Sign of the Dove

by Susan Fletcher

  “Jeorg?” Kymo called. “Kaeldra?”

  “Is this … where they live?” Lyf asked, gazing at the ferns sprouting from the roof, the shutters dangling from the windows.

  Kymo nodded. “They’re here, never doubt—”

  A twig snapped behind them. Lyf twisted round to see an archer, a bearded archer.

  His crossbow was drawn taut, the bolt aimed straight at her.

  Harper’s Tale

  Why, you ask, my lord, would a man be a friend to dragons? Or a woman, for that matter? For many of the dragons’ friends were women.

  All had their reasons.

  Some were more foes to the Krags than friends to dragons. Though the Krags had long ago subdued Elythia, some (though not myself, my lords—I wouldn’t dream it!) wished to push them out. Or, failing that, to thwart them however they might. These folk did not split hairs between the queen’s soldiers and those loyal to her cousin, the king. Any Kragish army invulnerable to the sword was greatly to be dreaded.

  And others …

  Have you ever seen a dragon soaring on the wind, my ladies?

  No? I guessed not. You’re all of you far too young.

  Some deem my arts great (though I am no proper judge of it)—but even I cannot school you in the wonder of dragons.

  Would you slay all the eagles as a pestilence? Would you outlaw the thunder for its din?

  If you had never known them, you wouldn’t mourn their loss. But if you had known them … the world would ever have a great, gaping hole in it, where splendor once had dwelt.

  For whatever motives, my lords and ladies, the friends of dragons conspired.

  CHAPTER 4

  Auntie Lyf

  Lyf stared at the archer and could not move. His features were veiled by the dark, streaking rain, but he loomed above Kymo, and his beard bristled full and blond.

  A Krag, he was.

  Kymo stepped toward him. “Jeorg?” he said.

  Jeorg? But Jeorg had no beard. …

  The archer lowered his bow. “Kymo, is it? And … will that be Lyf?”

  It was Jeorg —she knew him by his voice.

  He shouldered his bow and ran then. He lifted her off of Grumble and hugged her tight. “Lyfling!” he said

  “Jeorg … you grew a beard!”

  “Does it please you?”

  Lyf hesitated. “I don’t know. It makes you … strange.” Jeorg laughed, setting her on the ground, and then his face grew grave. “What brings you here?”—he turned to Kymo—”and you? Has ill befallen any at home—the girls? Granmyr?”

  “No. They’re well. But the queen’s men came seeking Kaeldra—or, failing her, this green-eyed one. And so Granmyr thought it safer to send her to you.”

  “And glad I am that she has” Jeorg said, turning to Lyf, “and Kaeldra will be gladder still.” He cupped his hands to his mouth. “ Kaeldra!” he bellowed. “It is Lyf! Lyf!”

  Down near the ruin Lyf could see movement: someone coming, someone running. Kaeldra, Lyf sprinted to the gate, grabbed the rusty iron bars and peered between them. Yes, Kaeldra—and two others coming behind: a thin, hawk-nosed man and a stocky little boy. The man would be Nysien, Mirym’s husband; the boy would be Owyn, Jeorg and Kaeldra’s youngest. Now Kaeldra was grating back the heavy bolt; she enfolded Lyf in her arms. Lyf felt a wave of comfort such as she had not known since she had left home. Kaeldra would take care of her. She had done so before—she had saved her life—and now she would again.

  “Are you well? Are all well at home?” Kaeldra asked at last. “Our girls? Granmyr? Mirym? Your mother?”

  “Granmyr and Mama are well. And Mirym too, though she pines for Nysien. And Lyska and Aryanna—I saw them, not a half-moon since. They are well, but they miss you.”

  Kaeldra nodded. “This will all be over soon, and then we will be”—her voice caught; she swallowed—“together.”

  Kaeldra sorely yearned for her daughters—that was plain to see. She and Jeorg had not brought them here because there was no one to care for them when she journeyed off to do her work with dragons. Neither was it safe for them in Granmyr’s home. Though the girls’ eyes were blue, they still were Kaeldra’s daughters, and so at risk. She had left them in care of a friend some way from home.

  With Owyn there had been no choice. He had his mother’s eyes—brightly flecked with green. The friend who kept the girls would not take him for fear his dragon-sayer’s eyes would put her in peril as well.

  So Kaeldra had brought him here. She had begged to bring Lyf, but Mama would not hear of it. Not until now.

  “Why, ” Kaeldra asked,”come you now?”

  “The queen’s men came seeking you—and me because of my eyes.”

  “Oh, Lyfling.” Kaeldra pulled Lyf to her again, and Lyf smelled the familiar smell of her, felt the warm softness of her as Kaeldra stroked her hair. But her belly… it felt hard. …

  Lyf pulled away. “Are you…?”

  Kaeldra smiled and laid both hands flat on her belly. “Three moon-turns now,” she said. “A late-harvest child, ’twill be.”

  A sudden loud clanking assailed them; Lyf whirled round to see Owyn beating a metal cup with a spoon. “I beat the drums!” he said in a voice startlingly husky for such a youngling. “Boom! Boom! I beat them!”

  “Owyn!” Kaeldra said. “Hush, now!” Gently stripping him of cup and spoon, she took his hand. “This is your Auntie Lyf. You recall your Auntie Lyf.”

  “Why?” Owyn asked. He peered up at her from beneath his thatch of red-gold hair. His face was so begrimed, Lyf could barely make out the freckles that sprinkled his snubby nose. “I beat the drums!” he mumbled, then he spun round and chugged away. It pained Lyf that he did not seem to remember her. A year it had been since they had left. The child had grown; ever he was growing. Three winters now he had. He stood sturdily on his feet, seeming a full head taller than when last she had seen him.

  Kaeldra sighed. “My little drummer boy. He will warm to you soon enough. But now—you are the one who needs warming. You’re soaked clear to the skin.” She took Lyf’s arm and led her through the gateway, leaving the men to stable Grumble.

  It was, Lyf thought as they approached the ruin, even more dreary a place than it had seemed on first sight. Moss dripped from the broken-down roof, and black mold crept up the stones from the sodden ground. It was large—larger than any dwelling Lyf had seen—and yet much of it was crumbled and overgrown by a tangle of thorny bushes. Rosebushes, Lyf guessed. She was surprised that Kaeldra would let them go untended; she took such pains with her roses at home.

  But when she stepped over the threshold, Lyf stared in wonderment. The floor was newly swept and strewn with clean rushes. Herbs hung in fragrant bunches from the rafters above Kaeldra’s claywheel. The walls, though blackened with smoke, were sound—as was the roof. A fire crackled in a makeshift hearth in the middle of the floor, and savory smells arose from a stew pot.

  “What sort of… cottage is this?” Lyf asked. “Is it from the olden times, the time of the road builders?”

  “Yes. We thought it best to keep the fallen-down parts fallen-down, so that none may guess we are here. But my fingers itch to tend the roses. Jeorg won’t allow it. He frets even about the smoke—but we must have fire”

  “Do you still… work the clay?” Kaeldra could see things in the spinning clay. Things that had happened in the past, or very far away.

  Kaeldra sighed. “Not often. It is not as it was. Does Granmyr still work it?”

  “Sometimes. But she says the same, that the visions grow feint. Or refuse to come at all.”

  Shaking her head, Kaeldra thrust a kirtle and shift into Lyf’s arms. “Well, then, let’s get you dry. These are mine, and so they will be large for you. But they’re not soaking wet, at any pass.”

  Lyf peeled off her drenched garb and draped it over a bench by the fire. She slipped gratefully into the dry garments Kaeldra had given her. They were drab-hued and cut long—unlike the bright, sh
orter gowns Kaeldra had worn at home. The kirtle’s sleeves hung well below Lyf’s hands, and its hem dragged upon the floor.

  Kaeldra laughed softly when Lyf was done. “You look to be garbed in giant’s dress—and so you are, I suppose. I have ever felt like a giantess among you Elythians.” She rolled up Lyf’s sleeves, then moved away past the claywheel to a chest behind a door. Drawing out a long, gray-blue sash, she fastened it about Lyf and bloused up the kirtle so that it came up off the floor.

  The sash.

  “Wait, there’s something I must show you” Lyf rummaged through her wet clothes. There. The message. Explaining how she had come by it, she handed it to Kaeldra.

  Kaeldra eyed Lyf sharply before taking it; she knew that Lyf was forbidden to ken with birds. Then she bore the message to the fire and labored to read it.

  Lyf studied Kaeldra’s face in the firelight. There were furrows in her brow and at the edges of her mouth that Lyf did not recall having seen before. Her straw-colored hair seemed limp and had lost its luster. Tired she looked—and also sad. As Lyf watched, alarm swept across Kaeldra’s face. “Jeorg!” Kaeldra called, then moved to the door and flung it wide. “Jeorg!”

  He came running from the courtyard, with Nysien and Kymo behind.

  “The mother is slain,” Kaeldra said.

  Jeorg looked at her blankly.

  “The dragon, the one we fetched the orphaned draclings to. She is slain”.

  “What!”Jeorg snatched the message from Kaeldra’s outstretched hand and went to the fire, reading it by the flame. He uttered a curse.

  “We must fetch the draclings “he said. “At once.”

  It was not at once, as it happened, for there was much to attend to, and most of it had to do with Owyn and Lyf. The children must stay, Kaeldra said. The journey was too perilous, and Lyf was already too far spent. But Kaeldra must go, it seemed, and Jeorg would not allow it without his protection, and Nysien, who might have helped, insisted on going elsewhere to muster a troop of archers. “There are many who are loyal to me,” he said, “and I know they will rally round.”

  “We don’t need a troop of archers,” Jeorg said, visibly irked. “We have done this many times before. If you would wait here, with the children—”

  “I? With the children?” Nysien raised a thin, dark brow, incredulous. And it was unthinkable to Lyf that he would tend to her and Owyn. He was of noble blood, and ever mindful of it. He even looked noble—tall, for an Elythian, and lean, with slender hands and a curving, princely nose.

  And yet the Krags had seized all his lands; he was penniless.

  There were many who had marveled when Nysien had taken Mirym as his bride. Why would he lower himself to marry a common lass—even one of uncommon beauty?

  But the marvelers had not seen Nysien as Lyf had—weak and raving with wound fever, fleeing the Krags, He had led a troop of archers to win back his lands—and failed. When he blundered, half-dead, into the Elythian hills, Granmyr took him in and nursed him back to health. Lyf had marked how Mirym looked at him, how in time he had returned her looks. He had made promises to her when ill that he was bound to keep when well.

  Yet Nysien had grown ever more restless on the farm. He seethed with a consuming hatred of the Krags and with schemes to recover his lost lands. He had pressed Kaeldra and Jeorg to let him help with the draclings—more, Lyf suspected, for vengeance on the Krags than for love of dragon kyn.

  Now Kymo broke in placatingly, and the disputation went round and round. Lyf sat huddled by the fire, weary to the bone and yet anxious to hear all—for her fate hinged on what came of this colloquy.

  The mother they spoke of, it seemed, was a dragon—the last but one of the mother dragons left in this land. An old friend of Kaeldra’s had sent the message telling of the dragon’s death.

  “He writes that a troop of Kragish soldiers came through his steading, pillaging for food,” Kaeldra said. “They had killed the dragon, had cut out her heart, and were fetching it to the queen. But they couldn’t find the draclings and had given up the search. They had already sent three of their number searching for me to find the draclings.” She paused, thinking. “Those must have been the soldiers at Granmyr’s cottage.”

  “We had given that dragon three orphaned clutches to care for,”Jeorg told Kymo. “Three.”

  “And now the draclings are alone,” Kaeldra said, “with none to feed them, and none to shield them from harm.”

  “If they’re yet alive.” Jeorg was grim.

  Kaeldra looked at the message again. “It says the mother was slain well away from any cave, so there’s hope we may yet find them and take them north to the last remaining dragon dam. But the children…” She cast a glance at Lyf and Owyn.

  Nysien looked impatient. “Leave them stay with the woman you left Owyn with before”

  “She took the lung fever over the winter and died,” Kaeldra said. “I have told you this. If you had fetched the help you promised, those who are loyal to you—”

  “I will fetch them! Give me time!”

  “—then we could have all of our children here with us— not scattered throughout Etythia”

  “I could spare a day or two to take the younglings home,” Kymo offered.

  “They can’t return home,” Kaeldra said. “It’s too perilous there.”

  “Well, is there another place? Are any of the dove sign nearby?”

  “None near enough. ”

  “It seems nothing will please you in this,” Nysien said.

  “I need to know the younglings are safe! I …”

  There was a tugging at Lyf’s kirtle. Lyf glanced down to see Owyn looking up at her. “Egg,” he said. “I will show you the egg.” He yanked at the end of her sash.

  “No, not now,”Lyf said softly. “I need to hear—”

  Owyn’s face crumpled. He let out a hoarse, piercing wail, then pounded away on chunky legs.

  Kaeldra sighed and started toward him. “Oh, Owyn …”

  “Let Lyf make herself of use,” Nysien said. “We need to settle this now.”

  Kaeldra looked uncertain. Behind her, Kymo mouthed at Lyf,“Go.”

  Lyf turned and followed after Owyn. Soon enough she would find out whether she was to leave or stay.

  Owyn forgave her on the instant, scrubbing the tears from his eyes with grimy fists. He tugged her through a room with straw pallets laid out on the floor, and through a storeroom jammed with sacks and crates and bales. Then out a back doorway they went, skirting the wreck of a room where the roof had caved in.

  A cooing sound: Owyn led her past a brambly hedge to a round stone building with a conical slate roof. The dovecote. Lyf halted, knowing she should not go within. But when Owyn tugged at her sash and she still did not budge, his lower lip started to quiver. Well, she did not have to ken with them if she did not wish it; she would take care.

  “Fetch the egg,” Owyn said, taking hold of her sash and hauling her within.

  The rich, musty smell of feathers and sawdust and guano engulfed Lyf as she entered. She could hear flutterings and the scratching of bird claws on stone, all overlaid with the deep, contented burblings of doves on the nest. The soft gray light of dusk, spilling down from an opening in the roof, illumined the stone crannies that encircled her. Deeply shadowed, the birds in their niches turned their red-rimmed eyes to stare.

  Owyn pulled on Lyf’s hand and pointed up. “Fetch the egg”

  It lay upon the stone nesting wall, just below the cone of the roof. It must not truly be an egg, Lyf thought. No egg could be that large. Whatever it was, it seemed to catch all the light of that place and hold it within.

  A ladder lay against the wall, but still Lyf hesitated. Whatever sort of bird might have laid that egg… she could not imagine. Perhaps it was an alabaster stone….

  Then all at once Lyf knew what manner of egg it was.

  A dragon egg.

  Lyf sucked in her breath and stepped back. “No,” she said to Owyn, “I will not
fetch it. It—”

  Owyn’s lower lip quivered again. His face reddened; tears spilled over the rims of his eyes. “Why?” he asked. His husky voice cracked and rose shrilly. “Fetch the egg!”

  Lyf huffed out a sigh, eyeing Owyn and then the egg. Well, what harm to humor him? Besides, she had never seen a dragon egg, and this … she wanted to see it better.

  “Very well!” Lyf said and, taking the ladder, moved it to just below the egg. “See? I’m fetching it! Don’t cry!”

  Carefully she scaled the ladder. Below, the crying abruptly ceased, replaced by loud, wet sniffles. When Lyf reached the egg, she stopped. It was as large as her own head, she guessed, and gray-white, tinged with green. The shell was not perfectly smooth. There were grooves on it, thin grooves that formed boxy figures, like the patterns on a tortoise’s shell. Lyf touched the egg, then gingerly picked it up. It was heavy, but neither hard nor brittle; it gave a little to her touch. An odd, low vibration trembled against her fingers.

  “Fetch the egg!”

  Cradling the egg against her side, Lyf backed down the ladder.

  She scraped together a heap of wood shavings with her feet, then settled the egg therein. Owyn squatted down beside it, moving his hands over its surface. He closed his eyes and began to hum.

  Lyf’s hands moved to touch the egg. The vibration passed through her fingertips and tingled in her palms. It almost seemed to … bum. Yes, it did—but faintly, and only when she touched it. It was a comforting sound—a sound, she thought, she could listen to forever.

  “Lyf?”

  Lyf leapt guiltily to her feet. Kaeldra stood in the doorway.

  “I’m sorry; Owyn brought me here; I—”

  Kaeldra waved aside her apology. “Well, and what do you make of our egg?”

  “It is … a dragon egg?”

  Kaeldra nodded. “I found it behind a rock in a cave where the other eggs had been broken and licked clean. By wolves, most like. But they missed this one. Jeorg deemed it dead, but … I sensed something, a faint trembling. …” She paused. “Do you sense it too?”