6. Jerrid
JERRID
The dragon lurched inside of Jerrid and grasped for control.
Go away!
Jerrid ground his teeth together, mentally hanging onto his own body as the strange cry rolled over them. It was neither howl nor wail, but something hung between the two.
Whatever it was, the sound excited his dragon.
“What is it?” Ava grabbed the back of his tunic and twisted her fingers into the rough woolen fabric.
He motioned for her to be silent. Stillness settled over the forest yet again, as if the Shadewood too was holding its breath.
Jerrid counted to ten and then started over. Inside him, the dragon seethed, clawing to get out. But he held the beast back, focusing on another painfully deep breath.
He did this four times before a single bird twittered over their heads. It flicked its wings and broke away from its hiding place to flit away into the treetops.
The wind brushed against his cheek as he lowered his hand and breathed a sigh of relief.
The dragon settled.
“I think it’s gone, whatever it was.” He cast one last, lingering look toward the northwest where the sound had seemed to originate.
Then he turned back to Ava and held out a hand. “Come on. Let’s get out of this ravine. I don’t like being cornered down here.”
She edged past him without taking his hand and eyed the incline between them and the forest above. This side was even steeper, a near vertical slope with jagged roots rippling out of the corroding soil in places. Jerrid laced his fingers together and squatted.
“I’ll give you a boost,” he said.
She shot him a look that clearly screamed, shades no, but when he didn’t move, she rolled her eyes and placed her left foot into his palms.
He tightened his core and stood, lifting the slender elf lass easily.
She squeaked and grappled for the lip of the root system above his head.
He heaved her higher, her free leg swinging wildly, and waited for the pressure on his palms to ease as she pulled herself up alongside the trunk of the tree looming over them. She peeked over the edge of the ravine.
“How are you going to get up?” she asked.
But he had already backed up, bracing to take a running leap.
He launched a foot off a boulder on the ground and flung himself as high as he could.
He caught hold of an exposed root above his head.
Swinging side to side, he used his upper body strength to lift his weight and drag himself up the remainder of the distance.
She stepped back, eyeing him with a slight smirk about her lips. “That was…fancy.”
His cheeks burned slightly. In his line of business, he had to keep himself strong.
His life depended on his ability to stay astride his dragon, sometimes swinging from one dragon to another in battle. Once, he’d even launched himself off Echo’s back in order to tackle a harpy trying to rip one of his fellow riders to shreds.
If Echo hadn’t caught him moments later, he would have smashed into the rocky cliffs below.
Brushing off his hands, he marched past her and collected his bearings. She fell in behind him as he resumed his trek northward, deciding that ignoring her would be the better part of valor.
The trees grew sparser as they climbed the hill and came to the top of a sweeping arc of high ground overlooking a meadow with a swathe of rippling water running down the center. With his eyes, he followed the ribbon of sparkling water to a range of hills northeast of their location.
A dark stone tower rose over the treetops, its rough stones covered in gray and green moss. The roof was half missing, blackened beams visible beneath the wooden slats.
“Looks abandoned,” Ava said at his elbow. “I don’t see any smoke. I doubt we are going to find anything of much use here.”
“I told you they looked like ruins.”
She shot him a quelling look that he studiously ignored. “You’re difficult to like. You know that, don’t you?”
Heat warmed the back of his neck, but he forced his expression to remain neutral. “It’s been brought to my attention…once or twice.”
“I bet.” She snorted and tossed her head, causing her raven-black hair to flutter behind her. “I could teach you some valuable skills about how to interact with people if you’re interested.”
“I’m not sure you’re the person I would trust to teach me such a thing.”
Ava impaled him with a look he couldn’t quite interpret, but he found himself rather wishing he did know what it meant.
“Suit yourself,” was all she said, and it was more than a little sulky.
I will, thank you very much.
They headed toward the structure, crossing the open meadow. The wind blew heavily against them, unfettered by the thick branches of the trees. It carried a sickly sweet scent, like rot.
Usually open places didn’t bother him, but here—in this unfamiliar land—unease rippled over Jerrid’s skin as they marched across the open patch of ground. Goose bumps prickled his arms, and he rubbed them vigorously.
When he looked over his shoulder, he caught Ava staring into the forest to their left with a frown. Could she sense it too? This feeling of…wrongness?
Perhaps they were both tired.
Or losing our minds.
They reached the edge of the clearing and forced their way through a brittle patch of briars. The branches were long dead and snapped easily as Jerrid pushed against them. The trees thickened around them once more, but instead of bringing relief, a heavier feeling of dread fell over him.
“The air feels so dense here,” Ava complained, breathing heavily as she tramped close at his heels. “It’s like there isn’t enough of it.”
Jerrid grunted his agreement. What he wouldn’t give to be high in the wide-open sky right now, dancing with clouds instead of battling his way through briars.
Behind him, Ava muttered something under her breath. Apparently, she wasn’t enjoying this any more than he was.
“I would have thought someone like you would enjoy being out in this.”
Her loud footsteps faltered. “Someone like me?”
“You know,”—he shot a look over his shoulder—“a healer. Don’t you people like being out in nature and stuff?”
She narrowed her eyes at him, hands clasping her hips. “For your information, people like me don’t enjoy being out in the unpleasant elements any more than anyone else. I prefer a nicely tended garden or greenhouse, thank you very much.”
He mouthed an “oh” but quickly turned back to the path he was attempting to create through the undergrowth. While he hadn’t meant to nettle her, clearly he’d done a bang-up job of it.
They stepped out of the thicket into an open space. Jerrid paused, his gaze skimming down to the steep ravine below them. It carved through the forest like a scythe, about a quarter mile wide at its thickest point. The bank on their side plunged in a nearly vertical drop for a good fifty feet.
Ava whistled as she leaned around him to peek over the edge of the cliff. “We won’t be going down that way, unless you have a lot of rope hiding in your pockets.”
He grunted.
“Which direction should we go? The ruins are almost directly across from us.”
To the right, the ground sloped upward as it followed the widest curve of the scythe. The terrain looked rockier and unpleasant. Going south, however, the ravine sloped downward…although, if Talos was still lurking around, that route would take them back in his direction.
“That way looks easier,” Ava said when he took too long to make up his mind.
“Yes, but it takes us back in the direction of Talos.”
“Oh.” She pursed her lips and reconsidered the rockier route to the right, a wrinkle forming between her eyebrows. “That way would take us longer though. It makes more sense to go down to find a way into the ravine than to go higher up.”
Exactly what he had been thinking. He slanted a look at her, grudgingly impressed that she had followed his line of thinking unprompted.
“Or,” she hedged, nibbling on her lower lip, “we could give up the ruins altogether and try to find our supplies somewhere else.”
His admiration withered and died a horrible death.
“And where exactly,” he said, with a tone so sarcastic it could not be missed by the densest of people, “do you propose we do that? These woods are teeming with towns and villages. We have so many to choose from.”
Ava’s dusky-gray cheeks darkened to coal. “I’m not the one who goes on dangerous assignments without a medical bag in his saddle.”
“No, you’re the one who gets herself kidnapped without one.”
“That’s hardly the same thing,” she protested, widening her stance and facing him as if she thought this conversation might come to physical blows. “I had medical supplies, but they were misplaced during the battle. You remember the one. Where my prince turned into a ruddy blue firebird?”
Now her sarcasm matched his, bite for bite.
“Your prince?” Jerrid mocked as he squared off against her in return. “You must be very smitten with him.”
He suppressed a smile, doubting she would find his amusement at all…well…amusing.
But he was amused. He was definitely amused.
He hadn’t thought her skin capable of darkening even more, but somehow it did.
“You know what I meant. My people’s prince. The prince of Gelaira. The dark elf prince. The prince that isn’t from your flame-eaten kingdom in the mountains.”
“Oh, yes, thank you. That does clarify things.”
Her lips thinned and whitened. “So happy to oblige. It must be difficult to keep up with such limited mental capacity. The human mind is much more fragile than I was led to believe.”
Now it was his turn to blush. “That’s rather a low blow. I hardly think it’s necessary to insult my intelligence.”
“You found it necessary to deliberately misunderstand my most basic vocabulary. You didn’t leave me any choice.”
“You always have a choice, lass.”
At least, that was what he told himself when Dragon reared his gnarly snout and began to demand feastings at all hours of the day. He had to believe he had choices, that he could control his fate.
That he could control Dragon.
She eyed him. “As enjoyable as this pointed exchange has been, it isn’t getting us any closer to the ruins.”