Dragonseed da-3

by James Maxey

"Ah, my faithful one," he said, his voice mournful as he lifted her limp body. "You've known nothing but violence all your life." He brushed the bloody hair away from her forehead. He placed his scaly talon over her face. "I know you acted out of love, but there's no need for fighting."

  He pulled his talon away. Colobi's forehead was intact; there was no sign of the tomahawk wound, not even a scar. Colobi's eyes opened, glistening with tears. She whispered, "I've defiled your holy presence with my anger. I'm not deserving of your mercy."

  "You're wrong, my child," said Blasphet. The skin around his eyes creased. Dragons couldn't smile, but his eyes signaled affection. "All are worthy of wholeness and mercy. You understand what you did wrong; you won't transgress again. You've paid for your sins. When I picked you up, you had no heartbeat. The woman who acted in anger is dead. You are a reborn creature now, free from the sins of your past."

  Blasphet set Colobi down. She stood on unsteady legs; tears ran down her cheeks. Driven by emotions that Anza couldn't fathom, Colobi spun and ran from the barn, weeping.

  Blasphet turned toward Anza. His great, long face, bigger than a horse's head, snaked down toward her. He exhaled as he studied her. His breath was pleasant, smelling of mint. It was nothing like the carrion breath of most dragons.

  He took a long, deep breath inches from her face. A fine silver dust rose from Anza's flesh. It reminded her of the residue that had been left behind by Jandra's bracelet.

  Blasphet's eyes stayed focused upon her as she searched his face for any possible weak points. If she could get her hands free, she still possessed a chance. The silver halo that hung above Blasphet's scalp reflected candlelight, meaning it was solid. It was plain, and didn't look strong, but it did have a small triangle near the front that rose up into a decorative peak. A sun-dragon's ears were large, flat disks on the side of their head, almost like the surface of a drum. If she could grab the circlet, then drive the point into Blasphet's ear, the pain would immobilize him. Then, if she could reach her throwing knives…

  Blasphet observed, "You're calculating how best to kill me. This is one reason I hold such affection for mankind. The best of you cling to hope long after a more rational being would succumb to despair. Tell me my child, what is your name?"

  Anza glared at him.

  "There is no need to fear me. I will not harm you."

  Anza stared silently as Blasphet cocked his head, waiting for her answer. In the candlelight, she saw more of the silvery dust riding in and out of Blasphet's nostrils. Blasphet turned his head to the right, then to the left, his eyes running up and down the length of her body.

  "You've not lead an easy life," said Blasphet, touching the festering burn wound on her chest. She sucked in air as a jangle of pain ran through her. "You possess far more scars than a typical woman your age. You've broken several bones over the years. Yet, you've received better medical attention than most humans. Your cuts have been expertly stitched and your bones have been reset by a confident hand."

  Blasphet turned his attention to her face. He stroked her cheek. "A typical female your age would already be a mother. Yet I see you retain your virginity. It's obvious from your rather formidable skills that someone has trained you as a warrior, not a wife. What a curious life you've led. Won't you tell me your story?"

  Anza ground her teeth together and strained against the hands that held her. Though she was still fully clothed, she felt as if Blasphet was somehow undressing her. She'd never felt so vulnerable.

  "Whoever trained you… he was never able to teach you to speak, was he?" asked Blasphet. He didn't wait for Anza to answer. His eyes were fixed on her throat. "He couldn't have. I see a small tumor on your recurrent laryngeal nerve. It looks quite old; perhaps you've had it since infancy. It's become calcified. It's a tiny stone in your throat that blocks nerve impulses to your vocal chords. The muscles in your larynx have atrophied, producing your present aphonia."

  Blasphet's talons fell upon Anza's throat. He lightly rubbed her skin. Anza shuddered, then tipped her head back as searing pain ripped through her neck. It felt as if Blasphet were attempting to decapitate her from the inside out. She couldn't breathe-it felt as if a dozen thick worms were squirming and coiling in her windpipe.

  She opened her mouth and tears welled in her eyes. She'd lived her life as a tool of death, like a sword or a bow. She'd known that the day would come when she would break and be discarded, as was the fate of all tools. She'd never told a soul that she was afraid of this day. Who was she to tell? It was her shameful secret that she sometimes woke up in the dead of night, from dreamless sleep, shivering at the thought of nothingness, of non-existence, of the world moving on in her absence.

  Suddenly, the worms in her throat lined up in a more orderly fashion, allowing the movement of air once more. She filled her lungs to fullness with a deep, desperate gasp.

  As she exhaled, a noise tore from her throat that was like nothing she'd ever heard. It was something the cry of a hungry baby, only deeper, like the howl of a coyote, or the wail of a wildcat. It was a long, deafening, drawn-out scream that caused the hands that pinned her to flinch.

  It was the scream of a woman who had never even whispered. It was a howl that was the sum of countless days of silence. It was the cry of a woman who'd never laughed, never cursed, and bore in silence the pain of broken bones and a thousand cuts.

  It was a sound she'd heard only in her dreams. There was no mistaking it. This noise was coming from her own mouth. It made her tongue itch and her teeth ache.

  Slowly, the scream died away as the last thimble of air left her lungs. She took a deep breath, and screamed again.

  One by one the hands that held her let go. She didn't move. She couldn't. All the anger and fear and shame of a silent lifetime had provided the tension that drove the springs of her clockwork heart. That tension was gone now, carried away by the primal howls. The last remnants of her unspoken agony seeped out as loud, choking, sobs.

  "Ooo," she said, trembling. "Ooohhh, oohhhh, ooohhhhhh."

  She possessed a voice, but she didn't know how to make words.

  "Ooohhhh!" she groaned, as she curled into a tight, fetal ball. "Oooohhh… Ooooohhh!"

  Gently, a pair of giant talons slipped beneath her and picked her up. She was cradled against Blasphet's enormous breast. She pressed her wet face against it. His scales felt cool in contrast to the heat of her tears. The drum-like beat of his heart filled her ears.

  "Your screams are like music to me, child," Blasphet whispered. "They are the sounds of your body healing, so that your soul may heal. Soon enough, we'll teach you to talk. You shall be whole, child. You shall be healed."

  "We shall all be healed," the chorus of women said in unison.

  Anza opened her teary eyes. She didn't see an angry face among the women who looked up at her.

  Beyond the women, however, was the sky-dragon she'd spotted earlier. He was standing near the back of the room, staring at her with a look that was best interpreted as a scowl. He didn't look pleased by what he was seeing, but he didn't look like a threat either. Nothing in the way the dragon carried himself suggested he was contemplating violence.

  Feeling completely, truly safe for the first time in memory, Anza closed her eyes and cried herself to sleep in the cradle of Blasphet's wings.

  JANDRA WOKE TO the sound of a woman screaming. Her eyes popped open as the echoes faded. She felt a flutter of panic; total darkness engulfed her. Was she blind? The disorientation faded and she remembered she was underground, deep in the mines.

  She'd seldom encountered true darkness. Above ground, even a cloudy, moonless night still possessed some faint trace of light. Within the palace where she'd grown up, there were many shadows, but she was never far from a torch or lantern. When she'd had her powers, she could create light simply by sprinkling dust in the air. She sat up, tossing off the blanket that covered her, taking a deep breath to calm her racing heart. She felt stupid. She was too old to be frightened of the da
rk.

  She groped for the visor she'd placed beside her rolled up coat that she used as a pillow. The walls of the mine came into sharp focus as she slipped it on, not that there was much worth looking at. They were in a long shaft of black stone. Up was rock, down was rock, side to side was rock. The only living things to be seen were Shay and Lizard. Shay was sitting up, his back to the wall. He already had his visor on, hiding his eyes. The short braid he normally wore had come undone, and his red hair lay about his face in tangles. He hadn't shaved in a week, and the shadow of stubble around his mouth made him look older. Coal dust had darkened the creases of his skin. His shotgun was in his lap, grasped with both hands. Life underground was proving hard on Shay. He'd grown increasingly silent the deeper they moved into the earth.

  The cool, dank tunnels were also taking a toll on Lizard. The little earth-dragon was pressed up against Shay, staring at Jandra with a wide-eyed gaze. He looked worried.

  "Have long have you been awake?" Jandra asked.

  "You were talking in your sleep again," said Shay. "You woke up screaming."

  "Did I?" Jandra cocked her head. She had a fleeting memory of a woman shouting, but it was ephemeral, the echo of an echo. "What did I say?"

  "You were talking to someone named Cassie," said Shay. "Just before you woke, you screamed, 'It's mine!'"

  Jandra brushed the hair back from her forehead, puzzling over this revelation. She thought about her tongue, how it could possibly speak without her mind controlling it, and grew aware of the bad taste in her mouth. "I need water," she said.

  Shay held out the leather canteen. She uncorked it and took a deep drink. The water had a sulfurous taint to it. There were numerous streams and pools in the mine, but most tasted like rotten eggs. It wasn't pleasant to drink, but neither was it dangerous. Vendevorex had provided her with a thorough education in chemistry. Sulfur posed no harm to the human body when ingested. The main downside was that her spit was taking on the foul odor. In fact, she was starting to reek, period. When she'd still been in control of her nanotech, the tiny machines had kept her skin clean, her breath fresh, and her hair untangled. Low tech grooming was tedious and almost pointless in a coal mine, where every surface she touched sullied her further.

  She put the jug down and wiped her lips with the back of her hand, feeling the coarse grit that covered both her hands and her mouth. The black grit reminded her of the black sand of an oil-covered beach-one of Jazz's memories.

  "Can you remember your dream?" Shay asked. "Who's Cassie?"

  "My sister." Jandra cringed. "I mean, Jazz's sister. I don't remember the dream directly. I feel like my brain is sorting through all these extra memories. Jazz's life story is starting to make sense finally. All the random, disconnected memories are becoming a coherent sequence of events."

  "A lot of slaves worshipped the goddess, but I wasn't a believer," said Shay. "It's hard to swallow the idea that she was real."

  Lizard jerked his head upward when Shay said the word "swallow." The little beast's vocabulary was limited, but he knew all the words connected to food.

  "Real is a relative term. Jasmine Robertson wasn't a goddess. She was a human, born a thousand years ago."

  "I've read about that time," said Shay. "The Human Age. It must have been like paradise."

  "Not quite," said Jandra. "Human civilization took a toll upon the earth. Vast areas of the globe had their native species plowed under and replaced with agriculture based on a few select plants, like corn. The soil had to be constantly replenished with petroleum-based chemicals. Poisons meant to fight pests worked their way into the groundwater. Water was also contaminated by runoff from digging into the earth for various minerals. To get at coal, humans would tear down entire mountain ranges. They burned that coal non-stop for two centuries, forever altering the atmosphere."

  "Was the sky of the whole world like the sky over Dragon Forge?"

  "Not quite. They constantly refined technology to make it cleaner. That's one reason Jazz's memories confuse me. She could have done so much to make the world better with her brilliance. Instead, she decided to tear the world down."

  "Was she insane?"

  "No. She was a genius, and something of an outsider, but not insane. Her sister, Cassie, had been born blind due to a side effect of a drug her mother had taken while she was pregnant. Cassie was an early recipient of artificial retinas. Jazz was fascinated by technology, and by biology, and, well, by everything, really. She wasn't insane-she was… overly confident. She thought she understood the world's problems and could fix them. Fixing the world, unfortunately, meant cutting the world's human population from eight billion to eighty million."

  "I can't even imagine eight billion people," said Shay. "Where did everyone stand?"

  "The world's bigger than you can imagine," said Jandra. "I don't think I really grasped just how big it was until Jazz took me to the moon."

  "To the… you mean, you've been… the moon?"

  Jandra nodded.

  "How? I mean, not even dragons fly that high, do they?"

  "Jazz knew a short cut. There's apparently a different kind of space that exists under our reality. Jazz called it underspace. She stole the technology for traveling through it from Atlantis."

  Shay scratched his head. She sensed that her explanations were only making things worse. "Atlantis is an alien artifact that arrived on Earth at the tipping point of its environmental collapse. It was a machine intelligence programmed for almost perfect altruism-a living city designed to serve the needs of its citizens. It could have ushered in a true golden age… except, Jazz was one of the first people to encounter it. While the machine intelligence was far more advanced than anything she'd ever experienced, she was able to subtly alter its mission. She stopped its altruism at the edges of its immediate environment. The humans who went to live in Atlantis are effectively immortal. The city ignores the rest of the world. Jazz has since reduced mankind to a feral state, devoid of advanced technology. She thinks this is the wisest path for the long-term health of the world."

  Shay nodded. If he didn't understand, at least he was humoring her. "You're still talking about Jazz in the present tense."

  Jandra lowered her head as she realized he was right.

  "What if I'm using the present tense because she's still alive?" Jandra whispered. "I need to get a genie back so I can fix my brain. I think… I think she's slowly pushing me out of my own memories." Despite her best efforts to hold them back, tears trickled down her cheeks.

  Shay scooted over toward her. He placed his fingers gently on the back of her hand. Lizard's small claws fell next to them. She shuddered.

  "Whenever… I go… to sleep," she said between sobs, "I'm afraid… I won't wake up as me."

  Shay slid beside her. He wrapped his arm around her shoulders. "Shh," he said, in a soothing tone. "You're just getting scared by a few bad dreams."

  "No!" she protested. "You don't understand. Nothing terrifies me more than losing my identity. I was raised by a dragon. I've always been confused about who I am."

  Lizard looked up at her with a concerned expression. Shay squeezed her hand more tightly.

  She wiped her cheeks. "I've always… I feel crippled because I didn't have wings, or a tail. I feel ugly when I look in a mirror and see skin instead of scales."

  Shay stroked the hair back from her face and said, softly, "You aren't ugly, Jandra. You're the prettiest woman I've ever met."

  Jandra rolled her eyes. "Inside, I'm all broken up and scarred. I'm a freak, raised by the wrong species. Now I've had my brain rewired by thousand year old egomaniac. I have to be the most screwed up person who's ever lived."

  "Jandra," said Shay, "if you're screwed up, then the world needs more screwed up people. You're incredibly brave. My mind went blank with fear when Vulpine attacked, but you kept your wits. I was on the verge of peeing myself while you calmly reloaded your gun. You're amazing. You bossed around Bitterwood. You took away an earth-dragon's own a
xe and killed him with it. Could a brain-damaged freak do these things?"

  "Why not?" She attempted to grin but couldn't quite manage it. "No wonder I wake up screaming. I'm a brain-damaged freak with a violent streak."

  "You've also got a compassionate streak. You put your life in danger to save Lizard. You're kind and caring. Despite all the awful things dragons have done to you, you aren't consumed with bitterness and hatred. More than anyone I've ever met, you're trying to make the world a better place. Lizard's right… you're a good boss."

  "Good boss," Lizard cooed. "Good, good boss." He stared up at her as she wiped the tears from her cheeks. The little dragon turned his gaze to her backpack. "We eat?"

  Jandra laughed, then hiccupped. "Flatterer," she said. "Yes, we'll eat."

  Shay released her hand. "If you want to talk more about this later, I'm ready to listen. You don't need to feel like the weight of the world is on your shoulders alone."

  She looked at Shay, his face only inches from hers. Of the three people she'd ridden with from Dragon Forge, he was the last one she would have expected to still be with her when she undertook what was probably the most dangerous mission of her life. This seemed like an insane amount of effort for Shay to go through in order to get his hands on some books. A light clicked on in her head.

  He hadn't come all this way for the books.

  "By the bones," she whispered. "You like me!"

  He grinned. "Of course I like you."

  "I mean… you're… interested in me. As a potential, um, mate."

  He looked away sheepishly and cleared his throat. "I haven't… I mean… I'm really…," his voice trailed off. He took a deep breath and looked back toward her. "Yes. I find you, as you say, interesting. On many levels. I've never met anyone like you."

  "How long…?"

  Shay shrugged. "It… it wasn't love at first sight. You are… you're a little intimidating, to tell the truth. But there's… there's something… something about the way you stand. Your shoulders are always pulled back. You hold your chin up. It's so… regal. I understand how a woman raised in a palace might find the interest of a slave… unwelcome."