Translator was back, a fat iron key in his paw. “Hurry, hurry,” he said as he unlocked the cage and swung the door wide.
The fur was literally flying in the middle of the compound as the two cats fought for leadership, but it was clear that whoever won, I was just going to end up so many steaks in the fridge. I ran after Translator to a little cave in the base of the cliff.
“What’s in there?” I asked him, panting.
“My study.”
I had to duck to get inside. The low-ceilinged space was even smaller than my cage, with grass mats on the floor and a one-row bookshelf with four more of Translator’s handmade books.
“I will stand guard,” Translator told me, seating himself in the cave’s entrance. We were safe, at least for the time being. Safe, but trapped.
Chapter 42: Reclaiming the Realm
Davix, stunned into immobility, stared all around at the corpses of the mixed beings, many of whom he’d known his whole life. Up on the stage, Korda dropped to her knees, the knife deep in her shoulder, a growing bloodstain colouring the ceremonial robe. With sweat pouring from her brow, she crawled to the front of the stage and half rose, pushing the hair from her eyes.
“Defence of Realm, arm yourselves!” she shouted hoarsely. “Deputies, gather your squadrons and chase these stinking cats from the Citadel!” The brindle cat looked around, weighing the sudden shift in power, and called out orders in the Tongue of Air. Every cat in the courtyard followed him up and over the walls.
Grav’nan-dahé ran up the steps, followed by a physician who hurried to aid Korda. The Prime Magistrate shouted into the courtyard in his preacher’s voice.
“People of the Realm, seek shelter in the bunkers! Protect the children and the elderly!” He looked down at Davix. “Go, help move your master and the other patients in the healing tent.” Davix hurried to obey.
The People were frightened as they scurried into the barracks, but Davix knew he wasn’t alone in feeling real hope for the first time in days. Still, the mixed beings dead? Another realm attacking for the first time in hundreds of cycles? It was hard to believe anything could ever return to normal.
The cats regrouped to attack at nightfall. But Defence of Realm was ready for them. They successfully repelled the attackers, killing two.
At dawn, Davix followed Grav’nan-dahé up into the foggy daylight where they found Korda, her shoulder bandaged and her arm in a sling, in weary conference with her deputies, including Stakrat.
“I doubt we’ll hear from those animals while the sun is up,” she told them. “Even so, I want the People to stay underground today.”
“Agreed,” said Grav’nan-dahé. “But we are not safe as long as a dragon of Air remains in the Realm.”
“It’s worse than that,” Korda said. “If Zishun could be believed, the strands to the Realm of Air are fully restored. If we can’t shut them down, more cats and probably more dragons will come.”
The Prime Magistrate asked, “How can we break the strands?”
“I don’t know. Without access to the DragonLaw, we can’t read any relevant history. Someone among the People will probably have an idea.” She looked up at the sky, shining weakly through the fog. “I must eat. Stakrat, I want you to rest until third bell.”
Stakrat stood taller. “I’m fine, Korda. You’re the one who was injured. I’ll stay with you.”
“That’s an order. You’re useless to me if you’re exhausted. Davix, find a quiet cot where your friend can sleep.”
The two apprentices walked together in silence, until Stakrat finally said, “Are we still friends?”
“I don’t know,” Davix conceded. “My thoughts of you weren’t kind when I was a prisoner in the tower.”
“You know I had no choice. I’m a soldier.”
“You don’t need to remind me.”
“Please, Davix,” she said, her voice growing throaty. “With all we’ve lost, I couldn’t bear losing you, too.” Her words made his heart ache. “It wasn’t me who told the guard where they could find you. It was Grentz.” Davix winced. “He thought he was doing the right thing.”
Davix stopped walking and closed his eyes. He had never known this feeling before—sorrow and anger and desolation, swirling together in a gale so strong, it threatened to knock him to the ground. It finally passed, leaving only fatigue. He turned to Stakrat.
“I don’t care what Grentz did. Or what you did,” he said. “Everything in my life was already upside down, even before my arrest and this awful war. I’ve changed, Stakrat.”
“Changed how?”
He sighed. “I thought I understood the world and my place in it. Atmospherics made me useful. The DragonLaw gave me purpose. I was so sure before.”
“Before?”
“Before Rinby died…and before the Dragon Groom came to our realm. He smashed my certainty. He broke the shell I had built around myself, and everything spilled out in chaos. At first, it only felt like a terrible loss. But then I realized, with the shell broken, the light could finally come in.”
“So, isn’t that good?”
“Good? I’m undone, Stakrat! What does this new life mean if X’risp’hin is gone?” Davix felt himself dissolve, the tears bursting from him with a harsh, guttural bark of pain. Stakrat held him until he calmed down. Through his exhaustion, he remembered his task. Davix took her hand and led her to the nearest bunker entrance.
Before they could descend, the alarm horn sounded.
“From the anti-spinward sky!” a guard on the walls cried. Stakrat jumped in front of Davix, knife drawn, eyes tracking upward. Davix expected the return of the terrible Air dragon, or maybe all twenty-two come to destroy them in a final assault. But that’s not what flew up over the walls of the Citadel. Appearing like a dream, beautiful and strange, were seven winged horses. They broke formation as they descended, landing in a clatter of hooves, breathing hard, damp with sweat and dew. Brown, black, piebald, white—each was uniquely lovely, in equal parts muscular and graceful. With brays and whinnies, they pawed the ground, shaking out their magnificent, leathery wings and then folding them on their backs.
The people had heard of the sky steeds of Farad’hil, but none had ever seen one. But as marvellous as the beasts were, they were still horses, and the stablekeepers knew to wipe them down, to feed and water them. In a pouch hanging from the lead steed’s saddle, one of the grooms found the special grace book.
Grav’nan-dahé had taken over Zishun’s desk, and there he opened the book. Davix and the assembled masters arrayed themselves around him and leaned in closer. On the first page, in calligraphy almost too elegant to read, were the words GREETINGS FROM FARAD’HIL. THE KINGSOLVER REACHED US. DESCRIBE THE SITUATION IN CLIFFSIDE.
Grav’nan-dahé did as instructed. The People are again in control of the city. Do I have the honour of addressing Great Renrit?
As he wrote, the jewel on the cover winked on and off until Grav’nan-dahé’s message faded into the paper to be replaced by more of the beautiful text.
INDEED, THAT HONOUR IS YOURS. THE OTHER DRAGONS WILL JOIN ME SHORTLY.
What happened to the mixed beings? Grav’nan-dahé wrote on the next blank page.
THEY WERE TERMINATED BY INBY WHEN THEIR DEFECTS BECAME KNOWN TO US.
The masters and Davix straightened in shock as the meaning of the words sank in. The Dragon Lords had killed all the mixed beings. With the blink of a crystal in one of Lord Inby’s mighty machines, the individuals they had always known and counted on, the nearest most ever came to standing before a dragon, were all dead. For the first time in his life, Davix felt doubt in the beneficence of the Dragon Lords. They were the saviours of the People and maintained the balance and beauty of the realm, but theirs was the power of life and death, a power
they could wield with frightening nonchalance.
Grav’nan-dahé alone remained focussed on the grace book. He turned to a blank page, but before he could write any question, Renrit’s next message appeared:
YOU MUST FLY SOME OF THE PEOPLE TO FARAD’HIL IMMEDIATELY. WE FIND IT DIFFICULT TO PERFORM OUR HOLY DUTIES WITHOUT SUPPORT. WE ARE ESPECIALLY IN NEED OF COOKS AND CLEANERS.
“No,” Korda said. “We must find the stronghold of Air in the Chend’th’nif. We don’t have time to fly to Farad’hil first.” Davix wanted to cheer. Flying off to challenge the Air dragon also meant flying to X’risp’hin’s rescue.
The Prime Magistrate was less impressed. “I am sure the Great Ones have taken these concerns into consideration.”
“No offence, Grav’nan-dahé, but the dragons are locked away in their mountain, with the grace books dark. They have been blind to the outside world. Does Great Renrit even know where we may find the breach that powers the strands?”
Davix blurted out, “Wait, yes, he does know.” He hadn’t asked permission to speak, and the Prime Magistrate was clearly irritated, but Davix had caught the spirit of Korda’s directness. “Rinby made rough calculations of the coordinates in the margins of her secret data. I copied them into the grace book.”
Renrit confirmed this. In fact, they had replicated Rinby’s work and produced a more precise calculation.
THE RIFT WILL BE LOCATED AT THE BASE OF THE MOUNTAIN KNOWN AS THE “RED HAMMER,” DIRECTLY ADJACENT TO THE BADLANDS.
Korda placed her hands on the table and leaned closer to the Prime Magistrate. “Grav’nan-dahé, please apologize to the Five, but we must use their sky steeds to mount an attack on the stronghold of Air.”
Lok’lok-sur-nep-dahé, his voice full of agitation, said, “But we have been ordered to serve our lords! They are hungry!”
Grav’nan-dahé banged a fist on the desk. “Silence. I have made my decision. Four of the horses will fly to Farad’hil, three to the Chend’th’nif.” Davix alone might have realized how much it cost Grav’nan-dahé to deviate at all from the Dragons’ command.
With some kind of nascent plans in place, excitement spread through the group. Grav’nan-dahé wrote their decision in the grace book, and amazingly, Renrit and whatever dragons were with him agreed.
THOUGH WE DO NOT JOIN YOU IN BATTLE, KNOW THAT OUR PRIDE IN YOU IS WITHOUT COMPARE. BELOW, FIND THE EXACT COORDINATES OF THE RIFT AND AN OPTIMAL FLIGHT PATH. YOU WILL FLY TODAY, LED BY THE QUADRANA TIQOKH.
“But,” stammered Krenlin-etnep-bor-dahé, “all the mixed beings are dead.”
“Not I,” Tiqokh replied, and they all turned to see him land gracefully on the stones of the square, folding his new wings on his back. “I remain. And I remain loyal.”
Chapter 43: Siege
I awoke on the second morning in the cave with my stomach rumbling, sore and cold from sleeping on the damp ground. I wished I could sleep some more and not have to face the misery of our situation. A single torchstone lit our refuge. I already knew every bump and crack in the rock that surrounded us, and I had a complete mental inventory of every object in the cave: Translator’s four bound volumes, his notebook, pen, bottle of ink, the cage’s iron key, the almost empty sack of mystery-meat jerky, and the equally diminished barrel of rusty water.
Translator was awake, sitting in the front entrance of the cave, sharpening his improvised spear. He spent all his time near that entrance, slept there—probably badly—alert for attacks by his nasty comrades.
The other three cats had spent the first hours after we ran underground trying to convince him to come out and give me up. Sometimes they promised to just keep holding me hostage, and sometimes they tempted Translator with an invigorating human hunt followed by yummy barbecue. I have no idea how tempted he was, but he kept refusing even when their cajoling tones turned hostile. I know all this because he translated a lot of it for me. Maybe that’s the main reason I believed he was on my side.
They tried attacking a couple of times, but they couldn’t get past Translator’s spear in the narrow entrance. Just to clarify, I was pressed up against the back wall during these attacks, whimpering and struggling not to piss myself as claws and fur and bone-chilling snarls filled the air. But my tortoiseshell cellmate could keep us safe as long as he stayed alert.
In between cat attacks, we spent a lot of the time discussing the Tongue of Fire. We were both of us student and teacher, him giving me insights into the history and grammar of the language, me supplying him a lot of new words he dutifully copied into his notebook. He had a theory that the tongues of the various realms had a common lineage, from the time before the realms separated from Earth. As school went, it was more interesting than usual, but I preferred talking to him about our lives, our families.
“Kras-pa-han, our situation is dire. I may never see my wife and kits again. Thinking of them fills me with despair and weakens my resolve.”
“You don’t know. We could still get out of this.” I wasn’t sure if I was saying that for his sake or mine. This was the third day of the siege, and I could feel hopelessness setting in.
“You should eat the last piece of jerky,” I told him, a level of self-sacrifice I didn’t know I had in me. “You’re the one protecting us.”
I handed him the dry, brown hunk which, under normal circumstances would have been highly unappealing. He tore off two-thirds for himself, and I gratefully ate the rest.
“I’m more worried about our water,” he said, betraying no emotion.
“What do we do when it runs out?”
He changed the subject, and I didn’t object. “We have not talked about the Tongue of Earth. Is it difficult to pronounce?”
“It’s not so simple,” I said. “There’s something like six thousand languages in the world. And sometimes there’s more than one way of speaking the same language. Like, I speak North American English, not British English.”
He considered this. “In the Realm of Air, we have but one goal: that our Dragon Lords conquer all of creation. For that, we need a common tongue. In a world of six thousand languages, are there an equal number of competing goals? Your world must be constantly at war with itself.”
It was hard to argue with the insight.
Translator gave me an easier question to answer. “Is inglish the only Earth language you speak?”
“Pretty much.”
“What words would you use to describe me in inglish?”
I grinned. “Oh, definitely bad-ass. And moody.”
“I am a bad-ass moody,” he ventured.
“Other way around, but for sure.”
We got quiet again, each of us lost in his own thoughts. Cats came to the door sometimes, but Translator had stopped talking to them. He wouldn’t answer me either the next time I tried to start up a conversation. He had gone inside himself, and it frightened me.
After what seemed like hours, he announced, “I will attack.” He said it without any excitement, like calling in a pizza order.
I sat up abruptly. “What do you mean? You can’t fight all three of them. We’ll both be killed!”
“Our situation will not improve. Either I will be caught unawares in an attack as I grow weaker, or we will die for lack of water. I must take my chances in battle.”
I wanted to tell him he wasn’t a fighter, but I knew that would be an insult. I tried to prepare myself. We were probably about to die, but at least something was finally going to happen. Translator started flexing his muscles, cracking his neck, and checking the point of his spear. He was very methodical.
“Hand me the second volume on the bookshelf,” he said, and I wondered how this played into his strategy. “This book is a treatise on the use of infixes in the Tongue of Fire. Of all my writing, I’m most proud of this. I hope it lives on even if I do not.”
He put down the book and coiled himself at the entrance of the tunnel, ready to pounce. You didn’t say goodbye to me, I thought. Translator sprang from the cave.
Immediately I heard howls of feline outrage, the sound of a high cry, and something toppling over with a bang. My heart was pounding, and I couldn’t sit still. I grabbed the empty water container—a lidless cube of clay—and lifted it over my head, ready to brain any cat that entered. It wasn’t long before the black-and-white pushed his head and shoulders through the door, his mohawk springing up to brush the ceiling.
“Khssssssss-ffaaaff,” he told me with a sick, toothy grin.
“Your mama plays with balls of yarn, asshole!” I screamed back, swinging the water container. He dodged it effortlessly and climbed farther in.
Another scream outside. More shouts and commotion than three squabbling felines could possibly make. Black-and-white must have agreed with this assessment because he paused, ears twitching, and started pulling himself backward from the cave. But just before his grotesque fright mask of a face disappeared, the eyes went wide. His paws flexed wide and he coughed a spitball of blood into my face before collapsing dead.
“Dragon Groom!” came a cry from outside. Someone was pulling the dead cat out of the entrance of the cave, and a moment later, the mask of horror was replaced by Stakrat’s sweet and sweaty face.
I crawled out into the fresh air, standing for the first time in days, and surveyed the scene. The black-and-white cat lay at my feet, three arrows in its back. The calico cat lay on a pile of broken rocks, its neck clearly broken. Above it, on the ledge overlooking the camp, was Tiqokh…and he had frickin’ wings! And in the middle of the compound stood Translator, his spear piercing the throat of the striped tabby, whose blood stained the stony ground.
Two guards from Defence of Realm had arrows notched in their bows, pointed at Translator.
“You will lower your spear and drop to your knees,” shouted Korda, standing behind them, one arm in a sling. Translator didn’t answer. He stood, panting heavily, looking down at the cat he’d killed. Korda shook her head. “He doesn’t understand. Archers, prepare to fire.”
The Dubious Gift of Dragon Blood Page 30