[Apologize after I get you out,] Leera said.

The sound of her voice was sweet relief. I felt the coffin being dragged through the water and out of the lake. It started to drain. I could breathe again. With a jolt and a thud, I was set down.

[Stay down,] Leera said.

I laid as flat on the bottom of the coffin as I could. Claws punched through the lid and ripped out pieces of wood until there was a decent-sized hole in the coffin.

"I'm tied up. I can't get out."

She snorted and continued demolishing the coffin's lid. Before she could finish, an arrow ricocheted off her chest plates and embedded itself in the ground by her feet.

[Don't move.] She reared on her hind legs, picked me up in her forepaws, and tossed me over her shoulder.

I landed hard on her saddle and my luggage, knocking the wind out of me. Wheezing, I hooked my tied arms over the saddle's handles. "I can't hold on well while I'm tied up."

[Don't worry, I'll catch you if you fall.]

That wasn't comforting at all. I gripped with my knees and held the handles as well as I could, but both me and the saddle were soaking wet and slippery. As she took off, I clung to her back with all my might.

Arrows and magical bolts shot up at us from the crowd that had apparently gathered to watch me drown. We soared over them, back over the forest. Soon after we left them far enough behind that they were out of sight, we met up with Clarisa, Tawny, and Kuertis in the air. We all flew at top speed, much too quickly for me to maneuver a knife out of my pack and untie my wrists.

"I think you can slow down a bit," I said.

Clarisa twisted around to glare at me. "You think they're going to let you just fly away after you burned down there stable?"

"I wasn't the one who burned it down. I was only there because I wanted to-"

Tawny gave me a curious look, and I trailed off. She thought I was crazy enough for listening to my 'mental echo.' If I told her I'd nearly blown the mission because I'd been trying to free some dragons, she would never let me forget it.

I shook my head. "I didn't burn it down."

Clarisa scoffed. "That doesn't matter if they think you did it."

"Either way, they can't catch us in the air. They shouldn't have any dragons left." Assuming, of course, that the katalni had gone to free the dragons that weren't in the stables too.

"They have cattledraks, idiot."

I twisted around in the saddle to look behind me at a chilling sight. Large, black specks covered most of the horizon. Even at this distance, I could hear the buzzing of the cattledraks' wings. While unable to breathe fire and also not as large or strong as dragons, cattledraks were formidable in large groups and wicked fast in the air. If I had to choose between betting on a dragon or a cattledrak in an aerial race, I'd bet on the drak.

Leera pumped her wings even harder. [You'd better hope you'll lose that bet.] 

Over the next half an hour, I managed to get the ropes off of my wrists and to search my pockets for my wand and rune book. They weren't there, which meant they must've been confiscated before I went into the coffin. Or maybe they'd been lost inside the coffin; I didn't know. All I knew was was, even if we got away from the drak swarm and finally reached the portal I was supposed to destroy, I might not be able to destroy it.

I just hoped we didn't need controlled fire magic from me to destroy it. Emotion-driven bursts of magic, I could probably still manage without a wand, but that was it. I didn't want to think about that, so I looked back and reminded myself of the present danger.

Our dragons were flying much faster than they had the last few days. They flew their hardest, pushing their wings to the max. I couldn't do anything to help them fly faster except encourage Leera as the buzzing grew louder and louder.

A few minutes later, I could hardly hear myself think. None of my friends talked or looked back, conserving all their strength for the fight that was bound to come soon. It wasn't long before I couldn't stand not looking anymore. I glanced over my shoulder and nearly had a heart attack. The lead riders couldn't have been more than seventy feet away, and they were all aiming wands and crossbows at us.

"How close are we to the border?" I shouted to Clarisa.

"Not close enough," she shouted back.

We would have to fight, that much was certain, but there was still the question of whether we should turn to fight now or keep flying for as long as possible. An arrow whistled past Leera's left wing and almost hit Moonhawk in the flank. Turning to fight seemed like our only option, then.

"We have to fight."

Clarisa shook her head. "Not yet. We can still outrun them."

I was about to counter with a firm, "we can't," but before I could, what looked like a whole flock of katalnis shot up from the trees and started flying towards us.

"We're dead," I said without meaning to.

[No, we're saved,] Leera said, heading for the ground.

"What are you doing?"

The others started diving as well.

[They're from Ferentis.]

I looked back up at the huge katalnis. Sure enough, each one of them was carrying a rider wearing a tunic with the red and black Ferentis crest emblazoned on it. The riders were dwarfed by their mounts. They didn't seem to care about us, flying past to charge at the drak swarm. There were only ten katalnis and riders, but they made up for it with their size and obvious firepower. The drak riders fled before their formidable strength.

Once the drak riders and their swarm had flown away, the katalni riders came down to land around us. They looked down at our exhausted dragons with piercing stares. I noticed that two of them were dalteks, easily identifiable by their fangs, pointed ears, and the black blood runes spattered across their dark red skin. As their sharp gazes passed over us, I struggled not to recoil.

"You are the group of runaways that burned down the mine's stable and set their dragons loose?" one of the riders, a talme with blue cinem wings, asked from atop his golden mount. His accent was pronounced, but I had no trouble understanding what he'd said in Lykelish.

Clarisa sat up straighter. "We are, and we've come to seek safe haven in Ferentis."

"Anyone wishing to enter Ferentis must submit to mind probes," the talme-cinem paltor said.

I glanced at Tawny and Kuertis to see their reactions. She was grimacing at the sight of the paltor, and he seemed nervous about the mind probes. At least they hadn't completely given us away yet.

Clarisa flipped her hair back. "We're ready for the mind probe."

The two dalteks laughed.

"We will not be doing it here. You little girls scream too much," one said.

Clarisa blushed but surprisingly kept her cool. "Lead the way."

The talme-cinem paltor took off first, followed by one of the dalteks and three other riders. Then the other daltek told us to take off as well, and the rest of the riders joined us in the air.

We flew at a leisure early pace, the katalni riders obviously having realized that our dragons were exhausted. While we flew, I subtly examined the Ferentisians. Out of the ten of them, two looked like they were pure-blood dalteks, five appeared to be some type of paltor, and three were probably pure-blood cinems. They all wore the same thick cloaks lined with furs, as well as gloves and winter boots. And whether it was because of their mixed ancestry or the climate in Ferentis, the elent and talme paltors seemed unnaturally pale. Their katalnis were guided by reins that tied to their horns. It'd been a while since I'd stopped using a halter on Leera, and I felt the displeasure in her mind as she watched the katalnis. Covering each of their mindstones were metal plates embedded with blue crystals.

The plates were probably the Ferentisians' version of a mind-jinking collar that only worked on katalnis. I wondered how I'd never known that there were dragons with mindstones if all the Ferentisian ones had them. Admittedly, it wasn't like the Ferentisians were eagerly giving us information about their mounts, and I'd never traveled far north or met someone who'd been near Ferentis.

Well, now was as good a time as any to have my questions answered. "Why do you ride katalnis instead of dragons?"

A cinem-elent man laughed. "You know what is a katalni? They are dragons, just we don't make them small by taking the crystals like you Lykelans."

"We don't make them small. They're hatched like this."

He chuckled. "Sure, that's why your greenie so puny."

Leera spun around so quickly in the air that I ended up hanging halfway off of the saddle.

[Puny? I am not puny!] she roared, hurting both my mind and my ears.

The cinem-elent pulled his katalni to a stop in midair. He brandished his wand at me as I pulled myself back up.

"You not get upset, girly. She more puny than any real katalni, and it's truth. Now, get on flying."

He obviously thought that I'd told Leera to spin around and roar. She snarled at his words, and I urged her to do what he'd said.

[You'd beat his katalni in a fight any day,] I assured her, knowing that that was very far from the truth, [but we can't get in a fight. Remember the mission.]

She jerked around in the air again and took off after the others, who'd pulled ahead of us.

As soon as we caught up with them, I resolved not to ask the Ferentisians any more questions.