The Dragon Book (67 page)

“Why are you telling my secrets?” Afra cried, looking around. She hadn’t noticed the villagers’ departure before this. Even the soldiers who had come with Numair and Daine had fled.

“She tells only us,” Numair said kindly. “And we are safe, because Daine and I are both mages. I wish Kitten had brought you to us sooner—”

“I suspect she wanted to look after Afra herself,” Daine told him. “Seeing as how we’d given her nothing to do.”

I felt myself turn pale yellow out of embarrassment. It was dreadful that my parents knew my mind so well.

She has something to do now,
Kawit said.
I know nothing of this new world. She may be my guide, and my friend. I hope she will be my friend.

I struggled to concentrate, so that only Kawit would hear my reply.
I would
love
to be your friend,
I said.
If you don’t mind that I am very young.

I like it,
Kawit told me.
You make
me
feel younger.

Daine set me down and went to Afra. “May I see your baby?” she asked. Slowly, Afra turned so Daine could lift Uday from his carry-basket. “I have two of my own, but they are with their grandparents,” Daine told Afra. “Please come with us. We’ll send the soldiers back for the rest of your things.” Holding Uday, she took Afra by one wrist and drew her toward the trail.

“But the dragon—Skysong—” Afra said, hesitating. “She drew a crown? The emperor is with you?”

“He’s a nice young man,” Numair said, coming to stand beside her. “Kitten said you have two-colored magic? How do you manage to keep one aspect from overpowering the other? My own, which is two-colored, has always been integrated, as you see—” He showed her a ball of his black fire so she could look at the white sparkles in it.

Oh, no, I thought. If Numair starts to ask questions now, I will never get my own answered.
Papa, when are we going home?
I demanded, tugging on the leg of his breeches. He was already walking off with Daine and Afra. Spots trotted ahead of us.
Kawit, come! Papa, did you fix the river? Mama, are the chickens going to be all right? Are you going to scold those mages for trying to kill us? Will you tell the soldiers to leave Spots with Kawit and me instead of tying him up all of the time?

That was just a start. I had a great many more things to say.

It’s always a good thing to have friends, but as the tense story that follows demonstrates, when you’re a shunned and despised outcast, sometimes having a friend can make the difference between life and death—particularly when that friend is a dragon!

One of the most popular and prolific of the new writers of the nineties, Mary Rosenblum made her first sale, to
Asimov’s Science Fiction,
in 1990, and has since become a mainstay of that magazine and one of its most frequent contributors, with more than thirty sales there to her credit. She has also sold to the
Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction, Science Fiction Age, Pulphouse, New Legends,
and elsewhere.

Rosenblum produced some of the most colorful, exciting, and emotionally powerful stories of the nineties, such as “The Stone Garden,” “Synthesis,” “Flight,” “California Dreamer,” “Casting at Pegasus,” “Entrada,” and many others, earning her a large and devoted following of readers. Her novella “Gas Fish” won the Asimov’s Reader Poll in 1997, and was a finalist for that year’s Hugo Award. Her first novel,
The Drylands,
appeared in 1993 to wide critical acclaim, winning the prestigious Compton Crook Award for best first novel of the year; with its picture of widespread social upheavals caused by catastrophic climate change, it and her other stories about the Drylands—an American West emptied of population by a disastrous drought—seem today more relevant than ever (alas!). Her second novel,
Chimera,
and her third,
The Stone Garden,
followed in short order, as did her first short story collection,
Synthesis & Other Virtual Realities.
She has also written a trilogy of mystery novels under the name Mary Freeman. Her most recent books are
Horizons,
a major new science fiction novel, and
Water Rites,
an omnibus collection of her Drylands stories that includes the novel
The Drylands
as well. A graduate of Clarion West, Mary Rosenblum lives in Portland, Oregon.

KNEELING in the rear of the narrow outrigger beneath the Crone’s dim yellow face, Tahlia gasped as salt spray soaked her. “What was that for, Pretty?” The little blue surf-dragon dropped the boat’s towline and rose half out of the water, needle teeth bared in her narrow snout as she chattered shrilly. Her teal-colored companion rolled his blue-green eyes and winked, and splashed his mate with water. She turned her wrath on him, and, in a second, both dragons were skipping away across the ocean swells, their vestigial wings sending up white skiffs of spray as they chased each other out of sight beneath the starry sky.

“Oh great.” Kir stood, balancing easily as the boat crested a swell. “What now? Do we have to paddle all the way back? We’ll miss the morning market for sure.”

“Maybe they’ll come back.” Tahlia shook her head as she gathered in the tow ropes the dragons had dropped. “I don’t know what got her upset. Surf-dragons are kind of … well … they get distracted pretty easily.”

“I wouldn’t know.” Kir sniffed. “You’re the only one who can talk to them … or whatever it is you do. We’d better start back now.” He peered northward. “I sneaked out, and if I’m not back by dawn, Dad’ll find out, and he said he’d beat me, next time I sneaked out to night-fish.”

Dad had meant next time he sneaked out with Tahlia. He didn’t approve of Kir’s friendship with the “bad-luck golden eyes.” Especially since someone had seen the surf-dragons towing her canoe and had spread the word. Spider-dragons they tolerated, because the big, aggressive spiders that lived on the grove trees were a lot worse than bad dragon luck. “I’m sorry.” Tahlia sighed and began to uncoil the fine fishing line. “We might as well fish while we paddle back. Maybe a jewel fish will bite. They come to the surface when the Crone is in the sky. If we can get it pulling in the right direction, it’ll even tow us.” She baited the line with a tree-crab and dropped it overboard, then leaned out over the stern. The gold that edged the jewel-fish scales might make even Kir’s father happy. The Crone’s light seemed to fall like a beam, illuminating a patch of sea a few boat lengths away. “Kir, what’s that? Something floating.” She grabbed a paddle.

“What?” Kir twisted to look. “I don’t see anything.”

“It’s like a pile of bubbles.” Tahlia paddled her outrigger closer to the floating mass. Half as tall as she, it looked a bit like the foam the storm winds whipped up on the waves, but each crystal bubble shimmered with rainbows in the Crone’s yellow light. “It’s solid.” She touched it tentatively. Her hand sank slowly into the dense mass, and she touched something. Warm. Smooth.

“Watch out!” Kir backed the canoe away with a hard paddle stroke. “You don’t know what’s in there!”

“Oh, stop it.” Tahlia hung on, and the floating mass drifted with them. “Look at this!” She pulled one of the warm shapes from the gleaming bubbles, held it up. “Some kind of egg. I felt a bunch of them.” So big that her fingers couldn’t close around it, the shell, iridescent like the bubble mass, seemed both soft and hard at the same time, pulsing faintly against the pressure of her fingers.

“Too big to be a ketrel egg.” Kir tilted his head, his sky-colored eyes narrowing. “Let’s take them back to the market. If they’re not rotten, that is.” He reached for the egg. “Let’s crack one and see.”

“No way. Hey.” Tahlia snatched it out of his reach, but as she did, the shell cracked, or rather split, pale edges curling back. A moment later, a long, narrow draconid head, the dull grey color of a stormy sea, poked through.

“Surf-dragon egg.” Kir looked disappointed. “Everybody has always wondered where they lay their eggs. Now we know.”

“I guess.” Tahlia cupped her hands around the egg as the small dragonlet clawed its way out of the shell. “But it doesn’t look quite right for a surf-dragon, and if this is how they lay their eggs, why don’t we find ’em all over the place? Surf-dragons are everywhere. Ow!” She snatched her hand away, nearly dropping the dragonlet into the bottom of the boat. “It bit me!”

“Throw it overboard.” Kir scrambled back to the bow of the canoe as the dragonlet thrashed in Tahlia’s grip. Blood dripped from her wrist as she examined the double set of tooth marks on her left hand. “Sharp teeth. No, I’m not going to throw it back, Kir. Why shouldn’t it think I’m going to eat it? Relax, baby, I don’t eat dragons,” she soothed it. “Look.” She nodded. “They’re all hatching.”

Small dragonlets were emerging, poking narrow heads into the Crone’s wan light, clawing their way to the surface of the mass.

“Ketrels!”

Kir’s cry made her tear her eyes from the hatching dragons. Sure enough dark shapes wheeled overhead, blocking out the stars with their huge wings. “They’re after the nest.”

“Better them than us. Tahlia, paddle!” Kir dug his paddle blade into the water and drove the canoe away from the bubble nest.

He was right. Tahlia grabbed her paddle. The dragonlet had stopped fighting her, was now wrapped tightly around one wrist. “Hang on, little one.” Tahlia dug her own blade into the water. “I won’t let them eat you.” They would be lucky if the ketrels didn’t eat
them
. More than one grove dweller had died when caught out in the night ocean by a hungry flock. The Crone’s light dimmed as a cloud veiled it, leaving them in safe darkness. Tahlia’s back itched with the expectation of razor-sharp claws as she and Kir drove the canoe through the swells.

But the flock of huge birds ignored them, their shrill cries making Tahlia wince. Thrashing and shrieks erupted behind them, and she risked a quick glance over her shoulder. The Crone had emerged again from her cloud, and her light seemed to focus on the nest. The flock shredded it, long necks dipping as they stabbed through the rags of foam. Dragonlets struggled in the long, sharp beaks. Tears stung Tahlia’s eyes as she turned back to her paddling. No hope for those babies. The sounds faded as the canoe leaped through the darkness. One of the huge islands of floating weed loomed in the darkness, and they paddled along the edge until they found a natural cavern in the tangle and drove the canoe into its shelter.

“Maybe they won’t spot us,” Kir panted.

“Pretty!” Tahlia rested her paddle as the blue surf-dragon erupted from the water, darting back and forth along the verge of the weed mat, squeaking and agitated. A moment later, the teal-colored male joined her. “Throw the tow rope out, Kir. Let’s go, you two. Fast, fast, fast!” She was never sure just now much language the surf-dragons understood, but this time, they seemed to share the urgency of the moment, slipping their heads through the collars she’d fashioned from braided weed fiber and fanning their water wings so that a fog of spray instantly drenched both her and Kir.

“We’re going to have to bail,” Kir shouted, but the canoe shot ahead, white foam at the bow as it cut through the water. “Wow, what a ride.”

“They’re afraid of the ketrels, too.” Tahlia looked back. The nest had vanished into the night. She shivered. The ketrel flew with the Kark, feasting on the exhausted spirit-slaves that the hardlanders tossed overboard. Rumor was that they led the raiders to the grove settlements. Her wrist tickled, and she looked down.

The dragonlet was licking the bite, cleaning every last trace of blood from her skin. “Thanks, little one.” She held out her hand, and it crawled onto her palm, wrapping its tail around her wrist. It was long and slender, with webbed feet and silvery blue fins, although they were closed up right against her sides, and the muscular tail. Like the surf-dragons, she thought. Their fins unfurled and stiffened in the water to help them swim. “Maybe you’re a surf-dragon after all,” she murmured.

The negative in her mind was as clear as a whisper in her ear. “You answered me?” She looked down at the small dragonlet, and it looked up to meet her gaze. Its silver eyes held a glint of intelligence that she had never seen in the eyes of surf-dragons or spider-dragons. “What are you?” she murmured. “Kir, look.” She held out her bitten hand. “Look what the dragon did.”

“Bit you again?” He looked back, fear still shadowing his eyes. “Just throw it out for the ketrels. Serve it right.”

“No, the bite is all healed. See?”

“Weird.” He eyed her hand with the faint pale trace where the teeth had pierced her. “I never knew surf-dragons could do that.”

“I don’t think they can. And I don’t think it’s a surf-dragon.”

“I don’t know what else it could be. Well, who cares? Surf-dragons aren’t much good to anybody but you.” He glanced ahead, where Pretty and her mate thrashed through the swells. “I wish they’d pull a boat for me.”

“You just have to ask them.” She shrugged.

“They don’t listen to me.”

“You don’t ask nicely, I bet.” She looked ahead. The sky was getting light to the east, and she could just make out the tops of the village grove clearly now, the dark green-furred limbs rising in a solid tangle on multiple trunks that went clear down to the ocean bed. The scaled fish skins that roofed the village domes caught the first sunbeams and winked gold in the morning light. “I hope you don’t get in trouble.”

“Too late now.” Kir sighed. “Father gets up at dawn.”

“Maybe he won’t look in your bed this morning,” Tahlia said hopefully.

They caught a snoutfish as they neared the grove. The snoutfish were trash eaters and liked to hang around the inhabited groves, cleaning up scraps that the villagers tossed into the water. This was a small one, and, as Tahlia unhooked it, the dragonlet threw itself onto the quivering fish, tearing at the pale flesh with its needle teeth.

“Hey.” Kir scowled. “That’s
our
fish.”

“Your mother doesn’t want to eat snoutfish.” Tahlia shrugged. “It has to eat something, you know. Wow.” She watched, impressed, as the dragonlet cleaned the snoutfish to its pearly bones in minutes. Its stomach bulged comically, and it made a low, burbling sound as it crawled into her lap and wrapped its long tail around her waist. “It’s growing.” Tahlia stroked its smooth, satiny hide. “It already looks a lot bigger than when it hatched.”

“Oh great.” Kir rolled his eyes as he rebaited the line and tossed it overboard. “Just what we need. A
big
bad-luck dragon hanging around the grove. Tahl, you already get in trouble; this isn’t going to help.

“It’ll probably take off as soon as it can fly or swim or whatever it does.”

Why would I leave?

Tahlia blinked with the intensity of that communication.
Were you speaking to me?
She stroked the gossamer folds of wing membranes with a fingertip. “Looks like she’s a swimmer to me.”

Of course I was. And my name is Xin.

“She?” Kir gave her a suspicious look. “How do you know it’s a she?”

“She told me.”

“How can she speak our language?” Kir gave her a look. “You’re fooling me.”

If the small-friend is talking to me
—Xin turned one large, silvery eye in Kir’s direction—
tell him you are speaking
my
language. Not many of your kind can do that.