The Summer Dragon

  No one said a word. Keirr stuck her nose up from under my arm and licked my face. It was a qit’s way of asking for comfort, so I drew her close, my head still resting on Malik’s, and kissed her nose tearfully.

  Footsteps approached, and then Jhem’s arm slipped around my shoulder.

  “What happened here?” Father’s tone was hushed.

  “I’ll tell you what has happened.” Bellua wiped Darian’s blood from his fingers with a kerchief. “You have reaped what you’ve sown. Your stubbornness echoes in your unmanageable daughter. See how death and omens of death follow this girl everywhere she goes.”

  I could take no more of Bellua’s voice eating at my head. I eased Keirr out of my lap and pushed to my feet. “You have to be the first to pass judgment with your poison tongue.” I advanced on him, fists clenched at my sides. “But I will tell you what happened. Getig led me here, Darian followed, and then this wilding saved our lives.”

  I grabbed the leather scroll case off of my back and fumbled it open. “This. Look at this. I found it in the cave. They were watching us. While you were busy planting your ugly little words in everyone’s ears, these monsters were making plans.” I ripped the drawing of the aeries out and threw it at Bellua’s feet. He didn’t even look at it, but Rov picked it up and unfurled it.

  I took a step toward Bellua. “You came to our aeries certain that you understood everything, but the Summer Dragon upset your . . . your idea of things, and it scared you. So you twisted everything into . . . into . . . a shape you could control. You spun curses and omens out of thin air to manipulate us. And everybody let you get away with it! No one else, least of all you, gave any concern for anything but their own needs and wants.” I swiped tears off my cheeks angrily.

  “This wild animal showed more bravery and . . . and selflessness than anyone here. And now you’re trying to do it again. Something happened that you couldn’t control, so you try to tie it up with your words. Well, you can’t.”

  Keirr bumped up against my leg and keened apprehensively. I knelt down and drew her close. “Whether you like it or not, I have a qit now, too.”

  All eyes dropped down to my baby.

  Bellua’s mouth opened and closed twice before he found words. “What you have done, clearly, is obtain the last qitling that Captain Rov needs to fill his requisition. Praise to Korruzon! I suggest that you turn the qit over to him now and save yourself worse punishment. Then set your mind to the journey you are about to take with me, to Avigal—”

  “I won’t go!” I looked around the circle of faces for support. “I have a qit now. The aeries are whole. And Rov has the qits you gave him. This qit is mine.”

  “Captain Rov?” Bellua held out a hand in my direction.

  “Father . . .” I said.

  Father stared at Keirr with wide eyes, his mouth down-turned and uncertain. When Rov handed the drawings to him, his eyes grew wider still and his hands trembled.

  “Are you all blind?” said a weak voice.

  Bellua started toward me. I put my arms around Keirr protectively.

  “Listen to me!” said the voice again, a bit stronger. It barely sounded like Darian.

  With ashen face, Father studied the drawing of the Harodhi spies.

  “Can none of you see what is really going on here?”

  Finally, everyone paused and looked at my brother. He had propped himself up on one elbow. His face was pale, his cheeks hollow, but his eyes sparked defiantly. “Maia took a qit from a wild dragon, with his blessing, and then rode him to safety. How can any of you fail to see the wonder in that?” He looked from face to face. “She showed courage when I was cowardly. She was resourceful when I was in complete panic. She applied every bit of knowledge about dragons that Father ever taught us in order to communicate with a wilding sire and his baby. She not only saved my life, but she acquired a qit for herself and alerted us all to a Harodhi threat.”

  “She put your life in peril,” Bellua snapped.

  “If Maia had obeyed you, that monster lying at our feet would still be in these caves plotting against us, and we would all be in peril.” Darian winced as he leaned forward. “As far as I can see, the Summer Dragon was here for Maia. Not for me, though I wanted to think so. And not for you. But for Maia.”

  Bellua glowered. “Praise be to Korruzon that he can turn this child’s wicked disobedience into a blessing—”

  “You don’t get it. Korruzon didn’t use Maia to show us a threat. Getig used the threat to show you my sister.”

  Everyone looked at me suddenly, and a lump grew in my throat as I looked back at my brother. He lay back abruptly with a sigh of pain.

  Bellua stared at me longest, his eyes wide with conflicting emotions. Anger, certainly, but also fear and confusion. Finally he started toward me again. “I won’t have theological matters explained to me by a—”

  Father stepped in front of him. “No, Bellua.”

  The merihem pulled up with a look of surprise on his face.

  “You have been wrong from the beginning,” said Father. He pressed the Harodhi drawing into Bellua’s hands, then Father looked back at me, and his chin went up. “We’ve all been wrong. I’ve certainly had something shown to me, something I should have seen a long time ago. They’ve already begun to bond. By your own logic, the Most High ordained this moment, but, as Darian says, for Maia.”

  Jhem’s hands gripped my shoulders from behind. I looked back at her. She held her quivering chin high. Tauman came up and put his arms around us. Jhem pulled me closer and leaned into him.

  “Maia has a dragon to raise now,” said Father. “She won’t be going to Avigal with you after all.”

  Bellua’s face was a thunderstorm. “Captain Rov. Your qit.” He pointed at Keirr again.

  Rov studied me for a long minute, then shook his head slowly. “No. The offspring of such a dragon as this one should breed more like him and not be spent on a battlefield. The aeries need such blood.” Then he nodded at me. “And this young woman has more than proved her worth. My requisition can fall short one dragon.”

  Bellua trembled with barely restrained emotion, but he looked more than a little bit lost as well. He dropped the chart on the ground. “This isn’t how it ends, Magha. There must be an investigation to determine how this fits with doctrine. We will go to the source—Korruzon—for the answer.” He strode back to his dragon—directly past Darian—and climbed into the saddle. “Bring the boy to the Temple,” he said. We watched as his dragon lifted into the sky and wheeled toward Riat.

  Father returned to Darian’s side. “Jhem, take Darian to Mabir. We’ll meet you there.” He and Tauman started to lift Darian as Jhem mounted Audax.

  “Wait.” Darian signaled to me to join them. I went to his side and knelt down close. Little Keirr stuck her head up under my arm.

  “I told you that you weren’t cursed,” he whispered, and he grinned at me, his chin bunched up in pride.

  Unable to speak, I mouthed the words, thank you.

  Father looked at me curiously, but then he and Tauman eased Darian into the saddle in front of Jhem. My brother’s smile was replaced with a grimace of pain when they launched. I wasn’t done worrying about him.

  Rov clapped Father on the shoulder. “The acquisition train will have to finish its journey without me. The Harodhi had designs on your aeries. Expect them to try again. We’ll need to investigate these caves and make sure they aren’t a liability, and seal them off if they are, then consider how best to defend Riat. I also want to hear the full story from this remarkable young lady. Then I will fly directly to Avigal to get reinforcements for Riat. In the meantime, we should muster up a militia to watch these caves. The Harodhi aren’t done here, I guarantee that. They’ll be back, and probably soon.” He spat on the Horror sprawled in the dirt. “I’ll be burning that before I do anything else.”

  Fath
er nodded, but his face was creased with worry.

  Rov looked at me. “Broodmaster, this is no small thing. Harodh was close to a second devastating blow. I believe your daughter may have saved you—all of us—from disaster.” He clapped Father on the shoulder again, then picked up the chart and started toward Cheien.

  Father came to me, and a smile touched the corners of his mouth. Finally he shook his head slowly and pulled me close for a bear hug.

  I wrapped my arms around him and squeezed. Despite myself I wept again, but they were tears of release and of happiness.

  When he pulled away, he placed his hands on my shoulders. His face wore a new appraisal. “I want to hear that story too, before Mabir or Bellua or anyone else has a chance to pick it apart. It appears that I owe you more than an apology—in fact, I’m in your debt.” He kissed me on the forehead. To my great surprise, a single tear rolled down his cheek. “I’ve been distracted. I’m ashamed that I didn’t realize how much like your mother you really are.”

  He knelt down to look Keirr in the eye. My baby looked back at him without blinking, and he smiled. “And you, my little friend. Aren’t you a wonder? What an unexpected turmoil you caused. What an amazing outcome. And so much for me to think about.” He stood and put his arm around my shoulders. “Darian is waiting.” Worry lines creased his face once more. “Come on, Maia. Let’s get your qitling home.”

  PROLOGUE

  GRAEDEN SHOVED THROUGH the crowd surrounding the Dragonry paddock, craning his neck for a better view. Words like slaughter, massacre, and lost cause fell in whispers around him. He pushed to the railing to see the Dragonry teams as they landed. Three, four, five of them. “Where are the rest?” he asked, alarmed.

  A tall man in farrier’s clothes turned to him. He paused and spared Grae a stern look. “Don’t be stupid, boy. Can’t you see that’s all that’s left?”

  Grae felt his throat close with grief. Out of three dozen teams that left this morning to retake the aeries of Cuuloda only these few returned. They’d been weeks gathering their numbers and planning their assault. Graeden’s drawings of the layout of his home informed their strategy. He’d sat in on every session, accompanied the scouts on reconnaissance. This failure seemed impossible.

  The dragons were slashed on chests and heads. Their wings were in tatters. One bore an extra rider—it could only mean that he’d lost his mount. A half-dozen merihem dashed out to meet them, followed by attendants with stretchers and satchels of gear.

  Grae vaulted over the railing and ran to join them. He grabbed a rider by the shoulders and spun him around. “What happened?”

  The man’s face was slashed across one eye, blood caked on his cheek and in his shirt. “What do you think happened? Get off me.” He pushed Grae’s hands away.

  Men jostled Grae as they passed. A rider collapsed onto a litter, one arm held tight against his chest where the armor had been torn away and only his bloody shirt remained. A dragon crumpled to the ground and his rider leapt down to help a merihem staunch the flow of a gaping wound on its shoulder.

  “We have to go back,” said Grae, to no one in particular.

  “You’re in the way, son,” said a merihem, shoving Grae aside with hands already covered in blood. Another soldier rushing in from the barracks bumped him, said something angrily that Grae didn’t hear. Wheels creaked, and he turned to see a traction rig being rolled out. With nets and manacles, it would immobilize an injured dragon so it could be treated safely.

  An arm around his shoulder guided him back toward the rail. He looked to see a big soldier in leather lancer’s gear. “I want to help,” Grae said.

  “You can’t help by standing in the way,” said the man.

  He shrugged the soldier’s arm off. “You don’t understand. That was my home. That’s my aerie. My family. I have to do something.”

  The man’s expression softened, and he sighed. “You’re the broodmaster’s son?”

  He nodded. “They wouldn’t let me go with them.” His chin fell to his chest.

  “You’d have died too, son. I’ll tell you what you do now. You take your dragon and you enlist in the Dragonry. Get some training. Join a talon. Then kill as many of the Harodhi that created those monsters as you can.” The soldier gave him one last shove toward the crowd of onlookers.

  Graeden staggered back, his head swimming, eyes blurred with unshed tears. He swung his legs over the rail. Fought his way back out through the mass of people; refugees, many of them. Rejoined his mount, Kiven, waiting obediently outside the Dragonry barracks.

  He absently stroked Kiven’s neck when the dragon lowered his head. He stared up at the mountains in the direction of the pass through which the defeated teams had returned. The peak blocked his view of the Cuuloda aeries further up the long valley, but the sun was bright on those most distant spires.

  His heart pounded and he closed his eyes. His fists clenched at his sides. Yes, that’s what he needed to do—murder Harodhi. Make them pay. As many as it took to bring this war to an end.

  TWENTY-FIVE

  “RELAX, MAIA. Focus on Keirr. Let the pain flow off you.”

  Mabir sat in a chair behind me in the winter stable, his graving tools arrayed on a table to our right, the broodmothers gathered round. His needle jabbed into the base of my skull like a wasp’s sting, but I embraced the pain. I’d been waiting for this day all my life. The bond mark was a rite of passage for every dragon rider. I knew what to expect, yet I couldn’t push the pain aside. “I’m sorry. It’s not the needle. It’s Darian. I can’t stop worrying about him.”

  Mabir touched a cool, damp cloth to my neck. “I understand. We’re all worried. But Bellua and I will pull Darian back. It’s simply a matter of time. Let’s concentrate on your bond mark. Relax. Don’t think about Darian or Bellua or anything else. We’re nearly done.”

  When I closed my eyes all I could see was Darian lying still and pale in the Temple, unconscious into his fourth day. His fever ran hot, and Mabir said he mumbled constantly in a strange delirium. I took a deep breath. “Darian followed me. He would be all right if I hadn’t—”

  “Maia, Maia, Maia.” Mabir swabbed my neck with something that stung. “The Wisdom of Haom says, There is no future in the past. You acted with initiative and courage. Good has come of it, with the exception of this strange wound in Darian’s leg that doesn’t want to heal.”

  Good had come of it. I looked down at Keirr, curled up at my feet, tiny snout under leathery wing. After four days in the aeries, the skin of her cream-colored belly was stretched drum-tight and her ribs no longer showed. I reached down to lightly brush the matching bond mark at the base of her skull, and she whuffed a deep, contented sigh. The scabs were already falling off. Baby dragons heal so quickly!

  When we started work on Keirr’s bond mark the day after her arrival in the aeries, I held her tight and hummed a tune Mabir taught me. The old dhalla’s gentle touch and his voice harmonizing with mine had calmed her. I started humming it now, in hopes that it would calm me.

  “Good, Maia. That’s right.” Mabir harmonized and adjusted his tempo ever so slightly to gather my voice into the ritual.

  I concentrated on the calming tune, and little Keirr responded in her sleep with a sustained, harmonizing tone. Dragons love music, and this music resonated in her bond mark. Grus joined in quietly, then Athys and Coluver. A soothing energy washed over me.

  Mabir hummed quietly, the tap-tap-tapping of his tools in my neck point and counterpoint to the beating of my heart. Occasionally he dropped into a chant as the rhythm of his tapping changed, or spoke in a monotone as he switched tools. It wasn’t idle noise, but part of the ritual somehow. I listened to his voice, ancient and pleasant, and willed myself to sink into the strange concert of music, rhythmic pain, and bone-deep ecstasy that seemed to ebb and flow with the cadence of his work. Keirr’s blood and mine were mixed into the ink he used. T
his was Temple Science, the ritual graving art of the Rasaal that bound dragon and rider together. When I concentrated, I could feel the tempos merge in a curiously soothing way, as if each tap knitted our bond a little tighter. My heart tied to hers, and hers to mine.

  I would wear the mark proudly, of course, but it almost seemed unnecessary. Keirr and I started to bond from the moment I met her. Our experience in the caverns together was a more powerful link than any the dhalla could draw in our skin. I still woke every night from dreams of burnt monsters chasing us, to find Keirr crying in her sleep beside me.

  There were moments when memory overwhelmed me, especially if I was alone. I would try to concentrate on good memories, of mother laughing at something I said, or flying with Father through cloudless skies with the wind in my hair. But soon anxiety would creep beneath the joy, like spiders under a worn but beautiful tapestry, and then images of dead things would erupt and tear the fabric: walking carrion, pale men with arrows—my arrows—thudding into their bodies, a human torch, dragon babies crawling with flies, barrels blackened with dried dragon blood, flames and darkness and—

  “Maia! Relax.”

  I shivered and let go my breath.

  Darian’s qit, Aru, lay next to me, a deep coppery color, almost black, with lighter copper markings on his shoulders. I could talk about this, at least, without choking up. “Aru is really unhappy. He whimpers through the nights, and he doesn’t eat enough. He shadowed Keirr and me all day yesterday, but he isn’t his usual playful self. He needs Darian. He needs the last ring in his bond mark.”

  Mabir touched the cooling cloth to my neck. “Yes, it leaves him with a deep wanting. He senses your bond mark in the making and is drawn to it. But we have to wait until Darian is ready. Bellua has graved deep healing into his wound, but it remains angry and red. I fear that he may lose that leg before we save his life.”