Dragon Haven (16 page)

“So, you see, you can help me harvest one mindless, unclaimed, stunted dragon and take your lady, crew, and yourself off to an indolent and indulgent life in Chalced. Or you can be stubborn and I’ll unravel you and destroy everything you have or ever hope to have.” He smiled, squinting into the rain as he added, “After they turn on you, I wouldn’t be surprised if I ended up with both your ship and your lady. I’ve put in quite a few evenings cultivating trust and friendship among the keepers, while you wasted time courting your giddy little woman. And I suspect I’ll have an ally in that Bingtown dandy. Or are you going to continue to pretend that all of you are innocent of any schemes?”

The dragon bent his head and picked up the animal’s rib cage in his mouth. His jaws closed on it, crushing it. He began a slow mastication, crushing and folding the rest of the animal in on itself. Leftrin stepped toward the silver, intending to intervene. The dragon blasted a snarl at him past the meat in his mouth. The stench of his breath made Leftrin blanch and step back as much as the threat.

“Oh, he doesn’t trust you,” Jess snidely commiserated. “I don’t think he’ll let you rescue him. Stupid damn lizard. Looks like we’re committed, Cap. Once he goes down, it’s time to butcher. I’ll just go take care of those boats right now.”

The man’s cockiness would have been enough to provoke Leftrin at any time without the threat to his dreams. As he passed Leftrin in the driving rain, Leftrin turned and launched himself at him. He’d beat him senseless and feed him to the dragon.
Poor Jess. Must have somehow provoked the dumb beast. Can scarcely blame a dragon for being a dragon, Alise.

But Jess spun to meet him, teeth white in a merry snarl and a shining blade in his hand.

S
INTARA WATCHED THE
two human females in consternation. Now, what did this mean, this clutching and sharing of tears? It wasn’t hunting, nor fighting, nor mating, nor any sensible activity that she could name. She wanted them to stop. “Did either of you bring me food?” she demanded.

Thymara stepped away from Alise and wiped her sleeve across her wet face. “I didn’t have a chance to hunt today. I think the hunters got some fish.”

“I already ate what Carson said was ‘my share.’ It was pitiful.”

“I suppose I could go and—”

“Quiet!” Sintara barked at her. There was something, a distant noise like the roaring of a huge wind. She sensed distress and anger from the silver dragon. As always, his thoughts were poorly formed, but something was alarming him.

“What is it?” she roared at him and to the other dragons in general. The sound was growing louder now; even the humans could hear it. She saw Thymara turn her head and shout. Alise clutched at her and her head swiveled back and forth, seeking the source of the noise. The roar was coming closer, but she felt no increase in the wind or driving rain. The sound grew louder, with a grinding base to it mixed with sudden cracks and snaps.

“It’s the river! It’s a flood!” Mercor’s bellow slammed into her mind, and with his warning, ancient memories leaped into Sintara’s awareness.

“Fly! Get above the water!” she trumpeted, for in that moment she forgot what she was, half a dragon, bound to the earth. The darkness could not completely mask the danger. She stared upriver and saw white lace on a gray cliff face and tumbling tree trunks in the cliff’s liquid face.

“Run for the trees!” Thymara shouted, but by then only the dragon could hear her small voice through the thundering water. She saw the two women, hands clutched together, turn and begin to run.

“Too late!” she bellowed at them. She stretched out her head, seized Alise by the shoulder and snatched her off her feet. The woman screamed. The dragon paid no attention as she craned her neck and set her down between her wings. “Hold tight!” she warned her.

Thymara was fleeing. Sintara thundered after her.

Then the wave hit them.

It was not just water. The force of it rolled boulders and carried sand. Old driftwood was tangled with trees newly torn from the earth. Sintara was bowled off her feet and pushed along. A log thudded against her ribs, knocking her sideways. The churning mass of water carried her inexorably downriver. For a moment, she was plunged completely underwater. She struck out, swimming vigorously for what she hoped was the surface and the bank. All was chaos, water, and darkness. Dragons, humans, boats, logs, and boulders mixed and mingled in the floodwater. Her head broke free of the water, but the world no longer made sense. Sintara spun in the current, paddling desperately. She could not find the shore. All around her, the water streamed white under the night sky. She caught a glimpse of Tarman’s lights and saw an empty boat seized by the leafy branches of a floating tree. The immense driftwood log that had been the heart of the keeper’s bonfire floated past her, streaming smoke and crowned still with a branch of glowing embers.

“Thymara!” she heard Alise shout, and only then became aware that the woman still clung to her wings. “Save her! Look, Sintara, see her! There! There!”

She didn’t see the keeper girl, and then she did. The girl was trying to struggle free of a mass of floating brush. It had entangled her clothing. Soon it would engulf her and she would be pulled under as it sank. “Stupid humans!” Sintara bellowed. She struck out for her, only to be hit broadside by Ranculos as the water shoved him past her. When she recovered and looked at the floating mass of brush, the girl was gone. Too late.

“Thymara! Thymara!” Alise was shrieking, but her voice was full of hopelessness.

“Which way is the shore?” the dragon bellowed at her.

“I don’t know!” the woman shrieked back. Then, “Over there! That way. Swim that way.” Alise’s shaking hand pointed in the direction they were already going. Encouraged, the dragon struck out more strongly. She could not climb the trees for safety, but she could wedge herself between them and wait out the worst of this flooding.

“There! Right there!” Alise shrieked again. But she was not pointing to the shore, but to a small, white, upturned face in the water. Thymara’s hands reached out and up to her.

“Please!” she screamed.

Sintara bent her head and dragged her keeper from the river’s grasp. “Mine!” she trumpeted defiantly around Thymara’s dangling body. “Mine!”

Day the 17th of the Prayer Moon

L
eftrin’s hands locked around Jess’s throat. The hunter was raining body blows on the captain’s midsection. Leftrin thought he had cracked ribs from the beating and he tasted blood from his smashed lips, but he kept his grip. It was a matter of time. If he could throttle him long enough, the punishing punches would stop. Already they were losing strength and when both Jess’s hands rose to clutch at Leftrin’s wrist, he knew it was over except for that final stretch of endurance. The hunter clawed at his wrists, but Leftrin’s hands were toughened, not just by scales but by too-frequent immersions in river water. His scar tissue resisted Jess’s nails. He could not see Jess’s face, but he knew his eyes would be bulging by now. He squeezed harder, imagining the man’s tongue starting to protrude from his mouth.

Around the combatants, the wind swirled and the black rain battered down. The silver dragon had either abandoned the car
cass or been unaffected by the drugs. He galloped in a clumsy circle around them, trumpeting in distress. Leftrin could not worry that the dragon’s noise might bring the keepers down on them. If they came, he could show them Jess’s knives, say he’d only been protecting the dragon.
Grip,
he told his weary hands and shaking arms.
Grip!
The pain was sickening. There was a roaring in his ears, and he feared he would pass out before he could finish the job. He squeezed, and still the hunter struggled, flinging his head forward in a futile effort to butt Leftrin in the face.

A wall of water, stone, and timber suddenly appeared behind Jess. Leftrin’s mind froze that agonizing moment into a decade. He saw, clearly, the debris that showed in the white water. He knew that the wave would be acid and heavy with silt. This was a flood that had come a long, long way, collecting driftwood and tearing trees free from the banks as it came. He caught one glimpse of a huge elk carcass coming toward them, tumbling like a toy tossed in the air.

“Tarman!” he shouted, and let Jess’s throat go. He spun to run for his ship, to save his beloved boat if he could.

But in that instant, time resumed. The water smashed him down as it devoured the sandbar. He saw nothing, knew nothing except the struggle of an animal that is suddenly thrust into a foreign element. There was no air, no light, no up, no down. Cold and force drove his breath from his body.
Good-bye,
he thought stupidly.
Good-bye, Alise. At least I didn’t have to see you go back to another man
. A drowning death might be better than that other, slower torment.

Something bumped him. His hands and arms locked on to it and he rose with it, bursting into blackness. He gasped in both air and the water that streamed from his hair and skin, choked, went under again with the tumbling log, and then popped up again. The crest of the wave had passed them, but the river still flowed strong and possibly twice as deep as it had been. The speed of the current swept him down the river in a dangerous stew of trees, struggling animals and carcasses, and driftwood. He did not try to get on top of the log he clutched. Instead he
resigned himself to regular duckings and held tight to it, hoping the current would hold him near the center of the river. He could hear the crashes and snapping as debris struck trees on the river’s banks and tore them loose or smashed them down. He had one glimpse of a dragon, swimming frantically. Then his log turned, ducking him again, and when he came up, the dragon was gone.

As the river settled, he moved down the trunk toward the root end. There the wood was thicker, and the roots offered him more grips. He ventured to climb a bit higher out of the water and scanned the surface of the water. As the water calmed, the debris was spreading out, borne along on the still swollen river. The starlight and moonlight shone on the white water. He saw floating carcasses as black shapes. In the distance, he saw a large silhouette of a paddling dragon. He shouted, but he doubted that his voice reached it. The sounds of the rushing water, of trees groaning and giving way, of flotsam crashing together drowned his human voice.

Then he saw something that lifted his heart. Light sparkled, dimmed, and then grew steady to become a perfect circle of yellow lamplight. It could only be Tarman; someone had just re-kindled a lamp on board him. The light gave sudden shape and meaning to what had been blackness against blackness. Tarman was distant, down current of Leftrin, but he knew his ship’s low black profile. He drew his breath deep into his abused lungs, wincing at his aching ribs. He didn’t waste his breath cursing Jess; with any sort of luck, the man was a corpse by now. Instead, he pursed his lips and pushed out a long, steady whistle. Another breath. Again, he whistled, the pitch a notch higher than before. Another breath.

Even before he pushed the sound out, he knew Tarman had heard him. The circle of light shifted as the ship wheeled toward him. The light vanished. For a time, he just clung to his log, breathing steadily and waiting. Then the lantern on Tarman’s bow was kindled. He drew breath, whistled again, and watched the light almost immediately grow larger. Paddling with all his might, Tarman was coming for him. The barge’s
thick sturdy legs and webbed feet would propel him against the current. Swarge would man the tiller and the crew would break out the sweeps, but Tarman would not wait for that pantomime of help. The liveship was coming for his captain. He whistled again, and low to the water, he saw the pale blue gleam of two large eyes. Rescue was coming. All he had to do now was wait for his ship to save him.

P
ERHAPS
S
INTARA ATTEMPTED
to set her down beside Alise. But the effort failed, and Thymara fell on top of the Bingtown woman. Alise’s arms closed around her in an engulfing embrace that both kept her from sliding back into the water and sent a spike of agony down her back as her clutching hands pressed against Thymara’s injury.

Thymara tried not to struggle against the grip that was saving her. An instant later, they were both starting to slide down the dragon’s sleekly scaled front shoulder. “Hold on!” Alise screamed by her ear, and Thymara reached out for anything that might offer purchase. Her scrabbling claws caught at the edges of Sintara’s scales; she was sure the dragon would have protested angrily if she hadn’t been struggling for her own life.

Alise’s grip on Thymara had gone from saving the girl from falling to clutching at her to stay on the dragon. Thymara risked letting go with one hand and lunged for a better grip. She hooked her hand over the joint where Sintara’s wings were anchored to her back. “Hold on to me!” she gasped to Alise, and used all her strength to drag them back on top of the dragon.

Once they were on top, she managed to loosen Alise’s grip on her enough that she could slide forward. She seated herself just in front of Sintara’s wings, pushing her heels back and gripping the dragon with her knees. It was not at all a secure perch, but it was better than where she had been. Behind her, she felt Alise settling into place. The Bingtown woman took a tight grip on Thymara’s belt, and suddenly there was a moment in which to take stock of their situation.

“What happened?” she shouted back to Alise.

“I don’t know!” Seated as close as she was, her words still barely reached Thymara’s ear. The river roared around them. “A huge wave came down the river. Captain Leftrin told me that sometimes, after a quake, the river ran white for a time. But he never mentioned anything like this.”

Wind snapped Thymara’s wet black braids. All around them was a fury of sound. Her eyes could make no sense of what the faint moonlight showed her. The river was white as milk. As she clung to the struggling dragon, she shared the creature’s panic and fury. And felt, too, her growing weariness. The water was filled with floating wreckage. Tree limbs and trunks, mats of uprooted bushes, and carcasses of drowned creatures bobbed and swirled in the river. When she stared toward the bank, it looked as if the flow of water now extended far under the forest eaves. As she watched, an immense tree swayed and began an impossibly slow fall. She cried out in terror, but there was nothing Sintara could do to avoid it. The tree was coming down, like a tower falling. It leaned, groaned, leaned again, and suddenly the river swept them past it and away from that danger.

“Dragon!” Alise shouted suddenly, and she stupidly let go of Thymara’s belt with one hand to point downriver of them. “Another dragon. I think it is Veras!”

It was. Thymara recognized her by the crest that the dark green female had recently begun to grow. She was still swimming, but it seemed to Thymara that she was lower in the water, as if her weariness was pulling her under. Veras was Jerd’s dragon. Thymara wondered where her keeper was, and then, like a second wave breaking over her, she realized she was not the only keeper swept away by the flood. The others had been gathered around the bonfire. All of them would have been inundated. And what had become of their boats and gear, of the
Tarman,
of all the other dragons? How could she have been thinking only of herself? Everyone, everything that made up her current life had been inundated and swept away. Her eyes swept the river in desperate search, but the light was too dim and there were too many objects floating and bobbing in the roiling water.

Beneath her, she felt Sintara’s ribs swell as the dragon took a breath. Then a trumpeting cry burst from her. In the distance, Veras turned her head. A tiny sound like a bird’s squawk reached her straining ears. Then another came, a deeper longer note, drawing her eyes to a massive swimming shape that had to be Ranculos. He bellowed again, and the sense of the sound reached her mind as well. “Mercor says swim for the bank. The trees will give us something to brace against. Hold in place until the water goes down. Swim for the bank!”

Sintara’s ribs swelled with air again. With greater energy she trumpeted out the message, passing it on to any who might hear her. “Swim for the bank! Swim for the trees!”

Thymara heard it echoed by another dragon in the distance. And perhaps a second time. After that, at irregular intervals, she heard a dragon trumpet. It seemed to come from the direction of the shore. “Go toward the sound,” she urged Sintara.

Following that advice was not an easy task. The current gripped them firmly, and the floating debris created obstacle after obstacle as Sintara battled toward the shore. Once they were caught in an eddy and spun around and around, until Thymara had no sense of direction left.

A
LISE HELD TIGHT
to Thymara’s belt and gritted her teeth against the pain of her fresh scalds. Where her copper gown touched her, her skin was protected, but her cheeks and forehead and eyelids burned from the acid water. She turned her face up to the rain and felt its coolness as a blessing. She gritted her teeth, her lips pulling back in a sardonic smile. She could die here and she was worrying about a little pain. Ridiculous. She laughed aloud.

Thymara turned to stare at her. “Are you all right?”

For a moment, the sight of her eyes glowing pale blue in the night unsettled Alise. But then she nodded grimly. “I’m as all right as I can be. I’ve counted eight dragons so far; or at least I think I have. I may have counted some twice.”

“I haven’t seen any of the other keepers. Or the
Tarman.
Have you?”

“No.” Alise bit the word off short. She wouldn’t, couldn’t worry now. The
Tarman
was a big boat; it had to be all right. Leftrin would come to find her and save her. He had to. He was her only hope now. For a moment she marveled that she could put so much faith in a mere man. Then she shook the thought from her mind. He was all she had that she could count on. She would not doubt him now.

All around them, the water seethed and roared. The sound pressed on her ears. The fury of the first wave had passed, but the water that followed it swelled the river and powered the current. Alise gripped with her knees as if she were riding a horse and held tight to Thymara’s belt and prayed. All her muscles ached from being clenched so long. Sweet Sa, how long could sheer terror last? Beneath her, the dragon struggled, and seemed to swim less powerfully than she had. She wondered how much time had passed. The dragon must be getting exhausted. If Sintara gave up, then all of them would die. She knew she could not survive in the deluge without her. She leaned closer to the dragon’s head.

“It’s not far now, my beauty, my queen. See, there is the line of trees. You can make it. Don’t try to swim straight to it. Let the current carry you but ease toward the shore, my gem, my priceless beauty.”

She felt something from the dragon, some warming of strength, as if her mere human words encouraged her in a way that defied the physical challenges.

Thymara sensed it, too. “Great queen, you have to survive. The memories of all your ancestors depend on you to carry them forward through time. Swim! Or all they have been will be forever lost, and all the world will be less for that. You must survive. You must!”

The shore came closer so slowly. Despite their encouragement, Sintara’s strength was flagging. Then the sound of trumpeting reached them. Along the shore, wedged against the trees,
were dragons. They called to her, and Alise felt a thrill shoot through her when she heard thin human voices raised as well.

“It’s Sintara! It’s Thymara’s blue queen! Swim, queen, swim! Don’t give up!”

“Sweet Sa, there is someone on her back! Who is it? Who did she save?”

“Swim, dragon! Swim! You’ll make it!”

Thymara suddenly lifted her voice. “Sylve? Is that you? Alise and I are here, Sintara saved us!”

Sylve’s high voice reached them. “Don’t try to climb up on the mat. You’ll get tangled up. Push through it until you get to the trees at the edge. Then we’ll get some big logs under you so you can rest, Sintara. Don’t get tangled up! It’s like a net; it will trap you and drag you down.”

I
N A MATTER
of minutes, they were grateful for that advice. All manner of debris had fetched up against the shore. At the river’s side, it was loose and floating, but the closer Sintara got to the trees, the more packed and tangled it became. Thymara clung to her dragon and felt that this final part of her struggle lasted at least a day. The safety of the trees loomed overhead, and never had she longed more to feel bark under her claws and hold fast to one of the immense giants and know she was safe. A dimness that was not quite light but indicated that morning was beginning somewhere had begun to permeate the sky and reach down toward the chaos on the water. Had they battled the water all night? Thymara could see the hulking shapes of dragons under the trees now. They were braced against the flow of the water, front paws wrapped around trees as they floated exhaustedly. At intervals, the dragons trumpeted; she wondered who they were calling. There were keepers there, too, perched in the lower branches of the trees. She could not tell how many or who, but her heart lifted with hope that all would be well. Only a few hours ago, she thought that she and Alise and Sintara might be the only survivors. Now she wondered if perhaps they had all escaped unscathed.