Dragon's Cage

by Daniel Potter

"Don't be stupid, she can barely breath, she's got some kind of asthma, you can hear it. We'll each take an arm and a leg." Raiju moved beside her and Gama mirrored him.

  "No priests." Yaki manage to groan as they picked her up and carried her to a back exit. The carriage that Gama had brought waited there. Yaki caught a glance of Chimon before the world started to unspool.

  A gray fog separated her from the world. Like a mask but not one she had any control of or even see through. The hot breath of the Death Panther flowed over the back of her neck. Yaki wondered if she had crossed over some invisible line and the spirit readied to snatch her into the dark.

  "I'm not ready yet." Her own voice drifted through the gray.

  "I have no more seeds of life to offer you." The words were soft. Tugging gently at Yaki as if trying to pry her loose.

  A figure moved in the dark, Amber eyes flashed. "Coyote!" a voice howled from it, A familiar voice.

  "Mother." Yaki heard herself whisper.

  "Coyote!!" The eyes flashed again and the vision brightened, to see Madria stumbling forward over a dune of grinning bones. Foam dripping from her mouth as a rabid animal. Pale light bathed the world in which she trudged. As she howled to her god, her eyes flashed with inhumanity.

  "She is alone, searching for a way back from where the moon now dwells. Will you go to her? Is that the place you wish me to take you?"

  "No."

  "Why not? Is she not your family who comes first? Where else wish to dwell with in last rest?" The Death Panther prodded.

  "Do wish to go to the city that lies beneath the Golden Hills? Will the Sun Emperor welcome a traitor to his living memory?" The Panther's tone mocked her gently, and a Yaki felt a wet nose caress her neck. As a mother cat might nuzzle a kitten.

  "No." Yaki felt her chest heave. A sharp Ka-Clank snapped through the darkness.

  The Death Panther chuckled. "It appears you still have time to decide after all. Bring me honor Yaki of Madria for I walk beside you. Deliver your enemies to me and if your choice is mercy, give them tools to live properly."

  As a shadow before the sun, the Death Panther left. Yaki felt herself rising. Toward something she did not know.

  Chapter 21

  Hawk groaned and rubbed her full belly as she lounged outside the tent she and Sparrow had been given. It would be impossible for her to stretch within it without bringing it down on poor Sparrow's head. They had offered her one of the chief's much bigger dwellings but she had refused, claiming only the status of a traveling warrior. Anymore than that and they might try to convince her to stay. They would probably try anyway.

  "Crrk? Crrk?"

  "Yeeeep!" Hawk opened an eye to see Shiny Boy who actual name was Stag's run standing very still as Blinky circled curiously. "Nice spider. Good boy." He spoke in a high pitched voice as you would to one of the long and limber dogs that roamed the camp.

  "He can't hear you when you speak like that." Hawk smiled, you have to shake the ground with your voice. "Blinky." Hawk lowered her voice to a rich deep octave. The spider whirled around to look at her. Hawk pointed at the log next to her. "Come."

  The spider blinked, eyes closing and opening in a wave as his considered the command for a moment, half turned back to Stag's run as if to say, "But... person!"

  "Blinky come here." Sparrow spoke from the flap of the tent, emerging with a steaming mug of something in each hand.

  The spider obeyed immediately, scuttling over with happy clicks. Sparrow edged around him and maneuvered himself on to the log besides Hawk. After handing off one mug to Hawk, Blinky scuttled onto Sparrow's lap to receive scritchings. Poor Stag looked as if he had forgotten himself and openly stared at the spider who thought itself a dog.

  Hawk sniffed at her mug, which contained a green frothy mixture with a few bark chips floating on the top. "Do I want to know what's in this?"

  He coughed twice, each one a stab at urge to stay with these people a while longer. "It’s tea, or nearest local equivalent I could cobble together."

  Taking a sip, she found the brew a bit bitter but it had a smokey spice that she found quite agreeable. "Heh. I like it. It’s no Worthmire but it will do."

  Sparrow chuckled, "No it is not Worthmire. But I say it does the trick." Sparrow leaned against her as memories danced between them.

  Stag's Run had found his nerve in the meantime and approached with a bow. "Honored Swooping Hawk and Sparrow. I greet you in the name of the deer clan of the Two Herds” He spoke formally in Golden Hills Japanese before rising.

  "I see you Stag's Run there is no need to bow. We are friends now." Hawk answered and the man relaxed a hair.

  "Then you will join us in the hunt tomorrow morning? It is a day's hunt and by sundown the chiefs will be here and wish to honor your deeds further."

  "Oh no, more feasting after that gruel in the mountain my system will go into shock." Sparrow said in Low River speak. Hawk elbowed him gently, electing a small cough.

  "It will be an honor to join your hunt. It has been far too long." Hawk answered, trying not to sound too eager.

  After a few more pleasantries, Stag's run bid them goodnight and retreated toward his own lodgings.

  Sparrow burst into a coughing fit. Instinctively Hawk rubbed his back until it passed.

  "After the chiefs we'll be granted passage to move on. We'll make our way back to the Golden hills and sign on another ship." Hawk said.

  "While you're hunting I'll see if I can get a peek in that big black tent on the edge of camp. Maybe more crew are in there. Perhaps they already found the girls." Sparrow whispered.

  Hawk let out a long sigh. "The Fox Fire is gone Husband. We're better off free from that family. These last two years, she'd become less a Fox and more of the rabid mother bear with her twin brats on board. I wanted to leave a year ago after we raided the Wolf Whip and her leave no witnesses order."

  "Yaki has a good heart, she just needed to get out from under her mother. If we had made it to port..." Sparrow countered.

  "Bah, Yaki is cut from the same cloth as Madria was, you were not going to save her. If either of them have a shot at becoming honorable it be Ishe."

  Sparrow hmpfed, "Ishe is only honest because she's a terrible liar. She'd gut a child like fish if her mother told her to."

  "They're both horrible. That family makes us horrible." Hawk pulled her husband into her lap and hugged him close. Blinky gave a slight chirp of protest as he was dumped from Sparrow's lap.

  A moment of silence stretched between them, within it, all the blood she had spilled in Madria's name ran through her mind like a river. Most of it had dripped through her fingers unnoticed and unquestioned. Being on a tiny silver of wood floating in the sky turned every fight into one of survival. Questions only gnawed at her mind in the calm between killings with Sparrow's whispering snores on her breasts. Now with a but a few nights with the earth at her back and the voices of the trees lapping at her ears her heart had begun to churn through the choices she had made. Excuses that she had murmured to herself were ringing hollow.

  "We could go back?" Sparrow mused, his thoughts seeming to be in tune with hers. "I have been thinking about this. Our accounts are not empty," Sparrow smiled. "We could purchase a small lift wood barge and I can live above the town, like a kite."

  "I will not go back to serve those who commanded me to let you die." Hawk's set her jaw. "Not until Black Jave recants his dream telling."

  Sparrow leaned back into her, mustache quirking instead of resuming the old argument. Perhaps the All would punish her at end, or perhaps this really had been the path intended for her? Ten years of laying beneath Sparrow in absurdly tight little bunks as they criss crossed the sky. Regrets always circled, choices that she might undo but choosing Sparrow had never been one of them.

  The peace of their embrace broke as Sparrow body spasmed with a hacking cough. He sounded better than he had in the caves but it wouldn't last. A few weeks and he'd be miserable, a month or a so and he'd be fighti
ng for breath.

  The screams of the dying men and women echoed in the back of her mind as she looked up into the sky, the mad eye, the sole remaining fragment of the devoured moon stared down accusingly. Under Madria she'd been a disciplinarian and an oath bound butcher. Now... Now with Sparrow relatively safe, she had to whether or Madria's girls were worth the risk.

  "I can't beat a dragon Sparrow, not one of that size." She said, giving voice to her worries, "Not unless I have the Great Maker at my side. And those days are gone. Name any human and I will lay them at your feet but this flesh of mine still burns the same as yours." Hawk recalled those screams that echoed down the mountain. "They might be dead anyway."

  Sparrow's spectacles reflected the mad eye's sliver gleam, "No they're not. Yaki has the Death Panther walking with her love. You know what that means as well as I."

  Hawk spun Sparrow around on her lap and clutched at his shoulders. "Did you see her? Did you see the Death Panther?"

  Sparrow stifled a cough beneath a smile. "Hawk, The Death Panther and I have been dancing around each other for a long time now. I tasted her presence when I attempt to use Yaki's old name."

  Hawk hugged him close for a long moment before uttering a curse. "Rot and bones, I have to go back for them."

  "Heh," Sparrow patted her arm, "Better you figure that out now instead after walking halfway to the Golden Hills."

  "Are you mocking me?" Hawk narrowed her eyes.

  Sparrow picked up the mug of tea like slurry and slurped it through his mustache. "Never my dear. You always do the honorable thing... eventually."

  Hawk grunted, he gave her far too much credit. Honor or not, leaving Ishe or Yaki in the Dragon's clutches would be bad for everyone. Ishe understood sailing as if she'd been born to it, she'd be her mother's equal in a few more years. And Yaki's original destiny had been eaten by the Death Panther herself, a Deathwalker without a tribe.

  Things were moving, destinies were breaking, the Age could be ending. Is that because I refused to walk the path laid before me? Hawk wondered, before shoving the thought aside. The web of the All could not be understood by the likes of her. Her mind turned to planning. "We can travel up the river, among the High Tree Tribe I have a cousin, you'll be safe there. If I have to battle the dragon to free the girls you won't become a hostage."

  "Hawk I'm your husband, not your child." Hawk scolded, firmly prying her fingers off him, "I have the hospitality Two Horns hospitality. You cannot be accused of abusing it if you are not here."

  A scowl flashed over the Hawk's face and she looked up at the sky to hide it. In the fading sunlight the brightest stars were already out shining the sun. A sourness rose in her stomach. "If I go back I do not want to come back down here and carve through new friends."

  "I will see what can be done. I promise there will be no need to rescue me this time. Been there, done that." He kissed her with his wiry whiskers. "Come lets to bed." He took her hand and led her back to the tent for the night.

  Chapter 22

  Ishe coughed. Her throat burned as she drank from the edge of a sliver cup adorned with Yaz'noth's horned visage. The cool water did little to sooth it now, as she watched the half dozen pairs of eyes stare back at her through the bars. Sin and Mei had been joined by others of their caste over time. Through it all Ishe had told stories, she had started with the origin legend of the Low River Tribe. She'd drifted from topic to topic after that. Mixing in stories of priest hunting Yozi through the streets of the Golden Hills, the breaking of the Vahallan siege. As long as she didn't mention the Steward, they all remained rapt.

  Except two. "The dark one and the shining one really exist? They're out there somewhere?" Mie remained fixated on that first story.

  "No!" Sin leaned forward. "I want to hear about more about Vallahans! How do they throw lightning bolts? Lightning bombs sure but to aim an actual discharge." Sin gripped the cage bars eyes shining with excitement.

  "We're not here for you to figure out how to build more weapons!" Mei pried the smaller girl back from the bars and lowered her voice to a whisper, "We have to figure out how the pirate survived. Or do you want to die screaming when it’s your turn?"

  "It doesn't matter to me. I'm not taking the contract."

  "What?!" Mei shot a glance at Ishe and swallowed back whatever she had been about to shout at Sin. She shoved the girl back, Sin toppled to the floor with a squawk.

  "The twin exist or existed at least." Ishe croaked, unable contain her smile. "All manner of spirits exist in the world beyond this mountain. Have you ever heard your mountain speak? Or bothered to listen to your restless ancestors?"

  "My ancestors?" with a violent wrench, Mei's attention shifted from Sin to Ishe. "What do you know of the burial grounds? You've never been that deep in the mountain! Have you?"

  Ishe remembered the clammy air that hung heavy with oppressive sensation of unhonored dead as if that brief moment was etched on the inside of the skull. "During my sister and I's escape attempt we passed through the upper quarries.

  "Those are forbidden!" Mei said with a volume that echoed around the warehouse.

  Chuckling, Ishe smiled and took another sip of water. "They're not sealed. Even I heard those bones rattle and I'm not even a crystal singer." Ishe felt a pang of regret that she'd never acquired her sister's skill with spirits and crystals. She had always tended towards people and things one could touch. Watching what shop keepers did with their daily take, how to swing a hatchet or what mix of elemental crystals made for the largest boom. The kami were always there supposedly but the only thing she'd heard during meditation was the cry of her skin wanting to be itched.

  After that hot poker had met with her upper lip, no one had expected the Rhino to do anything more than be a brute. And now here she was, in a cage, dreaming of coyotes in a sea of bone. Mei and the other Tenths had taken her silence as a ploy for their attention.

  "What do you mean by crystal singer?" Mei asked.

  "He's coming!" A boy in the back hissed and the half dozen children before Ishe scattered into the dross of the Warehouse. There were multiple human size doorways that dotted the ramp down into Yaz'noth's lair. Most of these had ramps that led down or up to the passage. In the center of all these stood massive arc way filled with stone bricks. With the crack of brittle masonry, a taloned digit jabbed through the wall. A golden eye appeared at the hole. It immediately fixed on Ishe. "Oh thatss where they stashed you!" Yaz'noth voice had a hissing quality to it. "Gangway!" He boomed. A moment later he came through the wall, expending as much effort as Ishe would to walk through a paper screen. It crashed down around him and kicked up a massive pile of dust. Yaz'noth cleared it with a small flap of his wings as he sauntered through the opening. Dross crunched underfoot and winced. Shaking out his forefoot like a cat who just stepped in a puddle, Yaz'noth swept his gaze over the warehouse. "Oh the memories of this chamber. They had me dig this entire place out with my claws, they were nothing but nubs by the time I finished."

  It took Ishe a moment to realize the dragon was talking to her, well at least at her. "Poor you, being subjected to hard work for what? A few days at most? Maybe a week." Ishe had attempted to raise her voice but it would barely raise above a whisper. In the hugeness of the warehouse it carried all the same.

  Yaz'noth study the shelving in front of him that blocked his access to the rest of the warehouse. It didn't even reach his knees. He experimentally attempted to push a rack loaded with crates out of the way. The racks were much fuller than the first time Ishe had come through the warehouse. With hard scream of metal on rock Yaz'noth pushed a row of shelving off the side. "Was a full year and they pried off several of my scales and pressed pain crystals to my skin. About where you are was the first place they used them. The moment I realized they intended me to be a slave." He stepped over the rest of the shelving or tried too, his tail, less obedient than his feet smashed through a line of the shelves. "I didn't have the complexity to do anything about it at the time but I
do remember swearing revenge."

  Ishe snorted. "Well you got that. Congratulations."

  "I did." He grinned. Now over the racks of supplies he began to sweep the scattered piles of debris out of his way with his forelegs. It was an awkward motion and the Dragon conducted himself as if the floor of the warehouse were the icy surface of a lake in the spring thaw, testing each step before placing his entire weight on it. The mountain itself groaned ominously. Ishe wondered how long it been had been in the warehouse. He was staying well away from the area directly above his lair. In fact, he was clearing a spot for himself on the opposite side of the mountain. The ruckus of the tumbling dross made conversation impossible.

  Slowly the heads of the half dozen Tenth popped up from their hiding places and crowds of dragon sworn gathered at the entrances to the warehouse. In about a half hour he had cleared a circle nearly the size of his lair. Once done and now clearly performing for the onlookers, he spread his wings out to their full extent, bones popped with such pressure that dust and pebbles fell from the ceiling. Yaz'noth let out a massive sigh as he stretched out his body. "Should have moved up here decades ago."

  His wing span reached over Ishe's head. The coal black membrane shot through by veins that pulsed with intense light of embers. Ishe tried not to be impressed by the display but it hard not to be awed by a flying tiger bigger than most airships. Awe was better than thinking about the casual way he had killed half the Fox Fire's crew without any effort. Without even looking. That beam he breathed, how similar was it to an elemental lance. It scythed through people. Which meant it had been thinner and more focused. The best elemental fire lance would incinerate the entire torso. Ishe mind ran through the naval implications of that beam. Assume it could reach farther than an elemental lance. How many ships could he take out before he was over whelmed by cannon fire? How many earth shells would it take to bore through his hide? Even not knowing precisely. She knew the number would be greater than one or two.