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you’ve found here.’ In his own ears his voice sounded hard and clumsy as his cold lips struggled to
shape the sounds.
    ‘Pell! Come on over. I’ve been waiting for you,’ Elian replied, sounding relieved to hear Pell’s voice. ‘Have you seen the girls?’
    ‘No, I was going to ask you the same. Did the other night dragons follow you?’
    ‘If they did, they didn’t catch up with us,’ Elian said, watching Pell climb awkwardly over the fallen tree. ‘Ra told me Fang deliberately stayed to draw them into a
chase and keep them off our backs. How about you?’
    Pell hunched down next to Elian and stared into the tiny flickering flames. He held his hands out, warming them as the pause grew into an uncomfortable silence. A series of loud cracking noises
announced the arrival of Shadow, pushing through the pines and snapping the branches she couldn’t squeeze past. Pell could see her red eyes glowing in the darkness. He felt comforted by her
presence, but was still unsure how to answer Elian’s question. It was hard to know where to start. Feelings of guilt and remorse returned in force, churning deep in the pit of his
stomach.
    ‘We met one of the night dragons,’ he said eventually.
    ‘What happened?’ Elian prompted, his tone cautious after the awkward silence that had followed his previous question.
    ‘Dragon and rider are both dead.’
    ‘Oh,’ Elian said softly. He fell silent, leaving the obvious question unasked.
    Pell turned to look at the boy from Racafi, but Elian did not meet his eyes. Did the boy really think that he and Shadow had deliberately killed a fellow dragon and rider? It appeared that way.
Indignant, Pell blurted out the truth.
    ‘The orb killed them.’
    The words hung in the air.
    ‘The orb?’ Elian asked, his voice rising with surprise and his eyes finally turning to meet Pell’s steady gaze. ‘How?’
    Pell told him. In halting snatches, he described the pull of the orb and the strange arrival of the small host of animals. To begin with the words came slowly, but the more he spoke the faster
the words came, until they tumbled from his mouth like a waterfall. Vivid memories flashed through his mind’s eye as he relived the horror of the orb’s power. Elian sat in silence, his
jaw slowly dropping as Pell reached the terrible climax of his story.
    ‘Gods alive!’ he breathed as Pell fell silent. ‘And I thought the first orb was dangerous! We need to get that thing to the Oracle’s cave – and fast!’
    ‘I agree, except for one thing,’ Pell said.
    ‘What’s that?’
    ‘There can’t be any
we
this time. I’m going to have to do this alone.’

Chapter Five
White Terror
    Kira had always been proud of her woodcraft skills, but in Racafi she had never had to deal with cold like this. Her hands felt worse than useless. They were clumsy lumps of
flesh on the ends of her arms. Her fingers felt weak and stiff and she had lost all dexterity. Muscles throughout her body ached with the fatigue of deep cold. Tears of frustration began to well in
her eyes. She blinked rapidly to prevent them escaping.
    ‘Damn, damn, damn!’ she cursed as she threw her flint and steel down in frustration.
    It was almost dark. The snow was still falling heavily and the temperature was dropping fast. For all her skills and knowledge of survival learned in the Racafian savannah, she could not get a
fire to light. She knew that to stop trying now was to invite the cold embrace of death. Tired though she was, and angry at her inadequacies, Kira could not give up. Quitting was not in her
nature.
    ‘Why can’t you breathe fire like Firestorm?’ she muttered at Fang, glaring at her dragon with accusing eyes. ‘I bet Nolita isn’t cold. Even if she hasn’t got
wood to burn, he can always heat the rock for her.’
    Her dragon did not respond with words, but she felt his love and concern flood through their special bond. The sensation triggered instant feelings of guilt.
    Fang had