Dragon Book, The

by Gardner Dozois

  “He was really crazy.” Kir hunched his shoulders. “I mean, he’s always been a bully, but …” He shivered. “Let’s lash some stuff together, big enough for us to rest on if we need to, okay?” He gave her a crooked smile. “I might need that.”

  He was worrying about her, not himself, but that seemed like a good idea. Even though the cuts weren’t deep, she wasn’t sure she had the strength to swim all the way back to the grove, even with a piece of floating weed to cling to.

  They lashed a small raft together and pushed off, heading for the grove, with the afternoon sun behind them. Before they’d swum more than a hundred lengths from the mat, a large cargo canoe appeared in front of them.

  “Slane.” Tahlia clung to their makeshift raft. “I’m so glad to see you. Kir’s hand is cut.”

  “Tahlia, what happened?” The healer maneuvered the wide-bottomed boat alongside and reached down to pull them aboard. “The boys showed up hysterical, with stories about some kind of monster. Where’s Andir, Elor, and Qwait?” Anxiety tightened his face. “Kir, how did you cut your hand like that?”

  “Taking a knife away from Andir.” Tahlia shook water from her hair. “Andir tried to kill me, they were going to drown Kir. They know what happened. The others. They were part of it.” As the healer stared at her, aghast, she poured out the story of Andir’s arrival and Xin’s transformation.

  “I don’t know … that’s not the story they’re telling.” He stared back toward the grove as the light deepened to sunset. “Not that … they’re very coherent.”

  His shoulders were hunched, and he wasn’t looking at her. “Slane, take me back to the weed mat. I have a camp there. Take Kir in. He wasn’t part of this.”

  “You are so wrong.” Kir grabbed her shirt, yanked her around to face him. “What are you thinking?” Angry tears gleamed in his eyes. “What am I? Nothing? I was there, too. I’m going to tell ’em what happened. We both are. No way you go off and wait for those liars to stir up a mob against you.”

  “I should just go.” She looked away.

  “I ought to hit you.” Kir scooted across the canoe bottom so that she had to look at him. “You’re my friend. It matters to me if it doesn’t to you.”

  “Okay.” She drew a deep breath. “It does matter to me, Kir. I’m sorry.” She looked down. “And don’t hit me. You’re already bleeding again.”

  “Oh. I guess I am.” He clenched his hand into a fist, blood dripping onto the floor of the canoe.

  “You’ll come stay with me.” Slane had straightened and drove the canoe through the water with fierce strokes. “No one will dare enter without my permission. We’ll see this through.”

  They didn’t get that far. As they neared the grove in the fading light, Tahlia made out the shapes of many canoes clustered along the shore. Oil lamps glowed in the gloom between the trunks, and it seemed as if every resident of the grove clustered on the lashed platform of the floating dock that skirted the massive trunks.

  “Healer, did you find them?” A voice rang out. “Who’s with you?”

  Sidon, the head of the grove’s council.

  Andir’s father.

  “Did you find Kir?” Another voice rang out. “Did she kill him, too?”

  “Father, she didn’t kill anyone.” Kir leaped to the prow of the boat, balancing there as Slane stilled its forward motion. “Andir tried to kill her. With a knife.” He thrust his slashed palm into the air. “He was crazy. And they were helping him. All of them.”

  “That’s a lie!” The three surviving boys stood in the midst of the council members in the middle of the dock. The tallest one, Zoav, pushed forward. “She called up a demon. He’s just trying to cover up for her.”

  “We need to sift truth from untruth here.” Slane raised his voice, but the crowd was pressing forward so that wavelets lapped over the dock as it sank beneath the load. Shouts of “bad luck” and “demon eyes” rose above the murmur.

  “We need to sort this out.” Slane dug his paddle into the water to back the canoe away from the dock, but already boats had pushed off, arcing out to cut off escape.

  “She must answer for these deaths.” Sidon’s voice boomed above the crowd noise. “No one will harm her until we decide her fate.”

  “Kill her before she can call the demon!” A woman with a taut face burst to the front of the dock. “While we wait and squabble, she is calling it back.” Hair wild about her face, she flung out her hand, finger like a spear thrust at Tahlia’s chest. “She must pay for my son’s death, and she must die before she can kill more of our children. Quickly!” Her voice rose to a scream. “I tell you, she’s calling it now!”

  “No,” Tahlia cried, but her voice was lost in a rising clamor. Some leaped into boats, others tried to hold them back. Sidon was shouting, but only a handful of people were listening to him.

  Slane thrust his paddle deep into the water, but a half dozen canoes had already cut him off, arrowed toward them. In the foremost canoe, a grim-faced man held a fishing spear, its long, barbed head bloody in the sinking sun’s light. Behind him, Kir’s father drove the boat forward, his face stark with fear and anger.

  “No.” Kir leaped in front of Tahlia. “You’re wrong. Don’t do this, Father.”

  A spear thunked into the side of the canoe, and, a second later, Slane cried out as an arrow sank into his arm. He dropped the paddle, grabbed for it with his good hand as it splashed into the water. The boat driven by Kir’s father slammed into their stern and Tahlia fell to her knees, grabbing for the side of the boat as she nearly went over. Kir managed to keep his footing, arms spread, his face desperate in the sunset light. “We’re telling the truth! Listen to us!”

  The man with the spear drew back his arm. Tahlia’s eyes seemed frozen to the gleaming point with its wicked barbs. She wanted to duck, leap overboard, but her muscles wouldn’t obey her.

  Screams from behind her seeped through her fear. The spearman hesitated, head turning. With a cry, he lowered his spear, turned. Tahlia followed his gaze. There, in the deepening twilight, a serpentine neck rose from the swells. Xin shrieked, eyes flashing crimson light brighter than the setting sun. She reared out of the water, rising taller and taller, her wings beating, expanding, whipping the water into white foam. The water seethed, began to whirl about her. It caught the canoe paddled by Kir’s father, sucked it toward the maelstrom.

  Already the water was rising into a white, spinning tower. Wind-driven spray stung Tahlia’s face, and she clung to the boat as it rocked in the sudden chop.

  “No!” Kir leaped from the canoe, splashing into the water between the boats, grabbing on to the gunwale of his father’s boat. “Tahlia, don’t let it!”

  A dozen canoes were in the water, and the waves generated by the waterspout washed across the dock, carrying grove residents shrieking into the water.

  “Stop!” Tahlia leaped to her feet, balancing lightly on the bucking canoe. “Stop it now!”

  They want to kill you. Xin turned her attention once more to the canoes and the people struggling in the water.

  “No!” Tahlia threw all the weight of her fear into the word. “Go away, Xin. Go fly up with the others! Now!”

  Fly up? Xin’s voice in her head was heavy with hurt. With the others?

  “Yes.” Tahlia closed her eyes. “Go. Now.”

  We don’t fly up. And she dove. Just like that, the water quieted.

  She was gone. Her absence rang in Tahlia’s head.

  For the space of a dozen heartbeats, the only sound was the slap of water against the dock and the grove trunks. Then the clamor began again as residents hauled people from the water. The canoes closed on them from all sides, bumping against the sides of the healer’s boat, cutting off all escape. Kir’s father had hauled his son into the boat and was paddling toward the dock with him. Kir hung over the stern, his mouth open, yelling something to her.

  She couldn’t hear his words. Bowed her head as hands grabbed her, hard, unforgiving fingers
bruising her arms.

  And then they let go. Canoes were pushing away from their boat. More shrieks rose from the grove dock. Tahlia blinked into the thickening dusk, squinting against the last bloody beams of light from the vanishing sun, looking for the dragon.

  “Kark!” The healer’s voice broke, and he leaned over the side of the canoe, tipping it dangerously as he grabbed for the dropped paddle with his good hand.

  Tahlia stared around, her heart a stone in her chest. There they were, three tall ships barely visible against the bloody light of the dying day, hidden until the last by the magic of their captains. Already small, sleek boats were dropping into the water, speeding toward the grove on a white tail of foam.

  Each powered by a captive’s life force, drained to power the magic.

  “Tahlia, paddle.” Slane’s command came low and urgent. “Quickly! Back to the mat. They’ll focus on the grove and taking captives.”

  “Kir.” She peered toward the grove, but his father’s canoe was lost in the chaos of grove residents arming themselves, docking canoes, scrambling up the trunks. “I can’t leave Kir.”

  “Yes, you can.” His voice was harsh. “He doesn’t matter. You do.”

  She grabbed the gunwale to vault into the water.

  Something hit her in the back of the head, and red light exploded behind her eyes, then blackness came rushing in.

  SHE woke to blue sky overhead and throbbing pain in her head. “I’m sorry.” Slane’s face moved into view, blocking out the sky. “I didn’t mean to hit you so hard. Here.” He held a bowl to her lips as he slid an arm beneath her shoulders. “This will help.”

  She grimaced at the bitter taste of the brew, but her headache faded some as she sat up. “Kir.” She started to get up, but Slane’s hand on her shoulder stopped her.

  Three Kark ships floated just off the grove, and dark longboats plied back and forth. They went to the grove empty, came back loaded with bound captives. Mostly children, it looked like. Numbly she watched as one of the small boats pulled alongside the ship and the first captive was winched upward by his bound hands. At this distance, she could make out the pale shapes of the chained slaves along the deck rail. Their life force fed the magic that moved the ships. For a while. Until it was gone. The boy being hoisted to the deck was struggling fiercely, in spite of the ropes that bound hands and feet. Kir? She squinted, but the tears in her eyes blurred his features. It could be. In a moment he was dragged on deck, and one of the raiders leaned over him, swinging a club, his sun-darkened shoulders gleaming with sweat as he struck. She looked away, her throat so tight that she could barely breathe. “They came because of me, didn’t they?” she whispered. “One of the ketrels must have seen the dragon, must have followed us back.”

  “You don’t know that.” Slane stroked her hair back from her face. “It doesn’t matter how they got here. They are here. Stay low.” He pulled her down as she started to rise. “I have a boat hidden on the far side of the mat. As soon as it’s dark, we’ll leave. We have enough water, I think, to get us to the next grove. And if not, we’ll just have to catch fountain fish.”

  “Badluck eyes.” She stared out at the dark ships, the busy to and fro of the raiders’ boats as they stripped the grove. “I’ll just bring it to the next grove.”

  “Stop it!” He jerked her around to face him, his own eyes blazing. “You are our hope, don’t you see? You need to call your dragon back. The dragons kept the groves safe once. It can happen again. We’ve kept the strain of dragon-speakers alive. You have given us the key to the dragons.”

  “Xin’s gone.” Tahlia looked down at the salt-crusted weed beneath her knees. “I sent her to … wherever they are.”

  Slane was staring at her in stunned disbelief. “Can’t you call her back?”

  She shook her head. All sense of the dragon was gone. As if she really had flown to the moon, like the old stories said.

  “Well,” he said heavily. “We’ll still go. We have to. Maybe … she’ll come back to find you.”

  She didn’t argue with him, nodded when he wanted her to agree, watched the slow descent of the sun as the boats went back and forth. They weren’t bringing any more captives now. They must have enough to power the boats. Until the next raid. The returning longboats were now full of bundles and fish-skin sacks of oil. Slane gave her some dried bluefish meat and a cup of water as the sun set, and she made herself eat and drink.

  “Sleep for a little while,” he told her in a whisper, as the dusk thickened to full dark. “We’ll leave after the Crone takes her walk.”

  She was already rising, her yellow lamp shedding a weak light across the water. It was still, the swells sluggish and oily, as if the sea itself grieved for the destruction of the grove. Tahlia listened, and, after a while, she heard Slane’s breathing change, deepen into sleep. Silently, she stripped to her belt and fish knife, crawled across the mat, and slid into the cool water.

  It was as if the Crone aimed her lamp to guide Tahlia’s way, laying down a yellow shimmer of light that stretched like a path to the nearest ship. It loomed over her, impossibly tall, silent except for the slap and suck of water along the hull. All must be below, she thought. Except for guards. There would be guards. The Crone’s light touched the rail of the ship above her and gleamed on clumps of stone-clam sprouting on the sleek black planks of the ship’s hull. You had to scrape them off the canoes, or they’d foul it clear to the gunwale.

  The Crone’s light picked out a stairway of clams. Tahlia stretched, grabbing the first clump, bracing her feet against the slick hull. The boat rolled gently in the slow swell, lifting her clear of the water as she reached for the next clump, got a toehold on the first clump. Her shoulders burned with the strain as she slowly, painfully, worked her way from clump to clump, afraid to look up, afraid to look down. Then, suddenly, she found herself at the deck. For a moment, her mind numb with effort, she could only stare at the low rail and the dark deck beyond. The Crone had hidden her light behind a cloud and all was black.

  Footsteps slapped on the deck, and she flattened herself to the hull as a Kark walked by. A guard? She listened to his steps diminish, then slipped over the rail and crouched, trying to get her breath back. The Crone unveiled her lamp again, and Tahlia stifled a squeak as she found herself between two crouching shapes. The Crone’s light illuminated pale, fish-belly faces and glazed, unseeing eyes.

  The captives. The ones that powered the ship. Tahlia’s stomach twisted with horror. Pale, unhealthy skin hung on bones, and no light of intelligence flickered in the glassy, golden eyes that seemed to look through her. For an awful moment, Tahlia thought the woman might be her mother. A softly glowing collar of ruby light ringed the captive’s throat, and shackles chained her ankles to the deck. Not her mother, no. The ruby collar pulsed with a thready irregular rhythm, like a heartbeat. A failing heartbeat. As she watched, it slowed, flickered, then darkened. The creature sagged slightly forward, its jaw dropping slowly.

  Tahlia scrambled backward, swallowed a gasp as she backed into another captive. A man, this one seemed less drained, still healthy-looking, his eyes the sky color of the grove peoples. But they had the same flat, unseeing look. His collar pulsed strongly.

  Voices sounded aft of the dead captive, coming closer. Someone laughed harshly, and Tahlia heard a sound like a blow. The Crone poured yellow light down on the dead captive as a silver-haired, gold-eyed Kark bent over the corpse and said something in a harsh, disgusted tone. Metal rattled as he unlocked the shackles. He removed the dull collar and picked the body up as if it weighed nothing. Tahlia shivered as he tossed her over the side like a piece of trash. He peered after, nodded as she splashed into the water, then snapped an order over his shoulder, his tone impatient.

  Another Kark emerged from the shadows, dragging a small figure. Hands bound behind him, face crusted with dried blood, the boy kicked at the Kark with bound feet.

  Kir.

  The Kark dragging him stopped and raised a f
ist, but at his companion’s snarl, grunted and grabbed Kir’s ankles, dragging him facedown toward the waiting shackles. The Kark with the collar grabbed Kir by the hair, ready to put it around his neck.

  Tahlia launched herself at him, knife in her hand. The blade caught the crouching Kark, the one who had dragged Kir, in the back, but it skated along his ribs. He leaped away with a howl, and Tahlia slashed at the other Kark’s eyes. He dropped the collar, scrambling back, yelling at the top of his lungs.

  Sound erupted everywhere, and the Crone doused her lamp once more. Tahlia flung herself down, felt Kir’s writhing body beneath her. “It’s me.” She found the weed-fiber ropes binding his hands, slid the knife blade beneath it. Hands closed on her back, nails raking her skin as she twisted, slashing blindly with the knife. Her attacker yelped and leaped back. Someone shouted a hoarse order, and, suddenly, Kir was yanked away from her, yelling at the top of his lungs.

  A dark shape loomed over her, and Tahlia leaped aside, ducking his grab. She leaped up to the rail, ran along it for a few steps. Oil lamps illuminated a dozen raiders. Some were grinning as they surrounded her, cutting her off on both sides. The Crone drifted from behind her veil of cloud, and Tahlia saw black boats below her in the water. No escape there, either. For a moment, time seemed to stand still. The Crone’s lamp seemed to float on the slow, dark swells, like a perfectly round pool of yellow light.

  They flew away up to the moon. The words of the old myth.

  We don’t fly up. Xin’s voice echoed in her head, full of hurt.

  Tahlia flexed her legs and dove from the rail, arcing downward as the Kark howled and laughed, her stiff fingers cutting the yellow circle of light precisely in the center.

  She kicked, disoriented for a moment, lungs burning as she swam down through a tunnel of golden light … no … she was swimming … up.

  She broke the surface, blinked in sunlight, beneath blue sky. Pale birds circled overhead, and one fell like stone, splashing down with a gout of spray to emerge a moment later, flapping heavily, a silvery fish in its talons. A moment later, a familiar form burst from the water, the serpentine neck curving as it spied her, silvery scales gleaming in the sun.