Oreg nodded and walked over to the bench. With his knife he cut a sliver of wood and held it in his hand. He closed his fist and then wiped the dust out of his palm while the bench crumbled into a dark gray mulch.

Kellen stared at the mess as if the crude board had meant a lot to him. His breathing was heavy and I could see the pulse pounded in his throat. “I’m ready.”

“I can’t take you the way we came in,” said Oreg. “Transporting people is nigh impossible if the person I’m carrying doesn’t trust me.”

“So what do you suggest?” I asked, rising to my feet since Kellen wasn’t paying attention to me anymore.

“Flying.” Oreg waved an arm at the stone wall between us and the outside. I could feel him draw on the fear that the Asylum’s captives had impregnated in the walls. Oreg took the wordless desire of every prisoner and gave it form as the wall popped and the great stones fell to the ground below.

It was a good thing Kellen’s cell was on the highest floor, I thought, looking over the edge to the ground below, otherwise Oreg might have collapsed the whole building.

The hole in the wall was more than large enough for a dragon, though Oreg had had to take out the wall next to us as well. Either the other cell was empty or its occupant had been crushed by falling stone. I gave it a closer look and felt relieved that there was no straw on the floor.

I turned back to say something to Kellen, but he was crouched in a corner as far from the broken wall as he could get. I looked at Oreg, but he shook his head and gestured for me.

My old stable master had never liked keeping horses in stalls for longer than a day or two. He told me once of a horse he’d seen who’d been kept in its stall from the moment it was born until it was ready to be trained for riding. It had taken four men to drag the horse out of its stall.

The rockfall had been loud; someone was bound to come here soon to check on Kellen.

There wasn’t time to coax Kellen out. I remembered how unsettling I’d found the darkness below Oreg’s wings, and I used my knife to rip a strip from the bottom of my shirt.

“Shh,” I said, wrapping my makeshift blindfold around Kellen’s eyes. “It’s just the shock of it. Let my dragon and me get you out of here to safety and you’ll be fine.”

Oreg took his cue and shifted into dragon form. I heard the noises of guards in the hallways, doubtless drawn there by the sound of falling stones.