by E. E. Knight
Hunting was a necessity, of course, but she helped him by acting as a game spotter. Her young eyes were better at picking out motionless game than Auron’s, and a number of thick-furred rabbits met their end thanks to her vision. Auron found nothing strange in a child tearing into a rabbit or goat corpse with her fingers, extracting still-warm organ meat and conveying it to blood-smeared maw, though he expected if she were ever reunited with her kind, she would have to be taught to eat differently.
The romps were even more frequent than the hunts. She ran more than she walked. The child lived at a pace that had only two speeds: full sprint and rest. After an hour or two of running, climbing rocks, trees, and Auron—who approached pony-size in height even though he had long ago passed it in length—she would collapse into a softly snoring heap. She imitated Auron in eating anything she could catch, including beetles, though he kept her away from the badgers, porcupines, and skunks that he had become acquainted with while he ran with Blackhard. But she also found nuts and berries, and would sit in front of a bush and eat until her face was smeared with purple juice. Auron licked her clean, wincing at the horribly sweet taste of the fruit.
She offered him a mashed mass of pulp and skin, sticky in her hand.
“Rotten,” he said.
“Sweet!” she insisted. “Sweet sweet sweet. Berry-sweet!”
He took to calling her “berrysweet,” because something about the way he pronounced the word made her giggle, and something about her giggle made him prrum with pleasure.
She wrestled with Auron, and instinctively picked up sticks to poke and clobber him, abuse he would tolerate for a while, and then he would take the weapon in his jaws and break it. Her feet, knees, elbows, and hands became as rough as Auron’s skin. Then there were days when she was content to collect stones or flower petals, and nights when she would refuse to sleep and Auron had to follow her close, futilely transmitting mind-pictures of sleeping little girls as she chased fireflies or the mysterious croaks and hoots from the trees.
There were adventures, too. Another cat followed them for a day or two, perhaps waiting for Hieba to leave Auron’s side. Auron left her at a stump gathering termites with a stick, and changed color in a patch of tall grass. The cat made a wary approach, but failed to out-jump Auron’s flame. The flaming explosion and colorful fire sent Hieba running for Auron’s back, but she soon lost her fear and began to tend to the fire by dropping deadfalls into it. It must have stirred some memory in her, for she stood awhile looking around, as if expecting other people to gather.
That night she wept beside the fire, and could not be consoled, so Auron left her to her mewling. Though he did not sleep until she did.
They dodged a group or two of blighters. Auron never chanced following them to find their holds, and he was not about to turn Hieba over to them, so their origins and intent remained a mystery. His father had once told him that the blighters worshipped dragons. Perhaps they had settled the mountain range to be near NooMoahk.
Summer became fall, and Auron led Hieba west along the wetter side of the mountains in easy stages, sometimes waiting for a day or two before traveling again. He had no idea what lay to the east, but he knew humans lived somewhere west. The weather turned rainy, swelling creeks into rivers so at times they had to swim to get across. Or rather Auron swam; Hieba clung to his back like a turtle on a log.
It was at one of these rivers that they met NooMoahk.
Auron’s year-filling quest ended on a rainy afternoon as he prowled a rocky riverside smelling out game trails. Had NooMoahk not shifted his tail, Auron would have taken the black dragon for the remains of an avalanche, so craggy were his scaly, fleshless hindquarters. Auron jumped at the sudden movement, then the startle turned into realization, then the realization into a shuddering thrill that set his capped tail a-quiver.
But Auron knew better than to sneak up on a dragon from behind. He turned and put his neck around Hieba’s shoulders. She had stuck wildflowers in the rents marring her blanket-wrap.
“Careful-and-quiet,” Auron said in their patois. “Danger maybe-maybenot.”
“Will-do,” Hieba said back, sotto voce with eyes round as she looked at the black bulk. NooMoahk’s tail worked from right to left to counterbalance the neck and head, which seemed to be rising and falling in a mist of roaring whitewater and rain.
Auron had to pull her away from the sight, so transfixed was she by the fully grown dragon. They circled back downhill and went up the bank of the river moving from tree to tree. A jay shrieked at them, blaming them for everything from the rain to the lack of insects in bird speech; Hieba clamped her lips in frustration.
“Bad blue-bird,” she chided. Bigger drops dropped from the branches above, striking them like fairy taphammers.
NooMoahk, the legend, in all likelihood one of the oldest creatures to walk the earth, was fishing. His massive body sat atop a cliff, wings folded against his sides and head swinging at the end of its long neck above a waterfall. He snapped at fish making leaps, or plunged his head into the lake pool the rapids to rise again with water streaming from between clamped teeth. Auron saw something silvery wiggle out from between his lips and fall back into the lake, but others must have remained behind: NooMoahk lifted his nose to the sky and let whatever was in his mouth slide down his pine-trunk-length throat.
“Big-animal,” Hieba said. “Danger maybe?”
“Maybe-not, Berrysweet,” Auron said. “We go closer.”
Hieba could creep along as quietly as a caterpillar when she wanted to, and she led Auron through the brush at the riverbank, opening branches for him so he would not snap them. Auron hoped he could get in range to use mind-speech; NooMoahk would be more receptive to that. A drake roar from the woods might seem too much like a challenge. And mind-speech wouldn’t reveal their location in case he objected to the presence of another of his kind.
NooMoahk’s crest was a mass of horn. Auron counted twenty-odd points extending out and away from the thick skull armor, gnarled and corkscrewed like tree roots. But the rest of him had a sunken-in look. Where muscle had bulged on father, NooMoahk had stringy ropes. Father’s armor had glittered even in the faint light of cavern moss, but the old black’s scales were dull and grew in irregularly where they had not fallen out. His wings drooped from sagging back muscle as though he did not have the strength to hold them to his body. He had a musty smell, even in the rain, like cobwebs thick with dust. But his eyes still burned as if red coals glowed under the horny ridges of his brow. Auron felt weariness and pain, and knew he was within range of the ancient dragon’s mind. Father had never taught him anything about speaking to strange dragons, so he just sent the first thing in his mind when he brought his head up to swallow again.
“Am I in the presence of NooMoahk?” he thought.
The dragon did not react. He lowered his head again.
“NooMoahk?”
Still nothing.
“NooMoahk, my name is Auron, a young drake. A gray of the line—”
NooMoahk’s head froze, and he sniffed. “What am I imagining now?” Auron heard his mind say.
Auron stepped out from the foliage and onto a riverbank stone. “No, I am here as a stranger to you,” he said aloud.
NooMoahk shifted his bulk around, tripping on the expanse of limp wing at his side. He faced Auron as if the drake were a foe. “I’ve been challenged for my hold many times, at least long ago, but never by one so young. There’s fire in me yet, and you’ve still got bits of shell on your skin, hatchling.”
“You don’t understand me. I don’t come to challenge you.”
“Then you should have better manners than to trespass and disturb me in my meal.”
“I . . . I need your help.”
NooMoahk’s eyes darkened. “Explain yourself. If this is some trick—”
“No trick. I’ve come from the other side of the Red Mountains to find you. I’ve been orphaned by assassins and chained by elves. I seek the wisdom of my kin
d. I know there’s much my parents would have taught me had they lived,” Auron said.
“If you’ve come to tell me a tale that ends, ‘The world is a hard place,’ I know that one already.”
“When’s the last time you had to defend your hold, sir?” Auron asked.
“When you get to be my age, time slips away. Perhaps five hundred years? A dragon flying from the north, he was. The southern dragons have been hunted out long ago.”
“That’s the problem of our people. We’re disappearing, NooMoahk.”
“What ‘our people’ are those? Are you of my lineage? What were your parents’ names?”
“AuRel, Clutchwinner of AuRye and Epata. My mother’s father was EmLar, a gray like me.”
“You are a gray, there’s no question of that. EmLar, EmLar, I had a grandson named EmFell. I never learned the fate of him. You say you’re from the Inland Ocean?”
“The mountains east of it, yes,” Auron said, thinking it best not to say that Mother had never mentioned a grandsire named EmFell. Was that the same as lying?
“Well, on the chance that you are a distant relative, I’ll allow your presence. Temporarily. Perhaps you can make yourself useful.”
“Thank you,” Auron said, wondering what the last might portend.
“It’ll be good to have someone to talk to. I will admit I’ve taken in my share of stray hominids just to have someone to talk to, though there’ve been those that took advantage of my generosity to engage in thievery. Had to eat them—my hospitality extends only so far.”
“We wouldn’t think of stealing from you, sir.”
“We?”
Auron turned to the woods. “Hieba, come see,” he said in their shared language.
The girl peeped from behind a tree trunk.
“A drake traveling with a human child? What is she, an offering?”
“Not at all, sir. A foundling, like me. She would have died in the desert if I hadn’t carried her here.”
“Word of advice for you, young drake. Don’t mix with hominids. Even the dwarves don’t live one-tenth of a dragon span. If they don’t betray you to their kind, they grow old and die just when you’re getting to understand them. Don’t share your hearts with one.”
“I’m keeping her until I can find some of her kind. Are there other humans within an easy journey?”
“I should think not. What spoils of war I’ve taken in the past I’ve turned over to the blighters. Their swords, purchased at no small cost to my hide, keep the other races away.”
“It must be a wise policy. I’ve never heard of a dragon as old as you. They say you go back to the forming of dragons.”
“Forming of dragons?” NooMoahk said, yawning to show yellow-and-brown teeth. “Ancient I am, but not that ancient. No, when I came out of the egg, the world was much as it is now. Men used flint then, before they learned the smelting secrets of the dwarves. Not so many elf babies were stillborn, and forests of ancient rooted elves sang around every waterfall and mountain lake. The blighter kingdoms of Uldam and Gomrotha ruled the axis of the world; they drove the other hominids like hares before their chariots. I can vouch that the mountains haven’t changed, though I’ve seen ice floes melt from the plains to the north. Forests came to take their place and then left again in the dry dustcloud years. Braaack. Excuse me, I’m not much used to speech, and I’ve got a belly full of fish.”
NooMoahk lay his head across his back, tucking his nose behind his flank like a goose sleeping with its head under a wing. Auron backed away and brushed a friendly tongue over Hieba’s face.
“Danger maybe-so?”
“No, no, Berrysweet. It rest; we rest.”
“It’s big as mountain,” she said, after screwing up her face in thought.
“Almost old as mountain, too-too.”
When NooMoahk awoke, hours later, Auron found he had to go through the tiresome task of introducing himself and Hieba again.
“Years ago, it seems, I met a gray with a human child,” NooMoahk said, suspicion burning in his eyes. “He didn’t have a cut-off tail, I don’t think. No idea whatever happened to them. You’re saying that was today?”
“Yes. It rained, you were fishing.”
“Oh, of course. You have an old dragon’s apology. Age plays tricks on the mind. What is that on the end of your tail?”
“Dwarves made it for me. It’s sort of a shield and a weapon.”
“You weren’t planning to fight me, I hope.”
“No. I think you said you’d be happy to let us stay for a time, that you’d be glad of the company,” Auron said. NooMoahk hadn’t said exactly that, but it wasn’t a lie.
“I did? So I did, and I am. Come, come, the main entrance to my hall isn’t far. I don’t travel more than a few hours from the doorstep anymore. Follow. It looks like it might rain again, and you might as well arrive dry.”
He did not travel up the mountainside, but down. They crossed the fishing river by walking across NooMoahk’s back as if it were a bridge, and then trailed him down the side of the mountain. Auron saw a road zigzagging its way out of the forest and up the hill. It must have been long abandoned, for giant trees grew through unearthed sheets of paving rock. At each turn a broken tower stood, straddling the road on two legs planted far apart. Only one arch remained; the rest had fallen away long ago.
“They were pretty,” NooMoahk explained. “Flowers used to grow from the tops, they trailed greenstuff down. The earthquake that came before the dustcloud brought them down, and the flowers died in the darkness. It was a blighter road once. Never let the other hominids tell you that the blighters didn’t build anything of beauty or wonder.”
They climbed under an overhang with the remains of inverted towers hung like teeth from the cavern roof. The ruins of the mountainside city made even NooMoahk seem small, though the buildings that hugged the cavern walls had long since collapsed. Three roads at one time threaded between the buildings and into the mouth of the cave, but only one was still open. The others were dammed by crumbled granite and blood-brown brick piles.
“This was once Kraglad, a city of Uldam. The Empire’s southgate. A wonder of engineering, half-a-thousand years in the making. Files of men in loincloths used to come up the arched road, bearing tribute. Before disaster and war, of course. Don’t bother poking your head in the windows, um, ummm-Auron. The blighters have picked it clean as a desert skeleton.”
“Were you the disaster?”
“No,” NooMoahk said. “Though some say I was, it isn’t true. I was formidable in my day, but not that mighty. It would take ten dragons or more to do this. I will admit that I drove some squatters out of the halls beneath.”
He led them down, and the smashed buildings gave way to a termite nest of caves. NooMoahk sniffed at one of the passages. “Blighters are down here again, poking around. They won’t trouble us, or you, as long as you’re with me.”
It felt good to be underground again. Quiet underground, forgotten underground. Not full of moving air, water, and light like the Delvings of the Diadem, or some shallow cave with no secrets to it save a hibernating bear. The air tasted like it had been placed there at the forming of the world and not moved since. Echoes of their movements disturbed a bat or two, which kept them company by flapping along NooMoahk’s long sides. Best of all was the smell of dragon. Not Father’s sharp tang, or Mother’s comforting nepenthe, but a dragon smell nonetheless. Hieba gripped his back-ridge with both hands as she rode him.
“Dark,” she said.
“Yes, safe dark, Berrysweet. Good with us.”
NooMoahk snaked his head between his legs and looked at them. “Careful here, we’re going to go down a sink. There’s plenty of holds for your sii.”
Auron squeezed past his elder and poked his head into the sink. There was a glow beneath, like the one in Father’s hoard. NooMoahk must have accumulated an enormous trove over his many years. He snapped his jaws shut and listened to the echo. It was a long drop.
“Arms and legs. Strong now. Hang on,” he told Hieba.
She swung herself so she was against his chest, arms around his neck and legs around a foreleg. NooMoahk started down, almost filling the chute. Auron waited until he was sure he wouldn’t be swatted off the cavern wall by a careless swipe of the old dragon’s tail, and then he climbed down.
“No like,” Hieba protested after a minute.
He shifted himself around so she was right side up. It made the climb slower. Below him, NooMoahk’s tail disappeared.
The chute changed direction after a dragon-length. Auron heard NooMoahk’s bulk receding down another passageway, blocking the glow. He followed and Hieba came up and sat on his back again. She began talking to herself; Auron understood enough to know that she was counting things.
They came to a cavern, wide and low. Stalactite-stalagmites joined to make columns between floor and ceiling, though they had been carved to make grotesque faces, or figures in tortured poses. Hanging upside down from the ceiling or squatting on the floor beneath were carvings of blighters driving or tormenting the other forms. Flat and polished panels had been formed in the middle of some of the vertical tableaux, writing like claw-scorings told tales of the glory of Uldam.
A rattling filled the cavern, like rocks being shaken in an iron drum. It came from NooMoahk. The old dragon lay curled a little above him on a circular dais in the center of the cavern, already asleep. Rather than steps as humans and dwarves used, the surface went up to a platform marked in a series of foothold notches. The dais had curved stonework, tapering like giant dragon claws, projecting up and out from the platform. They must have been carved from the rock of the dais, for they were strong enough to bear the weight of NooMoahk, who slept against them like a snake resting against tree branches.
