youngest valkyrie. Her eyes were full of scorn, with perhaps a touch of fear. She looked ready to run him through with the long spear she carried in her fore-talons. He turned back to the leader. Her face was a cool mask, impossible to read.
He tilted his head to study the final valkyrie. Her eyes were cold little slivers of copper. Graxen caught his breath as he noticed a slight discoloration against her cheek. A single scale of gray, the color of fresh-cut granite, sat below her left eye like a tear. The rest of her hide was flawless; she seemed sculpted from sapphire, her lean and well-muscled body sporting graceful lines and symmetry that rivaled the statues that adorned the College of Spires. This valkyrie continued to regard him with a look that approached boredom.
With one guard showing disinterest and another looking prepared to run him through, Graxen knew his best course of action was to win the leader over to his cause. He said, 'As a commander, you are obviously a dragon of proven judgment. Perhaps you should examine the scroll yourself.' Graxen reached into his satchel and produced the scroll. He stretched his wing across the watery gap to offer the message to the leader. Her fore-talon brushed his as she took the rolled parchment. This brief touch was his first adult contact with a female. He found the experience…unsatisfying.
The leader unrolled the scroll. She tilted her head and furrowed her brow, attempting to decipher its jagged calligraphy. The message had been scribed by Shandrazel, a sun-dragon. With talons twice the thickness of a sky- dragon's nimble digits, sun-dragons seldom earned praise for their penmanship.
'What does it say, Arifiel?' the youngest valkyrie asked, impatient.
'Quiet, Sparrow,' said the dragon with the teardrop scale. Graxen guessed that Sparrow was a nickname. It was rare to encounter a dragon whose name corresponded to something in the physical world. All sky-dragons names were drawn from the Ballad of Belpantheron. The two-thousand-page poem was the oldest document verified to have been drafted by a dragon. Unfortunately, it was also a document that had defied ten centuries of scholarly attempts to decipher its mysterious language. Tradition held that it told the story of how the young race of dragons slew the older race of angels. Less poetically inclined scholars speculated that the work was schizophrenic babble granted sacred status by the passage of time.
'It does say he is to be given safe passage,' Arifiel said, rotating the scroll to a thirty-degree angle as she puzzled out the script, 'but, this isn't Albekizan's mark.'
'Albekizan is no longer king,' said Graxen. 'He died at the hands of Bitterwood following an uprising of humans in the Free City. His scion, Shandrazel, charged me with this mission.'
Arifiel tilted the scroll in the counterclockwise direction. 'I guess that could be an 's.' That's probably an 'h' and an 'a.' Shandrazel is…plausible. However, all that's here is the order of safe passage. I see no further message.'
Graxen raised his fore-talon to tap his brow. 'I have the message up here. It's too important to be entrusted to mere parchment. This is why you should provide me with an escort for the rest of the journey.'
'I see,' said Arifiel.
'Shall we grant him passage then?' asked the teardrop valkyrie, still relaxed.
'No,' said Arifiel. 'Last I heard, Shandrazel was banished.'
'Who cares if Shandrazel is king now?' Sparrow growled, directing her words toward Arifiel. 'Male law ends at the lake's edge. Whatever transpires in the outside world is of no concern to us.'
'True,' said Arifiel, rolling the scroll back up. She eyed Graxen even more skeptically than before. 'My gut tells me this is a trick. Desperate males try far more clever schemes to reach the Nest in the hope of mating.'
'This is no scheme,' said Graxen. 'I'm marked by birth as one who will never breed. No female would ever submit to my touch.'
'Desperate dragons will attempt to breed by force,' said Arifiel.
'If I were here to resort to violence, why would I wish to journey into the heart of the Nest?' Graxen asked. 'Wouldn't a desperate dragon attempt to ambush valkyries on patrol, away from the safety of the fortress?'
'Perhaps that's your plan,' said Sparrow. 'Perhaps you didn't expect to be outnumbered.'
Graxen found Sparrow's tone grating. He felt that if she would only be quiet, he might have hope of convincing the Arifiel. He said, 'Arifiel, do you always allow the dragons in your command to abuse guests so?'
He expected Arifiel to order Sparrow to silence herself. He didn't expect Sparrow's face to suddenly twist into a mask of rage as her muscles tensed, ready to strike with her spear.
'Abuse is all a freak like you deserves!' Sparrow shouted.
'Sparrow, halt!' barked Arifiel.
It was too late. Sparrow lunged. Graxen shifted his weight back on the rock, swinging his tail around for balance as he pulled his shoulders back. The spear pierced the air before him. The weapon was twice Sparrow's height. Graxen calculated that avoiding the thrust might lead to tragedy. Sparrow was off balance, falling forward. If she toppled, her spear would reach all the way to the valkyrie with the teardrop scale. Perhaps her armor would deflect the blow, but could he take that chance?
Graxen grabbed the shaft of the spear, using the full weight of his body to halt its forward path. He jerked the spear backward. Sparrow let go, her hind-talons skittering on the wet rock. Before she could spread her wings to steady herself, Graxen jabbed the butt of the spear between her legs, tripping her. She landed in the water with an angry shriek.
Arifiel, perhaps mistaking his act of protection for an attack, released the scroll and readied her own weapon. Graxen dropped the spear, crouched, and then sprung into the air, whipping his tail forward to knock the falling letter upward before it hit the water. He grabbed the document in his hind-claws as he beat his wings, climbing into the sky with all his might.
'Stop!' Arifiel shouted, drawing back to throw her spear.
'Stop me,' Graxen called back, climbing higher.
Arifiel grunted, hurling her weapon, but Graxen didn't bother to look down. The weapon had been designed for a thrusting attack, not for throwing. He was practically straight over her, fifty feet up. The anatomy of a sky- dragon's wings simply wouldn't allow the weapon to reach him. Seconds later, he heard the spear clatter against the rocks. He kept flapping, turning the fifty-foot gap into a hundred feet, two hundred, more.
He glanced down to see Arifiel and the dragon he thought of as Teardrop chasing after him. Teardrop proved as strong as she looked, and was leading Arifiel by several body lengths. Indeed, if she weren't slowed by her leather breastplate and heavy spear, Graxen had every reason to think she might have gotten close to him. After a minute, Graxen judged he was over a hundred yards above her, and half that distance again above Arifiel. Graxen grimaced as he saw that Arifiel was no longer chasing him. Instead she was drifting in a circle as she used a hind-talon to free the hood on her alarm bell.
Graxen folded his wings back and held his body straight, plunging toward Teardrop. It was time to show these valkyries what he knew of the subtle art of falling. Teardrop looked up, her eyes wide as he shot toward her. She drew her body back, raising the spear she carried in her hind-talons to catch Graxen.
As Graxen hurtled down, the wind felt like water. His feather-scales were a thousand tiny paddles with which he pushed the current, controlling the angle of his fall. At the last second, Graxen curved his tail in a gentle arc, steering away from a collision. Her spear point flashed past his eyes. For a lightning instant he glimpsed the valkyrie's face with its single scale of gray, then her long serpentine neck flickered past, then her armored torso, and then there was her belt. In his right hind-talon he held Shandrazel's letter of passage. With his left, he snatched the manacles, ripping free the metal hook that held them. The sudden jolt threw Teardrop into a spin. As she flapped her wings for balance, Graxen shifted his tail once more to delicately adjust his fall. Off to his side, on a parallel course, a bright gleam caught his eye-a spear point. Teardrop had dropped her weapon. The spear now fell toward Arifiel on a path that would run her through. He kicked out with the manacles and clipped the tip of the spear, knocking it into a path that would do no damage.
By now Graxen had reached terminal velocity, words that possessed a double meaning. He could fall no faster, but if he collided with Arifiel at this speed, it would kill them both. He opened his wings into twin parachutes, tilting his hind-talons down. He dropped the scroll and craned his neck to catch it in his teeth as it flew upward. In the space of a heartbeat the distance between Arifiel and himself vanished as his hind-talons reached her left wing.
Graxen grabbed Arifiel's fore-talon, the three-clawed hand that sat at the middle joint of her wing. In a fluid motion, he snapped the first cuff of the manacle around her talon. The impact caused his body to flip, as his legs tarried at her wing while his head snaked downward. He reached out his fore-talons and grabbed her left hind-talon.
