Tortall (18 page)

I followed Afra into the rocky bays where she had gone to hide. I wanted to learn if she knew of the power that had not only made her escape route invisible to the boys, but made them believe they had walked some kind of maze.

Ten feet from the first stony finger, I walked into magic of a kind I had never encountered before. My experience of magic even at that time was great, yet this was unknown to me. I had not found it in visits to the realms of the gods or to the Dragonlands. Nor had I felt anything like it in all my dealings with humans, Gifted or born with any form of wild magic. Even the spirits of mountains, trees, rivers, and streams had nothing like this.

Numair says that magic is a sense for dragons as much as smell and hearing. The strangeness of this new power made my scales prickle.

I called it “new,” but it was that only to me. Even while the strange force trickled across my face and made my licking tongue quiver, I could tell it was old. It might even have
been older than my grandfather Diamondflame, who owns to several thousands of years. Where did this power come from? Who had placed it here?

I took a deep breath. The scent of the power entered my nose and burned, making my eyes water. I tried a smaller breath and thanked the Dragongods that Afra carried rotting food. That stench fought the magic’s scent. I took three steps. That strange power thrust at me, trying to stop me. I whistled at it softly, pushing back with my own air-carried magic. My power balanced against that older one as I walked forward.

Three feet. I slammed into a solid wall of magic that flared a hot white in my eyes. My softer whistle did nothing to that. I was too impatient to work my way up through lesser whistles. I used a mid-level squawk, good for shattering drawbridges. It was enough, too, for this barrier, which melted. I walked on into a third magic that poured down between two rocks, a flash flood that blazed green with red and blue sparks. I had no time to think. I yowled at the top of my lungs, fearing what might happen if I failed.

The flood vanished.

Far in the distance I heard humans cry out, demanding to know what was going on. (I heard them talk later about a leopard.) High in the mountains to the east, beyond the humans’ sense of hearing, I heard a rockslide. I cringed. If Daine shaped her ears to those of an animal that heard well, I was in
serious
trouble.

When nothing more happened and no humans came, I went on, following my nose. The scent of rotting garbage led
me to a cave set in a mass of orange stone, partway up a black rock divide. Its opening was tucked around a bend in the trail, easily missed if no one knew it was there. Flat stones lay before the cave, so no footprints would ever give a dweller away. Light from a lamp or candle shone from its depths. She had to feel safe there.

I poked my head inside.

She gasped, then cried, “Monster! Get out!”

She was quick to find a rock and throw it at me, painfully quick. It struck my head. I ducked out and waited, holding my paws to the nasty bruise on my forehead. After a moment, I shielded myself in protective spells and looked inside. She screamed and threw a blaze of her Gift at me. I backed out again. Her Gift had not touched me, but I understood why she was so frightened and why she needed any food that she could find. Her baby had begun to cry.

It was time to think matters through. Turning what I now knew over in my head, I returned to the imperial camp. I needed to obtain a few things.

I had just come back from my scavenging when I heard Daine and Numair. The long talk was over; they were returning. I smoothed a layer of spells over the items I had procured. When my mage parents looked at my nest of blankets, they would see only the back of the tent behind me, not the other things. It was tricky to work out something that would fool Daine and Numair, but I’d done it.

They would have been glad to help if I had let them know about Afra, but they always helped. I didn’t need that. I wanted to do it by myself, in part because I was bored, in
part to prove to them—to myself—that I could. I needed something of my own to do. If I had not tamed Afra by the time we had to leave, I would let my parents know about her.

I curled up in my blankets and pretended to sleep just as they entered our tent. They spoke quietly while preparing for bed. They said that the villagers had told Emperor Kaddar about a number of problems. They were hard for local folk to handle all at once, but their emperor and his companions could take care of them easily, if they cared to do so. Kaddar had walked into the trap. Knowing Kaddar, he had seen the trap and entered it anyway. He and his men would seek a robber gang that operated in the mountain pass five miles to the east. Daine would see to illnesses among the village herds while Numair cleared the river channel of the waterweeds that choked it. I knew we might be there for as long as a week, even two. That would give me more time to work with Afra.

In the morning, when dawn just brushed the mountains and my parents slept, I tied my things in a small bundle. Disguised in the colors of barely lit earth and stone, I returned to the place where the boys had acted as if they were lost in a maze of boulders.

When the first shock of alien magic crackled against mine, I was ready. In the pale light, I saw it only as a blurring of everything that lay beyond. From sandy earth with its patches of scrub brush to the black mountain stone, the strange power remade it into softness. It gave this land a more forgiving face.

When I touched it, the magic ran over my scales. It felt different than it had the night before. This time it was like a
thousand tiny hands explored me from crest to tail tip. I banished that thought. Grandfather Diamondflame and Numair would scold me for letting imagination color what I observed. I walked slowly into the magic’s growing resistance, seeing the boys’ tracks from last night and then my own footprints, off to my right.

Next I met the second, more resistant wall. I didn’t see it. I simply walked into it and felt it give a little as I stopped. Again there was something new, like a pause, as if the magic waited to see what I would do. I shook the peculiar thought from my skull. It was a leftover from sixteen years among humans.

I had spent the night considering my encounters with this magic. I did not want to risk using sounds by daylight, for fear of drawing attention. If the villagers got frightened enough, they would call on Kaddar, who would call on my foster father. When Numair found this magic, I would no longer have the riddle to solve for myself. I didn’t doubt that my papa could probably shatter these barriers easily.

Resting a paw against this barrier, I called up the spell I had prepared and blew it forward. The only sound I made was a long, soft hiss. The magic flowed out between my teeth, eating the barrier like acid. It vanished before my spell could devour it all, and I went forward with my bundle.

I was ready for that third defense, the flood of magic, but it never came. Had I exhausted it last night? I wished I knew who had set these protections. Surely whoever it was had died long ago. Perhaps the mage had been an Ysandir, one of the ancient race alive at the same time that human civilization was beginning to grow. That might account for the
total strangeness of the magic’s feel. It did not account for Afra’s ability to pass it without effort, however.

With no more barriers to fight, I found a hidden place near the cave where I left my bundle. I reviewed my plan. After last night, I knew I could not rely on the cute tricks that worked with those who knew me best.

First I had to investigate. I wrapped myself in silence, then climbed up into the rocks and over to Afra’s cave. She would not hear my lightest claw scratch or the slide of my scales. Then I positioned myself above the entrance to listen. It was so delightful, where I lay. Unlike the black rock, this orange stone was fine grained and warm, far warmer than it should have been with sunrise just begun. I had an odd fancy that the stone was breathing, which was impossible. Grandfather Diamondflame would have scolded me roundly for so foolish an idea. Yet I could not stop myself from stroking that warm stone like a pet as I listened for what Afra might be doing deep within her cave.

Light smoke flowed up from the entry and over my nose. I sniffed: mint tea. Other smells disguised those of rotten food: garlic, ginger, and onion. I smelled another thing, one I knew from the times after Daine gave birth to my human sister and brother. It was mother’s milk. Afra was nursing her baby. She would not be leaving her hiding place right away.

I backed away from the cave entrance, then halted. I wanted to stay right there, spread over the warm and breathing stone. I didn’t understand. I was no lizard, to doze my life away on any sun-washed rock!

Finally I ordered myself to stop being a fluffbrain, a
word Daine often used. I went back to my bundle. From it I chose some of the food I had stolen and carried it to the front of the cave. There I left my offering: a small goat cheese, dates, olives, and several rounds of bread.

Then I returned to my hiding place, sheltered by chilly, normal black rock. I could not hear the sounds inside the cave as well as before, but the black stone did not give me strange ideas, either. I drew my camouflage spell around me, just in case, and waited.

Soon I heard Afra’s footsteps as she came to the cave’s entrance. With my camouflage in place, I eased up to a spot from which I could see her. She stepped into the daylight, sure of the power that hid her retreat in the rocks. She was so confident that she almost crushed my gift before she saw it was there. Then she jumped back into the cave, vanishing into the darkness.

I waited. Soon she returned, crouching in the shelter of the cave’s mouth, peering around like a frightened creature. She had a rock in each hand. Only her head moved. She was listening for any noise.

In the distance I heard the village goats and sheep as their shepherds took them to graze in the lands not hidden by the barriers. A rooster in the village suddenly remembered that he had duties of his own. As he cried his name, other roosters joined in.

Afra’s eyes strayed more and more to the bundle of food. I wondered if her nose was as dead as most humans’ or if she could smell the cheese, at least. I scolded myself for not bringing hot meat. She would have smelled that.

She licked her lips. She
could
smell the cheese.

Slowly she put down her rocks. She rubbed her hands as her Gift moved into her fingers. She wasn’t able to do magic without some gestures, then. For anything subtle, she would need to write the signs in the air. She would require special herbs, oils, or stones for more. Did she have them? It would be good to know.

She wrote a sign for safety before her face. In the sunlight I could see the color of her Gift at last. I rocked back on my heels. Afra’s sign was shaped in pale blue light, outlined in pale green. I nearly whistled my excitement, then caught myself. None of my human friends except Papa had magic in two colors. Numair’s books spoke of such people, but he said he’d never met anyone else. He would be so glad to meet Afra once I had tamed her!

Had she borrowed her baby’s power? I asked myself. Perhaps
this
explained how she had passed through the magic that turned the village boys around, but not her.

Afra completed her spell and set it in motion. It fell onto the food, oozing over it. Within a breath it had vanished, sinking into everything. The scales stood on the back of my neck. I hoped it wouldn’t harm the food. Cheese in particular reacts badly to some kinds of magic.

Afra waited, looking all around, still wary. Then she darted forward, seized the food, and ran back into the cave. I guessed that if her spell didn’t react, it proved there was no magic on the bundle. I could not see her, but I could hear as she thrust a handful of something into her mouth and chewed. She continued to eat greedily out of my sight as I
slowly took the remainder of my stolen goods from my bundle. Daine and I had cared for many starving creatures, so I feared I knew what came next. I had hoped Afra would have better judgment than to stuff herself right away, but I had been wrong. Carefully, retracting my hind claws so they would make no sound on the stone, I carried my next offering to the cave’s entrance and left it there. Then I ran back to my hiding spot.

I was just in time. Afra raced from the cave, her hand to her mouth. She made it to a pocket of sand in the rocks across from me before she spewed everything she had eaten. I cursed myself silently. I should have given her just a mouthful of food to start. She had been living on
garbage
, and I had given her a meal of good fruit and cheese.

She stood there, her back to me, after she’d finished the last of her heaves. I could see bone against her skin where it was not covered by her garment. How was she feeding that baby? She must be giving everything to it and keeping nothing for herself.

A blade of pain stabbed me, an un-dragon-like hurt. Diamondflame says that sentiment is weakness. Maybe I have been among humans for too long. Or maybe I can never forget that my birth mother had given everything for me.

Finally Afra straightened, wiping her mouth on her wrist. She knelt and buried her vomit well. I wondered if the magic kept wolves away, if there were wolves in these mountains. I knew there were leopards. Did she use her spells to protect the cave at night, or did the strange magic keep the large killers away, as it did humans?

Afra stumbled back to the cave, unsteady with weakness,
and halted when she saw my new gift. She turned. Now she had to know that I had been close, to put that food there, and that maybe I was still close, watching. She scanned the rocks and the ground, searching for any sign of me. I had not left her even my footprints as clues.

It was my first chance to give her a good look. She had the bronze skin of the northern Carthakis, snapping black eyes, and coarse black hair that she tied back with a shred of cloth. She was young and so thin, with strong muscles that stood against her skin. She was trembling, though I could not tell if it was from long weakness or from just vomiting.