The Lost Lands Page 6

  “Where have you been?” she demanded.

  Tamra was in no mood to answer questions. She’d anticipated being a hero in her mother’s eyes. Now she was less than dirt to D’Mara. She was a waste of time. A failure.

  But that didn’t mean Tamra was giving up. She still believed in the scale’s power. She just had to find out how to make it work.

  Then Mirra said, “What secret mission has she got you on?”

  “Secret mission?” Tamra echoed.

  “You’re her favorite, so of course she’d choose you for whatever it is.”

  “Yes,” Tamra said, thoughtful. She sat across from her sister. “Yes, I am on a secret mission.”

  “Well?” Mirra watched her, jealousy plain in her gaze. She had no idea about the scale, its power, or Tamra’s spectacular failure tonight.

  If Tamra was now disgraced in her mother’s eyes, would that mean Mirra would be the new favorite? She wanted to vomit at the thought. She and her twin shared a great deal—a bedroom, their clothes, their birthday, even their dragon up until three weeks ago. But everyone knew Tamra was the better twin. She was smarter, tougher, and two minutes older. She couldn’t bear to be seen as inferior to Mirra.

  So she’d just have to drag Mirra down with her.

  For a plan was forming in Tamra’s mind. It was a weak one, but it was all she had. If she was lucky, it might give her the information she needed to activate the Silver scale again. And if it was to end in failure, then why not let Mirra share that too? They had to share everything else. Let their mother be furious at the both of them.

  “Do you remember that old place Declan used to run off to?” she asked. “Some ruin he liked to go visit, to read books.” She said it as though it were a shameful secret her brother had kept.

  “I think so,” replied Mirra.

  “He tried to tell Ma about it once, but she wasn’t interested,” Tamra recalled.

  Her twin snorted. “You know Ma—if it doesn’t breathe fire, she’s not interested.”

  “Well, now she is. There’s something she needs me to research, something to do with Silvers and portals. And I think Declan’s ruin might hold the answers. He did always say there was a bunch of old books and scrolls in there, with all sorts of dragony information in them.”

  “All right, I’m in!” said Mirra, without even a hint of suspicion as to why her sister would invite her into her secret, all-important mission. Blood and bones, Mirra really was the stupidest of girls.

  “Good,” said Tamra. “Then get dressed. It’s time we took a little trip to the library.”

  Allie kept an anxious eye on Lysander over the next two days, as they sneaked through the heart of Raptor territory toward the library. The Silver never complained, but it was clear his injuries were slowing him down. They flew only by night, keeping low to the ground even though it meant navigating choppier air. To spare Lysander any further strain, Sirin rode behind Allie, while Sammi flitted beneath Bellacrux’s wings like a sparrow shadowing an eagle.

  When they rested, Allie and Joss exchanged nervous looks about Lysander’s condition, communicating with their silent sibling connection that wasn’t all that different from a dragon’s Lock.

  “When we said we’d take the fight to the Raptors,” Joss whispered on the second morning, “I didn’t think it would mean literally strolling into their backyard. If we keep going in this direction, we’ll go right by Fortress Lennix.”

  “We’ll be fine,” Allie said. She tried to hide her own worry from him. “We just have to be smart.”

  “What part of killer library don’t you get?” Joss asked. “As in, the library wants to murder us?”

  “When Americans say killer, they sometimes mean awesome,” interjected Sirin.

  “Yeah, sure,” said Joss. “I wonder if it’ll eat us? Or maybe crush us to bits? Or perhaps it’ll open up its floor and we’ll fall forever into eternal darkness? So cool.”

  Sirin looked thoughtful. “You know, in the real world, killer can be just another way of saying awesome. Maybe it’s the awesome library!” But her voice was just a bit too high and a bit too trembly to hide the fact that she too was jittery with nerves.

  Honestly, what was wrong with Sirin, treating all of this like a story? They weren’t going to prance over a rainbow and meet a grumpy troll with some amusing riddle to be solved. No, they were venturing into the most dangerous region in the world, where they were more likely to meet a Raptor and find themselves promptly incinerated and devoured.

  This was not a world that treated heroes well. It didn’t reward courage with gold or pluckiness with victory.

  Worse, as the hours passed and the morning faded into a scorchingly hot afternoon, the landscape started to seem more and more familiar. They flew in silence, no one having spoken a word since breakfast, all of them watching the world below with increasing nervousness. Allie realized she now recognized the mountains in the distance and shuddered. They were getting nearer to Fortress Lennix.

  We will not come within sight of that place, Bellacrux reassured her. And I am giving it an extra-wide berth, just to be safe.

  “What happened here?” asked Sirin.

  Allie startled a little; the girl hadn’t uttered a word in hours, and she’d almost forgotten she was there. She looked around at the landscape they were flying over. Great cracks crisscrossed dry, baked ground, and nothing grew, though a few gray, dead trees hinted that this was not always so.

  “Raptors,” she said. “This was probably a forest once, or farmland. They’d have razed it so many times everything—and everyone—who lived here finally gave up.”

  “Where did they go?”

  Allie gave a sour laugh. “They didn’t go anywhere.”

  “Oh,” Sirin said softly, and she must have finally understood what Allie meant. A little while later, they swooped over a few bleached skeletons—cows, sheep, one human—and the point was driven further home.

  “They’ll do this to Earth,” said Sirin. “If they get through, they’ll burn everything.”

  “And everyone.”

  “We have to stop them.” Her voice was quiet but as hard and resolute as stone.

  “Yes,” said Allie. “And to do that, we have to find the Skyspinner’s Heart.”

  Over the cracked, faded land raced the shadows of the three dragons. Allie cast another anxious look at Lysander, whose wings were starting to beat unevenly. The Silver looked exhausted. He needed rest. They all did, but there was nowhere safe left to go. Allie thought again about simply running, fleeing through a portal to Earth.

  She must have imagined it too loudly, because Bellacrux picked up the thread of her thoughts.

  We cannot abandon the others, my Lock. Running away would mean condemning all the innocent dragons still True to the Wing.

  Allie thought of the Blue hatchlings dipping in the lagoon, of the eggs that would soon hatch not in their clan’s warm dens, but in the cold halls of Fortress Lennix. She knew that no matter how far she ran, she would never escape the guilt of leaving them all behind.

  Of course, she sent back. Anyway, it’s only a matter of time before another Silver is born. The Raptors will find their way to the Lost Lands eventually.

  The Heart really was their only option. If they could find it, they could not only stop the Raptors, they could change them—order them to be True to the Wing, as Bellacrux called it.

  Let’s focus on one step at a time, Bellacrux counseled. First, we must discover where the Heart is.

  Before that, we have to reach the library.

  Ah. A rumble sounded in Bellacrux’s throat. But we already have.

  Allie sucked in a breath as her Lock swooped low, diving into a canyon that crooked along the blasted landscape. She felt Sirin’s arms lock around her middle and didn’t even snap at her to let go, because she too felt a flutter of terror. The canyon walls closed around Bellacrux like the throat of a giant, swallowing them deeper and deeper into shadow. Lysander glided b
ehind them, and Sammi flew above.

  Then, abruptly, they came to a dead end. A sheer cliff face as wide as Fortress Lennix—and five times as tall—stood before them. Carved into it were many windows and doors and balconies, through most of these were half-collapsed. They were made of the same red rock as the cliff, and just a sliver of light shone on the structure from above, illuminating the massive main doorway between two pillars of stone.

  The dragons alighted on the rocky ground before the library. Allie jumped down and heard her footsteps echo along the canyon walls behind them. Then complete silence fell; not even the wind could reach this strange place. All around them were scattered bones—dragon and human alike.

  Joss immediately checked on Lysander’s wounds, which were healing well thanks to the athelantis they’d been applying every few hours.

  “Tashiva Lhaa,” said Bellacrux in a low, reverent tone. “The most ancient structure in this world, where our ancestors buried all our secrets.”

  Swallowing hard, Allie resisted the temptation to jump back on Bellacrux and fly away. Something about this place made her want to flee it. She had the strangest feeling that if they walked through the gaping black doorway into the library’s interior, they would never walk out again.

  “Why is it so dangerous?” she asked. “Why call it a killer library?”

  I do not know, said Bellacrux. I never had reason to come here before now, and I’ve never known any dragon who dared it.

  “It looks like Petra,” said Sirin, studying the library. “That’s a place on Earth, an ancient temple in a country called Jordan.”

  “Come on,” Allie said, before Sirin could draw Joss into another one of her Earth stories. “Let’s get this over with.”

  Wrapping a strip of cloth torn from her cloak around an old dragon bone, she then held it up for Bellacrux to light. It took only a tendril of fire from the dragon’s tongue, and the makeshift torch blazed.

  The library’s entrance was so wide and tall that it was clearly built with dragons in mind. Indeed, all around it had been carved fantastic dragons in flight, their tails and necks intertwining, their fearsome claws still sharp despite the wear of centuries. Allie stood a moment in the doorway, listening the eerie echoes and sighs coming from within, and tried to work up the courage to go another step.

  Wait, said Bellacrux.

  Allie stepped back and looked up, above the door, where her Lock was staring. There was some sort of writing carved there, strange runes she didn’t recognize. They weren’t like human writing, but rather enormous slashes that could only have been done by a dragon’s claw.

  “Can you read it?” Joss asked Lysander, and the Silver shook his head.

  It is Talonfari, Bellacrux told Allie. A form of dragon writing that is nearly lost to us. Only a handful of dragons are old and wise enough to still know it.

  Great, Allie groaned inwardly. So now we have to find a dragon who can read it?

  Bellacrux snorted indignantly, then breathed a wash of fire over the runes. The kids gasped and jumped back at the wave of heat. Where the flames hit the stone, they turned to smoke, but within the deep slashes of the runes the fire held and burned, so the ancient words glowed orange.

  “Lehemenn fin Lhaa,” Bellacrux read aloud. “Lehemenn tek makaa.”

  “Silence in the library,” translated Allie. “Silence … or death.”

  They all exchanged looks.

  “I think,” said Sirin at last, “that we had better be very, very quiet.”

  The moment she set foot through the door of Tashiva Lhaa, Sirin felt a chill run down her spine.

  Sirin loved libraries. She’d spent loads of time in them back home, always snug in some corner with a whole stack of books at her elbow. It was a rare week indeed in which she and her mother hadn’t checked out a bucketload—always adventures and fantasy and sci-fi for Sirin, and romances and historicals for her mother. Libraries were special places—safe places.

  But by that standard, Tashiva Lhaa was no library at all.

  There was no tidy counter with a smiling, slightly frazzled librarian behind it. There was no friendly sign directing her to the juvenile section or the reference stacks. There was no corkboard listing local book clubs, movie nights, or author signings.

  Instead, there were rows and rows and rows of stone columns fading away into total darkness. In the columns, crammed into recesses, nooks, slots, and holes, were enormous scrolls taller than Sirin herself. She stared at the nearest ones and realized, with a sort of sinking sensation, that the parchment was rolled not over wooden spindles, but bones.

  Sirin had felt safer a thousand feet in the air atop a fire-breathing dragon in the middle of a hurricane than she did in this dark, dusty place.

  “Look at those,” whispered Joss, pointing upward. Allie raised her torch.

  The ceiling was so high that Sirin couldn’t even see it. There were only the columns, fading upward into the black. There were a good many stone walkways crooking overhead, wide enough for even a dragon as large as Bellacrux to walk comfortably. And beneath them, carved into the supporting corbels, were dragons—stone dragons, like the gargoyles she’d seen back home. These stone dragons were much larger than their Earth counterparts, with wings and claws and everything. Their blank eyes seemed to watch the visitors’ every move.

  “Remember,” said Allie sternly, “the sooner we find the scroll about the Banishing, the sooner we can find the Skyspinner’s Heart. So don’t make a sound. We must all be very, very qui—”

  “A-CHOOO!”

  Everyone froze.

  And stared at Sammi, who herself looked completely shocked at the volume of her own sneeze.

  The sound of it echoed through the library: achoooOOoooOoooOOOooo …

  No one moved for a whole minute; even Bellacrux stood locked in place, her big eyes stretched as wide as they could go. Sirin looked all around, hardly daring to breathe. Her heart pounded so violently that she was certain it was making its own echo. She wasn’t sure what she expected would happen—maybe the floor to open under their feet, dropping them into a pit of sharpened stakes like in some sort of Indiana Jones film.

  But nothing did happen.

  No creature stirred, no trap sprang, no cardigan-sporting, bespectacled librarian popped out from behind a column to shush them.

  “Well,” said Sirin shakily. “We’re not dead.”

  “Yet.” Allie rolled her eyes. “After the things I’ve survived, dying because a baby dragon couldn’t stifle her sneeze would just be embarrassing.”

  “She’s only a baby,” Sirin said. “She didn’t do it on purpose.”

  “Maybe you and Sammi should wait outside and leave this to us.”

  “I can help!” Sirin protested. “If there’s one thing I know, it’s libraries.” Not that this placed really counted as a library; it was more in the realm of ancient tomb probably stuffed with mummies and bones and girl-eating spiders. But she squared her shoulders and looked at Allie straight on, unwilling to be left behind.

  Allie looked unconvinced by her bravado.

  “C’mon,” said Joss, bravely taking the first step forward. “Let’s just get what we came for.”

  “Yeah,” said Allie. “About that … How are we supposed to find one scroll in all of this?”

  Everyone looked around uncertainly. It was a good question. Sirin felt it safe to assume this library didn’t abide by the Dewey decimal system.

  “Spread out,” she suggested. “Start at the bottom, work our way up. And be careful. I’ve read about stuff like this in books. This place is probably booby-trapped. Watch out for pits full of snakes.”

  “Oh,” said Allie, groaning. “Well, if that’s what your books say.”

  “Sirin’s right,” said Joss. “We should be careful. Being cranky about it won’t help.”

  Grumbling, Allie turned away and marched to the nearest column. Sirin was starting to get the feeling that Allie didn’t much like her.

&nb
sp; But this wasn’t the time to argue. They’d come here to find a scroll about the Banishing, and who knew how much time they had. What if someone had seen them flying this way and told the Raptors? And it wasn’t like there was anything to eat around here. They had a little bit of seaweed left, but no water. By nightfall, they’d all be starving and thirsty and crankier than they already were.

  Sirin struggled to pull a scroll from its alcove. She tried not to think about the fact she was tugging on somebody’s bone to do it. But despite her efforts, the scroll was firmly wedged in place.

  Finally, she exhaled in frustration and put her hands on her hips. “This is nuts,” she said. “Allie’s right. We’ll be here the rest of our lives and still probably never find the right one.”

  Bellacrux pulled scrolls from the higher alcoves and spread them on the ground, while Lysander flew to the high walkways and wandered around, as if trying to decide where to start. Joss opened a scroll so ancient the entire thing crumbled to dust at his feet, and he was left holding the pair of femurs the parchment had been wrapped around—femurs which, Sirin grimly realized, were definitely human-size.

  “What would help,” said Allie, putting back another useless scroll, “is if there were a little more light down here.”

  “What would help,” Sirin added, “is if the scroll we needed were lying right out in the open, waiting for … for us to …” Her voice faded away.

  “For us to what?” asked Joss.

  “For us to find it,” whispered Sirin. “Kind of like … that.”

  She pointed down the row of columns, at a scroll lying on the floor, all alone but clearly out of place. Every other scroll in the library seemed to be stored in its proper alcove. So why was this one sitting out?

  They gathered around it at once, Lysander leaping from walkway to walkway before landing lightly on the ground. Allie held her torch over the scroll.

  For a long minute, they just stared.

  Then Joss said, “Someone’s going to have to open it.”