by M. M. Perry
“I’m cold. That’s pretty much it. Occasionally, I’m hungry, but generally that was preceded and followed by, I’m cold. And with less grammar. Mostly they’d just chatter ‘cold, cold, cold, cold, hungry, cold, cold, cold,’ incessantly. And they’d never quit. You can imagine how popular my experiments made me with my neighbors back in Xenor when some inevitably escaped. Worse than having a bleeding cricket hiding in your bedroom if one of those gets in. And if you think granting speech to a creature is hard, try taking it away sometime.”
“What will happen when we get there?” Cass interrupted. “Do the scrolls say?”
“Not exactly,” he spun back around on his scale. “I know the sun gem is involved. But, and I hate that I had to put off telling you this until now, but I was afraid you wouldn’t believe my interpretation of the prophecy if I had, I never got a chance to study most of the scrolls. They were burned up by a mad man among my people long before I became interested in studying them. He was, in fact, the Djinn who received them from the prophet. We managed to save a few, once we realized what he was doing, but… it turned out to just be the first few, and some badly charred fragments of a few others that, and it’s hard to be certain with how little is left of them, are either appendices, doodles, or possibly recipes for a hearty stew. Those things are hard enough to decipher when you have an extant scroll… working with a few scraps is impossible. I don’t really know what happens after this,” Manfred said guiltily.
“So… we could be ending the world,” Cass asked, “or something?”
“Well, I don’t think we’d be ending the world. That Djinn, he hadn’t gone mad with fear that the end of all things was nigh. He’d gone mad with grief after seeing the scrolls because he had determined them to be false. ‘We cursed ourselves forever. There is no hope save the false. It will be the death of us all.’ His words. He was a highly respected Djinn, so most of my people believed he had saved us from something terrible, meaning false hope. They chose to search for some scraps of meaning and purpose in the existence they felt they were stuck with. But there were those of us who believed otherwise. That what he couldn’t handle was the idea that we’d give up the godhood we’d bought so dearly. You see, most Djinn never tried very hard to reverse our circumstances. They just assumed we had paid a dear price. If we had tried… worked together… started sooner… maybe we could have…” Manfred’s voice tapered off into mumbling too soft for Gunnarr and Cass to hear him.
“We’ll be over the continent soon,” Gunnarr said. “It won’t be long after that until we’re at the plains, if the dragons keep this pace up. I hope whoever is supposed to be there, is. Flying in the light of day like this, staying low over the water might have kept us fairly unseen, but once we strike out over land… People will see. And once they’ve seen, it can’t be long until the gods know.”
“Timta is whom we’re meeting. She’ll be there. She’s always there,” Manfred said over his shoulder, “she has ever been, since the war.”
The coastal city of Horse’s Head was bustling with business at the midday bazaar. Goods were being traded at a lightning pace as people weaved hurriedly through the crowds during their lunch breaks. George was busy tending the stall, arranging his baked goods in a manner he hoped would attract the attention of the rushing crowd. He moved the more expensive fruit tarts close to the front so they’d be hard to miss. He was particularly pleased with the color the tarts took on in the full light of day. He was sure they would net him a few extra coins today. With them, he could finally buy Helen the new dress he couldn’t help but notice her eyeing longingly every time they passed one of the nearby tailor’s windows.
Tad ran up with a bunch of fresh flowers he had just purchased clutched tight to his chest so as not to lose any. Tad’s head was barely visible over the tops of the flowers, the bunch comically oversized pressed up against his tiny frame.
“Dad, I thought these might help,” he said, thrusting the bouquet high above his head so his father might get a better look.
George smiled down at his son and ruffled his hair.
He’s getting so big, so fast, he thought. Soon he’ll have to attend lessons with the rest of the children.
He took the flowers from Tad’s hands and, after clearing a prominent place among his goods, propped the flowers up among them.
“That’s great, Tad. That really makes the cart!”
Tad smiled up at his dad, delighted to be able to help out. Then his expression changed to one of awe.
“Dad!” he shouted, pointing up into the sky above and behind his father, “Dragons!”
George laughed. His son’s imagination seemed to know no bounds. Every day there was a troll lurking in some hallway or a griffin roosting in the attic which, upon the inspection Tad insisted on, turned out to actually be a large house spider casting a long shadow or an owl preening in the rafters, its loosed feathers falling to the ground. Grinning broadly, George hoisted his son up into his arms and turned to gaze into the sky with him, expecting to find a raven, or perhaps even an eagle of some sort.
“Let’s see this dra…” George trailed off as a shadow so broad settled on them that the entire market dimmed as if dusk had fallen. The bazaar went deadly quiet. The huge beasts glided near enough to the ground that George could make out the claws on their feet. Someone in the bazaar dropped a vase and the sound of it shattering broke the silent tension, and bedlam erupted.
No one knew nor cared at the moment why the dragons had suddenly sprung to life from myth, but what everyone knew for a certainty was that they were dangerous. George forgot all about his bakery cart and gripped Tad to his chest and ran, making his way through and in some cases over the incoherent screaming masses. He shoved aside the people who were blocking the thoroughfare, trying desperately to pack up their carts.
Foolish, George thought, you can always get more goods.
He pushed past the people who were taking advantage of the panic, grabbing anything in sight.
Foolish, George thought, you’ll get trampled over a few bits and baubles.
He saw the little flower girl that he knew his son must have purchased the bouquet from being mercilessly shoved back against a wall by those people that had the good sense to cut bait and run.
For a moment, George thought, Foolish, her parents should never have left her alone, before he realized his own small son had just moments before gone off alone to buy flowers from her. Had the dragons passed over at that time Tad would have been mobbed just like this little girl.
George stopped and spoke to Tad in the voice he reserved for the most serious of occasions.
“Tad, do not let go of me. Hold on very tight. As tight as you can.”
Tad nodded and squeezed his arms around his father’s neck. George pushed against the tide of people to reach the flower girl. Her face was streaked with tears, and though her mouth was opening and closing with what must have been sobs, he could not hear them over the pandemonium’s cacophony. He leaned down and shouted to be heard over the crowd. The girl was a little older than his own son.
“Are your parents in the bazaar?”
The girl didn’t seem to hear him, because she was still staring into the sky in the direction the dragons had disappeared.
George tried again, this time resting his hand on the girl’s shoulder.
“Are your parents in the bazaar?”
The contact seemed to bring her back to her senses. She shook her head back and forth. Tears were streaming down her face but, to her credit, she was otherwise very calm. George wondered if the shock of the situation had been too much for her. Then her small voice rang out.
“They’re at the shop,” she said as clear as day.
George reached down to pick her up. She pulled away at first, but when she noticed Tad’s familiar face staring down at her she allowed herself to be lifted up. George, now burdened with two small children, found it even more difficult to cut a path through the crowd. He was almost knocked
over several times by panicking people. Finally he made it far enough away from the center of town that the crowd thinned enough for him to move more easily. He darted down several relatively deserted side streets and alleys until he found the street he was looking for. He immediately spotted the girl’s nervous looking parents in the flower shop’s doorway. Her father had taken off his gardening gloves and apron and was handing them, along with his pruning shears, to his wife.
George hurried towards them. The girl’s mother noticed him first, just as her husband was stepping away from the store.
“Julia,” she said in a half sob.
George let the girl down and she darted to her mother. Her father walked to George, his hand stretched out.
“Thank you so much,” he began, as he firmly gripped George’s hand in his own and shook it vigorously, “if there is ever…”
“You’re welcome. Now get inside. Take to the cellar. At least three dragons were spotted overhead. I saw them myself,” George said, “now’s not the time for the niceties.”
He didn’t wait for a response before he moved off in the direction of his own home, leaving behind the bewildered shop owners. George found it easier to run now that he had only one child in his arms. He bolted through more alleys and streets, dodging others racing to get home until he came to his stoop. Helen wasn’t waiting there, as he’d expected. George guessed she was so busy inside baking goods to replenish the cart, expecting them to run out before lunch was over, that she hadn’t noticed the commotion outside. Their house was far enough out from the city proper that it was relatively quiet here.
George climbed the steps and entered the sturdy brick home, grateful now that his father was such a stubborn and, George was now realizing, farsighted man. He had only allowed the best, sturdiest building materials to be used when he built the family home all those years ago.
“Helen!” George shouted as he entered the house. He set Tad down and then hurried to slam and bolt the door tight behind him. After a moment’s consideration, he dragged the biggest chair they had over and wedged it against the door as well. He wondered if he had time to shutter the windows. At this point his biggest concern was not the dragons, but his neighbors. He knew men were capable of just about anything, including acts of extreme stupidity and heinous cruelty, when they were desperate enough.
“Helen!” George shouted again as he shuttered one of the front windows. Better safe than sorry, he had decided.
“What is it, George? Out already?” Helen said happily as she entered the living room, wiping flour off her hands onto her apron.
George ran to Helen and gripped her tight around her waist. Helen stroked her husband’s tousled hair to smooth it several times before she realized that he wasn’t just home for lunch. His eyes raced around the room filled with something she very rarely saw in them—fear.
“George?”
“Take Tad to the cellar. I’ll be down in a minute. I want to shutter all the windows first.”
“George!”
“The cellar, Helen, please. I don’t know exactly what’s coming, but it’s not gonna be good, I know that. Now go, I’ll be there in a minute.”
Helen grabbed Tad and hurried down into the cellar. George moved around the house quickly and efficiently, shuttering every window. He took the time to go to the second floor to get some blankets and, while up there, decide to shutter the bedroom windows as well. He took a moment to look out the window that faced north before pulling it closed, in the direction the dragons had been flying. He was squinting into the distance, wondering how anything so huge could have already traveled farther than he could see, when a powerful light filled the entire northern sky, temporarily blinding him. George fumbled with the shutters, closing them by feel.
“Gods save us,” he said as he stepped away from the window.
Chapter 16
The dragons landed as gracefully as they had ascended, which Cass found very impressive, given their bulk. Once they had settled, furling their wings away, the dragons each slowly lowered their heads to the ground to allow their passengers to make the long, slow, careful walk down their necks to dismount at the point where their scales flared out in an elaborate ruff around their heads. The ruff provided the easiest way for the party to dismount but, given their immense size, the process could only be described as easy in relation to trying to climb down directly from their backs—a process that surely would have resulted in more than one of them falling to serious injury or death. Patch was grateful to finally set foot on firm ground again. He even did a few quick steps of a popular satyr dance to celebrate his reunion with the earth, and was surprised to find that his leg no longer pained him where the husk had savaged him.
“Wow, satyrs heal fast,” Cass commented.
“We really don’t,” Patch said, “a hangnail can bother me for weeks.”
“It’s the dragons,” Anya said. “When near them, you heal faster. Our people have used this knowledge for a long time. If an injury is life threatening or severe enough, we will take the injured person and set up camp near one of the ice dragon nests. We discovered through trial and error that the ice dragons were the least… cantankerous of the dragon species, or at least the most willing to ignore us. Their healing aura has proven to be proof against all but the most grievous of injuries. If we can make it there in time, by the next day any injured person is healed enough to be up and around, and often outright invigorated.”
“Sounds like a dangerous trip to undertake with a seriously injured person, or people, with all the deathsglove, proteans and bears,” Viola said.
“We usually travel into the valley through a small crevice starting at the back of our temple to Gron. There are very few dangers along that route, and there is an ice dragon nest very near where it exits into the valley,” Anya said.
“If that’s so, then why did our pursuers risk the deathsglove and everything else? Couldn’t they have just cut us off by taking that path?” Nat asked.
“It comes out at a very different place in the valley. And they did not know exactly which nest I was going to take you to. They needed to track us and catch up with us,” Anya said.
Cass considered their surroundings while the others talked. They were near the base of Timta’s statue, facing the side where a small hut nestled up against the statue’s base. Almost before Cass began walking toward it the hut’s door opened, allowing a beautiful dark haired woman, who looked to Cass’ eye to be a few years younger than her, to step out. She smiled happily when their eyes met.
“Cass!” the woman exclaimed and rushed towards her.
“I’m sorry, I…” Cass began but she couldn’t finish her sentence before the woman embraced her. The rest of the group had stopped their discussion at the sound of Selina’s voice. A large, well-muscled and more than slightly rotund dark man followed Selina out of the hut. He had a thick, black, wildly bushy beard and a head of hair to match.
“Cahss!” he said, in a thick accent much like Anya’s, with so much warmth that Cass knew that she must be very important to him, despite her inability to recall him.
“You found my leetle Cahss!” Driscol continued, turning toward Gunnarr. “I knew you would.”
Driscol continued to take in the group when he saw Anya.
“Brother…” Anya said, stepping out from behind Gunnarr.
“Anya,” he said without a hint of surprise, as if she turned up on his stoop for a visit every day, “I knew you were able to coming through. And they,” he said gesturing to the huge dragons, “are beautiful. I never did even risk visiting the star dragon’s nest before I left. And here you are, riding in on them. You always were over achieving things.”
Anya sighed and said, “You knew this would happen all along, didn’t you.”
Anya gestured at the three huge dragons lurking nearby, though given their size it would be hard for them to ever be anything but nearby. In any other situation, the creatures would have dominated the landscape. Yet h
ere, on the Plains of the Dead Gods, they seemed diminished. The dragons were eyeing those very statues around them from which the Plains took their name. Even the dragons were dwarfed by them. Timta loomed overhead and the other dead gods seemed to look on in disapproval from along the horizon, towering parents looking down on misbehaving toddlers. Driscol stared at the dragons for a moment, taking in their splendor.
“I did. But I had benefit of seer’s vision,” the huge man said as he wrapped Cass in a long, rough hug. When he’d finally had his fill and let her go, he asked, “And all Selina saw was this, the moment of your arrival. How did you do it?”
“It’s a long story,” Gunnarr said.
“One we do not have time for, I’m afraid,” a sweet voice floated over to them.
The sound of it put the dragons on alert. They turned and faced the approaching woman, the scales along their backs and necks standing out, frills flexing, eyes narrowing.
Timta was wearing a toga that defied being described as a single color. It shimmered as the sun hit it and the colors shifted from pale yellow to deep orange then back to yellow again, as if the fabric itself coursed with liquid fire trapped inside it. Her thick golden hair flowed around her, scintillating like the sun’s rays when a person unwisely squinted directly at that burning orb. Her hair whipped around, though it was clearly not stirred by the wind to randomness. It moved with purpose and will to create a pattern not unlike that of a corona. Her amber eyes were bright as they stared at Cass.
“Oshia knows you are here. The only thing keeping him at bay is the presence of the dragons. I’m glad the Djinn thought to bring them or else you wouldn’t have gotten as far as Natan’s statue. Oshia has had his attention fixed on these plains since the moment he took the gem from me. Even while Issa was distracting him, he kept a portion of his awareness focused here. He is not entirely stupid, loathe as I am to admit it. He knows it is too late to stop this part from happening, now that you are here with the dragons. But he has not conceded defeat. He is already gathering the young. He prepares for war,” Timta said.
