Burn’s stronghold had once been the original SandWing palace. That was where all the trouble had started. Glory flattened herself against the sand and stared at it, remembering the history Webs had taught them.

Eighteen years ago, Queen Oasis had ruled the SandWings from here. Her three daughters, Burn, Blister, and Blaze, had been minor dragons, footnotes in the scrolls of the time. Oasis was old, fierce, and canny, with a vast and impressive treasury. No one expected her to be challenged for many years yet.

And certainly no one would ever have expected a puny trea sure-hunting scavenger to kill her, but that was exactly what had happened.

Now the trea sure was gone, and the three sisters had drawn all the other tribes into their struggle for power. Eighteen years of bloodshed. Glory flicked her tail, concentrating on keeping her scales the color of the sand.

Burn had driven out the other two and kept the palace for herself — or, depending on which scrolls you read, Blister and Blaze had escaped before she could kill either of them. They’d gone in search of allies, knowing that neither one could beat Burn on her own.

This wasn’t how the palace had looked during the reign of Queen Oasis. Burn had added the thick walls . . . and, of course, the dragon heads on top of them.

Glory wondered if Burn was down there in her stronghold right now. Or was she in the Sky Kingdom, trying to hold on to her alliance after what Glory had done to Queen Scarlet?

The real questions were: Did she know about this passageway? And did she have anything to do with the missing RainWings?

“Glory,” Clay hissed from the dark hole in the dune. “What’s going on?”

Glory slid back down the hill to face him. “We’re in the Kingdom of Sand,” she said. “I have no idea how or why.”

“What’s that over there?” Clay asked, pointing north.

Glory turned and saw a wing of dragons flying high up in the sky. Their scales sparkled in the sunlight so that even from here she could guess that they were IceWings, white and pale blue as diamonds. From their angle of flight, they seemed to be returning from the Sky Kingdom to their own home on the frozen peninsula to the north.

“IceWings,” Glory said. “We’re not too far from the Ice Kingdom here.” That was hard to imagine in this blistering heat, but she remembered it from the map on the wall of their underground cave.

“Oh,” Clay said brightly, “so we could go find Blaze.”

“Hooray,” said Glory. She knew the others were hoping that Blaze would be a good candidate for queen, so they could choose her instead of Burn or Blister. But Glory’s hopes weren’t very high, based on what she’d read about Blaze.

Could Blaze or the IceWings have anything to do with this passageway to the rainforest?

But what had they heard in the middle of the night — and where had it gone?

“All right. Let’s go tell the others,” she said.

“But that is completely impossible,” Starflight said for the millionth time. “The Kingdom of Sand is literally half a world away, on the other side of the mountains, for moons’ sake. You couldn’t have walked there down a tunnel in the rainforest.”

“Go look for yourself,” Glory snapped. “It’s for real. Someone built a secret passage between here and SandWing territory.” She dipped her tail in the stream, glad to be back in the coolness of the rainforest. Her scales felt as if she’d run through a fire. Silver sat on one of Glory’s talons, dipped her paw in the water, and patted it against Glory’s leg.

“But why?” Tsunami said. “What is the point?”

That, Glory couldn’t answer. So they could sneak through and eat a sloth here or there? That made no sense. And what made even less sense was kidnapping RainWings.

“Do you think SandWings are coming through here to attack the MudWings?” Sunny asked hesitantly. “Maybe it was a SandWing who killed those soldiers.”

“Seems like a roundabout way of doing things,” Tsunami said. “If the SandWings have an animus, they could create a passage straight into MudWing territory or something more useful.”

“I still think this passage has something to do with the missing RainWings,” Glory said, “but I don’t understand what. If they wandered into it by accident, they’d just come back, the way we did. If they were taken . . . what would SandWings or IceWings want with a few RainWings?”

“Burn likes collecting things,” Starflight remembered.

“But you saw her face when Queen Scarlet was showing me off in the Sky Kingdom,” Glory said. “Burn looked like she’d never seen a RainWing before. And she doesn’t like pretty things; she likes horribly weird things. You’re all so lucky you didn’t see the creepy gift Queen Scarlet got for her when she came to visit. It was this dead stuffed crocodile with bat wings sewn on its back so it looked sort of like a dragon.” She shuddered. “Totally hideous. But Burn loved it.”

“And you don’t know anything about this passage,” Tsunami said to Jambu.

Glory’s brother lifted his brightly colored wings, looking baffled. “I know the RainWings didn’t put it there,” he said. “Why would we want a way out of the rainforest? Life is perfect here.”

“Unless you make the mistake of going missing, and then good luck, because no one’s going to look for you,” Glory pointed out.

“Well, maybe,” Jambu said as if that were a perfectly normal problem for a dragon tribe to have. “But it’s great for the rest of us.”

Glory wondered what color his scales would turn if she bit him.

“Do you even have an animus dragon?” Starflight asked.

“What’s that?” Jambu answered.

“Never mind,” Glory said. “Do SandWings ever visit you? Or have you ever seen one in the forest?”

Jambu shook his head. “Don’t think so. I don’t even know what a SandWing looks like,” he said.

“Me,” Sunny said. “Sort of.”

“But you’ve seen them in scrolls, right?” Starflight said.

“Scrolls,” Jambu said. “Um. Those are . . . ?”

Starflight looked as if someone had just asked him whether breathing was really necessary. “You don’t have any scrolls?” he gasped. “Don’t you read? Do you really not read? Not anything?”

Jambu shrugged apologetically. “I’m not sure what you’re talking about,” he said.

Starflight had to sit down and fold his wings over his head for a minute.

Glory coiled her tail as Clay described SandWings for Jambu. Every new thing she learned about RainWings made them sound worse. A tribe without scrolls, who didn’t care what was beyond their own borders? Why weren’t they at least curious about the rest of the world? It made her want to shake all of them.

“Nope, doesn’t sound familiar,” Jambu said. “I’m pretty sure the only other-tribe visitors we’ve ever had looked like him.” He pointed at Clay. “And they’re usually lost and want to get out of the rainforest as fast as possible.”

“Maybe we should destroy it,” Sunny said unexpectedly.

They all turned to look at her. She shuffled her talons on the damp forest floor. “The passageway, I mean. It can’t be here for anything good, right? I know I don’t like the idea that Burn could pop out of there any minute. And if it’s making RainWings disappear . . . well, who cares why? Let’s just smash the boulder or stuff the tunnel full of trees and set them on fire or something.”

Glory blinked.

It did sort of make sense. There was definitely something not right about this hole someone had ripped through normal space. Maybe destroying it would solve the problem — but Glory wanted to know the answer, too. There had to be a why.

Tsunami spoke first.

“I don’t think that’ll work. If there’s someone, or something, behind this, then wrecking their secret passage won’t stop them. At least this way we have an advantage because we know about it.”

“And what if the missing RainWings are alive on the other side?” Clay said. “What if there’s a chance to save them?”

“Oh,” Sunny said. “That’s true.”

“I’m not going into Burn’s palace,” Starflight said immediately. “No way.” A monkey in the trees overhead dropped a nut, and Starflight jumped ner vously aside as it tumbled down beside him.

“I will if I have to,” Glory said. She should have been the one to think about saving the missing RainWings. If they were still alive, of course she had to help bring them home, even if she did think the whole tribe was empty-headed.

“But we don’t know for sure that Burn is involved,” Starflight pointed out. “It could certainly be the IceWings instead. We need to spend a lot more time gathering information — maybe spying on the stronghold and on the Ice Kingdom, charting their movements, studying the tunnel —”

Suddenly something much larger than a nut thudded out of the tree behind Starflight. The NightWing yelped and leaped out of the way as a bright green dragon galloped past him and dashed into the hole in the boulder.

“Hey!” Glory shouted.

“That was Mangrove,” Jambu cried. “What is he doing?”

“He’s going to look for Orchid.” Glory tucked Silver into the nearest tree. “Wait here,” she ordered the sloth. She folded her wings and ran into the tunnel after Mangrove.

“Mangrove!” she called as his tail whisked around the corner. “Come back! We’re making a plan! Dopey freaking dragon,” she added under her breath. Even the one RainWing she liked was a nimrod.

She shot around the last corner just in time to see him disappear out into the bright desert sunshine. By the time she burst out behind him and her eyes adjusted to the light, he was a green claw mark in the sky, flying away as fast as he could. A moment later, his scales shifted color, and he vanished against the blue.

Glory flapped her wings in frustration and sat down with a sigh.

One by one, her friends emerged from the tunnel.

“Oh, three moons,” Tsunami said as the heat hit her scales. “It’s horrible here.”

Sunny stretched her wings wide and tilted her face up to the sun. “Wow,” she whispered.

Starflight blinked and gazed around. “You’re right,” he said to Glory. “I can’t believe it. This is really the Kingdom of Sand.”

Jambu tumbled out behind them. “Where’s Mangrove?” he asked.

“Did he head for Burn’s stronghold?” Starflight guessed, shading his eyes to look in the direction of the faraway palace.

Glory shook her head and pointed north. “Nope,” she said. “I don’t think he even noticed it. Looks like we’re off to the Ice Kingdom.”