Dragon's Milk

by Susan Fletcher

  “Here I am!” Kaeldra called out. “Here! Over here!”

  Now she could make out their shapes, two ahead, one flying far behind. They wobbled above the water, rising and dipping in erratic spurts. Kaeldra gasped as one plummeted into the sea, then rose unsteadily into the air again.

  Embyr came first, and Pyro just after. They skimmed across the surf, belched out flame and tumbled into the sand. Kaeldra ran to them. She tripped and sprawled headlong; Embyr and Pyro bounded on top of her, thrumming and flicking their tongues. Soon Synge was there too, lying in the sand beside her, sides heaving.

  “You came,” Kaeldra said, tears burning her eyes. “You came.”

  chapter 24

  Torgar cut it out and spitted it on a branch. And when it was wele coked, he did byte into it. And sith that time, when Torgar ate that dragon heart, neither sword nor bolt colde byte him.

  —The Bok of Dragon

  Embyr did not like Modin.

  She called him a “bad man” and refused to come near. But Pyro took food from him, and Synge often rubbed against his legs.

  “Don’t mind Embyr,” Kaeldra said. “She didn’t care for Jeorg either, at first, but after a time . . .” She trailed off, thinking of Jeorg. Perhaps Embyr had been right not to like him. But Kaeldra could not wholly believe it.

  Modin shrugged. “It is well that it is wary. There are many who would do it harm.” He packed the last of the provisions into the saddlebags and began to hobble the horses. In the early morning light, Modin did not seem as old as when Kaeldra had first seen him. Though he limped, he moved quickly and with a muscular kind of grace. Remembering how he had lifted her onto the horse, Kaeldra supposed that Modin’s strength more than compensated for his one crippled leg.

  He finished with the horses and led Kaeldra and the draclings down a steep path to a cave where he had stowed a coracle. Across a stretch of sea the island of Rog floated in a grayish haze. Modin dragged the tiny boat across the sand and into the shallows, motioning Kaeldra to get in. When she hesitated, he told her not to fear, that the coracle would rise above the surf. “But it will not hold all three draclings,” he said. “They must swim. The island is not far, six sentares, no more.”

  Kaeldra sat down inside the coracle. It seemed tiny and frail, no match for the surf, which rose up out of the sea and heaved itself, foaming, at her. But when Modin strode through the breakers, pushing the coracle, it sliced through the curling spume and bobbed to the surface like a pyfal duck. At last Modin clambered, dripping, inside. He handed Kaeldra a hollowed-out gourd with which to bail, then began to paddle with sure, strong strokes.

  The waves came at them like moving hills. When they rode to the top of one, Kaeldra could see the island ahead and the draclings swimming behind. But in the valleys between the waves, there was only the sea all about, dark and shiny as flaked obsidian.

  Before long, Synge lagged far behind. “What ails that one?” Modin asked, his voice tinged with impatience.

  “She was bitten by a dog. Her shoulder has not healed.”

  Modin ceased rowing to give Synge a chance to catch up, but when they glimpsed her between waves, she seemed not to be moving at all. At last, with an exasperated sigh, Modin turned the coracle back toward the dracling. Kaeldra wondered, as he paddled, if he were as impatient with his own debility as he seemed to be with Synge’s. At last they hauled Synge in; she lay across Kaeldra’s knees, sides heaving, eyes glazed. The wound, Kaeldra saw, had reopened and oozed green. And how will you get up that hill, my Syngeling, she wondered, turning her eyes to the fortress that perched atop a steep, flat-topped bluff at the island’s crest. The haze had burned off, but a plume of black smoke trailed into the sky.

  “I see smoke,” Kaeldra told Modin. “I thought you said the king’s men were gone.”

  “They are gone,” Modin said. “It’s only a fire they left burning.”

  Kaeldra, gazing at the solid column of smoke, wondered how he could be so sure.

  They came at last into the lee of the island. The wind dropped. The seas calmed. They rode in on a wave, jumped out, and dragged the coracle onto the beach.

  Kaeldra lugged Synge out of the boat and laid her in the sand. The dracling sprawled on her belly. Her shoulder still oozed. Embyr and Pyro plunged through the surf and circled Synge, snuffling.

  “This way,” Modin said. He did not pause, but headed across the beach for a track which wound up the hill.

  “Come on, Syngeling,” Kaeldra said. “We must go.”

  Synge lunged to her feet; then her legs crumpled beneath her.

  “Couldn’t I call them from here?” Kaeldra asked Modin.

  “Only from the council bluff. That was the promise.”

  Kaeldra propped Synge on her feet, ran ahead a few steps. “Synge,” she called. “Come here.” The little dracling looked up mournfully, collapsed, and tucked her head beneath her wing. “Come on!” Kaeldra said.

  〈Hurts.〉 Kaeldra felt a sympathetic twinge of pain in her own shoulder. She stooped, picked up Synge, draped her like a woolen scarf across her neck and shoulders. Synge was light enough, but awkward to carry. A wing chafed against Kaeldra’s ear; the dracling’s tail flopped down past Kaeldra’s knees and often became entangled in her legs.

  They followed the track, which wound uphill through dry sea grasses and scrubby firs speckled here and there with nesting seabirds. When Kaeldra began to tire, Modin carried Synge. At a bend in the track, he turned off onto a narrower, rockier footpath, which scaled the slopes beneath the fortress through a thicket of celan trees.

  “This will save us a couple of sentares, at least,” he explained. But the going now was much rougher than before, especially with Synge. The path was so steep in places that they often had to grab onto roots and boulders to keep from slipping. Modin’s limp grew worse. Kaeldra offered to bear the dracling, but fared no better; her unshod feet were lacerated and raw. At last they were forced to stop at the base of a steep, rocky embankment. She could climb it, Kaeldra knew, but not if she carried Synge.

  “We’re nearly there,” Modin said. “The council bluff is just atop this slope. Why don’t you go ahead with the other two? I’ll stay here with the sick one. When the dragons come, you can send them for it.”

  Kaeldra looked up the slope, then at Modin. Uneasiness stirred inside her. “Why did you take us this way when you knew we could not reach the bluff?”

  “It’s so long since I came this way, I forgot how steep it is. In any event, the other way is worse. A storm washed out part of the track, and it would have been impassable to anyone carrying a burden.”

  Kaeldra hesitated. What Modin said made sense, and yet . . . A hard band constricted around her heart at the thought of leaving Synge.

  Still, what else could she do? They would never make it back down carrying Synge, and if what Modin said about the other track were true . . .

  Kaeldra knelt by Synge and grazed her cheek along the dracling’s neck. Her scales were cool and smooth. Her breath was smoky-warm. 〈I have to go now, Syngeling.〉 Against her cheek, Kaeldra felt an answering thrum. 〈Modin will stay with you until I return. He will care for you. We will be together again soon.〉

  Synge flicked her tongue. Kaeldra kissed the dracling’s eye ridges.

  “Tend her well,” she said to Modin.

  “I will,” he said. “Now, go!”

  Kaeldra turned to climb the slope.

  * * *

  Embyr and Pyro reached the crest before she did. They scrambled nimbly upward, showering Kaeldra with loose pebbles and dust before disappearing over the ledge above her. At last Kaeldra pulled herself up onto a wide, flat expanse of rock. The council bluff. At the far end stood the fastness, eerily reminiscent of the castle Kaeldra had seen spring from Granmyr’s clay—yet blackened, crumbling, smoking. The island fell away on all sides, surrounded by a wrinkled ring of sea.

  Kaeldra turned to wave at Modin, but he and Synge were nowhere to be seen. He’s taken her
someplace where she can rest, Kaeldra told herself. Someplace nearby, someplace sheltered, where she can lie down.

  The wind jostled her in fitful gusts. She struck out across the flat rock toward the draclings, who romped in circles, sniffing here and there, playfully nipping at each other. They spun round and galloped toward Kaeldra, careened into her; she tripped and stumbled to the ground. They clambered into her lap, thrumming, trying to find room to curl up. Something caught in Kaeldra’s throat; how could she bear to let them go? When she called the dragons, she might set in motion forces that would take them from her forever. She cast about for another way, a way they could remain together. Perhaps she could stay here with them, away from people, letting them fish in the sea.

  She looked north across the water, trying to stretch out that thought, trying to imagine what that life would be.

  Something glinted at the fortress. Kaeldra, blinking, caught a fleeting movement on the battlements.

  It’s nothing, she thought. No one is there.

  But men would return someday. And they would surely find her. If not Urk’s soldiers, then other dragon foes. If not here, then elsewhere. The world was full of men, as Yanil had said. It was a dangerous place, too dangerous for draclings.

  Kaeldra stood facing north and looked across the sea. The sun, no longer overhead, arced toward the horizon.

  It was time to let them go.

  〈Fiora,〉 she tried. 〈Fiora.〉

  It wasn’t right. Her inner voice sounded small and flat. Like a cowbell when she needed a gong.

  She closed her eyes and tried to reach across the water, tried to imagine a kyn of dragons flying toward her. But, perversely, all she could picture was the draclings, the way they had wobbled over the water to her the night before, the way they had skimmed the surf and plummeted onto the sand. These dragons would be bigger, Kaeldra thought, their flight a burst of power. Kaeldra played with the image in her mind, stretching out the draclings, imagining the beat of their wings, the thunder of their fiery breaths, the curves of their necks and backs and tails; and she saw her, then, in the shape of her thoughts, she saw—

  〈Fiora. I call Fiora.〉

  There was a jolting in her mind, like an alien consciousness startled from its sleep. Warily she kept it in her ken, felt it sharpen into alertness.

  All at once something burst inside her chest, exploded in brilliant shards of pain. The mind-presence fled; the draclings screamed and reeled as if stricken. They began to run: dizzily, clumsily away from her and toward the place where they had come up.

  “Wait!” Kaeldra called. “Come back!” She reached to touch their minds; they were crying, the way they had when—

  No. Kaeldra raced across the highland; the draclings plunged over the edge. She scrambled down the slope, sliding, an avalanche of pebbles mounting beneath her feet.

  There was a quicksilver flash of draclings among the trees; Kaeldra set off in that direction. As she ran she slowly became aware of a chattering, a twittering, a keening, a cawing. There was something in the sky. . . .

  Birds. The sky was thick with them. The air was shrill with them. It was like the other time, when Fiora—

  No, Kaeldra thought. It isn’t the same. It can’t be. Synge is safe with Modin.

  She pushed through a thicket, then saw them ahead. The draclings had stopped at last; they were sniffing at something on the ground. A man knelt beside them—not Modin—his hair and clothes were different.

  Kaeldra slowed. The man looked up.

  It was Jeorg. His face was streaked with tears.

  “Kaeldra, I—” he began. He rose to his feet, and Kaeldra saw the limp, bloody shape stretched out upon the ground.

  chapter 25

  We are come to a time when, no longer cowed by the old earth-powers, men must rise and take what we need from the ancient race of monsters.

  —Letter to Modin

  Urk, King of Kragrom

  Kaeldra, wait.”

  Jeorg moved toward her, tried to stop her; but Kaeldra pushed past him to kneel by the thing on the ground.

  It was Synge. Kaeldra drew her fingers along the dracling’s throat, seeking the life she knew must throb there. She felt beneath a filmy wing, seeking the breath she knew must rise there. Synge was still, too still. Gently, Kaeldra turned her onto her back and saw the bloody slit that cleaved the dracling’s belly.

  No.

  Embyr and Pyro nudged at Synge as though trying to wake her. Embyr turned to Kaeldra. 〈Gone,〉 she said, puzzled. 〈All gone.〉

  “Kaeldra.” Jeorg’s voice was hoarse. “By all the gods I’m sorry.”

  “Sorry?” Kaeldra felt the rage pushing up inside her. “You did this! You always meant to do this!” She rushed at him, pounded his chest with her fists. “You’re not sorry! Don’t say you’re sorry when you’re not!”

  Jeorg did not try to stop her; he encircled her with his arms. Kaeldra twisted away, sobbing.

  “I didn’t do it,” Jeorg said. “I followed the birds and found her here, found Modin. He was—” Jeorg hesitated. “He had cut out her heart. He was eating it.”

  “You’re lying.”

  “There is a legend that eating a dragon’s heart makes a man invulnerable to the sword. Modin knew it and believed it.”

  “Then where is he?” Kaeldra demanded. It couldn’t have been Modin. She had trusted him; she had left Synge in his care. “Why are you here and he is not?”

  “When I came, he laughed at me, and ran away.”

  “Why would he run from you if he were invulnerable?”

  Jeorg swiped at the hair in his eyes. “I—I don’t know. Kaeldra, can’t you see? I care for Synge. I care for you.”

  Kaeldra did not want to hear. She knelt and laid her head on Synge. The draclings sidled up to her, whining; she threw her arms around them.

  She had failed. She had called the dragons, and they had not come. She had left Synge, and now . . .

  The draclings’ sorrow pulsed against her own, a tremulous humming that reverberated in her bones. Something broke loose; there was a roaring in her ears.

  Kaeldra looked up.

  The horizon was moving. It tumbled toward them in a great long line, darkening the afternoon sky. The birds surged to meet it and the line broke into chunks, became a cloud of separate things.

  “Dragons,” she whispered. “They came.”

  They were every shade of green and red. They wheeled through the air in twisting spirals like enormous pennants set free from their moorings to swirl across the sky. They swooped above the island, circling, trailing wind spouts that thundered in the trees.

  Above the bluff the circle of dragons tightened. A chaos of birds soared about them, squawking, twittering, screeching. The dragons hovered, waiting.

  Waiting for us, Kaeldra thought.

  She jumped to her feet. 〈Let’s go!〉

  Embyr and Pyro cowered behind her legs. She scooped them up, one under each arm, and staggered toward the embankment, fighting the wind, ducking flying branches and debris. She clambered up, ignoring the rocks that cut her feet and banged against her knees. The draclings squirmed fiercely; Pyro wriggled free. Kaeldra slipped on a patch of loose pebbles and Embyr bolted from her grasp.

  〈Come here!〉 she called, but the draclings fled from her.

  And the dragons spiraled higher, banked to the north. Were they leaving?

  “Wait!” Kaeldra scrambled to the top of the slope. She ran toward the dragons, shouting, waving her arms.

  One by one they saw her. They swiveled their heads to regard her, then twisted back toward the bluff in a long, curving stream.

  The wind had abated. Kaeldra, heart thumping, knees weak, pounded across the highland toward the dragons.

  There were twenty of them at least. They hovered in a circle that nearly spanned the bluff. Their scales glinted in the sun; their wings glowed with a pearly translucence; their bodies rippled in shifting currents of air. The largest dragon, long as a ship,
so dark green as to be almost black, peeled off from the circle and sculled the air above Kaeldra. It glared down, its eyes vast, emerald pools, and she felt the power of its voice.

  〈Who called Fiora?〉

  It was a lightning bolt, a ball of fire, the beating of an enormous gong. Kaeldra fell to her knees, her hands covering her ears. Her head throbbed with the after-ring; she thought her skull would crack.

  The dragon drifted nearer, spat out a whip of blue flame. Its breath-stench scorched her lungs. 〈What is the death I feel?〉

  “Stop it!” Kaeldra cried. “You hurt me and I cannot think to speak.”

  The dragon lashed its tail; wind roared in Kaeldra’s ears. 〈If you would parley with dragons, you must pay the price. What—〉 The voice broke off. There was a humming sound, a strange vibration in her bones. Kaeldra looked up. The dragons had turned to regard something behind her. Their throats trembled; their wings fluttered rapidly. Kaeldra followed their gaze. Jeorg, one dracling tucked under each arm, stood at the edge of the highland. Gently, he set down the draclings.

  〈Come,〉 Kaeldra called.

  Embyr and Pyro looked up at the hovering dragons, then back at Kaeldra.

  〈Come.〉

  Slowly, Embyr tiptoed across the plain, muscles tense, eyes flitting back and forth between Kaeldra and the dragons. Pyro scuttled behind Jeorg and crouched in the shelter of his legs. Jeorg stepped away and nudged him with his boot; the dracling scampered to catch up with his sister.

  The humming sound grew louder as the draclings approached Kaeldra. They flicked their tongues and wound around her legs, eyeing the dragons fearfully.

  The green-black dragon dipped down, smooth as rippling water. Kaeldra held her breath as the massive slotted eyes surveyed the draclings. At last, the dragon rose a little, let out a steamy sigh. It turned to regard Kaeldra.

  〈Tell,〉 it said, its voice harsh but no longer quite so painful. 〈Tell about these.〉

  Kaeldra was not aware of telling a story in the usual way. She felt it flowing out of her in shifting patterns, like clouds that formed and combined and reformed and then were blown aside to make room for more. It began with Lyf’s illness and moved through all that had happened since, until the pictures broke up and cleared from her mind, and she was aware, once more, of the dragon’s gaze.