by James Maxey
Jandra's cheeks tingled at the word "lust." But with Hex flying her, the journey to find Zeeky and the real Bitterwood might only take a few days. Perhaps by then she could trust herself to work with Pet without risking becoming another of his conquests.
"Hex," she said, "It would be an honor. Do you need anything before we go?"
"I arrived with only the scales on my back and so I shall depart. There is nothing I need that the forests and the streams cannot provide."
"Wonderful. I travel light as well," she said, fingering the pouch of silver dust that hung on her belt. If she needed a change of clothes, she would simply weave them from materials at hand. In fact, her skirt seemed a little impractical for dragon-riding. She ran her fingers along the velvety cloth, willing it to transform. The fabric responded almost instantly, reweaving itself into a pair of riding pants.
"Wow," said Pet. "I didn't know you could do that. Change your clothes just by thinking."
"I've been able to transmute matter for a while," she said. "I've just gotten better at it."
"Do you, uh, take off your clothes the same way? Just think about at it and, whoosh, they fall off? Because that's just… I mean-" Pet's voice trailed off dreamily.
"Take care, Pet," she said as Hex crouched, giving her access to his broad back.
She glanced toward Pet as she straddled Hex's neck, grasping his mane of long feather-scales. She was out of range of Pet's aroma once Hex rose to his normal height. Pet didn't look as delicious as he had a second before. He looked a little pathetic, actually, small from where she sat on the back of a dragon. Which only made it all the more urgent to her that she not be near him should her senses run wild again.
"Let's go, Hex," she said.
Hex ran forward, spreading his wings. With a flap they were airborne and Jandra clenched her knees, holding on for her life.
Jandra had never ridden a sun-dragon before. When she was younger, she'd often flown with Vendevorex, riding in a harness strapped to his chest, looking out over the world upside-down. But once she'd gone through the growth spurt of puberty, she'd become too heavy for him to carry easily, and slowly she'd come to accept that she'd spend her adulthood earthbound.
Hex carried her across the night sky as if she was weightless. Sun-dragons' enormous wings had always reminded her of sails. Sun-dragons moved through the air the way ships sailed across the water, slowly, taking turns in great arcs. Sky-dragons moved more like fish, darting and flashing in any direction with the speed of thought.
As Jandra watched the moonlit landscape unfolding beneath her, she suddenly found a deep appreciation of the sun-dragon's command over the air. The relative slowness of their flight felt graceful, as if they were drifting down a river of wind, with Hex's wings carefully dipping and tilting in the current. From time to time he would beat his broad wings. His powerful muscles rippled beneath Jandra's legs as they climbed into the sky. She felt as if they must be miles above the earth. Yet, even as she thought this, her brain began to buzz as her helm gathered various bits of data-the angle of the crescent moon above in comparison to the size and shape Hex's shadow below-and a string of numbers flashed through her mind to inform her they were roughly three hundred yards above the countryside.
The terrain below was mostly gentle hills. It was late fall and most of the trees had shed their leaves. Cottages and barns dotted the hills; rail fences divided the land into large parcels, marking the boundaries of farms. It seemed odd that the earth should look so peaceful, with Albekizan's castle so near. Most humans had returned home after the battle of the Free City. It mattered little to them who sat upon the throne. They would continue their daily lives of raising families, planting, harvesting, and trading goods.
Vendevorex had told her long ago that humans benefited from the rule of sun-dragons. War had become a thing that dragons waged against other dragons. The armies that dragon kings amassed weren't aimed primarily at the oppression of humans, but at protecting themselves from the threats posed by other dragons. It was true that, under the law, humans owned nothing. They were legally little more than parasites upon the king's property. All the products of their labors could be taken from them on a whim. But, in practice, most humans were allowed to live their lives unmolested. The human arts of farming and tending livestock had never been activities dragons embraced. Humans produced food, the dragons took their portion, and beyond this most people spent their lives catching only the occasional glimpse of dragons. In return, humans lived in a state of relative peace. They weren't allowed to amass armies. The ruling sun-dragons would quickly quash any human militia before it could become a threat. While humans did skirmish with neighboring villages from time to time, most humans spent their lives never having to pick up a weapon to use against a fellow man. For centuries, there had been no human-against-human battle that involved more than a few dozen men. This time in history, Vendevorex had told her, was known as the Pax Draco-the Peace of Dragons.
Was Shandrazel risking this peace with his talk of freedom? Having grown up among dragons, Jandra had spent most of her childhood assuming that the existing world order was essentially fair. Perhaps the world would be better if the dragons continued to rule.
As she thought this, they passed over a high hill and on the far side found what looked to be a city of tents. Smoke from a hundred smoldering campfires scented the air. In addition to the hundreds of small and tattered tents, there were hundreds, perhaps thousands of humans who were slumbering on the bare ground, with not even a blanket to cover them.
"Who are these people?" Hex asked.
Jandra wasn't sure. "I suppose they're refugees," she answered. "People from the Free City who don't know how to find their way home."
"This is why Shandrazel's vision of a new world order is doomed," Hex sighed.
"Why?"
"Humans will care nothing for Shandrazel's proposed reforms after what my father has done," said Hex. "They may even take up arms to avenge my father's misdeeds. And what then? Shandrazel will use the armies he now commands to force the humans to respect his new laws. He'll become as much a tyrant as my father was no matter how good his intentions."
"You're something of a pessimist, I take it."
"On the contrary," he said. "I believe there is every chance a new and better world is only a few years away. Perhaps Shandrazel will lose control of his armies. The various domains that make up the kingdom will revert to local control. No longer ruled by a higher authority, the inhabitants of the land may learn to work together for the good of all. Simple self interest will lead dragons and humans to peace, once the claw of tyranny is lifted."
Jandra now found Hex's world view overly optimistic. Then she remembered the sound of the executioner's axe falling and taking the lives of her friends. She remembered the cries from the courtyard as Albekizan had all the humans in the palace slaughtered. Maybe Hex was right-perhaps all authority in this world did derive from violence.
She grew quiet, lost in thought, as the refugee camp vanished in the distance behind them. Hex said, "Perhaps I should have asked this an hour ago, but where are we going?"
"Oh," said Jandra. "Excellent question. I wish I knew. You were heading west, and I know that's right, at least. Zeeky said her village was called Big Lick. Supposedly, it's in the mountains near Chakthalla's castle."
Hex stiffened at the word "mountains." Jandra had always been mystified that dragons were afraid of the western mountains. Vendevorex had told her that dragons lived in lands beyond, but for some reason dragons avoided journeying to those distant lands.
"I don't think it's far into the mountains," she said, hoping to reassure him.
"It won't matter if it is," Hex said, sounding defiant. "I've never placed much weight in the legends of the cursed mountains, though others do. Dacorn, the most rational dragon I've ever known, told me that it was certain death for a dragon to risk traveling over them. I've faced things in life worse than death; a cursed mountain isn't all that worrisom
e."
"There's still the matter of finding it. I know we follow the river, but as it heads west more and more tributaries join it and I'm not sure which one Vendevorex followed when he took me there. Perhaps we should turn back. There are atlases at the palace."
As she said this, she saw in her mind's eye the giant pedestal that sat in the main library, and the atlas upon it, containing all the maps of the kingdom. She could still feel the weight of the parchment in her hand as she looked through the tome-a book scaled for sun-dragons had pages nearly as tall as she was.
As she thought about the atlas, it loomed in the air before her, luminous yet convincingly solid. She reached out to the floating book and opened its cover. Her head tingled as the helmet reached into a thousand folds of her brain simultaneously, reconstructing the book from memories.
Stunned by the detail of the maps before her, she realized, with a sudden thrill, that every book she'd ever studied lurked in the hidden corners of her mind. Would the reconfiguration of her brain that Vendevorex had told her about produce total recall? Would every page of every book she'd glimpsed be available with just a thought?
No wonder Vendevorex had always seemed like such a know it all.
Chapter Six:
Judgment by Swine
Bant Bitterwood thought the valley below looked like a giant's patchwork quilt, as squares of tan fields jutted up against blocks of gray trees. In the distance were mountains, the peaks barely visible through blue haze. Zeeky didn't seem interested in the scenery. Zeeky, a nine-year old girl with golden hair and dirty cheeks, only had eyes for animals. It was she who guided their mount, Killer, a barrel-chested ox-dog that carried two humans and a pig on his back as if they weighed no more than kittens. Zeeky was currently occupied teaching the pig to talk.
"Zeeky," she said.
Poocher, the pig, squealed, "Eee-ee."
Bitterwood hoped the pig would provide Zeeky better conversation than he could. Though he tried to hide it from Zeeky, he was currently wracked with fevers. The wounds he'd suffered when the dragon king Albekizan had buried his dagger-length teeth into him had festered. Yellow-brown puss glued his shirt to his torso and soaked through his makeshift bandages.
Bitterwood sucked in a sharp, pained breath as Killer slipped on a slick rock along the stream bed they followed. The ox-dog was as steady a mount as could be hoped for, and Zeeky's praise brought out an exceptional gentleness in him. Still, the terrain was rugged, and the broken things inside Bitterwood cut ever deeper.
Bitterwood found the sharp focus of the pain a welcome distraction. It brought him momentary relief from the torment of his memories. He never intended to survive his final battle with Albekizan. He'd nearly died beneath that river, drawn toward a light where he found his beloved wife, Recanna, dead to him for twenty years.
She'd told him to turn back.
She'd told him he wasn't ready.
For twenty years, Bitterwood had slain dragons, never wavering in his conviction that his cause had been just. Had he been turned away from death to continue that fight? Or had heaven shunned him because the struggle had warped him beyond redemption? Had twenty years with nothing but murder in his heart changed him into a worse monster than the creatures he battled?
"You can end this," Recanna had said.
Bitterwood picked at those words like a scab. End what? End his struggle against the dragons? Or did she mean he wasn't finished with the war, that he still had the power to end it by continuing to fight? Had she been telling him his life's work had been worthwhile? Or had it all been a mission of vanity?
Perhaps it had only been the dream of a drowning man. Could he tell the difference between dreams and reality any longer, after the life he'd led?
"Zeeky," said Zeeky.
"Eee-ee," said Poocher.
The ox-dog paused to drink from a pool of clear water at the stream's edge. Crayfish darted about the rocky pool, above a carpet of corn-yellow leaves. Bant grew more alert as he saw the crayfish. Despite his fever, he felt his appetite stirring.
"Any objection to me eating those?" Bant asked, pointing toward the darting figures.
Zeeky stared intently at the pool as she pondered the question.
"They aren't saying anything," she said, her face relaxing. "I guess it's okay."
Zeeky wouldn't let him eat anything she could talk to. Fortunately, not all animals met this criterion. She didn't seem to have any special rapport with bugs or fish, but late at night he'd caught her gossiping with owls, and she could be downright chatty with Killer and Poocher. Poocher was a few months old, no longer at an age where he could be called a piglet, not yet a full-fledged hog. He was at an awkward stage in a pig's life, too long and hairy to be cute, yet still too skinny to make a man think longingly of bacon. Poocher had a mostly white hide marked with patches of glossy black, and his dark eyes would sometimes fix on Bitterwood with a contemptuous gaze that caused Bitterwood to look away.
Bitterwood knelt next to the pool. Even in his weakened state, the swiftly darting crayfish didn't stand a chance. Long ago, his hands had been bitten off by a dragon, and an angel-or perhaps a devil-had given him new ones. She'd also altered his eyes and arms, leaving him fast enough to empty a quiver in under a minute, with every arrow finding its target. The crawfish may as well have been frozen in place as his agile fingers dashed about the pool, quickly gathering a score of the fat mud-bugs.
"We should stop here for the night," Bitterwood said, looking up at the darkening sky. "I'll start a fire."
"I want to keep moving," Zeeky said. "I think we're close. The air has a familiar smell to it. We're almost home."
Killer looked up from drinking and let out a quick snort.
"Oh, all right, I know you're tired, stop complaining," said Zeeky. "That's two votes to one. What about you, Poocher?"
Poocher lowered his head in a human-like nod and gave a squeal that made Zeeky frown.
"I know you're hungry," she said. "You're always hungry. Oh, all right. We'll make camp here. Go ahead and start the fire, Mister Bitterwood."
She said Bitterwood in a mocking tone. Zeeky knew Bitterwood only by legend, a near mythic dragon-slayer, a hero of humanity. Bant looked nothing like anyone's hero. His hair was thinning; he was missing quite a few teeth, and, though he was strong and wiry, he wasn't as tall as a hero should be. His clothes were little more than rags, and twenty years of survival beneath an open sky had left him with a face of wrinkled leather.
It wasn't important to him who she thought he was. Though they journeyed together, in truth each traveled alone. They were refugees, survivors of Albekizan's death camp. Except for the mundane details of travel, they had little to discuss. Zeeky was usually too busy talking to animals to allow bad memories to sweep over her. Bitterwood was nothing but his bad memories. Strip away the ghosts that haunted him, and his skin would collapse like an emptied sack.
Poocher bounded off into the woods to search for mushrooms and edible roots for dinner. Bitterwood pulled a wad of charred cotton wrapped in waxed parchment from his pocket. He set to work striking his fire flints together to make sparks. A moment later a tendril of acrid smoke rose from the cotton. He knew the smell well. It was the exact smell of the blackened remains of one of Adam's diapers. It was an odor that had haunted him for twenty years. He lifted the black cotton to his lips and gently blew, giving birth to a delicate flame. He lowered it to the bed of twigs he'd prepared.
Zeeky had the pig and the dog for companionship and protection. The small useful role Bitterwood served in her world was maker-of-fire. It was enough. It was the one thing he could do that made him feel as if his continued existence served some purpose.
As the flames grew, he arranged the crayfish on a stone facing the fire. Some were still alive, struggling to crawl away. He pressed down on their backs, breaking them, until they could do nothing but lie there and cook.
"How close are we?" Zeeky asked.
"You said it smelled like home,"
he said. "Your nose is pretty smart. After we follow this stream across the valley, we'll be at what's left of Chakthalla's castle. The town of Winding Rock was near it. You say your village was close?"
"Big Lick," said Zeeky. She sighed. "I miss everyone. Even Papa."
"Still think he'll try to eat the pig?" Bitterwood asked.
"He's learned his lesson," Zeeky said, in a firm, matter of fact way that spooked Bitterwood. For a little girl far from home and family, she sometimes sounded as if she were in control of the world.
The crayfish were turning red. Bitterwood snatched one up, snapped it in two, and chewed on the steaming meat in the tail. He sucked down the yellowish gunk inside the head. It tasted good, fatty and bitter. It felt like medicine sliding down his throat. A bucketful of these and a week in bed might cure his fever.
Zeeky wrinkled her nose. "It looks like a bug."
Killer gave a huff and Bitterwood looked up to see the giant dog staring at him. The dog seemed to like him, even if the pig didn't.
"Oh, you think everything smells good," Zeeky said.
Bitterwood tossed Killer the remains of the head and watched him greedily gobble it down, the shell crunching between his teeth. The grateful look in his eyes led Bitterwood to throw him a second crayfish, a whole one this time.
The darkening forest murmured as a breeze rustled through it. He thought for a moment he heard a woman whispering. From the corner of his eye he saw Recanna standing by the water's edge, waving. He turned and saw it was only a low branch of a tree, draped with pale leaves, shuddering in the chill air.
Bitterwood shuddered as well, and drew the tatters of the blanket he wore as a cloak tightly around him.
Winding Rock had been looted. Only a month ago, the little mountain town had been clean and full of life. Now, the place looked haunted. The doors stood open to the elements. The panes of glass that had filled the windows were gone. Not smashed, Bitterwood noted, but carefully removed. Gazing into a nearby house, Bitterwood couldn't see a scrap of furniture. The type of stuff that had been looted told a story. Dragons wouldn't bother stealing window glass or chairs. This was done by humans-quite possibly Zeeky's people, from Big Lick.
