Tanu leaned forward and began meticulously applying a paste to the puncture wounds.
Kendra pushed open the knapsack's flap. Gavin stooped and gave her a hand up.
"How's Warren?" Kendra asked, emerging.
"He should be all right," Tanu said. "We'll have to rest him in that knapsack of yours, and get out the unicorn horn."
"Will it heal him?" Seth asked.
Tanu shook his head. "The horn doesn't heal. It only purifies. Keeping the horn in his grasp should prevent infection and counteract any toxins."
Kendra nodded. "How about you?"
Tanu shrugged. "I have a little headache. My pride took the biggest hit."
"Your pride?" Warren griped, his speech slurred. "I was vanquished by a deer!"
"A giant magical flying deer with fangs," Seth said, parroting a description Gavin had shared earlier.
"That sounds a little better," Warren conceded. "Seth is in charge of my tombstone."
"Don't speak," Tanu soothed. "Relax. Breathe. You need to rest."
Gavin and Kendra had wandered away a few paces. Seth joined them. His sister glowered at him. "What?" he asked.
"You shouldn't be here," Kendra snapped.
"How about thanks for saving--"
"Gavin would have saved me. That's his specialty. Look at Warren. He's a wreck and we're barely getting started. I don't want you dead."
"N-n-not to interrupt," Gavin said, "but Seth may very well have saved you, Kendra. I'm not sure I would have made it to you in time. Nafia was in hunting mode. She would have struck quickly."
Kendra rolled her eyes. "Seth doesn't belong here. He hitched a ride uninvited. Wyrmroost is a death trap. Whether I die or not, I don't want him getting killed."
"I don't want to get killed either," Seth said agreeably. '"I'd much rather live. Partly because I know you'd write 'I told you so' on my gravestone. Believe it or not, I don't want you to die, either. I know what it feels like to bury you, and I'd rather not go through it again."
Kendra folded her arms and shook her head. "I'm glad you helped me. I am. Too bad Grandma and Grandpa are going to kill you."
"We'll have to make it out of Wyrmroost first," Seth responded. "Please, one crisis at a time."
"Did you two know that holding hands would make you dragon tamers?" Gavin asked.
Seth shook his head. "No, but it kind of makes sense. I've been thinking about it. At Fablehaven, when Ephira was attacking us, as long as I touched Warren, he shared my immunity to fear."
"When I faced the dragon, my mind was clear," Kendra recounted, "but I couldn't make my mouth move. I was paralyzed. As soon as Seth touched me, I was free."
"And I wasn't scared or frozen," Seth said, "but the dragon had me mesmerized. I couldn't think. Except, when the dragon glanced away from me, and said she would kill us, some instinct made me grab Kendra. Half to comfort her, half to get comfort. I didn't want to die alone. Then all of a sudden I could think clearly."
"Amazing," Gavin said. "I've never heard of anything like it."
"I've never heard anything like you speaking the dragon language," Seth chuckled. "When you first started, I thought you'd lost your mind."
"It made me self-conscious to have you guys watching," Gavin said. "I know how I look. And how I sound. Like a demented rooster."
"A demented rooster who saved our lives," Kendra said. "Thanks."
Gavin shrugged. "That's why I'm here."
"Know what makes me mad?" Kendra said. "I could talk to Chalize. I was frozen, but I managed to speak. And I talked to Camarat too. But with Nafia glaring down at me, my jaw would not work."
"Chalize was young, and I was distracting her," Gavin explained. "Camarat wasn't pushing us very hard. Dragons can deliberately exert their will to dominate us. The older ones are better at it. With Nafia, you got a full dose of dragon terror. But when you were holding hands, it didn't seem to bother either of you."
"I felt fine after we held hands," Seth said. "But I was still worried she would eat us."
"She might have," Gavin confided. "There are no guarantees with dragons. Flattery is good for the young ones. The older ones prefer spunk and personality. Most of the time."
Trask came up to them. "You three all right?"
"We're good," Kendra said. "Except it's hard to make my brother feel as guilty as he deserves when he saved my life."
Trask nodded. "Seth will have to deal with the consequences of joining us. I can't say he made a wise choice, but there's no way to undo it, so we'll make the best of his presence. Tanu has Warren stabilized. We better load him in the bag and move out."
Kendra tossed Trask the knapsack.
"There's a hermit troll in there," Seth said. "I think he's lived in there a long time. He seems pretty nice. His name is Bubda. We've played a lot of Yahtzee. He wouldn't pose a threat to Warren, would he?"
"Thanks for the tip," Trask said. "Hermit trolls aren't usually much trouble. They're scavengers. They mostly want to be left alone. I'll have a chat with this one, size him up. Bubda, you say?"
"Could he be spying for the Sphinx?" Kendra asked. "I got the knapsack when I left Torina's."
"Doubtful," Trask said. "Hermit trolls are the vermin of trollkind. They work no harmful magic. They make no allies. They have a talent for worming into cramped spaces and hiding--little else."
Getting Warren into the knapsack proved to be tricky, since he had lapsed into medicated unconsciousness. Trask clung to the ladder while Tanu handed Warren down. Dougan and Mara waited at the bottom.
Seth wanted to be down there to hear the conversation with Bubda. He hoped they wouldn't hurt him. The troll might be grumpy and aloof, but Seth felt sure he posed no threat. Bubda just wanted solitude. When Trask emerged, he told Seth not to worry. Bubda had been everything he had expected, and in return for some food he had vowed not to go near Warren.
The hike that day took them across increasingly rocky terrain. They navigated through and around tumbled boulders and other detritus. They hiked up a steep slope covered with stunted trees, half walking up the incline, half using the wind-warped vegetation to climb. For a time, they walked along a ridgeline with a sheer drop-off at either side.
Seth enjoyed being outside--the smell of the pines, the cool thin air, the ice-fringed streams full of smooth, glossy pebbles. He relished the glimpses of circling griffins, and the sight of a monstrous, bearlike creature devouring a recent kill, stringy scraps of meat dangling from a curved beak. The others seemed generally accepting of his presence, although Tanu gave him some disappointed looks.
With dusk coming on, the scant trail they had been following ended at a tall crack in a stone cliff.
"Sidestep Cleft," Mara recognized.
"Cuts through the rock for almost half a mile," Trask said. "Agad said a couple of sections are barely wide enough for big humans to squeeze through. Sidestep Cleft is only a few miles from our first destination. We should reach the shrine tomorrow."
"Do we camp on this side?" Dougan asked.
Trask checked the sky. "Starting at the far side of the defile, we'll be on ground claimed by Thronis the sky giant. No place is safe at Wyrmroost, but I take it this side might be a tad more hospitable than the other."
Backtracking a little, they set up camp in the midst of a grove of short, thickly needled evergreens. The long, irregular clearing had just enough room for them to build a fire and lay down their sleeping bags together. They dined on canned chili, corn bread, and baked potatoes, finishing the meal with chocolate bars.
When they bedded down, Seth used Warren's sleeping bag and bivouac. Mara had the first watch. Tucked into his sleeping bag, Seth gazed up at the stars, amazing himself with how far away they were. It was so easy to shrink the distance by thinking of them as little pricks of light on a black ceiling. But if peering off a cliff could make his knees a little wobbly, why not staring out across billions of miles of empty space? When he thought about it, the jaw-dropping vastness of the gulf separating him from those stats almost made him dizzy. How strange to think that the whole universe was arrayed above him like his own private aquarium.
He considered climbing out of the sleeping bag and helping Mara pass the time. Living inside a knapsack had thrown off his sleep schedule. Telling himself that he would regret staying awake now when his watch came later, he closed his eyes and forced himself to relax.
Kendra had the third watch that night. Dougan woke her gently and reminded her that she was to awaken her brother next. Nodding, she slithered out of her sleeping bag, wrapped herself in a blanket, and moved closer to the small fire.
Sitting alone, she wondered why they bothered keeping watch. No matter who was awake, Mendigo would raise the alarm first. And once he did, it would do little good. They had all been awake when the puppet had warned them about the perytons, and that had still turned into a mess.
Wyrmroost was not Fablehaven. The creatures here were huge. If a dragon like Nafia wanted them dead, they would die. They had escaped the dragon only because Gavin talked her out of killing them. He could not force her. They had relied on her generosity, and she had opted to let them go. What did it matter if they kept watch for creatures they had no chance of defeating?
She stared up at the sky, searching for satellites moving among the stars. The moon was up and getting fuller, its light making the stars look dimmer than they had of late. But after a few minutes, the slow, steady motion of a dim pinprick of light caught her eye.
Her gaze returned to the earth when she heard the jangle of Mendigo approaching. He was not coming fast, but he was coming. She had neither heard nor seen him the last time she was on watch.
The puppet strode into view through the evergreens alongside a tall, beautiful woman. The lovely stranger had aristocratic features--chiseled cheekbones, flawless skin, imperious eyes. A flowing, gauzy gown hung from her lithe frame, and golden sandals clad her feet. Most striking was her hair, a lustrous cascade of silvery blue. Aside from her air of casual confidence, nothing about the woman suggested that she should be roaming a dangerous mountainous sanctuary in the middle of the night. Her age was hard to gauge. Despite the silver in her hair, at first glance Kendra would have estimated mid-twenties, but the stranger carried herself with a stately grace well beyond those years. Mendigo walked beside her, holding her hand.
"We have a visitor," Kendra announced loudly, rising to her feet. She thought that the woman might be a dryad, but she had no intention of confronting the stranger alone.
"I mean you no harm," the woman called, her voice musical and gentle.
Kendra heard her companions stirring in their sleeping bags.
"Who are you?" Kendra asked.
"Let me handle this," Gavin grumbled, crawling out of his sleeping bag and pulling on a coat.
Trask had a hand on his crossbow.
The woman stopped a few paces from Kendra. In her flat sandals, she stood more than six feet tall. "Have you no guess? We've met before."
"Nafia?" Kendra whispered.
The woman blushed. "I go by Nyssa in human form. I'm here to help."
Gavin came up beside Kendra. "How might you help us?" he asked.
Nyssa's gaze became shrewder as she met his eyes. "I know the lay of the land."
"I'll b-b-believe that much," Gavin said.
"What an adorable stutter," Nyssa said, almost flirtatiously.
Gavin pressed his lips together. "Why would you want to help us?"
Nyssa smiled, perfect lips spreading wide. "I miss humans. Taking their form is a novelty I had nearly forgotten, until all of you showed up. Who knows when humans will come again? The closest thing we have at Wyrmroost is that old turncoat Agad."
"You're a dragon lonely for human company?" Gavin asked dubiously.
"Not just any humans," she said, stepping closer to Gavin. He was not quite as tall as she, so she was looking down. "A dragon brother." She glanced at Kendra. "And several dragon tamers. My kind of people."
Gavin glanced at Kendra. He looked disturbed. Kendra thought she understood. Their end destination was the Dragon Temple. No dragon would let them go there.
"You may not wish to come everywhere we mean to go," Gavin said weakly.
Nyssa laughed. "And where is it you humans mean to go that dragons would not be welcome? Perhaps you hope to make friends with Thronis the Terrible. Not a likely prospect. Yet you're heading into territory that he watches closely."
"We have a secret mission," Gavin said. "We can't accept your company."
Nyssa narrowed her eyes. "This is a peculiar troop of humans indeed, where the protection a dragon could offer is unwanted."
Gavin folded his arms. "I imagine that in dragon form you would not be half so accommodating to our needs."
Nyssa produced a humming response by laughing without parting her lips. "You have that right. As a dragon, I
see the world through less generous eyes. Shall we experiment?"
Gavin held out both hands. "N-n-n-no, please."
Nyssa wrinkled her nose. "I love that stutter."
"We mean no offense," Gavin said, a hint of pleading in his tone. "We just need to be careful and--"
"--and a dragon in your party is one dragon too many," Nyssa said, eyes sparkling. "I understand. I do not wish to force my society upon you. If it is your wish, I will leave you in peace so you can march to your deaths on the morrow. You will soon discover that not all the inhabitants of Wyrmroost are as... accommodating as I am. In fact, if the rumors are true, even I would not relish being caught in your company, regardless of my form."