Page 90 of Ash

Rindek frowned at him. “Tell me what you see.”

The portly man’s hands were shaking. “It is a large fortress, made of a deep-red stone, and it is built straight into the side of a cliff. There are Dragons on top of the walls.” The man took a deep breath. “I see a Dragon, much bigger than the ones at the fortress. Kind of a blue-green color. He’s scouting them from above. He’s different, he doesn’t belong with the others.”

Ash’s heart accelerated. His Dragon. That washisDragon. He focused, trying to see what the other man was seeing. But the deep internal pain wasn’t helping him. His body was too wound up in fighting for survival. The timelines twisted, and the path remained unclear.

Rindek’s eyes flashed crimson. “The fortress is made of red stone? Does it have carved Dragons at the entrance, one on each side?”

The Seer was sweating profusely, his eyes squeezed shut. Then he nodded. “Yes. Dragons on each side. Carved out of the same stone, with jewels for eyes.”

Ash closed his eyes. He’d seen that fortress too. A deep sense of dread filled him.

Rindek uttered a single, low growl. “The slave trader’s fortress.”

Demeti glanced at his father. “Is he someone important?”

“He wasn’t. But he might be now.” The Archmage walked over to Ash and yanked the dart out of his arm. “I think I have a way to test our new parasites.”

No.That washisDragon, and he was in danger. Ash’s talons flashed up to strike at Rindek. The Archmage stepped easily out of range, and sent a paralyzing pulse of power through the Dragon’s collar.

Ash gasped and arched right up off the table.

The Archmage shook his head. “I don’t know whether to be upset or impressed that you still try, my pet. But I should have known a Dragon could never be tamed.”

He turned away and took the Seer by the arm, waving to Demeti. “John and I have details to determine. I will leave Ash in your tender care.”

* * *

And he dreamed:

Tyrez tilted his wings and followed the swirling thermal in a rapid spiral through the drifting cloud.

The winds were as chaotic as the white-topped waves on the ocean below. They provided a flying challenge that only the experienced dared to attempt.

This realm was not a friendly place for Dragons. But he had been here before—when he’d stopped the golden Dragon from a lethal crash into the cliffs.

Had it been a dream, or, as his mother suspected, something more? Everything seemed so crystal clear—every sense so alive. No dream could provide such things.

Could it?

Movement on the beach far below. Tyrez banked toward it, no longer fighting to stay aloft. His keen eyesight detected a slim figure running along the gravel toward the ocean. Another, ghostlier figure followed—but its outlines were unclear. At times, Tyrez could see the beach clear through it.

The slim figure’s gaze was locked on the wind-tossed waves as he mounted a rock ridge and ran along the edge of it. Long, golden hair flowed out behind him.

Ash. It had to be Ash. Tyrez’s gut twisted—what if he fell into the churning water below? He banked again, fighting the cross-winds to get closer.

The pursuing figure stopped where the beach met the rock ridge. Tyrez saw that it was tall and thin, with long dark white-streaked hair. It lifted its hands, and they glowed with power.

Tyrez was over a thousand feet away and dropping fast when the pulse of pure energy shot toward the figure. To his horror, it was a solid hit. The air around Ash crackled, his feet slipped, and he fell into the pounding waves.

Tyrez’s heart froze, but his body responded as a trained warrior’s would. His wings folded tight to his body, and he dove.

The figure bobbed up once, twice in the waves, his arms flailing to keep himself afloat. Tyrez caught a glimpse of something huge in the water—a lethal swirl of finned appendages, as a predator zeroed in on the semiconscious man.

The figure on the beach had vanished as if he had never been. Tyrez dismissed him from his mind as he leveled out above the waves. He was now only three hundred feet from where Ash had fallen in, but he couldn’t see his target in the churning water.

Then a huge fin broke the surface, and he banked hard to the right. The predator was tracking its prey, and it was in its natural element.

Only feet above the ocean, Tyrez tilted his wings to catch air and slow down his progress as he desperately scanned the tossing waves. At the last possible second, he spotted a flash of pale flesh. He reached out his foretalons and snatched up the limp body. As he lifted Ash away, a creature almost as large as a Dragon reared out of the water, snapping at them with razor-toothed jaws.

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