Hardt's Tale: A Mobious' Quest Novel

by Gwendolyn Druyor

  Nahni’s younger eyes could see farther than either of the skins or Sophie and she caught the magnitude of the disaster before any of the others. “The whole town is on fire northwest of the river!”

  “Land by me.” Sophie yelled back so Mobious could hear her as well and led the way.

  They landed on the riverbank by the healer’s home. Or by where Hardt remembered the healer’s home had been. There was nothing there now but a smoldering foundation of stone surrounded by burning trees. Hardt wondered briefly if his brother had gotten out before he focused on the plan Sophie and Nahni were hatching.

  “We’ll spit water over the cottages that are the least damaged first. Hardt, we’ll drop you and Mobious as close to the village center as we can get you. You see if you can help the villagers and direct us to where our rain would be most useful.”

  Before she scooped up a mouthful of water, Nahni added smiling, “And Mobious, see if you can conjure up a new miracle, okay?”

  Hardt was an old man with probably eighty sheddings of lander age behind him and he was in no condition to be mounting a rescue operation, but if Sophie was willing to make the effort at her age than he figured he’d best not let her show him up. So he grabbed a couple of blankets from Sophie’s side, struggling as he always had with the harness until Mobious added his nimble fingers to the task. Not for the first time Hardt noticed how thin and weak his hands looked next to his atchs. There was no time for such reflection though and so he followed the spry young pre-teenish fifty-something frseason old boy off to fight the fire.

  Hours passed before they found one villager still alive. The two had split up to cover more of the village and Mobious had to suppress his gag reflex at the smell of burning flesh. The first few bodies he found had him retching in the street but since then he had soaked his wide belt with Sophie’s rain and wrapped it around his nose and mouth. The blanket had been usefull for waving smoke away so he could see as he picked his way through the village, but then a person struggling with the flames had been blown out of a building just behind him and he’d run to wrap the blanket around the figure and beat out the flames. When the flames subsided, he’d peeled back a corner of the blanket to help the person breathe and found the flesh of the figure’s face peeled away. She’d likely been dead well before Mobious’ attempted rescue.

  Any person would have lost their mind at such horror as young Mobious saw that morning. Though no one would have blamed him for running from the burning village, the boy kept searching for survivors. Still, it was with as much distrust of his own senses as overwhelming relief that he turned a corner to find the one living villager.

  The man was attempting to revive a young woman he’d pulled into a street and extinguished in the dirt. She was dead when Mobious reached them but the man was still trying to breath life back into her body between uncontrollable bouts of coughing. Feeding him sips of water from his shoulder canteen, Mobious tried unsuccessfully to get him to come away from the girl as the flames from the building were starting to spit into the street. Though the man drank, he would not move.

  In desperation and fear, Mobious looked up and screamed at Nahni, whom he saw cruising overhead, to find Hardt and send him. He spoke in dTelfur and the lander man noticed. The lander also noticed that the fearsome dragon responded to the boy’s words. It was a startling moment for him and he rightly suspected that he would never get to tell anyone about it.

  As Hardt rounded the corner of buildings, his blanket held at the ready to douse the flames he had imagined were immolating his atchs, he was pulled up short by the familiarity of the man in the street.

  Mobious had the common misconception that all landers looked alike simply because they looked different from telfs. When they had visited Forte he had observed the widely varying skin colors but hadn’t afforded it much consideration. So it was that he was kneeling at the side of a man who looked nearly identical to the man who’d raised him and wasn’t at all curious.

  Explanations raced through Hardt’s mind as he jogged down the street towards the trio. Just over forty sheddings had passed since Hardt brought pumpkin-poisoned young Mobious to the Pace healer who had turned out to be his brother. That man would be much older than this middle-aged figure before him. Hardt did some slow calculations, hindered by his acquired affinity for dTelfur aging and came up with a name.

  “Sruvic?”

  The man, Sruvic, looked up from the dead woman’s body in fear. “I don’t know you.”

  At the time of the pumpkin incident, Mobious and the little boy in the doorway had both looked to have about three sheddings. Now one of them looked nearly fifty and the other just around eleven.

  Hardt knelt by his nephew surrounded by buildings aflame. “We need to get out of here.”

  “No. I stay. I’ll go up with the town.”

  “Sruvic, you don’t have to stay, we can take you somewhere safe.”

  The soot covered lander turned his haunted gaze to Mobious. “My son did this.”

  Afraid to the core of this man and this town, Mobious nevertheless needed to know what had caused all of the death he had seen. He remembered to use the lander language this time and even tried, unsuccessfully, to mimic Hardt’s soothing tone. “What happened?”

  Sruvic spat at the boy, his eyes flashing, “Hatred is in the blood!” But he was immediately taken by a coughing fit and when it passed Sruvic’s eyes dropped in shame to the body of the woman laying in the dirt before him and he shook his head weakly. “No it’s my fault. I always said that old uncle Hardt should have burnt this place to the ground before he ran away. My son just finally took me at my word and did it.”

  Before Hardt could say a word, Mobious assured him. “It isn’t your fault, Hardt. You were just a baby.”

  “You’re Hardt?” Sruvic momentarily snapped out of his guilt to search the long lost legend’s face. “I imagined that you were, but I thought it was just death creeping into my brain.”

  “No, you were right. I’m Nadi’s son, Hardt.” There was no pride in his voice.

  Another fit of coughing wracked Sruvic’s body and left him too weak to sit up. Sinking back into Mobious’ young arms he looked up at Hardt with distant eyes.

  “Tell me, uncle, how is it my father burnt up in his grandson’s hatred and you and yours are flying with dragons?”

  Hardt struggled to find an answer, for himself and for this twin-image whose life had been so different. In the end he could only shake his head and say, “I had Vyck.”

  But her namesake never heard the reply. Sruvic lay dead in Mobious’ arms.

  Hardt took the weight of the body and laid the man back in the dirt of the street, closing the haunted eyes with one hand. Smoke was filling the street now that Sophie and Nahni had doused much of the fire around the trio. The heat had damped only slightly and both telfs, for so Hardt thought of himself, were drenched in sweat with the stench of fear only lightly masked by the heavy smoke.

  Rising from his knees, Hardt was overtaken with a wracking cough much like the one that had just taken Sruvic. Mobious caught him before he could fall. Holding his atchs with one arm, the boy waved frantically and yelled, hoping the dturs could see him through the roiling smoke. As the coughing subsided, the smoke swirled and a pair of soft dtur feet, claws extended, closed around them and pulled them out of the flaming town.

  Sophie rose slowly, unsure of her grip. Before Mobious even called, she had heard Hardt’s distress. Her hearing was not what it used to be. Unlike the near-immortal Deg, her body was not taking well to the constant growth of age. But still, hovering above the quartet of telfs in case she was needed, Sophie had heard every word of the conversation. It had seemed to her that the cough had passed out of Sruvic’s dying body and directly into Hardt's and this scared her. So she was already negotiating a careful landing in the small street when Mobious’ fearful cry had gone up.

  Nahni had gone for more water, but Sophie was confident that her young ears would catch Sophie�
�s cries from as far as the river and she would quickly return. Sophie’s wings hurt. And her chest. She was exhausted and less than confident that her grip would hold her two friends for much longer. Still, she hung on and flew away from the flaming town towards the closest safe place she could think of.

  Long minutes passed. Sophie’s lungs and throat were too full of pain for her to keep yelling for Nahni, but when her voice died out, Mobious took up the cry and Nahni found them. Her head was filled with smoke and her ears deafened by the crackle and boom of the fire, but she could see clearly away from the smoke where she caught up with Sophie flying like a hatchling. It was clear that her passengers were slipping inevitably from her grasp. Quickly sliding under the older dragon, Nahni pushed up as close as she could get, catching Hardt and the clinging Mobious on her neck.

  As soon as the two were safely seated on Nahni, Mobious holding Hardt in place, Sophie caught a current and coasted down to the clearing by the old stone cottage she’d covered with a bower before she ever met Hardt. The landing was less than graceful but Sophie barely noticed the trench she plowed into the hard ground. She lay where she landed, her head too heavy to hold up. She looked for Hardt.

  Nahni’s landing was smooth. She lay her head down as well, but only so Mobious could slide from her neck with the unconscious Hardt. The dTelfur laid the lander flat on the ground near Sophie’s nose, tilted his head, and felt for breath and a heartbeat. As he did, Sophie painfully pulled her tail around through the tall grasses and lay its blackened length along her friend’s body, stroking his head once with the tip. She said nothing while Mobious laid his hands on Hardt as Hardt had once lain his hands on her. The breaths which had been wheezing raggedly from her lungs stopped as the air grew thick with a magic that was nothing Hardt had ever taught the boy. Her friend sat up with a start and pulled in a sudden lungfull of clean air. When he exhaled again, Mobious’ arm supporting his back, Nahni’s wings sheltering him from the wind, and began breathing normally, Sophie closed her eyes.

  She never opened them again.

  Far away in Voferen Kahago, Tallee, only child to Kilalee and Trin of Stray Tor, known in the capital by the alias Jaydee, sat in a rocking chair playing a game of skill and winning against the Kimoet Partner, Geonn. She saw the two guardesmen approaching behind Geonn accompanying a young boy with dark hair and shaded blue-grey eyes, looking to have about ten or eleven frseason to his name. She didn’t like the boy’s eyes and so she made him wait, pondering her next move on the small board between herself and the Partner.

  The small boy had seen her measuring glance and now he contrived to drop a tear or two from the cold eyes, letting a stifled sob appear to escape his control. The sob worked according to plan and the Partner jerked around to look at the boy.

  Without taking her eyes from the board, Tallee cum Jaydee mentioned belatedly, “You have a visitor.” She was not impressed by the boy’s performance.

  “It’s my village, sir.” The boy struggled the words out, deciding to push on despite his one skeptical audience member. “Two dragons swooped out of the sky and burnt it down!”

  The Partner was propelled out of his chair to kneel by the now fully sobbing boy. His only daughter, Nrunel, was just about this boy’s age and his compassion was strengthened by this comparison.

  “Everyone’s gone. Everyone’s gone but me.”

  The boy with the cold eyes squeezed them shut tight and collapsed into Geonn’s arms. He dared not open them to check on how Tallee was taking this further embellishment though this interested him more than the foolish Partner’s gullibility.

  Had he taken a peek he would have seen only Tallee seated comfortably in her chair, thoughtful eyes still on the board. But in her mind, Tallee was forming questions: How had he survived? How was he certain that the whole town had burnt down and that no one else had survived? What motivation had he given the dragons to burn the place down? And was he at all aware of the growing rumor that dragons didn’t in fact breath fire at all?

  But she was merely a companion to the Kimoet. She’d given up her position in the guarde many frseason ago in favor of the easier life of tutoring young Nrunel in the survival arts and geography. So she let the Partner take the boy away to find the Queen and merely hoped that the leaders would see the lie for what it was.

  And so later, when they packed up arms and marched west with the guarde, she counseled consideration and diplomacy to deaf ears swayed too far by the tears of a child.

  Seventeen

  ∞

  “One hundred and sixty-nine sheddings have passed since the landers arrived on the continent. Once before I went to speak with their leaders. I played at communication with Chyell and with Greg and we came to an understanding which kept us at peace for many years. But the landers have short memories and they have all forgotten our agreements. This is not to say I blame them without regard. We have learned much about them since then and they have learned very little about us. So I understand that the agreements made between us were based on false assumptions on both our parts.”

  Konifer stood astride Deg’s shoulders where he could be seen by nearly everyone gathered. His tone was much calmer than Nahni felt she had any reason to expect under the circumstances. She had expected him to launch an immediate attack on the landers when she, Mobious, and Hardt had returned with the news of yet another burning forest.

  The Vize had organized a fire brigade. He had Nahni lead the dragons back to Pace and she did so by a direct route, avoiding the stone bower where Sophie’s body still lay uncovered to the sky. She avoided her grief by working day and night with crews until the fire was not only contained but quenched. She helped build a pyre in the lander style for the bodies found in the village, including Sruvic and the woman he tried to save, and stayed until the last ash had blown away. It was three days before she flew back to the stone bower leading Akai, Danny, and Tian with Nyah and Edwarg to move Sophie into her bower and weave closed the entrance. The six dTelfur wove the bower thick with the yellow flowers which would attract the red butterflies which would mark the bower as Sophie’s. With few words they finished her final bower and then left alone and in pairs. Danny flew back to tell Deg and Nyah flew back with him to keep busy with the wounded firefighters in the infirmary. Tian and Edwarg set off to walk the long way back to the village. Akai stayed at the bower for a few days and Nahni flew east alone to gather the citrus they had originally set out to collect.

  Konifer helped Mobious avoid his grief by keeping the boy at his side as he circled the burned village and forest encouraging the earth to heal itself quickly. He sent the boy on myriad errands to gather seedlings to replant in the scorched earth and to feed animals and water plants which had survived the immolation. Their hike took nearly a moon and by the time they returned to the village, Mobious had successfully tamped all his horror and grief down into a tight black ball in his heart. He showed no pain to the friends who attempted to comfort him and no joy to those who praised him for saving Hardt.

  Hardt himself, resting in the infirmary, was given escape from his grief only in the form of sedatives. It had taken all the strength Nahni and Mobious could cull to pull Hardt from Sophie’s side and drag him back to the infirmary, so lost was he in grief. And at the infirmary, before Edwarg’s sedatives took hold, Hardt grasped Mobious with a hand on either side of his head and informed the boy that he should have saved Sophie instead of him.

  The falls side bower remained empty for more than a moon after Sophie’s death and when Mobious and Hardt returned to sleep there, they found that Tareay had moved in to keep the place in order. She stayed and soon Nahni began sleeping there as well to help relieve the tensions between the despondent atchs. Still nothing, it seemed, could relieve the emptiness of Sophie’s absence.

  And so it was that neither Hardt nor Mobious had much to say when Konifer gathered all of the villagers and as many outlanders as could be found to discuss the increasing problem of the landers.

  Konif
er had just opened the duscussion when Tally, one of the dtur who had been off retrieving outlanders, flew into the village screaming at the top of his lungs about having seen hundreds of landers marching westward with weapons. As he hovered above the hatching grounds waiting for room to be made for him to land by Konifer and Deg, he reported that he’d detoured west to avoid overflying Voferen Kahago and seen nearly a thousand landers armed to the teeth.

  “Did anyone else see this army, Tally?” Akai asked him as he landed.

  “The outlanders I found were not with me, but they were packing up and they’ll have to see the landers when they fly in.” Tally’s tone was as antagonistic as Akai’s had been.

  Konifer trusted that even Tally wouldn’t lie about something like this. But the hunter’s viciously anti-lander reputation would inspire only doubt in most. “Akai, Nahni, Peltine; go confirm Tally’s sighting and get details.”

  The three had to jockey for enough room to take off and in the reshuffling, Tally gained control of the masses, describing in angry detail what he’d seen. Konifer let the hunter hold sway while he edged around Deg to find the man he finally had a use for.

  “Hardt. You were guarde. You know their secrets. Here’s a chance for you to prove your loyalty.”

  The old lander turned from the close discussion he was having with Deg and Tareay to stare coldly at the Vize. He took a breath to speak but let it out unused. Instead he looked down at his hands. Hands used fiercely by time, bent with age, dry and browned almost to the shade of a real telf’s skin. He rubbed his hands together, tracing the shape of the fingers which wouldn’t straighten anymore, massaging the right palm which always felt stiff and cold. When he again looked up at Konifer, it was with eyes which were just as old and tired.

  “Loyalty. I have lived as a dTelfur for sixty sheddings. In that time you have watched me grow old while others have barely grown up. You have heard how the healers struggle to understand my illnesses. You have walked through the festivals. You have seen hatchlings playing at being lander guarde. You were told of Sophie’s recovery thanks to lander healing. You were aware of the midnight discussions of lander buildings, behavior, and history here on these very sands. But now you approach, trying to manipulate me into revealing all the ugly war techniques I’ve kept secret from you for sixty frseason. For sixty sheddings you’ve had the opportunity to learn all the history and culture of landers that other dTelfur have learned from me but you chose to remain on your path of ignorant hatred.” He took a breath to calm the blood rushing to his head from the years of release rushing from his lips.