“Oh,” Anders said his cheeks flushing with embarrassment.
“Let’s get back to the skies and continue searching,” Ivan said.
Anders and Ivan climbed back onto Zahara, settling on her scaled back. They had to hold on tightly as she ran down the hillside to get more lift for takeoff.
Once they’d returned to the sky, the three of them continued searching the area with their minds. Anders slowly began to get the grasp of using the magical energy within him to mentally explore an area in one direction. Recalling and then disregarding Ivan’s warning, he decided to attempt to sweep out in multiple directions at once. Anders focused all of his attention on imagining that his mind was like many arms reaching out in all directions. This resulted in the overwhelming sensation of understanding each element in the topography sprawling out around them. The many cliffs lining the mountain slopes gave him sudden pause as they were abrupt changes in his mental world.
Suddenly his head snapped back as if he’d just smashed into a wall. Anders felt a vice-like grip pinching down on his brain, squishing it with increasing pain. In the sudden attack on their bonded minds, Anders noticed that Zahara was beginning to lose control of her flight path. She must have been feeling the same pinching pain that Anders was because she dipped and lulled, swaying through the sky. Anders reached up, gripping his head in hopes that the pain would somehow go away. Zahara let out a loud roar and began to fall rapidly. Her wings no longer carrying them through the sky, she was going straight down toward the ground.
Over the tremendous pain attacking his mind, Anders could barely tell that Ivan was shouting to them both. Anders couldn’t hear him clearly and, judging by the lack of response from the dragon, Zahara couldn’t hear Ivan’s shouts over the excruciating pain either. Blinking his eyes rapidly from the pain, Anders saw the ground fast approaching as they fell. Zahara struggled to regain control of their descent, but every time she tried to open her wings, something seemed to force them back in tight to her body. Anders clenched, flexing every muscle in his body as he braced for impact.
Zahara slammed into a patch of trees on the leeward side of the mountain, snapping the thick conifers in half with their initial impact. The fibers of each individual tree exploded upon the force of Zahara’s body pushing through. The loud popping and whipping branches sounded through Anders’ ears; he knew they were about to hit the ground. Zahara’s body recoiled when it skidded into the mountainside, sending Anders rocketing forward and feeling his body leave the perch on his dragon’s back.
He and Ivan flew into the air, thrown from Zahara’s back as she began to tumble after the initial impact. Anders flailed his arms like a windmill as he tried to keep himself from hitting the ground headfirst. As hard as he tried to avoid it, the angle at which he was thrown off Zahara was such that he toppled headlong over the ground where she collided with the mountain. His head tilted downward while his legs came overhead. He tucked forward trying to protect his head from the eventual impact. Thinking the ground would soon break his trajectory, Anders was surprised to feel himself continuing to tumble through the air. He soared through the air with his legs and feet up over the rest of his body; he tucked his head up to his waist, trying to force himself to rotate to put his feet back under his body. The only things Anders could see while he continued to fly through empty space were his legs and feet and the dark sky behind them.
As he drifted through the openness, he thought to himself, When am I going to hit the ground? I should have hit the ground by now; when am I going to hit the ground? Oh no, I’m going to break my back. If I survive this, my back will be broken.
Suddenly Anders could see the rushing of a rock wall moving past his head. As soon as he’d seen the rushing rock, his feet passed through the edge of a tree’s thinly spread branches.
Oh sh… he thought and slammed into the ground, with his shoulder blades breaking his fall. He tried hard to keep his head tucked on impact, but it wasn’t enough to prevent the whiplash. Flattening out from the force of the crash, he bounced off the ground and rocked forward again. He flipped in the air and hit the slope with the front of his shoulder this time. The steep mountainside where he landed left him tumbling out of control. His forehead grazed the side of a tree. The impact, though not direct, was enough of a blow to knock him unconscious momentarily. Coming to seconds later, he could feel that he’d stopped tumbling and was now sliding down the hillside. Anders slowly came to a stop. He dared not move, worried that his spine had been broken in the fall.
The air had been knocked out of his lungs in the hard landing and the struggle for breath made him sit upright. Straightening his neck and opening his mouth as wide as he could, he tried desperately to get some oxygen back into his lungs. As hard as he tried, he couldn’t get any air. A terrible thought surfaced – he began to wonder if Merglan was near and had created a spell that removed all oxygen from the air. He continued to gasp. Just as he thought he would suffocate, air rushed back into his lungs. The sudden inhalation made him cough violently. He sat on the side of the mountain heaving, relieved there wasn’t a spell corrupting his ability to inhale. At last, he could breathe freely again.
Well, I guess my spine is okay, he thought as he stood up and stretched his battered body.
Looking around at where he’d finally come to a stop, he quickly searched, but couldn’t see Zahara or Ivan.
Maybe I’ll try seeing where they are with my mind, he thought. He quickly dismissed the notion, because though the vice-like grip on his mind had disappeared only moments before, he was hesitant to try again after the mental attack. The initial pain was gone, but his head pounded from both the attack and the impact of the crash. He put his hand on his forehead and squeezed it slightly hoping that the applied pressure would lessen the pain. It didn’t work. When he lowered his hand, he noticed it was covered with his own blood.
Anders looked up the slope he’d just tumbled down. Although it was dark, his eyes had adjusted to the night and he could see farther than he expected. A cliff band stretched the width of the slope above him. Zahara had initially crashed even higher up the mountain above the band of exposed rock. He looked left and slowly out to the right of the cliff. He could see a chute where water and fallen rocks collected on their way downhill. The rock barrier looked unavoidable in all other directions. If he wanted to get back up to their initial crash site, he was going to have to ascend the steep chute.
Anders slogged uphill to the base of the chute and began scrambling up the steep chimney. He hoped Zahara was not too badly hurt from the crash. His deep concern for her kept him moving despite the difficulty of the climb. He wondered what exactly had happened to her when he was thrown from her back. She’d tumbled out of view. He could only see sky until he landed.
Anders felt his muscles straining and hardening while scrambling up the steep chute, but he ignored his body telling him to stop or slow down. With great relief, he reached the top of the draw and found himself back above the cliff band.
Bending over and placing his hands on his knees, he breathed heavily while he began searching the top of the cliff for Ivan and his dragon. He identified the uphill side of the small meadow where he was standing. The trees above the clearing were snapped where they’d broken through. The ground was gnarled and torn where Zahara’s body had crashed. Anders followed this path across the clearing and over a small horizon. He rushed to the edge of the slope where he saw her body. She was lying on the side of the cliff, her tail draped over the edge. She wasn’t moving.
“Zahara!” he shouted and ran as fast as he could to her side. Sliding onto his knees, he grabbed her head and said with worry, “Zahara wake up.”
Her large eye quivered for a moment, then opened. Anders asked, “Are you okay?”
She closed her eye and lifted her head. Rolling over onto her stomach, she got her four feet under her body and opened her eyes again. Anders stood with his hand on her neck trying to support her. She pushed herself up, wavering slightly. Realizing she was on the edge of the cliff, she took several steps uphill before sitting down.
Are you ok? Anders asked again, this time silently.
I think so, she said and, seeing Anders’ torn clothes and face covered in blood, added, You don’t look so good.
Anders put his hand up to his forehead again and then looked at the sticky blood on his hand, Yeah, but I feel good enough. He sat down, his body sore and tired, his head still throbbing. Together they remained still, taking a moment to recuperate from the crash.
Where’s Ivan? Zahara asked.
Anders shrugged, I don’t know.
I’ll search for him with my mind.
“No, don’t!” Anders shouted aloud, raising his arms and waving his hands. “We were attacked when our minds were searching before. Ivan said Merglan could still be out here and I think he might have been the cause of our crash. We shouldn’t take the chance of being attacked again.”
Okay. We should find him then.
Yes, Anders agreed, groaning in pain as he stood up.
The two went back to the indentation in the side of the mountain where they’d crashed. Anders remembered seeing Ivan fly off at the same moment that he did, so they stood in the tilled soil and looked in the direction he would have gone. Anders looked over the cliff edge into the darkened area before them. First, he eyed the area at the base near the spot where he had landed. It took awhile to search the space below through the darkness, but after not seeing anything on the ground, he decided to run his gaze across the trees that rose up in front of him. It didn’t take them long to spot Ivan climbing down from a tall tree.
“Ivan!” Anders shouted. Ivan looked around and saw Zahara and Anders standing on top of the cliff. “Are you okay?” Anders asked, cupping his hands around his mouth to make his voice carry farther.
Ivan waved and shouted back, letting them know he was not seriously injured from the crash. “Stay there. I’ll meet you at the top of the cliff,” he called back.
Anders and Zahara did as he asked, taking the time at the top of the cliff to rest up. Before Ivan reached them, Nadir ran down from the ridgeline above.
“Are you okay?” he asked, his face furrowed with concern. After making sure the two were not terribly hurt, he asked about Ivan. Anders pointed over the cliff and told him Ivan was on his way up.
“What happened?” Nadir asked. “I was following you and all of a sudden you started faltering. Before I knew it, I saw you plummet over the mountainside.”
“I don’t know exactly what happened,” Anders replied, still mystified. “We were searching the area with our minds and I think we were attacked. It could be that Merglan is still in the area and attacked us while we were vulnerable.”
Nadir drew his sword and looked around at the tree line along the meadow, ready for an attack at any moment.
“I doubt he’s that close,” Anders said. “He would’ve attacked by now if he was going to. We’ve been exposed for awhile.”
