Flight of the Dragon Kyn

by Susan Fletcher

  I lacked food. Only food.

  If I could keep to a straight course, westward to the sea, I would be three days walking, I judged. Barring storms and wolves and obstacles unforeseen. Our party had come farther in three days—an angled course, north and east—but our luck had been good, and the dogs had hauled our heaviest provisions, and we had not had to stop to set snares. I would make for Skogsby, a seacoast trading town north of Orrik’s steading. I did not deceive myself that I would hit upon it straightly. Three days to the seacoast, another two or three to Skogsby.

  With luck, that is. Good fortune.

  But I could not rely on good fortune alone. I would need food for a septnight, at least.

  What I would do when I came to Skogsby I did not know. I had gold—the rings on my neck and fingers—which I could trade for food and a cloak to disguise myself and ship passage. I would have to fit myself into the life of the town—find work of some kind, until the ships began sailing in spring.

  And then home …

  But my mind balked at straying too far into thoughts of home. Home would not be the same—this I knew.

  I could not dwell on that now.

  Food. I lacked only food.

  I would have to steal it from the sled. There was no other means. I could not ask for a septnight’s worth of food without arousing suspicion. I could not live off the land. Not in the dead of winter.

  So I stayed inside my tent and tried to sleep—vain effort!—until the talking stilled and scattered rumbles of snoring met my ears.

  Slowly, I opened my tent flap—only a crack. The looked-for snow had begun to fall. This was fortune chat cut both ways. It would hide my tracks from my pursuers, but it would also hide the land and stars from me. It was easy to become lost in the snow. Even in familiar terrain.

  But I knew how to make a snow cave and go to ground safely until the storm passed. If I could find wood. If I had food.

  I looked for the dogsled in the dark and found it where I had known it would be, near the center of the encampment. The dogs slept quietly in trenches they had dug in the snow. Now to find the sentries. There would be four. Always there were four. Two I found quickly, near the king’s tent, stamping their feet and swathed in furs. Another I spotted halfway round the edge of camp, to the left. The fourth I could not see.

  I opened my tent flap and craned out to look the other way.

  “Lady Kara?”

  I nearly jumped out of my skin.

  It was the fourth sentry; he was stationed by my tent.

  So much for stealing; now to beg.

  “What may I do for you, Lady?”

  I put one finger to my lips, motioning him to silence. He was young, I saw. Perhaps younger than I. He was tall and plumpish and eager-faced.

  “I am … hungry,” I whispered.

  “I’ll go get—”

  “Wait!” I clutched at his arm to stop him. “I lost one day’s meat and missed another’s. I could eat a whole ram.”

  He nodded. “I will bring plenty.” He started to go again, but I did not release his arm.

  “I will need some … for the morrow … when I call.”

  He hesitated, and I feared I had gone too far. But, “Three days’ worth I will fetch you,” he said, smiling.

  I released his arm and watched through the gap in my tent flap. One of the king’s sentries met him at the tent; they spoke in low voices, looking my way. Then the king’s sentry returned to his post, seemingly satisfied.

  When my sentry returned, he put into my arms a full hemp sack. I opened it.

  Dried fish, a rock-hard hank of barley bread, strips of dried reindeer meat. Three days’ worth this might be for a burly youth, but if I stinted I might stretch it to a septnight.

  I looked up into his beaming face and felt a wave of shame. He was so eager to please, and I had played him false. But too late to go back now. I would need that food. “I am … truly grateful,” I said.

  I hoped he would not be too severely punished for his kindness.

  I stuffed the food into my bulging pack, leaving out one small hunk of meat, then strapped on skis and sat down to wait until the sentries roused their replacements. Before long I heard footfalls moving past and then a low rumble of voices. I shouldered my pack, groaning inwardly at its weight. Then I took up Skava and peered out. The sentries—I counted eight of them—stood talking near the king’s tent. I stole behind my own tent, then lobbed the hunk of meat at the sleeping dogs.

  A yelp. A low, rolling growl. Then all fury broke loose: howling, yipping, snarling, shouting. Men converged upon the dogs from all about the camp. I set off at a fast shuffle for the frozen creek. Falling snow blurred the way before me. Behind, I heard the lash of a whip, sharp whining, a burst of shouting voices.

  Had they seen me?

  But no. The voices receded.

  I schussed through the snow as fast as I could, but with the overloaded pack weighing me down and Skava on my fist I was awkward, unbalanced, and slow. I could barely make out the cleft in the rock wall. I turned back one last time to look at the encampment. Only shadows. Dancing shadows, softened by snowfall and smudged by the glow of smoldering campfires.

  At last I reached the cleft. I took off my skis—hurrying, hurrying, fumbling,—then tucked them under one arm and stumbled up the snow-covered creek. The cliff walls closed in around me. I made my way round a bend and then looked back.

  Nothing. Nothing but rocks and dark and snow. The camp was out of sight. I held Skava close, put my face down near to her feathers, and breathed in the dusty-spice smell of her. I listened above the beating of my heart for the cries of alarm I knew would come.

  A grumble of voices, fading to silence.

  With a sigh of relief, I lashed my skis to my pack and began my ascent up the frozen creek.

  It grew narrower as I walked. I dared not think what would pass if the creek grew so narrow that it closed up entirely. I would cope with that when I came to it. It was so dark and the snow came so thickly that I could scarce see the way ahead—only an arm’s length or two. I felt my way up that creek, sometimes sinking knee-deep in drifts, other times clambering over boulders stripped bare of all but the new-fallen snow.

  And always I strained my ears, expecting to hear shouts of alarm behind.

  A strange, glad feeling began to fill me as I groped my way up the stream bed. I hardly marked the leaden weight of my pack or the fine-grained snow that pelted against my face. I had escaped the king’s men. They had not followed, nor were they likely to track me if this snow kept up. “We did it, Skava,” I said. She darted a glance at me, as if to acknowledge my words, then turned forward again. I could feel her excitement, twin to mine.

  And so the shout behind me took me by surprise.

  “Kara!”

  I stood stunned for a moment, my bloodbeat hammering in my ears. Then I pressed forward up the creek as fast as I could, half walking, half trotting.

  They knew. They were following.

  My feet faltered and slid; my pack jounced heavily on my back. The creek had pinched in nearly to nothing. But I rounded a bend and a way opened up on my left: a hummocky incline that reached to the top of the ridge. A rock slide, it must have been.

  Hurry!

  I picked my way up the slope as fast as I could, but carefully, carefully. These rock slides were perilous to climb when the ground was not frozen solid. Gravel shifted beneath my feet, but otherwise the slope held firm.

  When I reached the crest, I looked down where I had come.

  Shadows. Only shadows.

  The snow had nearly stopped; the moon, bounded by ragged clouds, blued the snowfields that stretched out beyond. I was standing on the shoulder of a great hunched hill. Or perhaps it was a mountain. It seemed high as a mountain, though not so steep.

  Should I go over? Or down and around?

  Then I heard it again. The voice. My name.

  It seemed to be but one man calling. A thought struck me. Might it
be Kazan … coming to help?

  I hesitated, listening.

  Nothing.

  I thrust upward and to my left, skirting a hollow in the side of the mountain.

  There was a crunch of shifting rocks; the ground slid beneath my feet. A clattering sound. A whump! of collapsing snow. My heart pitched up into my throat, and I was falling, down and down.

  Chapter 16

  With dragons it is as with birds: males wear the brighter plumage.

  —THE BOK OF DRAGON

  My feet hit first, but my legs buckled and I came down hard on one hip. I lay clutching Skava’s jesses as she bated, while the last clattering rivulets of rock played themselves out.

  Black. All black I could hear the beating of Skava’s wings; I could feel, against my cheek, the breeze they stirred. But I couldn’t see her, anymore than if my eyes had been shut tight. I could see nothing—not even my own hand before my face.

  Her wingbeat stopped. I groped for her, found her, settled her upon my fist. “Are you all right?” I asked. My voice made an echoey sound. She seemed well enough by the feel of her, but I could not know for certain.

  I wiggled my toes, moved my legs and arms, twisted side to side. The bottoms of my feet throbbed, one arm ached, and my hip felt sore where I had landed on it. But nothing worse.

  I reached out my arm and tried to feel this place where I had fallen. There was a damp smell to it. Beyond, in the blackness, I heard the plink of dripping water.

  A cave. It must be a cave.

  My hand met with nothing save for the cushion of mixed snow and gravel beneath me.

  I must have dropped through the roof of it. But then … why was it utterly black? Surely there would be moonlight….

  Unless the snow had sealed it up.

  All at once the air felt smothery, hard to breathe.

  Frightened, I shrugged off my pack, switching Skava from one wrist to the other, and fumbled about for flint and iron and punk and a candle.

  Broken. All the candles felt broken. I collected the pieces, groped about for my dagger, severed the linking wicks.

  I couldn’t strike fire with Skava on my wrist, so I perched her on one knee and tethered her jesses to my sash. The spark was struck at last, and when I had lighted my stub of candle I looked about me.

  Massive cones of dripstone pended down like icicles from the ceiling and sprouted up from the floor, as if we sat between the jaws of some many-toothed beast. I held up the candle to see whence I had fallen. There was an open shaft up through the rock, but no light shone in.

  Well, I had lost my pursuer, at any pass. Whoever it had been.

  It was silent—utterly silent—save for the plink of dripping water. The air smelled stale and never stirred.

  We were trapped.

  Still, this cave was big, I saw, as I moved my candle about. Far too big to smother in.

  My breathing eased. “There must be another way out,” I murmured to Skava.

  I took her to fist—she looked unharmed—and walked among the dripstone. It was damp and slimy to the touch, and seemed to be coated with something white. In some places the ceiling dripstone had joined with the floor dripstone, forming pale, knobby pillars. And here—a narrow tunnel. Leading where?

  I returned for my pack and skis; one ski was cracked, but not beyond repair. The candles and fire tools I rolled into my sash, then slung the rest over my back again and made for the tunnel. It soon converged with other passages—some close and winding, some so low-ceilinged that I had to crouch, some wide as a man is long, and twice as high. There were times when a passage narrowed down too tightly to admit me; then I retraced my steps and returned back the way I had come.

  Of caverns there were many. Some were smaller than a bedcloset; others more spacious than Orrik’s high hall. In the flickering light of my candle, I saw crystalline springs that glittered like frost; I saw ceilings festooned with dripstone; I saw walls like rippling curtains of pink and yellow and gray. And all around echoed the sounds of dripping water and runneling streams.

  At first I counted caverns and tried to fix them in memory, but after a time they began to merge together in my mind. I began marking the walls with smoke to discover if I only wandered round in circles. But there must be a way out. These passages could not just wind about inside the bowels of the mountain and never find their way to air.

  Skava, I marked, had returned to her old staring and seemed to face in one direction only, no matter how I turned.

  “What do you hear?” I asked her.

  And then I began to hear it—or imagine that I did. Strange, echoing noises. Distant rumbles and thumps.

  I recalled the stories I had heard of trolls mining silver and gold in the mountains.

  Trolls. I clung to the thought of trolls because I did not truly believe in them—while another, more likely surmise crept into my mind.

  Dragons.

  Could they lair here, in these very caverns? Was that why Skava seemed intent?

  No matter. Must get out of this place. Must push my way through the dank, suffocating darkness and into fresh air.

  I had carefully minded my pieces of candle, burning each down as far as possible, then lighting a new piece from the old. Now the stub I held burned low; I reached into my sash for another. There. I found one. But … only one. The last.

  And my fear came rushing in: fear of the dark; fear that I was lost; fear that I would die here, and never a soul would find my bones.

  Skava fluffed her wings. She leaned down and nibbled at my glove, then burbled at me. And somehow, that calmed me.

  “We will get out of this place,” I told her grimly.

  The bumpings and rumblings grew louder. I moved toward them, for whatever came into this place must also have means of going out. Still, it was hard to tell whence they came, for sound echoed confusingly.

  I watched where Skava faced and bore in that direction when I could. For I feared being lost in this cave more than coming upon the dragons. There were but five of them, Orrik had said—now four. And they went out to hunt at deepest night. So if there were dragons here, surely I could hide until they left to hunt, and then escape out the mouth of their cave.

  A muted, echoing crash.

  A rushing, rumbling sound, like a bonfire.

  The passage climbed steeply; light faintly limned the edge of the wall where it curved up ahead. Rounding the bend, I could see ahead of me, beyond my candle’s glow.

  Moonlight.

  The flame flickered, stirred by a breeze.

  Fresh air.

  I came to a halt and took thought.

  I was safe in the passage where I stood. It would admit nothing so large as a dragon. I blew out the stub of my last candle and enfolded it in my sash; I could see well enough without it.

  A sudden commotion erupted ahead of me, like the sound of water falling. Then a low, rushing, crackling noise: distant, reverberant with echoes.

  Fire?

  Dragonfire?

  I could stay here—listen and wait. I ought to do so.

  And yet …

  I ached to know for certain. If these were dragons. If there were truly a way out.

  Warily, I moved forward. The passage sloped up, widening, brightening. The sounds came clearer now: water and fire and the scrape of something on sand. There was a sporadic rumbling whoosh, like the sound of the sea within a coiled shell. And a strange, low murmuring that I seemed to feel rather than hear. The air moved: thin, chilly currents and floating drifts of warmth. A whiff of something … something burning … sulfur …

  Another bend in the passage. I crept around it; the passage ended and gave onto a broad rock ledge. Beyond, the floor dropped away sheer into a cavern. From where I stood I could see only the roof of it—dripping with stone icicles, awash in light.

  I ventured onto the ledge, first crouching, then dropping to hands and knees. Or rather hand and knees, for I held Skava aloft on my left fist. When I had nearly reached the edge, I lay
on my stomach, scooted the last remaining distance, and peered down into the cavern.

  I drew in a sharp breath.

  It was a vast chamber—larger than any great hall—larger than a score of great halls put together. At one end a huge opening gaped in the rocky wall, and beyond, I saw what I had hoped for: the snowfields, bright with reflected moonlight.

  And below, as I had known, were dragons.

  But not only four of them. There were ten times that, at least. Dragons slumbered in great glittering heaps all about the chamber floor. Those just below me looked large as knolls. Farther back, they seemed to shrink to the size of mice, though I knew it was only the vastness of the cave that made them seem so.

  Some few dragons seemed to be flying—no, not flying—liker to floating in the air below. These floating dragons looked smaller than the others, though each—I saw by the near ones—was larger than any horse. One flamed suddenly, dropping down lower, then gradually rose again through drifting tendrils of smoke. They seemed to be sleeping, or resting, or idling away their time.

  Skava made a soft, anxious sound in the back of her throat. “Shh!” I said.

  One of the smaller, floating dragons jostled against a stone icicle near the bottom of the cave; the dripstone crashed to the ground, shattering, clattering, echoing against the walls. A big green dragon opened its eyes and shot out a warning lick of blue flame. The smaller dragon twisted quickly away, then plunged into the pool in the center of the cavern, sending up a curtain of sparkling droplets. Another floating dragon flamed; the water evaporated into a hissing blue veil of mist.

  These were children. They must be children, and they seemed all of an age. Some were red and others green, just as with the older dragons. The younger ones were brighter in hue; some of their elders were so dark-hued as to be almost black. And I knew, without knowing how I knew, that the red ones were male and the green, female.

  I could not tear away my gaze. These dragons minded me of the whales I had seen disporting along the seacoast—huge, silent, joyous. This place—the dragons, the mist, the echoes, the suffusing blue light of the moon—seemed touched by a strange enchantment. So intently did I watch that I did not mark the floating dragon until too late. He wafted up from below me, from under the ledge; by the time I could recover from the shock, we were nearly face to face.