Dragon's Milk

by Susan Fletcher

  Embyr had trouble, as well, with the idea of carrying out an order sometime in the future. 〈Now?〉 she kept asking.

  〈No,〉 Kaeldra said. 〈Not now.〉

  Later, when the draclings were napping, Kaeldra thought about her plan. The draclings might be able to survive on their own for a little while, at least. They could forage for food in the sea; they seemed to have ceased floating in their sleep.

  If Landerath were dead, what more could she do—even if she did manage to escape? Granmyr, she remembered, had said something about a council bluff. Something about summoning the dragons with a name. But Kaeldra had no idea where the bluff might be, nor what the name.

  Still, she wouldn’t send them away unless she absolutely must. If she did, she doubted she would see them ever again. Kaeldra did not know what would become of her charges if they escaped into the sea. The world was full of peril for draclings. But at least they would have a chance.

  Over and over Kaeldra reviewed her plan, looking for flaws, keeping her thoughts busy, pushing back the fear that pressed against her heart: And what is to happen to me?

  * * *

  That night, there was a commotion outside. Shouts. Feet tramping on deck. The distant rumble of hoofbeats. Before Kaeldra could rise, Jeorg sprang to his feet and dashed to the wharf-side porthole. Kaeldra sat listening.

  A shouted greeting. The jingle of riding gear. Jeorg cried out a word Kaeldra did not know, and then there was a thundering of footsteps above. The hatch opened with a creak. The light of many lanterns pricked the darkness, and a mass of people descended into the hold.

  Kaeldra retreated into the shadows. The captain climbed down first, followed by a man in a flowing red robe, then a contingent of armed men.

  “Is this the girl?” the man in red asked, approaching Kaeldra. He walked with a limp, she saw.

  “Modin!” Jeorg, his chain clanking, strode forward to embrace the man.

  〈Now?〉 It was Embyr, hidden far back in the hold.

  〈No. Not now.〉

  “You know this man?” the captain asked.

  The man disengaged himself from Jeorg’s embrace, his eyes on Kaeldra. His robe, Kaeldra saw, was of velvet, richly embroidered in gold. A shag of grizzled hair frizzed out around the man’s face, which looked gaunt and skull white in the light from his lantern. His eyes were lost in pools of darkness.

  “He is known to me,” the man said.

  “Modin,” Jeorg said, “by the Blade it’s good to see you! I have been beaten and detained against my will. They have insulted me and Landerath. Tell them to release me at once. And”—he turned briefly toward Kaeldra—“the girl, as well. She has done nothing.”

  The man in red turned to the captain. He spoke softly, but there was a cutting edge beneath. “It is well you captured him. This man is one of Landerath’s companions in treachery, plotting to bend the wrath of dragons to their own demented ends.”

  Jeorg looked as if he had been slapped. “But, Modin! You know me! I am no traitor!”

  “I know very well what you are.”

  “Then I demand that you have me released. I am a vassal of the king!”

  “Batten your jaws!” the captain bellowed. He turned to the man in red and said in an altogether different tone, “I am honored to be of service, Sir Modin. Is there aught—”

  Jeorg lunged at Modin, clutched at his robe. “Why are you lying? Tell him to release me. I’m no traitor!”

  “Detain him.” The man in red did not raise his voice, but his order galvanized his men. Three of them rushed forward and pulled Jeorg away while two more bound his hands behind his back.

  The captain spoke. “Begging your pardon, milord, but may we expect some small, ah, recompense for capturing this traitor?”

  “Certainly. You are bound for the capital, I assume?”

  “Yes, we are sailing to Zarig, but—”

  “You will find the king most generous.”

  “But, begging your leave, I thought that—you would take him. If he is as dangerous as you say—”

  “I will leave my guards. Now, the girl—”

  “Modin!” Jeorg cried, struggling to free himself. “You’ll be sorry! I—”

  One of the guards dealt him a brutal blow to the stomach. Jeorg grunted, sagging.

  Kaeldra shrank back, afraid, as the man in red approached. He brought the lantern to her face; she blinked and turned away. “Look at me, my dear,” he said. Beyond the lantern’s glare, his features blurred and faded into darkness. “Ah, yes,” he said. “Yes. You will come with me.” He turned to one of his men. “Bind her hands.” And to the captain: “Unshackle her foot.”

  “But—” the captain said. “The reward?”

  “Ah, the reward.” Modin reached into the folds of his gown and took out a leather bag. He tossed it to the captain. “I trust that will suffice?”

  The captain opened the bag. His eyes grew large. “Yes, milord. The king is very generous.”

  Kaeldra felt the cold metal slip off her foot at the same time the ropes gripped her hands. She glanced at Jeorg. He looked bewildered. Like a child, she thought. Like a little boy. All at once she longed to reach out to him, to sweep the hair from his eyes.

  Stop that! she told herself fiercely. Remember, he set out to kill dragons.

  But he has changed, an inner voice answered. He would not do so now.

  〈Now?〉 It was Embyr.

  Kaeldra’s heart wrenched. It was time. The men were turned toward Kaeldra now; no one would notice the quiet movement in the dark behind their backs. And although she had planned for this moment, until now she had not truly believed it would come to pass.

  〈Now,〉 Kaeldra said. 〈Go now.〉

  chapter 23

  Into man’s domain,

  To this high terrain

  Where the spume of the sea circles round,

  Through the northern sky,

  Dragonkyn shall fly

  When a girl with green eyes calls us down.

  —Dragon to Kara,

  The Promise,

  A Drama in Three Acts

  hold up!”

  The man called Modin reined in his steed and pulled back on the lead with which he guided Kaeldra’s mount.

  When her mare at last jogged to a stop, Kaeldra relaxed the grip of her hands and thighs. Her legs trembled from clinging to the horse. Her hands were cramped. Beneath the coarse rope binding them, her wrists burned.

  “Hold out your hands,” Modin said.

  Kaeldra saw the flash of a silver dagger in the moonlight and her mind went numb; her hands would not move.

  “Hold them out.”

  The dagger flashed again. Kaeldra winced but felt no pain as her bonds peeled away. Gingerly, she fingered her wrists. The skin felt raw.

  When she had emerged from the ship, this man had lifted her astride the horse and led her galloping through the night across the bluffs beside the sea. Kaeldra did not know how long they had ridden. It was not yet dawn, but her back and legs and hands felt as though they had been bouncing on that horse for a quarter-moon.

  “I apologize for that,” Modin said now. He was looking, Kaeldra saw, at her wrists. “But had I not bound you, they might have suspected.”

  Then he kicked his horse, still holding Kaeldra’s lead, and she was left to wonder what he meant as they raced across the bluffs.

  They came at last to a promontory high above the sea. The bitten moon illuminated a sandy track winding down to the beach in a hollow between two hills. Halfway down the track, sheltered by the hills and stands of needlecone trees, Modin tethered the horses. He helped Kaeldra dismount, then untied some animal skins from the saddlebags, spread them on the ground, and motioned for Kaeldra to sit. Limping, he began to forage for kindling.

  I could escape now, Kaeldra thought. I could take a horse, ride away, find the draclings. She wondered why the man had left her there unfettered. Was he so certain she could not escape? Was he watching her? And what had he
meant before about the others suspecting? And what had he meant about Jeorg being in league with Landerath, using dragons for his own demented ends?

  Kaeldra tried to make herself get up, but her body, limp with hunger and fatigue, seemed to have melted to the ground.

  Modin soon returned, and before long a fire leaped and crackled nearby. He did not speak. Opening the saddlebags, he took out bread, cheese, and a packet of dried yellow fruits unfamiliar to Kaeldra. He spread them on a silver platter and set it down between them. He rummaged through his saddlebags and produced two silver goblets and a jar of wine.

  Kaeldra’s mouth watered. Her fingers itched to snatch a hunk of cheese and pop it into her mouth. Yet she did not trust this man; she feared to take his food. Even now he neither spoke nor looked at her. Was she a prisoner? Or not? A bubble of anger pressed up from her chest into her throat. If she were a prisoner, she wanted to know.

  Modin poured wine into the goblets, lifted one toward her.

  “What are you going to do with me?” Kaeldra demanded.

  Modin checked his arm, one eyebrow raised.

  “Do?”

  “Yes, do! You paid a sack of gold for me. Are you taking me to the king?”

  “Of course not,” he said, seeming surprised. “You’re free to go. Although I’d hoped you’d share a meal with me. And I’d like to hear news of your granmyr. Landerath spoke of her often.”

  Kaeldra sprang to her feet. “Who are you?”

  “I am called Modin, as you surely heard. However, I fear I may have misrepresented myself to those knaves on the ship. If they knew I was in league with Landerath, I’d be in chains or worse.” He smiled, a quick, twisting movement that seemed to mock his words. “You really ought to have some wine. I find it quite calming.”

  “How do you know Granmyr?”

  Modin drained his wine and answered as he poured himself more. “In truth, we’ve never met. But Landerath spoke of her so often, I feel we’re old friends. Are you quite certain you won’t join me?”

  Kaeldra eyed him suspiciously. Was he among Landerath’s underground? Modin’s story had turned so sharp a corner, Kaeldra knew not what to think.

  “Why did you take me here? What do you know of Landerath?”

  Modin sighed and set down the hunk of cheese he was about to put in his mouth. “I can see I’m to have no peace until I explain certain events, some of which, I warn you, are quite unpleasant. But I insist that you at least sit whilst I do so.”

  Kaeldra hesitated.

  “Sit! Sit!”

  She crouched near the fire, ready to flee.

  “Now, drink!” Modin held out the second goblet. “It isn’t poisoned, my dear. We’re on the same side.”

  Cautiously, Kaeldra sampled the wine. It was spiced with something pungent and unfamiliar, but she found that she liked it well. As Modin spoke, she nibbled at the things on the tray—after all, she reasoned, he had eaten them. The cheese tasted sharp; the strange yellow fruits were crusty and sweet.

  Modin told how he had been Landerath’s second-in-command at the fastness of the Sentinels. Outwardly, they had advanced King Urk’s oft-repeated vow to rid the earth of dragons. But unbeknownst to the king, they led a small, secret society that sought to preserve dragons from annihilation.

  “But why does the king campaign against dragons? They have been away for so long.”

  Modin shrugged. “Politics, mostly. It plays well with the farmers. And we all feel a primordial terror contemplating the Ancient Ones, don’t we? They are creatures of the Chaos, anathema to civilization. As long as they live, so too lives the threat of their return. Urk also fears the green-eyed descendants of Kara, like yourself, all of whom have been, ah, banished. He fears you possess a magical power over dragons that you might one day wield against him.”

  Banished. Kaeldra shivered, thinking of her birth-mother.

  Modin’s voice wove through the rumble of the surf and the stirring of needlecone boughs as he told how, when the banded bird had arrived, Landerath had sent Jeorg, his aide, with a message for Granmyr. “Jeorg was not yet initiated into the society; indeed, he knew not of its existence. Or so we believed. Yet Landerath was fond of the boy and thought he showed promise. I wanted to go to protect the dragons, yet Landerath said he could not spare me. There was a traitor among the brethren, he said, and I must help ferret him out.

  “We gravely miscalculated.” Modin looked down; shadows crept up his face. “Jeorg, I fear, had found out about our society. He sent a message to Urk, telling all he knew. Then he left for Elythia to slay the dragon.”

  “You know this for certain? About the message to King Urk?”

  Modin nodded. “We have our informers as well. But we discovered his treachery too late. Urk sent an army, and the castle was razed. Landerath, unfortunately, died.

  “I was away at the time and so escaped. But when the king finds that I have freed you, he will surely hunt me down.”

  “But Jeorg . . . I can’t believe he would betray Landerath. Surely you might be mistaken?”

  Modin shook his head.

  “Then Landerath—is truly dead?”

  “It is certain.”

  “Then we are lost,” Kaeldra whispered.

  “The society will rise again someday,” Modin said, “although few dragons remain for it to protect, I fear. It is a great tragedy the hatchlings are dead. They may have been the last; the other eggs may have been destroyed. You, my dear, might have saved them.”

  “What?”

  “The hatchlings. There must have been hatchlings. But they are surely dead by now. They could not long survive without their dam, and I have it from unimpeachable sources that she was killed.”

  “But if they were alive? How might I have saved them?”

  Modin shrugged. “What is the use? They cannot be.”

  “But if they were?” Kaeldra insisted.

  “You could call down the kyn of dragons.”

  Kaeldra stared.

  “Know you not of the promise the dragons made to Kara-of-the-Green-Eyes? I am surprised your granmyr did not tell you of it, for Kara was kin to you. If a green-eyed girl—Kara herself, or one of her descendants—if such a one calls, they will come to her aid.”

  “You mean, if I called—dragons would come?”

  “It’s not quite so simple as that. You would have to call from where Kara summoned them—on the council bluff on Rog. I know the place and could take you to it. But the lore says you must call a dragon by name, and I know not their names. Landerath did, yet he told no one. Although perhaps you might manage without a name. . . .”

  Modin shrugged. “But the hatchlings are dead, and you must yearn for home.” He stood and untied the horse Kaeldra had ridden. “Here, take Wopra. I owe you this much at least; I feel half-responsible for luring you from your home.”

  But Kaeldra barely heard him.

  Call down dragons? That was what Granmyr had said. And the council bluff . . .

  Kaeldra thought of Fiora, the terrifying size of her, the blistering heat of her, the excruciating pain of her voice.

  A whole kyn of them?

  She did yearn—terribly—for home. But she had come this far. She had done things she had never dreamed she was capable of. Kaeldra looked out over the sea. The draclings were out there now, somewhere, waiting for her. . . .

  “A pity, though,” Modin was saying. “About the hatchlings—”

  Could she trust him?

  Kaeldra searched Modin’s face for signs of cruelty or guile. But the sun, rising low in the sky behind him, kindled the edges of his hair, leaving his face deeply shadowed. He had known about Landerath’s underground, she told herself. He had known about the calling and the council bluff. Perhaps he was mistaken about Jeorg—she hoped so. Nevertheless, Modin must be who he claimed to be.

  “They’re alive,” Kaeldra said.

  “Beg pardon, my dear?”

  “The draclings. I was caring for them. They were in the
ship. I told them—before I left—to go out the portholes and swim up the coast.”

  The firelight flared, and Kaeldra thought, just for a moment, she saw a smile twitch across Modin’s face. But then it was gone.

  “Why, that’s splendid, my dear,” Modin said. “You wouldn’t, perchance, know the name of their dam?”

  “Yes, but she’s dead.”

  “Indeed. But the dragons would know her name, wouldn’t they? They might come to that name.”

  Kaeldra nodded slowly. “It’s possible. I don’t know. Nor do I know exactly where the draclings are.”

  “Perhaps,” Modin put a finger to his lips, “perhaps you might call them?”

  * * *

  They left the horses and wound on foot down the narrow track to the sea. At the edge of the beach, Modin stopped.

  “You had better go on alone, I think.”

  Kaeldra walked across the hard wet sand to where the broken waves surged and hissed. The wind slashed at her face, ached in her ears. The sea stretched, like an immense slab of shale, to the edges of the world.

  Where were the draclings? How could she find them, in a sea so vast?

  She and Modin had ridden northeast along the coast, and that was the direction in which she had sent the draclings. They could not have traveled as rapidly as the horses. Perhaps, Kaeldra thought, they were south and west of here.

  〈Embyr! Pyro! Synge!〉 Kaeldra sent their names across the waves. She strained to see some sign of them: a flash of color, a burst of spray. But there was only the cold, gray sea, and the spreading pink stain of dawn. She strained to feel them in her mind, but heard only a crashing of waves, a shudder of wind, the thin, plaintive cry of a gull.

  〈Embyr! Pyro! Synge!〉 A bitter loneliness swept through Kaeldra. How could she have let them go? How could she have thought she might find them again?

  Something prickled at a corner of her mind. There was a flash in the sea to the west, near the coastline. There. Again. And now she saw three dots above the water, growing larger and still larger. 〈We come,〉 Kaeldra felt, and, 〈Coming,〉 and, very faintly, 〈Wait for me.〉