Jennifer Scales and the Messenger of Light Read online

  The air here was warmer and heavier, as if filled with the lingering breath of ancient things. The scales on the back of Jennifer’s neck crinkled, and her ears flexed. She could hear foreign sounds in the near-darkness around them.

  “What are those?” Catherine asked. “They sound like crickets, if crickets could play cellos.”

  “Fire hornets,” Jennifer replied. “There are hives of them throughout the forests and mountains near here.”

  There was another sound, the tinkling of small streams of water. The delicate sound was amplified on the lake’s surface. Following the trickles with their ears, they spotted small, mantislike shapes skimming the water just below them. The water beetles raced over the ripples the two dragons had made when they emerged.

  “And those are the portal’s guardians,” Jennifer explained. “The sound you hear carries up to the moon, and then…”

  “Wow.” A streak of fire was igniting a circular path around the moon’s crescent shape. Like a belt of flame, the fire whipped round and round the fattest portion of the crescent several times before it died of its own accord.

  “We are recognized,” said her father. She had nearly forgotten he was with her in this strange new world. “The venerables have sent us a signal of welcome.”

  “Venerables? Who are they, dragons? Do they know who we are?”

  “They’re dragons of a sort,” he answered mysteriously.“They welcome us. Come on, follow me. It’s not far from here to Crescent Valley.” With a curl of his tail he made off for the shore of the lake, keeping the moon to his right.

  This lake was much larger than the one they had entered by. It seemed a prelude to the sea. But all Jennifer could tell for sure was that before her and to either side were the sturdy shapes of enormous hills. Their twilit outlines were rough with treetops, and soon Jennifer could make out the whistling of the wind through large branches with many leaves.

  “Jennifer, we’ve got to get down to the ground! I can’t keep this up for much longer!”

  Startled, Jennifer turned around. Of course—Catherine was a trampler, and her wings were not suited for efficient flying.

  “Whomping?” she suggested with a grin.

  “Yeah, sure, but will we be able to see down there? It’s already pretty dark!”

  “Oh, we’ll be able to see!”

  They dipped below the tree line and its thick canopy of leaves, and navigated a network of long and slender branches. Jennifer heard Catherine gasp behind her.

  It was still a breathtaking sight—and tinged in violet, different from when Jennifer had last been here.

  “What an amazing green!” she exclaimed to her father. “It’s like having an emerald sun all around us!”

  The lichen was luminescent, and laced the slender stalks of the ninety-foot trees. Moon elms, her father called them. There were no branches on their trunks until they exploded in the canopy above, ending in green-tinted bursts of large, five-pronged leaves. The dark trunks were unusually thin for their height, suggesting no more than twenty or thirty rings of astounding growth.

  They were going downhill now, she could tell. The lichen was getting more frequent. She could see the gathering luminescence ahead. It was as if they were skimming the surface of an enormous bowl, and all the light had pooled at the bottom.

  A stomp behind her told her that her friend had begun to turf-whomp—a trampler’s mix of jumping and flying. Here, the ground was sheathed in layers of moss and dead leaves, and the rebound was powerful.

  “Whoa!” she heard Catherine yelp as her friend nearly disappeared up into the canopy. “That’s quite a spring in the ground! Have you tried this?”

  “Once or twice.” Jennifer grinned. “I slammed into a fire hornet nest. Fire hornets get angry fast. I almost got turned into a gooey, charred mess!”

  That got Catherine looking warily about.

  “Don’t panic. They’re not in this part of the forest. The strumming you heard over the lake came from the southern shores. We’re headed northwest.”

  She vaulted in front of her friend with her own whomp. With a deft shift of her left wing and flick of a hind claw, she pushed down off a nearby tree trunk and propelled herself back toward the turf. Another thump and she was back up again.

  Thump. Whomp. Pumph. Like aliens enjoying a planet with low gravity, the two dragons bounded and glided through the eerie violet world.

  “How far to Crescent Valley?”

  “It’s just ahead, over this hill. Er, since you’re not supposed to be here, you’ll have to hide. Try to stay close, so you can follow us to the hunt.”

  “There’ll be newolves on the hunt?”

  “Absolutely. You might see them, though I’ve never gotten a really good look. But you’ll definitely hear them.”

  “The herd is scattered across the northern slope of Wings Mountain,” Crawford explained. He was speaking to forty-nine other creepers, Jennifer among them. Elsewhere, fifty tramplers and fifty dashers were also making their plans. But this was not for competition. Unlike the sheep “hunts” on the farm, she learned, hunts in Crescent Valley were part of a solemn and coordinated ritual.

  “It will begin with the newolves,” he continued, drawing a rough map in the dirt with his claw. “They will drive the herd down off the more difficult terrain and frighten them into a single unit, so that we can get as many of them as possible in our trap. Once they are off the steeper slopes—”

  “I don’t get it,” a young male creeper called out. “Why don’t we just pick these things off the slopes, one at a time, whenever we’re hungry? Seems easier.”

  Jennifer could see her grandfather tense. “You have just passed your fiftieth morph, son, so I’m going to assume you’ve never seen an oream and that’s why you’re wasting time planning to pick an animal with the horns of a devil and the presence of a mountain goat off a four-foot-wide ridge at an elevation of seven thousand feet!”

  If the younger creeper could have shifted his skin to look like thin air, he probably would have, she guessed from his embarrassed expression.

  “Once the herd is off the steeper slopes and in the open,” he continued, “Ned and the tramplers will rescatter them across the clearing.”

  Jennifer smiled at the mention of Ned Brownfoot, the easygoing elder who had taught her and Catherine how to call lizards.

  “That won’t break them down enough, though—their instinct will be to stick in pairs and families at least, for as long as they can. So the dashers will come in and set up a few fireworks.”

  Dashers had forked tails that could deliver nasty shocks of sparks in midflight. Jennifer hoped to try that role in a future hunt, but with Catherine hiding nearby, simpler was better.

  “That ought to break them up into single units, around the fringes of the field.” He looked up at them all. “That’s where we’ll be waiting, camouflaged, waiting to spring. Our job is the kill. Then we all pull together for the barbeque, so to speak. Any questions?”

  There were none. All but four or five of the hunters were experienced and well aware of their role. “Good. Let’s get set up. We need to be in position an hour beforehand, so we don’t spook the herd. Set out in groups of five, and give Wings Mountain a wide berth until you’re around it. You.” He pointed at the young dragon who had interrupted him earlier. “You’re with me. You, too, Niffer.”

  Crawford watched all the other groups go before he set out with Jennifer, the young male, and two other creepers. They set out in a diagonal formation, like half of the V a flock of geese might make. Just barely skimming the tops of the moon elms, Jennifer took position just behind and to the right of her grandfather. As they approached a cluster of mountains to the north, he led them sharply to the west so that they would remain a good mile away from the closest one—Wings Mountain, they called it, and its southern slopes were home to most of the dashers in Crescent Valley.

  “Grandpa,” she asked as they swept over the trees, “what happened at Pinegrov
e?”

  “What’s that?” His head whipped sharply to look at her, and then craned over a bit to give the young creeper behind her a stern look. “Pinegrove? Niffer, this is hardly the time for a story. In fact, I don’t know that there’s any good time at all for that particular tale.”

  “But Catherine said—”

  “Catherine Brandfire would do well to keep her mouth shut,” he huffed. “And so would you. Keep your mind on the hunt.”

  His gaze returned to the dim stars ahead, and Jennifer cruised behind him with a seething stare. No, this business of secrets did not sit well with her, not at all.

  She spared a quick glance behind and below her. Catherine would be whomping far beneath the canopy, following the creepers to the hunt site. From there, the young trampler would find a quiet spot to observe the hunt, and if luck turned out right, newolves.

  Fifteen minutes later, Jennifer found herself on the western edge of a massive clearing, rolled up between two raspberry bushes at the edge of the forest and looking rather branchy herself. Grandpa Crawford was about thirty feet north of her, with his reluctant protégé close by. Her leg was already beginning to cramp, but she knew she shouldn’t move if she could help it. At first the oreams were distant points of gray fur high up the mountain, but they were grazing closer now and had excellent eyesight. Across the twilit meadow to the southeast, she thought she could make out the still shapes of the tramplers, but they were hidden by a stiff ridge of rock that thrust up near the foot of the mountain.

  Finally, after nursing a cramp in her calf for at least twenty minutes, she heard the newolves.

  Four unseen newolves high upon the peak sounded a hunting chord: D major. Crawford had told her that newolves used these chords to inform the dragons how and when they would move a herd, among other things. D major was a standard drive pattern for a scattered herd.

  Sure enough, she began to see small, white, fluffy shapes make their way down the lower slopes of Wings Mountain and away from the howls. The earth trembled slightly with the distant pounding of hundreds of hooves, and her nostrils picked up the growing scent of prey.

  It took some time, but once the last ranks of the herd gathered at the foot of the mountain and passed into the vast clearing, the tramplers charged.

  Jennifer recalled the first time she had seen the breed on the hunt at her grandfather’s farm—thunderstorms in skin, she had thought them. There were ten times as many now, and they were more than ten times as loud. She marveled at how fast they moved: While they were the stoutest dragon breed, with wings that barely worked, their gallop was a spectacular sight, and they plunged deep into the meadow and scattered the herd into terrified pairs and trios.

  Now it was time for the dashers. A flood of electric blue silhouettes entered the field from the southwest treetops. As the herd got closer to Jennifer’s position, she sensed unexpected movement to her right, about where her grandfather was. It was the young creeper. He was out of camouflage, and edging back! He looked a bit frightened by how close some of the oreams were, and how fast they were still going.

  She couldn’t completely blame the young weredragon, though he must have been at least two years older than Jennifer. Oreams, after all, were not sheep.

  The first few were in plain sight now, but even the sound of their hooves revealed their size as closer to that of wildebeests than mountain goats. Their gray fur and yellow irises shone in the moonlight, but it was their horns that gleamed most brightly. Three smooth and sturdy spikes stood on each head—not pulled back like on a goat or ram, but pointed up and forward, like a triceratops. The unified front of these horns broke apart, sending sharp points with heavy bulk moving in unpredictable directions at great speed.

  The horns were probably what had the young guy nervous, Jennifer mused. But moving around was still inexcusable. The oreams were too smart to keep driving into a field that held an obvious and jumpy predator.

  Indeed they were. Upon seeing the movement, all of the nearby knots—about a fourth of the larger herd—veered away from her grandfather’s position and swept back up the gentle slope of Wings Mountain. Multiple other bands saw their herd’s new chosen path and followed.

  That fool’s blunder was reintegrating the herd!

  Several dashers tried to rescatter them, but this did not go well. This herd had plenty of experienced adults with the time and instinct to set themselves protectively at the front and sides of the running formation.

  Meanwhile, the tramplers were trying to make a second run. But because the predators were now scattered all over the field, their attack came from multiple sides rather than one. The herd reacted according to a different instinct. Dispersing as before made no sense, so instead the formation stubbornly tightened.

  Up the mountainside it galloped, ignoring the halfhearted roars behind them and heedless to the difficult terrain ahead. Several stumbled upon broken rock and were trampled by their brethren. Many dragons backed off in uncertainty, and creepers were letting their camouflage break. The hunt seemed ruined.

  But it was worse than that, Jennifer realized as she watched the herd’s progress. The leading edge of the herd had in fact turned back down the mountain—not as frightened prey, but as determined defenders. Only fifty yards ahead of them, the quartet of newolves that had started this affair were scurrying away, no match for the collective anger of this sea of horns.

  And just in front of them, galloping hard but limping with an obvious injury, was a lone trampler.

  It was Catherine.

  CHAPTER 5

  A Blaze of Dragons

  “Catherine!” Jennifer broke shape and texture and bolted into the clearing, heedless of the oncoming threat.

  Even from a distance under moonlight, it was easy enough to make out Catherine’s terrified expression. Clearly, she had been angling for a closer look at the newolves, had strayed out into the upper slopes of the clearing, and was caught by the sudden change in the herd’s direction. Now making for the western woods, her scaled face was desperate with the knowledge that she could not outrun the stampede.

  Skimming the grass with her wings at top speed, Jennifer judged the distance to her wounded friend (about fifty yards) and then on to the herd (another forty). Somehow, she needed to scare them off, all by herself. No one else was doing anything. She elevated, sucked in a gust of air, and breathed out a massive column of fire. The flames surged over Catherine’s armored back, scattered the newolves behind her, and flooded into the front ranks of the oreams.

  The herd did not stop.

  This was about the time Jennifer realized two things. First, the pounding of the hooves was very loud and did not sound like the kind of noise that you stopped with a bit of heat. Second, about three hundred oreams times three horns equaled an awful lot of fast and pointy stabbing.

  She needed something else to stop this herd. And that something was not available—at least not to a dragon.

  Before she landed smoothly, Jennifer was back in human form. Whipping out both knives, she held them up to her lips, kissed them, and reached deep within for her loudest voice. And vitalized by the air of this ancient world, the blades responded beautifully.

  The deafening sound shook the clearing, and the blinding rays pierced a world that until that day had only known twilight. The mountain shrunk next to her—as if a newfound sun had suddenly decided to rise to the top of the sky and wash out all the deep, dark colors this landscape thrived on.

  Under her own shout, she heard the sound of hundreds of collapsing bodies. The sea of horns and muscle in front of her came to a rolling stop as the assault of light and sound stunned the exotic creatures.

  A good ten seconds later, after she was sure the herd had fallen, she closed her mouth and sheathed her blades. That’s when she finally took in the scene across the meadow.

  The oreams were not the only victims of her battle shout. Virtually every dragon in the hunt lay huddled on the ground, mewling and covering ears with wings. Some
were writhing in pain. A stalwart few—farther away than most—had taken up a cry.

  “Beaststalker! To arms! Beaststalker! To arms!”

  “To wha—?” Jennifer began, but at that moment a large, slender shape closed in behind her like a missile and swatted her on the back of her head with a sizzling shower of sparks. She tumbled to the ground, and her mind went blank.

  When she woke up, Jennifer was lying on a stone surface, staring up at the bright crescent moon. Its lower tip was scooping up a handful of dim stars.

  She turned to the right and saw the shadow of an unfamiliar mountain. Shifting to the left, she saw what must have been every dragon in Crescent Valley—a few hundred of them—sitting in row upon row in semicircles, staring at her. Some had expressions of mere interest, some anger. Most were clearly afraid.

  There were bonfires lit here and there. At first Jennifer thought perhaps some oreams had been caught after all, and that it was dinnertime. But this didn’t seem like the festive aftermath of a typical hunt.

  “Owww,” she hissed, sitting up and feeling the dried blood covering the lump on the back of her head. “That stung! Who was the dasher that shocked my skull? You could kill someone doing that!”

  Her grandfather’s voice came quietly and sadly. “I believe that may have been the intent.”

  She looked up. Grandpa Crawford was sitting, along with about one hundred other very old dragons, on large stone slabs behind her, facing the larger mass of weredragons gathered this night. His expression was not encouraging—Jennifer was reminded of Cheryl Alder at Jack’s wake.

  Another elder stood up on his hind legs. He was a dasher, with blue scales so dark that he seemed sheathed in black, with a sickly gray underbelly. A rich pattern of gold and silver graced the underside of his delicate wings, and his enormous triple-pronged tail twitched with energy that belied his age. He pointed at her with a trembling claw while snarling in a raspy voice, through spittle-stained teeth, “The Scales girl is a beaststalker! The Ancient Furnace is corrupt! Crawford, you will answer for this!”