Switched ~ a Fractured Fairytale

Chapter Twenty-Three ~ A Hoard of Dragons

We waited until darkness had fallen before we dared to move, in case the soldiers had lingered. We had avoided being caught this time, but the damage was done: soon, Victor would know where I was and where I was headed. It now became imperative we reached the dragons before they found us. I knew we were close to the dragons, and the threat of Victor's soldiers so close made me all the more determined to rescue Alastair.

Under the cover of darkness, we walked alongside the horses, trying to pick a route through the trees that the spies wouldn't be able to track. We even left some footprints in the soft mud along a river in the opposite direction, and then doubled back up the river to throw them off our scent.

After a few hours, we hadn't seen the soldiers and we judged we had gone far enough to lose them. Where a large fallen log had created a small shelter, we decided to call it a night, though we didn't dare light a fire, instead eating apples and some beef jerky by the moonlight.

'It's my fault,' Killian said gloomily as we huddled under the trees. 'If I hadn't said who we are, they wouldn't have known.'

'If you hadn't, we would have been mobbed by those villagers,' I said. 'It was bound to happen sooner or later.'

Killian shrugged, 'I suppose,' he said.

I pulled my bedroll up around my ears and curled up, leaving Killian to keep the first watch, but I couldn't sleep. Knowing that there were soldiers to close, searching for us, put me on edge. Every rustle in the tree, every shadow, seemed to hold a Zlarovian spy. Eventually, as the cold light of dawn sent its chilly rays through the trees, I sat up and huddled beside Bear.

Killian pulled out the map and we both looked closely at it, trying to get our bearings. In the mad dash from the city, we had gone further south than we needed to.

'We need to backtrack a bit,' I said, pointing. 'I think we're around here and the secret route seems to start here.'

'That's what... a couple hours ride?' Killian said, eyeing up the map.

'I guess,' I said.

After a cold and miserable breakfast of carrots, we saddled up and made our way slowly through the forest, eyes peeled for any sign of the soldiers. The map indicated that the secret route began somewhere between two large boulders, and when we figured we were in about the right area, we dismounted and began searching for the triangular glyph that signalled the start of the path.

Killian wandered away to my right and I picked my way through a blackberry thicket, searching high and low. As I brushed aside a trailing vine, a strange, angular rock caught my eye. Looking more closely at it, I spotted the triangular glyph.

'Killian!' I called softly. 'I've found it!'

Bear came bounding up to me as Killian jumped down from the boulder he had been climbing. He traced his fingers over the glyph and smiled at me. 'We're on the right track,' he said excitedly.

We walked slowly beyond the first marker, searching for the next. From what Arras had said, even when dragons roamed the lands, few people had known about this path, and in the century since, the forest shrubbery had grown up to cover many of the rocks.

Bear accidentally discovered the second, as he chased a squirrel through the undergrowth and soon, we became more adept at spotting the markers and progress sped up. The ground began to slope upwards as we neared the mountains, and, even though I knew that there were dragons at the end of this path, I could not help but feel excited as we followed the markers through the forest. It was like following a treasure hunt as a child.

The last glyph stood beside a solid wall of rock that stretched up twenty feet. Killian and I stopped short and looked around.

'Uh,' Killian said, reaching for the map. 'Did Arras mention anything about a landslide?'