Ezaara snapped her head up. Was that a flash of orange? Maazini?
Adelina glanced up too, hope flickering across her face.
Their tharuk troop drew their bows and fired. Thank the First Egg, their arrows fell short. “Get higher. To the hills,” the troop leader barked.
Keeping Ezaara and Adelina in their midst, the tharuks swarmed up a steep trail. Adelina stumbled, and Ezaara pulled her upright. These beasts were fast. If they didn’t keep up, they’d be trampled. Was Maazini alone?
Ezaara melded, “Maazini, can you see us? Adelina and I are in the middle of a tharuk troop, heading up a hill.” She squinted at the sky. Was that another dragon up there?
“Ezaara? I see the troop. We’ll have you out in no time.”
If only it were that simple—there were hundreds of tharuks to get through. “Thank the Egg, you’re here. Is Zaarusha with you?”
“No, just Riona.”
Kierion? Thank the dragon gods that reckless fool and Tomaaz were daring enough to come to Death Valley.
The tharuks stopped halfway up the hill. Shoving Ezaara and Adelina behind a rocky outcrop, they fired arrows at Maazini. He swerved, dancing out of reach, then swooped, drawing more fire. “Are you behind that rock?” Maazini asked.
“Just me and Adelina. Roberto’s still captive.”
Maazini’s answering snarl seared Ezaara’s mind. “When I give the order, drop to your bellies.”
Nerves tight, Ezaara waited for Maazini’s signal. More tharuks swarmed up the hillside, eager to kill the dragons with their limplocked arrows. How could Tomaaz and Kierion ever get them out of this mess?
“Now. Duck!”
She thrust Adelina to the ground, saying, “Cover your head.”
Ezaara peeked around the rock. A bolt of purple shot through the sky—Riona! Green fireballs zipped from her back, hitting screaming tharuks. Maazini’s scales flashed as he flamed tharuks. Arrows hit beasts. Tharuks fell, blasted by wizard flame.
“Ezaara, stay down,” Maazini called. “Riona, now.”
“Gladly,” Riona answered.
The dragons opened their maws. Ezaara yanked her head behind the rock as a wave of heat hit the outcrop. Tharuks crackled with flame, the stink of their burned fur crawling up Ezaara’s nostrils. Shrieks and bellows rang out. Dragon roars filled the air. Flashes of yellow and green light glanced off the hillside.
Then there was silence.
Ezaara risked peeking out. Dead tharuks were scattered across the hill, green and yellow flames licking at their fur. A pall of black and green smoke hung in the air. She scrambled to her feet, hoisting Adelina up.
“Wizard fire.” Adelina’s voice cracked. “Kierion and Fenni are here.”
Roars echoed from the valley and more tharuks surged up the hill.
“Quick, Maazini.”
“Stand far apart. We’re coming to collect you.”
Ezaara dragged Adelina past smoking bodies, coughing on the foul smoke-laden air. “Adelina, brace yourself.”
With a sickening lurch, Maazini grabbed Ezaara in his talons and they were sky-bound. Riona snatched up Adelina.
An aching, empty hole gaped in Ezaara’s chest as they ascended, fleeing tharuk arrows. Leaving Roberto behind.
Retaliation
The air reeked of mage fire. The godforsaken stuff clung in Zens’ nostrils. Green smoke wafted across the hillside above the carnage of Zens’ dead troops, carrying the stench of burned flesh. A pair of dragons were fleeing over the Terramites—one of them was the orange specimen he’d captured. It didn’t matter that the dragon had escaped months ago. Zens had harvested its DNA long before. But it was worrying that mages and dragons were working together again. Years ago, he’d driven a bitter wedge of mistrust between dragon riders and mages, deep enough for them to hate each other forever.
When tharuks had reported dragons overhead, he’d deliberately brought the girls into the open. By rescuing them, the fools had played into his hands.
His slow smile turned to a grimace. A hundred stinking corpses littered the mountainside. He’d been prepared to sacrifice a few tharuks in a pathetic skirmish. But this? Fury roiled inside him at his wasted troops. Someone would pay.
Zens faced his assembled tharuks. “A hundred tharuks have died defending Death Valley. Those stinking dragon riders and mages did this. Will we let them get away with this carnage?”
His troops roared.
“We will avenge them,” Zens bellowed, rousing their bloodlust. “000 will take a troop to execute a hundred slaves.”
“Yes, sir.” 000 and his troop marched down the valley, their feet stirring up dust that mingled with mage smoke.
“Tharuk 766, take a raiding party and scour Spanglewood Forest for a hundred more slaves to replace them.”
“My pleasure, sir,” tracker 766 answered, tusks salivating.
766’s troop raced up the rocky mountainside, stomping over dead tharuks in their eagerness to hunt humans. Zens smiled. He’d trained them well.
“967, come here. The rest of you, clean up those corpses. Throw them onto the tharuk flesh pile. When you’re done, I want everyone on lockdown. Sleep in the slaves’ huts tonight. No one is allowed out in the valley. And post no lookout.”
“Yes, Commander,” the tharuks said as one, pounding their fists on their chests. They traipsed up the hill to gather the dead.
967, a wiry tharuk with an affinity for crows, approached. “Commander, how I help?” It wrung its hands.
His grunts’ lack of language skills was irritating at times. “Send crows to the tharuk troop leaders, telling them to kill all the wizards in Spanglewood Forest. Raze their homes and destroy their young, but bring me back two captives.”
“Kill all wizards. Bring two back.”
He mind-melded, showing a face to 967. “And 967, tell them I want Master Giddi alive.”
§
Hours after tharuks had taken Ezaara and Adelina, 000 returned to the holding cell, waking Roberto from a broken, hollow sleep.
“Commander Zens wants to see you.” 000 grabbed Roberto in a headlock.
As if he could put up a fight. He was a shadow of himself.
000 dragged Roberto along tunnels, his head
