The Dragon's Egg

by Pauline M. Ross

  “What? What do you see?”

  “Door,” she said, pointing. “There.”

  I could see nothing. Before I had a chance to say so, she reached for the apple again. “Gone now.” And she bit into the apple.

  “Really? There was a door, and now it’s gone?”

  “Yes. I heard someone calling me, then the door was there, now it’s not there.”

  “Calling you? How? By name?”

  “No. In my head. Wanting me to follow. Not there any more.”

  We waited, but neither the calling or the door reappeared. Eventually we set off through the tunnel again. Before we reached the opening, though, I became aware of other people above us. I stopped, raising a finger to my lips. Did Drusinaar understand what that meant? I had to hope she did.

  There were two pairs of eyes near enough for me to hop into their owners’ minds to see what they saw. It was the slightly hazy view of those who have no magic in them. Jumping from one head to the other and back until I got a clear view of each of them, I decided they were not from the Keep. I knew most of the inhabitants by sight, but even if they were junior servants unknown to me, they wore no uniforms. Besides, no one was allowed near the tower except me, and the Lady.

  They were young, no more than twenty, wearing plain clothing, but in reasonable condition, and leather packs on their backs. Not peasants, then. Perhaps visitors staying at the guest hall, who had somehow found their way out here, exploring. And they were coming from the seaward end of the promontory, where the rocky finger collapsed into a riot of disintegrating cliffs and tumbled rocks. Well, if they had landed a boat in that mess, they were braver than I was.

  A third mind, coming up behind them. Through his eyes I could see the backs of the other two in the distance, but neither of them turned round to give me a clear view of the newcomer. But his measured tread and rounded belly suggested an older man. And he had a crossbow in his hands.

  Now he was climbing a rocky outcrop near the cliff edge. Interesting. The other two had reached the tower now, and were talking animatedly, hands gesturing. Not making any effort to hide, then. They obviously thought they were alone. The man on the rocks got settled. From there he had a clear view of the base of the tower and the two men. For a moment I wondered if he meant any mischief to the younger men, but no, they turned and saw him, and came strolling towards him.

  I was right, he was a bit older, but not much. Maybe twenty-five. And the crossbow wasn’t primed or loaded. He didn’t even know how to hold it properly, by the look of it.

  Well, this was going to be easy.

  “Stay here,” I whispered to Drusinaar. “There are some people outside. They’re not allowed to be here, so I’m just going to get rid of them.”

  I crept cautiously out of the tunnel, allowing my eyes to adjust to the brightness outside. Then I scrambled up the slope and along a little way, materialising at the top some distance from the tunnel entrance. No point in giving away our secrets.

  “You are in grave danger,” I yelled, bursting out of hiding. “Run, if you want to live.”

  They were stupid, though. They turned to look at me, three pairs of eyes, surprised but unafraid.

  “Where is the danger?” one of them said, waving his hands in both directions to take in the whole islet.

  “I am the danger!” I shouted, pulling my boot knife.

  They laughed. “He has a crossbow,” one said. So stupid.

  The man on the rock pulled a quarrel from his pack, and started frantically trying to load the crossbow, but he fumbled it, dropping the bolt, and he hadn’t even worked out how to prime it. A crossbow is a formidable weapon, and it needs little strength or skill, but there is a knack to it. They were really not used to this. It was hard not to laugh. I could see wariness in their eyes, but they weren’t yet afraid enough to turn and run.

  I pulled out a throwing knife and tossed it casually, so that it stuck in the crossbow man’s pack beside him. That got their attention. They were definitely afraid, now. But the man with the crossbow picked up the bolt and with trembling fingers, doggedly began loading the bow again. By the Nine, they were so stupid. Was I really going to have to stick them with the knife before they got the message?

  “Go, now!” I yelled, striding towards them.

  Finally, the two younger men responded, edging away from me. The crossbow man got in a tangle, his nerves getting the better of him, and the quarrel skittered along the ground. Panicked, he jumped up, turned and ran.

  Before I had a chance to move, a bolt of flame shot past me, and caught him square in the back. He had time for one scream, before he dropped, a cloud of smoke surrounding him.

  For a heartbeat… two… three… we all froze. Then, screaming, the other two fled.

  I turned to see Drusinaar standing behind me, hands held out in front of her, her face covered in – what? Shock, more than anything.

  “Drusinaar?” I said gently. “Didn’t I tell you to stay in the tunnel?”

  “Yes. But someone called me. And then I saw the crossbow.”

  “It was all right, you know. They wouldn’t really have hurt us. But… can you do that again? The fire thing?”

  She looked at her hands, turning them over and back, examining them as if they didn’t belong to her. “No.”

  Her great eyes looked at me blankly.

  6: The Library (Zarin)

  There had been a time when Zarin hated mornings. His creaking joints had urged him to keep to his warm bed, and not exert himself too soon. On many days, he’d risen with the sun for morning contemplation, then fetched a tray of food and a pot of tennel and crept back to his bed for another hour or so. It set a bad example to the younger scholars, but at his age he was surely allowed a little indulgence from time to time.

  But no longer. Now he was up with the first rising bell of the day, dressed and on his way to the library before the small bell. She was always there before him, no matter how early he was. Sometimes he wondered if she stayed there all night, even though the Bookmaster assured him she left at fourth table, and reappeared each morning before first table.

  Even so, he always rushed along the corridors rather, as if afraid that one day she would be gone. She was such a miracle, surely one day the Gods would snatch her back to themselves, and not let her linger here amongst the mortals.

  She had her own study room, a narrow alcove with a single tall window, a table and two chairs. She was already deep into her studies, barely looking up as he swept in, rather breathless.

  “May the Gods bring us wisdom this day, Master Zarin,” she intoned, turning instantly back to her book.

  “And bless all our endeavours, Dru,” he replied, with a smile at the top of her head. “You have not forgotten that we are summoned to meet the Lady Guardian this afternoon?”

  “No.”

  “Are you finished with the Xhrin’ha Restoration already?” He rested a hand on a pile of books to one side of the table.

  “Yes.”

  “Did you find it interesting?”

  “Yes.”

  She was already well into the first volume dealing with the Early Hesstian Wars, with another five waiting.

  “What would you like to look at next? More history? Some descriptions of nature? Numbers?”

  She turned big eyes to him. “Whatever you give me, Master Zarin.”

  He sighed. It was so difficult to extract an opinion from her. So he did what he always did, pulled a chair to the side of the table so that he could see her face, and then watched carefully. He had discovered quite early that her eyes flickered more than usual when she was interested in a particular passage. Whenever he spotted that, he would look over her shoulder to see what precisely she was reading, and make a note of it. It was time-consuming, but then this was more important by far than any of his own studies.

  In his own mind, he called her Drusin Baashrim, a gift from the Gods, for surely she was not created by mortals. He had been so cross when the Lady
had asked him to teach the child to read, as if he were no better than a common scholar. He had not understood then how special she was. But the joy she had brought him! In three days she had mastered all the major scripts, and the three main languages of the western coast. He had never seen anything like it. Show her something once, and she knew it for ever, with perfect recall. After that, he had merely brought books for her to devour, and removed them later.

  But the Lady had set limits. He was not to teach Dru anything about magic, or the pre-Catastrophe mages. Then the matter of the Lady’s own people, the Tre’annatha, was also forbidden. That was more difficult. He could easily avoid any mention of the homeland, or their languages, or the workings of their society, for he had no knowledge himself, and no book ever referred to such matters. But the Tre’annatha had played a part in so many peoples of the northern coast, it was impossible to ignore them. They would keep popping up, playing their quiet background role in everything from city states to republics to empires. Other societies came and went, but the Tre’annatha were a constant.

  The prohibition that upset him most was religion. He was not permitted to show Dru the truth of the Gods.

  “But she comes from the Gods-forsaken far south!” he had protested. “They worship trees there, and make sacrifices to appease the evil spirits. So much superstition! She must be shown the true way. It is her right to be brought out of the darkness into the great light of the Seven.”

  “It is precisely her origin in the far south that makes her especially interesting,” the Lady had said. “Her mind has not been tainted by the priests’ teachings.”

  “Tainted!” He had been deeply offended by that.

  “Master Zarin, you know better than anyone what we hope to find in our work here. The priests know it too, and naturally some part of that hope is transmitted to the devout. The result is that they put themselves forward in order to find favour with the Gods, even when they have no more than a modest ability, or none at all. But Drusinaar is not here because she wishes to impress the local priest. Nor is she the usual type of peasant that we see so often, having dreams and fancying herself an oracle. She has a very real talent, that much is clear. But whether it is likely to be useful to us – that is another matter.”

  There was no point trying to change the Lady’s mind once it was made up, and Zarin had not attempted it. Still, it grieved him that he could not teach Dru the contemplations, or take her with him to the temple for the noon recital. On feasts and festivals, he liked to walk the few marks to the larger temple at the seminary, where the processions and music brought him great comfort, and he was sure Dru would have found it an uplifting and humbling experience, as he did.

  At least he had the great pleasure of watching the child learn, and directing her education as best he could. Just before three bells rising, he detected a spark of unusual interest in a passage about Hesstian coinage and taxation, so he set off to find some volumes on the subject.

  The library filled an entire tower of the Keep, and Zarin made his way there by crossing a bridge from the larger tower housing the study rooms and apartments of the scholars. The bridge brought him to what would be the library’s fifth floor, if it had floors at all. But the tower was hollow, with only a series of narrow walkways around the perimeter allowing access to the shelves.

  The upper stacks were partially filled, but the lower stacks were almost empty. It was only a moon since the ship from the homeland had called, depositing a motley collection of books to be examined and copied. Gradually the shelves would fill, until the next leaf-fall, when all the copied books would be boxed up to be returned, and a new collection would arrive.

  Where did they come from, all these books? Thousands upon thousands of them, in a variety of old languages, and some of them were clearly very old – many hundreds of years old, to judge by the subject matter and the occasional inscription. There were scrolls and books that unfolded, some were printed and some hand-scribed, others were bound in gold-trimmed leather, while some were nothing but thin paper, each in its own little box. So many different kinds of books.

  It was a mystery to Zarin, but he was employed to oversee the copying, not to wonder at it, and report on any significant findings to the Lady. And as long as a few copies of the most interesting volumes found their way to the upper shelves of the Keep’s permanent collection, he was content.

  On the open floor of the tower, long lines of tables were piled high with books, with a score of scholars busily engaged in their work. There was no time to read the books. There were too many of them to be transcribed to allow for such indulgences. But Zarin pretended not to notice if a few books disappeared to the scholars’ quarters. There was no harm in it, if they read in their own time and the books reappeared later. Only the handful of paying scholars, the sons and daughters of the wealthy, were permitted the luxury of study. And Dru, of course.

  “Merdyn, have you seen anything on finance in the Hesstian era?” Zarin said. “I can see nothing on our own shelves.”

  The young man set down his pen with inky fingers, and rubbed his nose, leaving a stain there, too. “Hesstian? No, I don’t believe so, Master Zarin. There was something from the Gra’amaat dynasty. Coin reforms, I think.”

  “Hmm. Well, perhaps that would do. That would be… the second level?”

  The scholar nodded, and immediately turned back to his writing. Zarin left him to it, and went hunting on the second level. He never found the Gra’amaat volume, but he returned to Dru with a heap of books of maps from the early post-Catastrophe days. She would like maps, he was sure.

  ~~~~~

  Dru had performed perfectly, as always. Whatever she was asked, if she had read about it, she knew it and could quote the exact passage from the book. She understood what she had read, too, so that when the Lady asked her questions about it, she could always answer.

  After Dru was sent back to her books, the Lady turned to the three of them, Zarin, Shakara and Garrett. Zarin was seated in the middle this time, a very uncomfortable position between the two wicked fornicators. They should never be allowed to mingle with clean, devout men like himself. But the Lady never commented on such matters. Perhaps she had no idea.

  The Sister was there today. She had returned on the ship with the books, bringing the two babes from the homeland with her, and she had been much occupied with them since then. Naturally so, for they would grow up to become Guardian and Sister in their turn. Their welfare was of the utmost importance to the Keep. But now it seemed that the infants were settled, and the Sister was free to resume her accustomed place at the Guardian’s side. She never spoke, but she was always there in the shadows, watching, listening. No doubt they discussed it all later.

  The Sister wore grey, as always. The Guardian wore a faded russet colour today. She chose a different gown every day, but the Sister never wore anything but grey. Zarin had the strangest feeling that if, one day, the Guardian wore grey and the Sister wore a colour, they could take each other’s places and no one would be any the wiser. They were so alike. All Tre’annatha were alike, impossible to tell apart, each with a silver chaylan hung around their neck, part of their religion.

  The Guardian talked to Shakara first, about Dru’s clothing, of all things. Well, it was typical of Shakara to dress the child in her own image. Those desert robes – comfortable, but so complicated, with all those ties and wraps and trailing bits. Hardly appropriate. A gown would be more fitting, or a simple scholar’s tunic and trousers.

  “And there is still no sign of physical development?” the Lady said. “Perhaps she is younger than we thought.”

  Shakara shifted restlessly on her seat. Who would have thought to see embarrassment in a woman so lascivious? Zarin would have imagined her to be quite shameless, but perhaps it was not so.

  “I asked the healers to examine her, Lady. To determine if there is any… problem. And they found…”

  “Yes?”

  “They found nothing! The usual fema
le passage – is not there. She will never be able to conceive.”

  “Ah. I see. But perhaps that is not such a bad thing for her, given her differences in other ways. Master Garrett, have you conducted the food experiments as we discussed last time?”

  “I have. I put an array of dishes on the table and left her to decide what to eat. I had to actually leave the room, or I don’t think she would have eaten anything at all.”

  “And?” the Lady said.

  “As far as I can tell, she ate whatever was nearest to her.”

  Zarin rolled his eyes. “All these experiments! What good do they do?”

  The Lady turned her penetrating gaze on him. “I wished to ascertain whether Drusinaar has any preference for food of any particular type – tropical or temperate, forest or field, spicy or bland. Such information may tell us something of her origins. But it appears that she will eat anything. She expresses no wish of her own.”

  “Better that than to be wilful and disobedient,” Zarin said.

  Garrett shook his head. “Better to have some kind of emotional responses. I’m not sure she has even a spark of humanity.”

  “Nonsense.” Zarin shook his head at such a misunderstanding. “She has been brought up to be very docile and subservient, that is all.”

  “We will not repeat this old argument,” the Lady said crisply. “There is still no sign of her producing fire? That is disappointing.”

  “It seems to be something she can only produce when she is afraid, or angry,” Garrett said. “When it happened the first time, she was being pressured by some man or other.”

  Zarin’s eyes widened. “You are not suggesting we try to reproduce those conditions—”

  “No, of course not,” Garrett said. “We are not savages, Zarin. I am simply offering a possible explanation, that is all.”

  “And what would you know about such abilities?” Zarin began, but the Lady raised her hand.

  “Master Garrett has my trust in the matter of unusual abilities, as you well know, Master Zarin. That is why he is the one to take possibilities to the tower. Sadly, Drusinaar is not alone in finding no way to open the tower for us.” She sighed. “For twelve hundred years there has been a Guardian here, watching and waiting for someone to gain access to the tower and release its bounty to us. Perhaps we will wait for another twelve hundred, who knows.”