The Tropic of Serpents: A Memoir by Lady Trent (A Natural History of Dragons)

by Marie Brennan

  While we did this work, Faj Rawango scouted the river. He soon returned with good news. “If you can cross the Hembi,” he said, “and come at the falls along the spit of land between it and the Gaomomo, I think you will be almost directly above your island.”

  “That sounds ideal,” I said. “I would prefer not to have to glide along the waterfall any farther than I must, as the air currents there are likely to be unpredictable.” (We had, in those days, a general sense that air currents were relevant to flight; the specifics had not yet been tested with anything more complicated than a kite. If they had … but it is quite useless to second-guess my own actions at this late date.)

  To cross the Hembi, I would need some sort of vessel. Faj Rawango accordingly went out again, and while he was gone, I held my final conference with Tom and Natalie.

  “There’s a good vantage point a mile or so back,” Tom said. “We’ll watch from there—though to be honest, it will make no difference one way or another.”

  A born gentleman would not have shown his nerves at the thought of what I faced. I was glad Thomas Wilker was not a born gentleman; it made me less ashamed about the storm of sparklings dancing in my stomach. “I will feel better for knowing you are watching,” I said, and shook his hand.

  Natalie embraced me. She had been all efficient concentration during the building of the glider, but with that task done, she had nothing to distract her from the situation. “I think the design is good,” she said into my shoulder, “but if it is not—”

  “I have every confidence,” I told her. “Come, though—we must give my conveyance a name. What shall we call it?”

  A dozen possibilities fluttered through my mind as I said that. I had named my son after his father, but to call a glider after them both seemed a bit much. Greenie, after my beloved sparkling trophy? Ankumata, in an attempt to flatter the oba, or alternatively Lord Hilford? Draconean, in honour of the ancient civilization?

  Tom made a sound I had never heard from him before, which I can only call a gurgle, as if he almost swallowed his tongue laughing. “Furcula,” he said.

  I had related the story while we built the glider, of how I dissected a dove in my childhood to discover the purpose of a wishbone. “It is vital to flight,” I admitted. “And if it breaks, well, that is supposed to make my wish come true. Furcula it shall be!”

  * * *

  And so it was that, with the wondrous Furcula in two pieces athwart my lap, I came to be rowed across the Hembi River near the border of Bayembe, for the purpose of flinging myself over a waterfall.

  Faj Rawango rowed the small boat, and studied me with an unblinking gaze as he did so. “What is it?” I asked, when I could bear the silence no more.

  He did not answer immediately, to the point where I thought he might not do so at all. At last he said, “You could have gotten eggs more easily than this.”

  “Perhaps,” I said, after some reflection. “We still know nothing about dragon mating: when it happens, where eggs are laid, even how to tell a female swamp-wyrm from a male. I would have had to go searching. That would have upset the Moulish, possibly to the point of violence—which is a different sort of cost, and one I am not eager to pay. And then there are other things I would not have learned. They may not be entirely relevant to natural history; tree-bridges, for example, are not directly concerned with dragons, but rather with how humans coexist with them. That is, however, something I am interested in knowing. As is this priesthood, or whatever term I should use for it, that Yeyuama belongs to. So perhaps I pay in difficulty, but I believe I gain more than enough in return.”

  Faj Rawango pulled steadily on the oars, not taking his eyes off me. “You do not do this for them.”

  The Moulish. In all honesty, it took me a moment of thinking to understand what he meant. Some years later—after stories of my exploits aboard the Basilisk began to filter back home, and the outrage over my Erigan deeds had faded somewhat—there were those in Scirland who romanticized me as some kind of champion of the Moulish, nobly aiding them with no desire for my own gain. This is entirely false, and I cannot decide if its falsity is too flattering to me, or perversely insulting, to myself and the Moulish both. One could imagine that I approached my research the way I did out of respect for our hosts and their traditions, but insofar as that is true, I cannot claim credit for it. It was the accidental consequence of my true reasoning, which was concerned with how to achieve the best results with a minimum of fuss. Flinging myself off a waterfall was, in my ledger, less fuss than Velloin’s approach; that is as noble as I can claim to have been.

  We were nearly to the far bank of the Hembi. The Moulish had not been on my mind, not in that fashion, but now Faj Rawango had put them there, reminding me of a conversation in Vystrana years ago, about what good our expedition could do for the people of Drustanev. This time we had done better; we had not held ourselves aloof from those around us, but had assisted in their daily work, contributing where we could in repayment for their hospitality. Still, it was not as much as we might have done.

  Now was hardly the time to be thinking about such matters, when I needed all my concentration for the task of not dying. I said to Faj Rawango, “I hope I have at the very least not been detrimental to our hosts. But if you know of any way I can be more beneficial to them—”

  The prow of the boat scraped against the bank. Faj Rawango did not answer me. It was, I think, not his place; I was asking about the Moulish, and although they were his father’s people, they were not his own. Furthermore, the point was not so much to effect a trade, wherein I gave them a particular thing in exchange for what I had received thus far, and would receive in the future. The point was to make me think about the question.

  I did not intend to think about it right then, not when I had more immediately perilous concerns at hand. But as I turned to brace myself against the boat’s edge and step out, I swept my gaze across the long, shallow valley where the three rivers came together, just to reassure myself the Ikwunde were not even now sneaking a raiding party across.

  They were not. The waters here were too treacherous to make a good crossing, and the close spacing of the rivers meant they could too easily be caught with their forces strung out in a vulnerable line. But as those thoughts went through my mind, I remembered something I had heard Natalie say.

  The Royal Engineers were planning a dam, somewhere in the west.

  I knew the geography of Bayembe passably well by now. More than well enough to be certain that there was only one part of the country with a river that might usefully be dammed, and that was this western region, the border with Eremmo.

  Speculation froze me where I stood, with one foot in the boat and one on the bank. They could try to dam the Hembi—but if they did so anywhere in this valley, it would spill over into the nearby Gaomomo and Girama, with very little profit to anyone.

  If one were to dam all three rivers, though …

  Faj Rawango said something to me, but I did not hear it. My mind was racing across the landscape, wishing desperately that I had one of those survey maps on hand, or that Natalie were there to answer a few questions. Could all three rivers be dammed? And what would happen if they were?

  It would create an enormous, shallow lake all through this valley. One which the Ikwunde would find much more difficult to cross than these three rivers; they would need a fleet of boats, or else—if the lake stretched far enough—they would be forced up into the western hills, which offered difficulties of their own. Provided the thing could be built (which would be easier said than done, with the Ikwunde making forays into the area), it might substantially improve the defensibility of this border. Had Galinke not said something about that, when we were in the agban? And with the water turbines Natalie had been so excited about, it could supply power for a number of industrial purposes, which I was sure would be very useful to our commercial interests here.

  But what would it do to the swamp below?

  I turned, staggeri
ng a little as the boat shifted beneath my foot, and looked toward the Great Cataract. I was no engineer; some of the ideas that went through my mind then were utterly false. (The dam would not, for example, cut off all water to the Green Hell; it must perforce allow the rivers through eventually.) But I was correct in my basic assumption, which was that a dam would interfere with the flow of the water, and that would, in turn, have untold consequences for the creatures and people of Mouleen.

  By then Faj Rawango had stood and reached for my arm. “Are you all right?” he said, awkward in his concern. “If you do not wish to do this … I’m sure there’s another way.”

  He thought I was paralyzed by my impending doom. “No, that isn’t it,” I said, then belatedly added, “Thank you.” I finished disembarking and bent to retrieve the pieces of the Furcula out of the boat; they were light enough that it was easy to carry one in each hand. “But please do me a favor. Ask Natalie whether those engineers were talking about building a dam here.”

  Whether they had admitted it to her or not, I was convinced that was their intent. If memory served, Lord Hilford had said something about an attack on the Royal Engineers in this area. This might also explain what Sir Adam had meant, the night we dined at Point Miriam; he had said something about how the Green Hell might not always defend Bayembe. Oh, he knew what this would do—I was certain of it. Certain, and seething mad, that he would dismiss the “backwater” as an unimportant casualty in pursuit of this goal.

  It seemed Faj Rawango knew nothing of such plans; he frowned in puzzlement, but nodded. Then he handed me my small, waterproof bundle, which I strapped to my back. It held a notebook and pencils, a bottle of water and a few strips of dried meat, a coil of rope, a penknife, and bandages with which to strap up any joints I might sprain along the way. A few other small odds and ends. They would, I hoped, be enough.

  Faj Rawango blessed me in the Yembe fashion, which I acknowledged with gratitude. They say there are no atheists in war; I tell you that pantheists abound at the edge of a cliff. I would have taken the blessing of any god I could get.

  Then there was nothing left to say. I put the dam out of my mind; it should have been difficult, but preparing to risk one’s life concentrates the mind wonderfully. Natalie had a letter in her pack, addressed to my son, in case I should not survive this. Jacob was too young to read it, or even to understand its meaning if someone else read it to him, but the words needed to be set down for posterity. (His posterity, not that of the world; I will not share its contents with you here.)

  I hesitated: this was my last chance to turn back. Then, with what I hoped looked like a decisive nod, I left Faj Rawango and walked toward the edge of the cliff.

  Rocks broke the smooth flow of the water here, making treacherous rapids no boat could approach. Now that I was atop the cliff, I could see those rocks went very near to the edge—no, all the way to it; there was a perch from which I could survey the (vertical) terrain. Leaving the wings of the Furcula on the ground with my bundle to pin them in place, I went to see what I faced.

  From the ground, the mist of the falling water had been an exquisite thing, veiling the cataract in rainbows and mystery. From here, it veiled the ground instead—which was a mercy. I had vertigo regardless, the world reeling around me as I gazed over the cliff. But it did not reel so badly that I failed to find the island for which I aimed.

  It was not so far away. In fact, from here it looked quite different: not so much hovering as dangling, as a pendant dangles from its chain. The chain on the far side was broken, inasmuch as I could see through the thunderous mist, but a rough string of rocks, some of them overgrown with vegetation, appeared to lead from my perch down to not very far above the island’s surface. Was this how the Moulish made their own journey?

  (In fact it was not. But I will not tell you how they did it, for I do not want hordes of curiosity-seekers to try that path for themselves. Suffice it to say that their way is far easier than my own—which accounts for Yeyuama’s willingness to permit me some assistance. Fortunately, few people are reckless enough to imitate what I am about to detail.)

  This presented me with an interesting choice. The intent had been to fly the Furcula down to the island, and then to fly a second time from the island to the swamp below. But that, of course, was to commit myself to the hazard twice, and furthermore to do so when my first jump, of necessity, must be the more difficult of the two. The wind whipped about me quite strongly, and my target was small. It seemed I had another option, however, which was to try to climb down by terrestrial means, and then to use the Furcula for the second, and much easier, stage.

  Of course this had its own hazards. The rocks were wet with spray. I must climb with the two pieces of the glider strapped to my back, which would not be easy; they might act as a sail to carry me off. I could not even be certain that the path I thought I saw would take me all the way; it might prove more broken than it seemed from this angle.

  But with a choice between those perils and the ones attendant upon flinging myself from the cliff, I found my answer was clear.

  The first part of the descent was relatively easy, save that I had to watch the edges of the glider’s wings, lest I damage them against the stone. (The dragonbone, of course, would survive any knock I might give it; the bindings and canvas, however, might not.) The stones were indeed slick beneath my hands, but there were also pockets of dirt and small plants; for a wonder, none of them were thorned, nor occupied by anything worse than a confused beetle or two. I had to make a sideways traverse that was worryingly narrow, and the wind was indeed tugging at my unused wings, but the difficulty grew the closer I came to the island.

  I will not pretend I navigated this challenge with aplomb. My heart was racing, my hands cramping with tension, and I knew that the mist was a blessing; without it I might have seen exactly what awaited me if I fell. As it was, I kept my gaze glued to the rock no more than a few feet away. Unfortunately, I could not do so forever: there came a point where my so-called path ended, and I was not yet at the island.

  From above, it had looked complete. As I had feared, however, the view had been deceptive. The path brought me laterally to the island, but not vertically. I stood above it, with no easy way to close the gap.

  Evaluating this required me to look down, which promptly rendered me certain that my foot would slip, the wind would seize me, the very stone would fling me off. I clutched the cliff face as if it were the dearest thing to me in the world; indeed, at that moment no thing could have been dearer. But I could not stay there: one way or another, I had to move.

  To go up would be as hazardous as coming down had been, with a flight still waiting at the end of it, and my body exhausted by this trial. Would the others see me, and send Faj Rawango back?

  The alternative was no safer. I had a coil of rope wrapped about my body, and Jacob had taught me to abseil in Vystrana. Even presuming I could do so again, however, it would cost me my rope; I could not untie it once I was at the bottom. And to try abseiling with my bundle and wings strapped to my back …

  I am a scientist, and fond of thinking matters through in a rational fashion. On some occasions, however, rational thought is not one’s friend. Before I could weigh the circumstances in great detail, I edged back along my path, to a space where a larger outcropping gave me a bit of safety to move.

  There I unstrapped my wings (nearly losing one to a gust of wind) and my bundle, tying them together with my belt. This achieved, I went back to the end of my pseudo-path and, hoping with all my might that I was not committing an act of abject stupidity, dropped them over the precipice. They tumbled a bit in the air, but landed on the island as I had hoped. Whether they had been damaged in the fall would remain to be seen: first I must try not to damage myself.

  I had kept my coil of rope, which I fixed about a stone, blessing Tom and Mekeesawa for teaching me knots during my time in the swamp. There was no time for questioning whether the rope might slip, or my weight pull th
e stone loose; such questioning would only paralyze me. I wrapped the rope around my body as Jacob had taught me, and committed myself to the void.

  It was not like abseiling in Vystrana. Here there was mist, which softened my hands and made the rope burn them unmercifully; here there was also an unpredictable wind that tried to spin me about like a top. I cracked not only my knees against the wall but also my shins, my hips, my shoulders, my elbows—every part of me, including my head, though fortunately that blow was glancing. I felt I had gone a hundred meters, but I was not yet at the island; I dared not let myself look down to see how much farther I had to go.

  As a consequence, the ground beneath my dangling left foot took me by surprise, and I thumped onto my posterior when my grip loosened for an instant. Fortunately the rope, wrapped about my body, kept me from rolling off the nearby edge, which I might otherwise have done.

  Some minutes passed before I could force my mind to work again, and more before I could persuade my body to unwrap itself and crawl away from that edge.

  But I had done it—half of it, at least. I was on the island.

  Not without damage. I was bruised and scraped, and my wings, when I collected them, had suffered three small ruptures in the canvas. I had needle and waxed cord with which to repair that, however, and they were (I hoped) not large enough to endanger me. I was not eager to contemplate the perils of getting off the island, however, not when I had only just arrived.

  Instead I set myself to discover why Yeyuama had sent me here.