"Good morning."

Aytin opened his eyes, and immediately blinked against the bright sunlight. When he could finally pry them open, he was greeted by the sight of a red dragon peering down at him.

"Good... morning?"

The corners of Faelon's mouth edged up in a razor-toothed grin and Aytin's eyes widened.

"Oh, gods, Faelon, I'm sorry! I was going to- I mean, it was-"

Faelon interrupted, "Did you sleep well?"

"Really, I'm sorry, I-"

"I asked if you slept well?" There wasn't any anger in the dragon's words. In fact, if anything, there was a touch of amusement behind them.

Aytin took a deep breath and thought for a few seconds. "Uh, yeah. Yeah, I guess I did."

If anything, he felt more refreshed than he had in days. Still tired. He needed about a week of sleep before he would feel well rested again. But better, save for his stomach clamoring for a meal.

Faelon's smile widened. "As did I. No memories. No visions. A very good night's sleep."

The sun hadn't been up too long. It couldn't have been more than half an hour after dawn, and the clouds had been swept away by the stiff breeze. The night's chill was lingering, though. No doubt it would warm up during the morning, but Aytin's lethargic muscles protested as he pushed his way to his feet.

"Look, even if nothing happened, I still fell asleep on watch." It was embarrassing. Guards who were caught napping inevitably ended up on punishment detail, cleaning chamber pots and mucking out animal stalls.

"It is no matter. I am impressed that you managed to remain awake long enough to finish that." He motioned towards the spear laying nearby.

"But, still, I said-"

"You were dead on your feet, and I was no better. If nothing else, you need to learn your limits," Faelon said, gently. "If you truly wish to apologize, you can make us breakfast."

Aytin immediately got to work cutting off hunks of meat. It turned out that Faelon was just as hungry as he was, and they ate in silence save for the sound of chewing. Somehow, it didn't even taste quite as bad as before.

After cleaning up the camp and reloading their belongings, Aytin made one final circuit around the dragon, checking the lines securing the cargo. As he walked, he asked, "Do you think we'll reach the cache today?"

"I certainly think it likely. We should reach the stream before late morning, and then the cache well before sunset. Assuming my pace is better than before." He extended his remaining wing in a stretch. "That should not be a problem."

"Yeah. It's amazing what a full night's sleep can do." Aytin extended his own wings, but grimaced a little.

Faelon noticed the expression. "Your wing?"

An angry purple was beginning to spread from the wound. "It's still not as bad as it was before. If I can get some salve on it in the next few days, I think it will be fine."

That was the hope, anyway. All there was to go on was his experience with Zan's concoctions and the promise that the cache held something even more potent.

As promised, they made excellent time. Faelon dealt with the cooler weather by pushing himself. They were traveling faster than a dragonette could jog, only slowing every so often to hunt for a trailblaze among the trees.

Aytin didn't have the luxury of much movement. He had to wrap himself in a blanket to keep his strength from being sapped away by the cold wind. If he closed his eyes, it was almost like flying again.

"It will not be long. We can break at the stream," Faelon remarked sometime midmorning.

"Hungry already? We just ate," Aytin teased.

He got a snort in reply. "You try running through the forest for hours and tell me how you feel."

"No, no, I'm happy letting you have all the fun."

It was like a cloud had been lifted. There was the same sort of feeling as when Faelon had killed the tirox and solved their food problem. Nothing was exactly good, but their needs were sated and there weren't any immediate threats to life and limb.

The trees were beginning to change. There were fewer needle-covered pines and more of the broad leaf varieties, many of which were starting to turn vivid colors at autumn's approach.

'I wonder if any are edible?' Frankly, Aytin had no idea. The trees back home tended to be little more than scrub, with very occasional patches of thicker growth. He knew some trees had nuts or fruit, but not much more than that. It was frustrating to be so close to all of that potential food and not be able to tell what was edible from the poisonous.

There were all sorts of things to eat in forests, apparently. Nyx, Opal, and Juniper had brought back nuts, roots, and leafy greens along with a regular supply of meat. It was certainly out there, if one knew where to look. The problem was, he didn't.

If only Voxin had survived. She had known her way around a foraging party. And as long as he was wishing for things, he might as well wish for a troop of huntresses.

Maybe Lin, too.

She'd be out of her comfort zone, sure. But, she was smart. She could adapt. Certainly find them something to eat, and cook it a lot better than he could. And it would be damn good to see her again.

He could almost imagine her flying to meet them, landing with that cocky smile she had the last time she was flying on Faelon's back. Because of course, if there was a rescue party, she would be the one to find him.

It was a happy thought. And after how well the morning was going, Aytin was feeling just optimistic enough to maybe even believe in it. He looked down at the distant forest and smiled.

That smile turned to a slight frown as a thought itched at the back of his mind.

"Something's not right..." he muttered.

Of course, Faelon couldn't hear him over the wind. Even flying slowly, circling to catch the thermal updrafts, it was still too loud for whispers to carry far.

The niggling thought persisted.

It didn't make sense. All around them, the sky was clear. They were over the forest, heading for the cache. And that was somehow wrong.

Aytin blinked and shook his head. Off to the left, something shifted. Faelon's wing was there. And it wasn't there. And it couldn't be there. And there was an echoed scream and the heat of flames and the feel of an ax as it bit into flesh!

"FAELON!"

The scream shattered the hallucination. Suddenly, they were back on the ground and he was face to face with a very confused looking dragon.

"Faelon! It's back!"

He got a long, slow blink in response. Then a faster one, followed by comprehension dawning.

"Down!"

Aytin obeyed, throwing himself flat on the dragon's back. An instant later, a wide arc of the forest was suddenly wreathed in flame.

It was a quick, wide burst of dragon fire that left tree trunks smoking as piles of fallen leaves quickly consumed themselves. Aytin could feel the heat of it against his head and back, even flat on his stomach with most of Faelon's body in the way.

He peaked up at the smoldering scene ahead, and coughed as the wave of smoke hit him. It didn't look like there was much risk of a wildfire. Not with the forest still damp from the previous night's storm. But isolated patches were putting out great clouds of thick, gray smoke while flames licked hungrily at the trees that caught the worst of the blast.

The ground shifted. Or more accurately, Faelon did, scanning all around. The heat and smoke didn't appear to bother him in the least. "What do you see?" he demanded.

"Umm, it looks like if you didn't get it, you at least gave him a good scare."

"No, what do you see, exactly?"

"Wha- oh. Oh." Aytin spent a moment taking the entire scene in. "You burned everything in front of us for maybe sixty paces. There are a few fires, and lots of smoke." He looked behind them. "I... I think you've been walking in circles. There's a pretty clear path behind us."

Faelon snaked his head around and his eyes narrowed at the curved path of muddy footprints and broken vegetation to their rear. It looked like a small flock of dragons had walked this way.

"There was a stream, just ahead," Faelon muttered. "I could see it through the trees..."

"You were flying. At least, that's what I saw."

The dragon gave him a penetrating look. "That is a sick joke."

"I'm just telling you what I saw!"

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"I know, but..." Faelon snorted, then turned to angle back towards their original path. He set off at a pace even faster than before.

"Do you think you got it?" Aytin asked, hopefully.

"Did you see a body?"

"No." There hadn't been anything like one among the ashes.

"Neither did I. At best, I drove it off. Or it could simply be following, biding its time."

Aytin instinctively looked back. There wasn't anything there. Not that he could see. Some movement caught his eyes, but with the shifting light and shadow it was impossible to tell if it was a trick of the eye or a watching delerion.

Or a hallucination.

"What do we do?"

"Find out if it is following us. Kill it if it is."

"Okay, but how do we do that?" Aytin had his bow out, with his last arrow gripped tightly in one hand.

"If you think of anything, let me know." Faelon's reply held a note of dark humor.

Aytin tried. As the dragon strained beneath him, he split his attention between keeping watch and trying to figure out some way to fight this delerion.

That was easier said than done. It could attack from hiding, without ever exposing itself. And it was fast. The more he thought about it, the more Aytin knew that even catching a glimpse of the delerion the night before had been sheer luck.

Thoughts chased each other as the trees rushed by. But they always came down to the same problem: They couldn't hurt what they couldn't see. Or at least, Aytin couldn't. Dragon fire turned concealment into an inferno. But Faelon couldn't immolate random patches of forest forever, even if that was their best defense for now.

He still didn't know how to make a trap worth a damn. There hadn't been time to figure it out. And the delerion seemed smart enough that it wouldn't just walk into a random pit. Not without some very, very appealing bait.

'Hmmm...'

"Faelon?"

"Yes?" After pushing himself so long, the dragon's voice sounded ragged.

"Can you think of anywhere on your path where the delerion would have to pass to follow us?"

"I do not know... what you mean?"

"Like, back home, the Luffin Keep has a few rooms any invader would have to fight through. They all have murder holes and long hallways leading out that we could shoot arrows from."

"Chokepoints."

"Yeah. I... I don't suppose there are any of those." The idea was starting to sound a little silly. A forest and a keep were completely different.

But to his surprise, Faelon answered, "Yes." It took a few more steps for the dragon to get the breath to elaborate. "The canyon... with the cache. It's narrow. Only about... twice... my wingspan. My old wingspan." The last was added with enough bite to carry through the panting.

"Then we get there, wait to start hallucinating, and then you burn it all to the ground!"

"It could work," Faelon agreed. "I have... nothing better."

"Then we just need to get there."

"What do you... mean we?"

Aytin had to laugh. It felt good.

"Okay, you get us there. And then kill the delerion while I sunbathe and eat dried meat."

"You... do that."

Without warning, Faelon increased the pace to nearly a galop. The reason became clear soon enough. The trees thinned to their front and beyond them a small river flowed.

Its banks were swollen with recent rainfall, and the sound of rushing water carried over the dragon's pounding lope.

Faelon skidded to a stop, leaving deep furrows in the soft, muddy ground. It was almost enough to throw Aytin off, and even with his magic he found himself grabbing onto spines to keep his balance.

The water was cool with only a hint of sediment, and Faelon dipped his head down to take bucket-sized gulps of it. He alternated between slurping and gasping for nearly a minute as Aytin hopped down to get his own drink and refill the waterskins.

"I will have to slow down."

"I kind of figured," Aytin said. The dragon had finished drinking his fill and was looking down at him. "You were pushing yourself for almost an hour. That can't have been easy."

"It was not. Now, get back on." He extended his wing. "We must keep moving."

"I thought you were hungry?"

"Starving. But I can eat on the move."

As soon as Aytin was on the dragon's back once more, he started walking upstream. It was a slower pace than before, made even worse by the need to turn and accept hunks of meat as they were offered. Still, they were moving.

"Tell me what you see," Faelon ordered, once he was finished eating.

"Trees, water, some hills not too far off. You're still following the river bank. No flying tirox or rogue islands." Aytin shrugged. "I know what you're doing, but it's going to get very boring, very fast if you keep asking me every few minutes."

"Our hallucinations are our own. If you and I are seeing different things then-"

"Then the delerion is near. Yeah, I know. But when that thing was getting to me, I wasn't just seeing things. I was drunk or something. Not making sense. So, really, we just have to be talking."

Faelon's back rolled as he bobbed his head back and forth in a shrug. "Very well. What do you want to talk about?"

"Uhh..." Aytin had to think about the question for a moment. In the end, he went with the obvious. "Do you have any better plans to deal with the delerion?"

"No. I will tell you if I think of anything. But I believe your plan is a good one. Simple and straightforward as most good ones are. So when something goes wrong, there is less to fix."

"You think something is going to go wrong?"

"Think back to other plans. Have they ever gone completely right?"

He had a point. Of course, Faelon was probably talking about the tirox showing up when they were hoping for boar. Or even this whole trip. But his escape attempts from Xantha and the brigands also came to mind as well.

"No. I can't say they usually work out the exact way they're supposed to." Aytin gave a short bark of laughter as an old memory resurfaced. "Say, do you remember the first time we ever met? I think I was maybe eight or ten years old."

"I vaguely recall you being presented by the Lady Luffin around that time. Why?"

Aytin had a wry grin on his face. "Do you remember I probably looked a little unhappy?"

"No. I am sorry to say that I was not paying particularly close attention."

"Well, I remember it, and I can tell you that I was pretty upset at the time. They'd just told me that if you got mad then I was going to be your dinner."

"What?!"

"They weren't being serious. At least, now I realize they weren't. But I was absolutely terrified at the time." Aytin laughed again. "Although, mother probably considered it at least once. I kind of deserved it."

Faelon made an inquisitive sort of noise and the young dragonette continued the story. "There's this plant that grows in the drier parts of the island. It has thick, waxy leaves and long needles. That's where it gets its name: The needlefruit bush.

"Those fruits, it takes years for them to ripen and they're a pain to harvest. But if you get enough of them you can boil their juice into a kind of syrup. It's not as sweet as honey and goes bad in a couple of months, but it's still pretty tasty.

"Now, my sister Lin and I were poking around the pantry. Well, mostly me, with her kind of tottering behind. She was really small at the time.

"Anyway, I managed to drag over this ladder to check out the top shelf, and found this fancy looking bottle up there."

"Oh, no." There was a hint of amusement in the dragon's tone.

"Oh, yes," Aytin said with a smile. "We poured it all over our morning porridge. Still the best porridge I've ever had in my life.

"But a few days later, you showed up. And when the cooks started looking for the needlefruit syrup to make a welcome cake with, they found an empty bottle. Our sweetened breakfast probably cost enough to feed a troop of huntresses for days."

"How did they find out?"

"Oh, I don't think it was that hard to figure out. Lin and I were literally bouncing off the walls that morning. And I confessed when mother confronted me. Which is probably the reason I got off so lightly."

"I recall that Reed did something remarkably similar when she was young. Only, she found a jar of honey."

"Oooohhh..." Aytin winced. He had only tasted honey a handful of times before. Gathering it from under the stingers of warrior bees half the length of Aytin's tail was an often deadly task. It explained the exorbitant price charged for the sweet treat.

"Yes. They put her to work in a warehouse for two weeks. Her mother Ivy was friends with the owner, and he had her running messages and sorting boxes from dawn to dusk."

"Wow, I really did get off easy. I only had to clean the kitchens for a few days."

"She was older than you were at the time. She should have known better."

That was an image. Reed: Veteran trader. Captain of a dragon crew. And reformed honey thief.

And thanks to Xantha's betrayal, dead.

Aytin's smile died. That thought soured his mood significantly. And he sensed Faelon was feeling the same.

"What... What happened to Reed's mother?" Aytin struggled to keep the conversation going, if only because the delerion was still out there.

"Ivy? She retired to the capital some years ago. I saw her the last time we were there."

Aytin tried to steer things in a less depressing direction. "Did you know her since she was a hatchling, too?"

"No, I met her... well, she was a crewmember who had saved, scraped, borrowed, and begged enough gold for a cargo and crew of her own. And I needed to eat."

"Did they not have clouds to eat back then?"

Faelon slowed just enough that he wouldn't sink into the mud surrounding them. "Are you making some sort of joke?"

"No, I... oh, shit!"

Realization hit him just as Faelon twisted and sent a burst of fire back downstream. He followed it up with a roar that left the much smaller dragonette's ears ringing. Then he barreled forward, sprinting at nearly the speed of a flying dragonette away from the presumed delerion.

The bucking gallop nearly threw Aytin off. He held on tight and burned magic to keep from tumbling into the nearby river. There were no pits of mud. That had been another hallucination. The very beginnings of one.

Soon enough, Faelon slowed his breakneck pace. He was panting, having covered half an hour's journey in just under ten minutes. Without a word, the dragon plunged his head into the river and took huge, greedy gulps.

Waves of heat rolled off of him. It felt more like midsummer than early autumn on the dragon's back.

"Are you alright?"

Faelon finished another gulp. "Fine." He took several gasping breaths.

Aytin anticipated the dragon's next question. "The trees are starting to thicken. There's a rise up ahead on the left bank of the river. I don't see anything behind us except your tracks."

"Good." And then, "We are nearly there."

"How far?"

"That rise you saw... it is a plateau. The canyon cuts through it."

At their earlier pace, it would take them a little over half an hour to get there. At the one Faelon set, it would be quite a bit less than that.

Aytin was too keyed up for conversation. He scanned the forest around them, dutifully reporting what he saw. Faelon didn't reply, simply grunting at the descriptions. Trees, bushes, small creeks flowing to join the larger stream.

A few fallen boulders started to dot the landscape as they approached their destination. The hill to their left sharpened as they passed its forward edge, becoming a rough sided cliff slowly rising above them. Its sides were no doubt the source of the occasional rock slide.

The cliffside grew as they continued. When it was a little taller than Faelon was long, a break appeared in the rock. A small creek flowed out from the middle of a miniature valley. From edge to edge it was maybe two or three hundred paces, bordered by sheer rock that was high enough to leave the canyon in shadow for most of the day.

They had finally arrived.