Dragon's Run

by Daniel Potter

  Sparrow’s coughing sounded worse, wetter than it had been, and whenever Ishe glanced back, the tear tracks along his face were never dry.

  “Closer now,” Drosa said as they threaded between the dead trees. Ishe did not need Drosa to see the Maw. The river didn’t simply flow into it; it poured over the lip with a roar that could only mean a waterfall within the darkness. Within, white teeth of quartz jutted from the ceiling. Off to the side of the cave lay the entrance to series of switchbacks up the mountain through a field of rocky rubble. Drosa paused there.

  “We need Stag to pass the Maw, and we ahead. We wait here in sun? Orin cave?” Drosa asked.

  It seemed obvious to Ishe. “We go up. Yaz’noth knows where we were heading. If he’s capable of sending anyone after us, then it’s best we have a hole to dash into.” After siccing the Grief on him, Ishe figured the dragon would be less careful with her life in the future. Using that as a shield wouldn’t work again.

  Drosa nodded, and together, the three of them climbed. No dragons came to pluck them from the rocky path that zigzagged up toward the Watchers. Only a lonely airship could be seen in the distance, rising from the wreckage of the Odin Sphere. Omau’s ship, a small sail trader with no propellers, struggled toward the column of smoke rising from the site where Hawk and Yaz’noth had fought. Dark clouds were creeping over the mountains, but the sun shone through a shrinking circle of blue sky over the site of the battle. The dragon’s body did not block the river’s flow, so it was clear who had survived the fight and who hadn’t. Of Hawk there was no sign.

  The three boulders, the Watchers, which made up the eyes of the Maw, were far less eyelike up close. Each stood on two legs and had mounds on their sides suggesting arms, yet each was as natural as weathered stone. Ishe felt their nonexistent eyes boring into her chest as soon as she stepped onto the platform on which they rested. Their attention roamed over her body, one hot, one cold, and one sad. The hot gaze, which originated from the center figure, made the inky surface of her arms bubble beneath their attention. Once Drosa started speaking in her tribe language, the force of their scrutiny fell from Ishe and onto her. The warrior went to each figure, placed a hand on each knee, which required Drosa to stand on her toes to reach, and sang to them. The song pitched up and down like a bending river, and Ishe felt her body shiver with a sudden chill as Eyah returned to Drosa. After she had sung to all three Watchers, Drosa drifted up to Ishe. She cut a lock of her own hair off and gestured for Ishe to do the same, handing her the knife. Ishe did not hesitate to offer a much shorter lock, and Sparrow trimmed a bit of his mustache. Drosa twisted the strands together and set them in front of the central Watcher.

  Ishe felt the attention of the Watchers again focused on her chest. A voice drifted on a warm breeze that tickled the new bare spot near her temple. “Do not tarry long in the darkness, or you will never leave it.” Ishe bit back a sarcastic response; most gods did not appreciate humor.

  The bundle of hair burst into flame, giving rise to a tendril of oily smoke. Drosa beamed a smile at both of them. “We can go in via the easy way; the Watchers are satisfied that we have been tested.” She pointed and Ishe saw a gap in the rock behind the Watchers. Maybe it been there a moment before; maybe it hadn’t.

  “Chrrk! Chrrk!”

  Ishe whipped around to find Sparrow nearly engulfed by Blinky, Sparrow’s arms flailing in surprise as they stuck through the cage of legs. “Aaaah! Don’t sneak up on me like that, Blinky!” Sparrow scolded the spider as he twisted his head, trying to avoid the spider’s “kisses.” “Down. Off!” Sparrow said, and the spider reluctantly obeyed.

  Once down, Blinky charged toward Ishe but skidded to a stop in front of her outstretched hands. He stared at the shiny skin, blinked his eight eyes, and then, with a sound somewhere between a squeak and a chirp, spun around and fled behind Sparrow’s legs. He leaned around them, moved his fuzzy pedipalps to display his shiny black fangs, and hissed like a cat.

  Ishe flinched at the display as Sparrow started to scold the spider.

  Drosa provided a needed distraction at that point. “I see them.”

  Ishe squinted where Drosa pointed; the bulky shape of Hammer rose from the smoke. He beat his wings as if he were battering the air. “We should go into the cave before we’re spotted,” Ishe said, stepping toward the entrance.

  Drosa nodded. “With dragon in sky, Stag will brave the teeth. We meet them below. The Watchers will guide them.”

  “Right. If Blinky’s here, then they can’t be that far behind.” Ishe took a step closer toward the entrance but halted when Drosa stepped in front of her.

  “Ishe.” Drosa’s voice was grave. “Eyah cannot follow inside, and he worried about you in dark.”

  “I stood against the Grief last night.” Ishe puffed out her chest. “I can do it again. For as long as I need to. Just get us to the other side.”

  Drosa’s eyes flicked downward, a smirk briefly making an appearance on her face before the warrior’s expression turned somber. “You are stronger than Gull. You must be; passing through Maw take time. Touch nothing; no taint this place with Grief.”

  Did she…check out my breasts? Ishe’s mind vaulted miles away as Drosa spoke. Her mind managed to replay Drosa’s words before they were lost. “Touch nothing, got it,” she managed to parrot as a wave of hot crashed over her face and chest, making her instinctively grab for the shirt stuffed in her belt and pull it out. She checked to make sure the blackness of her hands did not leach into the cloth, and put it on after Drosa had stepped into the shadow of the cave. No need to bare herself to the sun where there wasn’t any.

  In the dark opening, a spark of flint and steel ignited a torch on the wall, its ragged flame revealing Drosa standing in a roughly triangular passageway leading into the mountain.

  Ishe stepped from the sunlight and gasped as stabbing coldness bit into each of her limbs. The shock of the attack bowled her over, sending down to her hands and knees. Her torso convulsed as her teeth began to hammer together. The cold hurt like nothing else, an agony that stabbed directly into her heart.

  Those limbs made of ice were no longer numb. In the icy flow she could feel her bones, feel them start to shift, slipping from their proper alignments, like her entire self since Fox Fire had been destroyed. The burbling anger of the Grief trickled into her. How dare the world do this. How unfair.

  “Stop!” Drosa’s voice rang out like a thunderclap.

  Ishe opened her eyes and found Drosa’s nose inches from her own.

  “Pull together,” Drosa commanded. “You strong. Be strong.”

  What does she care? She tried to kill me a day ago. Remember the knife? the voices whispered in Ishe’s thoughts.

  Yet no trace of murder showed in Drosa’s eyes, illuminated in the dancing torchlight. They were wide and warm, perhaps slightly wet.

  “You not them. Pull together.” Drosa swallowed. “Not lose you, too. Got to get up.”

  Focusing on that, Ishe managed to slow her chattering and grin back. “I’m n-n-not them.” Speaking the words caused the whispers in her head to recoil, the slipping sensation in her limbs to pause.

  We are all but causalities of the world. We are you, you are us. It is pointless, we have much of you already, why struggle? The cold bit deeper and pain spiked to a level that lacked words to describe it.

  Ishe screamed out. It echoed back from the cavern. Yet the pain kindled a spark of a new anger. “Let me go!” Ishe shoved against the oily presence in her mind with the heat of her anger. It yielded with the hiss of water falling on a hot stove. Ishe found herself on her feet, black fists balled in front of her, ready to strike out.

  The drum of her heart filled her ears as adrenaline coursed through her chest. The cold pulled on her limbs but the anger pushed it back. “I am the Rhino and I am not done,” she told it.

  “Good. Very good,” Drosa said.

  Blinking, Ishe found Drosa inside her guard, eyes smiling. “No hands on me. Eyah can�
��t help much here. I warm you.” Then the slender woman hugged her, pressing herself against Ishe’s chest. There were sharp bits among the things she wore that pressed into Ishe’s breasts and stomach, but it mattered little, compared to the warmth that flowed forth. She smelled like a summer’s breeze. Drosa rested her head on Ishe’s shoulder and breathed.

  Words wandered around in Ishe’s head like sailors too drunk to find their way back to their ship. Finally, as the chattering of her teeth died away, she gave up and let her cheek press into Drosa’s soft mane, letting the moment be.

  “Better?” Drosa broke the silence.

  “Yes.” Ishe’s voice sounded hoarse as if it gone too long unused.

  Drosa slipped back under Ishe’s arms. “Come with, then.”

  Sparrow coughed behind them. “That is…one way of handling Grief venom. How you feel?”

  Ishe considered; the afterglow of the embrace was fading and the cold still sapped her, but the Grief’s whispers were indistinct and distant, almost muffled. She flexed her arms. The flesh ate the torchlight, leaving the limbs composed of pitch-blackness. The numbness had returned, but that was better than the sensation of her bones sliding around in her flesh. “It’s…bearable,” she told Sparrow.

  “Good, try not to touch anyone.”

  On cue, Ishe’s nose developed a maddening itch. She imagined her nose all black and drooping off her face. With a grunt, she let her hands fall to the side. She remembered poise class at the finishing school. Everyone had been forced to stand still as a statue as the troll of a teacher wandered about, asking questions, such as “Does your nose itch? Are your shoes comfortable?” Anyone who so much as twitched got a switch to the back of the neck. Same thing, just more motivation applied. She could do this.

  As she put one foot in front of the other to follow Drosa, Ishe heard a small snicker.

  Chapter Twenty-One

  The Grief are ghosts that want company.

  Boots, Storywalker

  Unlike the warren of the Dragonsworn, the tunnels within the Maw were smooth and linear. Ishe walked as if she stood on a narrow plank, black hands held out from her hips, trying to ignore the cold that flowed into her torso with every movement. Finally, as her teeth threatened to start chattering again, they entered a roughly square chamber in what seemed like the very heart of the mountain. The air in it smelled sweet and smoky. The center of the room opened to a stairway through which the roar of churning water rumbled. The four walls were carved with ornate petroglyphs, rich lines in the shape of humans, beasts, and shapeless masses that had to be the Grief. A man with the head of a goat seemed to lead groups of humans away from tall block-like things toward a jagged circle. Then the goat-headed man split in twain, tiny goats springing from the two fallen halves.

  “This one tells of the Two Herds coming to valley, away from the world,” Drosa said. “Two herds of animals that refuse to be herded, humans and goats.” She smiled brighter than her torch.

  She pointed to the wall opposite the entrance, raising the torch to it. “This how we live here.” The wall depicted herding goats, hunting stags, and a bridge across a river with Grief lying in wait beneath it. Yaz’noth appeared in the middle, head turned sideways so a single eye gazed balefully into the room. Drosa stepped away from it before Ishe could interpret it.

  “And this be how we leave this place.” Drosa showed the third wall. This one was mostly blank, a few drawings that seemed shallower, less certain. Yaz’noth gifted a group of figures with a spear. A figure wielding that same spear stood over the dragon. Ishe assumed this was One who Shatters Iron Two other possibilities stood on the wall. One showed the people on ships flying around Yaz’noth, and another depicted the Maw itself cracking, falling to pieces. That last possibility looked older than the others, its lines worn. Drosa didn’t give anyone much time to study the walls before stepping up toward the stairway. “Come. This will be easier if we can catch Stag in the river.”

  Ishe followed her down the stairs, Sparrow shuffling along behind, his eyes not leaving his feet. Blinky clicked anxiously in his wake. They descended into a huge cavern that spanned the width of the river and then split, arcing to either side. A wet sheen covered every stone surface as Ishe felt the saturated air start to deposit moisture on her skin. Drosa stepped with the surety of a mountain goat, keeping to the very center of the stairway. It split in twain as the passageway opened on a great chamber that contained the roaring river itself. The twin stairs were carved into half-tubes that could only have been shaped by earth crystals. Each one followed the ceiling and then arced down along the walls. The stairways ended at small platforms that each sat a foot above the rushing water. Ishe tried to follow Drosa’s example, but her own boot nearly flew out from under her midway down. As she was falling, Ishe’s hand hit the rock with a wet SMACK! Her plunge toward the river stopped abruptly. She hung there for a moment, traitorous feet dangling over the water as it roared around jagged fang-like rocks in the current.

  “Careful!” Drosa called from the base the stairway. “Current break you on the falls.”

  Ishe bared her teeth, stopping them from chattering, and looked up. The sight made her wince. Her black hand had spread itself thin onto the stone’s surface, like a mangled liquid gecko foot. In several places, white bone showed through. Hissing through her teeth and trying not to think about what that meant, Ishe pulled herself back up onto the stone. Peeling her hand off the rock made a sound like ripping paper. Her hand resumed its former shape but poorly, fingers too long, palm too wide as if it only partially remembering itself.

  Ishe joined Drosa on the platform without further incident. The wall had a rectangular block a few feet taller than Drosa. Most of its surface had been decorated with glyphs in a similar style to the room above, but the side that faced the river had an alcove big enough for a person to sit in. Drosa placed her torch in a slot above the alcove and then stooped to pick up a wooden pole that had been lying on the platform where it met the cave wall. “Running Stag and Catter either follow us path or brave river. This gate meant to open all Two Herds is ready to leave the Valley.”

  It didn’t look like much of a gate to Ishe. The river had been funneled into a space maybe thirty feet across, decorated with evenly spaced teeth. She didn’t see where the water went after it passed by. Downriver, where the light from Drosa’s torch faded, wet stone glinted beyond a whirling vortex of water.

  Drosa continued. “This meant to keep the Grief out of our river.”

  Ishe flexed her fingers. “Didn’t work, huh?”

  “Worked long time. Watchers chase them out now.” Drosa held out the pole towards Ishe. “Can you hold this?”

  Sparrow, who had stopped to sit on the last step of the stairway, cut in. “Ishe should not touch anything living with those.”

  “We floated down a river lined with dead trees; the stick will be fine.” Ishe would have added more, but the haunted look in Sparrow’s eyes made the bitter words shrivel and die on her tongue. Her mind replayed the way the searing blue cone of flame swept over Hawk. After a moment, she managed to shove the image away but guessed Sparrow could see little else at the moment. Turning away, she lifted the pole from Drosa’s hands as her teeth began to chatter.

  Drosa thrust a pole at Sparrow. “Need everyone help.”

  Sparrow stared at the pole, jaw slack with incredulity. “To what? What if they come down over on the other side? The pole won’t reach there,” he said after a long moment. Blinky huddled at his side, clicking worriedly as Sparrow stifled a cough.

  “He won’t. They hug this wall.” Drosa jiggled the pole at him.

  Sparrow took it with a great sigh.

  Together, they settled down to wait.

  The cold kept creeping into Ishe’s body. She yearned to ask Drosa to warm her again, but now the warrior stood stock-still, legs braced and pole extended out over the river, like Blinky waiting outside a rat hole. That embrace they had shared in the tunnel above seemed less rea
l than a dream. Yet as her chattering drowned out the roar of the water, she couldn’t banish the memory nor the desire to feel that springy hair against her cheek again.

  It could have been hours, but it had probably been minutes when Drosa’s bark pierced Ishe’s thoughts. “They come!”

  Ishe shook herself and it turned into a full-body shiver. While her black limbs were steady, her torso felt the need to attempt ten different dances at once, resulting in the tip of her pole vibrating like a threatening switch.

  A yell drifted from beyond the light of the torch. “Drosa! Yeeha!”

  Drosa shuffled forward, so close to the edge that the toes of her front foot stood on air. Ishe assumed a position downriver as far as she could get. Sparrow dragged himself to the platform’s midpoint.

  Incomprehensible human whoops and hollering echoed from upriver, and Ishe set her stance, praying that her boots served her better there than they had on the stairs. Blinky seemed to be having similar thoughts. Clicking and sighing irritably, the spider attached silk to the far wall, then looped the other end around Sparrow’s ankle. Blinky gave her a long stare before climbing up the stone pillar and turning his attention to the hollering.

  “There!” Drosa shouted, pointing at heads bobbing in the distance. One was within a foot of the closest wall, but the other had drifted to the center of the river.

  “What happens if we miss them?” Ishe asked. “Where’s that vortex go?”

  “Large waterfall. Many rocks.” Drosa grunted. “Get ready.” Her wiry frame tensed.

  The figure coming in near the wall shouted at Drosa in Two Herds, identifying himself at Stag. Drosa bent low, thrusting the pole toward him.

  “I got him!” she announced. “You get Catter!”