Longfang (5 page)

Chapter Four

Pell was stunned. The after-image of the moment of mass death was etched in his mind. He stood transfixed as he stared at the rows of lifeless bodies in the snow. What had just
happened? The dark orb throbbed relentlessly in his hands. He felt sick. It had used him. It was still using him. He could feel its power coursing through his body. Tears formed in his eyes. He had
no control. All he could do was stand and look at the aftermath of the orb’s destructive power.

Suddenly the pressure was gone. He staggered backwards, reeling in a dizzy circle. Pain spiked through his head as if a huge needle had been driven through his forehead and deep into his skull.
Released from the compulsion to hold it, he pushed the black globe away from his body. It flew through the air and landed in soft snow a few feet away, unharmed.

One hand went instinctively to his forehead to massage the spot from where the pain seemed to originate. For the briefest instant, Pell felt an overwhelming desire to rush over and smash the orb
into a million tiny pieces – an eye for an eye, a life for a life. Was the orb alive? he wondered. It certainly seemed to have an awareness of its surroundings. How else could it have
controlled him and selectively ignored both him and Shadow with its tendrils? He was not sure he wanted an answer to that question.

‘Pell?’
Shadow’s voice sounded lost and uncertain in his mind, but he sensed that she shared his pain.

He ignored her, stumbling forwards a few paces before finding his balance. Control restored, he placed his feet with care, stepping between the dead animals until he reached the dragonrider. The
man was lying face down in the snow about two paces from his unmoving dragon. Pell’s throat felt tight as he crouched by the body and tentatively reached under the man’s torso to roll
him over. He was heavy, but Pell was determined.

The man’s expression was exactly as it had been in the instant of his death. His features were slack and his eyes wide open and unseeing, just as they had been during his final few
moments. Pell’s stomach churned as he closed the man’s eyelids with trembling fingers.

‘Pell?’

‘I killed him,’ he croaked, tears forming in his eyes. ‘I killed them all.’

‘It wasn’t you, Pell,’
Shadow soothed, her voice stroking his mind with a velvet touch.
‘It was the orb. You did not call them here. You cannot blame yourself
for this.’

‘Can’t
I
?’ he spat, turning to face her. His eyes were burning with a fierce fanaticism. ‘Can’t I? My hands held the orb, Shadow. My hands! This man, this
dragon, all these animals – gone, because I wasn’t strong enough to control my hands.’

Shadow was silent for a moment. She had never seen her rider so distraught. Nothing in all her many years of travelling the world had prepared her for this.

‘Fang told me the first orb gave off an aura of blood,’
she said thoughtfully.
‘He said the orb’s aura drew predators from miles around and drove them into a
frenzy of bloodlust. It seems this orb also has an aura. This orb also attracts, but it then feeds on the life force of those it draws. It doesn’t seem to do it constantly like the day orb,
or we would have had visitors before now. The orbs are powerful, Pell. I doubt any human could resist the will of an orb.’

Shadow lifted her head high and looked around. The light was fading fast.

‘Sundown!’
she said suddenly.

‘What?’

‘Sundown. The orb killed exactly at sundown,’
she explained.

‘How do you know that?’ Pell asked, looking first around at the darkening sky and then back at his dragon.

‘Just as a dawn dragon has an affinity with dawn, so we night dragons can tell when night is about to begin. Let me know if you start to feel the urge to take out the orb again, but I
have a feeling it will not happen until the same time tomorrow. That gives us a day to work out how to prevent it from killing more innocents. We need to find the others. Maybe one of them will be
able to help. One thing is certain – the sooner we can get the orb to the Oracle, the better.’

‘I won’t argue with that,’ Pell said, a shudder rippling down his spine. ‘But are you sure we should look for the others? What if it kills them as well? I had no control,
Shadow. It was horrible. I don’t know if I can cope with carrying it any more.’

‘You have to, Pell. This is our duty. We have to get the orb to the Oracle in Orupee. The others share this responsibility. Don’t worry. We’ll warn them – make sure
they’re ready to run if it starts happening again. Try to be careful. Don’t touch it directly. Wrap it in your spare clothing and pack it at the bottom of the saddlebag. Make it as
difficult to reach as possible. That might give us the extra moments we need.’

Pell did not like to point out that wrapping it deep in his saddlebag was exactly what he had done the first time. He did not want to go anywhere near the gruesome globe, but he knew he had no
choice. Shadow was right. The quest was all that remained. They had both suffered a great deal to win the orb. He had come too far to give up now.

Picking his way back through the rows of bodies, Pell returned to the base of the rock where his open saddlebag sat in the snow. Shadow moved out of his way, uncoiling from the great boulder and
shaking the snow from her back and wings. Pell reached inside the bag and drew out his spare cloak. He turned and looked down at the black ball in the snow. It appeared inert and harmless, like a
mammoth black pearl deliberately set into a hollow of purest white.

If it had not been for the horrors of the last few minutes, Pell would have scorned anyone else for being reluctant to pick it up. Every muscle in his body was taut as he spread his cloak over
the orb. Even with it covered, he could feel his heart hammering against his ribs. He reached down to collect it and paused. With a flash of insight he realised that this was how Nolita felt every
time she approached her dragon.

The thought that he was acting like the cringeing girl hardened his resolve. He grabbed the orb and quickly wrapped it over and over in the cloth before stuffing it down into the base of his
saddlebag. Shuffling everything else around in the leather bag, he buried the bundle under as many things as he could. His fingers trembled as he fumbled with the buckles.

‘Well done, Pell,’
Shadow said smoothly.
‘Let’s go. The griffins will have released Segun and his men from the valley by now.’

The conditions were little better than they had been when they landed. The wind was still whipping the snow through the air and visibility was very limited, but Pell could feel that Shadow was
stronger after her rest. He could feel her confidence through the bond. No sooner had they launched into the darkening sky than she began to use her ability to silence the sound of her
wing-beats.

Pell felt safe sitting on Shadow’s back inside the unnaturally silent bubble. The light faded fast and the wind tugged at his clothing with cold fingers, but the silence had a strange way
of taking the sting out of the wind’s bitter chill. He also perceived something of the strange echo navigation sense Shadow used when flying at night. Even though her vision was limited, he
was confident she would not crash into anything. Much like a bat, she was perfectly at home flying blind in the dark.

It was hard to keep track of the passage of time. Shadow did not want to risk following the others directly, as this was likely to put them in the path of their pursuers again. Instead she
stayed amongst the mountains, threading through valley after valley in a zigzagging route southwards before finally turning left and heading for the edge of the mountain range. Once they were
clear, they turned south, paralleling the line of peaks and flying on into the night.

‘I’ve located Elian and Aurora,’
Shadow announced suddenly.

Pell was relieved. He was freezing cold and desperately tired. He wanted to find shelter, have a hot drink, eat some food and catch a few hours of sleep. If Elian had stopped, then so could
he.

‘Where?’
he asked.

‘Not far,’
Shadow replied, her voice encouraging.
‘They are holed up in a small wood just ahead and to our left. Hang on tight. We’re going down.’

‘Great. How did you find them?’

‘I didn’t. Aurora sensed me coming. She has given me directions. We should be there in less than a minute.’

Pell was so relieved it hurt inside.

‘Are the girls there as well?’
he asked.

There was a pause and Pell could feel Shadow reaching ahead with her mind.

‘I don’t think so,’
she said eventually.
‘If they are there, Fire and Fang are hiding their minds from me most effectively. I can feel no trace of
them.’

Pell decided it would be a relief if they were not there. Kira brought out the worst in him. Everything she said seemed to spark him to anger. And Nolita was no less annoying. Her cringing fear
and maddening little rituals drove him to distraction. All that hand-washing! It beggared belief that she was a dragonrider at all.

They descended steeply, adjusting their course to the left and dropping down into the darkness. Pell could not see a thing. He felt, more than saw, the ground approach. An instant before Shadow
adjusted the angle of her wings to arrest their rate of descent, his buttocks clenched instinctively and his stomach muscles tightened in anticipation. Shadow back-winged to a gentle landing.
Falling snow brushed at Pell’s face with tickling gentleness as it fell in a thick swarm around him.

‘Where are they, Shadow?’ he asked aloud. ‘I can’t see a thing.’

‘In the trees just ahead,’
she replied.
‘No more than about fifty of your paces, I’d say.’

‘I can’t even see the trees,’ he grunted. ‘Shall I get down, or can you get to them with me on your back?’

‘I suggest you get down,’
Shadow said.
‘The pines are quite thick. I will have to squeeze between the trees to reach them.’

Pell knew from past experience that trying to get in amongst densely packed trees on a dragon’s back could be uncomfortable. In this light he would not be able to see the branches coming.
At least if he was on foot he could feel his way through the needle-laden boughs.

Stiff with cold, he slid down Shadow’s left flank and landed with a thump into the ankle-deep snow. The shock of landing transmitted through his legs and up his back, carrying a ripple of
pain that highlighted just how cold-soaked he was. He grimaced as he straightened up, rubbing briefly at his thighs and lower back before taking his first careful steps forwards.

The fifty paces felt more like five hundred. He had to feel his way into the darkness, taking each blind step carefully for fear of a branch in the eye, or of stepping into an unseen hole. The
dim light from Elian’s hidden fire was not visible until Pell was little more than ten paces away from where Elian was sitting. He had cleverly built it on the far side of a fallen tree, in
the crook between the trunk and one of the larger branches. It was tucked almost underneath, which restricted the light, but ensured that the heat would all reflect outwards in a specific
direction.

All Pell could see of Elian was his head and shoulders over the fallen tree trunk that blocked his path, but he could tell that the younger boy was scanning the darkness, looking for him.

‘Evening, Elian,’ Pell said, trying to sound casual. ‘Nice spot you’ve found here.’ In his own ears his voice sounded hard and clumsy as his cold lips struggled to
shape the sounds.

‘Pell! Come on over. I’ve been waiting for you,’ Elian replied, sounding relieved to hear Pell’s voice. ‘Have you seen the girls?’

‘No, I was going to ask you the same. Did the other night dragons follow you?’

‘If they did, they didn’t catch up with us,’ Elian said, watching Pell climb awkwardly over the fallen tree. ‘Ra told me Fang deliberately stayed to draw them into a
chase and keep them off our backs. How about you?’

Pell hunched down next to Elian and stared into the tiny flickering flames. He held his hands out, warming them as the pause grew into an uncomfortable silence. A series of loud cracking noises
announced the arrival of Shadow, pushing through the pines and snapping the branches she couldn’t squeeze past. Pell could see her red eyes glowing in the darkness. He felt comforted by her
presence, but was still unsure how to answer Elian’s question. It was hard to know where to start. Feelings of guilt and remorse returned in force, churning deep in the pit of his
stomach.

‘We met one of the night dragons,’ he said eventually.

‘What happened?’ Elian prompted, his tone cautious after the awkward silence that had followed his previous question.

‘Dragon and rider are both dead.’

‘Oh,’ Elian said softly. He fell silent, leaving the obvious question unasked.

Pell turned to look at the boy from Racafi, but Elian did not meet his eyes. Did the boy really think that he and Shadow had deliberately killed a fellow dragon and rider? It appeared that way.
Indignant, Pell blurted out the truth.

‘The orb killed them.’

The words hung in the air.

‘The orb?’ Elian asked, his voice rising with surprise and his eyes finally turning to meet Pell’s steady gaze. ‘How?’

Pell told him. In halting snatches, he described the pull of the orb and the strange arrival of the small host of animals. To begin with the words came slowly, but the more he spoke the faster
the words came, until they tumbled from his mouth like a waterfall. Vivid memories flashed through his mind’s eye as he relived the horror of the orb’s power. Elian sat in silence, his
jaw slowly dropping as Pell reached the terrible climax of his story.

‘Gods alive!’ he breathed as Pell fell silent. ‘And I thought the first orb was dangerous! We need to get that thing to the Oracle’s cave – and fast!’

‘I agree, except for one thing,’ Pell said.