The Death Frontier

"Dart, can we please stop?"

They had been walking for days—how many exactly was a topic disputed amongst the group. The ashes of Vellweb had given way to a vast and endless desert. The constantly shifting sands and the ever-present howling winds made direction meaningless, and the sun and moon were scarcely seen through the gritty haze. These were not the Barrens; this was the Death Frontier, a poisonous waste where nothing would grow, even at the summons of a battalion of Nellos.

Yet still they pressed on, hastened by Dart Feld's silent and furious urgency. He had not spoken more than ten words since the nightmarish events at Vellweb, yet the rest of the Dragoons knew what he was thinking about—and who.

Shana.

His father.

The Black Monster who even now trudged near the rear of the procession.

If Dart hadn't spoken more than ten words, Rose spoke even less, guiding the group by pointing silently through the blizzard of sand. Kongol trudged in front, because he was the largest of the group and managed to carve out a trench through the sand for the others to walk through. Still, the rest of the group had had to fashion veils and scarves over their faces to be able to breathe, yet they were constantly hacking up grits of sand.

Meru choked out another lungful of sand. "Dart, please."

At the plaintive note in her voice, Dart turned his head but said nothing. His silence was answer enough.

Meru moaned and slumped against Haschel's side. Haschel looped an arm around her shoulders. "Dart, we need a rest."

Dart kept walking as though he hadn't heard.

Then Kongol, who had to constantly look over his shoulder for direction as well as to block the sandy spray, stopped in his tracks.

Dart looked up at the Giganto, his face chalked with ash and sandy stubble. Kongol's pale eyes fixed on Dart's gray-blue ones.

"We stop now."

Dart studied the rest of the group. They looked like colorless statues that had been left out to weather and ruin. He thought he must look the same to them. He could scarcely tell them apart (save for Kongol, who towered over them all), and that was bad. "How far to Ulara?" he croaked out.

All eyes turned to the woman at the back of the line.

Rose looked at them all, but her eyes fell short of Dart. "A day. Maybe two."

"Shana could be dead in two days!"

"Dart," Albert said gently, "Shana could already be dead."

Dart stayed where he stood, but they all saw his anguish was great. They barely heard Rose say, "No. She's not dead . . . not yet." Now her eyes met their leader, the son of the man she loved, the man they now pursued. "He won't let her die until . . ." Her voice cracked, faltered—and her gaze once more fell with them.

None of them had spoken aloud of the terrible events that had been set in motion at Vellweb. Dart's mad eyes flared up but he did not speak. The rest of the Dragoons stood between them, feeling the seething rage of one and the cold regret of the other. Dart's hand trembled over the pommel of his sword, and at any second he might seize it and—

"Kongol!"

It was Meru who had screamed. It snapped Dart from his tableau, and he whirled around to face Kongol . . . but there was no sign of the giant man. It was as though he'd vanished from the earth.

The rest of the Dragoons hurried over as Dart looked around frantically. He screamed the Giganto's name, but his cry was lost to the shrieking winds. He stepped forward, squinting ahead, trying to make out Kongol's hulk through the sand—and he fell.

His back crashed on a hard stone floor, his armor clattering deafeningly. He lay there for a long moment, eyes squeezed shut, the wind knocked out of him, as a torrent of sand spilled over his body.

He opened his eyes slowly, and saw the other Dragoons peering down from the lip of a pit, and understood. The sandy earth had given way, spilling down into a sparkling underground cave of limestone. He groaned, and managed to drag himself up to a sitting position.

He looked to his right. Kongol was sitting there dazedly, his war axe beside him. He rubbed his head and smiled sheepishly.

"We rest now?"

* * *

"Gods know I'm never going to be able to get all this sand out of my hair," Miranda muttered as she ran her hands through her flaxen locks. Sand drifted down like dandruff into the air.

"Forget the hair," Haschel complained as he shifted uncomfortably on the stone floor. "I'm never gonna get it out of my—"

"We're not staying here long," Dart broke in. He was standing away from the rest of the group, his fingers playing over the blade of his sword, testing it for any damage sustained in the fall. His fingertips had already sustained minor scalding from the blade's unnatural heat—the result of slaying two dragons—but he did not seem to mind. "We need to get to Ulara as soon as possible."

"Relax, Dart," Meru piped up cheerfully in the face of Dart's withering look. "I'm sure the Winglies can help!"

Dart grunted and went back to perusing his weapon. Albert coughed and got to his feet. His attention had been snagged by the cavern they had unearthed.

"There's something odd about this cave," he remarked, looking around. "It looks too . . . perfect to be natural." His gloved hand brushed the hard stone walls.

"That's because it's not a cave."

All eyes turned to the one who had spoken. Rose was sitting crosslegged in a corner, her smoky gray-blue eyes turned away from the rest of them. It was the first time she'd spoken without being provoked first.

"What do you mean?" Miranda asked.

"It's not a cave," Rose repeated. Now her gaze lifted to the high-vaulted ceiling. "This was once part of a city."

Albert gaped at her. "A city? In this godforsaken desert?"

"Back then, it wasn't a desert." Now Rose's eyes were sparkling with tears of nostalgia, and her voice quavered. "No—back then it was a great city. Back then, it was a paradise. It was our paradise.

"This was Gloriano."

The rest of the Dragoons fell silent. They had all heard the name of the ancient kingdom of the humans before, in the lore passed down from Albert's historian in Bale and the wizened librarians in Deningrad. But that had been in passing. Here, before them, was a survivor of the holy empire, the last bastion of humanity against the Wingly oppressors.

"This was where we made our stand." She rose to her feet and walked on the flagged stone floor, her heels clacking in echoing footfalls. "We walked these halls often. These were the halls to the throne room. Diaz's throne room."

"Diaz," Dart murmured. It was another name they'd heard often—the name associated with the man who was manipulating everything that had occurred. The Serdian War, Shana's abduction from Seles, Lloyd's crimes . . . all could be laid at the feet of the man who called himself Diaz. The man whom they now knew was not Diaz but Dart's father.

"The leader of the free humans," Rose went on. "He was the first to recognize the implications of the Dragoons' power. Before Zieg slew the first dragon and became master of the Red-Eyed Dragoon, we had no real power to resist the Winglies. Diaz knew how to use us to our maximum advantage, as well as how to inspire courage and leadership amongst the rest of the humans. He taught us to throw off the chains of slavery and embrace freedom for all races." She hesitated. "He was a great man."

"What happened to him?" Albert asked. His voice had taken on a hushed tone of an enraptured student.

Rose turned away from them, gazing into the shadows, into corridors that had not been traveled in millennia. "Before we shot down Kadessa, they razed Gloriano to the ground. It was revenge, you see. We had taken down another of their floating cities and they took great offense. It wasn't because we destroyed the city—it was because we had the audacity to rebel in the first place. Diaz, the savior of the human race, died in the fires."

"And you attacked Kadessa," Miranda guessed. "As revenge for Diaz."

"It wasn't just Diaz," Rose said. "Gloriano was home to thousands—tens of thousands—of innocent people. Most of them weren't even warriors. They were farmers, midwives . . . children." Rose's voice echoed hollowly down the passages. "The Winglies didn't care. They scorched the entire city, and buried it in a poison desert where nothing will grow. We almost lost the entire human race."

"So you destroyed them," Dart said. His eyes left the edge of his sword and met Rose's own. For the first time in her memory, Rose cringed. "You and my father."

"Yes," Rose said.

"Then answer me this," Miranda said. "How can we trust the Winglies now?"

Rose's eyes flickered at the accusation but she stared Miranda down. "You saw the Winglies in the forests of Mille Seseau. Not all of them professed war, even then—especially not the mass genocide Melbu Frahma favored. Some were sympathetic to our plight . . . but they refused to take sides. Only Charle Frahma would take a stand in the matters, even against her own brother."

"So much for family loyalty," Miranda snorted.

Rose's eyes flared in searing anger—and for the tiniest of seconds, the old Rose was back. "If it hadn't been for Charle, the humans may very well have lost the war. Even with Diaz and the Dragoons, we could not defeat Melbu Frahma without her help."

Miranda turned away silently, biting back her own anger. However, Rose was more concerned with the murderous glare from Dart. He had gone back to inspecting his sword for nicks or cracks, but Rose was well aware that he might very well be thinking about taking her head off with it.

It was Albert who broke the silence. "Well, they're quite fascinating, these ruins," he said. "Perhaps we should take a moment and, er . . . poke around a little?" He sounded a little hopeful.

The Dragoons doubted Dart would go for it. He was so anxious to be on the road to Ulara that they were still surprised he hadn't abandoned them already. They were all shocked when Dart nodded.

"Fine," he said. His voice was barely above a whisper. "We'll be staying in here for the night. Just don't get lost."

His eyes never left his sword, but Rose still felt them burning into her soul—or what was left of it. And that was when she felt something else, another feeling she hadn't experienced in over eleven thousand years.

Fear.