Fate of Dragons

Chapter Eighteen Part I

A glittering canal followed alongside the road, and small boats floated along in the same direction as the traffic on the road. Wrought iron posts with chains running between them formed a fence. A wall bordered the other side of the canal. Tesa made note of several doors in the thick wall.

"If we get the dragons back," Glenna said after they had walked awhile in silence, "what will we do?"

"We're getting them back," Tesa said. "What do you mean what will we do?"

"Well, we can't go back to Arethia. It's been taken over. At least, we can't just go back just like that."

"We'll take it back over. We'll have all of the dragons." Tesa said it and it sounded simple, but she knew it wouldn't be that easy. She hadn't thought about much past the search for the dragons. In fact, she'd been avoiding thinking of Arethia under the control of the Karume.

"The dragons won't be fit to fight when we get them back," answered Glenna. There was a sadness in her voice.

Tesa kicked a pebble in her path and sighed. "I wish you weren't right. I don't even know if the dragons we came with will be ready for a fight."

"Why not?" Glenna's gaze shot from her feet to Tesa's face.

Tesa explained Orrie's recent bouts of dizziness and nausea, and then Aerix's admission of the same symptoms. "Something here is making them sick. Or they caught an illness on the way. I don't know," Tesa shrugged. "Orrie has barely admitted anything is wrong."

Glenna chuckled. "Sounds like a dragon to me. They'll mask any sign of weakness until they absolutely can't hide it anymore. Fenn dealt with it all the time when he was caretaking. He eventually learned to see the signs beneath all of their posturing."

"So it might not be serious?" Tesa asked.

"If you're the only one who's noticed, they've hidden it pretty well. Give them a little more time. Maybe they'll get over it on their own."

"If they don't?"

"We'll tell Malía, if she doesn't notice on her own."

The traffic around them began to slow, then came almost to a halt. Tesa stood on her toes to see ahead. Above the crowd of heads, she could see that the wall on either side of the long garden curved to meet one large gate. The stream of people that Tesa and Glenna had joined inched forward.

"Well, we know where not to go if we need a quick escape," Glenna said.

"Maybe it's not like this all the time." Tesa glanced back at the open expanse of garden between the two crowded roads. There was no sign of Mr. Mao. Perhaps they had lost him. Then she shrugged to herself. What did it matter if he saw them walking about the palace, anyway? Nobody had said they couldn't explore, and nobody had said they couldn't leave. At least not since the first night, when they'd been trapped in by the magic shields.

Maybe Mr. Mao wasn't trying to catch them. Maybe he was just watching where they went. The thought made Tesa shiver despite the hot sun beating down on her. She glanced around again, but tried not to be too obvious.

The line kept moving forward. Tesa watched the Yennar-Leians around her. Some of them spoke in words she could understand, though with the slight lilting accent that she recognized from Emric and the others. Many, however, used a language that was not familiar to her at all. Many of their clothes were plainer than many of those that the students at the temple wore, but all wore the leather cord with an etched stone hanging around their necks.

Tesa fingered her own stone. So it wasn't just the students at the temple. All Yennar-Leians were tested for their magic. Tesa squinted at the symbols on her stone. She wished she were back in Areth, at her little desk in the student office adjacent to Renna's office. She'd be able to use her journal and all of the books she'd compiled to study and decipher the symbols on the stones.