by Paul Stewart
Eli paused, dropped to his haunches and examined the ground at his feet.
Ethan stopped next to him. ‘Looks like a footprint,’ he commented. He crouched down and ran his fingers round the splayed clawmarks. ‘It’s big.’
‘Blackwing,’ said Eli. ‘Size of a packmule full-grown. They have an orange crest that runs down their backs,’ he continued. ‘And angular black wings that they hold aloft to shadow their bodies.’
Eli rose and resumed walking, and Ethan trotted along beside him in the hope that Eli would talk some more. He liked to listen to the cragclimber’s voice. It was warm and dark and reassuring and wise.
‘So this blackwingwyrme,’ Ethan said, ‘it’s heading westwards?’
Eli nodded. ‘In search of food,’ he told him.
‘There’s food to be had to the west?’ said Ethan. He looked around at the ridged landscape of pleats and crevices. ‘Coz there ain’t a whole lot to be found around here.’
‘Grasslands, most like,’ said Eli. ‘Blackwings are grazing creatures.’
Ethan nodded. ‘So you reckon there’s grasslands out to the west?’
Eli sighed. The youth never gave up.
‘If we track this wyrme, follow the signs it leaves us, most likely it’ll lead us through these here ridges, and then we’ll find out.’
‘Signs,’ said Ethan. ‘You mean, like the footprint?’
‘Footprints. Dung. Bruised scrub. Cropped sagegrass,’ said Eli, his voice deliberately patient.
‘Sagegrass?’ Ethan persisted.
Eli tipped his walking staff towards a bushy tussock, half its seedheads bitten off.
‘I see,’ said Ethan. He shook his head in awe. ‘Seems like there ain’t nothing you don’t know about the weald.’
Eli made no reply but continued walking, staring down at the ground, and Ethan felt foolish for having spoken at all. He was nothing but an over-talkative greenhorn, trying too hard to ingratiate himself with this seasoned weald traveller.
‘I talk too much,’ he confessed. ‘It’s what my brother’s always telling me. Says I like the sound of my own voice. Says it gets on folks’ nerves.’ He paused. ‘I’ve been trying not to. Leastways, not so much.’
‘Your brother’s right,’ Eli said drily. ‘Happen you should try harder.’
And Ethan did try harder. For the next couple of hours, he kept his mouth resolutely shut. They continued over one ridge after another, some steep and barren, sunk in deep shadow; others shallow and verdant with scrub and thorn bushes. As the sun sank, they crested a ridge to find a sheer drop on the far side with a narrow series of ledges leading down into shadowy depths.
‘Wait for the others,’ Eli instructed, ‘while I scout for a way down.’ The cragclimber turned away and was about to begin his descent when a raucous screech echoed in the canyon.
The wyrme appeared out of nowhere, a flash of red and green and gaping fang-studded jaws. Ethan saw it coming straight at him; saw the dripping fangs, the outstretched claws . . .
He stumbled backwards. His boot skidded on the ridgetop, and he slipped. His knee gave way. Rock cracked and crumbled and fell away in a shower of stones and, with the screeching wyrme spiralling up into the sky overhead, Ethan teetered on the edge. Eli shot out a hand towards him, only for Ethan to shrink back from the cragclimber, his shoulders hunched and twisted and arms raised about his head, as if he thought Eli was going to strike him.
Then he fell.
Eli snatched at the back of the youth’s jacket and held on tight to it, stopping his fall. Then, with a grunt of effort he hauled Ethan back onto the top of the ridge. He released his grip on the jacket and Ethan dropped to his knees, trembling, panting.
‘That was a redwing,’ the cragclimber told him. ‘Happen there’s a nest close by.’
He held out a hand to Ethan to help him to his feet, but again the youth flinched and shrank back. He was white-faced and quaking.
‘The wyrme spooked you that bad?’ Eli said. He frowned. ‘We startled it, is all. It wasn’t attacking, just warning us off.’
Ethan shook his head. ‘It’s not that,’ he began. His face crumpled up and he began to shake as sobs convulsed his body. ‘My father,’ he wailed. ‘Back on the plains . . .’ He gulped for breath. ‘Used to beat me pretty bad . . . The last time, nigh on killed me. Till Cody put a stop to it . . .’
Tears were streaming down his face.
‘Permanent.’
Eli watched him thoughtfully.
‘It’s why we came up here to the high country,’ said Ethan, struggling to regain some semblance of composure. ‘For they’d have hanged Cody for sure had we not.’
He fell still, his body shuddering as if gripped by a bitter chill. Behind them, coming up the ridge, were the voices of the others. Ethan looked over his shoulder, sniffed and wiped his eyes on his sleeve.
‘Don’t want them to see I’ve been blubbering,’ he muttered. ‘I’m only sorry you had to witness it.’
Eli reached out and laid a hand on the youth’s shoulder, and this time Ethan did not flinch.
‘There’s one thing I do know about the weald,’ Eli said, his pale-blue eyes fixed on Ethan.
‘What’s that?’ said Ethan, looking up and meeting the cragclimber’s gaze. Eli smiled.
‘It’s a good place for leaving the past behind,’ he said.
‘You think he does it on purpose?’ said Cody. ‘Setting us these tasks of his?’
‘Of course,’ said Cara. ‘There isn’t anything he does that is without intent or design.’
Cody grunted. ‘So he’s learning us deliberate,’ he observed, and nodded. ‘I suspected as much.’
It was the sixth day on their westward trail. They had finally made it over the ridges and were now crossing a barren plain of rock that was dry and honeycombed and awkward to walk upon.
The night before they’d eaten meat from the carcass of a blackwing that had missed its footing, and that Eli had discovered dead at the base of a wedge-shaped rock. Eli had set Ethan the task of stripping the wyrme, and Cody the task of cooking it. Later, Cody had mended his net, using wyrmegut and a needle that Eli had fashioned for him from a splinter of bone, while Ethan worked on a rucksack made from the pelt of the stormwyrme under the cragclimber’s watchful eye.
Cara looked up along the trail. Far ahead were Micah and Eli, the pair of them scanning the horizon with their spyglasses. The landscape ahead was beginning to look more favourable; level and thick with long blue-green grass that swirled like water in the cool high air. Some way behind them was Ethan, shambling along, pausing now and again to strike loose rocks and pebbles with the walking staff Eli had lent him. He had his rucksack on his back and a watergourd slung over one shoulder.
‘He’s carrying his own kit,’ Cara said, and smiled at the older brother, who blushed under her gaze.
This journey of theirs seemed to be agreeing with him, Cara observed, for Cody had lost the pallor in his complexion and now looked tanned and healthy. He smiled back at her shyly. His teeth were white and strong.
‘It’s another of Eli’s lessons,’ he said. ‘Told Ethan that everyone should shoulder their own burden. That’s why he got him started making that rucksack out of the wyrmehide.’ He nodded. ‘I ain’t seen Ethan so proud of something since . . .’
He fell silent and looked off towards the distant grassland. For a moment, the only sound was the crunching of their boots on the honeycombed rock.
‘Since?’ Cara said quietly, glancing at Cody.
The muscles in his jaw twitched like he was battling with something going on inside.
‘. . . since we left the plains.’
He watched his younger brother in the distance. Ethan had almost caught up with Micah and Eli, and had adopted the purposeful stride the cragclimber had taught him.
‘Before we hitched up with you,’ Cody went on, ‘he would cry himself to sleep every night. Said the wyrmeweald would be the death of him, and never stopped talking about returning to the plains . . .’ He paused. ‘But he seems happy now though, specially under Eli’s guidance.’
‘And you, Cody?’ said Cara softly. ‘Would you like to return to the plains.’
Cody turned to her, and he held her gaze with an intensity that made Cara tremble inside. ‘No, Cara,’ he said. ‘Ain’t no place I’d rather be than right here. With you.’
Micah and Eli stopped at the top of a low hill and surveyed the landscape. To their right, the grasslands stretched into the distance, where tall purple mountains lined the horizon. To their left, the ground fell away into undulating folds, before rising up into a distant range of pale peaks.
A short way ahead was a thin stream, like a piece of string, twisting through a dried riverbed. The meltwater floods were over and by the end of halfsummer the water would dry up completely. A stunted tree grew some way up the bank on the near side of the stream, dense with dustgreen leaves and clusters of purple fruit. Some branches were broken and hung limp, their splintered breaks glowing white in the late sun; some had been snapped off and lay below on the ground.
‘Blackgages,’ said Micah, and glanced round.
Cody, Cara and Ethan were further back down the trail, Ethan walking beside the other two, waving his arms about as he talked animatedly in that way he had. Micah smiled, looked back.
‘Reckon them’ll make good eating,’ he said, and headed down the soft sandy bank towards the tree.
The cragclimber continued to scan their surroundings with his spyglass.
‘Do you think anyone’s ever been this far into the valley country before?’ Micah asked, reaching up and picking a ripe fruit.
‘It’s doubtful,’ said Eli, looking around. ‘That’s a rugged trail we’ve trod. Most kith go for easier pickings back east.’
Micah’s face broke into a smile. ‘Which means that I am the first person ever to have plucked a blackgage from this here tree.’ He bit off half of the fruit, spat away the stone, then pushed the rest into his mouth. Yellow syrup trickled over his chin.
‘The unripe ones’ll give you the gripes,’ Eli observed, then returned his attention to the magnified view through his spyglass.
Micah stood back and eyed the tree. The ripest fruit was out of reach. He edged slowly round to the back of the tree, which is when he saw it.
A skull, white against the dark rocks. It was human.
Micah approached the bleached skull gingerly, hoping against hope that it might be an isolate; a skull that some wyrme or other – maybe a redwing; they were fierce enough and strong enough – had carried and dropped here far away from the peopled parts of the weald.
But there were other bones. Ribs and femurs. And the tattered remnants of clothes. Backpacks. And a tent frame. A circle of charred rocks . . .
‘Eli!’ Micah shouted. ‘Eli! Eli, come look!’
Eli turned. He slip-slid down the bank, ran round the back of the tree. He saw Micah hunkered down, and saw what he was hunkered down over.
The cragclimber groaned. ‘I guess I was wrong,’ he said grimly.
Micah climbed to his feet. ‘Looks like there were three of them,’ he said.
‘More,’ said Eli. He nodded at the quantity of strewn belongings. He prodded at a length of yellowed shawl with the toe of his boot. ‘And they had an infant with them.’
Micah saw something glint, reached down and plucked something of bronze and glass from the dust. He wiped it on the front of his hacketon coat, then looked up at Eli, who nodded gravely.
‘If kith were responsible for this slaughter, they would not have left equipment like this behind,’ he said.
Micah stared dumbly at the compass. ‘Kin?’ he said.
Eli shook his head. ‘See how their bones are smashed up,’ he said, his brow deepfurrow thoughtful. ‘They have been dropped. And that ain’t kin way.’
Micah swallowed. ‘Wyrmes, then.’
Eli did not reply, and Micah watched the cragclimber crouch down. He picked up something dark and opalescent and blew the dust from it. Micah crouched down beside him.
He was holding two huge claws, with dried tendons knotting them together and blueblack scales clinging to the skin. The cut at the end was clean, like it had been made with a knife. The kith had clearly fought back against the wyrme that attacked him.
‘It’s wyrmes all right,’ said Eli grimly. ‘But not like any I’ve encountered before. These claws are more than twice the size of a great whitewyrme’s – and they’re the biggest wyrmes in the weald.’ Eli turned to Micah. ‘Or so I thought till now.’
Cara and the two brothers were sore disappointed that they were not to be resting up for the night at the place with the stream and the blackgage tree and the tall boulders that offered relief from the chill wind. But Eli was adamant that they should continue, and Micah seemed happy to go along with the cragclimber’s demands.
They followed the stream into the night. It twisted and meandered, and from the position of the stars, Micah was able to show Cara they were now heading north-west. Cody walked close behind them, his breath coming short and his feet dragging. Ethan was beside him. Like the others, he was weary and footsore. Like them, he did not question the decision to keep going, but concentrated on not stumbling as he trudged on after the cragclimber. It was past midnight when Eli finally stopped.
‘We’ll rest up here,’ he said gruffly. ‘Get us some sleep.’
The following day broke misty and cold. A heavy dew had fallen that had soaked into their clothes and that turned to a glistening spray of droplets as Micah shook the wyrmeskin out that he and Cara had been curled up upon.
Ethan and Cody stirred, pulled on their boots and, unbidden, started packing up. Eli was back uptop a ridge, his spyglass raised, staring at something in the far distance to the north. Micah joined him.
‘Anything interesting?’ he said.
Without saying a word, Eli passed Micah the spyglass. He put it to his eye and focused the lens.
Something appeared before him, far off across the patchgrass plateau, where the plains hit the mountains. It rose out of the swirl of mist – a great cliff-face of pale sandstone, but eroded and weathered in an extraordinary way, unlike anything Micah had seen before in the weald.
‘What is it?’ Micah asked, his voice little more than a whisper.
‘Wyrme galleries,’ said Eli simply. ‘Biggest, most magnificent I’ve ever seen.’ He frowned. ‘And there’s only one creature I know of capable of fashioning a roost out of a cliff-face like that . . .’
‘You mean?’ Micah began.
Eli nodded. ‘The great whitewyrme.’
Eight
Zar jolted awake.
There were sounds coming from outside – soft almost imperceptible sounds that mingled with the low whisper of the breeze through the fluted columns of the wyrme galleries. Zar listened. And there they were again. The windwhirr of wingbeats, the sigh of wyrmebreath . . .
Asa had heard them too. He uncoiled himself from the spiral pillar next to her and flexed his wings.
Picking up her kinlance, Zar rose to her feet and looked into her wyrme’s pale yellow eyes. He nodded.
They had visitors.
Zar and Asa had discovered the deserted wyrme galleries by chance two months earlier in the savage blast of fullwinter, and taken shelter there. They had explored the vast chambers with their winding pillars and niches, their alcoves and perch-ledges, all carved out of the rock over countless ages by the curved talons of the great whitewyrmes who had once lived there. And they had marvelled at their magnificence.
Later, the kinboy, Kesh, had arrived with his wyrme, Azura. They were wild and savage and smelled of sulphur and blood,
and Zar and Asa had been afraid. But then Thrace and Aseel had appeared, and Zar and Asa had felt safe again.
Thrace had explained everything. How the great whitewyrmes who once lived here had shunned those of their kind who kinned with humans, as Aseel had kinned with her and Asa had kinned with Zar. But the colony had abandoned the galleries to search for new lands far from the taint of man, rather than fight the way Thrace and Aseel, and other wyrmekin, did.
During those bitter days of fullwinter, the older kingirl had taught Zar and Asa how to wield a lance and how to swoop down in attack, shooting deadly jets of flame. This ancient place rising above the rolling grasslands would now be a fortress for kin, Thrace had told her. And Aseel had sent out the call, in deep and resonant wyrmetongue, like the rumbling of a distant storm – a call to other kinned wyrmes to gather here at the wyrme galleries and resist the tide of humans approaching from the east; to stand and fight together in a great host, rather than spread out across the weald, each defending their own territory, as had been the kin way before.
And as Zar had listened she had been aware of Kesh also listening, from the shadows just beyond the fire, crouched at the feet of his wyrme, Azura. She had heard the mounting excitement in his voice as the two of them had whispered together of the war to come.
And she had trembled . . .
Zar crossed the sandstone floor of the chamber soundlessly, the early halflight playing on the smooth white contours of the soulskin she wore. She shrank back into the shadows of a pillar and felt Asa’s warm smoky breath at her back. Her heart was beating rapidly in her chest and she tightened her grip on the black tooth-grooved wood of the kinlance to steady herself, before peering out into the chamber beyond.
It was bigger than the chamber Zar and Asa had been sleeping in and, at the far end, opened out onto a ledge. The golden light of dawn was colouring the sky, with pink-flecked clouds streaking the far horizon.
As Zar looked out, the sound of wingbeats grew louder and four great whitewyrmes swooped down out of the sky and landed on the ledge, silently but for the faint click-scritch of their claws on the smooth stone. They were large ancient females, their scales crisscrossed with scars and pitted with age. They exhaled great clouds of breath from their horned muzzles as their riders slipped from their backs, lances in hand.