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"Ready?" called Firedrake, shaking the desert sand fros
"Ready!" Sorrel called
Firedrake rose into the dark sky and fleard the ht
They had soon left the mountainous coast behind Darkness sed up the land, and ahead of theht of thehts of a ship winked on the waves Seabirds flew by, squawking in alarht, Sorrel suddenly gave a terrified shriek and bent over the dragon’s neck
"Firedrake!" she called "Firedrake! Have you seen the on
All this time his eyes had been fixed on the waves below, but now he looked up What he saw s feel as heavy as lead
"What is it?" Ben leaned over Sorrel’s shoulder in alar red"
Now Ben saw it, too The e of coppery red
"What does it mean?" he asked, baffled
"It means it’ll disappear anyto be an eclipse -- a azed down at the crashing, foa ishly as if invisible weights hung fro too low, Firedrake!" called Sorrel
"I can’t help it!" the dragon called back to her wearily "I’, Sorrel!"
Ben looked up at the sky, where thethe stars
"We’ve seen eclipses before," babbled Sorrel, "but ere always above solid land at the ti to do now?"
Firedrake dropped lower and lower Ben could already taste the salty sea spray on his lips And then, in the last red glow of light cast on the waves by the fadingfro hued hills
"Firedrake!" shouted Ben as loud as he could
The pounding of the waves tore the words froon had keen ears
"Look there, ahead of us!" yelled Ben "I can see islands Try to land on one of theulfed the ed by a shot, but the first of the strange islands was already below him To Ben and Sorrel, it looked al toward theon fell rather than landed on the island His riders were al all over, and Sorrel wasn’t doing round with a sigh, folded his wings, and licked the salt water off his paws
"Lawyer’s wig and hedgehog fungus!" Weak at the knees, Sorrel slid off Firedrake’s back "This journey’s going to shorten my life by a hundred years -- no,herself a shake, she looked down the steep slope of the hilly island to the black waves breaking on its shore "We almost took a very nasty dip in the sea!"