They were all watching me to see if I would answer. Even Dwalia. “No dreams,” I said quietly, and I saw a puzzled look wash through her eyes. “None that made sense,” I amended. “Silly dreams.” I hoped I sounded childish. I gave a small sigh and seated myself on the fallen log that was serving us as a bench. Odessa immediately came to sit close beside me.
For a short time I listened to the crackling of the fire. No one else spoke, but I could almost feel them wishing for me to go on. I didn’t. Dwalia made a little sound in her throat and left the fireside. I was suddenly tired. I leaned my head forward, my elbows on my knees and my face in my hands, and looked into the darkness there. I wanted Revel to come and pick me up and carry me in to where it was warm.
But Revel was dead.
I thought about my father. Did he care that I’d been stolen? Would he come after me?
I’m right here, Wolf-Father said. I’ve never left you.
My other father.
We are one.
“Shaysim?”
I felt queasy. I lifted my head slowly. Dwalia crouched before me. I said nothing.
“Look what I have for you, Shaysim.” She held out to me something rectangular and covered in bright fabric. I looked at it without comprehension. She opened it, and inside were pages of thick, creamy paper. It was a book, not a simple ledger such as my father had given me, but a book bound in rich cloth. I itched to touch it.
Danger! Wolf-Father’s warning brushed against my mind. I kept perfectly still.
“And this.” It was like a quill, but made of silver. “The ink I have for this is as blue as a summer sky.” She waited. “Don’t you want to try them?” she asked me.
I tried to restore childishness to my voice. “Try them how? What do they do?”
Dismay crept over her face. “You write with the pen on the paper. You write down your dreams. Your important dreams.”
“I don’t know how to write.” I held my breath, hoping my lie would protect me.
“You don’t …” She let her words trail away. Then she smiled her warmest smile. “That doesn’t matter, Shaysim. When we get to Clerres, you will be taught. Until then, you can tell me about your dreams, and I will write—”
Temptation surged in me. Tell her I had dreamed of a wolf tearing white rabbits into bloody shreds. Tell her of a man with a battle-axe chopping the heads of squirming white snakes.
NO. Wolf-Father was adamant. In a breath of awareness, he added, Do not provoke another predator until your pack is ready to tear it apart. Be small and still, cub.
“I don’t remember any dreams now.” I scratched my face, looked at the bits of dangling skin, wiped them on my shirt, and then pretended to pick my nose until she made a small sound of dismay. She moved away from me, taking book and quill with her. I looked carefully at my finger and then put it in my mouth. Odessa moved away from me. I did not let myself smile.
Chapter Seventeen
Blood
There are seventy-seven known medicinal uses for dragon parts, and fifty-two unsubstantiated ones. The seventy-seven are listed in the scrolls called Trifton Dragon-killer’s Remedies. Of great antiquity, this scroll has been translated many times, to the extent that seventeen of the remedies make no sense. For instance, we are told that “ground dragon scales applied to the apple with brighten coal a maiden’s eyes.” Yet, mistranslated as these remedies may be, for each one the original scribe provided the name and apparently the attestation from someone who had used the remedy to good effect.
The fifty-two unsubstantiated remedies are those with no attestations, and ones that seem unlikely to be real. As they are at the end of the translation I have, I suspect they are a later addition by someone seeking to present the medical properties of dragon parts as having more wondrous uses. There are potions made from various bits of dragons that are said to render a man invisible, to give a woman the gift of flight, ones guaranteed to bring twins to term, healthy and strong, in three months, and one startling remedy that assures the user of being able to see anyone whose name he speaks aloud, regardless of the distance or if that person is still alive.
With the reappearance of dragons in our corner of the world, perhaps these remedies may again become available, but I hypothesize that they will remain exceedingly rare and expensive. Thus the opportunity to test the beneficial effects of Trifton’s remedies may evade us still.
—Unfinished manuscript, Chade Fallstar
When one misses a stair in the dark and begins to fall, one feels that terrible lurch of wrongness combined with fear of the impact that will surely follow. I fell with the same horrid sensation of moving in the wrong direction, but my fear was that there would never be any impact. Only endless falling. The points of light were like dust. Bodiless, I flailed at them. Never before had I retained such a sense of self, such a sense of mortality inside a Skill-pillar.