Voyage of the Basilisk : A Memoir by Lady Trent (9781429956369)

by Marie Brennan

  Suhail nodded. “I had not told anyone about this, until you. I do not want hunters tramping through here trying to kill it.”

  He stopped us then and pointed at the last pyramid, lying some distance out from the others. “Near the peak—two tiers down—do you see?”the feathered serpent

  At first I did not. We were too far away, and the thick vegetation acted as both cover and camouflage. But I followed Suhail’s pointing finger, and then, indeed, I saw.

  The quetzalcoatl lay along the stone tier of the pyramid as if it were a great bed, its body curling through and around the surrounding growth. Its feathers gleamed iridescent green in the sun, the same shade as the quetzal bird from which it took its name. I estimated it to be at least five meters in length, quite possibly more.

  Could the creature hear us at this range? I had read what was known about quetzalcoatls, but there had been no mention of the quality of their hearing. In a low voice, I asked Suhail, “How close can you get before it flees?”

  QUETZALCOATL

  He shook his head. “I haven’t really tried. The first time, I stumbled on it by accident. I was at the base of the pyramid.”

  Then I could get closer. I spent a few moments studying the beast through my field glasses, then picked my way with care across the rough ground, not wanting to trip and startle him off. To my chagrin, I discovered that approaching closer was of very little use; I could hardly see anything at all through the bushes and trees that had taken root along the pyramid’s sides. If I wanted to see more, I would have to climb—and surely that would provoke it into fleeing.

  I considered what I knew of them. Crepuscular hunters (as many dragons were), and flightless. If I contrived to be atop the pyramid before it came for its midday nap, could I observe it from above?

  I could indeed, though Suhail was astonished when he heard I wanted to try, and Tom insisted on standing ready with a gun in case the creature noticed our presence and took offense. It required a dreadfully early start the next morning, not to mention a trip through the forest in the dim light of dawn, but the climb was the worst part. We identified the path by which the quetzalcoatl usually ascended, then made our way up on the far side, so as not to leave a scent trail that might alarm it. Since our quarry had chosen the easy route for its ascent, that perforce left us with a more difficult one. But once atop the pyramid, we were able to build a blind, and from there observe the thing to our heart’s content.

  Thanks to these efforts, which continued over the next fortnight, I was able to tell Suhail that his site had only the one draconic visitor, and that she was female. (Males possess a patch of red feathers on the throat beneath the head, which this one lacked.) I never did discover where she spent her nights; it was not at the ruin, and we could not track her well enough to find the location. But she was atop that pyramid more days than not, and I came to know her rather well.

  This, perhaps, is why we did not shoot her. At the time I named other reasons, chief among them the fact that her return to an area from which her kind had been driven was a good thing, one I did not wish to undo. We also knew the skeletal details moderately well, for while the bones of a quetzalcoatl are delicate, they do not decay as those of true dragons do—this being one of the chief arguments against classifying them as dragons.

  And yet I was not sure. We gathered feathers she had molted where she lay, and haggled with a local hunter for samples from the quetzal bird. At the hotel one evening, I sat fingering them both. “They are so alike,” I said to Tom. “I look at these and think that Miriam must be right—that dragons must be related to birds. And yet, if that were true, why should there be only one breed that exhibits feathers? Unless we count the kukulkan as a second—but by all accounts, it is as like the quetzalcoatl as a crested quetzal is to a resplendent one. And drakeflies, I suppose, if we stretch the family tree to include them. Conversely, if dragons are not related to birds, why is there a feathered breed at all? Why should they not all have scales?”more taxonomy

  Tom was conducting repairs on one of his boots. Indistinctly, because of the needle clamped in his mouth, he said, “Perhaps they aren’t dragons at all.”

  It was the simplest answer. After all, what grounds did I have for calling them dragons? A serpentine body and a draconic head, the latter quite unlike the head of either a snake or a bird. But they had no extraordinary breath, their bones did not decay, and they lacked limbs entirely, let alone wings. Yet sea-serpents had only fins as forelimbs, and wyverns had only hind limbs and wings. Which created the possibility of a continuum, with the feathered serpents at the far end from, say, a desert drake.

  At which point I had to ask myself how such a continuum came to be. It made no sense. Primates might encompass everything from human beings to lemurs, but there were no ocean monkeys, no feathered gorillas. The very notion was absurd.

  Suhail mostly worked at the far end of the site, tramping across the rough ground with a methodical regularity that refused to let anything short of an entire tree divert him from his path. He was, he explained to us, attempting to map the old city—not merely the pyramids, which everybody knew about, but the smaller bits that were of interest only to him. Periodically he would stop and dig, and then on the trek home we would listen to his grandiose plans of hiring a hundred workers to excavate the entire site. “I’ll never do it, though,” he admitted. “Not for many years, at least. I am like you—I aim to circle the world and see it all. Only then will I know where to focus my effort.”

  When that day came, I was certain his effort would be formidable. He seemed incapable of exhaustion: he would labor all day at the ruin, pausing only to pray, then come back to Namiquitlan and teach Jake to swim. My son was already able to keep himself afloat, but Suhail taught him how to use his movements more effectively, how to protect his ears when he dove. This did much to reconcile Jake to being shore-bound; he spent half his day in the water, collecting shells and other marine life to show to Abby. “He isn’t learning what he’s supposed to,” she confided wearily to me, “but I can’t say he isn’t learning.”

  I shrugged, accepting it with philosophical resignation. “He already has a better education than I did when I married. The history and such he can acquire later.”

  He certainly had more than enough opportunity to pick up odds and ends of knowledge, for he was present in the evenings when Tom and I argued points of natural history, sometimes with Suhail in attendance. On those nights, our conversations often turned to the question I had raised before: the relationship between the Draconeans and the creatures they had worshipped, from which we derived their name.

  “They never domesticated dragons,” I said very firmly, early on in this debate. “Not as we have done with dogs or cattle. Domestication does not simply mean that you keep such animals around; it implies a host of changes, from the behavioural to the physical. Think of the differences between your average hound and a wolf. If anything similar had ever taken place, we would know, because domesticated dragons would still be around today.”

  The chairs in our rooms were sturdier than those on the verandah. Suhail had a habit of leaning back in his, the front legs slightly off the floor, while he alternately steepled and interlaced his fingers. I had seen him teasing delicate remains out of the ground with those fingers, and knew he could be very still and slow when he wished—but without something to excavate, he very rarely wished. Now he tapped his forefingers together, thinking. “They could have gone feral.”

  “But that is not the same as returning to their wild form. Besides, they would make dreadful candidates for domestication. Have you not noticed that most of the creatures we alter in such fashion are social? It is easier to domesticate a species that is accustomed to co-existing with others. They understand the concept of hierarchy and will follow humans as their leaders. But most of the bigger draconic breeds are solitary—or near to it.”

  Tom grinned. “And I have yet to hear anyone claim the Draconeans rode into battle on the
backs of fire-lizards.”

  Since fire-lizards are the size of small cats, the mere thought was laughable. Suhail grinned, too, but it was brief; he lapsed back into thoughtfulness. “Men have tamed cheetahs, though. Even to the point of sending the cats to hunt for them.”

  I was rapidly learning that he relished a good debate and was not afraid to throw himself fully into one, armed with whatever information he had to hand—and his memory was encyclopedic. Fortunately, he was equally unafraid of conceding the point when faced with superior knowledge. I said, “Yes, but taming is a different matter. A tame animal has merely been socialized to tolerate human contact, and perhaps a modicum of control. But the change is individual: its offspring will need taming all over again.”

  “Is it possible the Draconeans did that?” He waved a hand before I could respond, dismissing one interpretation of his question. “I mean from a biological perspective. The practical considerations are another matter. Can dragons be tamed?”

  “It isn’t as simple as that,” I said. “I can’t answer yes or no. Much depends on which breed you mean, and what degree of effect you require before you would call the creature ‘tamed.’ In Bayembe, the oba keeps savannah snakes on chains. The Moulish have ways of shepherding a swamp-wyrm where they want it to go. But none of that is comparable to, say, a falcon on your wrist, hunting at your command.”

  The conversation devolved then into a discussion of the different draconic breeds and their characteristics, which might make them more or less suitable for taming; and this topic we revisited many times over subsequent days, interrupted by digressions onto matters ranging from Draconean architecture to survival tactics while out in the jungle.

  Suhail was a fascinating man to converse with. His intellectual curiosity matched my own, but his field of knowledge stretched in different directions, intersecting with mine in just enough places to give us common ground on which to range. I have written before about my growing sense of myself as a scholar; those conversations in Namiquitlan were an affirmation of that truth and, in a small way, consolation for the temporary loss of the Flying University. It is a wonderful feeling to have one’s brain stretched and tested, to know both that one has knowledge, and that one is gaining more.

  So congenial were those days that I felt quite regretful when the time came to bid Suhail farewell. I could have stayed for six months in Namiquitlan, studying the local quetzalcoatl and searching the region for others, but the rest of our journey beckoned, along with our obligations to our various financial backers. “If you should find yourself in Scirland,” I said, “then do not hesitate to seek me out. I am easily found.”

  Suhail wrinkled his nose. “Scirland’s Draconean ruins are not very interesting.”

  “True,” I said, and chided myself inwardly for feeling so crestfallen. I knew from my previous expeditions, and especially from the peripatetic nature of this voyage, that I would form friendships and then leave them behind. From the start, I had known that this one would not persist beyond our association in Namiquitlan. Yet knowing did not prevent me from wishing.

  At the time, I thought I concealed that desire well. As later gossip would prove, however, I did not succeed half so well as I might have hoped.

  PART TWO

  In which we encounter a wide variety of dragons and an even wider variety of problems

  SIX

  The perils of bureaucracy—Sabotage—My illiteracy—Dragon turtles—A matter of propriety—Jake goes for a ride

  There is a great deal I am glossing over in this account, of course. Some of it is documented elsewhere (such as in Around the World in Search of Dragons), but some of it is simply of no interest to anyone.

  Into this latter category I place the finer points of the difficulties we faced upon arrival in Va Hing, one of the great conquered cities of Yelang. Contrary to popular assumption, going on an expedition around the world is not merely a matter of obtaining a ship and charting a course. There are visas to be considered, and bureaucracy to navigate when those visas fail to arrive in time, expire too soon, or meet with blank stares on the receiving end. The politics of nations and their economic markets may interfere with your journey. In short, you may spend an appalling amount of time mired in stuffy little offices, trying to get permission to be where you are.

  I was fortunate in that the dragon’s share of this burden fell on Tom, not me. He had greater patience for such things than I did; but more to the point, he was male, and therefore more to be respected in matters of bureaucratic deadlock. I am not often grateful for the way in which my sex has historically been dismissed, but in this instance I must admit I was glad to leave the task of arguing to him.

  Tom was also more capable than I of reading the gentlemen on the other side of the argument. He spotted, as I would not have, an oddity in their conduct.

  “I think they know who we are,” he said, after another fruitless afternoon ashore.

  My afternoon had been spent in study; my head was full of dragons. I blinked owlishly at him. “What do you mean? Our papers give our names, quite clearly.”

  Tom shook his head, mouth opening to answer me. Then he glanced around. We were on deck; I was not about to closet myself in the coffin that passed for my cabin when I did not have to. All around us were sailors who might overhear. Tom put his hand on my elbow and nudged me toward the bow, where we might speak in something more like private.

  Once there, he said in a low voice, “I think they recognize our names.”

  Various scandal-sheets had made me notorious at home, but it was absurd to think anyone cared about such matters here, on the other side of the world. “There is no reason they should know us.”

  “Isn’t there?” Tom said. “We are in Va Hing, Isabella. And we are here to study dragons.”

  My jaw sagged loose as I caught his meaning. Several years previously, just before our departure for Eriga, the Marquess of Canlan had stolen our research on the preservation of dragonbone, and possible methods for synthesizing the material. We had never acquired proof—not enough to risk accusing him—but it would have brought little good if we had; the damage was already done. Needing ready money, that nobleman had sold the information to the Va Ren Shipping Association, based here in this city.

  “What should it matter if we are here?” I said, my bitterness no less for the wound being so many years old. “They have what they wanted. Let us conduct our research in peace.”

  “If they believed that was all we were here for, they might. But put yourself in their shoes. We might be using this expedition as cover for something else.”

  “Such as what? Espionage on behalf of Her Royal Highness?” The princess’ diplomatic mission had not yet arrived in Yelang, nor was she due to visit Va Hing, but that would not prevent excitable minds from spinning tales. More likely, though, what they feared was specific to us. “Do they think we will steal the notebooks back? There’s no point; by now they’ll have made any number of copies.”

  Tom’s eyes were grim and hard in his weathered face. “Sabotage.”

  I could not help myself; I let out a bark of laughter that attracted curious looks from the nearest sailors. “Would that I could! They greatly overestimate me, if they think I can do such damage.”

  “I believe the phrase is ‘better safe than sorry,’” Tom said, so dry it burned. “Even if we are innocent of such schemes, there’s no benefit to them in allowing us to wander about Yelang, looking at dragons. So they’ve taken steps to block us.” Then he stopped, sighing, and ran both hands over his hair, smoothing it back into place against the constant lifting of the harbour wind. “At least, I think they have. This seems like too much of a bureaucratic—”

  He caught himself before he could use whatever term he intended; I expect it was very foul. “Too much so for chance,” I said, with a sigh of my own. “Very well. How do we circumvent it?”

  Tom’s mouth twisted. “Money. Isn’t that the way of bureaucrats everywhere? Either they’ve on
ly been told to refuse us—not paid to do so—or they weren’t paid that much. One of them was distinctly hinting that he’d be amenable to a bribe.”

  If they had indeed been paid, then apparently the going rate for keeping Scirlings out of Yelang was higher than it had any right to be, for our bid had to be even higher. The sum was enough to make me quail. “This … will not do anything good to our finances,” I said in my cabin, staring down at the ledger.

  “It’s that,” Tom said, “or give up on visiting Yelang entirely. Or ask Aekinitos to put us ashore in a longboat along some uninhabited stretch of coastline, and hope no one asks for our papers.”

  Aekinitos would have done it, I had no doubt. I had no desire to risk arrest in a foreign country, though. Among other things, it would cause great embarrassment for Princess Miriam’s diplomatic mission, which should soon be arriving in Yelang—and I was already in bad enough odor with His Majesty’s government. “Then we pay,” I said. We would worry about the consequences later. I could try selling my art in the market square, perhaps.

  Tom conveyed the bribe to the necessary officials, and we received our stamps. After all that trouble, I had half a mind to seek out the Va Ren Shipping Association and see if I could interfere with them somehow. Common sense asserted itself, however—the aforementioned lack of desire to be arrested, not to mention that I had no idea where in the city they were—and so, as always, we turned our attention to dragons instead.

  * * *

  One of the first things I did was scour the bookshops of Va Hing until I found a volume on the Yelangese taxonomy of dragons, which is quite different from our own. At least, that was what I hoped it was: there were very fine woodcuts of dragons in it, and I had brought along one of the sailors from the Basilisk, who could read a little Yelangese. As I have said before, I am not much of a linguist, and Yelangese characters had defeated me entirely. I could learn their shapes well enough, but my mind persistently failed to link those shapes to sound and sense.