Within the Sanctuary of Wings

by Marie Brennan

  This was my first evidence that I was not supposed to be there at all.

  I watched this Draconean closely. I had begun to tell them apart: the one who spoke to me in our halting language lessons was the tallest, with pale streaks running down the sides of its neck, and so I called it Streak. Another, with narrower shoulders, most commonly took the task of cooking, and so I dubbed it Cook. This was the smallest and stockiest of the three, and I referred to it as Wary—for of the three, it was the most obviously afraid of me.

  Afraid of me! I was half a meter shorter and half its weight, with no claws or teeth to speak of, and yet it feared me. Much of their conference, I thought, had been about persuading Wary to stay with me while the other two went away. How long would they be gone?

  Watching the Draconean from my nest, I realized something else. All this time, I had been observing them with a naturalist’s eye, noting conformation, coloration, behaviour. We had begun to communicate … but not yet to treat one another as people.

  I caught the Draconean’s attention and pointed at myself. “Isabella.”

  It stared mutely. Confused? Or too wary to speak?

  To clarify, I went through the words we had established so far, naming the fire, the stones, my blanket, and more. Then I pointed at myself again. “Isabella.” This I repeated, several more times, with slow and careful enunciation. Then it was time to point at the Draconean and make an inquisitive noise.

  It understood me, I was sure. But it only turned away and bent itself to the task of cleaning the porridge-pot.

  Either they did not use names, or this one was unwilling to share its own. I made a private wager on the latter.

  The other two were gone for a long time, the remainder of which Wary and I spent in silence. Finally we heard sounds outside, and Wary gestured fiercely for me to hide myself; I complied without hesitation. But I peeked through a tiny gap in the blankets, and when the door was safely closed behind the familiar pair, I emerged once more.

  I hoped their return meant I might be permitted to go outside. They had never before taken the precaution of hiding me, which meant today was unusual; it might have heralded that welcome change. Unfortunately, I had no such luck. But I repeated the process of naming myself, and this time, it bore fruit.

  Streak understood my meaning immediately. After a glance at the others—I could see Wary silently willing its companion not to speak—the Draconean turned back to me, pointed one claw at its muzzle, and said, “Ruzt.”

  The one I had dubbed Cook followed suit. “Kahhe.”

  Then they glared at Wary until it muttered, “Zam.”

  Now all of us had names. They were no longer creatures to me; they were people. And that marked the beginning of many changes among us.

  ELEVEN

  Out of the house—Yaks and mews—A winter of learning—New arrivals—Kahhe’s wing—Hibernation—The utility of art

  “Zabel.” This was how they tended to pronounce my name. They were not incapable of providing it with its initial and final vowels, but in their speech such things tended to fall away, and I answered readily enough to the truncated form. Ruzt had gone out for a time; now it was back, and it held in its claws my mountaineering clothes, carefully mended.

  A thousand possibilities collided in my mind. I was to be escorted home; I was being tossed out on my ear; I was to meet other Draconeans at last; I was being taken to my execution. Would they bother to mend my clothes before killing me? I chided myself for foolishness and dressed with alacrity. Only one thing could I be sure of: I was going outside at last. After so long cooped up in that house, nothing sounded more wonderful.

  Despite my still-splinted leg, my step was light as I followed Ruzt through the door it had blocked me from before. The antechamber was stuffed with all manner of sacks and crates; clearly it served as a storeroom for those things which would not suffer from the cold. The wall it shared with the inner room was covered in more of that quilted hessian. Ruzt took garments from a nearby rack, snow-caked enough that I understood why it did not bring them inside, where they would leave meltwater all over the floor. The sight should have warned me of what I would face outside, but I was so caught up in the thought of freedom that I did not follow my observation to its logical conclusion.

  Ruzt led me to the exterior door, set a little distance to the side of the first (so the wind would not blow straight through to the interior), and opened it.

  I stepped out into a world of diamonds. The sky overhead was a brilliant, unforgiving blue, and the sun reflected off a thousand surfaces around me. From the col I had seen greenery in the valley below; unless Ruzt and the others had taken me someplace entirely different, that green was all buried now. Icicles decorated the eaves of the buildings, hung in dense strings from the trees. Directly ahead of me, dominating the mountain basin, was the peak I had seen from the col, dressed entirely in white. My first step sank me almost knee-deep into the snow, and the air was the coldest I had ever felt.

  While I lay ill and then healing inside that house, winter had begun.

  Oh, by the calendar perhaps it was not yet there. But in the Mrtyahaima, winter does not wait upon the solstice to come calling; it arrives early and stays late. Though much of the precipitation falls during the monsoon, as rain in the valleys and snow in the heights, winter is not without its storms; and during that season, travel is all but impossible.

  I stood as if turned to ice myself. All thoughts of departure withered on the vine. It did not matter how much I had recovered; it did not matter whether the Draconeans helped or hindered me in going. Any attempt to leave this place before spring would be a death sentence—and spring would not show her face before Fructis at the earliest. At a conservative estimate, I would be trapped here for at least four months.

  Four months, during which everyone I loved would believe me dead.

  Ruzt said something I could not understand. When I did not respond, it bent to peer at me. I shook myself to something like life and nodded, numbly. I could not encompass that thought yet; I would come to terms with it by degrees, for to take in the whole at once would break me. For now, I distracted myself with my surroundings, which I was at last free to explore.

  The house stood on the edge of a village. It should, I thought, have looked more exotic; after all, this was a Draconean settlement. But the truth is that sensible architecture stays much the same regardless of species. The steeply pitched roofs were not far different from those of the Nying—or, indeed, those one might find in Siaure or northern Bulskevo. Where there is a large amount of snow, there is a need to shed it, lest it crush the roof with its weight.

  I turned the other direction and saw that I had not come so terribly far. The familiar tower of Gyaptse stood proud in the sky, with Cheja alongside. From here, the path up to the col was comparatively easy. But I had no illusions that I could chance it: even if I made it across, I would die attempting to descend the other side alone; and even if I survived the descent, I would still be in the Mrtyahaiman wilderness, with a glacier between me and the nearest human settlement.

  When I turned back, all three of my Draconean hosts were watching me. I suspect they guessed my thoughts, but I do not know for certain.

  All three of my hosts. Where were the remainder?

  Just as when we had come into Hlamtse Rong, I saw no one on the paths between the houses; unlike in Hlamtse Rong, there was no one peering out at me from cover. I could not even see many tracks in the snow. What few I saw, I suspected came from Ruzt, Kahhe, and Zam.

  This was why they had permitted me to leave the house. Because no one else was here to see me.

  So where had the inhabitants gone? To winter quarters, perhaps? Leaving behind my three, who made no objection as I tentatively began to explore. They let me walk up to one of the other houses; when I knocked on the door, they only looked puzzled. Clearly it was not the Draconean custom to announce themselves in such fashion. Did they clap, as people do in other parts of the world?
I had no idea. But the door opened when I tried it, and although Kahhe followed me closely, they permitted me to go inside. The layout of the house was much like the one I had left, but clearly packed up for the season, its inhabitants not expecting to return any time soon. Here, though, part of the quilted hessian had split, exposing the stuffing. Poking at this, I found it was filled with scales like the ones that adorned my companions, but paler.

  “Insulation,” I murmured, stepping back to study it. The same material that helped protect their bodies could easily serve the same purpose on their houses. Did the Draconeans shed their scales each year? The quantity suggested they did, and the colour suggested the scales bleached over time, likely as a seasonal adaptation. (In wintertime a pale hide would camouflage them more effectively against the snow, while a darker hide would be much less conspicuous among the trees and bare stones of summer.) They must save their scales with care, stitching them into new fabric casings when the old ones failed.

  Zam was hissing something to Ruzt when I came out of the house. It still did not trust me; that much was palpable. I wished I could ask why.

  Since I could not, I continued exploring. There seemed no point in going into any of the other houses, but below me on the slope was a building unlike any of the others. It was low and square, but enormous in area, at least compared to everything else in the village. To give the roof a steep pitch would have required it to soar into the sky; instead its gentler slope was oddly lumpy, which I soon realized came from the pine boughs that carpeted it. These could be pried off as needed, taking the encrustation of snow and ice with them, and replaced with a clean covering from a storehouse built for the purpose.

  Of course my first thought was “temple.” We humans have a long history of attaching that name to any monumental Draconean structure whose use we do not understand; this one might be constructed of wood and rough field stone rather than the carefully shaped blocks of the ancients, but what other purpose could motivate them to build so large a place?

  I should have guessed the answer, for the parts of the village I had seen thus far had one exceedingly obvious lack. But it was not until I drew close and smelled the odour arising from it that I realized the truth.

  Ruzt unbarred the door and ushered me inside the yak barn.

  It contained what I presumed was every single yak belonging to the village, penned in a series of smaller enclosures. In each enclosure, the beasts shared a common style of nose-ring, which I understood to be owners’ marks. Wherever the rest of the Draconeans had gone, they had left behind their livestock—and, I soon realized, it was the duty of these three to care for them until spring.

  I spent a good deal of time in that yak barn during my stay in the village. I knew from past experience in other parts of the world that assistance with daily tasks goes some way toward establishing friendly relations, and it was no different here (though my aid did little to thaw Zam’s heart). But my motives were not entirely altruistic: owing to the number of beasts inside the barn, it was also the warmest place in the village, unless I wished to spend the months huddled right next to the Draconeans’ fire. Furthermore, there was something of great interest to me inside that barn.

  From above us I heard a familiar cry.

  “Mews!” I said in startlement, looking at the Draconeans. Naturally this meant nothing to them, and none of the Tser-zhag words I tried had any better effect. But Ruzt led me up a ladder to an attic space—a mews, I thought, remembering Suhail’s laughter at the word—filled with familiar draconic shapes. These, too, were marked, though in their case it was with paint on their hides rather than rings through the nose.

  In the days that followed I discovered that the mews were an integral part of how three Draconeans could care for such a large quantity of livestock all by themselves. In Hlamtse Rong we had wondered whether mews could be trained; in the Draconean village, which was called Imsali, I learned that they could. It works far better, however, when the trainer is not human, though the reasons for this are still a mystery. But I received my answer on the matter of the mews’ diving behaviour, for this is clearly a degenerate echo of the action they use to herd yaks.

  Yes, my Draconean hosts used mews as their aerial sheepdogs. The little dragons helped them drive groups of livestock out to areas where grazing could still be found—for yaks can nibble up shreds and patches of grass from beneath the snow. If they have fed well enough in summer, they can survive all winter on such fare. We supplemented this with dried fodder in the barn, but to keep them there the entire season would be detrimental to their health. My hosts therefore took them out in a steady rotation, one Draconean and cluster of mews per herd, with at least one caretaker remaining behind in the village.

  Even my fascination with dragon behaviour could not persuade me to volunteer myself for such excursions, not in a Mrtyahaiman winter. It was therefore in some ways fortunate that the Draconeans clearly did not want me to leave the village. Instead I engaged in chores there: mucking out the yak barn, caring for the mews not currently on duty, and working diligently to establish some command of the local language, with the help of Ruzt.

  It is difficult to tell the story of that winter among the Draconeans. I kept no journal during my time there (lacking a notebook to keep it in, or a pen with which to write). Even if I had, I could not tell you when and how I learned everything; too much of it seeped into my head by some osmotic process, assembled from a hundred little clues until one day I knew a thing, without ever quite having been told it. Even when my education was more overt, it is difficult to recall the sequence and cause. Certain details are vital enough to this tale that I will keep them in their proper places; but for the rest, I shall let them fall where they may, without undue concern for chronology.

  My progress often felt painfully slow—in part because it was, and in part because it came not in grand leaps, but by small degrees. There was no moment at which I began having conversations with Ruzt. We started with the vocabulary of my immediate environment, progressed to basic verbs, muddled through the fundamentals of grammar by a great deal of trial and even more error, and by the end could tackle some abstract concepts through extensive circumlocution—all of which was great progress over where I began, but it happened so slowly that at times I doubted it was happening at all.

  That I achieved so much success I largely attribute to my husband’s brilliant deduction, connecting Draconean to the languages of southern Anthiope. Familiar though I was with the concept of evolution, I was not in the habit of applying it to languages; and on my own, I do not know if I would have looked for the patterns that would allow me to extrapolate from the tongue I knew to the tongue I did not. (There is, of course, a hazard in leaning too heavily upon such analogies: I spoke very Akhian-flavored Draconean, as I instinctively defaulted to the grammar of the more familiar language whenever my attention wandered.) But with that theory in hand, I could apply my naturalist’s mind to the problem, and after a while I was able to make educated guesses as to Draconean words I had not yet learned. These were rarely correct, but they often led me toward the proper word by a faster road.

  The remainder of my success is due to Ruzt. If we, analogizing to biological evolution, think of Lashon and Akhian as the domestic housecat and the lion—differing in a variety of respects, but obviously near relations—then the modern Draconean tongue is like a dog: still derived from a common ancestor, from whom all three languages have inherited some important characteristics, but much more widely separated by millennia of change. Fortunately for me, Ruzt spoke what I eventually recognized as an older, religious form of the language, comparable to Scriptural Lashon; this lay much closer to the ancient roots than their modern tongue. The language she spoke with Kahhe and Zam contained a vast number of words that I suspect derived from another tongue entirely—perhaps a human language, though it did not, to my amateur ear, appear to be Nying or Tser-zhag.

  Despite this, I learned a few things, beginning with the shift my alert
readers may have noticed already: my hosts were in fact hostesses. Ruzt, Kahhe, and Zam were three sisters, which is the typical household arrangement among the Draconeans. Males are fewer in number, but rather than following the polygamous structure a human society might assume, the Draconeans practice no real marriage at all. Their males live together, in several larger buildings where they are sorted according to their age group, while sister-groups maintain independent houses. They consider the sibling bond to be much more significant than the parental one, and the sororal more significant than the fraternal.

  Imsali was not the only village in the region. On a clear day I could see smoke arising in other places around the Sanctuary—for that was how I came to think of the basin that encircled the great central peak, known to the Draconeans as Anshakkar. The ring of mountains surrounding it (of which Gyaptse and Cheja are but two) is nearly impassible; the col by which I entered is one of the lowest points in that ring, and as you have seen, it is not easy to traverse. Mountaineers may scale it, of course—but it is only in recent history that mountaineers have begun to frequent the region, people well equipped for the climbing of ridges and peaks, and motivated less by the search for new pastures or arable land or even trading routes than by the desire to conquer untrammeled terrain. For the inhabitants on all sides, the way is too forbidding to be worthwhile. What good would it do to enter such a place? Departure is too difficult; anyone who lived within would be isolated from the world without.

  But the land inside is hospitable—at least by Mrtyahaiman standards of hospitality. The valleys are quite deep, and at most times of year the surrounding mountains block enough of the wind to make the interior relatively pleasant. Farming is possible, and the herding of yaks; and while humans would find it quite hard going, the Draconeans, with the advantage of their adaptable biology, made do quite well.