Page 36 of Consorting with Dragons (Bloodlines #4)

“Don’t get excited. I just asked what would happen. If I didn’t know.”

“Talon, you tell me the truth right now. Do you know the way home?”

“Let’s say I don’t…”

“Talon!”

“I wasn’t paying much attention on the way out to the new lake. You know, Rylie, I’m still a baby. Maybe you shouldn’t trust me so much.”

“I did trust you though, Talon. And you’re not a baby anymore. Now what are we going to do?”

“I can’t think straight. Maybe it’s because I’m so hungry. Let’s find me something to eat and then I can think about finding the way home again.”

“Are you trying to blackmail me?”

“I don’t think so, because I don’t know what that is.”

“Are you trying to make me do something for you so you can get your way?”

“Oh. I don’t think I would do that.”

“Mmm hmm. Can’t you eat some more fish?”

“I could …if we saw another lake. But I’d rather have something else to eat.”

“Quinn is right. I’ve spoiled you!” I pulled out my communicator to call Quinn, but I couldn’t get a signal, and I began to feel the first little bit of panic.

These mountains were seemingly endless, and they all looked pretty much the same.

Just vast stretches of green trees and rolling hills with no landmarks anywhere except for lakes.

So many lakes. Talon was right. Neither of us had been paying close enough attention when we came this way the first time, and I shouldn’t have left it mostly up to him.

I remembered from when I was a child, and I got lost one time when my friend Kareb and I went for a hike in the woods.

We had tried for hours to find the trail again, until we finally heard Kareb’s father calling for us.

He had scolded us when he caught up to us and told us he’d walked around for hours searching.

“If you ever get lost again,” he’d told us.

“Just sit down where you are and stay put. Wandering around aimlessly like you did can waste your energy, make it harder for the rescuers to find you, and even lead you into more dangerous situations. Somebody will find you if you don’t keep wandering around. ”

I told that to Talon, and he agreed. Mostly.

“But what do I do about dinner? If we stay here, we can’t find me anything to eat. I could die, Rylie.”

“You’re not going to die because you miss one meal. And besides, I don’t know if there is anything up here for you to eat.”

He seemed to think about it a minute or two and then said, “Maybe goral.”

“What?”

“Goral. I’m pretty sure that’s its name. It’s a wild bov-something. Quinn told me.”

“A wild bovid?”

“Maybe. They have hooves and big horns, and they live in the high mountains. Maybe we could fly around a little and look for one. If we see one, I can get it for my dinner.”

“Maybe. But we might get even more lost.”

“If we don’t feed me soon, I could get sick and weak and then we couldn’t fly at all.”

“Oh, all right. Let’s do it then, but we need to be strategic about this.”

“How do we do that?”

“We need to make a plan. Do you see any big trees we could use as a starting point? Then you can fly around it in a wide circle, and let the circle get a little wider each time you go around.”

“Oh, I see. I’ll try. This tree is pretty tall, but it looks like all the others. Do you have anything you could drop down on top of it to show us it’s the right one?”

“Maybe the netting that’s attached to the harness? Can we pull that off?”

I scrambled around to tug at it and got enough of it loose so that Talon could reach it with his teeth. He pulled off a big piece of it with a loud ripping noise.

“Okay, fly up and I’ll drop this netting on top of a high branch.”

It worked like a charm, and I managed to drape the torn piece of netting over the highest tree branch I could find.

I called down to him. “Okay, fly out a little way and then start turning so we can circle the tree in a wide loop. I’ll look out for any goral I can see.”

We flew in a big circle like that until it began to get too dim for either of us to see very much, and I had to make him go back. We hadn’t seen any sign of goral or any other kind of animal, but I told Talon we had to land before it got any darker.

He was still grumbling about it as he landed back under our tree.

It was getting colder, but I decided to do what Kareb’s father had said years ago and just stay put.

We could shelter under these trees, and I could huddle close into Talon’s body to stay warmer.

It didn’t work that well with cold-blooded dragons, but it was all I had.

Then suddenly as we huddled there together, I saw the shadow of a huge object passing over us. I looked up and it was glowing in the fading sunlight, just like Talon was to a lesser degree. I urged Talon farther back into the shadows with me until we could see who or what it was.

“Oh look, Riley,” Talon said. “It could be Quinn coming to save us.”

“Shh…it isn’t Quinn. That’s another golden dragon like you.

Only a really big one. Stay back—those golden scales of yours are shiny, and they might see us.

I don’t know who that is, so let’s find out first before we show ourselves.

You go farther back in the shadows and be as quiet as you can. I’ll peek out.”

He moved back as far as his growing bulk would allow him to, and I crept over as close as I could to the edge of the shadows under the tree and looked up, keeping my body under cover as much as I could in case someone happened to glance down.

A big part of me still held out a sliver of hope that it was someone I knew coming to look for us, but no one I knew would be coming on a Golden dragon.

The shadow circled around again—I could see the shine moving through the treetops—and then suddenly it appeared plainly overhead as it came back around, like it was searching for something like we had been.

It was a Golden dragon, like Talon, only much bigger than Talon and fully grown.

It was every bit as large as Sulamon. It sailed majestically past, and I could see people on his back.

They were too far up for me to see who any of them were, but there was a rider, sitting where I usually sat up between the dragon’s shoulders, and then there was a kind of sling over his back, made of the same netting as we used for our harness packs.

Clinging to the netting were at least three or four people on the side I was looking at, with probably more on the other side to balance out the weight.

I ducked quickly back under the trees, so they didn’t see me or even a glimmer of my face in the growing dark as I gazed up at them.

Once they passed over, I stepped out from under the tree to see if I could still see it and figure out which way it was flying.

I had to crawl up to the very top of the ridge to see, but thankfully, those shiny scales of the big Golden shone in the last rays of sunlight.

I saw his wings dip down as he disappeared below the treeline.

I thought at first that I’d lost him, but then as clear as day, I heard what had to be his voice, calling out in a high, thin tone, very like Talon’s voice.

I couldn’t quite make out the words, probably because it wasn’t in any language I understood anyway, but it sounded like he was complaining quite loudly about something. I went back to Talon to tell him about what I’d heard.

“Talon,” I whispered. “Be very quiet and don’t call out or make noise.

They’re not far away. I’m going to go through the woods to spy on them if I can and see who they are.

They might help us, but then again, they might not.

So until we know for sure, we should be careful.

I’ve never seen any other Golden dragons, and I think Quinn said he hadn’t seen one in years.

Something very strange is going on. We got you from the Thalians, and now they have tried to rebel against my grandfather.

These may be some of the Thalians on the run and hiding out from Tygeria. ”

“Wait. That sounds dangerous. Are you leaving me here? By myself?”

“Yes, Talon, but you’re perfectly safe as long as you stay quiet. Don’t call out for me or make any noise. I’m going to get closer and figure out if we can trust them. Maybe they have food for your dinner.”

“I don’t think they do. That’s what the big dragon was saying. He’s hungry and wanted them to feed him. I think they had been looking for something for him to eat.”

“Just stay here and don’t come after me. Promise me.”

“I won’t,” he said, but he sounded unconvincing.

I left Talon behind in the shadowy woods and began walking in the direction I’d seen them flying.

I walked for a longer time than I thought I would have to and began to think that I’d gone in the wrong direction.

But just about the time I thought about turning around and going back, afraid I’d get lost again, I began to hear the distant sound of men talking to each other on the other side of the rise I was headed up.

I crept closer to the top of the hill and then got on my knees and crawled to a vantage point to look over the hill into a shallow valley below.

The “valley” was like a bowl in a way, or a declivity between two mountain ranges, and would be almost hidden by the thick forest and tall trees if anyone were looking from above.

I slowly moved down the side, darting between tree trunks and trying my best to stay under cover of the foliage and the shadows brought on by the quickly approaching darkness.

To my surprise, I could see it was a rather large sized camp.

From my vantage point looking down into it, hidden by the trees and shrubs, I could see men in green uniforms like those King Travon and his Thalian soldiers wore that day in the warehouse when I’d first encountered Quinn.

That had to be who they were. These soldiers were now bustling about, building up their fires outside their tents and setting up cooking pots outside.

Some men sat around the fires. Others carried water in buckets from a stream on the side of the camp.

All the tents seemed to form a circle of sorts around the largest tent in the center of the camp.

Young boys acting as messengers ran back and forth and smoke funneled up into the gray sky from a dozen or more campfires, but the smoke was quickly swallowed up and incorporated into the low clouds hanging overhead.

The truth of what I was seeing slammed into me—this was indeed a large Thalian encampment, judging from the green uniforms. But why were they here on Horvath?

If the Thalians were there openly, then why were they hiding in these remote mountains and why hadn’t I heard about it?

It would have been on the media, certainly, and Quinn would have known about it and maybe not discussed it with me, but surely, he would have at least made mention of it.

I crouched there in the encroaching darkness for a while, just trying to wrap my mind around the idea.

I was surprised to see it was almost completely dark, which meant I must have been there for much longer than I’d thought.

I had to get back to Talon, because knowing him, he was already panicking.

I glanced back down toward the camp before I left, and there on the far side of it, lying on the ground under a grove of trees, were several large, Golden dragons.

All of them were adults, according to what I could judge from their size.

They seemed to be as large as Sulamon, though it was hard to tell since they were all lying down.

They had to be here secretly, because I couldn’t imagine Horvath giving them a place to hide out from the Tygerian forces, even if Travon’s father had originally been from Horvath before he married the Thalian queen.

That might give him some claim to Horvathian citizenship, for all I knew, but from what my omak-ahn had said, Travon was on the run, after being involved in a coup attempt against the Axis.

Blake had said that Davos and Mikos would be taking care of it, and I knew what that probably meant.

I needed desperately to get out of there and find my way back home so I could contact Quinn.

He’d know what to do and how best to get word to my grandfather.