Spine of the Dragon

by Kevin J. Anderson

  The skas flew toward the sharp mountain peaks over the next ridge, where patches of snow lingered on gray granite. The cliffs were sheer, the climb seemingly impossible, but Glik couldn’t stop grinning. That was where she would find her egg. She felt the call in her heart.

  * * *

  It took her three more days to cover the distance, and each night she heard the raucous calls of skas in her dreams and the warm music of the link in her heart. She saw Ori in a vision, perched on a bent branch and flapping his scarlet wings, like an old mentor trying to guide her.

  In order to reach the peaks where the skas nested, she had to climb rough rocks. Glik sheltered in a deep crack for part of an afternoon as a rainstorm made the wet granite impossible to climb. She shivered and waited, not regretting her decision. Soon she would have a new ska. The perfect one for her. When sunlight dried the rocks enough, she kept climbing.

  As she approached the highest crags, she saw the reptile birds flying overhead again, guiding her. She kept working her way up the cliff faces. Her hands ached and bled, but she couldn’t let go. She never let herself look down at the sheer fall. Glik’s foot slipped, but she caught herself on a knob of rock, holding on with one hand. She just hung there shuddering, then she found a toehold and a handhold, then another and another until she ascended to a narrow ledge, where she rested. Air whistled through her lungs, and sweat trickled down her forehead.

  An image of Ori flashed through her mind, and she thought of the new ska she would have. Her vision blurred, and the call grew even stronger.

  The reptile birds flew close now, and she located the cracks and cave holes where they built their nests. Glik knew she could make it. Her dreams had brought her here. The wheeling skas watched her, but did not seem disturbed by her presence. Maybe Ori had told them she would be a good master.

  The ska nests were right there, inside the fissures. As she made her way into a widening crack in the granite, she could smell the distinctive musk of many skas. Their scales and feathers exuded an oil that reminded her of Ori. How she longed for that again!

  The beginning is the end is the beginning.

  She wormed her way deeper into the crack in the mountain. Sunlight penetrated through a gap overhead, providing just enough illumination. Ska nests were here in pockets of the rock, cluttered tangles of dry twigs and branches, uprooted vines and loose feathers in a mad motley of colors. Dozens of nests held mottled-brown eggs, any one of which would fit perfectly in her cupped hands. She went from nest to nest, poking among the feathers and the debris, ignoring the broken shells of recently hatched skas and the bones of the rodents they fed to their young.

  She closed her eyes, concentrated, drew the circle around and around her heart in a mantra to focus her mind. She could sense ska thoughts all around, but only one of the eggs whispered to her. The splotched and swirled pattern on the shell was hypnotic, beautiful. When Glik touched the warm, fist-sized egg, it vibrated faintly in welcome, and she gave a small gasp. Suddenly, she knew the ska inside. It was nearly ready to hatch, anxious for the world … anxious for her. If she took the egg now, Glik could be out of the eyrie and maybe even out of the peaks by the time it hatched.

  Knowing this was the one, she held the egg, stroked the shell, and the throbbing mental voices of other skas fell silent. She didn’t need the visions or guidance from the rest of the reptile birds anymore. She had what she needed. This was the one.

  Glik wrapped the egg securely in a soft cloth, tucked it into her leather pouch, then tied the pouch inside her shirt, where it would be protected. She would need both of her hands free for the climb back out, and she couldn’t risk damaging the egg.

  She could care for the little reptile bird, bring it back to the Utauk tribes, and she would be inside the circle again. Glik would no longer be hollow, no longer an orphan twice over. Besides, she would have a grand story to tell. She had climbed into the highest, most inaccessible eyrie.

  With her prize secure, Glik prepared to depart, but she felt something more, the dark and insistent throbbing of a vision, a foreboding. The crevice in the cliff widened ahead of her, and she heard a rumbling sound deeper in the mountain. Unable to resist, as if caught in a waking nightmare, Glik squeezed through the crevice and climbed down.

  Lit by glimmers of sky from the crack high above, the passage ended at a sheltered grotto infused with a strange glow. The air was warm, stifling, with a hint of brimstone, very unlike the musk of the gathered skas. She realized she was sweating.

  Drawn by curiosity and dread, Glik inspected the strange barrier wall. It was not stone, but some kind of resinous substance, like sheets of sheer fibers slathered in layers. It reminded her of the cocoons spun by silkworms grown in farms in southern Suderra. This curved shell was larger than a house, so how could it be a cocoon? The translucent wall contained something faintly luminescent.

  Glik touched the blurry wall and felt a vibration that was entirely different from the one she had felt from the warm ska egg. Behind the resinous shell, something stirred, something huge. A lurching vision flooded her mind, like a black cape folding aside to reveal fangs and scales and evil. The unbidden image pounded inside her skull like a thousand thunderclaps. She drew a sharp breath and nearly collapsed.

  Ska voices swooped into her thoughts again, this time protecting her, diverting the other dangerous vision, keeping her safe.

  Glik backed away from the barrier. Her heart pounded, but she couldn’t tear her eyes from it. With an alarming flicker of liquid motion, she saw a shift behind the shell, a glint of something that might have been an enormous faceted eye. It opened briefly, then closed.

  Stumbling, Glik retreated, making her way back up to the main rookery. She didn’t dare disturb the slumber of that thing behind its cocoon wall.

  Cradling the ska egg against her chest, Glik made her way out of the eyrie and into the open air again. She still faced the long and treacherous climb back out of the mountains. She suddenly longed for the safety and comfort of being surrounded by the Utauk tribes. Inside the circle again. She wanted to be among her people, to go home.

  With her new ska.

  58

  DAYS after the flock of agitated skas scattered from Bannriya, Adan still felt tension hanging over his city. He didn’t need the incomprehensible behavior of the wild reptile birds to warn him that something was amiss in the world. The bruised and smoky sky over the Dragonspine Mountains remained a mystery.

  While waiting, Adan and Penda rode through their city to be seen by the people, to reassure them. They dressed in bright colors and wore gold jewelry adorned with dragonblood rubies. He released wheat from his granary stockpiles and asked the castle’s kitchens to bake hundreds of loaves of bread, which he and his staff distributed in the streets. Adan wanted his people to break bread together and remember that they were all one Commonwealth and one race of humans, who had survived and reclaimed the world.

  An Utauk caravan had settled in the main square the night before, erecting tents and setting out their goods. This tribe was only distantly related to the Orr family, but Penda welcomed them like long-lost cousins. Utauks followed the king and queen through the streets, playing flutes and stringed instruments, which lightened the ominous mood in the city.

  “Suderra might eventually get back to normal, Starfall,” Penda said. On her shoulder, Xar bobbed his head, as if the celebration were all about him. The ska scanned the sky with his faceted eyes, as if ready to defend his territory from other reptile birds.

  Adan lowered his voice. “I don’t think anything will ever be normal again, my love. It all changed on the day the sandwreths arrived.” He forced a smile on his face. “But we can at least pretend, and sometimes pretending hard enough makes it real.”

  Penda touched her stomach. “We have a little more than four months to make the world right. I don’t want our child to be born into war.”

  In the main city square, a giant obelisk towered high, so old and weathered that the e
ngraved markings were no more than shadows and suggestions. The obelisk marked the place where the very first banners had been raised when human survivors claimed the world after the wreths vanished. Inset on two of the obelisk’s sides were squares of shadowglass harvested from an ancient battlefield. The tall, intentionally toppled statue of some ancient wreth hero lay faceup in the square, like the one near the front gates of Bannriya Castle.

  In an archive room, one of the ancient original flags had been preserved, sandwiched between two transparent sheets of crystal. The red fabric had faded to only a breath of pink, and the cloth fibers were little more than cobwebs. The object didn’t hold as much importance as what it symbolized. Humans had dared to build a city here in the wreckage of the world, and they had succeeded.

  As king of Suderra, Adan felt the weight of that responsibility, and he saw it in the hope and faith in his people, their confidence that he, King Adan Starfall, would keep them safe.

  Even from the wreths.

  That thought terrified him. Adan hadn’t imagined such a situation when he accepted the throne in the place of the fifteen-year-old child who had been the nominal king for ten years. In the previous generation, dour old King Syrus had ruled as a stern, lackluster man, who did little to earn the devotion of his people. Few minstrels could think of anything to sing about when they told the story of his reign. Syrus seemed to have no interest, no humor, no love.

  He died, leaving his young son, Bull—short for Bullton—as his heir. According to Suderran law, the child was managed by a group of seven regents, who in this case were self-serving and greedy. Using money from the treasury, they built monuments to themselves, wrote great chronicles in the city’s remembrance shrine, carved their names on stone walls, although they hadn’t actually done much worth remembering.

  As the boy grew older, he had few wits about him. When Bull reached the age of eight and tutors couldn’t even teach him his letters or the most basic mathematics, the regents realized that he was simpleminded and would never be prepared to rule. Bullton didn’t like the regents any more than the people did, and several Suderran vassal lords posted complaints to the konag in Convera. Some lords refused to pay taxes; one county even declared itself independent.

  As the unrest increased and Konag Conndur grew impatient with the regents, he invoked an ancient law that had been laid down from the earliest days of Queen Kresca, when the Commonwealth founded their alliance. The question was posed to all the vassal lords of Suderra’s fifteen counties, and the people were allowed to speak.

  None of them liked the prospect of an idiot king, or corrupt regents, and when Conndur suggested replacing the king with his son Adan Starfall, whom everyone liked, the response had been overwhelming. The people acclaimed him, the Commonwealth accepted him, and he took the throne with pride.

  The regents were exiled in disgrace to outlying counties, and though people still grumbled about them, Adan did not intend to hunt them down out of vengeance, nor did he hold any ill will toward the former boy king. Bullton—fifteen when he was ousted—was perfectly happy being raised in a hunting lodge in the hills.

  In his time here, Adan believed he had ruled well. Suderra was strong. Bannriya prospered. The people had been content … until the wreths came, and no one knew anything about the future anymore.

  As he and Penda rode through the streets while fresh bread was distributed, Adan could see that the people had faith in him, but how long would that optimism last if Queen Voo and her sandwreths placed a terrible obligation upon them, or if another wreth war laid waste to the entire land?

  * * *

  At last the smoke and distant dust storms cleared enough to show the stars at night again. Seeking peace and contemplation, Adan went to his gazing deck to be alone with the universe. He had spent many nights teaching Penda the constellations, while she had shown him entirely different patterns the Utauk tribes saw. Now, tired from the procession, she let Adan go outside by himself.

  He stood alone after midnight, hands clasped behind his back. The ominous changes in the world had dampened his enthusiasm for drawing his own atlas of the heavens. Now it seemed like a frivolous hobby, when there was a real chance the wreth factions would bring about an apocalyptic end to the world.

  Now that the moon had set, he saw a faint green glow off to the south, shimmering from the desert emptiness. Dissipated curtains of light danced like a mirage on heat ripples. Auroras were rare, and Adan had no idea what the eerie wash of color meant. Some kind of omen? Another harbinger, as Penda had seen before?

  Though Bannriya had quieted for the night, he still heard the simmer of noises in the streets, whispers of conversation, the rattle of a cart heading home up the cobblestones, a family singing and clapping as they played a game. He saw a bonfire and a small crowd celebrating a wedding.

  For these people, every day was another day in their legacy. They did not ask too many questions, but Adan looked at the stars. He was the king here, and he silently demanded explanations from the universe, but no one answered him. No one listened. Kur, the main wreth god, was long gone—not that he would have cared about a race he didn’t create.

  As Adan stared at the starscape, a great silhouette flickered across the sky, blotting out the stars. Could it be another swarming of skas? No, this was different. It flew like an enormous angular kite, swooping across the pastel of the auroras.

  With a gasp, he squinted to make out more details. It was a huge winged form, reptilian, larger than any living creature he had ever seen … Then it was gone. He could no longer find it against the starry backdrop. It swept across the night, far away.

  59

  CLIMBING around fallen trees and rockslides, rushing as fast as they could, Elliel and Thon made their way back to Scrabbleton, fearing what they would find there.

  On the way, one of the smaller towns they passed had been entirely buried in boulders and mud. Elliel stared at the collapsed dwellings and smothered bodies and saw nothing to salvage, no one to save. Her heart grew heavier and her fear increased as they closed in on the village she had called home, the kind people she had known.

  Fires continued to burn through the forested hillsides, and ash covered the landscape in a somber gray shroud. Smoke clogged the air, and every breath scraped like claws in Elliel’s throat. Thon’s lean form was streaked with gray, his long hair clumped, his deep blue eyes swollen and red. Several times each day the ground rumbled, and they would scramble for shelter, holding on to great slabs of stone or thick tree trunks, until calm returned.

  “Something made the dragon stir beneath the mountains,” Thon said. “Is it a coincidence? Or did my awakening have some part in it?”

  “I don’t know the legends well enough,” she said. “I never believed them, but I do know that if I hadn’t saved you from inside Mount Vada, you’d be dead now.” She negotiated a path over fallen trees that blocked the road. “Who can answer questions about the fate of the world? We’ll help the people closer at hand … if anybody’s left in Scrabbleton.”

  They faced an impossible barricade of deadfall, huge trees that had tumbled down the slope to pile up across the path, mixed with dirt and rocks. Elliel looked at it in dismay, knowing it would take an hour for them to work their way down and around it to a safer path. “If I could ignite my ramer, I’d carve a path through that.”

  “Perhaps I have a way,” Thon said, looking perplexed and curious. He extended his hand, palm out. “Much like I cleared the rockfall in the mines.” He frowned, and his brow furrowed as he summoned magic. The fallen trees shifted, then splintered down the middle to create a pathway through the mound strewn with wood chips. “Move quickly,” he suggested as the remaining trees trembled, settling and shifting. “It does not seem to be very stable.”

  Impressed with his unmeasured powers, Elliel hurried through the deadfall and was relieved when she reached the other side. Thon followed, seeming intrigued by what he had done. They hurried onward.

  After two
days, they finally reached Scrabbleton again. By now, she and Thon were white spectral figures, like ghosts. Elliel groaned as she saw the rubble of the mining village. Scrabbleton was silent and somber. She heard the sound of rocks shifting, the clink of metal tools as desperate diggers worked rescue operations. A handful of exhausted people wielded picks. Their clothes were torn, their hands and knees bloody as they dug through the rubble that filled the tunnel openings.

  Elliel passed the wreckage of the remembrance shrine, where the people kept records of their families and friends. The shrine was now just a heap of charred planks and support beams. A couple of older women in gray skirts squatted in the wreckage, sifting through the remains to find scorched scraps of paper on which names were written. One held up a half-burned sheet. “Eleven names … but what about all the others? Their legacy is lost. No one can remember them now. They’re … gone.”

  They barely recognized the Brava woman and her wreth companion covered in ash. They got to their feet, brushed soot from their skirts. “You came back.”

  One of the women flashed a glance at Thon. “Is the wreth man here to save us, or finish the destruction?”

  Thon spread his hands. “I don’t know.”

  A gigantic mound of debris had buried the office shack of mine boss Hallis. The streams that had flowed down the mountainside were clogged with debris, leaving only puddles of undrinkable water, covered with a scum of sulfur. Vents of steam gasped out of broken slopes.

  Ahead, townspeople clustered around Shauvon’s inn, which miraculously remained standing. Part of the roof had been smashed by a boulder dropping out of the sky, but the rest of the building seemed solid.

  The innkeeper looked harried and haunted as he gave the survivors important work to do. “Two homes up in the box canyon were buried when a slope came down, and we haven’t had time to excavate. Upwin just came back from inspecting them, but it’s worth a second look. Someone might still be alive in there.”