At the other end of the room was a long table occupied by the twenty-five members of the Dragonmeet. Leif, their leader—the Drekleid—was sitting at its head.
He had a shock of red hair and a neatly trimmed beard, and ruddy cheeks, as if he spent a lot of time outdoors. He was built on sturdy lines, and looked strong and capable. At the moment he wore a serious expression.
Anders had a better chance to study the rest of the Dragonmeet now than he’d had the day before—they were as mixed as the people of Holbard, their clothes practical and comfortable, brightly colored in most cases. Whereas the wolves of Ulfar all wore uniforms, if these people hadn’t been sitting around a table together, Anders never would have known there was anything to connect them. They lacked a sense of . . . pack.
The two youngest looked no older than the final-year students at Ulfar, and they wore slightly friendlier expressions than the others. Anders also saw the man who looked like Ellukka again—he had a heavyset, broad-shouldered build with suntanned skin and a wheat-blond braid, and he was frowning. And beside him was the man who had been most suspicious of him the day before, hard eyes unfriendly beneath unruly black eyebrows, mouth hidden by a bushy beard. He was almost as big as his companion, and even more intimidating.
“Good morning,” Leif said, and Anders stopped inspecting the others, turning his attention to the man who led them. “Anders, Lisabet, we all met briefly yesterday,
but once again, these are the members of the Dragonmeet. We are chosen by election. We come together from all over Vallen to discuss the issues most important to dragons, and to decide what action, if any, we should take. I am the Drekleid, the leader of the Dragonmeet, but we are all equals here. I lead the discussion, but I do not make our decisions.”
Anders nodded, fighting the urge to glance at Rayna or Lisabet, or even at Ellukka, who stood beside Rayna as if she were facing the Dragonmeet as well. He thought perhaps Leif was letting him know, with his quiet words, that Anders needed to find a way to appeal to all twenty-five people sitting in front of him, not just their leader.
“Thank you for letting us stay,” he said, and Rayna eased a little closer, pressing her shoulder against his encouragingly—reminding him he wasn’t alone.
“That’s not decided yet,” growled the man with the bushy beard.
Leif replied as if he hadn’t spoken. “As you can imagine, we have many questions for you.”
Anders’s heart was thumping. How was he supposed to answer the dragons’ questions—which would certainly be about the wolves—without being the traitor his friends and classmates already thought he was? It was one thing to hope he could find a home here in Drekhelm. It was
another to cause harm or hurt to those back at Ulfar.
And what would happen if he couldn’t? What exactly had the nurse in the infirmary meant when he’d talked about extracting answers?
Lisabet spoke beside him, her voice quiet, and he knew she had the same fear in her mind as he did. “We’ll try and answer.”
“The first,” Leif said, “is how you found us. We have gone to great lengths to conceal Drekhelm—we were forced to move after the last great battle ten years ago, and we do not wish to do so again.”
That, Anders thought he could answer, because there was a good chance the dragons would guess anyway. “We used Fylkir’s chalice,” he said, and a murmur went through some of the adults sitting up at the table.
“An artifact?” an older woman with a thin face asked. “How does it work?”
“You fill it with water,” he explained. “And then float a special needle in it. It acts like a compass, only it points to the largest gathering of dragons in Vallen.”
“And why have you wolves never used this to attack us before?” Bushy Beard demanded.
“We thought it was broken,” said Lisabet. “It was just a week ago that anyone began to suspect that if you took it all the way out of the city, away from the people in
Holbard who might have traces of dragon blood, and used it at the equinox, when the magical essence in nature is strongest and when the dragons come together in greatest numbers to celebrate, it might work one more time. And it did.”
“And we stole it,” Anders concluded. “To try and find my sister.”
There was another round of rumbling from the adults, most of whom, Anders knew from the day before, still didn’t believe Rayna could be his sister, since he was a wolf and she was a dragon.
The man with the blond braid who might be Ellukka’s father leaned forward. “And where is the chalice now?” he asked.
Anders and Lisabet exchanged a look—the dragons really weren’t going to like this answer.
“We dropped it,” Anders said. “When Rayna and Ellukka and Mikkel found us on the mountainside. We think our class was tracking us, so they probably found it.”
“So you left a trail,” Bushy Beard said, lifting a finger to point at them. “You showed them the way to attack us!”
“No!” Anders and Lisabet replied in unison. “Of course not!”
“Father,” protested Ellukka from one side, in unexpected defense, but the big man with the blond braid
shook his head at her, and she fell silent.
Leif lifted one hand to still the murmurs that were starting again. “If I were going to leave a trail for attackers,” he said mildly, “I’m not sure I’d leave it for an army of twelve-year-olds, and luckily for us, that is what we got.”
“This time,” said a pallid, silver-haired woman farther up the table, her expression grim.
“What will the wolves do?” Leif asked Anders and Lisabet. “Will they be readying themselves for war?”
Anders was torn—how did he answer that? The truth was, he and Lisabet knew that Sigrid was doing exactly that. They’d overheard her talking about her animosity toward the dragons in her study, the need to find them. But if he admitted that, would the dragons just attack the wolves before the wolves could make the first move?
Lisabet answered quietly. “They don’t know enough about you. It’s easy to believe stories—you believe them about us, I can tell. And there have been fires and kidnappings in Holbard. Our class came to rescue us, not to fight. But like you said, we’re twelve. The leaders of the wolves don’t discuss their plans with us.”
Her voice was calm and even. However upset she was about losing the only home she’d ever known, she was doing a good job now of explaining why they should be allowed to stay at Drekhelm.
Finally, one of the two youngest members of the Dragonmeet spoke, the girl. She had light-brown skin and curly blond hair tamed into a messy bun. Her mouth and her round cheeks looked as though they were made for smiling, which made it hard to be afraid of her. “It was only ten years ago, the last great battle,” she said. “Don’t the wolves remember how things were before it?”
“I don’t,” Lisabet replied. “We were only two years old when it happened. But the way I hear it, things weren’t easy between dragons and wolves even then.”