Neither traveler said anything for a long time afterward.
The ground beneath them that evening had changed from well-watered, black-dirt farmland to wetlands alive with thousands of south-ward-migrating birds settling down for the night. When Retruance tried to engage them in conversation for news of the rogue Dragon, they scattered away and filled the air with hysterical squawking and screaming.
“Brainless birds!” snapped Retruance irritably.
“They’ve been frightened,” guessed Tom. “They’re flighty at the best of times, of course. But it may be they’ve been stirred up lately by your papa.”
The thought cheered Retruance considerably.
“The scent of Dragon is as strong here as it has ever been in years of searching,” he exalted. “Papa is nearby, I’m sure of it!”
“But there’s all kinds of places he could hide. It’s so vast! I’ve looked at the maps! It goes on for miles and miles.”
“More important, it goes on for days and days, at the rate we must fly now!” Retruance now sounded discouraged.
“Well, we’ll plug away at it, old friend. For the sake of the Princeling and Arbitrance, too.”
“Of course!” choked the Dragon, and he banked sharply, still quartering over the wetlands, checking the direction his renegade papa had carried the Crown Prince of Carolna over what appeared to be endless, empty swampland.
To continue after dark seemed fruitless, for they were close enough now, Retruance said, for his father to become aware of their presence.
“And if we stumble on him in the dark,” Tom agreed, “there’s no telling what the...your papa...might do to the boy. At best, he’d fly off somewhere else and leave us to do all our slow searching over again.”
Retruance agreed reluctantly and set about finding a bit of higher and drier ground on which to spend the night.
“Hammocks or hummocks,” said Tom with a yawn. “That’s what they’re called where I come from.”
“Swamp islands, rather,” said Retruance. “Look! That one’s big enough for a Dragon and must rise ten feet out of the water in the center. Perfect!”
When Tom looked over the Dragon’s brow, he saw a tiny point of light on its westernmost edge.
“Careful!” he warned. “It might be Arbitrance!”
“No,” the Dragon disagreed. “It’s a campfire like no Dragon would ever need.”
He alighted softly a hundred yards downwind of the fire and Tom called out, so as not to frighten the campers by appearing suddenly out of the deep dark under the tangled trees.
“Hoy!” came a reply. “Come up to the fire, neighbors! Supper’s just about ready and I don’t think I can eat it all myself.”
A tall, gangly young man dressed in plain leather leggings and fringed shirt that covered him from neck to knee, despite the humid warmth of the night, jumped to his feet when he saw one of his callers was a Dragon.
“Holy mackerel!” he exclaimed. “The Dragon!”
“Not the Dragon, probably,” chuckled Retruance, stopping just across the fire from the camper, “but a Dragon very interested in any other Dragon you might have seen recently.”
“We’re searching for a certain Dragon said to be hiding in these parts,” explained Tom.
“Come and sit by my fire! Spend the night, if you will. I haven’t had company or any news at all for weeks!” cried the young man. “My name is Findles of Aquanelle.”
Tom shook his hand and told him their names and origins.
“I teach agriculture and hydroponics at Queen’s College in Aquanelle—that’s in Waterfields,” the scholar told them.
“We’re good friends of Queen Beatrix, your patroness,” Retruance said. “In fact, we’re here on her behalf, in a way.”
He let Tom explain their mission while the scholar busied himself about the campfire, dishing up a savory crawfish stew on tin plates, and slicing bread baked on a metal sheet slanted before the hot coals.
“Yes, I’ve seen both the Dragon and signs of him hereabouts,” he said as they sat down to eat. “I saw him fly over low, just this noontime. He didn’t see me, I think. Mostly I work under the trees at the water’s edge. I’m tracing the sources of the waters that flow through Waterfields to learn if they are safe and perpetual.”
“Ah!” said Tom, his ears perking up with interest. “What have you learned?”
“It would immeasurably harm the whole kingdom if Waterfields should become too dry or the waters were dirtied. Swamp drainage is not always a good idea, but most of our good country people wish to do it to make new fields, as you might imagine.”
“Ah, about the Dragon?” asked Retruance to steer the conversation back to his papa. “Where is he now, do you know?”
“Oh, in his redoubt, I imagine, unless he’s flown out some other way. In the morning we can look and see if he is venting smoke. He smokes a lot, usually.”
“Redoubt?” asked Tom. “He’s built a fort here in the swamp?”
“Of a sort, yes,” replied Findles. “More bread? It won’t keep long in this damp.”
“Explain the redoubt, please,” asked Retruance patiently.
“Well, this area is called Sinking Marsh, as you may already know.”
“I didn’t know. Stinking?” Tom asked.
“No, Sinking—it’s a vast quagmire. The quicksands won’t bear the weight of a child, let alone a grown man—or a Dragon. Goes on for miles and miles to the south and west. Actually, it’s a welling-up place where underground springs come to the surface to form a very shallow, very broad river.”
“We have something much like that at home,” said the Librarian, thinking of Hidden Canyon Lake.
“I’m measuring the flow as part of my study,” the scholar went on.
“A fabulous lot of water is filtered through the sand here. Also this marsh serves as a natural reservoir upstream from Waterfields.”
“Interesting,” said Retruance politely. “How could Papa...this Dragon you’ve observed...have landed there, then, without sinking into the quicksands?”
“I’m not sure, for I’ve never seen him on the ground,” admitted Findles. “However, I’ve a theory he’s found or constructed a hummock in the center of it all. Would have to be something like that. Pile up logs and brush and anchor it with rocks brought from elsewhere, eh?
Take him some time, even for a Dragon...”
“A matter of five to ten years?” guessed Tom, beginning to understand what Arbitrance had been doing all those years since he’d disappeared.
“Yes, I’d agree with that. I’d have to examine it more closely, to be sure. Impossible to cross Sinking Marsh on foot, of course. And most boats just bog down because it’s too shallow. The sand is entirely satu-rated, you see. If you can fly like a bird—or a Dragon—you could easily reach the Dragon’s hummock, I’d say.”
“Poses us some serious problems,” Retruance said, considering.
“We’ll explore the area tomorrow, Tom. As you said, we can’t afford to startle Papa or he might—just might—flee again with the boy. He’s been enchanted to do such wicked things. No telling what his instruc-tions might be.”
Tom ate another slice of Findles’s excellent campfire bread and swallowed a cup of tepid, marshy-tasting tea. The scholar insisted the water from which it had been made was perfectly clean and healthful.
“We may need more than just the two of us to pull this off,” Tom decided as they settled down for the night.
Large, voracious swampland mosquitoes swarmed from the still water but such bugs were repelled by the scent of Dragon, Tom discovered. Their shrill whining and humming lulled Tom at last into a deep, exhausted slumber.
He fell asleep thinking not of the kidnapped Princeling or the rogue Dragon who held him captive, but of the flow of water down from the peaks of the distant Snow Mountains, down through deep canyons like his Hidden Canyon Achievement, and then deep into hidden aquifers beneath the Hiding Lands’ desert.
C
hapter Ten
Findles’s Hummock
“If I can smell Papa, Papa can smell me... if the wind changes to blow east to west...and it will! Winter’s coming on. Right now it’s quite still, but that won’t last,” Retruance muttered, more to himself than to Tom.
“Before we move farther, we must have Furbetrance here, too,”
Tom decided. “And I’d like to have Murdan handy, too. Someone must watch the far side of the marsh, in case your poor Papa decides to flee when we move in on him.”
“Furbie should be here any hour,” his Dragon Mount promised.
They’d broken their fast and were watching as Findles demon-strated the dangers of the quicksands by probing near the tangled edge of his hummock with a ten-foot bamboo pole. There was no firm bottom at that length, even close inshore, although it seemed, when one looked, rather shallow.
“Nor at three times this length, either, I assure you,” the young scientist said, paddling his flat-bottom canoe back to the firm soil of his hummock. “That’s as deep as I can probe with my present equip-ment.”
Tom nodded absently, “I want to walk over to the other side of your island this morning. I may be able to get the birds to tell me something if nobody else is around to scare them off, Retruance. White Shoulders taught me enough bird-tongue to make myself understood.
A lot of them already speak our Elvish, of course.”
“Fine with me. I’ll just stay here close to guide Furbetrance to us.”
Tom said to the scholar, “Tell me, how did you manage to get here yourself?”
“Ten to twelve miles to the east the quagmire is no more. I poled my flat-bottomed boat from drier, higher ground there. I keep my boat moored under overhanging bushes down the shore a way—well hidden. As I said, I don’t believe yonder Dragon is aware of my being nearby.”
Tom made his way through the heavy, thorn-spiked underbrush across the raised center of the island. Although the going was slow and the air was humid, it was not unpleasant as long as he watched his step. Hundreds of birds sang in the moss-draped live oaks, and lizards of bright yellow, red, and blue scurried hastily away at his noisy approach.
Many of the trees and bushes were fall-flowering and the scent of their blossoms was near to overpowering in the close air. In other trees—some sort of walnut, he thought—he saw what he took at first to be tiny monkeys. They turned out to be frisky, daring black-tailed squirrels—nibbling and gnawing at the brown or gold nuts that grew in huge clusters.
From a grove of smaller trees in the center of the island he plucked oranges of brilliant color and deliciously sweet and juicy pulp.
Exploring and quite enjoying this strange island setting, Tom reached the far edge of the hummock after a half hour’s stroll and found a sandy spot of beach among the cypress trunks and knees at the edge of the hummock where he could actually reach open water.
It looked so invitingly cool that Tom shed his clothing without hesitation and took a bracing swim. No birds, animals, or snakes approached him until he climbed out on a mossy-soft, fallen cypress log to let his skin dry in the light breeze and bright midmorning sun.
“I’ve never seen a grown bird with such an appalling lack of feathers,” he heard a large, long-legged, snow white bird with a long, curved beak say. Tom smiled and nodded to the bird but made no rejoinder, realizing how strange he must appear sitting naked and soaking wet on the log.
“An exotic of some sort?” another voice asked with a laugh.
The second speaker was a three-foot lizard of dark green with white and bright yellow spots down his back and around his throat.
The reptile flicked out a vividly orange tongue, captured a bluebottle fly, and swallowed it with a quick gulp.
‘‘Where are you from and what flock?” asked the white heron, fixing the young man with one beady eye.
“Not from around here, at any rate,” Tom replied. “From the north.
A place called Overhall.”
“Never heard of it,” said the white heron with a haughty sniff.
“But that doesn’t mean anything,” put in the lizard with a lazy grin. “You’ve lived all your life right here on this hummock!”
“Well, so I have and my mother and grandmothers before me,”
said the heron defensively. “It’s the best place in the world to be, when it comes down to that.”
“Care for a dragonfly, fledgling?” the lizard asked Tom politely.
“No, thank you just the same,” Tom replied, shaking his head.
“I’ve already eaten. Why do you call me ‘fledgling’?”
“It’s obvious you aren’t yet feathered and ready to fly,” replied the lizard.
“Oh, come now!” cried the heron. “How else could he get here?
Unless he was brought by the strange water-poke.”
“Actually, I came by Dragon,” admitted Tom.
“By what?” squawked the bird.
She just did manage to keep from toppling off the log by a wild flapping of her long wings. “Dragons eat whole flocks of birds at a gulp! Mama told me so, so I know it’s true.”
“Some Dragons do, perhaps,” said the lizard, chuckling. “But not the one whose been over in the middle of Sinking Marsh these past few years. That one eats nothing but big rocks and cypress pilings, I’ve heard.”
“I wouldn’t trust a Dragon farther than I could spit,” said the heron with a shudder. “But you say one carried you here, youngster?
How? Why? Did you manage to escape?”
“Easily told,” Tom said, and he launched into the story of the Dragon gone bad and the kidnapping of young Prince Ednoll.
“The thing is, what can you tell me about this Dragon? Is he living on a hummock in the middle of Sinking Marsh, as we surmise?”
“Well, I can tell you that, for I’ve flown that way several times this week,” said the white heron, twisting her head right about to groom her tail feathers with her long, yellow beak. “Yes, there is a hummock there—quite large, in fact—and he’s added rocks and logs to it, making it even higher and larger and drier. Planted grasses, vines, and full-grown trees, also. For shade, I suppose, especially now he’s got the man-child for a visitor or guest.”
“They’re all afraid to go closer than that,” said the lizard with a slow wink at the Librarian. “Chickens, all of ‘em!”
“Sir, if you weren’t my best friend, I’d...I’d...” sputtered the heron angrily.
“But you’ve never really overflown the hummock, have you?” the lizard teased her.
“Well, not in so many...well, no! But I’ve seen the Dragon up closer than anyone else, haven’t I?”
“That much is true,” said the lizard to Tom, who was dressing himself as he listened. “The beast surprised her while she was fishing one evening.”
“No way to get closer to the Dragon but by wing, I suppose?” the Librarian asked the bird.
“Unless you’ve an insane desire to be a Dragon’s dinner, you’re safe enough. There isn’t any other way except flying...oh, maybe by swimming.”
Tom considered her words for a moment.
“I wonder if I could get you to do me a favor. Nothing dangerous and it won’t take long, I assure you. To help us save the little boy. He’s captive to the Dragon, you see...”
“I suspected it already! At your service,” twittered the bird, waving a wing. “I love an adventure! Children need our protection, ‘specially here.”
The lizard snorted in derision and slid off to find some tasty snails to top off the bluebottle flies he’d eaten for lunch.
“Fly as close to the Dragon’s hummock as you dare,” Tom explained. “Come back and tell us what they’re doing, the Dragon and the lad. Look especially carefully at the little boy. Has he been harmed?
We must send word to his mother, the Queen of Carolna. And rescue him, if we can, my Dragon and I.”
The white heron wanted to hear the whole story in detail. When Tom had finished the tel
ling, she agreed without further questioning to take a look from aloft at the Dragon’s lair in the midst of Sinking Marsh.
“I’ll be back at the water-poker’s camp by sundown,” she promised, and, flapping her wonderfully long wings, ran across the shallows off the beach and launched herself into the midday sky.
Tom pulled on his boots, gathered a dozen of the ripest oranges and a bunch of yellow-green bananas, then retraced his steps to the other side of the hummock.
Furbetrance had arrived in his absence, and his brother was filling him in on the latest developments.
“The heron can tell us exactly what we’re up against, if she dares to go close enough,” Tom told them. “What’s for lunch?”
“Small-mouth bass,” announced Findles, proudly displaying his morning’s catch.
He set Tom to cleaning the fish while he built up the fire and chattered about current flow and water levels and taste and the fact that he’d figured it took a given volume of water several hundred years, at least, to seep from the northern mountains down to the marsh by way of the deep-buried aquifer layers under the Hiding Lands’ sand and the Cristol River’s stony bed itself.
There was little else the two Dragons and the Librarian could do at the moment, so they responded to Findles’s request for assistance, probing several places within the quicksand morass that he couldn’t otherwise reach in his boat.
“Out of sight of the other Dragon, of course,” said the scholar.
“Only sensible!”
Attaching his three ten-foot poles together end to end, Findles attempted to plumb the depths and determine the contours of the open marsh bottom under the watery sand and silt. From that he hoped to estimate the volume of water flowing into the reservoir from the north. Every fact he gained was carefully checked and jotted in a mildewed leather-bound notebook that never left his hands or pocket.
Despite their impatience to finish their mission, the Dragons and Tom found that the time flew by. Tom was especially interested in the estimates Findles had made as to where and how deep the aquifers lay under Hiding Lands.
Dragon Rescue Page 11
