The Tropic of Serpents: A Memoir by Lady Trent (A Natural History of Dragons)

by Brennan, Marie

  We bundled up the bones Natalie deemed useful and took them with us back to camp, but we would not be with our hosts for much longer. As I proposed to come at the Great Cataract from above, and was bringing bulky equipment with me for the task, it would be easier for us to make the journey along the top edge of the swamp, rather than in its depths. So long as our paths lay together, however, we would travel with the other members of the camp, who were shifting to a new location.

  It was by then becoming a larger group once more, as the seasonal round brought the Moulish back together, and they sang as they walked. Natalie had been singing with the Moulish for some time, but now Tom joined in; his voice was rough but tuneful. “You should sing,” Yeyuama prompted me; when we left the camp, he would break off on his own to wait for me at the base of the Great Cataract.

  “Oh, no,” I said hastily. “The frogs are more melodious than I.”

  He seemed puzzled by my protest. “Why does that matter? It makes harmony.”

  The word he used, ewele, has the same double meaning as its Scirling translation: not only the effect produced by music, but a concord among people. Judging by the way he deployed it now, he meant the latter sense—or rather, he meant the latter produced the former. Still—“I would be embarrassed to try.”

  But Yeyuama would not accept my refusal. Nothing would do but that I sing. And so I did; Natalie gave me an encouraging pat on the shoulder, and Tom did his best not to wince. But the Moulish all smiled: however out of tune I might be, now I was harmonious.

  Our harmony, alas, did not last. It was broken by a furious, coughing snarl, and the sound came from some distance ahead.

  All singing fell silent. The hunters, who carried few burdens other than their spears and nets, dropped anything else they held and vanished into the surrounding growth. Mothers and elders boosted children into the trees, and within a few seconds I could not see them, either. Even after my time among them, I was startled at the speed with which they all concealed themselves.

  Yeyuama had gone stiff at my side. He met my gaze, and I saw him make a decision. “Dragon,” he said, and I nodded. “An angry one. Come.”

  That seemed to be extended to all three of us—three, because Faj Rawango had gone with the hunters. Tom stepped forward, but Natalie shook her head and grabbed the bones tied to his back. “Leave these with me. I’ll hide them.”

  As I went forward with Tom and Yeyuama, I wondered uneasily whether those bones might be the cause of the disturbance. It was the death and theft of their kin that had made the Vystrani rock-wyrms angry; we had not observed anything of the sort here, but the absence of evidence is not the evidence of absence. Moulish dragons were sullen and hostile creatures under the best of circumstances, but I had never seen one in a fury. Had we inadvertently provoked this one?

  I had my answer soon enough, in the shouts and curses of men.

  They were not speaking the Moulish tongue. I picked out Yembe words here and there, but the part that came through the most clearly to me was an unholy admixture of Thiessois and Eiversch. And although I had not heard that voice in months, the language of the profanity told me who the speaker must be.

  M. Velloin had come into the swamp in search of newer and more exciting prey.

  Yeyuama’s expression hardened as I gave him this explanation in a quick, worried undertone. “We will not let him kill a dragon,” he said—leaving unspoken what measures they might take to prevent him. Yeyuama himself might be pure, his hands unsullied by death, but the same was not true for the hunters.

  I half-expected to hear screams before we even reached the scene. The hunters, after all, had gone before us, and must already be in place. I also expected the raging of the dragon to subside, for Velloin was assuredly armed with a good rifle, and had shown pride in the swift kill. But neither shift came, and as we crept to the edge of the scene behind Yeyuama, I saw for myself what was happening.

  Five or six Yembe hunters were ranged around the dragon, spears at the ready—but it was spears they held, not rifles, and they used them only to keep the dragon at bay. Three other men were engaged at closer range, hauling with all their might on ropes that had been looped about the swamp-wyrm’s limbs. Velloin stalked around this fray, protected, as the others were, by a kerchief tied over his mouth and nose in addition to a pair of goggles, to keep the noxious gas from his eyes. He held another lasso in his hands, and as I watched, he flung it over the dragon’s muzzle and dragged the loop tight.

  “God almighty,” I whispered, staring. “They’re not trying to kill the dragon. They’re trying to capture it.”

  Velloin had done it before, and had said he wanted to try again. But the swamp-wyrm before us was no runt; it was a splendid beast, one of the largest I had seen. Even with four men trying to bind it, the creature still thrashed. It was difficult to imagine Velloin could drag it ten feet like that, let alone into a cage.

  As it transpired, he didn’t intend to. Velloin passed his rope to another man, then picked up a bow. The arrow he nocked was too light to have any chance of killing the creature, but before he put it to the string, he dipped the head in a small clay jar. Poison of some kind, I assumed. Something to weaken and slow the dragon for easier transport.

  He did not get the chance to try. Yeyuama had been watching the scene with narrowed eyes; when he saw the poisoned arrow, he lifted his hands to his mouth and made a sound like a birdcall. Like, but not the same: clearly it was a signal, and just as clearly, this was what our own hunters had been waiting for.

  I would have sworn my oath on the Holy Scripture that there were no Moulish in the immediate vicinity of this struggle, but on Yeyuama’s call, half a dozen nets dropped from the trees to snare the men below. Spears thudding into the ground at the feet of the Yembe caused several of them to leap back. Ropes slipped free of hands, and then the dragon spun about, smashing men to the ground with its muscular tail.

  What followed was chaos. Half-restrained as it was, the swamp-wyrm could not move easily, but it was determined to crush its tormentors; then Yembe spears began to stick in its hide, and it changed its intent to flight. This most of the Yembe seemed willing to let it do, but as the dragon slipped away, I saw Velloin raising a rifle.

  “No!”

  I did not even realize I was the one who had shouted until I had already flung myself forward. Then there was nothing to do but continue. “Hold your fire, sir!” I commanded, staggering across the trampled ground, coughing on the foul air.

  One of the Yembe caught me. But I had caught Velloin’s attention; for a moment that rifle was pointed at me. Then the hunter saw me properly, and jerked in surprise.

  “Well,” he said, tugging down the kerchief that covered his face. “Mrs. Camherst, I presume. My God—you still live.”

  “I was not aware my status was in question,” I said, trying and failing to pull my arms free of my captor. “Will you tell this man to unhand me?”

  Velloin grinned, not pleasantly. “I do not give orders to the son of a king, Mrs. Camherst.”

  Confused, I twisted to look up at the man holding me. He released one arm and uncovered his own face, revealing Okweme n Kpama Waleyim.

  “Is this your scheme?” I asked him. “Or Velloin’s? I have a hard time believing it is his; surely he would prefer to kill his prey, rather than snare it.”

  Okweme’s grin was as unpleasant as Velloin’s. Had I ever thought the man friendly, let alone attractive? “We are here at the request of my royal father. He will not be glad to hear that you interfered.”

  “It wasn’t just her,” Velloin said. He resettled his rifle on his shoulder. “Those nets and spears must have come from the swamp rats. Come out!” he shouted, turning to scan the trees. “We know you are there.”

  Tom needed no encouragement; indeed, I suspected Yeyuama must have been holding him back. Yeyuama himself followed a step behind. One might have mistaken his slow stride for relaxed, but to my eye, it had more the character of focused anger.
The hunters stayed hidden, and I blessed them for it.

  I had grown accustomed to measuring people according to Moulish stature, against which Tom, whose height was middling at best, seemed a giant. Facing Okweme and Velloin, Yeyuama was almost childlike in his smallness. There was nothing childlike, however, in the look he directed at the interlopers. “You are not welcome here.”

  “Speak Yembe,” Okweme snapped.

  Yeyuama merely raised his eyebrows at the man. “He doesn’t know your language,” I said, remembering my own experience with the Moulish tongue. “He might pick a few words out from what you say, and vice versa for you—no more.”

  “Then you translate,” Okweme said.

  However little I wanted to follow his orders, an interpreter would be necessary. “Unhand me, and I will.”

  Scowling, Okweme complied. I explained my position to Yeyuama, then repeated his original message and his subsequent expansion. “You have tried to harm one of the dragons. Because he is feeling merciful, he will let you go, but you must not return.” (His actual phrasing had been “Because you are ignorant,” but I softened it; proverbs about shooting the messenger kept dancing through my mind.)

  “Harm?” Velloin said, with half a laugh. “That is rich. How many have you harmed, Mrs. Camherst, pursuing your research? Or are you still reliant on others to do your butchery for you?”

  “I can learn by observation alone—and so I have,” I said. Yeyuama looked to Tom for a translation, but Tom was rigid with tension, watching the rest of us. Gritting my teeth, I conveyed what Velloin had said.

  Velloin saw my discomfort and pressed the advantage. “Have you stolen any eggs yet? Eggs,” he repeated in Yeyuama’s direction, very loudly, making sure he noticed the word. “Tell your friend about your own orders—that the oba sent you to take away something even more precious than a living dragon. See how he likes you, when he hears that.”

  He had me over a barrel. I was not good enough at lying to make up something else to say to Yeyuama; even my hesitation gave too much away. Desperate, I looked at Tom, and saw him open his mouth, perhaps to lie on my behalf.

  No, I thought, very distinctly. Perhaps I was like these two, in that I had come here for the oba’s gain as well as my own. I would not further compound that by trying to conceal anything. That was witchcraft, at least in the nonsupernatural sense; it was evil. And such evil must be purged with truth.

  I relayed Velloin’s words as faithfully as I could, then said, “It is true. The ruler of Bayembe sent me here to take eggs, though I have not done it. If these men do not shoot us, I will explain more later; but the explanation will not supercede the apology I give you now. I made my promise to the oba in foolish ignorance, without first learning what its consequences would be. I am sorry. And I am doubly sorry for not telling you sooner.”

  Yeyuama listened without blinking, without any hint of reaction. When I was done, he remained silent a moment longer, while my nerves wound tight. Then he said, “You will be tested. After that, we will see.”

  Tested? Another witchcraft ritual, perhaps. Okweme interrupted my speculations. “What did he say?”

  I translated both that and Yeyuama’s next words. “You are noisy—he means something more like ‘disruptive’—and ignorant, and you do not care to learn. You must leave now.”

  Velloin snorted. “How does he think to make us leave? We have rifles.”

  “And we have poisoned spears,” Yeyuama said, through me. “We have nets and traps. We have the forest. You are villagers, and our home will eat you. Go now.”

  The other Yembe heard my translation and looked uneasy. They were indeed villagers, outsiders to this place, and although they had spent this entire time looking for the hunters they knew must be about, they had not yet spotted a single one.

  It was a fragile threat. These people could easily kill Yeyuama; the Moulish, however, could kill more than a few of them. Then the oba might send a larger force, this one hunting not dragons, but men. However well the Moulish knew the Green Hell, they were safe here largely because no one cared to face the difficulty of coming after them. If they gave the oba a reason to change his mind, they would lose.

  But those were future possibilities; the present was this confrontation, and I could see that the other men were not eager to gamble their lives against the demons of the forest.

  “I recommend you take his advice,” I said. “The Moulish are quite fierce in defending what they hold sacred. Please assure the oba that I will have useful information for him soon; he must, however, be patient a while longer.” Information, of course, was not the same thing as eggs, nor was “useful” the same thing as “encouraging.” But it would, I hoped, buy us a little more time.

  “Very well,” Velloin said, and shot a look at Okweme that silenced whatever the prince had been about to say.

  Tom spoke, for the first time since this entire affair began. “I don’t recommend trying to come back at a different point. By this time tomorrow, the entire swamp will know of your hunting party, and I doubt they’ll be so generous a second time.” The talking drums. The Moulish were not a unified state, but at times like this, they could act in concert, and would.

  I did not know whether Tom had convinced Velloin or Okweme, but it at least gave the other Yembe something else to be worried about. The two leaders might have a mutiny on their hands, if they tried to come back.

  They left for the time being, at least, and I sagged in relief when they were gone. But not for long: there was still Yeyuama to deal with, and the revelation Okweme had forced upon me. As little as I wanted to return to that topic, delaying would be even worse.

  But when I tried to explain further, he stopped me with the same answer as before: “You will be tested, Reguamin. Then we will see.”

  Ominous words. Unfortunately, I had no choice but to accept them.

  NINETEEN

  Into the open—Constructing the glider—Wishbones—Across the river—Abseiling again—The waterfall island—Movement in the water—Bees—Strangely regular stones—My great leap

  Given the dangers I had already faced in my short life—deadly disease, attacks by wild beasts, kidnapping, and other threats from human sources—you would not think that leaving the forest for the more open ground of the savannah should be frightening. Yet so it was.

  The villagers of the Moulish border fear the forest, and when I went into the Green Hell, I experienced a taste of their fear. But the reverse side, which I have not yet mentioned, is that the Moulish themselves fear the land outside the forest. It does not quite go so far as what physicians term agoraphobia—the fear of open places and crowds—but after a life lived in the close embrace of the swamp, the savannah feels like a desiccated wasteland by comparison, one in which there is no shelter to be found. You are exposed: the sun beats down without mercy, the scattered trees providing only tiny oases of shade, and everything can see you.

  Being not Moulish, and only a visitor to the Green Hell, my reaction was not so extreme as theirs; but I did gain a degree of sympathy for it. My months in the swamp had acclimated me to an environment never further away than my elbow. Now I felt as if I teetered atop a small and unstable perch, and might at any moment go tumbling away into the emptiness.

  This feeling was all the stronger because I knew I would only be in the open air for a short while, after which I would tumble (or, one hoped, serenely glide) back into the confines of the swamp. I was not particularly eager to return to the Green Hell, but at the moment it felt familiar—and besides, I hoped, great discoveries awaited me there.

  Having departed from our Moulish hosts, Tom, Natalie, Faj Rawango, and I picked our way across the broken land where the fault that created the Great Cataract began. It was not easy going, but moving out onto flatter land would bring us too near the villages, and the men who fortified and held the rivers against Ikwunde advances. We did not want their attention and their questions. In due course, however, we came to the bank of the Hemb
i and settled down, under Natalie’s guidance, to build a pair of wings.

  I would not be able to fly with them, of course, in the sense of achieving the kind of lift and maneuverability that most breeds of dragons can manage. I lacked the thoracic muscles necessary for such a thing; the best I could hope for would be to glide. Even that was the fulfillment of a girlhood dream, though, and so I threw myself into this task with goodwill.

  The center of the frame was an oval shape, made by lashing ribs together, with a division where they could be pulled apart for easier transport. Two femurs reached out from this to form the leading edges of the wings, the surface itself consisting of canvas stretched over fans of alar cartilage. I painted that canvas with the sap of the rubber vine to make it airtight, while Tom helped Natalie lash the bones and cartilage together with gut and cord.

  I myself would hang feet-down from the center of this affair, just behind the femurs, with a crossbar for me to grip. Natalie was going to use a fibula for the crossbar, but I had, out of nostalgia for my childhood, insisted that a wishbone be among the pieces we preserved, and it seemed too apt not to employ here. (Apt and—I must admit—superstitiously lucky. If wishbones were a thing of flight, and I wished to fly … an irrelevant connection, of course, as it would not be serving anything like the anatomical function of a furcula in this instance. But when one is going to fling oneself off a cliff, these little superstitions become oddly vital.)

  Tom and I had spent enough time studying the mechanics of flight for me to need little instruction in the use of my glider. By leaning my weight to one side or another, I could turn; by throwing it forward or back, I could direct myself down or up. But only so far: the control offered by such a design is limited in the extreme, as enthusiasts of more advanced designs are no doubt shouting at the page even now. Furthermore, while I might not need instruction, to undertake such a thing without practice is little short of suicidal. But the art was in its infancy back then, and that meant there had been no dramatic accidents (such as the one that claimed the life of Mr. Garsell, Natalie’s Lopperton friend, three years later) to instil the proper fear in me. I therefore had only enough fear to make myself terrifed—not enough to turn back.