The Dragon Round

by Stephen S. Power

  The plateau is three acres of bare stone, cracked and depressed in places, punctuated by tall spikes of gray rock. The wind and rain have filled many with curious holes. “Where?” he huffs.

  “Well, they aren’t here anymore. But these were once columns for the halls of the Giant Kings. Or the Dwarf Kings. Their shadow birds would roost in the nooks.”

  “No. They’re spread too unevenly. Looks more like—”

  “Why are Hanoshi so stiff?” she says. “Where’s your imagination?”

  “Make-believe doesn’t put food on the table,” he says.

  Seeing the looks she makes, Jeryon adds, “Give me some proof a castle was actually here, then I’ll be filled with wonder. Isn’t it more exciting to find a use for a plant than to imagine it has some magical property? Isn’t it magical enough that boneset alleviates pain?”

  “If I didn’t imagine what a plant could do,” she says, “I’d never figure out what it actually does.”

  They cross the plateau. The sun has dried out the weeds growing in the cracks. Mosses and lichen scab the surface. The spikes cast shadows like sweeping black blades.

  Jeryon stops and says, “Where are the birds?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “This is an ideal roost. It should be covered with larus. Sea crows. Shag. And guano. Acres of guano. Birds are all over the island, but the plateau’s clean.”

  “If something’s scared them off,” she says, “wouldn’t we see signs of it? Like its guano?”

  “Perhaps.”

  They head to the northern edge. Everlyn dangles her legs over the cliff, leans forward, and spits. He sits farther away and resists the urge to pull her to safety.

  “I bet we can see thirty miles,” he says. “Of course, this must be just a hill to you.”

  “No,” she says. Tears shimmer atop her cheek.

  “I’ll get you home,” he says.

  “That’s not it,” she says. “I can see the curve of the world. I could see the horizon from the ship. I could see half the League from the mountains. But the view wasn’t like this. The curve’s so pronounced. As if it were drawn.”

  “I know,” he says.

  It’s her turn to look skeptical.

  “When I was a boy,” he hears himself say, “I left my father in the Harbor and snuck into the Upper City, then climbed to the top of the Blue Tower. I couldn’t see this far, maybe twenty-five miles, but I’d never been more than five miles from home. I could see towns I didn’t know existed, hills and forests beyond them, the tips of your mountains, and, most of all, the bay. I could see the other side. I could see Eryn Point and the Tallan Sea. I watched a galley head for them. That, I decided right then, is where I would go. I wanted to touch the curve of the world. And here I am.”

  She smiles. “So you do have imagination,” she says.

  “I picked a port,” he says, “and plotted a course. The next day the Trust took me in as a ship’s boy.”

  Took him in, Everlyn thinks, as if he were a foundling.

  “What if we called the plateau the Crown? These spikes remind me of radiates.”

  “That’ll do,” she says. It’s nice of him to try. “We could tie the bamboo Xs to them. We could probably make them even bigger if they aren’t freestanding. How big would they have to be to be seen thirty miles away?”

  Something scrapes behind them. They scramble away from the edge. Jeryon brings up his spears. She draws her sword. They don’t see anything. He whispers, “Stay close.”

  She says, “Not too close. I don’t want to hit you.”

  He points at a nearby spike. Each one is wide enough for a man to hide behind. Jeryon didn’t think there were that many spikes until now. They’re outnumbered. And the plateau’s edge feels exceedingly close. He survived a cliff fall yesterday. He doesn’t want to make a habit of it.

  “This way,” he says. They edge to their right to look around the spike. Nothing’s there. More noise echoes off the spikes so he can’t tell where it’s coming from.

  Everlyn closes her eyes. It sounds like a boot on gravel, digging in, waiting to spring. She points the sword at one of the larger spikes. She motions left. He nods and slides right. They charge the last few steps around and half swing at themselves. The scraping comes from above.

  There’s a large hole near the top of the spike. “Boost me up,” she says. She sheathes her sword and leans it against the spike.

  He holds his clasped hands for her to step in and pushes her up to where she can step on one outcropping, pivot, and sit on another. She looks into the hole and smiles broadly.

  “What is it?” he says. “A bird’s nest?”

  “You have to see this.”

  Something in the hole scrapes insistently.

  He looks for a foothold. She hugs the spike tight to her hip, pulls her foot off the outcropping, and holds out her hand. “Step where I did,” she says.

  She’s stronger than he imagined, and her hands are big and useful.

  He stands on the outcrop and hugs the spike opposite her. She puts her foot on his to steady herself. They start to let go of each other’s hand, but can’t. Both could fall.

  The scraping changes to the sound of tiny dishes breaking. But all that’s in the hole are two large charcoal stones. “Rocks?” he says. “I’m up here for rocks?”

  One of the rocks wobbles, scraping against the floor of the hole, then cracks down the middle. A tiny white claw reaches out to scratch the air.

  CHAPTER FOUR

  The Gray

  1

  * * *

  Two more claws widen the crack. A whole foot appears, as white as surf, then a two-clawed hand. A snout pokes out. Its nostrils huff as its horn chips at the crack.

  The other egg wobbles and tips over. A white horn bursts through its bottom and thrashes side to side to make a wider hole. The first snout answers by hacking at its own crack faster.

  “It’s a race,” the poth says.

  “We have to be the first people to see this,” Jeryon says. “No one’s written anything about dragons being born white. It makes sense, with them turning black as they age.”

  “Shhh!” she says.

  The first snout retreats and a red eye appears to check its progress. Its pupil is shaped like a keyhole and its iris is covered in a lace of black veins. It stares at Jeryon, then Everlyn. They hear tiny jaws snap.

  The second snout resolves into the face of a white wyrmling with black eyes shot with gold. One more push and its head is through. It’s the size of a walnut, but its mouth is already full of needle-sharp teeth. Its forked tongue lashes the egg as it beats its shoulders against its shell. It can’t get any leverage, though. The egg rocks futilely.

  The red-eyed wyrmling works more deliberately. Another hand appears, and the wyrmling pulls bits of shell inside instead of pushing them out. Its escape route widens considerably while the other wyrm­ling rolls its shell over in its struggles. When red eye can get its shoulders through the hole, it clutches either side and flexes its impossibly skinny arms. The shell snaps in two. The wyrmling tumbles out, tangled in the limp, translucent wings stretching beneath its arms. Fastidiously, it orders itself then plays its tongue over its lips at the sight of its clutchmate.

  Black eye’s head rears, its jaw drops, but it only releases a panicked squeal. Red eye crawls toward it. Its pupils tighten.

  Jeryon yanks his hand out of the poth’s, which nearly topples them both. She clutches his shirt. He puts his hand like a wall between the two wyrmlings.

  “What are you doing?” the poth says.

  Red snaps at his hand. He doesn’t move it. It bites his hand. He stifles a yelp, but doesn’t move it. The wyrmling squeals at him. The hand remains undaunted.

  The poth says, “I wish we could keep them both. I’ve seen this before with raptor
s, but you have to let that one—”

  “Watch,” Jeryon says.

  Red tries to crawl around his hand, then over it; he pushes the wyrmling back. Black, sensing an opportunity, resumes freeing itself, which makes red more frantic. Jeryon still won’t let it at its clutchmate. Finally, the wyrmling sits in frustration. Jeryon doesn’t move his hand. Red looks at him. Now he does.

  “Did you just teach it to sit?” the poth says.

  “No, I taught it to ask permission,” Jeryon says.

  Red leaps onto its clutchmate’s egg. Black snaps at Red’s face and rolls the egg, which knocks Red off, so Red spreads its wings over the egg to keep it in place. Its tongue flicks over Black’s eyes. It nips at Black’s snout. Its head rears, and Black ducks into its shell.

  “I don’t know, poth,” Jeryon says, “Black’s either very smart or very dumb.”

  Red considers its options: storm the castle or siege it. The wyrmling hisses a challenge. No response. It looks into the hole, and a claw darts out, nearly slicing Red’s eyeball. Red reaches inside, there’s a snap, and Red jerks out its hand and shakes it. A pinprick of blood spatters Jeryon’s shirt.

  The egg wobbles again. Then it rocks. It develops a rhythm. Red scurries around the egg, trying to decide what Black is doing. A crack forms on its underside, where the egg beats against a small, sharp stone.

  Jeryon says, “It’s trying to break a new way out.”

  “No,” says the poth, “it’s trying to rock the egg out of the hole.” One more push and the egg rolls over the chock and toward the hole’s mouth. It gets to the edge and teeters on the lip. Red claws at the egg, trying to keep it in the hole.

  The poth lets go of Jeryon’s shirt and cups her hand under the lip to catch Black’s egg. “I thought we weren’t playing favorites,” he says.

  “Maybe I was wrong,” she says. “Maybe this is a form of play, not population control.”

  “From what I’ve read about dragons, there’s no distinction.”

  Red slaps at the egg, which spins a little. The wyrmling squeals in delight, having found a solution. Red stands up and turns the egg around so Black rolls the egg back into the hole. When the egg lodges against the back of the hole, Black realizes how it’s been fooled and lunges out of its egg, teeth snapping, one claw grasping. Red dances backward, squealing in terror, and falls on its back. The wyrmling kicks and flings up its wings to ward off its clutchmate until it realizes that Black has wedged itself in the crack in its egg. Trapped, Black dips its head and mewls.

  “This is no longer cute,” Jeryon says.

  Red sits up and licks its wounded hand. It picks at a scale on its belly and eats whatever it found there. It flaps its wings, which are starting to stiffen, folds them, and snaps its tail. Ordered again, it crawls to Black.

  Red sniffs Black’s snout, strokes it, licks it, the gracious victor, then claws out an eye. Red holds it up, bites it in half, and chews it thoughtfully. Red likes it. It eats the other half. As Black hisses and flails, Jeryon lowers his hand between them. Snap. Bite. Sit. Glower. Look. And the hand goes up. Red slides its claws around Black’s remaining eye and plucks it like a shega. Black spits and mewls as Red eats it, then, appetized, moves in for the feast.

  Again the hand, the sitting, the glare, the raising.

  “I didn’t think a dragon could be trained,” the poth says.

  “Neither did I,” Jeryon says, “but who’s had the chance? Dragons hide their eggs in remote locations and move them at the slightest sign of a threat. Few have ever been seen, let alone taken.”

  They can’t look as Red devours Black’s tongue, then tears off a piece of Black’s face, which finally kills the wyrmling. This doesn’t suit Red, so it climbs over Black’s ruined head and uses its horn to crack the shell.

  “So where’s its mother?” the poth says as Red breaks through the top of the shell and digs heartily into Black’s shoulders. “Is that her down there?”

  “I’m hoping she’s the one the Comber killed,” Jeryon says.

  The dragon slurps and chomps. When it’s done, it slides out of the shell, a sticky mass of pride and gore, and wipes its face with a claw. It does a terrible job. Jeryon holds out his hand, and the wyrmling climbs onto it, curls up, and falls asleep. Blood puddles around it.

  “Has anything been written,” the poth says, “about how big a dragon would have to be to fly us away?”

  The issue of whether they’ll stay at Jeryon’s camp or the poth’s is settled by the need to keep the wyrmling safe. The white crabs would treat a wyrmling penned on the beach the same as they would a fish head handed into a crab pot: like bait.

  Before heading for Everlyn’s pond, they retrieve his collection of blue crab carapaces, his stash of wild olives and shega, his bow drill, and a few spears tied in a bundle with bamboo thread. He leaves the rest. It won’t take long to re-create them.

  While Jeryon gathers his stuff, the poth kills a crab for the wyrmling, which is hungry again. It sits quietly as Jeryon cleans it, glancing at him. He still makes it go through the hand dance before letting it have some meat.

  Jeryon says, “It’s already growing.”

  “I hope we don’t run out of crab,” the poth says. “It probably eats faster than they can breed.”

  The wyrmling rides to the pond in Everlyn’s hip pocket, sometimes poking its head up to look around, sometimes falling to the bottom to sleep. It alternates about every thirty steps by Jeryon’s count. When she brushes past a branch, she knocks an enormous red rhino beetle off a leaf into her pocket. A furious battle ensues in the depths of her smock. Peace comes with a muffled crunching.

  Jeryon wants to say something, but as the poth tries to settle her smock and collect herself he decides to save it for later. Beetles, at least, could solve the crab problem. There’s no end of beetles.

  Oaks shade the pond and shatter the wind into gentle breezes. Jeryon feels refreshed until he sees a bow drill beside the neat fire ring that puts his own to shame. “Where do you sleep?” he says.

  She points to a patch of spongy orange moss near the ring. He chooses a spot farther away and separated from hers by a tangle of branches.

  “I don’t need a screen,” she says. “I’m not that modest.”

  “I am,” he says. “I’ll put the pen by the fire.”

  The poth pulls the wyrmling out of her pocket by its scruff. “It could stay with me,” she says. “It likes my pocket.”

  “It’s not a kitten. It needs a proper enclosure so we can contain it and train it.”

  “I don’t think it’s going to like that.” The wyrmling kicks and squrims.

  “It’ll have to get used to it.” Jeryon scuffs a square into the dirt and holds out his hand. “I need to cut some bamboo. Let me have the sword.”

  “My sword,” Everlyn says after he disappears into the woods. She looks at the square and for the first time notices how the trees box in the camp.

  “What do you think?” she says and puts the wyrmling in the square. It promptly scuttles away. “I agree. We’re going to need a lot of walks to make this place bearable.”

  When the wyrmling reaches the pond, it snaps at its reflection. It gets a mouthful of water instead. It smacks its lips. It likes water. It drinks lustily.

  “The box won’t be so bad with you, though,” she says.

  Jeryon returns with a twenty-foot-long culm of green bamboo, then he drags in a ten-foot piece that’s older, browner, and thicker.

  “What should we call it?” she says. “We can’t keep calling it ‘it.’ ”

  “Why?” He cuts off the brown culm’s branches and reduces it to five two-foot logs.

  “This could be a legendary dragon,” she says. “The first trained. The first ridden. It needs a legendary name.” She holds the dragon in front of her face. “Sea Blight. Cloudbreaker. The Chiefest
and Greatest of Calamities.” The wyrmling shakes its head. “No, you’re right. You’re a good dragon. Another first.”

  “We better hope so.” With one log Jeryon mallets the others into the ground to serve as corner posts.

  “Why not Hope?”

  “Why not Desperation?” He surveys his work. “It needs a practical name. Something easy to say.” He gives a post a whack, and a splinter flies off. The wyrmling leaps out of the poth’s grasp to pounce on it. “Like that.”

  “Splinter?”

  “No, Gray, like those spots appearing on its spine.”

  “Actually,” the poth says, “that’s not terrible.” Jeryon shrugs his shoulders. He whacks another post, trying to get them even, and a larger splinter flies off.

  She looks at it and says, “Huh. Let me check something.”

  Everlyn picks up the splinter, then the wyrmling, which she lays on its back across her hand. It spreads its arms so its wings flop over her fingers and wrist like two washcloths. Its head and legs loll as if broken. It’s asleep. She prods the base of its tail with the splinter.

  “What are you doing?” He comes over to watch.

  “Sexing it,” she says. “My sister kept emperor snakes. She showed me how. It’s sort of a snake, isn’t it?” She probes some more. “I think our wyrmling’s female.”

  “Gray works either way,” he says.

  She flips the wyrmling back over and sets her on her palm. The wyrmling wakes up, and Everlyn says, “Gray.” The wyrmling shakes her wings, revealing a few faint gray streaks in the white.

  “That settles it then.” Jeryon smiles slightly, but enough for her to see.

  “Wait, you did mean Splinter, didn’t you?”

  Jeryon says nothing and goes to the green culm. The poth laughs. And Jeryon thinks their prospects are about as good as the wyrmling’s color. They might escape. They might not.

  2

  * * *

  They spend the rest of the afternoon finishing the pen. After splitting the green culm into slats, they use some as uprights between the corners and weave the rest through them and into slits in the posts. They reinforce the connections with bamboo threads. For hours they speak only with their work, which pleases them both.