The Dragons of Noor Read online

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  First published by Egmont USA, 2010

  443 Park Avenue South, Suite 806

  New York, NY 10016

  Copyright © Janet Lee Carey, 2010

  All rights reserved

  www.egmontusa.com

  www.janetleecarey.com

  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

  Carey, Janet Lee.

  Dragons of Noor / Janet Lee Carey.

  p. cm.

  Sequel to: The beast of Noor.

  Summary: Seven hundred years after the days of the dragon wars, magic again is stirring and three teenagers join forces to help bind the broken kingdoms of Noor and Otherworld.

  eISBN: 978-1-60684-237-9

  [1. Dragons—Fiction. 2. Fantasy.] I. Title.

  PZ7.C2125Ds 2010

  [Fic]—dc22

  2010011311

  CPSIA tracking label information:

  Random House Production · 1745 Broadway · New York, NY 10019

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, or otherwise, without the prior permission of the publisher and copyright owner.

  v3.1

  To Anjani Desiree Hubbard,

  who danced by the sea when we were sixteen,

  and made her home in the mountains.

  And to Dreamweavers:

  Katherine Grace Bond,

  Margaret D. Smith,

  and Rebecca A. Chamberlain,

  for story and song.

  Contents

  Cover

  Title Page

  Copyright

  Dedication

  Part One - The Fall

  Prologue - The Mishtar’s Hidden Scroll

  Chapter One - Stealing Wind

  Chapter Two - Othlore Wood

  Chapter Three - The High Meer’s Scrying Stone

  Chapter Four - Black Branches

  Chapter Five - Wild Esper’s Revenge

  Chapter Six - Enoch’s Gift

  Chapter Seven - Mist and Music

  Chapter Eight - Below Deck

  Chapter Nine - The Falconer’s Book

  Chapter Ten - Cracked Stone

  Chapter Eleven - The Pip

  Chapter Twelve - Fire on the Sea

  Chapter Thirteen - Shape-Shifter

  Part Two - Dragonlands

  Chapter Fourteen - Whirl Storm

  Chapter Fifteen - Dragon’s Cave

  Chapter Sixteen - Fierce, Unbending Truth

  Chapter Seventeen - Burned

  Chapter Eighteen - Sea Change

  Chapter Nineteen - Dragon’s Dreamwalk

  Chapter Twenty - Sealskin

  Chapter Twenty-One - Pilgrim

  Chapter Twenty-Two - Dragons’ Council

  Chapter Twenty-Three - The Law Of The Old Magic

  Chapter Twenty-Four - Night Battle

  Chapter Twenty-Five - Wing Home Swiftly

  Chapter Twenty-Six - The Hollow One

  Chapter Twenty-Seven - Ever Changing

  Chapter Twenty-Eight - Promise

  Chapter Twenty-Nine - Evver’s Plea

  Chapter Thirty - Entangled

  Part Three - The World Tree

  Chapter Thirty-One - Songs of the Mishtar

  Chapter Thirty-Two - The Valley Below

  Chapter Thirty-Three - Wind Riders

  Chapter Thirty-Four - The Hand

  Chapter Thirty-Five - Taking on the Name

  Chapter Thirty-Six - Shards

  Chapter Thirty-Seven - The Heart of the World Tree

  Chapter Thirty-Eight - Roots

  Chapter Thirty-Nine - Salt Water

  Chapter Forty - Dragons’ Bridge

  From The Falconer’s Book

  Glossary

  The Othic Alphabet

  Acknowledgments

  PART ONE:

  THE FALL

  PROLOGUE

  THE MISHTAR’S HIDDEN SCROLL

  To the future High Meers of Othlore Isle, guardians of the dragon treaties and the Sylth King’s scroll, I pen this letter, which is my greeting and my warning. As meers you will have studied my dragon histories in three volumes, but the scrolls locked away here with this letter tell a part of their story not revealed elsewhere. In brief, I trace the history of my last meeting with the Damusaun, our Dragon Queen, the journey I took to Oth on her behalf, and the dire secret regarding the Sylth King’s decree writ here on his scroll, a secret each High Meer must guard with his life.

  After the hundred years of war ended between men and dragons, the Dragon Queen summoned me. I was the only man who’d sided with the dragons in the war to bind the worlds, and it was an honor to be called before the queen. The night was clear on the eastern shore when we met, with a trace of moon like an eyelid over the sea. I bowed to Her Majesty.

  “Rise Mishtar, friend of dragons,” she said. “We have fought together these many years. I know your wounds as you know mine.”

  Her scales shone in the firelight, a fire she’d made with her own breath when I arrived at the beach. On her broad chest plate I saw the jagged scars: the names of the dragon dead, blood-written on her scales.

  I rose to address her. I was in my fortieth year, and the muscles in my arms and legs ached from battle. “Damusaun, Queen. It has been an honor to fight with you.”

  She was silent then, perhaps counting up her many losses. “You have fought well, Mishtar, but I would ask one more thing of you,” she said.

  A wave washed up, the white foam touching the tip of her tail. She flicked off the moisture. “Mishtar, you know it is against the law of the Old Magic to kill,” she continued.

  I nodded. I also knew all who lived in the Otherworld of Oth were bound to follow the law of the Old Magic. The dragons had broken it when they went to war.

  Wind bowed the bonfire, slanting the flames toward the sheer cliff, where more dragons waited for their queen deep in the cave.

  The queen said, “For breaking the law of the Old Magic, the Sylth King exiled us from our homeland.”

  “For how long, Majesty?”

  “We have not been able to return home for the last hundred years.”

  I’d not seen dragons using the deeply rooted Waytrees to leave our world of Noor, but I’d thought this was due to battle, that every tooth, talon, and fiery breath was needed for our fight.

  “Surely the High Sylth King of Oth understood the need to fight to keep the Waytrees alive? If they died, there would be nothing strong enough to bind the worlds. Noor and Oth would split apart.”

  The Damusaun shook her head, her neck scales rattling. “The Sylth King rules by the law, Mishtar.” She flicked her tail, smacking a thin glaze of seawater on the sand. “Go to him for us. Tell the High Sylth King the way between worlds has been secured by our blood. The worlds of Noor and Oth remain bound together as before. Now that the war is over, the treaties signed, ask if he will grant us passage back to Oth. We are war-torn. We long to go home.”

  And so I took the treaties we’d forged between dragons and men and traveled to the Otherworld, with the help of the deya spirits in the Waytrees.

  In that beauteous land, I was escorted to the fairy palace of the High Sylth King. Bright sun sparkled through the glimmer walls of the palace dome room. I was made to stand in the glare until I was damp with sweat, squinting up at the Sylth King where he sat in judgment on his jeweled throne. I came to him proud to be the dragon’s Mishtar. He treated me as a beggar.

  The king’s lip curled as he scanned the treaties. “Tell the dragons we do not forgive them for slaying men.”

  “Sire,” I said, “if
the dragons hadn’t fought, the men of my world would have taken the wild lands. I tell you the ancient Waytrees are nothing to these men but logs for building and wood for their fires. If they had succeeded in felling the deep-rooted trees that bind the worlds, Noor and Oth would have been severed forever.”

  The king tossed the treaties on the floor and called his scribe, bidding the man write the words he whispered in his ear. What was this? A new treaty? The ones the dragons signed with the rulers of Noor were binding and needed no addition. I stooped to retrieve the treaties from the floor.

  The Sylth King spoke his final judgment as the scribe handed me the new scroll. Hearing the king’s sharp words, the very ones writ in the scroll, I was stunned to silence. Before I could argue, I was taken from his sight. Sylth guards marched me to the Waytrees of Oth where the roots are deep, and threw me out of their world.

  Three days I walked through storms in my own world of Noor before I reached the Dragon Queen again. We took shelter under the boughs of an azure tree.

  “The Sylth King said if you do not kill any men for seven hundred years, your exile from Oth will end. Then you can return to your homeland.” I showed her the king’s scroll.

  The Damusaun’s eyes burned with fury. “Seven hundred … years?” she roared. “How can he expect us to abide by this?” She stepped beyond the shelter of the boughs, lifted her snout, and sent angry red fire skyward. The flames hissed and fizzled in the falling rain.

  The exile was long, even for dragons, who live more than a thousand years. Some of my friends would die before they would see their homeland again. But the Damusaun saw the real peril.

  In her hour of burning anger, I waited under the branches. She would not turn her anger on me, her messenger, but still she released it until the rain cooled her scales and her rage was spent. She stepped back under the tree and wrapped her tail about her legs. “The king’s judgment endangers both worlds,” she said at last. “We must keep our exile from Oth secret, Mishtar. If men know we can no longer fight to defend the Waytrees, they will break our hard-won treaties and come again to cut them down.”

  I left the dragons then and sailed back to Othlore Isle, a lone island set apart in Noor’s West Morrow Sea. On Othlore I built this school where the meers of Noor study the lore of Oth and apprentices learn the ways of magic. In the High Meer’s river house, I locked the scrolls away. Five scrolls in all, the treaties between men and dragons signed after the war, and the Sylth King’s scroll. This last scroll is to be kept secret. Only the magician appointed as High Meer shall know why the dragons live in exile: that if they kill a single man in seven hundred years, they will never again be allowed to cross back into Oth. So I have guarded these scrolls for the last fifty years. I am old now and a dying man. The scrying stone the Dragon Queen gave me when we parted shows me much. As the centuries pass, I foresee a time when prideful men will break the dragon treaties. If men return to the ancient woodlands to fell Waytrees again, the dragons cannot kill a single man to save them. We are all in great danger if men should cut the azure Waytrees of the east, for if these offspring of the World Tree fall, the splitting worlds will pull farther apart, tearing deep roots in every land, and all Waytrees in Noor will die. Sever these most ancient azure trees, these dragon bridges that stretch between the worlds, and there will be no way between.

  The dragons say there will be signs if the worlds begin to split. First, the Waytrees will begin to fall across the forests of Noor. Second, men will forget how to dream. Third, a black hole will be torn in the heart of the Old Magic, awakening a Wild Wind.

  If these things should come about, I compel the future High Meer who guards these scrolls here on Othlore to use all you know of magic and take what action you must to save the Waytrees that bind the worlds.

  Signed,

  Kiram, founder and first High Meer of Othlore

  Musician, scholar, the one the dragons call Mishtar

  ONE

  STEALING WIND

  Children fly when worlds are shaken,

  Now the children are Wind-taken.

  Seek them there, seek them here,

  before the children disappear.

  —FROM THE GAME CALLED “BLIND SEER”

  The fat bumblebee rammed against the kitchen window again and again. Hanna would have carefully put aside the green glass platter she was drying to free the little creature if the shock of the enormous golden wing spearing the white clouds above the trees hadn’t made her drop the precious platter. The loud crash as it hit the floor sent her leaping back as shards flew in all directions.

  “Now look what I’ve done!” She dropped to her knees, cursing her clumsiness. Three generations of Sheens had cherished the beautiful green platter. It was the finest thing the family owned, and her mother’s favorite possession. The sight of that golden wing high in the sky had sent such a jolt of fear and wonder coursing through her body, she’d forgotten what was in her hands.

  Tymm must have heard the crash. Racing into the kitchen with his glue pot, he hurriedly unscrewed the lid as Hanna put the larger shards on the table. Each broken bit made a gentle clinking sound like abandoned keys. Above the rim of the table she caught Tymm’s ready eyes.

  “You won’t be able to fix this one, Tymm.”

  “I will, Hanna. See if I don’t. And I’ll have it done before Mother comes home,” he added.

  She watched Tymm dip the brush into the glue pot. Hanna’s eight-year-old brother loved attacking broken things. With concentration he assembled like a great round puzzle the pieces she rescued from the floor.

  The bee still rammed the window with fixed determination. Had she imagined what she’d seen just now? Hands still shaking, she opened the window a crack to let the bee out, brushing the insect in the right direction. Only then did she have the courage to look above the trees again. New clouds brown with rain had blown in. The golden wing was gone.

  Terrow dragons are golden, she thought, catching her breath. Dragons? Here? Dragons lived in eastern Noor in sunny places like Jarrosh or Kanayar. She’d never heard of any flying as far west as Enness Isle, not since the days of the dragon wars, and that was seven hundred years ago.

  She looked up, wondering if it had only been a flash of sunlight cutting through the clouds, and caught sight of a giant form swimming through the air. The creature gleamed like polished coins, and it was … enormous. Hanna’s body quivered. First the Wild Wind a week ago screaming into town, stealing children right out of the market square, and now a dragon had appeared. Magic was stirring on Enness Isle, and there was no one here to help her.

  Wing and tail disappeared into the brown rain clouds drifting toward the mountain peak. Hanna curled her toes inside her boots. She’d heard voices, low and keening, coming down the mountain this morning. The deya spirits calling from the trees: another sign of the growing magic, of the wildness of the Otherworld reaching into Noor. She’d wanted to go to the deyas, but she’d promised to stay home and watch Tymm while Mother went to market. Tymm couldn’t be left alone with a Wild Wind blowing in, stealing young children.

  There was no call from the woods now. Only a brooding silence. Still, Hanna felt the magic rising in a slow and relentless wave, engulfing her, trying to draw her deeper in.

  When her older brother, Miles, went missing last year, the deyas in the trees had helped her cross into Oth in search of him. And she’d ridden with the wind spirit, Wild Esper.

  Hanna had seen no wind spirit in the gales that battered Brim Village and swept three children from the market square, none of them more than nine years old. A spiritless wind, she thought uneasily.

  She flung her apron on the chair. A week had passed since the children were Wind-taken. Seven days too long for the grieving mothers and fathers down in Brim. Seven days too long for her to be kept in the house looking after Tymm.

  “Pass that piece here, Hanna.” Tymm’s eyes gleamed with pleasure, as if he could see the broken platter whole again, and indeed he’d al
ready glued a fourth of it back together.

  Hanna pushed the shard across the table with her forefinger, then slipped on her cloak. “I have to go out. I won’t be long.”

  Tymm jumped up from the table. “I’ll come, too.”

  “No. You’ll stay here.”

  “Miles wouldn’t make me.”

  “Miles is away at school. And if he were here,” she added, “he’d tell you to obey your older sister. You may eat my piece of crumb cake while I’m gone.”

  She was out the door and through the garden before he could argue. The familiar sound of wooden wheels rumbled up the lane. Hanna ducked behind a pine tree as the wagon turned the corner. Good, Mother was back. Tymm would be safe now. She’d worry about Mother’s response to the broken platter later.

  Hanna took the steep trail heading for Garth Lake, which was cradled in a valley halfway up Mount Shalem. The oldest Waytrees on Enness Isle grew there. The deyas in them would know more than anyone else here on the isle about the rising magic that had come. If they’d helped her to find Miles last year, they might help her to reach the missing children now. She was the only Dreamwalker on Enness, and should do all that was in her power to find the ones who were gone.