by E. E. Knight
Amazing.
He jumped for the ground with wings extended. It turned into a flight across the old deer-tracked square. He had to tip his wings and swoop in a circle to avoid plunging into the trees, just catching a branch with his tail-tip. He dodged under vines hanging from tree limbs, then found himself slewing to the right. He crashed among the branches, some instinct folding his wings before he struck the ground. He shook his frame clean of mud, vine, and leaf and returned to the square. Mind-pictures of flights handed down from his parents and NooMoahk told his body what to do. He flapped hard and rose.
AuRon felt a strange duality—the part of him that was flying was separate from the part of him that was observing the flight, like a dream where he watched himself. Both halves shared one emotion: exhilaration. The freedom from earth, from shadows, from gravity made anything possible. He felt like one of the Great Spirits of Creation, a lord apart from and above the world.
He was breathing hard, but there was none of the agony of an extended sprint. Unlike running, his body was created for this, from the thick tree-root muscles across his back to the narrow, cablelike sinews of his outer wing. An updraft rose from a depression in the forest set against a cliff, and Auron experimented with it. The trees beneath shrank and foreshortened, and he was among the clouds.
When he tired, he found he could float on the updraft, circling with the least of adjustments at the tips of his wings. Such felicity! Even NooMoahk hadn’t passed mind-pictures of this; the armored dragons were too heavy for these drifting pleasures.
The sun began its descent, and so did he. His new muscles had tired, and he drifted down, down to the elephant’s head again. He landed, striking first with his tail to absorb the impact and slow him, then folded his wings with some awkwardness. His newly used muscles were sore, dreadfully sore. The wounds on his back had opened again in the flight, and he licked the blood oozing from the cracks in the translucent scab material. He knew he was hungry, but fatigue overcame him, and he slept even before it was fully dark.
He awoke to a burning ache across his back. Monkeys hooted from the trees, and another group of baboons stalked through the ruined square, hunting some kind of nocturnal creatures. Auron’s mouth wetted, and he jumped down among them, gobbling three young ones whole in quick succession before chasing another shrieker up a tree to bite it in half. His appetite somewhat assuaged after finishing the two pieces, he drank from the fountain pool and opened his wings again. The effort made him wince. He hadn’t been this tired in years, perhaps since his battle with the Ironriders. He wandered in memory for a moment before curling up to sleep, back pressed against the cool stone of the elephant statue.
He flew again briefly the next day, just long enough to find some wide-horned cattle in a muddy swamp. Without thinking, he folded his wings and dived. The beast did not even know what landed on it; it was dead in an instant. The rest fled splashing as he settled in on his kill.
After dining on liver, heart, and kidneys, AuRon left the carcass to the gars and the crocodiles, and climbed a water-oak with a quarter of the kill. He’d hang it overnight—it would make a fine breakfast.
He was a dragon now, if far from fully grown. Mother would have been thrilled, Father proud. In another decade or so, he’d reach true dragon size and sometime after that reach his adult weight. There were decisions to make. NooMoahk, though he spent most of his time napping, was a consideration. The old dragon could no longer take care of himself. If AuRon left him on his own, he’d either quietly starve in his cave or wander into the woods, with every chance of never seeing his hold again.
AuRon watched a green-brown crocodile swallow the leavings from his kill in gulps as a white bird stood on its back. The twig-legged bird stabbed the croc behind a rear leg, and came up with a glistening leech. AuRon’s position was similar: NooMoahk couldn’t hunt any more than that crocodile could get a leech off its hindquarters, but if the bird wasn’t careful, the crocodile would make a meal of it. Like the bird, AuRon got something out of the relationship, too. In the years with NooMoahk he had gained some perspective on dragons and their place in the world.
If dragons had once ruled the world, they did a poor job of leaving any record of it. Everything the hominids knew of dragons came down through myth and wives’ tales. Sometime, several lives of even ancient dragons like NooMoahk ago, the dragons had taken the three races under their wing, so to speak. They protected them against the dominant hominid of the time, the blighters, and were fed and obeyed for a time. But as the blighter menace faded, dragons were seen as a burden rather than a blessing. The races, each in their way, rebelled or escaped the authority of dragons, and the hunting began. There were exceptions, like the alliance between NooMoahk and Tindairuss. But there was no doubt in AuRon’s mind that the hominids were waxing and the dragons waning.
AuRon had three choices, none attractive. He could live in a remote place, like NooMoahk, and trust to distance and terrain to shield him from assassins. The mountains were far enough from the paths of the hominids for the blighters to exist, after a fashion, so he imagined he could as well. The blighters might even be convinced to follow him, as they once did NooMoahk.
There was an attraction to that choice. After all, why should he care what happened beyond his lifespan? He could mate and live out his existence, perhaps better but certainly no worse than most dragons. But if he could find a mate, could he be sure of that isolation in twenty winters, or forty? The hominids knew the mountains existed, and eventually they would come. And there was the problem of a hoard for mate and brood. NooMoahk’s falling scales were a testament to the lack of precious metals in the area.
The second choice was to join with the hominids, to serve rather than rule. The dwarves spoke of using him as a courier. He and Djer were friends; for a time he knew he could have safety, food, and shelter. But if he took a mate, would the dwarves expect his mate and hatchlings to serve them someday? He imagined so. The dwarves had any number of shining qualities, but they gave nothing away.
The third option was so remote, it hardly seemed a possibility. He could find some like-minded young dragons, convince them of their predicament, and get them to act together on a solution. Dragons were an independent species, jealous of everything from mates to hunting ground, and the very idea was like a gourd with no stem. AuRon couldn’t see how he could get inside without smashing it. Male dragons wouldn’t listen to him without a fight, a chancy business, and females, if Mother and his sisters provided any guide, were too concerned with mating and hatchlings to see beyond their immediate horizon.
AuRon watched the sun settle in the western mists rising from the river’s swamped banks. The dilemma was a hard bone to swallow. Perhaps he would wait for one of NooMoahk’s more lucid moments and talk it over with him.
He glided into the cavern bearing another chunk of water buffalo in his rear claws. Flying with the beast’s dead weight was a challenge, and his claws got caught in the meal, causing him to make an inelegant landing on his front legs and chin. He could almost hear Wistala’s braying laughter as he picked himself up.
He heard something—a dragon’s shriek.
AuRon forgot the buffalo and raced to the sink in a series of hops, half-dash and half-flight. He jumped for the lower entrance; the cave wasn’t wide enough for him to use his wings. A rope ladder caught on his left front elbow, and he bit himself free in a frustrated snap of his jaws.
Something wide-eyed turned and fled from before him, running on all fours like an ape. Blighters!
AuRon folded his wings in tight and dashed through the cave. The sentry, if that was what it was, was faster than it was watchful. It wasn’t until they reached NooMoahk’s lair that AuRon could catch up to it with a leap. It died shrieking under his claws, but AuRon hardly noticed.
An assassination unfolded before his slit-pupiled eyes.
Armored blighters hurling spears had NooMoahk surrounded on the dais, coiled about the crystal statue. Dragonfire lit th
e room in an infernal glow of orange and black shadow; the flame’s oily smell mixed with the coppery odor of blood. Pairs and trios of blighters sheltered behind columns, with larger ones shouting orders and gesturing with swords. They placed spears into some kind of throwing stick, then jumped out from behind the rock to hurl their missiles into NooMoahk’s sides. So many spears hung from wounds in his sides that he looked like a blood-soaked porcupine.
The blood scent, the screams of battle, and the spade-in-dirt sounds of throwing spears striking NooMoahk’s flesh awakened something in Auron. He braced his legs wide and half-opened his wings and bellowed a challenge that brought pebbles down from cracks in the ceiling. The blighters froze at the sight of AuRon: tall as a warhorse but much longer, opening his wings like a standard unfurling.
“You vermin! You dare trespass in a dragon’s hall?” he bellowed in his father’s voice.
NooMoahk rolled off his refuge, snapping spear shafts to lie, belly up, in the blood pooled on the floor.
A blighter shouted something back, and spears arced toward AuRon. He jumped to the right in a flash, and one spear punched a hole in his wing before clattering to the floor with its fellows. The blighters took up hand axes and stabbing spears, and they followed their hulking leaders in a ragged line to surround AuRon as they had NooMoahk. They were more numerous than AuRon had thought at first, and others popped out from behind pillars and appeared from beyond the flame-light. He couldn’t deal with a sixth of them with his flame, they would close and kill him like a deer surrounded by wolves.
AuRon turned around, whipping his tail low along the ground. A few blighters were quick enough to hop it, but the others went over like the wooden pins in the dwarves’ game of tendown. AuRon ran for the exit and felt a thrown ax dig into his flank.
A little lamely, he jumped over the corpse of the sentry-blighter and dashed down the tunnel, wings folded again and tail waving behind to keep his pursuers off his haunches. The closer space of the tunnel amplified their triumphant shouts and hunting cries.
At the widening of the down-shaft, AuRon reared up and grasped the jagged stone of the tunnel roof first in his fore sii, then his rear ones. He hung upside down, like a clinging lizard hunting insects. The blighters pointed with their stabbing-spears and gabbled. AuRon was just out of their weapons’ reach.
But they were within his.
He stiffened his neck and vomited up his fire bladder’s contents. Gravity and his muscles sent the liquid flame over the heads of the foremost blighters. The ones in the rear tried to spread out, but the tunnel confined them under the deadly shower. AuRon worked the flame forward, squeezing every ounce of his fire bladder. The remaining mass of blighters ran forward, pushing those in front of them, their desperate cries filling the tunnel with animalistic screams. The crowd dropped their weapons as they shoved and shouted—
—right over the edge of the tunnel and into the deep shaft. The packed river of panicked blighters plummeted over the edge en masse, too fearful of the pursuing flames to look forward until it was too late. They were shoved to their doom by those behind. The last few realized their mistake and jumped for the rope ladders, only to be batted off by AuRon’s tail to plunge into darkness with their comrades.
When the echo of the last cry faded, AuRon climbed down from his refuge and waited for the flames to die down. He crossed the pool of fire, fed by burning bodies, by crawling the wall and crept back to NooMoahk’s chamber. The battle blazes there had gone out, and only the familiar crystalline glow lit the chamber. AuRon heard a wheezy breathing and knew NooMoahk still lived.
“NooMoahk?” he called into the darkness.
A red eye opened, joined by a second, and AuRon heard the bulk of the ancient dragon rise. “Never,” NooMoahk grated.
“NooMoahk, it’s AuRon. The blighters are gone.”
“You’ll never have it. This is my hold. Trespasser!” NooMoahk roared, coming forward, sagging griff extended. His wounds still leaked a little blood, but the spears, save for a few snapped-off heads, were out of the unarmored spots on his hide.
AuRon read murder in the red coals burning in NooMoahk’s long face. He stepped back, lowering his head and hugging the ground. The pose failed to mollify the dragon, who came forward in a rush.
AuRon turned and ran, not as a feint this time, but in earnest.
NooMoahk pursued, shouting threats: “My hold, my city, my mountains! I’ll throw your bones to the cave rats, you jackal.”
AuRon climbed up the shaft in a flash, and scrambled for the cave mouth. NooMoahk, more animated that Auron had seen him in years, stayed a few lengths behind, driven on by fury born of instinct.
When he had enough sky above, Auron launched himself into the air. NooMoahk was long past flying, and in a day or so, when he had a chance to get the heat of battle out of his blood . . .
He heard a rustle and a flap behind him. NooMoahk flew! His gaunt, almost scaleless frame gained the air. With his second line of defense shattered, Auron flew between the remains of the upside-down towers at the giant cavern’s mouth and went higher.
NooMoahk made a chase of it, following AuRon north and into the sky. On the other side of the mountains, the dun desert stretched below. Auron fled into what NooMoahk would not consider to be hunting territory. Whatever madness drove the tons of mind and muscle behind him, it would perhaps be content with chasing him into a wasteland.
A few hours’ flight convinced him otherwise.
Perhaps if AuRon were more used to flying, he could have out-flown the old dragon, but AuRon’s new muscles barely kept him ahead of NooMoahk’s old ones, after the first burst of the chase shrank the black into a dot as large as a claw. NooMoahk gained steadily after that. AuRon was forced by fatigue to glide more and more frequently to rest his wing muscles. The addled NooMoahk was too old a hunter to give up the chase without a kill at the end of it.
Even darkness, when it came, was not enough; a bright moon lit the dry sky enough for AuRon to see their pair of shadows two score of dragon-lengths below. NooMoahk was even with him, diving for him with jaws agape. Again and again, through a desperate use of his wings, Auron rose in the sky when NooMoahk plunged for him. His body was a long rope of agony, his wings a rack of flame. He did not dare fight NooMoahk on the ground, where the elder dragon’s weight and remaining scales would make the difference, so flight was his only option. But it didn’t have to be a directionless flight—
Below AuRon saw the edge of the desert, a familiar hill or two, one with a mound over the monument well where he had said good-bye to Djer and the Diadem. AuRon steepened his glide and then circled up to bite at his pursuer. He caught a mouthful of tail before folding his wings to dive like a hunting hawk.
NooMoahk roared his outrage and followed. AuRon saw the earth hurtle up to meet him, and in the moonlight made for the tomb of Tindairuss. The black dragon dropped from the sky, perhaps looking to crush the offending fly under him even as he crashed to earth. The wind whistled in AuRon’s ears as he fell more than flew. When the rustless metal became clear in the color-draining moonlight, he opened his wings again—
Not enough. He hit the side of the pole-projection at the top of the tomb with a resounding thump and felt something in his shoulder give way. He grabbed the narrow column, thinner than a young palm, in his rear claws and looked up to see NooMoahk almost atop him, opening his wings to aim rather than stop his plunge.
AuRon leaped from the pole at the last moment. He landed atop the mausoleum at the same moment NooMoahk crashed down; the impact ran through the iron structure like a thunder from the Air Spirit. NooMoahk pivoted to bring his jaws into play, griff clattering against ancient multihorned crest, but he was pinioned. The sharp pole atop the center of the monument ran right through him, a gory needle sticking up from his back. The dragon drew a rattling breath and collapsed.
NooMoahk’s breathing became short and labored, and AuRon could feel his slowing heartbeat through the iron. NooMoahk rolled his head
back and forth and scraped ineffectually at the top of the monument with his claws, the fire in his eyes finally smothered. AuRon approached, knocking aside scales that had fallen off the dragon’s body when he hit.
“AuRon, you’ve got your wings at last. You’re a dragon now,” NooMoahk said. Blood stained his teeth black in the moonlight.
“Yes. Do you know where you are?”
“The cave? No, we’re outside. What is this place?”
“You had a lapse. You chased me. We flew, and you hurt yourself landing.”
“I flew? I flew? I thought I was past it,” NooMoahk said, trying to right himself, then falling back with a groan. The black’s mouth turned up at the corners in an oddly human expression: he was smiling. “I’ll never fly again. No pain, but I feel a chill. Are we on metal?”
“It’s like iron. This is the monument the men raised to Tindairuss. He is buried here.”
NooMoahk sniffed at the blood trickling on the metallic surface, keeping in well-rounded pools. “Is that the truth? Or something to comfort a dying dragon?”
“Can you move your neck? Look at the words on the side. You know the script.”
NooMoahk dragged his head across the surface, and with his long neck examined the characters AuRon pointed to with his tail. “I never knew this place existed, or I would have visited it before.” He was silent for a moment, and closed his eyes. Then he opened them again. “AuRon, you’ll see to it. Rest me in the same earth he does. Don’t let some wizard grind my bones.” The eyes shut again. NooMoahk took a last deep breath.
“Yes, my lord. I’ll see it done.”
“Tindairuss, old friend, I come,” NooMoahk wheezed. “We’ll fly to—”
The ancient head, crest crowned with its spread of horns as numerous as a jellyfish’s strands, dropped. AuRon could not hear a heartbeat.
“Beware, Great Spirits, for a dragon has returned to hunt your realms,” AuRon quoted, without knowing the origin of the words. They just came to him. His body felt heavy, and his legs buckled.