Iyesta dipped her head until her large eye regarded Linsha from a few feet away. Her eyes were golden brown, tinged with a smoldering red and gleaming with ancient intelligence. Her spiraled horns gleamed gold in the sunlight. Her lip curled up over her curved teeth like unsheathed scimitars.

The Rose Knight did not move a muscle. Iyesta’s delicately shaped face alone was taller than a man. When Iyesta peered down, all Linsha could see were nostrils and curved teeth. She stared patiently up at the huge dragon’s eye and waited.

Iyesta gave a snort that nearly blew Linsha off her feet. “You are right, Lady Knight. Excuse my impatience. This morning has been… long. My friends are missing, and we cannot locate them.”

“How long have they been gone?” asked Linsha.

“They were here yesterday. Dart was sent on an errand for me. The other two left suddenly last night with no explanation. We do not know what to make of it.”

Three missing brass dragons. If it had been any other metallic in Iyesta’s realm, Linsha would not have given it a second thought. None of the metallics who lived under Iyesta’s care were bound to her by anything more than respect and loyalty. They came and went as they pleased. Except for the triplets. Three parts of a whole, they were completely devoted to Iyesta and to each other. One or more attended her at the palace all the time. That they should leave and not return without some message did not bode well.

“Do you wish me to return later?” The words were barely said when a small shadow swept over the courtyard and Linsha looked up to see Varia glide in to land on Iyesta’s folded wing. The owl had no fear where this dragon was concerned.

“We are going to speak to Thunder,” Iyesta replied, a deep rumble of anger in her chest. “You are still in uniform. Come with us. We can talk on the way.”

Linsha felt her mouth drop open. Ride a dragon? To speak to a blue? This was an opportunity too good to miss.

“Who will carry me?”

“I will.”

Without giving herself time to change her mind, Linsha hurried to the escort and gave them orders to return to the Citadel. The half-elf agreed to keep Sand-hawk until her return.

Iyesta crouched to the ground, dropped her shoulder, and stretched out her taloned forefoot so Linsha could climb onto her back.

Since the climb was a high one over the brass’s slippery scales and Linsha did not want to show too much delight and enthusiastic scrambling, she clambered up the dragon’s shoulder with as much decorum and care as she could muster. The dragon’s wing joints and the base of her neck were massive, and it was all Linsha could do to spread her legs over the curve of the dragon’s shoulders to find some sort of seat. When she was finally situated on Iyesta’s back, she flashed a quick grin at Varia and settled the owl against her stomach. Both of them took a firm grip of the dragon’s heavy neck ridges.

Iyesta launched herself into the air with a fierce thrust of her hind legs, nearly snapping Linsha’s neck, and spread her massive wings into the wind. The gold and silver dragons swiftly followed her into the sky. Their wings beat hard to lift them above the turbulence of warming morning air into the cooler, calmer heights. Once they reached a comfortable elevation, all three dragons leveled out and veered northwest toward the desert wastelands of Thunder’s realm.

Linsha sat lost in delight as the dragon soared on amber colored wings. All her senses strained, she sought to catch every sensation of that glorious flight. The feel of the cold wind on her skin, the sharp smell of dragon mingled with the dry, slightly spiced scents of the desert, the sound of Iyesta’s wings beating on the powerful wind and the creak of her wing bones; the vast colors of reds and browns and pale greens passing by below and the cerulean blue arching overhead.

It was some time before Linsha realized she was hearing another small sound, a faint humming noise that sounded like a cross between a chortle and a buzz. She tilted her head to look down at Varia. The owl was pressed close to the shelter of her body where the wind would not tear her away, and the faint noise emanated from her throat. Linsha realized the small bird was purring in delight. How many birds flew this fast in their lifetimes?

She glanced down to the land far below and saw they had left all pretense of grasslands behind and were over the barren lands of the Plains of Dust. Until the arrival of the great Overlords, Sable and Beryl, the entire expanse rolling lands of the Plains were a tundra-like, desert waste land, bitterly cold in the winter and warm only during the short mild summers. However, when the Overlords arrived and began using their vast powers to change the land and its climates to their will, climates were affected in other areas as well. The harsh conditions of the Plains of Dust were tempered by the warmer winds off the hot Bay of Balifor, the spread of Sable’s vast swamp to the east, and forestation of Beryl’s realm to the west. The edges of the plains turned to savannahs and grasslands, particularly in Iyesta’s realm east of the Torath River. The center of the plains, though, remained barren, rocky and arid.

The heart of the Plains lay below the flying dragons like a vast rumpled reddish carpet worn by the tides of endless weather and shaped by the ceaseless wind. Linsha looked down, wondering how any dragon could tolerate the bleak, lifeless expanse of that desert. Yet one dragon did. Thunder kept a jealous vigil over his empty realm and discouraged all but the brave and foolhardy from wandering into his territory. The few daring merchants or barbarians who could survive the crossing of the blue’s domain usually found greater rewards in Iyesta’s realm. The foolhardy who wandered into the desert never wandered out.

Linsha asked a question she should have thought of sooner. “Iyesta,” she called loudly, “why are you going to see Thunder? Do you think he had anything to do with the disappearance of the three young ones?”

The dragon took so long to answer, Linsha wondered if she hadn’t heard the question over the rush of the wind. She considered repeating her query when the brass tipped her head around and said, “I sent Dart on a reconnaissance flight over Thunder’s territory to look for something. I’ve heard rumors…”

Linsha felt a chill that had nothing to do with the wind. “Rumors of what?”

“Just hints. Bits and pieces of news. Rumors of something that may be only Thunder’s wishful thinking.”

“What?”

“I have heard that Thunder has a new general. That he is raising an army. That he plans to expand his realm.”

“He is always planning to expand his realm. But he lives in mortal terror of you and Beryl and Malys. He is too frightened to make a move so aggressive.”

“So I believe. But I wanted to check. A traveler told me of seeing men and ogres gathering near Thunder’s lair. I fear he may be trying to build an army, so I sent Dart to look. He should have been back last night.”

The worry was so palpable in the dragon’s voice that Linsha felt it like a blow to her heart. The chill in her thoughts turned to ice.

“Do you think Thunder may have captured Dart and the others and holds them in the hope of trapping you?”

“Of course. That is why Chayne and Ringg are with me. Thunder would not dare take on the three of us. No, I do not wish a fight with Thunder this day. I only want to talk and observe.”

Considering that she was the only human in the group, Linsha was relieved to hear that.

“Why did you send a summons for me last night? Did you plan then to go to see Thunder?”

“I did not decide until this morning,” Iyesta called back. “No, I have received news from Sanction that I thought you’d like to hear.”