The Dragon Book (66 page)

Numair surveyed all of us. “Your pardon, my dear, but the magical energies here are making my ears ring,” he said in his usual mild way. “Something very big is about to happen within these stones.”

That made my ears prick. Magic? Earthquakes weren’t magical.

“Perhaps we should all return to the emperor’s camp and finish this discussion?” Numair asked. “I am certain that Kitten did not adapt such a threatening posture without reason.” His Gift flowed out from him to enclose Afra, Uday, Spots, and me, but not the villagers. My foster father had seen that we were under attack from them.

Afra started to raise her hand, her magic gathering around her fingers, but I grabbed her wrist. I was fairly certain that, even with her two-colored magic, she would get hurt if she tried to fight Numair.

She stared at me, her eyes wide with fear. “Is that the emperor?” she whispered.

Spots and I shook our heads.

“Stand away!” screamed the village’s chief mage. “This woman is a witch and a thief! She is ours to deal with! Call your monster off!”

Daine’s frown deepened. “Kit’s no more a monster than you,” she called back. “Though just now you’re looking fair monstrous to me!”

No one heard what the mage said next. The orange rock under him bucked and split. He and the other villagers were thrown, as I had been, into the pond. Chunks of rock dropped away from the orange stone. The villagers who escaped the pond tried to run down the canyon where the stream flowed, only to find that boulders were blocking the way.

No one wanted to come near us. They stayed on the far side of the pond.

As more orange pieces rolled onto the open ground, darker stone was uncovered. The inner rock was brown, glassy stuff. Once most of the orange stone had fallen away, the brown stone began to jerk and rise. Its ridges shifted as larger, angled pieces appeared out of the mass of rock beyond our view. The assemblage of stone, oddly shaped, even sculpted, kept turning toward us. One piece set itself on the sand next to Daine and Numair.

I was looking at a lizardlike foreleg. It was made of a glossy brown stone filled with a multitude of different-colored fires that blazed in sheets, darts, and ripples under each stone scale.

The center section up above bent in a U as the dragon—it was a dragon—hauled its still-captive hindquarters from their stone casings under the earth. Then it had to pull its tail loose, the tail being trapped in a different section of rock. I saw the foreleg press up. With a roar of shattering stone, the dragon forced its upper body free, then its tail.

Raining gravel and powdered rock, the opal dragon turned. It brought its head around and down to our level, regarding us with glowing crimson eyes. Their pupils, slit just like mine, were the deep green of emeralds. Free now of its prison, it was not so big as I’d thought. Numair was six feet and six inches; the dragon stood that tall at the shoulder. Head to hip it was sixteen feet. The tail I could not measure. This dragon carried it in curled loops on its back. I noticed its other peculiarity right away as well: it had no wings.

It said something that flattened me. I squeaked, in my body or my mind, I don’t know which. I tried to meet its eyes. The dragon spoke again, using very different words and talking slowly. I shook my head in the hope that I could make my ears open up, but my ears were not the problem. The dragon spoke within my skull, expecting me to understand. The language was completely unfamiliar.

Daine raced over and picked me up. “Stop it!” she cried, glaring at the great creature. “She can’t understand you! She’s just a baby!”

I shook her off. I didn’t mean to, but I was
trying
to understand this being. Was it a relative of mine? Didn’t the dragon ancestors mention kindred of ours, dragons fashioned of stone, flame, and water, at the gathering I had attended when I was nine? I was busy playing with my cousins, but I had listened to some of the stories.

The dragon looked at Daine, then at me. It tried another series of sounds, gentler ones. I heard something familiar,
sleep
, and called back with my own mind,
Awake?

The dragon flashed a look at the village’s chief mage, who was trying to creep up on it. He shrank away, his hands blazing with his Gift. The dragon stretched its head out on its long neck and blew a puff of air straight at the mage. His Gift vanished from his hands. He gasped and plunged his hands into the pond.

The opal dragon looked at me and spoke within my mind,
Child?

Dragon-child,
I thought to her. I knew this dragon was female. It was in the way that she said “child,” as if she had mothered several. She had loved them and scolded them, watched them grow, tended their hurts, and seen them leave in search of their own lives. Somehow I had learned all that just from the way she had thought that one word to me.

The dragon waved her forepaw at the humans around us.
These? Tell
.

I explained about Emperor Kaddar’s journey here. How I’d seen the boys stone Afra, and how Afra had led me to the cave in the rocks hidden by magic. I was almost to the end of how I’d tamed Afra with food when the dragon said,
That is sufficient for me to learn your speech.

I stared at her.

It has been an age since I last heard the speech of my winged cousins. I had quite forgotten it.
The opal dragon eyed the humans.
Other things have changed as well.
Some note in her voice was different. She was ready to talk to others. She asked,
Have you pestiferous creatures gotten any wiser?

The villagers dropped to their knees, crying out or weeping. Their chief mage was the last to kneel. He quivered as if he could not help himself. Afra clung to Spots. I was so proud that she did not kneel.

Spots bared his teeth at the dragon.
Try your luck against me, big lizard,
he said.
I have fought giants and steel-feathered Stormwings. I have faced Kitten’s family. No dragon, not even a stone one, will make me run.

So I see,
the dragon replied.

Neither Daine nor Numair had budged, though the emperor’s soldiers were on their knees. My parents, like Spots, had met far larger dragons.

Numair stepped forward. “It depends on how you gauge such things, Great One,” he said quietly, answering her question about humans. “I have met foolish dragons, and badgers with great wisdom.”

The dragon regarded him, then Daine.
Mages have improved,
she said.

“Would you favor us with an explanation?” Numair asked in his polite way. “We had no sense of you, or we would not have disturbed you.”

You did not disturb me,
the opal dragon told him. She turned her crimson eyes to Afra.
Nor did you, small mother. I layered my protective spells so that none of my kind, who had been plaguing me with questions and requests for
ages,
would find me. I wanted a nice, long nap. But I set the wards so that any mother or mother-to-be might find sanctuary behind my barriers. I welcomed you in my dreams.

She snaked her long neck around Afra to peer at Uday. A little uncertain, Afra half turned so the dragon might get a better look at her son.
And I am quite charmed by
you,
small human.
Uday crowed in glee, as if he understood.

The dragon straightened so she could eye all of us again.
It was
this
young dragon who caused my waking. When first she entered my barriers, I began to rouse myself from sleep, bringing down my old wards and cracking the shell that time had formed over me. It has been more than two thousand circles around the sun since her kind and mine have spoken. Moreover, she is so young. I feared that you two-legged creatures might have captured her. You have been known to do that.

Her gaze was so stern that the villagers, who had begun to rise, knelt again. The soldiers behind Numair and Daine quailed.

I am no captive!
I told her.
Daine and Numair
—my mind added their images and voices to their names so the opal dragon would know them better—
are my parents. They adopted me. My kin allow it. Daine tried to save my dragon mother’s life, and my mother left me with her. I have been managing very well among humans, thank you!

Now the beautiful creature looked down her long muzzle at me.
In my day, infant dragons were not so forward,
she said, her mind-voice crackling.

I am not like the infant dragons you knew,
I replied.
You said yourself it’s been more than two thousand years since you spoke with any dragons.

For a moment, I thought I heard her sigh. She picked up a slab of orange stone that was three feet thick.
My nap lasted far longer than I had intended. I was very bored, and tired
.

You could come with us,
I said.
It wouldn’t be boring if you did.

“Kitten—Skysong—means that it wouldn’t be boring for
her
,” Numair said. “But surely, after such a nap, it
is
time you moved around a bit?”

“Numair!” Daine said, tugging on his sleeve. “The people in the city—well, people anywhere! If we have a dragon with us—a
big
one—if folk see her out and about—”

I slumped. I liked this dragon, for all that she was so much older and a snob. She was beautiful and funny. Daine was right, though. People screamed at the sight of
me
. What would they do if they saw
her
?

My children ceased to need me long before my nap. The time I showed you, young dragon, the time when these lands were green and the creatures were larger, was the last time I was happy
. Somehow I could feel the dragon spoke to me alone.
I cannot—would not—take you from these strange friends, or your two-legged “parents.” But I would be happy to come with you, if you would like.

I squeaked and ran at her and wound between her forelegs. The glassy stone of her body was cool and pliable. She looked at Daine and Numair.
The skill of the dragon depends on the stone of our flesh,
she said so that everyone could hear.
We opal dragons are the mages of ideas, illusion, seeming, and invisibility. That is why my magical protections held for so long.

Suddenly I could feel her, but I could not see her. No one could. Then I could not even feel her. I cheeped, sending my magic out, searching for her. Just as suddenly as she had vanished, she appeared again, beside Afra and Spots. Afra jumped; Uday began to wail. Spots’s ears went back. The villagers decided it was time to run away.

“Now that’s fair wonderful,” Daine said with a smile. “You can hide in plain sight.” She looked at Afra. “I didn’t catch your name.”

“I’m—Afra. This is Uday,” Afra said, keeping an eye on the dragon. “Your little creature, there—she’s been looking after us.” She pointed to me, then Spots. “And the horse.”

“Kitten is the dragon,” Daine said, coming over to Afra. “Her ma named her Skysong, but she’s got to grow into it. Spots is the horse. He’s Numair’s. I see Kitten found some of my things for you to use. She’s a rare thief.” She hugged Afra’s shoulders, then looked at the dragon. “And your name, Great One?”

The opal dragon looked from Daine to me.
Why does this child not speak to you mind to mind, as she does to me?

“She is too young. That’s what her family told us,” Daine replied. “It drives her half-mad. I think it’s the only thing she dislikes about living among humans. She needs to talk among us, and she can’t.”

The dragon—my ancestress? My kinswoman?—went to the rocky hollow that had once been her bed and began to sift through the stones, tossing most of them aside.
I am Kawit, in the language of my people. Ah. Skysong, eat this.

She turned about and offered me one of her discarded scales. It sparkled in the sun.

But it’s too pretty to eat,
I protested.

Eat it,
Kawit ordered me.

I obeyed. Daine asked Kawit, “Will you teach me how you did that?”

The scale fizzed and tingled in my mouth, crunching among my teeth. Then it was gone.

I must compliment you upon your raising of Skysong thus far, Veralidaine,
Kawit said.
She is a valiant young one who will do whatever she must to care for her friends.
She nodded to Afra.

“How did you know my full name?” asked Daine, startled.

Because it is in all of me,
I said.
My mother put Daine’s name in all of me, so every dragon, god, and immortal would know who my new mother is. Kawit, would you tell her
?

“Oh, my,” Daine said. She sat on a rock.

You have already told her,
Kawit replied.

You hear me!
I cried, and I ran to my mother. I jumped into her lap.
You hear me! Now we can talk, and I won’t have to make funny signs or noises!
Daine hugged me close. Once we stopped saying private things to each other, I looked at Spots.
Can you hear me, too?

As well as if you were one of the beast-People,
he replied, nibbling on some weeds.
I’m glad you are happy, but we managed perfectly well before.

But now I will understand your jokes. I only used to guess at them,
I explained. I looked up at Numair.
Papa, Afra has magic in two colors, and Uday in three. Afra needs someplace to be safe and well fed and not enslaved
.