Tooth and Claw

by Jo Walton

“I think Respected Telstie might like some fruit first,” Felin suggested tactfully. “And didn’t you say something about some meat to go with it?”

  Sher smiled. “I’ll find you some immediately,” he said. He bounded off, the dragonets watching him enviously, and soon all the male members of the party were high in the air above them.

  “What do you think they’ll find?” Selendra asked, staring up. Sher was the largest of them, and the brightest burnished. His scales caught the sun as he flew.

  “Maybe a wild swine, or if we’re really lucky a venison or two,” Felin said.

  “Most likely nothing,” Gelener said. “I didn’t see anything as we flew here, though even lower down the trees are almost bare enough for real hunting.”

  “Do you hunt?” Selendra asked.

  “I have hunted since I could fly, with a spear of course. Though after I marry I think I’ll take up a rifle and do some fire-hunting. My father doesn’t think it right for a maiden, but I’m longing to try it.” Selendra was relieved to see that Gelener did have something in common with Sher after all. “I think I’ll go up to my uncle’s estate at High Telstie for the hunting this year. He’s having a party of friends for the season. Will you hunt here, Felin, or go into the real mountains?”

  “I’m too old for all that now,” Felin said, beginning to unpack the fruit.

  Gelener’s eyes sped up in mild surprise. Selendra was suddenly tired of the conversation.

  “I’ll take the dragonets and walk by the pool,” she said.

  Felin waved her away. “No swimming today,” she warned the dragonets.

  “We’d freeze,” Wontas said solemnly.

  There were tracks of venison at the edge of the water. The grass was trampled and there were hoofprints in the mud at one shallow point. Selendra pointed these out to the children, who immediately wanted to track them and drag them back for dinner. “They might have been here days ago,” Selendra said. “Uncle Sher will find some up in the crags.” The crags above were mostly pinewood, with gullies, perfect hunting territory as the gorse thinned, if there were any venison there at all. Now she had seen tracks, and knowing it was too early in the year for formal hunting, it seemed very likely to Selendra that they would find something.

  There were cries from the others at that moment, and Selendra, looking up, saw the hunting party returning, bearing triumphant carcasses. “There, see,” Gerin said, craning his neck upwards.

  She walked back towards the party. They were maidens for the most part, so the general impression in the sunshine was of golden scales, with here and there the pink of a bride. Felin’s deeper pink in the center of the group as she handed out fruit, was very conspicuous. This had not been so obvious when they set out, with the bronzes and blacks of their husbands and brothers mixed among them. Selendra wondered about it a little. Was the Exalt offering Sher some alternatives to the fashionable but frosty Gelener? Or was he seeking an escape for himself?

  Sher landed, a venison clutched in his claws. “We were there, under his claws like that,” Wontas said, poking Gerin.

  “We flew,” Gerin informed Gelener.

  “I know, I flew too,” she said. “Soon enough you’ll have wings of your own and be flying everywhere.”

  “I want to see the cavern now,” Wontas said.

  “After dinner,” Selendra assured them.

  The hunting party had managed two venison and a full-grown wild boar. This seemed barely a taste for a party of sixteen who had flown so far, but everyone agreed that food tasted better under the open sky, and it was so inventive of Sher to think of having a picnic at the end of Leafturn. Some thought, and Gelener said, that there should have been four beasts, to allow them each a quarter. They made do with what they had, and found hunger a very pleasant spice.

  As they ate, the clouds drew over them. “I’m afraid it’s going to snow,” Felin said, regretfully.

  Some of the party who had long flights home from Benandi, or who could reach home more quickly from the falls without making a detour back, decided to leave immediately the meal was finished. More and more of the others joined them, until at last only the Benandi party, Sher, Felin, Gelener, Selendra, and the dragonets, were left.

  “I think we should go home too,” Felin said. “Those clouds are getting heavier. The dragonets might get very cold in the basket if we leave it too long.”

  “You’re right,” Sher said, regretfully. “What a pity we didn’t have time for a peek at the cavern. Next time. We’ll bring you up here in Greensummer, Selendra, you’ll see it all that way.”

  “I’m sorry to miss it,” Gelener said, her tone expressing rather the opposite. “Well, if we are to return, shouldn’t we start?”

  It was at that point that they discovered that Wontas was missing. “He must have gone to see the cavern,” Gerin said, wide-eyed.

  “Did you see him go?” Felin asked.

  “No,” Gerin said, his eyes shifting pools of deceit.

  “When did he go?” Sher asked. But Gerin refused to be pressed, saying he thought Wontas had been right beside them, like everyone else.

  There was clearly nothing for it but to go into the cavern and find him. Felin apologized to Gelener for the bad behavior of her dragonet. “I should have been watching him,” Selendra said.

  “It’s terribly cold, but of course we must find him,” Gelener said, giving every sign of putting up with terrible hardship for the sake of the children. Selendra had never liked her, but now she began to detest her.

  They made their way to the mouth of the cavern. As Felin and Sher already knew, the entrance was a large room, with several tunnels branching off it. The light came in through the fall outside, and it did look very primitive, but not very exciting in the circumstances. There was no sign of Wontas, nor did he come when they called.

  “What a terribly unfortunate way to lose a dragonet,” Gelener said, preparing to turn away again.

  Gerin howled and clung to Felin’s leg. Felin put her head down and nuzzled him and slowly sank down until she was entirely supine on the floor of the cavern.

  “We will make a proper search for Wontas,” Sher said, impatiently. “Feel free to go home if you’d prefer, Gelener.”

  “I don’t know the way,” Gelener complained. “You’ll have to come with me.”

  “I need to stay, because I need to carry the dragonets when I find them,” Sher said, with commendable patience.

  “Then maybe Respected Agornin could show me the way?”

  Sher looked at Selendra, who had been trying to comfort Felin. “Do you remember the way?” he asked.

  “I think so,” Selendra said, hesitantly, looking up from her prostrate sister-in-law.

  “I’m not going with anyone who doesn’t know it properly,” Gelener said, her voice rising and her eyes whirling dangerously. “You’ll have to take me and come back, Exalted Benandi.”

  “Can’t you see it’s too far?” Sher snapped. “You’ll just have to wait.” He turned and called Wontas again.

  “Then Blest Agornin?” Gelener asked.

  “I think that might be a good idea,” Selendra said, cutting off Sher before he could snap. “Felin, you’re very upset, and you should go home. Gelener needs somebody to take her. Sher knows the caves and will find Wontas.”

  “But he’d have to manage Gerin as well,” Felin said, getting control of herself and looking up at Selendra. “And there are places where he’s too large to go now, where Wontas could easily have gone. And when he finds him, he’ll need me to help fasten the carrying basket to go home.”

  “I’m smaller than you, I’ll stay and help. I can look after Gerin. I can do anything you could do, Felin, and while it’s you the children would most want to have with them, I can’t take Respected Telstie back.”

  “But you shouldn’t be alone with an unmarried male,” Felin said.

  “I won’t be alone, the dragonets will be with us, and anyway, it’s only Sher, you know he won’t crowd me
. Don’t be silly Felin, this is an emergency, and Respected Telstie insists on going home.”

  Felin looked at Gelener with her eyes completely hidden by her outer lids, as if they were in bright sunlight instead of the dimness of a cave. She pulled herself slowly to her feet then lowered her head again to her one remaining dragonet. “Gerin, you stay with Aunt Selendra and do everything she or Uncle Sher tells you, and help them find Wontas.”

  “Yes, mother,” Gerin said, entirely cowed now.

  35. THE CAVE

  As soon as Gelener and Felin were gone, Sher turned to Gerin. “Now, your mother isn’t here, and you understand how bad things are. Wontas could get lost in here and never be found. I was a child myself not too long ago, and I understand you don’t tell your clutch-mate’s secrets, but this is more important than that. When did Wontas leave?”

  “When Mother said we had to go home because of snow, without seeing the cavern. He couldn’t bear to miss it. He just scuttled off quietly,” Gerin said, his head bowed, struggling to keep from tears. “He wanted to find Majestic Tomalin’s treasure. I would have gone too, only I was right in front of her so Mother would have seen me.”

  “Majestic Tomalin’s treasure? Whatever gave him the idea it was here?” Sher asked surprised.

  “You said the cavern was from those days,” Gerin said accusingly. “And our nanny has told us stories.”

  “We’re wasting time,” Selendra said, deciding to take charge to stop them bickering as if they were both dragonets. “If he left when Felin said it was time to go, that wasn’t long ago.”

  “Not long before we came to start looking for him, anyway,” Sher said. “Good. Any idea which way he would have gone first?”

  “Down?” said Gerin, uncertainly.

  “Well, let’s try it,” Sher said. “He can hardly be out of earshot yet, even if he’s running. You try calling, Gerin.”

  Gerin called, and Selendra called, but they had no more effect than Felin and Sher had had.

  “Don’t worry,” Sher said, looking very worried. “I know all the paths down here, or I did when I was smaller. We’ll find him.”

  Sher turned and plunged off down the first downhill passage. Though he was so large, he could sprint along as fast as anyone in caves and passages. Selendra and Gerin had to scurry to keep up with him.

  The search was at first fruitless. They saw a number of caverns with pools and limestone teeth reaching up and down that would have delighted them in other times, but they saw no sign of Wontas.

  “Why does nobody live here?” Selendra asked as they returned to the entrance cavern to try the second downhill passage.

  “Too damp, and too far from anywhere,” Sher said. “It’s Benandi land. Some of my ancestors used to live up here once, probably giving rise to the rumors the dragonets have heard, but you can see that was long ago, maybe, yes Gerin, in the fabled days of Honorable Ketar and Majestic Tomalin, before the Conquest. I’m sure they weren’t driven out by the invading Yarge though. They probably left because it was damp and draughty. I entirely understand why they preferred the comforts of Benandi Place, even if this is terribly romantic.”

  The passage led through three interconnected rooms, one of them with a seam of marble like a dragon’s eyelid in the roof. “Felin and I used to pretend that would open and look at us,” Sher said. Gerin looked up in awe, whether at the thought of the eye behind the lid or of his mother having been a child Selendra did not inquire.

  In the next room, another with huge limestone teeth, she stopped abruptly. “What was that?” she asked.

  They all stopped and listened. There was a broad passage leading off into another cavern, and a thin passage, much narrower, more like a crack in the rock than a proper passage, through which a draft came.

  “It was probably the wind,” Sher said, and then they all distinctly heard the sound of a dragonet crying.

  “Wontas must have hurt himself,” Gerin said.

  “I was afraid of that,” Sher said. “I’m not sure I can get down there. I haven’t been for years. There are pits down that way, the whole section is dissolving. He must have fallen in one of them.”

  “Wontas?” Selendra called. There came a distant answering cry.

  Sher went to the crack and began to squeeze himself along.

  “I think I can fit, if you can’t,” Selendra said.

  “I’m long, but I’ve never been broad-shouldered, and I’m not grown gross yet, I don’t think,” Sher said, his wings folded tight to his back, moving more like a snake than a dragon. Selendra folded her own wings tightly and followed him into the crack. Gerin brought up the rear. He was the only one of them who could move easily. Selendra felt the walls uncomfortably close, and though he did not stop she could hear Sher scraping his scales against them.

  At each pit, Sher stopped and called. He and Selendra could step over them, Gerin had to leap. It was at the fourth, the widest yet, that Wontas could be heard shouting from below. “I’m on a ledge,” he called.

  “I have never been down there,” Sher said, peering from the edge. “He’s too far down to reach from here. There’s no room to fly properly. Maybe I should go back and get the basket. I could get down, but I might knock any loose stones down onto him and push him off the ledge.”

  “If there’s room for you, then there’s probably room for me with less risk of knocking anything loose,” Selendra said.

  “But—no, you try it if you think you can,” Sher said.

  Sher crossed the pit and sat sejant on the farther lip, looking down. Selendra moved up to where he had been. The pit was about thirty feet wide at the top, it seemed to narrow below. She could not see the bottom, making it seem uncomfortably endless. It would be impossible for Sher to do anything but slither down the side, but she was small enough to try a proper descent.

  “Hold tight, Wontas, I’m going to try it,” she said.

  She would have had plenty of room to dive, if there had been clear air below for her to pull up and land. As it was she was going to have to descend feet first, as if standing, so she could land on whatever was there. It was not a flight, more a controlled fall, using her wings for balance and to slow herself. Selendra tried not to let herself think about how she was going to come up again. The pit narrowed as she descended until it was only about twenty feet wide. Selendra drew in her hands and back claws carefully to avoid scraping the sides. Soon enough she saw Wontas clinging to a ledge. His eyes were shut, and he was using three claws to cling with. The fourth, one of his front legs, was clearly broken.

  It was a very narrow ledge. She could not use it. She braced herself, hind claws and hands across the pit, just above Wontas. “I’m here,” she said.

  “I’ve hurt my claw,” Wontas said, gulping back tears.

  “You’ll mend,” she said, as Amer had said to Avan years before when he had broken a leg.

  “Oh Aunt Sel, Aunt Sel,” Wontas said. “Have you looked down?”

  She hadn’t, since she had begun her descent. She had been concentrating too much on the sides. “I need to get hold of you somehow and go back up,” she said.

  “Look down,” Wontas pleaded. “We have to go down.”

  She risked a quick glance. Not far below, the pit widened into a huge cavern, and the floor of the cavern seemed to sparkle with gold. Selendra gasped.

  “Did you see the treasure? We need to go down!” Wontas insisted.

  “We may have to, but we’re going to try up first,” Selendra said.

  “But it’s treasure,” Wontas said.

  “Most likely some rock crystals, or something like that,” Selendra said. “There isn’t enough light to see properly.”

  “There isn’t any light at all,” Wontas said. “This is the darkest cave I’ve ever seen. But it’s treasure, I’m sure it is. That’s why I was going down.”

  “Well, you need to go back up if you can,” Selendra said, feeling almost relieved that she would never have dragonets of her own to tug
at her heart like this. “Now let go of the wall.” She took hold of Wontas in one hand and clutched him tightly to her thorax. She tried to rise, unsuccessfully, and wedged herself again. She tried again, but there just wasn’t enough room for her to spread her wings and gain lift.

  “Sher,” she called. “We’re going to try going down. I have Wontas safe, but we can’t come up this way.”

  “I don’t know what’s down there,” Sher said. It was very reassuring to Selendra to hear his voice.

  “I think I can see the bottom and there’s room to land,” she said. She let herself sink slowly again. The walls widened as she went down, making a funnel shape. She came to rest at last, a remarkably comfortable landing. There was no mistaking the feel of gold beneath her.

  “Treasure,” Wontas called up.

  “Treasure?” Sher asked in surprise, and Gerin squeaked from high above.

  “Gold and cut amethysts and diamonds,” Selendra said, astonished, turning it in her hands. “Some old hoard, I’d imagine, which must be yours by inheritance, Sher.”

  “It’s Majestic Tomalin’s treasure, and it’s mine, I found it!” Wontas shouted.

  “You’re welcome to your share,” Sher called. “Not that it does any of us any good down there. Can you come up again, Selendra?”

  Selendra stared up. If she could take off upright she might be able to manage it, even clutching Wontas. But there was no way to get off the ground and go straight up into the funnel, it began to narrow too soon, and what little air came down this far was damp, and dead against her. She looked around. “No. But there’s a broad passage out of here westward we could try.”

  “But it could go anywhere,” Sher said. “West is away from everywhere. This is no good. I can’t let you go off into the middle of the mountain and never be seen again.”

  “It’ll come out somewhere, and then I’ll just have to go up to find my way back,” Selendra said, with more courage than she felt. She was used to granite, not this untrustworthy limestone, and she didn’t feel sure of her way even on the outside of the mountains.

  “I’m coming down,” Sher said.