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  A small group, four black dots in the overcast sky, was approaching from the east.

  ‘The raiding party,’ said Alucius.

  Alsasse groaned. ‘I must go,’ he said wearily.

  He scanned the incoming flock of wyrmes for a sight of the whitewyrme, Aylsa, who, several weeks earlier, had led the party of four blueblacks back to the valley country. But so far as he could see, she was not among them.

  Without another word, Alsasse spread his wings and launched off from the ground. He allowed the thermals to lift his aching body up into the glowering sky once more, and rode the air currents in a wide arc round the mountain peaks and down towards the blueblackwyrme colony, the searing heat burning his eyes as he flew closer to the fiery chasm. He touched down on the chasm’s edge amid a large gathering of blueblacks, who glanced at him dismissively as he landed, before returning their attention to the sky.

  Alsasse caught sight of movement, and turned to see a massive clawed hand appear out of the chasm and grip its edge. It was followed a moment later by a head, broad-jawed and one-eyed; muscular shoulders, a robust torso. Then, with a grunt, a huge blueblackwyrme pulled itself up onto the lip of rock and rose to its feet.

  Alsasse shrank back before the bulk and vigour of the mighty leader of the blueblackwyrmes. Like the heat from the chasm’s depths, Beveesh-gar radiated a burning power that was dominating and intense. His teeth and claws glinted in the blood-red light, while the milky white glow of his blind eye only seemed to enhance his brutal strength. And unlike Alsasse, whose skin was dull and yellow-stained by sulphurous lake water, the blueblackwyrme’s scales gleamed like burnished metal.

  Beveesh-gar threw back his head and stared up at the sky with his one good eye.

  ‘At last,’ he grunted.

  One by one the approaching blueblackwyrmes came in to land before him. They looked weary and bore ­evidence of a fight – half-healed wounds on their flanks and necks, torn wings. One of them had lost the tip of a tail; another, two claws from his left hand. Beveesh-gar acknowledged their arrival in silence, his inquisitive gaze resting for a moment on each in turn as they bowed their heads respectfully. The last of the four wyrmes was carrying a bundle in its foreclaws, which it laid at the leader’s feet.

  Beveesh-gar’s single eye grew wide with surprise. ‘Is that it?’ he asked, the guttural words tinged with a low growling contempt.

  The blueblackwyrme looked down at the body as if seeing it for the first time, then nodded. ‘We caught it in the valley lands.’

  Alsasse recognized the voice. It belonged to Hasheev-gul, Beveesh-gar’s sixth son.

  ‘Far to the east,’ he went on. ‘There were five of them, seated around a fire. We attacked and killed them all. This one was the biggest.’

  He nodded at the dead body at his father’s feet. The head was twisted to one side, the tongue lolling. One outstretched arm was jutting out, and Hasheev-gul pushed it back snug against the body.

  The leader of the blueblackwyrmes took a step forward. The others hung back deferentially. He looked down for a moment, then lowered his head and sniffed.

  ‘It stinks,’ he said, his voice harsh and grating.

  From around him, the blueblackwyrmes growled their agreement. Alsasse remained silent. The taint of the two-hides was nothing new to him.

  Grimacing, Beveesh-gar flicked the head from side to side with an outstretched claw. He thrust his muzzle into the corpse’s belly, then pulled back, perplexed . . .

  ‘It is a two-hides,’ said Alsasse.

  A hundred bright blue eyes stared at the slender whitewyrme in their midst. Beveesh-gar drew back from the body and turned to him.

  Alsasse stepped forward, his head lowered. ‘As you know, I . . . I have knowledge of these creatures.’

  For a moment, the towering blueblackwyrme glared back at him. Then, with a low snort that filled the air with sour odour, he moved to one side. Alsasse approached the body of the two-hides.

  Hasheev-gul was right. It was a large specimen. A male. And it looked as though it had been in good health before it had been killed.

  Holding his breath, Alsasse stooped forward over the corpse. Then, trying hard to keep his arm from shaking, he sliced through the front of the jacket with a single razor-sharp claw.

  ‘This is the outer hide I told you about,’ he explained. ‘It protects them. From the sun. From thorns . . .’ He slowly peeled back the thick scaly material to reveal the inner hide, that was thin and pale and downy with dark curling hair. ‘And this is the inner hide of the creature,’ he said. ‘The true hide. The hide it was born with, which burns in the sun and tears so easily . . .’

  ‘And the other?’ Beveesh-gar enquired.

  ‘Wyrmeskin,’ said Alsasse, and flinched at the sound of the great blueblackwyrme leader’s sharp intake of breath.

  ‘Let me,’ Beveesh-gar said gruffly, brushing the whitewyrme aside. ‘I want to see for myself just how easily it tears.’

  As Alsasse watched, the blueblackwyrme leaned forward. Then, with the lightest of touches, he ­punctured this inner hide with the tip of his dark claw and drew a line down the creature’s breast. The flesh beneath opened up, pink and fibrous, and Beveesh-gar looked round at the others in the circle, his face ­incredulous.

  ‘Its hide is softer than that of a sulphur grub,’ he said. ‘If it wasn’t for the outer hide . . .’ He growled softly. ‘The wyrme hide . . .’

  Returning his attention to the corpse, Beveesh-gar reached down and tore off its foot-coverings with his teeth one by one, and spat them aside. He tilted his head and examined the nails at the tips of the creature’s toes, then at its fingers, prodding them delicately with his own massive black claw. He snorted. Then, switching his attention to the dead creature’s mouth, he pulled the top lip up and peered closely at the two rows of teeth that were small and worn and brown-stained.

  He straightened up and turned to Alsasse. ‘These two-hides you fear so much are weak,’ he said.

  ‘Do not be fooled, Beveesh-gar, venerable leader of the blueblack host,’ said Alsasse, pulling himself up to his full height and looking the blueblackwyrme squarely in the eye. ‘As I told you before, what the two-hides lack in strength, they more than make up for in cunning – snares and traps and weapons that spit thorns . . . They have even found ways to steal our fire and turn it against us.’

  Beveesh-gar’s one good eye narrowed ‘Can this be true?’ He looked at his son, then at the others. At the wounds on the blueblackwyrmes’ flanks and neck, the torn wings, the missing claws . . .

  ‘Five of the two-hides did this to your raiding party,’ Alsasse continued. ‘And there are thousands more following their trail. Spreading further west with each passing season. That is why we whitewyrmes left the valley country, home of our ancestors, nesting place of our wyves . . .’

  ‘And yet,’ said Beveesh-gar, his voice as dark and ­menacing as the thunder that still rumbled round the smoking landscape, ‘you have also told us that there are those among you snowwyrmes who allow these stinking creatures to ride upon their backs.’

  Alsasse faltered. He turned away, unable to hold the penetrating gaze of the leader of the blueblackwyrmes.

  ‘It is true,’ he said at last. ‘Some whitewyrmes have kinned with the two-hides’ young. They rear them, nurture them. They clothe them in their own wyrmeslough,’ he said, and tried to ignore the expression of disgust that spread across Beveesh-gar’s face. ‘They believe that it is only by understanding the two-hides and using their cunning against them that they can be defeated.’ He paused. ‘It is not a way that the rest of us can accept . . .’

  ‘You are right to reject it, snowwyrme. Such wyrmes are a disgrace to all wyrmekind,’ the blueblackwyrme said bluntly, cutting Alsasse short. ‘Yet we blueblacks cannot accept your way either.’

  Beveesh-gar’s gaze bore into Alsasse’s.
r />   ‘You abandoned the land of your ancestors,’ said ­Beveesh-gar, his guttural voice softer now, ‘and came here.’ He shook his heavy head from side to side. ‘But you do not belong here, snowwyrme. This is not your home.’

  The words tolled inside Alsasse’s head. He stared down shakily at the ground, knowing that Beveesh-gar was right.

  ‘Yet we had to escape the taint of the two-hides,’ he explained. ‘The destruction they cause wherever they go. The stench of death they spread. We had no choice but to get as far away from them as possible . . .’

  ‘There is another way,’ the leader of the blueblackwyrmes said slowly.

  ‘There is?’ said Alsasse, aware more than ever of the great blueblackwyrmes towering over him. He felt small, lost and alone.

  ‘A return to the valley country.’

  Alsasse looked up. ‘You want us to leave? To go back there? Back to the taint of the two-hides and the wyrmekin we shunned?’

  ‘Wyrmekin!’ Beveesh-gar spat the words in his ­guttural wyrmetongue. ‘They deserve death even more than the two-hides . . . But the answer to your question, snowwyrme, is yes.’ He paused. ‘But you will not go alone.’

  The leader of the blueblackwyrme’s jewel-bright eye widened.

  ‘We shall return with you.’

  Thirty-Three

  Thrace had never been so far down beneath the whitewyrme galleries before. She’d visited the stores, of course, with their stocks of dried leathergrubs and soused damselfly larvae that the colony had abandoned when they fled, but had gone no further.

  She hadn’t wanted to. There seemed to be something private about the tunnels that wormed their way through the deep rock; something intimate.

  These dark subterranean depths were where the great whitewyrmes had nursed their young for centuries. Coiled around the wyrmelings they had carried from the hatchery in the highstacks to the nursery cavern below the colony, the great whitewyrmes would wreath their young in smoke, whispering the secrets and wisdom of their kind to them as they did so. Then, just after their first sloughing – when they were already fluent in wyrmetongue and ready to take their first flight – the wyrmelings would be led up into the light airy galleries above to join the bustling life of the colony.

  It hadn’t seemed right to Thrace to intrude into this, the most secret of places – especially now, when the highstacks had been lost and the nursery cavern had fallen silent. But then Zar had come to her, and Thrace had put her reservations aside. It had been impossible for her to continue to stay away.

  She stood now at the entrance to the nursery cavern. Her delicate fingers trailed over the clawscratch walls as she stared at the female whitewyrme who was curled up on the ground before her, just as Zar had said she would be. A circle of indentations in the floor, filled with flameoil and set alight, cast a flickering light over her white scales.

  ‘You are Aylsa,’ said Thrace.

  It was a statement, not a question, and it was responded to in kind.

  ‘And you are Thrace.’

  The kingirl flinched.

  ‘You thought I would not have heard of you?’ Aylsa said, her eyes glittering.

  Thrace shrugged. ‘I . . . I gave it little thought,’ she said.

  Aylsa raised her head and fixed Thrace with her intense yellow eyes. She said nothing. She didn’t need to. Both of them knew she was lying. And Thrace remembered that when Aseel had answered Aylsa’s mating call four seasons earlier, she had thought of little else but who this whitewyrme might be, whose hold over him had been so powerful that Aseel had left his kin standing on the highstack, alone and vulnerable.

  Thrace’s belly cramped just thinking about it – and the terrible things that had followed. But Aseel had returned to Thrace, and together they had taken their revenge on the kith . . .

  ‘Long before he kinned with you, when Aseel and I were still wyrmelings, we were paired,’ the great whitewyrme said in soft lilting wyrmetongue. Wisps of white smoke curled up from her nostrils as she spoke, and her eyes did not leave Thrace’s. ‘And then he chose to kin,’ she said, ‘and the colony rejected him.’

  Aylsa inclined her neck and her eyes glowed amber. Thrace felt her stomach churning.

  ‘But when the time came to mate,’ the whitewyrme said softly, ‘I called – and Aseel came to me.’ She sighed. ‘Afterwards, though, I could not persuade him to stay.’ Aylsa’s eyes flared to acid yellow once more, bright and accusing, as she stared at the kingirl. ‘He left and I flew alone to the highstacks and laid a wyve.’

  Thrace’s eyes grew wider. ‘A wyve?’

  Aylsa lowered her gaze. ‘It should still be there, warmed by the smoke-vents, waiting to hatch . . .’ A harsh edge came into her voice. ‘Unless one of your kind has taken it.’

  ‘My kind?’ said Thrace, her voice low and even as anger rose inside her.

  ‘Two-hides,’ said Aylsa simply.

  ‘The skin I wear next to my own is wyrmeslough, freely given, not the hide of a slaughtered wyrme,’ said Thrace hotly. ‘I am kin, not kith.’

  She took a step into the nursery cavern and noticed the great whitewyrme’s coiled body flinch.

  ‘Ever since we kinned, for as far back as I can remember,’ Thrace continued, ‘Aseel and I have defended the highstacks, and the wyves they contain.’ She stared back at the whitewyrme defiantly. ‘Even as the kith swarm through the valley country, we kin stay and fight. Unlike you and your colony. Who reject us,’ she added.

  Thrace crouched down beside the circle of flickering flame and looked intently at the whitewyrme.

  ‘Tell me, Aylsa,’ she said, nursing her anger. ‘Where did the colony go? And why aren’t you with them?’

  ‘The colony is far from the taint of the two-hides,’ Aylsa said, relaxing the coils of her tail and drawing back her wings. ‘And this is why I’m not with them.’

  Aylsa twisted her sinuous neck and stared down ­lovingly at the small child, who was nestled in the coils of her body. A boy. More than two years old, less than five; the oil-glow flickered on the wyrmeslough that swaddled his small body.

  Zar had told her about the whitewyrme in the nursery cavern that she’d seen Aseel visit, and Thrace guessed from what Zar had said – from the way they nuzzled, their necks entwined and eyes glowing amber – that this wyrme was Aseel’s mate, Aylsa. But there had been no mention of a child. ‘You have kinned . . .’

  Thrace’s words were cut short by the sound of a low growl and, realizing that they were no longer alone, both Thrace and Aylsa turned to the entrance of the cavern. A tall whitewyrme, body rigid, the black zigzag scar at the neck pulsing, stood looking at them.

  ‘Aseel,’ said Thrace, scrambling to her feet. ‘How long have you been there?’

  ‘Long enough,’ Aseel replied. He strode into the cavern and stopped in front of Aylsa. ‘We have a wyve?’ His voice was as harsh as splitting timber. ‘Why didn’t you tell me?’

  But before Aylsa could answer, the infant awoke. His face crumpled and he began to wail, fat tears sliding down his cheeks. Aylsa tightened her coiled body around him and inclined her neck, comforting him with lulling chitters and warm aromatic breath.

  Aseel straightened up and turned to Thrace. ‘We must return to the highstacks,’ he said.

  Thirty-Four

  Cody took the length of canegrass, turned it over in his hand, then laid it flat on the slab of rock before him. He clipped off the leaves with his knife and peeled away the dark outer layer, then chopped the remaining stem into six pieces, each the width of his hand. The blade was coated thick with yellow syrup. He reached for another stem and cut it likewise.

  ‘You lost something, Cara?’ he said.

  The two of them were sitting crosslegged on the grass-stubbled ground, an earthenware pot and a pile of green canegrass between them.

  Cara was muttering something under her b
reath, but it was to herself, not to him. She reached up and pushed her hair back from her face, feeling beneath the folds of her cloak as she did so, before returning her attention to the side pockets of the backpack. Then, with a small gasp of exasperation, she clutched at the front of her blouse and peeked down inside.

  Cody watched her, intrigued, colouring up ­moment­arily at the thought of the view she must have, then looked away guiltily.

  ‘Where is it?’ Cara sighed.

  And at that moment, Cody knew exactly what it was she was searching for. The carved medallion Micah had given her – and he was about to say as much when Micah himself returned, his outstretched arms weighed down beneath a fresh bundle of the woody green stems, which he dropped down on top of the rest. He glanced inside the earthenware pot, which was already close to half-full.

  ‘Happen this’ll be enough to fill it,’ he said and, pulling his hackdagger from his belt, he crouched down between Cody and Cara.

  Cody slapped at a midge on the back of his neck, avoiding his gaze. He looked flushed, uncomfortable. Cara smiled back at Micah, but weakly, with her mouth but not her eyes. Then she pushed her backpack to one side and picked up her own knife. The yellow syrup had started to coagulate on the blade.

  Micah shifted forwards onto his knees and picked up a pair of bone-crushers; two hinged metal clamps with a tightening screw. He gripped a stem of chopped canegrass in the jaws of the cumbersome tool and steadily tightened the screw. Viscous yellow syrup streamed down into the top of the pot. He held the canegrass in place till the syrup came in drips, then stopped completely. Finally, undoing the screw, he tossed the crushed fibres into the grass behind him.

  Cody slapped at another midge, on his forearm this time, and brushed the black smear away with his ­fingertips.

  ‘I remember the first time Eli showed me how to harvest the sweetness in canegrass,’ Micah said. ‘It was by a gulch near the blackwater falls. Had Thrace and me gather us up a mountain of the stuff before he revealed its secret . . .’