56. Viridhaven
56
VIRIDHAVEN
“I need you to close your eyes,” Ris told Gwydinion.
“Excuse me?”
They’d run along the bay’s edge for several hours by that point. It hadn’t been a comfortable ride: arguably Overbite never was, just big and intimidating and thus safer than other methods. Gwydinion had put away his improvised, inscribed compass, because Ris said she didn’t need it to find Viridhaven, but he’d yet to see any sign of the city. They were about to run smack into the Drav Mountains at the apex of the bay’s inlet.
“Close your eyes,” she repeated. “Don’t look up or the illusion will catch you.”
An illusion…
“Oh,” Gwydinion said. “I see. Or, I don’t.” He fumbled, put his hands over his eyes. Without looking at Ris, he said, “What about Overbite? Will she be affected?”
“No,” Ris said. “It doesn’t work on animals.”
“That’s sunshine.” He’d have to tell his mother about that when they returned; she’d never been able to resist learning new techniques.
Gwydinion nodded to acknowledge he’d heard Ris. He wanted to look up and see where they were going, but…
Illusions. He got the idea.
A few moments later, the ground beneath Overbite’s feet tilted; she now ran at a steep downward tilt. He kept his eyes down, fighting the temptation to raise his head.
Claw tapped him on the shoulder. “Open your eyes, kid. We’re here.”
Gwydinion looked up and gasped.
Someone had taken a Skyland city and inverted it, so that instead of houses built up along the sides of a mountain, they were instead built down into an enormous bowl carved into solid rock. Long, elegant towers had been built in circles radiating from the center of the bowl, joined to each other and to the sides of the depression by fragile bridges lined with flower boxes. There was sound, too—the murmur of people chatting, wafts of music, the laughter of children, birds singing, vel hounds baying. He didn’t understand the scale at first, and then he felt lightheaded.
Viridhaven was as large as Crystalspire.
Sunlight streamed through gaps between a lattice of flowering vines overhead. It was hardly camouflage—Gwydinion couldn’t understand how dragons wouldn’t be able to see it from the air.
Then he remembered Ris’s comment about illusions.
“How many sorcerers does it take to cloak an entire city?” Gwydinion asked.
“None.” Ris pointed up at the vines. “Those are all inscribed, and yes, it took a long time.” She grinned. “Lucky for us, the only dragon old enough to remember we’re down here is on our side.” Ris tapped Gwydinion on the shoulder. “Let’s dismount here so you can send Overbite back into the jungle. She’s too large to stay inside the city.”
“Right… right.” Gwydinion told Overbite to head back into the jungle and go find herself some food. He stepped back as the titan drake turned around with shocking dexterity and galloped away.
Apparently, she was hungry.
“This way,” Ris said, indicating a side road. “We’ll drop Naeron off with his family and then I need to fill the captains in on the plan—”
“Plan?” Claw scoffed. “Can it really be called a plan when it amounts to ‘Hey, let’s hide while someone goes to wake Daddy up and tell him Mother’s being mean?’”
Ris stopped in the middle of the road. She turned around, and Gwydinion saw she had that look on her face. The one that meant she was not to be pushed. He’d figured that look out quickly.
And if Claw ever had, she didn’t care.
“I would like you to remember,” Ris said with all the sweetness of an exquisite poison, “that we have one dragon. One. Neveranimas has hundreds. Thousands, should she feel ambitious, but for our discussion, let’s assume hundreds.” She put thumb and forefinger together. “We are hiding because that is the smart thing to do when you are this outnumbered.”
Claw made a face. “Fine. I get it. Thank you for the lecture, strategy mom.”
Ris took a deep breath and then exhaled. She tilted her head and gave Claw a fake smile. “We are this outnumbered only until we manage to ‘wake Daddy.’ At which point, we will be the ones with hundreds of dragons, and she will be the one outnumbered.”
Claw sighed, but she gave the other woman a nod.
As Ris walked away, bells rang in an overlapping chime.
Gwydinion didn’t know what that meant, but from the way everyone else froze, it wasn’t good.
“No.” Naeron spat the word like a curse.
“It’s a flyover,” Claw said, but she didn’t sound convincing. “How could they track us?” She gave Gwydinion an unfriendly look, and the question sounded less rhetorical than accusative.
Gwydinion protested. “If Neveranimas was still tracking me, she’d have snatched me up before you arrived. Why would she wait?”
“That wasn’t the ‘flyover’ alarm,” Ris snapped. “That was the ‘dragons are on the ground’ alarm. Dragons, as in plural.” She turned to Naeron. “Go get your family to a shelter.” To Claw, she said, “Find the captains and let them know what they’re dealing with. Make sure no one else tries to play this off as a false alarm.”
Claw ran across the nearest bridge to one of the central towers, Naeron, into a doorway. Or rather, into a tunnel.
The moment the bells started, people on the street retreated into buildings. Not everyone: perhaps one in ten moved across the bridges to the central towers.
“Hurry,” Ris said, grabbing Gwydinion by the arm. “Let’s get you to safety.”
Gwydinion tried to wiggle out of her grip. “You have illusions covering every inch of this place. How much danger—”
A furious, deafening roar clashed against the hard stone buildings of the city. Earth and stone rained down from several hundred feet away. Gwydinion looked up in time to see a dragon rabidly beating its wings to forestall plummeting downward. The dragon was a bright cerulean blue, with an opalescent stomach and bright, hot-red hands, feet, and frills.
Not hands, though. Just the one hand, because the dragon had unknowingly grabbed at one of the inscribed vines, which had cleanly severed the dragon’s wrist. The vine was now blood-covered and missing the niceties of its previous floral cloak.
The illusion was broken. The dragon stared down into the city.
“Dayevedies.” Ris spat out the name in recognition. “He’s a fire dragon. Run—!”
The dragon pulled back, inhaled, and breathed.