We stopped when my bruises made it impossible for us to go on. He put his hands up on my sweaty face and stared into my eyes like a mad man, his lips parted, panting. He looked into my soul and we gave each other such passionate release as we could never achieve with our bodies. We stared. We loved. We knew each other.
I curled up, finally, in his strong, warm arms and fell asleep blowing cool air on his neck. We slept hard. Annie’s bugling had to reach through a deep and heavy haze to wake me. Geoffrey was up before me, shaking my knee with one hand and pulling on pants with the other.
“Who are you dressing for? The dragon?”
“The sand. Come, something’s up.”
I smiled, but I grabbed the nearest clothes, tying his sleep skirt over my breasts like a muumuu. My shoes were more difficult and Annie pulled the tent from over our heads as I was pulling on the left one. Annie, away from the egg. That got me going.
I scrambled to my feet, following Geoffrey to the ladder we’d set against the mound by the stone path. But Annie offered me a foot and lifted me neatly up to the center of the mound. Geoffrey was not far behind and we all three jumped back when the mottled brown egg that lay where Annie had been sitting for the past week rocked violently and rolled itself completely over. Annie, the youngest dTelfur dragon, stared at the rock-hard, watermelon-sized egg as it tumbled and rolled. It was brittle all around and my first reaction was to protect it from the stones. Then I laughed at myself as I realized that we wanted it to break.
We didn’t know what to do so Geoffrey and I took Annie’s attentive inaction as our cue and trusted her instincts. Surely if the baby needed help, we would be able to tell.
The egg lay still for a moment before it rocked again, away from us. Annie circled to the far side of the mound and Geoffrey and I spread out to guard it from rolling right off of the makeshift hatching ground. It jerked a few more times and I held my breath, wondering if a good mother would rush in and rip the shell apart. Suddenly it tipped up on one long end and fell, shattering to pieces in the sand. In the middle of the gooey, wet mess, screaming to raise the dead lay my beautiful, perfect, bright red and shriveled baby girl.
We picked our way through the brown shards and knelt by the little creature. Annie purred like a city bus. I picked the tiny girl up off the hot sand while Geoffrey wiped gunk away from her eyes and mouth and nose. She was still screaming so I curled her up in my arms and held her to my chest. Her head fell backwards from her weak neck but Geoffrey’s hands were right there to catch her. Her eyes opened in reaction to the jolt and she looked up at Geoffrey’s. Her entire face melted into a glowing smile.
Geoffrey was startled and laughed, “What a smile!”
I looked at him, thinking about the smiles he’d given me in Denver. I looked back at my brand new gurgling, smiling baby daughter with her wide nose and red, bumply ears and I named her.
“Caldonia.”
Twenty-six
∞ Edling Geoffrey of Kaveg’s journal ∞
November 12
Denver, CO America
It may appear that I have been behaving like a madman since we came down from the mountains. I had intended never to let her out of my sight, but as always money became an issue and I had to get a job. I’m working nights for Murphy. I learned a little about drinks and public houses from Marcelendrew and his murderous concoctions and Murphy is all patience in teaching me about money and mixing. He pays me in cash and calls me his apprentice but when anyone official comes into the pub I’m sent to the back room to count boxes since I still don’t have a society number.
I am with Nanda every minute of the day though and she spends many evenings playing her guitar in the bar. The responsible prince in me has been encouraging her to exercise and teaching her Kavegan fighting techniques, trying to get her into prime shape for our great hike. The selfish man in me has been holding her hand and making love to her and searching for any clues about my departure from Kaveg and arrival in America that might help me prevent her leaving. I can roughly estimate how long I have. I know that she was with me in Kaveg for about two and half seasons before she gave birth. Most women carry for three seasons so assuming that she got pregnant that night on the mountain I estimate that I have only half a season before she disappears. One moon until I lose her.
∞
Donja was born under a full moon and slivered bondstar and she hatched into a bright dawn. She was a beautiful, laughing baby who from the moment of her shelling had us completely baffled. We wrapped her in the soft shawl that Yay had gifted to Nanda. We fed her broth from our stew and searched for a breeding animal to get her milk. Nanda had produced some in the first days of her recovery after the laying, but it had dried up quickly and her breasts did nothing for Donja. That bothered her, though Donja seemed fine without it and made no effort to suckle when Nanda offered her breast.
We really had no idea how to care for a baby. Nanda was the youngest in her family and I was an only child. We were way over our heads in the Dormounts and the Sapproach healer had never arrived. It had been fifteen dawns since Ko and Yay left, nearly a solid half.
“We can’t count on any help coming to us.”
“I know.” Nanda hunkered down and took Donja from my shoulder. “They would’ve been here long ago if they were coming. Something must have happened.” She trailed off and rose to lay Donja in the warm cradle we’d fashioned with sand stolen from Annie’s hatching ground.
Neither of us spoke of our fears for Ko and Yenay. If Girard had been there to help them over the river, he would undoubtedly have come or sent someone capable to help us. My collusion with nature was minimal, limited to only those tricks I had learned as a privileged child and my healing instincts. I was not one of those who could see a great distance or who could think of a person and know how they were.
I owed a great deal of my safety on that quest to Fierell’s lack of collusion with nature. She was a bloodmage by choice and while nature was the source of her powers, she would not respect nature’s own powers. She demanded what she needed much as our ancestors had when they first arrived upon this land.
After the lost battle, our people learned to listen to our new land and she taught us a new talent, one less damaging. But there were those few, Fierell great among them, who maintained the old ways. But she could not see or understand others, myself included. It was not a talent possible using demands.
But neither could I see Yenay or Ko or Girard.
“I’ve pulled out the maps we made up while you were preparing to go mad. We’ll have to travel slowly and I haven’t yet figured out how to cross the Sapproach, but it shouldn’t take much longer than a quarter to get to the village and our chances of finding a breeding animal will be better out of the Dormounts.”
“I don’t think it’s a good idea to travel so long with a newborn.”
“She loves being walked.”
“I have another idea, Geoffrey.” She handed me a cup of the tea she’d been brewing and poured herself one, blowing on it to cool away the steam. She waited until I’d taken a sip before she spoke again. “I’ve spoken with Annie.”
“How?”
“It’s an effort, but we both learned words from Yay before he left and she’s really good at charades.”
“Charades?” I set down my mug.
“She’s pretty sure that she can fly us over the river to Sapproach.”
“There is no way we can ride on that dragon.”
“Why not?” She glanced over at the sleeping Donja and lowered her voice. “We sit on the sleeping dragons all the time. You were the one who discovered the most comfortable way to rest in the mounts was to find a dragon neck and straddle it.”
“They’re asleep!”
“Big deal! So we’ll have to hang on. It just seems less stressful than having to walk all the way back without knowing if we can even cross the river!”
“I am not riding on that thing.”
“Fine. Donja and I are. We�
��ll send someone back for you.”
After spending the last three quarters with Annie, I believed Ko. I believed that she could not have killed my family or my people. She hadn’t once breathed fire. I wasn’t sure that she even could. Her exhalations were steaming hot, yes, but not flaming. She wasn’t very bright, but Yay said she was a baby and as Nanda pointed out, she’d had no one to teach her. I was beginning to think of her as a large and unusual member of our community. I just wasn’t ready to think of her as transportation.
Nanda left the Tearslake campsite with a water pitcher and headed over Deg’s back towards our old campsite in the clearing. I finished my tea and watched Donja sleep. Then I went back to fixing up buffalo stew for all four of us to eat.
I shored up the fire, calculating how long we would have to stay in Sapproach. Just as soon as Donja was old enough to travel, I wanted to return to Tyurae and confront Fierell. And when I had taken care of my aunt and her bloodprice, I wanted to go back to the sod cottage in Nuoiebos and commission dTella to tutor Annie in English and the rest of Kaveg in dTelfurian or dragon or whatever we needed to learn to communicate with Annie and possibly wake the rest of the dragons.
My quest was no longer aimless. I had duties to perform as the edling of Kaveg and as a foster father and maybe, as a bond. So I was deep in thought, hunched over the fire when Annie flew overhead, barely cresting Deg’s back, with my lover screaming from her neck.
They landed on the hatching mound. When I reached them in the center, with the now awake and crying Donja in my arms, Nanda was on the ground by Annie’s muzzle, pounding her joyously. The little dragon was purring like a distant thunderstorm and looking very pleased with herself.
“It’s fun.” Nanda deigned to notice me.
She turned and leaned against Annie’s side as Annie stopped flailing her long tail and curled it on the sand around me, forcing me closer. Annie took a deep breath and spoke, over my head as she has learned to do to avoid bowling us over, while raising her far wing, “Right.” Then she unfolded the close wing a bit and said, “Let.”
“La, la, yes, good, garke, Annie!” Nanda growled deep in her throat in a lousy approximation of Annie’s purr and smiled at me, “I’m just making up the purr. She does it when she’s happy, so I do too. But she knows directions!”
Donja had stopped crying when her mother started purring so Nanda leaned forward and took her from me, giggling into her tiny face and doing her little growl-purr when Donja giggled back. Annie craned her neck around and tilted her head to the side to be able to see the baby and not breath on us. Donja reached up for her and, with a lift from Nanda, grabbed a handful of the fur under Annie’s chin. The dragon blinked in surprise and snorted at the pain. The sound startled Donja and she let go, as surprised as the dragon was. She looked like she was going to burst into tears again, but Annie lowered her head and shook her furry goatee over the baby and let her grab at it. Nanda didn’t hold Donja close enough to get a grip again, but they both liked the keep-away and soon Annie was purring again and Donja was giggling.
While the game continued, Nanda bouncing Donja away if Annie got within distance of the grabby fingers, she told me her evaluation. “We can’t fly too high, cause the air pressure gets to your ears. And we can’t fly too fast because the wind burns your face. But she’s very steady and good at following directions now that she knows what the words mean. She also knows up and down though she can’t say them yet.” She smiled gently at me. “I really wish you’d reconsider.”
When I was a very small boy I ran around playing with the castle kiddens. I learned their language before I was any good at ours. So I looked deep into Nanda’s eyes and I purred.
The smile leaped into her eyes, “Does that mean la?”
“Yeah, it means yes.”
The next morning, before the sun had melted the dew, we climbed up onto Annie with our packs and took off into the sky. It was incredible! The Dormounts didn’t drop away beneath us as I had dreamed they would because Annie following Nanda’s orders, kept us as low as she could. We swerved around the higher dragons and rose only when going around was not possible. Within moments it seemed, we were flying along the Sapproach. Annie had flown us straight east of the Dormounts and to the river so that we could cruise north following the water and maybe spot evidence of Ko and Yenay, but there was no indication that they had fallen into mishap along the river.
From the crumbling stone towers where we had attempted to make our cross we headed east again towards Sapproach. It took some time, but I couldn’t tell. I was exhilarated by the height and the speed and the very idea that I was flying!
We had seen no signs of life when we landed in a clearing just southeast of Girard’s polygonal cottage. We left Annie with our packs still draped over her back and headed into the village. There was no answer at Girard’s and we couldn’t find anyone else at home either. The streets were deserted. The gaming yard and diningsquare were empty. We began yelling in the streets trying to find anyone. But nobody answered. Cottage shutters were closed tight against the weather and the walkways looked untended. There was no help to be found in Sapproach.
When we got back onto Annie, I took the front, Nanda behind me with Donja tied close to her chest. We took off and with a heavy heart I directed Annie towards Voferen Kahago.
∞
Nanda just got a call from Faite! He’s coming home and he’s bringing Kelly with him.
“He suggested that we meet in Cheesman Park on Tuesday and have a picnic to celebrate.” She turned to me while she hung up the phone. “You see, silly boy, he does want to meet you and she didn’t go away for good. Now kiss me and reassure me that I’m not going to lose all of your attention when we get the little monster back.”
I kissed her. And as soon as she comes out of the bathroom, I am going to kiss her some more.
Twenty-seven
∞ Nanda Junior’s journal ∞
Outside the castle of Voferen Kahago, Kaveg
He’s gone. There’s too much to do here for me to cry about it now. I know where he’s gone. As sure as I know I’m not in Denver anymore. I think it was a lot easier for me to fit in here, to get used to the change than it was… will be for him to adjust to my world. Because he had something to come back here for. He doesn’t even know who won. He doesn’t know if she killed me.
God my hands hurt. It’s hard to write. I’ve got to find a healer. And then find Mobious and get Donja. And figure out what the hell we’re gonna do without Geoffrey. But I have to write out today/yesterday/last night. I can’t let it sit in my gut like Forte.
We flew over many many trees and we saw more empty villages on our way to Voferen Kahago. After a few hours we began flying over caravans of people. They crouched and hid when they saw the dragon. We would have landed and asked questions, but some raised weapons at the sight of Annie, so we dared not risk it. We raised our altitude to as high as I deemed safe for Donja’s ears. She never made any complaint, but if I know one thing about flying, I know it’s hard on the ears. Then again, my baby hatched from an egg, so what do I know about anything regarding her physiology? She’s probably better off with Mobious.
Anyway, we flew higher and we saw thousands of people on the ground, all heading in the same direction. When we got near Kahago, we began hearing the clash of weapons. A war was raging around the city walls. We tried to circle over the battle and land inside the closed city gates, but each time we approached the fighting we were greeted with a volley of arrows. Annie gained some altitude and then descended into the city from above, but as she descended, more arrows rained. One large, metal-tipped bolt found its mark and sank deep into Annie's forearm. She screamed and Donja took up the cry. Immediately the little dragon used all of her strength to fly us up and out of range. The effort increased her heart rate and blood spurted harder out of the wound. So hard that it pushed the arrow right out of her flesh and drenched us in a geyser of blue blood.
Geoffrey transformed befo
re my eyes. He became the prince he was in name. He leaned forward over Annie’s long neck and comforted her. He calmly and firmly made her listen to him and stop flying higher. Annie and Geoffrey spoke a total of five words of each other’s languages, but he got the wounded baby to circle down past the fighting, the killing, to the east of the city walls and land by some rocks on the coast of a great lake. Even as we were landing, far outside the fray, I watched a troop of guardes separate from the fight and run in our direction.
Geoffrey kept his concentration on Annie. He leapt from her back and put his hands on the wound, encouraging the hide to knit itself closed. As he focused on the healing, he directed me to transfer Donja in the skirt sling from my chest to his.
I fumbled with the knots, tears pouring down my cheeks. My head was spinning with the bloody visions we had seen overflying the battle. I kept glancing at the soldiers running towards us.
"Nanda!" Geoffrey's tone was stern. "Remember Forte. Remember the corpses. Remember the rats and the bones. Remember those two decaying hands clasped together." He looked at the miraculously healing wound and controlled his breath. "Who did that?"
I held Donja tightly to my chest and whispered into her red hair, "Fierell."
Geoffrey wiped a hand over the new scales and shouted at Annie who starting licking her arm. "Go! Get away from here!" And as Annie tried to find the strength to make her legs launch her, he turned to me. "Those guarde answer to Fierell."
He stepped over and quickly handled the knots of the sling, transferring Donja to his own chest. "Nanda. I know a secret passage. I can get Donja safely inside the castle. But you need to protect Annie. You need to find our side and let them know that I'm here."
"I'm a stage fighter, Geoffrey."
He pulled his sword from its scabbard and looked me in the eyes. I could see the fear that wasn't in his voice. "My people," he looked away at the battle for a moment then continued, "our friends are being slaughtered. Most of them have no skills, no experience at all with fighting. But they're here. And none of them have seen Forte. None of them know what she can do. Donja will only be safe as long as Fierell stays outside my gates. You have to be the girl who had my back at Battlescar."
Geoffrey's Queen: A Mobious' Quest Novel Page 26
