The Lost Lands Read online

  Joss was beside himself. The boy wouldn’t stop pacing, and his constant movement was grating on Valkea.

  And though Bellacrux would never show it, she too was growing anxious.

  She had no idea what ordeal Allie might be going through, but the girl was brave and quick-witted and likely to survive whatever the scroll held in store. Whether she would survive Tamra Lennix, on the other claw, was more in doubt. That girl was bad news. She was the fiercest and strongest of the Lennix brood, as Bellacrux well knew. After all, it had been an act of Tamra’s unspeakable villainy that had first brought Allie to Bellacrux. Tamra had meant to feed Allie to the Grand; instead, the Grand had Locked with her intended victim. And now Allie was trapped in some other place with her would-be murderer. It chilled Bellacrux’s very scales.

  Valkea watched Bellacrux with venomous, scornful eyes.

  “Feshi me’lakti kefaan?” snarled the Red. What are you looking at, traitor?

  Bellacrux snorted disdainfully and turned her gaze away, though she never quite let Valkea get out of her sight.

  “So why are you here?” Joss asked Mirra. “What’s your interest in the Banishing?”

  “I don’t know,” Mirra said. “Tamra wouldn’t tell me. But I think it has to do with—”

  “TSSSS!” hissed Valkea, baring her fangs at the Lennix girl.

  Mirra swallowed and pulled her legs to her chest. “Never mind.”

  Bellacrux watched Valkea very carefully. What had Mirra been about to say? Could it possibly have been the Skyspinner’s Heart? Bellacrux thought it highly unlikely the Raptors would have been searching for the same thing, given how few dragons knew of its existence. Even Bellacrux hadn’t known what it was, until they’d met Ash.

  No, Bellacrux decided. It must be something else they were after. Something also related to the Banishing, and probably quite horrid, but not the Heart.

  Under no circumstances could she let them learn of it.

  “You know, Mirra,” said Sirin, “where I come from, girls our age just go to school and eat loads of junk food and play video games and stay up way too late reading.”

  “Where do you come from?” asked Mirra, eyes wide. “And what’s a video game?”

  “I come from Earth,” said Sirin. “You call it the Lost Lands.”

  “Really!” Mirra gasped. “What’s it like?”

  “Very different from here. There are loads more people, for starters.”

  Bellacrux noticed how Valkea’s eyes glowed at that. The Red did all but lick her chops.

  “And it’s beautiful,” said Sirin. “Green forests and white beaches and sparkling cities—and more books than you could read in your life, and the most wonderful food, like chocolate cupcakes and extra-cheesy pizza and hot chips you get by the seaside. But of course, I guess that’ll all be over soon.”

  “Over?” echoed Mirra, whose eyes also now held a hungry glint.

  “When you Lennixes and your Raptors take over.” Sirin sighed. “All those wonderful things will burn up. Your dragons will destroy everything, even though long ago, they lived peacefully on Earth with us humans. I suppose my world will soon look like yours—everything scorched and dying, and the few free people and dragons left will go into hiding.”

  Joss looked between Sirin and Mirra, holding a half-eaten fish by its stick skewer.

  “Yeah,” he said slowly, catching on. “Too bad you Lennixes hate everything and everyone.”

  “We don’t hate everything,” Mirra protested. “We just … My ma …”

  “Oh, right,” said Joss. “I forgot. Whatever D’Mara wants, the rest of the Lennix clan does.”

  “Not true!” Mirra scowled. “I do what I want.”

  Valkea began to growl; she didn’t like that Sirin and Joss were trying to sway Mirra’s allegiances. Bellacrux made no sound, but pulled back her lips, showing her larger fangs. Valkea glanced at her and fell quiet, but her fury seemed to shimmer on her scales like heat.

  “Is Valkea your Lock?” asked Sirin.

  “No!” said Mirra hurriedly. “She’s Tamra’s Lock. I only rode here on her because this is an all-important mission for Ma—”

  “T’lehemenn!” snarled Valkea, ordering Mirra to be silent.

  “No!” Mirra said back, startling them all. “No, I won’t be silent. You’re not my Lock, and you’re not my boss. You can push Tamra around—I know you do, though she won’t admit it—but not me. So you shut up!”

  “Faka labint,” hissed Valkea.

  “I am not a stupid girl,” shouted Mirra. “You and Tamra and Ma are all the same—everyone thinks I’m stupid! Well, I’m not! I know Tamra’s lying about this mission. I think Ma might not even know about it! And I saw the scale Tamra’s got hidden in her pocket.”

  “Scale?” echoed Joss. “What kind of scale?”

  Mirra didn’t seem to hear him. She kept yelling at Valkea. “Tamra thinks she’s so clever, but guess which one of us got herself stuck in some booby-trapped scroll? Not me!”

  With a roar, Valkea lunged at Mirra, and the girl screamed. Whether the Raptor was intending to simply scare her into silence or truly bite the girl in two, Bellacrux did not know. They didn’t find out, because high above them, a gong sounded.

  CLAAANNNGGGGGG!

  They all froze, even Valkea. Mirra choked off her scream. Instead of fading away, the gong’s tone grew stronger and louder, until the scrolls in the alcoves began to flutter and the temperature in the library seemed to drop.

  Then, from all directions, came the sound of groaning and moaning and splintering stone, like the sound of corpses trying to escape their tombs.

  With a growl, Bellacrux stamped out the torch, throwing the library into darkness. She pulled Joss, Sirin, and Sammi into the shelter of one wing and spread the other over the scroll that had swallowed Allie. If it were destroyed, her Lock might never find her way back.

  “There!” shouted Joss, pointing. “Something moved!”

  “Over there too!” said Mirra, looking in the other direction.

  Valkea loosed a sudden burst of dragonfire that scorched the columns and destroyed dozens of invaluable historical scrolls.

  In the light of that red fire, the library brightened suddenly, and they saw all around them had gathered scores of dragons. Stone dragons. Bellacrux recognized them as the carved statues that had been fixed atop the columns. Even now, she saw more of the stone dragons break away from their posts with splintering, cracking sounds, and they stretched open their gray jaws with deep groans and dropped to the floor. They formed a tightening circle around the intruders. Their voices—which sounded like rustling paper—whispered sibilantly. “Lehemenn, lehemenn, lehemenn … !”

  Bellacrux and Valkea stood back to back, the humans under their wings, the Scroll of the Banishing stuck to the floor between them. Enemies they might be, but they would fight together to protect their Locks.

  For they had broken the library’s first and only rule.

  And now the librarians had come.

  Tamra Lennix was drowning.

  She’d never learned to swim. There weren’t any lakes or rivers around Fortress Lennix that were safe to set toe in; the water was usually choked with ashes and debris from one of the wildfires the Raptors had set, or else stank of rotten eggs due to the sulfur abundant in the mountains. So she’d grown up with a fear of water deeper than her bath.

  Now Tamra sank like a stone in an ocean that wasn’t even real. Which made her angry. It wasn’t fair to die in a make-believe world. That would be like dying in a dream. Stupid. She clawed at the pale blue water, while all around her, slain ink-and-paper dragons dissolved into dark smudges.

  Then a pair of hands grabbed her beneath the arms.

  She squealed and went still as Allie Moran swam powerfully for the surface.

  The parchment sky was now empty of dragons; those who had been slain disappeared into the sea. There was no sign of the girls’ dragon guide. Allie treaded water, holding up Tamra
with one arm.

  “The exit!” said Allie. “Look!”

  There on the ink shoreline, a black doorway had appeared. It looked exactly like the one Tamra had gone through to reach this wretched place. It was a fair swim away though.

  Tamra, seized with sudden fear, met Allie’s eyes. “Go on, then,” she snarled. “Swim to it.”

  Allie stared at her, her mouth a grim, hard line. “Do you really think I’d leave you to drown?”

  “I think we both know you have a score to settle. So just get it over with.”

  But Allie didn’t shove her away. Instead she began kicking her legs, her arm still tight around Tamra’s torso.

  “You’re saving me?” Tamra said.

  “I’m not like you,” Allie said, now breathing hard from the effort of swimming one-handed, Tamra’s weight making her work twice as hard. “I don’t kill people for fun. Or revenge.”

  “That doesn’t make you better than me! It makes you weaker.” Tamra tightened her jaw and said no more; she held grimly on to Allie until they reached the shore. There they both collapsed onto papery land, coughing and gasping. Allie looked exhausted, but she still managed to reach her feet first and sprint for the door.

  Gritting her teeth, Tamra charged after her.

  They reached it at the same time and fell through the inky black curtain—

  —to nearly be scorched in a blaze of dragonfire.

  Tamra yelped and ducked, covering her head. Her knees had landed on the hard stone floor of Tashiva Lhaa, but the library was not the silent, dusty place she’d left. Now it was a scene of battle, with burning scrolls and splintering stone falling everywhere. She heard a clatter as the Scroll of the Banishing landed on the ground beside her, rolled tightly once more. It must have opened to spit them out.

  “Mirra!” she yelled, looking up. There was her twin, seated atop Valkea. It was the Red’s fiery breath that had nearly set Tamra on fire. Now her Lock snarled at her.

  Get on!

  Stumbling to her feet, Tamra ran to climb atop her dragon.

  “Move!” she said to Mirra, shoving her back and taking her seat in the front. “What’s happening?”

  “We made too much noise,” said Mirra in a frightened squeal.

  All around them, murky in the shadows, stone dragons hissed and scraped claws over the library floor, sending up sparks. They didn’t seem capable of breathing fire, but they were still nearly as large as Valkea and struck like snakes, darting in to rake their stony claws over the Raptor’s scales. Valkea whirled and growled, swatting them aside and building up another blast of fire in her belly. Tamra felt her Lock’s sides heating up beneath her legs.

  In the illumination of Valkea’s next fireblast, Tamra saw a familiar Green Grand several rows away, also battling the stone dragons. Bellacrux, the traitor. And the Silver was with her.

  “Valkea!” she screamed. “Get them!”

  A little busy! her Lock hissed, the thought sharp as a lash in Tamra’s mind.

  With a roar, Valkea grabbed a stone dragon in her jaws and hurled it; it crashed into a column and shattered—but so did the column. Above, the ceiling of the library began to dangerously groan.

  Val, get us out of here! Tamra ordered.

  Call me Val again and I’ll make sure you never leave this place! But the Red recognized the danger and started toward the door.

  The way was blocked by a horde of stone dragons.

  There was something more terrifying about their blank stone eyes than if they’d been real dragons. Utterly soulless and wholly intent on destroying the intruders, they advanced like a wall of living rock, clambering over one another in their eagerness to kill.

  Bellacrux bellowed and tried to barrel through their midst, stampeding past Valkea. The Green’s steps rocked the library. More columns, already weakened by the fighting, crumbled with thunderous crashes, filling the air with dust. Tamra choked and coughed.

  Back, back! she said. There must be another way out.

  Stone dragons were piling atop Bellacrux. That’s when Tamra realized she’d lost sight of the Silver and the Morans. Twisting around, she spotted them—vanishing into the deeper recesses of Tashiva Lhaa.

  They’d had the same idea as her—find another way out. Bellacrux was buying them time to do just that.

  Follow! Tamra told Valkea, but the Red was one step ahead, already giving chase.

  A few stone dragons slipped past Bellacrux and pursued them as Valkea bounded through the columns. Atop the Silver, Allie looked back and saw them. Her eyes connected with Tamra’s for a second, then she turned back around and the Silver picked up his pace.

  With an ear-shattering series of cracks and groans, splinters webbed through the floor and ceiling and up the remaining columns.

  The entire library was on the verge of caving in.

  Tamra’s heart stopped as Valkea launched herself into the air. The Red swerved wildly through the crumbling columns, and Tamra felt her Lock’s panic sizzling through her own mind. Valkea tore at the air, while all around them, stone dragons slithered up the columns and lashed out with their claws. They couldn’t fly, but they moved with unnatural speed, flocking over the ceiling and floor like chittering cockroaches. Valkea weaved in and out, her wings pumping furiously. Just ahead of them, the Silver was doing the same.

  Tamra leaned low and shut her eyes. She didn’t want to see the ceiling come crashing down on their heads.

  We will not die here, Tamra Lennix! Valkea roared in her thoughts. I smell fresh air!

  Daring to hope, Tamra lifted her head.

  She saw nothing but the faint glimmer of the Silver’s wings, heard nothing but the roar and crash of the collapsing library. Great slabs of stone fell from above and shattered around them, forcing Valkea to veer steeply. Tamra and Mirra barely hung on.

  A stone dragon leapt out of the darkness and landed on Valkea’s neck, teeth gnawing on the Red’s scales. Tamra lunged forward and kicked it hard, knocking it loose. Another dropped onto Valkea’s back and bit down on Mirra’s cloak.

  “Tamra!” she screamed. “Help me!”

  But Tamra was more focused on holding on to her Lock.

  Valkea shook her tail, throwing off the stone dragon, who nearly took Mirra with her. But the girl unclasped her cloak just in time, and it tore away in the dragon’s maw.

  Ahead, a burst of sunlight blinded Tamra’s eyes. The Silver had found the back door and broken through it, and seconds later, Valkea shot out too. Tamra looked back and saw a humble stone door broken from its hinges in a dingy gray cliffside; it was nothing like the pompous entrance of Tashiva Lhaa. She probably would never have noticed this back door if she’d walked right by it. All around rose the high walls of the canyon, reaching to a dim blue sky.

  Valkea landed awkwardly, exhausted. The Silver had set down a few yards away and looked just as tired. The three riders on his back watched the door anxiously.

  Bellacrux was still inside. Even Tamra felt a moment of panic for the Green, before remembering she was a dirty traitor who deserved to have a million tons of rock dropped on her head. But still, she watched the doorway with her breath held, waiting to see if Bellacrux would make it …

  “C’mon, Bell!” Allinson Moran cried out. “Please!”

  Seconds ticked away. The stone wall shuddered and stones crashed in the darkness within. Still the Green did not appear.

  Tamra started to laugh. “I guess that’s the end of old—”

  The wall exploded outward and Bellacrux burst through, bellowing sparks. The former Lennix Grand looked half-mad, her eyes rolling and her fangs bared. She still had a dozen stone dragons clinging to her hide. With a trumpeting, furious roar, the Green planted her claws on the ground and shook.

  Stone dragons went flying, crashing into the canyon walls and shattering into shards and dust.

  With a great crash that shook the canyon, the library caved in at last, the doorway filling with boulders. All those scrolls and knowledge we
re buried for good.

  A minute of silence passed, filled only by the heaving breaths of the winded, beleaguered dragons. All three were covered in scratches and dented scales, and the Silver’s belly was bleeding where Valkea had torn it open in their last meeting. Allie Moran slipped from his back and ran to Bellacrux, running her hands over the Green’s scales and then embracing her neck.

  Tamra was the first to recover from the mad escape from Tashiva Lhaa.

  “Stop them!” she snapped at Valkea. Behind her, she heard Mirra sigh.

  The Red made a half-hearted effort to breathe fire, but was simply too worn out. The Silver, however, lifted into the air with an angry snort.

  “Seriously?” called Allie, who was climbing onto Bellacrux’s back. “After what we just went through, you’re still trying to capture us?”

  Tamra smirked. “Only because I want to watch when Valkea bites your limbs off one by one. But whatever. Fly away. I don’t care. We don’t even need the Silver anymore.” She relished the shocked looks on their faces and couldn’t resist adding, “That’s right. I know another way to reach the Lost Lands, boneheads. So go on—slither off through one of your magic portals and hide. We’ll just catch up to you on the other side.”

  Bellacrux opened her mouth and a funnel of flame came flashing toward Valkea. The Red jumped clear, and when Tamra had blinked away the blinding spots dancing in her vision, Bellacrux and Lysander had taken off together.

  She opened her mouth to order Valkea to the chase, but at that moment, the air rippled and the two dragons and their riders vanished through a portal.

  Gritting her teeth, Tamra took the Silver’s scale from her pocket. She’d nearly been drowned, crushed, and roasted, but by blood and bone, she’d gotten what she’d come for. The memory of the Banishing burned in her mind, filled with Raptors opening portals across a parchment sky—glowing Silver scales gleaming on their brows.

  “We lost them,” Mirra groaned. “Tamra, what are you talking about? Another way to reach the Lost Lands? That’s impossible!”