Free War of Wizards by Michael Wallace Page A

reaches and find an icy stream to bathe in. What a relief that would be! She was dusty and dirty and perpetually hot.
    But she’d left her mother on bad terms. Again. Had returned to her aerie after dropping Markal off with Whelan’s army only to hear that a griffin rider had spotted the injured dragon flying out of the desert. Daria told her mother to gather the riders, but Palina had angrily insisted that it was not their fight. Daria reminded her mother who was the leader of the flock, then set off to search for the monster. Now she was anxious to get back and find out if her mother had obeyed the order.
    She brought Talon above the meadows and hardwood forests of the hills and into the sweet-smelling pine of the lower shoulders of the mountains. There, she cut south toward her aerie. The sun was already behind the mountains and casting long shadows across the plains to the east. Some instinct drew her attention in that direction.
    And it was then that she spotted the dragon wasps. They were three or four miles off, distant enough that Darik would have squinted with his weak lowland eyes, unable to see them, but she could pick them out clearly enough. Medium-size wasps, maybe eight or nine feet long, each carrying a single dragon kin. Wasps were young dragons, and these were probably the offspring of the monster she’d attacked and wounded earlier in the fall.
    Under other circumstances, Daria might have turned and chased them off. She was only one against their three, but a few skirmishes over the past two weeks had confirmed Talon’s power. Dragon wasps were scared to approach the aggressive golden griffin, and the dragon kin had a hard time getting close enough to Daria to use their spears. But she was tired, and so was her mount. Still, she couldn’t afford to lead them to the aeries, so she climbed higher in the mountain to lose them before returning home.
    Daria came over the top of one of the shorter peaks, flew briefly down into a grassy mountain valley on the western side of the range as she continued south, then came back up over the top again. But when she got to the eastern side, the enemy was waiting for her, this time only two hundred yards east and a thousand feet or so below. They must have continued following the mountains south in anticipation of her return. She’d used that tactic one time too many, and they had apparently learned it.
    Daria reached for her horn. She was close enough to home that a long blast might bring more griffin riders to her aid. But there were only three enemies. Surely, she didn’t need help.
    Talon spotted the wasps and screamed. He pulled on his tether, anxious to fight. Daria was exasperated, her patience gone, angry with the enemy for following her almost to her very home, and so she let the griffin have his way. He pulled back his wings and dove at the dragon wasps.
    The enemy pulled into formation, the kin holding their spears in a line like a row of pikemen bracing against a cavalry charge. Talon hurled himself toward them as if he would impale himself, but at the last moment, Daria gave a tug to the tether, and he angled to one side. She leaned almost completely off the griffin as they flew past. Only her thigh muscles and a single cord wrapped around one ankle kept her from falling to her death. The enemy spear brushed her shoulder. As it touched, she slashed with the sword. Her blade got past the spear, and the tip pierced flesh.
    The dragon kin dropped his spear, and it fell spinning toward the trees below. He clutched his neck briefly, then slumped face down on the back of his mount. Blood gleamed on the end of Daria’s sword, and she knew the man would not be rejoining the fight.
    With its rider no longer giving directions, the dragon wasp veered away with a screech and fled the battlefield with its leathery wings beating furiously. The other two kin regrouped and tried to gain altitude with their mounts so they wouldn’t be caught from above a second time,