by E. E. Knight
Some piece of him was the tiniest bit grateful to Auron for all the sudden pounces out of the darkness. Without the torments of his brother, he’d never have avoided the snake’s first strike.
He began to cry.
Chapter 8
The Copper slept but couldn’t rest. He ate but didn’t enjoy. He eliminated but felt no relief. More often than not he perched near the river tunnel, losing himself in its steady echo.
Auron and Wistala would come hunting for him. Wistala had already probed the home cave, looking for him, and both knew he used the pool. They’d never felt the pain of iron rods, or soft, promising whispers and kind touches that left one’s head in a muddle.
King Gan still lurked in the moss-ringed cavern pools, according to the bats, and his snakes were more aggressive than ever—at least as far as the bats were concerned. One got some cousin of Thernadad’s.
Which was just as well. The Copper had lost count of the number of bats gathered in the cave, each with a sad story, each begging for just a lap or two from a nipped-open vein. He’d be about to say no, and then Thernadad or Mamedi would dig at an earhole or push stray chin whiskers back into place and remind him of his escapes from death.
He dipped his stiff, dwarf-broken tail in the river, watched the cut it made in the current, the arrowhead pointing in the direction of the flow…
“Water Spirit, you brought me here for a reason. Give me your wisdom.”
If he still lived, it meant the spirits weren’t willing to take him back just yet. Scarred, lamed, and probably never able to fly thanks to the wound from the big man, he would be denied a normal dragon’s existence. What female would take a mating flight that could last no longer than a leap from a rock top?
According to Thernadad’s brother, Enjor, there were dragons somewhere upriver of him. That arrowhead in the current pointed toward them.
Did he even want to find more dragons?
He remembered Auron’s stalking and pouncing, Father’s indifference, Mother’s shunning. Anger bubbled in his fire bladder.
Sometimes their deaths didn’t seem such a crime.
He saw a six-legged scuttling thing crawling along just under the surface of the water, making the smallest of waves in the current. He plunged his snout in, grabbed it, flipped it out, and cracked its shell with a quick stomp of his saa before it could right itself. He tongued out the whitish, rather tasteless meat within and crunched down the legs and limbs. A little grit helped the digestion and was a pleasant change from the dirty, hairy taste of rat. If only he had Jizara to join him in the hunt. One could swim and toss the crabs out of the river; then the other could smash them before they could retreat back to the water.
Jizara’s death was a crime. A betrayal piled on a betrayal.
He could almost hear her singing beside the river.
He hurried away, back to the holes in the cavern ceiling where the bats liked to roost.
He listened for a particular pair of squeaky voices.
“Oh, shove off! Y’nose be dripping all over.”
“Faaaa!”
“Thernadad, you up there?”
The bats quieted. Thernadad climbed out of his hole and worked the back of his head with his gripping claw. “Sir be wanting something?”
“I need to speak to your brother.”
Thernadad clawed his way across the cavern roof, poking his head into holes, climbing over sleeping bats, throwing an occasional elbow and getting swatted in return.
“What be going on. Party?”
“Oooh! Watch it, cousin.”
“Enjor! Rouse yourself, y’fat tick. Sir wants to speak to you.”
The brothers’ mother popped out of her hole, moving with a younger bat’s energy despite her aging frame. “Is a feed on?”
“What do you want, m’lord?” Enjor said.
“How do I get back to my people? The dragons of this Lavadome?”
“Eh? Y’be knowing that best, m’lord.”
It took him several tries to get across that he couldn’t get back to his own kind without help—help from the bats. Their little mammalian brains took a while to get around the idea that they could travel together. While bats understood sharing living space, the idea of traveling together didn’t come easily.
“All roads in the lower world lead to the Lavadome, if y’follow them long enough,” Enjor offered, after much thought. “Don’t dragons have homing sense an’ all that?”
“Mine doesn’t seem to be working,” the Copper said.
Enjor scratched his tailvent and sniffed at the residue before continuing: “The best route would be the rivers. Only problem is the Sou’flow be a weary and uncertain trip from here. You might have to go the wrong direction a’ways, then cut across, though that would take you near more dwarves and their works a’following the river.”
“And then what?” The Copper felt a weight on his tail, found the white-flecked bat at her usual spot, lapping up blood.
“Old caves full of nothing but dark and bad air.”
“So good y’be to us, sir,” Thernadad said as the Copper’s teeth ground against one another.
“Perhaps I could engage you as a guide,” the Copper said to Enjor.
“Oh, m’be too old for such a fearful journey. Besides, there’s old Mum.”
Bats fluttered down from the roof.
“Oooo! A party!”
“There, open him up just under the knee; e’flows so nicely there—”
“I’ll feed you along the way,” the Copper said. “You and your mother both.”
Enjor’s eyes brightened. “That’s a generous offer, m’lord.”
“Faaaa! E’s our host!” Mamedi said, leaping on Enjor’s back.
“Off me, y’daft sot!”
But just as Thernadad shouldered his way into what was working up into a fifty-bat brawl, a bat let out a terrified death screech. A snake had reared up, biting a low-flying bat heading for the Copper’s tail and dragging it to the ground.
“Sons o’ Gan!” Thernadad shouted.
The Copper hugged rock, protecting his belly, and heard a pained squeak.
The cavern came alive with white shapes, pink tongues flicking as they rushed forward, coiled, struck, and rushed forward again. The greedier bats, stuck on the floor by the Copper’s open wounds, fell first.
The Copper found himself eyeball-to-eyeball with a great white snake, almost a rival to King Gan himself. He felt his griff lower and rattle, and the snake pulled back, gathering itself for a strike.
It would flash like lightning when it hit, so the Copper preempted the fangs with an openmouthed rush of his own. The snake, for all its size, wasn’t used to a dragon dash and seemed to slide in all directions in panic. The Copper bit for the neck—anywhere else on the snake would mean a counterstrike of venomous fangs.
The snake whipped its head sideways and the Copper went with it, clinging with claws and teeth. He struck the cavern wall, saw stars at the impact.
Blindly, he bit down hard, pulling with teeth and pushing with sii. The snake rolled and rolled again. The Copper found himself ensnared in coils. But they didn’t crush; they just twitched.
He dropped the dead snake’s neck and pushed away from the still-writhing body.
“Kill that one! The burning lizard!” the Copper heard. He turned his good eye to the sound and saw the great snake with a black-flecked face. King Gan’s smooth nose was peeled and cracked.
Snakes dropped dead bats and crawled for him.
The Copper doubted he had the strength left to fight another such snake, let alone several, or King Gan himself. He ran for the river. A snake slipped sideways to intercept. He jumped over it before it could do more than snap at his legs.
He looked up. The surviving bats were fighting to get into holes too small for snake heads.
“I’m leaving! Enjor?”
“Good idea, m’lord.”
“Leave the cave?” a bat squeaked.
“Who be a�
��needing it?” Thernadad barked. “Snakes and misery and too many bats lately.” He glared at his mate.
“E’be our host! W’be coming along,” Mamedi said, fluttering toward the river.
“Mum! Mum!” Thernadad shouted. He alighted on the chain hanging by the river mouth, then turned to search the tunnel and cavern beyond. “W’mustn’t leave without m’mum!”
“Past her time, anyway,” Enjor said, turning circles over the river.
“Mum!”
“’Ere me be!” a tiny voice squeaked. “M’been clinging for life to this fool dragon.”
A trio of snakes followed as quickly as coils could carry them.
“Unless you want to swim, madam…” the Copper said.
Thernadad flapped down and alighted on the Copper’s back. “Here, Mum, climb on.”
She launched herself into the air. “M’be all right for a bit.”
The Copper slid into the river, hugged his limbs to his side, and let his tail rather stiffly propel him through the water. He found that if he took a full breath of air, he could sink and let just his head ride above the waterline.
He gave a glance back and saw a snake plunge into the water, but its fellows clustered at the bank.
With a bend, a dropped shoulder, and a wave of his tail, the Copper rounded on his pursuer, and the snake fled upstream.
The bats fluttered overhead. For all the elbow throwing and head butting they did when clinging to the rock ceiling, they maneuvered in the air expertly, avoiding outcroppings of rock, the river surface—and a hatchling’s tiny crest.
They left the brighter mosses of the tunnel for a dim line of growth that existed at the edge of the river, clinging to the rough-hewn tunnel. Every now and then the tunnel widened and the lines fell away before coming together again where tool-work scarred the rock.
At one “lake,” Enjor swooped down and guided him toward an outflow. Colored lights glimmered across the lake, reds and blues and oranges, but he had no desire to investigate and risk another encounter with dwarves or whatever else lived down there.
Swimming was tiring—his bad leg dragged on the current, and he had to turn and push to compensate—so he preferred to float, keeping his lungs inflated and just waving his tail enough to stay afloat.
He became used to the cold of the water so quickly he feared he might be going numb and freezing to death. He struck out for the side of the cavern and tried a short climb and found all his limbs still able to function, though his hearts were pounding from the slight effort.
“M’be needing a rest, anyway,” Thernadad said, landing. His mother clung to his back, a tiny white-flecked thing atop his bulk. Her spurt of energy must have given out.
The others soon landed.
“M’be perishing,” Mamedi said. “Just a tiny drop of blood, sir.”
“I need my strength,” the Copper countered.
“Faaaaa!” she said. “You’re just floating there. Us on wing be doing all the work.”
“M’mind be muddled with exertion and shock of seeing cousins slain right and left, m’lord.” Enjor coughed. “A fork be coming up in the river. Unless I have my wits w’be going wrong.”
The Copper was tempted to tell him to return to the cave and deal with King Gan.
“Oops, you’d better be climbing higher, sir,” some young relation of Mamedi said. “Another dwarf boat a’coming!”
The Copper saw its light before he heard the faint ring of the approaching bell.
From what he could remember of the craft, the only dwarf who could see out the front was in a cage at the back of the boat.
“I’m tired of swimming,” the Copper said—though he’d been floating, there was no reason for the bats not to think him as tired as they were; otherwise they’d each clamor for blood. “Let’s ride with the dwarves.”
“Muh?” the bats chorused.
“You cling to rock well enough. Hang on to the front of the boat.”
“With all that racket?” Thernadad said. “A’deafened by that bell? Can’t echo with all that noise.”
“Leave the steering to the dwarves. Anyway, I’m going to ride for a while. Try to keep up.”
“The lordship’s right!” Enjor said. “M’be for it. The dwarves know their business.”
The Copper slipped back into the water.
Bing-bing. Bing-bing…Bing-bing.
It filled the tunnel like an angry dragon, light and clanging and churning as it cut through the water.
The Copper reached for it, but the front had been smoothed where it met the water. He slipped beneath its prow and felt the pull of current toward the bubbling stern, clawed frantically, and finally got a grip on a sort of rail running the underside of the vessel. He locked sii and saa on the projection and used it to climb back to the nose end.
He rode for a moment between front point and bow wave, catching his breath. Using the power in his saa and his good sii to grip, he managed to round the nose and found the bats huddled unhappily, their gripping digits white with terror. Worked metal in regular spiral shapes had been driven into the bow. Whether it was decor or functional he couldn’t say, but it did offer a grip.
He wrapped himself around the bow as comfortably as he could.
“M’feel like a bit o’ flushed dwarf-waste,” Thernadad said. His face was wet from being splashed.
“Ooo, ooo, ooo, such a tragedy,” Mamedi blubbered; some cousin of hers had slipped and fallen into the water.
Some of the bats climbed on the Copper, as his scales offered better grips than the smoothed wood.
“Sir, m’be losing strength,” Thernadad’s mother said. “Just a quiet nip and none be wiser.”
“Oh, very well.”
The bat dug around in the soft tissue behind his ear and he felt the usual tingling numbness as she licked the area before biting. He couldn’t move his head without squashing her, but he rolled an eye down and saw the other bats feeding.
Irked that they didn’t ask permission, he was tempted to eat one in the hope that it would teach the others some manners. But Mamedi had finally left off her blubbing.
The river wasn’t always flowing and channeled. Three times the boat plunged into rushing, frothing water, thoroughly drenching them as it nosed into walls of water. Bats and one exsanguinated dragon hung on until the bat claws hurt him more than the teeth. At these moments the dwarves shouted to one another and beat a drum, and the Copper heard a clanging within as they worked their machinery.
Other times the boat stopped at steel doors in the water and waited until the dwarves finished turning wheels and clanging, then passed through to another chamber shut by another set of steel doors, sometimes raising the boat and sometimes lowering it. During this process the Copper and the bats hid under the nose of the ship. The dwarves emerged from the boat’s interior and stretched on the flat top of the craft, or fouled the water with their waste.
These water chambers were thick with rats, but the Copper didn’t dare leave to hunt. The bats were under no such compunction, and whipped through the chamber, clearing it of insects.
Thernadad returned, cleaning his teeth and gum line with a darting tongue-tip.
“Wherever dwarves go, rats go. Wherever rats go, bugs go. Wherever bugs go, bats hunt.”
“Maybe you should live here, then.”
“Oh, sir, w’be sticking to you. Be a heartbreak to leave you after all w’ve been through.”
Water bubbled all around the craft as the chamber filled, and the dwarves shouted to one another. The Copper, splashed and cramped from clinging to the underside of the boat, felt a nip at a sore spot behind his saa joint.
He lashed out and down, heard a brief squeak as he crushed a bat in his jaws. He swallowed it.
The other bats yeeked in terror.
“Stupid sot,” Thernadad said. “That’ll teach ’em some manners.”
Mamedi set to yeeking with a group of bats. “Cruelty, cruelty, a poor starving bat…”
&nbs
p; The Copper felt rather better for the snack. “Did you see who it was?”
“Me cousin twice removed by mating. Too dumb to dodge a cave wall. W’be better off without him. If sir’s in the mood for afters, Mamedi’s sister wouldn’t much be a’missed. By me, anyway.” He threw a companionable wing around the Copper’s shoulder. “Let that be a lesson to the rest of you,” he yeeked.
“They’re getting set to open the doors again,” the Copper said. He heard the dwarves tramping back into the center of the vessel and going to their positions.
He looked back at the huddled bats, eyes wide and glinting at him in terror, and felt better than he had since he spit in King Gan’s eye.
Chapter 9
The Copper longed to sleep, but Enjor insisted that the tunnel they needed to get to was “just a bit ahead.”
They’d had to leave their first boat at another lake and swim to a different river mouth before coming upon a new vessel, smaller and more beat-up than the first, worked by a trio of dwarves.
Twice their own boat idled, hugging the side while larger vessels going the other way passed. One was wide and had heaps of black rock piled within, and crawled along only a slug’s pace faster than the current.
The other almost flew down the tunnel, a long, narrow craft with dwarves sitting in the front and rear at some kind of apparatus that reminded the Copper of the foul machines they’d used to attack Mother in the cave. Instead of a bell, this one sounded a horn at intervals. Its lights, throwing tight beams from curved copper lanterns, almost blinded him as they searched the water’s surface.
At last they came to another landing, where the dwarves reached up and snagged hanging chains and yelled back and forth as a pair of dwarves laden with bags hanging from wooden poles joined the boat.
“M’lord,” Enjor whispered in his ear. “This passage be getting us to the other river.”
The Copper nodded, and Enjor roused Thernadad. The Copper waited until the vessel got under way again and slipped off the nose with hardly a splash. He floated for a moment until the dinging bell receded, then dragged himself up into the chamber.
