Free Shadowed By Wings by Janine Cross Page A

venom-oiled muscles moved that easily. As I passed stalls of frisky dragons, some growled at me, while others merely stared intently at me with their still, slitted eyes. The diamond-shaped membranes at the ends of their short, twiggy tails slapped against stone at my passage. Slap-slap, slap-slap.
    It took me several moments to realize that the sound synchronized with my heartbeat, that the sound of muscle and blood caged behind the bars of my ribs was in precise rhythm with the dragon muscle and blood caged behind the stable’s gated stalls.
    Slap-slap.
    The synchronicity unnerved me, even while under the spell of venom. I didn’t want to be one with the dragon in that manner, didn’t want to experience the dragons’ captivity deep within my breast.
    I hurried on, averting my gaze from the dragons.
    The vebalu course was located behind the grain silo in the third courtyard of the stables, the same silo I’d hidden behind during my first day in the stable domain. The grunts and cries of young men hard at work acted as my compass. No sooner did I appear at the dusty outdoor gymnasium than Egg lumbered over to me.
    “Sit there!” he bellowed above the activity, pointing to a group of inductees squatting on their haunches. “And watch!”
    I knew at once by Egg’s manner that Ringus hadn’t told him of the haunt’s visit last night. As I joined the inductees, I scanned the gymnasium for Eidon. There he was, locked in a wrestling match with Dono while other veterans wrestled in pairs around them. Eidon hadn’t seen me. Yet.
    Overhead, the sun blazed like it had a vendetta against all things green and living. The ground of the gymnasium was as dry and red as a brick, and the peculiar equipment within the gymnasium was so thickly furred with rufous dust that in the heat it seemed to glow like live coals.
    So this was where I’d learn vebalu, the exercises that developed a dragonmaster apprentice’s physical agility, coordination, mental faculties, reaction time, and skills with Arena goading tools.
    I’d expected something more refined.
    I spotted Ringus. The slender servitor was leading a group of his peers through a furious drill of calisthenics. He had his back to me, hadn’t seen me enter. I wondered what had ensued after he’d fled from me last night.
    Abruptly, Ringus stopped exercising and gave a long whistle. The servitors began hurling themselves over, under, and along the assorted gymnasium equipment at his signal.
    First, they leapt onto and raced across a waist-high narrow bar, then leapt off the bar with a somersault. Upon landing, they snatched up one or more of the many goading tools scattered about the ground, and, while dodging around and whacking a series of tall, straw-wrapped pylons, they antagonized and hindered one another with their tools.
    The action during this obstacle race grew quite fierce, shields, lances, capes, and bludgeons all swirled and stabbed with malevolent vim. Grunts and the occasional cry of pain peppered the air.
    Upon completing eight circuits of the sparring obstacle course, the servitors then sprinted back to the balance bar, dropped their weapons about its base, and hurled themselves at a domed structure.
    Twelve feet high and constructed of steam-bent bamboo, the hide-covered dome clearly represented the back of a dragon. The aim was to vault directly onto the bamboo dragon’s back, using its nearest hind leg as a springboard to flip oneself up onto the dorsum, whereupon one tossed oneself off the other side with a half twist, to land facing the opposite flank of the beast.
    At that point, Ringus dodged in and out under the dragon’s scrotal sac, an impertinent bulge I thought surely more prominent than that of a real bull, though I couldn’t be sure, as the only male dragons I’d seen had been the senile kuneus of Convent Tieron; the testes and penile forks of those beasts had been as withered as their infirm wings.
    Each time Ringus darted toward the bull’s