The Tropic of Serpents: A Memoir by Lady Trent (A Natural History of Dragons)

by Marie Brennan

  Swiftly I laid out for the others what I envisioned. “Can you warn the fort?” I asked when I was done. The Moulish carried out some amount of trade with the villagers along their borders; surely that was true along the bay as well.

  Those around me exchanged glances. “We can tell the camps in the east,” Rikwilene said. “But will the villagers listen?”

  The villagers, or the Scirling officials at Point Miriam. “If the message was from me…” I dismissed this thought before it was even complete. “They’d have no reason to trust such a claim. Even if they believed the words came from me, they would doubt my judgment.” Sir Adam would hardly be inclined to vouch for my reliability. And while I wanted to believe they would take precautions regardless, I knew they were just as likely to laugh it off. No one could assault Point Miriam through the Green Hell. No one.

  If I went in person, I might have a chance of persuading them. But the scouts were already in the swamp; the army could not be that far behind. My odds of making it the length of Mouleen before they mounted their attack were even worse than my odds of Sir Adam listening to a transcribed drum message.

  But there were people who would listen to the drums. And I had seen for myself how effective they could be, the day we found Velloin and Okweme trying to kidnap a dragon.

  I looked around the circle at the gathered camp, youths and hunters and elders, with the children slipping between legs to listen. “Please,” I said. “You can stop them before they even get to Point Miriam. You can save any number of lives in Bayembe. If you send a message to the camps—I have seen how strong your hunters are. You can fight the Ikwunde. Not head-on, of course, but from the shadows—”

  Even before I started, I knew it was a lost cause. Heads were shaking all around, men and women drawing back in disapproval. “This is a villager fight,” someone said; I did not see who.

  Ikwunde against Yembe, Scirlings interfering, Satalu in the wings. What did any of that mean to the Moulish? Even if the Ikwunde conquered Bayembe, enclosing the Green Hell on three sides, it would have little consequence for the people here. Oh, perhaps someday that would rebound ill upon them—but vague fears of “someday” would persuade no one to put himself in harm’s way. Indeed, from their perspective it might be better if the Ikwunde triumphed, for that would destroy or at least set back the Scirling colony, and take with it the plans for a dam above the Great Cataract.

  Not that the Moulish knew of the dam …

  “What does this mean?” Yeyuama asked, snapping his fingers.

  I stared at my hand. I had not even realized I had done that, so caught up was I in my thought. “It means I’ve had an idea,” I said slowly. “One I should perhaps share only with you—to begin with, at least. It concerns the dragons.”

  He nodded and beckoned the two fellows who had arrived with him to join us off to one side. “They are pure,” he said, when I looked quizzical. “I brought them for the ceremony, but what you have to say comes first.”

  I would have been happier sharing this only with Yeyuama, who at least was familiar to me. But I was in no position to object. “It concerns what those hunters said,” I told the three of them. “I needed permission to come here, from the oba of Bayembe, and he required a promise from me in return.”

  This tale I kept as short as I could, stressing at every point my ignorance in making that promise, and my apology for having done so. “But,” I said, and then took a deep breath. “If it is not wholly blasphemous to suggest this … then I think, should that bargain be kept, it would help save the forest from a very great danger. One your people are not yet aware of.”

  Explaining the dam was both easier and more difficult than I expected, first when I told Yeyuama and the other two, then again when I repeated my words for the rest of the camp. The Moulish understood dams well enough; they created their own in certain seasons, to aid in their fishing. But a dam large enough to control the Great Cataract? Nothing in the world could be so powerful.

  “I assure you it can,” I said, with all the conviction I could muster. “And if this is built, it will change your forest forever. No longer will the floods rise as before; the swamp will always be in its dry season. The waterfall itself will be changed, and Yeyuama fears what the consequence of that may be for the dragons.” This had not been in my original speculations, when I stood on the bank of the Hembi, for at that time I had not yet seen the queens in the lake. Yeyuama’s hands had trembled when the possibility came to him. After that, he had given his full support to my plan.

  I said to my assembled listeners, “If you stop the Ikwunde from crossing the swamp and attacking Point Miriam, I will tell the oba that in gratitude for your help, he must not build this dam. It will be an agreement between his people and yours, sealed by the giving of a gift. The specifics of that gift are a matter for the pure, but I truly believe it will gain you this man’s friendship. And that friendship will protect your home for generations to come.”

  They needed time to consider it, of course. Such a thing could not be decided on a whim. I chafed at every minute of delay, but Yeyuama took pity on me; he and the other two pure drew me aside for the ceremony acknowledging my safe return from the island, which also served as distraction.

  It should have been done on the bank of the lake, but we could not spare the time to go there. They built a hut away from the camp, then put me inside it with a small fire, onto which they threw the leaves whose scent was so reminiscent of a swamp-wyrm’s extraordinary breath. It was the same material used on the fire the hunters passed when leaving camp, but whereas they were only required to walk through the smoke, or perhaps scoop it onto themselves with their hands, I was left inside the hut until I nearly asphyxiated. When Yeyuama finally let me out, I was glad enough of the fresh air that I hardly minded his insistence that I strip naked (yes, in front of all three of them) and bathe myself in a quiet and predator-free part of the swamp.

  “The smoke purifies us,” he said when I was done and clothed once more. “Nothing can undo the harm caused by that first death, but we come as close as we can.”

  Yeyuama’s distraction had served its purpose, with pefect timing. A boy came running up just then, summoning the four of us once more back to camp.

  The other pure were drawn into conversation briefly after we returned, while I waited apart. Then I was beckoned over, and Rikwilene delivered their answer. “You speak wisdom on some things,” the old woman said, “and foolishness on others. We will not attack the Ikwunde.”

  My heart sank. All that hope … but this was too much to ask of them, and the possible reward too uncertain.

  “Our hunters can be hunters of men when there is no other choice, but what you ask—for us to stop their camps so directly—that would only result in death on both sides. But,” Rikwilene said, and my breath stopped, “we have agreed to try other ways.”

  On the instant, my imagination filled with new possibilities, each one madder than the last. The hunter Lumemouwin stopped me, though, with a cautionary hand. “You do not know the forest, or our people. Not well enough. We will be the ones to make these plans.”

  He was right. I was no tactician, nor was I Moulish; I did not know how they might be most effective. What I had to offer was information, and assistance with the world outside when this matter ended. “If it would be useful,” I said, “I can tell you things about Point Miriam, and the weapons the people on both sides carry.”

  Yeyuama laughed. As tense as I was, it shocked me that he could be so cheerful. “We will have to think how to translate that for the drums, but yes. And you can do more than that. You are one of the pure now.”

  As pure as a hut full of foul smoke could make me. “Yes,” I said. “The promise I made—”

  “Not that,” Yeyuama said, grinning. “Come. This, too, is only for a few ears.”

  * * *

  The ears in question were those of the pure: those who had qualified themselves to “touch the dragons.”

 
That category, you may note, does not include your ears, nor your eyes neither. (Unless you have undergone that test yourself and passed, in which case you will not need me to tell you what I am about to omit.) As before, I will speak only of those things which I believe are safe to be shared with others, based on the judgment of my more experienced Moulish counterparts. I may have gone to the island and returned, but that was only the barest part of what it meant to join their ranks.

  “If we move the eggs now,” Yeyuama said when we had drawn apart, “they will hatch early. And then they may feast upon those who come into their waters.”

  I received these words in wide-eyed silence. He spoke the way my parents’ housekeeper in Tamshire might, suggesting that it would be advisable to shift the winter shutters into position a few weeks early. As if “moving the eggs” were a common task—just one not usually done at this time.

  While the other fellows considered it, Yeyuama explained to me. And this, suitably edited, is what I learned.

  The dragons I had seen in the lake were, as I have said, queen dragons, the females of a species for which I had heretofore only seen the males. Now I learned that the chief task of the pure was first to bring suitable males up to the lake for breeding, and then to disperse the eggs after they were laid, to various points around the swamp.

  The ramifications of this have been laid out extensively in my more academic works; I will dwell on only one now, as many of you are no doubt anxious to leave the dusty byways of natural history and get back to the invading army. The eggs so distributed were not, as is common among other draconic breeds, large and few in number. They were myriad, and shockingly small: less than ten centimeters in length. I thought of swamp-wyrms and their usual habits, and asked Yeyuama how on earth newly hatched dragons could be of much use in stopping an army, however many of them there might be.

  He grinned from ear to ear, as delighted as a magician pulling back the curtain to reveal his great trick. “You have seen them, and feared them. But you have called them fangfish.”

  The tiny, eel-like predator that had taken a bite out of my left arm back in Floris; the entirely aquatic creature we had thought at best to be a draconic cousin. In reality it was the infantile form of the great swamp-wyrm. They hatched in abundance, and were eaten in abundance not only by snakes and other creatures, but by their own, more mature kind; those who survived grew and changed, eventually becoming the full-grown dragons to which we had devoted the bulk of our attention and study.

  (Despite the unsightly scar on my arm, there was a part of me that thought in delight: I’ve been bitten by a dragon!)

  Then I remembered the swarms of fangfish that had roiled the waters during the flood, the avoidance of which had spurred the construction of tree-bridges. If the Ikwunde attempted to wade through on their way to Point Miriam—and they could hardly avoid it—then the consequences would be very bloody indeed.

  “You will help,” Yeyuama said, still grinning. “Your way of going to and from the island was madness; I have never seen anything like it. Most of us go a much easier way! We should call you Sasoumin instead.”

  Sasoumin—“woman who flies.”

  Yeyuama went on while I was considering my new appellation and fighting the urge to giggle with delight. (Even now, I believe that is the name by which I am best known in the swamps of Mouleen. It is much more flattering than some of the sobriquets I have born in the news-sheets of Scirland.) “I will show you where the eggs are, and you will help move them; that is your work now. We will use the drums to tell others to do the same.”

  I will, of course, not tell you where the eggs are initially laid, save to say that they are not on the island; the purpose of that challenge is to give a view of the queen dragons, and to test the mettle of those who will henceforth be taking their unhatched offspring from their original place of laying to new locations deeper in the swamp. This stage of the process I did not do, for it was not the correct season for newly laid eggs. Although the experience sounds hair-raising—queen dragons are decidedly unfriendly—it is one of my great regrets that I never had the chance, for my time in Mouleen was drawing to an end, and I have never been able to return for more than a few days. To come so close to one of the queens … I have had other breathtaking experiences in my life, some of which (others would say) surpass even that one. But one does not cease to treasure a gem simply because one owns another that is larger. I would have loved to place that in the jewelry box of my memory.

  I did, however, go with Yeyuama to where the current clutches of eggs were buried, in soft swamp muck. This is where they do much of their incubation, before being shifted to the water for hatching. The history of how this process developed has been discussed at greater length by the Yembe historian Chinaka n Oforiro Dara; I advise those interested in such matters to read her work, and to consult my own monographs for analysis of its effect on draconic development.

  But enough of such matters: there is an invading army to attend to.

  Drums had passed the requisite messages through the Green Hell, faster than any messenger could carry them. The four of us (myself, Yeyuama, and our two companions) were not the only ones shifting eggs; indeed, ours were likely to be the least relevant, for the Ikwunde were almost certain to make their crossing farther to the east. To hatch only some of the dragons now would, however, disturb the balance of the swamp. As it was, Yeyuama admitted that the effects of this would be difficult, as it was not the season of flooding, when food would be most abundant. “I hope they get a good meal off the Ikwunde, then,” I said.

  He shrugged philosophically. “If necessary, we will make another queen egg next year”—and that is how I discovered that part of the egg-handling process fosters the sexual differentiation between the queen dragons in the lake and their male suitors in the swamp.

  I keep diverting to matters of natural history. This is, I suppose, because what followed was akin to a large number of dominoes toppling over where I could not see them. Much of it I only learnt about afterward, or pieced together from what I was not told; altogether, the picture it made was very complex. As is only fitting, I suppose, for the chain of events that led to me being accused of treason against the Scirling crown. I shall have to give you the larger picture first, and then my humble strand within it that stitched these events together.

  TWENTY-THREE

  Nagoreemo’s message—Tom, Natalie, and Faj Rawango—The Ikwunde cross the swamp—Captives of war—My army

  The Moulish had, as per my request, sent a messenger to the fort at Point Miriam. In their generosity, they did not even recruit a coastal villager to carry the word on their behalf; this was deemed important enough that they sent one of their own, a man who spoke Yembe, an elder named Nagoreemo.

  He left the Green Hell and climbed the rocky slope up to Point Miriam, drawing many stares, I imagine, from Scirlings unaccustomed to seeing a man in nothing more than a loincloth. At the gate to the fort he was stopped by one of the soldiers on guard, and in his careful Yembe, conveyed the news that an Ikwunde force intended to pass through Mouleen and attack them from the landward side.

  What words he used to explain this, I do not know. My own conjecture had been translated into the language of the drums, which is (of necessity, owing to how that language functions) both long-winded and limited in its specifics. But the Moulish are practiced at sending a message the length of the swamp without distorting it, so I have faith it arrived at the coast in much the same shape it left our own drums in the west. Once there, however, it was interpreted by the local camps, then given to Nagoreemo, who then translated it into Yembe and relayed it to soldiers whose own grasp of that tongue was, I suspect, less than fully proficient.

  Small wonder that no one believed him. One of the officers at the fort, an army major by the name of Joshua Maitland, believed Nagoreemo was a defector from his own people, come to warn them about an ill-advised Moulish assault on the fort. Others thought him simply mad. The result was that h
e was turned away—with, I am ashamed to say, many jeers, and even a few blows from rifle butts. That venerable elder deserved better from us.

  In the meanwhile, events at the far end of Bayembe had become quite warm, to distract all eyes from anything that might be happening along the bay. The Ikwunde mounted a series of assaults along and across the Girama, including one that nearly made it to the Hembi before our forces caught them. This, as you may imagine, raised alarms all through that region, with the consequence that our side instituted new patrols to watch for any Ikwunde advance scouts. They not only found some of those; they also found Tom, Natalie, and Faj Rawango.

  Had the patrol that found them been composed of Bayembe forces, all might have been well, for Faj Rawango was experienced enough in the ways of the oba’s court that he could have demanded, and likely received, a proper hearing. They were, alas, found by Scirlings—and promptly taken prisoner.

  Did the lieutenant think those three were Ikwunde spies? No, of course not; only one was Erigan, and even the blindest Scirling private could see that the short, slight Faj Rawango was nothing like the tall, well-knit men in the Ikwunde army. But they were something inexplicable, and so they had to be detained. (The fact that Tom and Natalie both explained themselves to him at length did not dissuade him from this course.)

  They were soon transferred into the care of a captain—but this fellow, alas, had heard complaints of their activities from the despicable Velloin, who had given a highly biased account of our meeting in the swamp. As a result, they were read a lengthy diatribe on civilized behaviour and the necessity for them to reflect well on Scirland; following this, they were summarily packed up with the wounded from the river fighting and shipped back across toward Nsebu. All three of them were somewhere in the middle of the savannah when the rest of this matter resolved.