by Stephen Deas
The newcomer dragons were still close. She could still feel their thoughts, hot and fierce. They were circling around. They meant to come back.
She seized the Little One gently in her left foreclaws and hurled herself down the river, picking up speed with each stride. One of the other dragons swooped over her. She felt its thoughts and held the Little One close as the dragon above raked her with fire.
It passed over her head. As it did, she launched herself into the air and snapped at its tail. She still clasped the Little One tight to her breast. It was out of its mind, screaming and thrashing. Its thoughts were a jumble, disconcerting and incoherent. They made her feel strange. When another dragon swooped past her, she snapped at that one too and lashed it with her tail. She felt its surprise as it veered away.
Up, up, up. Faster and faster. Away. Sometimes she thought the Little One was trying to tell her to let it go, but its thoughts were chaos, broken and messy, and it kept contradicting itself. Three of the new dragons were following her. They were bigger than she was. They felt older. They had Little Ones to tell them what to do too. She could feel their determination, their hostility.
Another dragon dived from the sky above. A dragon she knew, one of the strong ones. One of the dragons that had come from her nest place. It shot down like an arrow and smashed into the closest dragon behind her, sending them both tumbling towards the ground. She heard the shrieks of other dragons echoing around the valleys, and with them came a surge of excitement. The dragons behind her were all gone, spiralling down together, snapping and lashing at her nest-mate.
She felt a shriek of terror from one of the Little Ones, abruptly cut to nothing. Then they were all gone, too far behind for her to hear their thoughts any more.
The excitement faded. The Little One held in her claws was calmer now, and her own thoughts were less confused. A part of her wanted to go back and play with these new dragons, but the Little One's thoughts were clear: it wanted to get away. Far, far away. It didn't know which way she should go and it didn't care, so she flew whichever way caught her eye, along valleys, between mountains, over lakes. She'd never seen this land before, or anything like it, with all its strange shapes and colours and so much sparkling rushing water. She dragged the tip of her tail through shimmering mirrors, soared and dived and snapped at waterfalls, and spiralled around mountains, riding the currents of rising air. Eventually the light faded, the sun set and the Little One's thoughts went quiet. She could feel herself slowly getting too warm, but the landscape was simply too fresh and exciting to ignore, and so she flew on, playing with it until the heat inside her was positively uncomfortable. Then she landed by a lake. She carefully put the Little One down on the ground, out in the open where she could see him, and bounded into the delicious ice-cold water. She splashed and played under the stars until she was cool again, and then curled up around the Little One and went to sleep.
She dreamed. Far, far away, things were happening. Immense things. Somehow she was a part of them, but they were so far away, she couldn't see them, couldn't hear them, couldn't remember them. She tried to fly towards them, but they kept moving away, eluding her, darting out of the way when she lunged for them.
Abruptly the sun was in the sky again, creeping over the surrounding peaks. She yawned and stretched out her tail and arched her back. The Little One was awake again. She could feel its thoughts. It was hungry.
Yes. Hungry. She was hungry too. She looked at the Little One and bared her teeth, as she always did when it was feeding time.
Tm sorry, Snow. You'll have to find your own breakfast.'
She looked around. She didn't understand most of the noises that the Little Ones made, but sometimes their thoughts were enough. He didn't have any food for her. He was in pain too. And he was afraid. She didn't like those thoughts. They made her feel anxious, and so she stopped listening to them. She thought about being hungry instead, waiting for the Little One to do something about it. When he didn't, she bared her teeth at him again.
'Hunt,' he said. 'You have to hunt.'
Hunt. She knew that noise. It meant flying and chasing and, yes! Catching and killing and eating.
She rose onto all fours and then lowered her neck, inviting the Little One to climb onto her back.
'I can't, Snow. I'm a Scales, not a rider. I'm not allowed.'
The noises made no sense. Hunt meant that a Little One sat on her back and told her where to go. She lowered her neck even more, rubbing it against the stones on the ground.
'They'd put me to death if they knew.' The Little One started to walk in circles. Its thoughts were confused, still laced with pain, Still frightened. 'Only riders ride dragons. That's the law. We should go back. What happened? Were we attacked?' It shook its head. 'Oh, I wish you could speak. What if they're still there? The queen won't be back yet, will she? Oh, what to do? I can't ride with you, Snow. There's no saddle; I'd fall. But we can't stay here, and you can't find your way home on your own. I don't even know where we are. Do you know where we are?'
She rubbed her neck against the ground again and bared her teeth once more. Hunt. Hungry.
'You want to eat. Yes, you must be hungry. Oh, but there aren't any alchemists here. You have to drink the water they make for you. You'll get sick otherwise. We'll have to go back.'
Hunt. Hungry. She made the gestures again. She was starting to get frustrated, and the Little One's thoughts were confusing her. She couldn't make any sense of them.
'I can't climb on your back, Snow. There's no harness. I can't reach.' The Little One walked to her left foreclaws and tried to open them. She didn't understand what he wanted to do, then she caught a picture from his mind, of flying through the air at night, and she was carrying him.
Yes. The way they'd come here. Carefully she raised herself onto her back legs and held out her foreclaws. The Little One nodded and made noises, and in his thoughts she saw that she'd understood him. He climbed into her claws, and she gently closed them around him.
'Hunt!' he said.
Hunt. That was something she understood.
24
A Memory of Flames
They hunted. She ate. The Little One ate too, and then they climbed into the sky together again. The Little One wanted to go somewhere, but it didn't know which way to go, so she flew again as the fancy took her, into a wilderness of crags and broken stone and boulders the size of castles. She tried to hunt there too, but the land was barren and empty. When night fell, she found a place to land and went to sleep. The dreams came again, as distant as ever.
The next day they flew back out among the valleys and rivers. It rained. She liked that, liked the feel of it. The Little One started telling her which way to go. She understood its thoughts: Left, straight, right, up, down. She knew the noises too, but when they were racing through the air, the noises were all lost in the wind, and she had to pluck the thoughts out of the Little One's head. She began to wonder whether this Little One was somehow broken. The other Little Ones that sat on her back had thoughts that were much clearer.
'We're lost,' said the Little One. She didn't understand, but she could see in his thoughts that he was anxious. He was always anxious. Mostly she blocked him out.
They looked for dragons but they didn't find any. The next day was the same. And the next. But at night, when she slept, something was beginning to change. The dreams were coming closer. She didn't notice it at first, but after a few days a strange understanding came to her. She wanted the dreams. More than anything else, she wanted them. They were important. More important than food or shelter or even than the Little One. She didn't know why; they simply were. With that one revelation came another. They would come to her as long as she stayed here, away from the others, alone.
The day after that she chose her own way to fly. Instinct drove her towards ever higher places. The Little One was even more upset than usual. It shouted at her. It was angry with her, and that made her feel very bad. She was supposed to do what the L
ittle Ones wanted, and this Little One was the most special Little One of them all, the one who'd been with her since she'd first opened her eyes.
That night the dreams were even closer. She could almost smell them, almost touch them. They were filled with fire and ash and burning flesh. In the morning, when she woke up, she left the Little One behind and went to hunt alone. She felt its anguish and despair as it watched her fly away. It was still there when she came back. It felt joy to see her return and made lots of noises that she didn't understand. When she slept again, the dreams finally let her touch them.
She was a tiny part of something vast. She couldn't see or hear, but she could feel the thoughts of hundreds of dragons, bright and sharp and clear. She could feel other beings too, huge and powerful. Far beneath them she felt a hum of lesser thoughts. Little Ones, she realised with surprise, but that didn't make any sense, because the Little Ones seemed so dull and dim next to the other dragons, and the truth she knew was the other way around.
She tried to grasp the dream, to unravel it, but it fluttered away only for another to come in its place.
She was flying. The air around her was thick with dragons, and on the back of each was a single rider clad in silver. She wheeled and dived and saw that the ground far below was alive. It was crawling, heaving, moving as far as she could see with Little Ones. Thousands upon thousands. Millions upon millions.
Arrows. She closed her eyes and felt them batter against her scales.
She flew over their heads as she would skim over a forest. Little Ones wrapped up in their crude skins of metal. Spears and axes rattled off her scales. She opened her mouth and let the fire burst out of her, filling the world with screams, filling her heart with joy. Everywhere other dragons were doing the same. She could feel the power from the man of silver on her back, driving her on, urging her to kill, kill…
The Little Ones were so many. She burned them by the hundred and they died, and the dead were swallowed up by the horde as though they'd never existed.
And then the dead rising back to life, burned and broken, turning on the living, grasping and clawing. The silver creature on her back was making it so. He laughed, and so did she.
And then something happened, and the silver creature on her back wasn't there any more, and her wings wouldn't fly, and she couldn't move or think, as though a giant claw had seized her mind and was slowly crushing her.
She remembered crashing into the ground, scattering Little Ones around her, as the claws in her mind sank deeper, and then she remembered nothing.
No. Not nothing. She was an egg again. She was a tiny part of something vast. She couldn't see or hear, but she could still feel the thoughts of hundreds of dragons, bright and sharp and clear.
She woke up. Most of the sky was still dark, although the first glimmers of dawn were peeking through between the mountains. The dreams were still there in her head, hundreds of them. They didn't feel like dreams now; they felt like memories. But that couldn't be right. There weren't even a hundred other dragons in her nesting place, never mind a thousand. They didn't feel the same either. The dragons in her dreams had thoughts that shone like cut diamond. The dragons of her nesting place were simple and dull.
She'd never flown far from her nesting place. She knew that. She hadn't been to the places she was remembering. She'd never felt the presence of one of these silver men whose minds burned like the sun. As for flying over a sea of Little Ones, burning them…
Above all the rest, that memory stayed in her mind. She'd enjoyed it. More than that; it was the most exhilarating thing she'd ever done.
But she hadn't done it. She couldn't have done it. They were dreams, not memories, and they couldn't be real. She struggled to make sense of it, but it was far too difficult, and she was already hungry again. She got hungry a lot out here in the mountains. There was plenty to eat, though, if you knew where to look.
She launched herself into the sky as soon as the sun was up, leaving the Little One behind again. She felt his sadness as she went. He didn't like to be left on his own. She didn't understand that. In her nesting place there were always other dragons nearby, and Little Ones too. Even at night in the dark she felt the presence of their thoughts. She'd never been as alone as she was here, and yet she'd never felt so strangely wonderful.
Without the Little One to slow her, she roamed far on her hunts. She looked for river valleys and then followed them, soaring high in the sky, watching and waiting for prey to emerge from the forests to drink. Sometimes it would be a bear, sometimes a few deer, sometimes a herd of snappers. She had to be careful because the animals were never far from the edge of the forest, and once they got among the trees they were as good as lost. So she'd watch them for a while until she was sure they were coming out to drink, and then she'd tuck in her wings and dive. If she could, she'd seize them with her claws and bite off their heads. If they saw her coming and ran, she'd lash at them with her tail, wrapping it around them or sending them flying through the air to pounce on while they were still stunned. If she had to, she'd burn them. They tasted better raw, though.
Today the sky was grey and a steady rain was falling. Rain and cloud were good. She could fly a lot lower before anyone would see her, and that meant they had less time to get out of the way when she fell out of the sky at them. She ate well, and yet something drew her on, further and further down the valleys, as if a part of her knew that something was waiting for her.
There was. She'd flown for half the day, perhaps a hundred miles, when she felt the tickle of stray thoughts. Little Ones. When she looked down, she couldn't see them, only the endless treetops and the little scar of the river flowing between them. She circled down towards the trees and finally landed in the river, peering into the gloom of the forest. Her eyes found nothing, but she knew nonetheless. They were close enough that she could feel their thoughts, each one of them. And they didn't even know she was there.
For a while she wondered what to do. Then she launched herself up into the sky once more.
25
Cinders and Ashes
The dragon trotted a few paces down the river, sending boulders splashing and tumbling, and then stopped and watched them. The air stank of damp charcoal. Here and there, as they dashed for the shelter of the forest, Sollos had to step over charred remains that had once been men and women. Outsiders burned by a dragon. The sight brought back too many memories. It set him on edge.
'Bastard,' grunted Kemir.
Sollos shook his head. 'There has to be a rider. I told you, dragons don't flamestrike unless someone tells them to, and they don't burn their prey. They like their meat fresh.'
They peered through the trees. 'Should we go back and tell Rider Rod?' asked Kemir. 'Or would it be more fun to lurk here and see what happens?'
'No point.' Sollos clucked his tongue. 'It's leaving.' he ran back through the trees to the river. By the time he got there the dragon was already airborne. He watched it go, skimming along the bottom of the valley, barely above the treetops, until it vanished around a bend. South, he thought. It went south.
He looked behind him, back down the river. He could see the riders and their alchemist now, picking their way through the stones.
'Sollos!'
He couldn't see Kemir through the trees but he heard the urgency. He darted back into the shelter of the trees. 'What?'
'Survivor. Sort of.'
Kemir, when Sollos found him, was kneeling beside a tree. Propped up there with him was an Outsider. Given how badly the man was burned, it was a miracle the man wasn't dead.
'Shit! Give him some water!'
Kemir grunted. 'Done that. He's not going to last. His mind's already gone. He keeps wittering about the dragon talking to him.'
The man groaned and nodded. 'The dragon spoke. It spoke in my head.'
'See.' Kemir shrugged. 'Gone.'
'Go and get the alchemist. He might be able to do something.'
'You go and get the alchemist.'
> 'Get the alchemist!' Sollos pushed Kemir away and crouched beside the dying man. 'We saw the dragon. A white dragon. It left when we arrived. Did it do this?'
'No, it was a careless bloke with a pipe,' muttered Kemir. 'Daft bugger.'
Sollos stood up. This time he shoved Kemir towards the river, screaming at him. 'Go and get the fucking alchemist!'
Kemir jogged off grumbling. Sollos sat down beside the man again.
'We're getting help. Did the white dragon do this?'
The man nodded. He whispered something, too quietly for Sollos to hear, until Sollos bent over and almost pressed his ear to the burned man's lips. 'It spoke. I heard it speak.'
'Who was riding it?'
The man shook his head.
'Was it a dragon-knight?'
The man shook his head again. 'No rider,' he breathed.
'A man then. Not a knight but a man.' The Scales. We never found the body.
Another shake of the head. 'No… rider… just… dragon… on… its… own.'
Sollos had never heard of such a thing. Maybe Kemir was right. The man had to be in unbelievable pain judging from his burns. Maybe his mind had already gone.
'It spoke.' The man sighed and closed his eyes, and for a moment Sollos thought he was gone. Then his lips moved again. 'It spoke in my head. I heard it. It came for Maryk.'
'Maryk? Who's Maryk?'
The man didn't answer. His chest was still rising and falling, but his breaths were fast and shallow and ragged. Sollos stood up. 'Kemir!' Where's that cursed alchemist?
The alchemist was too late, of course. Sollos watched the man's chest heave one last time and then he was still. He'd been gone a few minutes by the time Kemir returned with the alchemist and the dragon-knights.
