood pounded in her head, each beat a slow hammer-blow against her consciousness. The Dragon’s vicious bite seemed to slow, to proceed along a predetermined path, while Hualiama became the breeze blowing before his attack, shifting capriciously, impossible to pin down. Snap! The Dragon’s jaws clicked on thin air. Snap! The departing threads of her sleeve tickled his nostrils. Roar! Snap! Not even the reaction speed of an exasperated Dragon could catch up with her.
Hualiama whirled, rolling beneath the Red Dragon’s neck, her blades scoring twin slashes on the slightly softer underside of his throat. Really? These Nuyallith blades could cut Dragon armour?
GRRAAAAAGGGHHH!
The Red Dragon’s thunder blasted against her back as Lia fled, barely half a step ahead of the flame spurting from his nostrils. A burning Dragonship superstructure filled her vision. Soaring heron, she thought, leaping eagerly toward it. Flex the knees, soft to land. Hualiama rebounded off a leaning stanchion with a backflip that took her up onto the Dragon’s neck. Full extension of the arm. Her blade slashed his left eye.
Now, the Dragon’s thunder of before was as a zephyr. The crazed, half-blind Red Dragon thrashed in agony, spraying steaming, golden Dragon blood across the cavern, crashing through a pile of burning supplies, flattening the remains of a Dragonship. His bellows shook the cavern. Lia, flung aside as if she weighed no more than a kernel of mohili wheat, crash-landed on the sand. Groaning, she pushed to her feet. Where was Ra’aba? And Inniora–there, being loaded onto his vessel, which shifted as the turbines reversed it out of the cavern!
The stricken Red blasted past the Roc’s Dragonship and out into the night.
Hualiama scrambled to her feet, screaming incoherently. One more try. She could catch Ra’aba.
She pumped her arms, breaking into a lung-bursting sprint across the cavern from the point to which the Red Dragon had driven her. Her feet pounded the hard-packed sand. Suddenly, Ja’al was beside her, his jaw grimly clenched. They raced neck and neck for a few seconds before Lia began to outstrip him, her light frame filled with the memory of a Tourmaline Dragon’s fire, the swords beginning to gleam before her startled eyes as she closed the gap with the Dragonship. To her right came Flicker, screaming an incomprehensible but chilling challenge in Dragonish. The Dragonship gathered speed. Ra’aba’s brows rose as if he could not quite believe the prospect of their pursuit succeeding.
Ja’al hurled a throwing knife at Ra’aba. He flinched aside, his speed inhuman. The knife ricocheted off the crysglass panel behind him, striking one of his soldiers squarely between the shoulder blades. The man pitched off the side with a wail. Ra’aba’s eyes did not so much as flicker.
Hualiama was just twenty feet from the Dragonship when the Roc’s right hand rose from his side. Clawed. Outlined in orange fire.
Taking aim, Ra’aba hurled a fireball at them.
Hualiama began to duck, but Ja’al was faster. BOOM! The fireball detonated against the air right in front of their faces, flinging the trio backward. Ears ringing, head swimming, Lia staggered to her feet. Another fireball! Ja’al deflected it with a wave of his hand. The fireball detonated against an already gutted Dragonship. The gap was a hundred feet now, widening rapidly as Ra’aba’s Dragonship caught the breeze. That distance might as well have been a hundred leagues.
“Inniora!” Lia crashed to her knees.
Ra’aba’s smile widened. He threw them a mocking salute.
* * * *
Master Khoyal died. The Master of Arcane Arts, To’ibbik, perished, but he took one of the Red Dragons with him in an explosion that destroyed the northern quarter of the temple building. The monks were still pulling the dead and injured out of the rubble when Master Jo’el called together his Masters, together with Hualiama, Ja’al and Flicker.
Sober faces ringed the conference in the Chamber of Dragons, the same room where Ja’al had taken his vows so joyously, just months before.
“I’m going to kill Hua’gon!” Ja’al bellowed, storming into the room. “He brought Ra’aba down on us, the traitor!”
Master Jo’el said, “Your brother is a minor issue. Now, Masters–”
“Leave him to me, uncle!”
“Silence!” bellowed Jo’el. It was the first time Hualiama had known him to lose his temper, and it silenced his