by E. E. Knight
A glubbing sound came out when he tried to reply.
“Mother says Auron is growing. He may kill you in an attempt to drive you out of the cave.”
“I hate being alone! I’d rather die.”
“Mother has a message for you.”
“She does?”
“She told me that you can overcome this. You’ve got a gift, in a way, a chance to establish your own line. A whole new family of dragons, all tracing their songs back to you! Not even Auron has that. Go, and maybe one day we’ll meet again in the Upper World.”
Chapter 4
He lingered in the cave, however, keeping to the edges, avoiding the others. Once or twice he ventured up the passage Father used on his hunting trips, but they smelled of old dragonblood, and he found broken pieces of scale.
He was tempted to try eating it for the metals it contained, but the smell disgusted him and he wondered what the sharp edges would do to his insides.
The trickles of the cavern dried up into practically nothing, and the slugs ceased roaming. He became hungrier than ever—his appetite grew and thrived and seemed to tap insistently at the backs of his eyes, and he worried the edges of his claws with sharp little teeth, pulling up dead skin until he bled.
He drank and bathed at a little pool in a far corner of the cavern. Once it had been fed by a fall that made the trickle on the egg shelf seem like a rainy bit of nothing, but now even the cascade had dried to a thick dampness on the cave wall.
While licking at it one day he noticed air moving around a projection. Even better, the air carried with it the smell of slugs.
He squeezed around the rock and found a crack, a jagged projection that narrowed at the bottom like a claw. Some water trickled from the bottom, carrying a more definite slug smell. He wormed through the crack and heard a few loose scales—it seemed all his scales were loose these days—fall into the water.
The air in here was wetter, and the cave moss still grew thickly in a ring around the pool, offering some light and playing on the bubbles that popped up now and then through the pool, which had spongy pads growing on the surface. He saw slugs squeezing themselves between rocks and under the pads and fell on them, and upset one of the pads in his thrashing.
The other side of the pad held little white spheres, clustered together so it was hard to tell where one began and the next ended. He sniffed them and they smelled delicious.
He tried swallowing one and almost immediately felt better. Eggs! They were probably slug eggs; they certainly smelled like the slugs. He devoured six more before he remembered how he had overhunted the rats in the offal pile. Eat up too many eggs and there’ll be no slugs….
He tongued down two more anyway, and let out a soft burp. His blood flowed with new life.
He watched the water flow into the pool from a crack at a slightly higher level, less of a waterfall than a water step, and a little flowed out into “his” pool on the other side of the crack. The volume coming in and the volume going out seemed out of balance; a torrent came in but a trickle flowed out.
Of course—the bubbles. Water was going down, as it always did, and air wandered up, each always looking for company of its own kind.
He dove, followed the bubbles, hoping for another chamber with more slug eggs to raid. Though so little light filtered down that it was the next thing to black, he couldn’t get lost; the bubbles would guide him back up. He found another shelf, with the bubbles gathering momentarily before sliding up and out.
But a distinct glow came, not from the source of the bubbles, but from deeper within the shelf. He swam toward it, his whole body moving in an easy, back-and-forth manner, though the cold made his hearts beat hard.
Then the light burned above him and he rose.
The pool top had more of the spongy pad growths, but only partially covering the pool, like a half-closed eye. He grabbed onto one of the pad stalks to arrest his rise and stuck his nose out among the pads.
Instinct made him take a small, cautious nostrilful. The air smelled good. He half emptied his lungs and drew in fresh air, then examined the scents of the room. He smelled mosses and some slug trail and rats and a strange rich, dry smell and dirt and a dirtier, sweaty smell, like horse hoof and…metal!
He took three more breaths and found some more slug eggs under the pads. Then he risked popping the ridge of his head up.
Cave moss, brighter than any growths he’d ever seen, lit the room from a big mound next to the pool. The chamber was shaped rather like a dragon’s head and neck, with the pool resting at neck level, a high rise above that had air moving up it, and then it seemed to narrow off in one direction, like his snout. The pool next to the chamber had been cleared of the spongy pads, and a metal tube like his own neck rose out of the pool and turned at the top.
The metal came from what looked like flats and pits carved into the stone. The artificially straight lines on the metal and the worked stone set off some inner alarm.
Go back. This is not for you.
But the maddening, metallic smell made his mouth go thick and slimy. He had to find it.
He swam across the pool and heard rat claws scritch as he rose dripping from the water, sniffing and listening. The passage led off downward, narrowing even further. The sounds of anything coming up it would be forced in a single direction toward him, and he’d have plenty of warning, so he relaxed a little.
The metallic column rising from the water smelled delicious, but was too big to swallow. It made a loop above and turned back down over a big stonework hollow. It had a vaguely greasy smell to it, like food.
Strange, fashioned objects of a rough, dry, wholesome-smelling substance—wood, some old memory echo told him—held growth of some kind. The wood had bits of metal embedded into it.
Ah, here’s the metal. And here. And here.
The flats and pits of the chamber had bits of metal, some with wooden handles, many of them redolent of meats and scorching, and even better, a few were small enough to be swallowed. He found a hollow tube sealed at one end, the same color as his scales, and found that if he stood on it he could crush it. He folded it in half and smashed it down again—he enjoyed compacting the metal more than he’d enjoyed anything since listening to Zara sing—and soon he had it in a shape that could fit down his throat.
Most satisfying.
Now food.
Where the moss grew thickly there was a garbage pile so rich in tidbits it felt like a gift. He broke up a few bones and extracted the marrow, found several chunks of rat-gnawed gristle and delicious, charred skins with the hair conveniently burned down to a stubble.
Now, this is a feast worthy of a dragon!
With nothing but some gassy burps to keep him company, he explored a pit where some kind of fire had burned recently and found more wooden holders, some with metal bands. He decided the vaguely greasy, dirty smell was some manner of hominid. Didn’t dwarves spend a lot of time tunneling and mining?
He heard a clattering echo from deep down the passage and decided to leave the chamber, filching one more tube of metal on his way out. He’d have fun flattening and devouring it later.
While hunger gnawed at him back in the home cave, he argued with himself about going back. Certainly the metals he’d eaten would be missed, and the dwarves, if they were dwarves, would be put on their guard.
He visited the cave a second time, and lurked long in the pool before emerging. He spent most of the time rooting in the garbage heap and hunting rats. He very much doubted the dwarves would miss a few rats. He did find a single coin, fallen and rolled into a shadow behind one of the wooden boxes, and gobbled it eagerly. Coins were a perfect size to slide comfortably down a hatchling’s gullet.
But the metallic tang nagged at him, wanting company. He worked one of the metal talons driven into the wood loose with his teeth—there were so many others he didn’t see how one would be missed.
Since the second trip went so well he planned a third, though he waited what fel
t like ages, just in case. He kept himself in practice hunting up slugs. The trickles into the egg chamber increased day by day—evidently the dry period above was ending. The other hatchlings had all grown substantially, ranging over almost the whole cave now, and he couldn’t avoid them with his usual paths. Luckily he could hear Wistala, for she was always talking to Jizara.
Quick, quiet Auron was something else entirely. The Gray Rat almost killed him with a pounce and chased him all the way across the egg cavern, and the Copper had to dive into the rising pool to escape him by wiggling through the crack, now underwater again.
Auron wasn’t satisfied with having Mother and Zara and the chatterer and food and Father’s horded gold. Rich in everything, he wanted even the lightless edges and holes and cold corners of the egg cave.
But Auron had a weakness, and in his arrogance didn’t see his own faults. The Gray Rat had no scales. If the Copper could build up his strength a little, thicken his scales, he could close with Auron and take back the clutch.
The thought made his fire bladder boil.
With the waters rising again it meant a little longer swim to the treasure chamber. He took extra time smelling the air and certainly smelled no dwarves, though there was a dirtier scent, of the kind he associated with bits brought down from the Upper World.
The garbage pile had some meaty tidbits, and he lingered at the edge of the pool, ready for a fast dive, slowly nosing drier garbage aside while he extracted the meaty joints.
Then he smelled the silver.
It wasn’t a strong smell, and leather masked the aroma. He investigated next to the benches and cubbyholes—they smelled of the recently cooked meat—listening, always listening, and probing with eye and ear before he placed a foot.
The silver-and-leather smell came from pegs driven into a wooden wall hung with bits of woven fabric, most of which smelled like either grease or charcoal. Farther down the tunnel were stacks of fragrant wood, and many roots and herbs hung up and drying—perhaps the dwarves were replenishing supplies as the season changed above.
He found the source of the enticing smell. A leather bag containing a few coins—copper, silver, and even a faint aroma of gold—hung there. The top had some kind of binding on it, evidently to close it, and had been left loose, allowing the smell of coin to escape.
The Copper salivated. The dwarf would pay for his forgetfulness….
He nosed the bag off the peg.
Ka-thunk!
The peg, relieved of the coin’s weight, sprang up in its wooden slot.
Hairy masses of rope engulfed him. Festoons dropped from the cave roof, weighted with chains, and his eyesight went white as one of them struck him across the snout. The boxes to either side exploded open, throwing more lines that sprang from them. He felt weights and hooks and slick little circles of metal skittering across the floor.
When his eyesight returned he saw shadows all around, their beards glowing faintly. He felt tugs at his limbs as they attached lines.
He’d never been so terrified. His hearts felt as though they’d burst out of his chest or from behind his griff. Auron’s leaps and sudden pins were nothing to this.
One was trying to extract the purse from his mouth, grunting as he pulled. The Copper sawed at the purse strings and the dwarf fell back. Defiantly, he swallowed the silver. The dwarves might win a three-limbed hatchling, but they’d lose their silver.
The dwarves made noises that all seemed to be some variety of yak or grumt or phmumph.
They drove metal claws into the rocks and tied him, snout and tail, and set bands of leather about his limbs. A massive dwarf with an ax watched the whole thing, gurgling to his companions, ready to sever his head if he wiggled free.
But the dwarvish hands seemed made of rock and iron, and he was soon covered with their greasy smell.
Then the beatings began.
They took iron bars and smashed them against his vulnerable pinioned tail. The pain ran up his body, fired in each digit, sparked yellow in his eye sockets, whirled about his organs so that each breath brought agony.
He whimpered; he cried; he sent mind-pictures begging them to stop.
That pain was nothing to what came when they stopped, gave him time to sleep and heal, and then started in on his tail again. During the second beating his teeth came together and tore at mouth edge and tongue until he spit blood.
Even through the pain a clarity took over and he wondered at the dwarves. What sort of creatures cause pain just for the sake of pain? There was no contest for control of a cavern, and they weren’t killing him to eat him. The torture was its own end.
By the third beating the pain wasn’t so bad, just dull warmth with the occasional jolt, like a fading cramp.
He heard a heavy step and shifted his body, felt scales give way. His skin had stuck to the floor with his own dried blood.
He did his best to tuck his tail. It moved clumsily, stiff and heavy, unable to curl. He rolled an eye upward, saw a vague sort of shadow, a hominid huge and dark looming above. The hominid smelled of dogs.
The tall one grunted and turned away, almost as an afterthought giving him a swiping kick to the nose with the side of his heel. Pain shot across both eyes.
A warbling broke out, and another hominid fell to its—no, her—knees in front of him. Her flat face was scarred on one side, and she wore an eye patch. A light brown eye, with just a touch of Mother’s gold and a hint of green, looked into his.
“Oh, how they’ve hurt you, young one,” she said in intelligible Drakine. “Poor thing.”
His hearts woke to the words, the sympathy of her tone, even if the Drakine was nasal and harsh. She reached out and rubbed him between the eyes. If his snout hadn’t been tied shut, he would have brushed her with the tip of his tongue, so grateful was he for the sympathy.
“Worthless little scut,” the tall, broad, dog-scented man said in far worse Drakine. He lifted his boot again, and the Copper shut his eyes.
The one-eyed one interposed her body, and he noticed that she had leaves in her hair. That should mean something, he felt, but the aches in his body kept whatever vestigial memories he’d received in the egg deep and dark.
“The dwarves blame you for the crimes of your parents,” she whispered. “They’ve been hunting a very wicked pair, a bronze and his mate, who’ve betrayed and stolen from the dwarves. Dwarves will move mountains to reclaim their own, if you don’t know.”
She looked at her companion, off on the other side of the tunnel talking to the dwarves. One leaned on one of the iron rods they’d used to beat him. Another, more potbellied than the rest, pulled at his dim-glowing beard as the man spoke, making noncommittal hmpf sounds at the pauses. The tall man unrolled some kind of map, and the potbellied dwarf sneezed.
“I don’t hold with blaming offspring for the crimes of their parents, do you?”
He hesitated a moment before answering. Was it wise to talk to a…a…leaf-hair? Elf! So satisfied was he that he had finally summoned the name that he croaked, “No.”
The elf showed her teeth when he answered, even though the word was muffled by the binding about his snout.
The tall man came over and talked to the other in their unknown barking tongue. Casually, while he spoke, he brought his heel down on the Copper’s tail. The agony made him whimper and writhe, and the elf finally pushed him away.
She yelled at the others until they shrank away from her fury. If only Mother had been this protective of her own hatchling.
Then she knelt beside him again. “Little one, I’m here hunting hatchlings. The dwarves have a buyer willing to pay a princely sum for healthy males or females. That was your sire’s bargain with the dwarves, a set of eggs in exchange for much gold and silver. But they reneged and fled.
“I know dragons. I suspect you were driven out of the nest by the stronger male. Let me capture your brother and sisters, if any, and I’ll see to it you get enough copper—silver even—to stuff yourself for a year.”
She reached into a bag on her belt and extracted some coins and let him sniff. Even in his shattered and weakened state, the smell turned his mouth slick.
She put the coins back, looked at the others. The man approached, drawing a long sword, an evil carved blade extending from the wide-open jaws of a dragon.
“Some king and queen of dragons, this hatchling’s sires,” the man said. “If my babe disappeared from his home, I’d drag the sky down into the deepest corners of the earth to find him.”
The elf snarled something to him in their tongue.
He ignored her. “Just what you’d expect from dragons, leaving their hatchling in the hands of some vengeful dwarves. I’ll take his griff as a trophy and the dwarves can finish him.”
Another dwarf picked up an iron rod.
“No!” the elf protested in Drakine. The Copper would wonder, much later, how and where she learned the tongue. Even hate himself for not being suspicious at their use of Drakine in their arguments. “I can make a bargain with him. Even the dwarves will accept a bargain.”
She turned to him, caressed him under the chin. “Little one, you must let me help you. Show me to the egg shelf. We’ll take your brother and siblings. They’ll be well treated and prized by their eventual owner, and the feud between your parents and the dwarves will be over. You’ll have the egg shelf.”
The Copper didn’t care what they did with his brother. Or the chatterer—they could drag them both off, for all he cared. But Jizara…
“I have two sisters,” he said. “One goes. One stays. Her name is Jizara; she’s got the longer neck and tail. She stays.”
The elf’s eye widened and he saw her teeth again. She barked at the others. The potbellied dwarf lowered his face and stamped, then grunted something in return.
“Bargain!” she said, and untied his jaws.
The Copper felt better than he had since the first iron-rod blow to his tail. In all likelihood Mother and Father would kill these wretched, torturing dwarves. Even if they didn’t, the Gray Rat would be dragged off and have his snout tied. As for the chatterer, she could do with a bit of enforced quiet. He almost smiled at the thought.