“Well done, Wistala,” DharSii said. “That’s about the right size.”
A piece of her thrilled at the compliment. Another part wondered that he only truly became animated when something of interest to him could be found. Whenever DharSii looked at her he just stared at her as though she were an unusual boulder formation.
She nosed around. “Yes, this stone moves. I’ll pull it out, I think I can get my tongue awoun’ yeeth…”
The stone moved. She spat it out.
“Yes! Got it.”
“Is there anything in there?” DharSii asked.
“No,” Wistala said, her wings and tail sagging. “It’s empty. Wait, there’s a little bit of—I don’t know, moss like dried seaweed in the bottom.”
She removed her head from the hole, with something like a brown string clamped in her nostril, and spat out the stone and the remainder out on the egg-shelf.
“That might be—”
“Elf hair,” Wistala said. Though the leaves were long-shriveled, there was no mistaking elf hair. “I don’t remember elves attacking. There were some outside the cave.”
AuRon had been caught by elves soon after they saw Father return. He’d said—
“Wait! Hazeleye!” Wistala said. “She was an expert on dragons, spent many years in NooMoahk’s cave. I met her. She was very old and frail. I expect she’s dead now. Perhaps it’s her hair. I always wondered why someone who apparently loved dragons would go along with murder and enslavement.”
DharSii drooped. “Another wasted trip,” he muttered. “How many just this year?”
“The question is, was the hair an accident, or a token that she’d searched here?” Wistala continued. “Elves often leave a strand of hair as a signal to others. Rainfall used to mark his honeycombs he’d checked, or garden beds he’d planted, or the oldest sack of horse grain with his hair once it began to come back.”
She picked the stone up and put it back. That was how Mother and Father had left it; that’s how the egg cave would remain. Except for a little bit of stained stone, that star was the only evidence that her family had ever lived in this cave.
It was a good cave. Water and light and air and well out of seasonal changes of temperature. It could be improved, of course.
“What does the Star of Silverhigh signify?” she asked DharSii, to get his mind off another dead end.
“One point for each of the gifts of the Four Spirits,” DharSii said. “And a fifth point for the mysterious gift. Our ability to change what we touch.”
“How do you mean?”
DharSii wandered around the cave, inspecting. She supposed he was just being thorough. “No member of another race comes away from an encounter with a dragon unchanged. Some hate us forever, others want nothing more than to be around us, observe us, be protected by us, even if it means a lifetime of shoveling up waste and hauling it to the nearest dung heap.
“Of course, I’m sure you’ve noted the effect of dragon-blood and heard of the strange powers of our dead bones and teeth and so on.”
“Yes. When I was in the east I almost ended up as part of someone’s medicine supply. Aren’t most of those legends, though?” Wistala said.
“Not all. The Tyr himself has been feeding bats dragon-blood for decades. His original strain of rather overlarge, greedy cave-bats has grown into an entirely different species of quasi-bat. NiVom in Ghioz, who’s been breeding with more care toward developing certain traits, has created gargoyles almost as large as old Anklemere used to keep.”
“I should pay a visit to Ghioz and see what he’s up to,” Wistala said to herself.
DharSii continued: “We must use that gift wisely, our power to change what we touch. The problem is, destruction is too easy. It has a terrible beauty. A burning tower falls and in one glorious moment, we forget all the effort and care it took to lay the stones for a tower that will even stand up straight.”
“Where did we get that gift, I wonder?” Wistala asked.
“Some old songs say the sun gave it to us, so pleased was she with our ability to tame the blighters. Others say the moon snuck it in to ruin us, for once a creature has tasted dragon-blood and enjoyed the benefits, the desire grows in them for more. Around Hypatia much of that lore has been forgotten, but it still exists in the east. That’s why there are practically no dragons there, though they figure so strongly into their culture.”He finished his circuit in silence. Wistala waited, lost in memories. “Did anyone else return to the cave?” he finally asked.
“My brother,” Wistala said. “I met him here. I gave him that droopy eye, too. Father, too. We tried to warn him but we were too small. He couldn’t hear us. He left again, fighting.”
“If it was a treasure of your parents, he might have carried it away,” DharSii said.
“You don’t know our father,” Wistala said. “He was in a rage. I don’t think he had the presence of mind to look at anything except the bodies of Mother and my sister.”
“Still, there’s a small chance.”
“Very well,” Wistala said. “I’ll take you to where he died.”
She left the cave with small regret and tumultuous feelings. It would be a good place for eggs, if she could ever banish her memories. Once they reached the surface, she guided DharSii north.
The promontory with the old blighter altar was very much as Wistala remembered it, except the obelisk stones with their cryptic old runes no longer loomed quite so high. She re-experienced the ache brought on by the long, long climb down to the rushing white water turning its near-loop around the outcropping in her trips to get water for Father—she even smelled the rank rot of the old driftwood tossed up by floods with dwarfs-beard growing on it.
“This may have been a dragon-throne,” DharSii said.
Wistala didn’t know what he was talking about, but rather than ask DharSii to explain yet again she just cocked her head.
“Before the founding of Silverhigh, after the dragons had tamed the blighters, they worshiped us. Again, I suspect your parents knew something of the Star Order if he chose this as a place to land and die.”
“He had a little help with the dying,” Wistala said. “I led hunters right to him. Unwittingly.”
“Did he ever mention anything about a crystal?”
“No. Never. I’m sure of it. I hardly knew what the word meant until I saw the crystal ball—wait. Intanta. She had a ball. She claimed it was part of the old sun-shard. Why didn’t I remember—Oh, I’m a fool!”
DharSii stared hard at her. “You’re many things, Wistala, but you’re not a fool.”
“This Intanta traveled with a circus, it belongs to a dwarf named Brok now—she and her gang of humans never mixed much with the rest. They were—shady, I suppose you would call them. I think they cheated people and stole. But she had this crystal. It was most strange. It helped a woman—Rayg’s mother, in fact—with the nausea she suffered while carrying child. It also comforted her during birth.”
“I wonder if Rayg knows more than he’s saying. He’s studying the sun-shard,” DharSii said.
“I hardly know him,” Wistala said. “I doubt Lada would even recognize him. She’s old now, too, worn down with work as a priestess.”
“Then this Intanta is surely dead. Do you suppose the crystal is still with the circus?”
“Intanta’s people had left when last I met the circus. Her granddaughter, Iatella, inherited it, I believe. She read my fortune with it when she was just a little girl. She told me AuRon was still alive when I thought him dead.”
“I wonder how it ended up in the hands of that human? You say they were a strange tribe?”
“I always had the feeling they traveled with the circus, rather than as part of it. They dressed oddly, even for humans. Lots of metallic pieces on their clothing. They sewed layers of coins onto bandannas and belts and such.”
“Like they were imitating dragon-scale?”
“Perhaps, I thought they just wanted them to rattle together when they walked.”
“Just as Silverhigh still has its loyalists who still keep the faith, so too are the men who served it and later rebelled, passing their traditions on. It appears,” DharSii said. “I have a new quarry to hunt. Thank you, Wistala, you’ve given me hope.”
“I should return to the Lavadome. I have promises to keep.”
“And oaths that must never be broken,” DharSii said, a touch of fire in his voice. “We part for now, Wistala. If you think of anything else, or learn more from Rayg, you can leave a message with Scabia at the Sadda-Vale. Coin is no doubt growing short and I must return with more.”
He gave a brief bow to the altar Father had lain bleeding on, spread his wings, and launched himself off the precipice Wistala had fallen down all those years ago. Dogs with teeth locked into her tearing at her flesh. DharSii caught an updraft, turned, and swooped over her, gently running the end of his tail down her fringe. With that, he was gone once again.