The Dragon Circle

by Irene Radford

  “Welcome, Tracker.” Hestiia marched over and stuck out her right hand to her.

  Dalleena stared at the hand wondering if she was supposed to touch it.

  Hestiia took the decision away from her, grabbing her by the elbow and shaking her arm. Dalleena returned the gesture as well as the woman’s smile.

  “Come, the hospitality of this village is open to you. We have hot food ready. My husband and his brothers should return any time now.” The little woman led them up the bank and toward the cluster of cabins as if she held the honored place of headman.

  Dalleena followed, curious about a village that allowed a woman to speak for them. At the top of the track, an ancient woman of impressive girth and swarthy coloring waited. She stood with hands on hips, legs spread sturdily, and a fierce scowl upon her face.

  A Rover. What was she doing here? Rovers never settled in a village. Villagers never allowed them to linger near. Suspicion and distrust kept them always apart.

  “I be Pryth,” the Rover woman announced. “You be Tracker. Why do you feel needed here?”

  “I do not know, only that something, someone needs tracking.” Her senses awoke under the intense gaze of the old woman. Her hand burned and itched as it never had before. She raised her right arm and supported it with her left. Palm out she turned in a slow, methodical circle, pausing at every quarter of a quarter turn. Her head spun with the need to find the nameless thing before it destroyed itself. Or destroyed them.

  But she could not find a direction to look.

  CHAPTER 6

  KONNER STARED into the campfire. Villagers bustled around him. Women carried trenchers piled with roasted venison, chunks of wild yampion, a sweet tuber served raw or roasted or mashed with fresh milk, and globs of boiled greens dressed in fat and fruit vinegar.

  The Tracker sat among the men across the fire from Konner. She did not participate in any of the usual female pursuits. Her eyes wandered restlessly around the village, across the sky, and toward the deep shadows beyond the fire.

  Konner did not have the thoughts to spare this night to wonder why. All he could think about was the missing beacon and the audacious thief. Which led him back to Melinda and her betrayal of him.

  Hestiia offered Konner a platter without meat. He waved it away.

  She pursed her lips in disapproval and offered it instead to her husband, Kim.

  He took it from her with a smile that lighted his face all the way to his eyes. Their gazes locked on each other, grew intense. His hand covered hers, lingered, and caressed before she relinquished the bark platter.

  Konner turned his head away, embarrassed by their intimacy, jealous and lonely in his own isolation.

  Fifteen years ago he had believed he and Melinda could learn to love each other like that. She’d offered him one million Adols, the most stable currency in the galaxy, in exchange for a legal marriage ceremony. She wanted control of her inheritance, the corporation that owned the entire planet of Aurora. But her parents’ will had specified she could not sit on the board of directors or have access to capital funds until she married or turned thirty years of age.

  At twenty-two she decided to take control of her fate and made her proposal to Konner. He’d been only twenty and on his first solo reconnoiter for the family business. Aurora produced a number of high-tech items needed on bush worlds that could not afford to buy them legally. Mum had sent him to Aurora see if they could empty a warehouse without paying for the merchandise.

  Then Konner met Melinda. They had spent a giddy week together on a newly opened bush colony world. No one had asked questions or required much in the way of paperwork before the wedding ceremony. Seven days of sex and wine and laughter and more sex had not been enough for Konner.

  Within hours of returning to Aurora, Melinda had seized control of her corporation, had Konner arrested, and permanently exiled without a single fraction of a coin in payment of the prenuptial agreement.

  Notice of annulment of the marriage appeared on the bush world within hours.

  The humiliation and the loneliness burned so deep in Konner that he had not told his brothers about his marriage.

  Loki planned and executed the theft from Melinda’s warehouse based upon Konner’s information. Konner had participated in the plan without a single guilty thought to slow him down. Only Mum knew of his failed marriage, and she used the knowledge ruthlessly, to keep Konner in the family business when all he wanted was to go off exploring on his own. Mum promised him the time and money to fight Melinda for the prenuptial sums and custody of his son Martin when she completed a project of her own. The time never came when Mum had enough money to bribe the right officials to regain family citizenship. Without those essential papers, Konner had not a prayer of winning anything from Melinda in a legal court.

  But he had kept a copy of the prenuptial agreement and stashed extra copies in key places.

  Shame for his youthful misalliance still ate at him. His only consolation was a chance meeting with a mechanic who had worked a short time at the Aurora Space Docks and gave him the news that Melinda had a son.

  As soon as Martin was old enough to go to summer camp, Konner made a point of working at that camp as a counselor. He’d forged citizenship papers to pass their security screen. He and his son had bonded over many an evening campfire.

  Those flames had burned normal red and gold with a blue heart.

  In front of him, on this early autumn evening on a forgotten planet beyond explored space, pale green flames around a deep yellow layer licked branches greedily. Copper sulfate, he told himself, made the fire burn green. Copper sulfate impregnated every living thing on this planet. He’d never get used to the colors. Wondered if his blood would turn green if he lived here long enough.

  “I have to leave in five days,” he said aloud. “I have to leave by then or miss my . . . appointment.”

  Loki nodded his acknowledgment. Kim frowned as he jerked his head down and up a single time.

  Konner’s brothers now knew of his court date on Martin’s fourteenth birthday. He’d confessed everything to them after Loki had learned how to read minds with some regularity and consistency.

  Pryth, the ancient matriarch of the village, stood up and began reciting a long saga of the first coming of the Stargods to rescue the slaves of Hanassa. She directed the story to the new woman, but included the entire village in her audience.

  Konner winced. He’d heard this story every fourth or fifth evening sitting around the campfire during and after the communal meal. That he and his brothers were the heroes of the story embarrassed him.

  One of the younger men picked up a skin drum and began beating the rhythm of the old woman’s recitation. A middle-aged woman added deft tones on a reed flute to punctuate the story.

  “You and Loki can’t leave until we find the beacon,” Kim insisted in hushed tones. “I won’t have this planet at the mercy of the GTE, even if you two do leave.”

  “I told you that you should have dumped the beacon out Rover’s loo and let it burn up in reentry,” Loki grumbled.

  “No, you didn’t. You weren’t even there,” Konner replied.

  “Well, you should have thought of that solution.”

  “They are designed to withstand reentry and crash.” Konner returned to his contemplation of the fire.

  “So where did the thief go?” Loki leaned forward, shoulders and spine rigid.

  “Raaskan,” Kim hailed the village chieftain.

  The man Konner and his brothers had rescued from a life of slavery and death as a sacrifice to Hanassa’s god, ambled toward them. His soft leather knee breeches and vest molded to his muscular frame. The buttery color made a nice contrast to his permanently sun-bronzed skin. Konner guessed him to be in his early thirties, about his own age. But in this primitive society, just growing out of bronze and into iron technology, Raaskan commanded the same kind of respect as a senior CEO of a galactic corporation.

  “Pryth always tells stories
better than anyone else. She has an energy and sense of timing possessed by few,” Raaskan said as he lowered himself to sit cross-legged beside Kim in one smooth motion.

  Konner never had been comfortable out of doors before coming here. He preferred ships and big buildings filled with mechanicals. He could bond with machines more easily than people.

  But something about these people and their simple values tugged at his heart with an emotion akin to his love for machines.

  “Must be Pryth’s Rover heritage. Her people are renowned for their ability to take ordinary events and make them into life-changing sagas,” Konner replied.

  “Pryth has been with us for more than three generations. We forget that she is not originally one of the Coros,” Raaskan said.

  “She has seen many places in Coronnan.” Kim followed the casual conversational rules of this society. Pleasantries must continue for some time before coming to the meat of a subject.

  Loki fidgeted beside Konner. The oldest brother did not like waiting. Any second now he would plunge in and demand information.

  “Rovers wander far,” Raaskan said. He nibbled a bite of venison from his trencher.

  Kim turned his head away. Loki looked longingly at the meat before yanking his gaze away to watch the women.

  Hestiia and Raaskan’s wife led a dozen villagers in a dance around the fire, acting out the story Pryth told. They recounted how Konner and his brothers had unleashed their magic—fully charged stunner guns—and blasted the sacrificial altar rock to pieces. No more would the stone taste human blood in homage to the winged god Simurgh.

  “How far have you wandered?” Konner pressed Raaskan. ”What have you seen beyond the meadows and rivers of Coronnan.

  Raaskan clamped his jaw shut. He looked directly into Konner’s eyes for long moments.

  Konner did not look away. “You may speak of this among us.”

  “I flew with you, Stargod Konner, inside the belly of your white dragon that is no dragon.”

  “And when you traveled with my brother to the hills south of here,” Kim said, “to the huge outcropping that juts out into the Great Bay so that you could bring a blacksmith to this village, did you see a land with tufts of grass more gray than green, with scrubby shrubs and long fissures cutting deeply to reveal black rocks, like the bones of the land scorched by the sun?” Kim easily fell into the convoluted formal language of the bard. He excelled in calling up language that spoke in metaphors as easily as fact.

  The scientist in Konner rebelled at the imprecision these people loved. They liked many layers of meaning that they could peel away bit by bit to reveal truths of human nature that could not be quantified by science.

  He ached to be gone from here, back on the space lanes where he knew the risks and the dangers and how to overcome them.

  At the same time he knew he would miss the evenings spent in the community of friends sharing a meal, entertaining each other with stories and songs, and keeping the nightmares away with a cheering fire.

  “I have never seen such a land,” Raaskan admitted. “You must ask Pryth if her people know of it.”

  “Are there more Rovers we could ask? Clans who have traveled more recently than Pryth?” Loki asked. He twitched with the need to move.

  “There are always Rovers. Finding them is not easy unless they wish to be found.”

  “Great!” Konner exploded, letting his words propel him upward. The momentum of anger fueled his muscles so that he did not need to brace or balance himself. “What good are these people? What good are any of you?” He stalked off into the night, tromping heavily through the underbrush.

  He did not care how much noise he made. He did not care if he got lost. He just had to move; to do; to think.

  His feet automatically steered toward the meadow west of the village where he had parked Rover. The cloaking field gave off a slight hum, more muted than the dragongate, a different frequency. This tone lulled the senses into believing it did not exist and neither did the object it hid.

  Konner half smiled at his foresight in designing the system. After spending five months on this planet with its unique ability to augment psychic powers, he understood that the cloaking field worked with brain synapses to fool the mind.

  A sliver of a moon showed just above the horizon. He slowed his pace.

  He had to destroy the beacon. To do that, he had to find the thief. Should he go back to the volcano and wait for the dragongate to open to the same location as where the thief escaped?

  That could take days, even weeks. The gate was unreliable and random in choosing its destinations. He did not have that kind of time to waste.

  “I’ll take Rover up at first light. I’ll find that semi-arid land on my own.”

  (Will you?) a voice came to him out of the night.

  “What? Who?” Konner turned in a full circle seeking the source.

  Moonlight glinted off the nose of the shuttle. The cloaking field should mask even the reflection of light off the cerama/metal hull. He peered closer. His steps became more cautious.

  (Will you find the land that you seek on your own?) the voice repeated.

  The moon rose above the tree line at the edge of the meadow. To Konner’s trained eye the outline of the shuttle became clearer, still insubstantial because of the cloak, but he knew where to look and what to look for.

  Something marred the sleek silhouette of the vessel. A big lumpy something sat on the nose. A lumpy something with spikes. It looked a little like one of Mum’s pincushions.

  “Not again.”

  CHAPTER 7

  KONNER SANK to the ground just outside the cloaking field. Evening dew moistened his knees. A chill breeze reminded him that summer had come to an end and he needed a shirt beneath his leather vest. Like the fine white one worn by the new woman, the one who dressed as a man and sat with the men rather than working with the women.

  Still he sat there, staring at the nose of the shuttle.

  “Iianthe?” he asked the living pincushion.

  (I have not the honor of purple tips to my wings.)

  Typical enigmatic dragon thoughts. If Konner did not know that Iianthe was another word for purple and that Iianthe’s horns, wing veins, and wing tips were a shade of purple he would not have understood the statement.

  “I am Martin Konner O’Hara,” he said politely.

  (Irythros,) the dragon replied.

  “Irythros? Does that mean anything?”

  (I am Irythros. What should it mean?)

  “Does the word name a color in some other language?”

  (Ah,) the dragon sighed in understanding. It remained silent so long Konner wondered if it would say anything more.

  (Some might believe my name means Red.)

  “Red. You have red horns and spines and your wing tips and veins are red.”

  (Yes.)

  “Just like Simurgh.”

  (Never!) The dragon rose up on its hind legs, flapping its wings and roaring its displeasure. A single long flame shot forth from its open mouth.

  “Touchy subject?” Konner asked. But then he knew it would be. “Dragons don’t like to admit that one of their own became thirsty for human blood. You don’t like to remember that you had to destroy one of your own.”

  The dragon’s silence seemed to take on weight. Konner felt a heaviness in his mind that wanted to push his knowledge of Simurgh’s true nature deep into the forgotten recesses of his lizard hind brain. A place that knew instinctive fear and had no sense or reason.

  He fought the compulsion to forget.

  “So, Red, are you waiting for me?” Konner crept a little closer.

  (Irythros,) the dragon insisted.

  “Whatever. Why are you here? Dragons don’t show themselves to mere humans without reason.” Konner dared rise to his feet. This brought his eyes level with the dragon’s claws where they gripped the sleek nose of the shuttle. Each of those talons was as long as his forearm. He winced at the thought of punctures in t
he cerama/metal hull.

  No mere dragon could pierce the hull of a shuttle designed to withstand the heat, radiation, and pressure of reentry, he reminded himself. Again and again.

  “You are bigger than Iianthe,” he commented, tentatively checking to see if any cerama/metal hull scales had broken off beneath the talons. He needed every one of those scales intact to protect the ship—from space travel as well as corrosion of the interior.

  They all seemed intact. But he would not know for certain until the dragon moved.

  “Would you mind coming down from there?” He looked up to where the dragon’s eyes should be. Hard to tell in this light. Hard to tell in any light. His eyes wanted to slide around the dragon rather than look directly at it.

  (Is there a reason?) Irythros asked. Suddenly, he snaked his head down to Konner’s level.

  Hot breath bathed his face. A spiraled two-meter-long horn of red and crystal teased his hair.

  Konner resisted the temptation to jump back. He’d learned over the months of dealing with Iianthe, the purple-tip who was very fond of Kim and Hestiia, never to show fear. One had to earn a dragon’s respect. They had no use for cowardice. They considered Simurgh a coward for hunting weak humans rather than more honorable prey, like the huge predatory fish in the Great Bay. Like the one that had startled Konner in the dragongate and caused him to lose the beacon.

  Konner took three deep breaths to keep his feet from shuffling backward. The dragon exhaled.

  Konner winced at the thought of the fire the dragon could produce. (They liked their meals cooked.) The wind that passed his ears was cool.

  “I would like you to get off my ship because your claws are ripping holes in its hide,” Konner said mildly.

  (Oh.) The dragon leaped free of the shuttle. Its talons screeched against the cerama/metal.

  The sound became needle darts in Konner’s ears. Again he cringed but did not back away or cover the offended organs.

  (Forgive my trespass,) Irythros said as he settled to the ground beside Konner.

  The beast towered above him, as big as the shuttle. It spread its wings before furling them. The moonlight turned them into shimmering translucent veils. For a moment, Konner thought he could see star maps in the vein network. Or maybe transactional gravitons, the theoretical energy force that held the universe together and at the same time conspired to keep everything in place.