by E. E. Knight
The Red stiffened, every muscle in his body aquiver, and went limp. The hatchling closed his teeth on his throat, feeling the neck hearts rattle and die.
The hatchling went as limp as the Red.
Movement. The Gray was on his feet, facing him crest-to-crest.
Kill it! Kill and eat!
The Gray sidestepped to get around the corpse of the Red and rushed him, aiming straight for the bloody wound on his injured limb. The hatchling shifted to protect it, and the Gray drove his crest into his side, pushing, pushing….
He squawked as he went over a second time, grabbed for the Gray, but the hatchling danced out of the way of his rear claw and he fell….
Right on his bad forelimb.
The pain blinded him; it took him a moment to recover, and when he opened his eyes again he was alone at the base of the egg shelf, listening to more cracking sounds.
More?
He couldn’t even beat the lighter Gray. Suppose another such as the Red…?
But though he did not know it, he was the son of a powerful line, and his young hearts knew no despair. And he had his mother’s wit still intact. He rested, gathering strength. He’d let the others weary themselves tearing one another to bits and then come up fresh….
Except he felt so weak. He licked at his wounded limb, and the blood-tang left him both hungry and revolted.
No cries of battle greeted his ears. Maybe they were all bled out. He examined the wall to the egg shelf first, looked for an ascent with plenty of good grips.
This time, when he began to slip, he just tightened his grip and searched for a rest for his tail until he found the strength to climb on. He passed over the lip….
Nothing. Just two sprawled green hatchlings, uncrested and therefore innocuous, digging into the corpse of the Red. The blood smell inflamed his appetite.
My victory! My feast!
Others enjoyed his kill. He jumped on the Red’s corpse, claiming it, baring his teeth at the hapless Greens.
One, shorter of length and powerfully built like the Red, backed away. The other, longer and thinner even than the Gray, tripped, thrashed weakly.
Drive her away, his appetite roared.
He jumped on her, pushing, nipping her at the shoulder and hip points. She squeaked in alarm, pulled away.
He tore free a piece of fleshy tail she’d been gnawing at.
The other Green intervened with a growl, opening her jaws, glaring at him like the combative Red.
He caught a flash of motion off his weak side. It was the Gray again, bounding up from a trickle of water at the other end of the egg shelf.
The Green advanced, covering her sister with her own bulk.
He couldn’t fight them both at once. He mouthed the chunk of tail and fled, finding he could use the elbow of his injured forelimb when running, though it pained him. He jumped back off the egg shelf. If they tried to jump down after him, he’d get them at a disadvantage when they alighted.
The Gray yapped down at him, but showed no sign of plunging to the cave floor. The Copper gnawed at the meaty tail, feeling the energy entering his bloodstream from the swallowed hunks of tissue.
The Gray’s head disappeared, and the battle fury left the Copper. He felt cold, alone, and wandered over to the trickle and lapped a little water. He cooled his injured limb in the pool. Above, Mother started to sing. He crept closer so he could catch the end of the song:
…and the long years of dragonhood are sure to be thine.
He tried to climb up to the egg shelf, but failed, the pain in his throbbing limb overcoming him. He lay in the cold, hearing Mother’s soft throat music, half song and half prrum.
He made one more attempt at the climb. Not to fight this time, but to be by Mother, safe and warm, wrapped in music and belly heat. Mother’s great tail dropped over the edge and pushed him down. She looked down at him from the heights of her neck.
“No, little one, Auron has won the egg shelf. If you come up again he will kill you.”
He tried to reply, but the only noises he seemed to be able to make were squeaks, not words. He tried, came close, tried again:
“Fwhy?”
“I’m sorry, hatchling. You are an outcast. You must learn to overcome on your own.”
He huddled against the base of the egg shelf, cold and alone.
No pleasant dream, this.
Chapter 2
Loneliness was a constant companion to the outcast. Often hunger tagged along throughout the day, gnawing at him from belly to tail-tip, but hunger wandered off at night as he dreamed of warm, rich feasts. Loneliness would not be so easily seen off.
Only loneliness is mine to hold,
Scalel-edge sharp and dreadful cold.
The outcast rhymed to himself, in imitation of the songs he heard from the egg shelf.
He made his first kill almost by accident. While sleeping, tucked into a crack lest the Gray attack him again with a pounce and a triumphant squawk, he felt an odd tickle at his tail. A wide, flat thing, rather like his tongue save for a questing projection that stuck up from its front—he knew the front judging by the direction it slurped—had touched his tail and recoiled.
He fell on it without really knowing what he was doing and tore it open as he landed. It still writhed, so he batted it about some more before biting off the head. It mindlessly crept down his throat, seeking tight, wet safety, and he instinctively swallowed.
It tasted vile and slimy, but filled his belly. He ate the other half and suffered no ill effects save for a hunger that came back all the fiercer for having once been assuaged.
Hunger drove him out into the cave when his belly sagged, empty, and loneliness forced him back to the crevices under the egg shelf.
He explored the cave from the egg shelf to the entrance hole, knew its drains and its hollows and its patches of shining green moss that brought light to the blackness, thriving on dragon waste and bat droppings.
Often he clung to the side of the egg shelf, straining to pick up mind-pictures from Mother as she taught the rest of her clutch. Stories, lessons, songs, rhymes, she bubbled like the trickle at the other end of the egg shelf whenever she didn’t sleep.
The Gray was named Auron, he knew. His noisy sisters were Wistala and Jizara.
And then he met his father.
Father was a massive bronze mass, frightening in the quiet with which he moved. One moment the outcast was following a slug trail in the hope of another ephemeral meal of slug meat, and the next it seemed as though the cave wall had shifted next to him, a startling mass of sliding scales approaching the egg shelf.
He keened up at Father, tried to form words, sat up on his hindquarters and yapped until his head swam.
Father stared at his stiff, maimed limb, snorted, and continued his journey toward the egg shelf. He had to dodge Father’s swinging tail by retreating into a crevice.
Of course, he and Mother began to discuss Auron, the Gray Rat. To the Copper his brother was rather like an oversized rat: quick, quiet, and vicious.
Thus the pattern of his days was set.
He managed a grubby sort of survival, living off slugs, rats, and the bit of hoof or tail that he could sometimes filch by sneaking up onto the egg shelf when the others were sleeping.
How he longed to join them, basking in Mother’s heat!
Once he tried to settle up against them, under Mother’s protective wing, but she began to shift and rumble and woke Auron. He had to scramble off the egg shelf, pursued by his brother’s angry yaps.
He sat at the base of the egg shelf, picking up a stray mind-picture or two from Mother as she taught the others in dreams. He hugged the memory of Mother’s attention at his hatching. Would it be too much for her to stretch her neck and give him a lick, breathe a few bars of one of the long songs she sang to him in the egg…?
Tell him his name?
Little crying coughs escaped his body.
He learned to differentiate his sisters. Wistala was
quick of tongue, Jizara long, elegant, and with a melodious voice.
He avoided Auron. The Gray seemed vulnerable, with a thick, pebbly skin instead of scales, but was fast and alert and hard to hear coming. And he was growing strong on what he and the sisters hunted and the choicest bits of whatever Father brought back.
But soon the Copper realized he only thought he knew unhappiness and longing.
It happened during one of Father’s longer visits to the cavern. Every now and then he spent a period between hunting trips inspecting every nook and cranny with eyes, ears, and nose. Coming to a crack that the outcast knew contained nothing but dark, Father nevertheless stuck his nose deep inside and drew a long breath. He snorted out dirt and mucus.
“What do, Fazer?” the Copper said, greatly daring. The dragon-smell made his hearts pound against his skin.
The huge, six-horned head lifted and turned. “Ah. It’s you.”
Which wasn’t much of an answer.
“What name I? I name how?”
“You’re not of the nest, cripple. You don’t need to be named. I’m not even sure you can be called a dragon in the lifesong.”
That just made him miserable, and he lowered his head.
“That’s no way to look, hatchling. You’re unique, as far as my family memory goes. None of my line of sires ever saw a second male survive. You’re not of the clutch, yet you’re of our kind, and the cave’s so big Auron can drive you away, but not out, so to speak. Neither scale nor claw, son nor stranger.”
The Copper formed his next words carefully, and they came out better. “You my father. That prove me your son!”
“You may be lame in body, but your wit’s quick enough. That’s your mother speaking with your tongue. If you’ve got her brains, I expect you’ll survive at least until you leave the cave.”
“To light?” The Copper knew that tidbit from egg-dreams.
“Yes. The Upper World is a dangerous place, and your wings are still a full clawset of winters off. Look at your scales! Poor little blighter. You need a bellyful of coin. Follow me.”
The Copper almost danced in Father’s wake, the dragon’s dangerous smell no longer terrifying but thrilling. Father approached a small ledge, descended, and approached a heavy stone resting in a small sink. A dead trickle of water was thick with dried dark moss.
Father grasped the stone with his front sii and wrestled it out of the rock.
“I’ve been meaning to give the girls some play-pretties. But you need something more substantial. Can’t do more; there’s little enough as it is.”
He stuck his head down the hole, and the Copper smelled something he’d never experienced before: an aroma hard and rich and metallic. He felt his scales bristle and his griff descend and flutter against his jaw and neck, giving a faint rattle.
Father’s head came back up. His eyes burned.
“Indeed, little enough! Why should I part with any to a wretched nothing? Cripple! Outcast!”
The Copper backed up, half-terrified and half-furious. The gold smell made him want to leap and claw.
Father tilted his head back and forth as though gauging distance; then he suddenly relaxed. “Serves me right for depriving myself.” He swallowed something that clinked. Then his bristling scale relaxed and he gave a brief, satisfied prrum. He reached down again and spit out a few gold and silver coins, thick with slime.
“That’s to get you started. All there’ll be, I’m afraid, unless I get lucky.”
The Copper sniffed a silver disk. He needed its light, its brightness. His mouth went thick and wet all over. He gobbled it down, and then the others, quickly, as though they were a nest of rats about to escape.
Father’s feet stamped restlessly.
“I suppose no harm’s done. Auron won’t need it, after all.” Father exhaled in a whoosh that flattened the Copper’s scale. “Maybe we’ll have better luck with males in another clutch.”
The Copper smelled more gold down the hole. He hurried toward it, following the smell, which seemed to have seized hold of his brain.
The boulder came down, and he ran nose-first into it.
“A dragon must win his own hoard, outcast,” Father said, moving off toward the egg shelf.
Chapter 3
The Gray Rat and he made a sort of peace. The Gray kept to his hunting perches, keeping an eye out for slugs, and as long as the Copper avoided the usual spots they’d go long stretches without seeing each other. Wistala, the chatterer, seemed always to be talking to her mother or brother or sister, and was the most successful hunter.
Of course, they were usually hunting the best spots, so the Copper had to make do with trying to catch the white, long-whiskered cave rats in the offal pile while the others slept. They were smart, quick, and vicious, and to get on he had to be smarter, quicker, and even more vicious. He tried piling bones and loose rocks in such a way that they loomed over a juicy bit of dragon-waste, then toppling them when he heard noises in the pile, but he found that the rats would worm through the bones and hooves easier than if he tried to catch them on the hop.
He found that if he smeared himself first with slime from the receding pools and then with dragon-waste, they couldn’t smell him, thanks to the wet, and would often get within a jump’s distance. But he learned an enervating lesson when he overhunted the garbage pile, for the rats quit coming. He took to visiting it only after the other hatchlings ate something Father brought back, for sometimes they missed a tail or an ear or a bit of marrow. Then he hunted the pile with an appetite that would have taken many, many rats to fill, but took away only one or two for all the filth and bother.
Of course, this necessitated a good deal of washing afterward.
While scrubbing off after one meal he heard a high, pleasant trilling coming from the egg shelf above. The words and tune warmed him like the sunlight he dreamed of. The running, splashing water devoured the words, so he climbed up the egg shelf and peeked over.
Farther down the egg shelf, almost out of the mosslight, his mother slumbered, and he saw the tail of the Gray Rat wrapped around her tail-tip. Wistala’s nose peeped from under Mother’s tail.
The longer and thinner of his two sisters lay across the trickle, arching her back in the water cascading down the side of the cave, warbling to herself:
Paint my wings, as a stranger in paradise,
Take me not from the city’s light,
through white towers I long to soar…
“Oh,” she squeaked, seeing him. She shrank against the cave wall.
“Why did you stop?” he asked.
“Do you want to use the trickle?”
“Use it?”
“The cascade. It’s marvelous for cleaning under the scales, especially that bit that falls all the way from the ceiling.”
“Your name is Jizara,” he said, marveling at how easily the word formed in his mouth.
“That’s just for songs and such. Zara rolls off the tongue so much easier. You don’t speak very well. I suppose you don’t get much chance for talking.”
“Will you sing more?” He felt the clumsiness of his words.
She uncoiled a little. “You like my singing?”
“It’s beautiful.” He edged up on the other side of the trickle.
She turned a little deeper green as her scales rose and fell. “You won’t…you won’t jump on me?”
“Why should I?”
“Auron does it all the time.”
It felt so good to talk, he was wondering if he wanted a song to interrupt. “I’ll stay on this side of the trickle.”
“What do you want to hear?” she finally asked.
“What was that you were singing before?”
“A song of Silverhigh, the ancient. They made such beautiful songs. I can only sing them when I’m alone.”
“Why?”
“You sound just like Auron! Mother said it was a wicked place full of foolish dragons.”
“But they made beautiful songs. Sing.�
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She went on, and he found himself relaxing, joint by joint, claw by claw, lulled by the music. Then he was asleep.
He woke in glorious warmth. Jizara lay wrapped right around him, nose-tip to tail-point. But then she had an extraordinarily long neck.
A golden eye opened. She yawned. “You’re rather small. Almost like a new hatchling of my own,” she said. “You fell asleep, so I came over to your side.” She looked away. “Oh, Mother is stirring. I’d better get back. She gets angry when we wander while she sleeps.”
“When will you sing to me again?” he asked.
She retreated from the intensity of his words, jumping across the trickle. “I don’t know. A day? Another day after that?”
Why couldn’t she be more precise? Day had no real meaning in the Lower World. “I’ll wait for you.”
“And I’ll sing for you, brother. A-la, now.”
Her voice calling him brother settled in his head like a mother dragon on an egg perch.
He lurked about the base of the egg shelf too much, waiting for her to return, growing even hungrier. They met twice more, but one hardly counted, for Auron woke and the Copper had to run as soon as he saw him stretching his neck. After each meeting he hugged the moments to himself, played them in his mind so it seemed they’d never parted. They had played a game as they talked, trying to mirror their tail-tips, and he would go to his pool and play against himself, pretending the vague reflection was his sister.
Sister. Brother. Such lovely words to a lonely little dragon.
But the fourth time he saw her, she looked down into the water between them and wouldn’t meet his eyes.
“I’m not to sing to you anymore,” she said.
He was shocked into speechlessness. Everything appeared as usual at the other end of the egg shelf, Mother apparently asleep—
“You’re nameless. Outcast.”
He found his voice. “Zara, you are all I have.”
“She says that if I truly care for you, I’ll do this and you’ll go up out of the cave on your own and find more food and grow strong. Don’t you see how weak you are? You look positively hag-ridden. You’ve no chance at metals. Your scales are thin as an eyelid!”
