Dragon Haven (46 page)

“You smell the ship. You smell Tarman,” Mercor corrected him.

Ranculos lowered his head and extended his neck. With his wings slightly lifted, he reminded Thymara of a courting bird as he approached the liveship, nostrils flared.

Mercor spoke in a voice that seemed resigned to foolishness. “Tarman is a liveship, Ranculos. His hull was made from a dragon’s case, one that never hatched.” He paused, watching the ship again gather himself, lift, and then shift the direction of his bow as he lowered himself again. “But that old case has a more recent overlay. Part of him comes from the case of a dragon who would have come to be from the same tangle of serpents we came from. Tarman is as much one of us as a being of his kind can be.”

“A being of his kind? A ‘being’ of his ‘kind’? And what is that, Mercor? A ghost trapped in the body of a slave?” The silver eyes of the scarlet dragon flashed as Ranculos raised his
head high, rearing up briefly on his hind legs. Arbuc trumpeted shrilly, echoing his feelings while Fente lashed her tail and rumbled a growl.

Baliper spoke. “He is wrong. He smells wrong. He exists wrong. It is wrong for humans to ride on a dragon in any form, let alone for them to enslave the ghost of one. We should tear him apart and eat him. The memories trapped in his ‘wood’ should come back to us, for they belong to us.” He snapped open his scarlet wings and reared back briefly in a show of size and aggression.

“I think
not
.” This came in a roar from Kalo. The great blue-black dragon, largest of the drakes, waded forward through the gathered dragons, forcing the smaller ones to step aside or be trodden on. When Baliper did not give way, Kalo shouldered him roughly aside, sending him crashing against Fente. The little green queen screamed in fury and struck at Baliper, lightly scoring his shoulder with her teeth. In turn, the red clapped his wing at her, sending her sprawling into the mud. At this threat to Fente, a yell of outrage from Tats reached Thymara’s ear. He stood on board the Tarman, eyes wild with panic as he stared down at the conflict that threatened to engulf all the dragons.

“Stop!” Mercor cried out, but the golden went unheeded.

“Stop or I’ll kill you all!” Kalo roared.

A stillness froze them. The immense drake turned his head slowly, surveying the gathered dragons. A few of the keepers stood among them. Sedric had moved closer to Thymara. Sylve huddled by Mercor’s front leg.

Fente began to get to her feet.

“Don’t!” Kalo warned her. He opened his jaws wide and displayed to all of them the bright green poison sacs inside his throat. They were swollen and full, pulsing with his anger. “I am not Spit, to show my power before I need it. Oppose me now and I’ll let you feel the strength of my venom.”

The dragons were still. Kalo closed his jaws, but the spiny ruffs on his throat still stood out. He spoke slowly. “I do not recall all that a dragon should. And I recall much that a dragon should not. Kelaro I was, of Maulkin’s Tangle. And I followed
Maulkin, a great golden serpent, without question.” His silvery gaze suddenly fixed on Mercor. The golden dragon looked puzzled for a moment, then bowed his head in assent. “Kelaro I was, and Sessurea was a companion to me.” He looked now at Tarman. “I was the stronger, but sometimes he was the wiser.” His gaze moved over the gathered dragons. “If we tear that wisdom to pieces and share it amongst us, will any of us have the whole of it? Will any of us know what Tarman seems to know? Open your mouths and your nostrils, dragons. There is more than one way for a dragon to communicate. Or a serpent.”

Thymara was shocked to discover that she had taken Sedric’s arm and was holding it firmly. Something was happening here, something that frightened her. There were shrieks and shouts from the barge as he once more heaved himself high. For an instant, she clearly saw the squat powerful front legs and had a glimpse of the folded and flippered hind legs. A waft of stench, not unlike the smell she recalled from the day the dragons had emerged from their cases, enveloped her. Her eyes stung and she put her shirtsleeve over her mouth and nose, gasping for breath. Then, the barge wheeled, and Tarman’s bow slapped down onto the river. As his powerful hind legs pushed him away from the delta of river mud, a wave of dirty water washed up onto the beach.

The barge moved out into the river. It nosed, not toward the swift-flowing acid river with the wide open channel but toward the long green tunnel of the fresh water that she had explored yesterday. She realized what was happening at the same moment Sedric did.

“Tarman is leaving without us!”

“Wait!” This came in a wild shriek from Sylve. Thymara glanced in her direction, but she could not tell if Sylve called to the ship or Mercor, for the dragons were in motion, moving to follow the barge. Tarman had wallowed out into deeper water. None of the polemen was at their posts, but he was moving determinedly against the current. Thymara saw a disturbance in the water behind him and guessed at the presence of a tail.

“We’re being left behind. Come on!” She had been the one
clutching at Sedric. But now he shrugged free of her hold on his arm, caught her by the hand. Her free hand snagged the still-staring Sylve. “Run!” he told them. “Come on!”

They pelted down the beach toward the shore. Shouts of both anger and dismay from Tarman’s deck told her that there was nothing that the crew or keepers could do to detain the barge. She wondered briefly about the hunters. As was their wont, they had set out before dawn to look for meat, and they had doubtless headed up the other tributary of the river. How long would it take them to realize that the barge and the dragons had gone off in a different direction?

They were not the only keepers left onshore. All of them were converging on the three small boats that remained onshore. Kase and Boxter had claimed Greft’s boat, but they stood by to see if they’d have to make room for another keeper. Alum was in one of the other boats, and as she watched, Harrikin spoke with him. The third boat was empty. “Go!” Thymara shouted at them. “We’ll take the other boat.”

“Right!” Alum shouted back to her, and in moments they were launched. The barge was moving with swift certainty up the waterway. The dragons split and went around the small boats, waded out into the water, and followed. They would soon pass the barge. Kase and Boxter had taken up their paddles and were moving out into the river.

By the time Thymara, Sylve, and Sedric reached the final boat, they were alone on the shore. Thymara glanced back at the campsite. No, nothing left behind. A fire smoldered on the wet muddy flat. Nothing remained to show they had been there but trampled ground and the rising smoke.

“Will it hold three?” Sedric asked worriedly.

“It won’t be comfortable, but we’ll be fine. Besides, there’s no choice. You can turn your bucket upside down and perch on that. I suspect we’ll come alongside Tarman before too long, and we can ask them to take you up then, if you’d like.” She turned to a strangely quiet Sylve. The girl looked stricken. “What’s the matter?”

Sylve shook her head slowly. “He just went with the others.
Mercor didn’t even wait to see if I had a way to follow. He just left.” She blinked her eyes and one pink-tinged tear trickled down her cheek.

“Oh, Sylve.” Thymara felt sorry for her, but also impatient. Now was not the time for indulging in emotion. They had to catch up with the ship.

“M
ERCOR’S NO FOOL.
He knew there were boats on the shore, and that you’ve taken care of yourself in the past. He had to get the dragons moving before any of them had second thoughts. He hasn’t abandoned you; he just thinks you’re capable. Let’s prove he’s right.” Sedric spoke hastily, smoothing the quarrel before it could start. He was tired of conflict.

He upended his bucket to make a seat for himself in the middle of the boat, and it gave him a slightly higher perch and a different view of the river. Thymara pushed them off, and Sylve dug in her paddle with a will, and they devoted themselves to creating as much speed as they could. There was no discussion; all knew they’d make better time with the girls at the oars.

This was Sedric’s first opportunity to observe the river and the surrounding jungle from this perspective. The last time he’d been in one of the small boats, he’d been so busy trying to keep up with Carson that he hadn’t had time to look around. Now he stared at the lushest forest he’d ever seen. Trees, both deciduous and evergreen, leaned out over the water. Vines draped some of them. Undergrowth was thick, and reeds and rushes populated the mossy banks of the river.

“It’s so alive,” Sylve said in a voice full of wonder.

So he hadn’t been imagining the difference.

“It even smells different. Just, well, green. Alise and I walked a short way up here yesterday, and we both noticed it. There’s no acid in the water, no whiteness to it at all. And there’s a lot more life. I saw frogs swimming in the water yesterday. Right in the water.”

“Frogs usually swim in the water,” Sedric suggested.

“Maybe near Bingtown they do. But in the Rain Wilds, we find frogs up in the trees. Not in the river.”

He thought about that for a bit. Every time he thought he had grasped how much his life had changed, some new awareness doused him. He nodded quietly.

This tributary was completely unlike the main channel. It wound gently through the forest, and the trees leaned in over the water, seeking sunlight and blocking the view upstream. For a time, they pursued the dragons and the barge, but then the river rounded a gentle bend and they lost sight of everything except the other two small boats. They were at the tail end of the procession. If they capsized now, or if they came upon a pod of gallators on the riverbank…for a moment, tension tightened his gut. Then a peculiar thought came to him.

If anything befell him, Carson would come looking for him.

Carson.

A smile relaxed his face. It was true and he knew it. Carson would come for him.

He was still trying to reconcile the man with his concept of life. He’d never met a man like Carson, never known anyone who schooled his strength to such gentleness. He was not educated or cultured. He knew nothing of wines, had never traveled beyond the Rain Wilds, and had read fewer than a dozen books in his life. The framework that supported Sedric’s self-respect was missing from Carson’s life. Without an appreciation for such things, how could he appreciate who and what Sedric was? Why did the hunter like him? It mystified him.

Carson’s life was framed by this forest-and-water world. He knew the ways of animals and spoke of them with great fondness and respect. But he killed them, too. Sedric had watched him butcher, seen his strength as he cut into an animal’s hip joint and then used his hands to lever the bone out of the socket. “Once you know how an animal is put together, it’s a lot easier to take it apart,” Carson had explained to Sedric as he finished his bloody chore and made the meat ready for cooking.

Sedric had watched his hands, the blood on his wrists, the bits of flesh caught under his nails as he worked, and thought of those strong hands on his own body. It had put a shiver up his spine, a thrill of erotic dread. Yet Carson was gentle, almost ten
tative in his moments with Sedric, and several times Sedric had found himself moving into the role of aggressor. The sensation of being in control had been heady and in some ways freeing. He had watched Carson’s eyes and mouth in the dim light of his small room and seen no fear in his face, no resentment that, for that time, Sedric was in charge. He contrasted it sometimes to how Hest would react to such a thing. “Don’t try to tell me what you want,” Hest had once commanded him disdainfully. “I’ll tell you what you’re getting.”

He thought of Hest less frequently than he once had, and in the last few days when he had contrasted his old lover to Carson, Hest seemed like a fading ghost. Thoughts of him triggered regret, but not in the way they once had. Sedric regretted not that he had lost Hest, but that he had ever found him.

The two girls had fallen into a rhythm in their paddling, one that sped them along but was not closing the gap between them and the dragons, barge, and other keepers’ boats. As they passed a low-hanging tree, an explosion of orange parrots startled them. The birds burst from the branches, shrieking and squawking before the flock re-formed and abruptly landed in a taller tree. All three of them startled, and then laughed. It broke a tension of silence that Sedric hadn’t been aware of. Suddenly he didn’t want to be alone and lost in his thoughts.

“I’ll be happy to take a turn paddling,” he offered.

“I’m fine,” Sylve said, turning her head to shoot him a smile. The light caught briefly in her eyes as she did so, showing him a pale blue gleam. As she turned back, he could not help but note how the sunlight also moved on the pink scaling of her scalp. She had less hair than when they had started out. Her worn shirt was torn slightly at the shoulder seam and scaling flashed on the flesh that was revealed there with every stroke of her paddle.

“I may take you up on that, in a little while,” Thymara admitted. That surprised him. He had thought her the tougher of the two girls.

Sylve spoke over her shoulder, keeping her eyes on the river. “Is your back still bothering you? Where you hurt it in the river that day?”

Thymara was quiet for a time and then admitted grudgingly, “Yes. It’s never healed up all the way. The second dunking I got in that wave only made it worse.”

The boat traveled on. They passed a backwater spattered with huge flat leaves and floating orange flowers. The fragrance, rich to the point of rottenness, reached Sedric.

Sylve spoke. “Have you ever asked your dragon about that?” Her voice was hesitant and yet determined.

“About what?” Thymara replied, equally determined.

“Your back. And the way your scaling is getting heavier.”

Silence like a block of stone fell on the boat and filled it perfectly. Sedric felt as if he was unable to breathe for the heaviness of it.

When Thymara spoke, she could not hide the lie in her words. “I don’t think my back has anything to do with my scaling.”