Soar

Chapter 40

Runedan followed the first sign of gold through the clouds and grunted when we could make out the land below. We were a long way from the place where the battle had originated.

The enemy was nowhere to be seen, and around us allies were straggling back toward camp in scattered groups. Runedan quickly fell behind. He flapped his wings slowly, gliding on currents of air. Above us the storm was breaking.

Neither of us spoke. The rain had cleared some of the blood and dirt from my clothes and Runedan's scales, but fresh blood welled up where the old was washed away. My shoulder had settled into throbbing dully and my head felt thick again.

"Are they gone?" I asked at last.

Runedan was silent so long I thought he had not heard me. I was considering speaking again when he finally answered. "For now."

I listened to his heavy breathing, felt the thrum of his heart. "What happens, then? They will come back." It was not a question.

With a grunt, Runedan shook his neck. His torn scales scraped together and I bit my lip. "They will be more cautious next time, and we will understand them better. There is still hope."

We. Darriad's people would continue to fight, I knew. They were born for it, had grown up to it. And now Runedan and I had tasted war. We both bore the marks to prove it.

My mask was gone, and with it Azadryn the warrior. Every person I had killed, whose face had been lost in the heat of battle, hung at the edge of my thoughts and taunted me. War was not something we could shake off so easily.

"Do you still want to stay?" I whispered.

Runedan turned his head to look at me. His blind right eye showed first before he corrected himself and turned the other way. "After all I have given in the name of this war? Why in the name of the ancestors would I leave now?" He craned his neck around to nudge my knee. "And you seem intent on staying, for better or worse. I shudder to think what trouble you will get into on your own."

When I did not answer except for a shaky smile, Runedan looked away. I wanted to say I was done with fighting, that I had proved myself and had no intention of taking up a weapon again. But I did not know if that was true. If he was not dead, Umreo would be back, and there would still be a home to fight for; if not here, then in Hasarmon, where he had revealed himself. This was only the beginning.

I pushed such dark thoughts aside. There would be time later to search myself and see if I was still capable of fighting for what I had claimed as my own. For now we would heal, and see what the world would bring us.

A crisp autumn wind, strong and fierce so high above the world, tangled my hair.

Up there, among the heights, is a different world. Vedis's voice echoed in my head. It had not been long ago, but we had come so far in that time. We still had so far to go. Clouds so high they taste of sunlight and lightning. That is where we belong. Up there, we are beyond the reach of the world. We are free.

Runedan's wings were spread wide. He was soaring, gliding effortlessly over the air. Snatches of moonlight through the breaking clouds caught the silver in his wings and made it shine back brightly.

He was a dragon born into captivity who taught himself to fly, and I was the slave girl he saved with the power of a name. It means "free bird": Azadryn.

Who were we now? Because Runedan was no longer a show dragon, too weak to fly, and I was far from the nameless slave girl I had been when he found me.

So who was I? The daughter of Kalamec and Elania, though I hardly knew what that meant. Not a slave, not a runaway. I might still be a rebel, because I had defied a king. I had fought for my new home, but I was not sure that made me a soldier. I was more than a dragon rider. With Runedan I soared; we were sky dancers.