A Dragon at Worlds' End (8 page)

Lumbee was disturbingly beautiful and right there in the here and now. Moreover, they were alone, far from anywhere or anyone else. There was nothing to prevent him from reaching out to her, except the thought of Eilsa, and the other thought, the one that made him cringe inside.

The tail. The great, insurmountable difference between them. Relkin sometimes felt a desperate unease when he contemplated the strong brown tail. He was drawn to it as it floated about her and occasionally brushed against things, including both Relkin and Bazil. When it touched Relkin he felt something like a static shock. It was the same shock he felt when he and Eilsa held hands the first time. He wanted Lumbee, but she was not of his kind.

And yet they shared the boat together and were constant company. Lumbee was an openhearted person, honest through and through. She captivated him with her generous nature and he was drawn into a desperately complex relationship, wanting her and her love, and fearing the desires within him.

More and more often he caught her looking at him with an odd expression. Those big soft brown eyes seemed almost unfocused, her mouth settled in a tiny smile. How he wished he could kiss those lips!

Despite the tremendous difference between them, he was constantly drawn to her and the feeling was strengthening. Worse, he sensed that she reciprocated his feelings.

This unleashed speculations that left him feeling guilty enough to pray to the Old Gods for guidance. Where was Caymo now that he needed him so badly?

Still the question nagged at him. What if he asked her? What then? What if she said yes? Then his guilt choked him until unworthy thoughts rose in his mind like a dark cloud.

What would it matter? Eilsa would never know. She was so far away she might as well be on another world entirely. If he ever saw her again, if he ever managed to find his way home.

Besides, how long could she refuse the demands of her clan? The clan did not want her to marry the orphan dragonboy. They wanted her to marry to cement kinship relations within the clan. When the news of the disaster that had befallen the expedition to Eigo reached home, they would have learned that among the missing was one Relkin of Quosh. Then the pressure on Eilsa would rapidly mount.

How could she conclude anything but that he was lost forever and that it was time for her to do her duty and marry for the sake of Clan Wattel?

Confusion, longing, and self-loathing competed for attention in Relkin's thoughts. He grew moody and pensive and spent as much time as possible sitting by himself at the prow of the boat.

The weather continued dry and hot, and they made steady progress until the river narrowed to a half-mile width and began to curve in great meanders across its floodplain. The forest was thinning out, although it still fringed the river itself. Now they had to paddle almost all the time. The winds were rarely favorable and hardly ever lasted more than a few minutes at a time.

Lumbee was certain that her people were still in the slaver's camp. It seemed the slave raiders built a stockade at the beginning of the long dry season and used it as their base for the summer's depredations. Only when the rains began did they break camp, jam all their captives aboard rafts, and float down the southern rivers to the distant cities.

"Has anyone ever come back?" Relkin asked her.

Lumbee shook her head grimly.

"Never. The cities are far, far. Too far for our gods to call back our people. Even their ghosts are lost. Truly, it is the complete death when one is taken."

"Tell me again what we should expect ahead."

"This river flows out of the southern lake, but we will not be able to get that far—the boat is too big and the river level has fallen. We will probably have to start walking in the next day or so."

"I was afraid of that."

"It is not so far, though. We will be on the Plain of Three-Horns. We can cross the plain to the southern forests. There we will find the slaver's camp."

"But we will have to search for it, right?"

"It will be on the south river somewhere, and it will be a big camp by now. The slavers will have taken hundreds of people there."

Relkin nodded to himself. All the more important they get there in time and put a stop to it.

"How long do we have, do you think?"

Lumbee squeezed the end of her tail with one hand, something she did when she was concerned or upset.

"It feels like the end of the dry season. See how the grass is all brown, and the vines had gone brown, too. The trees along the river are listless. There has been no real rain here for many moons."

"If the rains come?"

"The slavers will break camp and we will never catch them."

"So we're cutting it fine."

"What is this 'cutting it fine'?"

"Nothing, a figure of speech."

"You say that before." Lumbee had switched into Ardu, a sign of impatience, even irritation.

"It is just a saying. You have them, too, I'm sure."

Lumbee did not seem so sure about this.

"Well, when rains come, slavers go."

All of this had long made Relkin wonder.

"If this has been going on for a long time, why do the Ardu not change their ways? Why don't they move away from the south river? Go somewhere else in the dry season, like to this forest?"

Lumbee reacted as if stung. Her lips pulled back in disgust.

"What? Not go to Summer Lands? Then where do we go? Into old jungle? Old jungle not have good food. Only fish and breadfruit. So many troublesome animals there, Ardu people not like that."

"Better the animals than the slavers."

Lumbee's brow furrowed once more.

Relkin explained. "I mean that the animals might take fewer Ardu than the slavers do."

Lumbee shrugged. "Ardu always go to Summer Lands. The food is good, it is best time of the year for fruit. The men make wine, everyone loves the summer."

Relkin had heard this line before. The Ardu were a folk with a rigid schedule and Lumbee often recited it. They went south in the dry season because the three-horns herds massed and then migrated north to Lake Gam. When in these big herds, the three-horns were dangerous. The bulls were very likely to charge anything that they came across. And worst of all, where the three-horns went, the pujish followed, and the Ardu always tried to avoid the big pujish. So the Ardu forsook the savanna and went south to make their ancestral summer camps. They had been doing this since the forest gods first blew the breath of life into them long, long ago.

Later, Relkin withdrew to the boat's prow and sat there brooding. Bazil was resting amidships under the sail, which billowed actively. For once, there was enough of a breeze to keep their unwieldy craft coursing steadily upstream, and this reach of the river was long and straight. Lumbee came and sat down beside the dragon. She had overcome her initial awkwardness around the great beast. She had come to accept that this huge, terrifying creature could actually speak, and could learn the words of her own language. It was astonishing, but she had been traveling with him for weeks and it was impossible to pretend anything else.

She had noticed many things about the great dragon. For one, he was not as quick at learning new words as Relkin, but once he learned them, he remembered them very well. He was not as verbal as the dragonboy, but he was shrewd and possessed an abundant sense of humor.

Now that she and the dragon were alone together, she asked Bazil the question that had been much on her mind.

"Why does Relkin fear Lumbee?"

The dragon's eyes fixed on her. Once she would have gone into dragon freeze, but now she was proof against that elemental terror. Bazil made a rumbling sound in his chest, a sound she now understood to mark gentle amusement.

"Boy fear he lose control of himself. He want to fertilize the eggs with you."

Lumbee laughed, relieved to hear that her suspicions were confirmed. The no-tail boy was interested in Lumbee, just as Lumbee was interested in him.

"Then why doesn't he?"

"He is pledged to another."

Relkin had told Lumbee about this distant girl several times and Lumbee had sensed a great tension in his words.

"But she is far, far. She will never know if Relkin and Lumbee lie together."

More rumbling in that immense chest. "I tell this to boy. It doesn't help."

"Lumbee like Relkin. Lumbee want to help him."

"Boy be happy to know this. This dragon thinks that sooner or later Lumbee will have her opportunity to help."

Lumbee giggled and flashed the dragon a look that said they now shared a secret together.

The next day the river broadened over shallows and rocks. It was much lower now than it had been when Lumbee had drifted downstream. They were forced to abandon their boat and begin the march south, through the gradually thinning forest. Clearings grew frequent and then became very large. And then they were walking through grassland, with clumps of trees scattered across it.

The land was parched and deserted. Once again food became a concern. The large animals had gone to cluster around the lake, which lay beyond the nearby hills. This meant the travelers had to skirt the hills, where the big pujish would be concentrated, and go around the lake.

The small animals they encountered were fleet of foot and quick to distance themselves from anything the size of Bazil. Relkin and his primitive bow were enough to ensure a supply of smaller fare, lizards and some of the ground birds they encountered, which kept Lumbee and himself fed well enough, but was not enough for the dragon. Nor were there fruits or much of anything edible in these grasslands except for occasional patches of tubers that had to be dug out of the rock-hard ground.

The nights were beautiful. Under crystal-clear skies, the heat of the day gave way to a deep chill. They usually camped near some small, dried-up watercourse. They dug down in the center of the dry streambeds and soon found underground water, enough to slake their thirst and give them water for a wash and for cooking.

There was enough dry brush to make good fires, though the fires had to be watched so as not to ignite the surrounding terrain, which was all dry tinder. They no longer bothered to build the huge protective bomas of brush and thorn, since the pujish were in the hills.

Still, they stood watches, Relkin the first, Lumbee second, and the dragon last. Little did they see. Their fire drew only a solitary kemma wan, somehow isolated from its yellow and scarlet kind. It fled before Lumbee could rouse Relkin and he could get his wits about him and put an arrow into it. Bazil was left with little to eat for another day.

On the fourth day, they came on an old, four-legged animal about Bazil's size. It had a large frill of bone that surrounded its head like a huge collar, plus a single, wicked horn that sprouted from its nose.

The old beast was lame and unable to continue the journey to the hills. When they found it, it was lying on its side, panting its last breaths. Small things, like lizards but running on their hind legs, were waiting.

Bazil took its head with a mighty stroke from Ecator and they cut it up and took the haunches. That night the dragon filled his belly with the stringy meat of the old one-horn.

They were camped above a dry streambed. There was still green grass growing along the center, and the trees were in leaf around it. The travelers had dug down less than a foot before hitting the wet ground. Soon they'd had a pool of muddy water five feet wide dug out, mainly by the dragon, who looked forward to a splash-down at the end of these dry dusty days.

They cooked the meat in the usual fashion, using large rocks from the streambed at the bottom of their fire pit and putting smaller ones on top of the meat. Afterward, the dragon sprawled out on a huge pile of dry grass and watched the skies for the red dragonstars. Soon he began to snore.

Relkin and Lumbee were left alone, as they had been on many occasions before. Now, however, there was something different in the air. An electric charge seemed to pervade everything and made them feel awkward together. Relkin was particularly hesitant, which was odd, since he had never been that shy around girls before.

Lumbee suggested suddenly that they stroll out a little ways onto the plain and look at the moon, which had just risen above the horizon to frost the land with tawny light.

The moon seemed huge, and while they stood there in awe of it, Lumbee slipped her hand into his. Relkin looked down, felt his throat go dry, and squeezed her hand gently. The electric tingle faded and was replaced by a warmer feeling. An overwhelming desire was rising like a spring tide through his limbs. Their eyes met.

"I…" he began.

"Lumbee feel the same," she said quickly.

"I didn't know—I mean, I didn't want—"

"Lumbee understand about your mate-to-be. Lumbee suggest that it does not matter here. She is far, far, you are here, here, near to Lumbee. Perhaps you go home in time. Perhaps you are reunited. Perhaps you never go home again. Either way it will not matter if you lie with Lumbee. With Lumbee it will be for the Ardu land."

Relkin took her other hand in his. The tail swished in the moonlight and no longer repelled him.

"Perhaps Lumbee is right."

The tensions between them dissolved after that night. It was as if everything had moved to a new level. Relkin had a song in his heart when he woke up in the mornings, and between himself and Lumbee there had blossomed something sweet, but deep and as much a true case of love as anything he had known previously, either with Miranswa Zudeina, Princess of Ourdh, or Eilsa Ranardaughter, his wife-to-be of Clan Wattel. Buoyed by the sweet emotions, the first in a long time, he gave scarce heed to any misgivings. It was as if he had thrown down a huge load of responsibility that had been crushing him.

For now he would live from day to day, and he would forgo thinking of the future, which had become something of a preoccupation with him lately. It was pretty obvious that the future for Relkin and Bazil was unclear and probably hazardous, if it existed at all. Relkin would live only for the present. He was a new man, or so he did his utmost to proclaim to himself.