The Summer Dragon

by Todd Lockwood

  “What? Her words were what?”

  I blinked away tears. “There’s something you don’t know.”

  “What don’t I know?” Irritated.

  I wiped my eyes again, then my nose, and fought back a sob. “Before Mother fell, before she scolded me, before you even got there, I saddled Grus.”

  “So?”

  “I don’t know if I did it right. I might have left that cinch strap too loose. I should have seen the tear in the strap. It might have been . . .” The sob escaped, and for a few moments I couldn’t find my voice. I sucked in a breath. “It might have been my fault. She said, ‘A dragon handler with her head in the clouds is cursed.’ She used that word—curse—and then she died. And it might have been my fault.”

  Darian shook his head. “Maia, she checked her own girth before mounting, every time. You know that.”

  “But she was angry and distracted that once, and she used that word. Then she was gone forever. And I’ve never been able to get it out of my head. Ever since that day, it seems that events work against me. I always get blamed. Father’s never happy. I’m never good enough. Bad things happen. When Fren was mauled and Father yelled at me, it was the same thing again. It was awful, but it was familiar. As if somehow Mother’s last words to me were an accidental curse created by her anger, and her death. And my guilt.” Tears overcame me.

  Darian fell silent, too, finally willing to let me say what I needed to say.

  I caught my breath again. “When we saw Getig, I felt such an uplifting, of warmth and hope. As if everything that had ever been wrong might be made right again. I could feel the wholeness of the world. And I wondered if that big miracle might lead to a small miracle for me. A lifting of this accidental curse.”

  I sniffled. “And then it all went so wrong.” I choked on the words. Had Getig really spoken to me in some strange way? Was there something more to be done? Or was he done with me already—my part over—a witness, and nothing more? Or worse, was the message exactly what Bellua said it was?

  “I don’t know if Getig came to me to lift my curse, or cast it in stone.”

  Darian frowned deeply, but his anger was gone. “Maia, sometimes accidents happen. You’re not cursed.”

  “But how can I know? With all these signs being thrown back and forth, I don’t know what to believe. I don’t know who I am. I only know that if Bellua takes me to Avigal, I won’t ever be able to return. I just know it. Something is going on, and he can’t let our story survive, Darian, and he will do what he must to keep us quiet forever. I can see that much even if you can’t. And when he has silenced me, he will come after you. And Father, and Tauman, and Jhem. The curse will spread.”

  From the forest came another desolate moan, trailing off into a soft chuffing—the cry of a grieving dragon. It punctuated the moment; the last time we had heard that sound was when Grus mourned for my mother.

  “The worst thing is, I might deserve it.”

  Darian said nothing, his head bowed.

  I stood abruptly, snatched up my knapsack, and grabbed the larger of the two crossbows. “So I really don’t have any choice; I have to figure out a way to save that qit. I can’t go back without a baby.”

  “How does that even make sense? You keep saying that Bellua is going to have his way, no matter what.”

  I hesitated, unsure how to answer.

  “And what if the qit is a little boy? Did you think of that?”

  I swallowed. “Yes. But if it’s a little girl, I give Father and Mabir leverage. I stave off Bellua. And maybe I show that Getig had something for me, too.”

  “And you’re willing to die for this fantasy?”

  I stared out at the deepening gloom for several seconds. “It’s all I’ve got, Darian.”

  He fell silent again, his face pinched in thought.

  I thrust Kaisi’s crossbow at him and he took it instinctively. Then I unhooked her quiver from my belt. “You didn’t even come prepared.” I shrugged into my jacket. “Wait here, Darian.”

  I left him behind me in the dark tunnel.

  Stars winked in the east as day’s colors followed the sun below the western horizon. The light outside was purple and the temperature had dropped. I checked the sky for silhouettes, then hopped over to the wider ledge. It followed the lip of the crevice eastward around a bend and ended at a broken, toothy snag that afforded me some easy steps back up to the plateau. I peeked over the lip, expecting to see Harodhi warriors scouring the tabletop. There was just enough light remaining to tell that all was still, but the Harodhi cave was lit by firelight. Dark shadows moved back and forth in front of it, and I heard voices in pitched tones. I needed to get closer.

  Cautiously, I advanced across the plateau, using what little cover was presented—a knob of stone, a thin, scraggly bush, a low spot in the table. Finally I paused behind a low wall of capstone with a crack I could peer through.

  Gentle padding behind me. I turned quickly as Darian dropped down beside me. “We don’t dare go closer,” he whispered.

  “Avar—You scared the shit out of me.”

  “I couldn’t let you run out here by yourself.” He saw my scowl, then added, “I know—shhh.”

  I peered through the crack again. “We can’t get any closer anyway without putting ourselves upwind of their dragons.”

  “How did they manage not to be discovered with Father and the others out hunting for an entire day?”

  “They have a cave to hide in. And Father wouldn’t have taken game from our own valley—he’d have wanted to tire the parents with a long flight, not steal food from our wildings.”

  He frowned. “What are they doing?”

  “I don’t know.”

  There were several guards posted across the cave entrance with crossbows at the ready, probably with the dragon sire in mind. Beyond them, figures milled about at tasks difficult to make out. Behind all, the heads and wings of the two dragons rose above the confusion, the brown dragon of the leader bobbing from time to time, but the Horror not moving at all.

  I made out the cage on the cart, the donkeys still hitched to it with their noses in feedbags. The door was open, but the baby cowered against a far corner as one of the Harodhi waved something at it through the opening. Meat? A weapon? I couldn’t tell. But when the qit bleated in fear, the man threw whatever it was aside in obvious disgust.

  The leader wearing the red sash stepped out of the milling of figures and cuffed the man. Their voices rose in pitch as they gesticulated, pointing at the baby, at something further back in the cave, and out into the night.

  “They’re arguing,” I said quietly.

  “About what?”

  “About the baby, I think.” Realization crawled on my skin. “They’re here to steal qits out from under our very noses, and start bonding with them. But they have no idea what they’re doing. Probably this rider with the red sash is the only one with any knowledge. And he’s failing.”

  “There are so many Harodhi, Maia.”

  “It almost makes sense. They think they have to bond the qits immediately, so they’ve brought a bunch of potential riders to take babies from the mountain nests. But they’re rushing things and doing them poorly. There are dead babies in the cave. They had their frills cut off and their wing ports done wrong.” I looked at the Horror again, with its darkly armored head and neck, lacking a frill at all, unmoving. “Gods, Dare, will they turn them into those things?”

  “Avar . . .” Darian looked terrified. “What about the riders? They’re human, aren’t they?”

  “Not both of them. Look at the one riding the Horror-dragon.” I sought the Horror-rider and found him standing just behind the leader. Covered in black garb but, like his dragon, utterly motionless among the figures scurrying all about. I couldn’t see his face except as strange reflections of firelight on a shiny surface. I duc
ked my head out of sight.

  “But they have dragons of their own in Harodh, don’t they? Why would they come so far to steal ours?”

  “Avar, Darian—”

  “How would you ever get past them? We would have to plan some sort of distraction.”

  I could barely see him in the failing moonlight, but I saw him shrug and, despite myself, I hugged him. He pushed me off. “I didn’t say it was a good idea or that I would help. I was just saying it would have to be something dramatic to draw them out, like a fire, but timed so that we aren’t anywhere near it when they spot it.”

  “But that would draw Father too, or worse, Bellua and Rov.”

  “Would that be a bad thing? I’d still rather talk you out of this and trust Father to come up with something. This is crazy.” He put a hand on my shoulder. I could tell he was shaking.

  Pitched arguing from the cave drew our heads up again. Another flurry of activity flickered against the firelight, and the cart with the corpses was brought to the mouth of the cave. The bodies were unloaded and one of the donkeys unhitched. The leader and another man were engaged in a heated conversation, pointing out into the night, then at the bodies, and then at the plateau.

  “They’re trying to decide what to do about us,” I whispered.

  Sudden horrific braying made us flinch. The leader’s dappled brown dragon opened its mouth and took one of the donkeys by the neck. With a shake of its big head, the cries were ended. The other pair of donkeys tried to back away, screaming into their feedbags, but the cart with the cage on it turned sideways and trapped them. The donkey remaining on the first cart bucked against its harness, screeching in panic. A soldier raised a sword over its neck. I turned away but heard the chunk of metal on bone, and the braying ended. Now the baby dragon bleated in fear too. When I found the courage to look back again, one donkey was being butchered. The other was disappearing by chunks into the maw of the leader’s mount. The other pair of donkeys watched in wide-eyed alarm.

  “That’s not how it’s done,” Darian muttered. “Hunting is one thing, but letting a dragon kill a captive animal will only make it dangerous. They have no idea how to handle—”

  And then the black dragon was brought forward. It stopped before the row of dead soldiers, bent down and picked one up by the head.

  Darian backed away in a panic. I watched a moment longer, frozen in terror. With calm, methodical movements, it took the corpse apart and swallowed the pieces. My gorge rose, and I swallowed hard to contain it, hand over my mouth.

  The baby bleated in fear. Its father answered from the forest behind me with a sad, angry bellow, while the Horror continued to feed. Then I noticed that its rider was crouched down, bent over to gobble something ravenously. I couldn’t tell what it was, but the Harodhi soldiers gave him a wide berth.

  Darian took me by the belt and dragged me backward, away from the nightmare. The last thing I saw before I retreated was my terrified qit being wheeled deeper into the cave.

  SEVENTEEN

  A GLOW ON THE HORIZON heralded the rising of the moon, now two days past full. I thanked the Avar that it hadn’t shown its face in time to reveal our panicked retreat.

  Its first rays cast a pale column of light into our tunnel as I arrived. Darian huddled deep inside, next to the abandoned dragon’s nest. His eyes were huge in the dim light.

  “What are we going to do, Maia? What are we going to do?” His words tumbled out in a rush. “They’re going to come looking for us again in the morning. They may even come in the night. Who knows what those things can do? We have to hide.” He held his hand up, looked in fear at the moon illuminating it, then scrambled noisily up into the dragon’s nest and out of its light.

  I followed him, though more carefully. “Calm down. We have to think.”

  “How can I calm down? They feed their dead to that Horror. How can you control a dragon that’s been fed people?”

  “I need you to help me.”

  “This is beyond us, Maia. Beyond us.” His face was contorted with fear, his whisper a barely controlled shout. “You’ll get us both killed. They’re monsters. They are going to kill us. Then they’re going to feed us to that thing. No, I told you, we sit right here and we wait. End of discussion.”

  “Darian, please . . .”

  “Why are you so determined to be a curse?”

  I felt the blood drain from my face. Sound and smell and sight and thought were suspended, as if I’d entered a dark limbo. There were no words I could say. For a long minute, there was nothing I could do but observe the constriction of my skin, the welling of my eyes, the opening of a chasm in the center of my chest. All the worst portents of the last several days coalesced into the cold, leaden mass of that word.

  Darian had asked if I was willing to risk death for this baby. The real question was whether I could live with a curse for the rest of my days. It didn’t matter whether it was real or imagined—inaction would make it real. I was either cursed, or I acquired a qit. It was finally just that simple.

  So be it. I wiped my eyes, and set my brave face.

  Darian stared silently as I gathered my belongings and climbed out of the nest. As I started toward the tunnel’s mouth, he grabbed at my arm. “Gods, Maia, I didn’t mean it. I just had the piss scared out of me. Don’t go.”

  I stepped out into the moonlight.

  “Maia, come back. I’m sorry.”

  I wanted to find another approach to the cave; there was no cover on the plateau. I looked down. The entire defile was made up of shelves and the chunks that had fallen away from them. The scree slope rose near enough to our tunnel that I could hop down from here. I sat on the ledge to negotiate the drop and realized it was practically a stair, though some of the steps were taller than others. The moonlight made it easy. I hopped down.

  “I’m sorry, Maia!” A hoarse whisper, from deep in the tunnel.

  I didn’t look back.

  The valley floor at the base of the cliffs was stony and difficult, and short on cover, but the moon was still low in the sky, and the nearby trees were tall. I allowed my eyes to adjust to the deeper darkness in their shadows. I needed to get close enough to the poacher’s cave to assess things and devise a plan. But I knew that once I reached its mouth, there would be guards and precious little cover for me. I was operating on instinct alone—instinct and blind desperation. I struggled to control my racing thoughts. Darian’s barb drifted into my mother’s last words, then into the arguments of Bellua and Mabir.

  Curse. It was distracting, maddening. Curse. Over and over again the litany turned, illustrated with images of the ravening Horrors eating the Harodhi dead. Doubt crept into my resolve, but the chorus of damning words always forced me back to the same place: a qit.

  I located the trail the Harodhi had used and quickly realized that I’d come upon the scene of their battle with the father dragon. Spatters and puddles of blood showed as ebony in patches of moonlight.

  My heart skipped a beat. He was out here still, somewhere. I listened, studied the blackness between the trees, but caught no sight of him. Cautiously I crept into the denser shadows and started up the trail. I stumbled across an abandoned crossbow and examined it. The stock was broken. I set it down again quietly. But here was a perfectly good arrow and another nearby. The arrowheads weren’t like the ones we used to hunt deer, with flat triangular blades. They were of military design, square and dart-like, meant to pierce armor. Common to every army that fought against dragons. Even so, dragon-skin is thick and covered with hard plates on the neck, chest, and shoulders—many of their shots had simply glanced off. Would one bow in the hands of a girl be enough to offer a defense? I stuck the arrows in my quiver anyway. They would still kill a man.

  Night made the going slow, but I inched my way up the hill, stopping frequently to listen and look all around, in every direction—uphill, downhill, clifftop, fore
st, sky.

  Grunts and moans ahead stopped me in my tracks. Low keening and quiet, sorrowful chuffing indicated a dragon in deep despair. I crouched and shielded my face from the moonlit cliff face and sky, so that my eyes could adapt to the murky shadow. I scanned the forest for a visual cue, finally detecting a bright glimmer ahead and to the right, like moonlight on scales.

  Father dragon was in bad shape. He tried to pluck crossbow bolts from his chest with his teeth, but growled in pain and frustration with each failed attempt. His posture was slumped—head down, right wing dragging, left wing held up and back at an odd angle. Several feathered shafts protruded from the alar pectoral, caked with drying blood. It was no wonder he couldn’t fly.

  He had to be in great pain, yet he’d fought to free his baby from its captors. He’d somehow avoided their snares and traps, and sent a number of Harodhi to their deaths. It reminded me of the tale of one of my ancestors, Malik, who fought off an invading tribe alone, just him and his dragon mount, to rescue his kidnapped daughter. It was nothing less than heroic. My heart went out to him. It would be hard not to think of him now as Malik. But he was also a wounded predator, and I was a girl with a single crossbow, wearing a knapsack full of meat. It was a thin arsenal, a thinner defense. And he was blocking my path.

  I knelt behind a rock to watch, and wait. Shortly, he moved up the hill again, slowly and painfully, stepping gingerly on his right forefoot. When he had advanced twenty yards or so, I crept to another hiding place. Little by little I followed him up the slope. He paused often to worry at the arrows in his chest. They didn’t look deeply imbedded, but several were oozing black runnels of blood. Walking had to be excruciating.

  From up the hill came the bleating of his baby, distant and plaintive. My heart sank at first, but I recognized the call—loneliness and fear, not outright terror. Safe, for the moment.

  Malik’s head came up and he froze, listening until the cries dwindled. Then he tipped his head back and called twice with a dragon-word, a phrase of his wilding tongue that I could not know. It sounded for all the world like the call of a gigantic hawk.