Within the Sanctuary of Wings

by Marie Brennan

  The col is not a perfect ridge; at its crest it flattens out, and even dips down slightly to create a shallow bowl. In the month of Seminis in the southern hemisphere, at six thousand meters of elevation, you would not think it is possible for one such as I to become overheated, but I did; the deep snow of this bowl reflected the sun like a mirror, and the slight shelter it provided gave enough respite from the wind that I found myself sweating heavily in my layers of wool and silk and fur. But I did not want to stop long enough to remove my pack and shed layers; and so I slogged onward, through the deep, wet snow.

  Even with our goggles on, the light was blinding, and we could not effectively search while floundering through the snow. At regular intervals one member of the party or another stopped to catch their breath and look around, scanning for any hint of something other than snow, rock, and ourselves, praying all the while that we had not climbed up here for naught. However glorious the view, however tempting the vista beyond, we had come here with a specific purpose in mind. And it was Tom, the most eagle-eyed among us, who spotted it at last.

  “There!”

  It was a tiny thing, an aberration in the smooth expanse of snow. Near to a small shoulder of Gyaptse on the north end of the col, it protruded only about fifteen or twenty centimeters; had the snow been any deeper or the winds here less fierce, we would have missed it entirely, for the monsoon had gone a long way toward burying it. But that tiny thing was enough, and we set off for it with new life in our limbs.

  Suhail dragged us to a halt a few meters away, quite literally grabbing our sleeves to stop us. “Wait. Wait!”

  There was nothing in the world I wanted less to do. Sun-dazzled though my eyes were, I could see enough to make my breath race even more than it already did. A pale, pebbled surface very similar to the scales Thu had shown us. A flattened lump I thought might have been a brow ridge, before the bone beneath gave way and collapsed the flesh. We had at least part of a specimen, and the rest … the rest might lie just a little distance under the snow.

  But if Tom and I were here for our expertise with dragons, and Thu and Chendley for their expertise with mountains, Suhail was here as our archaeologist, to make certain we did not damage what we had come so far to find.

  As he had done when we discovered the Watchers’ Heart, he made us proceed with care. While we hovered and twitched, he circled the visible remains at a safe distance, considering their disposition. Finally he said, “If the rest of the body is still attached, it most likely lies here.” One hand indicated an area of snow. “But without the skeleton, we can’t really be sure. It might have twisted in any direction.”

  The only way to know for sure was to dig.

  We began at the head—or rather I should say Suhail began, for he did not want more than a single person’s weight atop the snow there, in case it crushed something delicate. He brushed away the looser snow with his gloved fingers, exposing enough to reveal that we were indeed looking at the flattened head of some draconic creature. Then, with careful taps of a small pick, he began to chip away the older encrustation.

  While he did this, the rest of us brushed the ground in a circle around the head, scooping away the snow. Ordinarily I would have stood back and drawn the scene, but not on this occasion, for two reasons: first, that my heavily gloved hand could not wield a pencil with any accuracy, and second, that I could not have stood back for any sum of money. I took the southern quadrant, where Suhail thought the rest of the carcass was most likely to lie; Thu was to my left and Tom to my right.

  I did not have to dig far at all before it began. “I found something!” I exclaimed. Only a sharp order from Suhail kept Tom and Thu from hovering over me. But they turned their efforts toward mine, and we went on digging.

  One centimeter at a time, it emerged. At Suhail’s end, the collapsed head; at mine, a misshapen lump it took me a long time to be certain was a foot. Rather than chipping too far downward, I went horizontally, following the line of the leg. Hindleg, or fore? I kept changing my mind; we had not uncovered enough to be certain. Fore, I thought, based on the distance from the head, and the relative sizes—but then I reached something that did not look like a shoulder. And Tom, lying full-length to distribute his weight and digging between myself and Suhail, stopped without warning.

  “Isabella,” he said. “Look.”

  In science it is often possible to examine the bark so closely, one forgets the subject at hand is a tree, much less that it exists as part of a forest. I sat up, my back aching, and I looked.

  At Suhail’s knees, the head. At mine, the leg, twisted and flat, leading to a structure that was not a shoulder. And where Tom dug, another limb—smaller than the one I had uncovered, equally twisted and flat, but leading to a structure that most definitely was a shoulder.

  From foot to head, the entire thing was not more than two and a half meters. And it was bipedal.

  We stared at it in frozen silence, while the wind howled around us. Imagine it alive, with a skeleton inside; imagine it standing, with one foot outstretched and the shoulders thrown back proud. We had seen that image a thousand times, in statues, carved into walls.

  It was a Draconean god.

  NINE

  A race against time—Gyaptse’s wrath—Out of my grave

  What does one do, when one finds a mythical creature buried in the snow of the Mrtyahaima?

  One keeps digging, of course.

  We could not spare the time to discuss its implications. We were too exhausted, and there was no good place to set our tents on the Gyaptse side of the col; if we were to return to our previous campsite, we could not stay where we were for long. But all of us shared the fear that if we left the specimen where it was, exposed by our efforts, it would be destroyed or lost to the valley below, as the previous one had been. We must free it from the ice now, and carry it with us. That this would likely damage it, we must accept as preferable to the alternatives.

  Further excavation only confirmed that we were not hallucinating on account of altitude. The carcass was that of a bipedal, dragon-headed creature, with a head large in proportion to its body, as a human’s is. The first wing we uncovered was too poorly preserved for us to make any judgments; could it bear the body’s weight? How would a creature such as this fly, when it was built to walk upright? With the muscles so withered by cold and desiccation, we could only guess at its living mass, its sex, whether it was a juvenile or an adult.

  It was a race against time. We had barely set our hands to the task once more when Chendley, keeping a worried eye on the sky, said, “The weather’s changing.”

  In the Mrtyahaima, storms can blow in with shocking speed and very little warning. I soon took off my darkened goggles, for the sunlight had vanished behind a fresh layer of clouds. The wind picked up as we located the second wing, renewing the stinging onslaught of ice. And, worst of all, more snow began to fall.

  I cursed steadily under my breath as I worked. It was too unfair—finding something so astonishing, only to have the sky itself turn against us. This was no mere fouling of the weather, but a genuine storm, and every minute we stayed there endangered us further. One entire side of the carcass was still buried in ice when Suhail left off and hauled me to my feet. “No!” I shouted, struggling against him. “We can’t leave it—we can’t go back—no one will believe us if we don’t have proof!” My scientific reputation was not powerful enough to support such a claim. They would think I was clawing for more attention, making up stories to inflate my notoriety. No one would believe that we had found a dragon-headed biped, not unless we could silence the doubters with a carcass.

  But Tom was at my other side, helping Suhail drag me away. I knew they were right; I knew staying there would be suicide. And yet I fought them, even as we stumbled back across the col toward safety.

  Then Gyaptse itself turned against me. “Avalanche!” Chendley bellowed, and the thunder began.

  * * *

  Had we still been roped together, as
we had been during the climb, all five of us would have died. The rope itself would have broken our bones, yanked us this way and that, dragged us down into the torrent when we needed to swim for the surface.

  Surviving an avalanche is a good deal like swimming—in violent, solid water. The snow overtook us before we got very far at all, but in the interim, we all charged to our right, desperate to get away from the cliff that dropped into the valley where Thu found the first carcass. If we went over that edge, we were dead. I ran with Suhail’s hand gripped in my own, both of us stumbling in the deep snow and alternately helping one another to our feet—and then the hammer of God struck us from behind.

  THE FROZEN DRACONEAN

  Suhail was ripped from me in an instant. I lost sight of him, of Tom, of my entire party, and could spare no attention for anything other than trying to survive. The racing snow bore me along at terrifying speed. I floundered at what I hoped was an angle, trying to escape its current and keep myself near the surface. But which way was which? I had lost all track; I was only flailing, desperate, certain I would be buried and never found again.

  Then my leg struck something, and pain flared white-hot at the impact. My fingers hit a solid surface, but it was gone before I could grab it. On and on I slid, so disoriented I wanted to retch, and then, at last, it stopped.

  * * *

  I woke buried in snow.

  By purest chance, I had come to a halt with my hand in front of my face. Because of this, when I began to flail in panic, I did the most useful thing I could have done, under the circumstances: I compressed the snow, creating a pocket in front of my face.

  I could not have been unconscious for long at all, or I would have suffocated. And although I did not realize it until later, I could not have been buried very deeply, or the snow would have been too firmly packed for me to create that pocket. Spittle trailed down my face; it ran sideways across my cheek, and I retained sufficient presence of mind to realize that the surface must lie in the other direction.

  Clawing my way free of the snow felt like climbing out of my own grave—as it could easily have been. I was less than half a meter deep, I think, but even that weight was exceedingly difficult to move. Only the sheer animal panic of being trapped gave me the strength to drag myself out.

  The wind was still howling, the snow still falling. I lurched upright and nearly bit through my tongue when I put weight on my left leg; the only reason it held was because I was too cold to feel the pain clearly. But I was alive, and that was more than I might have had.

  Where were the others?

  For once it was not a stubborn refusal to contemplate the worst that kept me from thinking about how they might be dead. I was concussed; I was hypothermic; I was not thinking at all clearly, though I had the delusion that I was entirely rational. Since I was not dead, I must not have gone over the eastern edge of the col; since I had not gone over the edge, I must have been swept down the western slope, which was the direction I had been trying to go to escape the avalanche. Therefore—by the logic of my addled brain—I must go uphill to find the others.

  I set off, staggering in the snow.

  The pain faded from my leg as I went. I was no longer shivering. I went on, up a small slope and down the other side; I stumbled onward, looking for the correct slope. The ground went down and down and down, not obliging me. I lost my footing and slid a good distance, and when I rose I didn’t know which way I was facing. The sky was much too dim for me to see anything clearly. I saw a spark of light ahead; that must be them. But then it went away, and I lurched in a circle, trying to find it again. This dizzied me, and I collapsed once more into the snow, which felt almost warm.

  Just as my thoughts were fading, I saw them coming, and giggled in relief. I was all right. Suhail had found me. He and Tom and Jacob lifted me up and carried me to safety.

  PART THREE

  In which the memoirist passes a most unusual season

  TEN

  Fever dreams—My saviours—Theory as distraction—The beneficial effects of gloating—Many observations—Experiments in language—Names

  I was delirious for a long time after that, wracked with fever and the aftermath of what I later realized was a concussion.

  I dreamt again and again of the avalanche, the rushing snow sweeping me away with titanic force, only this time it carried me over the eastern edge of the col. Sometimes I fell to my death, and sometimes I flew away on dragon wings.

  I dug out the desiccated, boneless flesh of the Draconean god, and it woke up and spoke to me in a language I could not understand.

  I was at home in Scirland, lecturing on what I had seen—but no one would believe me, even though my audience was made up of dragon-headed figures.

  I was buried again, suffocating, certain I was about to die, even though the snow pressing me down was so warm and soft.

  The whole time, I kept calling for those dearest to me … but they did not come.

  * * *

  Then one day I woke with something like a clear head.

  I was not in camp. Whether I was in Shuwa’s house or someone else’s, I could not tell: my only illumination was one small yak-butter lamp, and someone had hung curtains of thick wool all around me, which had the odd effect of making me feel as if I were in the tent of an Akhian nomad. I lay on a heavy fleece, with another one over me. Smiling weakly, I recognized this as the “snow” that had buried me during my illness.

  Was I well enough to cast it off? I lifted it experimentally, and was not surprised to find myself no longer in my mountaineering clothes. I wore only a shift, the sort of thing that can easily be removed when caring for a sick individual. This was not quite warm enough for the air, but I was determined to stand and reassert myself as a living person, rather than the near-corpse I must have resembled since my rescue.

  My left leg ached when I put weight on it. Searching with my fingers along my calf, I found a tender spot, and surmised that I had fractured my fibula during the avalanche. No doubt I had done this very little good in my stumbling through the snow; but if my illness had one benefit, it was that I had given the bone some time to heal. Nonetheless, I made sure to bear the greater part of my weight on my right leg when I stood. The floor beneath me was not composed of the wooden panels I expected, but quilted hessian, stuffed with something small and hard.

  Once I was sure of my balance, I parted the curtains and stepped out into colder air. Only a single step: after that, it was not the temperature that made me freeze.

  Three figures stared at me from the other side of a fire. Not Suhail. Not Tom. Not Thu or Lieutenant Chendley, nor any of the Nying.

  Three dragon-headed figures.

  I clutched at the curtain for balance. It tore free from its moorings and we went to the ground together, the curtain and I. One of the figures stood, and I wanted to blame all of this on continued fever and delirium, but I knew better. I was awake, and alert, and the living cousin of the creature I had dug out of the snow was coming toward me with its claws outstretched.

  I did not react with wonder, nor delight, nor scientific curiosity. Quite frankly, I shrieked. And then I tried to scrabble away like an upside-down crab—but the heavy curtain tangled me and my injured leg failed me, so I did not get very far.

  The creature coming toward me went instantly still. On the other side of the fire, one of them jerked upright and popped its ruff as wide as it would go. The other lunged to the side of the second and clamped one clawed hand around its muzzle.

  Body language varies from place to place around the world, and a good deal more between species. These draconic figures did not behave quite like humans, nor quite like dragons, but owed a bit to both. The expansion of the ruff was either hostility or a fear response, making the creature appear larger and more intimidating. These thoughts stabilized me, breaking me out of my own fear response … though the fear itself did not entirely dissipate.

  I tried to behave like a rational being, rather than a bundle o
f instincts held together by a very tenuous thread. It was more easily intended than done, however, as was putting together a coherent sentence. I licked my lips, drew in a deep breath, and managed the following triumph of eloquence: “Where am I?”

  As soon as the words were out of my mouth, I knew they were futile. Sure enough, the creatures looked at one another with no sign of comprehension. Of course: why should they understand Scirling? Though my command of Tser-zhag was very nearly nonexistent, I could manage that simple of a question; but it elicited no better response. Perhaps they could not speak at all?

  A foolish thought. The creature that had approached drew breath and spoke, but I did not understand a word it said.

  Fear threatened to choke me again. For all the strange and dangerous situations I have been in before, none came close to this. All of my previous captors had been human, and with most of them I had shared at least a modicum of language. Here I had nothing. I knew I must be in the mountain basin that lay beyond Gyaptse and Cheja; my speculation on the col, that the species might not be extinct after all, was proved correct. But that meant I was cut off from human habitation. I could not even ask whether the others were here, Chendley and Thu and Tom and, most of all, Suhail.

  I tried regardless. Even though I knew they could not understand me, I asked; when my question got no response, I clung to names alone, repeating them in a louder and louder voice as if volume alone would accomplish what words could not. On the far side of the fire, the creature spread its ruff again, and the one at its side cast a glance toward—

  A door.

  I could not bolt for it, not with my legs so tremulous and one yet weak from the fracture. Still, I did my best, which was a rapid and unsteady hobble. I did not get more than three paces before the creature that had approached me interposed itself, half spreading its wings to block the way.

  My voice shook nearly as badly as my legs, but I made it as strong as I could. “I have to look for the others. I do not care that you cannot understand me, I must—”