Firebirds Soaring (28 page)

Tira rubbed her shoulder. “I’m sorry. I’m just worried.”

“Your friend is not a deadspeaker,” Smudu said.

“Can you hear her?”

“Dimly. It is strange. Your words are clear to me, but hers come to me on a river of sound that beats as blood used to in my ears.”

“What is he saying?” Tira asked. She settled on the mattress beside Elexa and looked in the same direction Elexa did, apparently determined to pretend she believed her friend.

“His name is Smudu Kush, from Likush—is that right, Smudu-sir? ”

“Likush, yes.”

“He was a councillor there, and he was snatched from their center ground.”

“Elexa?” Yan’s voice cut through her murmured recital. She glanced around and saw his shaggy-haired shadow standing between her and the fire.

“Headman?” Elexa hugged herself.

“Are you in truth talking to the dragon’s dead?”

“I am,” she whispered.

“How long have you had this deadspeaking skill?”

“Since I was six,” she said, then wondered if she should have told him. She did not trust Yan, even though old Peder had.

“You’re the one Plesta spoke of?”

She shrugged and huddled in on herself. “I don’t know what your dragon told you.”

“She said one of the village children brought village ghosts up to the terrace to join their dragons in relife. It’s an old tradition, she said, but never one as well tended as it has been since you started this practice. For the gifts you’ve given us, I thank you.”

There was a tone in his voice that worried her, a sharp edge of irritation that didn’t match the words he spoke. She hadn’t told anyone in the village of her encounters with human ghosts. Yan was the last person she had wanted to tell. Too late to keep it to herself now.

“Ask the man what he knows about the dragon who took him.”

“Smudu-sir, did you hear what the headman said?”

“What do I know about the dragon? I know nothing except that it came down from the sky and took me, and though I screamed and struggled, I could not stop it. We knew there was a village here in the mountains where people and dragons live together, but all we know of dragons from our own encounters is that in bad years they come and steal our stock and sometimes our children. We fear them.

“Once when I was riding in the mountains I saw three of them crouched over a kill, snapping at each other, hissing, sending out rivers of flame that charred the meat and sent smoke rising—horrifying creatures, large and hard to fight. We are fortunate they are scarce.

“We have not had enough attacks in Likush to focus all our effects on fighting them, but lately they grow bolder. Our armorers have worked on steel-tipped arrows, but our archers can only kill dragons when they hit the throat just at the base of the neck; all other parts of the dragons’ hides are too hard to pierce. Not all of our archers are skilled enough or strong enough to strike a killing blow. The lord’s war wizard has been working on smokes to stun them, but we don’t have enough specimens to experiment on. We would like to get hold of a young one we could control so we can test our weapons on it, but no one knows how. Some have suggested we send—” Smudu suddenly turned away, put his ghost hand over his ghost mouth.

Yan shook Elexa’s shoulder. “What is he saying?”

“The Likushi don’t know much about dragons. They have only found one way to kill dragons, an arrow through the throat.” Elexa swallowed, put a hand to her throat, imagining the point of an arrow punching through and letting all her blood out. “He doesn’t know the dragon who took him.”

Yan cursed, gripped her shoulder hard and shook her, then walked toward the fire.

“It’s true, then?” Tira whispered beside her. “You can talk to ghosts?”

Elexa rubbed her shoulder. She would have bruises in the shape of Yan’s fingers. She sighed. “I told you.”

“Not so I’d believe you,” Tira said.

“I didn’t want anyone to know.” She took Tira’s hand, meshed her fingers with her friend’s. “If you knew we could talk to ghosts, what would you think about feeding them to dragons? Isn’t it like giving them people to eat?”

“Can you talk to the ghosts of animals, too?”

“No. I hear them, can sense their feelings a little. They make some of the same sounds they made in life, but I don’t converse with them.”

“Animals are different. We eat them, and dragons eat them, too.”

“The dragons eat human ghosts when I catch them.”

“Elexa!” Tira jerked her hand away.

“But it’s not like eating meat,” Elexa said. She heard what she had said, thought about it, gave herself this comfort. “It isn’t as though they swallow the ghosts and digest them. The ghosts live in the dragons. They become part of the dragon mind. Have you spoken with old Peder’s dragon since he died? He’s there inside her. He went willingly. He was my first ghost.”

“Old Peder?” Tira said, her voice almost silent. “You’ve been doing this since you were six, and you never told me. You sent human ghosts to our dragons to eat?”

“Only those who asked for it, or the ghosts of strangers.”

“The ghosts of strangers? That’s horrible!” Tira said. She jumped up and left Elexa alone in the darkness with the ghost.

“Your friend has gone?” asked the ghost.

“She’ll be back,” Elexa said. She wasn’t sure, though; if Tira was truly horrified, she might stay away. Tira had more strength of will than other people.

Elexa lay on her mattress, curled into a bean shape, knees up and arms hugging her front. She felt cold and alone. There were blankets somewhere in the cave, thin ones, the ones the weavers had made mistakes in or machine-loomed ones made from cheap flax in the southern countries, but she didn’t have the energy to find a blanket.

The ghost crouched beside her.

“I release you,” she whispered to him. She opened the strands of her ghost net and let him go. “I’m sorry you died in such a horrible way.”

“I wish I had seen my wife and daughter safe.” He stared at distance. “There’s not much money left in our hidden hole, and I’d only bought half the grain we need for summer. I was wearing most of our wealth”—he touched his armbands—“and carrying the rest of the grain price for after the meeting.” He felt the wallet at his belt. It still looked full, but it was as misty as the rest of him. “The real money, where will it be? It was most of our savings.”

“Probably in the dragons’ cave. They don’t eat gold, but they hide it where it’s hard to get. Never mind, now.” Most of the ghosts Elexa had spoken with had left a few things undone. None of them had figured out how to work in the world to finish the tasks. “There’s nothing you can do about it. You should look for your god now.”

“I don’t want my gods,” he said. “I want to get inside a dragon and kill the one who killed me. I don’t want her going back to Likushi and hunting my people.”

“Dragons don’t often fight each other, especially female dragons. Most of the ones who live here are big with eggs or busy with young right now and wouldn’t fight even if they normally did. I don’t know if there’s any on the mountain who can do what you want.”

“There are no males?”

“We don’t feed the males. We don’t bond with them. They travel. Most are gone now.”

“Feed me to one of the big males who can fight,” he said.

“Smudu-sir,” she said, then covered her eyes with her hands. She had released him. She didn’t want to see him anymore.

He tugged at the ghost net at her waist—she felt a strange stretching in her nerves, and opened her eyes—and unraveled part of the weave until he had a loose string. He tied it around his wrist, sat down on the mattress beside her. “Rest, if you must. I will wait.”

She didn’t like it that he could use her ghost net to trap himself. She supposed if she worked at it, she could dissolve this net, leave him adrift. But if he wanted to stay—she was too tired to deal with him now.

She let sleep claim her and drown her worries about Father, Kindal, and Tira.

Someone shook her shoulder. “Lexa?” Tira’s voice said.

“Tira.” She clutched Tira’s wrist, didn’t let go. She sat up. “Has Kindal—Father—?”

“They haven’t come yet, but Yan talked to Plesta again, and she said we can go outside now. The stranger dragons have taken dragon oath not to harm anybody in the valley so long as we give them goats. Anyway, it’s night now.” Tira wrenched her wrist free of Elexa’s grip.

Elexa sighed and sat up. She would have to work to make Tira like her again, and she was already tired. She straightened her tunic and her belt. The pouch of jewels had been half under her while she slept, and had left a dent in her side. Her shoulder throbbed from where Yan had shaken her, and her chest ached from Sanric’s punch.

Smudu was still beside her; if he had been solid, he would have been touching her. She wasn’t sure how she felt about that. Ghosts could be intimate with you in strange ways and you wouldn’t even notice.

She got to her feet. Tira handed her another gourd of water, and Elexa drank. “Thank you,” she said. Maybe it wasn’t such a long way back to their friendship.

The fire had died down; there was no longer much light in the cavern, and the din of people, sheep, and goats had faded too. Only a few people were left.

“Thanks for waking me,” Elexa said. She picked up her mattress and dropped it off in the alcove where they stored the cave supplies. Smudu followed a few feet from her; since he had chosen the line he’d bound himself with, he had room to range. Tira shrugged and walked away, plainly not wanting Elexa’s company.

Worry about that later. Outside, the night air smelled fresh and full of plants instead of smoke and people. It was much warmer than the cave had been. Stars shimmered in the rising leftover heat of day.

Elexa ran home to find out whether her father or brother had come there while she was underground.

One of the lamps was lit in the house; it shone through the thin, tanned skin over the window, a flickering yellow warmth. Elexa opened the door. “Kindal? Father?”

Her father rose from his chair. “Lexa!” He rushed to hug her. “I heard the alarms. I hid in the eastern cave with the flocks until nightfall. Is Kindal all right?”

“I don’t know,” she wailed. “He didn’t come to the cavern.”

Her father’s bushy eyebrows lowered, shadowing his eyes. He looked toward the door. Elexa unhooked her loot pouch and laid it on the table, grabbed another water gourd and her cloak.

“Did you see which direction he went this morning?” Father asked.

“South,” said Elexa.

Father put a fat candle in the cut tin lantern they used for outdoors and took his herder’s crook. They went out.

In the center ground, Fonsee Weaver sat beside the bell, talking to other people with questions about missing relatives. When she saw Elexa’s father, she said, “Oh, Horst! Thank goodness! We thought you were lost,” and she made a note.

“We’re going to look for Kindal,” Elexa told her.

“Wait.” Fonsee lowered the list into her lantern’s light and read over it. “Mishta says he saw Kindal hunting near Starfall Lake this morning.”

“Starfall Lake!” said Elexa’s father.

“His dragon mother and children must be very hungry,” Elexa said. Starfall Lake was far to the south, nearly to the pass. People could usually find game there because it was so far they didn’t hunt there often. It would be hard to find in the dark. One had to leave the road at just the right place and climb up through trees over a field of jagged boulders.

Father fingered the whistle he wore around his neck. With it, he could summon his dragon mother, but she would be bedded down for the night now, and even if he rode her, there wasn’t much he would be able to see from her back in the dark.

“Let’s walk the south road,” Elexa said. “Maybe we’ll meet him coming home.”

Father nodded. They left the center ground and followed the road, the tin lantern casting flowing cutouts of candlelight and shadow on the pale dust. Night was cool and damp and full of the scents of plants waking from winter and the sounds of courting frogs and insects. Little Moon had risen, casting faint blue light over the land.

Elexa listened to the night, glanced around with the edges of her eyes, alert for ghosts. Smudu walked silently beside her, glowing in the night with the light of vanished day. She saw an owl swoop down on a mouse, but she let the mouse’s ghost fly. She already had one mouse ghost on her belt and no longer knew if she would ever be able to give it to Kindal.

They had missed the turnoff for the lake and almost reached the pass when Elexa sensed something strange a little way off the road. “Wait,” she said. She left the circle of light scraps her father was casting and went into the woods, searching by the pale light Smudu’s ghost cast as he walked with her. He was like a small, local moon.

“Oh,” Smudu said, surprised, as they got closer to the thing that was like a giant gem and tickled her ghost senses at the same time. “What is it?” He grabbed the thread that tied him to Elexa and clung as his feet pulled out from under him; he hung sideways on the line like a hooked fish in a river current. “It’s pulling me!”