Dragon Haven (30 page)

“Thank Sa you’re alive! And the dragon, too? That’s a double miracle, then. And she’s up and out of the water! How did
you do it? Look at you! The river worked you over, didn’t it? Here, let me take that and I’ll make her fast. What do you need first? Water? Food? I thought I’d find you half dead if I found you at all!”

He stood shaking as Carson did all the talking for both of them. In moments the boat was secured to the edge of the debris island, and without his asking, Carson was offering him a waterskin. He drank greedily, paused to mutter, “Sa be praised and thank you,” before drinking again. Carson watched him, his grin white in his beard. He looked weary and yet so triumphant that he shone.

As Sedric returned the waterskin to him, the hunter pushed a flat ship’s biscuit into his hands. Sedric suddenly felt giddy with the smell of food. Perhaps he swayed on his feet, for Carson caught his elbow. “Sit down. Sit down and eat slow. You’re going to be all right now. You’ve had a bad time, but everything’s come right now. For you, too!” he assured Relpda as the dragon trumpeted her protest that Sedric was eating and she wasn’t. Sedric was grateful but suddenly so hungry he could scarcely focus on Carson’s words or Relpda’s complaints. He broke off a piece of the hard bread and chewed it slowly. His jaw hurt, and he couldn’t chew on the bruised side. Swallowing food made the pain worth it. He broke off another bite and ate it slowly.

Carson left him and went over to speak with the dragon. When he came back, he was shaking his head in admiration. “That’s a nice bit of work there; it will probably fall apart if she moves around at all, but having a place to haul out is better than any of the other dragons have had.”

The words slowly penetrated Sedric’s mind, and he remembered that there were more things in the world to consider than just food and water. He spoke with his broken mouth full. “Who survived?”

“Well, more survived than went missing. Took us a day or two, but we’ve gathered up most everyone. Now that I’ve found you and the copper, we’re only missing Rapskal, his dragon, and Jess. We found poor Warken dead, and Ranculos is badly bruised, but other than some injuries, everyone else
is fine. How about you? You look more battered than anyone else.”

He touched his face self-consciously. “A bit.”

Carson gave a low laugh. “From here, it looks like more than ‘a bit’ to me. So. It’s only you and the dragon here. No one else?”

“Only us,” he replied guardedly. How would Carson feel if he knew that he and Relpda had killed the other hunter? He had frequently seen the two men together on the boat, and they often partnered each other in their hunting tasks. Now was no time to risk offending his savior. If he said nothing about Jess, no one would ever know.

Unless Relpda said something.

A tremor of fear went through him. The dragon reacted to it.
Danger? Eat hunter?

“No, Relpda, no. No danger. The hunter will find food for you, but not right now.” He mended her words as best he could and then said to Carson quietly, “She’s been a bit more confused since the big wave.”

“Well. I think we all have. But she has a point. She has to be ravenous. She was never fat to begin with, and it looks like the last couple of days have winnowed her down. Relpda? I know that dragons prefer fresh meat, but I saw an elk carcass floating not far from here. Shall I show you where?”

“Bring to Relpda. Relpda tired.”

“Carson tired, too,” the hunter muttered, but it was a good-natured complaint. “I’ll go put a line on the stinking thing and pull it down here. You want me to leave the water with you?”

“Don’t go!” The words were out of his mouth reflexively. Rescue had only just arrived.

Carson grinned and put a gentle hand on his shoulder. “Don’t worry. I’ll be back. I’ve gone to all this trouble to find you. I’m not about to abandon you here.” Carson’s gaze met Sedric’s, and the words seemed to come from the hunter’s heart. Sedric didn’t know what to say.

“Thank you,” he managed at last. He looked away from the man’s earnest gaze. “I must seem a coward to you. Or an incompetent idiot.”

“Neither one, I assure you. I won’t be long. I’m leaving the water with you. It’s all we’ve got right now, so go as easy on it as you can.”

“It’s all we’ve got? Why did you let me drink so much?” Sedric was horrified.

“Because you needed it. Now, let me go get Relpda some nice rotten elk, and then I’ll be back. Maybe I’ll still have enough light to go up the trees and look for more food for us.”

“Jess—” Sedric halted his words. He’d nearly told him that Jess had found fruit nearby. Stupid, stupid, stupid. Don’t mention the other hunter.

“What?”

“Just be careful.”

“Oh, I’m always that. I’ll be back soon enough.”

T
HE WATER HAD
gone down. There was still plenty of dead fish to eat. It wasn’t fresh, but it was filling. She wasn’t dead. At least, not yet.

Sintara shifted her weight. Her feet were sore from the constant immersion. The water was less acid than it had been, but her claws still felt soft, as if they were decaying. And she had never had less hope for herself.

She, Sintara, a dragon who should have ruled the sea, the sky, and the land, had been picked up and tumbled head over heels like a rabbit struck by a hawk. She’d floundered and gasped. She’d clung to a log like a drowning rat. “No dragons have ever endured what we have,” she said. “None has ever sunk so low.”

“There is nothing ‘low’ about survival,” Mercor contradicted her. As always, his voice was calm, almost placid. “Think of it as experience hard won, Sintara. When you die and are eaten, or when your young hatch from the egg, they will carry forward your memories of this time. No hardship endured is a loss. Someone will learn from it. Someone profits from it.”

“Someone is tired of your philosophizing,” scarlet Ranculos grumbled. He coughed, and Sintara smelled blood. She moved
closer to him. Among the dragons, his injury was the most serious. Something had struck his ribs as he tumbled in the flood. She could sense the pain he felt with every breath. For the most part, their scaled bodies had protected them. Sestican had a bruised wing that ached when he tried to open it. Veras complained of a burned throat from swallowing acid water. The lesser bruises that they all had scarcely seemed worth mentioning. They were dragons. They would heal.

The river had retreated as the day wore on. There was something of a shore now. Bushes festooned with streamers of dead vines stuck up in a long bar of silty mud. It was a relief to be able to stand, to have her belly out of water, but walking about in the thick sucking mud was almost as wearying as swimming.

“So what would you have me say, Ranculos? That after we have come this far, through so much adversity, we should now lie down and die?” Mercor came slogging over to them. To stand so close to one another was not a normal behavior for dragons, Sintara recognized. But they were not normal dragons. Their years huddled together in the limited space near Cassarick had changed them. In times like these, times when they were weary and uncertain, they tended to gather. It would have been comforting to lie down and sleep next to Ranculos. But she would not. The mud was too deep. She would stand and doze tonight and dream of deserts and hot dry sand.

“No. Not here, at least,” Ranculos replied wearily.

Big blue Sestican slogged his way over to them. Mud streaked his azure hide. “Then it’s agreed. Tomorrow we move on.”

“Nothing is agreed,” Mercor replied mildly. The gold dragon opened his wings and shook them lightly. Water and mud pattered down. His peacock-eyes markings were streaked with grime. She had not seen him so dirty since they had left Cassarick.

“Strange,” Sestican commented sourly. “It sounded to me that we had decided not to lie down and die here. So the alternative would be, I think, to keep moving on, toward Kelsingra.”

“Kelsingra,” said Fente. She made the name sound like a curse. The little green dragon fluffed out the fronds of her immature
mane. If she’d been properly grown, it would have appeared threatening. As it was, she reminded Sintara of a green-and-gold blossom on a skinny stem.

“I, for one, see no reason to wait for the keepers. We don’t need them.” Kalo wandered over. He limbered his wings as he came, spreading their blue-black expanse and shaking them to rid them of mud. They were larger than Mercor’s. Was he attempting to remind them all that he was the largest and most powerful male?

“You’re splattering mud all over me. Stop it.” Sintara lifted the frills along her neck, confident that her own display was at least as intimidating as his.

“You’re so covered with mud now, I don’t know how you’d tell,” Kalo complained, but he folded his wings all the same.

Sintara was in no mood to let him make peace so easily. “And you may not need your keeper, but I’ve a use for mine. Tomorrow I will have them both groom me. I might have to stand in mud, but there’s no reason I must wear it.”

“Mine is negligent. Lazy. Full of himself. Angry at everyone.” Kalo’s eyes spun with anger and unhappiness.

“Does he still think that perhaps butchering a dragon and selling him like meat would solve his problems?” Sestican baited him happily.

Kalo rose to it. No matter how often he complained of what a poor keeper Greft was, he would not tolerate comments critical of him. Even after Greft had made his obscene suggestion, Kalo had snapped at any of the others who dared complain about him. So now he opened his jaws wide and hissed loudly at Sestican.

He seemed as surprised as any of them when a bluish mist of venom issued from his mouth, to hang briefly in the air. Sintara lidded her eyes and turned her face away. “What are you about?” Fente demanded angrily. The little green splattered mud up on all of them as she scampered out of reach of the cloud. Sestican immediately stretched his own jaws wide and gathered breath.

“Stop!” Mercor commanded. “Stop it, both of you!”

He had no more right to issue orders than any other dragon.
Nonetheless, that never prevented him from doing it,
thought Sintara.
And almost always, the others obeyed him. There was something in his bearing that commanded their respect, even their loyalty. Now he waded closer to Kalo. The big blue-black dragon stood his ground, even half lifting his wings as if he would challenge Mercor. But the golden dragon had no intention of seeking battle. Instead, he stared intently at the other big male, his black eyes whirling as if they gathered up the darkness around them.

“Now do that again,” Mercor challenged him, but not as male to male. Rather he stared at Kalo as if he could not believe what he had witnessed. He was not alone. The other dragons, sensing something about the urgency in Mercor’s voice, were drawing nearer.

“But downwind of us!” Sestican interjected.

“And put some heart in it,” Mercor added.

Kalo folded his wings. He did it slowly, and slowly was how he turned away from the gathering dragons, to face downwind of them. If he was attempting to make it appear he was not obeying Mercor, he failed, thought Sintara. But she kept the thought to herself, for she too wished to see if he could, indeed, spit venom. All of them should have been capable of it since they emerged from their cases, but none had achieved reliability or potency with that most basic weapon in a dragon’s arsenal. Had Kalo? She watched his ribs swell as he took in air. This time, she saw him work the poison glands in his throat. The muscles in his powerful neck rippled. He threw back his head and snapped it forward, jaws opening wide. He roared and a visible mist of bluish toxin rode with the sound. It drifted in a cloud over the water. She was not the only dragon to rumble in amazement. She watched the toxin disperse and heard the very soft hiss when acid met acid as it settled on the water.

Before anyone else could react, Fente propelled herself out into the open river. She shook herself all over, opened her wings wide, and threw back her head. When she launched her toxin with a trumpet like a woman screaming, the cloud was smaller but more dense. Again and again, she shrieked it forth, until on
her fourth try there was no visible sign of poison. Nonetheless, she turned to all of them and proclaimed, “Make no mistake. You may all be larger than I am, but I am just as deadly as any of you are. Respect me!”

“It would be wiser to save your toxins for hunting rather than making a show of them,” Mercor rebuked her mildly. “You have no way of knowing how long it will take you to recover them. If you saw game right now, it would escape you.”

The small green dragon spun to face them. Now the layered fronds of her immature mane stood out stiffly around her neck. She shivered them, a move more serpent than dragon. “Don’t preach to me about wisdom, golden one. Nor hunting. I do not need your advice. Now that I have my poison again, I am not sure that I even need your company.”

“Or your keeper?” Ranculos asked in mild curiosity.

“That remains to be seen,” she snapped. “Tats grooms me, and it pleases me to hear him praise me. I may keep him. But having a keeper does not mean I must stay in company with you or those other raggle-taggle keepers. Nor do I need to be near keepers so disrespectful they speak of butchering a dragon as if he were a cow.” She beat her wings, stirring air and spattering water. “I have my poison and soon I will be able to fly. Then I will need nothing of anyone save myself.”

“So Heeby spoke of flying, too,” Sestican said quietly.

“Heeby. That’s not even her true name. She couldn’t even summon her true name. Heeby. That’s a name for a dog or a rather stupid horse. Not a dragon.”

“Speak no ill,” Mercor advised her. “Her end might be the same one we all meet.”

“She didn’t end because she never began,” Fente retorted. “Half a dragon is no dragon at all.”

Privately, Sintara agreed with her. The dimmer dragons still distressed her in a way she could not explain. To be around a creature with the shape of a dragon but to have no sense of that creature thinking the thoughts of a dragon was unsettling. One night she had overheard some of the keepers telling “ghost”
stories to one another and wondered if that were not the same sensation. Something was there, but not there. A familiar shape with no substance to it.