Free Dragon Trials (Return of the Darkening Book 1) by Ava Richardson Page B

map.
    This one was easy. It was a map of Mount Hammal with a list of codes and annotations along one side. I read down the list quickly.
    Red flag in a circular pattern meant a general warning, and green flag for forest. A missing dragon was last seen flying north. Looking at the map these clues meant that I was looking for a forest directly north of the enclosure. There were the woods on the side of the mountain itself, but I rather doubted any dragon and its riders would get lost only a few miles from home.
    Checking the map, I scanned for the next nearest forest.
    There…Wychwood. I took a ruler and drew a red line from Mount Hammal to the blob of color that signified the unmarked Wychwood forest to the north, then turned to the map tube, looking for a more detailed map of the region. I could find nothing that matched exactly, but an aerial map was close. Swathes of orange, reds and blues indicated the lay of the land. Again, I saw annotations on the side of the map. Three small banner-ribbons meant three dragon beats high elevation. And the blue flag stood for water.
    I searched the area. The three small banner ribbons I knew were like scarves that were added to the flag poles to indicate how high or low a feature was. One scarf-like ribbon meant about house height, two ribbons meant castle height, and three ribbons meant even higher.
    That’s quite a high elevation, I thought, frowning at my map. There were no white patches of high mountains on this map…and what did the blue for water mean?
    I scoured the different hills and dips of the forest until I saw a feature that might fit the bill. Eagle Falls? I’d heard of that place. It was supposed to be quite high. That could certainly make it ‘high water.’ I drew a red line to the area, then held up my hand and waited for a Dragon Rider to come to me.
    “Yes, scrub?” he said his voice stern.
    I told him my findings, that I thought that the flags told me our dragon and its riders must have travelled to Eagle Falls, in Wychwood Forest.
    He nodded. “As you and your team search the falls, you find the downed dragon has taken ill. The riders tell you there is a rare herb that is not stocked at Mount Hammal that can heal the dragon. You must retrieve this rare herb that only grows in beech trees just below the snowline.”
    Herb. Beech. Under the snowline.
    I nodded and turned to the map tube for a much larger map of the surrounding area. I found an elevation map that showed the white patches of the highest mountains, but they didn’t say what type of trees grew where.
    I turned to a smaller, land map for the different shapes of tree drawings and found several woods that must be beech a few hours away by dragon. But beech didn’t grow that high up. I didn’t know what to think. I couldn’t find beech that fit the description of living near the snowline. I scanned the woods, but no, each stand of trees seemed to be in the valleys and nowhere near the hills.
    What would make a cold place hot enough for beech trees? I thought. Don’t follow the woods…look for the current maps!
    Rummaging through the map canister, I found what I was looking for, a strange sort of map with place names written along the sides and arrows pointing all directions. I knew from my time in the Map Room these arrows were air currents, either blowing down from the cold north or up from the warm south.
    By laying the names over the elevation map, I could track where the cold air flowed down one side of the Leviathan Mountains and out into the foothills. There was only one place where an arrow of warmer southern air crept along a wide river gulf, pooling into an area surrounded by frost-bitten hills.
    By going back to the land map, I shouted out when I saw that yes, right there on that seemingly high altitude spot, there was a stand of beech. “There!” I shouted, looking up to the Dragon Rider.
    “Well done,” he said, raising a gloved hand to indicate a trainee had completed the