misunderstood her—she wished she could protect them. She knew the rebels had volunteered for a life of danger; but if it weren’t for her, they would not be facing the deadliness of the wyvern battalion this very moment. “I can fight.”
“And so can we. We may not have a specific plan of counterattack in case of siege, but we have trained for wyverns, which are not without weaknesses.”
One might find an opportunity to attack a wyvern’s tender underbelly—if one could last long enough before its fire and viciousness. She would have that opportunity: the Bane wanted her alive and in good shape; a dead elemental mage was useless in sacrificial magic. The prince too stood a chance: the satisfaction of getting rid of him was probably not worth an all-out war with the Domain, which, though well past its days of glory, still had enough might and mage power to be a thorn in Atlantis’s side. Not to mention such a war would render Atlantis vulnerable to attacks on other fronts.
The wyverns spewed fire, a latticework hemisphere of flames crashing toward the rebels. A chorus of spell-casting rose. Most of the dragon fire was stopped by a wall of shields, but here and there the tassels and fringes of a carpet caught fire. Iolanthe had become accustomed to the more modern flying carpets, which resembled tablecloths and curtains more than they did actual rugs. But the carpets used in battle were of a more traditional appearance, a good deal thicker and sturdier than their counterparts meant for disguise and ease of carrying.
She commanded the fires on the carpets to extinguish themselves. Already the rebels on the front line were on the counterattack, diving lower so they could aim at the wyverns from underneath. Iolanthe expected at least a couple of wyverns to rear back in pain, their wings flapping wildly.
No reaction. It was as if the rebels had emitted rose petals and dandelion puffs, instead of spells that would have slaughtered elephants and rhinoceroses.
Shouts erupted in languages Iolanthe couldn’t identify, let alone understand.
“The wyverns are armored,” Kashkari interpreted. “Not metal, but plates of dragon hide on the belly.”
Wyverns tolerated metal armor—dragon hide plates, not so much. Whether they clearly understood that they were being strapped into contraptions that had once been body parts of their own kind, nobody knew. But wyverns were intelligent enough that anything made of dragon hide repelled them.
Which meant that they had been given taming draughts ahead of time, so they wouldn’t struggle against the donning of the plates. A taming draught given before a battle slowed a wyvern’s normally lightning-quick reflexes. Atlantis must have decided that the protection of the plates outweighed the disadvantages of the taming draught.
“They are prepared for you,” said Titus.
Of course. Metal plates against the most susceptible parts of the wyverns would have put them in danger when faced with a mage who command fire. Dragon hide, on the other hand, was immune to ordinary fire.
But it wasn’t immune to dragon fire.
She pointed her wand and routed a stream of dragon fire back at the wyvern that had spewed it. The wyvern’s rider wrenched it sharply to the side to avoid the jet of flames. Iolanthe gathered the flames of two nearby wyverns into two fireballs and hurtled them at the same wyvern, narrowly missing the ridge of one wing.
A noise like a thousand sharp claws scratching upon a thousand windowpanes grated against her eardrums. Instantly the night turned darker. She held her breath for several heartbeats before she realized that it wasn’t some new and frightfully powerful act of sorcery on Atlantis’s part. It was only that all the wyverns had stopped spewing fire.
So that she could not use their own fire against them.
You cannot surprise Atlantis twice.
The wyverns, without their fire, were scarcely less deadly. The sharpness of their talons and the toughness of their wings were matched only by their fierce intelligence. They came at the rebels, teeth and claws at the ready.
“I do not like this,” Titus said darkly.
“You never like anything, darling.” But she liked it no better than he did.
The wyverns advanced from all directions. The rebels retreated toward the center of their formation. The wyverns pushed in farther. The rebels pulled tighter.
All at once the wyverns on the front line charged. The rebels scattered like a school of fish bombarded by diving cormorants. Kashkari wrested Titus and Iolanthe left and up to get out of the way of a pair of hard-driving wyverns. Iolanthe,