The Summer Dragon

by Todd Lockwood

  She shook her head. “It doesn’t look like it. There’s no way to know, but if they did, they left all their belongings behind.”

  Without further comment we mounted up and took to the air again.

  Shortly after noon we spotted an abandoned wagon with a broken wheel. A quick survey found it empty, though stains on the floor showed where trunks and barrels had sat recently.

  After a hasty meal we flew on. We’d underestimated the time it would take to get to the confluence of the two rivers. Could the Juza teams that searched in this direction have come this far? Perhaps. But it seemed doubtful. We pressed harder, and a few miles on we spotted a field decorated with kites.

  “What do you make of that?” I shouted to Jhem.

  “I don’t know. Let’s have a look.”

  We landed and dismounted, noting wagon tracks carved into the tall grass. Just up a shallow rise twelve short poles stood above twelve mounds of fresh earth, each supporting a tattered kite.

  “These are graves,” said Jhem.

  A lump rose in my throat. I thought of Borgomos’s brave march out of Riat. He’d told the council, when he spoke of Edimmu and Utukku—Shadow and Blight—We can face them again here or face them on the road. The difference hardly matters. Wind rustled the grass and blew loose hairs into my eyes. I swallowed my tears.

  Jhem put a hand on my shoulder. “They still had enough healthy men to bury their dead. They kept moving from here.”

  So did we.

  The sun passed its zenith before the river Gadia emerged from the haze, glinting in the distance. Gulls’ wings flickered in the strong light. The river’s expanse defied belief. We could scarcely see the far bank, even from the air. Only the highlands of the Daancar Peninsula marked the horizon to the south and east.

  A road emerged out of the prairie, and then farmhouses to either side. We circled but again saw no sign of habitation. The only livestock ranged through fields that should have been readied for crops. We landed only long enough to find the same strange abandonment, and no sign of Darian and Aru. Then we continued on.

  A small fishing village occupied an enclosed bay in the river. Buildings and simple docks lined the banks. Hope leapt within me. If Darian had come this way he would surely have stopped, and the locals might even know something about Borgomos. The lanes were quiet, though, with no activity of any kind other than the crows and gulls that squabbled along the shores and filled the sky.

  We landed in the center of the biggest cluster of buildings, dismounted, and nocked arrows to our bows. It hadn’t been a big community. Not so large as Riat, certainly. Maybe a hundred people, a hundred-twenty. A mere dozen mud-brick buildings clustered along the biggest quay, where a fisherman’s boat lay sideways in the mud of low tide. Jhem’s wide eyes met mine. She shook her head in negation. Of what I didn’t know. Disbelief. Anger. Alarm.

  The first building we checked contained nets and hooks, charts and buckets and clubs and unidentifiable tools. We moved on. The second building, an accounting office, perhaps, was unoccupied too. And the third, another fisherman’s hovel. When we pushed open the door to the largest building the smell nearly drove me to my knees. A murder of crows fled through open windows at our intrusion. Gulls hopped away from us in wary circles, less willing to give up their bounty. In the center of what might have been a gathering place of some sort, like a tavern or hostel, a pile of corpses rotted beneath a seething cloud of flies.

  I shouted and drove the birds away, eyes tearing up at the stench. I held my hand over my nose and mouth, though it didn’t help. “Gods, Jhem! What happened here?”

  She ran out the door, fell to her knees outside, and emptied her stomach into the courtyard dust.

  Only now did I recognize this as the local Temple of the Rasaal. Not in the least bit ostentatious, with ordinary windows rather than stained glass, a plank floor, and a simple altar made of wood carved into the semblance of a dragon. Dried blood spattered it. Blood was everywhere.

  Birds and maggots had scavenged the corpses on the outside of the pile so thoroughly that injuries were difficult to make out. I wasn’t about to move bodies to see what lay beneath. But here I saw blood crusted around slashes in clothing, with shattered bone beneath, and there a skull seemingly hewn in two. Finally I fled the stench.

  Jhem kneeled and trembled in the sun with her face in her hands. I squatted down and patted her gently on the shoulder. When she lowered her hands I gave her my canteen so she could rinse her mouth. Afterward she nodded silent thanks and stood. Then she and our dragons followed as I walked down the center of the street toward the north end of town.

  More of the same everywhere: silence and death, though it seemed that most of the townspeople had gathered in the Temple to meet their end. The smell of dust combined with the stink of carrion and brine. “They’ve been dead for weeks,” I said.

  “Horrors?” Jhem’s voice was constrained and shaken.

  I considered it, remembering the Horror dragon and its unholy rider in the cave. Ravenous. They tore wildly into the corpses they ate. These bodies were largely whole. We’d seen livestock from the air. Only the people were killed. I shook my head. “No, I don’t think so.”

  “Was it disease, perhaps?”

  “No.” I shook my head. “No, they were murdered. Rounded into their Temple and slaughtered.”

  At the north end of town we found wagons—many of them, and my heart beat faster. Low fences made of rocks and driftwood surrounded several, as if they were the first pinnings of a new homestead. An entire new neighborhood made of wagons.

  “Oh, Maia . . .” Jhem choked on her next words, and I looked where she pointed: Over one of the wagon doors hung a kite.

  My arms and legs trembled with immediate fear and anger. I ran to the wagon, burst open the door, looked inside. On the floor lay a body, badly desiccated and swarming with flies. I couldn’t even tell its gender. Despite the smell, I looked closer. A brown stain on the shirt or dress and the floor beneath indicated a possible wound. With an arrow tip I pushed the fabric aside, and studied the wound in the shriveled remains. A small puncture, like an armor-piercing arrowhead might make. The arrow had been withdrawn.

  I left, stalked to the next wagon in the row, and kicked the door open. A woman and child lay in each other’s arms in a puddle of dried blood, but with no obvious way to tell what had killed them.

  “Maia, don’t,” I heard Jhem say, and realized it was me who made the unnatural sound in my own ears, a low growl of anger and despair.

  The next wagon was empty, but the one after, forming a roof over a new dugout started beneath, contained an entire family of four. This time the injuries were clear. A deep gash had split the man’s clavicle and opened his torso. The woman’s arms and hands were mutilated as if she’d held them up in defense. The children were all but cut in two.

  I shouted my anger and moved on. Keirr keened unhappily behind me as I ran. Ten more wagons. Eight murdered families, and other corpses tucked into long grass or behind fences. I shouted in rage. Felt Jhem’s hands on my arm. Shrugged her off and kept moving.

  Here was another kite trampled into dried mud. Here a child picked clean by scavengers. A shirt. A broken spear. A cane. A skull. A whole field full of skeletons, arrayed as if they’d been slain as they ran.

  The last wagon was larger than the others, but unlike the rest had no fence around it. A large kite, slashed and broken, hung over the porch. I pushed the door open. An oddity, this wagon was appointed like a business office with a desk and chair, a broken lamp, a thick ledger book. And in the corner, a skeleton barely clothed in shriveled flesh. The robes that hung from it in tatters might have been lustrous once, trimmed in gold brocade. In the strange, detached part of my mind behind the angry screams I wondered that Borgomos’s skeleton didn’t have more stature, that this spare frame of bone could have carried such a large man.
/>   I pounded the walls in fury, until Jhem came up behind me and wrapped her arms around mine. I screamed until my voice trailed off into a hoarse rattle.

  “Oh, Maia, Maia—”

  I pushed out of her arms and went to Borgomos’s body, curled on its face. His right hand clutched the Staff of Office, with its grooves and holes where precious stones and metals had once marked his importance, now leering like the orbits in a skull.

  “They killed them, Jhem. They killed all of them.”

  “Who?” she said, with tears in her eyes.

  I didn’t know. Their murderers left no evidence of any sort behind. Intentionally so; they’d removed at least one arrow. Bandits? Harodhi? Here? I reached out to touch his shoulder lightly, my mind a swirl of confusion. “They got only this far, but they found a place to stay, to settle in. These people, these ordinary fishermen, found room for them.” My voice cracked. A whisper was all I could manage. “They were going to be all right.”

  Something peeked from beneath him, where his body would have concealed it when it was still ample and newly dead. I rolled him aside. His left hand clutched an arrow buried deep in his ribs. I pried his dry fingers loose and with some effort pulled it out into light.

  “What is that?” Jhem asked, but her face told me she already knew the answer.

  Long and slender with the armor-piercing head, the shaft and fletching were red as blood. I had seen those shafts nestled in their quivers for the last five months.

  “Juza,” I said.

  FORTY-FOUR

  “GODS, JHEM. Addai sent a Juza team with Father.”

  Her eyes grew wide. “You don’t think they would . . .”

  I shook my head, but my stomach sank. “I don’t know. The Juza team wouldn’t know we’ve found them out. Maybe Father will be safe.” As the words left my mouth, I already didn’t believe them.

  “What is going on? Why would they . . . ? Why all of them?”

  “Borgomos showed his allegiance to the old ways too willingly. Bellua . . . the Rasaal hated this situation from the very beginning, from the moment Getig appeared. They’re trying to bury my story.” Our eyes met and held.

  She swiped a tear off her cheek. “Tauman will come looking for us. We don’t want to miss him.”

  “Will he come alone?”

  She wrapped her arms around herself. “I didn’t think of that.”

  “He doesn’t know what we found. What if Addai insists on sending Juza with him, like he did Father?” My jaw tightened at the thought. My anger spread to encompass Father, too. He’d left us at a critical hour, certain that his task would be simple. Perhaps it would have been, if he’d left alone as he intended. Instead Addai had sent one of his assassins with him.

  “What do we do?” Her voice sounded small.

  “We go back. Now. We tell Mabir what we found.”

  “What about Tauman?”

  “I don’t want to stay here a minute longer than we have to. It’s not safe. We’ll call for him as we go. Rannu will know Audax’s voice. We’ll find him.”

  “We have to tell Rov.” I opened my mouth to object, but Jhem said, “No one else has authority to do anything about it.”

  I nodded.

  She looked around unhappily. “We can’t leave all these people like this.”

  I considered the bodies in the field, in the wagons, in the streets. “We don’t have time to do anything for them.”

  She shook her head sadly. “Borgomos at least, then.”

  I nodded and swallowed the lump in my throat. Stuck the red arrow in my quiver and lashed Borgomos’s staff to my saddle. Then Jhem and I piled fence posts and other loose wood under the Guildmaster’s wagon. We made kindling from paper and dried grass, and doused it with oil from his broken lamp. It ignited quickly under a spark from my flint. We stood back and watched only long enough to be sure it caught.

  “There’s one more thing I need to do before we go,” I said, turning away. Jhem watched me until she understood my intent. I located one of Cuuloda’s dragon-shaped kites in good condition. It took no time at all for the breeze wafting off the sea to coax it into the sky. I tied the line to a wagon wheel and let it rise up above the murdered village, to mark the passing of Cuuloda’s lost unwanted and of the people who took them in.

  We followed the sun westward. Every half hour or so Audax roared in case Tauman might be within range. Twilight gave way to stars and the moon peered over the eastern horizon before we heard Rannu’s answering voice. He and Audax sounded back and forth until three silhouettes appeared against the moon behind us. They had passed us by in the dark, but followed Audax’s vocal beacon to find us. Jhem slowed down so they could catch up, but I kept moving. I didn’t want to talk, and I wasn’t sure I wanted to know who accompanied my brother.

  Dawn revealed familiar terrain and gave us thermals to climb. The lower falls of the Wilding brought trees and fresh air. In the distance, Zurvaan rose above familiar peaks. The outlying farms appeared, followed by the cliffs and pinnacles of home.

  I looked back over my shoulder. Jhem and Tauman followed a couple hundred yards back. I recognized the second team now as Cairek and Taben, flanking them on the north. At first I wanted to curse, but then I felt guilt for my anger and even a bit of relief. Thank the gods for Cairek.

  The third team flanking them on the south were Juza. The hairs on my bond mark rose with a shiver, and I appreciated Cairek’s presence all the more. Asha, what am I supposed to do?

  I circled the aeries once. Riders patrolled above me, and more ran to their mounts below. More Juza. I directed Keirr down below the pinnacle, past the fall of the Roaring through the mist to the Temple. We lit in the front court, away from the stable yard where the Juza kept their dragons. Keirr stood panting as I untied the staff and swung to the ground. Juza teams approached in the sky behind me. “Come on, baby. Quickly.” We hurried to the Temple doors and entered together.

  Morning light streaming through the stained glass lent the sanctuary a bizarre, fractured appearance. Keirr clicked and looked all about.

  “Mabir!” The echoes of my voice were short and sharp. “Mabir! I have to speak with you!”

  “I’m here,” he said, hobbling from the chambers beyond the sanctuary. His acolyte, Tulo, came behind him and started to reach for Keirr’s harness, as if to lead her out for care.

  “No,” I said, and his brows lifted with puzzlement. “She stays.”

  “What is this?” said Mabir, stopping to brace himself on a chair.

  I held up Borgomos’s staff, and Mabir’s face sank.

  “We need to talk to Rov,” I said.

  Mabir started toward me again, but before he took three steps, shadows filled the doorway. Jhem entered, then Tauman and Cairek. And then Addai, with four of his Juza.

  Addai clasped his hands behind his back and sauntered toward me. He eyed the staff I held. “Once again you have created quite the commotion, young woman. Valuable time lost from my Juza, since they were out looking for you instead of patrolling this mountain. What have you got to say for yourself?”

  I squeezed the staff so tight that I felt my pulse in my fingers. I locked his gaze. How could he pretend he didn’t know what I held in my hand? “Let’s wait for Rov to get here,” I said.

  “Indeed,” said Addai, pacing a circle around me. “I’d like to know what punishment he has in mind for you. Your adventures are becoming increasingly dangerous. Not only to you, but to the aeries and everyone stationed here. You’re a menace.”

  My ears burned and my heart pounded. “I could hardly be more dangerous than you.”

  He reversed his gait to circle me in the other direction. “Whatever do you mean by that?”

  Bellua entered the chamber from outside, followed immediately by Rov and three more Juza.

  Gods! How I wish Father was here.

/>   Rov marched straight through the circle of onlookers and planted his feet before me, arms akimbo. “You’re grounded, and your dragon will be shackled in the Temple stables until I’ve decided what to do with you.”

  In answer, I held Borgomos’s staff before me, inches from his face. He considered it with mute indifference.

  “Do you recognize this?” My voice rose with anger.

  He looked it up and down. “It is Borgomos’s Staff of Office.”

  I waited for some flicker of emotion to cross his face. Nothing. “Wouldn’t you like to know where I found it?”

  He stared at me, waiting for the answer. Damn his reticence. “In his right hand,” I said, my voice croaking with emotion. “Where he lay dead.”

  Tauman looked at Jhem with worry in his eyes. She stood with her fingers over her mouth, eyes closed, forehead wrinkled in worry. Bellua stared at the staff as if it were a flayed corpse.

  When Rov said nothing more, I threw the staff at Addai’s feet. “Where were you for two days when Horrors attacked us on the mountain?”

  “Take care, child,” he said.

  “No one saw you since early the day before. You didn’t return until the action was over, and a Dragonry team lay dead on the mountain.” I made a point of meeting Rov’s eyes.

  “You know perfectly well where I was,” Addai said calmly. “I was on patrol.”

  “Where?”

  His nostrils flared. “Let’s do ask some questions, shall we?” he said. “Why did you wait until I was gone to venture onto the mountain so brazenly?”

  I shook my head. “What do you suppose I found in Borgomos’s rib cage?” Before anyone could answer, I pulled the red arrow from my quiver and held it up. Addai’s eyes narrowed. My cheeks burned as I turned my glare to Mabir. To Tauman and Jhem. To Bellua and finally to Rov. “We found the refugees and all their wagons in a fishing village on the shores of the river Gadia. Killed, every last man, woman, and child of them, plus every villager.”