Wistala bit into a dog, exchanging pain for pain. It howled, and the Dragonblade’s men left off his victory song and turned toward her.
Other men, some carrying two-handled saws, gathered behind.
She wouldn’t end up on these rocks, her head and claws sawed off. Wistala gathered what remained of her strength and managed to stand. She tottered a few steps toward the edge of the cliff, dragging dogs at every step. The dogs pulled back, at war with her body.
Perhaps the Dragonblade read her intent. He ran forward, bloody sword held out, waving on the others, who stood gaping at Father’s bloody wounds.
The two still-living dogs snarled and fought her every step, their muzzles covered with blood, the spiky hair on their backs standing straight up. They dragged her back, away from the ledge, toward the Dragonblade.
“You shan’t have—,” Wistala grunted. She swung her tail, knocked a dog off its feet, and lunged at the ledge. She got the claws of one sii over. Now she had some real traction.
Tearing—pain.
Fly! She’d fly once before she died.
She got a saa at the edge, and the dead dog fell over the side, its jaws finally relaxing. Freed of its weight, she coiled her spine and jumped.
Wistala felt light as one of Bartleghaff’s long tip-feathers as she spun through the air. She struck the prominence Father used to climb up from the river, rolling over on a growling dog and hearing a snap, and felt free air one last time before she plunged into the cold, roaring river.
BOOK TWO
Drakka
WHOSOEVER SAVES A SINGLE LIFE HAS SAVED A WORLD.
—Hypatian Low-Priest Proverb
Chapter 11
Drifting, flying, but the air—so cold. Impossible to see through the clouds.
Tiring—so she glided. A hurtful pull in the back—had a wing joint slipped?
Now she could see.
A hominid bent over her, face shadowed. Can’t raise her claw to strike it—
A sound, sharp and regular tap-top-tap-top, movement in time with the beats, lulling her, and she slept. . . .
Fighting for breath—cold. Nose must be kept out of water. Drowned dog pulling me under, if I don’t get free, I’ll die. Bite! Tear! Rushes of warm blood in the cold. Nose up! Nose up! One more breath before I go under!
Wistala stretched, unbelievable warmth and well-being suffusing her body, dreams fair and foul gone.
She opened an eye. She lay stretched out on hairy fabric that caught in her scales. A vast presence, white and curved like a huge dragon egg, gave off heat from a mouthlike opening in its side. Woof-woosh woof-woosh woof-woosh—the sound in her ears reminded her of Father when he got out of breath from his climbs up from the river. She rolled her head and saw a hominid, its back to her, working an apparatus that opened and closed like a dragon’s mouth, complete with folding griff at its sides.
A crackling and a glowing came from the huge egg’s mouth. She smelled burning charcoal. The heat increased, and she basked in it before she slept again.
She woke to a salubrious greasy smell, like the road-dwarf’s sausages, only more powerful.
A steaming double-handled iron pan appeared before her, filled with a greasy broth. She glanced around, saw a roof above held up by thick rounded beams. Doors wide enough to fit a full-grown dragon had been flung open to the summer air and light.
The faint smells of horse and goats interested her, but not half so much as the broth. She found enough strength to take two tonguefuls.
The hominid, standing so still, he might have been one of the timbers holding up the roof, watched her from a good dragon-dash away. Probably a male: he had prominent, angular features, a lean, narrow-hipped body, and a clean-shaven head covered with a thick film that reminded her of the high mountain rocks with winter lichens she and Auron had climbed.
An elf.Father’s stories about the killing prowess of the elves came back to her in a rush of imagery. . . .
He stayed away. There were windows and the wide doors closer to her than he—though with her body feeling limp and drained, she wondered if she could even manage to right herself for a dash—
A mist-colored horse at the other end of the interior regarded her warily. This place was divided into a number of smaller chambers along a central alley.
Another sip of the hot liquid, and she felt newly hatched, despite the strange surroundings full of disconcertingly straight lines.
Wistala examined her wounds. Cracked scales and any number of brown-stained injuries marked every limb. The brown stains puzzled her. They didn’t smell of dried blood, but a sharper smell. But stained or no, the wounds were certainly healing up nicely. She rolled onto her other side and saw that a terrible rend in her saa interior had been sewn like a hominid garment.
Perhaps the elf was healing her to make better sport of her later.
She rested a few minutes, then had a little more broth, rested and then lapped, until finally by midday, the pan had been licked clean. Then she slept, deep and dreamless.
After sundown, she dragged herself—standing hurt her wounded limbs too much—to a central stone cistern, where she smelled water fed by an outlet coming down from the roof beams. She drank deep. Then she slept against the stone.
A gentle cough woke her. The elf stood there, perhaps twice the length of her body away. He squatted, toadlike with his gentle eyes and long, folded limbs.
This time she didn’t tremble. Whoever he was, whatever his aim, she read in his eyes that he meant her no harm. He rocked on his haunches. It took her a moment to realize he was inching forward, putting one or the other leather-strap-bound foot after another an almost imperceptible length.
The horse didn’t seem to like her presence at the trough. He expelled an angry breath and stamped, chewed on a wooden rail in a sidelong manner. Wistala thought horses timid creatures, but this one seemed to be eager to get out of its alcove and at her.
The elf reached one long hand out, palm empty and toward her. He tickled her under the chin. She couldn’t help her griff lowering a little or her fringe standing on end, not with her nostrils full of the terrible odors of elf and horse from that day she lost Auron.
She watched his eyes. They never seemed to be the same color. Brown when they looked at one of the beams holding up the roof, a dull red color when they glanced down at the bricks paving the floor, green when they briefly rested on her. Now, looking at the water in the trough, they became dark and reflective.
The elf pulled up a handful of water, let it trickle through his fingers. “Anua,” a voice like a soft fall of rain said. “Anua.”
She tried making the sound in her throat. “Ennuh,” she managed.
The elf brought a handful of water to her mouth. “Anu sah.” He put his lips to his palm and sucked up the water.
“Ehnu-ssa,” Wistala repeated, and lapped up some water.
His mouth crinkled. “Anu sah!” he said, pushing a wave of water to her. She took another tongueful.
“Ahnu-ssa,” she said, and nosed a wave at him. She splashed him a little by accident, but he didn’t seem to mind. Next he taught her his name: Rainfall.
After that, Rainfall drank with his mouth turned up at the corners.
In the following days, as her strength returned, they made slow progress with her Elvish. He learned her name, though he preferred to call her by the familiar Tala, as it was easier for him to pronounce. Dragon traditions weighted lightly on her. She took her lessons in turn, naming things around the stable.
Shortly, she dragged herself outside. The mountaintops to the east were just visible through a part in the trees. She must have come some length down the river, perhaps as far west as Tumbledown, though the hills here were covered with grass and rock, and trees seemed to grow thickly only out of the wind.
That she’d come so far without drowning was as miraculous as if she’d sprouted her wings. Yet she had not the tiniest memory of being in the water beyond the leap off the cliff with the dogs dragging at her.
The elf’s behavior surprised her as much as her survival. According to Mother and Father, elves were soft-stepping hunters of spear and bow who blew horns and sang swanlike warbles over the corpses of dead dragons as they danced, holding hands sticky with dragon blood.
The only part of that legend that rang true was the elf’s quiet nature. Whether passing over brick, wood planking, or soft grass, he hardly made a sound, save for the whispers of the wind moving around him. The rest of his manner was as gentle and tender as a mother dragon’s over still-wet hatchlings.
Thoughts of Mother and Jizara left her cold and sleepy and miserable. Why didn’t memories heal and fade like wounds?
That evening he cooked her a platter full of organs and entrails in a sharp-smelling herb she’d learned to call gar-loque, or dragon-buds, as the smell of the white clusters when crushed was faintly dragonish.
The meal filled her gorge but did little for her anguished mind.
To divert her thoughts, the next day Wistala ventured out of the stable and viewed Rainfall’s home.
It was a vast home and garden for a single hominid and a few animals. Treble vast when she learned that the wild orchards, melons, and wheat- and tuber-fields around were also his. He made no effort to farm as she understood the word, though he threw the horse’s manure on two beds of flowers surrounding the trees on his threshold.