Page 3 of The Poisoned King (Impossible Creatures #2)

Naravirala

The sphinx pounced. With one swipe of her paw, she knocked Christopher to his knees. She leaned over him, and ran her tongue across the side of his face.

“Welcome!” She licked again, across the cut on his forehead. The bleeding stopped. Like a cat with her kitten, she fixed her lion jaws around his arm and pulled him to his feet; then gave him such a powerful headbutt of pleasure that he nearly fell again.

It was like being mugged by the ancient powers of knowledge and generosity. Christopher laughed.

“Naravirala! What are you doing here?”

“I have come to carry you on my back to Sarkany.” She stretched out her wings, and their scope and beauty were astonishing. “Jacques came to beg my aid.”

“I never beg,” said Jacques, flying to land on Christopher’s ear. He shook himself like a dog, and steam rose from his scales. “If you dare to use that word in my biography, Christopher, I shall set fire to your undergarments while you’re wearing them. It was more of a lordly request.”

“And he solved a riddle, which you must likewise do,” said the sphinx.

“What happens if I get it wrong?” said Christopher. “Will you refuse to help us?”

“Of course. And I will also consider eating you,” said Naravirala. She did not laugh, and he was reminded that a sphinx is not a human, and their logic is not human logic.

“Here is your riddle: What is it that you can give to another, and only then must keep? ”

Christopher stared at the sphinx. Money? A…shoe? And then he looked at Jacques, and at the huge Archipelagian sky, and understood. “Your word,” he said. “I gave my word to protect the islands.”

“Good,” said Naravirala. “It is not to be done lightly. A promise is a sharp and shining thing: it should cut like a knife and weigh like a stone.”

“My riddle,” said Jacques smugly, “was about the powers and properties of dragon dung. I knew the answer immediately, as you’d expect. Naravirala, are you content? Do we fly?”

“Yes. Sarkany is on the island of Edem,” said Naravirala. “It is to the southwest of here.”

“Then let’s go!” said Christopher. “I’m ready.”

“Wait,” said Naravirala. “There is something else; something I have read in the stars. I ignored it at first, but these last nights it has become insistent. There is a child in trouble. She is at risk of death. She is connected, somehow, to you and the dragons.”

Christopher felt his heart beat faster. “Not…the Immortal?”

“No,” said the sphinx. “This child is something else entirely. She is in need of you; and you are in need of her. But I do not know precisely where she is: we would have to hunt. We could also choose to ignore the stars. It has been done many thousands of times before, and sometimes it is wise to do so.”

“But who is she? What danger? What does she have to do with me?”

“I do not know. Only that she is a child in need of aid. That is the difficulty of stars.” The sphinx blinked huge ironical eyes at him. “They are notoriously unspecific.”

Jacques snorted. “I loathe star-talk. If they have something to say, they should do us the service of spelling it out in a recognizable alphabet.”

Naravirala ignored him. “Will you make a detour, on your way to Sarkany? There will be dangers, I believe. I do not order you; I merely ask.”

“Of course,” said Christopher. If this girl was going to die, they had no choice but to go.

Naravirala looked at Jacques. “And you?”

The small dragon’s face was grudging, but he huffed white smoke. “If we ask the sphinx’s aid, it is fair that she may ask ours in return.”

“Then yes,” said Christopher. “Yes!”

Naravirala took the sword in her mouth and laid it at Christopher’s feet.

“Take this,” she said. “The blade has heat and light in it. It’s an ancient thing; it was forged from dragon obsidian.

” She knelt, and Christopher swung himself onto her back, settling between her wings with his legs pulled up under him.

There was a great pulsing beat of muscular strength against stubborn gravity, and they took flight.