by James Maxey
Whatever the danger, it wasn’t here now, nor were any snakes. He leapt to the branch of the tree he’d first landed on, then threw himself out into the air, swooping down, then climbing, tracing an arc as he studied the feasibility of a pregnant dragon being able to climb up to the rocky shelter. It looked steep, but not impassible.
The journey here also looked relatively easy, since they could descend from Nadala’s current position into the valley, which was broad and relatively flat. They could follow the stream and—
A flash of yellow caught Graxen’s eye. Yellow was normally a color only seen in nature on flowers or dying leaves, but this hadn’t been a flower. He circled back for another look.
A metal sign. Diamond shaped, about a foot tall, with a vivid yellow background and a black symbol that might have been a stylized drawing of the sun. It was a small circle surrounded by three triangles radiating away from it, their outer edges curved to trace a still larger circle.
Before he had time to ponder the meaning of the symbol, his mind latched onto an even more amazing detail. The sign was bolted to a wall, and the wall was part of a vast building almost completely hidden beneath vegetation. Now that he saw the one wall, he spotted others throughout the valley, a few at first, then hundreds, almost forming a maze, albeit one that would be easy to pass through, since most of the walls had crumbled and fallen. More yellow signs soon emerged, nearly everywhere his eyes fell now that he knew what to look for.
He landed in front of the first sign he’d spotted, which hung on the most intact building among the ruins. From above, the structure was so massive it looked like a low hill covered with trees and bushes. Parts of the outer wall had collapsed revealing three floors within. He found a door among the vines. It stood ajar. Beside it was another of the yellow sun signs. The height and location of the door hinted it had been built for humans. It was far too small to allow a sun-dragon to pass through, and, while many sky-dragon buildings had ground floor doors to accommodate human slaves, most sky-dragon structures were built many stories high, with the main door located on the highest floor and set back from a broad landing area, to allow easy takeoff and landing.
What most drew his attention was the writing. There was a sign over the door. He recognized the letters as a variant of draconic script, though far more angular and stylized. He could even make out words he recognized. O-A-K and R-I-D-G-E could be made out easily enough, though the letters had faded. The next word was long, and rust had claimed the middle letters. Assuming it was all one word, it began with an N and ended with an A-L. He could barely make out what he thought was a T about one gap away from the N. Natural? The missing gap seemed too long. Nutritional? Now the gap wasn’t long enough. National? Was it even one word? Not At All might fit. The final visible word was L-A-B-O-R, though it looked like their might have been a word after that before it rusted through. He studied the faint remnants of the lost word. Stories? Perhaps this had been a training ground for slaves? Where they were taught Labor Stories? And they came from all over the kingdom to learn, making it National? As for the Oak and the Ridge, looking around it seemed an obvious place name, given the terrain and vegetation. Perhaps too obvious. It was like naming some random stretch of ocean shoreline “Sea Oats Beach.” Perhaps human slaves weren’t sophisticated enough for anything more poetic.
But then, how many human slaves did he know who could read? A few were taught the skill to aid the biologians, but most lacked the aptitude for learning the literary arts. The sign would be wasted on most of them.
An intriguing mystery. For upwards of thirty seconds, his mind whirred with a desire to return at once to the College of Spires and inform the historians there of his discovery. They would no doubt be eager to send a team of scholars to study the ruins. He would no longer be known as Graxen the Gray, and instead be known as Graxen the Discoverer, Revealer of Ancient Truths.
The fantasy crashed as swiftly as it took flight. He and Nadala had been banished by the Matriarch herself. If he were ever to return to the kingdom of his birth, any valkyrie or member of the aerial guard would be duty bound to put them to death on sight. If his scales had been the ordinary shade of blue, perhaps he could reach the College of Spires undetected. From a distance, it was difficult to distinguish one sky-dragon from another. With his cursed discoloration, he’d be dead within hours if he returned. There was no hope of both flying and hiding.
He pushed the door open wider and looked inside. The movement startled a nest of rats on the far side of the room, who scattered in all directions. One ran into a beam of sunlight filtering through a crack in the wall.
Before he even knew he was moving, the rat was dead, dangling at the end of the long shaft held in Graxen’s fore-talons. He’d killed it! By pure reflex and instinct, he’d known where it was running and thrust his spear without even thinking of his aim.
He studied the rat closely. It was a fat little beast, with a healthy brown coat, but still only a rat, half a pound of meat at best. It was fuel for at least a few more miles walk for Nadala and the small dragon growing inside her.
NADALA COLLAPSED into the shadow beneath the overhang, panting heavily.
“By the bones,” she groaned. “How do earth-dragons manage to travel everywhere on foot? I’ve walked more this last month than I have my whole life.”
“Is your experience typical?” asked Graxen.
“Falling in love with an outcast, betraying my sisters, and being banished instead of executed because the outcast happens to be the bastard son of the all-powerful Matriarch? No. No, I would not assert that my experience is typical.”
“I meant your pregnancy,” he said. “You’re still months from giving birth. Are other sky-dragon females normally incapacitated for so long?”
“I’m not incapacitated,” she grumbled. “If anything, I’m more physically active than I’ve ever been in my life. Now that I have a comparison, I can accurately say it’s far easier to fly a hundred miles than it is to hike ten.”
“I’ve chosen my words poorly,” said Graxen.
“If you meant to ask if my belly has grounded me more swiftly than it grounds my pregnant sisters, I don’t know. I’ve never spoken with a sky-dragon in the later stages of pregnancy.”
“How is that possible?” Graxen asked. “The whole point of the Nest—”
Nadala raised her fore-talon, cutting him off. “I know at the College of Spires, the belief is that all female sky-dragons are preoccupied with getting pregnant, giving birth, and raising the young. The reality is, the Matriarch determines from birth, and sometimes even before birth, if we are fit for further breeding. Given my discoloration, I was deemed unfit to serve as a child-bearer and was slotted to serve solely as a warrior.”
Nadala’s discoloration consisted solely of a few gray scales among the tens of thousands of blue scales adorning her. She had the grey teardrop beneath her left eye, and another small batch of gray scales on her inner thighs near her genitals, which Graxen had remained unaware of even after their first few awkward attempts at mating, and noticed purely by chance after they’d bathed in a pool at the base of a waterfall and stretched out on a nearby rock to sun themselves.
He said, “But, even if you weren’t meant to breed, certainly you met others who—”
“No,” she said, cutting him off again. “Once a female was matched with a mate, they were isolated from the general population of the Nest, confined to the upper chambers. I would sometimes see them sunning themselves on the balconies, fat and full of life. All activity in the Nest is centered around providing for a pregnant dragon’s every need. They receive the freshest meats, the choicest crops, the finest bedding, and the constant attention of a whole squadron of elder dragons who provide guidance and assurance at every stage of pregnancy. Queen Tanthia probably had more duties than a pregnant sky-dragon.”
“But after they give birth and return to the normal life of the Nest—”
“They are forever apart,” said Nadala
, interrupting once more. Graxen clenched his jaw. He’d once overheard a human slave telling another slave that he’d lived so long with his mate that they now finished each other’s sentences. Graxen felt like this only ran in one direction. Nadala interrupted him without a thought, and he would never dare to interrupt her, not because he feared her reaction, but simply because he cherished listening to her. Of course, he also cherished conversation, and was beginning to wonder if the exchange of words between them could still be categorized as such.
“You mean they never return to other duties in the Nest?” asked Graxen.
She shook her head. “It’s more their attitude. They only associate with others who’ve given birth, though they usually return to work alongside the rest of us. Running the Nest is a laborious job, requiring all able-bodied dragons to pitch in. Unlike you males, we don’t make use of slaves.”
“How very liberal of you,” said Graxen. A few radicals at the College of Spires viewed slavery as unjust, and he had some sympathy for their arguments, though he felt that in some ways sky-dragons were just as enslaved, given that they were assigned careers, mates, and residences by superiors who gave little regard to their preferences.
Nadala gave a brief, bitter laugh. “There’s nothing liberal about our keeping humans from the Nest. They’re a competitive species, desiring many of the same resources to survive and having a demonstrated propensity to gain those resources through theft, deception, and violence. Allowing such creatures inside the walls where we shelter our offspring could be the first step toward our own genocide. Besides, what need do we have of human slaves? We’re experts at enslaving ourselves.”
Graxen nodded. “I was thinking much the same thing.”
Nadala looked out over the valley. She pointed toward something in the distance. “Is that one of them? The ruins of a human building? For a hill, it seems to have rather sharp angles.”
Graxen followed her gaze. “Exactly,” he said. “Once you know what to look for, they’re everywhere.”
“Do you think it’s true?” she asked.
“What?”
“That a human civilization championed by angels existed before the dragons took control of the world?”
Graxen shrugged. “Perhaps. I’ve never dwelled on the question. We live in the world we were born in. What came before matters little.”
“Only now we don’t live in the world we were born in,” said Nadala, softly. “We live in the wilderness, outcast and alone. I thought we’d meet others by now. I thought we’d find the dragons rumored to exist beyond the mountains. Were they only myth? What will become of our fledgling, growing up in a world all alone?”
“He or she will have us,” said Graxen.
“Not forever,” said Nadala. Her voice sounded grave. “In… in childbirth… sometimes a female goes into the birthing chamber and never returns. Birth… can apparently be injurious. To both the mother and the baby. And sometimes… sometimes the mother must be killed, cut open to release the baby, and save its life.”
Graxen watched the birds flitting around the valley in the fading sunlight. Their songs provided an unsettling cheerful counterpoint to Nadala’s heavy tone.
“It won’t come that,” said Graxen.
“It may,” said Nadala. “And if it does, I need you—”
“It won’t,” he said. She looked shocked by his words, either because of his tone, more forceful than comforting, or because it was the first time in his memory that he’d cut her off midsentence. He normally hung on every word from her throat but this… this…
The bird songs seemed to mock him. How simple it must be to lay eggs, smooth, rounded, relatively small, unlike the living, rough-scaled monsters that were infant dragons, born with oversized heads sporting long jaws already filled with needle teeth.
“You must promise,” she said. “You must promise to save the child.”
“It won’t come to that,” he said, no longer forcefully, but still failing to summon a comforting tone.
“It might,” she said. “And there’s no point in not being prepared. If it looks as if something has gone wrong, and there’s any risk of losing the baby… you need to use the spear’s blade and—”
“I understand,” said Graxen.
“But do you promise?”
He took a long, slow breath. “I promise,” he said, looking across the valley. He saw a trio of deer far away, near the tree line. He’d never reach them before they fled. Still, the fact that they were there gave him hope.
“Let’s get some sleep,” he said. “We have a long way to travel in the morning. If I rise early enough, and my luck improves, we won’t need to make the journey on an empty stomach.”
SLEEP PROVED ELUSIVE. The heat of the day rose from the valley, turning the space beneath the rock outcropping into an oven. The storm he’d sensed earlier still hadn’t arrived, though now there were distant flashes in the sky, and the low rumble of thunder rolling in from the west. When the storm arrived, it would be violent. Graxen worried whether their shelter would be sufficient.
At least, when the storm did arrive, it would finally cool the air, and hopefully provide relief for the buzzing, crackling pressure that had been growing in his skull since they’d arrived in the valley. His sick headache combined with the heat made him glad he hadn’t eaten any of the rat he’d given Nadala. She needed the nourishment more than he did and, with his head throbbing like it was, he probably couldn’t have kept the meal down. Plus, while Nadala hadn’t been squeamish at all about eating an animal normally regarded as vermin, he suspected he’d need a few more days of hunger before he could swallow a rat, either cooked or raw.
Graxen closed his eyes, tensing the muscles in his legs and back, holding the tension, then releasing it, hoping for relaxation. He was curled up cat-like, his head resting on his tail, and though his side had grown numb he stubbornly held his position, determined by sheer force of will to break through the discomfort of his body and sleep. Nadala slept soundly. Her breathing was regular and beautiful. After their discussion earlier, the fact she was sleeping without nightmares only gave him more reason to admire her.
A loud crack echoed through the valley, followed by a sizzling sound, but, curiously, no thunder. And the flash of light was no longer a flash—even through closed eyelids, Graxen could tell the light hadn’t faded. Had lightning lit a fire? He couldn’t smell smoke.
Succumbing to curiosity, he opened his eyes. He found Nadala already awake, sitting on her hind-talons on a nearby boulder, spear at the ready, staring out over the valley. The valley was brightly lit, as if the sun had risen over the horizon, but from the south.
Graxen furrowed his brow. “What are we looking at?” he asked, moving to the side of the boulder.
“I was hoping you might have some clue,” she said.
He didn’t. He again found himself missing books more than food. Somewhere, among the nearly endless libraries of the College of Spires, some meteorologist must certainly have described all the possible types of lightning.
But what type of lightning lingered so steadily and strongly as what he now witnessed? In the valley below, from the center of the large building he’d examined earlier, a bolt of lightning crackled, dancing back and forth, arcing up to a circling cloud a few hundred feet above the rooftop. The cloud seem unconnected to the storm on the horizon, churning rapidly, but without the accompanying winds Graxen would have expected from such violent motion. He’d seen a tornado once. Its spin in retrospect was comparatively lackadaisical.
He raised his fore-talon to shield his eyes. The column of lightning was a dazzling, whitish blue. The charged sensation he’d felt in the air earlier was positively tangible now. The fringe of feathery scales along his neck ruffled involuntarily. Sparks suddenly leapt from the tip of Nadala’s iron spear, striking her claw. With a cry of surprise more than pain, she dropped the weapon and leapt, landing beside him.
“Fly!” she said. “Save yourself!”
“Away!” she said. “I… I don’t know what this is, but fear it will destroy us both if we linger!”
“I’m not leaving you behind,” said Graxen.
“I’ll follow as swiftly as I can on foot,” she said.
“We could try to fly together again.”
“Break our necks together, you mean,” she grumbled. “Just go!”
Graxen clenched his fore-talons, wondering what he could do to convince her to try flying together once more. He’d once carried his father Metron many miles on his back. Of course, his father had been old and withered, weighing half of what Nadala weighed even before her pregnancy. Female sky-dragons were slightly larger than the male of the species. And, unspoken between them was the fact that they had actually tried this once before, leaping from a much lower cliff at the edge of a lake. They hadn’t quite plummeted straight down, but they also hadn’t gotten very far at all before crashing into the water. On a more solid surface they might, indeed, have broken their necks.
“I’m staying,” he said, firmly. “I’ll not abandon you. We fear this thing because it’s unknown. It may not represent a danger to us at all.”
“I won’t argue with you on staying,” she said, recognizing the determination in his voice. “But I’m more than open to debating how dangerous this thing might be. Have you never seen what happens to a body struck by lightning?”
“I haven’t, but I’ve also never seen lightning so confined and constant. Assuming it’s lightning at all. Perhaps it’s some sort of firefly mating ritual?”
“That’s creating a tornado?” she asked.
Graxen hopped onto the boulder for a better view. His firefly supposition did seem unlikely and he regretted mentioning it. The initial terror of the phenomenon was fading, and curiosity was starting to overpower caution. He vaguely recalled some proverb used by human slaves involving curiosity and cats, but the exact phrasing eluded him. Did curiosity kill cats? No, that could hardly be right. To hunt, cats had to poke their noses and paws into all sort of dark nooks and crannies. Curiosity fed the cat? Though biologically accurate, that didn’t sound right either.
