THE DRAGON'S RETURN

The Frozen Ridge

LA shadow with wings as wide as a house swept across the icy moon.

Thorn crouched under the shelf of a frozen rock, his right hand buried deep in the freezing snow. Rain had turned to heavy white flakes two miles back, coating his black shirt in a thin layer of ice.

"It is a imperial hunting wyvern," Lyra whispered, her pale ghost light flickering faintly inside his collar. "The mountain guards are scouting the high pass with beasts."

"Let them scout," Thorn said, his voice flat and raspy. "The wind is blowing our scent down the valley."

He flexed his left hand. The stone skin was cold, thick, and stiff, but it did not feel the freezing snow at all. The dark gray petrification had reached the base of his neck, locking his jaw so tightly that speaking felt like grinding two river rocks together.

"Your left shoulder is frozen solid," Lyra said, hovering right in front of his face. "If you take one bad fall on these rocks, your arm will snap like dry pine wood."

"Then I will not fall," Thorn said, pushing himself up from the drift.

He took three slow steps up the narrow goat path. High above them, the jagged peaks of the northern ridge cut into the black sky like jagged iron teeth. The air was thin and bit sharp in his throat, making his right lung burn with every quick breath.

A sharp whistle echoed down from the crags above, followed by the crunch of boots on frozen gravel.

"Down!" Lyra hissed.

Thorn stayed upright, drawing his short iron sword with his right hand. "Too late. They saw the movement."

Three men in thick white furs stepped down from the higher rocks, holding long wooden pikes tipped with blue steel. Their face wraps hid everything except their narrow, wind-reddened eyes.

"Halt, traveler," the lead guard shouted over the howling wind. "The northern pass is closed by order of the mountain garrison."

Thorn did not stop walking. "I am not turning back."

The guard raised his pike, pointing the blue steel tip at Thorn's chest. "You are wearing a summer shirt in a snowstorm, stranger. And your left cheek looks like gray slate."

"He is the fugitive from the capital!" the second guard yelled, pulling a bronze horn from his fur belt. "The poster said he carries a gray hand!"

"Drop the horn," Thorn said, his dark eyes fixing on the second guard.

"Sound the alarm!" the lead guard barked, lunging forward with his pike.

The steel tip shot straight for Thorn's ribs. Thorn did not dodge. He swung his stone-gray left arm across his chest, catching the wooden shaft of the pike with his petrified forearm.

The heavy wood snapped in two with a loud crack, sending splinters flying across the ice.

"What is that arm made of?" the lead guard gasped, stumbling back into the snowbank.

Thorn stepped in close before the lead guard could recover. He did not use his short sword. He placed his stone palm flat against the man's heavy iron chest plate.

"Unmake," Thorn thought.

The iron plate dissolved into dark gray powder, blowing away into the freezing wind. The sudden shock of the chaos force hit the guard's ribs, knocking the wind straight out of his lungs. He collapsed into the snow, coughing and gasping for air.

The second guard raised the bronze horn to his lips, his hands shaking wildly. "Help! Intruder on the pass!"

Before he could blow a single note, Lyra shot forward as a blinding streak of silver light, passing straight through the guard's eyes. The man shrieked in terror, dropping the horn into the deep snow as he clawed at his face.

"Run, Thorn!" Lyra yelled, her ghost shape spinning wildly in the wind. "The third one is drawing a bow!"

The third guard pulled back a long ash bow, aiming a black arrow right between Thorn's eyes. "Die, monster!"

Thorn did not hesitate. He threw his short iron sword like a hatchet. The heavy blade spun twice through the snowstorm, striking the guard's shoulder with a dull thud and knocking him backward over the cliff edge into the white abyss below.

The second guard scrambled up the rocks on his hands and knees, fleeing up the mountain trail toward the upper fort without looking back.

"He is going to warn the garrison," Lyra said, floating back to Thorn's side. "There are fifty soldiers in that watchtower at the top of the ridge."

Thorn walked over to the snowbank, retrieved his short sword from the drift, and wiped the frost off the metal with his right sleeve.

"Then we have to beat him to the cabin," Thorn said.

"The cabin is past the watchtower!" Lyra cried out. "You cannot fight fifty men with one working arm and a rusty short sword!"

"I am not fighting them," Thorn said, stepping over the groaning lead guard lying in the snow. "I am using the mountain."

He pushed through the deep drifts, his boots cutting a dark line through the fresh white snow. The trail turned sharply upward, winding around a massive overhang of unstable blue ice that hung over the narrow pass.

Near the top of the ridge, a squat stone watchtower sat square in the middle of the path. Iron torches burned along its high walls, casting a warm orange glow over the snow.

A dozens of guards were already rushing out of the wooden gate, carrying torches and heavy iron shields.

"There he is!" a voice yelled from the tower wall. "Block the pass! Do not let him reach the northern slope!"

Thorn stopped fifty yards below the watchtower, right beneath the massive overhang of blue ice. He looked up at the tons of frozen water hanging suspended over the narrow gorge.

"Thorn," Lyra said, her voice dropping to a frightened whisper. "What are you looking at?"

"The ice is old," Thorn said, raising his left hand toward the base of the overhang. "The balance is soft."

"If you drop that glacier, it will bury the trail!" Lyra yelled. "It will bury us too!"

"Keep behind my shoulder," Thorn said.

He thrust his stone-gray hand straight into the base of the frozen ice wall. He did not target the cold water. He targeted the structural stress holding the glacier to the cliff face.

"Unmake," Thorn barked into the howling wind.

A deep black shockwave shot up the ice wall. A sound like a cannon blast echoed across the mountain as a hundred jagged cracks split through the blue glacier all at once.

"The mountain is falling!" a guard on the tower wall screamed, dropping his torch in terror. "Fall back! Fall back!"

Tons of blue ice and heavy snow detached from the cliff, roaring down the gorge like a white river. The avalanche slammed directly into the watchtower gate, smashing the wooden doors and burying the forward guards under twelve feet of crushed ice.

Thorn threw himself sideways into a shallow rock cave just as the roaring wave of snow rushed past the entrance, blocking the entire gorge behind a massive wall of white debris.

Silence returned to the high pass, broken only by the whistling wind.

Thorn crawled out of the shallow cave, coughing up white powder. The watchtower path was completely blocked, but a small gap remained open near the top of the fallen ice ridge.

"Are you still alive?" Lyra asked, floating out from his collar, her light dim and tired.

Thorn pulled himself over the top of the icy mound, looking down into the quiet northern valley on the other side. A small wooden cabin sat nestled among the pine trees below, its stone chimney dark and cold.

"I am alive," Thorn said, his gray jaw clicking as he spoke. "Let us go get the key."