Scorch Dragons Page 2

  When they were done, Lisabet still had a couple of hours to stay awake, so they tipped their boots over to rest the leather against the warm stone floor, hoping they’d dry, and leaned back against their pillows. Anders was dying to crawl under the quilt and close his eyes—because he was exhausted, and because falling asleep would give him a break from the thoughts and questions racing around his head. But he made himself keep his eyes open.

  “So,” he said, trying the words out loud. “We’re in Drekhelm.”

  “We’re lying in their beds,” Lisabet agreed. “Pack and paws, we couldn’t be more in Drekhelm if we tried.”

  “I wish you hadn’t come,” Anders whispered. “Not that I don’t want you here,” he hurried on, when he heard her hurt intake of breath. “But now you can’t go home. I’m used to moving to new places, to finding my feet wherever I go. But Ulfar’s always been your home.”

  “We don’t even know if they’ll let us stay,” she said quietly. “You heard that man in the infirmary.”

  “That’s what’s worrying me most,” he admitted. “What if they want us to tell them things we can’t?”

  “We might not have a choice. And they’re not just going to ask questions about Ulfar’s secrets, they’re going to have questions about your icefire as well.”

  “I have questions about my icefire,” Anders said. “I don’t know how I did it, but I can tell it’s . . . gone. I don’t think I could do it again, I don’t know how.”

  “Maybe we can tell them that,” Lisabet whispered. “They’ll think we’re less of a threat.” She didn’t sound very hopeful.

  But the idea was starting to take root in Anders’s mind. “We don’t have to just wait around,” he said quietly. “We’ve been talking about how we can’t go back to Holbard, but maybe there’s an option in between going there and staying here.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “If Rayna’s better in the morning, she could help us get somewhere else. Somewhere they can’t find us, at least until we know what they’ve got planned for us,” he suggested.

  “Do you think she’ll be well enough to move?” Lisabet’s tone said she was already seriously considering the idea, which told Anders she’d been as worried as he was.

  “I think we should go see her as soon as the sun comes up,” he said. “And find out.”

  As the evening drew on, the only noise in their room was the slow trickling of the water in the clock, and the occasional soft click as a tube filled up completely, and the hands ticked on to show another quarter hour, draining out the water to start again.

  Every so often he checked to make sure Lisabet was still awake, and she always was. Eventually the clock had counted off the hours they’d been told to wait, and it was late in the afternoon, almost a day and a half since they’d last woken up. They left the blinds open so the morning light would wake them, and each climbed under their quilts.

  Anders waited for sleep to take him. The mattress was luxuriously soft, and the quiet trickle of the water lulled him. Against all the odds, and in defiance of every story he’d ever heard growing up, this was the most comfortable bed he’d ever slept in. Sleep tugged at his eyelids.

  Whatever tomorrow held, he’d have to be ready to fight. If Rayna could hide them, that would buy them more time to learn the Dragonmeet’s intentions and try to make a plan. If she couldn’t, he’d have to face down the Dragonmeet and do something he’d never imagined he’d want to—he’d have to find a way to convince the council that he and Lisabet should be allowed to stay at Drekhelm.

  Chapter Two

  ANDERS WOKE UP BECAUSE HE WAS STARVING. For a long moment he couldn’t work out where he was, staring up at a smooth stone ceiling that looked nothing like his room at Ulfar. Then he realized he couldn’t hear Sakarias mumbling in his sleep or the distant sounds of the city.

  It came back to him in a flash: he was at Drekhelm.

  He pushed upright, looking around the little room he was sharing with Lisabet, who was still a sleeping lump under her quilt. They were alone, and the room was far too bright. He shoved back his own quilt, hurrying over to the window and peering out.

  Behind him, there was a bleary groan of protest from Lisabet as his movement woke her, but he barely heard it. The sun was much too far above the horizon, and his heart thumped an alarm—it was mid-morning. They’d slept much too long, and their chance of finding Rayna without running into anyone on the way was surely gone.

  “Whatimesit?” Lisabet mumbled from under her blankets.

  “Morning,” he said, his head whirling. “Late morning.” Pack and paws.

  He crossed back to his bed, sitting down to pull on his boots, lacing them tight. They had to get moving, do something. They had to try and find a back way to Rayna, to figure out how to keep themselves out of the hands of the Dragonmeet and their threats.

  “We’d better hurry,” said Lisabet, pushing off her quilt and hurrying out of bed, over to the door so she could rest her ear against it, one hand on the doorknob.

  “There must be more than one way to the infirmary,” he said. “Rayna will . . .” But he trailed off, because Lisabet had the strangest expression on her face.

  She stood with her hand on the doorknob, trying to turn it, then trying again. She shoved her shoulder against the door, rattled the knob one more time, and finally gave up, leaning against the door and looking back at him. “It’s locked,” she said. “They’ve locked us in.”

  Anders stared at her, a shiver going through him.

  They were prisoners.

  “We can’t just wait here until they come for us,” she said.

  “Agreed. And Rayna would have come for us herself by now if she knew we were locked in. So she doesn’t know, or else they haven’t let her out of the infirmary yet.”

  He crossed over to Lisabet, dropping to a crouch beside her to take a good look at the lock. He could see a tiny sliver of the corridor beyond through the keyhole. This lock didn’t look much harder to pick than Hayn’s had been, but he didn’t have so much as a hairpin to try with. He gazed at the metal, trying to think through what he knew of locks.

  Neither he nor Lisabet were strong enough to break it, so they needed to trick it somehow. Lisabet pressed her fingers to it, pushing hard, though they both knew it wouldn’t work. Seeing her gave Anders an idea, though.

  “Could you freeze it?” he asked. “If you can blast metal with enough cold, it’s not so hard to break afterward.”

  “I can try,” she said, closing her eyes in concentration, then slipping down into her wolf form.

  Anders stepped back, and Lisabet brought down her paws, casting a quick, thin ice spear straight at the lock. It struck the keyhole, and the metal all around it turned white with frost.

  Anders followed it up with the hardest kick he could muster, twisting to stomp the sole of his boot against the lock, driving his heel into it.

  The lock cracked but held.

  “Again,” he said, and Lisabet cast a second spear, the air in the room turning freezingly, refreshingly cold.

  Anders kicked once more with all his might, the shock of it traveling up his leg.

  This time the lock came to pieces, and he pulled them free of the door, which swung open slowly.

  Lisabet pushed herself back into human form, panting. “Transforming is much harder work than usual in this heat,” she said, grabbing her boots and lacing them up quickly. Meanwhile, Anders stuck his head out into the hallway to check that the coast was clear.

  “Let’s try for the infirmary,” he said. “I want to find out where Rayna is.”

  “The dragons are going to ask questions if they see us wandering around,” Lisabet pointed out. “They locked us in.”

  “Most of them won’t even know who we are,” he replied. “We look just like them when we’re in our human form. And we’re wearing their clothes.”

  She hesitated, but he knew she was going to come around. Otherwise, she wouldn’t have he
lped him break open the door. “Let’s do it,” she agreed.

  They made their way quietly out into the hall, keeping on the balls of their feet, ready to move—ready to run—at the first sign of trouble.

  They did their best to retrace the path they’d followed with Ellukka the day before, but it proved busy, and soon enough they were obliged to duck into lesser-used passageways, taking each new turn that seemed to lead them in the right direction—or so Anders hoped. The first few hallways they looked down were nothing special—they found more bedrooms, and then a small communal area with nobody in it. The common area had tables and chairs, some couches, some playing cards left out. On the bright side, it also had a bowl full of dark bread slices spread thickly with creamy butter, waiting for hungry dragons to come along. Anders and Lisabet both took a slice in each hand and kept on their way.

  It wasn’t until a few hallways later that they discovered the room of maps.

  When Anders carefully poked his head through the doorway, the chamber waiting for him was much larger than any they’d been in so far, except for the Great Hall. The walls were plastered with maps, showing everything from small sections of Vallen to the whole of the island—that map took up nearly an entire wall.

  A big table ran the length of the chamber, with a dozen seats around it, all facing toward one end of the room.

  At that end, a huge map—taller than Anders himself, taking up another whole wall—was pinned up.

  It was a map of the city of Holbard, capital of Vallen and home to Ulfar Academy. Around the edges were marked the plains that surrounded the city on three sides, as well as the harbor that bordered it on the fourth.

  “That’s a map of home,” Lisabet said, poking her head in beside his.

  They both walked into the room, their footsteps audible on the stone as they made their way up to stare at the Holbard map.

  “There’s Ulfar,” he said, pointing at the squares that outlined the adult barracks and the Academy. There was a large red cross marking it.

  “Why do they need to look at it on a map?” she whispered, sounding as worried as he felt.

  They walked along the base of the map, taking in all the landmarks they knew so well. By the docks, there was another place marked with a bold red cross. Anders peered, trying to determine exactly what it was. Suddenly, all the air went out of him. “Lisabet,” he whispered.

  She was at his side in a moment. “What is it?”

  “Right here, this is where the fire was at the docks. This is the exact place, the exact buildings.”

  “Pack and paws,” she whispered.

  “Are you lost?” someone said from behind them, in a pointed tone. It was Ellukka’s voice.

  They both turned and found her standing beside Mikkel, the smirking boy they’d met on the mountainside the day before with Ellukka and Rayna. Mikkel dipped into a deep, sarcastic bow. “I see our honored guests have been exploring,” he said.

  “We’ve been looking all over for you,” Ellukka added.

  “You thought we’d be in our room, where you locked us in?” Anders asked pointedly.

  Mikkel shrugged. “You’re wolves,” he said, as though that explained it.

  Ellukka, despite her irritated expression, actually looked away. Maybe she wasn’t quite as unapologetic as he was.

  Lisabet cut across his thoughts. “Why is the site of the docks fire marked on your map?”

  Ellukka frowned, walking into the room to stand by them and stare up at the map. After a moment, Mikkel followed. He was tall, with a shock of copper hair, long and curly on top, short on the sides, and had fair skin. He looked a lot like Anders’s wolf friend Sakarias, except that where Sakarias’s eyes were blue and always full of laughter, Mikkel’s were a dark brown—clever, intent, and maybe even unfriendly.

  “Right there,” Anders said, pointing. “That’s where a huge fire started just a week ago. It was dragonsfire, I saw it myself.”

  “Look,” said Mikkel. “I don’t know what it was, but nobody would have lit a fire in the middle of Holbard. It’s too dangerous.” He sounded sure. “We’d know.”

  “Or perhaps they didn’t tell you,” said Lisabet, “because you’re twelve.”

  “Maybe someone was investigating the fire,” Ellukka said. “It’s just a map of the city.”

  “It’s more than that,” Lisabet replied. “You know it doesn’t look good.”

  “What, and you’re looking good right now?” Mikkel snapped. “You just broke down your door and started snooping around Drekhelm.”

  Anders stared at him. “We broke out after you locked us in!”

  “You’re wolves!” Mikkel replied, voice rising to a shout.

  “And?” Anders replied hotly. “That means what, exactly?”

  “It means you’re not to be trusted,” Mikkel replied. “And you proved it by prying into our business at the first opportunity you got.”

  Anders growled in the back of his throat. “You can’t seriously be arguing that. We went looking for my sister after you locked us in, and can I remind you again that we found a map marked with your attack plans when we did?”

  “Look,” said Lisabet, holding up her hands. “I don’t think anyone’s looking good here. Are we really going to stand around debating things like whether locking us in or breaking out was the worse crime?”

  Ellukka spoke up. “We came to get you because Leif is ready to see you. You should ask him what this map is if you’re so sure it’s evidence of something.”

  Anders’s heart fell into his boots. They’d lost their chance to get away from the Dragonmeet. Now they’d have to face whatever the dragons had in store for them.

  But Mikkel was still gazing up at the map, head to one side, as if he was trying to make sense of it too. “What’s this?” he asked, pointing at Ulfarstrat. “The main street?”

  Lisabet turned to see what he was looking at. “That’s right,” she said.

  Mikkel was quiet for a little before he spoke again. “What’s Holbard like?” He didn’t sound angry or frustrated now. Mostly, he just sounded curious.

  “Big,” said Lisabet eventually. “Big stone walls around the city, lots of cobbled streets, and colorful houses. They’re mostly two or three stories high, and they’re all painted pinks and blues and yellows and greens, you name it. The window frames are wood or white, and the rooftops are covered in grass—it keeps the cold out. In spring and summer, flowers grow up there, and it’s almost like being out on the plains. And the city’s on the harbor, so the ships’ masts are like a forest of bare trees when the harbor’s full. There are huge metal arches at the port, wind guards. Wolves and dragons made them together, to keep the ships safe.”

  “Artifacts so big a ship can sail under them?” Mikkel whistled, impressed.

  “There are all kinds of people there,” Lisabet continued. “From just about every country there is. They speak different languages, they look different, they sell different food and play different music, it’s wonderful. The sea’s right there beside the city, so whatever the weather is, we know about it. Sometimes the rain’s so hard it seems like it wants to drive us into the ground, and sometimes you get a warm breeze that feels like it’s come all the way across the ocean from some other country.”

  Mikkel and Lisabet seemed to have forgotten Anders and Ellukka were even there. In that moment, Mikkel could have been any of their fellow students at Ulfar.

  At first, when Lisabet had said “big” and mentioned the walls, Anders had thought she was trying to make sure Mikkel understood how well-defended Holbard was. But that wasn’t it at all. Lisabet had seen what Anders hadn’t, or she’d suspected it. The young dragons were as curious about wolves as the wolves were about dragons. They probably had their own scary stories to match the ones Sakarias had told around the campfire, come to that.

  It was Ellukka who broke the spell. “The Dragonmeet will be waiting,” she said. “And when I left the infirmary, they were about to let Rayna ou
t, so she should be there to meet us in the Great Hall.”

  “Good luck,” said Mikkel, sounding like perhaps he even meant it a tiny bit. “I’m meeting Theo in the gardens. I’ll see you later.”

  Anders swallowed, then nodded. He couldn’t wait to see his twin, but he had to focus. Since they’d missed their chance to hide, he had to find a way to stay at Drekhelm without betraying the wolves. At least Mikkel’s words made it sound like the young dragon maybe did expect him to stick around, but the cross on the map was a reminder that there was a lot Anders didn’t know about the dragons.

  He had to look after the people he cared about. That was what mattered.

  Rayna was indeed waiting for them outside the door to the Great Hall, and as soon as she saw Anders, she hurried over to his side, slipping her hand into his, giving it a squeeze. Her touch was familiar, her skin warm.

  Wolves didn’t like hot weather—it made them weaker, made it harder to think clearly—any more than dragons liked the cold. But her warmth didn’t bother him now, just as the bath hadn’t the night before. It was very odd. Perhaps something had changed in the wake of the incredible, impossible silver icefire he’d thrown to end the battle the day before? It had been neither the ice of the wolves nor the fire of the dragons . . . but somehow both.

  With Rayna on one side and Lisabet on the other, he followed Ellukka through the double doors into the Great Hall, where the Dragonmeet was waiting. It was a huge room with a high ceiling so smooth he wasn’t sure if it had been carved or if some long-ago lava bubble had somehow created it. Enormous doors, big enough for a dragon to fly through, led out to the side of the mountain, though just now they were bolted closed. Below those, the human-size doors through which his classmates had come were also closed and bolted.

  At the other end of the room was a long table occupied by the twenty-five members of the Dragonmeet. Leif, their leader—the Drekleid—was sitting at its head. He had a shock of red hair and a neatly trimmed beard, and ruddy cheeks, as if he spent a lot of time outdoors. He was built on sturdy lines, and looked strong and capable. At the moment he wore a serious expression.