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 kind. 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?”