by E. E. Knight
Mother looked out into the gloom of the cavern. “No! I’m faint with hunger, and the winter’s been so—”
Mother reached up with her long neck and put her mouth about a loose stalactite. She wrenched it free, and Wistala felt air move. “I hope you aren’t too big for this, my hatchlings. Auron, take your sisters and go to the surface. At once! Climb, my love, climb.” She shoved Wistala up the wall with her nose.
Wistala climbed toward the patch of shadow with the faintly new air flowing down from it.
Wistala looked down at the egg shelf, where chaos ruled. Jizara clung to Mother’s leg, all eyes and bristling scales and fluttering griff. Auron stood at the egg shelf, tail twitching, crest-shrouded eyes fixed on ranks of approaching mounds of metal and muscle, short-legged fellows with beards that glowed like fire. Had they drunk some latter-day dragonfire before charging into the cavern?
She almost lost her grip with her sii as she counted the numbers. Behind the dwarves, she saw what she took to be an exceptionally tall dwarf or broad man in black armor. The tall figure wore a winged helm and gestured with a broad-headed spear that sparked and glowed as though it had a life of its own. He pointed it toward the egg shelf, and dwarves bearing some kind of wood-and-metal contraption on their backs hurried up a broken stalagmite. With his other hand, he held the straining lines of a pack of hairy-backed dogs the size of ponies.
Mother, her head level with Wistala and imploring Jizara to release her grip, must have seen them, too. Wistala got a brief thought—Him! Gobold has sold us out!—before Mother reached down and picked Auron up by the base of his neck. She threw him into the air toward the hole. Auron twisted as he flew and struck next to Wistala at the opening. Wistala reached and held him as he found his grips. As he breathed, Auron’s ribs moved so fast, they were a blur.
Dwarven climbing poles struck the egg shelf with a klank!
“Climb! Auron, climb!” Mother called.
Jizara, we’re up here. Climb with us! Wistala thought, but her sister retreated behind Mother’s hindquarters as the first dwarf-helm appeared over the rim of the egg shelf. Jizara looked up at her, stupidly, not even recognizing her. Sister!
Scrring came the sound like an arrow in her ear. She saw blades flash silver in the lichen-light as they were drawn.
Auron drove his crest into her side, and the tenuous connection vanished. Wistala, up and away! came Mother’s last frantic thought, and with it a horrible, clawing fear that blinded and deafened. Wistala fled upward.
Ku! Ku! Kuuuuuu! came the war cries from below. The sound traveled through rock and ice.
Dead lichen, ice, and loose rock gave way, dropping onto Auron, who was following below. Vague flashes came through—Blood—spears—Wheel of Fire Drakossozh—Yellhounds! Jizara!
Death cries and madness pursued her up the shaft. Up she climbed, up until there were no more sounds echoing from below, up until sii and saa both burned and quivered and the hatchlings had to cling to each other with tail and mouth, up until blood-taste coated their tongues with each breath and the hammering in their neck hearts made their ears ache. Wistala pushed through bone and dead dry pine needles in utter darkness, no longer climbing but not walking either. The darkness unnerved her. Not even dragon eyes could pick out detail, and at every moment she feared the terrible sound of blades being drawn.
She fetched up against something cold and wet—an ice flow blocked the tunnel. She could still feel air moving from a crack at the top, a crack that could hardly fit her snout. What little remained of her ebbing strength vanished.
“Auron, we’re trapped,” she said, hardly able to get the words out. A last hope flickered: perhaps the dwarves and that tall wing-helmed man had been defeated. “We have to go back down. Perhaps Mother and Jizara—”
“No,” Auron said. Dully, she observed that he was hardly panting, though he moved stiffly. Of course, he was lighter, being scaleless. Auron sniffed at the clean, cold air coming in over the ice flow. “Fresh air. We’re almost there.”
“That’s why you don’t want to go back. Your thin hide—”
Auron shoved her aside. Her brother simply went mad. There was no other word for it. He began to pound the ice with his tail. Pieces, tiny pieces of ice compared to the mass, flaked off and slid down to the bones at the bottom of the tunnel. She wondered if this was the raging fighting fury that Mother said took over young drakes. He bit and clawed at the ice whenever he shifted position.
When his tail began to spray blood at each swipe, he spat at the ice. The spittle hissed as it struck, and it ran into fractures, raising a sharp odor of bat urine.
“Wistala, spit!”
“I’ve no fire yet—”
Excrement and excuses. It is melting the ice, she realized. She tried to squeeze her fire bladder behind her breastbone. Nothing.
“Spit, Wistala!”
“Can’t!”
Then she could see. A faint pink light came through the ice flow. It must be the light of the Upper World, the sun.
Two cracks ran up the ice flow, parallel and in a shape oddly reminiscent of the man with the spear’s winged helm. She pictured the helm at the base of the cracks—Something spasmed behind her breastbone, and she found she could spit. Found she could—she had no choice. Her tongue pressed itself against the roof of her mouth, and her jaw opened wide—
Out it came, until she felt as though her vertebrae from shoulder-pivot to tail-tip might be running up her neck and out her mouth. An orangish light filled the cave along with the acid smell, stronger than ever.
She collapsed, spent in an entirely new way.
Auron gathered himself, curled tight, and exploded toward the orange glow like a projectile from one of the dwarves’ war machines.
He broke through in a shower of yellow-white shards—
And disappeared straight over a ledge.
Wistala struck out from her shoulders, extended her neck even as his tail-tip whipped for a hold. She sank her teeth into it, tasted her brother’s blood in her mouth. His momentum dragged her forward, toward the ledge. Impossible distances stretched off in every direction, out, to either side.
Especially down. Her head went over.
A drop, a thousand times greater than that of the egg shelf, lay beneath. The vast distance seemed to reach up and touch her between the eyes. Her head swam. . . .
Her teeth, however, gripped all the tighter as her short legs found purchase. She arched her thick back, claws dug into ice, rock, and hardened snow, setting every haunch against her brother’s weight.
Auron found a grip, and his weight vanished. She didn’t release his tail, though, until he rolled beside her on the ledge.
The two hatchlings shivered against each other, panting in the thin air of the Upper World.
Chapter 5
Don’t think about this big, empty, howling chaos that is the Upper World, Wistala told herself for the beyond-countingeth time. Or how much you miss Mother, even her endless lessons. Or dwarves. Or eager, straining hounds. Don’t think beyond the next meal. Just find food, and then rest. Find food, and then rest.
They made it down the mountain, thanks to Auron. His light weight allowed him to test holds for her, and they’d come off the horrid, cold mountaintop and into a slightly less horrid, slightly less cold tree line, where Auron promptly scared away some feeding goats by leaping at them at first whiff. She had no luck hunting after that, and it was only after they developed a system where he’d drive game to her, or she to him, as his skin naturally changed color to match whatever he rested against, that they were able to eat.
Auron had a plan to find Father. She went along with it. Having a goal, “a star to fix on,” put hope in his hearts and stopped him from crying in his sleep at night. She listened, learned to find Susiron, the unchanging star, by following the nose-tip of the Bowing Dragon.
Wistala suspected that, small as they were, it was just a matter of time until something got them. The only question was what—and
where and when. At one point she thought Auron had died in the night, taken by the frigid wind on his scaleless skin, for when she woke, he was white and cold, until he stirred and she realized he’d just been mimicking the snow.
She hoped that as they traveled west around the shoulder of the mountain toward the main entrance to the cave—Auron had some idea of the topography, thanks to mind-pictures from Father—they’d find a quiet mountain lake where they could spend the coming spring and summer, feeding on frogs and fat bottom-sucking fish. Perhaps they could find a hollow log and enough muck to hide their smell. When one didn’t have a cave, one had to improvise. Without a safe refuge, it was only a matter of time before something got them.
“Quit saying that,” Auron said. “We’re doing all right. We’ve adapted to the Upper World, at least what we’ve seen of it.”
Auron trotted fearlessly through the Upper World, turning from brown to green to white as the surface he paused over changed. Wistala felt that every step she took was through an endless arena under thousands of eyes peeping at her from treetop and slidepile. Voices relayed what the eyes saw, berry-brained birds tittered about the hatchlings passing beneath, not caring a dead twig whose ears might hear of their movements.
Having every field mouse know of their passing bothered her.
Then there was the dirtiness of the Upper World. As she passed through thickets, pine needles and branches caught under her scales; pebbles had an uncanny knack for working themselves inward rather than out, resisting any but the most determined effort of tooth and tongue to extract them. She lost scales in pursuit of biting and stinging insects, stopping to probe and dig for them as Auron stamped impatiently. His leathery skin couldn’t turn arrows, but it kept out the flies admirably.
Then the storm hit. Winds screamed up from the southwest, pursued by lightning and thunder, more terrifying than ten thousand stamping dwarves on the march. They found shelter, if the notch between two boulders could be called shelter, and waited it out.
Auron talked her into trying the rainwater. Its clean taste seemed to clear her mind and wash away the thoughts of danger and doom. It was the first sensation in the Upper World she enjoyed. She stuck out her tongue and let the water run off the boulder, onto her tongue, and into her jowls, where it could be easily swallowed.
And—Sun-bless the Water Spirit—the rain washed her scales clean. She stretched and rippled and lifted her scales to the invigorating flow. Take that, sticky pine sap! Better luck next hatchling, blood-bugs! Even the faint sparking smell in the air from a nearby lightning strike gave her hearts new life.
The rain left the valleys to the south and west clear; individual branches stood out in the storm-washed air. Anything was possible. Finding Father, even. Then the dwarves would taste their own blood and tears.
The rain slackened, and the hatchlings found plentiful soft worms driven to the surface by the moisture. Auron tried to snap his up, but Wistala found that they went down faster and easier if one simply inhaled with one’s lips tight around the worm. Auron thumped his tail in appreciation as she showed him the trick.
“Clever,” Auron said, giving a faint prrum. “You know how to find a meal’s weak spot.”
“Father will boil those dwarves in their own skin,” she said, more of a mind for vengeance than compliments.
“To do that, he’d have to dig them out of their own holes,” Auron said. “I have a mind-picture of a dwarf fortress from Father. It’s all sheer rocks and towers and gates and arrow-slits.”
“Father shared more with you.”
“And Mother more with you.”
“Think of it. Think hard. I’ll try.”
Auron’s eyes screwed up in concentration. Wistala got a flash or two, grim towers around a mountain lake, an overhanging rock, a pounding sound, craft on the lake like water beetles—and then it left.
“Now it’s going fuzzy,” Auron said.
“Stop trying. I got some of it. Who are they?”
“They’re some dwarves Father saw at some point. To the north of the cave.”
“Dragons must kill them one day. Or they’ll come into other caves.”
“The only day we can count on is today,” he said.
She nuzzled her brother. She’d never felt this close to Jizara, and even Mother had been more presence than person. Perhaps it was the way they depended on each other.
She settled down next to Auron as he made himself miserable and tore up the turf with his sii. She formed a resolve—perhaps a silly one, with her being so young, but she would grow, and the resolve would not die unless she let it. Auron would have to take care of their line. She’d protect the lines of others:
And for those who threaten our ancient fame,
To feel the wrath of dragon-dame.
The horse smell the next day made Wistala hungry. But they weren’t wild horses. They came with blankets and saddles and lines and other accoutrements of the hominids. She also smelled a cold fire, which could only mean hominids—dragonflame, even old, had a greasy smell. Auron counted better than thirty horses in a high meadow, and they decided to climb to avoid the chance of running across sharp-eyed elves in the mountainside forest.
By Auron’s calculation, they were on the same part of the mountain as the western entrance Father used. They moved, taking extra care, staying low behind brush or fallen timber. That approach limited their vision of the landscape, but more important, it also limited their enemies’. As the sun set, they crossed another high meadow, bellies tight to cool earth.
“Nearly there, Tala,” Auron said when she tired. “See that point of rock? Like a claw held out? The cave mouth’s just on the other side.”
Wistala saw Father first, high to the north, his bronze scales shimmering in the sun.
“Auron! Auron . . . look,” she gasped.
With limp four-leggeds clutched in his sii, Father tipped his wings and began to descend, floating down through the air like water feeding into a cavern crack.
Auron let out a glad cry and leaped away, dashing for the stone prominence. Wistala stood and waved her neck, trying to catch Father’s eye, but the dragon kept his head to the dangerous dark just inside the cave mouth, examining his landing spot from a variety of altitudes and angles. Why wouldn’t he just look round?
She caught up to Auron in time to see him sag against the outcropping, neck and tail drooping.
“Father didn’t see me.”
Wistala choked back a wail.
The cave mouth showed signs of ancient construction, ruined battlements and cracked towers about wide creeper-hung mouth. Father must have considerable flying skill to land inside without disturbing the overgrowth.
Spilled rock covered the whole mountainside beneath the cave mouth. Moss grew thick out of the wind between the rocks.
Betrayed! The Wheel of Fire!
The power of Father’s mind sent a shudder down her long spine. Not so precisely modulated as Mother’s mind-speech, Father’s was all emotion and imagery. Auron’s mind-picture of the dwarf hold, though this time as clear and painful as naked sunlight, burned into her brain. A roar she felt through the rock as much as she heard emerged from the cave, as though the mountain itself were screaming from its broken-toothed mouth.
After the roar came the dwarven battle cry she’d heard before: Ku! Ku! Kuuuuu!
Father’s pain and need came through to her, as hard and bright as his gemstones they’d thoughtlessly gobbled. She felt wounds as Father emerged, a dwarf with legs set tight against his neck, hacking at Father’s scaly spine with a bloody ax as though trying to cut a tree dodging out of the way.
Off, off my back, you klut!
Wistala could feel the dwarf on her back, winced at the blows. She threw herself off the rock, rolled in the meadow as battle horns blew in the valley below.
“Above you!” Auron shouted in a voice louder than she’d have given him credit for. Then Auron, too, gave in to Father’s pain, and he rolled himself into a ball.
Flee!
She saw Father flapping north, plucking spears from his hide, got another flash of the dwarf halls around the lake. He couldn’t mean to go into battle again!
In the valley below, from hiding places in the mossy rocks, elven heads watched him go.
“Wistala, lie flat!” The words came fast as Auron told her to let him lead the elves away. She would go north and find Father.
Her hearts almost ceased beating at the thought of her brother leaving her. “Blades and raids, let’s run. I want us to be with each other, no matter what.”
“One of us has to make it, Wistala. You hunt better than I. You have a chance of making it alone in the wilderness.”
“I don’t know the way!”
“Follow the mountains north. You can’t miss this lake—it’s on this side of the mountains and very big.” He gave her his fuzzy mind-picture again, but it didn’t matter. She’d never make it—
Auron touched her nose, managed a choking prrum as he pushed her into a crevice.
He listened to the hoofbeats of the approaching elves. “Go to Father. Follow the Bowing Dragon. Follow Susiron. Father is there!”
“Auron, I can’t—”
“Yes, you can. Don’t waste time.”
Auron hurried into the meadow, in the open for everyone to see. High above, wheeling hawks altered course and moved to fly over him. They cried out, and were answered by horns from the valley.
He can’t be leaving! He can’t he can’t he can’t . . .
She called to him with her mind, called him brave and good and sent all the love she couldn’t find words for, reaching to touch his mind if not his soft gray skin.
“Good-bye, sister.”
He’d never called her sister before.
He never would again.
Wistala cried, alone, and not one living thing in the Upper World cared.
Chapter 6
Darkness settled on the mountainside before Wistala moved again. All the time she waited, she had to choke back little peeping hatchling cries. A day ago, she would have put her neck on an oath that she couldn’t keen like a still-wet hatchling anymore, but the sight of her brother leading the elves away from her and to his doom brought the sound—whether she liked it or not.