Darkness of Dragons

  He dashed back to Moon and Kinkajou, who were huddled together with Turtle against the fat raindrops that were starting to fall. Anemone stood beside them, waving her talons at the clouds.

  Moon looked up at him, the wind whipping her wings and tail back. She had a really odd expression on her face, as if the agony of the prophecy vision had suddenly popped and meerkats had come cartwheeling out of the cracked mountain instead of death.

  “What is it?” Qibli asked her. “What happened?”

  “I don’t know,” she said. “I caught a glimpse of a new vision, I think, but a strange one.” She shook her head. “It was a dragon, someone I’ve never seen before.”

  “What was he doing? Joining the battle? Was he a SandWing?” Qibli narrowed his eyes at the sky, wondering if Vulture was up there somewhere … or if not, where he was and what evil he was plotting.

  “No, he was — he was picking strawberries,” Moon said.

  Qibli stared at her for a moment.

  “Evil strawberries?” he asked finally.

  “I don’t think so,” she said with a hint of a smile. “I know, it was strange. Probably not worth mentioning.”

  But he knew it must have felt important to her. He’d spend more time puzzling over it later … if they had a later.

  “I think we should move away from Jade Mountain,” he said. “Just in case.”

  “No need,” Anemone said, tossing her head triumphantly. “I’m winning. Off you go, storm clouds.” She flicked her wings at the sky.

  She was right. The raindrops were slowing and the wind was dying down. Glimmers of starlight were visible through the thinning clouds. The sun was almost down now, rendering many of the NightWings impossible to see, but Qibli could still make out the vast shape of Darkstalker, lifting his head to scent the air.

  Does he sense the storm retreating? Does he know I stopped myself from using the bracelets? Did he know that was part of the prophecy?

  Is that what he saw in my future in the library — me bringing down Jade Mountain? Is that what he wanted me to do?

  He didn’t think I’d be able to stop myself. He also didn’t know Anemone would be here.

  “We still have to stop the fighting,” Moon said. She reached into the pouch around her neck and drew out the skyfire. The rock looked more than ever like a piece of a fallen star, winking enigmatically in her talons. “If I put this down, I can reach Darkstalker’s mind. I’ll try to talk him into ending the battle.” She sighed. “It seems kind of fitting that this started with us talking in our minds, and maybe that’s how it’ll end, too.”

  “But there are so many dragons here,” Qibli said, catching her talon and closing her claws around the rock. “Angry dragons, violent dragons, injured and dying dragons. Won’t it be overwhelming? Won’t it hurt you, to have all their minds flooding into yours right now?”

  “Maybe,” she said, “but it’s what I have to do.” She tugged herself out of his grip and carefully placed the skyfire on top of the jagged tooth of a boulder beside her.

  Qibli could see the tension whiplashing through her muscles as the thoughts of hundreds of warring dragons clashed and clawed at one another inside her head. Moon slowly sank to the ground, her wings spreading around her like a carpet of fallen leaves, her palms pressed against her eyes.

  I hope she comes out of this still thinking there’s good in other dragons.

  I wonder if she’s right, or if she sees us that way because that’s how she is.

  I wonder if those dragons up there would fight like this if they could read each other’s minds. If everyone could feel what she’s feeling — if they understood all the other dragons around them — would they still be able to kill each other?

  A tremor shivered through his wings.

  What if that’s the way to peace?

  What if the way to change other dragons isn’t a spell that forces them to like you or makes them do what you want?

  What if it’s opening them up to other minds and letting them decide for themselves?

  “I have an idea,” he said to Turtle, who jumped slightly.

  “Oh, good,” said Turtle. “Because I don’t have any, apart from stand here and try not to die.”

  “It’s another spell,” Qibli said. “One that Darkstalker won’t be able to counteract, I hope, at least not right away.”

  “We want the IceWings to win, don’t we?” Anemone interjected. “What if we give all of THEM superstrength! That would make it fair, at least.”

  “No, no,” Qibli said. “We don’t want to make the war worse. We want to end it, for good, forever, with no more dragons dying.” He put one talon on Turtle’s shoulder. “Can you do one more spell?”

  “Yes,” Turtle said solidly. “Or more. Whatever you need.”

  “No,” Anemone jumped in. “I should do it. Darkstalker can’t see me in his future. He won’t see it coming if I’m the one to cast it.” She shot a look at Turtle and then down at her feet. “Besides, there’s still hope for Turtle’s soul. We shouldn’t waste it.”

  Qibli cleared the leaves from a patch of dirt with his tail. He used his claw to write out the spell, erasing and rewriting it until it was the way he wanted it.

  While he was working on it, Turtle bumped his shoulder against Anemone’s and ducked his head to meet her eyes.

  “It’s not too late for your soul,” he said to her. “You’re here now, with us. You’re on the right side, doing the right thing. You’re not evil.”

  “Maybe a tiny bit evil,” Kinkajou muttered.

  “I’m here because I want to destroy Darkstalker,” Anemone said. “That doesn’t exactly make me the most heroic dragon in the world. Come on, sea snail, aren’t you done yet?” she said to Qibli.

  He nodded down at the spell. “That’s it,” he said. “I think. I hope it’ll work.”

  “Can we trust her?” Kinkajou asked. “What if she randomly decides to make all the IceWings fall in love with Winter or something?”

  “You are so ungrateful,” Anemone said huffily. “I was just trying to do something nice for my brother because of his enormous crush on you. I was trying to make your love lives a little happier. And all I get for it is whine whine whine.”

  “You don’t get to decide who I’m in love with!” Kinkajou cried, her scales rippling scarlet and lavender.

  “Could we have this fight later?” Qibli asked.

  “Yes, pipe down,” Anemone said to Kinkajou, who bared her teeth furiously. “I’m saving the world right now. Although this spell is super weird, SandWing.”

  “Just do it, please, Anemone, or let me,” said Turtle.

  “I need a thing to enchant,” she said.

  Qibli felt in his pouch and took out his library card from school. “Here, might as well use this,” he said.

  Anemone held it up gingerly in one talon and leaned over to read what Qibli had written in the dirt.

  “I enchant this object to connect the minds of all the dragons in the battle overhead for the space of a hundred dragon heartbeats,” she said aloud, “so that they feel what every other dragon is feeling as completely as they feel their own emotions, and know exactly whose feelings they’re experiencing. When that time is up, they will return to normal, and at that moment I enchant this object to instantly transport all the IceWings to the main palace of the Ice Kingdom and all the NightWings to the Great Diamond in the Night Kingdom, safe and unharmed.”

  Anemone’s eyes flicked up to her brother for a moment. “And while we’re at it,” she added, “I also enchant this object to take the love spell off Kinkajou, so she can feel whatever incredibly special feelings she wants to feel about absolutely anyone and stops annoying me about it.”

  Turtle gave her a wordless, grateful smile. Kinkajou just looked startled.

  Qibli tipped his head back to watch the fighting dragons. Something was rippling through them. It took a few moments to sink in, but he could see the attacks faltering, the claws pulling back, the con
fusion on every face.

  He felt Moon rise to her feet beside him, her expression suddenly clear and peaceful. She took a breath and words spilled out of her, just like the time she’d spoken the Jade Mountain prophecy, but spinning and tumbling faster and free like cactus blossoms in the wind.

  “I see her dragonets, waiting in fear back in the Night Kingdom. I feel her terror that she’ll never see them again. She’s fighting to protect them. She thinks I want to kill them and she has to kill me first.

  “I see his mother, dying of the plague that Darkstalker sent. He loved her as much as I loved my mother. He wants to stop us before we kill any more of his family.

  “I see years of hunger and fear; I see a volcano seething with danger; I see the endless struggle for survival and the constant worry that his beloved tribe would die out forever. I see hope arrive in the form of a dragon who promises everything, who promises all the glory and power the tribe used to have in a place of safety and beauty. I see him fighting to protect it because he needs that hope.

  “I see her in an IceWing nursery, listening to the ancient tales of Darkstalker and the NightWings with wide, frightened eyes. I see her nightmares, I hear the stories that run through the tribe about how many IceWings Darkstalker killed even after his supposed death. I see her study the scrolls about NightWings, wondering when they will take the animus gift they stole, break through the Great Ice Cliff, and wipe out the entire IceWing tribe because they hate them and have always hated them.

  “But you hated us first.

  “You hated us first.

  “You want to kill us all.

  “You want to kill us all.

  “I’m afraid of you.

  “I’m afraid of you.

  “I’m afraid, and that is why I fight.”

  Silence fell. The hundred heartbeats were up.

  The NightWings and IceWings faced one another for a long moment.

  And then they all vanished from the sky.

  “They’re gone,” Kinkajou said wonderingly.

  “Oops,” said Turtle, scanning the sky. “I think we might have zapped Winter back to the Ice Kingdom along with everyone else.”

  “Are they gone for good?” Kinkajou asked. “Or will they come flying right back? Did we end the war, or just postpone it?”

  “If I understood their thoughts correctly,” said Moon, “I think those dragons will have a hard time killing one another from now on.”

  “We did it,” Qibli breathed.

  “You did it,” said Moon. She turned toward him with shining eyes.

  “He certainly did,” said Darkstalker, swooping down out of the sky. He seized Qibli in his talons with startling speed and shot away on his enormous wings.

  “Qibli!” Moon shouted.

  It happened too fast for Qibli to react. Massive claws dug into his chest, holding him just tightly enough to let him know that with the slightest bit more pressure, he’d be dead. His wings were pinned to his back in an uncomfortable twisted position; he could tell if he struggled too much he might sprain one of them. His tail swung free, but he knew that stabbing Darkstalker’s invulnerable scales with his venom barb would be useless. He could see the ground rushing by far below him, or if he craned his neck around he could see the line of icy white scales under Darkstalker’s beating black wings.

  Where is he taking me? Why not just kill me?

  Darkstalker was huge, but carrying an entire dragonet in his talons still had to be exhausting for him. He wouldn’t be able to go far — Qibli hoped.

  Sure enough, it wasn’t long before Darkstalker banked suddenly and dove. Qibli’s eyes stung in the rush of wind. The earth seemed to be hurtling up toward him and he wondered if this was how he was going to die: smashed into the dirt by a vengeful monster from the past.

  Then he saw a gaping maw ahead: a mouth studded with rocks and drooling splintered trees. The crevasse gouged out a piece of mountain and went too deep to see the bottom, at least from Qibli’s dizzy, spinning point of view.

  Apparently he would see the bottom, though. Darkstalker plummeted straight into the fissure and down, spiraling as the walls narrowed in around them. Qibli’s suppressed claustrophobia rushed over him. Dying in a dark cave, where the sun and wind would never touch his scales again, was a recurring nightmare of his.

  Is he taking me somewhere to kill me out of sight? So Moon doesn’t have to see it?

  The light had faded to a small line overhead when Darkstalker slowed and dropped Qibli the last short distance to the ground at the bottom of the gorge. The stone was smooth and cold under Qibli’s talons as he stood up shakily.

  Darkstalker sat on an outcropping just above him, blocking the route to the sky. He plucked a stone from the cliff wall and conjured it into a compact ball of flames, setting it spinning beside him like a haunted imitation of the sun. The glow illuminated a cramped crawl space behind Qibli, barely large enough for a dragon the size of Darkstalker to turn around if he squashed his wings in and stood on his own tail as he did it.

  All around Qibli were claw marks in the stone, hundreds upon hundreds of scratches, some of them firm and bold, others tiny and slanted to fit in around the others. A discarded scrap of rusty metal wires lay near the opening, frayed and looped around a trio of misty white gemstones.

  His tail brushed something the size of a tooth. When Qibli bent to pick it up, it turned out to be a mouse skull rubbed almost smooth as velvet.

  “One thing I like about you,” Darkstalker said conversationally, “is that I don’t have to waste a lot of time on tedious explanations. I drop you somewhere and your brain goes clickity-click and a moment later, you know where we are and we can get on with the interesting bits.”

  “This is the cave Clearsight left you in,” Qibli said. “Where you were buried for thousands of years. That’s the broken bracelet.” He nudged the fragment of wires — such a small, fragile thing to hold back such a powerful danger. Qibli lifted a claw to touch one of the scratches. “And these are the number of days you were awake down here before Peril set you free.”

  Darkstalker flicked his tail at the skull in Qibli’s talons. “And that leftover from my only dinner was also my only friend in the world, until I heard Moon’s thoughts overhead and realized another mind reader was finally nearby.”

  “Did you bring me down here to make me feel sorry for you?” Qibli asked incredulously.

  Darkstalker’s mouth quirked into a small half smile. “Well, that empathy spell of yours was so effective on my subjects,” he said. “I figured it couldn’t hurt for you and I to understand each other a little better.”

  “It wasn’t my spell,” Qibli said, tracing the tiny eyeholes of the mouse skull.

  “Let’s be serious.” Darkstalker nudged the floating sun a little closer to him. “That was your spell. You lack the magic, but you have the ideas.”

  Qibli didn’t answer.

  “You have the brains to be a great animus dragon, but Turtle has the power instead,” Darkstalker observed. “I know that’s frustrating for you.”

  There was a pause.

  “I’ve noticed something,” Darkstalker said a little more quietly. “You’re just like me, Qibli. Maybe even as smart as me; certainly smarter than everyone else. You have big ideas and lots of them, not just one or two in a lifetime like some dragons. You want to change things — all the things that are wrong with the world. You know you could do it, if you had the chance.”

  “I’m not like you,” Qibli interrupted. “I’m not a murderer.”

  “Oh, but you would be, under the right conditions,” Darkstalker said, waving this off. “To protect your queen, to save your tribe, or if it would make Moon love you.”

  “That’s not true,” said Qibli. “She wouldn’t love a murderer.”

  “Sure she would.” Darkstalker looked amused. “You don’t think she would love a dragon who had to kill someone in order to save Kinkajou — just for one example? Or what if you figure out how to kill me
?” The amusement faded from his face. “Wouldn’t she still love you then?”

  “Do I figure out how to kill you, in the future?” Qibli asked, avoiding Darkstalker’s question and the other questions that spiraled out of it, inside him. “Is that why you brought me here, to stop that from happening?”

  Darkstalker chuckled. “No, no. There’s no future in which I die. That’s impossible. But there are futures where I go about my business peacefully, and there are futures where certain clever gnats continue to annoy me for an interminable length of time.”

  “Something to aspire to,” said Qibli. “Annoying, clever gnat-ness.”

  Darkstalker pointed a talon at him. “There’s one crucial difference between us,” he went on. “You want to be loved so desperately. I think it lies underneath everything you do. Will this make that dragon like me better? What should I do now to turn all these dragons into friends? If I can convince this cold, standoffish IceWing to like me, surely that’ll prove that I’m a dragon worth liking.”

  “Excuse me,” Qibli said. “I’m not the one who literally enchanted the entire world to like me. That was you, if you’ve forgotten.”

  “But I got the idea from you,” Darkstalker said, now immensely amused. “Your first day at Jade Mountain. Oh, if only I could magically make everyone like me! Don’t you remember? That comes from the holes in your heart that your family never bothered to fill. My first thought was, how tremendously sad. What a tragic well of need that dragon is. And then I thought, but my, that would be a useful spell. How easy life would be if everyone liked and trusted me. No one scheming against me, sending assassins to kill me, or getting irrationally upset over perfectly harmless enchantments.” He frowned, as though a part of him was locked in an endless argument with someone long gone.

  “Clearsight and Fathom liked you,” Qibli said. “As I understand it, they loved you. But they still risked everything to stop you, because they saw how dangerous you are.”