Page 79 of Ale Storm

Rylana would have waved, but Loxvonla had picked up her pace again. She flew straight toward Rylana, and Killaynia did nothing to alter her path. No, she probably wanted Rylana to die.

Snarling, Rylana rose enough on the dragon’s back to aim her bow. She loosed an arrow that would have gone right between Loxvonla’s eyes, but Killaynia must have known what she was doing because she tilted her back as Rylana fired. The arrow still grazed the dragon’s jaw, but Killaynia had spoken the truth when she’d said the mundane weapons were far inferior to mithril. If the arrow drew blood, Rylana couldn’t tell. Worse, she almost lost her balance, thanks to Killaynia’s moving back.

Jildarin roared again, and Rylana glimpsed him flying toward her. The blue dragon he’d been battling was plummeting to the ground, its throat torn open, but two other males not only remained but were flying fast after Jildarin, snapping for his tail.

Killaynia, who’d been content to transport Rylana here without trying to knock her loose, changed her attitude—and her altitude—now. She dove, her back shifting and twisting.

Half falling off, Rylana managed to nock another arrow and fire once more at Loxvonla. But another twitch sent Rylana sliding back to Killaynia’s tail. That tail flicked, and she flew toward an evergreen tree.

Flailing, Rylana lost her bow and struggled to catch a branch as she hit. Boughs pummeled her, and pine needles jammed into her mouth, but she found a handhold instead of plummeting to the ground.

A nearby roar from Killaynia promised that Rylana wasn’t safe. The golden dragon didn’t fly toward the tree, however; instead, she alighted on the cliff, as if she would now watch the show.

Loxvonla, an arrow gouge in her scaled jaw, had a lot more than watching in mind. She whipped her head about, roared with insane fury, and flew at Rylana’s tree with fire roiling in the back of her throat.

Rylana released her branch and grabbed a lower one, climbing downward as fast as she could. But the ground was forty feet below. If she lost her grip this high up, she would fall to certain death.

Flames spewed toward the tree. Heat assailed Rylana as the top boughs burst into flame.

She scrambled down faster, branches clawing at her exposed skin and her pack, her quiver catching and arrows falling out. Loxvonla circled, and another gout of fire streaked toward the tree.

Rylana shifted to put the solid mass of the trunk between her and the flames, but tremendous heat blasted her as needles turned to ash and wood caught fire. The scorching air rippled and writhed in the smoke.

Jildarin roared again, closer now, and the gout of flame halted. With the tree burning heartily above and below, Rylana resumed climbing down, dropping as quickly as she could without grabbing branches alight with crackling fire. When she finally landed on the ground, flaming boughs and ashes falling all around her, three dragons fought in the air overhead. Jildarin and the remaining males bit and roared and lashed out with their talons.

Determined to help, Rylana glanced around for her bow. A huge silvery spear, the entire shaft gleaming in the sun, stuck out of a rock cairn not ten feet away. Was that one of the mithril lances that Killaynia had mentioned? Rylana’s bow lay on the ground beyond the pile of rocks.

Snatching up arrows along the way, she ran toward it. A great thud came from above, followed by a thunderous snap. Rylana halted and lifted her arms protectively, expecting a tree to fall on her. Broken branches did rain down. One of the male dragons had been hurled into a trunk, the momentum and his weight breaking it. The tree toppled as the dragon screeched and tried to extract himself, talons and wings snapping branches.

In the sky twenty feet away, Jildarin and the remaining male tore and bit, tails whipping about as they fought wildly. And was that the green-scaled female leaving the cliff to fly toward the melee? Would she help Jildarin or hinder him?

Rylana ran toward her bow, but a shadow fell over her. The dragon that had hit the tree was coming down for a landing instead of flying back into the battle. Bleeding from a dozen gashes, the scaled creature still emanated strength and power. Its enraged yellow eyes spotted Rylana and locked onto her.

The dragon roared as he alighted less than ten feet away and opened his maw. To attack her?

“I didn’t do anything to you!” she yelled.

Jildarin’s human servant will die! the dragon announced into her mind.

Still too far from her bow to grab it, Rylana leaped behind the cairn. The dragon breathed fire straight at her. She ducked low as the flames hit the rocks and the lance. Some of those rocks split and flew as the air heated hotter than an oven. Rylana hunkered as low as she could but feared the dragon would stride around the cairn and hit her directly.

The air above her crackled and emanated magic, such magic that even she, with her weak human senses, felt it. It didn’t come from the dragon fire but from something else—something closer.

Rylana peered up and gaped. Even as flames bathed it, the ancient lance glowed silvery white.

More snaps and thumps and a screech came from the air above the male dragon. For a moment, his fiery breath halted, and he looked up, crouching as if worried he would have to spring away.

Rylana took advantage and was about to run to the side to grab her bow, but the lance continued to glow. That thing looked a lot more magical than her arrows.

Though she worried it was embedded in the rocks and would be too hot to grip even if she could pull it out, Rylana risked climbing up the pile to touch a finger to the shaft. Surprisingly, it was ice cold instead of hot, its magic protecting it from the fire.

Jildarin’s angry roar came from above, but he was still battling his foe. Unfortunately, the nearby dragon noticed Rylana’s movement and spun back toward her. She yanked on the lance, not expecting it to come free, but she was desperate for a weapon with which to protect herself.

To her surprise, it glided out of the cairn like a knife pulled from butter. Since she’d expected resistance, she barely kept her balance.

The dragon opened his maw to spew fire at her again. Faster than she’d ever moved in her life, she shifted the long lance to throw like a javelin. As flames roiled in the back of the dragon’s throat, she hurled the weapon into his open maw.

As soon as it left her fingers, Rylana sprang off the cairn, again diving for cover. The ground shook with a thunderous thud as she landed—something else heavy must have struck down nearby.