Rhiannon - Dragonrider

Chapter Ten - To Fly

Rhiannas leaned sideways and allowed himself to fall off the veranda into space. I almost screamed as we plummeted and I grabbed at his crenels. They felt reassuringly secure.

After what felt like forever, his long leathery wings unfolded, as if by magic, from the scales on his back and, as they caught the air, he turned the headlong plunge into a swooping dive.

Beneath me, I could feel his muscles rippling under his scaly skin as, with a few powerful beats of his wings, he drove us up towards the opening in the roof of the edifice. I had a bit of a panic as his crenels started to twitch in my hand but then I worked out that it was probably normal as he turned round to look at me.

"Come into my mind, Rhianadoc," he told me. "If you are to serve me, we must fly as one."

I reached cautiously across to his brilliant presence but of course he wasn't anything like satisfied with that. He sort of slapped me aside then grabbed my cloud and pulled it into his own.

The link was so intense... so profound... that I found myself experiencing the world through his senses. I could feel our surge of muscles and the wind under our wings. I was flying!

And, with the excitement, I found myself being pulled even deeper into the experience. I was reaching out with my own wings to drive myself through the air... stretching out my own neck to shape and guide the wind over my wings... flexing my own tail to give perfect balance and control.

And I gradually worked out that it wasn't just muscle power driving us upwards. Somehow, with every beat of the wings, there came a surge of mind-power to drive us higher. I was drawn into the stroke and, without really thinking about it, I found myself adding my own mind-power to his.

But I got another little slap for that. "Desist!" he told me. "Gratifying though it is that you appreciate your future purpose, I cannot tolerate your clumsy contributions at this time."

I guessed that was because we were getting close to the mouth of the Edifice. The air was growing thick with dragons... though none of them were getting too close to us. A number greeted him in this really formal tone and a couple of them failed to completely hide their curiosity about the creature on his shoulders.

The border of the main opening was decorated with astonishingly fancy stonework. It looked as if someone had taken an enormous lace collar and turned it into stone. It was surrounded by a dozen little tunnels through which daylight was filtering.

But then I gave a bit of a scream thing when I realised he was heading straight towards one of the little tunnels. "It's too small," I kind of squeaked.

But he thought my worry was funny. "I have been transitioning through the Rhian flute all my life with no mishap," he assured me and, without slackening his pace, he drove on into the tunnel. It was a little bit wider than it had looked from below and Rhiannas could get through, though his wingtips were pretty much skimming the walls.

In the middle of the tunnel, he had to do this crazy rolling twist thing and I had to duck as my head flashed dangerously close to the stonework. Then we exploded out of the opening into sunshine and I was just staggered by the brilliance of the scene. The green and brown speckled island lay spread out below me, almost circular, with the brilliant blue sea crashing onto its rocky coast. On one side, I could just about make out the mainland, far-away and hazy, whilst, on the other, the sea stretched out forever.

With a couple of casual beats of his wings, Rhiannas took us off, away from the island, out over the sea. Then he stretched out into a glide.

"We are to take a single wing stroke in which you are to work with me," he said. "You are to apply no power at this time but will focus exclusively on timing and control."