Dragon Fate

by J. D. Hallowell

  The next day they stayed at the camp because there was a thunderstorm which left Geneva grounded. Delno and Nat were forced to spend the day inside Delno’s small tent with barely enough room to sit comfortably. They swapped stories about their lives, and generally got to know each other. After the noon hour passed, and the storm showed no sign of abating, they ate a cold meal, and then napped for a bit.

  By evening, the rain had slacked off but not stopped. They munched on jerky while they talked about dragon anatomy. “From what I’ve read,” Nat was saying, “the muscles that extend and flex the wings simply overlay the normal, four-legged muscle structure. There are extra lateral muscles that attach at the pelvis, and then attach to the wing at the pinion joint. That’s why the hips are so large; the pelvis is bigger to accommodate the extra muscle and sinew. The same goes for the breastbone and collarbones. The muscles that attach to the front legs are still there and still separate from the muscles that run over them and pull the wing in the downward part of the stroke. The flight stroke works very much like a bat. The lateral muscles relax and the extra deltoids pull the wing forward and up, then the extra pectoral muscles pull the wing down while the lateral muscles assist in the down stroke and pull the wings back. The whole motion from beginning to end is rather like using a butterfly stroke to swim, although not quite so exaggerated.”

  Since she was outside the tent, and it was hard to actually talk to both men, Geneva said to Delno, “I would like to know more about growth and maturity.”

  Delno translated her thoughts, and Nat told her that he would answer what questions he could.

  “Ask if he can settle our dispute about flying together,” she said.

  Delno quickly explained about their argument and especially his concerns about her bone growth.

  Nat thought about it for a moment before answering. “Well, from what I’ve read, bone growth doesn’t seem to be an issue.” Delno could feel Geneva’s smug feelings of triumph, but Nat continued, “The problem, as I understand it, is,” at this Geneva began to deflate somewhat, “that putting too much weight on the dragon too early can overtax the muscles, and, especially, the sinews. Once this happens, it can take months or even years to get them back to normal. The biggest drawback is that you wouldn’t even know there was a problem until those muscles were put under some extra stress, such as the more acrobatic flight required when fighting, and then the muscles and sinews could fail, causing a fatal plunge.”

  Delno had to work very hard not to say, “I told you so.” He consoled himself with saying, “I’m very glad we were cautious, Dear Heart.”

  “So am I,” she responded. “Point for you, Love.”

  They continued talking for a while, then Delno decided that it had been too long since he had practiced reaching out with his senses magically. Geneva and Nat were talked out for the time being anyway, so they respected his desire for quiet. He reached out and found that he could easily feel everything around him. The storm itself, though nearly spent, was immensely powerful. The lightning flashes that were still happening sporadically in the distance were nearly “blinding,” and he had to dampen his senses to observe them.

  Then he concentrated on seeing the living creatures in the area. He could see farther now than before: his range had increased to nearly a mile. There was nothing on two legs within range of his “sight,” which was a relief. He did find that there were quite a few rabbits in the thickets around camp, though. After he pulled back to himself and reported his findings to both of his companions, he left the tent to go and make a couple of snares to try and get a rabbit or two for the pot.

  When he returned to the tent, he was a bit surprised to find Nat playing softly on a stringed instrument the like of which he had never seen. It had a neck and body, but it was more akin to a mandolin than a guitar, though it was larger and had eight strings. It was extremely well made, and had a tone that was extraordinary. The physician was quite adept with it, also. Delno was quite content to just listen to him for a while.

  After about half an hour of listening, he reached into his pack and brought out his pipes, which he held up as a request to join in the music making. Nat smiled and nodded and Delno began to play along. It was hard at first to keep up with the haunting tune and somewhat strange modulations that the half-elf’s nimble fingers were making, but he caught the hang of it, and soon they were playing quite well together. Nat almost stopped playing when Geneva added her multi-toned voice to the melody, then he smiled broadly, and they all played together for a couple of more hours.

  When they stopped, Delno asked Nat where he had gotten such a wonderful instrument. “I made it,” the physician responded.

  Delno said, “You are full of surprises, my friend. You are an accomplished physician, musician, and now instrument maker.”

  Nat laughed softly and replied, “When you study music with the elves, making your own instrument is part of the training.” At Delno’s look of surprise, he added, “My father insisted that I learn more than one skill, so I studied music and archery as well as medicine.”

  “He encouraged you to broaden your horizons. He sounds like a good man. I’d like to meet him.”

  The smile on Nat’s face this time was rather sad, “I wish you could have met him, but he was killed by Roracks down in Horne.”

  The look on Delno’s face was stricken, “Nat, I’m sorry. . . .”

  “It’s all right; you couldn’t know that he was dead.”

  “I feel like crap for bringing it up all the same.”

  Nat’s smile turned a little brighter, “Don’t feel bad, you honored him with your sentiment.” He had finished putting his instrument into its case, and he climbed into his blankets and said simply, “Good night, my friend.”

  Delno said good night and blew out the candle. Then he reached out to Geneva and said, “Good night, Dear Heart”

  “Good night, Dear One, sleep well.”

  Delno felt Geneva beside him and looked around. As soon as he saw the reddish light and the swirling clouds, he realized he had again joined her in the Dream State. “It’s good to be here tonight,” he said to her.

  “Yes, it is. I felt your uneasiness before you fell asleep. What is troubling you, Love?”

  Delno told her about his conversation with Nat, and how he inadvertently reminded the man of his dead father.

  She considered it for a moment then said, “I do not think he faults you for that.”

  “I know,” he responded, “In some ways that only makes it worse.”

  “I wouldn’t worry too much about it, Dear One. Nat may look old and frail, but I have a feeling that he cultivates that image to avoid trouble. I think under it all he is a very tough and capable man.”

  “I have a feeling that you are right,” he said.

  He then put the incident out of his mind. That was easy to do here in the Dream State. The whole place radiated tranquility.

  Geneva spoke up, “There is another male dragon. This one is much older; that is unusual.”

  Delno looked where she indicated, and there was a male, larger than the first he had seen. This one was deep blue, almost black. This time he tried to be careful about being seen. He didn’t want to anger the dragon, not only because he did not want to disturb the peace of this place, but also because this dragon was much bigger and more dangerous looking than the youngster had been. Intellectually, he knew that the dragon was no threat to him, but he still didn’t like the idea of facing those teeth and claws if the old boy got angry. After all, there had to be some way to affect others here, because Geneva had said that the females wouldn’t tolerate bad behavior, so they had to have some way to stop it.

  He thought about that for a while as he watched the male. Then he realized that the male had seen him watching and didn’t appear to care. He told Geneva about his musings and asked her how the females kept order here.

  “As I have told you, this place is a construct of the females’ minds collectively. If seve
ral females decide that a male, or even another female, is causing trouble here, they simply use their minds to force them to leave. It isn’t a physical expulsion. No one can get hurt; the offender is simply blocked from staying and returns to his or her sleep.”

  She seemed a bit preoccupied, so he asked, “Geneva, are you communicating with the other females now?”

  “Yes.”

  “Do you mind if I ask what you are saying to each other?”

  “Not at all,” she answered, then paused so long he thought she was waiting for him to actually ask the question. Just before he did so she said, “I am speaking with them about something I would have liked to have talked about long before now. I have been gathering information about our training.”

  “Are they telling you anything useful?” he asked.

  “Yes, tonight they are willing to discuss this. Before now they wouldn’t talk to me about it.”

  “Wouldn’t talk about it? Why not?”

  “Because they didn’t know me. At first, only the wild dragons would talk with me, and they can’t answer my questions about training with a rider because they simply don’t know. Before the bonded females wouldn’t even speak to me; they had to get to know and recognize me first. Now they know me, and they are willing to help.”

  He started to ask another question but she cut him off, “Dear One, I would love to indulge your questions, but you are distracting me from my conversation with a particularly knowledgeable older bonded dragon.”

  He contented himself with simply sitting by her side watching the other dragons soaring for a while. Suddenly, the old male began spewing forth fire and soared in a tight spiral: it was an impressive display.

  Geneva chuckled at him and said, “He’s displaying his readiness to mate. He’s also broadcasting the place where he can be found in the waking world. It doesn’t happen often, but sometimes males do come here and do that, at least the older and wiser ones do.”

  As they watched, the male and several females faded from view. Geneva said, “I think that’s my lot; the female who was instructing me is in mating heat and left to find the male.”

  “Well,” he said, “you have to admit the old boy was impressive.”

  “Yes,” she replied, “he was. Even I was stirred, and it will be quite some time before I am ready to rise to mate.” Then she continued, “We will leave now, you return to sleep, Love, it will be dark for several more hours.”

  Everything faded to black and Delno drifted back into normal sleep until the sound of chirping birds woke him.

  Chapter 27

  The next day the road was an ankle-deep quagmire, so they decided that traveling would be more strain on the animals than it was worth. There were two plump rabbits in the snares, so they decided to stew them. The problem came when they discovered that all of the deadwood in the area was thoroughly soaked.

  They were about to give up on the fire when Nat’s face lit up and he said, “Couldn’t you use magic to dry the wood?”

  Delno thought about it for a moment and said, “I don’t know, I’ve never given it much thought. I suppose it’s possible, but up until now my training has been limited to telepathy and simple healing.”

  Nat responded, “Yes, but according to what you told me about your training, your first attempt at healing resulted in burning the patient’s foot. Couldn’t you use that same energy to heat the wood enough to dry it?”

  Delno thought about it and said, “I suppose if I tried hard enough, I could probably heat the wood enough to turn it to ash. I’ll give it a try.” Then he added, “To dry the wood, not turn it to ash.”

  Both Geneva and Nat chuckled at his small joke.

  While looking at the wet wood that was piled near the tent, he reached out and looked for a source of energy large enough to generate the heat he needed. There was no fire to draw from, and, while there was water nearby, it flowed very slowly and didn’t release much energy. He was about to give up when he remembered about the ground. He reached down with his senses. There it was, an enormous amount of energy, some coming from the roots of the plants that were drawing the rainwater up into the stems, but also a great deal of energy from the earth itself, many times more than he estimated he would need.

  He opened himself up as a conduit and began channeling the energy from the earth. At first it was difficult, as if the energy was resisting the flow. He bent his will toward the task, but kept himself open so that the energy would flow through and not gather within him. It began to move slowly but picked up momentum quickly. After a minute, the wood began to shimmer before his vision; he realized that this was a simple heat mirage such as you see on a hot day. Then steam began to rise, just a little at first but increasing steadily. Nat and Geneva both encouraged him, so he continued. The steam ceased to rise and the wood began to smoke and char, then, suddenly, what a few minutes before had been a pile of wet timber burst into flame. He quickly shut down the contact, afraid that he really would turn their firewood into ashes.

  Geneva was smiling and Nat was actually clapping like a child who has just seen an illusionist perform a neat trick. Delno bowed to his audience and said, “That concludes our show, please, there’s no need for applause, but feel free to throw a few coins if you like.”

  Nat laughed and said, “I guess we’d better get those rabbits cleaned and in the pot before the fire burns down. It might also be a good idea to pile up some more wood near the heat so we will have a dry stack for later.”

  While Nat bent to the task of cleaning the rabbits, Delno gathered more wood and stacked it near enough to the fire that it would dry. Nat was delighted when Geneva asked for the entrails of the animals he was cleaning. He enjoyed giving them to her and watching her eat. He kept the skins though, explaining that he had not only the expertise, but also the chemicals available, to cure them properly. He then went on what he called a “weed-walk” while Geneva excused herself to go hunting since she had not done so the day before, and she was famished.

  As Delno chopped herbs for the stew, he thought about magic. He decided to try and keep himself more open to the energy around him while going about his daily tasks. After all, it would be a very valuable asset to be able to keep his awareness high, if he could do so without leaving himself open to attack or intrusion. Thinking of how he had read Cheeno, and then been able to block the young mage before he could turn the tables, he reasoned that what he was trying now was possible and mostly a matter of practice. He also figured that since magic would be more common in the south, he should start practicing now before they actually reached any southern cities.

  Nat returned to camp with a bundle in his hands. He explained that a “weed-walk” was simply walking about in the nearby fields and looking for any plants that would be useful, whether they were for cooking or medicine. The bundle contained quite a few herbs; rosemary, a bit of sage, some wild onions, and the greatest treasure of all, a bulb of wild garlic. Garlic was very hard to cultivate in the north and was hideously expensive, so Delno hadn’t had any in quite some time. He was surprised that Nat had found the stuff.

  “Oh, you find it here and there in these parts occasionally,” Nat said. “The caravans take it north with other trade goods. If they find any fungus on any of it during the trip, they will throw out the whole sack to avoid the fungus contaminating the rest of the load. Often half of what they discard is still good, and, if the weather conditions have been favorable, some of it will take root. The last two years, the winters have been hard on the other side of the mountains but the mountains themselves have shielded these lands from the harsh weather. Still, garlic doesn’t flourish here. We were very lucky I found this: a few days from now it would most likely have been dead from the drowning it got yesterday.”

  After putting the stew on the fire, Delno and Nat talked quietly for a while. Delno was curious about the elves and their lands. He explained that, until recently, he’d always thought of elves as mythical, not real, and asked Nat to tell him more.<
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  “There’s not much to tell, really,” Nat was saying, “The elves keep to themselves, tending not to trust outsiders. They practice magic, but the magic they practice is mostly concerned with the land and the plants. They have a way at woodcraft that seems magical to those who aren’t familiar with it. They can blend in with their forests so well they can nearly disappear while you’re watching them: they just seem to fade from view.”

  “And that’s not magic?” Delno asked.

  “Not really,” he replied. They make clothing out of the natural materials available to them, and they make it in patterns that blend with their surroundings. They move in a way that fools the eye. As they move farther away, the camouflage is so good that your eye loses the ability to distinguish them from the background. I learned some of the techniques when I studied archery, though, to be honest, I was much better at music.” He laughed softly.

  “What are they like, as a people I mean?”

  “Well, that depends,” Nat responded. “When I first met them, I had been traveling with my father for several years. I was about nine when he decided he needed to return home to ‘recharge’ himself, as he put it, so we traveled to his homeland.”

  He was thoughtful for a moment; Delno had decided that the man organized his thoughts in bits and filed them away the way that some businessmen filed records. Then Nat started speaking again, “The elves usually like children just fine, but since I was a bit older and half human, they were a little standoffish at first, almost as if they were reluctant to get attached to me. Perhaps it has something to do with the fact that they live about seven hundred years. Maybe they don’t want to become emotionally involved with someone they know they will outlive.”

  “I can almost understand the sentiment,” Delno said. “I’ve been thinking about that a bit lately myself.”

  “Well,” Nat responded, “there are no guarantees in life, my friend. The possibility that one person in a relationship may die is no reason not to get to know someone.”