hair trailed out of her hood. Her eyes, though. Her eyes were pools of sparkling lavender that were so deep a person could drown in them.

“My name is Zahrellion, but you can call me Zah,” she said. “Why did you lie about the dragon?”

Jenka was answering before he could stop himself. “Because Jade saved me from a certain death at the hands of the trolls. I can never forget that.”

“Jade? You know its name? You spoke with this wyrm?”

“Yes I did, and I don’t care if you believe me or not. Just don’t tell … ”

She cut him off. “Oh, I believe you, Jenka.” Her eyes grew wide with a girlish excitement that she de ly quelled the second the emo on showed.

Looking around to make sure no one was listening in on their conversa on, she hooked her arm in Jenka’s and led him away from the dragon carcass.

“I’ve talked to a dragon too, way up in the icy peaks. They choose to aid people every now and then when things come to a head. A me like that is at hand. Crystal told me that something evil has awakened in the hills.

Most likely, you and Jade will meet again.” Her brows narrowed as the direc on of the conversa on took a sour turn. “We have a common enemy, dragons and men. The trolls don’t like the humans, and we are spreading and popula ng the fron er like field mice. King Blanchard won’t make the move, but he has planned it all out for his son. When Prince Richard takes the throne, the kingdom seat will shi to Mainsted, here on the mainland, and once that happens, there will be no hope for the trollkin.”

The word trollkin was a slang term that included the li le, gray-skinned goblins, the larger, black-skinned orc, and of course the trolls themselves. A er hearing Jade call the trolls trellkin, he decided that

maybe it wasn’t a slang term a er all. Ogres, Jenka had deduced, were another sort of creature altogether.

“They are star ng to figure this out,” Zahrellion con nued. “Already they’ve been forced into the higher reaches where the ogres and dragons reign. Soon there will be nowhere le for them to go. The dragons, on the other hand, can always nest out of man's reach. Only a very few of the most foolish wyrms get their selves killed, those are usually the mudged, like this one. There are hundreds of dragons in the deep of the mountains, Jenka. Some of the wyrm are older than you can imagine.”

Jenka stopped her and shook his head to clear it. He had lost her words in the feel of her dainty hand on his bicep, in the warmth of her smile, and in the convic on of her voice.

“I’m telling you that we have to find a way to make King Blanchard or Prince Richard understand.” Her voice showed that she was becoming agitated, if not a li le angry.

“Understand what?” Jenka asked stupidly.

She jerked her hand away, let out an exasperated girlish huff, and clenched her fists at her sides. “That the dragons want to help us when the trolls start their war! They’re in the hills gathering and planning as we speak.”

“War?” Jenka didn’t understand. “Is it the Dragons or the Trolls who are in the hills planning right now?” Jenka had no idea what she was talking about. He was entranced by her very existence though, and couldn’t get his mind to focus on anything other than her beauty.

She stared at him for a few long moments. “You’re da ,” she finally said. Her eyes were brimming over with tears of disappointment as she turned and stalked away.

Jenka stood there, slack-jawed, staring at the darkness un l Master Kember came over and started speaking to him. “Fargin women’ll twist your thinker ll it pops.”

“What?” Jenka asked.

“Never mind, boy. What did she say to you?”

“That the trolls are gonna start a war with us. That the dragons want to help us prevail, and that King Blanchard has to know about it so that we don’t keep killing wyrms.” Jenka couldn’t believe he had retained all of that, but ever since the beau ful druida had stalked away, Jenka had been thinking more clearly.

“That’s nonsense,” Master Kember shook his head with disgust.

“Fargin trolls can’t fight with any sort of form or muster. They end up figh ng each other. By the hells, they’ll stop figh ng to feed on the dead while you’re cu ng them down. I’ve seen it. You didn’t tell her we were going to King’s Island, did you?”

“No, sir,” Jenka answered. “Is the kingdom seat really going to move to Mainsted when Prince Richard takes the throne? I mean, I sort of understand the expansion and all, but where did we come from before the Dogma wrecked on Gull's Reach? No one ever talks about that much.”

“That’s a good ques on,” the old hunter nodded. “There’s an age-old saying about it. It goes like this: Don’t worry about how you got here. You

are here, and if you want to survive you have to keep doing everything that needs ge ng done.”

“What does that mean?” Jenka shrugged.

“It means that only a few historians even care where we came from, boy. A few dozen people survived a shipwreck that washed up on Gull's Reach. From that meager beginning, we populated all three islands and set up the strongholds on the mainland. Then we built that fargin wall to keep the wilderness out. Now we are trying to tame the land between the wall and the mountains so that we can grow more crops and build more ci es and towns. We have achieved everything you know about. We’re not going back. We’ve been here two hundred twenty some-odd years. We are going to se le this fron er, and the trolls and dragons can be damned if they oppose it.” He let out a red sigh and changed the subject. “We’ll have to postpone our journey for one more day. It’ll be dawn by the me we get back to Crag.”

Jenka was only mildly disappointed by the news of the delay. He was busy pondering Zah’s beauty and what she had told him. The ride home was wrought with anxiety and excitement. Several mes he started to ask Master Kember a ques on but caught himself. The idea that Zah might be right, that the trolls would defend their homeland, couldn’t be purged from his mind.

He fell asleep back in his mother's hut as the sun was just star ng to paint the horizon, and he dreamed that he was flying high in the sky on the back of an emerald-scaled dragon. They flew across the oceans, over mountains, deserts and plains, un l they found the mother land. It was crowded and noisy, and a haze of filthy air hung over the people like a cloud. There were no forests or fields, and the river that turned slowly

through it all was clogged and thick with muck. Even the sea around the land was black and shimmering with an oily sheen. There were factories, and shops, and buildings, and so many people that Jenka couldn’t stand it.

Jenka wasn’t befuddled with Zah’s beauty when he woke up late the next day. He was contempla ve and distant. He could imagine Crag a hundred years from now, all crowded and busy, and he wasn’t sure if he liked the idea of it. He finally forced all the nega vity from his mind, like he some mes did when he was hun ng, and was decidedly the be er for it.

Beyond being as red as he could remember, he was also beside himself with a giddy, childish glee. He was about to go on a grand adventure, and a er being invited with the King’s Rangers last night, he felt he would make Forester this year for sure. He had just decided that things couldn’t possibly get any be er, when he learned that beau ful Zahrellion and another of the Druids of Dou were going to be traveling to King’s Island with their group. A er hearing that news, Jenka spent the rest of the evening floa ng around as if he were on a cloud.

Master Kember was none too pleased about the unwanted addi ons to his group, but he kept his opinions mostly to himself. Captain Brody had asked him, and ordered the King’s Ranger named Herald, to escort the druids as a personal favor. He also asked that Master Kember help them gain King Blanchard’s ear. Master Kember didn’t like it. He didn’t like it at all, but he was willing to do it for the captain. Crippled or not, he was s ll a King’s Ranger at heart.

Jenka said goodbye to his mother early in the morning, and promised to deliver a wri en message to her former employer on King’s Island.

Visi ng a true Witch of Hazel ne wasn’t one of the things Jenka had planned to do, but he loved his mother and couldn’t possibly consider

refusing her simple request. A er those tears were dried, he went and found Solman and Rikky at the stables. They both had their long hair chopped at the shoulders like Jenka’s, and they were doing what they could to help the two Foresters get the horses ready.

As the sun was coming up and losing its ba le to light the sky, the group of nine travelers gathered outside the stable in a light, dreary drizzle.

They all had their hoods pulled up high on their heads and their cloaks fastened ghtly. Not even the inclement weather could dampen their spirits though, especially Jenka’s. He had been assigned the pleasant duty of personal a endant to Zah and her older male companion for the journey.

“Star ng a journey is always such a thrilling feeling,” Master Kember said op mis cally to his three students and the two young, uniformed Foresters. Jenka, Solman, and Rikky all cringed, expec ng one of Master Kember’s windy proclama ons. They were saved from a lengthy discourse on the beginning of journeys by the grizzled old King’s Ranger, Herald. He harrumphed loudly over Master Kember’s voice, spat a wad of brown phlegm from a slit in his dark tangle-shrub of a beard and snorted, “It’s just the possibility that we might not ever make it back home that makes it thrilling, Marwick. Now let’s get this cavalcade moving before the buzzards fly down and eat us where we sit.”

With that, they started out of Crag moving south toward Three Forks.

Chapter Four

By midday, the late spring sun had burned the clouds away, and though the lightly ru ed road was so under the horses' hooves, there hadn’t been enough precipita on to make it muddy. Birds flu ered about and called out merrily from the thinning copses of tangle oak and pine trees that do ed the roadway, and a light breeze kept the travelers from ge ng too warm. The chink and jingle of the tack and the occasional whinny of one of the well-mannered horses provided a constant and steady rhythm to their passing.

“I’m Zahrellion, but you can call me Zah.” The white-haired, ta oo-faced druida said to the two young uniformed Foresters. When they didn’t respond, she con nued. “This is Linux.” She indicated her fellow druid.

“What are your names?”

Linux was tall and thin, with a cleanly shaven head and a dark, well-trimmed beard that came to a sharp point a few finger-widths below his chin. The ta oos that marked his pale face were very nearly the same as Zah’s, save the triangle on his forehead wasn’t silvery. It was a darker color, like deep stained mahogany.

“Mor n Wheatly from Copperton, ma’am,” the bigger of the two Foresters eventually replied. He had short-cropped, carrot-red hair and looked like he had never missed a meal in his life. He was thick necked, thick armed, and looked as if he might be a li le thick headed too.

“They call me S ck,” the other Forester said quickly, then heeled his horse away from the two druids. He was dark skinned and had short, straight hair as black as pitch that looked like a helmet on his head.

“They call him S ck because he’s thin like a s ck,” Mor n explained for those who didn’t get it.