Ezaara slipped along to his end of the net and yanked it. “Handel, Zaarusha, a little higher.”
The dragons strained and pushed Erob further.
Erob let out a moan that made Ezaara’s skin crawl. “Shards, we’re hurting him.”
“Fast!” Zaarusha’s mental voice trembled. “I can’t hold him.”
Ezaara yanked. Suddenly, the net was free. She sprawled on her backside under Erob’s descending belly.
“Move. I’m slipping,” Zaarusha barked, talons scrabbling in the stones.
Tomaaz’s strong hands pulled Ezaara backward as Erob’s bulk landed right where she’d been.
Gasping for breath, she stared at Tomaaz. “That was close.”
He nodded and swallowed. “Dragon squash—never grew that on our farm, did we?”
Behind them, twigs cracked and a low snarl came from the trees. As quick as a starving dragonet, Adelina snatched up her bow and fired. A yell sounded. Pa nocked his bow, too, aiming for dark shadows among the trees. Handel gusted flame at the tharuks.
Zaarusha mind-melded, “Ezaara, we have to go.” She snatched up the net on one side of Erob. “Handel, take the other side. Ezaara, tell everyone we’re leaving.”
“To the dragons. Let’s go,” Ezaara yelled.
Pa and Adelina ran to Handel, but a beast leaped out of the trees, straight for Tomaaz. He slashed with his sword.
Shards! More tharuks were nearly upon him. Ezaara fired an arrow into a beast’s neck, then slung her bow over her back and ran at the tharuks. She swung her sword, connecting with flesh, fur and bone. More and more beasts were pouring out of the forest. “Tomaaz, too many tharuks. We have to go.” Ezaara ducked a tharuk’s claws and parried. “Hurry, now.”
They raced to Zaarusha, two tharuks on their heels. As they scrambled onto Zaarusha’s back, Handel blasted the beasts.
Roars and snarls broke out as tharuks ran at them.
Handel and Zaarusha grasped the net on their respective sides of Erob’s body and flapped, lifting him off the ground. “Quick, the rings. He’s no lightweight,” Zaarusha melded.
Ezaara and Pa rubbed the rings, calling Anakisha’s name. With a pop, the snarling beasts and smoldering tharuks disappeared.
Anakisha floated toward them, surrounded by golden light.
“Liesar, we have Erob,” Ezaara mind-melded.
“Quick, Anakisha, to Dragons’ Hold,” Hans called. “Erob is dying.”
§
Marlies paced on the ledge outside the infirmary. Her needles and squirrel gut thread were ready on a small table. She’d also prepared clean herb infusion—which Liesar kept warming every time it cooled—vials of piaua, and limplock remedy in case Erob had been poisoned. All they needed now was Erob. What was taking Ezaara, Tomaaz and Hans so long? With instantaneous travel, they should’ve returned ages ago. The torch stuttered in a chill wind that rippled across the basin. She stopped to gaze out over Dragons’ Hold.
Something strange was going on. A dragon master was stuck in Death Valley, yet no rescue party had been sent. The council hadn’t refused to rescue Roberto, but they hadn’t acted yet. Why would they leave one of their own, a master with highly valuable skills, in Death Valley? She tugged her jerkin closer around her and went into their quarters next to the infirmary to fetch a cloak. Cold affected her more since she’d returned from Death Valley two moons ago. And fatigue.
Lately, she was always tired.
When she’d taken the blue piaua berries and sunk into a deep coma to prevent Zens from torturing her, she’d never realized that it would leave her with bone-deep tiredness that she could never shake. On the outside, no one guessed. Since she’d been reinstated as Master Healer, she fulfilled her duties, but exhaustion dogged her. Throwing her cloak over her shoulders, Marlies paced through the infirmary.
“Marlies, Erob’s coming,” Liesar melded from the ledge.
Marlies strode out to the ledge. What she saw made her blood freeze.
Erob was suspended in the nets between Handel and Zaarusha, but below him hung a tharuk. Clinging to the bottom of the nets with one hand, it was sawing at the ropes with its dagger. Any moment now, Erob would plunge to his death.
“Liesar, there’s a tharuk on board.” Marlies ran to the infirmary, snatched her bow and arrows. “Tell Handel and Zaarusha to hold right there. I’m getting weapons.”
“Done.”
She raced back to the ledge. Shards. In the flickering torchlight, with the dragons fighting to keep Erob aloft, the tharuk was swinging like a rag doll. She couldn’t get a clean shot.
The beast drew its dagger back and plunged it into Erob’s belly wound. Erob bellowed in pain.
Marlies loosed her arrow.
The tharuk thudded to the ledge, its knife skittering across the stone. Marlies kicked the monster’s body off the ledge and it thunked down the mountainside to the basin.
The fraying nets ripped.
“Support Erob,” she melded to Liesar.
Liesar dived under the hole in the net, using her body to help ease Erob to the stone.
Ezaara sprang down off Zaarusha. “He has a belly wound, blood loss, is dehydrated and may have an infection.”
Erob was listless, his scales fading. “Ezaara, check the rest of his body for wounds or arrow marks in case he’s been limplocked. I need water.”
“I’ll get some.” Adelina dashed into the infirmary.
“What should I do?” Tomaaz asked. Shoulders slumped, he looked ready to collapse.
“Go and lie down and rest that hip,” Marlies said, taking the water from Adelina.
She dampened the wound. It was a ragged gash, weeping yellow pus. Marlies cut the stitches with her surgical knife. Ezaara bathed Erob’s exposed gut with clean herb. Marlies lifted back the edges of the wound and swabbed the pus away. They made a good team, working quickly and efficiently. If she wasn’t Queen’s Rider, Ezaara would have made a wonderful healer.
A low growl built in Erob’s throat.
“Adelina,” Marlies said, “please soothe him. The last thing I need is an irate dragon thrashing around.”
The young girl
