‘I thought the Hom were driven out of the domayne?’ bickered Abrial, still tetchy about his new role.
‘They were,’ said Grynt, equally irritable. ‘Your job is to stop them coming back in.’
‘Grynt, be done with this,’ said Prime Galarhade. ‘We are not gathered here to talk about the Hom.’ He gave a call and two more dragons glided down from their settles – the females, Grendel and Gossana. Abrial stepped aside so that Grendel would have room to land. She was a gloriously beautiful dragon with touches of gold around her purple face and enough lytes underwing to star the night sky. Her eyes, like Abrial’s, were just beginning to crystallise, but there was still enough softness in them to melt even the hardest of Veng hearts. She nodded shyly at Abrial, a look that suggested she felt sorry for him. He gulped and tightened his wings. Being this close to Grendel made his scales rattle, and that was not wise in front of the Elders.
The other female, Gossana, was well known throughout the Wearle. She was dark green, running to black along her neck. She had heavily-slanted eyes, one the colour of amber stones, the other near blood red. Many dragons feared to look at her, for the eyes could alter colour with her mood. Like most mature females, she possessed a ruffle of sawfin scales, which stood up in a frill behind her ears and were the same dark colour as the rest of her body. This bestowed her with a bold, majestic look, which she further inflated with the high carriage of her head. On Ki:mera she had twice raised wearlings and had been sent to Erth to oversee Grystina’s first birthing – a slightly modest assignation for one so grand, but an important commission nonetheless. Galarhade bowed when he spoke to her.
‘Matrial,’ he said, acknowledging her previous successes with young.
‘A sorry day,’ she said, funnelling dark smoke. Dark smoke was heavier than air and would fall from the nostrils rather than drift away. It was one of the few ways a dragon could express sorrow. She glanced at Grynt and the ever-silent Givnay. Both gave a courteous nod.
‘We have a problem,’ said Galarhade. ‘Grystina’s wearmyss is without a mother. I cannot commit her body to Godith until we have settled upon a solution.’
‘Is it so difficult?’ Gossana said, her words almost hissing across the water. If any other dragon had addressed the Prime so, they would have been met with an ear-singeing flame. (Abrial actually flinched, expecting it.) ‘We have an able female in Grendel. Fostering an orphan is not beyond her, as long as the myss is given to her quickly. I’m surprised the Elders have been slow to see this.’
‘I see it,’ said Galarhade, some authority restored in his terse response. He straightened his long red neck. ‘The myss is sickly, her air sacs full of dust. She is nesting in healer Grymric’s cave. She will be given over to one of you when Grymric is satisfied she will survive.’
‘One of us?’ Gossana said. She inhaled the last of her smoke.
‘It is important,’ Galarhade said, letting some weight fall onto his words, ‘that we continue our breeding programme.’
‘One of us?’ Gossana repeated, her upper jaw pulled so tight that her teeth were now aggressively unveiled. A broken fang on the upper left side was causing an abrasion where it met the lower jaw, weeping saliva and a touch of green blood. ‘Are you saying you expect me to foster the myss?’ Her fin scales billowed.
Abrial shuddered and looked around him. G’vard and per Gorst were keeping their silence. Even Grynt was curling his claws.
Elder Givnay leant towards his Prime, who nodded as he received a thought from the mute. Galarhade said, ‘The Elders acknowledge Gossana’s past accomplishments and are grateful she brings her wisdom and experience to bear at this time. However, as Elder Givnay has reminded me, we must always introduce new lines into the Wearle. We are therefore decided that Grendel will enter the next laying cycle and Gossana will raise the myss.’
‘This is an insult!’ Gossana roared.
‘It is my ruling,’ Galarhade said firmly.
‘Yours – or his?’ She cocked her snout in the direction of Givnay. She had never liked the mute, whom she saw as little more than an ineffective peddler of spiritual fantasies. What use, she had been known to argue, was a dragon steered by its third (and smallest) heart? The matrial had even been recorded as saying that she would not have let Givnay survive the injury that had left him unable to flame or speak. Not surprisingly, there was little regard between them. What was surprising was that both had been included in the second Erth party, a decision that had caused a great deal of muttering among some orders of the Wearle.
Despite Gossana’s fearless conceit, Elder Grynt felt it necessary to lash out a warning. ‘Have a care, Matrial. Remember where you are.’
Gossana spread her gigantic wings, almost blowing Abrial off his feet. ‘Have you forgotten that I am frenhines fawr?’ (Words from the old tongue, meaning ‘great queen’.) ‘How dare you dishonour me like this? The fostering of orphans is for common dragons, not one of my standing. And what male would willingly protect an orphan’s…carer?!’
Galarhade let out a thread of steam. ‘The white, G’vard, will be your guardian, and will be called father to the myss.’
This raised an immediate objection from per Gorst. ‘Prime, with respect, that cannot be. The battle was void.’
‘Well, it appears he’s been declared the winner,’ snapped Grynt, who seemed to be growing tired of the arguments.
‘But without her true mother to imprint upon, the character of the wearmyss will always be challenged. This would be of little importance if the father was of less noble bearing, but—’
‘It’s all right, Gorst, I will do it,’ said G’vard. He raised his weary head. ‘In the name of Godith, I will honour Grystina and be a father to her myss.’ He looked at Gossana and bowed. ‘I pledge to protect you in all—’
‘Faah!’ said Gossana. ‘Save your voice for singing your orphan to sleep. I demand to be returned to Ki:mera,’ she roared. ‘You’ll send the wearling too, if you know what’s good for it.’
‘You would be wise to bite your tongue,’ said Grynt – a slightly inappropriate remark, given the condition of Gossana’s upper fangs.
She bared the whole row at him. ‘You haven’t heard the last of this.’ And with a screech that made the mountains shudder, she took off back to her eyrie.
Abrial sank into a pit of despair. His wings felt as heavy as the rain clouds looming overhead. Had it not been for a kind glance from Grendel, he might have thrown himself under the waterfall and joined the ice on its long trail down to the sea.
Prime Galarhade called for Grendel’s attention. The young female looked up, her blue eyes lively with fear. Galarhade said, ‘Be calm, Grendel. Do not think yourself unworthy of the duty your Elders have placed upon you. Although you were not brought here to further the early growth of the Wearle, fate has selected you to be the first true queen of this colony. You were born of noble, Fissian ancestors. The males that come to you must be a suitable match. Do you understand?’
‘Yes.’ The word clicked in her throat.
‘Are you ready to be courted?’
‘I am.’ She bowed before Galarhade, but again she flashed a look at Abrial as if to say, Will you fly with me?
It made his hearts race to have her regard, but it also hurt so much. How he would have loved to chase Grendel round the mountains. But what chance would he have, stuck out on the edge of the domayne, keeping watch? He was going to be a sweeper, the lowest of the low. A forest might have grown on the peak of Skytouch before he ever saw Grendel again.
With a whumph! Grystina’s body caught fire. Galarhade was above her, coating her in flame. One by one every dragon flew past, adding their own breath to the blaze.
‘Forgive me,’ Abrial whispered. And he lifted up and flamed Grystina as well, not caring who was watching or what was being said. And when his flame was spent he lifted up
again and flew away from the lake. He glided over the bulging crags of Vargos, setting a course for the northernmost edge of the domayne. He hung his head low as he flew. His life was over, he told himself. His name was blunted, his family shamed, his chances of fathering wearlings minimal. It really didn’t get much worse than this.
But had he been a little less doleful and a little more alert, his life would have been so very, very different. Had he chanced to begin his sweep from that moment, his sensitive optical triggers would surely not have missed a slight movement on the hillside, the actions of a creature desperate to conceal itself against the dark rock. Unbeknown to the dragons, the loss of Grystina was being felt by something other than themselves.
A young Hom was on the mountainside. A boy, no more than twelve winters old. Within the folds of his robe he was hiding something.
A frightened dragon wearling.
A drake.
Part Two
Ren
5
It was forbidden, by order of Targen the Old. No man or woman of the tribe must contest the beasts or defy their will. Just to look upon the skalers, especially in flight, was enough to call down their fire on the tribe. From now on, men would settle on the flatlands.
This was the law of the Kaal.
Ren Whitehair, son of Ned, heard the words true. No man or woman must contest the beasts. But Targen the Old had not mentioned boys. And what kind of boy concerned himself with laws when his heart was beating to the spirit of adventure?
Ever since the first group had burst through the sky and driven the Kaal tribe out of the mountains, the beasts had been despised by the men. A few brave souls had crossed the scorch line in defiance, but all had returned to the settlement in terror, many with hot blood running from their ears, clouds across their vision or blisters on their skin. Thus far, the skalers had killed no men, but their forceful defence of the mountain territories suggested they would burn to the bones anyone foolish enough to provoke them to excess. Nothing got past their patrols anyway. The eyes of the beasts were so advanced it was said they could see the smallest scratcher scurrying through grass from the highest clouds above. And even if a man did manage to hide, he could not conceal the scent of his body.
But as much as men mourned the loss of their caves, it was all Ren could do to contain his excitement about the skalers. Awed by their power, he was eager to be near them and learn their ways. He was often chastised by his father for climbing to high places from which he might watch them, and banned from making drawings of the beasts. ‘What Kaal,’ Ned had thundered in exasperation, ‘would wish to look upon a rock and see the eyes of a skaler looking back?’
None of this hampered Ren’s ambitions. If a curfew was placed upon him, he simply waited out his father’s temper and amused himself with the cache of skaler artefacts he kept hidden among the hides on which he slept: two talons, a chipped scale that sparkled under moonlight, and the charred bones of several unfortunate animals. What would it feel like, he wondered, to run his hand along a whole row of scales? Or ride upon a beast as it soared above the mountains? Such fancies played with his dreams, but dreams were all they were destined to be, until the morning of the fateful hunt, the day he saw Utal Longarm burn.
Ren had been out catching snorters with the men when two huge skalers had ranged across the sky. Utal had dared to challenge them. Utal, who stood higher than any man in the tribe, had ripped his robe wide open at the neck, bared his chest and roared at the beasts to give the mountains back to the Kaal.
Ned, who was leading the hunt that morning, turned his whinney round and said, ‘Utal, step back from the line. If you bring the beasts down, we all burn.’
But Utal had been drinking the juice of many berries and his head was not where it needed to be. He began to dance and sing a lewd song. Stomping left and right, he flapped his arms in a mocking imitation of beating wings. ‘Harken to me, skaler! I’m flying!’ he boomed.
It amused the men, but not Ren’s father, who was watching the beasts with a wary eye. ‘Oak,’ he said, to the man astride the whinney nearest him, ‘I propose you tie your brother to his mount if you wish to hear him snoring tonight.’
Oak laughed and pulled on his reins. ‘Utal, stand back,’ he called. ‘Ned fears you might be worrying the beasts. Don’t poison them with your breath, brother!’
It was a decent attempt to calm the situation, but Utal continued his clownish antics. And now Ren was growing concerned for him as well. A skaler the colour of fresh spring grass was raising the horns that grew in sharp lines from the back of its head. Ren had seen many skalers do this just before they swept to take prey.
The beast was preparing to attack.
‘Utal, it’s coming!’ he called.
Still Utal refused to listen. He lifted a foot and dangled it over the scorch line. Then he pulled up the lower half of his robe and made water on the skalers’ territory.
The bright green beast gave a quiet snarl and bared more fangs than Ren could count. Almost leisurely, it glided down and produced a burst of fire that made the hair crackle on Utal’s head. Utal yelped. And then he really danced, flapping his arms as if a swarm of buzzers had filled his ears. Foolishly, he picked up a stone.
His brother whispered, ‘Utal, no…’
But the fool could not resist. He took aim and hurled the stone. It bounced harmlessly off the skaler’s rump. The beast flicked its tail in anger. Utal gave a triumphant shout and picked up another, larger stone.
This one would never leave his hand.
The green beast circled back. It put itself directly in line with Utal and began what appeared to be another slow descent. It was still some distance away and there was time enough for Utal to halt his madness. But Ren had witnessed this manoeuvre as well. He had once seen a beast bear down on a bleater, closing so fast that the hapless animal had died of fright, even before the claws sank into it. He knew exactly what was going to happen.
‘GET DOWN!’ he screamed.
At the same time Oak kicked his whinney in the belly and raced toward his brother. He planned to knock some sense into the oaf or at best take hold of his newly-singed hair and drag him clear of the line. But in an instant the beast was there in front of them, fearfully huge, much closer to the line than anyone (other than Ren) had expected. It had somehow jumped the length of fifty men in the time it would have taken Ren to crush a leaf in the palm of his hand. The whinneys reared. The men yelped in terror. Ren flung himself down as the beast unlatched its blistering jaws and released another surge of flame. The fire travelled in a ball from the back of its throat and burst against Utal’s upright arm, charring it black from the midbone to the hand. Utal rocked like a blade of grass. His eyes glazed, their centres stopped. Then he fell in a slow and steady motion. He sagged to his knees and toppled sideways, falling just the right side of the scorch line.
The skaler banked away, splattering sizzling dung across the field. One pat landed squarely on Utal, steaming where it glued to the skin of his chest. The men recovered their nerve and dragged him away. Using leaves, they cleaned off what they could of the dung, cursing when it stung their hands. Then they laid Utal over a whinney and quickly took him back to the settlement. One burst of lunacy had bought their best hunter a withered arm and a new name. From then on he was known as Utal Stonehand, because the stone he’d intended to throw was now permanently fused to his clawed black fist.
And there was worse. By the time the men had laid him out, the stains of the dung had burned into his chest, eating back the flesh in great red welts. A splash had travelled to his eye as well, fusing the lid to the ball in a horrible stew. And no amount of bathing could wash the stench of dung off his body. Poor Utal. He now had a chest that stank, a useless arm and only one eye to see it with. The stench made certain no one visited his shelter without good cause, and not without their face wrapped heavily in
cloth. It was a terrible lesson to bear, and Targen the Old was rightfully enraged. Had he not ordered the Kaal to stay clear of the beasts? Was it not better to live in peace beyond the mountains rather than be walking ash among them? The men glumly acknowledged this wisdom, but the incident had rankled their pride and there was much shared talk that night about what might be done to restore their honour. The beasts were mocking them. First they had driven the tribe from the mountains, and now left their best man ruined by dung!
But while most of the Kaal tribe cussed and wailed, Ren began to look at what else might be learned from this dreadful incident – and a frightening idea came to him. It happened as he watched Oak Longarm burning his brother’s soiled robe. Even in the fire the bad odour still carried, blocking out the cooking smells around the camp. Men and women alike were complaining, covering their noses as they went about their work. It made Ren wonder how the skalers put up with it, never mind the Kaal – and suddenly, there it was: a way of reaching the mountains again, a way of getting close to the beasts.
Use dung.
It would be dangerous. Ridiculously so. One mistake and Ren would be black specks floating on the wind. But the challenge burned so brightly in his mind that he could not resist exploring it. Early the next morning, he crept back toward the mountains and waited until the skies were clear. Then he ran across the scorch line in search of what he needed – a fresh heap of skaler dung.
The heap he found was fresher than fresh, steaming black, still red with cinders. It almost boiled away the mitt he’d made for his hands. Turning his face aside, he smeared the dung over a robe he’d brought with him. Oh, it smelled bad. Worse than the innards of a dying mutt. But he stuck to the task and when it was done he undressed and put the dung robe on, over an undercloth he’d stolen from his mother’s things. She would roast him like a snorter if she ever found out, but Ren had taken note of Utal’s suffering and knew he must keep the dung off his skin. Thankfully, the extra layer worked, but the stench was just as bad as ever. Every time Ren drew breath, the reek almost tore the nose off his face. But the deed was done and there was no going back. Two beasts had appeared above the shoulder of the mountains. He was over the scorch line, inside their territory. Now he must hide – or die.
The Erth Dragons Book 1: The Wearle Page 4