The Lost Dragons of Barakhai

by Mickey Zucker Reichert

  As the echoes of the sound died away, Collins could hear Falima whinnying wildly in the distance. Heart slamming, rationality returning in a slow trickle, he hit the stop button. “Is Falima . . . all right?”

  *Fine.* Prinivere did not elaborate. *Are you?* Collins did not answer, not only because he wasn’t sure, but because Prinivere could read his state of mind better than he could.

  *Do you want another?*

  No! Collins forced himself to say, “Yes, please.” He had originally planned to try to fill the tape, not knowing how much effort he could expend rewinding and replaying. With less than six hours to work and the unpleasantness of Prinivere’s first vocalization, he would settle for two. He pressed the buttons and thought hard, Go! Almost in afterthought, he clamped both palms over his ears. This time, he prepared his mind as well, thinking in a cycle. It’s just Prinivere. She won’t hurt me. It’s just . . .

  The second roar exploded through his mind, scattering his thoughts and stiffening every muscle. He bit his lip, grabbing for the stabilizing anchor of his chant. It’s just Prinivere. The discomfort lessened gradually. This time, when Collins uncovered his ears, he came immediately back to himself. He hit the stop button.

  *Let’s hear,* Prinivere suggested.

  Collins guessed she spoke from curiosity. She wanted to see for herself how the technology worked. He needed to test the recording, to make certain it had not failed and that it displayed the necessary clarity to keep the carnivores at bay. “All right,” he said cautiously, pressing the rewind button. The tape hissed for a moment, then the button clicked up. “But please be ready to stop me if I charge off into the ozone.” Collins pushed in “play.” A half-second of silence was broken by a full-throated roar that could put a chorus of lions to shame. Collins’ heart skipped a beat, and he tensed every muscle, but he did not have to fight instinct to remain in place. He thumbed down the volume just as the second roar exploded through the speaker.

  *Amazing!*

  “Yes,” Collins agreed.

  Prinivere dipped her head. *Is that what I sound like?*

  Collins smiled. Some things are the same everywhere. It was the first question nearly everyone in his own world asked after hearing a recording of his or her voice. “Yup.” He realized he was not being entirely forthright. “Well, I didn’t get the full effect of the real thing, since

  I covered my ears. It seems the same, and everything I’ve ever recorded comes out exactly like the original.” He frowned. “Your recorded roar, even without my hands covering my ears, doesn’t scare me as much as the real thing. I’m not sure if that’s because I’m getting used to it or if it’s just scarier coming directly from a dragon’s mouth.”

  *The carnivores won’t know I’m not standing right there.*

  Collins nodded. They would have no knowledge of whatever technology had come to Barakhai since their imprisonment, let alone the much more advanced level of his own world.

  Prinivere lumbered toward Collins and the cave exit. *Ialin has a couple of things for you. Then I think we should head out.*

  Collins turned as the dragon walked past him, noting the ancient parchmentlike skin, the swampy gray-green of her scales, the myriad scars. Even the triangular plates that ridged her back looked tired, some flopped over at the tips like the ears of a scraggly mutt. He wondered how closely related her DNA might be to that of the dinosaurs.

  Korfius trotted happily after her.

  The dog could not come with him, Collins knew, given the prison wards against switchers. Korfius could not join the other team either since all dogs were guards.

  Prinivere gave Collins the answer to the question he was on the verge of asking. *I’ll bring Korfius with us to the caverns. He won’t be able to follow you in, so I’ll take him back with me. I’ll keep him safe until you return.*

  “Thanks.” Though Collins appreciated the economy of speech Prinivere’s mind reading allowed, it still bothered him. He imagined he now knew how a stutterer must feel when a well-meaning but impatient acquaintance insisted on finishing his sentences for him. Collins wished he had some way to ensure a modicum of privacy.

  *I can stop it, if it makes you feel uncomfortable.*

  Prinivere’s pronouncement caught Collins by surprise as he followed her from the cave. “You can stop reading minds?”

  *Well, no. But I can stop responding to thoughts until you’ve spoken them aloud.*

  Collins considered, then shook his head. “Actually, I prefer things as they are.” Without the occasional reminder, he tended to forget about Prinivere’s skill until he had already become focused on something embarrassing. The ability went so far beyond the logic of his own world that he found it almost impossible to continually bear in mind. Even as the thought came to him, he knew he had just informed Prinivere of his reasons as well. And again. He laughed at the hopeless cycle. He had discovered a few things about her skill. She could read only surface ideas and emotions, and she could only focus on one or two at a time, especially when engaged in conversation. The more the views were steeped in duplicity, the harder she found it to interpret them. Capturing others’ thoughts and feelings had often seemed as much a curse as a skill in science fiction novels and movies, yet Prinivere seemed to handle it deftly enough. Of course, she had had thousands of years to adapt, and it did come naturally to her species.

  Prinivere let Collins know she still followed his train of thought. *It’s as natural as breathing to a dragon. Learning to deal with spending part of my life as a human was much more difficult to handle.*

  Collins believed that but did not dwell on the image. He headed toward Ialin who worked over an edgy, whickering Falima with bursts of quick movement.

  Ialin gave Collins only a glance. In that instant, he could see the coarser, older features Prinivere had given Ialin. His dark brown eyes had turned hazel, and the shaggy mop of short, brown hair now fell around a bulbous nose and broad cheeks that looked beefy on his slender frame. “Are you done scaring the crap out of Falima?”

  Collins approached the horse with slow gliding movements intended to soothe her. Her eyes rolled backward, and her ears lay pressed against the back of her head. The ground below her was pocked with the scars her prancing hooves had left. “Easy, girl. Good girl.” He reached out a hand.

  Falima jerked back her nose and rose into a half-rear, whinnying shrilly.

  “Easy, girl.” Collins held his ground, hand still extended.

  Falima nuzzled Collins’ fingers. Encouraged, he ran a gentle hand across her muzzle, then scratched behind her ears. His fingers glided over a furry lump, and Vernon scuttled into Falima’s mane with an indignant squeak.

  “Sorry,” Collins murmured, keeping the apology to Vernon at the same volume and timbre as his words to Falima. He continued to look at the horse as he spoke.

  Falima calmed, nuzzling his shirt.

  Collins looked at Ialin, who watched the exchange, shifting from foot to foot. “Will that do?”

  “Nicely,” Ialin said gruffly, holding out a sword to Collins. “I have to admit, you have a way with her that I don’t.”

  Collins resisted talking about his new relationship with the human form of Falima. “It’s all a matter of slow, unthreatening movement. Predators and other dangers come swiftly and suddenly.”

  “Predators?” Ialin snorted. “What fear would any horse of Barakhai have of predators?”

  Prinivere came to Collins’ aid, to his relief and surprise. On his last visit, Ialin had freely baited him, and Falima had often joined in against him. *Remember, animals and humans were not always one here. Instinct ingrains deeply and often doesn’t dislodge even long after it’s no longer needed.*

  Collins nodded his agreement, then added, “Plus, all horses, including Falima, are trained as guards. It’s usually best to approach them slowly and unthreateningly as well.”

  Ialin grunted, the closest he would come to agreeing with Collins. His fidgeting continued. “If you haven’t notice
d, I don’t do slow and steady well. I’m more of a quick and busy mover.”

  It was gross understatement. If Collins had not known Ialin turned into a hummingbird, he would have had no trouble guessing it. Not all of Barakhai’s inhabitants proved so easy to read, however. Collins would never have believed Vernon’s enormous, dark-skinned human form could possibly compress down to a tiny gray mouse. In fact, many Barakhains did not share so much as hair or eye color with their switch-forms, and bearing little resemblance to the animal they became was one way of assessing attractiveness. Falima believed herself homely because her golden skin and black hair matched the buckskin coloring of her horse form and her well-muscled human limbs seemed “horsey.”

  Ialin tapped the sheathed blade against Collins’ arm. “Are you going to take this?”

  Collins looked at the sword. Cloth blackened by dirt and age hung from the cracked wooden sheath, and only a spiral of bright metal showed where rope or string had once wrapped the grip.

  Guessing at the reason for Collins’ hesitation, Ialin said, “I have another. It’s not the only one.”

  Nodding, Collins took the sword, and Ialin pulled a short knife from his belt.

  “Take this, too.”

  Believing he might have more use for that, Collins shifted the sword from both hands to one. He wrapped his fingers around a hilt that had absorbed the morning chill and felt like ice in his grip. Gingerly, he took the knife in his other hand.

  Prinivere lowered herself fully to the ground. *Hop aboard.*

  After several unsuccessful attempts to place the sword comfortably and securely through his belt, Collins secured it through his pack instead. The knife worked better against his hip, though it had no sheath and he was more afraid of accidentally stabbing himself than someone else. “Thank you.” He headed for Prinivere. “Good luck, Ialin. Good luck, Aisa.”

  “Good luck,” they called back.

  Collins swung onto Prinivere’s back, and Korfius scrambled up beside him. The reality of the task set in at that moment. I’m actually doing this. The coolness of the knife blade seeped through his jeans. Once again, the world had changed and would never, ever, be the same again.

  Chapter 8

  BENTON Collins clung to Prinivere’s back as she skimmed over the forests, dodging the open areas that revealed Barakhai’s occasional towns and cities. The wind whipped his seal-brown hair into a tangle, and the banking movements sent his already squeamish stomach lurching. Only the realization that it would mortify Zylas kept him from vomiting on the dragon’s verdant scales. Trees zipped past in a blur of green and brown, while sun and sky seemed to shift position every time the dragon wove, yawed, or banked. Collins tried closing his eyes and concentrating on his many questions, few of which he was likely to find answers for, but he soon found that seeing and feeling the aerial stunts helped his equilibrium more than feeling them alone did. In clear contrast, Korfius seemed to enjoy the ride with the exuberance of most dogs on car rides. He kept his face turned into the wind, ears plastered inside out, jowls flapping.

  Prinivere could not describe the layout of the caverns, given their warding against switchers. She knew a stream flowed through them, providing fresh water for any remaining inhabitants. People occasionally threw foodstuffs, blankets, or other useful items upstream, out of sympathy or from the belief that some ancestor confined there might have spawned them cousins. Even Barakhai’s royals were known to order that cadavers be flung into the water when a famine, illness, or a mass execution overwhelmed the vultures, crows, and hyenas who served as Barakhai’s gruesome cleanup brigades, the only ones allowed by law to consume meat.

  Prinivere did not even know for certain whether or not the little dragons would be capable of reading or projecting thoughts. The ability came to dragons early, but the parents taught and honed it. Without guidance, they might not learn it at all. Conversely, Collins realized, the youngsters might have discovered the strange form of communication by using it to speak to one another. When Collins spoke the thought aloud, however, Prinivere shook her hoary head.

  *For a human, twenty years makes an adult but, to us, that’s barely toddlerhood.*

  Collins wondered which form would dominate. He knew Korfius aged in “people years,” his dog form lagging to correspond with the human stages of maturity.

  This time, Prinivere did not wait for Collins to verbalize his question. *I got the longevity and maturation rate of a dragon, but I don’t know if that came of it being my first form or the longest lived one. As far as I know, everyone else’s life spans a normal human lifetime.*

  Collins kneaded his hands in frustration. “So, if you had to guess?”

  Prinivere dipped leftward. *This is a unique situation; I’ve got nothing to compare it with.* Apparently knowing that would not appease Collins, she elaborated. *It seems unlikely that their human forms could have reverted back to infancy, but we can’t entirely rule that out. As humans, they might stay at the same maturity level until their dragon forms catch up. It’s possible their dragon selves might have gained some understanding from at least those first thirteen years before their birth forms became Random.* She paused, forest unscrolling beneath them. *I’m not even sure which to hope for. If the dragon form takes precedence, they’ll have a stronger bent toward magic and live far longer, but it may take decades before they gain the maturity to assist in lifting the Curse.* She did not need to add that those were decades she, as a greatly aged dragon, might not share.

  Collins mulled the possibilities as they zipped through a pristine landscape mostly untouched by human progress. He wondered whether their human forms could actually regress. It seemed terribly unlikely given that time, at least, seemed to follow physical laws. Though it would also involve a time glitch, he found it less difficult to believe that their dragon forms might have matured more quickly, making them the equivalent of young teens. Maybe their switch-forms simply aged at different rates, making them twenty or so in their human forms and infantile when dragons, or the forms meshed in some odd manner in-between. Carrie Quinton would, of course, know; and Collins ruefully wished he had asked her. He could not recall her ever mentioning them having a human form. She discussed them like animals, talking about breeding them as if they had no humanity to consider. Now, he could scarcely believe the thought of questioning her about their exact nature had never before entered his mind.

  As usual, Prinivere intervened in Collins’ thoughts. *It didn’t seem necessary to know such a thing. And we had other details to worry about.* She added one more thought that relieved him, *And I happen to know you figured you could always turn to us for those sorts of specifics.*

  Prinivere was right, as always, but it did not console Collins very much to realize it. He glanced at Korfius who sat nestled in a hollow between Prinivere’s left wing and torso, head up and tongue lolling in the breeze.

  Collins turned to more practical concerns. He would not have time to draw more than a crude map in the caverns, even if he had had a pencil and paper with which to do it. Leaving a food trail had obvious disadvantages that went way beyond Hansel and Gretel. He had no rope or string to mark his way back to the entrance. He would have to rely on his memory and as many stones as he could carry into the cave along with his gear, or some other method that came to him in the next few minutes.

  One more question occurred to Collins as Prinivere spiraled into a descent among a spattering of low hills covered with a multicolored carpet of wildflowers. “The dragons are switchers, too, right?”

  *Right,* Prinivere sent back, concentrating more on her landing than on divining the intention of Collins’ question.

  Obligingly, Collins continued, “So how did someone get them through the magical barrier and into the caverns in the first place?”

  Prinivere landed on rocky ground with a hop and a bounce, then walked a few steps to keep her passengers settled. *That’s an excellent question, Ben. One I hadn’t considered.*

  Collins scrambled
from her back, only to be met by Korfius, who had leaped to the ground more swiftly. The dog trotted to his side, tail waving hopefully. Collins stirred his fingers through the dark fur on the top of Korfius’ head with his fingertips, surprised by Prinivere’s confession. He expected the ancient dragon to know everything and had hoped she had an equally excellent answer.

  *Clearly, the kings of the past had a way to get prisoners inside, some sort of one-way portal, since no one has ever escaped or entered without the express will of the royals. A crystal, perhaps, imbued with magic. I’d have thought such a thing destroyed, though, when King Terrin’s father tried to purge the world of everything magical.*

  “Tried.” Collins pounced on the operative word. The realization enhanced his understanding of why Zylas had so fiercely guarded his translation stone and Prinivere’s life, why the crystal he had rescued meant so much to them. Collins could see why the Barakhain royalty might take special pains to see to the demise of an item that allowed switchers through long-placed magical barriers, since it would also grant commoners access to the rulers’ quarters. “Apparently, that one-way portal is another magic item he missed destroying.”

  *Apparently. Things imbued with enough magic protect themselves, and it would not have been used for its proper purpose in at least a hundred years.* Prinivere stretched her neck to delineate a specific hill. *There’s a natural entrance to the caverns here.*

  This time, Collins had no difficulty seeing the cave mouth amid a tangle of vines and blue-green clover. Idly, he wondered whether practice had improved his vision or if it had more to do with the diligence with which the renegades camouflaged their hiding places. This cave’s cover grew spontaneously, without tweaking from outlaws who could not afford discovery. As Prinivere had mentioned, a stream wound through the hills and into the entrance, a spare trickle that burbled against its bed of rocks and fallen foliage.

  Prinivere dipped her muzzle into the water and drank. Taking her cue, Collins knelt at the bank and dipped his hands into the stream. Icy water as clear as fresh-cleaned glass spilled through his fingers. After decades of warnings about Giardia, amoeba, and other invisible pathogens teeming even in the water of the highest, untouched mountains, Collins had to force himself to drink. It was not his first natural water; he had shared his companions’ rations on both trips to Barakhai. Rationally, he knew their stored water came directly from unchlorinated rivers, brooks, and streams like this one, but deceiving himself proved easier when his sustenance came from a man-made vessel.