Lilly nodded. “Understood. Thank you for showing me the exercise. Will it be a problem if I practice while we’re flying?”
“Not at all,” Luc told her. “Just hold on tight and let Shilayla do the rest.”
Which was what she did for the next three stops. It was mid-afternoon by the time they started to see fields cleared for Spring planting. Snow was slowly giving way to earth, and even the air aloft began to feel a tiny bit warmer and smell more of growing things than ice and snow. They were getting closer to civilization.
Lilly was impressed by how fast the journey was going from the air. What had taken her more than a month to do on the ground—with serious delays—was taking mere days with Shilayla’s help. Dragons really were the most amazing creatures. Lilly loved flying, and she enjoyed seeing things from a new point of view.
Mountains were nothing to Shilayla. Rivers, likewise, posed no impediment to her motion. It was incredible seeing these things from above and, when the sky was clear, being able to see so far in every direction. Everything looked different from up here. Houses were little dots below. Towns and villages were a group of little dots from this altitude.
Lilly was marveling at the sights below her when she got her first premonition of danger. Something wasn’t right, and the feel of the air around her made her skin crawl.
“Luc!” she shouted to be heard above the sudden roar of the wind, which had increased tremendously.
“I know,” he yelled back. “Hold on, we’re going to try to evade whatever this is.”
What followed was the most harrowing moments of Lilly’s life. She clung to the ropes and to Luc, grabbing onto his clothing as Shilayla made fast turns and swooping dives, straining for the sky one moment and banking hard the next. She’d never experienced anything like it and found it hard to breathe as the wind rushed past her face and incredible speeds.
No matter what Shilayla and Luc tried, though, the spinning center of the vortex seemed to anticipate where they would be until, finally, Shilayla was out of sky and one wing traced too close to the maelstrom. It sucked them in, faster than thought. One minute, they were flying free, the next, they were whirling toward the center of a gigantic hole in the sky.
Lilly didn’t know up from down. She felt like a boulder being rolled down a hill, except that there was no firm ground beneath her. She tumbled with the others in mid-air, not knowing where they might come out of it—or even if they would come out of it. Her senses whirled, and her stomach insisted that up was down and down was up. Repeatedly. She fought against the nausea and finally won, but by that time, the whirlwind was slowing, and Shilayla’s wings seemed to be steadying with airflow under them.
Was she learning how to ride the tempest? Or was the vortex letting them go? Spitting them out somewhere very different from where they had been. For, Lilly quickly realized, the landscape over which they had been flying was changed. Now, instead of spotty snow, it was waving green grass, and little copses of trees and bushes dotted on the countryside below them with no hint of snow in the area.
It wasn’t the farmland of her home country. No fences marred the landscape. No herds. No neat rows of plantings. Just wild waving grasses and occasional wild trees and bushes. Very odd.
Shilayla swooped low, still gathering control, then started to rise as she beat her wings, straining for altitude. Lilly suspected the dragon wouldn’t land—if at all possible—until she knew it was safe.
“Where are we?” Lilly looked all around for some familiar landmark. She only saw green slopes of those wild grasses leading down to a river that grew bigger as Shilayla glided closer.
“This doesn’t smell like home,” Shilayla said into their minds. “We are a great distance from anyplace I have ever been before.” Her voice sounded both plaintive and resigned.
Before Luc could say anything, Shilayla angled lower. “Two dragons come,” she said. “I can just see them in the distance, over the river. And they can see me. They were flying parallel to the river, but now, they are headed in this direction.”
“Snow dragons?” Luc asked quickly, shouting to be heard over the rushing wind.
“No,” Shi replied. “They are shades of green. One is sort of blue-greenish, and the other a pure green.”
“Could we somehow be in Draconia?” Lilly asked, bewildered by the idea, though it seemed to make a strange sort of sense. “I’ve seen maps in King Alric’s hall. The northern border of Draconia is formed by a river.”
“It’s possible, I guess,” Luc allowed as they glided ever closer to the two specks in the distance that were also moving rapidly closer. “Let’s see what these dragons have to say, if they will speak with us.”
“I just hope they’re friendly,” Lilly muttered.
They didn’t have to wait long.
Out of the cloudless sky, two dragons appeared to the two-legged riders, steadily growing larger. As they neared at high speed, the flapping of wings could be seen, and then, the little humps of riders on the dragons’ backs.
Their colors were exotic to people who had only ever seen snow dragons. Verdant green and blue-green, their scales sparkled in the sun. Their trumpeting calls were echoed by Shilayla when they were close enough to hear them.
“They ask if we are friendly,” Shilayla told her riders after a moment. “They claim to be the leaders of the Northern Lair. I will tell them what happened to us and try to find out more about them.” A few minutes later, as the dragons closed on each other, Shilayla started to descend. “We’re going down so you two-legs can talk more easily.” There was a hint of humor in her voice as she glided down for a gentle landing.
The two new dragons landed alongside—one on each side of her. Lilly could see there was just one man riding each dragon, and judging by their dress and build, they were both warriors. They dismounted as soon as their dragons touched ground and turned to face Lilly and Luc as they also dismounted. Lilly went right while Luc went left, each keeping one of the warriors in their sights by unspoken agreement. The two foreign dragons moved around to face Shilayla, eyeing the white dragon curiously. Shilayla paced forward to confer with the dragons, leaving the two-legs, as she had called them all, standing together.
“I am Hal, and this is my fighting partner, Jures. We, along with our dragon partners, Tilden and Rue, lead the Northern Lair. Where do you come from, and what is your business in Draconia?” the man with brown hair asked while his blond partner came to stand beside him.
“I am Lucassian, and this is Lilly. We were flying across the Snowlands, heading for the Blind King’s Court, when a magical tempest came upon us, flinging us here,” Luc answered briefly while Lilly eyed the warriors critically.
They looked well-equipped and moved with the lethal grace she had come to associate with the best warriors her father had trained. She would not underestimate these two—especially because they were men who had been chosen by dragons. That said a lot about their abilities, but she needed to know more about their character before she would pass judgment on whether or not they could be trusted.
“I have seen these places on maps, but if what you say is true, you have traveled far from where you were. How long did the journey take?” Hal asked.