The Dragons of Noor (2 page)

The dragons say there will be signs if the worlds begin to split. First, the Waytrees will begin to fall across the forests of Noor. Second, men will forget how to dream. Third, a black hole will be torn in the heart of the Old Magic, awakening a Wild Wind.

If these things should come about, I compel the future High Meer who guards these scrolls here on Othlore to use all you know of magic and take what action you must to save the Waytrees that bind the worlds.

Signed,

Kiram, founder and first High Meer of Othlore

Musician, scholar, the one the dragons call Mishtar

T
he fat bumblebee rammed against the kitchen window again and again. Hanna would have carefully put aside the green glass platter she was drying to free the little creature if the shock of the enormous golden wing spearing the white clouds above the trees hadn’t made her drop the precious platter. The loud crash as it hit the floor sent her leaping back as shards flew in all directions.

“Now look what I’ve done!” She dropped to her knees, cursing her clumsiness. Three generations of Sheens had cherished the beautiful green platter. It was the finest thing the family owned, and her mother’s favorite possession. The sight of that golden wing high in the sky had
sent such a jolt of fear and wonder coursing through her body, she’d forgotten what was in her hands.

Tymm must have heard the crash. Racing into the kitchen with his glue pot, he hurriedly unscrewed the lid as Hanna put the larger shards on the table. Each broken bit made a gentle clinking sound like abandoned keys. Above the rim of the table she caught Tymm’s ready eyes.

“You won’t be able to fix this one, Tymm.”

“I will, Hanna. See if I don’t. And I’ll have it done before Mother comes home,” he added.

She watched Tymm dip the brush into the glue pot. Hanna’s eight-year-old brother loved attacking broken things. With concentration he assembled like a great round puzzle the pieces she rescued from the floor.

The bee still rammed the window with fixed determination. Had she imagined what she’d seen just now? Hands still shaking, she opened the window a crack to let the bee out, brushing the insect in the right direction. Only then did she have the courage to look above the trees again. New clouds brown with rain had blown in. The golden wing was gone.

Terrow dragons are golden
, she thought, catching her breath. Dragons? Here? Dragons lived in eastern Noor in
sunny places like Jarrosh or Kanayar. She’d never heard of any flying as far west as Enness Isle, not since the days of the dragon wars, and that was seven hundred years ago.

She looked up, wondering if it had only been a flash of sunlight cutting through the clouds, and caught sight of a giant form swimming through the air. The creature gleamed like polished coins, and it was … enormous. Hanna’s body quivered. First the Wild Wind a week ago screaming into town, stealing children right out of the market square, and now a dragon had appeared. Magic was stirring on Enness Isle, and there was no one here to help her.

Wing and tail disappeared into the brown rain clouds drifting toward the mountain peak. Hanna curled her toes inside her boots. She’d heard voices, low and keening, coming down the mountain this morning. The deya spirits calling from the trees: another sign of the growing magic, of the wildness of the Otherworld reaching into Noor. She’d wanted to go to the deyas, but she’d promised to stay home and watch Tymm while Mother went to market. Tymm couldn’t be left alone with a Wild Wind blowing in, stealing young children.

There was no call from the woods now. Only a
brooding silence. Still, Hanna felt the magic rising in a slow and relentless wave, engulfing her, trying to draw her deeper in.

When her older brother, Miles, went missing last year, the deyas in the trees had helped her cross into Oth in search of him. And she’d ridden with the wind spirit, Wild Esper.

Hanna had seen no wind spirit in the gales that battered Brim Village and swept three children from the market square, none of them more than nine years old.
A spiritless wind
, she thought uneasily.

She flung her apron on the chair. A week had passed since the children were Wind-taken. Seven days too long for the grieving mothers and fathers down in Brim. Seven days too long for her to be kept in the house looking after Tymm.

“Pass that piece here, Hanna.” Tymm’s eyes gleamed with pleasure, as if he could see the broken platter whole again, and indeed he’d already glued a fourth of it back together.

Hanna pushed the shard across the table with her forefinger, then slipped on her cloak. “I have to go out. I won’t be long.”

Tymm jumped up from the table. “I’ll come, too.”

“No. You’ll stay here.”

“Miles wouldn’t make me.”

“Miles is away at school. And if he were here,” she added, “he’d tell you to obey your older sister. You may eat my piece of crumb cake while I’m gone.”

She was out the door and through the garden before he could argue. The familiar sound of wooden wheels rumbled up the lane. Hanna ducked behind a pine tree as the wagon turned the corner. Good, Mother was back. Tymm would be safe now. She’d worry about Mother’s response to the broken platter later.

Hanna took the steep trail heading for Garth Lake, which was cradled in a valley halfway up Mount Shalem. The oldest Waytrees on Enness Isle grew there. The deyas in them would know more than anyone else here on the isle about the rising magic that had come. If they’d helped her to find Miles last year, they might help her to reach the missing children now. She was the only Dreamwalker on Enness, and should do all that was in her power to find the ones who were gone.

It took her more than half an hour to reach the first plateau. Sweaty even in the morning chill, she stopped to
take a breath. No sign of the dragon since she’d left the house. She quickened her pace, still dizzy with wonder at what she’d seen. What was a terrow doing here, so far from its homeland in the east? The thought of pairing up with a dragon to find the village children thrilled her, but it was a thrill mixed with fear. Dragons were dangerous.

Mist crept in on cat paws through the underbrush and stirred about her feet in rings. At last she reached the trail that wound up the ridge high above the lake. She stopped by a mossy boulder, hands on her knees to catch her breath. The woods seemed too silent.

Her skin began to prick. She hadn’t been able to come when she’d first heard the deyas’ calls. Had she missed her chance to ask their help? Still out of breath, she started off again.

The first lines of the Blind Seer game haunted her as she circled the ridge. They seemed to foretell what had
happened down in town. Blind Seer was a game she’d played when she was younger, skipping off to hide from the seer, who stumbled about wearing his blindfold. Back then they’d thought nothing of the rhyme.

Snap. Hanna spun around. Who was following her? She slipped into the foliage.

Another snap. “Tymm? What are you doing here?”

“I finished up the platter and sneaked away from Mother. You can’t make me stay inside for always.” His short blond curls bobbed as he ripped the leaves off a slender twig.

Hanna pricked her ears, listening for a breeze. “Come on. I’ll take you home.” She thrust out her hand.

Tymm brushed her away. “I want to stay with you. You’re going to see Taunier, aren’t you? I know you like him.”

“I’m not going to see Taunier.” Impossible that her little brother could make her blush, but there it was.

“Then why’d you come up here?”

“Why should I tell you? And anyway, there’s no time to argue. I’ve got to get you home before the wind blows in.” She tugged him more forcefully.

He thrust out his chin. “I won’t go. I’m not afraid of no wind.”

Tymm was used to playing outdoors, roving with Da and Taunier tending sheep or mending pasture fences. He was too young to understand the horror of what had happened in town: everyone shouting, running after the wind-blown children; mothers and fathers crying out. One of the children was Tymm’s friend Cilla, a beautiful girl with red curls and a singing laugh. Hanna and Taunier had fought the gusts, climbed a tree, tried to grab Cilla’s flailing skirt as she blew higher and higher. In the end she and the other two were no more than three black dots sweeping east over the sea.

“Listen to me. The wind came after children and no one else, Tymm. It scoured through the crowd, knocking everyone but those three young ones flat, and it swept them away. You have to stay inside!”

Tymm resisted a little longer, but when she tried to pick him up and carry him back, he said, “I’m no baby!” His footfall was heavy as they made their way back along the rim of the gorge. If Tymm hadn’t come along, she could have found the deyas in another ten minutes. He was
always
getting in the way, always …

A little breeze stirred her hair. Hanna trembled. No one knew where the Wind-taken children had gone. Not
the grieving parents nor the rest of the terrified villagers who’d sworn to keep their young children indoors or tethered to their sides if they had to step out of the house.

“Why didn’t you know that bad wind was going to come ahead of time?” Tymm asked sulkily. “Great-Uncle Enoch told me you can see the future in your dreamwalks.”

“He told you that?” Hanna gripped his hand tighter. “I can, sometimes, but not always.” She crushed a mushroom underfoot. It had upset her, too. She’d not felt any sense of danger when she’d gone to Brim with Da and Taunier that day. All she’d cared about was whether she could sit next to Taunier in the cart, close enough for her arm to touch his shoulder.

Taunier was sixteen and strong. He smiled little and talked even less. Still he never called her witch-girl like the other boys in town, never teased her for her strange miscolored eyes. That in itself would have warmed her to him, even without his tall muscled form, his smooth brown skin, dark eyes, and the slightly crooked nose that made his handsome face all the more real. Miles had boasted that he’d been the one who had given him that
crooked nose in a fight, but she wasn’t sure it was true. Boys down in Brim liked a good fight, too, especially with the outsiders like Miles and Taunier.

That day in the market, she’d been so preoccupied with delicious thoughts of riding home next to Taunier that she’d had no inkling of the storm. What good were dreamwalks if they didn’t warn her of danger?

“Wait a moment, Tymm.” She stooped to uproot a few handfuls of long grass. She’d weave a sturdy tether, tie Tymm to her arm, and keep him close to her side.

“What are you doing?”

“Making a rope.”

“I can do that better than you.” Tymm swiped the grass. He would not have been so greedy if he knew what it was for. Still, what good would grass be in such a strong wind? She sighed.

They were nearly to the fork in the path that led back down to their cottage when the midday mist thinned enough for them to see the water below. Hanna paused and pointed down to the valley floor, at the little island poking out of the water in the center of Garth Lake.

“Can you see those giant trees?” she asked.

Tymm glanced up from his braid. “They’re all ugly
and burnt up,” he observed, his fingers moving nimbly as he spoke.

Hanna didn’t blame Tymm for dismissing them. She’d felt the same way the first time the Falconer had brought her here. She smiled at her ignorance now. The Waytrees were likely more than a thousand years old. There were few trees like them in all of Noor, wise enough to bridge the way to the magical world of Oth. More Waytrees grew on the mountain, but none so old as these.

Only the ancient Waytrees housed deya spirits, who held the wisdom of the two worlds and helped the trees bind Noor and Oth together. The deyas’ magic was strong. She needed their help to find the Wind-taken children. But she couldn’t take Tymm down there. A rook flew past, its wings beating the air. She followed its flight and caught sight of a long golden spear shooting through the sky—the terrow dragon. Hanna’s neck tingled as the slender tail slipped into the clouds again.

“Tymm?” she breathed, her voice thick with wonder.

“Aye?” Tymm’s eyes were still on the grass rope. She would have told him about the dragon sighting if she hadn’t heard a wind rustling through the bushes.

What was she thinking, standing here on the trail with Tymm fully exposed?

“Let’s go.” Hanna tugged him down the path. This time she would tell Mother to
lock
the door, no matter how much Tymm complained.

A haunting sound drifted up the hill behind her. Soft at first, it slowly grew from one voice to two and three. The voices mingled with the dove cooing in the evergreens, the croaking frogs in the water below, but the deya song was deeper and richer than these.

The deyas in the Waytrees were calling again, and she wanted to go, had to go.

I’ll come back
, she silently promised.

“Hear that?” asked Tymm.

“Hurry,” she answered, though she was surprised Tymm could hear the deyas’ call. He had never been attuned to magic the way she and Miles were.

“Frogs in the lake,” Tymm shouted happily. “Dozens
of them. I’ll catch some.” He suddenly broke free. Spinning round, he dropped the grass rope and started running down the steep hill toward Garth Lake below.

“Stop, Tymm! You can’t go down there!”

Hanna retrieved the rope and ran after him. A cold gust slapped her face as she raced downhill.