The Little Dragons

by Rowan Starsmith

  All-powerful Warrior God, Melisande lives, and yet, for the wellbeing of the Realm, I am to be married again. Two living women. Two wives. A gross violation of your all-wise law for the conduct of human lives. Please forgive me. It is for the wellbeing of the Realm. It is for …

  He could not think what else it was for, and as he considered this, his mind wandered into questions that had been circling in his head ever since Jessa had come back into his life: Where was Liandra?

  Aden reported that his Princess had run away from that old witch in the Eastlands after the birth of the child, and that the child had been given to a peasant family to adopt, as had been agreed from the beginning. Aden said the crone seemed surprised about the Women’s Retreat House outfit. Were both his daughters running around in the woods of the Eastlands at the same time? No, that couldn’t be. This was part of someone’s intricate plan for something, but what? And who?

  He would love to send someone to question that old witch in the woods. Aden was the one who knew the way, but if he were told about the two daughters, if anyone were told, the secret would not be long reaching Ermin’s ears. At one time, he would not have dreamed of keeping anything from Ermin, his Spymaster, ally, servant and friend, but things were changing. Or rather, he, Anglewart, was changing and Ermin had not. Or perhaps he had, but in a different direction. For a time, Ermin had seemed in complete agreement that outright warfare against the Dragons was just a recipe for dead warriors. Now, he had begun to suggest that with the advances in smithing armor, with the longer-flying arrows, with stronger alloys in their swords, with the larger horses they had been breeding over the past decade … Would he have tried to poison Melisande without Ermin’s urging? Would he be planning his marriage to Thalassa? Yes, the Westlands alliance was important, but, at the price of his Melisande?

  Melisande. She was the other person who could be up to something here, but what? And why? He couldn’t think of a way to question the crone for now, but he had accomplished a meeting with Melisande once before. But would she tell him? There was only one way to find out.

  Chapter 86: Liandra

  It was midnight, and Liandra lifted her lantern to peer into the woods along the road. “I think we should find a place to rest for the remainder of the night,” shd said. “In the morning, we can try traveling in the daylight.”

  Mother Peg planted her walking stick. “You say your Little Dragon says it’s safe.”

  “He does.”

  “How do I know you’re telling me the truth?”

  Liandra placed a hand on her hip and let out her breath. “Why would I lie and put both of us in danger?”

  “Humph.”

  “Oh for the God’s sake.”

  “The Goddess’s sake.”

  Their argument had become so loud that neither heard the drover until he came around the corner, his lantern swinging from the shaft of his handcart. Startled, Roxtrianatrix, on Liandra’s shoulder, arched his back, raised the crest on his head and made a hissing sound. The drover’s eyes popped wide open, his mouth formed an O, and he dropped his hand shafts. His cart clattered to the stones. His lantern bounced into the road and went out.

  Liandra instinctively doused her lantern too and stepped off the path into the darkness among the trees. By touch she found a particularly large trunk and, slipping behind it, stood still, her hand around Roxtrianatrix’s muzzle to silence him.

  The drover fumbled for his light and re-lit it, holding it up and peering around him. “Mother Peg?” he said.

  “My son, you frightened me.” Mother Peg had not moved from the spot where she had been standing, could not.

  “Mother Peg, I thought I saw …”

  There was the slightest pause. “My son, do you suffer from waking dreams?”

  “Ah, no, never have before, anyway.”

  “Well it’s something you should perhaps talk to a Healer about. Now, if you’ll excuse me.” She hobbled past him and his cart and continued on down the road.

  Light from the drover’s lantern shone into the woods, briefly lighting up the forest floor on either side of Liandra’s hiding place. She shrank down and held her breath. The light moved away. After a few minutes, she heard the drover pick up his shafts and move on. His light disappeared down the path towards the west. By now Mother Peg’s had long since disappeared in the opposite direction.

  Liandra waited a little longer before feeling her way back to the road. She lit her lantern and hurried after Mother Peg. The old woman had not gone far. “That was close,” Liandra heard the trembling in her own voice.

  “Much too close. We must be more careful.”

  Liandra found a small cave not far from the trail. “You can do what you like,” she had told Mother Peg. “I’m going to get some rest and then try traveling in daylight in the morning.” She grumbled quietly as she hunted for soft pads of moss and fern by lantern light. You’d think the old woman could do just a little bit of the work. Liandra, after all, was a princess and had the burden of Roxtrianatrix perched on her shoulder. When the bed was ready, Mother Peg simply curled up inside her cloak with her back to her traveling companion.

  Liandra made a face at the old woman’s back and sat down, leaning against the rock wall at the cave’s door. She unlaced her bodice and shifted Roxtrianatrix around into position to nurse. He sucked for a few moments and then squirmed away, climbing back up to her shoulder and looking around at the dark woods. What’s wrong? she asked him with her mind.

  Hungry, he said.

  So come back down here and nurse, she thought back at him. My breasts are full enough to hurt.

  The Little Dragon crawled back into her arms and suckled, but switched his tail back and forth, restless. Not enough anymore, he said into her mind. Need more now.

  Like what?

  Meat.

  Oh. Liandra sighed. She had wondered if her Little Dragon would need to eat like a Great Dragon someday, and what to do about it.

  Hungry, said Roxtrianatrix.

  You’ll have to wait until we get to the School. The Healers will help us figure something out.

  Chapter 87: Maida

  The young boy actually knelt before Maida. She winced as his bony knees struck the stone floor of the cottage with a bruising sound. “Please, Apprentice, everyone says you can heal my mother.”

  “Get up,” she said, more sharply than she intended. “You’re mistaken. I’m not an Apprentice. I’m just Mother Peg’s servant.”

  “But you help her, at births, stitching up wounds, setting bones. You know what to do. Everyone says.”

  His eyes looked so big and frightened in his thin dark-skinned face. Maida softened, just a little. “What did you say happened to your mother?”

  “She fell into the well. Her leg is bent funny and it’s swelling. And she’s in so much pain she cries all the time. It must be broken.”

  “Is the skin broken? Is she bleeding?”

  “No.” He shook his head. “Please come, Sister.”

  “I am not a Sister! But all right. If the bone is broken it must be set to heal properly. I have watched Mother Peg do it many times. You live on the Tummel road, you say?” The boy nodded. She took a small pack to the pantry and tried to think what would ease the pain, speed the healing. As she gathered up her cloak and traveling lantern, she worried about Rafe. She had never before left him here alone.

  “Go on ahead,” she told the boy. “Care for your mother. You’ve given me good instructions. I will be there as soon as I can.”

  When his lantern had disappeared down the path, she allowed him some time to get well ahead of her, then went to find Rafe in his hiding place in the barn. She gave him careful instructions: finish moving the last of the manure pile to the garden. I’ve left some bread and cheese on the counter in the kitchen for you to eat. Take the chickens and goats into the stable as soon as the sky begins to turn even a little bit grey. Feed them and wait for me there. I’ll be home in time to milk and make your supper.
Do you understand?

  Rafe nodded. “Wait,” he said.

  “Yes, exactly, and don’t worry. I’ll be home very soon.”

  “Soon,” he repeated.

  Chapter 88: Liandra

  They walked slowly that first morning they traveled in daylight, their lanterns hanging from their belts, bouncing blindly against the fabric of their skirts. It seemed more important to study the shades of green in forest canopy, smile at a little grey bird that sat on a branch and sang to them, study a tiny, glowing flower growing beside the trail than to walk. Liandra watched Mother Peg feel the bark of a tree, running her knarled fingers over the dips and creases in its rough skin, admiring the hundred shades of brown and grey. Her face was open, taken over by amazement like a small child’s. Liandra imagined her own face looked that way too. It was a wondrous world open before them, and they could see so much of it. Glade led to glade as Liandra peered through the forest, light sloping into small clearings and picking out jewels: a berry, a mushroom. The smell was different too. At night the woods gave off an earthy scent, soil and moss, fungus and dampness. In the daytime the sun warmed the swaying fans of the evergreens and gave off a waft of resin, piney and sharp. Who could have imagined a world so beautiful?

  As the morning went on, they began to walk with a little more purpose, learning to peer in amazement at their surroundings and take steps at the same time. Roxtrianatrix was right. They could make much better time in daylight, without roots reaching out of the night to grasp their feet and shadows to trick them into stumbling when there was not anything there. Roxtrianatrix danced above them, landing on branches, taking off again, playing like any young thing in the bright day that was his natural habitat.

  A small group of dragons circled high above them. Liandra shivered when she looked up, but each time Roxtrianatrix reassured her. They love you, he said. You are a Dragon Priestess. And it was true. At the Dragonstone two nights before, Liandra had felt love pulsing from the stone, surrounding her, caressing her. She felt like lying down and curling up, sleeping in its warmth and safety. Does that come from the stone? she asked Roxtrianatrix. From the Dragons, he said, through the stone.

  They stopped to eat a bite of lunch on a large flat rock in a clearing. Maida had packed their food carefully, each day’s allotment wrapped separately in waxed cloth. As they ate, a Dragon circled down toward them, a little lower with each pass. They stared at him, fascinated. He was a bronze-brown colour, but as he turned his sinuous body, catching the sunlight from different angles, his scales came alive with layers of rainbows. His wings, too, displayed every colour of the spectrum, shimmering as if alive as they gracefully moved the long body through the air. Roxtrianatrix rose to fly in matching circles above their heads, but still below the tips of the trees. The light flashed off of his glittering blue scales so brightly that the two women had to raise their hands to protect their eyes, not accustomed to the full light of the sun.

  On the next pass, the Dragon looked down at them and Liandra gave a little squeak of recognition. “Look,” she said. “His eyes. Like jewels. Like opals. I remember that from the Dragon at my father’s castle.”

  Just then the dragon swooped so low that his belly brushed the tops of the trees encircling the clearing, bending them slightly. Both women instintively ducked. Roxtrianatrix chattered aloud in excitement. In the Dragon’s wake the pointed tips of the trees sprang back, swaying. Liandra and Mother Peg looked at each other. Liandra could see fear in Mother Peg’s eyes to match her own. “Roxtrianatrix keeps telling me it’s all right,” Liandra assured the Old One.

  “I should certainly hope so,” she responded, still nervously scanning the sky.

  Later that day they took a detour through the trees to avoid a small cottage sitting in its little clearing in the forest. It was obviously occupied—a pail by the pump, an ax wedged into a chopping block. The inhabitants were probably asleep at this hour, but it was well not to assume so. Bad enough that the drover had seen them on the road the night before. You never knew when someone might decide to curry favour by taking word to the King.

  The Little Dragon was not, however, cooperating. He flitted into the clearing, sniffed about, hovered over a small shed that stood near the edge. “Get him back here!” Mother Peg hissed to Liandra.

  “I’m trying!” she snapped back, and it was true. She was saying everything she could think of to get him to come back to her, coaxing, commands, threats.

  Feathered things in there, Roxtrianatrix signaled back. Like Maida’s.

  Do you mean chickens?

  Hmmmm—to eat, he said.

  Well you can’t get at them in that shed. We’ll have to find some later, when we get to the School.

  Just then the shutter on one of the cottage windows swung open. The face of a woman appeared there, sleepy and annoyed. As soon as her eyes fell on Roxtrianatrix perched on her chicken coop, she shrieked and slammed the shutter closed.

  Come, Liandra threw the thought at Roxtrianatrix. Quickly! She took Mother Peg’s elbow and pulled her toward the path. As soon as Roxtrianatrix realized they were leaving, he abandoned the chicken coop and followed just above them.

  As they were about to leave the clearing, Liandra looked back. Two shutters stood wide open, the woman’s face in one, a man’s face in the other, watching them leave.

  A few hundred meters along the path, Lianda’s eye was drawn to something light coloured in the brush by the trail. A chicken crouched there, probably left behind when the people in the cottage put the rest of the flock in for the day. No sooner had Liandra spotted the bird than her thoughts drew the Little Dragon’s attention to it. A flash, a crashing of branches, a dismayed squawk, and Roxtrianatrix shot upward with the chicken in his claws. He settled on a high branch in a cloud of feathers. His mistress could feel his triumph and need to eat.

  A moment later, Liandra fell to her knees on the trail, grinding her fists into her eyes and shouting, “Stop! Stop! Stop!”

  “What’s wrong?” Mother Peg was instantly at her side.

  “Blood and insides. He’s tearing it apart.” She bent over, now pressing the heels of her hands into her eyes. “I can see it even with my eyes closed.”

  Mother Peg put her hands on the younger woman’s shoulders. Liandra could feel the Healer’s calming energy flowing through her body and into the ground beneath her knees. The terrible images were still there, but her panic eased, and shortly the chicken was gone, leaving a bloodstain on the bark. At this point, she realized she could look down, past the branch, and see herself kneeling on the path, Mother Peg bent over her. She looked up into the tree, and the minute her eyes settled on Roxtrianatrix, her vision clicked back into the proper perspective, through her own eyes. “I was looking through his eyes,” she said to Mother Peg.

  “Yes, there’s something about that in Mother Calla’s journal.”

  “There is?”

  “It’s clearly another gift of the tie between Dragon Priestess and Little Dragon, but one that you’re going to have to learn how to control.”

  “Does she say how, in the journal?”

  “I didn’t read that section in detail. I hope so.” Mother Peg helped Liandra to her feet. The Princess brushed the dirt off of her skirt and turned again to the tree branch high above them. Now she could feel waves of satisfaction coming from her charge. Happier now? she asked him.

  Yes, oh yes, he said. Sleepy now.

  Well, come back down to my shoulder, but clean that blood off your claws first!

  They reached the edge of the Barrens the next day, pausing where the path left the shelter of the trees to cross the open ground. Are you sure? Liandra asked Roxtrianatrix. The Little Dragon was snaking along ahead of them, circling back, chittering to them impatiently. “Is he sure?” Mother Peg asked. “We could stay until evening in the Healer’s cabin we just passed, wait for darkness to be absolutely certain.”

  Come, come, of course it’s safe. They love you, Roxtrianatrix said in a
singsong voice in Liandra’s mind.

  “He says he’s sure it’s all right,” she told Mother Peg.

  Mother Peg gave one more nervous look at the Dragons circling overhead. They did seem to be very high in the sky. “All right, then. He is a Little Dragon. He should know.” She firmly set her stick on the path ahead of her and took the first steps out on to the Barrens. Ignoring the shiver she felt along her spine, Liandra followed.

  They were no more than a few hundred meters out onto the Barrens when there was a deafening flapping sound immediately behind them. Liandra turned just in time to see a set of long, reptilian fingers, tipped by curving claws, opening under a vast shadowed ceiling of glittering blue scales. They closed around her. She screamed as her feet left the ground, shut her eyes as tightly as she could. It’s all right, it’s all right, he won’t hurt you, said Roxtrianatrix in her mind, almost drowned out by the sound of her heart beating in her throat.

  He’s gentle. You’re not hurt, said Roxrianatrix. Open your eyes.

  The wind whistling past her ears was deafening, punctuated by the flap, flap of massive wings. The scales on the Dragon’s belly were not cold, as she would have imagined, but warm against her back

  As she opened her eyes the wind instantly drove tears from them. She was held in the scaly claws as if in a basket. The Barrens were disappearing below her, wheeling as the Dragon climbed in slow circles. Roxtrianatrix flew at her side. She could feel his excitement, his joy. The Little Dragon continued to offer a litany of comfort: You’re fine. He won’t hurt you.

  She caught sight of Mother Peg, as tiny as a child’s doll, her walking stick more like a match stick dropped on the path beside her, looking up, waving her arms. Her mouth was moving. And then she was gone. All Liandra could see now was a carpet of green treetops rolling gently up and down over hills and valleys, passing beneath her, her glittering Little Dragon keeping pace by her side. Whump, whump, whump went the powerful wings. It’s all right, Roxtrianatrix repeated, They love you. And now she could feel it, surrounding her, holding her up like the scaly blue claws that held her gently to the Dragon’s breast, the same warm, powerful love she felt at the Dragonstone.