Wind Rider (Return of the Dragons 2)

You are letting your emotions get the better of you, rider. You would do best to control them, lest they cause you and your friends harm. You humans may find us dragons cold and calculating, but you have a lot to learn from us.

I nodded, and tried to watch Ulrike without feeling.

What I saw made me gasp. She had put her arms up over her head, and her hair was out in all directions. Her feet were off the ground. There was a call from far off on the mountain.

Adalbjorn. I did not think he would come. He is the biggest and most ancient of all of us. He sleeps in the mountain, but perhaps we have awakened him.

The cry echoed out again aga

inst the stone floor underneath us, against the stone mountain behind us. And the stone rumbled and shook, and pieces of stone fell down among us. And from Ulrike’s upturned hands came two beams of green light, which reached up into the heavens. And still she rose up into the air.

He is not what I would call a happy dragon, but I think everything will be all right.

I did not find that very reassuring. Far above us, there was what looked like a long black string. The cry rang forth again, and the rock shook. How could something so far away make a noise so loud and powerful? I was almost afraid to find out. But that feeling filled me with shame. Here I was mounted on top of a dragon, afraid of a dragon who was coming for Ulrike?

You would do well do fear him; he is the biggest of us all, and sworn to protect this world, and the stone mountain. His mind is closed to me, and open only to the human, there, floating in the air.

Suddenly I asked myself what I had got us all into. What if something happened to Ulrike, and it was all my fault?

There was another cry, and I pressed my hands to my ears. The dragon up in the air looked like a great snake, incredibly long, looping around and around as it flew. It must have had four sets of wings. It twisted around in the air now, making great looping arcs, its great maw spouting red fire, forming runes of magical flame in the air that burned red in my third eye.

There was something familiar about these runes. I could not place them… Then I looked around, and saw Elias staring up into the sky atop his dragon’s back. That was it. They were the runes of the portal; the runes that Elias had traced on the stone wall, just minutes ago.

I looked up again.

Ulrike was floating horizontally, so far up now that she seemed just like a little line. And then it happened. The dragon stopped its rune; the connection snapped, and Ulrike was falling through the air.

Instinctively I squeezed my legs to my dragon, to rise up and catch her.

Wait.

What do you mean, wait? She’s going to smash into the rock!

But even as I thought this, I saw I was mistaken. She was holding herself out now, as she fell, and behind her swooped the dragon, his wings clipped in, sleek, his body straight like a fanged arrow shot from a gigantic bow. And then he was beneath her, and she dropped onto his back.

They were but fifty paces from the ground when his wings opened.

There was a great burst of wind that knocked the new riders against their dragons, and Cullen was blasted back against the stone.

Adalbjorn swung up and into the air again, Ulrike high on his neck, and then he swooped down slowly this time, in three magnificent circles, and landed some thirty paces away from the others, with a thud that made the ground quake.

He has accepted her. The last time Adalbjorn bore a rider was before I was hatched; perhaps a thousand of your years ago. He has been a very lonely dragon; this will be good for him, I think.

All at once it had begun to snow. The flakes fell large and wet, and I felt them on my face.

I could feel Ulrike looking at me. What was she thinking? I would do anything to find out. I sent out my mind towards her, and … hit a wall. A great tremendous wall, of foreign intelligence.

Adalbjorn is not letting any thoughts in, at the moment. After the ceremony is over, maybe you can talk to her.

The smith was the only one left.

Cullen put down his portable forge and answered the last call. A long red wild dragon moved forward to meet him. They met in the center of the field.

He is a sword-maker, that one.

He reforged the sword I carry at my side.

We dragons once wore armor. Perhaps he will be able to help us. Most of the art of dragonsmithery has been lost. Sednar is a fire breather whose grandsire was a firebreather and a dragonsmith. She wants to carry on the lost traditions.