Flight of the Dragon Kyn by Susan Fletcher

Author:Susan Fletcher
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Atheneum Books for Young Readers

Chapter 13

And dragons, being the most ancient of all creatures, hold by the old way of speech: Say little; convey much.

—THE BOK OF DRAGON

There was a deep, sharp, ripping noise in the air, growing louder and louder as if the sky were being rent apart. The dragon was growing, bearing down on me. It twisted through the black strip of sky, glinting green in the moonlight, trailing wind spouts that rustled in the trees and loosed showers of clattering rocks down the sides of the canyon.

I heard shouting in the encampment; beneath the ledge I saw a churning of movement pricked by quicksilver flashes of moonlight on metal. The king had sworn to protect me, but now I did not see how he could. Not with the dragon coming so fast. Not with the dragon so big, and the men so tiny.

I tried to root myself to the river where I stood because that was the plan: I would stay and call the dragon to me, and the men would shoot it down. But the dragon sped closer, loomed larger, until it: filled the sky between the canyon walls: a massive, winged eel. And the panic grew and grew and then erupted inside me, and my legs were running, slipping, stumbling up the slope toward the encampment, and I didn’t know how they had begun. I looked back over my shoulder. The dragon was above the canyon—too high for the men to shoot it—almost overhead.

The rushing, ripping-air sound filled my ears, and I breathed in an alien scent: like sulfur, like hot metal. I threw myself down, covering my head and waited for … what? A blast of fire? A raking of claws?

I heard it pass above: a whooshing wingbeat, and then a wind-wake roaring in my ears. When I looked up, the dragon was soaring far down the canyon. It crested a rise, then was hidden from view.

Slowly, I clambered to my feet. The world was still, save for the crying of birds and a faint distant thunder that might have been only an echo in my mind. A sprinkling of arrows littered the slope; I had not heard them loosed. My bearskin lay where I had dropped it on the frozen river.

The dragon was nowhere in sight. I looked up into the sky at the circling birds and thought I saw Skava among them but could not be sure. “Come,” I called. “Skava, come.” I strained to reach her with my mind but felt only restlessness, confusion.

Then a shout from the encampment.

“Kara!” Orrik’s voice echoed off the canyon walls. “Call again!”

Again?

Was he mad?

I had called and it had come and the men had loosed their arrows and nothing had stopped the dragon from killing me, save for its own wild reasons, whatever those had been. And now he wanted me to call … again?

“I … can’t!” I held out my arms in a shrugging motion and started up for the encampment.

“Call!” the king shouted.

I kept climbing up the slope, pretending not to hear.

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