by E. E. Knight
He found a riven helm and nibbled off some chain links. The metal tasted better even than rat. With that he remembered Father’s hoard cave.
Father! What would happen when he returned to this?
Time passed, sliding by unmarked as he staggered around the cave. He couldn’t drink from the pool, evil memories of the dwarves keeping him far from the familiar waterfall. He couldn’t drink from the trickle; he’d spotted more gore and slaughter atop the moss-thick heap of dragon waste; the shadows of the cave held lurking recriminations; the stalactites and stalagmites were spears….
What sort of world was it where dragons were slaughtered in their own homes? He knew almost nothing of the history of his kind, but had a vague sense of the majesty and grandeur that once was theirs, passed down from egg to egg. He’d committed a crime against every drop of blood in his body, every glittering scale passed down from some ancestor.
A hard world, that was certain. Cast out by his own family. Betrayed by dwarves. Of course, he forgot his own intent to betray in his wretchedness, explaining to himself that the dwarves didn’t know his plan. Any betrayal on their part carried the full weight of its own sin, not tainted by his own intent.
Then he went a little mad.
He may have even frothed at the mouth. He vaguely remembered thirst-thick saliva crusting on his snout when he came out of it, a good deal thinner and with claws worn down to dull nubs.
When he woke as though from a sleep-terror he found himself bleeding from a cracked scale at the base of his crest and between his eyes—he’d been bashing his head against a sharp projection shaped like a dragonhorn.
What had brought him out of it?
A familiar sound, a dragon roar.
“Irelia! Auron! Wistala! Jizara!” Father called. “Spirits, it cannot be! Not all! Curse the Wheel of Fire to flame and ash!”
Why did Father not list him with the others? Was he not part of all?
He tried to answer, but his dry throat was capable of only emitting a small squeak: “Fazer!”
Father didn’t call for him because he had no name. He needed a name if he were to be called for.
He hurried toward the bellows but found himself stumbling on his crippled forelimb. He caught one quick glimpse of bronze tail-scale disappearing through the shaft that led up and out. Only Father’s harsh, angry smell remained.
He found some deer that Father had dropped and nibbled a little, but had no appetite. He should save them for Father when he got back. Father would also need metals; he would return from his great battle with the dwarves needing them. He’d show Father that he hadn’t eaten a single coin of the hoard, and in gratitude Father would share some with him again.
Thinking of the hoard…
He went to the shaft covered by the great rock. It had been moved aside and smelled of dwarf. He shut his nostrils so as not to be overwhelmed by the smell and descended into the cavern….
The cavern lay almost empty. A few pieces of copper had been left, and a bit of silver glinted toward the back where it had rolled under a projection, but all that remained was the lingering smell of dwarf. There wasn’t a full mouthful left for him, never mind Father’s vast jaws.
Father would give him some fine names. Thief.
Traitor.
Outcast.
He flung himself down and keened.
Later, he climbed out of the hoard cave and went to the much-reduced pool. The dwarves had rerouted the water so it emptied into some deeper cavern to facilitate their works and crossing into the cavern. It bubbled and belched up from a whirlpool. As he drank he could feel the current.
He heard a wailing Drakine scream from the direction of the egg shelf.
Did one of his family still live? Perhaps Zara had played dead so the dwarves would leave her alone. The smaller body he’d glimpsed was a cruel trick of the Dragonblade’s. He hobbled as quickly as he could to the egg shelf.
It was Zara, green and alive and rubbing her fringe against a sharp spur of rock next to a great growth of thriving moss at the base of the trickle where the dragon-waste lay. He could just see the fringe on her back and the side of her head, but it was certainly her, gloriously alive and moving….
“Sizter!” he said, happy beyond words. She must need comforting, with Wistala lying dead next to her; the pair had been closer than stalactite and stalagmite run together.
“They killed her, Jiz…” he tried to get out, but the words came only with difficulty.
The green hatchling rounded on him, burning anger in her golden eyes. “I’m Wistala.”
Confusion…certainty. He missed the rest of her words, or perhaps shut his ears to the accusations he knew to be true. It was Wistala; she’d returned, and she knew exactly what had happened and who was responsible.
Auron wasn’t with her. He hadn’t made it. Perhaps the Copper could reason with her, confess and beg for a chance at redemption.
“They lied,” he said. He needed her to know the whys and wherefores. “A bloody cave, no hoard—”
She leaped at him, tripping in her fury. He fell on her, tried to keep her from biting him. If she’d only listen for a moment, he’d make it up to her somehow. “We need to overcome this, put it behind. Unite. The past can’t be changed, but we can make sure—”
She wasn’t listening; she was struggling. She threw him off; healthy, well-fed muscle with a good deal of strength in her stout frame forced him backward, over—
“It can be avenged,” she said, biting and clawing for his underbelly, fighting as though in a duel to the death, not a hatchling wrestling match. Blinding pain struck as her claws found soft flesh at his eye. He fought madly, broke her grip, turned his good set of backscale toward her, and hit her with his broken and stiff tail. He scrambled away.
Alone again.
Wistala knew what he’d done, the enormity of it, bigger than the cavern, bigger than the mountains he’d never seen save in vague dreams. Somehow that was worse than the pangs of his own conscience. Wistala would carry this knowledge with her for the rest of her life and hate him forever.
How could he overcome her hatred? Or was it not her hatred, but his own, shared in some lesser portion by her?
Yes, he would overcome her hatred, his guilt, the horror that had engulfed their home. He staggered toward the pool, flung himself in, and let the whirlpool carry him away from his lonely and broken life.
Chapter 7
Later he tried to remember how long he was in the water. The darkness made it a fearful journey. He slipped down through the whirlpool, went limp, and waited to become wedged in a crack or hole and asphyxiate.
Instead he had the sensation of bouncing off a rock, and then feeling air all around his body before he struck moving water again with a slap. Something about the smell and temperature in the water told him he’d joined an entirely different watercourse.
Oddly, the interest in that fact sustained him for a moment, long enough for him to right himself and realize he was in a fast-moving current in a tunnel.
The rushing current and the cold were enemies to be fought, and his body responded automatically. He turned to keep his nostrils above water, angled his frame so he rode the current with little effort.
At intervals he passed glowing dots, little clusters of eyes and wagging tongues. They flashed up and by so rapidly he never could make sense of them. In his experience anything regular indicated dwarves, though he couldn’t imagine why they should wish to mark a tunnel of freezing water in the dark of the Lower World.
So when he fetched up against a stout chain hanging into the water, fully as thick as his neck, it was the easiest thing in the world to hang on and look around.
He recognized more marks, similar to the ones in the tunnel behind, differing only in profusion in their verticals and horizontals. Three caves were scarred with signs of mining. Cave moss, a good deal brighter than the kind he knew from the home cave, extended from the water from the common landing.
He
reached out with his neck and found a grip, then let the rest of his body follow in easy stages, finally releasing the helpful, wide-looped chain with his saa.
He lay a long time and slept next to the rushing water.
Voices came to him in a dream full of dark rocks rushing by.
“Don’t m’tell that m’knowing not the smell of blood. Fresh blood.”
“Faaaa!” another voice bawled back.
He opened an eye.
“Here e’is. Traveler. A bit of washup from the river.”
A horridly upturned face, all ears, black eyes, and nostrils, regarded him from the cavern wall. The thing had leathery wings, with a gripping digit not unlike a dragon’s wing-spur. It was a bat, fully three times the size of the ones he’d seen in the home cave. And he’d never understood a word of their high-pitched chatter.
“E’breathing!” a second, smaller but wider one behind said.
“Cave lizard, m’think,” the larger said, hanging from his tiny rear legs for a better look. “Strange sort. Hurt.”
The larger extended his arms and flapped his leathery wings vigorously. They were thinner than dragonwings, almost translucent. The Copper could see blue veins in the skin.
Under the fanning and the light touches of the wing tips the Copper twitched. They tickled! He twitched.
He tried to give a greeting, but it came out as an unintelligible cough. He shook his head and righted himself.
“E’having a set of scale. A’wait!…E’be a dragon!”
“Faaaa!” the other said again, staying away from the Copper and just peeking out into the cave.
The hanging one rubbed his face up and down with his wings, licking his grip-digit and rearranging the face-fur, though there was only so much that could be done with such ugliness. “M’name’s Thernadad, an e’be m’mated, Mamedi. A’begging your pardon, sir. Y’be hurt. W’can attend that for you.”
The brightness in the creature’s black eyes disturbed him a little.
“You’re right, I am a dragon,” the Copper said. “I do seem to be bleeding.” His back wound had opened up again, and it hurt abominably.
“M’told you!” the hanging one said to his companion.
“Once!” the other said to no one in particular. “Once in a three-season turn e’be right, and now m’hearing it until m’let loose for the drop.” But she licked her lips, and the Copper saw sharp white teeth.
“If y’will just shift closer to the wall, sir, we work best right-side down. Unless y’want us clinging to your scale, but m’knowing not the extent of your injuries….”
The Copper rolled and the bat shifted. It started licking at the wound on his back, and he felt a slight tingle that transformed into a pleasant numbness. He looked back, and the bat had worked his odd, jutting jaw into the wound and was tearing away ragged bits of flesh and lapping up blood with a blurring tongue that flicked in and out faster than he’d ever seen anything move in his life.
The bat lifted a blood-smeared snout. “See to sir’s face, dear, with that soft touch of yours.”
The other came forward a good deal more cautiously, eyeing the Copper warily. Finally she hung over him, but kept all her four limbs attached to the cavern ceiling, ready for a quick getaway. She dropped down and went to work in the region around his right eye. He noticed some blurring there, as though the eye regarded the world through a half-closed lid.
“Bit of a mess, here, sir. Just a’going to numb it down a bit.” She began to lick about the eye, and he felt that same tingling followed by numbness.
“Y’carrying a set of tunnel nits, tight up against that scale. A’lurking in the moss a’waiting on a tasty bit of juicy skin, like always. May I?”
“Of course.”
The Copper felt a tug and heard a crunch. Followed by another and another.
“Finished here,” the female said. She touched him with a wing. “Excuses, sir. Y’permit some body work?”
“Certainly,” the Copper said, enjoying the warmth beneath the numbness.
He felt the female climb onto his back, gripping at his scale, lifting and digging out insects with more tugs and crunches, moving slowly front to back. “That’s kindness! That’s generosity. So rare these days. E’be a gentle sort, e’be.”
“Y’hearing m’disagree? M’found him, you thick cow!”
“Faaaa! Luck’s the only thing y’got in this life, you great squirt.”
The Copper fell into a pleasant half sleep, and heard little gassy emissions from the pair. “That’s what m’call a feed. Indeed,” the male—Thernadad, the Copper corrected himself—said.
“Y’wanting to get away from the river, sir,” Mamedi added. “A trunk full of dwarves could pass at any time. Might a’spot your skin and throw out a hook.”
The Copper dragged himself around the corner of the cave, ready for sleep.
“Watch out for snakes. Cave snakes in here,” Thernadad said.
“E’be too big for all but King Gan himself,” Mamedi said.
“Don’t y’worry, sir. We’ll be right above.” Thernadad said more, but the Copper didn’t hear it.
He had vague dreams of the bats clinging to him, swelling like great ticks, but woke to find his wounds crusted over with healthy-smelling scab, though they itched a little. His right eye bothered him more than anything; he could see through it as if through a mist, but everything went a little fuzzy and indistinct when he closed his left eye and looked only through the right.
He judged himself to be in a cave, vaster but lower than the home cave, branching off in every direction but up. Always there were the little channels of cave moss—in some places stopped up, glowing bright where the water still flowed. There were a good many small holes driven into the ground, as though something had been fixed there with spikes, like the dwarves had used for their water-diversion apparatus, but the work had long since been abandoned and the metal taken up. While nosing around he found a broken bit of spike and swallowed it.
He heard a flutter off in a corner and saw the big blood-drinking bats yeeking in voices pitched so high he could hardly hear them, and flapping their wings in each other’s faces as they hung from the cavern roof. It seemed more of a squabble than a fight, so he ignored the commotion.
The odd thing was that he felt relieved when he saw them. It was nice to have someone speak pleasantly to you, praise you, even if it was only for the number of nits clinging to your scale-roots. And their chatter distracted him from the griefs circling in his mind.
He walked over to the pair, trying to strut like a proud young dragon, but feeling a little off balance, thanks to his stiff tail.
“You, there. Excuse me.”
The bats left off spitting at each other. Both licked their gripping digits and straightened up the fur on their ears and chins.
“Sir a’needing something?” Thernadad said, rubbing his gripping digits together under his chin.
“What is this place?”
“Dwarf mine, long and longer abandoned,” Thernadad said. “In my oldfather’s time, there was a’feasting on draft horses and goats, but now there’s nothing but mushroom-fed rats and moss-crawlies. And the snakes, of course, who a’eating our poor young.”
“What were you fighting about?”
“Nothing of import to sir.”
“Faaaa! E’be a heartless brute, to a’be telling the truth,” Mamedi said. “E’leaving my sister to starve! Ooo, ooo, ooo!”
“Sir doesn’t want to be a’hearing our troubles.”
“Why will she starve?”
“The dwarves just closed off the old air shaft to a stock paddock and she’s—”
“Shut it, you,” Thernadad made a swipe at her ears, but she ducked over it.
“M’answering the nice young dragon’s question! So now e’be starving and yeee-eyee-yeee…” Her story trailed off into high-pitched wailing.
“Oh, you should just bring her to this cavern. I’m going exploring. Maybe I’ll pick up ano
ther set of cave nits.”
Mamedi left off crying. “Oh, sir—”
Thernadad snapped his teeth at his mate. “Mind the snakes,” he called.
He left them yeeking and boxing again, though Thernadad flapped his wings halfheartedly, as a veteran campaigner who knew a battle lost when he saw one.
This cavern was very different from the home cave. The dwarves had carved it almost wholly from rock, smoothed the floors, and laid the saa-width water channels where the mosses still thrived and offered some amount of light.
Deep pocks like spear wounds—no, like rat holes—could be found in profusion around rougher areas where they’d extracted their minerals. He sniffed one and smelled rat. There were damps and trickles, and these supported more colonies of cave moss and mushrooms, which in turn supported rats and mice. When backtracking to the bat cave and river outlet, he found a few soil beds where the mushrooms grew more thickly—the dwarves must have cultivated something in the soil other than mushrooms, for there were stakes and wire lines, but nothing but a few dead, tough vines remained of their crop.
He smelled more rat here and began to hunt by nose. He caught a flash of white skin and bit quickly and instinctively, cutting it in unequal halves. Legless—a snake! The back end had a big bulge—it had obviously just eaten a rat and couldn’t creep away as he approached. It took a moment for the front end to twitch out.
He carried both halves back to the bats. Mamedi was away getting her sister, so he climbed up and hung the front end up where Thernadad could easily reach it, and swallowed the back half in one long inhale—with a little gulp at the thickening where the half-digested rat lay.
Thernadad nibbled and sucked. “Not to be a’criticizing, sir, but if y’leaves ’em whole, there’s more to lap. Just give ’em a good shake and a crack against a rock, is how an experienced snake killer goes about it. They stay juicier that way.”
“I wasn’t hunting with you in mind.”
“Oh, no, no, no. Of course not.” He nipped out one of the snake’s eyeballs and gulped it down. “M’sees your wounds are healing up nicely. Glad we got to you in time, sir, so’s y’didn’t bleed to death crawling out of the river.”
