The red dragon lumbered into the sky, his hind legs dangling and twitching as he tried to pull them up into alignment with the rest of his body. Some of the other keepers were adding their voices to Harrikin’s now. ‘Too soon, Ranculos, too soon!’
‘Come back! Circle back!’
The red dragon ignored them. His laboured efforts carried him farther and farther from the shore. The steady beat of his wings became an uneven flapping.
‘What is he doing? What is he thinking?’
‘Silence!’ A trumpeted blast of sound and thought from Mercor quenched them all. ‘Watch!’ he commanded both humans and dragons.
Ranculos hung suspended, wings wide now. His uncertainty was plain. He tipped and teetered as he began a wide circle, losing altitude as he did so. Then, as if realizing that he was closer to Kelsingra than the village, he resumed his course. But his weariness was evident now. His body drooped between his wings. The intersection of dragon and river became both obvious and inevitable.
‘No-o-o-o!’ Harrikin’s low cry was a sound of agony. He stood stiffly, hands clutching at his face, his nails sinking into his cheeks as he stared. Ranculos’s glide carried him farther and farther from the village. Below him, the grey river’s greedy current raced relentlessly. Sylve gave Mercor a cautious glance, and then ran to stand beside Harrikin. Lecter plodded down the hillside toward his foster-brother, his broad shoulders slumped as if he shared Harrikin’s desperation and already knew the outcome.
Ranculos began to beat his wings, not steadily but in panic. Their uneven rhythm tipped and tilted him. He fluttered like a fledgling fallen too soon from the nest. His destination was the far side of the river but despite his battle with the air, all knew he could not attain it. Once, twice, thrice his wingtips scored white on the river’s face and then his drooping hind legs snagged in the current and the waters snatched him from the sky, pinwheeling him wide-winged into the greyness. He slapped his wings uselessly against the water. Then he sank. The river smoothed over the spot where he had fallen as if he had never been.
‘Ranculos! Ranculos!’ Harrikin’s voice went shrill and childish as he fell slowly to his knees. All eyes watched the river, hoping for what could not be. Nothing disturbed the rushing waters. Harrikin stared, straining toward the water. His hands went into fists as he shouted, ‘Swim! Kick! Fight it, Ranculos! Don’t give in! Don’t give up!’
He lurched to his feet and took a dozen steps toward the water. Sylve, clutching at him, was dragged along. He halted and looked wildly about. Then a shudder passed over him, and he cried out, ‘PLEASE! Please, Sa, not my dragon! Not my dragon!’ The blowing wind swept his heartbroken prayer to one side. He fell to his knees again, and this time his head bent and he did not rise.
A terrible silence flowed in as all stared at the empty river. Sylve glanced back at the other keepers, useless horror on her face. Lecter moved forward. He set one heavily scaled hand upon Harrikin’s lean shoulder, and bowed his head. His shoulders heaved.
Tats stared silently, sharing his agony. Guiltily, he stole a glance at the sky. It took him a moment to locate Fente, a winking green gem in the distance. As he watched, she dived on something, probably a deer. Unaware or uncaring? he wondered. He looked in vain for either of the other two dragons. If they realized that Ranculos was drowning, they gave no indication of it. Was it because they knew there was nothing anyone could do? He did not understand the seeming heartlessness of dragons toward one another.
And sometimes, toward their keepers, he thought as the blue beauty that was Sintara abruptly swept across his field of vision. She, too, was on the hunt, skimming the distant hills on the other side of the water, unmindful of either Thymara standing alone on the shore or Ranculos perishing in the river’s icy grip.
‘Ranculos!’ Sestican bellowed suddenly.
Tats saw Lecter’s head come up. He spun and then stared in horror as his blue dragon began a lumbering gallop down the hillside. Sestican opened his wings as he ran, baring the bright orange tracery on his blue wings. Lecter left his collapsed brother and began his own run on a path that would intercept his dragon, bellowing his pleas for him to stop. Davvie ran after him. The big blue dragon had been practising flight assiduously but even so, Tats was astonished when he suddenly leapt into the air, snapping his body into arrow-straight alignment and gaining air with every beat of his wings. He cleared his keeper’s head but even so, he was barely a wing span above the river’s surface as he began his attempt to cross. Lecter dissolved in hoarse screams of ‘No! No! You’re not ready yet! Not you, too! No!’