by E. E. Knight
She waited until long after dark, hoping that Auron would return, galumphing out of the mountainside mists with eyes ablaze and a tail-thumping story of outwitting the elves.
She looked into the valley in the direction Auron had disappeared. Campfires dotted the area around the meadow where they’d come across the unsaddled horses. She heard no baying of hounds, saw no torches in the trees indicating a hunt still on. But Auron was quick, perhaps—
No. You’re alone now. They’re all assassinated.
Except Father. Gone north, to some dwarven fortress by a lake. The clouds thickened; another storm might be working up.
She couldn’t just leave. She and Auron deserved some mark to show they’d lived and breathed and seen. She went to the ledge where they’d watched Father fight the elves and dwarves. She extended a thick saa-claw and scored a pair of marks into the lee side of the stone.
Though she took her time, the result certainly didn’t match the fabled artistry of Silverhigh—it looked like something a bored blighter might carve into his cave wall: two dragons, mirror images, circling each other as though guarding the other’s back.
“We’ll always be together here, Auron. This stone won’t forget.”
She crept up the hill, moving away from the rocky prominence.
Going up a mountain can sometimes save you travel around its base, but that wasn’t the case for Wistala. Without a second pair of eyes to keep watch as she moved, she had to pause every hundred lengths or so, to watch and listen and pick a route for her next creep.
The cave also drew her from the heights. This time, instead of screaming, the mouth of the cave seemed to call to her. Home . . . home . . . home, the egg shelf, the trickles, the patches of moss and easily caught slugs.
And she had to know.
Perhaps at the last moment Mother had shoved Jizara into the chimney, the way she tossed Auron. Or both sides, having torn each other to pieces, had retreated to lick the blood from their wounds.
She hazarded an entry by the roof. The elves and dwarves would be less likely to watch the top. While difficult and tiring, it would be infinitely safer to go that way.
Once closer to the mouth of the cave, traveling through knots of creeper where a hominid could barely crawl and cling, she examined the ancient battleworks. Dwarves or blighters had broken up pieces of mountain and rebuilt them into walls and chambers, sealing them with something that felt—and tasted, she explored a crack with her tongue—like long-dried mud, only harder.
The view from the top of the cave mouth made her dizzy and disoriented. Not so much from the distance she could see even in the dark, for dragon eyes opened wide, or from the height to the rock spill below, but from the sense that she’d seen this view before. Sensory impressions from Mother, no doubt.
Below and at the bottom of the rock spill, a tiny campfire guttered with hominid forms sleeping around it. Woven bags containing some kind of prize gleaned from the fight—perhaps dragonscale? The nets were too widely woven to hold Father’s gems from the small hoard Auron had told her about and which she and Jizara had played with before greedily devouring. If a sentry watched the cavern, he was well concealed.
She reversed herself and entered the cave at slug speed. There were no end of grips for her probing sii and saa, and if her tail wasn’t so long as Auron’s, her rather stumpy limbs were a good deal stronger than his. The great hump of muscle on her back that would one day power her wings—assuming she survived the passage of the season-circles—took over when she clung to just rest.
Detritus of a battle could be smelled below. Dragonblood—dwarf loathsome reek!—and fainter scents like bruised mint-herbs that may have been elf.
The cave twisted and turned, and at one corner, she descended to the cave floor to pant and rest her muscles. She might have become lost on the way down, as the cave branched out twice, but thanks to the spatterings of dragonblood, the trail was easily followed. When she started to come across cave moss again, she returned to the ceiling.
She let out a hatchling mew—the noise took her by surprise—as she entered the cave, a tiny skulking shadow of one of Father’s glad returns with sii full of feast for his hungry hatchlings.
Alarmed at the noise, she spent a long time looking, listening, and smelling. Except for the odor of dragonblood and the faint foreign smell of dwarf, the cave smelled no different; indeed, it was achingly familiar, so much so that it was all she could do to keep from running to the egg shelf.
The familiar patterns of the faintly glowing cave moss pulled at her. How could the splashes of light remain unchanged when everything else had? It should re-form itself into spear points and daggers and arrows and—
Something lay on the egg shelf.
She lost her grip, didn’t even right herself as she plummeted, and only a patch of cave moss saved her serious injury.
The egg shelf shielded what lay up there. Most of it, anyway. She crept, mindlessly as a slug, toward the shelf. A broken ax-blade slid as she trod on it, and she froze, listening. Nothing but her own heartbeat answered.
She climbed up to the egg shelf.
It wasn’t Mother. It was mother’s size, certainly, but mother had skin, glowing green dragonscale that changed color as it rose and turned according to mood and body temperature.
Mother also had a head. And sii. And saa. And tail. And great leathery wings that could cover the whole egg shelf when extended. Not tendrils of cave moss exploring and thriving on what it found as it crept up her back.
She stood in the cave moss consuming Mother, engulfing her like a growing, grasping soft claw.
Wistala’s body no longer obeyed her. It jerked and shook as she walked, walked away, turned her back, and shut her nose to the sickly-sweet smell, tripping clumsily like a hatchling fresh out of the egg. She hurried to the trickle at the end of the egg shelf, sat under it, let water fall and wash her scales clean.
Then she saw her sister.
They’d done the same to Jizara, then tossed her on the dragon-waste pile. The thing that had been her sister was mostly obscured by devouring cave moss, but even moss couldn’t hide that the tail she’d once been so proud of, her lovely elegant tail. . . .
A shrieking, whistling cry came up her throat, and she didn’t care if the dwarves came again. Once her head was off, she’d have no more images of this, this butchery. How could her mind carry this for the remainder of her life?
She ran all the way to the egg shelf, where it turned into hardly a ledge, drove herself against the cave wall, vaguely aware of a racking sound coming from somewhere deep in her chest. She rubbed her fringe against a sharp rock. Some old scales were coming loose up there, and it would be just as well to be rid of them sooner, and the pain wasn’t bad at all; in fact, it was a bit of a relief as—
“Sister?”
Auron?
She looked off the shelf, heart leaping and body ready to join it—
And saw the copper. Thinner and more haggard than ever. The copper stood, leaning a little as he balanced on his crippled limb’s joint.
“They killed her, Jiz—” His voice was only superficially like Auron’s after all; he still had some hatchling inflections.
“I’m Wistala. You’re no brother to me. You had a tooth in this.” She felt her fanlike griff expand. Though she had no crest to rattle them against, they could still flutter angrily, she found.
“They lied,” the copper said, but she launched herself off the ledge, jaws agape and sii reaching for him. “A bloody cave, no hoard—”
He dodged as she landed, took advantage of her being off balance to throw himself across her neck. “We need to overcome this, put it behind. Unite. The past can’t be changed!” he said.
Wistala squirmed, couldn’t break free. She gathered her limbs under her body. “No. But it can be avenged.” She lifted herself with all four limbs and her tail, pushing forward.
The copper tipped.
And she struck him, sii, teeth, even dealt
shoulder blows, trying to tip him so his vulnerable underbelly would be exposed, gutted and thrown on the waste heap to feed the lichen!
She tried to claw at his eyes, but her sii just rattled off his crest and griff. She found something soft, drove her digits in with claws extended.
The copper squealed, so loudly that it shocked her into releasing him, vague memories of wrestling with Auron during one of his attacks triggering instincts—
Face smeared with blood, the copper scrambled away, striking her between the eyes with his tail as he turned so that she saw dragonflame explode for a moment. She shook her head to clear her vision, and he was gone.
Liquid gurgled and pulsed behind her breastbone, and she spat after him. Her fire bladder bile had a sharp, unpleasant smell, like vomit and sulfur.
She sniffed out the blood trail and followed it. The dribbles led her to the biggest of the cave pools, the one with the waterfall next to it. A fissure in the wall had been widened, and she saw a forgotten spike or two still resting in a piece of wall that had come down and fallen into the pool.
Had he gone to get the dwarves?
I’ll meet that cripple and his dwarves again when I have real dragonfire, instead of bladderbile.
But until then, she had to survive. She took a deep drink of the water from the pool; her brother’s blood could just be tasted on it. Or perhaps it was simply a loosened tooth from the fight. Wistala turned and left her home cave forever.
Chapter 7
Wistala used the walls and ceiling again on her way out, now sure of the route and good places to rest. She wasn’t afraid of being taken unaware by pursuit; the bloody-handed dwarves might as well bang their shields against the walls for all the noise they made.
She feared and hated them. It would be hard to say which emotion was the stronger—perhaps her fear, that she would end up another headless, sii-less, saa-less corpse robbed of life and skin itself.
Her body wasn’t equal to the anger she felt. It hung above her, vast and thick, like a storm cloud. One day she might be able to inhale that cloud, take it into her body and use it to fuel her vengeance for a butchered family.
One day. When I am strong. I’m too weak now.
Weak wasn’t the word for it, more like exhausted, drained . . . Every muscle in Wistala’s body ached as she climbed out of the cave. She inched forward as she emerged, not knowing what sort of help her brother might have summoned. Furtive creeping was her only defense. She wouldn’t be able to put up any more of a fight than a slug, thanks to her weariness and the cold despair in her hearts.
The smell of fresh air steeled her limbs and gave her a last burst. As she climbed up through the creepers at the mouth of the cave and squeezed into an old crack in the battlements, she felt as though her body was sloughing off her limbs to puddle beneath her. She joined it, slid down a rushing slide of fatigue, and slept.
Wistala awoke to alarm that she couldn’t smell Auron. The events of the previous day came back in a rush, along with the tumult of emotions. Not true emotions, rather echoes of them. The fear, the anger, the disgust, the despair all felt cold and dead and dark, leaving her spiritless.
Was it just yesterday she had lost one brother, and fought another?
I’m done for. The world’s too much for me. It’ll have me, too, in the end.
She would have laughed at the dreams of were-blood taken from the dwarves were it not too much effort. Never to smell Mother’s rich, comforting scent, spin gemstones on the egg shelf with Jizara, listen to Father’s approach with awe and a little fear at the bloody odors . . .
A beetle probed the dirt of a crack in the battlement above her eye. She could pick it with a flick of her tongue and crunch it down, but it still sought sustenance with the determination of one who knew only instinct. It knew nothing of doom or enemies or the vast indifference of this uncaring, friendless world.
“I shall be you for a time, beetle.”
The beetle hunted so that it might eat, unaware of its own near destruction. And so should she.
She crept out of the cold crack. Everything on her hurt, especially the gripping maniples of her sii. She got behind an old wall, or perhaps it was a paved path; it was wide and low, and thick brush almost turned it into a tunnel.
It was morning on the other side of the mountains, she guessed. Here the land lay shadowed and cold under a purple sky. The clouds above slowly warmed, and she took advantage of the twilight to explore a broken tower. From an arrow-slit next to a stony ledge, she examined the approaches to the cave.
No campfires. No dwarves. No hunting dogs. No men. Elves you wouldn’t see until their bowstrings sang your death. Some wide-winged birds circled above the woods and meadows; others sat on bare tree limbs with a good view of open ground, preening or keeping watch. Their behavior was regular: they didn’t suddenly change course or startle or cry out, as they would if hunters were prowling the woods. To the north, more mountains, a long line of them, snowy tops tinged with morning gold. Father was up there somewhere, but he wouldn’t even be a dot at this distance.
If he still lived.
Wistala sniffed the air, smelled mountain goat droppings in the grassy interstice filling the bottom of a rocky runnel. The beetle would no doubt find the clumps tasty. She preferred the source.
Wistala followed the smells at a slow stalk with a thoughtless—but not senseless—appetite.
Wistala didn’t need to follow the Bowing Dragon during the day, since the mountains appeared to run more or less north. She kept to the dead area above most of the trees but below the snow. Brilliant green moss the color of her scales covered every rock, evidence to some play of wind and weather that meant mists at these heights almost every morning and night.
While moving in open sunlight meant she could be observed, she’d rather see trouble from a distance than worry what might be around the next scraggly pine tree.
Water was plentiful—the mountains were shedding their winter weight of snow, and it came down in innumerable streams. The streams carried more than just refreshing water and bits of bark and leaf on a long journey down the mountain; they were full of tasty frogs that wiggled delightfully as they went down Wistala’s long throat.
By evening she’d crossed over two shoulders and had to face a decision. The mountains curved away west before going north again, and she could save herself a good deal of time by cutting across the valley, going the same distance in a quarter of the dragon-lengths. But it would mean plunging into thick forest. Trees could mean men, or worse, elves.
But trees also meant warm-blooded, furry, four-footed feasting, marrow-filled bones to crunch, and juicy eyeballs for sucking.
Appetite and the desire to hurry north, hopefully to find Father somewhere plotting destruction to the dwarves, won out over caution. She descended into the valley.
Patient trees waited for her. Soon she could see only slivers of sky around the tops of pines.
“Grounddragon look look!” a blue jay shrieked. It fluttered to a lower branch to scream at her: “Nestraider! Nestraider!”
Birdspeech made hatchling babble seem sophisticated.
“News! Dragon lives?” a swift answered from a nearby tree. Wistala couldn’t see it.
“Lives, lives, the grounddragon lives,” the jay called back.
“I won’t raid your nests,” Wistala said. “Why would it be news that I live?”
“Such news! News! Sparrow say grackle say thrush say elf-hawk say elves kill grounddragon,” the swift called.
“Nestraider! Nestraider!” the jay insisted.
“I will raid your nests if you don’t shut that thorn you use for a beak. When was this grounddragon killed, swift?”
“Not-today,” the swift answered.
Perhaps birdbrains had room for only two concepts of time: something that happened today and Everything Else. Auron might still live, somewhere. The birds might be gossiping about a killing in the area from weeks and weeks ago.
But she
wondered—and her fire bladder went cold. Could birds keep a thought in their singsong heads that long?
Mother said some elves understood birdspeech. Wistala didn’t want her comings and goings sung about through the whole forest. She knew she couldn’t convince them to lie. Then she’d have to come up with an alternative truth they could understand. “Good riddance. We not-dragons don’t like them.”
“Nestraider! Nestraider!”
“You look like a dragon,” the swift said, and Wistala finally spotted him sheltering in the notch between two thick branches. She’d seen him only because he raised his whitish chin to speak.
“No, I’m a not-dragon. Though we look a lot like dragons and are often mistaken for them, that’s why we hate them so.”
“Nestraider! Nestraider!”
“Not-dragons don’t raid nests!” Wistala said. She marched off into the forest, tail held high, exposing her vent to the still-screaming jay.
“I’ve met a not-dragon,” the swift bubbled. “The sparrows must hear of this!”
The next day she cut through another wooded valley and crossed a low rocky ridge in the middle of the forest. It was honeycombed with caves of assorted sizes and, unfortunately, empty nests. There was good snake hunting in the rocks. All she had found to eat in the forest was a white-eyed possum, which had been wandering around in the daylight in a muddled daze. It stank like disease, but she still ate it. Mother had said that the illnesses that plagued mammals wouldn’t affect dragons.
Snake hunting was all quickness, and it appealed to Wistala. One good thump behind the head, and a snake’s back was broken, leaving a thick feast that fit neatly down one’s throat. She got one bulging black-cave serpent that had recently eaten a large rat or a baby raccoon, judging from the size of the bulge in its midsection, thus giving her two meals with one jump.
