Dragon Rigger Read Free

it had never existed. The air blew cold and empty in his nostrils, except for the faint but ubiquitous smell of the Enemy, Tar-skel. It was the same all through the realm—here in the south borderlands, as well as in the north where the male dragons lived.
    Windrush would not admit discouragement. He could not explain how the Dream Mountain could have vanished, or where it might have gone. It all seemed so impossible. But he had already flown far in search of it, and he would fly as far as he had to, to find the place where the draconae lived. The draconae. How he wished he had valued them properly when they'd still graced the realm with their singing and teaching! But who could have guessed that they would vanish without a trace?
    The sparks from Windrush's breath glowed briefly in the air. Gazing out over the tumbled landscape, he felt a deep sorrow. This was a changed place, even from a season ago. The land here was called the Forest Mountains; but the forests, once green and dark and vibrant, were now brittle and lifeless. The trees were stunted, the wild lumenis virtually nonexistent. He sensed no small animals. It was a part of the desolation that afflicted the whole realm. Even near the dragon strongholds, the long-woven spells of protection were weakening, as if the land itself were being bled of life. Bled by the sorcery of Tar-skel.
    It had not always been so. While Tar-skel's influence had been growing in the realm far longer than any of them liked to believe, Windrush remembered well the victory of just a few seasons ago, when the Enemy had been dealt the most serious defeat in the history of this generation of dragons. It had been a magical moment: Jael, the outsider from another world, with her friends, riding on Windrush's back to the aid of his father Highwing. Sentenced to death in the Black Peak, Highwing had been the one dragon to actively resist the rising tide of evil in the land. The one dragon with courage, the one dragon to keep faith with the Words of Prophecy by befriending an outsider. The one dragon . . . until, at Jael's urging, Windrush himself had flown against all hope to challenge the darkness, to free his father.
    They had saved Highwing—Jael had, really—in an astonishing rescue, bringing him back from the brink of a fiery death in an alien realm. They had not been able to save him from death itself, but they had allowed him to die with a dragon's honor and peace. And with that act, they had broken the power of the Black Peak and freed many of their fellow dragons from the ensnarement of the Enemy. For a time afterward, the realm had enjoyed a renewal of life, a renewal of hope.
    But it had not brought back the Dream Mountain. And now, in the face of new losses, that victory seemed long removed.
    Windrush blinked, bringing his thoughts back to the present. Southward, toward the Sawtoothed Ridge, which ran east and west dividing the Forest Mountains from the harsher Stone Peaks of the far south, he caught sight of an odd-looking, puckered cloud formation that was moving in a peculiar corkscrew fashion. It was probably nothing; but still . . . if Enemy sorceries were at work there, he probably ought to investigate. He hesitated, because there were many old places of magic in the far south, and he had little knowledge of what he might find. It would be wiser to travel in company. But the nearest companions were far to the north.
    Finally he launched himself into the south wind, wondering at his own decision. It had been almost as if he had heard a voice whispering in the back of his mind, urging him on. But if so, whose voice? The spirit of Highwing, whose leadership he had assumed? He didn't think so. Perhaps it was one of those enigmatic ifflings who appeared at the oddest times, bearing news or counsel. He shook his head, scanning the land below.
    Windrush?
    Startled, he glanced to his left and glimpsed a shimmer of light in the air. A reflection off a distant peak, a trick of