A Sending of Dragons

by Jane Yolen

  “COME. COME. COME.”

  22

  THEY GATHERED ON the edge of the meadow and watched the sun go down, a crowd of silent, staring people bound together by their thoughts.

  Then, as if the setting sun released them to their tasks, the crowd surged forward into the great open space. Some of the men moved away from the rest, going toward a section of meadowland that was fallow and fuzzed over with new grass. A few women with hand tools headed toward the planted fields. The rest paused around the altar, which was splotched with dark shadows.

  One woman began gathering up discarded robes, passing through the crowd to collect any that were left. She made piles of them on the stones, though Jakkin couldn’t tell whether the piles had to do with size or with the amount of dirt or rips or tears in the robes. When he and Akki handed their wet robes to her, she glanced at them oddly, then placed them in a separate pile.

  Makk threaded his way through the crowd, placing his hand on an arm here, a shoulder there, choosing a cadre of workers, who in turn chose others. There were no arguments.

  Coming toward him, Makk put his hand roughly on Jakkin’s arm and his sending hurtled forward.

  “Stay with others now. Pull cart.”

  Jakkin looked puzzled, and Makk pointed. When Jakkin made no immediate move Makk pushed him and hurled a sending after him.

  “Go Brekk. Brekk knows.”

  Jakkin bowed his head at Makk, grateful the man hadn’t noticed their absence. Searching out Akki, who’d been herded into a knot of women folding robes, he caught her eye and nodded. Then he concentrated on raising a heavy curtain over his thoughts with a tiny peephole showing through which he let out a carefully constructed sending. He was counting on the fact that these people, who shared every thought together, seemed to know nothing about acting or telling lies. His sending was a dark rendering of a dragon in pain. Not the pain of the slashed throat or the pain of a dragon in the pit, but the pain of a hen whose birth canal was blocked. He drew on his memory of the days just past and flung the sending directly at Makk.

  Makk’s head jerked up. Looking around, he found Akki in the crowd and walked over to her swiftly, placing his hand on the back of her neck.

  Jakkin forced himself to relax and lower the curtain, letting Makk’s sending flood through him. He knew he’d be able to eavesdrop on it because he didn’t subscribe to the code of privacy these people had fashioned for themselves.

  Makk’s sending was direct and clear. “Go dragons. Heal.”

  When Makk took his hand away, severing the intensity of the connection, Jakkin insinuated a sending into Akki’s still open mind.

  “Good. Go to the dragons. Pretend Au ricle’s sick. Check her bonds. I’ll be back as soon as I can.” Then he closed his mind, turned, and sought out Brekk and the others, who had been detailed to the bone cart.

  ***

  THE JOURNEY SEEMED endless, even with ten men pulling and pushing the cart, for it was a heavy, unwieldy vehicle that could navigate the twisting passageways only with a great deal of human help. Pulling was worse than pushing, for they had to be strapped into leather harnesses. They stopped often and traded back and front groups.

  Jakkin tried to keep track of the turnings so that he could make his escape. But he lost count of the numbered patches when someone fell against him, shoving him into the wall. He bumped his head so painfully, he forgot his careful tally.

  It surprised him that they never came to the original lake where he’d tracked Auricle until he remembered that Akki had been taken on the other side of the lake and brought to the Place of Women by an entirely different route. So, he reasoned, his head still throbbing from the fall, there were many roads in this intricate mountain maze. That thought didn’t comfort him.

  He recognized only three of the men from the ore shifts, one being one-eyed Brekk. If he’d had any hope that Brekk might treat him with an easy familiarity, he was wrong. As cart master, Brekk was a hard but fair leader and a tireless worker, taking many extra turns in the harness. In this he reminded Jakkin of Master Sarkkhan, who had outshoveled and outshouted every bonder at his nursery. Brekk’s sendings were loud and snappish: “Faster! Push! Here! Right turn! Stop!”

  In fact, they took only five rest stops altogether, and at each Brekk handed around several jugs filled with a cold, spicy red drink. Whether it was made of dragon’s blood, like the hot protein drink takk, which was standard nursery fare, or of pressed berries, Jakkin couldn’t tell. And he didn’t ask. He drank it as eagerly as the rest of the men, for it was all they got on the long haul. When they’d each drunk their fill Brekk pushed them back to their feet with a powerful sending.

  The cart and its bloody baggage rumbled on. Every once in a while one of the bones would tumble from the cart and someone would bend to retrieve it. Often the man picking up the bone would hold it up to his nose or lick it surreptitiously, snagging a piece of the stringy flesh. One time a bande dominus dropped down at Jakkin’s feet, and when he stooped to pick it up he was aware that all the men were staring at him, waiting to see what he’d do. He stood up slowly and placed it reverently back on the cart, eyes smarting for while it was in his hands he could feel—as if in a sending—the mental screams of the dying dragon. He walked away from the back of the cart into a side tunnel and was quietly sick.

  The men ignored him completely after that, as if he’d failed some important test. Jakkin remembered, almost as if in a dream, the easy camaraderie of the bondhouse: the silly jokes, the noisy songs, the raucous, teasing laughter. Suddenly he missed all the bond boys and girls he’d grown up with: the fat cook Kharina, the sluggard Slakk, the hardhanded trainer Likkarn, even Errikkin, whose ingratiating ways had often irritated him. He thought of them with an exaggerated fondness even as he wondered what they’d make of Akki and him should they ever return.

  When he had to get into the pull harness, Jakkin placed himself in the worst position, closest to the cart, where the wheels threatened at every pull to bang against his heels. But at that position the growling and creaking of the cart overwhelmed everything else and he could lose himself in his own thoughts, forgetting the sweat around him and the stale air of the cave.

  ***

  BY THE TIME they reached the bone pile Jakkin was walking in his sleep, every muscle aching. After all, he’d been up long before the others and the underwater swim had taken its toll on his strength. Though he hadn’t shared the frenzy of the night before, he’d also not shared all of the sleep. So he pulled with his eyes closed, following the lead of the straps, oblivious of the time. That’s why it came as a surprise to him when they rolled to a stop in front of the great pile of whitened bones.

  The other men dropped down where they stood, but Jakkin couldn’t even move that much.

  “Sleep,” Brekk sent. “Work not-now.”

  Even before Jakkin could get his bearings, two of the men were snoring. When he finally got himself free of the harness, he found he couldn’t just drop like the others into mindless sleep. He was too tired and too upset for that. So he stepped over the men in his way and walked up to the bone pile, craning his neck to look at the top. He remembered—how many days ago had it been?—when Akki and he had first seen the bones. They’d wondered what horrible beast could have done such a thing. And now they knew.

  Walking slowly along the tunnel, he found his way back to the cave opening where he and Akki had first entered, pursued by the copter. He bent down and squinted at the bright light filtering through the interfacings of caught-ums. It was day again! They’d pulled the cart with its load of hollow bones the whole night long. It was clear that ordinary time had no meaning for these people. They went to hoe fields in the night. They slept when they dropped. All that mattered was metal—and blood. Dragon’s blood. Because metal gave them their tools and blood gave them the ability to live in the cold, the ability to send, the ability to see the world through dragons’ eyes.

  And then a further thought hit him. These were the gift
s—metal and the knowledge of the change through sheltering in the dragon’s bloody birth chamber—that he and Akki had wanted to bring back to the daylit world.

  He pushed aside the caught-ums, heedless of the briars that pierced his fingers. When he’d opened up a path he looked around. It would be so easy, he thought, to slip away down the hill, back to the three little caves where he and Akki had been so happy. But he couldn’t slip away because there was Akki, left behind. And Auricle. And the hatchlings born of the slaughtered dragon. And because those three little caves were no longer an easy answer.

  Finding a stick on the ground near the copse of spikka trees, he hefted it and went back through the thorny path, using the stick to unhook the caught-ums and close the way behind him. Then he found a place in the cave as far from the other sleepers as he dared, yet still within sight of them, curled his back against the wall, and slept.

  23

  THEY STACKED THE bones in an interlocking pattern and set them without ceremony next to the large pile. The unceremonious manner with which they treated the bones after the frenzied ritual of slaughter surprised Jakkin, and he was not asked to help. Because there were so many bones, it took a long time. When the men were done they began the long trip back without fussing. The cart was only marginally lighter on their return.

  It occurred to Jakkin slowly, as they wound through the tunnels, that the pattern of bones was much too complex for these simple people to have invented. All their bowl ware was new and simple; the carved statues and the ironwork had been created generations before by the original Makker and his friends. Over the years of inbreeding and silence the cave people’s minds had grown dull, lifeless. Jakkin knew enough about bloodlines to understand that. Dragon masters always said, The wider the stock, the better the breed.

  The closer they got to the heart of the caves, Jakkin realized something else. He no longer feared the dark-minded Makk or the single-minded Brekk or any of the others. He pitied them. But—he was quick to remind himself—that didn’t mean they were any the less dangerous for it. After all, they’d killed a full-grown dragon with the crudest of weapons and their combined sendings could stun a man into a stupor. What he and Akki had were quick wits and an ability to communicate through words as well as sendings. He felt equal to any battle. But he would not let his confidence get in the way of caution.

  ***

  WHEN THE MEN returned they ate in the Place of Women, for it was the largest cavern available. The ceremony being over, however, they ate apart from the women, though Jakkin noticed several couples signaling one another with their hands and then slipping away down the tunnels after the meal. Briefly he looked for Akki, thinking they might do the same. Then he remembered that he’d told Makk she was a healer, not to be treated like an ordinary woman. For her own safety, he had to keep her apart.

  As he thought about Makk the man seemed to materialize beside him, a blunt sending coming through without the help of a touch.

  “Go dragon. Help healer” The sending seemed grayed over, as if Makk were tired.

  Jakkin nodded and, with Makk’s initial help, found the right tunnel, which was marked with three lines of phosphorescence placed vertically, one horizontally. He took careful note of it. Then, hearing a sound behind him, he turned to see Brekk, his single eye glaring. Jakkin stopped and Brekk stopped. When he started forward again Brekk followed. So, Jakkin thought, he had been assigned a guard. And there was nothing secret about it. Something he or Akki had done must have made Makk wary. If he could only find out what, he’d act differently. After all, he didn’t want to alert them ahead of time.

  The tunnel opened into the egg room, bright with the light of many torches, and Jakkin saw Akki standing by a large stall behind a pale red dragon. Auricle had been moved into a layer’s spot, though it would be months before she was ready to birth her clutch.

  Auricle greeted Jakkin with a gray rainbow and arched her neck, but Akki’s greeting was all in her face. Then her eyes shifted to Brekk, who had paused at the tunnel entrance to lean against the wall. Akki’s eyebrows went up, and Jakkin, with his back to Brekk, formed a single silent word.

  “Guard.”

  She nodded, turning back to the stall, and Jakkin followed her in. There were two women on their knees fussing over the dragon’s nails and a third woman picking up straw and fewmets by hand and dropping them over the stall wall into a pushcart. By hand! Jakkin smiled wryly, wondering what his bond friends, the lazy Slakk and the fastidious Errikkin, would say about that.

  Sending carefully, he questioned Akki. “How bad is this one?” But he let the query broadcast to the women and Brekk.

  “This one seems well, but when I examined her I found many potential problems. She needs exercise. And a bath.” The picture she sent was of a greenish lake where a dragon frolicked and splashed.

  “Careful,” Jakkin whispered.

  One of the women tending the nails looked up at the sound. Her mouth worked angrily, and her sending was sharp. “Kkriah! Kkriah!”

  Brekk straightened up and started toward them, and Akki pushed out of the stall and met him halfway, putting her hand on his. “The dragon must be moved. She must walk. Standing still so much makes the birth canal. . .” Her sending faltered. She didn’t find lying easy without words.

  Jakkin broke in, finding the contact with Brekk made simpler by Akki’s hand contact. “Makes the birth canal close tight with sores. It is the way of this sickness.”

  Akki took a deep breath, adding, “How do I set her free?”

  Brekk shrugged off her hand and turned away from her, going back to the wall. His contempt shaped his sending. “Woman’s work.”

  Wiping her filthy hands on her shirt, the woman who had been handling the fewmets signaled to Akki, “Come. Come.” Her sending had more tone and rhythm than most.

  Akki went back into the stall, Jakkin behind her. The woman bent down and opened the metal cuff with a quick flick of her hands. She held the cuff up. It had a simple snap-on lock.

  Akki nodded, then turned away as if she were no longer interested in the mechanics of the bonds, sending instead to the women still tending Auricle’s nails, “Get water. Boil it. Very hot.”

  They showed nothing in their faces but leaped up together and went out past Jakkin and Akki toward a far entryway.

  “And you,” Akki sent to the other woman, “I need knives for the lancing. Boil them. And wash that filth from your hands.”

  “Filth?” The sending was clearly puzzled.

  “Go!” Akki let her exasperation show.

  The woman left, wiping her hands down the front of her shirt.

  Akki walked back to Brekk, who had been observing everything from his post, his single eye squinting. “I need. . .”

  His sending cut across hers with the neat precision of a surgeon. “I watch. I go no woman’s way”

  Akki controlled her mouth and eyes with an effort, turned her back to him, and opened her mouth in a silent shout at Jakkin. “Help!”

  Jakkin gave her a lopsided grin, bent, and quickly flicked open the other three chains and removed one from its setting in the wall. Then he signaled to Brekk. “A man is needed here. The dragon must be led to water. Do not help the woman. Help me.” He never thought it would work.

  But Brekk seemed relieved, and he came over at once to take hold of the dragon’s ear, pulling it so roughly that Auricle backed out of the stall with jerky steps. Jakkin waited until the dragon obscured him, then he pulled Akki close and whispered in her ear, “We can go now. Get the hatchlings. I’ll take care of him.”

  She moved quickly to the stall where the five hatchlings were sleeping, climbed over the fence, and disappeared. Jakkin, holding the chain behind him, walked up to Brekk, who still had Auricle’s ear in a twisting hold.

  Brekk may have heard his step, or a bit of Jakkin’s anxiety may have leaked out around the edges of his mind barrier. At the last moment, just as Jakkin was bringing the heavy chain down upon his head,
Brekk turned and raised his arm, taking most of the blow there, but the shock of it nevertheless tumbled him in front of the dragon’s forefeet. She fell on her knees on top of his leg, and Jakkin heard the crack of bone. At the same moment a sending rocketed through him, full of pain and anger and astonishment. Then Brekk must have passed out because only a lingering shard of the sending remained in his head.

  Jakkin grabbed for Auricle’s ear. “Up!” he commanded aloud. His sending was more emphatic. The dragon slowly rose from her knees and Brekk, groaning out loud from the pain, turned his head aside.

  Out of the corner of his eye Jakkin saw Akki climbing out of the stall, a single hatchling in her arms.

  “Only one?”

  “All the rest are males,” she said.

  “Are you sure?”

  “Trust me.”

  “Then let’s go.” He pulled at her arm.

  “I’d better do something about his leg,” Akki said. “I don’t know if they can set it. And—”

  “We don’t have time, Akki. And when he comes to, he’s not going to be happy with us.”

  “Jakkin . . .”

  He bent and picked up the chain and dangled it in front of her. “Trust me.”

  “Yes, sir!” she said, giving him a mock salute.

  “Sometimes I wish you’d obey as fast as those other women!”

  She whispered a curse that startled him because he hadn’t known she knew such language. Then he grinned and gave her a hug. “But I’m satisfied,” he added. “Trust me!” Throwing the chain down, he grabbed a fresh torch lying against the wall and lit it. “Now let’s go!”

  ***

  THEY TROTTED DOWN the tunnel, careful to mask their thoughts, until Jakkin realized that the dragon’s mind was wide open and broadcasting.

  “Shut up,” he commanded in a frantic sending, but either she didn’t understand him or she just couldn’t stop. And then the hatchling began to send a piping that bounced from wall to wall.

  “Well, so much for a sneaky exit,” he said. Akki’s laughter bubbled through his mind, a laugh on the edge of hysteria. He had to concentrate hard to keep from responding to that hysteria himself.