Thrall - Christie Golden [89]
But some of them would.
There was just one catch: in order to get to a wyvern, she would have to walk right past the sleeping Chromatus.
She hesitated, the horror resurfacing. … If he awoke—
Then you would be no better off than if you had gone to him docilely. But if you get past him—
It was the only way. If she didn’t get past him, she yet had the dagger. She would use it on herself rather than submit to such an abomination.
She tucked the dangling chain into her linen shirt, gripped the dagger—pitiful weapon though it would be against so great a creature—and stepped slowly forward.
His breathing sounded like a small wind as it moved in and out of enormous, unnaturally animated lungs. In her human form, Kirygosa was as a mouse to a tiger, and yet somehow she thought the sound of her snow-muffled footfalls and rapidly beating heart would awaken him. He was not curled up but lay with his heads stretched out before him, his body moving slowly up and down with each breath.
Kiry wanted to break into a run but did not. Instead, step by quiet step, she moved down the length of his enormous, mottlehued form. He smelled musky and rank, as if the stench of rot that had clung to him for so long could not be dispersed merely by the spark of life. Hatred suddenly formed in her belly, its heat warming her, giving her renewed determination.
More than her life was at stake here. She had been kept prisoner by the Twilight Father long enough to learn things—things he was not aware that she knew. If she could reach Kalec and the blues with that information, she might be able to tell them something that could help them in their attack.
Because they would, indeed, attack again. Kirygosa knew her people. And she wanted to be with them this time, not kept helpless and weak by a chain around her neck.
Chromatus stirred.
Kirygosa froze in mid-step, not breathing. Had he somehow sensed her sudden flush of hatred? Smelled it on her, perhaps? Or had she been careless and crunched a twig hidden beneath the snow?
He shifted, lifting his massive bronze head and resettling it, heaving a great sigh. His tail lifted, thumped down. Then he was again still and the heavy breathing that denoted deep slumber renewed.
Kirygosa closed her eyes briefly in relief and resumed her slow, careful movements past the sleeping chromatic dragon toward where the mounts were tethered. Her eyes flicked from the hulking, ugly form of Chromatus to the wyvern who would bear her to freedom.
The wolves and nightsabers were too bonded to their riders for her to steal. The elk were not sufficiently tamed to carry riders, though they were native to this land and would have borne her swiftly if they had been. Besides, they and the other herbivores would be skittish at the smell of blood that still clung to her. The wyverns that the Horde used as its primary beasts for flying were surprisingly calm, she had found, and as there were so few of them gathered here at the temple, they were trained to accept anyone atop their backs.
Anyone, that is, who knew how to manage them. Kirygosa once again chased away her fear, telling herself that she was lucky that there were still two available.
She approached the one she had chosen, murmuring softly. The lionlike head turned to her, eyes blinking with bored inquiry while his bat-like wings stretched and flexed. He was not saddled, and she could not spare the time. Any moment now, the alarm would be raised, and she needed to put as much space between her and the temple as possible before then.
Kirygosa had watched wyverns being ridden but had never mounted atop one herself. Cautiously, she slipped a leg over the great beast. He grunted, turning to look back at her, obviously sensing at once that she was a novice rider.
Kiry stroked him in what she hoped was a reassuring fashion, grasped the reins, and turned the wyvern’s head skyward. Obedient and well