“To get the dragon.”
“Yes, but why?”
“Because it killed my family, Nanda.”
She stirred her cooling meal. “Didn’t you give up the revenge option? When Mobious offered you the quest, the circlet, or the sword, you chose the quest. But here you are ready to use the sword and then go back and take the circlet. And you don’t even know what you were supposed to do out here other than find some queen whom I know I am not.”
I breathed carefully. I hadn’t gotten much sleep and I was armed to kill a dragon that day. “Do you want to be the queen?”
“I want to know why you’ve quit. Why you’ve spent eight frseason on a journey only to change your mind now. That dragon didn’t kill Ko. Your parents either, from what he says. And we both suspect that Fierell and no dragon was responsible for Forte. Maybe it’s innocent of the other deaths as well. So why are you still going out to kill it?”
I stood up, hit my head on one of our support poles and knocked it out of its precarious balance with the other two. The entire tent came tumbling down on our heads. I caught and spread the folds of the opening so that Nanda would not be buried where she sat, watching me. I stepped out of the mess to the laughing voice of Yenay telling Ko what had happened. I ignored them and went to stir the fire cold, to bury it in its own ashes.
Nanda came up behind me, “Geoffrey.”
“You don’t understand my responsibility to the people of Kaveg.”
“I had a dream, Geoffrey, and I was you or rather you were me because we were a woman and Mobious told us...”
“You’ve never met Mobious.”
“I know. This man had the face and voice, the appearance of a great teacher of mine but I, we knew him to be Mobious. He told us...” she struggled to remember, “something and we flew away. To here. To the Dormounts and we saw a man who looked like my father, standing in front of the dragons and we knew that they were not asleep. But he raised a palm to the sky and great winds rose about him as a flash of brightness blinded the world. Then the dragons were asleep and he was gone.” She rubbed at the wrinkle between her eyes. “But we stood where he had and we put a palm to the ground and felt the land sigh and there was a shower of dust and the dragons awoke. And it was a good thing, Geoffrey. A mighty great thing that they were with us again. We watched the dragons soar through the sky while people swarmed on the land and everyone danced. Then this little one began kicking and I woke up to your hair tickling my belly.” She laid a hand on my arm, on the bond ring. “I do understand that you are responsible to your people. But you are responsible to them like a father to his children. Sometimes they lie or are mistaken and you must be strong enough to lead your child to a frightening place. It is so much easier to think this unknown creature is responsible for all your sadness and fear than to think that your guardian might have caused it, or Fierell, your own mother’s sister.”
I stared at her, dumbfounded, “You’re saying that this dragon is not responsible for all the death and destruction it has been accused of for the last eighty-three seasons?”
“I’m saying it’s possible.”
∞
I don’t dream much here in Denver. Nanda doesn’t tell me if she dreams, but sometimes she’ll wake me in the middle of the night with her tossing or I’ll turn over in the morning to find her desperately clutching her pillow, the case torn to shreds. I don’t think she wants me to notice. She never talks about them.
But Kelly has incredible dreams, fantastic nonsensical dreams filled with color and sounds which she’ll try, impossibly, to explain over breakfast. Sometimes I tell her tales about Kaveg and my travels and pretend that it was all in a dream. Nanda will stop in her morning rush to listen when I talk about the great sea-birds we’d swim with off the shores of Kahago or about the impromptu festival Marcelendrew started in the woods around Waindansyell when I sat in a tree for two moons and drummed the romantic passages in the tale of the queens. From as far away as the sound carried, people came and brought their instruments and their voices and, as Marcelendrew had anticipated, their goods. While we feasted on music and dancing and the tale of my grandmothers, he traded for everything we needed - flour, plaincloth, tales, knives, and a new wheel. When the wagon was fixed, he joined the festival and found that his trick of creating a village when we couldn’t reach one had cost him a son. We took our festival and our new wheel to Waindansyell, then left the boy and his bond there.
∞
Nanda’s dream haunted me all day as we hiked to and through the dTelfur village. By the time we arrived at Tearslake, the sun was dancing along the western tails of the Dormounts and the full bondstar already hung high in the eastern sky. We had set up camp by Ko’s garden, taken a break for a meal, and then followed Ko’s blind lead along the river and over a dragon’s neck. The ‘lake’ was an empty pit about the same width and length as Kelly’s elementary school with a depth of only a few greg.
“The water rises along the sides of the other dragons. Empty, it can be deceptive.”
“How long has it been empty, Ko?” Yenay walked out towards the middle of the area.
“It was full when it let me leave.” Ko laid down a blanket for Nanda. He turned to me after handing her a waterskin. “I buried your parents out there in the center of the lake when it was dry. I know they would have gone into the water at Voferen Kahago. This was the best I could do.”
I followed Yenay away from Ko and Nanda. The ground was smooth, more even than a festival dance yard. Most of the circumference was bordered by one immense dragon. Its head was as long as the entire wakened one and that creature must have been curled up in the curve of this great dragon’s body much as I used to curl up in my mother’s arms. A small length of the unevenly ovoid lake was bordered by the side of a dragon with rich green scales where the water had washed away the dirt, or where the waking dragon had slept against it. The larger dragon had scales of brown, the edges tinted with a dark green and the great rising and falling of its flanks had kept dirt from piling on it. Its breath blew against the side of the green dragon and circled around, creating a warmth in the lake area that was welcome, if unnerving.
The sky was alive with all the shades of the day’s dying blood clinging to the clouds though the sun had set behind the great dragon’s sleeping head. The moon and her bondstar both looked down on us creating crossing shadows. A chilly breeze ruffled my hair between dragon exhalations. Yenay, a few greg off, stood staring at the disappearing day. Ko and Nanda stood on the ‘shore’ by the long ridged neck. A second chilly breeze nearly knocked me from my feet and I turned to see that the three of them weren’t watching the sky.
The wakened one had arrived.
I stood stunned. It was terrifying, yes, but also beautiful. I had only ever seen it from far away and by itself. Here in these Dormounts, surrounded by its like, it looked almost small. Its head, peeking over the muzzle of the great dragon, was dwarfed by the larger monster. Its scales were flecked with green and gold and brown and coruscated in the moonlight as it turned its long neck to look at each of us.
It seemed at first to only see Yenay and myself, but as it climbed further up the great dragon’s muzzle, it spied Nanda and Ko beyond the curve of the head. I saw Ko put a hand out to steady Nanda as it spotted them and growled deep in its throat, menacingly.
Ko took a few steps towards the creature, but it tilted its head and crept forward to see beyond my uncle, to get a better view of Nanda. She took a step sideways and walked toward it, her hands held palms up before her. The growling, more like rumbling or a rockslide actually, started again and grew louder, more excited. The dragon exhaled. And as Ko rushed to steady Nanda against the hot wind I drew my sword and ran to protect them. The dragon raised its head rearing back for an attack. I changed my direction and ran directly for the thing, aiming to stab up into the soft tissue I could see under its jaw.
“No!”
I hadn’t heard Yenay running behind me, but there he was, tack
ling me. I tried to throw him off and keep my eyes on the dragon’s attack, but the boy was sturdier than I expected. He fell off my back, but held onto my arms and pulled me over with him. I elbowed him in the gut and escaped as his muscles reacted to the blow. I got to my feet, but as I leaned into a run, he caught a leg and I fell face first into the dirt. The dragon’s breath blew around us and the pressure whipped his words away as he scrambled along my body, pinning me to the ground. I struggled, but the wind was knocked out of me and the blow to my head had left me dazed. I could see that the dragon had retreated farther behind the other’s muzzle. And that Nanda was following it.
“She’s not attacking!” Yenay’s screams filtered into my mind, “she raised her head so she wouldn’t blow them over.”
He let me sit up but didn’t loosen his grip on my arms. I took a moment to raise Nature for my head, but the throb did not subside. Nature denied me. The shame slowed me enough to finally hear Yenay.
He helped me rise. “I’m sorry. The noises sound frightening, but she’s happy. Very happy.”
“Geoffrey!” Nanda’s cry had tears in it, “She’s just a baby.”
Nanda was standing at the base of the muzzle murmuring to the hiding dragon, trying to call it out. I shook off the pain in my body, broke gently from Yenay, and made my way over to her. Ko was trying to get her to back up, to return to the blanket but she ignored him.
“Nanda,” I spoke calmly, whispering as though the dragon might understand me. “Nanda, come away. It’s not a baby, it’s a dangerous monster. I can’t let you get hurt.”
Nanda turned to me and plucked the sword from my hand. I was too surprised to stop her.
“It is not dangerous.” She hissed. “She is scared. You frighten her. This is no monster, Geoffrey. Listen to her.”
The whimpering didn’t sound like a fire-breathing, man-eating monster, but all my life. . .
I turned to Ko. “Will you make her listen to reason?”
“He’s never done me any harm.”
“Except trap you here.” I reached for my sword. “And kill your sister.”
Ko took my sword from Nanda and threw it away. “I don’t think he did kill her. I don’t think he could kill anyone. He cries, Geoffrey.”
I turned away from his pleading eyes and moved to recover my weapon.
Yenay blocked my way. “She. The dragon is female, my lord.”
I pushed the boy aside and strode to where the sword had sunk deeply into the loam where my parents lay buried. The thought paralyzed me as I knelt to pull the steel from the sand.
Yenay hadn’t stopped talking. “You can tell from the teats just behind the forelegs. Nanda’s right, she is just a baby. She’s still got bluefuzz which is—"
Without turning, I cut him off, screaming. “It killed my family, it terrorizes my people, it must be destroyed!”
The dragon ducked down behind the other dragon completely. A whining, breathy sigh quietly floated to us.
“She is intelligent,” Yenay mumbled at me.
“Hey!” Nanda ran to me and knelt with the help of my sword, sinking it further into the loam. “Don’t you have a law about that?”
“If she’s intelligent, she must be heard.” Ko spoke with all his authority as my weapons tutor. “Why do we live in an organized society?”
“I am not going over the tenants with you.”
“You have no queen, you have no advisors, you have no one to hear you. If I were your queen, you would have to take counsel with me.”
“Not now. The creature might escape.” I tried to take the sword but Nanda stopped me.
She whispered, “Listen to him, Geoffrey.”
“And you must question yourself before you act. Why do we live in an organized society?”
I stood and turned on him, “We’re pack animals. It is in our nature to live together. Nanda, give me my sword.”
As I stood, she pulled the sword from the earth and carried it away. Ko stopped me as I tried to follow her.
“Upon what principle do we organize our pack?”
“That everyone should have happiness, freedom, and respect. Get down from there.”
Nanda pulled herself up the immense dragon.
“How do we achieve this?”
“Cooperation and communication.”
Nanda kept climbing the muzzle as best she could with my sword clutched firmly in one hand.
Ko looked nervously up at her, but kept questioning me and blocking me from following. “What is the purpose of a leader?”
“Let me stop her.”
“Answer my questions.”
“The purpose of a leader is to watch.”
“For what?”
“To watch for anyone or anything that deliberately causes unhappiness for, denies freedom to, or lacks respect for one or more of the people.”
“And?”
“And to change that situation.”
“Why must we have two leaders?”
I spoke quickly, reciting from rote. “One cannot watch him or herself. There must be a queen. Her line ensures a peaceful succession. And there must be a partner. His counsel ensures considered action. They watch together as kimoet for the benefit of the people.”
“And if this dragon is intelligent, she is one of your people and you must watch for her benefit.”
Nanda had reached the plateau of the muzzle. The small dragon straightened up to lay its head beside her and it was growling through its whine.
“Geoffrey, this creature is intelligent.” She yelled. “She’s talking to me. She knows that I’m talking. Listen to that!”
Nanda laid a hand high on the dragon’s face, gently caressing it. The dragon growled and turned its head to throw Nanda from the larger creature’s muzzle. Ko ran for the base of the dragon to catch her. I ran and launched from the sleeping monster’s leg, my minni aimed for the wakened one’s eye.
“Nan ye.”
The dragon’s words struck me like an icicle through the heart. I twisted and bounced against rough scales, dropping my weapon. The minni slid down the sleeping dragon and buried itself in the soft sand just before I landed beside it with a thud. Ko made no move to catch me.
Yenay had climbed up right behind Nanda. He blocked her fall as the wakened one pulled back behind its elder.
Frozen where I lay I repeated, “Nan ye.”
“Laurinel said that before she died.” Ko whispered in awe.
I looked up at my uncle. “What?”
“Nan ye.” He repeated. “Before she died. Your mum told me ‘he didn’t do it.’ Then she turned to the dragon and said nan ye.” He looked up at the dTelfur boy. “What does it mean?”
I answered.
“It means thank you.”
The others stared at me. Nanda stood to see better where I lay on the sand and the woken dragon poked its muzzle under her hand for balance. I looked up at the pair and then down at my buried minni. “Mum told me, on the day I was chosen to succeed her, if ever I met a dragon I was to say nan ye. She made me repeat it but I still forgot.”
I had twelve when they chose me. My land was under siege by a dragon. My parents were leaving to battle that dragon. Mum said it was a directive passed down from her grandmother, Queen Nrunel. ‘Say nan ye and listen.’ She told me between council meetings, between packing and planning, before leaving me. I had twelve.
While I sent silent apologies to my dead mother, Ko fell to his knees there beside the great dragon’s muzzle, overcome by his own guilt.
“She’s been trying to talk to me,” he gasped. “I’ve been here for ten frseason and she’s been trying to talk to me the whole time.”
“Ko!” Yenay called down from where he stood murmuring with the dragon. “Don’t cry. She says please don’t cry.”
“How long has she been awake?” Ko asked.
“Eighty-three seasons.”
“Twenty years, all alone.” Nanda sat. The dragon lifted its horse-sized head and laid it on Nand
a’s legs, putting its eyes on a level with her face, still grumbling. Nanda put her hand on the small monster’s head, petting it with slaps like she does the neighbor dogs. “What is she saying, Yenay?”
Ko climbed up, leaving me alone in the pit of the lake. He took the sword from Nanda and stood back.
Yenay knelt beside Nanda and ran his fingers through the dragon’s blue goatee. “Her name is Annie. This dragon we’re standing on is Deg. She knows you’re pregnant. She’s very happy to have people again and she’d like to know our names.”
“How do I say I’m called?”
“Ighay.” The boy stroked the creature’s eye ridges, pointing at each of us in turn. “Uui’y’annie, ighay Yenay. Ko ighay. H’dadt hren Geoffrey ighay. Erendtedt—” He gestured lastly to Nanda, but she interrupted him and introduced herself.
“Ighay Nanda.”
On the way back to the village, after Nanda had seen Annie curled up by Deg, Yenay told us that his mother had drilled him in the dragons’ tales much as I’d been drilled in the history of our queens. Deg was the oldest dragon, but dTella couldn’t say how old he was. Annie was the youngest. She’d hatched about twenty sheddings or frseason before the Lost Battle. An infant. Yenay was considerably impressed with her grasp of language and that she’d been able to fend for herself since awakening. Yenay told us a lot of things I could wish he had told me before we faced the dragon. He excused his silence by admitting his own doubt. I went to bed in a stupor of change and dreamed incomprehensibly all night long.
When I woke in the morning, a mist had settled over the dragons. The uneven ridges of the great dragon’s back, not a long walk from our camp, faded into the sky as if they were far off myths. As I built up our fire and prepared some breakfast for everyone I spotted a figure descending the great dragon’s side. It wasn’t Nanda, I’d left her in the tent. Ko and Yenay had slept underground in the burrows, which Yenay now told us, housed the dTelfur when they wished to be indoors. I had worked on Ko’s leg and eyes for a while after we left the lake, but I didn’t think he was yet agile enough to climb down so quickly.
I looked back to my preparations and my thoughts and by the time Yenay reached me, I had a pan of sunbread bubbling over the fire.
Geoffrey's Queen: A Mobious' Quest Novel Page 22
