Darkness of Dragons

  Clearsight stopped moving, frozen in the middle of a laugh.

  “Maybe it’s not the memories,” Darkstalker said, leaving a smudge of green ink on his face as he tapped his snout thoughtfully. “Maybe … maybe your power was one of the things I loved about you. Even if it was spectacularly annoying sometimes.” He sighed. “Fine, be Clearsight, with all her memories and an understanding of what’s happening now, but only able to see the good futures, where everything turns out perfectly. Unfreeze.”

  Clearsight didn’t move for a moment. She stared out the window, reaching toward the ruins visible below.

  “Darkstalker,” she whispered. “What happened?”

  “It doesn’t matter!” he said. “It’s all in the past. We’re together now. We can be happy.”

  “Ruling the NightWings?” she said disbelievingly. “After everything you did, they —”

  “Stop,” said Darkstalker, and she froze again.

  “This is awful,” Moon whispered to Qibli.

  “I don’t even understand,” Qibli whispered back. “It’s like she’s not real. He’s — he’s rewriting her, over and over again.”

  “She isn’t real,” Moon agreed, “or at least, she’s not really Clearsight. He must have … made her somehow.”

  “Be Clearsight,” Darkstalker said, now visibly frustrated, “exactly as I knew her but without any nagging or worrying or pessimism or telling me what to do and what’s wrong with me all the time! By all the shining moons!” He seized the scroll and ripped it into shreds. “Go on, be her!”

  “Oh, poor Darkstalker,” Clearsight said soothingly. “Don’t you fret so much, darling. You’re just perfect. You’ll be a wonderful king.”

  “Why isn’t this working?” Darkstalker said to her. “Why does being with you feel so wrong and weird?” He slumped to the floor and buried his face in his talons. “I really miss you, Clearsight.”

  “I’m right here,” she said gently.

  “Not you. Freeze.” She stopped with one wing around him. “The real you,” he said miserably to the floor. “What am I doing all this for, if I never get to be with you again?”

  “That’s the dragon I see,” Moon whispered to Qibli. “Underneath the other dragon.”

  “You’re right,” Qibli said to her. “Underneath the brainwashing genocidal murderer is a very lonely brainwashing genocidal murderer.”

  “All right, I know, I get it,” she said. “But this is the right time to talk to him. Stay close?”

  “I’ll be right here,” he said, brushing her wing with his. “I’ll always be close, if you need me.”

  She took a deep breath and stepped into the room.

  Darkstalker looked up and started violently at the sight of Moon.

  “What are you doing here?” he said. “Why didn’t I hear you coming?” He touched his head for a moment, then gave her a searching look. “Are you all right? I can’t reach you.”

  “I’m using skyfire,” Moon said.

  “Skyfire? Protection spells?” he said, looking genuinely wounded. “Moon, aren’t we friends?”

  “I thought so,” she said. “But then I found out you’ve been lying to me and doing some really terrible things.”

  He raised his front claws to his forehead again. “All the futures are wavering, Moon. The futures where we’re not friends — those aren’t good futures for anyone.” His eyes drifted to the side, as if he was watching a path unfold. “Something is happening. Something very bad.”

  Turtle escaping? Qibli thought worriedly. Is he seeing the ripples from that?

  “This dragon isn’t real,” Moon said, pulling his attention back to her. She pointed at Clearsight. “I don’t know how you made her, but I know she’s not the real Clearsight. At first I was worried you’d really brought her back from the dead somehow.”

  “No.” Darkstalker sighed, regarding the silent, enchanted dragon. “Rumor has it that’s the one thing an animus dragon can’t do. I’d probably need her bones to try anyway. I mean, not that I would,” he added, catching Moon’s expression. “Because creepy? Right. Creepy.”

  “But that’s why she feels wrong to you, Darkstalker,” Moon said. “Because this is wrong, this … experimenting with other dragons. Trying to create a perfect dragon for yourself. Trying to change someone to be exactly what you think you want. That’s not love.”

  “I do love Clearsight!” Darkstalker insisted.

  “Right, and this isn’t her,” Moon said. “You loved the real her even when she fought with you, because she was always completely herself.” She spread one of her wings toward the false Clearsight. “Not the version of her you tried to create. Let her go, Darkstalker. Whatever this is — whatever you enchanted to turn into Clearsight — turn it back.”

  It’s not whatever, Qibli guessed with a bolt of inspiration and horror. It’s whoever. There’s someone else under there.

  Darkstalker looked at Moon for a while, thinking.

  He doesn’t want her to know it’s another dragon. He knows how she’d react.

  “All right, I will,” he said finally. “If you promise to stay my friend. Always.”

  Moon picked up a torn piece of the scroll and started folding it carefully between her claws. “I don’t know if I can promise that,” she said. She looked him in the eyes. “Not if it’s true about what you’ve done to the IceWings.”

  “What I’ve done?” he said. “What do you — that’s it.” His voice abruptly dropped into a low hiss. “That’s the change. I see it. It’s the IceWings. They’re — my spells aren’t working on them anymore.” He whirled furiously toward the window. “Who did this? What idiot — Moon, can’t you feel it?”

  “A vision?” she said.

  “Yes!” he said. “Your vision! It’s drawing closer — can’t you tell how soon it is?”

  “I have it all the time,” she said. “Every day now.”

  “I thought I’d stopped it for you! But somebody ruined my plans.” Darkstalker pounced on the other half of the ripped scroll and picked up the bottle of green ink. “Tell me what the IceWings are doing right at this moment,” he said, upending the bottle over the paper. Green ink poured out, but instead of splashing into a blobby puddle, it spread and shifted into letters that scrawled across the scroll.

  “Queen Glacier is dead,” Darkstalker read aloud.

  Qibli stifled a gasp. Oh no. They hadn’t been fast enough with the earrings. Winter was going to be devastated.

  “The new queen of the IceWings is her daughter, Snowfall,” Darkstalker read on. “She has declared war on the NightWings after learning that the Darkstalker has returned and that he was responsible for the plague decimating their tribe. The entire IceWing army is on the move, planning to wipe out the NightWings for good.” He snarled angrily.

  “So you did try to kill them all,” Moon said.

  “Because I knew otherwise they’d come kill us!” he cried. “There are a lot more IceWings than NightWings right now, in case you hadn’t heard. And they hate us. They’re going to wipe out our whole tribe, and it’s all because of your interfering friends.”

  “No, it’s because of you!” Moon said spiritedly. “The IceWings and NightWings were at peace! Queen Glory and Queen Glacier had worked out a truce, finally, after all those centuries of hatred. We were starting over. But of course they’re going to fight back after what you did!”

  “They would have come for us anyway,” Darkstalker insisted. “As soon as they heard I was alive. That’s what your vision was always about — the coming war between the NightWings and IceWings. That’s what I was trying to save us from.”

  “By murdering an entire tribe?” she said. “Darkstalker, you really don’t see how fundamentally horrible that is?”

  “They started it,” he growled. He turned back to the scroll, lashing his tail. “Tell me where the IceWing army is now.”

  Moon tipped her head to read the new letters that rearranged themselves on the page. “On their way
to Jade Mountain,” she read. “To demand answers about where Darkstalker and the NightWings are. Oh no.” She pressed her front talons together. “Jade Mountain will fall — the prophecy —”

  “It’s too late to stop it now,” Darkstalker said. “We have to go fight them, or else they’ll come here and destroy the new home we’re building.”

  “Maybe they won’t,” Moon said desperately. “Qibli told me they’re afraid of the mountains on the northern border. Maybe they won’t want to come through them.”

  Darkstalker stopped, looking at her with glittering eyes. “That’s right,” he said. “My spell to protect the border. That was a stroke of genius. It did an excellent job of protecting our kingdom from invading ice dragons. Well, guess what? IT’S COMPLETELY USELESS NOW.” He stabbed a claw violently into the scroll. “Thanks to whatever cleverclaws made the IceWings safe from all my spells. Now the whole tribe can come pouring through to wipe us out!”

  He shook his head. “No. We won’t just wait for them to come destroy us. We’re NightWings! The greatest tribe in Pyrrhia! We’re taking this fight to them.”

  He whirled toward Clearsight. “Go back to the dragon you were, with no memory of the spells I put on you,” he barked.

  She smiled and nodded pleasantly, and then a moment later, sleek, beautiful Clearsight was gone, and in her place stood the thin and scowling shape of Fierceteeth. She glanced around the room, scowling more deeply in confusion.

  Yikes, Qibli thought.

  “You —” Moon pointed at Fierceteeth, aghast. “She — you —”

  “Gather all the NightWings who can fight,” Darkstalker said to Fierceteeth. “The very young and the sick can stay here safely. The rest should meet me in the Great Diamond as soon as possible.”

  “The Great Diamond?” Fierceteeth said snippily.

  “The plaza below the palace,” said Darkstalker, waving one talon out the window. “Go on, fly as fast as you can. And don’t annoy me again.”

  “But what for? What do I tell them?” Fierceteeth demanded.

  Darkstalker’s face looked carved from stone. “Tell them we’re going to war.”

  Qibli and Moon ran through the palace, flying down the levels, leaping over staircases on their way back to Moon’s room. Qibli had a stitch in his side, and Moon’s wound was bleeding again, leaving little smears of blood behind them, but neither of them stopped.

  “I’m guessing that wasn’t exactly how you hoped it would go,” Qibli said.

  “Well,” Moon answered, “at least now he’s definitely going to be too busy to worry about Turtle escaping.”

  “Can we get a message to Jade Mountain?” Qibli asked, panting for breath. “To Sunny?” He shook his head, answering himself. “I can’t think of a way. We have to get there ourselves, as fast as we can.”

  “And we have to break the news to Winter,” Moon said with an agonized wince.

  “I can do that,” Qibli volunteered. “I can tell him. You don’t have to.”

  “No, I’ll do it. You go look for Kinkajou and Turtle,” she said, skidding to a stop outside her door.

  “Where are the dungeons?” he asked.

  She lifted her wings in a hopeless shrug. “I’m guessing … down?”

  “I could end up running around this huge palace for the rest of the night,” he pointed out. “Is there anyone we can safely ask?”

  “Yes!” Moon said. “I mean, no, but there’s a scroll with the architectural plans of the palace — I was looking at it in the palace library earlier today. It’ll still be out on the table. Up those stairs, second door on your right.” She pointed at the closest flight of stairs.

  Qibli hesitated. “I don’t want to leave you here. I — I don’t want Winter to yell at you again.”

  “I’ve heard it all in his thoughts,” she said, “and worse in other dragons’. I can handle it.”

  “Does it make you hate everyone?” he blurted. “Knowing what we’re really thinking?”

  She tilted her head to the side. “No, Qibli. Just the opposite,” she said, catching one of his talons. “It helps me see what’s really going on inside everyone. It’s why I believe every dragon has good in them.” She squeezed his claws. “Some have so much kindness inside, it gives me hope for the world.”

  Does she mean me? he thought wonderingly. Is that what she found in me?

  “Find Kinkajou,” she said. “Get back here as quick as you can.”

  He raced up the stairs and found the palace library immediately. It was only one room, but a very big one, and more than one of the tables had a scroll unrolled on it. It didn’t take him long to find the one with the blueprints, though. He fumbled to roll through it, leaving a little tear in the paper with his claws by accident.

  There were three floors of dungeons at the very bottom of the palace, it turned out, which seemed a bit excessive to Qibli until he tried imagining what else Darkstalker might do with prisoners if he ran out of room to jail them. He studied the little sketches of stairs carefully and figured out that there must be an entrance to the dungeons right next to the royal throne room.

  The back of his neck started to prickle, as if his scales were shifting uneasily. That haunted feeling rolled over him slowly, like curling wet fog.

  He whirled around.

  And to his surprise, someone was actually there.

  “Hello,” said the strange NightWing. She stared at him for a moment. “I can’t figure out who you are.” She took a step closer, studying him with eyes that were neither friendly nor entirely unfriendly. Her face was hard to read.

  “Just … a friend,” said Qibli. “Of … Moonwatcher’s.”

  “Moonwatcher,” she said as if she were tasting the name on her forked tongue. “I see. Are you a friend to Darkstalker?”

  The pause was tense, laden with danger, but Qibli wasn’t sure in which direction.

  “Moon is his friend,” he said at length. “I would say I have some concerns.”

  She flicked her tail. “Such as? Be honest, please.”

  “I kind of have to be somewhere,” he said, taking a step backward toward the door.

  “Then be honest and brief,” she suggested, in a tone that wasn’t open to argument.

  “All right,” he said. “Such as the fact that he killed his father; the fact that his seer girlfriend thought he was so dangerous he had to be hidden under a mountain for eternity; he can enchant dragons to do anything he tells them to, or turn them into other dragons entirely if he wants; the fact that he just tried to kill the entire IceWing tribe with magic; and the fact that he’s so charming and sincere that smart dragons tend to like him even when they’re not enchanted to. Also, I’m not sure there’s anyone who can stop him.” He kept edging toward the door as he spoke, putting more space between him and the stranger. “I’m not sure there’s anyone he cares about enough that he’d listen to them — or anyone who’s willing to try.”

  “I see,” she said. “Compelling. One last question. Why was there an angry SeaWing chasing after him?”

  This arrested Qibli midstep. “Tsunami?” he said. “Are you the one who stopped her? Where is she?”

  “I understand Darkstalker has had some trouble with angry SeaWings before,” she said. “This one was … very shouty. Not terrific at answering polite questions. Confining her seemed like a sensible precaution.”

  “Where?” Qibli asked. “Is she here? At the palace?”

  “No,” said the NightWing. “I left her in a convenient cave in the rainforest while I assessed her threat level. Upon reflection, I would like to let her go,” she added thoughtfully. “But she’s made some very specific threats. One might call them alarmingly detailed.”

  “If you tell me where to find her, I’ll let her out and make sure she understands it was your idea. I can talk her out of any revenge, I promise.”

  “That would be very helpful,” she said. She held out a scrap of folded paper. When Qibli unfolded it, he found a sketchy map of the r
ainforest with a little X marked about halfway between the mountains and the RainWing village.

  “Is that why you approached me?” he asked, studying the map for a moment before looking up. “Because you guessed I’d — oh.”

  The NightWing had vanished.

  Which was weird, since Qibli was standing in front of the door. He peeked under the closest table, glanced around the vast room, and realized there must be another exit at the far end.

  Still wondering what had just happened, he hurried to the throne room and searched the corridors around it until he found an appropriately sinister-looking iron door, coated with rust. It wasn’t guarded, which surprised him.

  Maybe the guards are in the Great Diamond, listening to Darkstalker call for war.

  Or maybe he chose not to post any here because he didn’t want Moon to notice them and ask who was in the dungeon.

  Three heavy iron bolts studded the edge of the door, sealing it in place. He threw them back one by one, then seized the handle and pulled as hard as he could. With an outraged, grating shriek, the door swung open.

  On the other side was darkness; he could see a few stairs going down, but the rest vanished beyond the edge of the light. He blinked, letting his eyes adjust for a moment, and then something slammed into his chest.

  He stumbled backward, feeling wings smack him in the face but unable to see anything of his attacker.

  “Ow!” he yelled. “Please be an excited RainWing and not something scarier!”

  “Oh, sorry!” said Kinkajou’s voice. She popped into view, disguised as a NightWing in black and silver scales. It was very weird to see Kinkajou’s face on a NightWing. Qibli wasn’t sure any NightWing in history had ever smiled so much.

  “We’ve been stuck in there for ages,” Kinkajou said. “All because SOMEONE refused to stay outside the door and make sure it didn’t get locked again.”

  “Yes,” said Anemone’s irate voice. The princess poked her head around the door and peeked up and down the hall. “And that SOMEONE is you.”

  “No, it isn’t!” Kinkajou yelled. “It’s you! I was talking about you!”