He judged himself to be in a cave, vaster but lower than the home cave, branching off in every direction but up. Always there were the little channels of cave moss—in some places stopped up, glowing bright where the water still flowed. There were a good many small holes driven into the ground, as though something had been fixed there with spikes, like the dwarves had used for their water-diversion apparatus, but the work had long since been abandoned and the metal taken up. While nosing around he found a broken bit of spike and swallowed it.
He heard a flutter off in a corner and saw the big blood-drinking bats yeeking in voices pitched so high he could hardly hear them, and flapping their wings in each other’s faces as they hung from the cavern roof. It seemed more of a squabble than a fight, so he ignored the commotion.
The odd thing was that he felt relieved when he saw them. It was nice to have someone speak pleasantly to you, praise you, even if it was only for the number of nits clinging to your scale-roots. And their chatter distracted him from the griefs circling in his mind.
He walked over to the pair, trying to strut like a proud young dragon, but feeling a little off balance, thanks to his stiff tail.
“You, there. Excuse me.”
The bats left off spitting at each other. Both licked their gripping digits and straightened up the fur on their ears and chins.
“Sir a’needing something?” Thernadad said, rubbing his gripping digits together under his chin.
“What is this place?”
“Dwarf mine, long and longer abandoned,” Thernadad said. “In my oldfather’s time, there was a’feasting on draft horses and goats, but now there’s nothing but mushroom-fed rats and moss-crawlies. And the snakes, of course, who a’eating our poor young.”
“What were you fighting about?”
“Nothing of import to sir.”
“Faaaa! E’be a heartless brute, to a’be telling the truth,” Mamedi said. “E’leaving my sister to starve! Ooo, ooo, ooo!”
“Sir doesn’t want to be a’hearing our troubles.”
“Why will she starve?”
“The dwarves just closed off the old air shaft to a stock paddock and she’s—”
“Shut it, you,” Thernadad made a swipe at her ears, but she ducked over it.
“M’answering the nice young dragon’s question! So now e’be starving and yeee-eyee-yeee…” Her story trailed off into high-pitched wailing.
“Oh, you should just bring her to this cavern. I’m going exploring. Maybe I’ll pick up another set of cave nits.”
Mamedi left off crying. “Oh, sir—”
Thernadad snapped his teeth at his mate. “Mind the snakes,” he called.
He left them yeeking and boxing again, though Thernadad flapped his wings halfheartedly, as a veteran campaigner who knew a battle lost when he saw one.
This cavern was very different from the home cave. The dwarves had carved it almost wholly from rock, smoothed the floors, and laid the saa-width water channels where the mosses still thrived and offered some amount of light.
Deep pocks like spear wounds—no, like rat holes—could be found in profusion around rougher areas where they’d extracted their minerals. He sniffed one and smelled rat. There were damps and trickles, and these supported more colonies of cave moss and mushrooms, which in turn supported rats and mice. When backtracking to the bat cave and river outlet, he found a few soil beds where the mushrooms grew more thickly—the dwarves must have cultivated something in the soil other than mushrooms, for there were stakes and wire lines, but nothing but a few dead, tough vines remained of their crop.
He smelled more rat here and began to hunt by nose. He caught a flash of white skin and bit quickly and instinctively, cutting it in unequal halves. Legless—a snake! The back end had a big bulge—it had obviously just eaten a rat and couldn’t creep away as he approached. It took a moment for the front end to twitch out.
He carried both halves back to the bats. Mamedi was away getting her sister, so he climbed up and hung the front end up where Thernadad could easily reach it, and swallowed the back half in one long inhale—with a little gulp at the thickening where the half-digested rat lay.
Thernadad nibbled and sucked. “Not to be a’criticizing, sir, but if y’leaves ’em whole, there’s more to lap. Just give ’em a good shake and a crack against a rock, is how an experienced snake killer goes about it. They stay juicier that way.”
“I wasn’t hunting with you in mind.”
“Oh, no, no, no. Of course not.” He nipped out one of the snake’s eyeballs and gulped it down. “M’sees your wounds are healing up nicely. Glad we got to you in time, sir, so’s y’didn’t bleed to death crawling out of the river.”
The Copper looked over his many scabs and felt a little ashamed. He should have brought Thernadad and his wife back a whole snake, at that.
“Hope y’didn’t chomp one of King Gan’s favorites. E’be a mean one. E’doesn’t like anyone a’meddlin’ w’his snakes. Except hisself, of course. E’eats his own kind.”
“King Gan eats his own snakes? Why would they keep such a king?”
“The others not be having much choice in the matter. E’says: ‘They can hate as hard as they like, as long as they fear.’ It’s a necessity, like. There’s precious little to fill an appetite such as his.
“A cave snake, sir, twice your length and more besides. The White Lightning. By the time y’knows he struck y’be dead. He’s strong enough to swim upstream in the river if he likes. Lost my own poor father to him, and an uncle besides.”
“Any area I should stay away from?”
“There’s a swampy bit over there.” Thernadad pointed with a vein-stitched wing. “Beyond that, a real honeycomb it is, where the dwarves struck gold. There’s an air shaft to the surface e’using in summer. Y’be keeping away and not getting ideas, m’hoping.”
“Of course,” the Copper said. He squeezed into a crevice welled in shadow. “I’m for a nap. Wake me if King Gan goes for a swim.”
Thernadad licked his grasping digits and cleaned all around his eyes. “Nowt a’gets past me, sir. Why, m’be having eyes that can spot a rat-tail twitch on the far side of the cavern, and ears that echo off a pinched mouse turd before it hits. M’begging the sir’s pardon for the coarse language; m’be forgetting myself. Right! Ears down and all, on duty, quick’s the wing and sharp’s the tooth…”
Thernadad’s chatter went on, but the Copper slept through the rest.
The Copper woke briefly at a slight smelly sploit of bat guano dropping. He rolled an eye upward and saw Thernadad hanging there, wings well over his face, making rasping noises in his sleep.
“There, e’be waking,” Mamedi said.
Another, even wider than her and with two little bats clinging trembling to its back, also looked down at him.
Mamedi rubbed her grasping digits together. “Sir, not to be bothering sir, but it’s been a long trip and me sister, e’be perishing hungry, and her brood a’be so hungry they barely a’clinging to her back. Just the tiniest of nips out of your tail; won’t feel but a pinch, an’ a little blood loss heals a big wound, good for the circulation an’ all….”
“Just this once,” he said, shifting so he could extend his tail.
Mamedi crept down first, found a scale nit, and crunched it down. “Oh, they a’be the very buggers. There’s another. Sir, what y’been doing that y’picked up so many so quick?”
He craned his neck a little so he could look behind and saw Mamedi’s sister and her children lapping at a slight, pleasantly tingling wound. Another bat crept out of the shadows and joined in the flowing feast.
“Wait, who’s that?”
Mamedi lifted her snout from his scale-roots. “Her mate, of course. E’s supposed to leave the father of her children behind when she moves into a new cave?”
“I imagine not.”
“There’s a lesson in generosity for you, nephews!” Mamedi said. “Remember it. Y’don’t often see the like these days. E’be a very special gentle sort. It’s a rare one that doesn’t forge a favor and returns kindness with kindness, Thernie and me saving his life and all.”
Her sister and family cooed and yeeked agreeable noises as they lapped.
The Copper dozed. He’d hunted again, keeping well away from the set of pools Therenadad had called “the swampy bit.”
He wondered if the events in the home cave had been some terrible dream, brought on by exploring the pool, diving, and being injured when he fell into the river. He’d fallen in and out of consciousness often enough, or been half drowned when pulled by undertow. Could all the detail—the dwarves with their faint-glowing beards and the big man with the glowing spear—be the product of frightful, dying-hatchling dreams?
He told himself his family was alive and well. Not missing him a bit, of course, but such was his lot as an odd male—what had Father called him? Outcast. They were probably gathered around Mother on the egg shelf now, feasting on some thick-muscled oxen brought back by Father, and Jizara was singing after the feast.